"... Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans, but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon. ..."
"... This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps. Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent shape public perception." ..."
"... During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no one really wanted. ..."
"... When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. ..."
"... Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of war." ..."
"... The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam. ..."
"... Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. ..."
The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It
was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of
mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience:
us.
To understand the Iraq war you don't need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR
flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from the murky corridors of Washington where
politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit.
Consider the picaresque journey of Tony Blair's plagiarized dossier on Iraq, from a grad
student's website to a cut-and-paste job in the prime minister's bombastic speech to the House
of Commons. Blair, stubborn and verbose, paid a price for his grandiose puffery. Bush, who
looted whole passages from Blair's speech for his own clumsy presentations, has skated freely
through the tempest. Why?
Unlike Blair, the Bush team never wanted to present a legal case for war. They had no
interest in making any of their allegations about Iraq hold up to a standard of proof. The real
effort was aimed at amping up the mood for war by using the psychology of fear.
Facts were never important to the Bush team. They were disposable nuggets that could be
discarded at will and replaced by whatever new rationale that played favorably with their polls
and focus groups. The war was about weapons of mass destruction one week, al-Qaeda the next.
When neither allegation could be substantiated on the ground, the fall back position became the
mass graves (many from the Iran/Iraq war where the U.S.A. backed Iraq) proving that Saddam was
an evil thug who deserved to be toppled. The motto of the Bush PR machine was: Move on. Don't
explain. Say anything to conceal the perfidy behind the real motives for war. Never look back.
Accuse the questioners of harboring unpatriotic sensibilities. Eventually, even the cagey
Wolfowitz admitted that the official case for war was made mainly to make the invasion
palatable, not to justify it.
The Bush claque of neocon hawks viewed the Iraq war as a product and, just like a new pair
of Nikes, it required a roll-out campaign to soften up the consumers. The same techniques (and
often the same PR gurus) that have been used to hawk cigarettes, SUVs and nuclear waste dumps
were deployed to retail the Iraq war. To peddle the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell
and company recruited public relations gurus into top-level jobs at the Pentagon and the State
Department. These spinmeisters soon had more say over how the rationale for war on Iraq should
be presented than intelligence agencies and career diplomats. If the intelligence didn't fit
the script, it was shaded, retooled or junked.
Take Charlotte Beers whom Powell picked as undersecretary of state in the post-9/11 world.
Beers wasn't a diplomat. She wasn't even a politician. She was a grand diva of spin, known on
the business and gossip pages as "the queen of Madison Avenue." On the strength of two
advertising campaigns, one for Uncle Ben's Rice and another for Head and Shoulder's dandruff
shampoo, Beers rocketed to the top of the heap in the PR world, heading two giant PR houses:
Ogilvy and Mathers as well as J. Walter Thompson.
At the State Department Beers, who had met Powell in 1995 when they both served on the board
of Gulf Airstream, worked at, in Powell's words, "the branding of U.S. foreign policy." She
extracted more than $500 million from Congress for her Brand America campaign, which largely
focused on beaming U.S. propaganda into the Muslim world, much of it directed at teens.
"Public diplomacy is a vital new arm in what will combat terrorism over time," said Beers.
"All of a sudden we are in this position of redefining who America is, not only for ourselves,
but for the outside world." Note the rapt attention Beers pays to the manipulation of
perception, as opposed, say, to alterations of U.S. policy.
Old-fashioned diplomacy involves direct communication between representatives of nations, a
conversational give and take, often fraught with deception (see April Glaspie), but an exchange
nonetheless. Public diplomacy, as defined by Beers, is something else entirely. It's a one-way
street, a unilateral broadcast of American propaganda directly to the public, domestic and
international, a kind of informational carpet-bombing.
The themes of her campaigns were as simplistic and flimsy as a Bush press conference. The
American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were all about bringing the balm of "freedom" to
oppressed peoples. Hence, the title of the U.S. war: Operation Iraqi Freedom, where cruise
missiles were depicted as instruments of liberation. Bush himself distilled the Beers equation
to its bizarre essence: "This war is about peace."
Beers quietly resigned her post a few weeks before the first volley of tomahawk missiles
battered Baghdad. From her point of view, the war itself was already won, the fireworks of
shock and awe were all after play.
Over at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld drafted Victoria "Torie" Clarke as his director of
public affairs. Clarke knew the ropes inside the Beltway. Before becoming Rumsfeld's
mouthpiece, she had commanded one of the world's great parlors for powerbrokers: Hill and
Knowlton's D.C. office.
Almost immediately upon taking up her new gig, Clarke convened regular meetings with a
select group of Washington's top private PR specialists and lobbyists to develop a marketing
plan for the Pentagon's forthcoming terror wars. The group was filled with heavy-hitters and
was strikingly bipartisan in composition. She called it the Rumsfeld Group and it included PR
executive Sheila Tate, columnist Rich Lowry, and Republican political consultant Rich
Galen.
The brain trust also boasted top Democratic fixer Tommy Boggs, brother of NPR's Cokie
Roberts and son of the late Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana. At the very time Boggs was
conferring with top Pentagon brass on how to frame the war on terror, he was also working
feverishly for the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In 2002 alone, the Saudis paid his Qorvis PR
firm $20.2 million to protect its interests in Washington. In the wake of hostile press
coverage following the exposure of Saudi links to the 9/11 hijackers, the royal family needed
all the well-placed help it could buy. They seem to have gotten their money's worth. Boggs'
felicitous influence-peddling may help to explain why the references to Saudi funding of
al-Qaeda were dropped from the recent congressional report on the investigation into
intelligence failures and 9/11.
According to the trade publication PR Week, the Rumsfeld Group sent "messaging advice" to
the Pentagon. The group told Clarke and Rumsfeld that in order to get the American public to
buy into the war on terrorism, they needed to suggest a link to nation states, not just
nebulous groups such as al-Qaeda. In other words, there needed to be a fixed target for the
military campaigns, some distant place to drop cruise missiles and cluster bombs. They
suggested the notion (already embedded in Rumsfeld's mind) of playing up the notion of
so-called rogue states as the real masters of terrorism. Thus was born the Axis of Evil, which,
of course, wasn't an "axis" at all, since two of the states, Iran and Iraq, hated each other,
and neither had anything at all to do with the third, North Korea.
Tens of millions in federal money were poured into private public relations and media firms
working to craft and broadcast the Bush dictat that Saddam had to be taken out before the Iraqi
dictator blew up the world by dropping chemical and nuclear bombs from long-range drones. Many
of these PR executives and image consultants were old friends of the high priests in the Bush
inner sanctum. Indeed, they were veterans, like Cheney and Powell, of the previous war against
Iraq, another engagement that was more spin than combat .
At the top of the list was John Rendon, head of the D.C. firm, the Rendon Group. Rendon is
one of Washington's heaviest hitters, a Beltway fixer who never let political affiliation stand
in the way of an assignment. Rendon served as a media consultant for Michael Dukakis and Jimmy
Carter, as well as Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Whenever the Pentagon wanted to go to war, he
offered his services at a price. During Desert Storm, Rendon pulled in $100,000 a month from
the Kuwaiti royal family. He followed this up with a $23 million contract from the CIA to
produce anti-Saddam propaganda in the region.
As part of this CIA project, Rendon created and named the Iraqi National Congress and tapped
his friend Ahmed Chalabi, the shady financier, to head the organization.
Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon handed the Rendon Group another big assignment: public
relations for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon was also deeply involved in the planning
and public relations for the pre-emptive war on Iraq, though both Rendon and the Pentagon
refuse to disclose the details of the group's work there.
But it's not hard to detect the manipulative hand of Rendon behind many of the Iraq war's
signature events, including the toppling of the Saddam statue (by U.S. troops and Chalabi
associates) and videotape of jubilant Iraqis waving American flags as the Third Infantry rolled
by them. Rendon had pulled off the same stunt in the first Gulf War, handing out American flags
to Kuwaitis and herding the media to the orchestrated demonstration. "Where do you think they
got those American flags?" clucked Rendon in 1991. "That was my assignment."
The Rendon Group may also have had played a role in pushing the phony intelligence that has
now come back to haunt the Bush administration. In December of 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported
that the inner circle of the Bush White House preferred the intelligence coming from Chalabi
and his associates to that being proffered by analysts at the CIA.
So Rendon and his circle represented a new kind of off-the-shelf PSYOPs , the privatization
of official propaganda. "I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician," said
Rendon. "I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or
corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception
manager."
What exactly, is perception management? The Pentagon defines it this way: "actions to convey
and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their
emotions, motives and objective reasoning." In other words, lying about the intentions of the
U.S. government. In a rare display of public frankness, the Pentagon actually let slip its plan
(developed by Rendon) to establish a high-level den inside the Department Defense for
perception management. They called it the Office of Strategic Influence and among its many
missions was to plant false stories in the press.
Nothing stirs the corporate media into outbursts of pious outrage like an official
government memo bragging about how the media are manipulated for political objectives. So the
New York Times and Washington Post threw indignant fits about the Office of Strategic
Influence; the Pentagon shut down the operation, and the press gloated with satisfaction on its
victory. Yet, Rumsfeld told the Pentagon press corps that while he was killing the office, the
same devious work would continue. "You can have the corpse," said Rumsfeld. "You can have the
name. But I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done. And I have."
At a diplomatic level, despite the hired guns and the planted stories, this image war was
lost. It failed to convince even America's most fervent allies and dependent client states that
Iraq posed much of a threat. It failed to win the blessing of the U.N. and even NATO, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Washington. At the end of the day, the vaunted coalition of the willing
consisted of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia, and a cohort of former Soviet bloc nations. Even
so, the citizens of the nations that cast their lot with the U.S.A. overwhelmingly opposed the
war.
Domestically, it was a different story. A population traumatized by terror threats and
shattered economy became easy prey for the saturation bombing of the Bush message that Iraq was
a terrorist state linked to al-Qaeda that was only minutes away from launching attacks on
America with weapons of mass destruction.
Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of
threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans,
but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the
American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was
behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon.
Of course, the closest Saddam came to possessing a nuke was a rusting gas centrifuge buried
for 13 years in the garden of Mahdi Obeidi, a retired Iraqi scientist. Iraq didn't have any
functional chemical or biological weapons. In fact, it didn't even possess any SCUD missiles,
despite erroneous reports fed by Pentagon PR flacks alleging that it had fired SCUDs into
Kuwait.
This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps.
Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few
weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent
shape public perception."
During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized
opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the
Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no
one really wanted.
What the Pentagon sought was a new kind of living room war, where instead of photos of
mangled soldiers and dead Iraqi kids, they could control the images Americans viewed and to a
large extent the content of the stories. By embedding reporters inside selected divisions,
Clarke believed the Pentagon could count on the reporters to build relationships with the
troops and to feel dependent on them for their own safety. It worked, naturally. One reporter
for a national network trembled on camera that the U.S. Army functioned as "our protectors."
The late David Bloom of NBC confessed on the air that he was willing to do "anything and
everything they can ask of us."
When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the
war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a
fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain
death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. Of course,
nearly every detail of her heroic adventure proved to be as fictive and maudlin as any
made-for-TV-movie. But the ordeal of Private Lynch, which dominated the news for more than a
week, served its purpose: to distract attention from a stalled campaign that was beginning to
look at lot riskier than the American public had been hoodwinked into believing.
The Lynch story was fed to the eager press by a Pentagon operation called Combat Camera, the
Army network of photographers, videographers and editors that sends 800 photos and 25 video
clips a day to the media. The editors at Combat Camera carefully culled the footage to present
the Pentagon's montage of the war, eliding such unsettling images as collateral damage, cluster
bombs, dead children and U.S. soldiers, napalm strikes and disgruntled troops.
"A lot of our imagery will have a big impact on world opinion," predicted Lt. Jane Larogue,
director of Combat Camera in Iraq. She was right. But as the hot war turned into an even hotter
occupation, the Pentagon, despite airy rhetoric from occupation supremo Paul Bremer about
installing democratic institutions such as a free press, moved to tighten its monopoly on the
flow images out of Iraq. First, it tried to shut down Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. Then
the Pentagon intimated that it would like to see all foreign TV news crews banished from
Baghdad.
Few newspapers fanned the hysteria about the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction as sedulously as did the Washington Post. In the months leading up to the war, the
Post's pro-war op-eds outnumbered the anti-war columns by a 3-to-1 margin.
Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass
destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington
Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of
war."
The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly
attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam.
Anything to punish Iran was the message coming from the White House. Donald Rumsfeld himself
was sent as President Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Baghdad. Rumsfeld conveyed the bold
message than an Iraq defeat would be viewed as a "strategic setback for the United States."
This sleazy alliance was sealed with a handshake caught on videotape. When CNN reporter Jamie
McIntyre replayed the footage for Rumsfeld in the spring of 2003, the secretary of defense
snapped, "Where'd you get that? Iraqi television?"
The current crop of Iraq hawks also saw Saddam much differently then. Take the writer Laura
Mylroie, sometime colleague of the New York Times' Judy Miller, who persists in peddling the
ludicrous conspiracy that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
How times have changed! In 1987, Mylroie felt downright cuddly toward Saddam. She wrote an
article for the New Republic titled "Back Iraq: Time for a U.S. Tilt in the Mideast," arguing
that the U.S. should publicly embrace Saddam's secular regime as a bulwark against the Islamic
fundamentalists in Iran. The co-author of this mesmerizing weave of wonkery was none other than
Daniel Pipes, perhaps the nation's most bellicose Islamophobe. "The American weapons that Iraq
could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines and
counterartillery radar," wrote Mylroie and Pipes. "The United States might also consider
upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad."
In the rollout for the war, Mylroie seemed to be everywhere hawking the invasion of Iraq.
She would often appear on two or three different networks in the same day. How did the reporter
manage this feat? She had help in the form of Eleana Benador, the media placement guru who runs
Benador Associates. Born in Peru, Benador parlayed her skills as a linguist into a lucrative
career as media relations whiz for the Washington foreign policy elite. She also oversees the
Middle East Forum, a fanatically pro-Zionist white paper mill. Her clients include some of the
nation's most fervid hawks, including Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Al Haig, Max Boot,
Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, and Judy Miller. During the Iraq war, Benador's assignment was to
embed this squadron of pro-war zealots into the national media, on talk shows, and op-ed
pages.
Benador not only got them the gigs, she also crafted the theme and made sure they all stayed
on message. "There are some things, you just have to state them in a different way, in a
slightly different way," said Benador. "If not, people get scared." Scared of intentions of
their own government.
It could have been different. All of the holes in the Bush administration's gossamer case
for war were right there for the mainstream press to expose. Instead, the U.S. press, just like
the oil companies, sought to commercialize the Iraq war and profit from the invasions. They
didn't want to deal with uncomfortable facts or present voices of dissent.
Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk
show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a
running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired
generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. The network's executives
blamed the cancellation on sagging ratings. In fact, during its run Donahue's show attracted
more viewers than any other program on the network. The real reason for the pre-emptive strike
on Donahue was spelled out in an internal memo from anxious executives at NBC. Donahue, the
memo said, offered "a difficult face for NBC in a time of war. He seems to delight in
presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's
motives."
The memo warned that Donahue's show risked tarring MSNBC as an unpatriotic network, "a home
for liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every
opportunity." So, with scarcely a second thought, the honchos at MSNBC gave Donahue the boot
and hoisted the battle flag.
It's war that sells.
There's a helluva caveat, of course. Once you buy it, the merchants of war accept no
returns.
"... Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans, but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon. ..."
"... This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps. Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent shape public perception." ..."
"... During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no one really wanted. ..."
"... When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. ..."
"... Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of war." ..."
"... The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam. ..."
"... Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. ..."
The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It
was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of
mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience:
us.
To understand the Iraq war you don't need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR
flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from the murky corridors of Washington where
politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit.
Consider the picaresque journey of Tony Blair's plagiarized dossier on Iraq, from a grad
student's website to a cut-and-paste job in the prime minister's bombastic speech to the House
of Commons. Blair, stubborn and verbose, paid a price for his grandiose puffery. Bush, who
looted whole passages from Blair's speech for his own clumsy presentations, has skated freely
through the tempest. Why?
Unlike Blair, the Bush team never wanted to present a legal case for war. They had no
interest in making any of their allegations about Iraq hold up to a standard of proof. The real
effort was aimed at amping up the mood for war by using the psychology of fear.
Facts were never important to the Bush team. They were disposable nuggets that could be
discarded at will and replaced by whatever new rationale that played favorably with their polls
and focus groups. The war was about weapons of mass destruction one week, al-Qaeda the next.
When neither allegation could be substantiated on the ground, the fall back position became the
mass graves (many from the Iran/Iraq war where the U.S.A. backed Iraq) proving that Saddam was
an evil thug who deserved to be toppled. The motto of the Bush PR machine was: Move on. Don't
explain. Say anything to conceal the perfidy behind the real motives for war. Never look back.
Accuse the questioners of harboring unpatriotic sensibilities. Eventually, even the cagey
Wolfowitz admitted that the official case for war was made mainly to make the invasion
palatable, not to justify it.
The Bush claque of neocon hawks viewed the Iraq war as a product and, just like a new pair
of Nikes, it required a roll-out campaign to soften up the consumers. The same techniques (and
often the same PR gurus) that have been used to hawk cigarettes, SUVs and nuclear waste dumps
were deployed to retail the Iraq war. To peddle the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell
and company recruited public relations gurus into top-level jobs at the Pentagon and the State
Department. These spinmeisters soon had more say over how the rationale for war on Iraq should
be presented than intelligence agencies and career diplomats. If the intelligence didn't fit
the script, it was shaded, retooled or junked.
Take Charlotte Beers whom Powell picked as undersecretary of state in the post-9/11 world.
Beers wasn't a diplomat. She wasn't even a politician. She was a grand diva of spin, known on
the business and gossip pages as "the queen of Madison Avenue." On the strength of two
advertising campaigns, one for Uncle Ben's Rice and another for Head and Shoulder's dandruff
shampoo, Beers rocketed to the top of the heap in the PR world, heading two giant PR houses:
Ogilvy and Mathers as well as J. Walter Thompson.
At the State Department Beers, who had met Powell in 1995 when they both served on the board
of Gulf Airstream, worked at, in Powell's words, "the branding of U.S. foreign policy." She
extracted more than $500 million from Congress for her Brand America campaign, which largely
focused on beaming U.S. propaganda into the Muslim world, much of it directed at teens.
"Public diplomacy is a vital new arm in what will combat terrorism over time," said Beers.
"All of a sudden we are in this position of redefining who America is, not only for ourselves,
but for the outside world." Note the rapt attention Beers pays to the manipulation of
perception, as opposed, say, to alterations of U.S. policy.
Old-fashioned diplomacy involves direct communication between representatives of nations, a
conversational give and take, often fraught with deception (see April Glaspie), but an exchange
nonetheless. Public diplomacy, as defined by Beers, is something else entirely. It's a one-way
street, a unilateral broadcast of American propaganda directly to the public, domestic and
international, a kind of informational carpet-bombing.
The themes of her campaigns were as simplistic and flimsy as a Bush press conference. The
American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were all about bringing the balm of "freedom" to
oppressed peoples. Hence, the title of the U.S. war: Operation Iraqi Freedom, where cruise
missiles were depicted as instruments of liberation. Bush himself distilled the Beers equation
to its bizarre essence: "This war is about peace."
Beers quietly resigned her post a few weeks before the first volley of tomahawk missiles
battered Baghdad. From her point of view, the war itself was already won, the fireworks of
shock and awe were all after play.
Over at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld drafted Victoria "Torie" Clarke as his director of
public affairs. Clarke knew the ropes inside the Beltway. Before becoming Rumsfeld's
mouthpiece, she had commanded one of the world's great parlors for powerbrokers: Hill and
Knowlton's D.C. office.
Almost immediately upon taking up her new gig, Clarke convened regular meetings with a
select group of Washington's top private PR specialists and lobbyists to develop a marketing
plan for the Pentagon's forthcoming terror wars. The group was filled with heavy-hitters and
was strikingly bipartisan in composition. She called it the Rumsfeld Group and it included PR
executive Sheila Tate, columnist Rich Lowry, and Republican political consultant Rich
Galen.
The brain trust also boasted top Democratic fixer Tommy Boggs, brother of NPR's Cokie
Roberts and son of the late Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana. At the very time Boggs was
conferring with top Pentagon brass on how to frame the war on terror, he was also working
feverishly for the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In 2002 alone, the Saudis paid his Qorvis PR
firm $20.2 million to protect its interests in Washington. In the wake of hostile press
coverage following the exposure of Saudi links to the 9/11 hijackers, the royal family needed
all the well-placed help it could buy. They seem to have gotten their money's worth. Boggs'
felicitous influence-peddling may help to explain why the references to Saudi funding of
al-Qaeda were dropped from the recent congressional report on the investigation into
intelligence failures and 9/11.
According to the trade publication PR Week, the Rumsfeld Group sent "messaging advice" to
the Pentagon. The group told Clarke and Rumsfeld that in order to get the American public to
buy into the war on terrorism, they needed to suggest a link to nation states, not just
nebulous groups such as al-Qaeda. In other words, there needed to be a fixed target for the
military campaigns, some distant place to drop cruise missiles and cluster bombs. They
suggested the notion (already embedded in Rumsfeld's mind) of playing up the notion of
so-called rogue states as the real masters of terrorism. Thus was born the Axis of Evil, which,
of course, wasn't an "axis" at all, since two of the states, Iran and Iraq, hated each other,
and neither had anything at all to do with the third, North Korea.
Tens of millions in federal money were poured into private public relations and media firms
working to craft and broadcast the Bush dictat that Saddam had to be taken out before the Iraqi
dictator blew up the world by dropping chemical and nuclear bombs from long-range drones. Many
of these PR executives and image consultants were old friends of the high priests in the Bush
inner sanctum. Indeed, they were veterans, like Cheney and Powell, of the previous war against
Iraq, another engagement that was more spin than combat .
At the top of the list was John Rendon, head of the D.C. firm, the Rendon Group. Rendon is
one of Washington's heaviest hitters, a Beltway fixer who never let political affiliation stand
in the way of an assignment. Rendon served as a media consultant for Michael Dukakis and Jimmy
Carter, as well as Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Whenever the Pentagon wanted to go to war, he
offered his services at a price. During Desert Storm, Rendon pulled in $100,000 a month from
the Kuwaiti royal family. He followed this up with a $23 million contract from the CIA to
produce anti-Saddam propaganda in the region.
As part of this CIA project, Rendon created and named the Iraqi National Congress and tapped
his friend Ahmed Chalabi, the shady financier, to head the organization.
Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon handed the Rendon Group another big assignment: public
relations for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon was also deeply involved in the planning
and public relations for the pre-emptive war on Iraq, though both Rendon and the Pentagon
refuse to disclose the details of the group's work there.
But it's not hard to detect the manipulative hand of Rendon behind many of the Iraq war's
signature events, including the toppling of the Saddam statue (by U.S. troops and Chalabi
associates) and videotape of jubilant Iraqis waving American flags as the Third Infantry rolled
by them. Rendon had pulled off the same stunt in the first Gulf War, handing out American flags
to Kuwaitis and herding the media to the orchestrated demonstration. "Where do you think they
got those American flags?" clucked Rendon in 1991. "That was my assignment."
The Rendon Group may also have had played a role in pushing the phony intelligence that has
now come back to haunt the Bush administration. In December of 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported
that the inner circle of the Bush White House preferred the intelligence coming from Chalabi
and his associates to that being proffered by analysts at the CIA.
So Rendon and his circle represented a new kind of off-the-shelf PSYOPs , the privatization
of official propaganda. "I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician," said
Rendon. "I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or
corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception
manager."
What exactly, is perception management? The Pentagon defines it this way: "actions to convey
and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their
emotions, motives and objective reasoning." In other words, lying about the intentions of the
U.S. government. In a rare display of public frankness, the Pentagon actually let slip its plan
(developed by Rendon) to establish a high-level den inside the Department Defense for
perception management. They called it the Office of Strategic Influence and among its many
missions was to plant false stories in the press.
Nothing stirs the corporate media into outbursts of pious outrage like an official
government memo bragging about how the media are manipulated for political objectives. So the
New York Times and Washington Post threw indignant fits about the Office of Strategic
Influence; the Pentagon shut down the operation, and the press gloated with satisfaction on its
victory. Yet, Rumsfeld told the Pentagon press corps that while he was killing the office, the
same devious work would continue. "You can have the corpse," said Rumsfeld. "You can have the
name. But I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done. And I have."
At a diplomatic level, despite the hired guns and the planted stories, this image war was
lost. It failed to convince even America's most fervent allies and dependent client states that
Iraq posed much of a threat. It failed to win the blessing of the U.N. and even NATO, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Washington. At the end of the day, the vaunted coalition of the willing
consisted of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia, and a cohort of former Soviet bloc nations. Even
so, the citizens of the nations that cast their lot with the U.S.A. overwhelmingly opposed the
war.
Domestically, it was a different story. A population traumatized by terror threats and
shattered economy became easy prey for the saturation bombing of the Bush message that Iraq was
a terrorist state linked to al-Qaeda that was only minutes away from launching attacks on
America with weapons of mass destruction.
Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of
threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans,
but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the
American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was
behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon.
Of course, the closest Saddam came to possessing a nuke was a rusting gas centrifuge buried
for 13 years in the garden of Mahdi Obeidi, a retired Iraqi scientist. Iraq didn't have any
functional chemical or biological weapons. In fact, it didn't even possess any SCUD missiles,
despite erroneous reports fed by Pentagon PR flacks alleging that it had fired SCUDs into
Kuwait.
This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps.
Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few
weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent
shape public perception."
During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized
opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the
Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no
one really wanted.
What the Pentagon sought was a new kind of living room war, where instead of photos of
mangled soldiers and dead Iraqi kids, they could control the images Americans viewed and to a
large extent the content of the stories. By embedding reporters inside selected divisions,
Clarke believed the Pentagon could count on the reporters to build relationships with the
troops and to feel dependent on them for their own safety. It worked, naturally. One reporter
for a national network trembled on camera that the U.S. Army functioned as "our protectors."
The late David Bloom of NBC confessed on the air that he was willing to do "anything and
everything they can ask of us."
When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the
war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a
fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain
death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. Of course,
nearly every detail of her heroic adventure proved to be as fictive and maudlin as any
made-for-TV-movie. But the ordeal of Private Lynch, which dominated the news for more than a
week, served its purpose: to distract attention from a stalled campaign that was beginning to
look at lot riskier than the American public had been hoodwinked into believing.
The Lynch story was fed to the eager press by a Pentagon operation called Combat Camera, the
Army network of photographers, videographers and editors that sends 800 photos and 25 video
clips a day to the media. The editors at Combat Camera carefully culled the footage to present
the Pentagon's montage of the war, eliding such unsettling images as collateral damage, cluster
bombs, dead children and U.S. soldiers, napalm strikes and disgruntled troops.
"A lot of our imagery will have a big impact on world opinion," predicted Lt. Jane Larogue,
director of Combat Camera in Iraq. She was right. But as the hot war turned into an even hotter
occupation, the Pentagon, despite airy rhetoric from occupation supremo Paul Bremer about
installing democratic institutions such as a free press, moved to tighten its monopoly on the
flow images out of Iraq. First, it tried to shut down Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. Then
the Pentagon intimated that it would like to see all foreign TV news crews banished from
Baghdad.
Few newspapers fanned the hysteria about the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction as sedulously as did the Washington Post. In the months leading up to the war, the
Post's pro-war op-eds outnumbered the anti-war columns by a 3-to-1 margin.
Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass
destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington
Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of
war."
The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly
attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam.
Anything to punish Iran was the message coming from the White House. Donald Rumsfeld himself
was sent as President Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Baghdad. Rumsfeld conveyed the bold
message than an Iraq defeat would be viewed as a "strategic setback for the United States."
This sleazy alliance was sealed with a handshake caught on videotape. When CNN reporter Jamie
McIntyre replayed the footage for Rumsfeld in the spring of 2003, the secretary of defense
snapped, "Where'd you get that? Iraqi television?"
The current crop of Iraq hawks also saw Saddam much differently then. Take the writer Laura
Mylroie, sometime colleague of the New York Times' Judy Miller, who persists in peddling the
ludicrous conspiracy that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
How times have changed! In 1987, Mylroie felt downright cuddly toward Saddam. She wrote an
article for the New Republic titled "Back Iraq: Time for a U.S. Tilt in the Mideast," arguing
that the U.S. should publicly embrace Saddam's secular regime as a bulwark against the Islamic
fundamentalists in Iran. The co-author of this mesmerizing weave of wonkery was none other than
Daniel Pipes, perhaps the nation's most bellicose Islamophobe. "The American weapons that Iraq
could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines and
counterartillery radar," wrote Mylroie and Pipes. "The United States might also consider
upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad."
In the rollout for the war, Mylroie seemed to be everywhere hawking the invasion of Iraq.
She would often appear on two or three different networks in the same day. How did the reporter
manage this feat? She had help in the form of Eleana Benador, the media placement guru who runs
Benador Associates. Born in Peru, Benador parlayed her skills as a linguist into a lucrative
career as media relations whiz for the Washington foreign policy elite. She also oversees the
Middle East Forum, a fanatically pro-Zionist white paper mill. Her clients include some of the
nation's most fervid hawks, including Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Al Haig, Max Boot,
Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, and Judy Miller. During the Iraq war, Benador's assignment was to
embed this squadron of pro-war zealots into the national media, on talk shows, and op-ed
pages.
Benador not only got them the gigs, she also crafted the theme and made sure they all stayed
on message. "There are some things, you just have to state them in a different way, in a
slightly different way," said Benador. "If not, people get scared." Scared of intentions of
their own government.
It could have been different. All of the holes in the Bush administration's gossamer case
for war were right there for the mainstream press to expose. Instead, the U.S. press, just like
the oil companies, sought to commercialize the Iraq war and profit from the invasions. They
didn't want to deal with uncomfortable facts or present voices of dissent.
Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk
show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a
running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired
generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. The network's executives
blamed the cancellation on sagging ratings. In fact, during its run Donahue's show attracted
more viewers than any other program on the network. The real reason for the pre-emptive strike
on Donahue was spelled out in an internal memo from anxious executives at NBC. Donahue, the
memo said, offered "a difficult face for NBC in a time of war. He seems to delight in
presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's
motives."
The memo warned that Donahue's show risked tarring MSNBC as an unpatriotic network, "a home
for liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every
opportunity." So, with scarcely a second thought, the honchos at MSNBC gave Donahue the boot
and hoisted the battle flag.
It's war that sells.
There's a helluva caveat, of course. Once you buy it, the merchants of war accept no
returns.
On January 8, 2018, former government advisor Edward Luttwak wrote an opinion piece for
Foreign Policy titled "It's Time to Bomb North Korea."
Luttwak's thesis is relatively straightforward. There is a government out there that may
very soon acquire nuclear-weapons capabilities, and this country cannot be trusted to
responsibly handle such a stockpile. The responsibility to protect the world from a rogue
nation cannot be argued with, and we understandably have a duty to ensure the future of
humanity.
However, there is one rogue nation that continues to hold the world ransom with its nuclear
weapons supply. It is decimating non-compliant states left, right, and center. This country
must be stopped dead in its tracks before anyone turns to the issue of North Korea.
In August of 1945, this rogue nation dropped two atomic bombs on civilian targets, not
military targets, completely obliterating between 135,000 and
300,000 Japanese civilians in just these two acts alone. Prior to this event, this country
killed even more civilians in the infamous
firebombing of Tokyo and other areas of Japan, dropping close to 500,000 cylinders of
napalm and petroleum jelly on some of Japan's most densely populated areas.
Recently, historians have become more open to the possibility that dropping the atomic bombs
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not actually necessary to end World War II. This has also been
confirmed by those who actually took part in it. As the Nation
explained:
Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public
address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that 'the atomic bomb played
no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan ' Adm. William
"Bull" Halsey Jr., Commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that 'the first
atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . It was a mistake to ever drop it . [the
scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it
A few months' prior, this rogue country's
invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa also claimed at least one quarter of Okinawa's
population. The Okinawan people have been protesting this country's military presence ever
since. The most recent ongoing protest
has lasted well over 5,000 days in a row.
This nation's bloodlust continued well after the end of World War II. Barely half a decade
later, this country bombed North Korea into complete oblivion, destroying over 8,700 factories,
5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals, 600,000 homes, and
eventually killing off as much as 20 percent of the country's population. As the Asia
Pacific Journal has noted, the assaulting country dropped so many bombs that they eventually
ran out of targets to hit, turning to bomb the irrigation systems, instead:
By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every
significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the
spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the
North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to
the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating
whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans."
This was just the beginning. Having successfully destroyed the future North Korean
state, this country moved on to the rest of East Asia and Indo-China, too. As Rolling Stone's
Matt Taibbi
has explained :
We [this loose cannon of a nation] dumped 20 million gallons of toxic herbicide on Vietnam
from the air, just to make the shooting easier without all those trees, an insane plan to win
'hearts and minds' that has left about a million still disabled from defects and disease
– including about 100,000 children, even decades later, little kids with misshapen
heads, webbed hands and fused eyelids writhing on cots, our real American legacy, well out of
view, of course.
This mass murder led to the deaths of between 1.5 million and 3.8 million people,
according to the Washington Post. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were unleashed
during the entire
conflict in World War II . While this was going on, this same country was also
secretly bombing Laos and Cambodia, too, where there are over 80 million
unexploded bombs still killing people to this day.
This country also decided to bomb Yugoslavia ,
Panama
, and
Grenada before invading Iraq in the early 1990s. Having successfully bombed Iraqi
infrastructure, this country then punished Iraq's entire civilian population with brutal
sanctions. At the time, the U.N.
estimated that approximately 1.7 million Iraqis had died as a result, including
500,000 to 600,000 children . Some years later, a prominent medical journal attempted
to absolve the cause of this infamous history by refuting the statistics involved despite
the fact that, when interviewed during the sanctions-era, Bill Clinton's secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, intimated that to this rogue government, the
deaths of half a million children were "worth it" as the "price" Iraq needed to pay. In other
words, whether half a million children died or not was irrelevant to this bloodthirsty nation,
which barely blinked while carrying out this murderous policy.
This almighty superpower then invaded Iraq again in 2003 and plunged the entire region
into chaos . At the end of May 2017, the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
released a study
concluding that the death toll from this violent nation's 2003 invasion of Iraq had led to over
one million deaths and that at least one-third of them were caused directly by the invading
force.
Not to mention this country also invaded Afghanistan prior to the invasion of Iraq (even
though the militants plaguing Afghanistan were
originally trained and financed by this warmongering nation). It then
went on to bomb Yemen, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and the
Philippines .
Libya famously
had one of the highest standards of living in the region. It had state-assisted healthcare,
education, transport, and affordable housing. It is now a lawless war-zone
rife with extremism where slaves are openly traded like commodities
amid the power vacuum created as a direct result of the 2011 invasion.
In 2017, the commander-in-chief of this violent nation took the monumental death and
destruction to a new a level by removing
the restrictions on delivering airstrikes, which resulted in thousands upon
thousands of civilian deaths. Before that, in the first six months of 2017, this country
dropped
over 20,650 bombs , a monumental increase from the year that preceded it.
Despite these statistics, all of the above conquests are mere child's play to this nation.
The real prize lies in some of the more defiant and more powerful states, which this country
has already unleashed a containment strategy upon. This country has deployed its own troops all
across the border
with Russia even though it promised in the early 1990s it
would do no such thing. It also has a specific policy of
containing Russia's close ally, China, all the while threatening China's borders with talks
of direct strikes on North Korea (again, remember it already did so in the 1950s).
This country also elected a president who not only believes it is okay to embrace this rampantly violent
militarism but who openly calls other
countries "shitholes" – the very same term that aptly describes the way this country
has treated the rest of the world for decades on end. This same president also reportedly once
asked three times in a meeting
, "If we have nuclear weapons, why don't we use them?" and shortly after proposed a policy to
remove the constraints protecting the world from his dangerous supply of advanced nuclear
weaponry.
If we have any empathy for humanity, it is clear that this country must be stopped. It
cannot continue to act like this to the detriment of the rest of the planet and the safety and
security of the rest of us. This country
openly talks about using its nuclear weapons, has used them before, and has continued to
use all manner of weapons unabated in the years since while threatening to expand the use of
these weapons to other countries.
Seriously, if North Korea seems like a threat, imagine how the rest of the world feels while
watching one country violently take on the rest of the planet single-handedly, leaving nothing
but destruction in its wake and promising nothing less than a nuclear holocaust in the years to
come.
There is only one country that has done and that continues to do the very things North Korea
is being accused of doing.
Take as much time as you need for that to resonate.
On January 8, 2018, former government advisor Edward Luttwak wrote an opinion piece for
Foreign Policy titled "It's Time to Bomb North Korea."
Luttwak's thesis is relatively straightforward. There is a government out there that may
very soon acquire nuclear-weapons capabilities, and this country cannot be trusted to
responsibly handle such a stockpile. The responsibility to protect the world from a rogue
nation cannot be argued with, and we understandably have a duty to ensure the future of
humanity.
However, there is one rogue nation that continues to hold the world ransom with its nuclear
weapons supply. It is decimating non-compliant states left, right, and center. This country
must be stopped dead in its tracks before anyone turns to the issue of North Korea.
In August of 1945, this rogue nation dropped two atomic bombs on civilian targets, not
military targets, completely obliterating between 135,000 and
300,000 Japanese civilians in just these two acts alone. Prior to this event, this country
killed even more civilians in the infamous
firebombing of Tokyo and other areas of Japan, dropping close to 500,000 cylinders of
napalm and petroleum jelly on some of Japan's most densely populated areas.
Recently, historians have become more open to the possibility that dropping the atomic bombs
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not actually necessary to end World War II. This has also been
confirmed by those who actually took part in it. As the Nation
explained:
Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public
address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that 'the atomic bomb played
no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan ' Adm. William
"Bull" Halsey Jr., Commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that 'the first
atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . It was a mistake to ever drop it . [the
scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it
A few months' prior, this rogue country's
invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa also claimed at least one quarter of Okinawa's
population. The Okinawan people have been protesting this country's military presence ever
since. The most recent ongoing protest
has lasted well over 5,000 days in a row.
This nation's bloodlust continued well after the end of World War II. Barely half a decade
later, this country bombed North Korea into complete oblivion, destroying over 8,700 factories,
5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals, 600,000 homes, and
eventually killing off as much as 20 percent of the country's population. As the Asia
Pacific Journal has noted, the assaulting country dropped so many bombs that they eventually
ran out of targets to hit, turning to bomb the irrigation systems, instead:
By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every
significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the
spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the
North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to
the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating
whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans."
This was just the beginning. Having successfully destroyed the future North Korean
state, this country moved on to the rest of East Asia and Indo-China, too. As Rolling Stone's
Matt Taibbi
has explained :
We [this loose cannon of a nation] dumped 20 million gallons of toxic herbicide on Vietnam
from the air, just to make the shooting easier without all those trees, an insane plan to win
'hearts and minds' that has left about a million still disabled from defects and disease
– including about 100,000 children, even decades later, little kids with misshapen
heads, webbed hands and fused eyelids writhing on cots, our real American legacy, well out of
view, of course.
This mass murder led to the deaths of between 1.5 million and 3.8 million people,
according to the Washington Post. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were unleashed
during the entire
conflict in World War II . While this was going on, this same country was also
secretly bombing Laos and Cambodia, too, where there are over 80 million
unexploded bombs still killing people to this day.
This country also decided to bomb Yugoslavia ,
Panama
, and
Grenada before invading Iraq in the early 1990s. Having successfully bombed Iraqi
infrastructure, this country then punished Iraq's entire civilian population with brutal
sanctions. At the time, the U.N.
estimated that approximately 1.7 million Iraqis had died as a result, including
500,000 to 600,000 children . Some years later, a prominent medical journal attempted
to absolve the cause of this infamous history by refuting the statistics involved despite
the fact that, when interviewed during the sanctions-era, Bill Clinton's secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, intimated that to this rogue government, the
deaths of half a million children were "worth it" as the "price" Iraq needed to pay. In other
words, whether half a million children died or not was irrelevant to this bloodthirsty nation,
which barely blinked while carrying out this murderous policy.
This almighty superpower then invaded Iraq again in 2003 and plunged the entire region
into chaos . At the end of May 2017, the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
released a study
concluding that the death toll from this violent nation's 2003 invasion of Iraq had led to over
one million deaths and that at least one-third of them were caused directly by the invading
force.
Not to mention this country also invaded Afghanistan prior to the invasion of Iraq (even
though the militants plaguing Afghanistan were
originally trained and financed by this warmongering nation). It then
went on to bomb Yemen, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and the
Philippines .
Libya famously
had one of the highest standards of living in the region. It had state-assisted healthcare,
education, transport, and affordable housing. It is now a lawless war-zone
rife with extremism where slaves are openly traded like commodities
amid the power vacuum created as a direct result of the 2011 invasion.
In 2017, the commander-in-chief of this violent nation took the monumental death and
destruction to a new a level by removing
the restrictions on delivering airstrikes, which resulted in thousands upon
thousands of civilian deaths. Before that, in the first six months of 2017, this country
dropped
over 20,650 bombs , a monumental increase from the year that preceded it.
Despite these statistics, all of the above conquests are mere child's play to this nation.
The real prize lies in some of the more defiant and more powerful states, which this country
has already unleashed a containment strategy upon. This country has deployed its own troops all
across the border
with Russia even though it promised in the early 1990s it
would do no such thing. It also has a specific policy of
containing Russia's close ally, China, all the while threatening China's borders with talks
of direct strikes on North Korea (again, remember it already did so in the 1950s).
This country also elected a president who not only believes it is okay to embrace this rampantly violent
militarism but who openly calls other
countries "shitholes" – the very same term that aptly describes the way this country
has treated the rest of the world for decades on end. This same president also reportedly once
asked three times in a meeting
, "If we have nuclear weapons, why don't we use them?" and shortly after proposed a policy to
remove the constraints protecting the world from his dangerous supply of advanced nuclear
weaponry.
If we have any empathy for humanity, it is clear that this country must be stopped. It
cannot continue to act like this to the detriment of the rest of the planet and the safety and
security of the rest of us. This country
openly talks about using its nuclear weapons, has used them before, and has continued to
use all manner of weapons unabated in the years since while threatening to expand the use of
these weapons to other countries.
Seriously, if North Korea seems like a threat, imagine how the rest of the world feels while
watching one country violently take on the rest of the planet single-handedly, leaving nothing
but destruction in its wake and promising nothing less than a nuclear holocaust in the years to
come.
There is only one country that has done and that continues to do the very things North Korea
is being accused of doing.
Take as much time as you need for that to resonate.
"... Maybe I am overestimating the intelligence of MIC profiteers, but my impression is that those thieves know that their loot is only useful as long as they are alive. There is a lot of silly hostile talk against Russia and China, but have you noticed how the US military always makes sure that there are no direct confrontations with countries that can turn the US into radioactive dust? The profiteers want huge Pentagon budget to steal from, but not the war where they lose along with everyone else. ..."
Maybe I am overestimating the intelligence of MIC profiteers, but my impression is that those thieves know that their loot
is only useful as long as they are alive. There is a lot of silly hostile talk against Russia and China, but have you noticed
how the US military always makes sure that there are no direct confrontations with countries that can turn the US into radioactive
dust? The profiteers want huge Pentagon budget to steal from, but not the war where they lose along with everyone else.
As to the wall, it is one of the silliest projects ever suggested. Maybe that's why it was so easy to sell it to the intellectually
disadvantaged electorate. There are two things that can stop illegal immigration.
First, go for the employers, enact a law that fines them to the tune of $50,000 or more per every illegal they employ. Second,
enact the law that anyone caught residing in the US illegally has no right to enter the US legally, to obtain asylum, permanent
residency, or citizenship for life, and include a provision that marriage to a US citizen does not nullify this ban.
Then enforce both laws. After that illegals would run out of the country, and greedy employers won't hire any more. Naturally,
the wall, even if built, won't change anything: as long as there are employers trying to save on salaries, immigration fees, and
Social Security tax, and people willing to live and work illegally risking nothing, no wall would stem the flow.
Unfortunately, no side is even thinking about real measures, both are just posturing.
Am wondering in which prosperous U.S. Zionist "career" field has John Yoo landed?
He is a distinguished professor at Berkley Law, UC. Here's his bio:
Professor Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law and director of the Korea Law
Center, the California Constitution Center, and the Law School's Program in Public Law and
Policy. His most recent books are Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons
Change the Rules for War (Encounter 2017) (with Jeremy Rabkin) and Point of Attack:
Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Professor Yoo is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a visiting
fellow at the Hoover Institution
From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of
Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving
foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers.
Notice how they gloss over his diabolical activities as deputy AG for the Bush II
Adminstration "where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the
separation of powers."
And, oh, yeah, he cobbled together legal statements that gave the Bush Admin carte blanche
to engage in "enhanced interrogation techniques," more commonly known as "torture." He was
about to be in big dodo for his crimes. but just like the 5 dancing Israelis were rescued by
Chertoff, a guy named David Margolis managed to get Yoo off the hook:
The Office of Professional Responsibilty (OPR) report concluded that Yoo had "committed
'intentional professional misconduct' when he advised the CIA it could proceed with
waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects,"
although the recommendation that he be referred to his state bar association for possible
disciplinary proceedings was overruled by David Margolis, another senior Justice department
lawyer.
"... Maybe I am overestimating the intelligence of MIC profiteers, but my impression is that those thieves know that their loot is only useful as long as they are alive. There is a lot of silly hostile talk against Russia and China, but have you noticed how the US military always makes sure that there are no direct confrontations with countries that can turn the US into radioactive dust? The profiteers want huge Pentagon budget to steal from, but not the war where they lose along with everyone else. ..."
Maybe I am overestimating the intelligence of MIC profiteers, but my impression is that those thieves know that their loot
is only useful as long as they are alive. There is a lot of silly hostile talk against Russia and China, but have you noticed
how the US military always makes sure that there are no direct confrontations with countries that can turn the US into radioactive
dust? The profiteers want huge Pentagon budget to steal from, but not the war where they lose along with everyone else.
As to the wall, it is one of the silliest projects ever suggested. Maybe that's why it was so easy to sell it to the intellectually
disadvantaged electorate. There are two things that can stop illegal immigration.
First, go for the employers, enact a law that fines them to the tune of $50,000 or more per every illegal they employ. Second,
enact the law that anyone caught residing in the US illegally has no right to enter the US legally, to obtain asylum, permanent
residency, or citizenship for life, and include a provision that marriage to a US citizen does not nullify this ban.
Then enforce both laws. After that illegals would run out of the country, and greedy employers won't hire any more. Naturally,
the wall, even if built, won't change anything: as long as there are employers trying to save on salaries, immigration fees, and
Social Security tax, and people willing to live and work illegally risking nothing, no wall would stem the flow.
Unfortunately, no side is even thinking about real measures, both are just posturing.
With an ever faster News cycle, People forget what happened in the Past bringing this World
to the Present.
Historical Facts Americans don't take into consideration.
1. Within weeks of 9/11, the US came out with WAR PLANS to change the governments of Iraq,
Libya, Syria and at THE END, Iran.
2. Republican Bush illegally invaded Iraq in 2003.
3. ISIS did not exist until the illegal US invasion of Iraq
4. Democrat Obama did Libya and started the Syrian regime phase of the 2001 US WAR PLAN for
the Middle East in 2011.
5. In line with the 2001 US WAR PLAN to change the Assad government, ISIS moved from Iraq to
Syria as proxy regime change fighters.
6. US MSM report the US illegally started bombing ISIS in Syria, and with all the US smart
bombs, they missed, and ISIS was getting stronger, on the verge of bringing down the Assad
regime after 4 years of Death and Destruction following the 2001 US WAR PLAN for Syria.
7. Russia and Iran are legally asked to come to the aid of their Middle East Ally, like
NATO's Article 5, and enter the Syrian WORLD WAR in 2015.
8. Russia starts bombing ISIS and doesn't miss. ISIS is finally degraded in Syria, putting a
stop to the 2001 US WAR PLAN for regime change.
9. The US has made regime change as American as Apple pie and refuses to look as the
terrorist failed States it begat implementing it's 2001 WAR PLAN. It does increase sales for
the Military-Industrial Complex.
10. This MATERIAL WORLD did not notice the Spiritual Sign of the Times, when ISIS destroyed
the Islamic Mosque in Nineveh, Iraq containing the tomb of Jonah in the Whale fame recorded
in the Jewish-Christian Bible some 2900 years ago. He was sent to that "World City Nineveh"
to warn them of impending destruction if they continue on the path they're on. He tried to
get away from being a buzzkill.
10. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Matthew 12:39-41
I despise Trump, but if he's managed to stumble on doing something sensible, and actually
does it (never a certainty with the casino swindler) -- great! There's no sane reason for
us to muck about in Syria. However it comes about, we should welcome a withdrawal there. If
the move gives Trump some of the approval that he plainly craves, maybe he'll repeat the
performance and end our purposeless wallow in Afghanistan.
It doesn't say anything good about the nominal opposition party, the Dems, that half or
more of them -- and apparently *all* of their dinosaur "leadership" -- can't stifle the
kneejerking and let him do it. Of course many of them are "troubled" because their Israeli
& Saudi owners, er, "donors" expect it. But some of them seem to have developed a sudden
deep attachment to "our mission in Syria" for no better reason than, Trump is for it,
therefore I must shout against it .
And then, of course, there's the Russia hysteria. Oh yeah, what a huge win for Moscow if
it scores the "prize" of occupying Syria! If that's Putin's idea of a big score, how
exactly does it harm any American to let him have it?
I wonder if the Democratic Party will ever be capable of doing anything other than
snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?
"... In his just published book, War With Russia? ..."
"... To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition." ..."
"... Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared. ..."
"... The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned. ..."
Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a
voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington's contribution to the conflict and to criticize only
the Soviet contribution. Cohen's interest was not to blame the enemy but to work toward a mutual understanding that would remove
the threat of nuclear war. Although a Democrat and left-leaning, Cohen would have been at home in the Reagan administration, as Reagan's
first priority was to end the Cold War. I know this because I was part of the effort. Pat Buchanan will tell you the same thing.
In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA
had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the "Russian threat," Wohlstetter's
accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later
Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA's assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor
Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to
attack the US.
The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team
B caused.
Today Cohen is stressed that it is the United States that thinks it can win a nuclear war. Washington speaks openly of using "low
yield" nuclear weapons, and intentionally forecloses any peace negotiations with Russia with a propaganda campaign against Russia
of demonization, vilification, and transparent lies, while installing missile bases on Russia's borders and while talking of incorporating
former parts of Russia into NATO. In his just published book, War With Russia? , which I highly recommend, Cohen makes a
convincing case that Washington is asking for war.
I agree with Cohen that if Russia is a threat it is only because the US is threatening Russia. The stupidity of the policy toward
Russia is creating a Russian threat. Putin keeps emphasizing this. To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring
us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless
repetition."
Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the
Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of
cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared.
The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media
and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media
to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful
use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo
Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned.
The demonization of Russia is also aided and abetted by the Democrats' hatred of Trump and anger from Hillary's loss of the presidential
election to the "Trump deplorables." The Democrats purport to believe that Trump was installed by Putin's interference in the presidential
election. This false belief is emotionally important to Democrats, and they can't let go of it.
Although Cohen as a professor at Princeton and NYU never lacked research opportunities, in the US Russian studies, strategic studies,
and the like are funded by the military/security complex whose agenda Cohen's scholarship does not serve. At the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, where I held an independently financed chair for a dozen years, most of my colleagues were dependent on
grants from the military/security complex. At the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where I was a Senior Fellow for three
decades, the anti-Soviet stance of the Institution reflected the agenda of those who funded the institution.
I am not saying that my colleagues were whores on a payroll. I am saying that the people who got the appointments were people
who were inclined to see the Soviet Union the way the military/security complex thought it should be seen.
As Stephen Cohen is aware, in the original Cold War there was some balance as all explanations were not controlled. There were
independent scholars who could point out that the Soviets, decimated by World War 2, had an interest in peace, and that accommodation
could be achieved, thus avoiding the possibility of nuclear war.
Stephen Cohen must have been in the younger ranks of those sensible people, as he and President Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet
Union, Jack Matloff, seem to be the remaining voices of expert reason on the American scene.
If you care to understand the dire threat under which you live, a threat that only a few people, such as Stephen Cohen, are trying
to lift, read his book.
If you want to understand the dire threat that a bought-and-paid-for American media poses to your existence, read Cohen's accounts
of their despicable lies. America has a media that is synonymous with lies.
If you want to understand how corrupt American universities are as organizations on the take for money, organizations to whom
truth is inconsequential, read Cohen's book.
If you want to understand why you could be dead before Global Warming can get you, read Cohen's book.
The trouble with CIA democrats is not that they are stupid, but that that are evil.
Hillary proved to be really destructive witch during her Obama stunt as the Secretary of State. Destroyed Libya and Ukraine,
which is no small feat.
Notable quotes:
"... The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton's State Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all other considerations. We armed, trained, and "vetted" the Syrian rebels, even as we looked the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn't pass muster. And our "moderates" quickly passed into the ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we'd provided. ..."
"... She is truly an idiot. Thanks again, Ivy League. ..."
The Grauniad just quoted a tweet from a predictably OUTRAGED @HillaryClinton:
Actions have consequences, and whether we're in Syria or not, the people who want to
harm us are there & at war. Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous.
Playing into Russia & Iran's hands is foolish. This President is putting our national
security at grave risk.
This from the woman who almost singlehandedly (i.e. along with David Cameron and Sarkovy)
destroyed Libya and allowed -- if not encouraged -- the flow of US weapons to go into the
hands of ISIS allies in the US-Saudi-Israeli obsession with toppling Assad regardless of the
consequences. As Justin Raimondo wrote in
Antiwar.com in 2015:
The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton's State
Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all
other considerations. We armed, trained, and "vetted" the Syrian rebels, even as we looked
the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and
al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn't pass muster. And our "moderates" quickly passed into the
ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we'd provided.
This crazy policy was an extension of our regime change operation in Libya, a.k.a.
"Hillary's War," where the US – "leading from behind" – and a coalition of our
Western allies and the Gulf protectorates overthrew Muammar Qaddafi. There, too, we
empowered radical Islamists with links to al-Qaeda affiliates – and then used them to
ship weapons to their Syrian brothers, as another document uncovered by Judicial Watch
shows.
After HRC's multiple foreign policy fiascos she is the last person who should be
commenting on this matter.
a different chris, December 21, 2018 at 11:50 am
> the people who want to harm us are there & at war
Sounds like then they are too busy to harm us? She is truly an idiot. Thanks again, Ivy League.
Overall, arms sales increased in 2017, with total global sales nearing 400
billion dollars, marking a 2.5 percent increase from last year and the third year of continued
growth for the industry.
Russia comes in second, with year-over-year growth in arms production. In 2017, Russia
provided the world with 10 percent of arms sales, closely followed by The UK.
Only major arms companies were included in this study. China was excluded due to
insufficient data.
Problem with this is that the buyers of all that American weaponry are definitely not got
any 'bang for the proverbial buck' (pun intended). Horrendously overpriced weaponry which in
most instances render less value and effectiveness than similarly available Russian
analogues.
They know, the arms are inferior garbage, it's just like mafioso protection money or
better known as extortion. The charge a fortune for substandard weapons and MIC folks keep
the change. Same as murican tax payers. If there were no boogie men created then what would
be the justification for all the spending on military hardware?
There is no return on investment here. It's money laundering.
Letter of intent only. They have literally purchased none of those orders, despite
repeated US harassment for the 15 Billion for the THAADS to get the ball rolling. All bluster
and boasting and smoke and mirrors.
My suspicion is that SA under MBS is considering switching sides slowly and will purchase
Russian and Chinese instead. If the US had foreknowledge of this, hence the switch in tone re
butchering journalists and Yemenis ... hence why MBS isn't Time Magazine poster boy at the
moment.
Your correct I went back and checked it was order book not delivery,MBS situation is very
interesting with the recent high five with Putin there was some backstory that it was
celebration of a certain US admirals demise that was causing them problems whether true or
not I dont know but it would not surprise me if S400's end up in Saudi Arabia
Remember that old stuff about Krupp being the "Merchant of Death"? Aren't we, like, edging
into that territory? Is this what the Founders and Ratifiers had in mind? Could this enormous
arms trade and our military expenditures and adventures be a clue that we're on the wrong
track?
After the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) took power in 1978,
the Pentagon began arming the Islamist opposition to the PDPA. US officials, reeling from their
defeat in Vietnam, devised a policy of "sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire" in
Afghanistan, as CIA official Robert Gates wrote in his 1996 memoir From the Shadows .
When the Kremlin invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, in a reactionary attempt to strengthen
the PDPA regime in Kabul and stabilize the PDPA's relations with the Afghan rural elites,
Washington used Afghanistan as a battleground to bleed the Soviet army.
One of the CIA's main allies in carrying out this policy, recruiting tens of thousands of
Islamist fighters worldwide to go and fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, was a young Saudi
billionaire, Osama bin Laden, the future leader of Al Qaeda. Hensman endorses the US policy in
Afghanistan, while remaining silent on the CIA-Al Qaeda alliance, and presents it as part of a
liberation struggle against Soviet imperialism.
She writes, "A PDPA coup in 1978 faced tribal revolts that developed into a full-scale
uprising by December 1979, when the Russians invaded and occupied Afghanistan. The military
campaign that followed resembled the US campaign in Vietnam in its brutality to civilians The
war had reached a stalemate in the mid-1980s when Reagan, who was already supporting the
mujahideen, agreed to supply them with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. These weapons turned the
tide against the Russians..."
Hensman's defense of the US role in the Soviet-Afghan war, and her silence on CIA-backed
Islamist terror networks, are reactionary. She hides the bloody character of the CIA-backed
Islamist proxy wars, both in 1979–1992 in Afghanistan and in 1979–1982 in Syria. It
is the descendants of these same forces, who are fighting today's Syrian war, that Hensman
hails as a "democratic revolution."
And then there's Brzezinski, with his murderous legacy that contains a curious thread linking
the Mujahideen "freedom fighters" to 9/11. As was written in the recently republished article
on the Bush family fortune and the Holocaust, "the only constant is the defense of the power
and privilege of the ruling oligarchy by whatever means are required."
--- Brzezinski acknowledged in an interview with the French news magazine Le Nouvel
Observateur in January 1998 that he initiated a policy in which the CIA covertly began arming
the mujahedeen in July 1978 -- six months before Soviet troops intervened in Afghanistan --
with the explicit aim of dragging the Soviet Union into a debilitating war.
Asked, given the catastrophe unleashed upon Afghanistan and the subsequent growth of
Islamist terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, whether he regretted the policy he championed in
Afghanistan, Brzezinski replied:
"Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing
the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets
officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of
giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war
unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally
the breakup of the Soviet empire."
Asked specifically whether he regretted the CIA's collaboration with and arming of
Islamist extremists, including Al Qaeda, in fomenting the war in Afghanistan, Brzezinski
responded contemptuously: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or
the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central
Europe and the end of the cold war?"
Kind of a funny aside: to find the Z-bigz quote I wanted, I put "Brzezinski on
Afghanistan" into duckduckgo, and the wsws obituary was third from the top.
Like the term "conspiracy theory "whataboutism" is a nasty and dirty propaganda trick. Truth can be understood only in historical
context.
Notable quotes:
"... The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is his demolition of the Guardian's reuse of the Merkel "quote." ..."
"... Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime, "whataboutism." The crime may be defined as follows: ..."
"... "Whataboutism" is the attempt to understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has asserted contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does this *other* truth affect our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?" ..."
"... Whataboutism seems to proclaim that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no essential relation to any other past, present, or future asserted truth. ..."
The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is his demolition of the Guardian's
reuse of the Merkel "quote."
This one detail tells us so much about how propaganda works, and about how it can be defeated. Successful propaganda both depends
upon and seeks to accelerate the erasure of historical memory. This is because its truths are always changing to suit the immediate
needs of the state. None of its truths can be understood historically. b makes the connection between the documented but forgotten
past "truth" of Merkel's quote and its present reincarnation in the Guardian, and this is really all he *needs* to do.
What b points out is something quite simple; yet the ability to do this very simple thing is becoming increasingly rare and
its exercise increasingly difficult to achieve. It is for me the virtue that makes b's analysis uniquely indispensable.
Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime, "whataboutism." The crime may be defined
as follows:
"Whataboutism" is the attempt to understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has
asserted contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does this *other* truth affect
our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?"
Whataboutism seems to proclaim that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no essential relation to any other past,
present, or future asserted truth.
The subtitle of this effusively admiring biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Grand Strategist, does not reflect its
true purpose. A more accurate one might be this: "Just as Smart as the Other Guy." The other guy, of course, is Henry Kissinger. The
implicit purpose of Justin Vaïsse's book is to argue that in his mastery of strategic thought and practice, Brzezinski ranks as Kissinger's
equal.
Notable quotes:
"... That Brzezinski, who died last year at age 89, lived a life that deserves to be recounted and appraised is certainly the case. Born in Warsaw in 1928 to parents with ties to Polish nobility, Brzezinski had a peripatetic childhood. ..."
"... After graduating from McGill, Brzezinski set his sights on Harvard, which at the time was the very archetype of a "Cold War university." Senior faculty and young scholars on the make were volunteering to advise the national-security apparatus just then forming in Washington. For many of them, the Soviet threat appeared to eclipse all other questions and fields of inquiry. In this setting, Brzezinski flourished. Even before becoming an American citizen, he was thoroughly Americanized, imbued with the mind-set that prevailed in circles where members of the power elite mixed and mingled. Partially funded by the CIA, the Russian Research Center, Brzezinski's home at Harvard, was one of those places. ..."
"... From his time in Cambridge, he emerged committed, in his own words, to "nothing less than formulating a coherent strategy for the United States, so that we could eventually dismantle the Soviet bloc" and, not so incidentally, thereby liberate Poland. To this cause, the young Brzezinski devoted himself with single-minded energy. ..."
"... Convinced that the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc were internally fragile, he believed that economic and cultural interaction with the West would ultimately lead to their collapse. The idea was to project strength without provoking confrontation, while patiently exerting indirect influence. ..."
"... This limited academic influence probably did not bother Zbig; he never saw himself as a mere scholar. He was a classic in-and-outer, rotating effortlessly from university campuses to political campaigns, and from government service to plummy think-tank billets. According to Vaïsse, Brzezinski never courted the media. Even so, he demonstrated a pronounced talent for getting himself in front of TV cameras, becoming a frequent guest on programs like Meet the ..."
"... Toward the end of his life, Brzezinski even had a Twitter account. His last tweet, from May 2017, both summarizes the essence of his worldview and expresses his dismay regarding the presidency of Donald Trump: "Sophisticated US leadership is the sine qua non of a stable world order. However, we lack the former while the latter is getting worse." ..."
"... Although not an ideologue, Brzezinski was a liberal Democrat of a consistently hawkish persuasion. Committed to social justice at home, he was also committed to toughness abroad. In the 1960s, he supported US intervention in Vietnam, treated the domino theory as self-evidently true, and argued that, with American credibility on the line, the United States had no alternative but to continue prosecuting the war. Even after the war ended, Vaïsse writes, Brzezinski "did not view Vietnam as a mistake." ..."
"... Yet Vietnam did nudge Brzezinski to reconsider some of his own assumptions. In the early 1970s, with an eye toward forging a new foreign policy that might take into account some of the trauma caused by Vietnam, he organized the Trilateral Commission. Apart from expending copious amounts of Rockefeller money, the organization produced little of substance. For Brzezinski, however, it proved a smashing success. It was there that he became acquainted with Jimmy Carter, a Georgia governor then contemplating a run for the presidency in 1976. ..."
"... When Carter won, he rewarded Brzezinski by appointing him national-security adviser, the job that had vaulted Kissinger to the upper ranks of global celebrity. ..."
"... Because of Brzezinski's limited influence on foreign policy after Carter, Vaïsse's case for installing him in the pantheon of master strategists therefore rests on the claim that on matters related to foreign policy, the Carter presidency was something less than a bust. Vaïsse devotes the core of his book to arguing just that. Although valiant, the effort falls well short of success. ..."
"... From the outset of his administration, Carter accorded his national-security adviser remarkable deference. Brzezinski was not co-equal with the president; yet neither was he a mere subordinate. He was, Vaïsse writes, "the architect of Carter's foreign policy," while also exercising "an exceptional degree of control" over its articulation and implementation. ..."
"... The disintegration of the Soviet bloc and eventually of the Soviet Union itself was, in his view, a nominal goal of American foreign policy, but not an immediate prospect. ..."
"... The Camp David accords did nothing to resolve the Palestinian issue that underlay much of Israeli-Arab enmity; it produced a dead-end peace that left Palestinians without a state and Israel with no end of problems. And the Brzezinski-engineered embrace of China, enhancing Chinese access to American technology and markets, accelerated that country's emergence as a peer competitor. ..."
Underlying that purpose are at least two implicit assumptions. The first is that, when it comes to statecraft, grand strategy
actually exists, not simply as an aspiration but as a discrete and identifiable element. The second is that, in his writings and
contributions to US policy, Kissinger himself qualifies as a strategic virtuoso. For all sorts of reasons, we should treat both of
these assumptions with considerable skepticism.
That Brzezinski, who died last year at age 89, lived a life that deserves to be recounted and appraised is certainly the case.
Born in Warsaw in 1928 to parents with ties to Polish nobility, Brzezinski had a peripatetic childhood. His father was a diplomat
whose family accompanied him on postings to France, Germany, and eventually to Canada. The Nazi invasion of 1939, which extinguished
Polish independence, also effectively ended his father's diplomatic career. With war engulfing nearly all of Europe, Brzezinski would
not set foot on Polish soil again for nearly two decades.
Although the young Brzezinski quickly adapted to life in Canada, the well-being of Poles and Poland remained an abiding preoccupation.
After the war, he studied economics and political science at McGill University, focusing in particular on the Soviet Union, which
by then had replaced Germany as the power that dominated the country of his birth. Brzezinski was a brilliant student with a particular
interest in international affairs, a field increasingly centered on questions related to America's role in presiding over the postwar
global order.
After graduating from McGill, Brzezinski set his sights on Harvard, which at the time was the very archetype of a "Cold War university."
Senior faculty and young scholars on the make were volunteering to advise the national-security apparatus just then forming in Washington.
For many of them, the Soviet threat appeared to eclipse all other questions and fields of inquiry. In this setting, Brzezinski flourished.
Even before becoming an American citizen, he was thoroughly Americanized, imbued with the mind-set that prevailed in circles where
members of the power elite mixed and mingled. Partially funded by the CIA, the Russian Research Center, Brzezinski's home at Harvard,
was one of those places.
From his time in Cambridge, he emerged committed, in his own words, to "nothing less than formulating a coherent strategy for
the United States, so that we could eventually dismantle the Soviet bloc" and, not so incidentally, thereby liberate Poland. To this
cause, the young Brzezinski devoted himself with single-minded energy.
A s a scholar and author of works intended for a general audience, Zbig, as he was widely known, was nothing if not prolific.
Churning out a steady stream of well-regarded books and essays, he demonstrated a particular knack for "summarizing things in a concise
and striking way."
Clarity took precedence over nuance.
And with his gift for stylish packaging -- crafting neologisms ("technetronic")
and high-sounding phrases ("Histrionics as History in Transition") -- his analyses had the appearance of novelty, even if they often
lacked real substance.
Whether writing for his fellow scholars or addressing a wider audience, Brzezinski had one big idea when it
came to Cold War strategy: He promoted the concept of "peaceful engagement" as a basis for US policy.
Convinced that the Soviet Union
and the Soviet bloc were internally fragile, he believed that economic and cultural interaction with the West would ultimately lead
to their collapse. The idea was to project strength without provoking confrontation, while patiently exerting indirect influence.
Yet little of the Brzezinski oeuvre has stood the test of time. The American canon of essential readings in international relations
and strategy, beginning with George Washington's farewell address and continuing on through works by John Quincy Adams, Alfred Thayer
Mahan, Hans Morgenthau, and a handful of others (the list is not especially long), does not include anything penned by Brzezinski.
Although Vaïsse, a senior official with the French foreign ministry, appears to have read and pondered just about every word his
subject wrote or uttered, he identifies nothing of Brzezinski's that qualifies as must-reading for today's aspiring strategist.
This limited academic influence probably did not bother Zbig; he never saw himself as a mere scholar. He was a classic in-and-outer,
rotating effortlessly from university campuses to political campaigns, and from government service to plummy think-tank billets.
According to Vaïsse, Brzezinski never courted the media. Even so, he demonstrated a pronounced talent for getting himself in front
of TV cameras, becoming a frequent guest on programs like Meet the Press . He knew how to self-promote.
Toward the end of his life, Brzezinski even had a Twitter account. His last tweet, from May 2017, both summarizes the essence
of his worldview and expresses his dismay regarding the presidency of Donald Trump: "Sophisticated US leadership is the sine qua
non of a stable world order. However, we lack the former while the latter is getting worse."
F rom the time Brzezinski left Harvard in 1960 to accept a tenured position at Columbia, he made it his mission to nurture and
facilitate that sophistication. For Zbig, New York offered a specific advantage over Cambridge: It provided a portal into elite political
circles. As it had for Kissinger, the then-still-influential Council on Foreign Relations provided a venue that enabled Brzezinski
to curry favor with the rich and powerful, and to establish his bona fides as a statesman to watch. Henry's patron was Nelson Rockefeller;
Zbig's was Nelson's brother David.
Although not an ideologue, Brzezinski was a liberal Democrat of a consistently hawkish persuasion. Committed to social justice
at home, he was also committed to toughness abroad. In the 1960s, he supported US intervention in Vietnam, treated the domino theory
as self-evidently true, and argued that, with American credibility on the line, the United States had no alternative but to continue
prosecuting the war. Even after the war ended, Vaïsse writes, Brzezinski "did not view Vietnam as a mistake."
Yet Vietnam did nudge Brzezinski to reconsider some of his own assumptions. In the early 1970s, with an eye toward forging a new
foreign policy that might take into account some of the trauma caused by Vietnam, he organized the Trilateral Commission. Apart from
expending copious amounts of Rockefeller money, the organization produced little of substance. For Brzezinski, however, it proved
a smashing success. It was there that he became acquainted with Jimmy Carter, a Georgia governor then contemplating a run for the
presidency in 1976.
Zbig and Jimmy hit it off. Soon enough, Brzezinski signed on as the candidate's principal foreign-policy adviser. When Carter
won, he rewarded Brzezinski by appointing him national-security adviser, the job that had vaulted Kissinger to the upper ranks of
global celebrity.
Zbig held this post throughout Carter's one-term presidency, from 1977 to 1981. It would be his first and last time in government.
After 1981, Brzezinski went back to writing, continued to opine, and was occasionally consulted by Carter's successors, both Democratic
and Republican. Yet despite having ascended to the rank of elder statesman, never again did Brzezinski occupy a position where he
could directly affect US policy.
Because of Brzezinski's limited influence on foreign policy after Carter, Vaïsse's case for installing him in the pantheon of
master strategists therefore rests on the claim that on matters related to foreign policy, the Carter presidency was something less
than a bust. Vaïsse devotes the core of his book to arguing just that. Although valiant, the effort falls well short of success.
From the outset of his administration, Carter accorded his national-security adviser remarkable deference. Brzezinski was not
co-equal with the president; yet neither was he a mere subordinate. He was, Vaïsse writes, "the architect of Carter's foreign policy,"
while also exercising "an exceptional degree of control" over its articulation and implementation.
In a characteristic display of self-assurance and bureaucratic shrewdness, as the new president took office, Brzezinski gave him
a 43-page briefing book prescribing basic administration policy. Under the overarching theme of "constructive global engagement,"
Brzezinski identified 10 specific goals. The first proposed to "create more active and solid cooperation with Europe and Japan,"
the 10th to "maintain a defense posture designed to dissuade the Soviet Union from committing hostile acts." In between were less-than-modest
aspirations to promote human rights, reduce the size of nuclear arsenals, curb international arms sales, end apartheid in South Africa,
normalize Sino-American relations, terminate US control of the Panama Canal, and achieve an "overall solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
problem."
While Brzezinski's agenda was as bold as it was comprehensive, it nonetheless hewed to the Soviet-centric assumptions that had
formed the basis of US policy since the end of World War II. Zbig recognized that the world had changed considerably in the ensuing
years, but he also believed that any future changes would still occur in the context of a continuing Soviet-American rivalry. His
strategic perspective, therefore, did not include the possibility that the international order might center on something other than
the binaries imposed by the Cold War. The disintegration of the Soviet bloc and eventually of the Soviet Union itself was, in his
view, a nominal goal of American foreign policy, but not an immediate prospect.
Using Brzezinski's 10 policy objectives as a basis for evaluating his performance, Vaïsse gives the national-security adviser
high marks. "Few administrations have known so many tangible successes in only four years," he writes, citing the Panama Canal Treaty,
the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, and improved relations with China. Yet while Panama remains an underappreciated achievement,
the other two qualify as ambiguous at best. The Camp David accords did nothing to resolve the Palestinian issue that underlay much
of Israeli-Arab enmity; it produced a dead-end peace that left Palestinians without a state and Israel with no end of problems. And
the Brzezinski-engineered embrace of China, enhancing Chinese access to American technology and markets, accelerated that country's
emergence as a peer competitor.
More troubling still was Brzezinski's failure to anticipate or to grasp the implications of the two developments that all but
doomed the Carter presidency: the 1978 Iranian Revolution and the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Vaïsse does his best to
cast a positive light on Brzezinski's role in these twin embarrassments. But there's no way around it: Brzezinski misread both --
with consequences that still haunt us today.
The Iranian Revolution, which Brzezinski sought to forestall by instigating a military coup in Tehran, offered a warning against
imagining that Washington could shape events in the Islamic world. Brzezinski missed that warning entirely, although he would by
no means be the last US official to do so. As for the Kremlin's plunge into Afghanistan, widely interpreted as evidence of the Soviet
Union's naked aggression, it actually testified to the weakness and fragility of the Soviet empire, already in an advanced state
of decay. Again, Brzezinski -- along with many other observers -- misread the issue. When clarity of vision was most needed, he failed
to provide it.
Together, these two developments ought to have induced a wily strategist to reassess the premises of US policy. Instead, they
resulted in decisions to deepen -- and to overtly militarize -- US involvement in and around the Persian Gulf. While this commitment
is commonly referred to as the Carter Doctrine, Vaïsse insists that it "was really a Brzezinski doctrine."
Regardless of who gets the credit, the militarization of US policy across what Brzezinski termed an "arc of crisis" encompassing
much of the Islamic world laid the basis for a series of wars and upheavals that continue to this day. If, as national-security adviser,
Brzezinski wielded as much influence as Vaïsse contends, then this too forms part of his legacy. When it mattered most, the master
strategist failed to understand the implications of the crisis that occurred on his watch.
The most glaring problem anyone faces in trying to assert Brzezinski's mastery of world affairs, however, rests not in Iran or
Afghanistan, but in how the Cold War came to an end. Indeed, Brzezinski viewed it as essentially endless. As late as 1987, just two
years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was still insisting that "the American-Soviet conflict is an historical rivalry that
will endure for as long as we live."
B rzezinski was certainly smart, flexible, and pragmatic, but he was also a prisoner of the Cold War paradigm. So too were virtually
all other members of the foreign-policy establishment of his day. Indeed, subscribing to that paradigm was a prerequisite of membership.
Yet this adherence amounted to donning a pair of strategic blinders: It meant seeing only those things that it was convenient to
see.
Which brings us back to Zbig's last tweet, with its paean to American leadership as the sine qua non of global stability. The
tweet neatly captures the mind-set that the foreign-policy establishment has embraced with something like unanimity since the Cold
War surprised that establishment by coming to an end. This mind-set gets expressed in myriad ways in a thousand speeches and op-eds:
The United States must lead. There is no alternative; history itself summons the country to do so. Should it fail in that responsibility,
darkness will cover the earth.
This is why Trump so infuriates the foreign-policy elite: He appears oblivious to the providential call that others in Washington
take to be self-evident. Yet adhering to this post–Cold War paradigm is also the equivalent of donning blinders. Whatever the issue
-- especially when the issue is ourselves -- it means seeing only those things that we find it convenient to see.
The post–Cold War paradigm of American moral and political hegemony prevents us from appreciating the way that the world is actually
changing -- rapidly, radically, and right before our very eyes. Today, with the planet continuing to heat up, the nexus of global
geopolitics shifting eastward, and Americans pondering security threats for which our pricey and far-flung military establishment
is all but useless, the art of strategy as practiced by members of Brzezinski's generation has become irrelevant. So too has Zbig
himself.
Authoritarianism has always existed. But it hasn't always been clearly visible. Technology
makes authoritarianism more powerful. Centralization and urbanization have served the
purposes of the elite well.
People need information and communication. The inverted totalitarianism we live in,
doesn't like that. It wants the Internet to implement that inverted totalitarianism (see
China). They want everything (in a corporatist way) to be mandatory, except for what is
forbidden. What has been revealed, and is being revealed, is that the current
political-economic system isn't fit for purpose, human purpose.
So the real answer is like what is happening in France now...
Attempting to blame the internet for the increasingly authoritarian world we live in is
not seeing the forest through the trees. The internet is surely a tool used against
humanity,That doesn't make it "bad". I would say the reason people can be fooled by these
social media propaganda tactics, is precisely because the fourth estate is practicing such in
depth propaganda campaigns, with all propaganda, all the time coverage on every other form of
media as well. People have nowhere to turn.
Why do people think some russians posting on facebook and twitter skewed the electorate in
this country than say nothing about:fox news,npr,cnn,rush limbaugh,hannity,the new york
times, wall st journal,the weekly standard, time magazine,people magazine, etc.All of these
organizations and all the others spout disinformation. every day.
And america's trend towards the authoritarian state has been accelerating since at least the
national security act of 1947.as a national trend, whereas in the beginning of this countries
existence, there have been authoritarian control of local districts by local groups, ie.
whites over blacks, or whites over indians, or rich over poor immigrants, etc.
All the internet age and the "information age is doing, is changing the medium. the message
is still the same. and there has always been resistance. now that resistance seems more
futile, but is it?
Why do people think some russians posting on facebook and twitter skewed the electorate
in this country than say nothing about:fox news,npr,cnn,rush limbaugh,hannity,the new york
times, wall st journal,the weekly standard, time magazine,people magazine, etc.All of these
organizations and all the others spout disinformation. every day.
Exactly. Our society is mainly shaped by its elites. And other than Twitter they are
barely involved with the internet at all but rather get their news and attitudes from the NY
Times or (in Trump's case) cable TV. Therefore rather than enhancing the always existing
authoritarianism of "manufactured consent," the internet works to undermine it. This of
course provokes much fingering of worry beads among the elite who see the mob and their
pitchforks as real threats. The situation in France illustrates this phenomenon nicely and
there have been calls by some to block Facebook in France so those yellow vests can't
communicate with each other.
Diversity of opinion is a good thing, not bad, and some of us scan right leaning websites
just to get a different view. The internet is not the problem. Powerful authoritarians are
the problem.
In my own undoubtedly faulty memory of Animal Farm , Orwell characterized the
devolution as "the nature of the beast" through his characters. That is (over and above the
allegory of the Russian revolution/devolution), there are strong traits in human character
that makes this devolution inevitable. We have the pigs; the aggressors, and the followers,
and less savory characters, and the "never quite enough" wise annimal(s) and so on, working
unwittingly together against the welfare of the whole making the end result seem precast. Not
so much that we did nothing, as that we could do nothing.
1984 never really addressed that issue (or at least I don't remember it doing so), but
from the start everything seemed inevitable, there was no discussion of any "might have
been," that could have been an alternative to the dystopia of an engineered rivalry between
two super-powers that worked off each other to maintain a compliant global society in
hopeless mass psychological, never mind physical, irons.
But even assuming this inevitability was Orwell's own belief and intent in his
writings (and not simply my misunderstanding of them), I agree with your point that we had
plenty of warning, and not just Orwell, and that society as a whole too frequently took the
easier road but with a lot of help and insistent guidance (manipulation) from our
increasingly corrupt leaders and captains of industry (our own pigs).
Animal Farm was Orwell's best book IMO because it speaks to universal human tendencies
even though the book was also about Stalin and Trotsky. 1984 was far fetched speculation
based on, as it turned out, the short lived totalitarianism of figures like Hitler and
Stalin. People assume we are living 1984 when it's really Animal Farm.
"... Neoliberal doctrine leads to skyrocketing inequality, a swelling in the desperate and forgotten poor who are vulnerable to populist messaging and the idea of a strongman peddling easy answers to keep people safe as civil unrest increases. Fascism seeks power for power's sake and total control over the populace, and always cruelty to the marginalised, the 'others'. How all the right wingers hand-wringing over the idea of 'socialist communisms!!1!' can't see that, I don't know. ..."
"... All over the world, failed neoliberalism is being replaced by right-wing populist nationalism & I don't think "repairing democratic institutions" is at the top of their to-do list. ..."
"... I'm certainly in favour of greater nationalisation, especially of essential services. But around the world, neo-liberalism has morphed into neo-fascism and this is where the next fight must be. ..."
"... In social systems, natural selection favours cooperation. In addition, we are biased toward ethical behaviours, so cooperation and sharing are valued in human societies. ..."
"... The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts. ..."
"... No wonder you get fascist right wing insurgence in this climate! ..."
Never forget that fascism is the natural defence mechanism of capital. After it is accrued,
it must be defended. The current trend in global politics is not an anomaly but an entirely
predictable outcome.
Neoliberal doctrine leads to skyrocketing inequality, a swelling in the
desperate and forgotten poor who are vulnerable to populist messaging and the idea of a
strongman peddling easy answers to keep people safe as civil unrest increases. Fascism seeks
power for power's sake and total control over the populace, and always cruelty to the marginalised, the 'others'. How all the right wingers hand-wringing over the idea of
'socialist communisms!!1!' can't see that, I don't know.
It's too late for the US I fear, and time is rapidly running out for the UK if they don't
pull their finger out and have another referendum before the self immolation of Brexit.
All over the world, failed neoliberalism is being replaced by right-wing populist nationalism
& I don't think "repairing democratic institutions" is at the top of their to-do list.
If
Australia does swing the pendulum to the left, it, along with NZ, will be one of the few
countries to do so. De-privatising will not be easy & will be met with a huge reactionary
backlash. They'll need to tread very carefully if they want to stay in government.
Neoliberalism may be dead but the neoliberals in the government will never admit it as they
seamlessly transition to authoritarian nationalism with populist promises - and failure to
deliver on them.
The neoliberal project was always a philosophical cover for crony capitalism that betrayed
the public interest by rewarding vested interests for their patronage, perverted democracy,
and served as a mechanism for perverting the natural function of an economy - to fairly
distribute goods, resources, and services throughout society - to favor the welfare of the
few over the many.
The self-interested culture of neoliberalism - the cult of the individual that denies the
common good - pervades every aspect of Australia's life as a nation - business, politics,
sport, education, and health - denying and crowding out public spirit, selfless service, and
societal wellbeing.
For meaningful change to occur there must be a rebirth of the conception of the public
good, and the virtue and necessity of acting to realise it.
However at this stage there is not a communal recognition of what the problem is let alone
how to go about repairing it. For that to happen there must be a widely accepted narrative
that naturally leads to the obvious actions that must be take to redress the damage done by
the neoliberal con job: decreasing economic inequality, restoring democracy, and rebuilding a
sense of common cause.
Piecemeal change will not be sufficient to enact the the sweeping transformation that has
to occur in every department of life. It is not enough to tax multinationals, to have a
federal integrity commission, to build a renewable future, or to move to proportional
representation.
Someone, some party, some coherent philosophical perspective has to explain why it must be
done.
It's certainly the case that the Liberal party, in particular, are now using ideas that fall
outside and to the right of neo-liberalism, but it's also obviously the case that
neo-liberalism and current Liberal thinking share the same underlying goal. Namely, the
transfer of wealth and power towards a narrower and narrower group of people and
corporations.
That suggests the death of neo-liberalism is coming about because – having done so
much damage already – it's no longer capable of delivering the required results, and
that we're moving into a new phase of the death spiral. I think that can also be seen in both
the US (where Trump is using the identified problems of neo-liberalism to further the same
basic agenda, but with less decorum and a larger cadre of useful idiots) and the UK (where
there's still a very strong possibility that Brexit will be used as an excuse to roll back
great swathes of social and democratic safeguards).
Perhaps even more worrying – given the latest reports on how we're destroying
habitat as well as the climate, and how much of our biodiversity is in South America,
particularly the Amazon – is that Brazil is how on a similar path.
The likelihood is that the Liberal party won't get away with what they have planned, but
they – and the forces behind them – certainly won't stop trying. And
unfortunately it's far from obvious that the Labor party will repudiate neo-liberalism
anytime soon. That they signed up for the latest iteration of TPP is hardly a good omen.
Democratic re-engagement is the better way forward from neo-liberalism, but unfortunately
I think it's unlikely to be the one that we end up taking.
All of that said, the deepest problem of all is the way in which democracy and government
have been corrupted, often via the media, but typically at the behest of corporations, and if
there is a way forward it has to be found in addressing those interactions
I'm certainly in favour of greater nationalisation, especially of essential services. But
around the world, neo-liberalism has morphed into neo-fascism and this is where the next
fight must be.
In social systems, natural selection favours cooperation. In addition, we are biased
toward ethical behaviours, so cooperation and sharing are valued in human societies.
But what happens when we are forced into an economic system that makes us compete at every
level? The logical outcome is societal decline or collapse.
Perhaps the worst aspect of neoliberalism was its infection of the Labor party. This has
left our social infrastructure alarmingly exposed.
The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no
means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through
narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts.
Globally, debt has forced policy convergence between political parties of differing
ideologies. European center-left parties have pushed austerity even when ideology would
suggest the opposite.
No wonder you get fascist right wing insurgence in this climate!
Thank you Richard Denniss we need to highlight this more and more and start educating the
dumbed down population saturated with neoliberal snake oil!
"The game motif is useful as a metaphor for the broader rivalry between nations and
economic systems with the rise of imperialism and the pursuit of world power. This game has
gone through two major transformations since the days of Russian-British rivalry, with the
rise first of Communism and then of Islam as world forces opposing imperialism. The main
themes of Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games include:
US imperial strategy as an outgrowth of British imperialism, and its transformation
following the collapse of the Soviet Union;
the significance of the creation of Israel with respect to the imperial
project;
the repositioning of Russia in world politics after the collapse of the Soviet
Union;
the emerging role of China and Iran in Eurasia;
the emerging opposition to the US and NATO.
This work brings these elements together in historical perspective with an understanding
from the Arab/ Muslim world's point of view, as it is the main focus of all the "Great
Games"."
Jay Dyer discusses the book here, its strengths and weaknesses:
"... Capitalism never was benign, Chrustjow worked as a miner in a commercially exploited mine, where there was little regard for
safety, he abhorred capitalism. ..."
@Bill Jones Interesting to read
how these idealists agree with Christian Gerondeau, 'Le CO2 est bon pour la planete, Climat, la grande manipulation', Paris 2017
Gerondeau explains how many deaths reducing CO2 emissions will cause in poor countries, simply as an example how electricity
for cooking will remain too expensive for them, so cooking is done on smoky fires in confined spaces.
" to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history." " To intentionally impoverish
the world. To what end, I wonder ?
Anyone who knows anything about history is that the rich were always better off than the poor, in fact the very definition
of rich and poor.
In this respect it never mattered if a society was capitalistic, communistic, or a theocracy, as Tibet was.
These idealistic idiots do not understand how they created the problem they now intend to solve with creating an even bigger
problem, their example is the EU, the EU is following this policy for more than twelve years now, since 2005, when the EU grabbed
power through the rejected EU 'consitution'.
Capitalism is no more than deciding between consumption and investment, Robinson Crusoë invested in a fishing net by temporarily
reducing consumption, he did not go fishing, but made a fishing net, expecting that his investment would make it possible to eat
more fish.
Capitalism never was benign, Chrustjow worked as a miner in a commercially exploited mine, where there was little regard
for safety, he abhorred capitalism.
Dutch 17th century capitalistic commerce to the far Indies, east and west, was not benign. Typically a ship left Amsterdam,
near the Schreierstoren, trans 'the tower for the crying', wives, mothers and girl friends, with 300 men aboard, and returned
with 100. Most of those who died were common sailors, captain and officers had a far lower mortality, mainly better food.
Our East Indies commerce also was not much fun for the people in the East, in the Banda Sea Islands massacre some 30.000 people
were killed, for a monopoly on pepper, if I remember correctly.
But, as the earth developed economically, there came room for also poor people getting lives beginning to look as worth living.
Engels in 1844, hope the year is right, described the conditions of working people in GB, this resulted in Das Kapital.
This room for a better life for also the poor was not given by the capitalistic system
In their struggle for a better world for anyone the idealists wanted globalisation, level playing field, anyone should be welcome
anywhere, slogans like this.
Globaliation, however, is the end of the nation state, the very institution in which it was possible to provide a better life.
Anyone following me until here now can see the dilemma, the end of the nation state was also the end of protection by that state
against unbridled capitalism.
As the idealists cannot give up their globalisation religion they must, as those who cannot give up the biblical creation story,
find an ideological way out of their dilemma. My conclusion now is 'in order to save our globalisation religion we try to destroy
economic growth, by making energy very expensive, in the hope of destroying capitalism'.
Alas, better, luckily, capitalism cannot be destroyed, those who invented the first furnaces for more or less mass producing
iron, they were capitalists. They saw clearly how cheap iron would bring economic growth, the plow.
In the country where the CO2 madness has struck most, my country, the Netherlands, the realisation of the poverty that drastically
reducing CO2 emissions will cause, has begun. If there really is madness, I wonder.
I indeed see madness, green leftists unable to make a simple multipiclation calculations about costs, but maybe mainly political
opportunism. Our dictator, Rutte, is now so hated that he needs a job outside the Netherlands, in order to qualify, either at
Brussels or in New York, with the UN, has to howl with the wolves.
At the same time, we have a gas production problem,, earthquakes in the NE, houses damaged, never any decision made to solve
the problem, either stop gas production, or strenghten the houses, both expensive solutions.
So, in my suspicious ideas, Rutte now tries to improve himself, at the same time solving a problem: within, say ten years,
the Netherlands functions without gas, and remains prosperous; the idea he tries to sell to us. In a few years time it will emerge
that we cannot have both, prosperous, and zero emission, but the time horizon for a politician is said to be five years.
"... Neoliberalism is a set of practices that favors entrepreneurs and corporations, supports--often below the radar--massive state subsidies for the corporate estate, presses for radical deregulation of private markets, treats labor as an abstract factor of production, celebrates the authority of courts governed by a neoliberal jurisprudence, hates collective social movements on the left, protects imperial drives, strives to render democracy minimal, and moves to dismantle or weaken unions, social security, public schools and universal voting if and when the opportunities arise. Fascism is a form of capitalism that dismantles democracy, pushes intense nationalism, pursues racism, deploys big lies systematically, attacks vulnerable minorities to energize its base, corrupts courts, drives to make the media its mouthpiece, places police and intelligence agencies under its wing, colludes with foreign dictatorships, welcomes vigilante groups beneath a veneer of deniability, and jacks up the intensity of cultural ruthlessness. ..."
"... Democracy in Chains ..."
"... MacLean's book, through a close review of an archive not studied before, reveals how the public neoliberal pronouncements by Buchanan between the 1970s and 2000s were soon matched by a set of covert plans and financial funding designed to bring neoliberalism to power by "stealth" strategies. Buchanan had come to see, as had others, that the neoliberal agenda was not apt to be enacted by democratic means. So he adopted a two-track model. ..."
"... MacLean's review of the ruthlessness and narcissism that marked the private and public persona of Buchanan, a review that invites attention to character affinities between him and Trump. Neither Buchanan, Trump, nor Charles Koch -- the latter another key figure in the Buchanan story -- thought highly of compromise. They play a hardball game. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, its critics know so well, periodically spawns the economic crises its hubristic devotees promise will not happen. It also works to foster voter suppression, unlimited dark campaign contributions, extreme gerrymandered districts, take away worker benefits, appoint judges at state and national levels governed by neoliberal jurisprudence, treat voter suppression tactics to be needed to eliminate phantom voter fraud, oppose affirmative action, to weaken labor unions, and attack universal health care. ..."
"... The old, all so familiar, Hayek story of how socialism and social democracy are always on the "road to serfdom" is a fairy tale that has not in fact occurred. The transition, however, from neoliberalism to virulent fascist movements has occurred before and could do so again. ..."
Neoliberalism is not fascism. But the fact that many famous neoliberals have been moved to
support fascism to protect a regime from social democracy or socialism does give one pause.
Hayek, Friedman, von Mises, among others, took such a turn under duress. They also had highly
expansive views of what counted as a "socialist" threat.
Neoliberalism is a set of practices that favors entrepreneurs and corporations,
supports--often below the radar--massive state subsidies for the corporate estate, presses for
radical deregulation of private markets, treats labor as an abstract factor of production,
celebrates the authority of courts governed by a neoliberal jurisprudence, hates collective
social movements on the left, protects imperial drives, strives to render democracy minimal,
and moves to dismantle or weaken unions, social security, public schools and universal voting
if and when the opportunities arise. Fascism is a form of capitalism that dismantles democracy,
pushes intense nationalism, pursues racism, deploys big lies systematically, attacks vulnerable
minorities to energize its base, corrupts courts, drives to make the media its mouthpiece,
places police and intelligence agencies under its wing, colludes with foreign dictatorships,
welcomes vigilante groups beneath a veneer of deniability, and jacks up the intensity of
cultural ruthlessness.
So the two are different. Are there, however, enough affinities between them to help explain
how the former -- both in its leadership and its base of support--can migrate rapidly toward
the latter during periods of stress? Stress that it often enough creates by its own hubristic
market practices? Bearing in mind those noble neoliberals who today call out and hold out
against Trumpism -- they are on welcome public display on the Nicole Wallace show on
MSNBC--recent experience in the United States suggests that many other neoliberals, in a
situation of public stress, too easily slide toward the latter. A whole bunch of neoliberal
Republicans in the American Congress, after all, now support or tolerate policies and
belligerent practices they did not before the era of Trump. Many do not merely do so because
they are cowed by the danger of threats to them in Republican primaries -- they could, for
instance, quit politics, or join the Democratic Party to stop aspirational fascism, or
staunchly support the principles they embrace in those very Republican primaries and
elections.
The recent book, Democracy in Chains , by Nancy MacLean, allows us to discern more
closely how such slides and gallops can occur. It is focused on the life of a Nobel Prize
winning neoliberal -- who often called himself a libertarian -- loved by the Mt Pelerin Society
by the name of James Buchanan. I used to teach critically his book The Calculus of Consent in
the 1980s. But MacLean's book, through a close review of an archive not studied before,
reveals how the public neoliberal pronouncements by Buchanan between the 1970s and 2000s were
soon matched by a set of covert plans and financial funding designed to bring neoliberalism to
power by "stealth" strategies. Buchanan had come to see, as had others, that the neoliberal
agenda was not apt to be enacted by democratic means. So he adopted a two-track model.
That two-track model is revealing. So is the fact that this refugee from Tennessee -- a
former slave state and one that then imprisoned Blacks systematically to replace lost slave
labor -- seldom mentioned the specific conditions of Blacks or women as he articulated his
abstract defense of liberty. So, too, is MacLean's review of the ruthlessness and
narcissism that marked the private and public persona of Buchanan, a review that invites
attention to character affinities between him and Trump. Neither Buchanan, Trump, nor Charles
Koch -- the latter another key figure in the Buchanan story -- thought highly of compromise.
They play a hardball game.
The story starts, really, in Pinochet's Chile, where Buchanan helped that repressive regime
impose economic reforms backed by constitutional changes that would make it next to impossible
to reverse them. They were called them constitutional "locks and bolts". Buchanan never
publicized the extensive role he played with Pinochet in Chile. Nor did he ever express public
regret over its fascism, replete with prohibitions of free speech, practices of torture, and
decrees making it illegal to organize dissident social movements.
Another key epiphany occurred in the 1980s in the States. Reagan's massive tax cuts, which
were promised to spur rapid growth to pay for them, instead created deficits three times larger
than those Jimmy Carter had bequeathed. A public reaction set in as the regime proposed to make
radical cuts in Social Security and Medicare to make up the shortfall. But those plans failed.
After that failure, Buchanan concluded, consonant with advice by Milton Friedman, that such
entrenched programs could only be weakened and dismantled through disinformation campaigns.
Democracy had to be squeezed. Why? The majority of "takers" will never accept open plans to
curtail their benefits to reduce taxes on a minority of "producers". The takers, let's call
them for starters workers, the poor and the elderly, don't even believe in "liberty"--meaning
above all the freedom of entrepreneurs to roam freely in the market. So, you must pretend you
are trying to save the very system you seek to unravel. Talk incessantly about its "crisis".
Divide its supporters into older, retired members, who will retain benefits, and younger ones
who will have them cut. Celebrate the virtues of private retirement accounts. Propose to have
the wealthy be removed from the system, doing all these things until general support for the
social security system weakens and you are free to enact the next steps -- steps not to be
publicized in advance. Once you finally eliminate the system, people's general confidence in
the state will wane more. And new initiatives can be taken -- again in a stealth manner -- with
respect to Medicare, pollution regulations, climate change, unemployment insurance, and
democratic accountability.
Buchanan, to make a long story short, first increasingly bought into disinformation
campaigns and later joined the main financier of his Center at George Mason University, Charles
Koch, to support a series of voter suppression programs, neoliberal court appointees,
anti-labor laws, and intensely funded political campaigns to shift the priorities of the state.
The guiding idea was not only to change the rulers but to change the rules which govern
districting, court jurisprudence, voter access and the like. Liberty is for producers, not
takers, as Milt Romney also said later when he thought he was speaking only to a closeted room
full of producers.
Buchanan's abstract concern for market liberties, and the slanted liberties of association
and speech they carried with them, never brought him to speak of the subjugated conditions of
Blacks, women and other minorities in this society. The reason seems clear: their living
grievances threaten abstract claims about a market system of impersonal rational coordination.
The danger, to him, is mass democracy, which enlarges the power of "the state". When Buchanan
worried about the state he didn't seem to mean Pinochet. He meant democratic processes through
which the state is moved to support a collection of minorities who have been closed out of
equality, participation, and representation. Buchanan, as did his hero Hayek, loved to think in
abstractions, the kind of abstractions that cover up specific modes of suffering, grievance,
and care under shiny terms. As MacLean also notes, Buchanan came to see that neoliberal (and
libertarian) propaganda must aim at men more than women, because, on average, the latter are
less predisposed to such messages.
The Koch/Buchanan alliance, consolidated through an Institute at George Mason University,
soon became a Center to fund movements and generic models of reform on the Right as it informed
American movers and shakers how to create constitutional "locks and bolts" in states and the
federal government to secure desired reforms from dissident majorities once they were pushed
through and their real effects became apparent. A stealth campaign, followed by opposition to
"mob rule". Wisconsin, for instance, became a key laboratory under the regime of Scott Walker,
both enacting draconian policies and pursuing constitutional changes to secure them from future
majorities. To discern the severity of the stealth activities, consider how one of Buchanan's
lieutenants, Charles Rowley, eventually turned against them. He became upset when a new Chair
of the economics department summarily fired all untenured economists to replace them with a
single breed of libertarians. As summarized by MacLean, two things above all dismayed Rowley,
who retained his neoliberal outlook but opposed the stealth practices. "First the sheer scale
of the riches the wealthy individuals brought to bear turned out to have subtle, even seductive
power. And second, under the influence of one wealthy individual, in particular, the movement
was turning to an equally troubling form of coercion: achieving its ends essentially through
trickery, through deceiving people about its real intentions to go to a place which, on their
own given complete information, they would not go." (p. 208) It's like saying "repeal and
replace Obamacare" while planning only to make the first move. And then turn the same trick
again in several other domains. Eventually, Buchanan himself grew wary of Koch, in a setting
where two narcissistic, authoritarian men struggled to control the same Center. The money man
won out. In Rowley's own words Koch, the billionaire donor, "had no scruples concerning the
manipulation of scholarship."
Neoliberalism, its critics know so well, periodically spawns the economic crises its
hubristic devotees promise will not happen. It also works to foster voter suppression,
unlimited dark campaign contributions, extreme gerrymandered districts, take away worker
benefits, appoint judges at state and national levels governed by neoliberal jurisprudence,
treat voter suppression tactics to be needed to eliminate phantom voter fraud, oppose
affirmative action, to weaken labor unions, and attack universal health care.
How many neoliberal Republicans called out Donald Trump, for instance, when he launched his
presidential campaign by pretending insistently for six long years (with absolutely no
evidence) that the first African American President held office illegally. Obama was guilty
until proven innocent, according to that Donald Trump. How many stepped to the plate to
acknowledge galloping climate change in the face of those who have called it a hoax against all
the available evidence? What about the appointment of a judge who lied about his previous
record, had trouble with his drinking and temper, and probably tried to rape a young girl when
they were in high school? What about Trump's constant suggestions that minorities are guilty
until found innocent, punctuated by assertions that men applying for high government positions
and accused of harassment must be treated as innocent unless a court of law finds them guilty.
Quiet whispers from neoliberals of regret and suspicion against Trumpism on these issues, by
the way, do not cut the mustard. Neoliberal stealth tactics and neofascist Big Lies have moved
too close together for comfort.
One thing that emerged out of the long-term two track campaigns of neoliberalism is a
powerful wealth/income concentration machine joined to a series of precarious and suffering
minorities, including so many urban Blacks and poor whites. With labor unions, too, caught in a
squeeze. Donald Trump could then play on the prejudices and insecurities created; he thus found
himself in a position to incite large segments of the white labor and lower middle classes to
return to the old days, while retaining the support of a huge segment of the wealthy, donor
class. The disinformation campaigns of the old neoliberal vanguard can too easily slide into
the Big Lie campaigns Trump pursues in the service of White Triumphalism, intense nationalism,
misogyny, the reduction of critical social movements to mob rule, and militant anti-immigration
campaigns. The long time con man and money launderer has not, then, merely cowed a neoliberal
elite that had pointed in a different direction. He has pulled its stealth campaigns into
channels that most find more palatable than other social visions in circulation.
The memories of Hayek and Friedman in this respect return to haunt us. It need not surprise
us, given MacLean's archival history, that the latest Trump Supreme Court appointee supports
neoliberal policies in the domains of corporate deregulation, medical care, restrictive voter
laws, limits on civil rights, gerrymandering and like while also trumpeting notions of a
sovereign president so dear to the dark heart of Donald Trump -- the aspirational fascist who
conspired with Russia to win an electoral college majority in 2016. We must light a candle for
those noble neoliberals who resist the slide we are witnessing before our very eyes, as we also
keep both eyes open with respect to the wider crossing between neoliberalism and
neofascism.
The old, all so familiar, Hayek story of how socialism and social democracy are always
on the "road to serfdom" is a fairy tale that has not in fact occurred. The transition,
however, from neoliberalism to virulent fascist movements has occurred before and could do so
again. The current fascist electoral campaign rallies by Donald Trump are designed to up
the ante of charges against liberals and the Left by several decibel levels so that people will
temporarily forget all the horrible things he has done and will do if Republicans keep both
houses. They include halting or weakening the Mueller investigation, eliminating transgender
rights, consolidating Trump control over intelligence agencies and the courts, reversing the
remaining shreds of ObamaCare, upscaling attacks on universal voting, weakening the media,
creating horrendous immigration laws, encouraging vigilante drives, and many other things yet.
Drive someone to a voting precinct on election day and give them a copy of the MacLean book a
week before you do. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
One month to the day after President Kennedy's assassination, the Washington Post published
an article by former president Harry Truman.
I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our
Central Intelligence Agency -- CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason
why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected
it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
Truman had envisioned the CIA as an impartial information and intelligence collector from
"every available source."
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting
conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to
established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such
intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all
intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as
President without department "treatment" or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a
volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about
this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead
the President into unwise decisions -- and I thought it was necessary that the President do
his own thinking and evaluating.
Truman found, to his dismay, that the CIA had ranged far afield.
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original
assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.
This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive
areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into
peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we
have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the
President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol
of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue -- and a subject for cold war enemy
propaganda.
The article appeared in the Washington Post's morning edition, but not the evening
edition.
Truman reveals two naive assumptions. He thought a government agency could be apolitical and
objective. Further, he believed the CIA's role could be limited to information gathering and
analysis, eschewing "cloak and dagger operations." The timing and tone of the letter may have
been hints that Truman thought the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination. If he did, he
also realized an ex-president couldn't state his suspicions without troublesome
consequences.
Even the man who signed the CIA into law had to stay in the shadows, the CIA's preferred
operating venue. The CIA had become the exact opposite of what Truman envisioned and what its
enabling legislation specified. Within a few years after its inauguration in 1947, it was
neck-deep in global cloak and dagger and pushing agenda-driven, slanted information and
outright disinformation not just within the government, but through the media to the American
people.
The CIA lies with astonishing proficiency. It has made an art form of "plausible
deniability." Like glimpsing an octopus in murky waters, you know it's there, but it shoots
enough black ink to obscure its movements. Murk and black ink make it impossible for anyone on
the outside to determine exactly what it does or has done. Insiders, even the director, are
often kept in the dark.
For those on the trail of CIA and the other intelligence agencies' lies and skullduggery,
the agencies give ground glacially and only when they have to. What concessions they make often
embody multiple layers of back-up lies. It can take years for an official admission -- the CIA
didn't officially confess its involvement in the 1953 coup that deposed Iranian leader Mohammad
Mosaddeq until 2013 -- and even then details are usually not forthcoming. Many of the so-called
exposés of the intelligence agencies are in effect spook-written for propaganda or
damage control.
The intelligence agencies monitor virtually everything we do. They have tentacles reaching
into every aspect of contemporary society, exercising control in pervasive but mostly unknown
ways. Yet, every so often some idiot writes an op-ed or bloviates on TV, bemoaning the lack of
trust the majority of Americans have in "their" government and wondering why. The wonder is
that anyone still trusts the government.
The intelligence agency fog both obscures and corrodes. An ever increasing number of
Americans believe that a shadowy Deep State pulls the strings. Most major stories since World
War II -- Korea, Vietnam, Kennedy's assassination, foreign coups, the 1960s student unrest,
civil rights agitation, and civic disorder, Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, domestic
surveillance, and many more -- have intelligence angles. However, determining what those angles
are plunges you into the miasma perpetuated by the agencies and their media accomplices.
The intelligence agencies and captive media's secrecy, disinformation, and lies make it
futile to mount a straightforward attack against them. It's like attacking a citadel surrounded
by swamps and bogs that afford no footing, making advance impossible. Their deadliest operation
has been against the truth. In a political forum, how does one challenge an adversary who
controls most of the information necessary to discredit, and ultimately reform or eliminate
that adversary?
You don't fight where your opponent wants you to fight. What the intelligence apparatus
fears most is a battle of ideas. Intelligence, the military, and the reserve currency are
essential component of the US's confederated global empire. During the 2016 campaign, Donald
Trump questioned a few empire totems and incurred the intelligence leadership's wrath,
demonstrating how sensitive and vulnerable they are on this front. The transparent flimsiness
of their Russiagate concoction further illustrates the befuddlement. Questions are out in the
open and are usually based on facts within the public domain. They move the battle from the
murk to the light, unfamiliar and unwelcome terrain.
The US government, like Oceania, switches enemies as necessary. That validates military and
intelligence; lasting peace would be intolerable. After World War II the enemy was the USSR and
communism, which persisted until the Soviet collapse in 1991. The 9/11 tragedy offered up a new
enemy, Islamic terrorism.
Seventeen years later, after a disastrous run of US interventions in the Middle East and
Northern Africa and the rout of Sunni jihadists in Syria by the combined forces of the Syrian
government, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, it's clear that Islamic terrorism is no longer a
threat that stirs the paranoia necessary to feed big military and intelligence budgets . For
all the money they've spent, intelligence has done a terrible job of either anticipating
terrorist strikes or defeating them in counterinsurgency warfare
So switch the enemy again, now it's Russia and China. The best insight the intelligence
community could offer about those two is that they've grown stronger by doing the opposite of
the US. For the most part they've stayed in their own neighborhoods. They accept that they're
constituents, albeit important ones, of a multipolar global order. Although they'll use big
sticks to protect their interests, carrots like the Belt and Road Initiative further their
influence much better than the US's bullets and bombs.
If the intelligence complex truly cared about the country, they might go public with the
observation that the empire is going broke. However, raising awareness of this dire threat --
as opposed to standard intelligence bogeymen -- might prompt reexamination of intelligence and
military budgets and the foreign policy that supports them. Insolvency will strangle the US's
exorbitantly expensive interventionism. It will be the first real curb on the intelligence
complex since World War II, but don't except any proactive measures beforehand from those
charged with foreseeing the future.
Conspiracy theories, a term popularized by the CIA to denigrate Warren Commission skeptics,
are often proved correct. However, trying to determine the truth behind intelligence agency
conspiracies is a time and energy-consuming task, usually producing much frustration and little
illumination. Instead,
as Caitlin Johnstone recently observed , we're better off fighting on moral and
philosophical grounds the intelligence complex and the rest of the government's depredations
that are in plain sight.
Attack the intellectual foundations of empire and you attack the whole rickety edifice,
including intelligence, that supports it. Tell the truth and you threaten those who deal in
lies . Champion sanity and logic and you challenge the insane irrationality of the powers that
be. They are daunting tasks, but less daunting than trying to excavate and clean the
intelligence sewer.
I sometimes wonder whether the Bond films are a psy-op.
I mean, the 'hero' is a psycho-killer ... the premise of the films is 'any means to an
end' ... they promote the ridiculous idea that you can be 'licensed to kill', and it's no
longer murder ... and they build a strong association between the State and glamour.
Bond makes a virtue out of 'following orders', when in reality, it's a Sin.
Can't remember which Section of MI6 Ian Fleming (novelist 007.5) worked but he came into
contact with my Hero, the best double-agent Cambridge, maybe World, has Ever produced, Kim
Philby. Fleming was a lightweight compared to him and was most likely provided the Funds, by
MI6 to titillate the Masses, spread the Word of Deep State.
The article makes many good points but still falls into use of distorting bs language.
For example, "after a disastrous run of US interventions" - well, they stole Libya's
wealth and destroyed the country: mission accomplished; that's what they were trying to do.
It was not an ""intervention", it was a f***ing war of aggression based on lies.
Well the good news is that folks now know there is deep State, shadow govt, puppet
masters, fake news MSM mockingbird programming, satanic "musik/ pop" promoters, etc.
Not everyone knows but more know, and some are now questioning the Matrix sensations they
have. That they have not been told the Truth.
Eventually humanity will awaken and get on track, how long it will take is unknown.
The CIA is a symptom of the problem but not the whole problem. Primarily it is the
deception that it sows, the confusion and false conclusions that the easily led fill their
heads with.
Now that you know there are bad guys out there...
Find someone to love, even if it is a puppy or a guppy. Simplify your needs, and commit
small acts of kindness on a regular basis. The World will heal, it may be a rocky
convalescence, yet Good triumphs in the end.
"... Have you been watching the news over the past few weeks where the clowns who supposedly represent us at Westminster were offering to take cash in brown envelopes for privileged access to the political system? ..."
"... Now we have the Prime Minister attending the Bilderberg Group meeting without any officials or Civil Servants to record what is going on. I suppose he needs to attend to get instructions from his bosses on how he must run his 'democracy'! ..."
Democracy = a political system in which citizens have an equal say in the decisions that
affect their lives. Democracy allows eligible citizens to participate equally -- either
directly or through elected representatives -- in the proposal, development, and creation
of laws. It encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and
equal practice of political self-determination. Do we have this in the UK at the moment
bearing in mind recent events (brown envelopes and Bilderberg Group to name but two)?
Does any country have this? With all due respect it is just words and sentiment. In my
previous comment I said that No i didnt think we had true democracy and I dont think it (if
there is such a thing) is achievable, not everyone would be satisfied it would be true
democracy thus its legitimacy would be called into question.
In my mind its a bit like saying the best thing would be a "benevolent, incorruptible,
sensible dictator", its a fantasy.
Politicians who are found to be on the take or are fiddling the public purse should be
dismissed immediately and a by election called. Would stop it happening as much as I am
sure we are only seeing the 'tip of the iceberg'.
Agreed and they should always be innocent until proven guilty and if found guilty of abuse
of office they should be barred from public office indefinitely in my mind, as long as they
break the law, not fudge the rules or whatever, which is also part of the problem. Hazel
Blears and countless others was re-elected despite being reviled in the media as an expenses
cheat.
So I assume you are happy for our PM to attend a secret meeting where nothing is ever
released to the media or press about what is going on or discussed?
I am neither happy nor unhappy, it is a private event that the PM is invited to by a
steering committee, I imagine the idea being they can discuss candidly without official airs,
graces, platitudes and politician speak for a while, it doesnt particularly concern me.
@LetsGetCynical - Democracy = a political system in which citizens have an equal say in the
decisions that affect their lives. Democracy allows eligible citizens to participate equally
-- either directly or through elected representatives -- in the proposal, development, and
creation of laws. It encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the
free and equal practice of political self-determination. Do we have this in the UK at the
moment bearing in mind recent events (brown envelopes and Bilderberg Group to name but two)?
Politicians who are found to be on the take or are fiddling the public purse should be
dismissed immediately and a by election called. Would stop it happening as much as I am sure
we are only seeing the 'tip of the iceberg'.
So I assume you are happy for our PM to attend a secret meeting where nothing is ever
released to the media or press about what is going on or discussed?
No, but then again what is a "true democracy"? Agreed they are bunch of clowns but then
again who are the clowns that repeatedly vote for the same party regardless of what they say
or do?
where the clowns who supposedly represent us at Westminster were offering to take cash
in brown envelopes
Corruption is about as old as humanity itself, no "true democracy" will ever remove the
human element and all the pros and cons that entails.
Now we have the Prime Minister attending the Bilderberg Group meeting without any
officials or Civil Servants to record what is going on. I suppose he needs to attend to get
instructions from his bosses on how he must run his 'democracy'!
Whether or not you argee or disagree with the conference, it is by invite only, they don't
have to invite civil servants or journalists if they don't want to. And it does contain very
powerful people, why would the PM not attend?
attend to get instructions from his bosses
I take it the waiters are under permanent surveillance in order to ensure they don't
reveal the dastardly secrets about what Eric Schmidt "tells" Cameron to do? A bit fanciful in
my opinion.
@LetsGetCynical - Do you really believe that we live in a true democracy? Have you been
watching the news over the past few weeks where the clowns who supposedly represent us at
Westminster were offering to take cash in brown envelopes for privileged access to the
political system?
Now we have the Prime Minister attending the Bilderberg Group meeting
without any officials or Civil Servants to record what is going on. I suppose he needs to
attend to get instructions from his bosses on how he must run his 'democracy'!
"What do you mean by claiming Hersh "cozys up" to MIC ppl? And what would be a specific
example of a story he broke after doing that?"
Our Men in Iran?
"We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the
D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada," a former senior American intelligence
official told me. ... In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised
the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been
privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in
Nevada
His conversations with Lieutenant Calley are apparently what allowed him to break the My
Lai massacre story as well, even though members of the military had already spoken out about
it, and there had been already been charges brought. It just revealed the story to the
general public, which prompted a fuller investigation and courts martial. I'm sure there are
others.
So, obviously Hersh's "cozying up" (surely not the right term for it, though) is in the
interests of raising public awareness of nefarious deeds, and is not scared of painting these
organizations in a bad light, whereas Mazzetti's goal here seems to be to maintain his
privileged access by providing favors - totally different motivations. It's rather easy to
contrast the two, which "smartypants54" has even stated here.
Whatever the case, it's true that elements of the NYT have been mouthpieces more or less
for government and corporate power for a long time. While I agree with Glenn about the faux
cynicism perpetuating this kind of activity - "don't be naive, this is done all the time" - I
can understand that it exists.
Such cynicism on the part of the public, rather than being an acknowledgment of
acceptance and approval of such practices, can also be seen as part of a more radical
critique of the corporate media in general, and the NYT particularly, in that such
organizations - not that I totally agree with this - , by their very nature, can't be
reformed and can never be totally effective checks on power because of the way they're
structured, and who they answer to.
That's definitely not a reason to stop pointing it out, though.
Josh Rogin
uses the Senate's 63-37 vote on S.J.Res. 54 earlier this week to make a very strange
claim:
The Senate's stunning bipartisan rebuke of President Trump's handling of U.S.-Saudi
relations shows that the internationalist, values-based foreign policy of the late senator
John McCain still holds significant weight in both parties [bold mine-DL].
At the end of his career, McCain was one of the foremost defenders of U.S. involvement in
the war on Yemen. I suppose it was fitting that he capped off a long career of supporting
unnecessary and illegal wars by proudly supporting a truly indefensible one. When U.S. support
for the war began in 2015, he and Lindsey Graham
chastised Obama for not doing enough to help the Saudi coalition. Needless to say,
he was an
early and eager supporter of the intervention . When McCain was asked about the coalition's
bombing campaign and the civilian casualties that it was causing, he denied
that there were any. "Thank God for the Saudis," he once
said , praising the kingdom for its role in fueling the war in Syria.
I
commented on McCain's support for the war on Yemen in a post last year:
In addition to dismissing the civilian casualties caused by the indiscriminate coalition
bombing campaign, McCain has reliably recited Saudi propaganda to provide cover for the war
while completely ignoring the catastrophic humanitarian crisis that their campaign has done
so much to cause.
McCain was the champion of a particular strain of aggressive interventionism that relied on
moralizing rhetoric to justify unjust actions. His foreign policy was "values-based" in the
sense that he would use "values" language to rally support for attacking certain regimes, but
when it came to applying the same standards to U.S. allies and clients McCain frequently became
mute or turned into a cynical apologist on behalf of states aligned with Washington. That is
certainly how he acted
when it came to the
Saudi coalition war on Yemen . Back when there were very few critics of the war in the
Senate, McCain was one of their
loudest opponents :
McCain incredibly described the Saudis as a "nation under attack" because of incursions
into Saudi territory that were provoked by the Saudi-led bombing campaign. Graham portrayed
the Saudis as victims of Yemeni "aggression," which has everything completely and obviously
backwards. It requires swallowing Saudi propaganda whole to argue that the Saudis and their
allies have been acting in self-defense, and that is what McCain and Graham tried to do. Both
repeatedly asserted that the Houthis are Iranian proxies when the best evidence suggests that
Iran's role in the conflict has always been negligible, and then justified their complete
indifference to the consequences of the Saudi-led war by complaining about Iranian behavior
elsewhere. Needless to say, the humanitarian crisis brought on by the Saudi-led bombing
campaign and blockade never once came up in their remarks, but I'm sure if they ever do
mention it they'll blame it on Iran somehow.
McCain used many of the same cynical and dishonest arguments then that Trump administration
officials use now. The senators that voted for S.J.Res. 54 were not following McCain's example
and they were definitely not embracing the kind of foreign policy he supported. On the
contrary, the success of the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution this week was as much a rebuke to
McCain's foreign policy legacy as it was a rebuke to Trump's shameless Saudi First behavior.
Opposition to the war on Yemen was something that McCain vehemently rejected, and it is simply
and obviously wrong to credit McCain's foreign policy views for the antiwar victory that Sens.
Sanders, Murphy, Lee, and their colleagues won this week. For the last twenty-five years,
McCain never saw a U.S.-backed war he couldn't support, and that included the war on Yemen.
When the Senate voted to advance S.J.Res. 54 on Wednesday, they were voting against the war
that McCain had vocally backed for years.
Gage
Skidmore /
Charles Haynes /Flickr Josh Rogin
uses the Senate's 63-37 vote on S.J.Res. 54 earlier this week to make a very strange claim:
The Senate's stunning bipartisan rebuke of President Trump's handling of U.S.-Saudi
relations shows that the internationalist, values-based foreign policy of the late senator
John McCain still holds significant weight in both parties [bold mine-DL].
At the end of his career, McCain was one of the foremost defenders of U.S. involvement in
the war on Yemen. I suppose it was fitting that he capped off a long career of supporting
unnecessary and illegal wars by proudly supporting a truly indefensible one. When U.S. support
for the war began in 2015, he and Lindsey Graham
chastised Obama for not doing enough to help the Saudi coalition. Needless to say,
he was an
early and eager supporter of the intervention . When McCain was asked about the coalition's
bombing campaign and the civilian casualties that it was causing, he denied
that there were any. "Thank God for the Saudis," he once
said , praising the kingdom for its role in fueling the war in Syria.
I
commented on McCain's support for the war on Yemen in a post last year:
In addition to dismissing the civilian casualties caused by the indiscriminate coalition
bombing campaign, McCain has reliably recited Saudi propaganda to provide cover for the war
while completely ignoring the catastrophic humanitarian crisis that their campaign has done
so much to cause.
McCain was the champion of a particular strain of aggressive interventionism that relied on
moralizing rhetoric to justify unjust actions. His foreign policy was "values-based" in the
sense that he would use "values" language to rally support for attacking certain regimes, but
when it came to applying the same standards to U.S. allies and clients McCain frequently became
mute or turned into a cynical apologist on behalf of states aligned with Washington. That is
certainly how he acted
when it came to the
Saudi coalition war on Yemen . Back when there were very few critics of the war in the
Senate, McCain was one of their
loudest opponents :
McCain incredibly described the Saudis as a "nation under attack" because of incursions
into Saudi territory that were provoked by the Saudi-led bombing campaign. Graham portrayed
the Saudis as victims of Yemeni "aggression," which has everything completely and obviously
backwards. It requires swallowing Saudi propaganda whole to argue that the Saudis and their
allies have been acting in self-defense, and that is what McCain and Graham tried to do. Both
repeatedly asserted that the Houthis are Iranian proxies when the best evidence suggests that
Iran's role in the conflict has always been negligible, and then justified their complete
indifference to the consequences of the Saudi-led war by complaining about Iranian behavior
elsewhere. Needless to say, the humanitarian crisis brought on by the Saudi-led bombing
campaign and blockade never once came up in their remarks, but I'm sure if they ever do
mention it they'll blame it on Iran somehow.
McCain used many of the same cynical and dishonest arguments then that Trump administration
officials use now. The senators that voted for S.J.Res. 54 were not following McCain's example
and they were definitely not embracing the kind of foreign policy he supported. On the
contrary, the success of the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution this week was as much a rebuke to
McCain's foreign policy legacy as it was a rebuke to Trump's shameless Saudi First behavior.
Opposition to the war on Yemen was something that McCain vehemently rejected, and it is simply
and obviously wrong to credit McCain's foreign policy views for the antiwar victory that Sens.
Sanders, Murphy, Lee, and their colleagues won this week. For the last twenty-five years,
McCain never saw a U.S.-backed war he couldn't support, and that included the war on Yemen.
When the Senate voted to advance S.J.Res. 54 on Wednesday, they were voting against the war
that McCain had vocally backed for years.
This is from 1999 and in 2018 we see that Mills was right.
Notable quotes:
"... Personnel were constantly shifting back and forth from the corporate world to the military world. Big companies like General Motors had become dependent on military contracts. Scientific and technological innovations sponsored by the military helped fuel the growth of the economy. ..."
"... the military had become an active political force. Members of Congress, once hostile to the military, now treated officers with great deference. And no president could hope to staff the Department of State, find intelligence officers, and appoint ambassadors without consulting with the military. ..."
"... Mills believed that the emergence of the military as a key force in American life constituted a substantial attack on the isolationism which had once characterized public opinion. He argued that "the warlords, along with fellow travelers and spokesmen, are attempting to plant their metaphysics firmly among the population at large." ..."
"... In this state of constant war fever, America could no longer be considered a genuine democracy, for democracy thrives on dissent and disagreement, precisely what the military definition of reality forbids. If the changes described by Mills were indeed permanent, then The Power Elite could be read as the description of a deeply radical, and depressing, transformation of the nature of the United States. ..."
"... The immediate consequence of these changes in the world's balance of power has been a dramatic decrease in that proportion of the American economy devoted to defense. ..."
"... Mills's prediction that both the economy and the political system of the United States would come to be ever more dominated by the military ..."
"... Business firms, still the most powerful force in American life, are increasingly global in nature, more interested in protecting their profits wherever they are made than in the defense of the country in which perhaps only a minority of their employees live and work. Give most of the leaders of America's largest companies a choice between invading another country and investing in its industries and they will nearly always choose the latter over the former. ..."
"... Mills believed that in the 1950s, for the first time in American history, the military elite had formed a strong alliance with the economic elite. ..."
One of the crucial arguments Mills made in The Power Elite was that the emergence of
the Cold War completely transformed the American public's historic opposition to a permanent
military establishment in the United States. In deed, he stressed that America's military elite
was now linked to its economic and political elite. Personnel were constantly shifting back and
forth from the corporate world to the military world. Big companies like General Motors had
become dependent on military contracts. Scientific and technological innovations sponsored by
the military helped fuel the growth of the economy. And while all these links between the
economy and the military were being forged, the military had become an active political force.
Members of Congress, once hostile to the military, now treated officers with great deference.
And no president could hope to staff the Department of State, find intelligence officers, and
appoint ambassadors without consulting with the military.
Mills believed that the emergence of the military as a key force in American life
constituted a substantial attack on the isolationism which had once characterized public
opinion. He argued that "the warlords, along with fellow travelers and spokesmen, are
attempting to plant their metaphysics firmly among the population at large." Their goal was
nothing less than a redefinition of reality -- one in which the American people would come to
accept what Mills called "an emergency without a foreseeable end." "
War or a high state of war
preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States,"
Mills wrote. In this state of constant war fever, America could no longer be considered a
genuine democracy, for democracy thrives on dissent and disagreement, precisely what the
military definition of reality forbids. If the changes described by Mills were indeed
permanent, then The Power Elite could be read as the description of a deeply radical,
and depressing, transformation of the nature of the United States.
Much as Mills wrote, it remains true today that Congress is extremely friendly to the
military, at least in part because the military has become so powerful in the districts of most
congressmen. Military bases are an important source of jobs for many Americans, and government
spending on the military is crucial to companies, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which
manufacture military equipment. American firms are the leaders in the world's global arms
market, manufacturing and exporting weapons everywhere. Some weapons systems never seem to die,
even if, as was the case with a "Star Wars" system designed to destroy incoming missiles, there
is no demonstrable military need for them.
Yet despite these similarities with the 1950s, both the world and the role that America
plays in that world have changed. For one thing, the United States has been unable to muster
its forces for any sustained use in any foreign conflict since Vietnam. Worried about the
possibility of a public backlash against the loss of American lives, American presidents either
refrain from pursuing military adventures abroad or confine them to rapid strikes, along the
lines pursued by Presidents Bush and Clinton in Iraq. Since 1989, moreover, the collapse of
communism in Russia and Eastern Europe has undermined the capacity of America's elites to
mobilize support for military expenditures. China, which at the time Mills wrote was considered a serious threat, is now viewed by American businessmen as a source of great potential
investment. Domestic political support for a large and permanent military establishment in the
United States, in short, can no longer be taken for granted.
The immediate consequence of these changes in the world's balance of power has been a
dramatic decrease in that proportion of the American economy devoted to defense. At the time
Mills wrote, defense expenditures constituted roughly 60 percent of all federal outlays and
consumed nearly 10 percent of the U. S. gross domestic product. By the late 1990s, those
proportions had fallen to 17 percent of federal outlays and 3.5 percent of GDP. Nearly three
million Americans served in the armed forces when The Power Elite appeared, but that
number had dropped by half at century's end. By almost any account, Mills's prediction that
both the economy and the political system of the United States would come to be ever more
dominated by the military is not borne out by historical developments since his time.
And how could he have been right? Business firms, still the most powerful force in American
life, are increasingly global in nature, more interested in protecting their profits wherever
they are made than in the defense of the country in which perhaps only a minority of their
employees live and work. Give most of the leaders of America's largest companies a choice
between invading another country and investing in its industries and they will nearly always
choose the latter over the former.
Mills believed that in the 1950s, for the first time in
American history, the military elite had formed a strong alliance with the economic elite. Now
it would be more correct to say that America's economic elite finds more in common with
economic elites in other countries than it does with the military elite of its own....
"... Enough Afghans either support the Taliban or hate the occupation, and managed, through assorted conventional and unconventional operations, to fight on the ground. And "on the ground" is all that really matters. This war may well have been ill-advised and unwinnable from the start. ..."
"... There's no shame in defeat. But there is shame, and perfidy, in avoiding or covering up the truth. It's what the whole military-political establishment did after Vietnam, and, I fear, it's what they're doing again. ..."
America Is Headed For Military Defeat in
AfghanistanIt is time to acknowledge this is more than political. We can lose on the
battlefield, and it's happening right now. By Danny Sjursen •
November 30, 2018
Marines
with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, sprint across a field to load onto a
CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter during a mission in Helmand province, Afghanistan, July 4,
2014. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Joseph Scanlan / released) There's a prevailing maxim,
both inside the armed forces and around the Beltway, that goes something like this: "The U.S.
can never be militarily defeated in any war," certainly not by some third world country.
Heck, I used to believe that myself. That's why, in regard to Afghanistan, we've been told that
while America could lose the war due to political factors (such as the lack of grit
among "soft" liberals or defeatists), the military could never and will never lose on the
battlefield.
That entire maxim is about to be turned on its head. Get ready, because we're about to lose
this war militarily.
Consider this: the U.S. military has advised, assisted, battled, and bombed in Afghanistan
for 17-plus years. Ground troop levels have fluctuated from lows of some 10,000 to upwards of
100,000 servicemen and women. None of that has
achieved more than a tie, a bloody stalemate. Now, in the 18th year of this conflict, the
Kabul-Washington coalition's military is outright losing.
Let's begin with the broader measures. The Taliban controls or contests more districts --
some 44 percent -- than at any time since the 2001 invasion. Total combatant and civilian
casualties are forecasted to
top 20,000 this year -- another dreadful broken record. What's more, Afghan military casualties
are frankly unsustainable: the Taliban are killing more than the government can recruit. The
death rates are staggering, numbering 5,500 fatalities in 2015, 6,700 in 2016, and an estimate (the number is newly
classified) of "about 10,000" in 2017. Well, some might ask, what about American airpower --
can't that help stem the Taliban tide? Hardly. In 2018, as security deteriorated and the
Taliban made substantial gains, the U.S. actually
droppedmore bombs than in anyother year of the war . It
appears that nothing stands in the way of impending military defeat.
Then there are the very recent events on the ground -- and these are telling. Insider
attacks in which Afghan "allies" turn their guns on American advisors are back on the rise,
most recently in an attack that wounded a
U.S. Army general and threatened the top U.S. commander in the country. And while troop numbers
are way down from the high in 2011, American troops deaths are rising. Over the Thanksgiving
season alone, a U.S. Army Ranger was
killed in a friendly fire incident and three other troopers
died in a roadside bomb attack. And in what was perhaps only a (still disturbing) case of
misunderstood optics, the top U.S. commander, General Miller, was filmed carrying his own M4
rifle around Afghanistan. That's a long way from the days when then-General Petraeus (well
protected by soldiers, of course) walked around the markets of Baghdad in a soft cap and
without body armor.
More importantly, the Afghan army and police are getting hammered in larger and larger
attacks and taking unsustainable casualties. Some 26 Afghan security forces were killed on
Thanksgiving, 22 policemen
died in an attack on Sunday, and on Tuesday 30 civilians were
killed in Helmand province. And these were only the high-profile attacks, dwarfed by the
countless other countrywide incidents. All this proves that no matter how hard the U.S.
military worked, or how many years it committed to building an Afghan army in its own image,
and no matter how much air and logistical support that army received, the Afghan Security
Forces cannot win. The sooner Washington accepts this truth over the more comforting lie, the
fewer of our adulated American soldiers will have to die. Who is honestly ready to be the last
to die for a mistake, or at least a hopeless cause?
Now, admittedly, this author is asking for trouble -- and fierce rebuttals -- from both
peers and superiors still serving on active duty. And that's understandable. The old maxim of
military invincibility soothes these men, mollifies their sense of personal loss, whether of
personal friends or years away from home, in wars to which they've now dedicated their entire
adult lives. Questioning whether there even is a military solution in Afghanistan, or, more
specifically, predicting a military defeat, serves only to upend their mental framework
surrounding the war.
Still, sober strategy and basic honesty demands a true assessment of the military situation
in America's longest war. The Pentagon loves metrics, data, and stats. Well, as demonstrated
daily on the ground in Afghanistan, all the security (read: military) metrics point towards
impending defeat. At best, the Afghan army, with ample U.S. advisory detachments and air
support, can hold on to the northernmost and westernmost provinces of the country, while a
Taliban coalition overruns the south and east. This will be messy, ugly, and discomfiting for
military and civilian leaders alike. But unless Washington is prepared to redeploy 100,000
soldiers to Afghanistan (again) -- and still only manage a tie, by the way -- it is also all
but inevitable.
The United States military did all it was asked during more than 17 years of warfare in
Afghanistan. It raided, it bombed, it built, it surged, it advised, it everything. Still, none
of that was sufficient. Enough Afghans either support the Taliban or hate the occupation,
and managed, through assorted conventional and unconventional operations, to fight on the
ground. And "on the ground" is all that really matters. This war may well have been ill-advised
and unwinnable from the start.
There's no shame in defeat. But there is shame, and perfidy, in avoiding or
covering up the truth. It's what the whole military-political establishment did after Vietnam,
and, I fear, it's what they're doing again.
Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and a regular contributor to Unz. He served
combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his
alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War,
Ghostriders of
Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge . Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet .
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an
unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of
the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
"... Trump's memo on the Saudis begins with the headline "The world is a very dangerous place!" Indeed, it is and behavior by the three occupants of the White House since 2000 is largely to blame. ..."
"... Indeed, a national security policy that sees competitors and adversaries as enemies in a military sense has made nuclear war, unthinkable since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, thinkable once again. ..."
"... George Washington's dictum in his Farewell Address , counseling his countrymen to "observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all." And Washington might have somehow foreseen the poisonous relationships with Israel and the Saudis when he warned that " a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification." ..."
"... Cautious optimism may be better than none, but futile nonetheless. Bullying, dispossession, slavery and genocide constitute the very bedrock, the essence and soul of the founding of our country. ..."
"... Truth be told we simply know of no other kinder, gentler alternatives to perpetual war and destruction as the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Normality? Not in my lifetime. ..."
"... Your CNI and 'If Americans Knew' informed me about Rand Paul's courageous move. I plan to call his office today to give him encouragement and call my Senators and Representative to urge them to support him (fat chance of that but I have to stick it in their face). ..."
"... America doesn't have a policy because America is no longer a real nation. It's an empire filled with diverse groups of peoples who all hate each other and want to use the power of the government for the benefit of their overseas co-ethnics. ..."
President Donald Trump's
recent statement on the Jamal Khashoggi killing by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince might well be considered a metaphor for his foreign
policy. Several commentators have suggested that the text appears to be something that Trump wrote himself without any adult supervision,
similar to the poorly expressed random arguments presented in his tweeting only longer. That might be the case, but it would not
be wise to dismiss the document as merely frivolous or misguided as it does in reality express the kind of thinking that has produced
a foreign policy that seems to drift randomly to no real end, a kind of leaderless creative destruction of the United States as a
world power.
Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of Britain in the mid nineteenth century, famously said that "Nations have no permanent friends
or allies, they only have permanent interests."The United States currently has neither real friends nor any clearly defined interests.
It is, however, infested with parasites that have convinced an at-drift America that their causes are identical to the interests
of the United States. Leading the charge to reduce the U.S. to "bitch" status, as Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard
has artfully put it , are Israel and Saudi
Arabia, but there are many other countries, alliances and advocacy groups that have learned how to subvert and direct the "leader
of the free world."
Trump's memo on the Saudis begins with the headline "The world is a very dangerous place!" Indeed, it is and behavior by the
three occupants of the White House since 2000 is largely to blame. It is difficult to find a part of the world where an actual
American interest is being served by Washington's foreign and global security policies. Indeed, a national security policy that
sees competitors and adversaries as enemies in a military sense has made nuclear war, unthinkable since the demise of the Soviet
Union in 1991, thinkable once again. The fact that no one is the media or in political circles is even talking about that terrible
danger suggests that war has again become mainstreamed, tacitly benefiting from bipartisan acceptance of it as a viable foreign policy
tool by the media, in the U.S. Congress and also in the White House.
The part of the world where American meddling coupled with ignorance has produced the worst result is inevitably the Middle East...
... ... ...
All of the White House's actions have one thing in common and that is that they do not benefit Americans in any way unless one
works for a weapons manufacturer, and that is not even taking into consideration the dead soldiers and civilians and the massive
debt that has been incurred to intervene all over the world. One might also add that most of America's interventions are built on
deliberate lies by the government and its associated media, intended to increase tension and create a casus belli where
none exists.
So what is to be done as it often seems that the best thing Trump has going for him is that he is not Hillary Clinton? First of
all, a comprehensive rethink of what the real interests of the United States are in the world arena is past due. America is less
safe now than it was in 2001 as it continues to make enemies with its blundering everywhere it goes. There are now
four times as many designated terrorists as there were in 2001, active in 70 countries. One would quite plausibly soon arrive
at George Washington's dictum in his Farewell Address
, counseling his countrymen to "observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all." And Washington
might have somehow foreseen the poisonous relationships with Israel and the Saudis when he warned that " a passionate attachment
of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary
common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former
into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."
George Washington or any of the other Founders would be appalled to see an America with 800 military bases overseas, allegedly
for self-defense. The transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the military industrial complex and related entities like Wall Street
has been catastrophic. The United States does not need to protect Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries that are armed to the teeth
and well able to defend themselves. Nor does it have to be in Syria and Afghanistan. And
If the United States were to withdraw its military from the Middle East and the rest of Asia tomorrow, it would be to nearly everyone's
benefit. If the armed forces were to be subsequently reduced to a level sufficient to defend the United States it would put money
back in the pockets of Americans and end the continuous fearmongering through surfacing of "threats" by career militarists justifying
the bloated budgets.
... ... ...
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation that seeks a more interests [email protected]
.
but even small steps in the right direction could initiate a gradual process of turning the United States into a more normal
country in its relationships with the rest of the world rather than a universal predator and bully.
Cautious optimism may be better than none, but futile nonetheless. Bullying, dispossession, slavery and genocide constitute
the very bedrock, the essence and soul of the founding of our country.
To expect mutations -- no matter how slow or fast in a
trait that appears deeply embedded in our DNA is to be naive. Add to that the intractable stranglehold Zionists and organized
world Jewry has on our nuts and decision making. A more congruent convergence of histories and DNAs would be hard to come by among
other nations. Truth be told we simply know of no other kinder, gentler alternatives to perpetual war and destruction as the cornerstone
of our foreign policy. Normality? Not in my lifetime.
Your CNI and 'If Americans Knew' informed me about Rand Paul's courageous move. I plan to call his office today to give
him encouragement and call my Senators and Representative to urge them to support him (fat chance of that but I have to stick
it in their face).
Hey, how about a Rand Paul-Tulsi Gabbard fusion ticket in 2024, not a bad idea, IMHO.
Going back to the Administration you can see the slimy Zionist hands of Steven Miller on all of those foreign policy statements.
Trump is allowing this because he has to protect his flanks from Zionists, Christian or otherwise. He might be just giving Miller
just enough rope to jettison him (wishful thinking on my part). Or he doesn't care or is unaware of the texts, a possibility.
1. Because that defies human nature. See all of history if you disagree.
2. America doesn't have a policy because America is no longer a real nation. It's an empire filled with diverse groups of peoples
who all hate each other and want to use the power of the government for the benefit of their overseas co-ethnics.
The beginning of USA foreign policy for me is the 1820 or 1830 Monroe Declaration: south America is our backyard, keep out.
Few people know that at the time European countries considered war on the USA because of this beginning of world domination.
When I told this to a USA correspondent the reply was 'but this declaration still is taught here in glowing terms'.
What we saw then was the case until Obama, USA foreign policy was for internal political reasons.
As Hollings stated in 2004 'Bush promising AIPAC the war on Iraq, that is politics'.
No empire ever, as far as I know, ever was in the comfortable position to be able to let foreign policy to be decided (almost)
completely by internal politics.
This changed during the Obama reign, the two war standard had to be lowered to one and a half.
All of a sudden the USA had to develop a foreign policy, a policy that had to take into consideration the world outside the USA.
Not the whole USA understands this, the die hards of Deep State in the lead.
What a half war accomplishes we see, my opinion, in Syria, a half war does not bring victory on an enemy who wages a whole
war.
Assad is still there, Russia has airforce and naval bases in Syria.
Normally, as any history book explains, foreign policy of a country is decided on in secret by a few people.
British preparations for both WWI and WWII included detailed technical talks with both the USA and France, not even all cabinet
members knew about it.
One of Trump's difficulties is that Deep State does not at all has the intention of letting the president decide on foreign policy,
at the time of FDR he did what he liked, though, if one reads for example Baruch's memoirs, in close cooperation with the Deep
State that then existed.
The question 'why do we not leave the rest of the world alone', hardly ever asked.
The USA is nearly autarcic, foreign trade, from memory, some five percent of national income, a very luxurious position.
But of course, leaving the rest of the world alone, huge internal consequences, as Hinckley explains with an example, politically
impossible to stop the development of a bomber judged to be superfluous.
Barbara Hinckley Sheldon Goldman, American Politics and Government, Glenview Ill.,1990
Good luck. A fight over resources with the biggest consumer of resources, the People That Kill People and all their little buddies
in the Alphabet Soup of Law Enforcement and Intelligence Depravity..
That could get a fella hurt. Ask Jack and Bob Kennedy.
"The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Russia is now worse than it was towards the end of the Cold War". Classic American
cold warrior mentality. The present-day Russian Federation is assimilated to the former Soviet Union.
Tragically for America, and the West in general, President Trump is unrecognizable from
candidate Trump :
'This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over
our government. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals,
massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry Their financial resources are virtually
unlimited, their political resources are unlimited, their media resources are unmatched, and most importantly, the depths of their
immorality is absolutely unlimited.'
Update 4 : A UN Security Council meeting has been called for 11am
tomorrow after Ukraine incident with Russia, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in a
tweet.
* * *
Update 3 : according to media reports, on Monday Ukraine's president will propose imposing
military law, amid the ongoing crisis with Russia.
* * *
Update 2: This is the moment when the escalating crisis started...
* * *
Update 1: Following reports from the Ukraine navy that Russian ships had fired on Ukraine
vessels near the Kerch Strait, Ukraine accused Moscow of also illegally seizing three of its
naval ships - the "Berdyansʹk" and "Nikopolʹ" Gurza-class small armored artillery
boats and a raid tug A-947 "Jani Kapu" - off Crimea on Sunday after opening fire on them, a
charge that if confirmed could ignite a dangerous new crisis between the two countries.
As reported earlier, Russia did not immediately respond to the allegation, but Russian news
agencies cited the FSB security service as saying it had incontrovertible proof that Ukraine
had orchestrated what it called "a provocation" and would make its evidence public soon.
According to media reports, Russia said it has "impounded" three Ukrainian naval ships after
they crossed the border with Russia
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko immediately called a meeting with his top
military and security chiefs to discuss the situation.
Separately, the EU has urged both sides to rapidly de-escalate the tense situation at the
Kerch strait:
*EU URGES UKRAINE, RUSSIA TO DE-ESCALATE SITUATION AT STRAIT
*UKRAINE, RUSSIA SHOULD ACT W/ `UTMOST RESTRAINT', EU SAYS
*EU URGES RUSSIA TO RESTORE FREEDOM OF PASSAGE AT KERCH STRAIT
NATO has confirmed it is "closely monitoring" developments and is calling for "restraint and
de-escalation"...
" NATO is closely monitoring developments in the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait, and we are
in contact with the Ukrainian authorities. We call for restraint and de-escalation.
NATO fully supports Ukraine's sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its
navigational rights in its territorial waters. We call on Russia to ensure unhindered access
to Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, in accordance with international law.
At the Brussels Summit in July, NATO leaders expressed their support to Ukraine, and made
clear that Russia's ongoing militarisation of Crimea, the Black Sea, and the Azov Sea pose
further threats to Ukraine's independence and undermines the stability of the broader region.
"
Finally, Ukraine has called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting over 'Russian
aggression' while Ukraine's secretary for national security, Oleksander Turchynov, accused
Russia of engaging in an act of war: "We heard reports on incident and have concluded that it
was an act of war by Russian Federation against Ukraine"
* * *
As we detailed earlier, the Ukrainian navy has accused Russia of opening fire on some of its
ships in the Black Sea, striking one vessel, and wounding a crew member.
In a statement on its Facebook page , the Ukrainian navy said the
Russian military vessels opened fire on Ukrainian warships after they had left the 12-mile zone
near the Kerch Strait, leaving one man wounded, and one Ukrainian vessel damaged and
immobilized, adding that Russian warships "shoot to kill."
Ukraine accused a Russian coastguard vessel, named the Don, of ramming one of its tugboats
in "openly aggressive actions". The incident allegedly took place as three Ukrainian navy boats
- including two small warships - headed for the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, an area of
heightened tensions between the countries.
Russia accused Ukraine of illegally entering the area and deliberately provoking a
conflict.
Sky News reports that the Ukrainian president has called an emergency session of his war
cabinet in response to the incident.
"Today's dangerous events in the Azov Sea testify that a new front of [Russian] aggression
is open," Ukrainian foreign ministry spokeswoman Mariana Betsa said.
"Ukraine [is] calling now for emergency meeting of United Nations Security Council."
It comes after a day of rising tensions off the coast of Crimea, and especially around the
Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from mainland Russia after Ukrainian vessels allegedly
violated the Russian border. The passage was blocked by a cargo ship and fighter jets were
scrambled.
According to RT , Russia has
stopped all navigation through the waterway using the cargo ship shown above. Videos from the
scene released by the Russian media show a large bulk freighter accompanied by two Russian
military boats standing under the arch of the Crimea Bridge and blocking the only passage
through the strait.
"The [Kerch] strait is closed for security reasons," the Director-General of the Crimean sea
ports, Aleksey Volkov, told TASS, confirming earlier media reports.
Russian Air Force Su-25 strike fighters were also scrambled to provide additional security
for the strait as the situation remains tense. The move came as five Ukrainian Navy ships had
been approaching the strait from two different sides.
According to RT, two Ukrainian artillery boats and a tugboat initially approached the strait
from the Black Sea while "undertaking dangerous maneuvers" and "defying the lawful orders of
the Russian border guards." Later, they were joined by two more military vessels that departed
from a Ukrainian Azov Sea port of Berdyansk sailing to the strait from the other side.
The Russian federal security agency FSB, which is responsible for maintaining the country's
borders, denounced the actions of the Ukrainian ships as a provocation, adding that they could
create a "conflict situation" in the region. According to the Russian media reports, the
Ukrainian vessels are still sailing towards the strait, ignoring the warnings of the Russian
border guards.
According to
Reuters , a bilateral treaty gives both countries the right to use the sea, which lies
between them and is linked by the narrow Kerch Strait to the Black Sea. Moscow is able to
control access between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea after it built a bridge that straddles
the Kerch Strait between Crimea and southern Russia.
Reuters adds that tensions surfaced on Sunday after Russia tried to intercept three
Ukrainian ships -- two small armored artillery vessels and a tug boat -- in the Black Sea,
accusing them of illegally entering Russian territorial waters.
The Ukrainian navy said a Russian border guard vessel had rammed the tug boat, damaging it
in an incident it said showed Russia was behaving aggressively and illegally. It said its
vessels had every right to be where they were and that the ships had been en route from the
Black Sea port of Odessa to Mariupol, a journey that requires them to go through the Kerch
Strait.
Meanwhile, Russia's border guard service accused Ukraine of not informing it in advance of
the journey, something Kiev denied, and said the Ukrainian ships had been maneuvering
dangerously and ignoring its instructions with the aim of stirring up tensions.
It pledged to end to what it described as Ukraine's "provocative actions", while Russian
politicians lined up to denounce Kiev, saying the incident looked like a calculated attempt by
President Petro Poroshenko to increase his popularity ahead of an election next year. Ukraine's
foreign ministry said in a statement it wanted a clear response to the incident from the
international community.
"Russia's provocative actions in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov have crossed the line and
become aggressive," it said. "Russian ships have violated our freedom of maritime navigation
and unlawfully used force against Ukrainian naval ships."
Both countries have accused each other of harassing each other's shipping in Sea of Azov in
the past and the U.S. State Department in August said Russia's actions looked designed to
destabilize Ukraine, which has two major industrial ports there.
England may well be the only country in the world that is so snobbish about "trade" that,
in spite of having rung up record numbers of fundamental scientific breakthroughs and
engineering inventions, it has hardly earned any money at all from them.
If you really want to see a country "that treats a vacuum cleaner salesman like he's some
sort of genius physicist", take a look at the USA. Half its immense wealth was built on
pinching other people's ideas and "monetizing" them (a characteristically American word for a
quintessentially American practice).
The problem with this line of thinking is that the world is interested in the continuation of
the current role of the dollar. That provides for the USA a safely valve.
The problem for the US empire is the Neoliberalism is no longer attractive ideology. So the USA is not only in troubles
financially due to the level of dent, but also it is bankrupt ideologically. much like Bolsheviks in the USSR became in late 60th.
The "church of neoliberalism" collapsed in 2008. So another 50 years or so and the USA might face the problems the USSR faced in
late 80th. The neoliberalism--caused epidemics of narcoaddition reminds the USSR epidemics of alcoholism: people who feel
that are not needed in the society tend to behave destructively toward themselves and their families.
Notable quotes:
"... Stein's Law at first glance might seem like a banal platitude. But we should be fully cognizant of its implications: an unsustainable system must have an end. The American empire is internally flawed, a fact that anti-imperialists both left and right should appreciate. ..."
"... The United States holds the most debt of any country in the history of the world. In fairness, when our debt-to-GDP ratio is factored in, there are many countries in far more perilous economic situations than the U.S. But there will come a tipping point. How much debt can the system hold? When will the cracks grow too big to hide? When will the foundation crumble? There's a great deal of ruin in a nation, said Adam Smith, and our ruin must ultimately come. ..."
"... Nobody can deal politically with demobilization, because the offshored economy eviscerated the one at home, at the same time that war economy became of outsized importance. The end of empire as a political choice is impossible, because of the economic dislocations it would incur, and that the dollar's invulnerable reserve purpose is only sustained now by empire militarism. Kicking the can so as collapse doesn't happen now is the political reality, a case of , "apres nous, le deluge." ..."
"... In Rome's case, incompetence in governing, coupled with the arrival of migrating tribes in a position to capitalize on that incompetence, were the causes of the collapse of the western empire. With America, it may be that our inability to curb our spending, combined with the futility of trying to control the remaining nations outside of our sphere of influence, will be what collapses us. ..."
"... the warmongers who seem intent on squandering our national wealth, lives and limbs of our service people, and national prestige on their designer wars. To discuss the etiology of their militarism is to vent the obvious. The 800-pound gorilla has not been contained quietly in the corner. ..."
"... Without a commodity base, the money stock is nothing more than bookkeeping entries -- numbers piled high upon other numbers. ..."
"... Well, I sure hope you're right, but color me skeptical. Our overlords seem to have little difficulty manipulating public opinion to their wishes. The strongest support for the "Global War on Terror" comes, geographically, from the regions that are sustaining the most deaths and maimings among their children. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are in the grip of the neoconservative ideology to agree that borders on the psychotic. ..."
"... For the better part of the post-WWII era (and prior), the US has been invading, pillaging, murdering, and basically doing its utmost to ensure the maximum number of dead and the minimum number of freedom of sovereign countries. ..."
"... From propping up genocidal fascists like Pinochet in Chile and the Military Junta in El Salvador, including death squads, to genocidal theocratic dictators in Saudi Arabia and Israel, the US and its deluded and primitive knuckle-dragging population was the pre-eminent hyperpower and Empire, yet no Americant would dare tell the truth and utter that word, 'Empire'. ..."
"... I hate to sound overly cynical but do the war profiteers even care? ..."
"... Clearly the author does not understand the power of the military industrial complex and the Empire it services. Choice between Social Security checks and the Empire? The Empire will win every time–let me put it as clearly as possible. ..."
"... Post-1970 cheap-labor immigration policies have already boosted the population of the United States by about 100 million and climbing. As Malthus pointed out, this is not a problem as long as the appropriate investments are being made to accommodate the increased number of people. ..."
Herbert Stein was chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Richard Nixon
and Gerald Ford and is the father of the more well known Ben Stein. In 1976, he propounded what
he called "Stein's Law": if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Stein was referring
to economic trends, but the same law applies just as much to foreign policy and the concept of
empire.
Stein's Law at first glance might seem like a banal platitude. But we should be fully
cognizant of its implications: an unsustainable system must have an end. The American empire is
internally flawed, a fact that anti-imperialists both left and right should appreciate.
The United States' national debt is approaching $22 trillion with a current federal budget
deficit of over $800 billion. As Senator Rand Paul often points out, bankruptcy is the Sword of
Damocles hanging perilously close to Uncle Sam's neck. Outside of a handful of libertarian
gadflies in Congress such as Paul, there is no serious political movement to curb the country's
wayward spending. It would take some upset of multiple times greater magnitude than Donald
Trump's 2016 victory to alter this course ;
The United States holds the most debt of any country in the history of the world. In
fairness, when our debt-to-GDP ratio is factored in, there are many countries in far more
perilous economic situations than the U.S. But there will come a tipping point. How much debt
can the system hold? When will the cracks grow too big to hide? When will the foundation
crumble? There's a great deal of ruin in a nation, said Adam Smith, and our ruin must
ultimately come.
Is bankruptcy possible? As some Beltway economists remind us, no. Technically the government
has the power to artificially create as many dollars as it needs to pay its debts. But this
kind of hyper-inflation would deprive the U.S. dollar of any value and tank the global economy
that trades with it. Simple failure to pay back our debt might even be a better scenario that
such an inflationary hellscape.
When the world loses confidence in the American government's ability to pay its debt, or the
interest rate on our debt becomes unsustainably high, choices will have to be made. No more
kicking the can down the road, no more 10-year projections to balance the budget. Congress, in
a state of emergency, will have to take a buzzsaw to appropriations. And the empire will be the
first thing to go.
The writer states: "What happens when American troops must be evacuated from all over the
world because we can't afford to keep them there anymore? There's no debate, no weighing of
options, and no choice. If the money isn't there, the money isn't there. Nothing could tie
the hands of America's military more than a debt crisis. And if one happens, it will be in
part because those same neoconservative intellectuals preached a multi-trillion-dollar global
war to remake humanity in our image. Hubris leads to downfall."
Try telling that to the "neoconservative intellectuals" and warmongers that included
Americans and their allies that gathered in Halifax, Canada a few of days ago. See pertinent
article at link below:
November 18, 2018
"Are Taxpayers Funding Fallacies at a 'Forum' in Halifax"?
When one reads the words above that mention "values" and "NATO", one wonders if the people
attending this "Forum" are aware of the victims of their values. Or the reported evidence of:
"The Diabolical 'Work' of NATO and its Allies "
[read more at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2018/11/are-taxpayers-funding-fallacies-at.html
"A popular theory about the Fed and money creation in the United States is built around
the notion of a "mathematical flaw" inherent in introducing money by means of "lending" as
opposed to "spending." This theory starts with the observation that money in the United
States (and most other countries) is placed into circulation through the purchase of
interest-bearing debt. . .
If debt must mushroom over time in order to keep the money supply from shrinking,
according to this line of thinking, then the cost of doing business must rise faster each
year, and so must prices. In short, it is argued, the money supply process demands that debt
grow exponentially. As debt grows as a proportion of total production, so do interest
payments. And as interest payments grow relative to the rest of real income, it is claimed,
prices must rise faster as well.
This dilemma, the proponents argue, is the inherent problem that causes instability in the
current banking system -- an instability that the authors believe to be responsible for the
business cycle.
Most of those who advance this view believe that to correct the inherent instability in
the current monetary system and simultaneously reduce inflation, the system of "debt" money
must end. They argue that money must be spent into existence, or at least issued without
charging interest.
This analysis is deficient on four counts. First, the banking system does not behave as
presented above. The payment of interest on debts that arise through the money creation
process will neither contract the money supply nor result in the growth of debt relative to
the money supply. Second, there is no reason for the money supply to equal the sum of debt
and interest. Third, debt is such a common and essential part of an economy, there is always
plenty of it available for money creation without any need to encourage the creation of more.
(The fourth reason, that interest costs are not the cause of inflation, is discussed in
another section). "
it's an indepth article, but this section suggests that people like myself simply don't
get how money works. What we have is not unstable, but rather reflects money circulation.
That in order for money to flow throughout the system, lending must take place to money in
supply.
I think that is the shortcut, I am still digesting the content. I am not convinced.
The Globalists need a weakened America. A strong America is a threat to them. Americans are
feeding off the slop given to them out of the trough of electronic media. It is laced with a
hallucinogenic that all is fine and will get better with the right changes in DC. Those that
have not fed out of that trough have been lulled to sleep by comfort.
When the so- called "conservatives" can explain how tax cuts produce more government revenue,
I might vote them in. Sadly, the only people that ever point out that starting with the
Reagan economy, it has been red ink as far as the eye can see, are those "liberal"
politicians forced to scale back any ideas they may have. Rinse and repeat.
Nobody can deal politically with demobilization, because the offshored economy
eviscerated the one at home, at the same time that war economy became of outsized importance.
The end of empire as a political choice is impossible, because of the economic dislocations
it would incur, and that the dollar's invulnerable reserve purpose is only sustained now by
empire militarism. Kicking the can so as collapse doesn't happen now is the political
reality, a case of , "apres nous, le deluge."
It's not just money spent on troops abroad. It's the size of our defense spending. And what
about borrowing one and a half trillion dollars to give tax cuts to the rich, gambling they
would invest the money rather than buy back stocks. They bought back stocks.
It was during the first world war that the financial centre of the world quietly shifted from
London to Wall Street. The mighty British Empire was at its peak a mere 12 years earlier, but
the pressure of the trenches and unrestricted naval warfare started the decline that lead to
the loss of Ireland, and later India and Singapore after WWII. Then the Suez humiliation, the
loss of east Africa in the 1960s and finally Hong Kong, all within one lifespan.
The US is following this path, no matter how many red caps shout at rallies and expensive
toys are given to the Pentagon.
All the while, 'One Belt – One Road' eats away at the US and supplants America's
role on the world stage as the economic powerhouse. Pence was sent to APEC last week to avoid
Trump being embarrassed by Beijing calling the tunes for east Asia. Soon, only India will be
left to contain her economic and military rival over their contentious border.
Did it occur to the writer of this piece that our permeating military presence overseas
serves no strategic presence in dealing with "enemies," but rather to intimidate host nations
into remaining locked into continuing to use the dollar as the world's reseve currency? The
reality is that pulling these troops out would be akin to the Romans pulling the limes back
to the Rubicon. This is the inherent contradiction in all empires, that they are ultimately
all built on foreign plunder and control, and can only continue to exist as long as they
maintain that control until some internal or external factor causes their collapse.
In Rome's case, incompetence in governing, coupled with the arrival of migrating tribes in
a position to capitalize on that incompetence, were the causes of the collapse of the western
empire. With America, it may be that our inability to curb our spending, combined with the
futility of trying to control the remaining nations outside of our sphere of influence, will
be what collapses us. However, we are far too committed to our current course and trying to
reverse direction at this point, given that it would inevitably be mismanaged and
catastrophic, offers no real option. Reality will at some point catch up to us, but hopefully
that day does not come within the lives of us or our children, or their children.
In the meantime, continuing to support the empire in its present state probably makes more
sense than any other option, as unpalatable as it is. Only expanding upwards, creating a
permanent presence in space, offers any new economic ground in the world, but there is only
token support for this in the immediate gratification mindset of American policy makers.
1. Every penny, including interest payments, the government spends is always just "printed
money". That money sits as deposits in the banking system.
2. After spending the money, the government gets most of it back in tax payments.
3.The rest gets hoovered up by trading that money for treasury bonds.
4. The federal government "just prints" today. It doesn't cause inflation because every
dollar is returned to the government.
5. Ergo, the federal government has not debt. In the sense that you and I have debt. It
works backwards from the way you think. Which is why we've been running deficits for decades
and interest rates are at historic lows.
Our bankruptcy is moral. It is the willingness of the American people to to take up arms
and murder people around the globe for the ill-gotten gains of a share holder class.
Being financially bankrupt is one thing, such things can be dealt with if the will and the
right attitudes are applied. The USA is however morally bankrupt (both "left" and "right"),
on the world stage it is now nothing more than a thug (both "left" and "right"
establishment), on the domestic front it is increasingly made up of an angry, hostile and
fanatical population – this can clearly not last.
The fabulously rich empire of Spain managed to bankrupt itself with endless, useless,
unwinnable wars. It has been done before. Spain wasn't first or last, just one of the best
known. They didn't print money the world would take, they mined it, but the effect was the
same, as was the way they just wasted it.
As a Vietnam veteran (31 May 1967 -31 May 1968), the fall of Saigon on April 30,1975, was a
wake-up call. It marked the end of our dreams of endless empire-building by a nation that had
lost its major compass. The collective wars on terror now rival that foreign policy debacle.
Yet war hawks continue to lobby for us to be the policeman for the world though they veil
their hubris with "full spectrum dominance." As Chalmers Johnson warned us in his "Blowback"
trilogy without a course correction, our empire will collapse from its own internal stress
and contradictions. But despite the fall of Saigon, which clearly marked the end of the
American century, we continued to feed the ravenous beast of the military/ industrial
complex. And we still pursued demons overseas as Captain Ahab did chasing after that white
whale in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." If the Vietnam War was a Greek tragedy, we are
playing out what can only be considered a play from the Theater of the Absurd.
Ideologically motivated wars have led us to the precipice of financial disaster.
American foreign policy must adopt a limited, highly strategic view of its national
interest and use its remaining wealth sparingly and only when necessary. Realism can stave
off national ruin.
Bull sh*t!!!
Tax cuts for Billionaires staring in the eighties is how we got in this level of debt,
Reagan/Bush took the National debt from 1 trillion in 1980 to 12 Trillion in 1992, not
foreign wars (not that they helped), return to the tax rates of the 70's (brackets adjusted
for inflation) and within a couple of decades, the national debt will be paid off.
This article suggests that the limitations to monetarizing military interventions may be our
best hope to deter the warmongers who seem intent on squandering our national wealth, lives
and limbs of our service people, and national prestige on their designer wars. To discuss the
etiology of their militarism is to vent the obvious. The 800-pound gorilla has not been
contained quietly in the corner. He is out and about, everywhere and in many guises. Are
these folks prepared to pull the monetary edifice down on themselves and the rest of us? Push
on TAC. Keep the truth that CNN and the mainstream media obscure, coming.
Or, business as usual. The national debt grows the budget deficit deepens and the polity is
distracted by one military adventure after another. We are at the point where monetary value
is nothing but an abstraction.
Millionaires become billionaires. And, their empires are made with paper not land.
Economics no longer drives the arrangement of social bonds and the way people are governed.
Without a commodity base, the money stock is nothing more than bookkeeping entries -- numbers
piled high upon other numbers.
In this fantastically bloated world of paper or rather computer entries (that incessant
stream of zeroes and ones) we cling to our ideological notions of how reality ought to be
organized. No matter the crisis and no matter if the average worker carts home his daily
wages in a wheelbarrow, the masses cling to their belief systems. And the elected will play
their games of folly.
Should sobriety ever enter the picture as the article suggests could very well happen then
we return to the counsel of Hjalmar Schacht and establish the equivalent of the Rentenmark.
The debt is forgiven and we start this debauchery all over again. The military proceeds
without interruption of its revenue flow to march on other capitals unless there is a
realignment of power amidst the chaos of conflict.
What might be considered a sea change stemming from the mad rush to print money to pay
debts will be nothing more than a tsunami clearing the ground of human settlement in specific
areas without stirring human habitation elsewhere. The survivors will pick up the pieces and
resume life back along the coast and along river banks. And ostriches will once more bury
their heads in sand.
Well maybe when the Empire crashes, America can find her way back to being a Republic.
Although truth be told, I think America will end up being Balkinized in the aftermath.
Mr. DeRensis, I sure hope you and Senator Paul can gain some traction against this insane
foreign policy debacle of decades for all the citizens of this country's sake and for the
worlds.
As you note, when you borrow in your own currency, you can't default. You can always print
money to pay the debts.
What you don't note, is that you don't need hyperinflation to get out of the debt problem.
If the US was to average 5% inflation for 15 years, the real value of the debt would be more
than halved.
Thank you for this. Ironically, the USSR collapsed in main part because they spent
themselves, militarily, into oblivion. It's long been obvious that we are hurtling towards
the same cliff, but for some reason think that It Cannot Happen To Us.
I agree with the author but I'm far from convinced that they'd chose retirees vs. military.
Future will tell. After all they can "atomize" retirees. The reverse is not true. Elections?
If you believe in them, be my guest.
Just like its warfare state, the government's welfare state has plenty of internal
calamities. But while it might be the preference of some megalomaniacal globalists to let the
proles starve while preserving overseas holdings, it's not going to happen. What would
transpire if Social Security checks stopped showing up in mailboxes and Medicare benefits got
cut off? When presented with that choice, will the average American choose his social safety
net or continued funding for far-flung bases in Stuttgart, Okinawa, and Djibouti? Even the
most militaristic congressperson will know which way to vote, lest they find a mob waiting
outside their D.C. castles."
Well, I sure hope you're right, but color me skeptical. Our overlords seem to have little
difficulty manipulating public opinion to their wishes. The strongest support for the "Global
War on Terror" comes, geographically, from the regions that are sustaining the most deaths
and maimings among their children. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are in the grip of
the neoconservative ideology to agree that borders on the psychotic.
The trend over time has
been, if anything, to further expand the empire with ever increasing aggression. The public,
meanwhile, supports whatever MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News, as the case may be, tells them to. The
evisceration of our safety net will be sold as the necessary sacrifice to preserve the
"homeland." We will be reminded of the glory days of World War II when the nation came
together to accept material hardship to assure that the needs of the GIs would be met.
Why will it be different this time? I hope it will, but I don't see any reason to believe
that. I hate to say this, but I think you are wildly optimistic here.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving country. For the better part of the post-WWII era (and
prior), the US has been invading, pillaging, murdering, and basically doing its utmost to
ensure the maximum number of dead and the minimum number of freedom of sovereign countries.
From propping up genocidal fascists like Pinochet in Chile and the Military Junta in El
Salvador, including death squads, to genocidal theocratic dictators in Saudi Arabia and
Israel, the US and its deluded and primitive knuckle-dragging population was the pre-eminent
hyperpower and Empire, yet no Americant would dare tell the truth and utter that word,
'Empire'.
You truly epitomize the quote, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
I hate to sound overly cynical but do the war profiteers even care? Im sure they would wrap
themselves in the flag and wax poetic about the need to defend freedom and the American way (
through military activism of course), but they won't give up their lip lock on the gov't teat
until it runs dry. By the time it hits the fan they will be safely ensconced in their
hideaways protected from the worst of it by the dirty, bloody money they have bilked out of
us.
Clearly the author does not understand the power of the military industrial complex and the
Empire it services. Choice between Social Security checks and the Empire? The Empire will win
every time–let me put it as clearly as possible. These guys, if they have to will do
ANYTHING to stay in power. They have no morality whatsoever and will grind us into flour and
make muffins out of us before they give up their "security" budgets.
>"Congress, in a state of emergency, will have to take a buzzsaw to appropriations. And
the empire will be the first thing to go."
That's an opinion but I am afraid not one I have much faith in. The Republicans are
already planning a slaughter of benefits to prop up empire. The Dems will help out. The
bottom line is politicians get rich from defense spending not helping the old and the
poor.
Even if the government completely cut grandma's benefits and she had to live on the street
she would still vote for her party if the poor were allowed to vote, because there are no
Americans any more. Only Democrats and Republicans and they are as tribal now as any region
of the Middle East.
I taught Macro Economics for a long time. Since the late 70's I lectured about the fact that
Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Defense (including the V.A.), and interest on the
national debt made up at least 80% of all Federal Spending. I would have never believed the
debt and deficits could get as large as they are under both Democratic and Republican
administrations. The Defense Budget is one large Federal jobs program for every congressional
district and foreign aid to many foreign countries. The last number I saw, there are over 800
bases outside the United States. Everyone, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican should
heed Ike's warning. The tragedy is no one will and nothing is going to change. What a nation
this could be if it wasn't for the Military Industrial Political Complex. I'm now 70 and, to
be honest, I have given up hoping I will ever see a change in fiscal behavior. More's the
pity.
I hear you, but I think we have to realize that the real problem with the national debt is
not the debt per se – it's the combination of our immigration and trade policies.
Post-1970 cheap-labor immigration policies have already boosted the population of the
United States by about 100 million and climbing. As Malthus pointed out, this is not a
problem as long as the appropriate investments are being made to accommodate the increased
number of people.
But not only are we not making the needed investments to handle growing population, we are
shipping our industrial base overseas! So we have more and more people, and less and less of
a real (non-financial) economy to support them.
We have been handling this gap by running ever-increasing trade deficits. THAT is the
problem. Because a debt that we owe ourselves, is not really an issue: we can always just
wipe it out. A debt that we owe foreigners, in principle, is also not a problem: we can just
stiff them. But if we depend on foreign imports for manufactured goods – and soon I
think, even for food! – if we stiff our foreign creditors, and we can no longer run a
trade deficit, that could be really really bad.
As John Maynard Keynes always pointed out, money is important, but never forget the real
physical economy.
Few people realize that closing many overseas bases will help our military! Here is a list of
outdated U.S. military bases overseas that can be promptly closed to save billions of dollars
each year while shifting billions of dollars and thousands of jobs into the American economy.
None of these closures require the construction of replacement facilities in the USA because
they are mostly base and headquarters overhead fat that serve no purpose.
The days of the American Empire are over because we live in a domestic Empire that we can't
control, the latter is like the Soviet Union during the last years before the breakup and we
should acknowledge this.
"Congress, in a state of emergency, will have to take a buzzsaw to appropriations. And the
empire will be the first thing to go."
Afraid not. There will be a threat – because there's always a threat, right? –
and the threat will be so urgent as to take precedence over the needs of regular Americans,
of whom there will be precious few anyway because of the tens of millions of aliens they've
imported.
Our military has become a giant mouth demanding to be fed, and we're reaching the point
that if it isn't fed, it will feed itself, because it can. It happened to Rome and can happen
to us.
CIA democrats of which Obama is a prominent example (and Hillary is another one) are are Werewolfs, very dangerous political beasts,
probably more dangerous to the world then Republicans like George W Bush. But in case of Ukraine, it was easily pushed into Baltic orbit,
because it has all the preconditions for that. So Nuland has an relatively easy, albeit dirty task. Also all this
probably that "in five years we will be living like French" was pretty effective. Now the population faces
consequences of its own stupidity. This is just neoliberal business as usual or neocolonialism.
Notable quotes:
"... populists on the right ..."
"... hired members of Ukraine's two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties ..."
"... Disclaimer: No Russian, living or dead, had anything to do with the posting of this proudly home-grown comment ..."
Let's recap what Obama's coup
in Ukraine has led to shall we? Maybe installing and blatantly backing Neo Nazis in Ukraine might have something to do with the
rise of " populists on the right " that is spreading through Europe and this country, Hillary.
America's criminal 'news' media never even reported the coup, nor that in 2011 the Obama regime began
planning for
a coup in Ukraine . And that by 1 March 2013 they started organizing it
inside the
U.S. Embassy there . And that they hired members of Ukraine's two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties , Right
Sector and Svoboda (which latter had been called the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine until the CIA advised them to change
it to Freedom Party, or "Svoboda" instead). And that in February 2014 they did it (and here's the
4 February 2014 phone call instructing the U.S. Ambassador
whom to place in charge of the new regime when the coup will be completed), under the cover of authentic anti-corruption demonstrations
that the Embassy organized on the Maidan Square in Kiev, demonstrations that the criminal U.S. 'news' media misrepresented as
'democracy demonstrations ,' though Ukraine already had democracy (but still lots of corruption, even more than today's U.S. does,
and the pontificating Obama said he was trying to end Ukraine's corruption -- which instead actually soared after his coup there).
But wait there's more .... Remember
that caravan of refugees making their way through Mexico? Guess where a number of them came from? Honduras. Yep. Another coup that
happened during Obama's and Hillary's tenure.
In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
used a review of Henry Kissinger's latest book, "World Order ," to lay out her vision for "sustaining America's leadership
in the world." In the midst of numerous global crises, she called for return to a foreign policy with purpose, strategy and pragmatism.
She also highlighted some of these policy choices in her memoir "Hard Choices" and how they contributed to the challenges that
Barack Obama's administration now faces.
**
The chapter on Latin America, particularly the section on Honduras, a major source of the child migrants currently pouring into
the United States, has gone largely unnoticed. In letters to Clinton and her successor, John Kerry, more than 100 members of Congress
have repeatedly warned about the deteriorating security situation in Honduras, especially since the 2009 military coup that ousted
the country's democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. As Honduran scholar Dana Frank points out in Foreign Affairs, the
U.S.-backed post-coup government "rewarded coup loyalists with top ministries," opening the door for further "violence and anarchy."
The homicide rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2011; political repression,
the murder of opposition political candidates, peasant organizers and LGBT activists increased and continue to this day. Femicides
skyrocketed. The violence and insecurity were exacerbated by a generalized institutional collapse. Drug-related violence has worsened
amid allegations of rampant corruption in Honduras' police and government. While the gangs are responsible for much of the violence,
Honduran security forces have engaged in a wave of killings and other human rights crimes with impunity.
Despite this, however, both under Clinton and Kerry, the State Department's response to the violence and military and police
impunity has largely been silence, along with continued U.S. aid to Honduran security forces. In "Hard Choices," Clinton describes
her role in the aftermath of the coup that brought about this dire situation. Her firsthand account is significant both for the
confession of an important truth and for a crucial false testimony.
First, the confession: Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office.
"In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa
in Mexico," Clinton writes. "We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could
be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot."
Clinton's position on Latin America in her bid for the presidency is another example of how the far right exerts disproportionate
influence on US foreign policy in the hemisphere. up 24 users have voted. --
Disclaimer: No Russian, living or dead, had anything to do with the posting of this proudly home-grown comment
@snoopydawg@snoopydawg
Obama, Hillary and the rest of that administration knew it was a coup because that was the goal.
"..4. (C) In our view, none of the above arguments has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution. Some are outright
false. Others are mere supposition or ex-post rationalizations of a patently illegal act. Essentially: --
the military had no authority to remove Zelaya from the country;
-- Congress has no constitutional authority to remove a Honduran president;
-- Congress and the judiciary removed Zelaya on the basis of a hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process;
-- the purported "resignation" letter was a fabrication and was not even the basis for Congress's action of June 28; and
-- Zelaya's arrest and forced removal from the country violated multiple constitutional guarantees, including the prohibition
on expatriation, presumption of innocence and right to due process. " https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TEGUCIGALPA645_a.html
That evil woman thinks she has the right to preach to others about how to handle the very fallout from the horrific disasters
that she HERself created? Hillary, look in the mirror, you evil woman.
Clinton said rightwing populists in the west met "a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do, and
where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality.
" The whole American system was designed so that you would eliminate the threat from a strong, authoritarian king or
other leader and maybe people are just tired of it. They don't want that much responsibility and freedom. They want to be told
what to do and where to go and how to live and only given one version of reality.
"I don't know why at this moment that is so attractive to people, but it's a serious threat to our freedom and our democratic
institutions, and it goes very deep and very far and we've got to do a better job of shining a light on it and trying to combat
it."
This arrogance of looking down on the populace is very part and parcel of the neoliberal attitude of the ruling class takes
to the rest of us peons. They created this unreality for the American people and have suppressed our right to know what is really
happening in the world. Obama destroyed the Occupy Movement with violent police attacks and kettling. And then disgustingly, Clinton
comes out with her hubristic victim blaming.
The Clintons are nearly single handedly responsible for much of the destruction of the American middle class and the repression
of poor and black people under Bill and the violent destruction of many countries under Hillary. And yet neither Clinton is willing
to own up for all the human misery that they have caused wherever they go. Unfortunately, the one place they refuse to go is just
away forever.
The belief that HRC & her circle are principled & progressive is just as fictitious as the belief that they lost to a reality
TV host because of stolen emails, social media trolls, & a (fictitious) conspiracy between the reality TV host & the Kremlin:
https://t.co/iyTC1M6uws
Clinton says Europe should make clear that "we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge & support." Isn't this
the attitude we denounce Trump for? Speaking of irony, Clinton's regime wars in Libya & Syria (& Iraq, indirectly) fueled the
migration she wants to stop. https://t.co/CIkkGRRKNd
This ego-maniac sees the world's problems - which she had a huge hand in creating - only through the lens of her electability.
Apparently, the only problems the world has are the one's that keep her from sitting in the Oval Office. Everything else is
fine. She is deplorable.
That evil woman thinks she has the right to preach to others about how to handle the very fallout from the horrific disasters
that she HERself created? Hillary, look in the mirror, you evil woman.
Clinton said rightwing populists in the west met "a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do,
and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality.
" The whole American system was designed so that you would eliminate the threat from a strong, authoritarian king
or other leader and maybe people are just tired of it. They don't want that much responsibility and freedom. They want to
be told what to do and where to go and how to live and only given one version of reality.
"I don't know why at this moment that is so attractive to people, but it's a serious threat to our freedom and our democratic
institutions, and it goes very deep and very far and we've got to do a better job of shining a light on it and trying to
combat it."
This arrogance of looking down on the populace is very part and parcel of the neoliberal attitude of the ruling class takes
to the rest of us peons. They created this unreality for the American people and have suppressed our right to know what is
really happening in the world. Obama destroyed the Occupy Movement with violent police attacks and kettling. And then disgustingly,
Clinton comes out with her hubristic victim blaming.
The Clintons are nearly single handedly responsible for much of the destruction of the American middle class and the repression
of poor and black people under Bill and the violent destruction of many countries under Hillary. And yet neither Clinton is
willing to own up for all the human misery that they have caused wherever they go. Unfortunately, the one place they refuse
to go is just away forever.
@gulfgal98 Because they just HAVE to get a rich, far-right, patriarchal white woman elected at any cost for the sake
of 'making history'. If these idiots really wanted to make history, they'd work like hell to put someone in charge who actually
had the balls to hang the pigs and their collaborators for their crimes.
The belief that HRC & her circle are principled & progressive is just as fictitious as the belief that they lost to a
reality TV host because of stolen emails, social media trolls, & a (fictitious) conspiracy between the reality TV host &
the Kremlin: https://t.co/iyTC1M6uws
Clinton says Europe should make clear that "we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge & support." Isn't
this the attitude we denounce Trump for? Speaking of irony, Clinton's regime wars in Libya & Syria (& Iraq, indirectly)
fueled the migration she wants to stop. https://t.co/CIkkGRRKNd
This ego-maniac sees the world's problems - which she had a huge hand in creating - only through the lens of her electability.
Apparently, the only problems the world has are the one's that keep her from sitting in the Oval Office. Everything else
is fine. She is deplorable.
"... Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region ..."
"... The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies." ..."
The hacking collective known as "Anonymous" published a
trove of documents on November 5 which it claims exposes a UK-based psyop to create a " large-scale information secret service
" in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" - which has been blamed for everything from
Brexit to US President Trump winning the 2016 US election.
The primary objective of the " Integrity Initiative " - established
in 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft - is "to provide a coordinated
Western response to Russian disinformation and other elements of hybrid warfare."
And while the notion of Russian disinformation has become the West's favorite new bogeyman to excuse things such as Hillary Clinton's
historic loss to Donald Trump, we note that "Anonymous" was called out by WikiLeaks in October 2016 as an FBI cutout, while the report
on the Integrity Initiative that Anonymous exposed comes from Russian state-owned network
RT - so it's anyone's guess whose 400lb
hackers are at work here.
Operating on a budget
of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists,
military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference
in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.
The UK establishment appears to be conducting the very activities of which it and its allies have long-accused the Kremlin,
with little or no corroborating evidence. The program also aims to "change attitudes in Russia itself" as well as influencing
Russian speakers in the EU and North America, one of the leaked
documents states. -
RT
The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway,
Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its
sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region .
The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts
embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government
agencies."
The initiative has received £168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and £250,000 from the
US State Department , the
documents allege.
Some of its purported members include British MPs and high-profile " independent" journalists with a penchant for anti-Russian
sentiment in their collective online oeuvre, as showcased by a brief glance at their Twitter feeds. -
RT
Noted examples of "inedependent" anti-Russia journalists:
Spanish "Op"
In one example of the group's activities, a "Moncloa Campaign" was successfully conducted by the group's Spanish cluster to block
the appointment of Colonel Pedro Banos as the director of Spain's Department of Homeland Security. It took just seven-and-a-half
hours to accomplish, brags the group in the
documents .
"The [Spanish] government is preparing to appoint Colonel Banos, known for his pro-Russian and pro-Putin positions in the Syrian
and Ukrainian conflicts, as Director of the Department of Homeland Security, a key body located at the Moncloa," begins Nacho Torreblanca
in a seven-part tweetstorm describing what happened.
Others joined in. Among them – according to the leaks – academic Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, who wrote that "Mr. Banos is to
geopolitics as a homeopath is to medicine." Appointing such a figure would be "a shame." -
RT
The operation was reported in Spanish media, while Banos was labeled "pro-Putin" by UK MP Bob Seely.
In short, expect anything counter to predominant "open-border" narratives to be the Kremlin's fault - and not a natural populist
reflex to the destruction of borders, language and culture.
"... It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" ..."
"... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
"... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
"... this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war ..."
"... Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK. ..."
"... The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth ..."
"... British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me ..."
"... It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations ..."
"... A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants? ..."
"... I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins. ..."
"... The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval. ..."
"... Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda ..."
"... This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap. ..."
"... Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification ..."
"... It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling ..."
"... As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love? ..."
"... They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites. ..."
"... The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation. ..."
"... Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power. ..."
"... Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government. ..."
British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear CampaignsSteveg , Nov 24,
2018 11:43:44 AM |
link
In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream.
We have already seen
many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who
does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign
against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but
seems to be part of a different project.
The ' Integrity
Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military
personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via
social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.
On June 7 it took the the Spanish cluster only a few hours to derail the appointment of
Perto Banos as the Director of the National Security Department in Spain. The cluster
determined that he had a too positive view of Russia and launched a coordinated social media
smear
campaign (pdf) against him.
The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its
documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and
posted them under the 'Anonymous' label at cyberguerrilla.org .
The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in
cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of
politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed
by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North
America.
It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" and
promises that:
Cluster members will be sent to educational sessions abroad to improve the technical
competence of the cluster to deal with disinformation and strengthen bonds in the cluster
community. [...] (Events with DFR Digital Sherlocks, Bellingcat, EuVsDisinfo, Buzzfeed,
Irex, Detector Media, Stopfake, LT MOD Stratcom – add more names and propose cluster
participants as you desire).
The Initiatives Orwellian slogan is 'Defending Democracy Against Disinformation'. It
covers European countries, the UK, the U.S. and Canada and seems to want to expand to the
Middle East.
On its About page
it claims: "We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and
agencies who share our aims." The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the
Initiative's funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State
Department. All the 'contact persons' for creating 'clusters' in foreign countries are
British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British
government that hides behind a 'civil society' NGO.
The organisation is led by one Chris N. Donnelly who
receives (pdf) £8,100 per month for creating the smear campaign network.
To counter Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe by: expanding the
knowledge base; harnessing existing expertise, and; establishing a network of networks of
experts, opinion formers and policy makers, to educate national audiences in the threat and
to help build national capacities to counter it .
The Initiative has a black and white view that is based on a "we are the good ones"
illusion. When "we" 'educate the public' it is legitimate work. When others do similar, it
its disinformation. That is of course not the reality. The Initiative's existence itself,
created to secretly manipulate the public, is proof that such a view is wrong.
If its work were as legit as it wants to be seen, why would the Foreign Office run it from
behind the curtain as an NGO? The Initiative is not the only such operation. It's
applications seek funding from a larger "Russian Language Strategic Communication Programme"
run by the Foreign Office.
The 2017/18 budget application sought FCO funding of £480,635. It received
£102,000 in co-funding from NATO and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense. The 2018/19
budget application shows a
planned spending (pdf) of £1,961,000.00. The co-sponsors this year are again NATO
and the Lithuanian MoD, but
also include (pdf) the U.S. State Department with £250,000 and Facebook with
£100,000. The budget lays out a strong cooperation with the local military of each
country. It notes that NATO is also generous in financing the local clusters.
One of the liberated papers of the Initiative is a talking points memo labeled
Top 3 Deliverable for FCO (pdf):
Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology, setting up clusters in a
range of countries with different circumstances
Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big
picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted, deliberate hybrid attack
by Russia
Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of
the "golden minute"
Under top 1, setting up clusters, a subitem reads:
- Connects media with academia with policy makers with practitioners in a country to impact
on policy and society: ( Jelena Milic silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV )
Defending Democracy by silencing certain voices on public TV seems to be a
self-contradicting concept.
Another subitem notes how the Initiative secretly influences foreign governments:
We engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal
contacts, specifically to ensure that they do not come to see our work as a problem, and to
try to influence them gently, as befits an independent NGO operation like ours, viz;
- Germany, via the Zentrum Liberale Moderne to the Chancellor's Office and MOD
- Netherlands, via the HCSS to the MOD
- Poland and Romania, at desk level into their MFAs via their NATO Reps
- Spain, via special advisers, into the MOD and PM's office (NB this may change very soon
with the new Government)
- Norway, via personal contacts into the MOD
- HQ NATO, via the Policy Planning Unit into the Sec Gen's office.
We have latent contacts into other governments which we will activate as needs be as the
clusters develop.
A look at the 'clusters' set up in U.S. and UK shows some prominent names.
Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to
censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core cluster also
includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council
shill Ben Nimmo and the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person
of interest is Andrew Wood who
handed the Steele 'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over
alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah
Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus
of the BBC.
A ' Cluster
Roundup ' (pdf) from July 2018 details its activities in at least 35 countries. Another
file reveals (pdf) the local
partnering institutions and individuals involved in the programs.
The Initiatives Guide
to Countering Russian Information (pdf) is a rather funny read. It lists the downing of
flight MH 17 by a Ukranian BUK missile, the fake chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun and the
Skripal Affair as examples for "Russian disinformation". But at least two of these events,
Khan Sheikun via the UK run White Helmets and the Skripal affair, are evidently products of
British intelligence disinformation operations.
The probably most interesting papers of the whole stash is the 'Project Plan' laid out at
pages 7-40 of the
2018 budget application v2 (pdf). Under 'Sustainability' it notes:
The programme is proposed to run until at least March 2019, to ensure that the clusters
established in each country have sufficient time to take root, find funding, and
demonstrate their effectiveness. FCO funding for Phase 2 will enable the activities to be
expanded in scale, reach and scope. As clusters have established themselves, they have
begun to access local sources of funding. But this is a slow process and harder in some
countries than others. HQ NATO PDD [Public Diplomacy Division] has proved a reliable source
of funding for national clusters. The ATA [Atlantic Treaty Association] promises to be the
same, giving access to other pots of money within NATO and member nations. Funding from
institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal
disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been
resolved and funding should now flow.
The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from a cross society
(think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is
proving to be mutually reinforcing . Creating the network of networks has given each
national group local coherence, credibility and reach, as well as good international
access. Together, these conditions, plus the growing awareness within governments of the
need for this work, should guarantee the continuity of the work under various auspices and
in various forms.
The
third part of the budget application (pdf) list the various activities, their output and
outcome. The budget plan includes a section that describes 'Risks' to the initiative. These
include hacking of the Initiatives IT as well as:
Adverse publicity generated by Russia or by supporters of Russia in target countries, or by
political and interest groups affected by the work of the programme, aimed at discrediting
the programme or its participants, or to create political embarrassment.
We hope that this piece contributes to such embarrassment.
Posted by b on November 24, 2018 at 11:24 AM |
Permalink
"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to
prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election
meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil
throughout 2016."
"Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that
Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In
Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling
custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele
dossier..."
For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.
this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and
propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex
corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the
voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war.. i guess the idea is to get the
ordinary people to think in terms of hating another country based on lies and that this would
be a good thing... it is very sad what uk / usa leadership in the past century has come down
to here.... i can only hope that info releases like this will hasten it's demise...
Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of
illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a
financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same
laws as the rest of the UK.
The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to
me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth
@6 ingrian... things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of Russia after the fall of
the Soviet Union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit Russia
fully, as they'd intended...
Let the Doxx wars begin! Sure, Anonymous is not Russian but it will surely now be targeted
and smeared as such which would show that it has hit a nerve. British hypocrisy publicly
called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me.
I think we've all noticed the euro-asslantic press (and friends) on behalf of, willingly
and in cooperation with the British intelligence et al 'calling out' numerous Russians as
G(R)U/spies/whatever for a while now yet providing less than a shred of credible
evidence.
It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The
interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint
does not bode well for such relations.
Meanwhile in Brussels they are having their cake and eating it, i.e. bemoaning Europe's
'weak response' to Russian propaganda:
"A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of
the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you
have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants?
Yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black when in fact the kettle may not be
black at all; it's just the pot making up things. "These Russian criminals are using
propaganda to show (truths) like the fact the DNC and Clinton campaigns colluded to prevent
Sanders from being nominated, so we need to establish a clandestine propaganda network to
establish that the Russians are running propaganda!"
"In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia
propaganda into the western media stream."
I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit
and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been
launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins.
The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's
explicit approval.
Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed
by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to
have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are
not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own
party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda
BUT...the author assures us that the "deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding
should now flow" Huh?? In other words, the fix is in. Mueller will pardon Trump on collusion charges but the
propaganda campaign against Russia will continue...with the full support of both parties. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it...
This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been
about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had
plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap.
A lot of
sour grapes with this so-called 'integrity initiative', IMO. BP was behind a lot of this, I
would also think. When Assad pulled the plug on the pipeline through the Levant in 2009, the
Brits hacked up a fur ball. It's gone downhill for them ever since. Couldn't happen to a
nicer lot. If you can't invade or beat them with proxies, you can at least call them names.
If Trump was taking dirty money or engaged in criminal activity with Russians then he
was doing it with Felix Sater, who was under the control of the FBI... And who was in
charge of the FBI during all of the time that Sater was a signed up FBI snitch? You got it
-- Robert Mueller (2001 thru 2013) ...
It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6
meddling, including:
Steele dossier: To create suspicion in government, media, and later the public
Leaking of DNC emails to Wikileaks (but calling it a "hack"):
To help with election of Trump and link Wikileaks (as agent) to Russian election
meddling
Cambridge Analytica: To provide necessary reasoning for Trump's (certain) win of the electoral college.
Note: We later found that dozens of firms had undue access to Facebook data. Why did the
campaign turn to a British firm instead of an American firm? Well, it had to be a British
firm if MI6 was running the (supposed) Facebook targeting for CIA.
As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The
election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was
the best candidate for the job.
The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love?
"things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of russia after the fall of the soviet
union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit russia fully, as
they'd intended..."
They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent
Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course
the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass
psychological pathology among the elites.
The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist
"order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US
and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation.
Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it
all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is
Strength." The three pillars of political power.
Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his
pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always
been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so
called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK
government...and in this context, new empowerished sovereign governemts into the EU should
consider the possibility expelling these traitors as spies of the UK....
Country list of agents of influence according to the leak:
Germany: Harold Elletson ,Klaus NaumannWolf-Ruediger Bengs, Ex Amb Killian, Gebhardt v Moltke, Roland
Freudenstein, Hubertus Hoffmann, Bertil Wenger, Beate Wedekind, Klaus Wittmann, Florian
Schmidt, Norris v Schirach
Sweden, Norway, Finland: Martin Kragh , Jardar Ostbo, Chris Prebensen, Kate Hansen Bundt, Tor Bukkvoll, Henning-Andre
Sogaard, Kristen Ven Bruusgard, Henrik O Breitenbauch, Niels Poulsen, Jeppe Plenge, Claus
Mathiesen, Katri Pynnoniemi, Ian Robertson, Pauli Jarvenpaa, Andras Racz
Netherlands: Dr Sijbren de Jong, Ida Eklund-Lindwall, Yevhen Fedchenko, Rianne Siebenga, Jerry Sullivan,
Hunter B Treseder, Chris Quick
Spain: Nico de Pedro, Ricardo Blanco Tarno, Eduardo Serra Rexach, Dionisio Urteaga Todo, Dimitri
Barua, Fernando Valenzuela Marzo, Marta Garcia, Abraham Sanz, Fernando Maura, Jose Ignacio
Sanchez Amor, Jesus Ramon-Laca Clausen, Frances Ghiles, Carmen Claudin, Nika Prislan, Luis
Simon, Charles Powell, Mira Milosevich, Daniel Iriarte, Anna Bosch, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi,
Tito, Frances Ghiles, Borja Lasheras, Jordi Bacaria, Alvaro Imbernon-Sainz, Nacho Samor
US, Canada:
Mary Ellen Connell, Anders Aslund, Elizabeth Braw, Paul Goble, David Ziegler
Evelyn Farkas, Glen Howard, Stephen Blank, Ian Brzezinski, Thomas Mahnken, John Nevado,
Robert Nurick, Jeff McCausland
Todd Leventhal
UK: Chris Donnelly
Amalyah Hart William Browder John Ardis
Roderick Collins, Patrick Mileham Deborah Haynes
Dan Lafayeedney Chris Hernon Mungo Melvin
Rob Dover Julian Moore Agnes Josa David Aaronovitch Stephen Dalziel Raheem Shapi Ben
Nimmo
Robert Hall Alexander Hoare Steve Jermy Dominic Kennedy
Victor Madeira Ed Lucas Dr David Ryall
Graham Geale Steve Tatham Natalie Nougayrede Alan Riley [email protected]Anne Applebaum Neil Logan Brown James Wilson
Primavera Quantrill
Bruce Jones David Clark Charles Dick
Ahmed Dassu Sir Adam Thompson Lorna Fitzsimons Neil Buckley Richard Titley Euan Grant
Alastair Aitken Yusuf Desai Bobo Lo Duncan Allen Chris Bell
Peter Mason John Lough Catherine Crozier
Robin Ashcroft Johanna Moehring Vadim Kleiner David Fields Alistair Wood Ben Robinson Drew
Foxall Alex Finnen
Orsyia Lutsevych Charlie Hatton Vladimir Ashurkov
Giles Harris Ben Bradshaw
Chris Scheurweghs James Nixey
Charlie Hornick Baiba Braze J Lindley-French
Craig Oliphant Paul Kitching Nick Childs Celia Szusterman
James Sherr Alan Parfitt Alzbeta Chmelarova Keir Giles
Andy Pryce Zach Harkenrider
Kadri Liik Arron Rahaman David Nicholas Igor Sutyagin Rob Sandford Maya Parmar Andrew Wood
Richard Slack Ellie Scarnell
Nick Smith Asta Skaigiryte Ian Bond Joanna Szostek Gintaras Stonys Nina Jancowicz
Nick Washer Ian Williams Joe Green Carl Miller Adrian Bradshaw
Clement Daudy Jeremy Blackham Gabriel Daudy Andrew Lucy Stafford Diane Allen Alexandros
Papaioannou
Paddy Nicoll
"... When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also. ..."
"... Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. ..."
"... This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts. ..."
One of the documents lists a series of propaganda weapons to be used against Russia. One is
use of the church as a weapon. That has already been started in Ukraine with Poroshenko
buying off regligious leader to split Ukraine Orthodoxy from Russian Orthodoxy. It also
explicitly states that the Skripal incident is a 'Dirty Trick' against Russia.
The British political system is on the verge of collapse. BREXIT has finally demonstrated
that the Government/ Opposition parties are clearly aligned against the interests of the
people. The EU is nothing more than an arm of the Globalist agenda of world domination.
The US has shown its true colours - sanctioning every country that stands for independent
sovereignty is not a good foreign policy, and is destined to turn the tide of public opinion
firmly against global hegemony, endless wars, and wealth inequity.
The old Empire is in its death throes. A new paradigm awaits which will exclude all those
who have exploited the many, in order to sit at the top of the pyramid. They cannot escape
Karma.
The Western world needs to come to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its
aftermath. Today, Russia is led by Putin and he obviously has objectives as any national
leader has.
Western "leaders" need to decide whether Putin:
Is trying to create Soviet Union 2.0, to have a 2nd attempt at ruling the world thru
communism and to do this by holding the world to ransom over oil/gas supplies. OR
Is wanting Russia to become a member of the family of nations and of a multi-polar world to improve the lives of
Russian people, but is being blocked at every twist and turn by manufactured events like Russia-gate and the Skripal affair
and now this latest revelation of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns being coordinated and run out of London.
Both of the above cannot be true because there are too many contradictions. Which is it??
Yes because imagine that that we lived in 1940 without any means to inform ourselves and
that media was still in control over the information that reaches us. We would already be in
a fullblown war with Russia because of it but now with the Internet and information going
around freely only a whimpy 10% of we the people stand behind their desperately wanted war.
Imagine that, an informed sheople.
Can't have that, they cannot do their usual stuff anymore.... good riddance.
"250,000 from the US State
Department , the documents allege."....... Interesting.
"During the third
Democratic debate on Saturday night, Hillary Clinton called for a "Manhattan-like
project" to break encrypted terrorist communications. The project would "bring the government and the tech communities together" to find a way
to give law enforcement access to encrypted messages, she said. It's something that some
politicians and intelligence officials have wanted for awhile,"........
***wasn't the Manhatten project a secret venture?????? Hummmmm"
Hillary Clinton has all of our encryption keys, including the FBI's . "Encryption keys" is
a general reference to several encryption functions hijacked by Hillary and her surrogate
ENTRUST. They include hash functions (used to indicate whether the contents have been altered
in transit), PKI public/private key infrastructure, SSL (secure socket layer), TLS (transport
layer security), the Dual_EC_DRBG
NSA algorithm and certificate authorities.
The convoluted structure managed by the "Federal Common Policy" group has ceded to
companies like ENTRUST INC the ability to sublicense their authority to third parties who in
turn manage entire other networks in a Gordian knot of relationships clearly designed to fool
the public to hide their devilish criminality. All roads lead back to Hillary and the Rose
Law Firm."- patriots4truth
When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with
plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also.
FBI/Anonymous can use this story to support a narrative that social media bots posting
memes is a problem for everybody, and it's not a partisan issue. The idea is that fake news
and unrestricted social media are inherently dangerous, and both the West and Russia are
exploiting that, so governments need to agree to restrict the ability to use those platforms
for political speech, especially without using True Names.
Oilygawkies in the UK and USSA seem to be letting their spooks have a good-humored (rating
here on the absurd transparency of these ops) contest to see who can come up with the most
surreal propaganda psy-ops.
But they probably also serve as LHO distractions from something genuinely sleazy.
Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. Anything that is
remotely like Nationalism is the true enemy of these Globalist/Internationalists, which is
what the Top-Ape Bolshevik promoted: see Vladimir Lenin and his quotes on how he believed
fully in "internationalism" for a world without borders. Ironic how they Love the butchers of
the Soviet Union but hate Russia. It is ALL ABOUT IDEOLOGY to these people and "the means
justify the ends".
Basically, if one acquires factual information from an internet source, which leads to
overturning the propaganda to which we're all subjected, then it MUST have come from Putin.
This is the direction they're headed. Anyone speaking out against the official story is
obviously a Russian spy.
Better to call it the Anti-Integrity Initiative. UK cretins up to their usual dirty tricks - let them choke on their poison. The judgement of history will eventually catch up with them.
A good 'ole economic collapse will give western countries a chance to purge their crazy
leaders before they involve us all in a thermonuclear war. Short everything with your entire
accounts.
This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have
such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the
WEST? This is nuts.
Isn't it just as likely someone in the WEST planted this cache, intending Anonymous to
find it?
Any propaganda coming from the UK or US is strictly zionist. EVERYTHING they put out is to
the benefit of Israel and the "lobby". Russia isn't perfect, but if they're an enemy of the
latter, then they should NOT be considered a foe to all thinking and conscientious
people.
Yesterday, the BBC had a thing on Thai workers in Israel, and how they keep dying of
accidents, their general level of slavery etc. Very odd to have a negative Israel story, so I
wonder who upset whom, and what the ongoing status will be.
Thai labourers in Israel tell of harrowing conditions
A year-long BBC investigation has discovered widespread abuse of Thai nationals living
and working in Israel - under a scheme organized by the two governments.
Many are subjected to unsafe working practices and squalid, unsanitary living
conditions. Some are overworked, others underpaid and there are dozens of unexplained
deaths.
England and the U.S. don't like their very poor and rotten social conditions put out for
the public to see. Both countries have severely deteriorating problems on their streets
because of bankrupt governments printing money for foreign wars.
More of the same fraudulent duality while alleged so called but not money etc continues to
flow (everything is criminal) and the cesspool of a hierarchy pretends it's business as
usual.
This isn't about maintaining balance in a lie this is about disclosing the truth and
agendas (Agenda 21 now Agenda 2030 = The New Age Religion is Never Going To Be Saturnism).
The layers of the hierarchy are a lie so unless the alleged so called leaders of those layers
are publicly providing testimony and confession then everything that is being spoon fed to
the pablum puking public through all sources is a lie.
Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity
Initiative consists of "clusters" of (((local politicians, journalists, military personnel,
scientists and academics))).
The (((team))) is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian
interference in European affairs, while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes,
the documents claim.
Oil and commodity markets were used as a finishing move on the Soviet system. The book,
"The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century" by James R. Norman details the
use of oil futures as a geopolitical tool. Pipelines change the calculus quite a bit.
How long jews can maintain their political power, not just in the USA, but in the whole
west, I have no idea, there is not much that points to an important change soon.
This, of course, is the $64,000 question. Rather than us Dumb Goyim speculating
about it, why not listen to what a political insider had to say about this issue back in
2001?
His name is Dr. Stephen Steinlight. And although Ron Unz has characterized him as "some
totally obscure Zionist activist" he was was for more than five years Director of National
Affairs (domestic policy) at the American Zionist Committee. If that doesn't qualify him
as an "insider," I don't know what does.
Excerpts from The Zionist Stake in America's Changing Demography: Reconsidering a
Misguided Immigration Policy :
Facing Up to the Gradual Demise of Zionist Political Power
Not that it is the case that our disproportionate political power (pound for pound the
greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America) will erode all at once, or even quickly.
We will be able to hang on to it for perhaps a decade or two longer. Unless and until
the triumph of campaign finance reform is complete , an extremely unlikely scenario,
the great material wealth of the Zionist community will continue to give it significant
advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by key figures in Congress. That power
is exerted within the political system from the local to national levels through soft
money, and especially the provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to
Israel , a high wall of church/state separation, and social liberalism combined with
selective conservatism on criminal justice and welfare issues.
Zionist voter participation also remains legendary; it is among the highest in the
nation. Incredible as it sounds, in the recent presidential election more Jews voted in Los
Angeles than Latinos. But should the naturalization of resident aliens begin to move more
quickly in the next few years, a virtual certainty -- and it should -- then it is only a
matter of time before the electoral power of Latinos, as well as that of others, overwhelms
us.
All of this notwithstanding, in the short term, a number of factors will continue to
play into our hands, even amid the unprecedented wave of continuous immigration. The very
scale of the current immigration and its great diversity paradoxically constitutes at least
a temporary political asset. While we remain comparatively coherent as a voting bloc, the
new mostly non-European immigrants are fractured into a great many distinct, often
competing groups, many with no love for each other. This is also true of the many new
immigrants from rival sides in the ongoing Balkan wars, as it is for the growing south
Asian population from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. They have miles and miles to go
before they overcome historical hatreds, put aside current enmities and forgive recent
enormities, especially Pakistani brutality in the nascent Bangladesh. Queens is no
melting pot!
For perhaps another generation, an optimistic forecast, the Zionist community is thus in
a position where it will be able to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions
that support our agendas. But the day will surely come when an effective Asian-American
alliance will actually bring Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Koreans, Vietnamese,
and the rest closer together. And the enormously complex and as yet significantly divided
Latinos will also eventually achieve a more effective political federation. The fact is
that the term "Asian American" has only recently come into common parlance among younger
Asians (it is still rejected by older folks), while "Latinos" or "Hispanics" often do not
think of themselves as part of a multinational ethnic bloc but primarily as Mexicans,
Cubans, or Puerto Ricans.
Even with these caveats, an era of astoundingly disproportionate Zionist legislative
representation may already have peaked. It is unlikely we will ever see many more U.S.
Senates with 10 Zionist members. And although had Al Gore been allowed by the Supreme Court
to assume office, a Jew would have been one heartbeat away from the presidency, it may be
we'll never get that close again. With the changes in view, how long do we actually
believe that nearly 80 percent of the entire foreign aid budget of the United States will
go to Israel?
If Steinlight was obscure or not, I do not know.
What struck me in one of his articles is how he sees the holocaust story as essential to Zionist power in the USA.
Also in that article he wondered if at some point in time Jews might be driven out of the
USA, 'but, there is always the life boat Israel'.
That Israel will collapse the minute Zionist power in the USA [eventually] ends, he seems unable to see
this.
About your quote, it seems to have been written before it became clear to the world that
western power is diminishing.
So even if Zionist power over the West remains, Zionist power in the world is diminishing
too.
NATO, EU, Pentagon, neocons, whatever, may still want war with Russia, my idea is that on the other
hand that more and more people see this intention, and are absolutely against.
While western influence is receding, Assad still is there, Russia has bases in Syria, Erdogan, on what side is he ?; and so on and so forth.
The battle cry 'no more war for Israel' exists for a long time in the USA. And I interpret discussions on
this side of the Atlantic about increasing anti-Semitism as the acknowledgement of the fact that more and more people
on this side begin to criticize Zionists, especially with regard to Palestinians.
"In the US, the Trump administration has designated Russia and China, two nuclear-armed
powers, as "strategic competitors," declaring that "great power competition" not terrorism is
the primary focus of US national security. It has scrapped the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces (INF) treaty in order to prepare for war against Russia and China while in France
President Macron has called for the building of a European army to confront not only Russia
and China but if necessary the United States.
These and many other warning signs -- not least the creation of innumerable flashpoints
from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the South China Sea to North East-East Asia -- point to
the acute danger of the eruption of World War III, which would assume a nuclear dimension
from its very outset.
This clear and present danger is rooted in the fundamental problem that now confronts
mankind: how to free the vast productive forces which its labour has created from the
destructive grip of capitalist social relations based on private ownership of the means of
production and the division of the world into rival nation states and imperialist great
powers.
But as Marx once explained, no great historical problem ever arises without at the same
time the material conditions also arising for its solution. And as the devastation of World
War I was unleashed, that solution emerged in the form of the Russian Revolution of October
1917, the first successful conquest of power by the working class. The perspective that
animated Lenin and Trotsky, the leaders of that revolution, was that the toppling of Tsarism
in Russia was to be the opening shot of the world socialist revolution.
The war, they insisted, arising from the breakdown of the capitalist system, signified the
dawning of a new epoch in mankind's historical development: an epoch of wars and revolutions.
"A permanent revolution versus a permanent slaughter: that is the struggle, in which the
stake is the future of man," Trotsky wrote."
Just to clarify the ideological point:
When Trotsky wrote of "permanent revolution" he was not talking about revolutions happening
every day of the year. What he meant was along the lines of Lenin's "April Theses", namely,
that when the revolution DID happen, then it should continue past the bourgeois phase and
onto the phase where government passed to the Soviets.
People get this point wrong quite a lot and use it to slander Trotsky as some kind of
"mongerer" of never-ending unrest.
As for the "permanent slaughter", I think Trotsky was just being dramatic here, and
pointing out that if the proletarian revolution doesn't succeed, then the world is in for a
lot of wars. Which turned out to be quite true, in our own era.
"... "It's basically a high level of corruption and the rule of man instead of the rule of law" ..."
"... "We're getting a lot of inquiries from various investors, they come to talk to us, and we see the opportunities in Ukraine, but time after time we hear the concerns about the governance." ..."
"... "meaningful progress" ..."
"... "inefficient court system continues to obstruct the administration of justice." ..."
It has been five years to the day since Ukraine's 'Euromaidan' protest movement began,
with anti-government protesters demanding an end to corruption and a closer relationship with
the European Union. But what became of the dream?
On the evening of November 21, 2013, pro-West protesters began flocking to Kiev's Maidan
Square, carrying banners and waving EU flags. Hours earlier, then-president Viktor Yanukovych
had suspended preparations to sign a European Association Agreement, which would have been a
potential step on the road to joining the EU - and a move which Russia had warned would be
"trade suicide" for the post-Soviet state. The West, on the other hand, was determined
to wrangle Ukraine out of Russia's "orbit" and lure it into its own.
Ukraine was facing an economic crossroads. The country was being pulled in two directions,
asked to choose between closer alignment with the EU or Russia. When Yanukovych chose Russia by
refusing to sign the Association Agreement, it sparked outrage within the EU and a protest
movement which would quickly be hijacked and used to engineer a Western-backed coup - a
shortcut to bringing a pro-West government to power.
Such interference, manipulation and exploitation of Ukraine's internal political and
societal divisions was not without consequences. More than 10,000 died during an insurgency in
the eastern regions which began when the ethnic Russian population began to fear it would be
swallowed into an anti-Russia nationalist state backed by Western powers. But the West ignored
dangerous
signs of growing nationalism - and outright Nazi-style fascism - in Ukraine, bargaining
that anything was better than Russia 'winning' in a game of geopolitical chess.
Five years on, what has become of the protesters' dreams to rid Ukraine of corruption and
build an equal, transparent and functional democracy? The sad answer is that Ukraine's
revolution was a disaster which left the country teetering on the edge of becoming a failed
state.
An anti-corruption revolution?
Corruption is still rampant in Ukraine. A recent assessment by the International Monetary
Fund suggested that
corruption wipes about two percent off the country's GDP growth per year.
The IMF and World Bank also scolded the Ukrainian government for the "limited
results" that have been seen in fighting corruption, with no high-level officials
convicted - something which is said to be keeping investors out of the country.
World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine Satu Kahkonen said that
"governance issues" were forcing investors to steer clear. "It's basically a high
level of corruption and the rule of man instead of the rule of law" that have prevailed in
Ukraine, she said. "We're getting a lot of inquiries from various investors, they come to
talk to us, and we see the opportunities in Ukraine, but time after time we hear the concerns
about the governance."
Higher living standards?
Ukraine is also emerging as Europe's poorest
country , with a GDP per capita of just €2,960 - well below Estonia's €22,420 and
Slovenia's €26,590 GDP per capita.
In fact, according to a recent Credit Suisse report, Ukrainians
rank among the world's poorest people, coming a dismal 123rd out of 140 countries, with the
net wealth of the country's citizens lagging behind Bangladesh and Cameroon. Another recent
study by the United Nations Development Program found that, despite continuing economic growth,
60 percent of Ukrainians live below the poverty line.
Less income inequality?
Meanwhile, Ukraine's richest 100 citizens have seen their wealth increase significantly in
the years after the Euromaidan protests. A recent report from the Novoe Vremya magazine
showed
that the wealth of the country's richest people is growing 12 times faster than Ukraine's total
GDP. Pro-West President Petro Poroshenko is the country's sixth richest man, increasing his
wealth by 10 percent to about $1.1 billion, all while average Ukrainians see little or no
improvement in their own living standards or net wealth.
Political reforms?
While some recent reforms in education, pensions and healthcare were welcomed by the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in its l atest country report , there has still been a lack of
"meaningful progress" in the reform of governance and an "inefficient court system
continues to obstruct the administration of justice."
European values?
Scant attention has also been paid by the Ukrainian government - and Western powers and
media - to the increasingly worrying growth of neo-Nazi sentiment in Ukraine. When, in October
2017, Ukraine witnessed its biggest neo-Nazi march in years, Western media all but ignored it. In
fact, in deeds and words, Ukraine's government has almost encouraged this kind of sentiment, by
praising as an "inspiration" the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) fighters who the Nazi
marchers were commemorating. In recent months, mainstream media have done more to acknowledge
this creeping fascism in Ukraine, but the admission comes far too late.
On the world stage, too, Ukraine's pro-West President Petro Poroshenko has faded into
near irrelevance, barely
acknowledged by US President Donald Trump at recent Armistice Day commemorations in Paris,
as geopolitics returned to business-as-usual with Kiev fading from the headlines.
@ChuckOrloski
Not surprising to anyone who understands that stealing ,especially from 'others' is a first
choice career of Jews/Israelis.
I have always suspected that the 9 billion of stolen Iraq funds were stolen by the Jews who
were embedded in the US occupation administration and sent to Israel. Israel was so broke in
2001 they asked the Us for economic aid then suddenly in 2004 by some miracle they were
rolling in surplus money again.
Investigations reveal a pattern of Israeli officials stone-walling efforts to stop the
perpetrators of massive financial swindles in various countries, from Europe to the US to the
Philippines While some Israeli reporters work to expose the scams, a new one is already
underway
By Alison Weir
[MORE]
French and Israeli media report that a group largely made up of Israelis scammed 3,000 French
citizens out of approximately $20 million. Most of the stolen money is in Israel, but Israeli
authorities are reportedly failing to cooperate with France in prosecuting the scammers and
retrieving the money.
This is the latest of numerous examples of Israeli officials stone-walling international
efforts against the perpetrators of massive financial swindles around the world, according to
Israeli investigative journalists and others. These scams have brought estimated billions
into the Israeli economy, propping up a regime widely condemned for human rights abuses and
ethnic cleansing against indigenous Palestinians. Together, the stories paint a picture of a
government that seems to be turning a blind eye to -- and even protecting -- scammers.
A Finance Magnates analysis reports that one of the swindles alone has brought in over a
billion dollars and employs 5,000 people. And a new scam, described below, may help what is
predicted to be "the next major driver of the Israeli economy."
A former IRS expert on international crime notes that "fraudulent industries are often
major economic drivers, and that can translate into political clout."
Some Israeli journalists have been working to expose the situation in Israeli newspapers,
publishing exposés like "As Israel turns blind eye to vast binary options fraud,
French investigators step in" and "Are French Jewish criminals using Israel as a
get-out-of-jail card?" (Short answer: yes.)
Victimizing French business owners & churches
The victims of the recent scam against French citizens included churches and the owners of
small businesses -- delicatessens, car repair shops, hair salons, plumbers, etc. Some lost
their life savings and describe being threatened and intimidated by the scammers.
OK, so, that was a close one. For a moment there, I was starting to worry that the Democrats
weren't going to take back the House and rescue us from " the brink of
fascism ." Which, if that had happened, in addition to having to attend all those horrible
stadium rallies and help the government mass murder the Jews, we would have been denied the
next two years of Donald Trump-related congressional hearings and investigations that we can
now look forward to
I'm going to go ahead and call them the Hitlergate Hearings.
Staging these hearings has always been a crucial part of the Resistance's strategy. As
history has proved, time and time again, when literal fascists take over your democracy, outlaw
opposing political parties, and start shipping people off to concentration camps and revoking
journalists' White House access, the only effective way to defeat them is to form a whole
buttload of congressional committees and investigate the living Hitler out of them. This is
especially the case when the literal fascists who have commandeered your democracy are
conspiring with a shifty-eyed Slavic dictator whose country you have essentially surrounded
with your full-spectrum dominant military forces, and who your media have thoroughly demonized,
but who is nevertheless able to brainwash your citizens into electing his fascist puppet
president with a few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads.
Once you've determined that has happened (which it obviously has), the gloves have to come
off. No more prancing around in pussyhats, not with Russian Hitler in office! No, at that
point, you really have no choice but to wait two years until your opposition party (which
Hitler somehow forgot to ban) regains control of the House of Representatives (which Hitler
somehow forgot to dissolve), wait another two months until they take office, and then
immediately start issuing subpoenas, auditing Hitler's financial records, and taking affidavits
from former hookers. I realize that may sound extreme, but remember, we're talking about
literal fascists, backed by literal Russian fascists, who are going around emboldening literal
fascism, and making literal fascist hand gestures on television, and doing all kinds of other
fascist stuff!
Photo of a typical Trump rally. Trump himself designed the grandiose, operatic setting and
cast himself in the male lead as fiery, spittle-flecked orator/savior of his nation.
"... The U.S.A. is a powerful empire. It is expansionist. It's no different from the British, Soviets, Chinese, etc. None of this is new information to anyone. If it is, you are retarded for just now coming to these conclusions. You should have understood all of this by your early twenties. ..."
"... Generally speaking, political reform follows cultural and economic change – not vice versa ..."
"... It would seem in the Soviet Union cultural and economic also followed political reform. One could sustain the same regarding Peronist Argentina until the early 1950s, the German Empire in 1871 which created the framework for profound and vast cultural and economic change, Italy since 1861, and so on. Thus, I am not so sure about the validity of the historical "law" you have tentatively formulated. ..."
"... Every state must have its peoples, in one way or another, support its geopolitical operations. In democracies, this comes down to applying psychological pressures so that the citizenry votes for the desired programs. ..."
"... Support can be achieved even in the face of strong initial opposition, such as WWI and the Iraq war. As Saker mentions, the support can be eroded when a war drags on too long without victory, such as Vietnam or Afghanistan. ..."
@Hans
Vogel You are probably onto something here.
Especially with:
all, empires are ipso facto violent, since they must keep a variety of other states and
peoples under permanent control and this can only be achieved by way of violence.
If he wants to preserve his authority, he is compelled to use these techniques, which
makes him, in a sense also the victim of the system he represents.
Not doing so would entail the collapse of the imperial system.
This is like something an undergraduate would write. It's like taking history and running it
through an "all I needed to know I learned in kindergarten" filter.
The U.S.A. is a powerful empire. It is expansionist. It's no different from the British,
Soviets, Chinese, etc. None of this is new information to anyone. If it is, you are retarded
for just now coming to these conclusions. You should have understood all of this by your
early twenties.
We thank the veterans because, at an instinctual level; they are the warriors of our
tribe. Guilt over expansion isn't sincere; we know that Russians have and would eagerly
engage in the same behavior, were they as powerful. "The weak must do what they must."
I read his stupid justification for living in our country. We need a law forbidding
foreigners from speaking on our political affairs. It is not, and never will be, their call.
The author is clearly a Russian nationalist, which is a great thing, but that belongs in
Russia.
American nationalism alone should exist here. The entire problem is that there are so many
paper Americans here that our country has become corrupted beyond its original purpose; even
before WWII, (((Americans))) had power, which is the reason for our poor actions against
Japan. I've long supported dismantling the empire, but only because it is impoverishing our
people, and we need those troops here to eject the millions of invaders, and guard the
border. The empire is also a tool for (((you know who))).
Finally, a foreigner criticizing the U.S. military, while living in the U.S.A., is like
going into your neighbor's home and accusing him of being an alcoholic. He may very well be,
but it's not your place to say so. Once you cross over our border, any allegiance to a
foreign power needs to end. Even if we make one of those Matryoshka dolls of your mother
being plowed by one of our negroes, you better keep quiet. Because in truth, you are not
wanted here. There is no benefit to me for Russians to be here.
Heritage Americans understand that these veterans are our hoplites, regardless of the wars
they have fought in. If you don't have that national bond, it's time to admit it, pack up,
and go back to a nation that you can identify with. One where you don't feel the urge to talk
trash about the most brilliant saints of the Church. Yes Catholicism is lost, and the pope a
hopeless cuck, but unlike the author, I'm not Russian. Converting to Russian Orthodoxy, even
inside the U.S., is a process rife with hostility.
They have to go back. If you value Peter the Great more than Thomas Jefferson, great, but you
have to go back.
The important questions–which (one is tempted to say "of course") he does not
raise, let alone attempt to answer–are: (i) how did this sorry state of affairs come
about; and (ii) what is to be done to correct the situation?
Ah, you see .that's not Saker's job. One of posters here already said what it is. Scroll
up and you'll find it with ease.
And, those are definitely THE QUESTIONS. The second more important than the first.
Any ideas of yours?
Probably related to
.what failures or refusals on the part of the American people to enforce what provisions
of their own Constitution have led to this pass?
I guess. I believe it has something to do with what happened to Rome once upon a time.
Or any such entity.
Even if we simply focus on military: comparing militia from The American Revolutionary War
with early Roman military and current US military with legions of, say, Augustus.
Complex topics, of course.
And, there IS one aditional element too Saker types will never touch: is there a need for
a World Policeman? I think there is (human nature, nukes and such). The catch is, of course,
who 's going to be that one. Or better, who is going to control the cop. Even better,
who and how, is going to control the controllers.
Sounds complicated so irrelevant for most posters here. Better to focus on "bad Anglos" or
"terrible Joos". Or whatever.
Saker's angle, and the resident "Team Russia" of course is, no need for World Policeman.
They'd like three equal cops policing their own parts of the world. Saker cop "managing" that
region from Vladivostok to, say .current German/Austrian/Italian/Greek border.
Chinese even "better": area up and including Tasmania and Stuart Island.
Hehe not that they'll ever admit that.
If your country is weak, the credibility of your criticisms is comporomised.
Of course, you don't accept the U.S. military. However, you have zero authority to employ the
Alinskyite tactic of "hold them to their own ideals."
This is why the only foreigners besides tourists and students, who should be allowed here,
are those who benefit Heritage Americans.
Russia is most definitely the "good guy" overall. I've been saying that for years, but we
criticize the Neocons and even more influential (((neocons))), not our own soldiers. It
doesn't matter if they've murdered entire towns overseas, not to most people. This is
indisputably true for every country on Earth.
Soldiers rescue you when you're in a giant fish bowl
that has been hit by a cat. 5 hurricane, or when a tornado levels your town. They protect you
from invasion under normative circumstances; the current circumstances, of the military and
government standing by while millions of third world invaders flood our land, isn't a typical
one, and even then, it is only made possible by (((propagandists)))
@wholy1
Lots of people escaped to Canada, for example rather than serve the empire. Would you rather
murder people in Vietnam for the corrupt U.S. "government" (or be killed by someone defending
their country from invaders), or go to Canada? I would've chosen Canada.
@Fhilaerene
"We need a law forbidding foreigners from speaking on our political affairs."
You are a fool. I think you might be a good individualist though. At least you have a sense of self. Quit
trying to speak for "Americans" (Who left you in charge of defining who is "American"?)and
instead, speak for yourself. It would sound much less stupid.
It's true that many join the military for benefits. This is esp true of Negroes and Browns.
But many whites join because they like the culture of Brotherhood. And these types tend to
be patriotic and gung-ho. Of course, they are often clueless about how their patriotic
feelings are being manipulated by globalists.
It'd be nice to have a law that says that while all men must fight to defend the US from
invasion, all overseas ventures must be voted on by men in the military.
In the US the military is deified, in other saner countries it is at best respected and
supported and in some countries it is feared and avoided.
The US is a country, that has been at war for most of its life. I believe only a mere 25
years of not waging or participating in a war. Hence its reverence for the military.
And in wars a lot of money can be made, lets not forget that
"We need a law forbidding foreigners from speaking on our political affairs."
No what we need is a friggen law that imposes death penalty on any US citizen ever leaving
the US.
The US is the main culprit of the misery and despair throughout the world, especially the ME
too. Come to think of it, we should have for Israel citizens too.
@Harold
Smith Indeed! Seem to me you must have read Kafka.
Else we use the one below.
Someone said something like : We change reality faster than you perceive reality has changed.
Even a war fought for the openly crass reason of protecting one's own economic interests
is hardly a uniquely evil event. It may be a deplorable fact of life, but you have to ask
yourself: What else did you think was going to happen? Are the powerful of the world going
to just sit by and watch their fortunes be destroyed?
Is the mob just going to sit by and watch as someone decides not to pay their protection
money ? "what else did you think was going to happen?" Of course they're going to place a
horse's head on their door step and if that doesn't work they'll put two bullet holes in his
eye sockets.
ID, don't forget to thank your mafia soldier for his service on Veteran's day! (Oh, and don't
forget to leave that protection money in the bucket behind the door like we talked
about.)
how can anyone not believe a conspiracy was afoot that day
A conspiracy is two or more people working together to commit a criminal act. The official
narrative of 9-11 is a conspiracy theory. Not a credible one, but conspiracy theory none the
less.
What a snarky article by a weenie who lacked the cajones to serve.
When I joined the military in the mid-70′s, it wasn't for the benefits or the money;
neither was particularly attractive, and with a lottery number north of 250, I wasn't at risk
of being drafted. I joined for three reasons–first, my dad had served in WWII in the
infantry, so there was a bit of family history; second, because I hated Marxism and the
Commies who threatened to bury us; and third, because I considered it my civic duty to serve.
So, I found myself in in a nuclear ordnance unit in Europe, helping keep several hundred
nukes at the ready to fly in an easterly direction to kill Commies if necessary. Of course,
the whole idea wasn't ever to vaporize eastern Europe, rather, it was to deter the Russians
and their allies from attacking western Europe. Mission accomplished.
As was the case with NATO in the 70′s, the primary mission of the military isn't to
fight wars; rather, it's to deter others from starting a war in the first place. As was the
case with the Commies 40 years ago, if we didn't have a strong deterrent force (and the
demonstrated will to use it) there are plenty of Mohammedans, Chinese and others who would
dearly love to subdue us. And blowhards like Saker would be out of business, probably in a
concentration camp somewhere, or dead. Unless, that is, they became collaborators.
I do agree, however, on one thing: I didn't and don't need any Thank-you's for my service.
I don't expect thanks for paying my income tax or driving on the right side of the road;
those are civic duties. And to me, service in the military is a civic duty as well for
able-bodied males. After I got out of the Army, all I ever wanted a modicum of respect for
having performed my civid duty–not to be derided and called a fool or a fascist for
having served. But a civilian again and a student in the late '70s, that's all I heard from
my smartypants lib classmates. It wasn't until 9/11, when people perceived (rightly or
wrongly) that their pansy butts were at risk unless somebody was willing to fight or deter
bad guys, that people started saying "Thank you for your service."
Saker, instead of calling people who served fools and fascists, calls us money-grubbing
mercenaries. It would be annoying coming from anybody other than a guy who believes that 9/11
was some kind of CIA plot. My cat is smarter than that. And even Saker is smarter than to
spout his malarky to a veteran's face.
" since the attack on Pearl Harbor was set-up as a pretext to then attack Japan). "
Since FDR is his 1940 election promised not to 'send USA boys overseas unless the USA was
attacked'.
On the Sunday of the attack the America First Committee understood quite well, as Lindbergh
writes, he got a phone call: 'he (FDR) got us into the (European) war through the back
door'.
Charles A. Lindbergh, ´The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh', New York,
1970
Since the end of 1939 the USA navy was waging war in the Atlantic against Germany, but Hitler
had given strict orders that his navy and airforce should not give FDR a pretext for war.
Not quite sure, but I think
Patrick Beesly, 'Very special intelligence', 1977 Londen
describes the very close cooperation in the Atlantic between GB, navy and airforce, and FDR's
navy and airforce, beginning at the end of 1939.
There was one incident between a German submarine and a USA navy vessel that nearly was
serious enough for FDR to declare war.
Few people, including myself until recently, know about Hitler's attack on Russia, and
Japanese war aims.
Japan had promised Hitler to attack the USSR if Hitler had taken Moscow and was at the Volga,
thus the desperate fight over Stalingrad.
Robert J.C. Butow, 'JAPAN'S Decision to Surrender', Stanford, 1954
F.W. Deakin and G.R. Storry, 'The case of Richard Sorge', New York, 1966
If indeed Japan would have attacked Russia, I doubt.
In any case, Hitler was very pleased with Pearl Harbour, really a surprise to him, it
seems.
That FDR's provocation to Japan caused that Japan remained neutral towards the USSR until the
beginning of 1945, the USSR annihition of the Kwantung Army, I wonder if Hitler ever realised
this.
@Fhilaerene
" The U.S.A. is a powerful empire. It is expansionist. It's no different from the British,
Soviets, Chinese, "
It is quite different from what the British empire was.
The perfidous Britons built their empire not just on naked force, but on diplomacy, cunning,
deceit, blackmail, bribery, propaganda, etc., than the USA.
British people indeed were outraged when Gordon was killed at Khartoum.
Far more outrage, is my impression, than USA people about the Vietnam defeat.
@Simply
Simon The Empire State Building has a steel frame designed using moment distribution. It
was being designed as it was being built. Steel and labor were cheap during the Great
Depression. Thus, the building could be overdesigned, and it was.
@Fhilaerene
"It doesn't matter if they've murdered entire towns overseas, not to most people." It might
well have mattered to those who have been murdered and it should it should matter to the rest
of us. Soldiers and their political masters should not get a free pass for wanton murder.
@Intelligent
Dasein 'Most soldiers all throughout history have been mercenaries'
Standing armies were not generally a thing untill comparatively recently
Bravo Saker! All your points are undeniably true and very clearly stated. I salute your
courage in publishing these truths in the face of the world's greatest disinformation and
propaganda machine – the US government.
The military is the huge death squad of the evil US Empire. These are the oligarch's tools
for murder and pillage around the world. The US Military is the most shameful group in the
world today, composed of those willing to kill their brothers and sisters for money.
Saker, the very nature of life itself is based on war and has always been based on
war. Problem?
We're chemical machines, that have been built over 4 billion years, and we've been
tested in what can be called quite accurately a 'Gladiator War'; where the machines went into
the battle and if you won, your DNA replicated, and that's all it was was a war.
@Z-man
"The two planes were two large armored napalm tanks"
Except that planes aren't built like tanks or else they wouldn't lift off the ground. And
their engines don't run on napalm.
There's no way for a large plane traveling at low speed to go right through a building. It
would have crashed to pieces and plummeted to the ground where it would have exploded and
burned down.
@The
Alarmist I joined to shoot all sorts of weaponry, to use explosive, to rappel out of
helicopters, to call in close air support, etc. All great, fun stuff. Unfortunately , mixed
in with that, was a lot of 3 am spit shining shoes and ironing ponchos for a junk on the bunk
inspection at 0800.
@Realist
In fact there has NEVER been any occasion since the War of 1812 when members of the US armed
forces had to fight to protect their "homeland" – which is impressive when you remember
that the USA has been at war for 222 out of 239 years since 1776.
As for the War of 1812, while it is true that the British invaded the USA and burned some
of Washington, the Americans were responsible for the outbreak of war. President James
Madison declared war on Great Britain, when negotiations were still possible. At the time,
Britain was at war with the empire of Napoleon so the US declaration of war must have seemed
to the British a treacherous stab in the back.
@James
Speaks I suppose the proximity of the jets cause WTC7 to experience slenderness too. Or
was it that the BBC announcing WTC's demise 20 minutes before it actually happened was caused
by "kl/r"?
@Rex
Little Rex, may I point out that it was the US government (in the person of President
Madison) who declared war on Great Britain – not vice versa? Until then there were serious disagreements, but they could have been negotiated. It was
the US government that chose to have a war – as it has often done since.
@Wally
The Saker is a Russian. He can probably give you the body count of the Red Army on the
Eastern Front.
The Nazis were bastards, and they started an aggressive war (and by that, I mean
"aggressive" from the standpoint of the victors, unlike say Iraq), they killed a lot of
people, and they lost. You don't even have to bring (((them))) into to equation to conclude
that the Allies didn't hang enough people when they had the chance, but I guess someone had
to be left to rebuild.
@Tom
Welsh You are either fighting over there or you are fighting in your homeland. When you
stop fighting over there, you end up fighting in your homeland. Putin wants war and
instability in Ukraine, because he knows Russia is next.
America has just done the same thing every other successful Empire has done since the dawn
of time, suggesting a natural line of development in human civilizations. All of America's
enemies simply want America out of the way so they can do the same thing America has done. If
I were Russian or Chinese, I would want the same thing Saker calls for. But let's face it, a
second-rate gorilla wanting the Alpha gorilla to die is a different sentiment from the
internationalist liberal humanitarian bullshit Saker cites in his article.
@Fhilaerene
"We need a law forbidding foreigners from speaking on our political affairs. It is not, and
never will be, their call. The author is clearly a Russian nationalist, which is a great
thing, but that belongs in Russia".
A peculiar argument. As the author presumably believes in the political equality of all
human beings, he would no doubt agree that Russia needs a law forbidding foreigners from
speaking about Russian political affairs. (Would that apply just to foreigners speaking while
in Russia, or in their own countries?)
@peterAUS
" is there a need for a World Policeman? I think there is (human nature, nukes and such). The
catch is, of course, who's going to be that one. Or better, who is going to control the cop.
Even better, who and how, is going to control the controllers".
That sounds quite clever and sophisticated, but it leads nowhere because it's fairly
obvious that there is no answer to the questions "who's going to be the World Policeman?" and
"Who's going to control the cop?"
For practical purposes we can regard the idea of a "World Policemen" is obviously
impractical. Even if such a regime could be brought about, it would likely lead to the very
worst tyranny ever – and perhaps the first one impossible to escape or overthrow.
Therefore we need to return to the real world and consider alternatives. At present I see
nothing better than Messrs Putin and Xi's concept of a multilateral world order, regulated by
international laws, in which nations show respect and consideration for one another.
If anyone thinks that's not good enough, consider that the world is not some schoolroom
where we are posed questions with predesigned, cut-and-dried answers. In real life, we
sometimes encounter questions that have no simple answers.
@anonymous
Your comment displays a very common misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.
The species that survive best and reproduce most in a given environment are sometimes
called "the fittest". At present – although perhaps not for much longer – Homo
sapiens has been very successful in terms of fitness for perhaps 10,000 years. People tend to
ascribe this mostly to our large brain and intelligence, but they err in thinking that the
main evolutionary advantage of intelligence is the ability to invent weapons and other
machines.
In fact, humans have thriven mainly because of their social organization and ability to
cooperate.
Which is why any theory that proposes vicious competition between individual human beings
or human groups is flying in the face of Darwin. We succeed or fail as teams. Cheating and
murdering your team-mates is not a recipe for success.
@Anon
"But many whites join because they like the culture of Brotherhood".
That reminds me, rightly or wrongly, of something else. Oh yes, here it is:
"Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of
what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape
individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from
freedom." It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not
guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and
maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the
Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?"
Saker,
Go fuck yourself. You are not an American so you are hardly in a position to say why
Americans serve in OUR military. I might add that the so-called "illegal wars" and covert
actions were primarily fought against the Communist madness YOUR people unleashed on the
world or primitive Islamists who have always been our enemies.
@Wally
'"But in a world of empires, the US empire preferable to the German, Japanese, Russian, and
Spanish."
'Really?
'Please explain'.
You really don't get it? Isn't it obvious that being burned to death by good red-blooded
democratic American napalm or white phosphorus is far better than being killed by a German,
Japanese, Russian or Spanish weapon?
It's the kindly good intentions that make all the difference!
@Intelligent
Dasein @Intelligent Dasein: so why on earth do you read Saker's articles? Why on earth do
you then proceed to pollute this thread with your insane vituperations and bore us all to
death? If you want to impress us with the use of vulgarities, there is no need to dedicate an
essay to it.
@ThreeCranes
The same cabal that had been denouncing young Americans conscripted to fight in Vietnam as
"baby killers" -- the same ones always disproportionately underrepresented in our armed
forces -- are from what I see on Fox News the ones behind the jingoism serving only Israel
today. Cops were vilified as "pigs." The American flag was walked on and burned with glee.
Now we have "wounded warrior" ads running all the time, while MAGA is making Wall Street
richer and creating new jobs for anyone but the young white men who mostly wear the uniforms
and do the dying so fine young Israeli boys need not.
All in all this "thank you for your service" is obviously well meaning from everyday
people, but it is nothing short of grinning mockery coming from that same bunch -- the "war
party" of neo-lib/neo-con foreign agents -- who only yesterday were denouncing our soldiers
as "baby killers." There is no left/right when it comes to bankrupting America for
Israel.
Now on Fox News we get Trotskyite neocons elevating those same "baby killers" and "pigs"
in uniform to hero status, and in preparation for the coming martial law, authoring the
thoughts of the gullible with the concepts and catchwords of the police state. "Baby killers"
and "pigs" alchemically have become heroes-in-uniform first-responders putting their boots on
the ground in harm's way, whose muh brothers/muh mission training sanctions incinerating
civilians IDF style, who won't hesitate enforcing shelter-in-place orders back home at gun
point even on their own kind.
@ThreeCranes
The same cabal that had been denouncing young Americans conscripted to fight in Vietnam as
"baby killers" -- the same ones always disproportionately underrepresented in our armed
forces -- are from what I see on Fox News the ones behind the jingoism serving only Israel
today. Cops were vilified as "pigs." The American flag was walked on and burned with glee.
Now we have "wounded warrior" ads running all the time, while MAGA is making Wall Street
richer and creating new jobs for anyone but the young white men who mostly wear the uniforms
and do the dying so fine young Israeli boys need not.
All in all this "thank you for your service" is obviously well meaning from everyday
people, but it is nothing short of grinning mockery coming from that same bunch -- the "war
party" of neo-lib/neo-con foreign agents -- who only yesterday were denouncing our soldiers
as "baby killers." There is no left/right when it comes to bankrupting America for
Israel.
Now on Fox News we get Trotskyite neocons elevating those same "baby killers" and "pigs"
in uniform to hero status, and in preparation for the coming martial law, authoring the
thoughts of the gullible with the concepts and catchwords of the police state. "Baby killers"
and "pigs" alchemically have become heroes-in-uniform first-responders putting their boots on
the ground in harm's way, whose muh brothers/muh mission training sanctions incinerating
civilians IDF style, who won't hesitate enforcing shelter-in-place orders back home at gun
point even on their own kind.
@Den Lille
Abe "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,'
which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and
empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued.
'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying
that reality judiciously, as you will we'll act again, creating other new
realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's
actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
- Ronald Suskind (American journalist) reporting the comments of a White House aide (later
identified as Karl Rove) ["Without A Doubt" by Ron Suskind, The New York Times Magazine, 17
October 2004].
" Why?" Well for one thing they carry out policies concocted by delusional "intellectuals"
and fellow travellers of whom you are most assuredly king, Saker.
@Charles
Martel Charles Martel expresses views that I suppose are very common among Americans. My
favourite SF writer Robert Heinlein would certainly have agreed with every word. Yet I
believe that Charles shows signs of having been deceived – having "drunk the Kool-Aid",
as I think some people used to say.
As soon as I saw the trope about Khrushschev "threatening to bury us" I knew there was
some intentional or unintentional misunderstanding. Lo and behold!
'While addressing Westerners at the embassy on November 18, 1956, in the presence of
Polish Communist statesman Władysław Gomułka, Khrushchev said: "About the
capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don't like us,
don't accept our invitations, and don't invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or
not, history is on our side. We will bury you!" The speech prompted the envoys from twelve
NATO nations and Israel to leave the room'.
What Khrushchev obviously meant was "We shall be the survivors after you have perished,
and so we will stand at your graveside". Unfortunately, he worded the thought more briefly
and vividly. In the Western world, which is ruled by propaganda and psyops, such techniques
are used to put the worst possible construction on the words of any antagonist.
Very similar to the furore about Iranian president Ahmadinejad supposedly threatening to
"wipe Israel off the map". As the extensive and accurate articles cited below explain, what
Ahmadinejad really said (in Farsi) was that "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem]
must be eliminated from the pages of history". Just as the USSR, for instance, has been
eliminated from the pages of history (and atlases).
" Let me repeat that truism once again, in an even more direct way: veterans are killers
hired for money. Period. The rest is all propaganda."
Yes, from the point of view of recruiters.
Not, as far as I can see, from the point of view of the hired.
Do not think that many join military forces with the intention to kill.
Happen to know a now retired USA pilot, who joined the USA forces for two reasons, he hated
the work on his father's farm, and he wanted to fly.
He did kill, I suppose, flying a helicopter in the Vietnam war is not for philantropic
business.
He also flew bombers, bomber pilots seldom see what the bombs they drop do.
But I wonder if he ever saw that he killed someone, as far as I know him he did not like to
kill at all.
Back to the question, should we thank veterans ?
I wonder for what.
They took a job, a job they knew could well lead to killing, or be killed.
A quite different situation exists for those who join an army out of idealistic motives, such
as George Orwell in the thirties in Spain.
But, thanking them depends on what side in the war you support.
@Simon in
London "If Russia ran the world things would be different, but I doubt they would be
better".
You are very probably right, which is why Russia has no desire to run the world. All it
wants – at least according to Mr Putin – is to be treated with respect and given
its rights under international law. Not to live in a world ruled by any single nation, but in
a world where all nations treat one another with respect and consideration.
@Simon in
London "If Russia ran the world things would be different, but I doubt they would be
better."
Self-serving, subjective Anglo-Zionist crap logic. For YOU, maybe, as a "patriotic"
denizen of the globo-imperialist Anglosphere, it "wouldn't be better". For RUSSIANS, it would
for sure "be better". For most of the world outside the Anglosphere except the Zionists and
the Wahhabis, too, it would "be better". I daresay that even for most ***ordinary*** people
in the Anglosphere, it would probably "be better" (depending of course on exactly how you
define "better") – or at least, not be WORSE.
It's also quite amusing how you automatically equate the ending of the current criminal
U.S. regime's planetwide aggressions and uncontested global hegemony aspirations, with
"Russia running the world", the same way that the U.S. regime wants to do right now. As if
that is the ONLY possible outcome – and as if it is preordained and inevitable that one
single hegemonic nation should lord it over and call the shots in the entire world by force.
The result, no doubt, of your brainwashing since birth with capitalist imperialist ideology,
wedded to "British Empire" chauvinism that now finds a vicarious outlet in sucking up to U.S.
global hegemonism as part of the Anglosphere.
Read The Protocols of Zion and see who is behind the wars that America has been forced into
ie it is the Zionist banking kabal and this was true from WWI right on down to the wars in
the Mideast and all for the Zionist banking kabal and their Zionist satanic NWO!
@Rex
Little There have been several armed invasions of the US with two more on the way. They
were entirely undeterred by the useless parasitic employees of the "Department of Defense".
I want to thank the men of the armed services for for their service. Whether that service
was for money, job, because you wanted to vent a warped sense of what it means (merely
killing others fellows is hardly a noble task) or
whether you sincerely desire to serve the country as a duty.
For any of those reasons above
Thanks . . . (my only regret is not keeping you from unnecessary conflicts) But I honor
your service.
This is how the Pentagon thanks everyone for their service!
Jun 30, 2014 America's Veteran Crisis: Abandoned At Home
As politicians in Washington wring their hands over the Veterans Affairs scandal, VICE
News travels to Portland, Oregon, to see what it's all really about.
December 9, 2016 Report: VA staff left veteran's body in shower nine hours, tried to hide
mistakes
SEMINOLE -- Staff members at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System left the body of a veteran
in a shower room for more than nine hours then tried to cover up the mistake, a hospital
investigation shows.
@Charles
Martel You have it backwards. The enlisted and conscripted were dummy candy asses,
lacking the balls and brains to avoid abetting the venal national security state and its vile
owners. Now in this sad year of 2018, the US military is little more than the Goy Auxiliary
of the jooie IDF making enlistment doubly stupid and cowardly, especially if you are a white
person. Notice your hero Trumpstein didn't enlist and neither did any of the "neocons" or
anyone else with any brains or balls
@David In
TN No, but irrelevant. What's your point?
All humans who sacrifice their own free will and freedom of conscience, no matter what
"side" they are on to follow orders like a killing machine, are almost by definition,
subhuman. They are dangerous amoral killers. They are the "kinetic action" that takes
aggressive war from a concept to a reality. Humanity would be better off if they could never
reproduce and if they were strictly limited to fighting each other to the death
We need a law forbidding foreigners from speaking on our political affairs. It is not,
and never will be, their call. The author is clearly a Russian nationalist, which is a
great thing, but that belongs in Russia.
I'll keep reading the foreign press, including from Russia, until there is a good reason
not to, like a shooting war.
Even propaganda sometimes includes constructive criticism. The Soviets were right when
they criticized lynchings in the South, and the international shame helped bring an end to
them.
If you believe some of the American Pravda articles here, you should welcome any
help that we can get from abroad to clean up our government.
@Tom
Welsh You probably overlooked the rest of my comment: "like most politicians in high
office everywhere and at all times, he was also a psychopath and did not shirk from killing
fellow human beings." That includes the war criminals Bush I, Bush II, and the White House
Negro.
A well-argued essay that addresses a relevant and important issue. Mercenaries, like regular
working folk, are just doing their job that they got paid for as per the contract. They
fulfilled the contract, no need to thank them. I never got a special thanks for doing my job,
certainly not from the highest authorities and every Tom, Dick and Harry in between.
@EliteCommInc.
@EliteComminc: the US was "invited" into South Vietnam by the puppet regime it installed
there in the 1st place. Therefore its attack on North Vietnam was still illegal and amounted
to a war crime. Period.
The Empire will NOT survive for one day without a war! The MIC runs this Empire and it won't
allow the Empire to go on as usual without purchasing or the empire's puppet government
exporting their products to the other countries. The aggressions are meant to kill innocent
people and to destroy the weapons that were sold to the countries to begin with! So the other
countries have to purchase more to defend themselves (catch 22). In other words all acts of
aggression are about nothing but money in this capitalist system!
One of the very best articles I have ever read. and which in my opinion should be required
reading for every high school graduate in the United States, and other countries.
@Hans
Vogel I do agree with your generalisation about politicians in high office. It was just
that I reacted quite strongly to your implication that the mere appointment of that man
proved Saddam to be "perverted".
There's an interesting discussion to be had about how fair it is to call people
"perverted" who merely behave like the proportion of humans who love violence and often
resort to it.
I certainly wouldn't have liked to be in Saddam Hussein's power if he had any reason to
harm me. On the other hand, I often wonder how easy it can be to rule a country like Iraq or
Syria, and wonder if perhaps a hard dictator might be the best fit under present
circumstances.
Generally speaking, political reform follows cultural and economic change – not vice
versa. I'd love to see any of the leading American or British politicians, or other
blowhards, try to do Saddam's or Assad's job without getting killed within a week or two.
After a year we could ask them searching questions about the morality of what they have done,
and I bet they would come up with something along the lines of "It was either me or
them".
"The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to
believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and
expect to have one's laws and constitution embraced. It is in the nature of things that the
progress of Reason is slow and no one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature
and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.
One can encourage freedom, never create it by an invading force".
- Maximilien Robespierre (1791)
"Laws should be so appropriate to the people for whom they are made that it is very
unlikely that the laws of one nation can suit another".
- Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, "L'Esprit des
Lois"
I guess it stands to reason that people who are stupid enough to join the military, are the
same ones stupid enough to keep waving the American flag after getting their asses shot off.
But other than for that reason, I've never understood why anyone would do such as thing.
The Saker seems like a foreign psychological warfare agent.
Now ... you could be onto something here.
I wouldn't put it in exactly those words, feels so "Cold war" and things have changed since,
but, yes, the overall intention IS something along that path.
Agree with the main points, of course. Especially with
..if we didn't have a strong deterrent force (and the demonstrated will to use it) there
are plenty of Mohammedans, Chinese and others who would dearly love to subdue us.
and
.And to me, service in the military is a civic duty as well for able-bodied males.
Does "The Saker" really imagine that he is the first person who has thought to quote the
principles of the Nuremberg Trials ? Does he expect applause for stating the obvious?
What the Saker is indeed quite obvious, but it is is not openly stated all that often.
Even people who generally object to the US-led wars feel it necessary to exempt the veterans
from the blame as an innocent or even wronged party. I've personally witnessed the madness at
the begging of the Iraq war when people practically genuflected before the members of the
military, and the banners and pins "We support our troops" were everywhere. Support in what,
in the commission of a crime? But no one came out and said that.
failures or refusals on the part of the American people to enforce what provisions of
their own Constitution have led to this pass?
I am sure he did but the article isn't about that. You care to provide the answer?
The most obvious one is that the American people are under intense propaganda coupled with
the essential informational blockade. All alternative information is carefully excluded from
the public view. Again, the Iraq war is a good examples: before the invasion, all attempts to
say what things might not go as smoothly as projected were promptly cut off. Add to this a
remarkably low level of education of most Americans, who aren't familiar with geography or
history, and you get the state of affairs you have.
You are either fighting over there or you are fighting in your homeland. When you stop
fighting over there, you end up fighting in your homeland.
America has just done the same thing every other successful Empire has done since the
dawn of time, suggesting a natural line of development in human civilizations.
Pretty much.
All of America's enemies simply want America out of the way so they can do the same
thing America has done.
Exactly.
If I were Russian or Chinese, I would want the same thing Saker calls for.
And that explains his articles in general.
But let's face it, a second-rate gorilla wanting the Alpha gorilla to die is a different
sentiment from the internationalist liberal humanitarian bullshit Saker cites in his
article.
@Ernesto
Che that just tells me how much you don't know about South Vietnam. The problem was not
that the South Vietnamese were puppets. But just the opposite. Trying to get the South
Vietnamese to follow US prescriptions was like trying to catch a porcupine.
Single most obvious rebuttal to your nonsense -- the rem oval of the first president by
his own leadership – sure we signed on -- no sign on to get rid of an obedient
compliant partner. No one removes their puppets.
I suggest you peruse the lengthy discussions on this subject in the archives on the site
or you could stop mouthing talking points and actually examine the issues on your own.
But to the point -- Well, dropping the civil war nonsense is progress.
@Tom
Welsh Civil reply in obvious deep disagreement in this pub. Nice.
So, my reply is simple: disagree.
Not because of multipolar world, no. That could be a good idea if the other two contenders
were setups I'd like to live in. I wouldn't. So, as I stated before and always will, if I
have to choose multipolar between those three and unipolar managed by US Administration, I
choose the later. Free will, personal choice and such. Vodka, Jack Daniels, whatever.
And, in my particular case it would mean living under, ahm, that " Xi's concept ". Haha
.yeah.
You are correct in one thing, though. There are some questions with no answers,or better,
answers we like. In this particular case there is such answer. Two options:
Global US (or, as Saker puts it "Anglo-Zionist") domination.
Multipolar world with regional wars on its borders, if we are lucky. If unlucky MAD.
The first one could be improve upon. The second can too, without the later.
Big topic; too big for this pub.
Now, should Russia and/or China introduce some other economic and societal models things
could change for better, maybe. That option, hope, remains. Especially in Russia. Of course,
not while the current regime is in power.
But, then, something can change for better in USA too.
We'll see. In meantime, having USA being a dominant world power is, for some of us, preferable
solution to that multipolar" thing.
Or to put it bluntly:we .do ..NOT TRUST .Kremlin and Beijing.
Simple as that.
Russia has no desire to run the world. All it wants – at least according to Mr
Putin – is to be treated with respect and given its rights under international law.
Not to live in a world ruled by any single nation, but in a world where all nations treat
one another with respect and consideration.
Ups... had I seen this , especially " .all nations treat one another with respect and
consideration ." I wouldn't have bothered with my comment No. 239. Please disregard it.
Moving on.
@Tom
Welsh Interesting point you are raising: "Generally speaking, political reform follows
cultural and economic change – not vice versa." I am afraid in most cases, there is
just a woeful lack of documentary evidence. Regarding a recent case for which we have a
wealth of data, the EU, we see the opposite. Cultural and economic change (immigration,
stifling regulations, advance of big monopolies such as Microsoft, Bayer, social misery such
as in Greece etc) has followed in the wake of political reform, initiated by the Maastricht
Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty.
It would seem in the Soviet Union cultural and economic also followed political reform.
One could sustain the same regarding Peronist Argentina until the early 1950s, the German
Empire in 1871 which created the framework for profound and vast cultural and economic
change, Italy since 1861, and so on. Thus, I am not so sure about the validity of the historical "law" you have tentatively
formulated.
In meantime, having USA being a dominant world power is, for some of us, preferable
solution to that multipolar" thing.
Or to put it bluntly: we .do ..NOT TRUST .Kremlin and Beijing.
Simple as that.
I don't trust Beijing. I trust D.C. about as much as I trust the Kremlin, or maybe a
little less, given the way the United States has comported itself internationally since the
end of the Cold War.
@James
Speaks I had considered that my comment about you having low low brain wattage was a bit
too harsh even though you are certainly a fool but it seems I was correct on both counts
after all. A fool is one who is repeatedly fooled and your comment proves that this is the
case in the matter of yourself and 9/11.
The little bit of knowledge that you've acquired is quite useless without a measure of
commonsense which you clearly lack. Again, this thread is about the poor fools who were duped
into participating in US wars of aggression not 9/11 so do yourself a favour and read the
articles on 9/11 that can be found right here at The Unz Review including the one Ron Unz
wrote himself. Good luck.
@Mario964
Excellent point. It would be interesting to read a similar discussion of Saker's points, but
starting from the psychology behind the Milgram experiment and mass propaganda.
Every state must have its peoples, in one way or another, support its geopolitical
operations. In democracies, this comes down to applying psychological pressures so that the
citizenry votes for the desired programs. (Note that whether soldiers enlist primarily out of
idealism or as mercenaries is incidental.) Sufficient political and psychological support can
usually be generated (The surprising failure to inflame the Goutha gas attack into a major
war on Syria is one notable exception). Support can be achieved even in the face of strong
initial opposition, such as WWI and the Iraq war. As Saker mentions, the support can be
eroded when a war drags on too long without victory, such as Vietnam or Afghanistan.
It follows that an article such as Saker's will necessarily generate a strong opposition
reaction. After all, "support the troops" is itself one of these conditioning slogans that
drew the populace in in the first place. Simply recognizing propaganda creates cognitive
dissonance against what has been programmatically imbued, and people have to get past this
point to even consider that they might be acting from Milgram-like motives. Motivating people
to enter this state of psychological confusion so they can deprogram themselves is the
political trick.
This is probably easier for intellectuals, which include many on this site. Not because
they're smarter, but because temperamentally, they actually derive pleasure from the
headaches that accompany delving too deeply into confusing matters ;-).
1. Whether out of idealism or venality, there are a variety of sites, such as Saker's, Russia Insider, and notorious RT, which present viewpoints in general support of Russia.
2. The majority of the rest of the web (and news) presents viewpoints generally
denigrating Russia in nearly every way, from its economy, to government, to domestic and
foreign policy, to its military, and to its leadership (Putin!).
Regardless of motivation, each of these groups is busy telling us what's right with their
viewpoint, and how despicable is the other. The process reveals important information and
angles that the other side wouldn't publicize. Really, all you have to do is read critically
to identify and see past the authors prejudices. This is the point of free speech,
after all.
Pretty much all political arguments are meant to persuade readers, and I don't hold anyone
to blame for trying to be convincing. I do for outright lying, however, and I see a lot more
of that coming from #2 than #1. To the extent that #1 is "influencing elections", their main
effect IMHO is to bust propaganda bubbles of the MSM. And this effect is minor given the vast
resources allocated by #2 to their efforts.
Aren't sanctions (i.e., economic pressure) acts of aggression, too? Just as much as dropping
of bombs, boots on ground, etc.?
Anyway, I really like this article and was hoping it would come along sooner or later in
the wake of the 100th anniversary of the end of the "great" war. I am the only person I know
who doesn't suck up to the paid killers.
Regardless of motivation, each of these groups is busy telling us what's right with
their viewpoint, and how despicable is the other. The process reveals important information
and angles that the other side wouldn't publicize. Really, all you have to do is read
critically to identify and see past the authors prejudices. This is the point of free
speech, after all.
Or to put it bluntly:we .do ..NOT TRUST .Kremlin and Beijing.
Of course; we shouldn't. But then, we shouldn't trust Britain or Israel either. It's
really stupid to assume that a conflict of interest won't arise.
The point of diplomacy is to attempt to come to workable accommodations that have some
chance of implementing peaceful coexistence at a minimum, and preferably to discover common
interests that can be developed to mutual advantage. We'll have to accept or compromise on
irresolvable differences, and work so these don't become too abrasive.
This would be a nice change from the foreign policy of destruction in which the west has
been engaged. Country after country wishing to stay outside that orbit have been turned into
hell-holes, while the austerity economic policies of the west have destroyed their own
nations even from within.
I've been trying to understand why it's nice to read about development in China and
Russia. I've come to realize that it's uplifting to read about anyone engaging in
constructive activity, and it saddens me to see so little of that in the west along similar
lines. Not that Russia and China are neglecting their military, but nearly all large
scale western projects seem to be militaristic and destructive, to the exclusion of anything
else. Has the west lost its ability to do something inspiring?
The US is a country, that has been at war for most of its life. I believe only a mere 25
years of not waging or participating in a war. Hence its reverence for the military.
Yep, the ZUS is as addicted to war as a junkie to drugs over 90% of its history at war,
truly a rogue, insane country.
And in wars a lot of money can be made, lets not forget that
That's why one of the key elements of the ZUS deep state is the corrupt military
industrial complex.
May I ever so slightly differ from one of your points?
You stated; "The result of this will, however, be catastrophic for the top 100 U.S.
'defense' contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, because then
all of those firms' foreign sales except to the Sauds, Israel and a few other feudal and
fascist regimes, will greatly decline."
I would suggest that these top US defense contractors sales will decline for the simple
reason that they would then have to compete with the rest of the world. One of these US
defense strategies had been to sell their products, or rather say force their products on
NATO no matter how inferior they were. If my memory serves me correctly the UK had a good
fighter jet in the Lightning, but the US forced NATO to buy the vastly inferior American
product which had many crashes and killed quite a few pilots.
But in the situation of a multi-polar world the US would have to really compete with the
likes of Russia and China, which as we know are already producing superior products and the
US has never really been able to compete in such an atmosphere.
There is one other statement which I would also like to differ upon: " a mono-polar world
is a world in which one nation stands above international law" and this statement is
flawed.
A mono-polar world' has never given the right for one nation to be above international
law. America did though start calling itself the International 'policeman', modelling itself
on something similar to a New York policeman stealing apples from a greengrocer's stand. Once
the US realised that there were no voices to be heard, they automatically progressed from the
uniform policeman to the likes of 'Al Capone', which I've noted many bent policemen do.
The trick for such policemen is to know when to retire and get out of the game, but the US
has never been able to retire, and now its fruits are coming back to haunt them.
Eisenhower's
worst nightmare has come true, as defense mega-contractors climb into the cockpit to ensure we
stay overextended. What President Dwight D. Eisenhower dubbed the "military-industrial
complex" has been constantly evolving over the decades, adjusting to shifts in the economic and
political system as well as international events. The result today is a "permanent-war
complex," which is now engaged in conflicts in at least eight countries across the globe, none
of which are intended to be temporary.
This new complex has justified its enhanced power and control over the country's resources
primarily by citing threats to U.S. security posed by Islamic terrorists. But like the old
military-industrial complex, it is really rooted in the evolving relationship between the
national security institutions themselves and the private arms contractors allied with
them.
The first phase of this transformation was a far-reaching privatization of U.S. military and
intelligence institutions in the two decades after the Cold War, which hollowed out the
military's expertise and made it dependent on big contractors (think Halliburton, Booz Allen
Hamilton, CACI). The second phase began with the global "war on terrorism," which quickly
turned into a permanent war, much of which revolves around the use of drone strikes.
The drone wars are uniquely a public-private military endeavor, in which major arms
contractors are directly involved in the most strategic aspect of the war. And so the drone
contractors -- especially the dominant General Atomics -- have both a powerful motive and the
political power, exercised through its clients in Congress, to ensure that the wars continue
for the indefinite future.
♦♦♦
The privatization of military and intelligence institutions began even before the end of the
Cold War. But during the 1990s, both Congress and the Bush and Clinton administrations opened
the floodgates to arms and intelligence contractors and their political allies. The contracts
soon became bigger and more concentrated in a handful of dominant companies. Between 1998 and
2003, private contractors were getting roughly half of the entire defense budget each year. The
50 biggest companies were getting more than half of the approximately $900 billion paid out in
contracts during that time, and most were no-bid contracts, sole sourced, according to the
Center for Public Integrity.
The contracts that had the biggest impact on the complex were for specialists working right
in the Pentagon. The number of these contractors grew so rapidly and chaotically in the two
decades after the Cold War that senior Pentagon officials did not even know the full extent of
their numbers and reach. In 2010, then-secretary of defense Robert M. Gates even confessed to
Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin that he was unable to
determine how many contractors worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which includes
the entire civilian side of the Pentagon.
Although legally forbidden from assuming tasks that were "inherent government functions," in
practice these contractors steadily encroached on what had always been regarded as government
functions. Contractors could pay much higher salaries and consulting fees than government
agencies, so experienced Pentagon and CIA officers soon left their civil service jobs by the
tens of thousands for plum positions with firms that often paid twice as much as the government
for the same work.
That was especially true in the intelligence agencies, which experienced a rapid 50 percent
workforce increase after 9/11. It was almost entirely done with former skilled officers brought
back as contractor personnel. Even President Barack Obama's CIA director Leon Panetta admitted
to Priest and Arkin that the intelligence community had for too long "depended on contractors
to do the operational work" that had always been done by CIA employees, including intelligence
analysis, and that the CIA needed to rebuild its own expertise "over time."
By 2010, "core contractors" -- those who perform such functions as collection and analysis
-- comprised at least 28 percent of professional civilian and military intelligence staff,
according to a fact sheet from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The dependence on the private sector in the Pentagon and the intelligence community had
reached such a point that it raised a serious question about whether the workforce was now
"obligated to shareholders rather than to the public interest," as Priest and Arkin reported.
And both Gates and Panetta acknowledged to them their concerns about that issue.
Powerfully reinforcing that privatization effect was the familiar revolving door between the
Pentagon and arms contractors, which had begun turning with greater rapidity. A 2010 Boston
Globe investigation showed that the percentage of three- and four-star generals who left
the Pentagon to take jobs as consultants or executives with defense contractors, which was
already at 45 percent in 1993, had climbed to 80 percent by 2005 -- an 83 percent increase in
12 years.
The incoming George W. Bush administration gave the revolving door a strong push, bringing
in eight officials from Lockheed Martin -- then the largest defense contractor -- to fill
senior policymaking positions in the Pentagon. The CEO of Lockheed Martin, Peter Teets, was
brought in to become undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National
Reconnaissance Office (where he had responsibility for acquisition decisions directly
benefiting his former company). James Roche, the former vice president of Northrop Grumman, was
named secretary of the Air Force, and a former vice president of General Dynamics, Gordon R.
England, was named the secretary of the Navy.
In 2007, Bush named rear admiral J. Michael McConnell as director of national intelligence.
McConnell had been director of the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996, then became head
of the national security branch of intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Not
surprisingly McConnell energetically promoted even greater reliance on the private sector, on
the grounds that it was supposedly more efficient and innovative than the government. In 2009
he returned once again to Booz Allen Hamilton as vice chairman.
The Pentagon and the intelligence agencies thus morphed into a new form of mixed
public-private institutions, in which contractor power was greatly magnified. To some in the
military it appeared that the privateers had taken over the Pentagon. As a senior U.S. military
officer who had served in Afghanistan commented to Priest and Arkin, "It just hits you like a
ton of bricks when you think about it. The Department of Defense is no longer a war-fighting
organization, it's a business enterprise."
♦♦♦
The years after 9/11 saw the national security organs acquire new missions, power, and
resources -- all in the name of a "War on Terror," aka "the long war." The operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq were sold on that premise, even though virtually no al Qaeda remained in
Afghanistan and none were in Iraq until long after the initial U.S. invasion.
The military and the CIA got new orders to pursue al Qaeda and affiliated groups in
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and several other African countries, parlaying what the Bush
administration called a "generational war" into a guarantee that there would be no return to
the relative austerity of the post-Cold War decade.
Drone strikes against targets associated with al Qaeda or affiliated groups became the
common feature of these wars and a source of power for military and intelligence officials. The
Air Force owned the drones and conducted strikes in Afghanistan, but the CIA carried them out
covertly in Pakistan, and the CIA and the military competed for control over the strikes in
Yemen.
The early experience with drone strikes against "high-value targets" was an unmitigated
disaster. From 2004 through 2007, the CIA carried out 12 strikes in Pakistan, aimed at
high-value targets of al Qaeda and its affiliates. But they killed only three identifiable al
Qaeda or Pakistani Taliban figures, along with 121 civilians, based on analysis of news reports
of the strikes.
But on the urging of CIA Director Michael Hayden, in mid-2008 President Bush agreed to allow
"signature strikes" based merely on analysts' judgment that a "pattern of life" on the ground
indicated an al Qaeda or affiliated target. Eventually it became a tool for killing mostly
suspected rank-and-file Afghan Taliban fighters in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, particularly
during the Obama administration, which had less stomach and political capital for outright war
and came to depend on the covert drone campaign. This war was largely secret and less
accountable publicly. And it allowed him the preferable optics of withdrawing troops and ending
official ground operations in places like Iraq.
Altogether in its eight years in office, the Obama administration carried out a total of
nearly 5,000 drone strikes -- mostly in Afghanistan -- according to figures collected by the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
But between 2009 and 2013, the best informed officials in the U.S. government raised alarms
about the pace and lethality of this new warfare on the grounds that it systematically
undermined the U.S. effort to quell terrorism by creating more support for al Qaeda rather than
weakening it. Some mid-level CIA officers opposed the strikes in Pakistan as early as 2009,
because of what they had learned from intelligence gathered from intercepts of electronic
communications in areas where the strikes were taking place: they were infuriating Muslim males
and making them more willing to join al Qaeda.
In a secret May 2009 assessment leaked to the Washington Post , General David
Petraeus, then commander of the Central Command, wrote, "Anti-U.S. sentiment has already been
increasing in Pakistan especially in regard to cross-border and reported drone strikes, which
Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties."
More evidence of that effect came from Yemen. A 2013 report on drone war policy for the
Council on Foreign Relations found that membership in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in
Yemen grew from several hundred in 2010 to a few thousand members in 2012, just as the number
of drone strikes in the country was increasing dramatically -- along with popular anger toward
the United States.
Drone strikes are easy for a president to support. They demonstrate to the public that he is
doing something concrete about terrorism, thus providing political cover in case of another
successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Donald Trump has shown no interest in scaling back
the drone wars, despite openly questioning the stationing of troops across the Middle East and
Africa. In 2017 he approved a 100 percent increase in drone strikes in Yemen and a 30 percent
increase in Somalia above the totals of the final year of the Obama administration. And Trump
has approved a major increase in drone strikes in Afghanistan, and has eliminated rules aimed
at reducing civilian casualties from such strikes.
Even if Obama and Trump had listened to dissenting voices on the serious risks of drone wars
to U.S. interests, however, another political reality would have prevented the United States
from ending the drone wars: the role of the private defense contractors and their friends on
Capitol Hill in maintaining the status quo.
♦♦♦
Unlike conventional bombing missions, drone strikes require a team to watch the video feeds,
interpret them, and pass on their conclusions to their mission coordinators and pilots. By 2007
that required more specialists than the Air Force had available. Since then, the Air Force has
been working with military and intelligence contractors to analyze full-motion videos
transmitted by drones to guide targeting decisions. BAE, the third-ranking Pentagon contractor
according to defense revenues, claims that it is the "leading provider" of analysis of drone
video intelligence, but in the early years the list of major companies with contracts for such
work also included Booz Allen Hamilton, L-3 Communications, and SAIC (now Leidos).
These analysts were fully integrated into the "kill chain" that resulted, in many cases, in
civilian casualties. In the now-famous case of the strike in February 2010 that killed at least
15 Afghan civilians, including children, the "primary screener" for the team of six video
analysts in Florida communicating via a chat system with the drone pilot in Nevada was a
contract employee with SAIC. That company had a $49 million multi-year contract with the Air
Force to analyze drone video feeds and other intelligence from Afghanistan.
The pace of drone strikes in Afghanistan accelerated sharply after U.S. combat ended
formally in 2014. And that same year, the air war against ISIS began in Iraq and Syria. The Air
Force then began running armed drones around the clock in those countries as well. The Air
Force needed 1,281 drone pilots to handle as many "combat air patrols" per day in multiple
countries. But it was several hundred pilots short of that objective.
To fulfill that requirement the Air Force turned to General Atomics -- maker of the first
armed drone, the Predator, and a larger follow-on, the MQ-9 Reaper -- which had already been
hired to provide support services for drone operations on a two-year contract worth $700
million. But in April 2015 the Air Force signed a contract with the company to lease one of its
Reapers with its own ground control station for a year. In addition, the contractor was to
provide the pilots, sensor operators, and other crew members to fly it and maintain it.
The pilots, who still worked directly for General Atomics, did everything Air Force drone
pilots did except actually fire the missiles. The result of that contract was a complete
blurring of the lines between the official military and the contractors hired to work alongside
them. The Air Force denied any such blurring, arguing that the planning and execution of each
mission would still be in the hands of an Air Force officer. But the Air Force Judge Advocate
General's Office had published an article in its law review in 2010 warning that even the
analysis of video feeds risked violating international law prohibiting civilian participation
in direct hostilities.
A second contract with a smaller company, Aviation Unlimited, was for the provision of
pilots and sensor operators and referred to "recent increased terrorist activities," suggesting
that it was for anti-ISIS operations.
The process of integrating drone contractors into the kill chain in multiple countries thus
marked a new stage in the process of privatizing war in what had become a permanent war
complex. After 9/11, the military became dependent on the private sector for everything from
food, water, and housing to security and refueling in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2009 contractors
began outnumbering U.S. troops in Afghanistan and eventually became critical for continuing the
war as well.
In June 2018, the DoD announced a $40 million contract with General Atomics to operate its
own MQ-9 Reapers in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. The Reapers are normally armed for
independent missile strikes, but in this case, the contractor-operated Reapers were to be
unarmed, meaning that the drones would be used to identify targets for Air Force manned
aircraft bombing missions.
♦♦♦
There appears to be no braking mechanism for this accelerating new reality. U.S. government
spending on the military drone market, which includes not only procurement and research and
development for the drones themselves, but the sensors, modifications, control systems, and
other support contracts, stood at $4.5 billion in 2016, and was expected to increase to $13
billion by 2027. General Atomics is now the dominant player in the arena.
This kind of income translates into political power, and the industry has shown its muscle
and more than once prevented the Pentagon from canceling big-ticket programs, no matter how
unwanted or wasteful. They have the one-two punch of strategically focused campaign
contributions and intensive lobbying of members with whom they have influence.
This was most evident between 2011 and 2013, after congressionally mandated budget
reductions cut into drone procurement. The biggest loser appeared to be Northrop Grumman's
"Global Hawk" drone, designed for unarmed high-altitude intelligence surveillance flights of up
to 32 hours.
By 2011 the Global Hawk was already 25 percent over budget, and the Pentagon had delayed the
purchase of the remaining planes for a year to resolve earlier failures to deliver adequate
"near real time" video intelligence.
After a subsequent test, however, the Defense Department's top weapons tester official
reported in May 2011 that the Global Hawk was "not operationally effective" three fourths of
the time, because of "low vehicle reliability." He cited the "failure" of "mission central
components" at "high rates." In addition, the Pentagon still believed the venerable U-2 Spy
plane -- which could operate in all weather conditions, unlike the Global Hawk -- could carry
out comparable high-altitude intelligence missions.
As a result, the DoD announced in 2012 that it would mothball the aircraft it had already
purchased and save $2.5 billion over five years by foregoing the purchase of the remaining
three drones. But that was before Northrop Grumman mounted a classic successful lobbying
campaign to reverse the decision.
That lobbying drive produced a fiscal year 2013 defense appropriations law that added $360
million for the purchase of the final three Global Hawks. In Spring 2013, top Pentagon
officials indicated that they were petitioning for "relief" from congressional intent. Then the
powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, California Republican Buck McKeon, and
a member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, Democrat Jim Moran of Virginia,
wrote a letter to incoming Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on May 13, 2013, pressing him to fund
the acquisition of the Global Hawks.
The Pentagon finally caved. The Air Force issued a statement pledging to acquire the last
three Northrop Grumman spy planes, and in early 2014, Hagel and Dempsey announced that they
would mothball the U-2 and replace it with the Global Hawk.
Northrop spent nearly $18 million on lobbying in 2012 and $21 million in 2013, fielding a
phalanx of lobbyists determined to help save Global Hawk. It got what it wanted.
Meanwhile, Northrop's political action committee had already made contributions of at least
$113,000 to the campaign committee of House Armed Services Committee Chairman McKeon, who also
happened to represent the Southern California district where Northrop's assembly plant for the
Global Hawk is located. Representative Moran, the co-author of the letter with McKeon, who
represented the northern Virginia district where Northrop has its headquarters, had gotten
$22,000 in contributions.
Of course Northrop didn't ignore the rest of the House Armed Services Committee: they were
recipients of at least $243,000 in campaign contributions during the first half of 2012.
♦♦♦
The Northrop Grumman triumph dramatically illustrates the power relationships underlying the
new permanent-war complex. In the first half of 2013 alone, four major drone contractors --
General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing -- spent $26.2 million lobbying
Congress to pressure the executive branch to keep the pipeline of funding for their respective
drone systems flowing freely. The Center for the Study of the Drone observed, "Defense
contractors are pressuring the government to maintain the same levels of investment in unmanned
systems even as the demand from the traditional theatres such as Afghanistan dies down."
Instead of dying down, the demand from drones in Afghanistan has exploded in subsequent
years. By 2016, the General Atomics Reapers had already become so tightly integrated into U.S.
military operations in Afghanistan that the whole U.S. war plan was dependent on them. In the
first quarter of 2016 Air Force data showed that 61 percent of the weapons dropped in
Afghanistan were from the drones.
In the new permanent-war complex the interests of the arms contractors have increasingly
dominated over the interests of the civilian Pentagon and the military services, and dominance
has became a new driving force for continued war. Even though those bureaucracies, along with
the CIA, seized the opportunity to openly conduct military operations in one country after
another, the drone war has introduced a new political dynamic into the war system: the drone
makers who have powerful clout in Congress can use their influence to block or discourage an
end to the permanent war -- especially in Afghanistan -- which would sharply curtail the demand
for drones.
Eisenhower was prophetic in his warning about the threat of the original complex (which he
had planned to call the military-industrial-congressional complex) to American democracy. But
that original complex, organized merely to maximize the production of arms to enhance the power
and resources of both the Pentagon and their contractor allies, has become a much more serious
menace to the security of the American people than even Eisenhower could have anticipated. Now
it is a system of war that powerful arms contractors and their bureaucratic allies may have the
ability to maintain indefinitely.
Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to. He is also
the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
The proposal I would like to see introduced at the United
Nations would be one to remove a nation that systematically violates the UN Charter. If not
totally remove them, then at least bar them from being on the Security Council, and of course
thus removing their veto.
The UN Charter is the treaty that any nation must adopt to join the United Nations. The very
purpose of the UN when it was formed after WW2 was to prevent war. Thus, the UN charter has
clauses that say a nation can only attack another nation under the authority of the UN Security
Council. It has a clause that says that it violates the UN Charter to even mass forces on
another nation's borders and to then threaten to attack in order to coerce another nation.
The USA has of course frequently been in violation of the UN Charter. Certainly what it has
been doing in Syria is in violation of the UN Charter. The US has been in violation of the UN
Charter for some time. At least back as far as when Clinton couldn't get the UN Security
Council to support his attack on Serbia and he went ahead and did it anyways. There is of
course a long list of such violations. Israel is of course also in violation of the UN Charter
with its constant attacks on its neighbors.
From there, the course would follow basically what Mr. Zuesse says. America's poodle, the UK
would certainly veto a resolution seeking to discipline the USA for breaking the very core
notion of the UN, which is to prevent another worldwide catastrophe like what the world
experienced during WW2. It was a world that was horrified by what had occurred during WW2 that
formed the UN to prevent that from happening again.
To me, its hard to see how the UN accepts the leadership of a nation that violates the Charter that every nation had to
agree to in order to join the organization. Of course, mob bosses have their own ways of breaking the rules of civilized
society. Still, it seems like a place to try to rally the world about.
Dear "Anonymous": Your comment is extremely well-informed and relevant, but the U.N. has been
highly dependent upon the U.S. financially, and therefore the initiative cannot come from the
U.N. itself, but only from particular nations. What I was summarily describing in concern to
the U.N. as it actually exists (not to the U.N. as it should exist, which maybe we'll get to
some day) is an ongoing PR stunt, to be staged at the U.N., to draw the public's attention to
the fact that the U.S. Government has been functioning blatantly, for many years, as a
fascist power. This truth needs to be rubbed constantly into the face of today's America's
Government so as to isolate that Government internationally to become the pariah-Government
that the people who founded the U.N. would puke to see. What won WW II was physically the
Allies, but what has since taken over in spirit is Hitler's spirit, but with different
priorities of whom the 'enemies' are, not Jews especially but this time Russians especially.
Instead of the 'vast Jewish conspiracy', we've got the 'cunning Russian conspiracy' now
having supposedly chosen the evil Trump and made him become America's President, etc, and
it's based on lies now just as it was based on lies in Hitler's time. But it's now the
American aristocracy, instead of the German aristocracy. I was proposing there a PR campaign,
to expose them as what they are.
The wealthy owners of America were always in favor of Hitler's idea of world domination, butt
hey wanted to be in charge of it instead of the Germans. After WWII they saw their chance to
take the lead and have been working to enslave the world ever since. Of course they hate the
UN, or anyone who does not bow to their will to power.
Thank you for this important article. I do not see the development of PESCO or any homegrown
European military as something positive. I think this is simply a re-branding exercise on
behalf of those who control NATO. These " new" proxy militaries will continue to buy US
military equipment as NATO did before. My fear is that the re-branding effort may result in a
revised military doctrine which may actually be more aggressive than NATO..
Laugh if you will, but I think the Eurocrats want to attempt to (re)take the North American
continent (probably with DC's blessing.) Did you see Putin and Trudeau huddle together at the
WWI commemoration meeting?
(And another thing ) We (the people of the West) should remember that the European, English
and American aristocracies (as Zuesse refers to them) keep a boot to each others throats, and
if one lets up, the other grabs a knife from the back pocket and goes for the jugular.
Because they are like that.
In other words: a mono-polar world is a world in which one nation stands above international
law, and that nation's participation in an invasion immunizes also each of its allies who
join in the invasion, protecting it too from prosecution, so that a mono-polar world is one
in which the United Nations can't even possibly impose international law impartially, but can
impose it only against nations that aren't allied with the mono-polar power, which in this
case is the United States.
Might I suggest a viewing and listening to a Dr. Navarro speech:
America is not only the true "evil empire," but it is also a very sick and deluded evil
empire.
The Trump Regime is unhinged, as it desperately tries to Make the American Empire Great
Again by attacking its opponents such as Russia, China, or Iran; waging financial and
economic wars on the world; and projecting its own imperial insanity onto others one twitter
tweet at a time.
But this is true of America in general, regardless of whatever malign regime is in
Washington DC.
The more that America lashes out and seeks to maintain its pretensions as the
Exceptionalist nation, the more it only accelerates its own decline and destruction, as well
as its Day of Financial Reckoning with the collapse of the Ponzi Scheme US economy and Wall
Street.
Indeed, it's not a secret that another Wall Street implosion is coming, one that will make
the 2008 version triggered by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy seem like a tea party in
comparison.
Given Donald Trump's own record of multiple business bankruptcies, perhaps it's only
appropriate that he is the current ruler of America. LOL.
The real issue is when America itself will shatter into a several separate nation states.
Indeed, the prospect of a Second American Civil War is increasingly on the minds of US
foreign policy experts and even the American masses themselves.
According to Dmitry Orlov, America is fast closing the "collapse gap" with its former Cold
War nemesis, the USSR.
Here is how U.S. President Barack Obama proudly, even imperially, described it when
delivering the Commencement address to America's future generals, at West Point Military
Academy, on
28 May 2014 :
The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation . [Every other nation is
therefore 'dispensable'; we therefore now have "Amerika, Amerika über alles, über
alles in der Welt".] That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the
century to come. America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else
will...
Russia's aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China's
economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle
classes compete with us. [He was here telling these future U.S. military leaders that they
are to fight for the U.S. aristocracy, to help them defeat any nation that resists.] ...
In Ukraine, Russia's recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern
Europe. But this isn't the Cold War. Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia
right away. [He was proud of the U.S. Government's effectiveness at
propaganda, just as Hitler was proud of the German Government's propaganda-effectiveness
under Joseph Goebbels.] Because of American leadership, the world immediately condemned
Russian actions; Europe and the G7 joined us to impose sanctions; NATO reinforced our
commitment to Eastern European allies; the IMF is helping to stabilize Ukraine's economy;
OSCE monitors brought the eyes of the world to unstable parts of Ukraine.
No other nation regularly invades other nations that never had invaded it. This is
international aggression. It is the international crime of "War of Aggression" ; and the only
nations which do it nowadays are America and its allies, such as the Sauds, Israel, France, and
UK, which often join in America's aggressions (or, in the case of the Sauds' invasion of Yemen,
the ally initiates an invasion, which the U.S. then joins). America's generals are taught this
aggression, and not only by Obama. Ever since at least George W. Bush, it has been solid U.S.
policy. (Bush even kicked out the U.N.'s weapons-inspectors, so as to bomb Iraq in 2003.)
In other words: a mono-polar world is a world in which one nation stands above international
law, and that nation's participation in an invasion immunizes also each of its allies who join
in the invasion, protecting it too from prosecution, so that a mono-polar world is one in which
the United Nations can't even possibly impose international law impartially, but can impose it
only against nations that aren't allied with the mono-polar power, which in this case is the
United States. Furthermore, because the U.S. regime reigns supreme over the entire world, as it
does, any nations -- such as Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua,
Cuba, and Ecuador -- that the U.S. regime (which
has itself been scientifically proven to be a dictatorship ) chooses to treat as an enemy,
is especially disadvantaged internationally. Russia and China, however, are among the five
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and therefore possess a degree of international
protection that America's other chosen enemies do not. And the people who choose which nations
to identify as America's 'enemies' are America's super-rich and not the entire American
population, because
the U.S. Government is controlled by the super-rich and not by the public .
If one of the five permanent members of the Security Council would table at the U.N. a
proposal to eliminate the immunity that the U.S. regime has, from investigation and prosecution
for any future War of Aggression that it might perpetrate, then, of course, the U.S. and any of
its allies on the Security Council would veto that, but if the proposing nation would then
constantly call to the international public's attention that the U.S. and its allies had
blocked passage of such a crucially needed "procedure to amend the UN
charter" , and that this fact means that the U.S. and its allies constitute fascist regimes
as was understood and applied against Germany's fascist regime, at the Nuremberg Tribunal in
1945, then possibly some members of the U.S.-led gang (the NATO portion of it, at least) would
quit that gang, and the U.S. global dictatorship might end, so that there would then become a
multi-polar world, in which democracy could actually thrive.
Democracy can only shrivel in a mono-polar world, because all other nations then are simply
vassal nations, which accept Obama's often-repeated dictum that all other nations are
"dispensable" and that only the U.S. is not. Even the UK would actually gain in freedom, and in
democracy, by breaking away from the U.S., because it would no longer be under the U.S. thumb
-- the thumb of the global aggressor-nation.
Only one global poll has ever been taken of the question "Which
country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?" and it found
that, overwhelmingly, by a three-to-one ratio above the second-most-often named country, the
United States was identified as being precisely that, the top threat to world-peace . But then,
a few years later, another (though less-comprehensive) poll was taken on a similar question,
and it produced
similar results . Apparently, despite the effectiveness of America's propagandists, people
in other lands recognize quite well that today's America is a more successful and
longer-reigning version of Hitler's Germany. Although modern America's propaganda-operation is
far more sophisticated than Nazi Germany's was, it's not entirely successful. America's
invasions are now too common, all based on lies, just like Hitler's were.
On November 9th, Russian Television headlined "'Very insulting': Trump bashes
Macron's idea of European army for protection from Russia, China & US" and reported
that "US President Donald Trump has unloaded on his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, calling
the French president's idea of a 'real European army,' independent from Washington, an insult."
On the one hand, Trump constantly criticizes France and other European nations for allegedly
not paying enough for America's NATO military alliance, but he now is denigrating France for
proposing to other NATO members a decreasing reliance upon NATO, and increasing reliance,
instead, upon the
Permanent Structured Cooperation (or PESCO) European military alliance , which was begun on
11 December 2017, and which currently has "25 EU Member States participating: Austria, Belgium,
Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania,
Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden." Those are the European nations that are now on the path
to eventually quitting NATO.
Once NATO is ended, the U.S. regime will find far more difficult any invasions such as of
Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-, Yemen 2016-, and maybe even such as America's bloody coup
that overthrew the democratically elected Government of Ukraine and installed a racist-fascist or
nazi anti-Russian regime there in 2014 . All of these U.S. invasions (and coup) brought to
Europe millions of refugees and enormously increased burdens upon European taxpayers. Plus,
America's economic sanctions against both Russia and Iran have hurt European companies (and the
U.S. does almost no business with either country, so is immune to that, also). Consequently,
today's America is clearly Europe's actual main enemy. The continuation of NATO is actually
toxic to the peoples of Europe. Communism and the Soviet Union and its NATO-mirroring Warsaw
Pact military alliance, all ended peacefully in 1991, but
the U.S. regime has secretly continued the Cold War, now against Russia , and is
increasingly focusing its "regime-change" propaganda against Russia's
popular democratic leader, Vladimir Putin, even though this U.S. aggression against Russia
could mean a world-annihilating nuclear war.
Europe's desire to create its own army and stop relying on Washington for defense is not
only understandable, but would be "positive" for the multipolar world, Vladimir Putin said
days after Donald Trump ripped into it.
" Europe is a powerful economic union and it is only natural that they want to be
independent and sovereign in the field of defense and security," Putin told RT in Paris where
world leader gathered to mark the centenary of the end of WWI.
He also described the potential creation of a European army "a positive process," adding
that it would "strengthen the multipolar world." The Russian leader even expressed his
support to French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently championed this idea by saying that
Russia's stance on the issue "is aligned with that of France" to some extent.
Macron recently revived the ambitious plans of creating a combined EU military force by
saying that it is essential for the security of Europe. He also said that the EU must become
independent from its key ally on the other side of the Atlantic, provoking an angry reaction
from Washington.
Once NATO has shrunk to include only the pro-aggression and outright nazi European nations, such as
Ukraine (after the U.S. gang accepts Ukraine into NATO, as it almost certainly then would
do), the EU will have a degree of freedom and of democracy that it can only dream of today, and
there will then be a multi-polar world, in which the leaders of the U.S. will no longer enjoy
the type of immunity from investigation and possible prosecution, for their invasions, that
they do today. The result of this will, however, be catastrophic for the top 100
U.S. 'defense' contractors , such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon,
because then all of those firms' foreign sales except to the Sauds, Israel and a few other
feudal and fascist regimes, will greatly decline. Donald Trump is doing everything he can to
keep the Sauds to the agreements he reached with them back in 2017 to buy
$404 billion of U.S. weaponry over the following 10 years . If, in addition, those firms
lose some of their European sales, then the U.S. economic boom thus far in Trump's Presidency
will be seriously endangered. So, the U.S. regime, which is run by the owners
of its 'defense'-contractors , will do all it can to prevent this from happening.
The brutal warlord understood how to govern shrewdly and even humanely.
Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Winston Churchill, even Barack Obama: there are many
historical figures who Americans have turned to for inspiration in this political distemper.
That's especially true with the midterm elections only a week in the books. But I've recently
found an even more surprising leader who offers a number of political lessons worth
contemplating: Genghis Khan.
I'm quite serious.
As a former history teacher, I picked up Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern
World because I realized I knew relatively little about one of the most influential men in
human history. Researchers have
estimated that 0.5 percent of men have Genghis Khan's DNA in them, which is perhaps one of
the most tangible means of determining historical impact. But that's just the tip of the
iceberg. The Mongolian warlord conquered a massive chunk of the 13th-century civilized world --
including more than one third of its population. He created one of the first international
postal systems. He decreed universal freedom of religion in all his conquered territories --
indeed, some of his senior generals were Christians.
Of course, Genghis Khan was also a brutal military leader who showed no mercy to enemies who
got in his way, leveling entire cities and using captured civilians as the equivalent of cannon
fodder. Yet even the cruelest military geniuses (e.g. Napoleon) are still geniuses, and we
would be wise to consider what made them successful, especially against great odds. In the case
of Genghis Khan, we have a leader who went from total obscurity in one of the most remote areas
of Asia to the greatest, most feared military figure of the medieval period, and perhaps the
world. This didn't happen by luck -- the Mongolian, originally named Temujin, was not only a
skilled military strategist, but a shrewd political leader.
As Genghis Khan consolidated control over the disparate tribes of the steppes of northern
Asia, he turned the traditional power structure on its head. When one tribe failed to fulfill
its promise to join him in war and raided his camp in his absence, he took an unprecedented
step. He summoned a public gathering, or khuriltai , of his followers, and conducted a public
trial of the other tribe's aristocratic leaders. When they were found guilty, Khan had them
executed as a warning to other aristocrats that they would no longer be entitled to special
treatment. He then occupied the clan's lands and distributed the remaining tribal members among
his own people. This was not for the purposes of slavery, but a means of incorporating
conquered peoples into his own nation. The Mongol leader symbolized this act by adopting an
orphan boy from the enemy tribe and raising him as his own son.
Weatherford explains:
"Whether these adoptions began for sentimental reasons or for political ones, Temujin
displayed a keen appreciation of the symbolic significance and practical benefit of such acts
in uniting his followers through his usage of fictive kinship ."
Genghis Khan employed this equalizing strategy with his military as well -- eschewing
distinctions of superiority among the tribes. For example, all members had to perform a certain
amount of public service. Weatherford adds:
"Instead of using a single ethnic or tribal name, Temujin increasingly referred to his
followers as the People of the Felt Walls, in reference to the material from which they made
their gers [tents]."
America, alternatively, seems divided along not only partisan lines, but those of race and
language as well. There is also an ever-widening difference between elite technocrats and
blue-collar folk, or "deplorables." Both parties have pursued policies that have aggravated
these differences, and often have schemed to employ them for political gain. Whatever shape
they take -- identity politics, gerrymandering -- the controversies they cause have done
irreparable harm to whatever remains of the idea of a common America. The best political
leaders are those who, however imperfectly, find a way to transcend a nation's many differences
and appeal to a common cause, calling on all people, no matter how privileged, to participate
in core activities that define citizenship.
The Great Khan also saw individuals not as autonomous, atomistic individuals untethered to
their families and local communities, but rather as inextricably linked to them. For example,
"the solitary individual had no legal existence outside the context of the family and the
larger units to which it belonged; therefore the family carried responsibility of ensuring the
correct behavior of its members to be a just Mongol, one had to live in a just community." This
meant, in effect, that the default social arrangement required individuals to be responsible
for those in their families and immediate communities. If a member of a family committed some
crime, the entire unit would come under scrutiny. Though such a paradigm obviously isn't ideal,
it reflects Genghis Khan's recognition that the stronger our bonds to our families, the
stronger the cohesion of the greater society. Politicians should likewise pursue policies that
support and strengthen the family, the
"first society," rather than undermining or redefining it.
There are other gems of wisdom to be had from Genghis Khan. He accepted a high degree of
provincialism within his empire, reflecting an ancient form of subsidiarity. Weatherford notes:
"He allowed groups to follow traditional law in their area, so long as it did not conflict with
the Great Law, which functioned as a supreme law or a common law over everyone." This reflects
another important task for national leaders, who must seek to honor, and even encourage, local
governments and economies, rather than applying one-size-fits-all solutions.
He was an environmentalist, codifying "existing ideals by forbidding the hunting of animals
between March and October during the breeding time." This ensured the preservation and
sustainability of the Mongol's native lands and way of life. He recognized the importance of
religion in the public square, offering tax exemptions to religious leaders and their property
and excusing them from all types of public service. He eventually extended this to other
essential professions like public servants, undertakers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and
scholars. Of course, in our current moment, some of these professions are already well
compensated for their work, but others, like teachers, could benefit from such a tax
exemption.
There's no doubt that Genghis Khan was a brutal man with a bloody legacy. Yet joined to that
violence was a shrewd political understanding that enabled him to create one of the greatest
empires the world has ever known. He eschewed the traditional tribal respect for the elites in
favor of the common man, he pursued policies that brought disparate peoples under a common
banner, and he often avoided a scorched earth policy in favor of mercy to his enemies. Indeed,
as long as enemy cities immediately surrendered to the Mongols, the inhabitants saw little
change in their way of life. And as Weatherford notes, he sought to extend these lessons to his
sons shortly before his death:
He tried to teach them that the first key to leadership was self-control, particularly
mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild
lion, and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned
them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead." He admonished them never to
think of themselves as the strongest or smartest. Even the highest mountain had animals that
step on it, he warned. When the animals climb to the top of the mountain, they are even
higher than it is.
Perhaps if American politicians were to embrace this side of the Great Khan, focusing on
serving a greater ideal rather than relentless point-scoring , we might achieve the same level
of national success, without the horrific bloodshed.
Changing the direction of American politics from the continued descent into degeneracy and
ahistoricity will be a dynastic task requiring us to teach our youngest generations about
civics and civility and U.S. history all the way from the intellectual and historical events
that led to the formation of the U.S. to the varied movements over the years that have either
strengthened the social cohesion of our melting pot nation or provoked rot from the inside
out.
Swallowing one's pride is the most difficult task of any political leader who tastes power
even once. At that point the politician frequently craves the citizenry to get on bended knee
and swallow the the arrogant decisions of the politician who has grown turgid from the
lustful exceses of the governmental trough.
I realize this "American Conservative" author is trying to point out strengths of someone
who he admits was also a tyrant, but there's a little too much much tyrant love for my taste.
Maybe strong leaders are exactly the problem, and maybe one of the reasons conservatives
often have their pants on fire is their claim that they love freedom as they beg for law and
order at the end of someone else's gun.
"... One of the characteristics of fascists, such as the self-confessed fascist, and Republican party icon, Leo Strauss, is to return philosophically to an earlier age when despotism ruled, and present that as a purer form of politics, before ideas of democracy arose, like Mr. Chalk's article suggests. ..."
"... A brief historical note: the conquests of Russia, the Middle East and southern China happened under Genghis' successors ..."
Mr. Chalk writes: The best political leaders are those who, however imperfectly, find a way
to transcend a nation's many differences and appeal to a common cause, calling on all people,
no matter how privileged, to participate in core activities that define citizenship.
The Great Khan also saw individuals not as autonomous, atomistic individuals untethered to
their families and local communities, but rather as inextricably linked to them. For example,
"the solitary individual had no legal existence outside the context of the family and the
larger units to which it belonged; therefore the family carried responsibility of ensuring
the correct behavior of its members to be a just Mongol, one had to live in a just
community."
The guy who wrote this couldn't have said it better: The Doctrine of Fascism, by Benito
Mussolini. He wrote, in pertinent part:
"In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process
to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in
function of history to which all nations bring their contribution."
"Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State
and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State,
which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity."
"The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves the individual adequate elbow room.
It has curtailed useless or harmful liberties while preserving those which are essential. In
such matters the individual cannot be the judge, but the State only."
My only exposure to Mr. Chalk's educational institution, Christendom College, was with a
friend's son who went there, and came back to Minnesota and argued with me, as an Army
Officer, that, of course torture was permissible, Aquinas said so.
A Catholic priest whom I knew pointed out later that there had been some further
developments in Catholic doctrine since Aquinas's pronouncements, even if he was a
"Saint."
One of the characteristics of fascists, such as the self-confessed fascist, and
Republican party icon, Leo Strauss, is to return philosophically to an earlier age when
despotism ruled, and present that as a purer form of politics, before ideas of democracy
arose, like Mr. Chalk's article suggests. This is not to ascribe fascist thought to Mr.
Chalk but only to suggest he doesn't need to go all the way back to Genghis Khan for his
political theory, the first half of the 20th Century was replete with similar ideas, in
places like Germany, Italy, and Japan, to name three, all of whom were featured in numerous
TV shows this past weekend in celebration of Veteran's Day.
I've had experience with Christendom College, too. One of my children graduated from there
& received a wonderful education & made lifelong friends.
The little I know about China & other cultures in the East sounds similar to: "and the
larger units to which it belonged; therefore the family carried responsibility of ensuring
the correct behavior of its members to be a just Mongol, one had to live in a just
community."
I think if you just replaced "Mongol" with "Chinese" here you might get the same idea.
That concept is a harder sell in the West where everything is about the individual but I
think we could benefit from adapting that idea a little to our culture.
Jack Weatherford is an apologist for Genghis Khan and should not be the sole source life
lessons that Genghis Khan offers. Go to primary sources to read about Mongol invasions from
the vantage of the victims and their efforts to get out from under the Mongol yolk.
Genghis Khan was from a nomadic people that made their living by grazing and raiding their
neighbors. He raised that up a notch by conquering much of the known world of the day.
I have my doubts about Genghis Khan putting much value on the lives of public servants,
undertakers, lawyers, teachers, and scholars. Perhaps doctors but medicine was not all that
advanced in the 13c. He definitely prized craftsmen who could work with leather, fabric, and
metal and particularly engineers whom he incorporated into his military campaigns.
This enlightened environmentalist may have spared the lives of animals but wantonly killed
peasants and destroyed farmland.
Genghis Khan military strategy involved rapine, destruction, terror, torture, enslavement,
and mass extermination, with death tolls unmatched by any other single person.
He destroyed civilizations leaving fields of bones where once there were buildings,
libraries, churches, mosques, temples, and hospitals. A partial list of cities destroyed by
Mongol conquest listed in in Wikipedia includes Balkh, Bamiyan, Herat, Kiev, Baghdad,
Nishapur, Merv, Urgench, Lahore, Ryazan, Chernigov, Vladimir, and Samarkand.
Mr. Chalk would have it that Genghis Khan created one greatest empires the world has ever
known. This was an empire of vassals, subject to communal punishment, and subject to periodic
acts of savagery to test loyalty. It is not a model that the US should emulate.
Perhaps we can learn much more from Cyrus the Great (580-529 BC) the Persian benevolent
emperor who declared the first charter of human rights in the history.
Contrary to Genghis Khan, he was very generous and kind to the conquered, who recognized him
as a liberator and "Law-giver".
He respected their religion and culture. Genghis was the opposite of Cyrus. When he conquered
Persia, he was extremely brutal.
"Weatherford notes: "He allowed groups to follow traditional law in their area, so long as it
did not conflict with the Great Law, which functioned as a supreme law or a common law over
everyone." This reflects another important task for national leaders, who must seek to honor,
and even encourage, local governments and economies, rather than applying one-size-fits-all
solutions."
I guess the Great Khan was a very fortunate man he did not have to deal with an
uncontrollable globalized financial network serving banks and multinational corporations
only.
The people over elites, yep. Is that not what the Great Trump promised?
Interesting article, though its relevance to our current unpleasantness is a bit hard to
swallow. MacArthur considered Timujin/Genghis Khan to be the greatest military genius of all
time. Can't argue against that assertion. To my knowledge, he never lost a single battle, and
his Mongol empire became the largest in history, controlling over 60 percent of the Eurasian
landmass (including China under his grandson, Kublai).
Nevertheless, as Marcus Aurelius might have written "Where is Genghis Khan now?" And his
empire? After he died, his descendants (Timujin's progeny was enormous) fell into quarreling
among themselves. When another grandson, Mangu Kahn, was defeated by the great Sultan Baybars
and the Egyptian Mamluks at the Battle of An Jalut, the empire began its slow recession.
Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler succumbed to the "Arrow of Time"–along with their
empires. And in the latter case, the United States will suffer the same fate, as difficult as
it may be for us to envision.
As Peter O'Toole's T.E. Lawrence said "Nothing is written." And nothing–is
forever.
In fairness one should take account of the responsibility of some of the conquered for the
westward expansion of the Mongol Empire. The rules of diplomacy we expect today probably
descend from the practice of the ancient Persian empires, but they had been adopted by the
steppe dwellers long before the days of Genghis Khan.
His most powerful neighbor to the west was the Khwarezmian Empire. The Shah of Khwarezmia
gave ample casus belli to Genghis Khan, and not long after died a refugee on an island in the
Caspian and had to be buried in his servant's shirt as he had none of his own. There were
further consequences.
The Shah's mother was a princess of the Qipchak nomads, who dominated the western steppe,
and they thus became enemies of the Mongols. After the fall of Khwarezmia, Genghis Khan sent
a reconnaissance force to scope out the western steppe and neighboring regions, two divisions
led by two of his best generals but with no mission to conquer anyone or to fight unless
necessary.
They needed to cross the Caucasus Mountains from south to north, but were impeded first by
the Georgians (who had suffered greatly at the hands of the Khwarezmians but did not regard
the Mongols with gratitude) and then by a Qipchak contingent who blockaded the pass. So the
Mongols first destroyed the Georgian army, and then tricked thi Qipchaks with bribes, which
they promptly took back once they were through the pass.
They then sent ambassadors to the major cities of Rus', each ruled by its own prince, to
assure them that they wanted peace with Rus' and intended to stay on the steppe. Many of the
princes, however, had taken wives from the Qipchak nobility (in addition to political
advantages secured by such unions, it seems that Qipchak girls were regarded as knowing how
to treat a fellow right), and Qipchaks in the princely courts told them that the Mongols were
dangerous enemies.
Thereupon the princes had the Mongol ambassadors thrown from the city walls (probably by
the Qipchaks). This gross violation of diplomatic norms put Rus' on the Mongols' fecal
register permanently. Worse yet, the Princes of a number of major cities were incited by the
Qipchak to take their armies and drive off the Mongols.
The latter staged a feigned retreat and led the Rus' forces a merry chase until they had
them with their backs to the River Kalka. Then they did what the Rus' princes could hardly
have expected (the Qipchaks should have, but were blinded by thirst for revenge)–they
turned and slaughtered the Rus' armies.
Then they went back and reported to the Great Khan, fulfulling their orders exactly. When
under his successor Ögödei the Mongols returned to Rus', they regarded the Rus'ians
as a low-life lot who violated basic rules of decency in international relations, had no
grasp of such military basics as unity of command, and had needlessly made themselves enemies
of the Great Khan and of the Blue Heaven.
The Khwarezmian Shah, Queen Tamara of Georgia, and the princes of Rus' could at least have
treated the Mongols politely. It might have saved them a lot of trouble.
by Justin
Raimondo Posted on November 15,
2018 November 14, 2018 We don't really hear all that much about Melania Trump in the
media except occasional digs at her immigration status and a few daring photos. That's
because the FLOTUS is one of the few unreservedly good things about this administration, and
of course the media doesn't want to go there. Her grace, her reserve, her remarkable calm at
the epicenter of a tumultuous White House, and, strikingly, her sense of style (and I don't
just mean her clothes) puts her on a different plane from the Washington circus that
surrounds her.
She had managed to keep her distance from the cutthroat politics of the Beltway, that is,
until her
collision with Mira Ricardel, National Security Advisor John Bolton's top aide and
enforcer. Ricardel apparently disparaged the First Lady to other members of the White House
staff, and tried to withhold resources from her on her recent trip to Africa. Whatever
personal interactions of an unpleasant nature may have passed between these women, it's hard
to imagine what provoked the office of the FLOTUS to issue the following statement :
"It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the
honor of serving in this White House."
Ricardel is described by those who know her as abrasive, a bureaucratic in-fighter, and
one "who doesn't suffer fools lightly." Having mistaken the First Lady for a fool, Ms.
Ricardel is the one who will suffer – along with Bolton, who has protected her since
her appointment from a chorus of critics, but who cannot stand against Melania.
So Team Bolton is on the outs, which means the America Firsters within the administration
who oppose our foreign policy of globalism and perpetual war are on the rise. Which leads us
to contemplate the meaning of this incident. The War Party's ranks are not filled with Mr.
Nice Guys. They are nearly all of them pushy self-serving aggressive SOBs, with about as much
personal charm as a rattlesnake.
I'm reminded of an essay by the
conservative philosopher Claes Ryn, professor of politics at Catholic University, in which he
describes the obnoxious behavior of the children of our political class in a local
MacDonald's just inside one of the Beltway's more prestigious neighborhoods:
"Deference to grown-ups seems unknown. I used to take offense, but the children have
only taken their cue from their parents, who took their cue from their parents. The adults,
for their part, talk in loud, penetrating voices, some on cell phones, as if no other
conversations mattered. The scene exudes self-absorption and lack of self-discipline.
"Yes, this picture has everything to do with U.S. foreign policy. This is the emerging
American ruling class, which is made up increasingly of persons used to having the world
cater to them. If others challenge their will, they throw a temper tantrum. Call this the
imperialistic personality – if 'spoilt brat' sounds too crude."
The Imperialistic Personality, indeed! It seems Ms. Ricardel had one too many temper
tantrums so that even in the permissive atmosphere of Washington, D.C., it was too much.
There are a lot of imperialistic personalities in that particular location, it seems, for one
reason or another. But things are different in Donald Trump's Washington, and even if we have
to take down the Ricardels one by one, just think of the numbers we can rack up in the next
six years.
A NOTE TO MY READERS : My apologies for the short column: I have some medical
issues to take care off this week and I'm a bit pressed for time.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes
deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out
loud.
"... The more I think of it, the more similarities I see between the fall of the Soviet Union & Warsaw pact countries and the United States & NATO countries. Time for some truth bombs, Namely... ..."
"... 1. A bloated military industry that is strangling the civilian side of the economy in a struggle for limited resources. The US official spends 720 billion on the military (not counting the NSA & NSA budgets, the operating expenses of the Afghanistan/Iraq wars, US nuclear weapon costs are paid out from the department of Energy, the real cost is probably around 1.1 Trillion dollars annually) for that amount of money the US could repave all the highways, replace every bridge, pay for universal health care for all citizens, send every American to university AND still have enough money left over to replace every Hospital in the US), but the civilian economy will get none of that money and will instead make due with the rusting relics from Johnson's Great Society Programs he started in the mid-60s (which is now 60yrs old) ..."
"... Strictly regulated economic relationships between the central power and their "vassal" states, which bleeds off the wealth out of the central power's country in the form of bribes to the vassal states' elites to ensure their loyalty. ..."
"... A decaying political elite that draws it's legitimacy from its' victory in a prior great conflict 30-40 years (the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet Union, The Cold War for the US). ..."
"... Declining life expectancy: average life expectancy has declined for most Americans for 3yrs in a row ..."
"... Increasing drug and Alcohol abuse ..."
"... Lastly and most importantly, a corrupt and dishonest media. ..."
"... If the newsmedia deliberately misinforms the electorate it logically flows that the electorate will not create the best polices and political culture will deteriorate into a meaningless Blue Team vs Red Team dichotomy as opposed to a reasoned debate on the best of political, economic, foreign or social policies. ..."
"... The US's trajectory as it is, clearly parallel's the Soviet Union and Russia's situation during the mid-80's. This is NOT to say I am hoping it will continue to do so, but if the US doesn't address these 6 points it WILL create a systemic crisis because these issues by their very nature do not promote stability as they do not allow for self-correction ..."
The more I think of it, the more similarities I see between the fall of the Soviet Union
& Warsaw pact countries and the United States & NATO countries. Time for some truth
bombs, Namely...
1. A bloated military industry that is strangling the civilian side of the economy
in a struggle for limited resources. The US official spends 720 billion on the military
(not counting the NSA & NSA budgets, the operating expenses of the Afghanistan/Iraq wars,
US nuclear weapon costs are paid out from the department of Energy, the real cost is probably
around 1.1 Trillion dollars annually) for that amount of money the US could repave all the
highways, replace every bridge, pay for universal health care for all citizens, send every
American to university AND still have enough money left over to replace every Hospital in the
US), but the civilian economy will get none of that money and will instead make due with the
rusting relics from Johnson's Great Society Programs he started in the mid-60s (which is now
60yrs old)
2. Strictly regulated economic relationships between the central power and their
"vassal" states, which bleeds off the wealth out of the central power's country in the form
of bribes to the vassal states' elites to ensure their loyalty. This weakens the Central
power's civilian economy, where generating chaos in the Vassal states as the elites place
their economic interests above the interests of the state (also making the elites alienated
from the non-elite citizenry who suffer most from these policies). Ukraine's Robber Barons
have profited mightily from their relationship with the US, but Ukraine as a state is in
civil war and near collapse, kept alive only by "Bribes" from the US/IMF/EU, how is this in
the interests of the Ukrainian people
3. A decaying political elite that draws it's legitimacy from its' victory in a prior
great conflict 30-40 years (the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet Union, The Cold War for
the US). Note that just like the Soviet union of the 80s most of the Democratic &
Republican leadership is in its' 70-80s and none of them seem interested in retirement (Nancy
Pelosi, John McCain, Diane Feinstein), the average senator is now 61 years old, an age when
most plebeians are planning on leaving the workforce. How many great (or at least competent)
political leaders are being pushed out of the political arena in favor of the geriatric
status quo, the US/the West has gone from a democracy to a Gerontocracy(rule by the old). I
don't know about you, but I cant wait to see what revolutionary economic policies 85yr old
Nancy Pelosi will bring to the floor of the house!
4. Declining life expectancy: average life expectancy has declined for most Americans
for 3yrs in a row , despite (or perhaps because of) a half-assed, unaffordable,
semi-universal, mandatory health insurance plan. Life expectancy increased within the Soviet
Union stagnated in the 1980s then dropped more than 10yrs (to a low of 58.9yrs for men!),
before slowly recovering and the growing to 71.5 yrs in 2018.
5. Increasing drug and Alcohol abuse : the collapse of the Soviet Union and
Russia resulted to a spike in deaths due to suicide, alcohol and drug abuse (alcohol abuse
being a historical Russian ill), since the 2000s we've seen a similar spike in deaths due to
drug abuse and suicide (firearms), like the Russians of the 90s the Americans seem to be
embracing their own historical ills of shooting up (both in drugs and guns) as a means of
coping with the economic and social dislocation of the last 18yrs
6. Lastly and most importantly, a corrupt and dishonest media. The Soviet union
had 2 major news papers Komsomolskaya Pravda (Truth) & Izvestia (news), a popular saying
in the Soviet Union was that "there's no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia". The US
outdid the Soviet Union by creating 6 Mass media news outlets, but all of them just give the
left or right wing interpretation of US policy. My advise is this, NEVER read The New York
Times and the Washington Post for news or the truth, only read them to know the Party line.
The Corruption of the mass media & news industries is the worst of all similarities
because the entire organizing theory of a Democracy is that an informed and educated
electorate will create the best (a more perfect) form of governance. If the newsmedia
deliberately misinforms the electorate it logically flows that the electorate will not create
the best polices and political culture will deteriorate into a meaningless Blue Team vs Red
Team dichotomy as opposed to a reasoned debate on the best of political, economic, foreign or
social policies.
The US's trajectory as it is, clearly parallel's the Soviet Union and Russia's situation
during the mid-80's. This is NOT to say I am hoping it will continue to do so, but if the US
doesn't address these 6 points it WILL create a systemic crisis because these issues by their
very nature do not promote stability as they do not allow for self-correction (everything is
based on bribing people to put their interests above that of the local society itself, take
away the brides the system collapses as people withdraw their support in favor of local
interests, increase the bribes the system collapses because it hollows out the economic
vitality that pays for the bribes, maintain the status quo, the system collapses because it
does not address the social/economic/political problems created by the status quo)
"... Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its shores are in their nineties, and soon there won't be any of them left. ..."
"... Every single person who has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil. ..."
"... Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn't wake up to the fact that its government's insanely bloated military budget is being used to unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth. ..."
"... Your rulers have never feared the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the terrorists, the Iranians, the Chinese or the Russians. They fear you. They fear the American public suddenly waking up to the evil things that are being done in your name and using your vast numbers to shrug off the existing power structures without firing a shot, as easily as removing a heavy coat on a warm day. If enough of you loudly withdraw your consent for their insatiable warmongering, that fear will be enough to keep them in check. ..."
The US will be celebrating Veterans Day, and many a striped flag shall be waved. The social
currency of esteem will be used to elevate those who have served in the US military, thereby
ensuring future generations of recruits to be thrown into the gears of the globe-spanning war
machine
Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their
country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its
shores are in their nineties, and soon there won't be any of them left.
Every single person who
has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other
than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been
fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for
imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil.
I just said something you're not supposed to say. People have dedicated many years of their
lives to the service of the US military; they've given their limbs to it, they've suffered
horrific brain damage for it, they've given their very lives to it. Families have been ripped
apart by the violence that has been inflicted upon members of the US Armed Forces; you're not
supposed to let them hear you say that their loved one was destroyed because some sociopathic
nerds somewhere in Washington decided that it would give America an advantage over potential
economic rivals to control a particular stretch of Middle Eastern dirt. But it is true, and if
we don't start acknowledging that truth lives are going to keep getting thrown into the gears
of the machine for the power and profit of a few depraved oligarchs. So I'm going to keep
saying it.
Last week I saw the hashtag #SaluteToService trending on Twitter. Apparently the NFL had a
deal going where every time someone tweeted that hashtag they'd throw a few bucks at some
veteran's charity. Which sounds sweet, until you consider three things:
2. The NFL has taken millions of
dollars from the Pentagon for displays of patriotism on the field, including for the
policy of bringing all players out for the national anthem every game starting in 2009 (which
led to Colin Kaepernick's demonstrations and the obscene backlash against him).
3. VETERANS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RELY ON FUCKING CHARITY.
Seriously, how is "charity for veterans" a thing, and how are people not extremely weirded
out by it? How is it that you can go out and get your limbs blown off for slave wages after
watching your friends die and innocent civilians perish, come home, and have to rely on charity
to get by? How is it that you can risk life and limb killing and suffering irreparable
psychological trauma for some plutocrat's agendas, plunge into poverty when you come home, and
then see the same plutocrat labeled a "philanthropist" because he threw a few tax-deductible
dollars at a charity that gave you a decent prosthetic leg?
Taking care of veterans should be factored into the budget of every act of military
aggression . If a government can't make sure its veterans are housed, healthy and happy in a
dignified way for the rest of their lives, it has no business marching human beings into harm's
way. The fact that you see veterans on the street of any large US city and people who fought in
wars having to beg "charities" for a quality mechanical wheelchair shows you just how much of a
pathetic joke this Veterans Day song and dance has always been.
They'll send you to mainline violence and trauma into your mind and body for the power and
profit of the oligarchic rulers of the US-centralized empire, but it's okay because everyone
gets a long weekend where they're told to thank you for your service. Bullshit.
Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct
designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It
glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be
recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn't
wake up to the fact that its government's insanely bloated military budget is being used to
unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth.
The only way to honor veterans, really, truly honor them, is to help end war and make sure
no more lives are put into a position where they are on the giving or receiving end of evil,
stupid, meaningless violence. The way to do that is to publicly, loudly and repeatedly make it
clear that you do not consent to the global terrorism being perpetrated in your name. These
bastards work so hard conducting propaganda to manufacture your consent for endless
warmongering because they need that consent . So don't give it to them.
Your rulers have never feared the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the terrorists, the
Iranians, the Chinese or the Russians. They fear you. They fear the American public suddenly
waking up to the evil things that are being done in your name and using your vast numbers to
shrug off the existing power structures without firing a shot, as easily as removing a heavy
coat on a warm day. If enough of you loudly withdraw your consent for their insatiable
warmongering, that fear will be enough to keep them in check.
This Veterans Day, don't honor those who have served by giving reverence and legitimacy to a
war machine which is exclusively used for inflicting great evil. Honor them by disassembling
that machine.
* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see
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Patreon or Paypal , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With
Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
So the USA Congress operates under CIA surveillance... Due to CIA access to Saudi money the situation is probably much
worse then described as CIA tried to protect both its level of influence and shadow revenue streams.
Notable quotes:
"... The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing. ..."
"... I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014 ..."
"... The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement. ..."
"... According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper." ..."
"... Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications ..."
"... CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director ..."
"... During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016. ..."
CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
The Inspector General expressed concern about "potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality" and "chilling effect"
Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.
The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures
are contained in two letters of "Congressional notification" originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept
secret until now.
In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during
"routing counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems," the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and
the CIA's head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he's concerned "about the potential compromise to
whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent 'chilling effect' that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might
have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing."
The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch,
is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence
agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.
"Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints," McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats
and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss
(R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type
of monitoring that occurred was "lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes" but
"I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive
Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community
Inspector General 2014
The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The
fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers
raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly,"
wrote Grassley in a statement.
According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with
"bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper."
Grassley adds that he repeated his request to declassify the letters under the Trump administration, but that Trump intelligence
officials failed to respond. The documents were finally declassified this week after Grassley appealed to the new Intelligence Community
Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
History of alleged surveillance abuses
Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the
possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications. A Congressional staffer involved at the time says Clapper's
response seemed to imply that if Congressional communications were "incidentally" collected by the CIA, the material would not be
saved or reported up to CIA management.
"In the event of a protected disclosure by a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring
user activity," Clapper wrote to Grassley and Wyden on July 25, 2014, "there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported
to agency leadership under an insider threat program."
However, the newly-declassified letters indicate the opposite happened in reality with the whistleblower-related emails:
"CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually
shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy
Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director."
Clapper has previously come under fire for his 2013 testimony to Congress in which he denied that the national Security Agency
(NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Weeks later, Clapper's statement was proven false by material leaked by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
"During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance,"
said
Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016.
"Top officials, officials who reported to Director Clapper, repeatedly misled the American people and even lied to them."
Clapper has repeatedly denied lying, and said that any incorrect information he provided was due to misunderstandings or mistakes.
Clapper and Brennan have also acknowledged taking part in the controversial practice of "unmasking" the protected names of U.S.
citizens - including people connected to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump - whose communications were "incidentally" captured
in US counterintelligence operations. Unmaskings within the US intelligence community are supposed to be extremely rare and only
allowed under carefully justified circumstances. This is to protect the privacy rights of American citizens. But it's been revealed
that Obama officials requested unmaskings on a near daily basis during the election year of 2016.
Clapper and Brennan have said their activities were lawful and not politically motivated. Both men have become vocal critics of
President Trump.
Can you imagine what kind of place the US would have been under Clinton?!!!!!!
All the illegality, spying, conniving, dirty tricks, arcancides, selling us out to the highest bidder and full on attack against
our Constitution would be in full swing!
When intel entities can operate unimpeded and un-monitored, it spells disaster for everyone and everything outside that parameter.
Their operations go unnoticed until some stray piece of information exposes them. There are many facilities that need to be purged
and audited, but since this activity goes on all over the world, there is little to stop it. Even countries that pledge allegiance
and cooperation are blindsiding their allies with bugs, taps, blackmails, and other crimes. Nobody trusts nobody, and that's a
horrid fact to contend with in an 'advanced' civilization.
Forget the political parties. When the intelligence agencies spy on everyone, they know all about politicians of both parties
before they ever win office, and make sure they have enough over them to control them. They were asleep at the switch when Trump
won, because no one, including them, believed he would ever win. Hillary was their candidate, the State Department is known overseas
as "the political arm of the CIA". They were furious when she lost, hence the circus ever since.
From its founding by the Knights of Malta the JFK&MLK-assassinating, with Mossad 9/11-committing CIA has been the Vatican's
US Fifth Column action branch, as are the FBI and NSA: with an institutional hiring preference for Roman Catholic "altared boy"
closet-queen psychopaths "because they're practiced at keeping secrets."
Think perverts Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe "licked it off the wall?"
I agree with you 100%. Problem is, tons of secret technology and information have been passed out to the private sector. And
the private sector is not bound to the FOIA requests, therefore neutralizing the obligation for government to disclose classified
material. They sidestepped their own policies to cooperate with corrupt MIC contractors, and recuse themselves from disclosing
incriminating evidence.
Everyone knows that spying runs in the fam. 44th potus Mom and Gma BOTH. An apple doesn't fall from the tree. If ppl only knew
the true depth of the evil and corruption we would be in the hospital with a heart attack. Gilded age is here and has been, since
our democracy was hijacked (McCain called it an intervention) back in 1963. Unfortunately it started WAY back before then when
(((they))) stole everything with the installation of the Fed.
The FBI and CIA have long since slipped the controls of Congress and the Constitution. President Trump should sign an executive
order after the mid terms and stand down at least the FBI and subject the CIA to a senate investigation.
America needs new agencies that are accountable to the peoples elected representatives.
A determined care has been used to cultivate in D.C., a system that swiftly decapitates the whistleblowers. Resulting in an
increasingly subservient cadre of civil servants who STHU and play ostrich, or drool at what scraps are about to roll off the
master's table as the slide themselves into a better position, taking advantage to sell vice, weapons, and slaves.
What the hell does the CIA have to do with ANYTHING in the United States? Aren't they limited to OUTSIDE the U.S.? So why would
they be involved in domestic communications for anything? These clowns need to be indicted for TREASON!
"... There is something very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies. There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to testify before congress. ..."
"... Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary. ..."
"... "Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it." ..."
"... "While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the £4 billion annual license fee." - BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women ..."
"... The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it. ..."
"... While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE. ..."
"... Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony." ..."
"... In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another 'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage] ..."
"... The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945 ..."
"... I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months. The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war. We are in an age of new mccarthyism ..."
"... What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told to! ..."
"... Yes, the "New Pearl Harbour" called for and carried out by the authors of the "Project for a New American Century" worked as planned. ..."
"... Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called it as soon as the buildings imploded! ..."
"... Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form a "Political Revolution against Empire" ..."
"... While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is concerned. ..."
"... As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood. ..."
This is one of the most sensible editorials on the Russia issue I've seen, and it is true, insofar as it goes. There is something
very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies.
There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to
testify before congress.
That said, I wouldn't dismiss the effect of the Russian involvement, or the relevance of the charges against Trump and his
people. Bear in mind that the Party of McCarthy has been all about spying on its opponents from the days of HUAC. Nixon's break-in
at the Watergate Hotel didn't singlehandedly decide the election ... but who would believe that was the only underhanded tactic
he used? Republicans believe that if you're not cheating, you're not trying -- holding out for any ethical standard makes you
inherently disloyal and unworthy of support. Something like Kavanaugh's involvement in the hacking of Democrats in 2003 (
http://www.foxnews.com/poli... ) should be no surprise; neither should the "Guccifer" hack that put the Democrats' data in
the hands of Wikileaks. (Their subsequent attempts to demand Wikileaks not publish such a newsworthy leak, of course, is the sort
of thing that undermines their position with me!)
Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary.
But if you go back in your house after the Republicans were minding it, don't be surprised if together with the missing couch
change you notice some missing silverware, your kitchen tap has been sawed off, and the laptop is short half its RAM. By the time
you've catalogued everything missing, the stolen brass part from the gas main downstairs might have blown you to smithereens.
"Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie,
the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it."
There are many reasons the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule. Each one of them is bound up with the lies required to enforce
its rule. The greater its unfitness, "the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it.
"While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise
is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just
want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the £4 billion annual license fee."
- BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women
The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it.
While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies
to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in
the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE.
Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of
colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources
and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony."
In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another
'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite
an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage]
The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945. It is time radical critiques of
its values, power and methods should call it by its right name.
I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months.
The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war.
We are in an age of new mccarthyism
What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction
they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told
to!
just because it was a convenient act for them to do what they wanted in conquering iraq is not reason that idiots like that are
capable of planning and concealing the numerous co-conspirators to arrange something like 9..11. imperialism can always count
on blowback to have occasion for further crimes. there is the slim chance that they knew what was being planned and that they
let it happen - except that none of those folks is evil enough for that. not even dick cheney. what i love about all conspiracy
theories of the american kind is that they never nam or show an actual conspirator conspiring. look at one of the truly great
failed conspiracy, that of the 20th july 1944 in germany that was meant to kill hitler and how many people were arrested in no
time at all and executed..
A "conspiracy" is just any two or more people getting together to discuss something affecting one or more other people without
them being party to the discussion. Like a surprise birthday party, for instance. Obviously the "official" version of the 9/11
events is also a "conspiracy theory" that 19 mostly Saudi Arabians led by a guy hiding in a cave in Afghanistan conspired to carry
out co-ordinated attacks that just happened to coincide with most of the USAF being conveniently off in Alaska and northern Canada
on an exercise that day, and another "coinciding exercise" simulating a multiple hijacking being carried out in the northeast
US thereby confusing the Air Traffic Controllers as to whether the hijackings were "real world or exercise", significantly delaying
the response, among other things.
Do you really believe that WTC 7, a steel frame building which was not adjacent to WTC 1 & 2, and was NOT hit by any airplanes,
coincidentally collapsed due to low temperature paper and furniture office fires? Something that has never happened before or
since? Or that such low temperature fires would cause the massive heavily reinforced concrete central core/elevator shaft to collapse
first, pulling the rest of the building inward onto it in classic controlled demolition technique?
It is getting more difficult to find the videos showing that now as Google, as with WSWS articles, is pushing them off the
front pages of results, while Snopes has put out a some very misleading reports that set up false "straw man" claims and then
"disprove" them. Even the "disproofs" are false.
For instance, a Snopes report on the WTC 7 collapse states: "relied heavily on discredited claims, none of which were new,
including:
Jet fuel cannot melt steel beams (This claim is misleading, as steel beams do to not need to melt completely to be compromised
structurally).
A sprinkler system would have prevented temperatures from rising high enough to cause to cause structural damage. (This claim
ignores the fact that a crash from a 767 jet would likely destroy such a system.)
The structural system would have been protected by fireproofing material (similarly, such a system would have been damaged
in a 767 crash). "
Jet fuel, which is Kerosene, burns at around 575º in open air, which was the case in WTC buildings 1 & 2. Most of it was vaporized
by the impact with the buildings and burned of within minutes. At any rate, 575º is far below the point at which structural steel
specifically designed to withstand high temperature fires like that used in the World Trade Centre buildings is weakened.
All of which is irrelevant, as are the other "points" made by Snopes, because Building 7 was not hit by an airplane and there
was no jet fuel involved. Something conveniently "overlooked" by Snopes and other similar misleading "disproofs". Not to mention
that the Intelligence establishment is busy putting out false trails constantly which use, for instance, obviously faked photos
or videos of the three WTC buildings collapsing to discredit the real videos and photos by setting up "straw men" they can then
"disprove" and point to as "evidence" that people who don't believe the official version are "creating fake news".
Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called
it as soon as the buildings imploded!
"The perpetrators and their conspiracy is not a theory since it has been proved."
By "proved" I assume you are referring to "proofs" such as the fantastical claim that Mohammed Atta's passport was allegedly
and fortuitously "found" when it supposedly survived the 600 mph impact of the 767 he was supposedly piloting with a huge steel
and concrete building, survived the huge fireball it was supposedly in the middle of unscorched, and conveniently fluttered to
the ground intact to land at the feet of an FBI agent who immediately realized it must have belonged to one of the hijackers!
Even Hans Christian Andersen couldn't invent Fairy Tales like that.
the best that conspiracy theorist can do is, invariably, to call proven facts "just another theory " which only proves that they
are actually aware that they are full of hot air! zarembas father as a structural engineer unless a fantasy is certainly better
off among the dead than among the living and perpetrating his ignorance of steel and weight and fire onto the world!
Just because all the details aren't known as to who conspired and why there's enough holes in the "official conspiracy theory"
of 19 hijackers to conclude that this could not have been pulled off without some conspiring on the American side. Certainly the
the neocons benefited greatly from these attacks. So motive is there for sure.
Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most
effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party
Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party
are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form
a "Political Revolution against Empire"
While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is
concerned.
There is nothing to win in global nuke war, all know it while the outcome would be surely the current global oligarchy loosing
grip on population destroying the system that works for them so well giving chance to what they dread socialist revolution they
would have been much weaker to counter.
Regional conflicts are just positioning of oligarchy for management of global oligarchic country club while strict class morality
is maintained.
What I do not we are conditions for war (split of global ruling elites) while what I see is broad propaganda of war as a excuse
to clamp down on fake enemy in order to control respective populations while there is factual unity among world oligarchy.
As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch
of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood.
She died abandoned by those on the left who embraced the war for their political aspirations, she was murdered for her true
internationalism i.e. No war fought between working people of one country and working people of another country.
Kalen, it's only effective to use the correct and understandable term 'Empire' in exposing, warning, and motivating average Americans
--- since very few even know what words like; oligarchy, plutocracy, fascism, authoritarianism, corporate-state, or Wolin's 'inverted
totalitarianism' mean --- let alone could ever serve as rallying cries for the coming essential Second American Revolution against
EMPIRE.
As Pat would have shouted if Tom had taken the Paine to edit his call, "Give me Liberty over EMPIRE, or Give me Death!"
"Sweet Carolyn" OH OH OH --- Yes, only a very small percentage of Americans understand that our former country, the U.S. of America,
is categorically, provably, and absolutely a new form of Empire, and is inexorably the first in world history an; 'effectively-disguised',
'truly-global', 'dual-party Vichy', and 'capitalist-fueled' EMPIRE --- an EMPIRE, really just an EMPIRE!
Just do an honest survey, "Sweet Carolyn", yourself, and if you're not a "Sweet Liarlyn", you will have to admit that essentially
ZERO of the first 1000 people you ask, will say --- "Oh ya, Carolyn, of course I know that this whole effin 'system' that others
less informed may still be so stupid that they think they live in a real country, when I (enter their name) do solemnly swear
is just an effin EMPIRE, which is so well disguised, that these few idiots who don't understand that they are just citizen/'subjects'
of this monsterous EMPIRE."
Do the survey, "Sweet Carolyn" and if you don't lie to yourself --- which maybe you do, because HELL, your job is to lie to
others (so it's quite likely that you'll lie about anything) --- you'll find that exactly zero average Americans have the effin
slightest idea in the world that their great 'country' is actually an effin EMPIRE.
HELL, Carolyn, almost half the Americans repeatedly yell, "We're number ONE", "We're number ONE", that their brains would rather
rattle themselves to death than even let logic, history, knowledge, or anything into their addled and propaganda filled heads!
Excellent article, and it did a particularly good job of tying together the foreign policy and domestic policy stratagems of a
major faction of the U.S. ruling class. I, for one, do not doubt that the Russians conduct some sort of cyber warfare against
the U.S.; but that must be understood by considering the fact that every major governmental, political, military, and business
organization on the face of the Earth must now operate in this manner. A friend of mine's son, who was in the Army, pointed out
that the big players, by a wide margin, in spying on and to some degree interfering in the U.S. domestic scene are China and Israel.
Kevin Barrett has written and said on various radio shows that much of what is attributed to the "Russians" are actually the actions
of Russian/Israeli dual citizens, many of whom move freely between the U.S., Russia, and Israel. And, of course, the U.S. runs
major spy and manipulation operations in more countries than any other nation of Earth, and U.S. based corporations are busy both
inside the U.S. and in foreign places in similar activities.
It is clearly a desire of significant sectors, of the Capitalist rulers of the U.S., to repress dissent and political activities
that oppose their agendas. It took them a few years to realize that their old methods using TV, hate radio, magazines, direct
mail, and newspapers were losing their effectiveness. They have been increasing their attacks on leftist websites, hacking into
websites, closing websites using phonied-up "national security" justifications, employing numerous trolls, and establishing and
funding more far right websites, such as Breitbart and Infowars. These efforts are most effective when they are not overpowering
and heavy handed.
The classic book on this was the 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
by Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann. Rob Williams has updated the concept for the internet age in
<http:
www.vermontindependent.org ="" the-post-truth-world-reviving-the-propaganda-model-of-news-for-our-digital-age=""/>.
The strategy
is nothing new, the methods are merely updated and use the latest technologies.
I guess the lesson to be learned here is that rigging elections through byzantine electoral laws and billion dollar corporate
slush funds is a thing of the past. All you need now is 13 amateur IT goomba's with a marketing scheme and twitter accounts. Well, sure is a fragile "World's Sole Superpower" we got here. Go Team?
>>Johnstone: The Best Way To Honor War Veterans Is To Stop Creating Them<<
Preach!
The military defends Money Power Monopolist Mega-Corporate Fascist Global Empire, not
America, and definitely NOT the Constitution. The New Deal effectively wiped out the
Constitution, which was the "Old Deal."
Syria and Iran aren't threats, they are countries that don't have debt-based money systems
controlled by the Money Power Monopolists.
"In a sense, there is no "future". Currently, you note a consolidation of the few
remaining countries without a "central bank" ...and how rapidly this is occurring. Look for
Syria next to fall, and fall quickly.
North Korea has already cut a deal under the aegis of China...feit accompli. Cuba has also
agreed to the North American integration once Fidel "passes".
That leaves IRAN. And biblical prophesy. The fallout from that conflict sets the stage for
the true new world order as has been broadcast in the media for the last 13 years or so."
~Unnamed Rothschild
The establishment of central banks is ALWAYS a necessary first step of subjugation of
geographically congregated bloodlines. Note that Libya's first official act, before even the
corpses turned stiff...was the establishment of a central bank. Those rebel forces were
certainly well schooled by someone!
~Unnamed Rothschild
Amazing how Libyan rebels took time out of their daily war duties to establish a CENTRAL
BANK! Imagine the paperwork in getting that done on the battlefield!
Those rebels are a well educated lot!
Laughing out Loud!
Seriously, don't the serfs notice things like this?
~Unnamed Rothschild
The financier of the military makes it clear they are attacking Western countries -
monetarily and economically.
"Remember, the equity and bond markets exist only to remove fiat from circulation!"
~Unnamed Rothschild
Our soldiers joined, were trained, given orders. The best way to honor veterans is to quit
putting it on them. This is the government we have because it is the government we
want. It's the government we allow. This is on all of us . I think it's time for
people who are dissatisfied with the treatment of veterans, with the voter fraud, with the
lies and theft of elected officials, local, state, and federal, tired of the media lying to
us and creating fake events... perhaps it's time to peacefully strike. Perhaps it's time to
say No to vote fraud, to say No to lies and deceit.
Perhaps it's time to peacefully petition the government for redress of grievances. That's
a Constitutional Right guaranteed to Citizens of the United States. That requires an active,
constructive peaceful assembly. Everyone has had it up to the eyes with this ******** and
this con-game we're being fed.
I'd rather get stomped to death than live on with this never ending slow coup against We
The People. We hold the power. Just us. We designate that power. It should be here to protect
us. That social contract deserves respect. You may be watching the only chance in your life
that you could do anything about it, given the current President and his attitude. I really
think that. It's not enough to watch the Proud Boys punch an Antifa in the jaw. That doesn't
do it for me. That's theatre.
My girlfriends father is old army security. I'm paying the bill at Dennys and he says, let
me put my military discount on that. So he's behind a guy in an Operation Iraqi Freedom
jacket. He says, hey; I like your jacket. The guy looks at him and he says, nice hat. Army
Security Agency. The military deserves more than a discount at ******* Denny's. They deserve
a country. So do I. So do you. But there's not going to be any country if we don't peacefully
come together to hang every last traitor scumbag lying trasonous seditious bastard by just
saying NO! Arrest these traitors! I don't want my vote raped. I don't want my speach raped.
Or yours! I don't give a **** about illegals or their kids because I take care of my kids
legally and lawfully and didn't put them in that **** expecting a parent of the century
award.
I don't ******* care what you call yourself. But if it's more important than your right to
call yourself whatever you want, you are my enemy and I tell you no.
If it's legal to vote and legal to be off work to vote, to peacefully assemble, it should
be legal to redress government. It's time to show out. It's time to say we want this ********
to stop. We have paid very well for the lifestyles and presidential libraries and foundations
and kept all the traitors in good health. But we reserve the right to cut you off if you
abuse our sacrifice to you and our votes to you. We reserve the right without prejudice to
say NO. That's our right. And until we say NO! our silence equals consent.
I say NO. I say **** THE SEDITIOUS TRAITORS trying to hold on to rape us of all our
Rights. And I say long live Trump for giving our country back to us at inauguration. That's
what's up. Let's peacefully **** these people up. USE IT OR LOSE IT.
And from a movie that says the futility of it all: "We fight because we are here." Imagine
dying in the trenches of WWI or in a shithole like the trenches of Korea.
The least we could do is to learn what really happened and why. I realize I was taught an
endless string of lies about history, especially US History, WWI, WWII, Vietnam war.
Be very careful and informed before joining the military.
Libtards don't really know much about anything, so it seems. Here's the deal:
As long as there are assholes in the world, there will be wars.
I don't have a problem with that. It's the world that I live in. It's been the case
throughout all of human history. A world without wars is pure ******* fantasy. It will never
happen. It's high time that libtards start accepting the world that they live in.
The problem that we're having , is that we're shooting the wrong assholes instead
of the right ones. But you know what? All of human history shows that problems like that are
always remedied as well. And if you're doing some soul-searching, trying to figure out who
the assholes are, they're probably going to be any group of people, who can't leave other
groups of people the hell alone .
Not surprisingly, the 20th century seems to be characterized by assholes fighting each
other.
Our psychopathic dna as a nation comes mainly from england, one of the most, if not the
most murdering countries in history. england cruelly colonized Asia and Africa, and literally
never stopped murdering the innocents. Now as our ALLY, among the other killing nations, such
as France and Germany, we the USA can kill literally any country or countries for any reason
or no reason.
we as the american people will be blamed for all the monstrous destruction and
innocents deaths. separation of our country and our politicians would be necessary if we are
to have a future. looking dim. why are we still dirty, and killing innocents, why are we
allowing saudi and israel to mass murder innocent women and children ?
no one cares enough
yet. you would think by 2018 we all would have banned war and conflict, we have not. this
makes me sick. I am a vet.
I'm actually thinking of not watching football anymore the war propaganda is constant. I
went to a game and it was like walking into an armed camp. Hundreds of cops and military.
Every five minutes they're marching around and everyone has to "honor" them. It's disgusting.
All the players are told to kiss every soldiers ***. The Army are the terrorists. They all
make me want to puke.
In Australia at the moment the suicide rate is a shocker among those coming back from
Afghanistan, Iraq and places unknown, the solution they are proposing is for priority airport
treatment and more medals and other stuff along the model the US has, which is an insult as it
does nothing to financially support or mentally cure, its a cop out.
Very few wars are even about righting some amazing wrong. They merely tend to be about
treasure i.e. nat gas, oil, rare earth materials, diamonds, water, blah blah blah. And, if
there happens to be some fight, ala WWII, then you can bet your *** on it that all corporate
assholes are funding and benefiting from the war....on both sides of the coin i.e. backing
each side until a peace is called.
I don't have an answer to the human condition or our propensity to be violent and fight
etc., but I sure as **** am not cool with sacking places, and killing kids, over *******
things. We're better than this.
I have 2 kids myself. You can all be on notice that if a bomb were to be dropped on my
house, and if my kids were killed, I would likely devolve and start picking off the low
hanging fruit i.e. the zombies shuffling in and out of said bomb makers companies, and
wasting them 1 person as a time. I'd slowly, if still able, work my way up to the execs.
Hopefully, and along the way, I'd be able to wipe shareholders off of the grid, also.
When you go off to fight for "freedom", and arrive home to find that you have little to no
real freedom and essentially live in a police state, it's a shocking blow.
This sounds like something I would write. And even the damn CHURCHES honor the veteran
"serving" his country. What a crock of ****. I tell the pastor that he will be judged harshly
when his time comes. And I tell Christians that because they support the rampant murder of
millions that when they die and are standing before Jesus for judgement they will be soaked
in the blood of the innocent and he will ask you why did you support this? Why did you not
speak out against it? Then I look at them and say "good luck because you're gonna need
it".
The world is not ruled by pure evil yet. In Brazil A nationalist was elected, in Italy and
much of eastern Europe other nationalists were elected. You think the Chinese protected the
Italian and Brazilian right to free and fair elections? You think Russia is the arsenal of
freedom? You think the EU upheld the votes of the people, allowing Britain to vote on leaving
the EU and Italy and eastern Europe? You think the unelected rulers of the EU respected other
peoples right to vote? Look out onto the world, and recognize that as of today, the nations
of the world have A group to join if they chose to fight for liberty, capitalism and all the
other virtues, and that group is grounded and guaranteed by the United States of America. In
G-d I trust.
Hopeful thinking for a hopeless reality. Truth is tyrants never fall by their own swords.
It always takes someone else's. The modern problem is a bit more complex when we make the
tyrants that we later topple. The toppling is where the bucks are... just ask any of the the
last 4 Presidents and their respective Congresses.
So war is just an American problem, something we just invented? Do we read much history or is it all PBS specials now. War has ALWAYS been fucked up. Violence has been a major contributor to immigration for
all of history. Like it or not, we live in dangerous times. We can ASSUME that if America shrank it's
military and ended all interventions that world peace would magically appear....but it won't.
We can pray that while we retreat behind of big screen TVs that China will end their
territorial expansion and military programs, but they WON'T.
I'm all for reigning in our interventions, but let's not pretend that America is to blame
for human evil and aggressive behaviors....just because we are good at it..
There is an endless stream of history illustrating the absolute brutality and evil that
had persisted since the beginning of time. We should avoid embracing it but we should avoid
thinking we have the power to end it. More arrogance to be used for destructive purposes.
Nah, it is just that USA has made forever war such a profitable and ongoing
mega-business. The degenerate banker and royal families of Europe would only fight every generation or
two. You fight all the time and try to start new ones, before you finish off with the old ones,
and print global toilet paper to pay for it all. Because it is good business. **** laws,
lives and human decency.
And then you have Hollywood make ****-for-brain movies about just wars, war comradery and
heroic sacrifice and spread that **** all over the world.
So yeah, you got all the reasons for being hated for your war business.
The only way to honor veterans, really, truly honor them, is to help end war and make
sure no more lives are put into a position where they are on the giving or receiving end of
evil, stupid, meaningless violence
A bit too close to the Bone for the average American to appreciate. A well thought out & articulated article.
The machine is not the problem. It's like a gun. Guns are just mechanical devices and
can't kill until people aim them and pull the trigger. It's people that kill by forcing the
machine to do their terrible evil bidding.
It's the business and political leaders that build, guide and enable the machine and
facilitate the infrastructure and culture to wage war.
Democrats love War as we saw with LBJ, Bill Clinton (bombing the hell out of and
destroying Yugoslavia), Obama and Hillary Clinton. Democrat McNamara was one of their finest! McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War
It's both Republicans and Democrats - George Bush I's Desert Storm, Panama; George Bush II
invading Iraq, Afghanistan; Reagan invading GRENADA!, Nixon in Vietnam, assassinating
Salvador Allende in Chile, bombing Laos and Cambodia; Eisenhower started in Vietnam,
installed a dictator in Guatemala in 1954, installed Batista in Cuba, Kennedy was going to
withdraw from Vietnam and part of the reason he was assassinated; and on and on and on.
"... officials and politicians in Britain and France conspired to transform Serbia's murder of Austro-Hungary's Crown Prince into a continent-wide conflict. France burned for revenge for its defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Britain feared German commercial and naval competition. At the time, the British Empire controlled one quarter of the world's surface. Italy longed to conquer Austria-Hungary's South Tyrol. Turkey feared Russia's desire for the Straits. Austria-Hungary feared Russian expansion. ..."
"... Prof Clark clearly shows how the French and British maneuvered poorly-led Germany into the war. The Germans were petrified of being crushed between two hostile powers, France and Russia. The longer the Germans waited, the more the military odds turned against them. Tragically, Germany was then Europe's leader in social justice. ..."
"... Britain kept stirring the pot, determined to defeat commercial and colonial rival, Germany. The rush to war became a gigantic clockwork that no one could stop. All sides believed a war would be short and decisive. Crowds of fools chanted 'On to Berlin' or 'On to Paris.' ..."
"... The 1904 Russo-Japanese War offered a sharp foretaste of the 1914 conflict, but Europe's grandees paid scant attention. ..."
"... This demented war in Europe tuned into an even greater historic tragedy in 1917 when US President Woodrow Wilson, driven by a lust for power and prestige, entered the totally stalemated war on the Western Front. One million US troops and starvation caused by a crushing British naval blockade turned the tide of battle and led to Germany's surrender. ..."
"... Vengeful France and Britain imposed intolerable punishment on Germany, forcing it to accept full guilt for the war, an untruth that persists to this day. The result was Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists. If an honorable peace had been concluded in 1917, neither Hitler nor Stalin might have seized power and millions of lives would have been saved. This is the true tragedy of the Great War. ..."
"... Let us recall the words of the wise Benjamin Franklin: `No good war, no bad peace.' ..."
We are now upon the 100th anniversary of World War I, the war that was supposed to end all
wars. While honoring the 16 million who died in this conflict, we should also condemn the
memory of the politicians, officials and incompetent generals who created this horrendous blood
bath.
I've walked most of the Western Front of the Great War, visited its battlefields and haunted
forts, and seen the seas of crosses marking its innumerable cemeteries.
As a former soldier and war correspondent, I've always considered WWI as he stupidest, most
tragic and catastrophic of all modern wars.
The continuation of this conflict, World War II, killed more people and brought more
destruction on civilians in firebombed cities but, at least for me, World War I holds a special
horror and poignancy. This war was not only an endless nightmare for the soldiers in their
pestilential trenches, it also violently ended the previous 100 years of glorious European
civilization, one of mankind's most noble achievements.
I've explored the killing fields of Verdun many times and feel a visceral connection to this
ghastly place where up to 1,000,000 soldiers died. I have even spent the night there, listening
to the sirens that wailed without relent, and watching searchlights that pierced the night,
looking for the ghosts of the French and German soldiers who died here.
Verdun's soil was so poisoned by explosives and lethal gas that to this day it produces only
withered, stunted scrub and sick trees. Beneath the surface lie the shattered remains of men
and a deadly harvest of unexploded shells that still kill scores of intruders each year. The
spooky Ossuaire Chapel contains the bone fragments of 130,000 men, blown to bits by the
millions of high explosive shells that deluged Verdun.
The town of the same name is utterly bleak, melancholy and cursed. Young French and German
officers are brought here to see firsthand the horrors of war and the crime of stupid
generalship.
Amid all the usual patriotic cant from politicians, imperialists and churchmen about the
glories of this slaughter, remember that World War I was a contrived conflict that was totally
avoidable. Contrary to the war propaganda that still clouds and corrupts our historical view,
World War I was not started by Imperial Germany.
Professor Christopher Clark in his brilliant book, `The Sleepwalkers' shows how officials
and politicians in Britain and France conspired to transform Serbia's murder of
Austro-Hungary's Crown Prince into a continent-wide conflict. France burned for revenge for its
defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Britain feared German
commercial and naval competition. At the time, the British Empire controlled one quarter of the
world's surface. Italy longed to conquer Austria-Hungary's South Tyrol. Turkey feared Russia's
desire for the Straits. Austria-Hungary feared Russian expansion.
Prof Clark clearly shows how the French and British maneuvered poorly-led Germany into the
war. The Germans were petrified of being crushed between two hostile powers, France and Russia.
The longer the Germans waited, the more the military odds turned against them. Tragically,
Germany was then Europe's leader in social justice.
Britain kept stirring the pot, determined to defeat commercial and colonial rival, Germany.
The rush to war became a gigantic clockwork that no one could stop. All sides believed a war
would be short and decisive. Crowds of fools chanted 'On to Berlin' or 'On to Paris.'
Few at the time understood the impending horrors of modern war or the geopolitical demons
one would release. The 1904 Russo-Japanese War offered a sharp foretaste of the 1914 conflict,
but Europe's grandees paid scant attention.
Even fewer grasped how the collapse of the antiquated Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires
would send Europe and the Mideast into dangerous turmoil that persists to our day. Or how a
little-known revolutionary named Lenin would shatter Imperial Russia and turn it into the
world's most murderous state.
This demented war in Europe tuned into an even greater historic tragedy in 1917 when US
President Woodrow Wilson, driven by a lust for power and prestige, entered the totally
stalemated war on the Western Front. One million US troops and starvation caused by a crushing
British naval blockade turned the tide of battle and led to Germany's surrender.
Vengeful France and Britain imposed intolerable punishment on Germany, forcing it to accept
full guilt for the war, an untruth that persists to this day. The result was Adolf Hitler and
his National Socialists. If an honorable peace had been concluded in 1917, neither Hitler nor
Stalin might have seized power and millions of lives would have been saved. This is the true
tragedy of the Great War.
Let us recall the words of the wise Benjamin Franklin: `No good war, no bad peace.'
It's interesting that Clapper is against abandoned by Trump Iran deal.
Tramp administration is acting more like Israeli marionette here, because while there a
strategic advantage in crushing the Iranian regime for the USA and making a county another Us
vassal in the middle East, the cost for the country might be way to high (especially if we count
in the cost of additional antagonizing Russia and China). Trump might jump into the second
Afghanistan, which would really brake the back of US military -- crushing Iran military is one
thing, but occupying such a county is a very costly task. And that might well doom Israel in the
long run as settlers policies now created really antagonized, unrecognizable minority with a high
birth rate.
Vanishing one-by-one of partners are given due to collapse of neoliberalism as an ideology.
Nobody believes that neoliberalism is the future, like many believed in 80th and early 90th. This
looks more and more like a repetion of the path of the USSR after 1945, when communist ideology
was discredited and communist elite slowly fossilized. In 46 years from its victory in WWII the
USSR was dissolved. The same might happen with the USA in 50 years after winning the Cold
War.
Notable quotes:
"... a vanishing one by one of American partners who were previously supportive of U.S. leadership in curbing Iran, particularly its nuclear program. ..."
"... The United States risks losing the cooperation of historic and proven allies in the pursuit of other U.S. national security interests around the world, far beyond Iran. ..."
Only well calibrated multilateral political, economic and diplomatic pressure brought to
bear on Iran with many and diverse partners will produce the results we seek.
"Then there were none" was Agatha Christie's most memorable mystery about a house party in
which each guest was killed off one by one. Donald Trump's policy toward Iran has resulted in
much the same: a vanishing one by one of American partners who were previously supportive
of U.S. leadership in curbing Iran, particularly its nuclear program.
Dozens of states, painstakingly cultivated over decades of American leadership in blocking
Iran's nuclear capability, are now simply gone. One of America's three remaining allies on
these issues, Saudi Arabia, has become a central player in American strategy throughout the
Middle East region. But the Saudis, because of the Jamal Khashoggi killing and other reasons,
may have cut itself out of the action. The United Arab Emirates, so close to the Saudis, may
also fall away.
Such paucity of international support has left the Trump administration dangerously
isolated. "America First" should not mean America alone. The United States risks losing the
cooperation of historic and proven allies in the pursuit of other U.S. national security
interests around the world, far beyond Iran.
... ... ...
European allies share many of our concerns about Iran's regional activities, but they
strongly oppose U.S. reinstitution of secondary sanctions against them. They see the Trump
administration's new sanctions as a violation of the nuclear agreement and UN Security Council
resolutions and as undermining efforts to influence Iranian behavior. The new sanctions and
those applied on November 5 only sap European interest in cooperating to stop Iran.
... ... ...
The United States cannot provoke regime change in Iran any more than it has successfully in
other nations in the region. And, drawing on strategies used to topple governments in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the United States should be wary of launching or trying to spur a military
invasion of Iran.
Lt. Gen. James Clapper (USAF, ret.) is the former Director of National Intelligence.
Thomas R. Pickering is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Russia and
India.
"... Over 60,000 US troops either killed or wounded in conflicts ..."
"... The study estimates between 480,000 and 507,000 people were killed in the course of the three conflicts. ..."
"... Civilians make up over half of the roughly 500,000 killed, with both opposition fighters and US-backed foreign military forces each sustaining in excess of 100,000 deaths as well. ..."
"... This is admittedly a dramatic under-report of people killed in the wars, as it only attempts to calculate those killed directly in war violence, and not the massive number of others civilians who died from infrastructure damage or other indirect results of the wars. The list also excludes the US war in Syria, which itself stakes claims to another 500,000 killed since 2011. ..."
Over 60,000 US troops either killed or wounded in conflicts
Brown University has released a new study on the cost
in lives of America's Post-9/11 Wars, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The study estimates between 480,000 and 507,000 people
were killed in the course of the three conflicts.
This includes combatant deaths and civilian deaths in fighting and war violence. Civilians make up over half of the roughly
500,000 killed, with both opposition fighters and US-backed foreign military forces each sustaining in excess of 100,000 deaths as
well.
This is admittedly a dramatic under-report of people killed in the wars, as it only attempts to calculate those killed directly
in war violence, and not the massive number of others civilians who died from infrastructure damage or other indirect results of
the wars. The list also excludes the US war in Syria, which itself stakes claims to another 500,000 killed since 2011.
The report also notes that over 60,000 US troops were either killed or wounded in the course of the wars. This includes 6,951
US military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.
The Brown study also faults the US for having done very little in the last 17 years to provide transparency to the country about
the scope of the conflicts, concluding that they are "inhibited by governments determined to paint a rosy picture of perfect execution
and progress."
"... Over 60,000 US troops either killed or wounded in conflicts ..."
"... The study estimates between 480,000 and 507,000 people were killed in the course of the three conflicts. ..."
"... Civilians make up over half of the roughly 500,000 killed, with both opposition fighters and US-backed foreign military forces each sustaining in excess of 100,000 deaths as well. ..."
"... This is admittedly a dramatic under-report of people killed in the wars, as it only attempts to calculate those killed directly in war violence, and not the massive number of others civilians who died from infrastructure damage or other indirect results of the wars. The list also excludes the US war in Syria, which itself stakes claims to another 500,000 killed since 2011. ..."
Over 60,000 US troops either killed or wounded in conflicts
Brown University has released a new study on the cost
in lives of America's Post-9/11 Wars, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The study estimates between 480,000 and 507,000 people
were killed in the course of the three conflicts.
This includes combatant deaths and civilian deaths in fighting and war violence. Civilians make up over half of the roughly
500,000 killed, with both opposition fighters and US-backed foreign military forces each sustaining in excess of 100,000 deaths as
well.
This is admittedly a dramatic under-report of people killed in the wars, as it only attempts to calculate those killed directly
in war violence, and not the massive number of others civilians who died from infrastructure damage or other indirect results of
the wars. The list also excludes the US war in Syria, which itself stakes claims to another 500,000 killed since 2011.
The report also notes that over 60,000 US troops were either killed or wounded in the course of the wars. This includes 6,951
US military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.
The Brown study also faults the US for having done very little in the last 17 years to provide transparency to the country about
the scope of the conflicts, concluding that they are "inhibited by governments determined to paint a rosy picture of perfect execution
and progress."
"... You know something is fundamentally wrong when the average high school drop-out MAGA-hat-wearing Texan or Alabaman working a blue collar job has more sense, can SEE much more clearly, than the average university-educated, ideology-soaked, East Coast liberal. ..."
"... Trump is a "nationalist". More or less every administration previous to his, going back at least 100 years, was "globalist". For much of its history, the USA has been known around the world as a very patriotic (i.e., nationalist) country. Americans in general had a reputation for spontaneous chants of "USA! USA! USA!", flying the Stars And Stripes outside their houses and being very proud of their country. Sure, from time to time, that pissed off people a little in other countries but, by and large, Americans' patriotism was seen as endearing, if a little naive, by most foreigners. ..."
"... Globalism, on the other hand, as it relates to the USA, is the ideology that saturates the Washington establishment think-tanks, career politicians and bureaucrats, who are infected with the toxic belief that America can and should dominate the world . This is presented to the public as so much American largess and magnanimity, but it is, in reality, a means to increasing the power and wealth of the Washington elite. ..."
"... Consider Obama's two terms, during which he continued the massively wasteful (of taxpayer's money) and destructive (of foreigners' lives and land) "War on Terror". Consider that he appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who proceeded to joyfully bomb Libya back to the stone age and murder its leader. Consider that, under Obama, US-Russia relations reached an all-time low, with repeated attacks (of various sorts) on the Russian president, government and people, and the attempted trashing of Russia's international reputation in the eyes of the American people. Consider the Obama regime's hugely destructive war waged (mostly by proxy) on the Syrian people. Consider the Obama era coup in Ukraine that, in a few short months, set that country's prospects and development back several decades and further soured relations with Russia. ..."
"... The problem however, is that the Washington elite want - no, NEED - the American people to support such military adventurism, and what better way to do that than by concocting false "Russian collusion" allegations against Trump and having the media program the popular mind with exactly the opposite of the truth - that Trump was a "traitor" to the American people. ..."
"... The only thing Trump is a traitor to is the self-serving globally expansionist interests of a cabal of Washington insiders . This little maneuver amounted to a '2 for 1' for the Washington establishment. They simultaneously demonized Trump (impeding his 'nationalist' agenda) while advancing their own globalist mission - in this case aimed at pushing back Russia. ..."
"... The US 'Deep State' did this in response to the election of Trump the "nationalist" and their fears that their globalist, exceptionalist vision for the USA - a vision that is singularly focused on their own narrow interests at the expense of the American people and many others around the world - would be derailed by Trump attempting to put the interests of the American people first . ..."
Billed as a 'referendum on Trump's presidency', the US Midterm Elections drew an
unusually high number of Americans to the polls yesterday. The minor loss, from Trump's
perspective, of majority Republican control of the lower House of Representatives, suggests, if
anything, the opposite of what the media and establishment want you to believe it means.
An important clue to why the American media has declared permanent open season on this man
transpired during a sometimes heated post-elections press conference at the White House
yesterday. First, CNN's obnoxious Jim Acosta insisted on bringing up the patently absurd
allegations of 'Russia collusion' and refused to shut up and sit down. Soon after, PBS reporter
Yamiche Alcindor joined her colleagues in asking Trump another loaded question , this time on the 'white
nationalism' canard:
Alcindor : On the campaign trail you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw
that as emboldening white nationalists...
Trump : I don't know why you'd say this. It's such a racist question.
Alcindor : There are some people who say that now the Republican Party is seen as
supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric. What do you make of that?
Trump : Why do I have among the highest poll numbers with African Americans?
That's such a racist question. I love our country. You have nationalists, and you have
globalists . I also love the world, and I don't mind helping the world, but we have to
straighten out our country first. We have a lot of problems ...
The US media is still "not even wrong" on Trump and why he won the 2016 election.
You know something is fundamentally wrong when the average high school drop-out
MAGA-hat-wearing Texan or Alabaman working a blue collar job has more sense, can SEE much more
clearly, than the average university-educated, ideology-soaked, East Coast liberal.
Trump is a "nationalist". More or less every administration previous to his, going back at
least 100 years, was "globalist". For much of its history, the USA has been known around the
world as a very patriotic (i.e., nationalist) country. Americans in general had a reputation
for spontaneous chants of "USA! USA! USA!", flying the Stars And Stripes outside their houses
and being very proud of their country. Sure, from time to time, that pissed off people a little
in other countries but, by and large, Americans' patriotism was seen as endearing, if a little
naive, by most foreigners.
Globalism, on the other hand, as it relates to the USA, is the ideology that saturates the
Washington establishment think-tanks, career politicians and bureaucrats, who are infected with
the toxic belief that America can and should dominate the world . This is presented to the
public as so much American largess and magnanimity, but it is, in reality, a means to
increasing the power and wealth of the Washington elite.
Consider Obama's two terms, during which he continued the massively wasteful (of taxpayer's
money) and destructive (of foreigners' lives and land) "War on Terror". Consider that he
appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who proceeded to joyfully bomb Libya back to
the stone age and murder its leader. Consider that, under Obama, US-Russia relations reached an
all-time low, with repeated attacks (of various sorts) on the Russian president, government and
people, and the attempted trashing of Russia's international reputation in the eyes of the
American people. Consider the Obama regime's hugely destructive war waged (mostly by proxy) on
the Syrian people. Consider the Obama era coup in Ukraine that, in a few short months, set that
country's prospects and development back several decades and further soured relations with
Russia.
These are but a few examples of the "globalism" that drives the Washington establishment.
Who, in their right mind, would support it? (I won't get into what constitutes a 'right mind',
but we can all agree it does not involve destroying other nations for profit). The problem
however, is that the Washington elite want - no, NEED - the American people to support such
military adventurism, and what better way to do that than by concocting false "Russian
collusion" allegations against Trump and having the media program the popular mind with exactly
the opposite of the truth - that Trump was a "traitor" to the American people.
The only thing
Trump is a traitor to is the self-serving globally expansionist interests of a cabal of
Washington insiders . This little maneuver amounted to a '2 for 1' for the Washington
establishment. They simultaneously demonized Trump (impeding his 'nationalist' agenda) while
advancing their own globalist mission - in this case aimed at pushing back Russia.
Words and their exact meanings matter . To be able to see through the lies of
powerful vested interests and get to the truth, we need to know when those same powerful vested
interests are exploiting our all-too-human proclivity to be coerced and manipulated by appeals
to emotion.
So the words "nationalist" and "nationalism", as they relate to the USA, have never been
"dirty" words until they were made that way by the "globalist" element of the Washington
establishment (i.e., most of it) by associating it with fringe Nazi and "white supremacist"
elements in US society that pose no risk to anyone, (except to the extent that the mainstream
media can convince the general population otherwise). The US 'Deep State' did this in response
to the election of Trump the "nationalist" and their fears that their globalist, exceptionalist
vision for the USA - a vision that is singularly focused on their own narrow interests at the
expense of the American people and many others around the world - would be derailed by Trump
attempting to put the interests of the American people first .
Gold age of the USA (say 40 years from 1946 to approximately 1986 ) were an in some way an aberration caused by WWII. As soon
as Germany and Japan rebuilt themselves this era was over. And the collapse of the USSR in 1991 (or more correct Soviet
nomenklatura switching sides and adopting neoliberalism) only make the decline more gradual but did not reversed it. After
200 it was clear that neoliberalism is in trouble and in 2008 it was clear that ideology of neoliberalism is dead, much like
Bolshevism after 1945.
As the US ruling neoliberal elite adopted this ideology ad its flag, the USA faces the situation somewhat similar the USSR
faced in 70th. It needs its "Perestroika" but with weak leader at the helm like Gorbachov it can lead to the dissolution of
the state. Dismantling neoliberalism is not less dangerous then dismantling of Bolshevism. The level of brainwashing of both
population and the elite (and it looks like the USA elite is brainwashed to an amazing level, probably far exceed the level of
brainwashing of Soviet nomenklatura) prevents any constructive moves.
In a way, Neoliberalism probably acts as a mousetrap for the country, similar to the role of Bolshevism in the
USSR. Ideology of neoliberalism is dead, so what' next. Another war to patch the internal divisions ? That's probably
why Trump is so adamant about attacking Iran. Iran does not have nuclear weapons so this is in a way an ideal target.
Unlike, say, Russia. And such a war can serve the same political purpose. That's why many emigrants from the USSR view the current
level of divisions with the USA is a direct analog of divisions within the USSR in late 70th and 80th. Similarities are
clearly visible with naked eye.
Notable quotes:
"... t is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised crime and capitalist accumulation before on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided to put it up on Histomat for you all. ..."
"... "Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose bowls. ..."
"... A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.' ..."
"... The biggest lie ever told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to protect or favor the American people. ..."
"... please mr. author don't give us more globalist dribble. We want our wealth back ..."
"... America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work ..."
"... It's the ruling capitalist Predator Class that has been demanding empire since McKinley was assassinated. That's the problem. ..."
"... And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? ..."
"... The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades by the Predator Class... ..."
"The only wealth you keep is wealth you have given away," said Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD),
last of the great Roman emperors. US President Donald Trump might know of another Italian,
Mario Puzo's Don Vito Corleone, and his memorable mumble : "I'm going to make him
an offer he can't refuse."
Forgetting such Aurelian and godfather codes is propelling the decline and fall of the
American empire.
Trump is making offers the world can refuse – by reshaping trade deals, dispensing
with American sops and forcing powerful corporations to return home, the US is regaining
economic wealth but relinquishing global power.
As the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev's
perestroika (restructuring) led to the breakup of its vast territory(22 million square
kilometers). Gorbachev's failed policies led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and
independent countries, and the end of a superpower.
Ironically, the success of Trump's policies will hasten the demise of the American empire:
the US regaining economic health but losing its insidious hold over the world.
This diminishing influence was highlighted when India and seven other countries geared up to
defy Washington's re-imposition of its unilateral, illegal sanctions against Iran, starting
Monday.
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy
Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the
station
The US State Department granting "permission" on the weekend to the eight countries to buy
Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station.
The law of cause and effect unavoidably delivers. The Roman Empire fell after wars of greed
and orgies of consumption. A similar nemesis, the genie of Gorbachev, stalks Pennsylvania
Avenue, with Trump unwittingly writing the last chapter of World War II: the epilogue of the
two rival superpowers that emerged from humanity's most terrible conflict.
The maverick 45th president of the United States may succeed at being an economic messiah to
his country, which has racked up a $21.6 trillion debt, but the fallout is the death of
American hegemony. These are the declining days of the last empire standing.
Emperors and mafia godfathers knew that wielding great influence means making payoffs.
Trump, however, is doing away with the sops, the glue that holds the American empire together,
and is making offers that he considers "fair" but instead is alienating the international
community– from badgering NATO and other countries to pay more for hosting the US legions
(800 military bases in 80 countries) to reducing US aid.
US aid to countries fell from $50 billion in fiscal year 2016, $37 billion in 2017 to $7.7
billion so far in 2018. A world less tied to American largesse and generous trade tarrifs can
more easily reject the "you are with us or against us" bullying doctrine of US presidents. In
the carrot and stick approach that largely passes as American foreign policy, the stick loses
power as the carrot vanishes.
Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather. Big payoffs needed for big influence. A
presidential lesson for Don Trump
More self-respecting leaders will have less tolerance for American hypocrisy, such as
sanctioning other countries for nuclear weapons while having the biggest nuclear arsenal on the
planet.
They will sneer more openly at the hysteria surrounding alleged interference in the 2016 US
presidential elections, pointing to Washington's violent record of global meddling. They will
cite examples of American hypocrisy such as its sponsorship of coups against elected leaders in
Latin America, the US Army's Project Camelot in 1964 targeting 22 countries for intervention
(including Iran, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia), its support for bloodthirsty dictators, and its
destabilization of the Middle East with the destruction of Iraq and Libya.
Immigrant
cannon fodder
Trump's focus on the economy reduces the likelihood of him starting wars. By ending the
flood of illegal immigrants to save jobs for US citizens, he is also inadvertently reducing the
manpower for illegal wars. Non-citizen immigrants comprise about 5% of the US Army. For its
Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US army recruiters offered citizenship to lure illegal immigrants,
mostly Latinos.
Among the first US soldiers to die in the Iraq War was 22-year old illegal immigrant
Corporal Jose Antonio Gutierrez, an orphan from the streets of Guatemala City. He sneaked
across the Mexican border into the US six years before enlisting in exchange for American
citizenship.
On March 21, 2003, Gutierrez was killed by friendly fire near Umm Qasr, southern Iraq. The
coffin of this illegal immigrant was draped in the US flag, and he received American
citizenship – posthumously.
Trump policies targeting illegal immigration simultaneously reduces the availability of
cannon fodder for the illegal wars needed to maintain American hegemony.
Everything comes to an end, and so too will the last empire of our era.
The imperial American eagle flying into the sunset will see the dawn of an economically
healthier US that minds its own business, and increase hopes for a more equal, happier world
– thanks to the unintentional Gorbachev-2 in the White House.
I am sure that many of us are OK with ending American Empire. Both US citizens and other
countries don't want to fight un-necessary and un-ending wars. If Trump can do that, then he
is blessed.
See a pattern here? Raja Murthy, you sound like a pro-American Empire shill. 1964 Project
Camelot has nothing to do with the current administration. Raja, you forgot to wear your
satirical pants.
The idea and catchy hook of 2016 was Make America Great Again, not wasting lives and
resources on the American Empire. You point out the good things. Who might have a problem
with the end of the American Empire are Globalists. What is wrong with relinquishing global
power and not wasting lives and money?
"The only lives you keep is lives you've given away" That does not ring true. The only
lies you keep are the lies you've given away. What? You're not making any sense, dude. How
much American Empire are you vested in? Does it bother you if the Empire shrinks its death
grip on Asia or the rest of the world? Why don't you just say it: This is good! Hopefully
Trump's policies will prevent you from getting writers' cramp and being confusing--along with
the canon fodder. Or maybe you're worried about job security.
America is a super power, just like Russia. Just like England. However, whom the US
carries water for might change. Hope that's ok.
Trump is an empirial president, just like every other US president. In fact, that's what
the article is describing. MAGA depends upon imperialist domination. Trump and all of US
capitalism know that even if the brain-dead MAGA chumps don't.
Capitalism can't help but seek to rule the world. It is the result of pursuing
capitalism's all-important growth. If it's not US capitalism, it will be Chinese capitalism,
or Russian capitalism, or European capitalism that will rule the world.
The battle over global markets doesn't stop just because the US might decide not to play
anymore. Capitalism means that you're either the global power who is ******* the royal ****
out of everyone else, or you're the victim of being fucked up the *** by an imperialist
power.
The only thing which makes the US different from the rest of the world is its super
concentration of power, which in effect is a super concentration of corruption.
Another day and another ZeroHedge indictment of American capitalism.
And how refreshing that the article compares US capitalism to gangsterism. It's a most
appropriate comparison.
--------------------
Al Capone on Capitalism
It is well known that legendary American gangster Al Capone once said that 'Capitalism is the
legitimate racket of the ruling class', - and I have commented on the links between organised
crime and capitalist accumulation before
on this blog, but I recently came across the following story from Claud Cockburn's autobiography, and decided
to put it up on Histomat for you all.
In 1930, Cockburn, then a correspondent in America for the Times newspaper,
interviewed Al Capone at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, when Capone was at the height of his
power. He recalls that except for 'the sub-machine gun...poking through the transom of a door
behind the desk, Capone's own room was nearly indistinguishable from that of, say, a "newly
arrived" Texan oil millionaire. Apart from the jowly young murderer on the far side of the
desk, what took the eye were a number of large, flattish, solid silver bowls upon the desk,
each filled with roses. They were nice to look at, and they had another purpose too, for
Capone when agitated stood up and dipped the tips of his fingers in the water in which
floated the roses.
I had been a little embarrassed as to how the interview was to be launched. Naturally the
nub of all such interviews is somehow to get round to the question "What makes you tick?" but
in the case of this millionaire killer the approach to this central question seemed mined
with dangerous impediments. However, on the way down to the Lexington Hotel I had had the
good fortune to see, I think in the Chicago Daily News , some statistics offered by an
insurance company which dealt with the average expectation of life of gangsters in Chicago. I
forget exactly what the average was, and also what the exact age of Capone at that time - I
think he was in his early thirties. The point was, however, that in any case he was four
years older than the upper limit considered by the insurance company to be the proper average
expectation of life for a Chicago gangster. This seemed to offer a more or less neutral and
academic line of approach, and after the ordinary greetings I asked Capone whether he had
read this piece of statistics in the paper. He said that he had. I asked him whether he
considered the estimate reasonably accurate. He said that he thought that the insurance
companies and the newspaper boys probably knew their stuff. "In that case", I asked him, "how
does it feel to be, say, four years over the age?"
He took the question quite seriously and spoke of the matter with neither more nor less
excitement or agitation than a man would who, let us say, had been asked whether he, as the
rear machine-gunner of a bomber, was aware of the average incidence of casualties in that
occupation. He apparently assumed that sooner or later he would be shot despite the elaborate
precautions which he regularly took. The idea that - as afterwards turned out to be the case
- he would be arrested by the Federal authorities for income-tax evasion had not, I think, at
that time so much as crossed his mind. And, after all, he said with a little bit of
corn-and-ham somewhere at the back of his throat, supposing he had not gone into this racket?
What would be have been doing? He would, he said, "have been selling newspapers barefoot on
the street in Brooklyn".
He stood as he spoke, cooling his finger-tips in the rose bowl in front of him. He sat
down again, brooding and sighing. Despite the ham-and-corn, what he said was probably true
and I said so, sympathetically. A little bit too sympathetically, as immediately emerged, for
as I spoke I saw him looking at me suspiciously, not to say censoriously. My remarks about
the harsh way the world treats barefoot boys in Brooklyn were interrupted by an urgent angry
waggle of his podgy hand.
"Listen," he said, "don't get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the
idea I'm knocking the American system. The American system..." As though an invisible
chairman had called upon him for a few words, he broke into an oration upon the theme. He
praised freedom, enterprise and the pioneers. He spoke of "our heritage". He referred with
contempuous disgust to Socialism and Anarchism. "My rackets," he repeated several times, "are
run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way"...his vision of the
American system began to excite him profoundly and now he was on his feet again, leaning
across the desk like the chairman of a board meeting, his fingers plunged in the rose
bowls.
"This American system of ours," he shouted, "call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call
it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it
with both hands and make the most of it." He held out his hand towards me, the fingers
dripping a little, and stared at me sternly for a few seconds before reseating himself.
A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of
The Times . He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I
explained that when I had come to put my notes together I saw that most of what Capone had
said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The
Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing
eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. Mr Walter, after a moment's wry
reflection, admitted that probably my idea had been correct.'
This article was obviously written by someone who wants to maintain the status quo.
America would be much stronger if it were not trying to be an empire. The biggest lie ever
told is that American hegemony relies on American imperialism and warmongering. The opposite
is true. America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs, not to
protect or favor the American people.
I truly believe that "America First" is not selfish. America before it went full ******
was the beacon of freedom and success that other countries tried to emulate and that changed
the world for the better.
America the empire is just another oligarchic regime that other
countries' populations rightly see as an example of what doesn't work.
Empire is a contrivance, a vehicle for psychopathic powerlust. America was founded by
people who stood adamantly opposed to this. Here's hoping Trump holds their true spirit in
his heart.
If he doesn't, there's hundreds of millions of us who still do. We don't all live in
America...
America is weak precisely because it is trying so hard to project strength, because
anyone with half a brain knows that it is projecting strength to enrich oligarhcs [sic],
not to protect or favor the American people.
And who do you suppose are the forces which are funding US politicians and thus getting to
call their shots in foreign policy? Can you bring yourself to name them? Oligarchs...you're
FULL of ****. Who exactly pools all (((their))) money, makes sure the [s]elected officials
know (((who))) to not question and, instead, just bow down to them, who makes sure these
(((officials))) sign pledges for absolute commitment towards Israel--or in no uncertain
terms-- and know who will either sponsor them/or opposes them next time around?
JSBach1 called you a 'coward', for being EXACTLY LIKE THESE TRAITOROUS SPINELESS
VERMIN who simply just step outside just 'enough' the comfort zone to APPEAR 'real'. IMHO, I
concur with JSBach1 ...your're a coward indeed, when you should know better .....
shame you you indeed!
There is little evidence, Trump's propaganda aside (that he previously called Obama
dishonest for) that the US economy is improving. If anything, the exploding budget and trade
deficits indicate that the economy continues to weaken.
Correct. The US physical plant and equipment as well as infrastructure is in advanced
stages of decay. Ditto for the labor force which has been pauperized and abused for decades
by the Predator Class...
the US can't even raise an army... even if enough young (men) were
dumb enough to volunteer there just aren't enough fit, healthy and mentally acute recruits
out there.
"... But the state as a bureaucratic institution had another, more fundamental function. Lenin, citing Engels, defined the essence of the state as "bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.," in short, an instrument for the maintenance of the rule of the exploiting minority over the exploited majority. ..."
"... As capitalism burst the bounds of the nation-state, the coercive military function of the state took on a new dimension -- that of protecting (and projecting) the interests of the capitalists of one country over those of another. As capitalism developed, the role of the state increased, the size of the state bureaucracy increased, and the size of its coercive apparatus increased. ..."
"... The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries ..."
"... But the way the governments propose to solve this problem of imperialism is not through the intelligent, organized cooperation of all of humanity's producers, but through the exploitation of the world's economic system by the capitalist class of the victorious country ..."
They were saying that Trump didn't promote the economic boom enough. Then they trotted
out their economic analyst to tout all the great economic statistics!
Well of course, for the corporate media lying about the economy has priority over any kind
of Trump-bashing.
Unfortunately, Debsisdead is correct. The United States cannot be fixed. It could be
that Trump knows what's needed and is deliberately trying to set the US on a course towards
sanity using shock treatment, and is deliberately trying to wean America from the petrodollar
in such a manner that Americans have no other country to blame/bomb, thus saving civilization
from America's inevitable spasm of ultraviolence when the BRICS succeed in taking the
petrodollar down. This seems unlikely, though.
The sad reality is that the delusion Americans suffer from (result of their universal
cradle-to-grave brainwashing that I mentioned earlier) is too deeply rooted as a core
component of their identities.
That mass-based delusion must be overcome before America's psychotic behavior on the world
stage can be addressed, but I see no forces within the US making any progress in that
direction at all.
Even the brightest and most humanistic Americans are horribly twisted to appalling
evil by unquestionable faith in their own exceptionalism. As a consequence it could be
that the only hope for humanity lies in a radical USA-ectomy with the resulting stump being
cauterized.
I certainly wish there were some other way, but I don't see one.
"... So, as with Rome, Greed is Good has done more to hinder the Outlaw US Empire than anything done by the so-called Revisionist Enemies. Combined with Trump's totally unwise Trade War policy forcing all other nations to abandon US-centric financial institutions and its currency, the specter of the Outlaw US Empire being defeated by its own ideology is rather marvelous, even hilarious, although any levity must be tempered by the Empire's brutality and its massive crimes against humanity that've destroyed millions of innocents. ..."
Aah . the woeful state of the Outlaw US Empire's military, done in by Neoliberal ideology,
the tool designed to help Wall Street being destroyed by its machinations. Yesterday, a
translated Russian article based upon
a Reuters report and the
Department of War research paper (Large PDF) it was based upon appeared at
The Saker . Instead of writing a separate comment here, what follows is the comment I
made there.
"What the Reuters article makes clear but avoids mentioning is the culprit is Neoliberal
ideology that resulted in the deindustrialization and financialization of the Outlaw US
Empire's domestic economy all for a Few Dollars More--that such hollowing out was official
Washington--and Wall Street--policy starting with Carter in 1978, greatly accelerated by
Bush/Reagan during the 1980s, then finished off by Clinton/Bush from 1993-2008.
The Defense Department research paper that's linked is also a hoot as it calls for a level
of performance by the procurement and manufacturing systems that's impossible to accomplish
given decades of corruption that's made the MIC what it is today--a maker of overpriced
junk.
Read the transcript of the latest Michael Hudson interview to discover Wall Street's
policy goals and compare them to what Trump wants to accomplish via MAGA, where
Hudson states banks don't lend to--help capitalize--industry because not enough profit
exists there compared to other opportunities.
So, as with Rome, Greed is Good has done more to hinder the Outlaw US Empire than
anything done by the so-called Revisionist Enemies. Combined with Trump's totally unwise
Trade War policy forcing all other nations to abandon US-centric financial institutions and
its currency, the specter of the Outlaw US Empire being defeated by its own ideology is
rather marvelous, even hilarious, although any levity must be tempered by the Empire's
brutality and its massive crimes against humanity that've destroyed millions of
innocents.
"So, as with Rome, Greed is Good has done more to hinder the Outlaw US Empire than
anything done by the so-called Revisionist Enemies. Combined with Trump's totally unwise
Trade War policy forcing all other nations to abandon US-centric financial institutions and
its currency, the specter of the Outlaw US Empire being defeated by its own ideology is
rather marvelous"
The U.S. is indeed collapsing under its own mismanagement, the result of converting its
(weak) democracy into a full-fledged oligarchic dictatorship. The only solution is for the
U.S. to retrench into a shell in order to re-make itself.
Intentionally or not, Trump's policies are hastening this retrenchment.
Thanks for the link to that poll. Those are astonishing results, to find the mainstream
population afraid of the same things we are: that the US is not being representatively
governed because its government is totally corrupt, and that meanwhile the planet and country
are being stripped of resources, in a vicious downward spiral of paralysis.
It's worth quoting the results in full (sorry it doesn't format well):
[begin]
Below is a list of the 10 fears for which the highest percentage of Americans reported
being "Afraid" or "Very Afraid." :
Top Ten Fears of 2018 --->> % Afraid or Very Afraid
1. Corrupt government officials --->> 74%
2. Pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes --->> 62%
3. Pollution of drinking water --->> 61%
4. Not having enough money for the future --->> 57%
5. People I love becoming seriously ill --->> 57%
6. People I love dying --->> 56%
7. Air pollution --->> 55%
8. Extinction of plant and animal species --->> 54%
9. Global warming and climate change --->> 53%
10. High medical bills --->> 53%
If there's any reality in these numbers it means that a politically vast majority of
people in the US are focused on the right things, principal among which is that their
recourse to address these things is completely broken. The obvious thought in a once famously
"can-do" culture must obviously be that the government must be fixed or replaced. The tough
question lingering is, How?
What you illustrate are known as Structural Adjustment Loans/Programs promoted by both IMF
and World Bank as the major plank of Neoliberal ideology begun by McNamara when he was
appointed to WB by Carter in 1978. This recap provided by developmental economist and
critic Walden Bello details why and for whom the IMF/WB loans were designed to benefit--they
differed little from the purposes of bilateral loans made by the US treasury during the Age
of Dollar Diplomacy, which provided the ideological basis for robbing those nations. The
point being US Imperialism atop centuries of Spanish Colonialism is why Latin America is do
developmentally poor and kept that way through gross class distortions and outright Class War
sponsored by CIA and Spain.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But
should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as
a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the
pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic
politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain
control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political
control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for
it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham.
Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to
destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if
only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of
the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel
industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very
little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis
brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.
The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that
has given rise to Trump, are the party of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics,
Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump! This is
ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing
another run for the presidency after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political
heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast elites who want to instill
corporate fascism with a friendly face.
Bertram
Gross (1912-1997) in "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power" warned us that
fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is
embodied in the executioner's sadistic leer. Janus-like, fascism seeks to present itself to a
captive public as a force for good and moral renewal. It promises protection against enemies
real and invented. But denounce its ideology, challenge its power, demand freedom from
fascism's iron grip, and you are mercilessly crushed. Gross knew that if the United States'
form of fascism, expressed through corporate tyranny, was able to effectively mask its true
intentions behind its "friendly" face we would be stripped of power, shorn of our most
cherished rights and impoverished. He has been proved correct.
"Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly
across America," Gross wrote. "Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a
corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to
enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or
unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these
consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the
poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and more important, the subversion of our
constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international
politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion."
No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press has
replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The banal
and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our emotions
are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured events. We are,
at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including sporting events, reality
television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of this form of entertainment.
Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the modern equivalent of the Roman
arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs corporations billions of dollars, is
called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans, which assure us that the freedoms we
cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national discourse as these freedoms are stripped from
us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a vast con game.
You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24 hours a
day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in perpetuity. You
cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and monitored population in
human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is impossible to vote against the
interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot use the word "liberty" when the
state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate lethal force against unarmed citizens
in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens,
mostly poor people of color, are held in the largest prison system on earth. This is the
relationship between a master and a slave. The choice is between whom we want to clamp on our
chains -- a jailer who mouths politically correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist.
Either way we are shackled.
Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate fascism.
It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that consolidates power
and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political philosopher Sheldon
Wolin , refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate tyranny or friendly
fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin pointed out, characterized by
anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution and the
iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had seized all of the levers of
power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were being shackled incrementally.
Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He wrote that "a friendly fascist power
structure in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more
sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no
charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it would require no one-party rule, no mass
fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of
reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the
Establishment."
Gross foresaw that technological advances in the hands of corporations would be used to trap
the public in what he called "cultural ghettoization" so that "almost every individual would
get a personalized sequence of information injections at any time of the day -- or night." This
is what, of course, television, our electronic devices and the internet have done. He warned
that we would be mesmerized by the entertaining shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave as we
were enslaved.
Gross knew that the most destructive force against the body politic would be the war
profiteers and the militarists. He saw how they would siphon off the resources of the state to
wage endless war, a sum that now accounts for half of all discretionary spending. And he
grasped that warfare is the natural extension of corporatism. He wrote:
Under the militarism of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism violence was openly
glorified. It was applied regionally -- by the Germans in Europe and England, the Italians in
the Mediterranean, the Japanese in Asia. In battle, it was administered by professional
militarists who, despite many conflicts with politicians, were guided by old-fashioned
standards of duty, honor, country, and willingness to risk their own lives.
The emerging militarism of friendly fascism is somewhat different. It is global in scope.
It involves weapons of doomsday proportions, something that Hitler could dream of but never
achieve. It is based on an integration between industry, science, and the military that the
old-fashioned fascists could never even barely approximate. It points toward equally close
integration among military, paramilitary, and civilian elements. Many of the civilian leaders
-- such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Paul Nitze -- tend to be much more bloodthirsty than any
top brass. In turn, the new-style military professionals tend to become corporate-style
entrepreneurs who tend to operate -- as Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lieutenant Colonel Paul
L. Savage have disclosed -- in accordance with the ethics of the marketplace. The old
buzzwords of duty, honor, and patriotism are mainly used to justify officer subservience to
the interests of transnational corporations and the continuing presentation of threats to
some corporate investments as threats to the interest of the American people as a whole.
Above all, in sharp contrast with classic fascism's glorification of violence, the friendly
fascist orientation is to sanitize, even hide, the greater violence of modern warfare behind
such "value-free" terms as "nuclear exchange," "counterforce" and "flexible response," behind
the huge geographical distances between the senders and receivers of destruction through
missiles or even on the "automated battlefield," and the even greater psychological distances
between the First World elites and the ordinary people who might be consigned to quick or
slow death.
We no longer live in a functioning democracy. Self-styled liberals and progressives, as they
do in every election cycle, are urging us to vote for the Democrats, although the Democratic
Party in Europe would be classified as a right-wing party, and tell us to begin to build
progressive movements the day after the election. Only no one ever builds these movements. The
Democratic Party knows there is no price to pay for selling us out and its abject service to
corporations. It knows the left and liberals become supplicants in every election cycle. And
this is why the Democratic Party drifts further and further to the right and we become more and
more irrelevant. If you stand for something, you have to be willing to fight for it. But there
is no fight in us.
The elites, Republican and Democrat, belong to the same club. We are not in it. Take a look
at the flight roster of the billionaire
Jeffrey Epstein , who was accused of prostituting dozens of underage girls and ended up
spending 13 months in prison on a single count. He flew political insiders from both parties
and the business world to his secluded Caribbean island, known as "Orgy Island," on his jet,
which the press nicknamed "the Lolita Express." Some of the names on his flight
roster, which usually included unidentified women, were Bill Clinton, who took dozens of trips,
Alan
Dershowitz , former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers, the
Candide -like
Steven Pinker ,
whose fairy dust ensures we are getting better and better, and Britain's Prince Andrew. Epstein
was also a friend of Trump, whom he visited at Mar-a-Lago.
We live on the precipice, the eve of the deluge. Past civilizations have crumbled in the
same way, although as Hegel understood, the only thing we learn from history is "that people
and governments never have learned anything from history." We will not arrest the decline if
the Democrats regain control of the House. At best we will briefly slow it. The corporate
engines of pillage, oppression, ecocide and endless war are untouchable. Corporate power will
do its dirty work regardless of which face -- the friendly fascist face of the Democrats or the
demented visage of the Trump Republicans -- is pushed out front. If you want real change,
change that means something, then mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, not for one of the two
political parties but to rise up and destroy the corporate structures that ensure our doom.
"... Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion. ..."
"... Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite's power. ..."
"... The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US. ..."
"... Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and without – from the moment of their election. ..."
"... The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more violence. ..."
"... As in Pinochet's Chile, Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with neoliberalism. ..."
"... Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net . ..."
With Jair Bolsonaro's victory in Brazil's presidential election at the weekend, the doom-mongers among western elites are out in force once again. His success, like Donald Trump's, has confirmed a long-held prejudice: that the people cannot be trusted; that, when empowered, they behave like a mob driven by primitive urges; that the unwashed masses now threaten to bring down the carefully constructed walls of civilisation.
The guardians of the status quo refused to learn the lesson of Trump's election, and so it will be with Bolsonaro. Rather than engaging the intellectual faculties they claim as their exclusive preserve, western "analysts" and "experts" are again averting their gaze from anything that might help them understand what has driven our supposed democracies into the dark places inhabited by the new demagogues. Instead, as ever, the blame is being laid squarely at the door of social media.
Social media and fake news are apparently the reasons Bolsonaro won at the ballot box. Without the gatekeepers in place to limit access to the "free press" – itself the plaything of billionaires and global corporations, with brands and a bottom line to protect – the rabble has supposedly been freed to give expression to their innate bigotry.
Here is Simon Jenkins, a veteran British gatekeeper – a former editor of the Times of London who now writes a column in the Guardian – pontificating on Bolsonaro:
"The lesson for champions of open democracy is glaring. Its values cannot be taken for granted. When debate is no longer through regulated media, courts and institutions, politics will default to the mob. Social media – once hailed as an agent of global concord – has become the purveyor of falsity, anger and hatred. Its algorithms polarise opinion. Its pseudo-information drives argument to the extremes."
This is now the default consensus of the corporate media, whether in its rightwing incarnations or of the variety posing on the liberal-left end of the spectrum like the Guardian. The people are stupid, and we need to be protected from their base instincts. Social media, it is claimed, has unleashed humanity's id.
Selling plutocracy
There is a kind of truth in Jenkins' argument, even if it is not the one he intended. Social
media did indeed liberate ordinary people. For the first time in modern history, they were not
simply the recipients of official, sanctioned information. They were not only spoken down to by
their betters, they could answer back – and not always as deferentially as the media
class expected.
Clinging to their old privileges, Jenkins and his ilk are rightly unnerved. They have much
to lose.
But that also means they are far from dispassionate observers of the current political
scene. They are deeply invested in the status quo, in the existing power structures that have
kept them well-paid courtiers of the corporations that dominate the planet.
Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an
intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion.
The plutocrats who run our societies need figureheads, behind whom they can conceal their
unaccountable power. Until now they preferred the slickest salespeople, ones who could sell
wars as humanitarian intervention rather than profit-driven exercises in death and destruction;
the unsustainable plunder of natural resources as economic growth; the massive accumulation of
wealth, stashed in offshore tax havens, as the fair outcome of a free market; the bailouts
funded by ordinary taxpayers to stem economic crises they had engineered as necessary
austerity; and so on.
A smooth-tongued Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the favoured salespeople, especially
in an age when the elites had persuaded us of a self-serving argument: that ghetto-like
identities based on colour or gender mattered far more than class. It was divide-and-rule
dressed up as empowerment. The polarisation now bewailed by Jenkins was in truth stoked and
rationalised by the very corporate media he so faithfully serves.
Fear of the domino effect
Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a
far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They
prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect
their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class
privilege, the real basis of the elite's power.
The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not
control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms
manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that
smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the
US.
Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because
powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the
key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and
without – from the moment of their election.
Local elites in Latin America are tied umbilically to US elites, who in turn are determined
to make sure any socialist experiment in their backyard fails – as a way to prevent a
much-feared domino effect, one that might seed socialism closer to home.
The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist
governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no
interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of
the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more
violence.
Bolsonaro will not face any of the institutional obstacles Lula da Silva or Chavez needed to
overcome. No one in power will stand in his way as he institutes his "reforms". No one will
stop him creaming off Brazil's wealth for his corporate friends. As in Pinochet's Chile,
Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with
neoliberalism.
Immune system
If you want to understand the depth of the self-deception of Jenkins and other media
gatekeepers, contrast Bolsonaro's political ascent to that of Jeremy Corbyn, the modest social
democratic leader of Britain's Labour party. Those like Jenkins who lament the role of social
media – they mean you, the public – in promoting leaders like Bolsonaro are also
the media chorus who have been wounding Corbyn day after day, blow by blow, for three years
– since he accidentally slipped past safeguards intended by party bureacrats to keep
someone like him from power.
The supposedly liberal Guardian has been leading that assault. Like the rightwing media, it
has shown its absolute determination to stop Corbyn at all costs, using any pretext.
Within days of Corbyn's election to the Labour leadership, the Times newspaper – the
voice of the British establishment – published an article quoting a general, whom it
refused to name, warning that the British army's commanders had agreed they would sabotage a
Corbyn government. The general strongly hinted that there would be a military coup first.
We are not supposed to reach the point where such threats – tearing away the
façade of western democracy – ever need to be implemented. Our pretend democracies
were created with immune systems whose defences are marshalled to eliminate a threat like
Corbyn much earlier.
Once he moved closer to power, however, the rightwing corporate media was forced to deploy
the standard tropes used against a left leader: that he was incompetent, unpatriotic, even
treasonous.
But just as the human body has different immune cells to increase its chances of success,
the corporate media has faux-liberal-left agents like the Guardian to complement the right's
defences. The Guardian sought to wound Corbyn through identity politics, the modern left's
Achille's heel. An endless stream of confected crises about anti-semitism were intended to
erode the hard-earned credit Corbyn had accumulated over decades for his anti-racism work.
Slash-and-burn politics
Why is Corbyn so dangerous? Because he supports the right of workers to a dignified life,
because he refuses to accept the might of the corporations, because he implies that a different
way of organising our societies is possible. It is a modest, even timid programme he
articulates, but even so it is far too radical either for the plutocratic class that rules over
us or for the corporate media that serves as its propaganda arm.
The truth ignored by Jenkins and these corporate stenographers is that if you keep
sabotaging the programmes of a Chavez, a Lula da Silva, a Corbyn or a Bernie Sanders, then you
get a Bolsonaro, a Trump, an Orban.
It is not that the masses are a menace to democracy. It is rather that a growing proportion
of voters understand that a global corporate elite has rigged the system to accrue for itself
ever greater riches. It is not social media that is polarising our societies. It is rather that
the determination of the elites to pillage the planet until it has no more assets to strip has
fuelled resentment and destroyed hope. It is not fake news that is unleashing the baser
instincts of the lower orders. Rather, it is the frustration of those who feel that change is
impossible, that no one in power is listening or cares.
Social media has empowered ordinary people. It has shown them that they cannot trust their
leaders, that power trumps justice, that the elite's enrichment requires their poverty. They
have concluded that, if the rich can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the planet, our
only refuge, they can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the global elite.
Are they choosing wisely in electing a Trump or Bolsonaro? No. But the liberal guardians of
the status quo are in no position to judge them. For decades, all parts of the corporate media
have helped to undermine a genuine left that could have offered real solutions, that could have
taken on and beaten the right, that could have offered a moral compass to a confused, desperate
and disillusioned public.
Jenkins wants to lecture the masses about their depraved choices while he and his paper
steer them away from any politician who cares about their welfare, who fights for a fairer
society, who prioritises mending what is broken.
The western elites will decry Bolsonaro in the forlorn and cynical hope of shoring up their
credentials as guardians of the existing, supposedly moral order. But they engineered him.
Bolsonaro is their monster.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
"Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East"
(Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books).
His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
"... As of today, the US is embargoing all Iranian energy exports and freezing Iran out of the US-dominated world financial system, so as to cripple the remainder of its trade and deny it access to machinery, spare parts and even basic foodstuffs and medicine. ..."
"... In doing so, American imperialism is once again acting as a law unto itself. The sanctions are patently illegal and under international law tantamount to a declaration of war. They violate the UN Security Council-backed 2015 Iran nuclear accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... Those developing the SPV are acutely conscious of this and have publicly declared that it is not Iran-specific. ..."
"... The strategists of US imperialism are also aware that the SPV is a challenge to more than the Trump administration's Iran policy. Writing in Foreign Affairs ..."
"... With its drive to crash Iran's economy and further impoverish its people, the Trump administration has let loose the dogs of war. Whatever the sanctions' impact, Washington has committed its prestige and power to bringing Tehran to heel and making the rest of the world complicit in its crimes. ..."
"... The danger of another catastrophic Mideast war thus looms ever larger, while the growing antagonism between Europe and America and descent of global inter-state relations into a madhouse of one against all is setting the stage ..."
Washington's imposition of sweeping new sanctions on Iran -- aimed at strangling its economy and precipitating regime change in
Tehran -- is roiling world geopolitics.
As of today, the US is embargoing all Iranian energy exports and freezing Iran out of the US-dominated world financial system,
so as to cripple the remainder of its trade and deny it access to machinery, spare parts and even basic foodstuffs and medicine.
In doing so, American imperialism is once again acting as a law unto itself. The sanctions are patently illegal and under
international law tantamount to a declaration of war. They violate the UN Security Council-backed 2015 Iran nuclear accord, or Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement that was negotiated at the behest of Washington and under its duress, including
war threats.
All the other parties to the JCPOA (Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the EU) and the International Atomic Energy Agency,
which is charged with verifying Iranian compliance, are adamant that Iran has fulfilled its obligations under the accord to the letter.
This includes dismantling much of its civil nuclear program and curtailing the rest.
Yet, having reneged on its support for the JCPOA, Washington is now wielding the club of secondary sanctions to compel the rest
of the world into joining its illegal embargo and abetting its regime-change offensive. Companies and countries that trade with Iran
or even trade with those that do will be excluded from the US market and subject to massive fines and other penalties. Similarly,
banks and shipping insurers that have any dealings with companies that trade with Iran or even with other financial institutions
that facilitate trade with Iran will be subject to punishing US secondary sanctions.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who like US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran and ordered
military strikes on Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard forces in Syria, has hailed the US sanctions as "historic." Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates, two other US client states, are pledging to ramp up oil production to make up for the shortfalls caused
by Washington's embargoing of Iranian oil exports.
But America's economic war against Iran is not just exacerbating tensions in the Middle East. It is also roiling relations between
the US and the other great powers, especially Europe.
On Friday, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany and European Union Foreign Policy Chief Frederica Mogherini issued
a statement reaffirming their support for the JCPOA and vowing to circumvent and defy the US sanctions. "It is our aim," they declared,
"to protect European economic operators engaged in legitimate business with Iran, in accordance with EU law and with UN Security
Council resolution 2231."
They declared their commitment to preserving "financial channels with" Iran, enabling it to continue exporting oil and gas, and
working with Russia, China and other countries "interested in supporting the JCPOA" to do so.
The statement emphasized the European powers' "unwavering collective resolve" to assert their right to "pursue legitimate trade"
and, toward that end, to proceed with the establishment of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that will enable European businesses and
those of other countries, including potentially Russia and China, to conduct trade with Iran using the euro or some other non-US
dollar medium of exchange, outside the US-dominated world financial system.
Friday's statement was in response to a series of menacing pronouncements from Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other
top administration officials earlier the same day. These fleshed out the new US sanctions and reiterated Washington's resolve to
crash Iran's economy and aggressively sanction any company or country that fails to fall into line with the US sanctions.
In reply to a question about the European SPV, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, said he had "no expectation" it will prove
to be a conduit for "significant" trade. "But if there are transactions that have the intent of evading our sanctions, we will aggressively
pursue our remedies."
Trump officials also served notice that they will sanction SWIFT, the Brussels-based network that facilitates secure inter-bank
communications, and the European bankers who comprise the majority of its directors if they do not expeditiously expel all Iranian
financial institutions from the network.
And in a step intended to demonstratively underscore Washington's disdain for the Europeans, the Trump administration included
no EU state among the eight countries that will be granted temporary waivers on the full application of the US embargo on oil imports.
Germany, Britain, France and the EU are no less rapacious than Washington. Europe's great powers are frantically rearming, have
helped spearhead NATO's war build-up against Russia. Over the past three decades they have waged numerous wars and neocolonial interventions
in the Middle East and North Africa, from Afghanistan and Libya to Mali.
But they resent and fear the consequences of the Trump administration's reckless and provocative offensive against Iran. They
resent it because Washington's scuttling of the nuclear deal has pulled the rug out from under European capital's plans to capture
a leading position in Iran's domestic market and exploit Iranian offers of massive oil and natural gas concessions. They fear it,
because the US confrontation with Iran threatens to ignite a war that would invariably set the entire Mideast ablaze, triggering
a new refugee crisis, a massive spike in oil prices and, last but not least, a repartition of the region under conditions where the
European powers as of yet lack the military means to independently determine the outcome.
To date, the Trump administration has taken a haughty, even cavalier, attitude to the European avowals of opposition to the US
sanctions. Trump and the other Iran war-hawks like Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton who lead the administration are
buoyed by the fact that numerous European businesses have voted with their feet and cut off ties with Iran, for fear of running afoul
of the US sanctions.
The Financial Times reported last week that due to fear of US reprisals, no European state has agreed to house the SPV,
which, according to the latest EU statements, will not even be operational until the new year.
The European difficulties and hesitations are real. But they also speak to the enormity and explosiveness of the geopolitical
shifts that are now underway.
Whilst European corporate leaders, whose focus is on maximizing market share and investor profit in the next few business quarters,
have bowed to the US sanctions threat, the political leaders, those charged with developing and implementing imperialist strategy,
have concluded that they must push back against Washington.
This is about Iran, but also about developing the means to prevent the US using unilateral sanctions to dictate Europe's foreign
policy, including potentially trying to thwart Nord Stream 2 (the pipeline project that will transport Russian natural gas to Germany
under the Baltic Sea and which Trump has repeatedly denounced.)
As Washington's ability to impose unilateral sanctions is bound up with the role of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency
and US domination of the world banking system, the European challenge to America's sanctions weapon necessarily involves a challenge
to these key elements of US global power.
The European imperialist powers are taking this road because they, like all the great powers, are locked in a frenzied struggle
for markets, profits and strategic advantage under conditions of a systemic breakdown of world capitalism. Finding themselves squeezed
between the rise of new powers and an America that is ever more reliant on war to counter the erosion of its economic might and that
is ruthlessly pursing its own interests at the expense of foe and ostensible friend alike, the Europeans, led by German imperialism,
are seeking to develop the economic and military means to assert their own predatory interests independently of, and when necessary
against, the United States.
Those developing the SPV are acutely conscious of this and have publicly declared that it is not Iran-specific.
Speaking last month, only a few weeks after European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker used his State of the EU address
to called for measures to ensure that the euro plays a greater global role, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire declared the "crisis
with Iran" to be "a chance for Europe to have its own independent financial institutions, so we can trade with whomever we want."
The SPV, adds French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Agnes Von der Muhl, "aims to create an economic sovereignty tool for the European
Union that will protect European companies in the future from the effect of illegal extraterritorial sanctions."
The strategists of US imperialism are also aware that the SPV is a challenge to more than the Trump administration's Iran
policy. Writing in Foreign Affairs last month, former Obama administration official Elizabeth Rosenberg expressed grave
concerns that the Trump administration's unilateral sanctions are causing the EU to collaborate with Russia and China in defying
Washington, and are inciting a European challenge to US financial dominance. Under conditions where Russia and China are already
seeking to develop payments systems that bypass Western banks, and the future promises further challenges to dollar-supremacy and
the US-led global financial system, "it is worrying," laments Rosenberg, "that the United States is accelerating this trend."
With its drive to crash Iran's economy and further impoverish its people, the Trump administration has let loose the dogs
of war. Whatever the sanctions' impact, Washington has committed its prestige and power to bringing Tehran to heel and making the
rest of the world complicit in its crimes.
The danger of another catastrophic Mideast war thus looms ever larger, while the growing antagonism between Europe and America
and descent of global inter-state relations into a madhouse of one against all is setting the stage...
by Chris Bertram on October 31, 2018 Candice Delmas, A
Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Political obligation has always been a somewhat unsatisfactory topic in political
philosophy, as has, relatedly, civil disobedience. The "standard view" of civil disobedience,
to be found in Rawls, presupposes that we live in a nearly just society in which some serious
violations of the basic liberties yet occur and conceives of civil disobedience as a deliberate
act of public lawbreaking, nonviolent in character, which aims to communicate a sense of grave
wrong to our fellow citizens. To demonstrate their fidelity to law, civil disobedients are
willing to accept the consequences of their actions and to take their punishment. When Rawls
first wrote about civil disobedience, in 1964, parts of the US were openly and flagrantly
engaged in the violent subordination of their black population, so it was quite a stretch for
him to think of that society as "nearly just". But perhaps its injustice impinged less
obviously on a white professor at an elite university in Massachusetts than it did on poor
blacks in the deep South.
The problems with the standard account hardly stop there. Civil disobedience thus conceived
is awfully narrow. In truth, the range of actions which amount to resistance to the state and
to unjust societies is extremely broad, running from ordinary political opposition, through
civil disobedience to disobedience that is rather uncivil, through sabotage, hacktivism,
leaking, whistle-blowing, carrying out Samaritan assistance in defiance of laws that prohibit
it, striking, occupation, violent resistance, violent revolution, and, ultimately, terrorism.
For the non-ideal world in which we actually live and where we are nowhere close to a "nearly
just" society, we need a better theory, one which tells us whether Black Lives Matter activists
are justified or whether antifa can punch Richard Spencer. Moreover, we need a theory that
tells us not only what we may do but also what we are obliged to do: when is standing by in the
face of injustice simply not morally permissible.
Step forward Candice Delmas with her superb and challenging book The Duty to Resist:
When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (Oxford University Press). Delmas points out the
manifold shortcomings of the standard account and how it is often derived from taking the
particular tactics of the civil rights movement and turning pragmatic choices into moral
principles. Lots of acts of resistance against unjust societies, in order to be effective, far
from being communicative, need to be covert. Non-violence may be an effective strategy, but
sometimes those resisting state injustice have a right to defend themselves. [click
to continue ]
Hidari 10.31.18 at 3:41 pm (no link)
Strangely enough, the link I was looking at immediately before I clicked on the OP, was this:
It would be interesting to see a philosopher's view on whether or not civil disobedience
was necessary, and to what extent, to prevent actions that will lead to the end of our
species.
Ebenezer Scrooge 10.31.18 at 4:52 pm (no link)
Two points:
As far as the Nazi-punching goes, it is important to remember that we hung Julius Streicher
for nothing but speech acts.
I have no idea who Candice Delmas is, but "Delmas" is a French name. The French have a very
different attitude toward civil disobedience than we do.
Moz of Yarramulla 10.31.18 at 11:23 pm (no link)
civil disobedience as a deliberate act of public lawbreaking, nonviolent in character,
which aims to communicate a sense of grave wrong to our fellow citizens.
I think that's a pretty narrow view of civil disobedience even if you just count the
actions of the protesters. Often NVDA is aimed at or merely accepts that a violent response
is inevitable. The resistance at Parihaka, for example, was in no doubt that the response
would be military and probably lethal. And Animal Liberation are often classified as
terrorists by the US and UK governments while murderers against abortion are not.
Which is to say that the definition of "nonviolent" is itself an area of conflict, with
some taking the Buddhist extremist position that any harm or even inconvenience to any living
thing makes an action violent, and others saying that anything short of genocide can be
nonviolent (and then there are the "intention is all" clowns). Likewise terrorism, most
obviously of late the Afghani mujahideen when they transitioned from being revolutionaries to
terrorists when the invader changed.
In Australia we have the actual government taking the view that any action taken by a
worker or protester that inconveniences a company is a criminal act and the criminal must
both compensate the company (including consequential damages) as well as facing jail time.
tasmania and
NSW and of course the anti-union
laws . The penalties suggest they're considered crimes of violence, as does the
rhetoric.
Moz of Yarramulla 11.01.18 at 12:13 am (no link)
Jeff@11
one should never legitimize any means toward social change that you would not object to
seeing used by your mortal enemies.
Are you using an unusual definition of "mortal enemy" here? Viz, other than "enemy that
wants to kill you"? Even US law has theoretical prohibitions on expressing that
intention.
It's especially odd since we're right now in the middle of a great deal of bad-faith use
of protest techniques by mortal enemies. "free speech" used to protect Nazi rallies,
"academic freedom" to defend anti-science activists, "non-violent protest" used to describe
violent attacks, "freedom of religion" used to excuse terrorism, the list goes on.
In Australia we have a 'proud boys' leader coming to Australia who has somehow managed to
pass the character test imposed by our government. He's the leader of a gang that requires an
arrest for violence as a condition of membership and regularly says his goal is to incite
others to commit murder. It seems odd that our immigration minister has found those things to
be
not disqualifying while deporting someone for merely
associating with a vaguely similar gang , but we live in weird times.
As far as the Nazi-punching goes, it is important to remember that we hung Julius
Streicher for nothing but speech acts.
I do remember that*, but it's not clear to me why you think it's important to remember it
in this context. If somebody who had fatally punched a Nazi speaker were prosecuted for
murder, I doubt that 'he was a Nazi speaker' would be accepted as a defence on the basis of
the Streicher precedent.
*Strictly speaking, I don't remember it as something that 'we' did: I wasn't born at the
time, and it's not clear to me who you mean by 'we'. (Streicher himself probably would have
said that it was the Jews, or possibly the Jews and the Bolsheviks, who were hanging him, but
I don't suppose that would be your view.) However, I'm aware of the events you're referring
to, which is the real point.
Rawls presupposes that we live in a nearly just society in which some serious violations
of the basic liberties yet occur For the non-ideal world in which we actually live and where
we are nowhere close to a "nearly just" society, we need a better theory
People need to stop spreading this misinterpretation about Rawls on civil disobedience, which
I've seen several places in the past few years. Rawls focuses on the case of a nearly just
society not because he thinks it's the only case in which you can engage in civil
disobedience but because he thinks it's the only case in which there are difficulties with
justifying it. He states this very clearly in A Theory of Justice : in cases where the
society is not nearly just, there are no difficulties in justifying civil disobedience or
even sometimes armed resistance. His natural duty account is not put forward as a general
theory of civil disobedience but to argue that civil disobedience can admit of justification
even in the case in which it is hardest to justify.
I'm not a fan of Rawls myself, but I don't know how he could possibly have been more clear
on this, since he makes all these points explicitly.
LFC 11.02.18 at 12:45 am (no link)
J-D @18
The Nuremberg tribunal was set up and staffed by the U.S., Britain, USSR, and France; so
whether Ebenezer's "we" was intended to refer to the four countries collectively or just to
the U.S., it's clear who hanged Streicher et al., and the tone of your comment on this point
is rather odd.
anon 11.02.18 at 4:23 pm (no link)
Resisting by protesting is OK.
However, here in the USA, actual legislation creating laws is done by our elected
representatives.
So if you're an Amaerican and really want Social Change and aren't just posturing or
'virtue signaling' make sure you vote in the upcoming election.
I'm afraid too many will think that their individual vote won't 'matter' or the polls show
it isn't needed or some other excuse to justify not voting. Please do not be that person.
Don Berinati 11.02.18 at 5:06 pm (no link)
Recently re-reading '1968' by Kurlansky and he repeatedly made this point about protests
– that to be effective they had to get on television (major networks, not like our
youtube, I think, so it would be seen by the masses in order to sway them) and to do that the
acts had to be outlandish because they were competing for network time. This increasingly led
to violent acts, which almost always worked in getting on the news, but flew in the face of
King's and others peaceful methods.
So, maybe punching out a Nazi is the way to change people's minds or at least get them to
think about stuff.
Historians of the now seventeen-year old U.S. war in Afghanistan will take note of this past week
when the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations in the country made a
bombshell, historic admission.
He conceded that
the United States cannot win in
Afghanistan
.
Speaking to NBC News last week, Gen. Austin Scott Miller made his
first public statements after taking charge of American operations, and shocked with his frank
assessment that that
the Afghan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be
achieved through direct engagement and negotiations with the Taliban
--
the very
terror group which US forces sought to defeat when it first invaded in 2001.
"This is not going to be won militarily,"
Gen. Miller said.
"This is going to a political solution."
Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the U.S. commander of resolute support, via EPA/NBC
My assessment is the Taliban also realizes they cannot win militarily.
So if you
realize you can't win militarily at some point, fighting is just, people start asking why.
So you do not necessarily wait us out, but I think now is the time to start working through the
political piece of this conflict.
He gave the interview from the Resolute Support headquarters building in Kabul. "We are more in
an offensive mindset and don't wait for the Taliban to come and hit [us]," he said. "So that was an
adjustment that we made early on. We needed to because of the amount of casualties that were being
absorbed."
Starting
last summer it was revealed
that
US State Department officials began meeting with
Taliban leaders in Qatar to discuss local and regional ceasefires and an end to the war
. It
was reported at the time that the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not
invited; however, there doesn't appear to have been any significant fruit out of the talks as
the Taliban now controls more territory than ever before in recent years
.
Such controversial and shaky negotiations come as in total the United States has spent well
over $840 billion fighting the Taliban insurgency
while also paying for relief and
reconstruction in a seventeen-year long war that
has become more expensive, in current
dollars, than the Marshall Plan
, which was the reconstruction effort to rebuild Europe
after World War II.
Even the
New
York Times
recently chronicled the
flat out deception of official Pentagon
statements vs. the reality
in terms of the massive spending that has gone into the
now-approaching two decade long "endless war" which began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Via NYT report
As of September of this year the situation was as bleak as it's ever been after over a
decade-and-a-half of America's longest running war, per
the NYT's numbers
:
But since 2017, the Taliban have held more Afghan territory than at any time since
the American invasion
. In just one week last month, the insurgents killed 200 Afghan
police officers and soldiers, overrunning two major Afghan bases and the city of Ghazni.
The American military
says
the
Afghan government effectively "controls or influences" 56 percent of the country. But that
assessment relies on
statistical sleight of hand
. In many districts,
the
Afghan government controls only the district headquarters and military barracks, while the
Taliban control the rest
.
For this reason Gen. Miller spoke to NBC of
an optimal "political outcome" instead of
"winning"
--
the latter being a term rarely if ever used by Pentagon and officials
and congressional leaders over the past years.
Miller
told NBC
: "I naturally feel compelled to try to set the conditions for a political outcome. So,
pressure from that standpoint, yes. I don't want everyone to think this is forever."
And ending on a bleak note in terms of the "save face" and "cut and run" nature of the U.S.
future engagement in Afghanistan, Gen. Miller concluded,
"This is my last assignment as
a soldier in Afghanistan. I don't think they'll send me back here in another grade. When I leave
this time I'd like to see peace and some level of unity as we go forward."
Interestingly, the top US and NATO commander can now only speak in remotely hopeful terms of
"some level of unity"
--
perhaps just enough to make a swift exit at least.
Tags
War Conflict
Politics
There not going to come out as say, where here because we want
BOMB IRAN a few years down the track and maintain US Military
deployment for Israel's long-term interests. Israel are suspected
of committing 9/11 attacks, if you think about it long term policy
of expansion, getting ride of its surrounding threats it's all
makes sense. scraficing 3000 americans for Israel's longterm
policy's seems to be the pill they were willing to swallow.
US is trying to shift the blame on Russia, as the Talibans went
to Moscow for peace talks.
And with Pakistan aligning with Russia/China and Iran (
Pakistan being the main supply route for the US army in
Afghanistan), the US army is practically f*cked.
Good to know that Trump is not prepared to continue to protect
Deep State opium production at the taxpayers' expense. I hope he's
planning to withdraw US armed forces from all foreign soil.
Based on what? What did he stop? Which wars did he pull out out
of?
Military was a huge contributor to his votes. He's not
going to lift a finger. He would have started by pardoning
Snowden, or closing Gitmo - something Obama lied about when
making campaign promises. Where, here is your chance, Donald.
Do at least one single thing that shows you as anything other
that a MIC puppet. Just one thing! Anything!
Bombing Syria? Yep. Blind eye to Saudi crimes in Yemen? Yep.
Dancing to Zionist demands? Yep.
Trade wars? Oh sure, those things never lead to military
conflict either!
The only reason we were in Afghanistan in the first place was to
protect the heroin trade from acquisition by the Taliban. It's
time to pull out and let the British protect their poppy fields if
they want em that badly.
Notice that Rivera says the Marines just had a visit from
Prince Charles. If you want to know more about why we have
so much heroin in America now and who benefits.. read Dope
Inc.
"... What will the postmortem statue of neoliberalism look like? ..."
"... "You stupid Wap, you just scratched my car. That dirty Mick tripped me when I wasn't looking." ..."
"... That [N-word] SOB is just like them other Jew-boy globalists who are sending our jobs to Chinamen and whatnot. Screw him and all the damned Democrat libtards. ..."
LP: You've recently highlighted that this is a
tricky time for historians and those who want to examine the past, like filmmakers.
Well-intentioned people who want to confront the injustices of history may end up replacing one
set of myths for another. You point out the distortion of history in films like "Selma" which
offer uplifting narratives about black experiences but tend to leave out or alter meaningful
facts, such as the ways in which blacks and whites have worked together. This is ostensibly
done to avoid a "white savior" narrative but you indicate that it may serve to support other
ideas that are also troubling.
AR: Exactly, and in ways that are completely compatible with neoliberalism as a style of
contemporary governance. It boils down to the extent to which the notion that group disparities
have come to exhaust the ways that people think and talk about inequality and injustice in
America now.
It's entirely possible to resolve disparities without challenging the fundamental structures
that reproduce inequalities more broadly. As my friend Walter Benn Michaels and I have been
saying for at least a decade, by the standard of disparity as the norm or the ideal of social
justice, a society in which 1% of the population controls more than 90% of the resources would
be just, so long as the 1% is made up non-whites, non-straight people, women, and so on in
proportions that roughly match their representation in the general population.
It completely rationalizes neoliberalism. You see this in contemporary discussions about
gentrification, for example. What ends up being called for is something like showing respect
for the aboriginal habitus and practices and involving the community in the process. But what
does it mean to involve the community in the process? It means opening up spaces for
contractors, black and Latino in particular, in the gentrified areas who purport to represent
the interests of the populations that are being displaced. But that has no impact on the logic
of displacement. It just expands access to the trough, basically.
I've gotten close to some young people who are nonetheless old school type leftists in the
revitalized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and I've been struck to see that the
identitarian tendency in DSA has been actively opposing participation in the Medicare for All
campaign that the national organization adopted. The argument is that it's bad because there
are disparities that it doesn't address. In the first place, that's not as true as they think
it might be, but there's also the fact that they can't or won't see how a struggle for
universal health care could be the most effective context for trying to struggle against
structural disparities. It's just mind-boggling.
LP: If politicians continue to focus on issues like race, xenophobia, and homophobia without
delivering practical solutions to the economic problems working people face, from health care
costs to the retirement crisis to student debt, could we end up continuing to move in the
direction of fascism? I don't use the word lightly.
AR: I don't either. And I really agree with you. I was a kid in a basically red household in
the McCarthy era. I have no illusions about what the right is capable of, what the bourgeoisie
is capable of, and what the liberals are capable of. In the heyday of the New Left, when people
were inclined to throw the fascist label around, I couldn't get into it. But for the first time
in my life, I think it's not crazy to talk about it. You have to wonder if Obama, who never
really offered us a thing in the way of a new politics except his race, after having done that
twice, had set the stage for Trump and whatever else might be coming.
Thanks, Yves. For decades now Reed has set the standard for integrating class-based
politics with anti-racism. I only wish Barbara Fields, whom he mentions, could get as much
air time.
Those who argue for identity-based tests of fairness (e.g. all categories of folks are
proportionately represented in the 1%) fail to think through means and ends. They advocate
the ends of such proportionality. They don't get that broad measures to seriously reduce
income and wealth inequality (that is, a class approach) are powerful means to the very end
they wish for. If, e.g., the bottom 50% actually had half (heck, even 30 to 40%) of income
and wealth, the proportionality of different groups in any socioeconomic tier would be much
higher than it is today.
There are other means as well. But the point is that identity-driven folks strip their own
objective of it's most useful tools for it's own accomplishment.
In reading this, my mind was drawn back to an article that was in links recently about a
Tea Party politician that ended up being sent to the slammer. He was outraged to learn that
at the prison that he was at, the blacks and the whites were deliberately set against each
other in order to make it easier for the guards to rule the prison.
It is a bit like this in this article when you see people being unable to get past the
black/white thing and realize that the real struggle is against the elite class that rules
them all. I am willing to bet that if more than a few forgot the whole
Trump-supporters-are-racists meme and saw the economic conditions that pushed them to vote
the way that they did, then they would find common cause with people that others would write
off as deplorable and therefore unsalvageable.
Howard Zinn, in " A Peoples' History of the United States" makes a similar argument about
the origins of racism in southern colonial America. The plantation owners and slave owners
promoted racism among the working class whites towards blacks to prevent them ( the working
class blacks and whites) from making common cause against the aristocratic economic system
that oppressed both whites and blacks who did not own property.
The origin of militias was to organize lower class whites to protect the plantation owners
from slave revolts.
The entire book is an eye-opening story of class struggle throughout US history.
The origin of militias was to organize lower class whites to protect the plantation
owners from slave revolts.
The militias were the bulk of the military, if the not the military, for large periods of
time for all of the British American Colonies for centuries. The colonists were in fairly
isolated, often backwater, places for much of the time. Between the constant small scale
warfare with the natives and the various threats from the French and Spanish military, there
was a need for some form of local (semi) organized military. It was the British government's
understandable belief that the colonists should pay at least some of the expensive costs of
the soldiers and forts that were put in place to protect them during and after the Seven
Years War that was the starting step to the revolution; the origins of modern American
policing especially in the South has its genesis in the Slave Patrols although there was some
form of police from the start throughout the Colonies form the very beginning even if it was
just a local sheriff. The constant theme of the police's murderous brutality is a legacy of
that. The Second Amendment is a result of both the colonists/revolutionarie's loathing, even
hatred, of a potentially dictatorial standing army of any size and the slave holders'
essential need to control the slaves and to a lesser degree the poor whites.
people gang up (in racial groups – maybe that's just easiest though it seems to have
systematic encouragement) in prison for protection I think. The protection is not purely from
guards. There are riots in which one could get seriously injured (stabbed), one could get
attacked otherwise etc.. Because basic physical safety of one's person is not something they
provide in prison, maybe quite deliberately so.
"I am willing to bet that if more than a few forgot the whole Trump-supporters-are-racists
meme and saw the economic conditions that pushed them to vote the way that they did, then
they would find common cause with people that others would write off as deplorable and
therefore unsalvageable."
In those for whom poverty caused them to vote for Trump. But some voted for Trump due to
wealth. And whites overall have more wealth than blacks and so overall (not every individual)
are the beneficiaries of unearned wealth and privilege and that too influences their view of
the world (it causes them to side more with the status quo). Blacks are the most economically
liberal group in America. The thing is can one really try simultaneously to understand even
some of say the black experience in America and try hard to understand the Trump voter at the
same time? Because if a minority perceives those who voted for Trump as a personal threat to
them are they wrong? If they perceive Republican economic policies (and many have not changed
under Trump such as cutting government) as a personal threat to them are they wrong? So some
whites find it easier to sympathize with Trump voters, well they would wouldn't they, as the
problems of poor whites more directly relate to problems they can understand. But so
what?
I am glad that Reed mentioned the quasi-religious nature of identity politics, especially
in its liberal form. Michael Lind made a similar observation:
As a lapsed Methodist myself, I think there is also a strong undercurrent of
Protestantism in American identity politics, particularly where questions of how to promote
social justice in a post-racist society are concerned. Brazil and the United States are
both former slave societies, with large black populations that have been frozen out of
wealth and economic opportunity. In the United States, much of the discussion about how to
repair the damage done by slavery and white supremacy involves calls on whites to examine
themselves and confess their moral flaws -- a very Protestant approach, which assumes that
the way to establish a good society is to ensure that everybody has the right moral
attitude. It is my impression that the left in Brazil, lacking the Protestant puritan
tradition, is concerned more with practical programs, like the bolsa familia -- a cash
grant to poor families -- than with attitudinal reforms among the privileged.
Many white liberals are mainline Protestants or former Protestants and I think they bring
their religious sensibilities to their particular brand of liberalism. You can see it in the
way that many liberals claim that we cannot have economic justice until we eliminate racist
attitudes as when Hillary Clinton stated that breaking up the big banks won't end racism. Of
course, if we define racism as a sinful attitude it is almost impossible to know if we have
eliminated it or if we can even eliminate it at all.
Clinton and liberals like her make essentially the same argument that conservatives make
when they say that we cannot have big economic reforms because the problem is really greed.
Once you define the problem as one of sin then you can't really do anything to legislate
against it. Framing political problems as attitudinal is a useful way to protect powerful
interests. How do you regulate attitudes? How do you break up a sinful mind? How can you even
know if a person has racism on the brain but not economic anxiety? Can you even separate the
two? Politicians need to take voters as they are and not insist that they justify themselves
before voting for them.
I thought this reference to the Protestant way of self-justification or absolving oneself
without talking about class in the US is true but was perhaps the weakest point. The
financial elites justify their position and excuse current inequalities and injustices
visiting on the 99% by whatever is the current dominate culturally approved steps in whatever
country. In the US – Protestant heritage; in India – not Protestant heritage; in
Italy – Catholic heritage, etc. Well, of course they do. This isn't surprising in the
least. Each country's elites excuse themselves in a way that prevents change by whatever
excuses are culturally accepted.
I think talking about the Protestant heritage in the US is a culturing interesting artifact
of this time and this place, but runs the danger of creating another "identity" issue in
place of class and financial issues if the wider world's elite and similar self excuse by
non-Protestant cultures aren't included in the example. Think of all the ways the various
religions have been and are used to justify economic inequality. Without the wider scope the
religious/cultural point risks becoming reduced to another "identity" argument; whereas, his
overall argument is that "identity" is a distraction from class and economic inequality
issues. my 2 cents.
Chris Hedges has been warning about the rise of American Fascism for years, and his
warnings are coming to fruition- and still, the general population fails to recognize the
danger. The evils and violence that are the hallmarks of fascist rule are for other people,
not Americans. The terms America and Freedom are so ingrained in the minds of citizens that
the terms are synonymous. Reality is understood and interpreted through this distorted lens.
People want and need to believe this falsehood and resist any messenger trying to enlighten
them to a different interpretation of reality- the true view is just to painful to
contemplate.
The horrors of racism offer a nugget of truth that can misdirect any effort to bring about
systemic change. Like the flow of water finding the path of least resistance, racist
explanations for current social problems creates a channel of thought that is difficult to
alter. This simple single mindedness prevents a more holistic and complicated interpretation
to take hold in the public mind. It is the easy solution for all sides- the tragedy is that
violence, in the end, sorts out the "winners". The world becomes a place where competing
cultures are constantly at each others throats.
Falling in the racism/ identity politics trap offers the elite many avenues to leverage
their power, not the least of which is that when all else fails, extreme violence can be
resorted to. The left/progressives have become powerless because they fail to understand this
use of ultimate force and have not prepared their followers to deal with it. Compromise has
been the strategy for decades and as time has proven, only leads to more exploitation. Life
becomes a personal choice between exploiting others, or being exploited. The whole system
reeks of hypocrisy because the real class divisions are never discussed or understood for
what they are. This seems to be a cyclical process, where the real leaders of revolutionary
change are exterminated or compromised, then the dissatisfaction in the working classes is
left to build until the next crisis point is reached.
WWIII is already under way and the only thing left is to see if the imperialist ideology
will survive or not. True class struggle should lead to world peace- not world domination.
Fascists are those that seek war as a means of violent expansion and extermination to suit
their own ends. Hope for humanity rests in the idea of a multipolar world- the end of
imperialism.
Agressive war is the problem, both on the small social scale and the larger stage between
nations. The main question is if citizens will allow themselves to be swept up into the
deceptions that make war possible, or defend themselves and whatever community they can form
to ensure that mass destruction can be brought under control.
The real crisis point for America will be brought about by the loss of foreign wars- which
seem inevitable. The citizenry will be forced to accept a doubling down on the existing
failures or will show the fortitude to accept failure and defeat and rebuild our country.
Seeking a mythic greatness is not the answer- only a true and sober evaluation will suffice-
it must be a broader accommodation that accepts responsibility for past wrongs but does not
get caught up in narrow, petty solutions that racist recriminations are hallmark. What is
needed is a framework for a truth and reconciliation process- but such a process is only
possible by a free people, not a conquered one. It is only on this foundation that an
American culture can survive.
This will take a new enlightenment that seems questionable, at least in the heart of
American Empire. It entails a reexamination of what freedom means and the will to dedicate
oneself to building something worth defending with ones life. It has nothing to do with
wanting to kill others or making others accept a particular view.
It is finding ones place in the world, and defending it, and cultivating it. It is the
opposite of conquest. It is the resistance to hostility. In a word, Peace.
I don't disagree with many of your assertions and their warrants but I am growing
disturbed by the many uses of the word 'Fascism'. What does the word mean exactly beyond its
pejorative uses? Searching the web I am only confused by the proliferation of meanings. I
believe it's time for some political or sociological analyst to cast off the words 'fascism'
and 'totalitarianism' and further the work that Hannah Arendt started. We need a richer
vocabulary and a deeper analysis of the political, social, philosophical, and human contents
of the concepts of fascism and of totalitarianism. World War II was half-a-century ago. We
have many more examples called fascism and totalitarianism to study and must study to further
refine exactly what kinds of Evil we are discussing and hope to fight. What purpose is served
sparring with the ghosts as new more virulent Evils proliferate.
You have brought up a very important point. The meaning of words and their common usage.
But I have to disagree that "new more virulent Evils" require a new terminology. To my mind,
that plays right into the hand of Evil. The first step in the advancement of evil is the
debasement of language- the spreading of lies and obfuscating true meaning. George Orwell's
doublespeak.
I don't think its a matter of casting off the usage of words, or the creative search to
coin new ones, but to reclaim words. Now the argument can be made that once a word is
debased, it looses its descriptive force- its moral force- and that is what I take as your
concern, however, words are used by people to communicate meaning, and this is where the easy
abandonment of words to their true meaning becomes a danger for the common good. You cannot
let someone hijack your language. A communities strength depends on its common use and
understanding of language.
Where to find that common meaning? Without the perspective of class struggle taken into
account- to orientate the view- this search will be fruitless. Without a true grounding,
words can mean anything. I believe, in America, this is where the citizenry is currently, in
a state of disorientation that has been building for decades. This disorientation is caused
by DoubleSpeak undermining common understanding that is brought about by class consciousness/
solidarity/ community. In a consumerist society, citizens take for granted that they are lied
to constantly- words and images have no real meaning- or multiple meanings playing on the
persons sensibilities at any given moment- all communication becomes fundamentally marketing
and advertising BS.
This sloppiness is then transferred into the political realm of social communication which
then transforms the social dialog into a meaningless exercise because there is really no
communication going on- only posturing and manipulation. Public figures have both private and
public views. They are illegitimate public servants not because they withhold certain
information, but because they hold contradictory positions expressed in each realm. They are
liars and deceivers in the true sense of the word, and don't deserve to be followed or
believed- let alone given any elevated social standing or privilege.
Your oppressor describes himself as your benefactor- or savior- and you believe them, only
to realize later that you have been duped. Repeat the cycle down through the ages.
DoubleSpeak and controlling the interpretation of History are the tools of exercising
power. It allows this cycle to continue.
Breaking this cycle will require an honesty and sense of empathy that directs action.
Fighting evil directly is a loosing game. You more often than not become that which you
fight against. Directly confronting evil requires a person to perform evil deeds.
Perpetuation of War is the perfect example. It must be done indirectly by not performing evil
actions or deeds. Your society takes on a defensive posture, not an aggressive one. Defense
and preservation are the motivating principles.
Speaking the truth, and working toward peace is the only way forward. A new language and
modes of communication can build themselves up around those principles.
Protecting oneself against evil seems to be the human condition. How evil is defined
determines the class structure of any given society.
So much energy is wasted on trying to convince evil people not to act maliciously, which
will never happen. It is what makes them evil- it is who they are. And too much time is
wasted listening to evil people trying to convince others that they are not evil- or their
true intensions are beneficent- which is a lie.
"Sparing with ghosts", is a good way of describing the reclaiming of historical fact. Of
belief in the study of history as a means to improve society and all of humankind thru
reflection and reevaluation. The exact opposite desire of an elite class- hell bent on self
preservation as their key motivating factor in life. If you never spar with ghosts, you have
no reference to evaluate the person standing before you- which can prove deadly- as must be
constantly relearned by generations of people exploited by the strong and powerful.
The breaking point of any society is how much falsehood is tolerated- and in the West
today- that is an awful lot.
"I've gotten close to some young people who are nonetheless old school type leftists in
the revitalized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and I've been struck to see that the
identitarian tendency in DSA has been actively opposing participation in the Medicare for All
campaign that the national organization adopted "
Check to see how their parents or other relatives made or make their money.
This is quite the challenge. I know a large number of upper middle class young people who
are amenable to the socialist message but don't really get (or don't get at all) what it
means. (I'm convinced they make up a large portion of that percentage that identifies as
socialist or has a positive image of socialism.) But it would be wrong to write them off.
A related point that I make here from time to time: all these UMC kids have been
inculcated with a hyper-competitive world view. We need a systemic re-education program to
break them free.
as a complementary anecdote, i know of economically bottom 50% people who are devout
anti-socialists, because they deal with "micro-triggers" of free-riders, cheaters, petty
theft in their everyday life.
To them, the academic/ivory tower/abstract idea of equality in class, equality in income
is an idealistic pipe dream versus the dog-eat-dog reality of the world.
Interesting that you mention "economically bottom 50% people who are devout
anti-socialists, because they deal with "micro-triggers" of [low income?] free-riders,
cheaters, petty theft in their everyday life."
I read a lot of their snarling against alleged low income "moochers" in the local media.
What I find disturbing is their near total blindness to the for-profit businesses,
millionaires and billionaires who raid public treasuries and other resources on a regular
basis.
Just recently, I read a news story about the local baseball franchise that got $135
million dollars (they asked for $180 million) and the local tourism industry complaining
about their reduction in public subsidies because money had to be diverted to homeless
services.
No one seems to ever question why profitable, private businesses are on the dole. The fact
that these private entities complain about reductions in handouts shows how entitled they
feel to feed from the public trough. Moreover, they do so at a time of a locally declared
"homeless emergency".
Yet, it is the middle class precariat that condemn those below them as 'moochers and
cheaters', while ignoring the free-riders, cheaters and grand larceny above them.
There is no class consciousness. The working stiffs admire their owners so the only people
left to blame for their difficult life conditions are the poor below them on the social
hierarchy. Or they blame themselves, which is just as destructive. In the interim, they enjoy
the camaraderie that sporting events provide, so give the owners a pass. Bread and
Circuses.
A capitalist critique is the only way to change this situation, but that would require
learning Marxist arguments and discussing their validity.
There is that, or Charity for the poor, which only aggravates the class conflict that
plagues our society.
The third way is actually building community that functions on a less abusive manner,
which takes effort, time, and will power.
I homed in on your phrase "they deal with 'micro-triggers' of free-riders, cheaters, petty
theft in their everyday life" and it landed on fertile [I claim!] ground in my imagination. I
have often argued with my sister about this. She used to handle claims for welfare, and now
found more hospitable areas of civil service employment. I am gratified that her attitudes
seem to have changed over time. Many of the people she worked with in social services shared
the common attitudes of disparagement toward their suppliants -- and enjoyed the positions of
power it offered them.
I think the turning point came when my sister did the math and saw that the direct costs
for placing a homeless person or family into appallingly substandard 'housing' in her area
ran in the area of $90K per year. Someone not one of the "free-riders, cheaters, [or villains
of] petty theft in their everyday life" was clearly benefiting. I am very lazy but I might
try to find out who and advertise their 'excellence' in helping the poor.
A "re-education" program? That usage resurrects some very most unhappy recollections from
the past. Couldn't you coin a more happy phrase? Our young are not entirely without the
ability to learn without what is called a "re-education" program.
The comments in this post are all over the map. I'll focus on the comments regarding
statues commemorating Confederate heroes.
I recall the way the issue of Confederate statues created a schism in the NC
commentarient. I still believe in retaining 'art' in whatever form it takes since there is so
little art in our lives. BUT I also believe that rather than tear down the Confederate
statues of Confederate 'heroes' it were far better to add a plaque comemorating just what
sorts of heroism these 'heroes' performed for this country. That too serves Art.
Tearing the statues down only serves forgetting something which should never be
forgotten.
This was intended as a separate comment to stand alone. I believe Art should not forget
but should remember the horrors of our past lest we not forget.
It occurred to me that centrists demonize the left as unelectable based entirely on tokens
of identity. Long haired hippies. The other. It works because the political debate in America
is structured entirely around identity politics. Nancy Pelosi is a San Francisco liberal so
of course white people in Mississippi will never vote for the Democrats. Someone like Bernie
Sanders has a message that will appeal to them but he is presented as to the left of even
Pelosi or alternately a traitor to the liberal identity siding with racists and sexists.
Actually, all of these oppressions are rooted in working class oppression. But that is
inconsistent with the framing of ascriptive identity.
This was a great post. Didn't know about Adolph Reed. He gets straight to the point
– we have only 2 options. Either change neoliberal capitalism structurally or modify
its structure to achieve equality. Identity politics is a distraction. There will always be
differences between us and so what? As long as society itself is equitable. As far as the
fear of fascism goes, I think maybe fascism is in the goal of fascism. If it is oppressive
then its bad. If it is in the service of democracy and equality the its good. If our bloated
corporatism could see its clear, using AR's option #2, to adjusting their turbo neoliberal
capitalism, then fine. More power to them. It isn't racism preventing them from doing this
– it is the system. It is structural. Unfortunately we face far greater dangers,
existential dangers, today than in 1940. We not only have an overpopulated planet of human
inequality, but also environmental inequality. Big mess. And neither capitalism nor socialism
has the answer – because the answer is eclectic. We need all hands on deck and every
practical measure we can conjure. And FWIW I'd like to compare our present delusions to all
the others – denial. The statue of Robert E. Lee, imo, is beautiful in its conveyance
of defeat with deep regret. The acceptance is visible and powerful. What will the postmortem
statue of neoliberalism look like?
Do you really want 'equality' however you might define it? We are not born equal. Each of
us is different and I believe each of us is therefore very special. [I suppose I echo the
retort of the French regarding the equality of the sexes: "Vive la Difference!".] I believe
we should celebrate our inequalities -- while we maintain vigilance in maintaining the equal
chance to try and succeed or fail. The problem isn't inequality but the extreme inequalities
in life and sustenance our society has built -- here and more abroad. I don't mind being
beaten in a fair race. An unfair race lightens my laurels when I win. But our societies run
an unfair competition and the laurels far too heavily grace the brows of those who win. And
worse still, 'inequality' -- the word I'll use for the completely disproportionate rewards to
the winners to the undeserving in-excellent 'winners' is not a matter solved by a quest for
'equality'. The race for laurels has no meaning when the winners are chosen before the race
and the 'laurels' cost the welfare and sustenance for the losers and their unrelated kin who
never ran in the race. And 'laurels' were once but honors and there is too far little honor
in this world.
Nothing denotes a naive idealistic "progressive" than the demand for near absolute
equality in terms of money and status in their future society.all or nothing i guess.
I have read and appreciated many comments by 'Susan the other'. I would not ever
characterize her comments as those of a naive idealistic "progressive" demanding absolute
equality I should and must apologize if that is how you read my comment. I intended to
suggest equality is not something truly desirable in-itself. But re-reading her comment I
find much greater depth than I commented to --
'Susan the other' notes: "The statue of Robert E. Lee, imo, is beautiful in its conveyance
of defeat with deep regret." In answer to her question: "What will the postmortem statue of
neoliberalism look like?" I very much doubt that the post mortem statue of Neoliberalism will
show regret for anything save that all the profits were not accrued before those holding the
reins, the Elite of Neoliberalism, might gracefully die without care for any children they
may have had.
Thanks for this post. I am really surprised these days by black "liberal" media folks who
insist that racism be addressed before inequality/class issues. They are almost vehement in
their discussions about this. Are they protecting neoliberalism because it benefits them
.???
My previous admittedly overlong reply has yet to show. Darn.
But this question is an important one.
Yes, they do very much.
One of the reasons the Civil Rights struggle died was the co-option of the Black elites,
especially of the Civil Rights Movement, by the American elites. After Martin Luther King's
assassination, his Poor People's Campaign slowly died. A quiet quid pro quo was offered.
Ignore all the various social, economic, political and legal wrongs done to all Americans,
and yes blacks in particular, and just focusing on black identity and social "equality" or at
least the illusion of campaigning for it, and in you will be given a guaranteed, albeit
constrained, place at the money trough. Thus the Black Misleadership Class was born.
All the great movements in past hundred plus years have had their inclusivity removed.
Suffragism/Feminism, the Union Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, even the Environmental
Movement all had strong cross cultural, class, and racial membership and concerns. Every
single of these movements had the usually white upper class strip out everyone else and
focusing only on very narrow concerns. Aside from the Civil Rights Movement, black
participation was removed, sometimes forcefully. They all dropped any focus on poor people of
any race.
A lot of money, time, and effort by the powerful went into doing this. Often just by
financially supporting the appropriate leaders which gave them the ability to push aside the
less financially secure ones.
Reading this post in its entirety I feel the author must become more direct in critique.
Old jargon of class or race or a "struggle against structural disparities" should be replaced
by the languages of such assertions as: " the larger objective was to eliminate the threat
that the insurgency had posed to planter-merchant class rule" or "It just expands access to
the trough, basically". Why mince words when there are such horrors as are poised against the
common humanity of all?
Your comment is too brief and too enigmatic. If by Adolf you mean Adolf H. -- he is dead.
New potentially more dangerous creatures roam the Earth these days beware.
I consider currently one of our great intellectuals in that he understands and can use
language to make his case in a layman not necessarily friendly but accessible .
and as a southern born white male I think maybe I should watch Glory I remember a '67 show
and tell when a black classmate had a civil war sword come up in their sugar cane field, and
when I and a friend found a (disinterred yuck) civil war grave just out in the woods in north
florida. People seem to have forgotten that times were chaotic in our country's checkered
past I was in massive race riots and massive anti war protests as a child of the '60s, but
since I was in the single digits at the time no one payed me any mind as a for instance my
dad somehow got the counselors apartment in a dorm at florida state in 68′ and I
remember people in the the dorms throwing eggs at the protesters. It was nuts.
Ferguson's INET paper got me thinking about what triggers racism in us. As a kid, ethnic
pejoratives were usually a reaction to some injury. "You stupid Wap, you just scratched
my car. That dirty Mick tripped me when I wasn't looking." I tend to agree with the
premise that bailing out Wall Street and letting Main Street lose out offers a powerful
trigger for a racist reaction. People might have been softening on their lifelong covert
racism when they succumbed to Obama's charm. But when you lose your job, then your house, and
wind up earning a third of what you did before the GR, that is the sort of thing that
triggers pejorative/racist reactions. That [N-word] SOB is just like them other Jew-boy
globalists who are sending our jobs to Chinamen and whatnot. Screw him and all the damned
Democrat libtards. Then, when a MAGA-hatted Trump echoes those sentiments over a PA
system, the ghost of Goebbels is beaming.
Preparing for a multipolar order, the USA is falling back by consolidating its grip on its
own backyard: Latin America.
Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador are already aligned. Brazil will follow soon after
Bolsonaro takes office in Janurary 1st. The USA doesn't have any "carrots" left, only the
"big stick". This realignment will be brutal for the Latin American people, with high
inflation, slave wages, high unemployment and abscence of basic human rights (police state)
to follow.
Paul Jay says a significant section of the population supporting far right "populism" is
part of the process of the development of fascism, but the acceptance of gross inequality is
also a necessary condition for this process – From a live recording on October 29th,
2018
What does the question mean: "How is Israel mediating its right-wing nationalistic
ethnocratic political bent with the fact that the Jews massacred in
Pittsburgh were apparently progressive?" One cannot mediate "a bent". I cannot follow a
discussion of a question I do not understand. To mediate means to "intervene between
people (not a bent!) in a dispute in order to bring about an agreement or
reconciliation", according to one good dictionary. I notice that diction is a problem for
many who ask questions, and no one stops to ask them what they mean.
This is the net result of neoliberalism enforced debt slavery for the country. And there is no chances for Ukrainians to
climb back from this debt hole.
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine's SSS has acknowledged that so far this year, the population has already decreased by 122,000. ..."
"... While the country's low birth rate of approximately 1 birth for 1.5 deaths is a contributing factor to the country's depopulation, emigration is by far the biggest factor. ..."
"... Between 2002 and 2017, an estimated 6.3 million Ukrainians emigrated with no plans to return. ..."
"... Through 2015 and 2017, as a result of the ongoing war in the Donbass region and the plunging value of the Ukrainian hryvnia, migration increased notably: 507,000 people went to Poland; 147,000 to Italy; 122,000 to the Czech Republic; 23,000 to the United States; and 365,000 to Russia or Belarus. ..."
"... The easing of visa-free travel by the European Union (EU) in September 2017 only increased the flow of Ukrainians to countries such as Poland, which is facing its own demographic crisis and in need of workers. In 2018 alone, more than 3 million Ukrainians applied for passports that would allow them to work in Poland. Poland is the only EU country that allows Ukrainians to obtain seasonal work visas with just a passport. Ukrainians have received 81.7% of all work visas issued in Poland this year. ..."
"... Between 1 and 2 million Ukrainian workers now reside in Poland, where they are often forced to take jobs "under the table," are easily exploited by employers, and work in dangerous conditions. Many Ukrainian laborers are recruited to Poland by scam offers of employment, only to then find themselves stranded and forced to work for whatever wage they can get. ..."
"... While Russia is constantly demonized in the Ukrainian and Western press as the eternal enemy of Ukraine, 2 million Ukrainian citizens now live or work in Russia. According to Olga Kirilova, between 2014 and 2017, 312,000 Ukrainians were granted Russian citizenship and Ukrainians make up the vast majority of immigrants to Russia. ..."
"... The migration of Ukrainian workers abroad has reached such a level that remittances from migrants now constitute 3 to 4 percent of the country's GDP. They exceed the amount of foreign investment in Ukraine. Nonetheless, such transfers are not nearly enough to make up for the negative impact of the currency's falling value, inflation, and the disappearance of skilled workers. ..."
"... The Ukrainian ruling class acknowledges that the country is in serious trouble. "One of the main risks of the current scenario is the continuation of the outflow of labor from Ukraine, which will create a further increase in the imbalance between demand and supply in the labor market," noted a report from the country's national bank. ..."
"... The Corrupt, extreme right wing government of Poroshenko, that has driven large proportions of the Ukrainian population into poverty and despair has only been able to take power and remain I office thanks to US imperialism and Angela Merkel's scheming and regime change program. ..."
"... Popular support for the "maidan" in the Ukraine was based on misleading and dishonest claims by pro EU and Pro US opportunistic political operators that such "regime change" would lead to total integration with Europe and open borders.... ..."
"... One of the most horrific consequences of the dismantling of the Soviet Union was the explosion of sex trafficking and very large numbers of Ukrainian women were caught up in this horrific exploitation and continue to be. ..."
"... Oh the benefits of US installed dictatorships. ..."
"... "Welcome to Europe, Ukraine. Here are your rubber gloves and toilet cleaning brush. Oh, you're a young woman? The red light district is three blocks that way". ..."
"... In Baltic states after being "freed from communism and Soviet occupation" the population decline is also very prominent, the same reasons as in Ukraine too. ..."
As fascist far-right nationalist groups regularly parade through the country demanding "Ukraine for Ukrainians," Ukraine faces
a massive depopulation crisis. Millions of people of all ethnicities are leaving the country, fleeing poverty and war.
Since the restoration of capitalism in 1991, the overall population of Ukraine has declined from just over 52 million to approximately
42 million today, a decrease of nearly 20 percent. If the separatist-controlled provinces of the Donbass region and Crimea are excluded,
it is estimated that just 35 million people now live in the area controlled by the government of Petro Porosehnko.
Ukrainian governments, including the current one, have been loath to carry out an official census, as it is widely believed that
the population estimates reported by the country's State Statistics Service (SSS) are inflated by including deceased individuals.
One aim of this is to rig elections. An official country-wide census has not been held since 2001. In late 2015, the Poroshenko government
postponed the 2016 census until 2020.
Despite the lack of reliable official numbers, all independent reports point to a sharp reduction in the population. According
to Ukraine's Institute of Demography at the Academy of Sciences, by 2050 only 32 million people will live in the country. The World
Health Organization has estimated that the population of the country will drop even further, to just 30 million people.
Ukraine's SSS has acknowledged that so far this year, the population has already decreased by 122,000.
Such data are a testament to the monumental failure of capitalism to provide a standard of living that matches, much less exceeds,
that which existed during the Soviet period over 25 years ago.
While the country's low birth rate of approximately 1 birth for 1.5 deaths is a contributing factor to the country's depopulation,
emigration is by far the biggest factor.
Between 2002 and 2017, an estimated 6.3 million Ukrainians emigrated with no plans to return.
Facing poor employment prospects, deteriorating social and medical services, marauding far-right gangs, and the ever-present
prospect of a full-scale war with Russia, Ukrainian workers are fleeing the country in great numbers, either permanently or as temporary
labor migrants.
According to a report from the Center for Economic Strategy (CES), almost 4 million people, or up to 16% of the working-age population,
are labor migrants. Despite having Ukrainian citizenship and still technically living in Ukraine, they actually reside and work elsewhere.
Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has put the number of Ukrainian migrant workers even higher, at 5 million.
Through 2015 and 2017, as a result of the ongoing war in the Donbass region and the plunging value of the Ukrainian hryvnia, migration
increased notably: 507,000 people went to Poland; 147,000 to Italy; 122,000 to the Czech Republic; 23,000 to the United States; and
365,000 to Russia or Belarus.
The easing of visa-free travel by the European Union (EU) in September 2017 only increased the flow of Ukrainians to countries
such as Poland, which is facing its own demographic crisis and in need of workers. In 2018 alone, more than 3 million Ukrainians
applied for passports that would allow them to work in Poland. Poland is the only EU country that allows Ukrainians to obtain seasonal
work visas with just a passport. Ukrainians have received 81.7% of all work visas issued in Poland this year.
Between 1 and 2 million Ukrainian workers now reside in Poland, where they are often forced to take jobs "under the table," are
easily exploited by employers, and work in dangerous conditions. Many Ukrainian laborers are recruited to Poland by scam offers of
employment, only to then find themselves stranded and forced to work for whatever wage they can get.
While migrant workers in Poland are constantly subjected to anti-immigrant rhetoric from the right-wing PiS government in Warsaw,
the Polish state classifies Ukrainian laborers as "refugees" in order to comply with EU quotas and reject refugees from Syria and
elsewhere.
According to polls of Ukrainian migrants in Poland, over half are planning to move to Germany if the labor market there is ever
open to them.
While Russia is constantly demonized in the Ukrainian and Western press as the eternal enemy of Ukraine, 2 million Ukrainian
citizens now live or work in Russia. According to Olga Kirilova, between 2014 and 2017, 312,000 Ukrainians were granted Russian citizenship
and Ukrainians make up the vast majority of immigrants to Russia.
The dearth of a working-age population in Ukraine is putting further strain on an already struggling pension system. According
to Ukraine's SSS, as a result of widespread labor migration, only 17.8 million out of 42 million Ukrainians are economically active
and paying into the pension system.
The migration of Ukrainian workers abroad has reached such a level that remittances from migrants now constitute 3 to 4 percent
of the country's GDP. They exceed the amount of foreign investment in Ukraine. Nonetheless, such transfers are not nearly enough
to make up for the negative impact of the currency's falling value, inflation, and the disappearance of skilled workers.
The Ukrainian ruling class acknowledges that the country is in serious trouble. "One of the main risks of the current scenario
is the continuation of the outflow of labor from Ukraine, which will create a further increase in the imbalance between demand and
supply in the labor market," noted a report from the country's national bank.
However, the government can do nothing to slow the mass emigration, as it is thoroughly under the control of international finance
capital and committed to implementing the austerity programs demanded by Western states and banks.
Despite assurances from the Poroshenko regime that the economy will improve, the emigration and emptying of the country shows
no signs of slowing.
The Corrupt, extreme right wing government of Poroshenko, that has driven large proportions of the Ukrainian population into
poverty and despair has only been able to take power and remain I office thanks to US imperialism and Angela Merkel's scheming
and regime change program.
Without the working class intervening the only ones remaining in Ukraine will be those unable to leave and those that have
their noses in the trough.
Another excellent report of decaying of artificial entity of Ukraine (and capitalism specializes in collapsing societies) that
never even existed before 1992 in European history and was resurrected ( from brief self declared by Bandera racist state status
in 1941) and funded by Germany, Canada and US only to nurture their Fascist and actual Nazi traditions starting from Doncov to
Bandera terror of hundreds of thousands dead 1941-1948 of OUN-B, UPA and Ukrainian SS, all against Russia, as Ukrainian "Country"
was and is used as a Trojan horse to push Putin to submit to the west even more than he does now.
Pain and suffering of Ukrainian people is enormous as only 5% of population of Ukrainian Nazi thugs terrorist nation like like
Hitler street thugs in 1932-1934. It is tragedy that capitalism instigated, exasperated and augmented and should be a lesson for
the left what nationalism does, divides working class that was rendered powerless in Ukraine as Ukrainian industry tied to Russia
collapsed and forces massive migration and de-cohesion of communities, divisions of working class and eradication of any real
leftist leadership via murder, intimidation and exile.
Just a note. All that anti Russia hoopla after 2014 and ensuing NATO belligerence and warmongering and sanctions all were focused
on so called annexation of Crimea to Russia which was nothing but reunification of land under control of Russia since 1754.
I was shocked watching an episode of Columbo, crime series in 1970s when one of characters proudly referred to California joining
in US 1845 as annexation from Mexico, with no shame or condemnation like hinting that it was international aggression of US as
Alta California was never part of US before that.
Well, it was before 1984 and Orwellian newspeak.
Note that Crimea remained autonomous region, not a part of Russia but part of Russian Federation.
Popular support for the "maidan" in the Ukraine was based on misleading and dishonest claims by pro EU and Pro US opportunistic
political operators that such "regime change" would lead to total integration with Europe and open borders.... That would
have allowed (so the misconception went) Ukrainians to flee the country much more openly with less red tape and hassle at the
borders. So, far from being politically or ideologically supportive of Europe or the US or opportunist/nationalist Ukrainian politicians,
the vast majority of Ukrainians only wanted to be allowed to flee, as they experience it, a social shipwreck
One of the most horrific consequences of the dismantling of the Soviet Union was the explosion of sex trafficking and very
large numbers of Ukrainian women were caught up in this horrific exploitation and continue to be.
Victoria Newland and Geoffrey Pyatt, both US officials, were recorded at the time of the right wing and fascist led coup that
overthrew Russian backed Yanakovic, boasting that Washington had poured $5 billion into Ukraine ensuring that their man, an ex
World Bank executive, was elected.
Since then the most rabid anti working class/ anti Russian governments have ruled the roost.
Only those unable to flee this hell- hole and those whose snout is in the trough will soon be left there. Oh the benefits
of US installed dictatorships.
In addition to emigration, Ukraine's decreasing population is a result of a higher infant mortality rate than surrounding countries.
High infant mortality rates always indicate economic and social stress.
According to The World Bank 2017 figures for infant mortality in that region, the rate per 1,000 births in Ukraine is 7.5 compared
to the following rates in surrounding countries:
Poland - 4.0
Romania - 6.6
Russia - 6.5
Belarus - 2.8
Hungary -3.8
Slovak Republic - 4.6
Only poor Moldova is higher at 13.3
Kinda shot themselves in the foot with their "Revolution of Dignity" fascist coup. "Welcome to Europe, Ukraine. Here are your
rubber gloves and toilet cleaning brush. Oh, you're a young woman? The red light district is three blocks that way".
Life in Crimea must be looking pretty good to them now.
The puppet of the USA, Poroshenko , needs to go, and the USA should get the hell out of the Ukraine plus NATO has no business
being on the borders of Russia. This is all the fault of the USA, And, the current immigration problem world wide is because the
USA bombs countries eviscerating them yet the USA refuses to admit refugees which are fleeing from the USA wars.
In Baltic states after being "freed from communism and Soviet occupation" the population decline is also very prominent, the
same reasons as in Ukraine too.
These same right-wing, fascist Ukrainian Banderovitzes love to yell and scream about the bogus "Holodomor" hoax (which has been
debunked by serious scholars such as Pers Anders Rudling, and others, as well as Thottle). They falsely claim that the USSR tried
to "depopulate" Ukrainians, when they are the ones who have depopulated Ukraine.
Speaking of Ukraine, the Russian sanctions against Ukraine have been announced. Predictably,
Poroshenko considers them to be 'an award', or so he says. I don't know why he feels
qualified to speak for those so honoured, since he was not on the list.
Trade between Russia and Ukraine hit a low of $10.26 Billion in 2016, but struggled back
up to $12.9 Billion last year. Mind you, pre-glorious-Maidan it was more than $50 Billion
annually. Never mind; I'm sure Yurrup will pick up the slack, just like it did after the
glorious Maidan. Amazingly, the New York Times is still referring to Poroshenko as a
'chocolate tycoon', in the same sentence in which it calls Viktor Pinchuk an oligarch.
Empire is a political entity that rules multiple nations with one (imperial nation) as the
first among equals.
Notable quotes:
"... Thus emperors do their utmost to ensure that politics is stuffed with reliable personal retainers. Longstanding official empires are a bit easier on the imperial person: there may be a tradition of a submissive bureaucracy and a compliant senate, and so the emperor's legitimacy is less at the mercy of policy failure. But crisis immediately opens up the prospect of rival claimants and coups, usurpations, and civil wars. ..."
Something
remarkable happened on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Commentators began to declare, in
somewhat exultant tones, that America had at last become a true empire. America was of course
also a benevolent empire, they insisted, but that nod to altruistic tradition could not hide
their excitement that America had at last joined the greatest empires of the past.
Implicit in these giddy declarations was the assumption that empire was an exalted state of
power and possibility, not so unlike Rome at its zenith. Ironically, and for a historical
instant, they were right. But there is one inescapable aspect of empire that the commentators
missed. Empires are weak. It is republics in contrast that are strong. The United States is a
republic that has been operating like an empire, and it has suffered for it. If we look at the
gold standard for empire -- Rome -- we can see why.
First of all, what is an empire? Empire has less to do with scale of realm or of power than
it does with one single feature. Simply, it is a polity where politics itself revolves around
the person of the emperor.
This differs from the politics of kingship. Kings represent and embody a densely woven
social fabric. They preside over a society of aristocracy: an extended family of rule, where
the king is also father. Empires in contrast often emerge from republics. Thus Rome has been a
favorite model for American commentators precisely because its successful passage from republic
to empire seems close to ours.
Such post-republican emperors often inhabit the complex politics of multiple competing
constituencies. These groups and factions continue to do political business within a republic's
constitutional framework transformed. Thus emperors find themselves consulting with and
cajoling senates or assemblies; and unlike kings, they may owe their very legitimacy to these
bodies.
Weakness 1: The Imperial Person
But the making and the doing in politics swirl around the imperial person -- indeed,
politics is dependent on the imperial person. This is the first weakness of empire: because
politics revolves around the emperor, the rise and fall, success and failure of state policy is
ultimately his alone.
The imperial situation is thus one of continuing and always worrisome vulnerability because
no matter how many supporters or factions an emperor marshals, they can vanish in an instant.
No matter that they have been handsomely bought off with perquisites and gifts, no matter that
they are kept in line with threats and periodic cruel example. Failure of an imperial venture
puts imperial authority itself instantly at risk.
Thus emperors do their utmost to ensure that politics is stuffed with reliable personal
retainers. Longstanding official empires are a bit easier on the imperial person: there may be
a tradition of a submissive bureaucracy and a compliant senate, and so the emperor's legitimacy
is less at the mercy of policy failure. But crisis immediately opens up the prospect of rival
claimants and coups, usurpations, and civil wars.
A republic's robustness, in contrast, derives from its ability to replace an elected leader
and his government with relative ease. This is consecrated in the U.S. Constitution by mandated
quadrennial elections of its executive.
Our constitutional framework is still in place, but after 9/11 it shifted operating practice
to the imperial. Basically, 9/11 created an imperial dispensation. Through it the president
took on the mantle of the office of commander in chief, which under the circumstances was
perfectly natural. But then he went further and announced a state of perpetual war -- "a war of
generations," "a hundred years war" -- and so transformed himself into an imperial person. The
transformation here was from episodic commander in chief -- when and where circumstances
warranted -- to permanent generalissimo. His primary identity was now that of the military
commanding person.
U.S. tradition and precedent limited the office of commander in chief both to the duration
of a specific emergency and in terms of presidential powers. The Cold War chipped away at
congressional authority to limit presidential powers. But the breathtaking 9/11 attacks drove
the president to expand these powers further and make them truly open-ended.
Here the imperial transformation was not simply about power. Even more persuasively, it
operated in the realm of authority and expectation. The popular climate was such after 9/11
that Americans seemed to share the prospect that American energies now revolved again around a
great world struggle. Here of necessity -- or so everyone thought -- the entire conduct and
control of this struggle should be vested in the emperor. The president took full advantage of
the new zeitgeist to lock politics into an imperial orbit. Moreover, Americans also believed
that war was the new national norm and that it would last a very, very long time. Few
questioned that the situation marked a historic shift in the inmost nature of American
politics.
So the president, through the transformed office of commander in chief, became an emperor.
But the war that made this possible was now an imperial war and so his exclusive enterprise. He
deliberately denied national participation -- "go about your business" -- that would have put
this war squarely in the tradition of the old republic. Now it was his, and the benefits were
great, extending deeply into American society as much as they did across the globe.
But the president also took on this weakness of empire: the enterprise stands and falls with
him.
Weakness 2: The Imperial Purse
In crisis, a republic can claim all the energy and resources of its citizens because in the
end the citizenry and the republic are the same. In empires, however, former republican
citizens have given over their political authority to the trust and keeping of empire -- and
also their deepest responsibility to the nation as well. The emperor now manages; the emperor
now defends. This is the heart of the imperial compact, and it is expressive of a fundamental
political transaction: the citizens yield over management powers to the imperial person in
exchange for a release from civic responsibility.
In revenue terms, this means that although they will still pay a citizen's normal taxes,
they are no longer obligated for extraordinary levees. Formal empires, in fact, are unusually
weak when it comes to squeezing the very top citizens, those who in a republic would have been
the foremost contributors. Remember, an empire that succeeds a republic retains as a sort of
sacred fiction the old constitutional framing. And behind this fiction is continuing reality:
that the emperor is not all-powerful, but rather dependent on the same political constituencies
that were players in the old republic. The emperor cannot do without them, and he cannot afford
to alienate them. Thus the top citizens in effect have to be bought off. This president has
done just that with his extravagant tax cuts. In other words, the emperor can have his war,
which itself is necessary to his majestic exercise of imperial power, as long as he does not
demand too much from the interest groups whose support he needs for the continued exercise of
imperial authority.
It is up to the emperor to marshal what national resources he can -- and this is especially
true in elective wars he has taken on and made his own. He cannot ask citizens to bear a burden
that is exclusively his, and this limitation extends to money. As historian Mark C. Bartusis
wrote, "In Byzantium there was never a general 'citizen's duty' to fight for the state. In fact
the very notion that a subject had an obligation to defend the state was foreign to the
Byzantine mind set and antithetical to both Roman and Byzantine ideology that identified the
emperor, through his army, as the Defender of the Empire."
War expenditures therefore must exist in a "normal" fiscal context -- which naturally limits
the scope of imperial actions. Thus truly grand war by contrast and by definition is always a
republican, or people's war.
This limitation is even more keenly felt when it comes to soldiers. Here it is not simply a
question of how they are paid, but also how they are recruited and retained. One of the key
transformations of republic to empire is precisely in the shift from armed citizenry to
imperial military. By fighting his own war, the emperor above all needs loyal troops: both
figurative troops in politics and real shooters in the battle. The transformation from armed
citizenry to imperial military is not simply a shift from conscription to volunteer force. In
fact, it is necessary for the new army to become the emperor's instrument, and thus it must be
at some deep level bonded to the imperial person. In this way, the empire's soldiers are also
transformed. But it is often metamorphosis so nuanced as to be easily missed that they become
the emperor's retainers.
If they are native volunteers, then their emotional motivation to join is still patriotic --
for the nation. But increasingly, their functional motivation as soldiers changes and is
expressed through their direct allegiance to the emperor, in whose wars they fight. He is their
benefactor, their protector, and their leader. Integral to imperial authority and imperial
majesty is also the emperor's overarching identity as soldier (hence in the original Latin,
imperator meant general). Therefore, the emperor's relationship to his soldiers must first be
one of a general to his troops. He may not actually lead forces in the field, but his persona
is anointed as generalissimo and war leader. For this president these ties were underscored in
media interviews with troops on the eve of war: "We're good to go when our commander-in-chief
gives the word."
This relationship has also been etched repeatedly in very public and very emotional images
of the emperor with his army. The president would often give war speeches at posts and bases
where his person was always staged with troops arrayed in back of him, as well as before him.
There he would stand in camera-eye in a sea of battledress uniforms. The emotion would run
high, encouraging him, lending steely drama to his voice. There are even images of soldiers in
the round, outstretching their arms to him. At applause lines his troops would go further,
washing his presence with whoops and hoo-yahs. The ties of the imperial person and his army
were further consecrated by his ubiquitous short military jacket, emblazoned with its badge and
title of supreme authority: "George W. Bush, Commander-in-Chief."
Weakness 3: The Imperial Majesty
We have indicated that the personal politics of empire are surprisingly fragile, and that
the politics of the emperor must therefore always be about reinforcing or shoring up his
politics by the constant reminding exercise of imperial authority. This is best done not
through attempting to acquire more statutory power -- a risky and problematical pursuit -- but
rather through radiating more authority.
This is after all why people put up with emperors at all. People have come to believe that
leadership of the polity and the nation requires a single, celestial man at the helm.
Imperial vesting happens because the emperor in his imperial person is the bringer of
triumph, the vanquisher of foes in a world milieu of constant, "lurking" insecurity -- a
favorite term in presidential rhetoric because it helps to sustain the impression that enemies
are everywhere, all the time, requiring constant, strenuous, and victorious executive action.
In Rome this quality of the imperial person was famously styled as victor ac triumphator.
The emperor himself was anointed ultimately through the legitimizing concept of "eternal
victory." Rome's very identity came to be couched in terms of perpetual triumph -- over foes,
adversity, backwardness, over what was not Roman. Moreover, the nation's (res publica) triumph
was achieved always through the intercession of imperial leadership. The emperor had to be the
quintessential generalissimo, and victory thus became the essential hallmark of his reign.
The emperor's authority was established through what became the central Roman imperial
ritual: the imperial triumph. In the triumph, the emperor's semi-magical persona that marshaled
the forces of the nation and led them to victory was celebrated and revealed.
Central to a Roman imperial triumph was the conveyance of the imperial person to the sacred
place where triumph would be celebrated -- a stage entrance always freighted with grand
symbolism. Our emperor's landing on the flight deck of the USS Lincoln was no exception.
Instead of a triumphal chariot, the president arrived on a military aircraft in which he was
co-pilot, thus demonstrating to all his soldierly bona fides.
The Lincoln itself represented a grand symbol of American power and an enormous icon of
eternal victory. In this triumph it is significant that the emperor chose to celebrate
exclusively with his troops, where Americans were collectively placed outside as second-class
onlookers -- thus underscoring their depreciation of citizenship while elevating the military's
relationship.
In Roman times, of course, the army was often the source of imperial legitimacy. Just as the
army would proclaim a new emperor by elevating him on a shield borne up by troops, so this
emperor was raised up by "his own" (ton idion). In a supremely public moment, the emperor chose
to have his own legitimacy ratified before the American people by the very military that
represented "his own."
The procession and prostration of the enemy leader is a common trope in Roman victory
ceremonies. The vanquished leader undergoes ritual divestiture of his badges of authority and
then is forced to prostrate himself before the imperial person. This ceremony was often
associated with the army and took place in the camps. But Justinian transferred this ceremony
to the imperial capital in 534. The public triumph over the Vandalic kingdom culminated in the
divestiture and proskynesis of Gelimer, which served to signal to the Gothic kingdoms that
their regimes too were illegitimate, that they were no better than usurpers, and that they were
next.
When U.S. forces pulled Saddam out of his "spider hole" they made sure to videotape the
filthy and disheveled dictator during a medical examination. This was no medical moment but
rather a carefully orchestrated ceremony of divestiture and prostration. Like similar late
Roman ceremonies, it took place in one of the battle army's encampments, but it was also
broadcast worldwide, to have the widest public impact, like an ancient victory procession in
the imperial capital. Indeed, modern ceremony puts its ancient antecedents to shame. Not only
was the entire world shown again and again the interior of Saddam's mouth, but also the
purposeful degradation of the former ruler went beyond even the old Roman act of forced
proskynesis.
The emperor-president also addressed the people in carefully assembled, handpicked venues.
These not only guarantee high levels of emotional support -- visualized on-camera as positive
energy -- but they also bring forth comments that are less questions than they are petitions of
support. In the president's March 22 "town hall" meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia, one
military wife exclaimed, "I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, for a solution to this,
because it seems that our major media networks don't want to portray the good. And if people
could see that, if the American people could see [the good], there would never be another
negative word about this conflict."
These are reminders of imperial authority flowing from popular acclamation. These events
become all the more essential as imperial popularity wanes. No matter how selective and
narrowly unrepresentative the audience, its enthusiastic acclamation is broadcast to all as
though it were all-American.
But of course, modern America is not ancient Rome, and Americans are not generally even like
old Romans. But it is rather astonishing how some of the rituals of imperial kingship -- those
that defined imperial authority 1,500 years ago -- should have reappeared, unbidden and
unrecognized, and yet with such crystal fidelity in our own politics.
Moreover these echoes, however strongly they have sounded over the past four years, may well
be fading. The entire imperial enterprise erected around the global war on terrorism seems to
be receding, if not heading toward wholesale collapse.
But the imperial moment was real. For a time at least the American Republic came close to
being transformed -- in operating politics if not in its actual constitution -- into an
empire.
We would be wise at the very least to acknowledge how close we came to the politically
irreparable. We should also recognize what attends the transformation to empire. For a time,
national politics came to revolve dangerously like old empires, and almost wholly, around the
person of the commander in chief. Everywhere it was believed that the fate of the nation was in
his hands, that he would protect us, that he would lead us to victory -- and moreover that the
people were passive onlookers in a great struggle run by the emperor.
Two convergent conditions made this happen.
The prodigal symbolism of 9/11 -- whose emotional power transcended Pearl Harbor -- demanded
a national narrative on the scale of America's great wars, especially World War II. This was
not simply a war narrative but a sacred war narrative. It alone seemed to demand a struggle
between good and evil and an American national messianic mission of world redemption -- or at
least Islamic-world redemption.
At that moment, Americans were not only emotionally vulnerable, their emotions inclined them
toward the comforting and the mythically familiar. We were ready for a great war that would
unify the nation, vanquish evil, and lead to a better world. We were primed, in short, for a
war of national transcendence.
And this administration was ready to give America a military catharsis. Americans were ready
for the war leadership of a commander in chief. But the administration took the all-powerful
Great War trope and shaped it into an imperial rather than republican vessel of authority.
Like Rome, the administration made victory the foundation of authority. It was implied that
a series of campaigns would be necessary to achieve millennial goals such as "democracy in the
Middle East." The situation called for active and constant presidential leadership. Going
further, the entire management of the war would be the president's alone: there would be no
government of national unity, no national mobilization, and no conscription. Not only was the
president acting as commander in chief, he had undergone a metamorphosis: his person now fully
inhabited an imperial station.
Furthermore, the administration also transformed the war into a permanent dispensation for
imperial authority. The "long war" was designed to take normal politics and normal expectations
off the table. By accepting the reality of the long war, moreover, Americans were encouraged to
submit to a working imperial constitution. In practice this meant widespread expansion of
executive powers at home as well as abroad.
But now "his own" closest retainers have deserted him, and even the military is no longer
ton idion. And so, according to ancient story, the emperor is increasingly isolated, if not
quite alone.
Our very strategy now founders because it was vested entirely in the cockpit of one man's
vision. So what is next? Where do we go from here? What lessons can we draw from the past five
years?
First, the office of emperor as bringer of Eternal Victory is now a bankrupt, rotten
concept. The quest to fulfill this triumphant identity did not bring victory but instead
visibly weakened American world authority and domestic cohesion. Arguably no future leader will
touch the model of triumphal rulership for a very long time. Therefore future executives will
be less tempted to transform themselves into working imperial persons.
Second, even if the model of triumphal rulership has been discredited, the other imperial
dispensation -- the "long war" trope -- is still alive and well, so even the next president
might be tempted to renew a state of national emergency and become a permanent war leader.
Then, if a real war rears up, the lure of triumphal rulership will beckon yet again.
But national emergencies are nonetheless real, and the political-military role of commander
in chief was designed to deal with crisis. We must also remember that the slide beyond this, to
imperial mode after 9/11, was more like an opportunistic pushing of norm and form rather than a
permanent transformation. After all, we did not end up with anything like real triumphal
rulership but only in contrast, its sordid failure.
Perhaps the lesson for all of us is in how quickly an imperial enterprise took root in the
American presidency in the wake of a single -- if pushing-all-the-buttons flamboyant -- attack.
Moreover, that enterprise was supremely confident: it was fully prepared to transform the
office of president into that of an imperial victor ac triumphator. There was the real
possibility, however remote it might actually have been, of an American political
transformation.
Therefore, if nothing else, we should be all the more alert to future imperial
temptation.
______________________________________
Michael Vlahos is principal professional staff at the National Security Analysis
Department of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
"... Roberts goes on to say that the ideology of US neoconservatives is "akin to the German Nazy Party last century" in their ideology of American supremacy and exceptionalism. ..."
Roberts, Former Asst. Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration and former
contributing editor at the Wall Street Journal has been an outspoken critic of neocon foreign
policy and Washington corruption from a conservative viewpoint.
He has an enormous following on the internet and publishes at the Unz Review and on his own
website.
... ... ...
Roberts, 79, served in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1982. He was formerly a
distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior research fellow at the Hoover
Institution, and has written for the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek.
Roberts maintains an active
blog .
He's also vehemently against interventionary wars around the world , and spoke with Russia's
state-owned Sputnik news in a
Tuesday article - in which Roberts said that President Trump's decision to pull out of the
Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty was a handout to the military-security
complex.
The former Reagan administration official clarified that he does not think "that the
military-security complex itself wants a war with Russia, but it does want an enemy that
can be used to justify more spending. " He explained that the withdrawing from the INF
Treaty "gives the military-security complex a justification for a larger budget and new
money to spend: manufacturing the formerly banned missiles."
...
The economist highlighted that " enormous sums spent on 'defense' enabled the armaments
corporations to control election outcomes with campaign contributions ," adding that in
addition, "the military has bases and the armaments corporations have factories in almost
every state so that the population, dependent on the jobs, support high amounts of
'defense' spending."
"That was 57 years ago," he underscored. "You can imagine how much stronger the
military-security complex is today." - Sputnik
Roberts also suggested that " The Zionist Neoconservatives are responsible for Washington's
unilateral abandonment of the INF treaty, just as they were responsible for Washington's
unilateral abandonment of the ABM Treaty [in 2002], the Iran nuclear agreement, and the promise
not to move NATO one inch to the East. "
Is this what got him suspended?
Roberts goes on to say that the ideology of US neoconservatives is "akin to the German
Nazy Party last century" in their ideology of American supremacy and exceptionalism.
" Their over-confidence about their ability to quickly defeat Israel's enemies and open the
Middle East to Israeli expansion got the US bogged down in wars in the Middle East for 17 years
... During this time, both Russia and China rose much more quickly than the neoconservatives
thought possible."
Dr. Roberts opined that US policy makers are seeking to weaponize the Russian opposition
and "pro-Western elements" to exert pressure on Moscow into "accommodating Washington in
order to have the sanctions removed." On the other hand, the Trump administration's new arms
race could force Russia into spending more on defense, according to the author. - Sputnik
While we don't know if Roberts' Sputnik interview resulted in his Twitter ban 48 hours
later, it's entirely possible.
Trump may have his own views, but he has no own foreign policy. He is a neocon's
marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... Instead Bush, and later Obama, transitioned the military mission -- without consultation from Congress -- into a nation-building effort that was doomed from the start. Candidate Donald Trump spoke of a different approach to the Middle East and railed against nation-building abroad. His instincts on Afghanistan have been consistent and correct from very early on. Had it not been for the relentless pressure of several key officials, the war might already have come to end. ..."
"... Woodward wrote ..."
"... Trump defers to the Pentagon because he doesn't really care. He says he wants to get out of Afghanistan (and I support that) but getting out isn't going to make him any money, or get him any votes. So why bother with it, especially when he can lie to his base and tell them we are already out, and they'll believe him? ..."
"... Trump is the kind of person who likes to "talk the talk" but when comes right down to it, he going to sadly, "walk the walk" that the Washington establishment tells him to walk. ..."
"... The treasonous MIC and those top generals do not care about the nation and ordinary Americans. They care only about their profits, careers and their own egos. ..."
"... There is no war they don't like – Middle East, checked, Ukraine, yes, South China Sea, sure, Korea, definitely. It is so sad that Trump turns out to be such a weak and impotent president, contrary to what the supporters claim. ..."
In a routine dating back to 2004, U.S. officials
regularly claim that the latest strategy in Afghanistan is working -- or as General David
Petraeus said in
2012 , the war had "turned a corner." It hadn't and it still hasn't. In fact, evidence
overwhelmingly affirms that the newest "new" strategy will be no more effective than those that
came before it. It is time to stop losing U.S. lives while pretending that victory is just
around the corner. It is time to end the war in Afghanistan.
Last week, one of the most brazen insider attacks of the war took place in Kandahar when one
of the Afghanistan governor's bodyguards turned rogue,
killingthree high-profile
Afghan leaders and
wounding the senior U.S. field commander, Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley. Miraculously,
the new commander, General Scott Miller, escaped harm. But in 2018,
eight Americans have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the American death toll to
2,351 .
On October 7, 2001, President George W. Bush
addressed the nation as combat operations in Afghanistan began. He emphasized that the
American "mission is defined. The objectives are clear. [Our] goal is just." Those objectives,
he explained , were "targeted actions" that were "designed to disrupt the use of
Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the
Taliban regime."
By the summer of 2002, those objectives were fully met as the Taliban organization was
wholly destroyed and al-Qaeda severely degraded. As of 2009, there were reportedly
as few as 100 stragglers scattered impotently throughout Afghanistan. The military mission
should therefore have ended and combat forces redeployed.
Instead Bush, and later Obama, transitioned the military mission -- without consultation
from Congress -- into a nation-building effort that was doomed from the start. Candidate Donald
Trump spoke of a different approach to the Middle East and railed against nation-building
abroad. His instincts on Afghanistan have been consistent and correct from very early on. Had
it not been for the relentless pressure of several key officials, the war might already have
come to end.
After a December 2015 insider attack, Trump tweeted : "A suicide
bomber has just killed U.S. troops in Afghanistan. When will our leaders get tough and smart.
We are being led to slaughter!" According to Bob Woodward's book Fear , Trump brought
that same passion against the futility of the Afghan war into the White House.
Woodward
wrote that at an August 2017 meeting on Afghanistan, Trump told his generals that the
war had been "a disaster," and chided them for "wanting to add even more troops to something I
don't believe in."
Woodward claims that Trump then told the top brass, "I was against this from the beginning.
He folded his arms. 'I want to get out,' the president said. 'And you're telling me the answer
is to get deeper in.'" Under pressure -- from the likes of Secretary of Defense James Mattis
and Senator Lindsey Graham -- Trump eventually gave in.
Events have since proven that Trump would have done the country a favor by resisting that
pressure and sticking to his instincts to end the war. The violence
keeps up at a record pace, civilian casualties continue to set
all-time highs , and Afghan troops struggle
mightily with battle losses. The president was right in August 2017 and his instincts
remain solid today.
The longer Trump continues to defer to the establishment thinking that produced 17
consecutive years of military failure, the longer that failure will afflict us, the more
casualties we will suffer unnecessarily, and the more money we will pour down the drain.
It is time for Trump to remember that it is futile to try to win the unwinnable and finally
end America's longest war.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lieutenant
Colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments,
two of which were in Afghanistan.
Trump defers to the Pentagon because he doesn't really care. He says he wants to get out of
Afghanistan (and I support that) but getting out isn't going to make him any money, or get
him any votes. So why bother with it, especially when he can lie to his base and tell them we
are already out, and they'll believe him?
Trump is the kind of person who likes to "talk the talk" but when comes right down to it, he
going to sadly, "walk the walk" that the Washington establishment tells him to walk.
The treasonous MIC and those top generals do not care about the nation and ordinary
Americans. They care only about their profits, careers and their own egos.
There is no war they don't like – Middle East, checked, Ukraine, yes, South China
Sea, sure, Korea, definitely. It is so sad that Trump turns out to be such a weak and impotent president, contrary to
what the supporters claim.
I think a lot of us could have tolerated the asinine antics if he had stuck to his campaign
positions on this and other things .
God; what might have been .
SDS, you are correct. I've often thought that Trump could have forged a majority coalition by
doing things the People really wanted, or at least didn't hate: nominating another Gorsuch,
cutting the size of government, appointing competent people, getting out of the Middle East,
no tariffs, less racism, getting concession from businesses that benefited from the tax cut,
following emoluments rules, etc. etc.
"I think a lot of us could have tolerated the asinine antics if he had stuck to his
campaign positions on this and other things . God; what might have been ."
First, sorry you fell for The Con. I understand. Maybe. Second, the real question is, "What are you going to do about it?". Vote Republican Nov 6? Why would you do that? Hope against all hope? Dementia? Gluttony
for punishment? BTW. HRC is not on the ballot this time, and will never be again.
Unless we intend to invade en mass, and scour the country from one end to the other to defeat
any and all opponents, the mission in Afghanistan will remain what it is. "new wine (of
sorts) in old wineskins.
If we are going to remake a country -- we had better remake it. I am not sure i have ever
said this before but the entire affair
We hear Pakistan is now desperate for IMF aid. That the One belt One Road initiative there by
China has already put the country in the position of having to stand down its creditor,
China. Partly with the help of Japanese finance, Iran and India are out to squeeze Islamabad
out of world trade.
The Pakis are headed into a new dark age, so don't expect the Russians to bark wildly and
chase down this car. With any luck, they and China will revive the Northern Alliance, make a
garrison of Kabul, and eventually Xi and Vladi will have their own escalating civil war over
control over Central Asia.
I'd say January 2019 is a good time to begin a quick US withdrawal, just as long as we
pull out of the IMF and not give another red American cent to the region, save a green zone
around Kabul with economically productive areas.
I would argue that although this would seem like an American loss, it will put our
Progressive yappers to shame. What human values would they stand up and defend now, among the
IndoPak Caravan? Maybe then we'll really focus on our own border and wage the good fight
where it is needed -- the Culture War.
Obama had intended to leave. The military insisted on vict'ry and another Surge. He gave them
their Surge and their time to do it. They failed, made things worse and prevented Obama from
leaving. They're still playing. Trump's just the latest Oval Office 'sucker'.
"... As to your question about who votes for Bolsonaro, I think we can break this down into three or four categories. His hard core is the sort of middle class of small business owners, plus members of the police and the armed forces. This would be, I guess, your classic fascist constituency, if you want to call it that. But you know, that's a very small proportion. ..."
"... Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is a former academic sociologist who was exiled during the military dictatorship and was president of Brazil in the late '90s. He has yet to endorse Haddad, despite the fact that Bolsonaro previously said something about 10 years ago that Fernando Henrique Cardoso should have been killed by the military dictatorship. This is a real, in my opinion, a real failure of character, a real cowardice from the Brazilian supposedly-centrist elite to defend democracy against the very obvious threat that Bolsonaro poses. ..."
As to your question about who votes for Bolsonaro, I think we can break this down into
three or four categories. His hard core is the sort of middle class of small business owners,
plus members of the police and the armed forces. This would be, I guess, your classic fascist
constituency, if you want to call it that. But you know, that's a very small proportion.
And certainly in terms of his voters, in terms of his voter base, that's a small proportion.
What you have, then, is the rich, amongst whom he has a very significant lead. He polls 60-65
percent amongst the rich. And these people are motivated by what is called [inaudible]machismo,
which is anti-Worker's Party sentiment, which is really a sort form of barely-disguised class
loathing which targets the Worker's Party, rails against corruption, but of course turns a
blind eye to corruption amongst more traditional right-wing politicians.
These are the people who, at the end of the day, are quite influential, and have probably
proved decisive for Bolsonaro. But that isn't to say that he doesn't have support amongst the
poor, and this is the real issue. Bolsonaro would not win an election with just the support of
the reactionary middle class and the rich. He needs the support amongst the broad masses, and
he does have that to a significant degree, unfortunately.
What are they motivated by? They're motivated by a sense that politics has failed them, that
their situation is pretty hopeless. The security situation is very grave. And Bolsonaro seems
to be someone who might do something different, might change things. It's a bit of a rolling of
the dice kind of situation. And you know, here the Worker's Party does bear some blame. They've
lost a large section of the working class. A large section of the poor feel like they were
betrayed by the Worker's Party, who didn't stay true to its promises. The Worker's Party
implemented the austerity in its last government under Dilma, which led to a ballooning of
unemployment. And you know, there's a sense that- well, what have you done for us? A lot of
people don't want to return to the path. They want something better, and kind of roll the dice
hoping that maybe Bolsonaro does something, even though all evidence points to the fact that
he'll be a government for the rich, and the very rich, and for the forces of repression.
GREG WILPERT: So finally, in the little time that we have remaining, what is
happening to Brazil's left? Is it supporting the Haddad campaign wholeheartedly?
ALEX HOCHULI: Yes, absolutely. It's pretty much uniform amongst the left. Certainly
in terms of, you know, in terms of individuals, in terms of groups, in terms of movements.
Everyone, from even the kind of far-left Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party who
hate PT have told its members that they should vote for Fernando Haddad who, it should be
noted, is a figure to the right of that of PT, I guess, within the party. He's a much more
centrist figure. So that's kind of notable.
What hasn't happened is a broad front against fascism. That hasn't really materialized,
because the Brazilian center has failed to defend its democratic institutions against the very
obvious threat that Bolsonaro represents. You know, just to highlight one thing, Eduardo
Bolsonaro, who is Jair Bolsonar's son and a congressman, has threatened the Supreme Court,
saying that you could close down the Supreme Court. All you have to do is send one soldier and
one corporal, and they'll shut down the Supreme Court. I mean, this is a pretty brave threat
against Brazilian institutions. And a lot of the center has failed to really manifest itself,
really failed to take a stand. Marina Silva, who was at one point polling quite high about six
months ago, who is a kind of an environmentalist and an evangelical and a centrist, and who is
known for always in her speeches talking about doing things democratically, even she- it took
her until this week to finally endorse Haddad, lending Haddad critical support.
The center right, which should be the, you know, the Brazilian establishment, the ones
upholding the institutions, have broadly failed to endorse Haddad as the democratic candidate.
Which is really, really striking. I mean, just to give you one example, probably the best known
figure for your viewers outside of Brazil who might not know the ins and outs and all the
players involved, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is a former academic sociologist who was
exiled during the military dictatorship and was president of Brazil in the late '90s. He has
yet to endorse Haddad, despite the fact that Bolsonaro previously said something about 10 years
ago that Fernando Henrique Cardoso should have been killed by the military dictatorship. This
is a real, in my opinion, a real failure of character, a real cowardice from the Brazilian
supposedly-centrist elite to defend democracy against the very obvious threat that Bolsonaro
poses.
GREG WILPERT: Wow. Amazing. We'll definitely keep our eyes peeled for what happens on
Sunday. We'll probably have you back soon. I'm speaking to Alex Hochuli, researcher and
communication consultant based in Sao Paulo. Thanks again, Alex, for having joined us
today.
I would say that fascism is nationalist movement with the nationality of host country in its core. While neoliberalism
like Trotskyism is in its core globalization movement.
Modem far right movement in Europe emerged as a reaction neolineralism and with few exceptions (Ukranina, oland, Baltic states)
are suspecialous of both EU and the USA and by extension of neoliberal globalization
Notable quotes:
"... The Council on Foreign Relations has placed its members in policy-making with the State Department and other federal agencies. Every secretary of State since 1944, with the exception of James F Byrnes, has been a member of the council. ..."
"... n their pursuit of a New World Order, they are prepared to deal without prejudice with a communist state, a socialist state, a democratic state, a monarchy, an oligarchy ..."
"... When we change presidents, it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945, three different Republicans have occupied the White House for 16 years, and four democrats have held this most powerful post for 17 years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable change in foreign or domestic policy. ..."
"... There has been a great turnover in personnel, but no change in policy. Example: during the Nixon years, Henry Kissinger, a council member and Nelson Rockefeller protégé, was in charge of foreign policy. When Jimmy Carter was elected, Kissinger was replaced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a council member and David Rockefeller protégé. ..."
"... Whereas the Council on Foreign Relations is distinctly national, representation is allocated equally to Western Europe, Japan and the United States. It is intended to act as the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. ..."
"... Before defining the characteristics of fascism, we should look at the neo-conservatives who run the US government on behalf of the elite. ..."
"... The small, but ruthless, group of men, the "money power" described by Lincoln, has stolen democracy from the American people. ..."
Perhaps the best description of how the elite operate comes from the late Senator Barry Goldwater, Presidential candidate of
the Republican Party back in 1964. Senator Goldwater, a close friend of both JFK and Joe McCarthy, was considered a saber
rattling, extreme right wing conservative. Following his death, the Washington Post wrote: "Unlike nearly every other politician
who ever lived, anywhere in the world, Barry Goldwater always said exactly what was on his mind. He spared his listeners
nothing." This eulogy appears to be confirmed in one of Goldwater's books, With no Apologies, [12] in which he presents an
astonishingly frank exposé of the unfettered power and aspirations of the elite:
"The Council on Foreign Relations has placed its members in policy-making with the State Department and other federal
agencies. Every secretary of State since 1944, with the exception of James F Byrnes, has been a member of the council. Almost
without exception, its members are united by a congeniality of birth, economic status and educational background. I believe
that the Council on Foreign relations and its ancillary elitist groups are indifferent to communism. They have no ideological
anchors. In their pursuit of a New World Order, they are prepared to deal without prejudice with a communist state, a
socialist state, a democratic state, a monarchy, an oligarchy - it's all the same to them.
"When we change presidents, it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945,
three different Republicans have occupied the White House for 16 years, and four democrats have held this most powerful post
for 17 years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable
change in foreign or domestic policy.
There has been a great turnover in personnel, but no change in policy. Example: during
the Nixon years, Henry Kissinger, a council member and Nelson Rockefeller protégé, was in charge of foreign policy. When Jimmy
Carter was elected, Kissinger was replaced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a council member and David Rockefeller protégé.
"Whereas the Council on Foreign Relations is distinctly national, representation is allocated equally to Western Europe,
Japan and the United States. It is intended to act as the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and
banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.
"Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller screened and selected every individual who was invited to participate in shaping
and administering the proposed New World Order The Trilateral organization created by David Rockefeller was a surrogate - its
members selected by Rockefeller, its purpose defined by Rockefeller, its funding supplied by Rockefeller Examination of the
membership roster establishes beyond question that all those invited to join were members of the power elite, enlisted with
great skill and singleness of purpose from the banking, commercial, political and communications sectors In my view, the
Trilateral Commission represents a skilful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power -
political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical.
"The Trilateral Commission even selects and elevates its candidates to positions of political power. David Rockefeller and
Zbigniew Brzezinski found Jimmy Carter to be an ideal candidate, for example. They helped him to win the Democratic nomination
and the Presidency [1977]. To accomplish their purpose, they mobilized the money power of the Wall Street bankers, the
intellectual influence of the academic community - which is subservient to the wealthy of the great tax-free foundations - and
the media controllers represented in the membership of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. It was
no accident that Brzezinski and Rockefeller invited Carter to join the commission in 1973. But they weren't ready to bet all
their chips on Carter. They made him a founding member of the commission but to keep their options open they also brought in
Walter Mondale and Elliot Richardson, a highly visible Republican member of the Nixon administration, and they looked at other
potential nominees."
Goldwater's testimony is all the more astonishing coming from a man with considerable knowledge of the core of the matrix and
who was no radical of the left. Goldwater was the only Republican Presidential candidate not to be the CFR choice for the
presidential nomination in the last 50 years.
The elite inner-circle members of the Bilderberg club, Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, conspire to
politically, and economically, dominate the entire world under their New World Order, or Globalisation as they now prefer to name
it.
Since the Second World War, Rockefeller's Council on Foreign Relations has filled key positions in virtually every
administration. Since Eisenhower, every man who has won the nomination for either party (except Goldwater in 1964) has been
directly sponsored by Rockefeller's CFR.
Before defining the characteristics of fascism, we should look at the neo-conservatives who run the US government on behalf of
the elite. In her book, Leo Strauss and the American Right, [13] Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the University of
Calgary, Canada, names current politicians, political advisers, administration and Supreme Court officials, who were followers of
the teachings of the fascist Leo Strauss.
Leo Strauss (1899- 1973) was a philosopher at the University of Chicago (built by Rockefeller money) where he taught many of
those currently involved in the US administration. Strauss left Nazi Germany in 1934 having been given a Rockefeller Foundation
bursary and is considered to be the "fascist godfather" of today's neo-cons.
According to Jeffery Steinberg in Executive Intelligence review [14]: "A review of Leo Strauss' career reveals why the label 'Straussian'
carries some very filthy implications. Although nominally a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany (he actually left for a better
position abroad, on the warm recommendation of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt), Strauss was an unabashed proponent of the three most
notorious shapers of the Nazi philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. Recent biographies have
revealed the depth of Heidegger's enthusiasm for Hitler and Nazism.
"The hallmark of Strauss's approach to philosophy was his hatred of the modern world, his belief in a totalitarian system, run
by 'philosophers' who rejected all universal principles of natural law, but saw their mission as absolute rulers, who lied and
deceived a foolish 'populist' mass, and used both religion and politics as a means of disseminating myths that kept the general
population in clueless servitude."
Professor Shadia Drury [15] provides a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the neocons "Leo Strauss was a great believer
in the efficacy and usefulness of lies in politics. Public support for the Iraq war rested on lies about Iraq posing an imminent
threat to the United States - the business about weapons of mass destruction and a fictitious alliance between al-Qaeda and the
Iraq regime. Now that the lies have been exposed, Paul Wolfowitz [Straussian] and others in the war party are denying that these
were the real reasons for the war.
"The idea that Strauss was a great defender of liberal democracy is laughable. I suppose that Strauss's disciples consider it
a noble lie. Yet many in the media have been gullible enough to believe it. The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished
believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be
like throwing pearls before swine A second fundamental of Strauss's ancients has to do with their insistence on the need for
secrecy and the necessity of lies. In his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss outlines why secrecy is necessary. He
argues that the wise must conceal their views for two reasons - to spare the people's feelings and to protect the elite from
possible reprisals. The people will not be happy to learn that there is only one natural right - the right of the superior to
rule over the inferior, the master over the slave and the wise few over the vulgar many.
"I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close
to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of
a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny."
Shadia Drury is by no means alone in her desperate concern. Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois law
school writes [16]: "I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was
trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and literary executor Joseph Cropsey.
Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago I concur completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of
Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process by Chicago's Straussian
cabal.
"Chicago routinely trained me and numerous other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is
precisely why so many neophyte neo-con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago became
the 'brains' behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree
from the University of Chicago in 1967. Many of his 'lawyers' at the Department of Injustice [sic] are members of the
right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, and totalitarian Federalist Society (aka 'Feddies'), which originated in part at the
University of Chicago.
"According to his own public estimate and boast before the American Enterprise Institute, President Bush Jr. hired about 20
Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration Just recently the University of Chicago officially celebrated its
Bush Jr. Straussian cabal. Only the University of Chicago would have the Orwellian gall to publicly claim that Strauss and
Bloom [a Strauss protégé] cared one whit about democracy let alone comprehend the 'ideals of democracy'.
"Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz or
totalitarians like Ashcroft! The neo-con cabal, currently ruling America and in charge of pursuing the New World Order agenda
is, according to Professors Drury and Boyle, "a tyranny of warmongers and unscrupulous elites from an intellectual and moral
cesspool."
What are the implications of this "New World Order", or "Globalization" as it is now called? Richard K. Moore [17] writes:
"The course of world events, for the first time in history, is now largely controlled by a centralised global regime. This regime
has been consolidating power ever since World War II and is now formalising that power into a collection of centralised
institutions and a new system of international 'order'. Top western political leaders are participants in this global regime, and
the strong Western nation state is rapidly being dismantled and destabilised. The global regime serves elite corporate interests
exclusively. It has no particular regard for human rights, democracy, human welfare, or the health of the environment. The only
god of this regime is the god of wealth accumulation.
"In two centuries the Western world has come full circle from tyranny to tyranny. The tyranny of monarchs was overthrown in
the Enlightenment and semi-democratic republics were established. Two centuries later those republics are being destabilised
and a new tyranny is assuming power - a global tyranny of anonymous corporate elites. This anonymous regime has no qualms
about creating poverty, destroying nations, and engaging in genocide.
"Humanity can do better than this - much better - and there is reason to hope that the time is ripe for humanity to bring
about fundamental changes We can oust the elites from power and reorganise our economies so that they serve the needs of the
people instead of the needs of endless wealth accumulation. This is our Revolutionary Imperative. Not an imperative to violent
revolution, but an imperative to do something even more revolutionary - to set humanity on a sane course using peaceful,
democratic means."
Bottom line, are the neo-cons driving this agenda neo-fascist? Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, published research
on fascism [18] in which he examined the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto and several Latin American
regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each fascist State:
Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans,
symbols, songs and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
Disdain for the recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in
fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the
other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarceration of prisoners, etc.
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy
over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists;
socialists; terrorists, etc.
Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a
disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military are glamorized.
Rampant sexism - The government of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist
regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is
represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media
is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in
war time, is very common.
Obsession with National security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
Religion and Government are intertwined - Government in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the
nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when
the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation are often the ones who
put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
Labor Power is suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government,
labor unions are either eliminated, or are severely restricted.
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher
education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free
expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce
laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There
is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates
who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from
accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even
outright stolen by government leaders.
Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are
manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassinations of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting
numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries
to manipulate or control elections.
Benito Mussolini - who knew something about fascism - had a more straightforward definition: "Fascism should more properly be
called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
Abraham Lincoln stated, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the
safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country
will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and
the republic is destroyed."
The small, but ruthless, group of men, the "money power" described by Lincoln, has stolen democracy from the American
people. An ever-growing number of informed Americans, however, are fighting a brave, but desperate rear-guard action to
retrieve that democracy. Will we give them our total support now, or simply sit back and watch as the entire planet is taken back
to the dark ages? "The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing."
Jim Macgregor is a 57 year old retired doctor. For many years he was a family practitioner and visiting Medical Officer
to Glenochil Prison, one of Scotland's high security prisons. Through his prison work, he developed a special interest in
miscarriages of justice and is a member of the Miscarriage of Justice Organisation. MOJO (Scotland). You can contact Jim at
[email protected]
smart traffic they say? Wowsers. I always wanted those lights to turn green immediately (when Im around).
And 24/7 tracking, so they can give you personal ads on LCD billboards while you walk past.
And better yet: access to lock or unlock your front door for a 'repairman'. Yeah that will work out great. I always wanted to
hand the keys to my home to outsiders for safe keeping, but now its automatic!
Amazing. What a different life we would all lead in this Smart City. /s
B, it does seem that the k affair has risen the crisis in Yemen to the foreground just as
many predicted. Thank goodness.
You are correct in that many are looking too far into this as some kind of conspiracy. I
am reminded by this of many who put forth that it made no difference as to who won the prez
election. It did make a difference to the military as well as Hillary's backers in the cIa
and fbI.
The Saudis screwed up and they will get their comeuppance it seems. Russia might be able
to wiggle their way into the middle then, filling the vacuum of uncle Sam at the circle
jerk. The Saudis will have to curtail their operation in Yemen and no quarter will be given
to wahhabi-terrorists by ksa who wish retribution against Russia. Win-win.
Interesting take by Ghassan Kadi on the Saker's blog, for those who still sense a
conspiracy in this. https://thesaker.is/insights-into-the-khashoggi-ordeal-who-and-why/
Goes back to this 'fiance', but adds Gullen to the mix and makes Erdy out to be an
instigator. Good to have a viewpoint from someone who has lived in Sawdi land.
"The Saudis say they are countering Iran, which backs the Houthis. But the Houthis are an indigenous group with legitimate grievances,
and the war has only enhanced Iranian influence . As has been obvious for some time, the only solution is a negotiated settlement.
But the Saudis have done their best to sabotage a U.N.-led peace process. Talks planned for Geneva in September failed when Saudi
leaders
would not grant safe travel guarantees to Houthi leaders." Bezos' editorial board at WaPo
---------------
Beneath the largely specious argument that Saudi Arabia has the US by the cojones economically lies the true factor that
has caused the two countries to be glued together.
This factor is the Israeli success in convincing the US government, and more importantly, the American people, that Iran is a
deadly enemy, a menace to the entire world, a reincarnation of Nazi Germany, and that Saudi Arabia, a country dedicated to medieval
methods of operation, is an indispensable ally in a struggle to save the world from Iran. The successful effort to convince us of
the reality of the Iranian menace reflects the previous successful campaign to convince us all that Iraq was also Nazi Germany come
again.
The Iran information operation was probably conceived at the Moshe Dayan Center or some other Israeli think tank. and then passed
on in the form of learned papers and conferences to the Foreign Ministry, the Mossad and the IDF. After adoption as government policy
the Foreign ministry and Zionist organizations closely linked to media ownership in the US and Europe were tasked for dissemination
of the propaganda themes involved. This has been a brilliantly executed plan. The obvious fact that Iran is not presently a threat
to the US has had little effect in countering this propaganda achievement.
Last Saturday morning, the Philadelphia based commentator Michael Smerconish openly asked on his popular talk show why it is that
US policy favors the Sunni Muslims over the Shia. i.e., Saudi Arabia over Iran. To hear that was for me a first. This was an obvious
defiance of the received wisdom of the age. I can only hope that the man does not lose his show.
It is a great irony that the barbaric murder of a personally rather unpleasant but defiant exiled journalist has caused re-examination
of the basis and wisdom of giving strategic protection to a family run dictatorship. pl
Erdogan called the Khashoggi murder brutal and premeditated, but did not reveal any damning audio or video evidence. Elijah Magnier
surmises Erdogan extracted a heavy payment from both the Saudis and the Americans in exchange for his relative silence. We shall
see if the economic pressure on Turkey dissipates in the coming days and weeks.
It appears the central pillar of the Borg creed, so eloquently and precisely described here by Colonel Lang, will survive this
bout of heretical thinking. Will journalists and other members of the press be able to keep challenging the Borg? With Trump so
thoroughly assimilated into the Borg, will the "resistance" keep the issue of Saudi perfidy alive? I have my doubts. The Israeli
information operations machine is a juggernaut. Few have the stamina and will to resist it. But it is a fight worth fighting.
We're getting close to the end now. Can you feel it? I do. It's in the news, on the streets,
and in your face every day. You can't tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to.
Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we now have censorship
, monopoly , screaming , insults
,
demonization , and, finally, the use of force to
silence the opposition. There is no turning back now. The political extremes are going to war,
and you will be dragged into it even if you consider yourself apolitical.
There are great pivot points in history, and we've arrived at one. The United States,
ruptured by a thousand grievance
groups , torn by shadowy agencies drunk on a
gross excess of power ,
robbed blind by oligarchs and their treasonous henchmen and decimated by frivolous wars of choice, has
finally come to a point where the end begins in earnest. The center isn't holding indeed,
finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no
societal norms, constrained by no religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language,
art, philosophy, music, or culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more
than easy money, hubris, and sheer momentum.
There comes a time when hard choices must be made...when it is no longer possible to remain
aloof or amused, because the barbarians have arrived at the gate. Indeed, they are here now,
and they often look a whole lot like deracinated, conflicted, yet bellicose fellow Americans,
certain of only one thing, and that is that they possess "rights", even though they could
scarcely form an intelligible sentence explaining exactly what those rights secure or how they
came into being. But that isn't necessary, from their point of view, you see. All they need is
a "voice" and membership in an approved victim class to enrich themselves at someone else's
expense . If you are thinking to yourself right now that this does not describe you, then guess
what? The joke's on you, and you are going to be expected to pay the bill that "someone else"
is you.
In reality, though, who can blame the minions, when the elites have their hand in the till
as well? In fact, they are even more hostile to reasoned discourse than Black Lives Matter , Occupy Wall Street,
or
Antifa . Witness the complete meltdown of the privileged classes when President Trump
mildly suggested that perhaps our "intelligence community" isn't to be trusted, which is after
all a fairly sober assessment when one considers the track record of the CIA ,
FBI , NSA
, BATF, and the other assorted Stasi agencies. Burning cop cars or bum-rushing
the odd Trump supporter seems kind of tame in comparison to the weeping and gnashing of teeth
when that hoary old MIC "intelligence" vampire was dragged screaming into the light. Yet Trump
did not drive a stake into its heart, nor at this point likely can anyone... and that is
exactly the point. We are now Thelma and Louise writ large. We are on
cruise control, happily speeding towards the cliff, and few seem to notice that our not so
distant future involves bankruptcy, totalitarianism, and/or nuclear annihilation. Even though
most of us couldn't identify the band, we nonetheless surely live the lyrics of the Grass
Roots : "Live for today, and don't worry about tomorrow."
The "Defense" Department, "Homeland" Security, big pharma, big oil, big education, civil
rights groups, blacks, Indians, Jews, the Deep State, government workers, labor unions,
Neocons, Populists, fundamentalist Christians, atheists, pro life and pro death advocates,
environmentalists, lawyers, homosexuals, women, Millenials, Baby Boomers, blue collar/white
collar, illegal aliens... the list goes on and on, but the point is that the conflicting
agendas of these disparate groups have been irreconcilable for some time. The difference today
is that we are de facto at war with each other, and whether it is a war of words or of actual
combat doesn't matter at the moment. What matters is that we no longer communicate, and when
that happens it is easy to demonize the other side. Violence is never far behind ignorance.
I am writing this from the bar at the Intercontinental
Hotel in Vienna, Austria. I have seen
with my own eyes the inundation of Europe with an influx of hostile aliens bent on the
destruction of Old Christendom, yet I have some hope for the eastern European countries because
they have finally recognized the threat and are working to neutralize it. Foreign malcontents
can never be successfully integrated into a civilized society because they don't even intend to
try;
they intend to conquer their host instead. Yet even though our own discontents are domestic
for the most part, we have a much harder row to hoe than Old Europe because our own "invaders"
are well entrenched and have been for decades, all the way up to the highest levels of
government. That there are signs Austria is finally waking up is a good thing, but it serves to
illustrate the folly of expecting the hostile cultures within our own country to get along with
each other without rupturing the republic. Indeed, that republic died long ago, and it has been
replaced by a metastasizing mass of amorphous humanity called the American Empire, and it is at
war with itself and consuming itself from within.
Long ago, we once knew that as American citizens each of us had a great responsibility. We
were expected to work hard, play fair, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and
serve our country when called upon to do so. Today, we don't speak of duty, except in so much
as a slogan to promote war, but we certainly do speak of benefits for ourselves and our "group"
of entitled peeps. We will fail because of our greed and avarice. The United States of Empire
has become quite simply too big, too
diverse , and too
"exceptional" to survive.
The US belief in free markets isn't doing them any favours.
What goes wrong with free markets?
They found out in the 1930s, after believing in free markets in the 1920s.
Henry Simons was a firm believer in free markets, which is why he was at the University of
Chicago in the 1930s.
Having experienced 1929 and the Great Depression, he knew that the only way market
valuations would mean anything would be if the bankers couldn't inflate the markets by
creating money through loans.
Henry Simons and Irving Fisher supported the Chicago Plan to take away the bankers ability
to create money, so that free market valuations could have some meaning.
The real world and free market, neoclassical economics would then tie up.
The mandate to fight for the Republic ends in November, after that, it's optional. We'll
keep our part of the bargain, after that, the USA is on her own. There are too many people
who refuse to understand that the way to national health, goes through some rough valleys,
from the President, through congress, the states, and down to the regular folks.
Many are not paying attention, those that understand, are busy looting what's left, those
that'll pay, are wringing their hands in helplessness, or burying their heads like ostriches,
hoping denial of reality, will protect them from reality.
The political class has made the determination that rather than acknowledge reality, and
adjust accordingly, they'll instead implement a surveillance state, ensure comfortable
positions for themselves, and oppress the plebs into compliance. The plebs on their part,
have sacrificed their honor, integrity, and conscience, hoping the world can be looted, to
keep their standard of living.
What the protagonists fail to understand, or understanding, refuse to acknowledge, is that
ROW (Rest of World), is not amenable to looting anymore. Lootable generations are fading
away, unlootabke generations replacing them.
It can be confidently asserted now, that the West, devoid of Europe, has cast the dice for
the final gamble thus, intimidate the world into lootability, or threaten to take everyone
down as well. The problem? Russia responded thus, game on! India responded thus, bring it on!
Pakistan responded thus, up yours! Africa is responding thus, really? China is yet to respond
clearly but we know where they stand thus, what?
Does that mean the end of America? No! It means the end of the American delusion
masquerading as dream. You can't carry on this way, refusing to acknowledge reality, hoping
to somehow do the impossible thus, overturn the laws of nature. You simply cannot game the
rules, no matter how clever. It's analogous to inhaling, but refusing to exhale, it's
unsustainable, impossible in fact!
You have to exhale, or explode, no third choice. You can exhale slowly, Powell's way,
exhale in one breath, Gorbachev's way, or refuse to exhale, British way, with the attendant
consequences, disorderly disintegration.
Trump is trying not to exhale, while still trying to inhale. It's schizophrenic because
you neither get the benefit of fresh oxygen, nor rid yourself of unpleasant carbon dioxide.
Every attempt to do both simultaneously, wastes the available oxygen, while the carbon
dioxide builds up, turning you BLUE in the face, when what you really require, is a healthy
red complexion.
It's a paradox really, that folks are running in reverse, and yet claim their destination
is ahead, it doesn't make sense, it's basically self deception writ large. Well, November is
practically here, and then, we'll be free of all obligations and can thus move on. We very
much look forward to our liberty, very much indeed, this Republic restoration business, has
not been profitable at all, we're cutting our losses...
Myriad, conflicting, "security" departments only further prove 9-11 was a coup d' etat.
Plus it's all about oil (and now ethanol, think water next). Where the US once sent aid to
places like Honduras we now use it as a mere drug distribution center.
"The center isn't holding indeed, finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are
the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms,"
Free Speech. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These are the core values of America. They are under attack, but still there. This is the
single thread that binds our history, culture, and identity together.
It's the left-cultural Marxist faction that has forgotten it, twisted it and made it about
'diversity.' Sold out our country to Chi-coms and globalists.
Anyone who doesn't understand this can either learn fast or GTFO
The best that can happen now - as many are jolted rudely out of their MSM-programmed sleep
- is for people to ask themselves, friends, neighbors, and - the $lime that currently runs
the place: how did we get to this nightmare the author describes? And sift the answers -
mercilessly.
They will - imho - all need to take a deep breath, and look way up/out in $cale to see the
structure and architects of the massive ponzi that has debilitated a whole planet via debt,
and cancel/walk away from it. The fish is the last to discover water. Let the rentier
universe implode. People need real money.
A lot of attention should be devoted to the techniques, authors and motives of the social
engineering that facilitated this debilitation. People need real culture.
The populism/nationalism heading towards (hopefully massive) decentralization we are now
starting to see (so reviled by all DS/NWO MSM, camp-followers/useful idiots) is the
beginning. People need real, local, democratic politics ASAP.
It was never truly an "American" empire, just as the British Empire was never truly
"British".
It was ran and blown up by Luciferian-Hazarian globalist parasites that made untold
profits on the way up, and down.
I would call it the Western Banking/Vatican/MIC Empire, with this empire of old being
represented by London as the financial center, the Vatican/Rome as the Spiritual/Religous
center, and Washington, D.C. as the Military center; and now the facade is cracking.
During the 20th century it successfully kicked off two world wars, spread its version of
globalization (and communism) benefiting the banksters the most (Bretton-Woods), installed a
debt-based fiat currency reserve system (globally), and more.
Now they're trying to do the same thing with China, all the while cut the US at it's
knees, and inundate Western Europe with the Muslim hordes they purposely destablized with
manufactured Middle Eastern wars. (China's trying to play both sides, btw)
Then kick off a possible WWIII, and the aftermath will have whomever's left begging for a
"peaceful" NWO, on any condition.
The losers in this scenario have been, and will be the vast majority of humanity,
regardless of nationality; unless a drastic change is made to the global financial/governance
system as a whole; and it won't be pretty but it will be worth it. How that looks, I truly
don't know.
I'm sure it gets more complex with various factions at the upper echelons, but that's my
summary in a nutshell....
Another of countless articles on the Hedge where all the symptoms are laid out in gruesome
detail while conveniently not stating who's behind the disintegration of the country.
"We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms, constrained by no
religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language, art, philosophy, music, or
culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more than easy money, hubris,
and sheer momentum."
This is precisely what the (((nation wreckers))) have done throughout history. The
miscegenation of races and cultures, the breaking down of morals & religion (replaced by
a worship of money and Mammon), the erasure of the indigenous peoples' history and heritage,
a bastardization of language and philosophy, and debasement of all art and music... These are
but a few of the techniques employed by the parasitic entity. Once the cattle are adequately
milked, only slaughter remains for them before the butchers move on to their next host.
America WAS once a great idea, founded on white Christian ethics. Our Founders had a "no
foreign entanglements" mentality. No, it wasn't perfect, but it worked and our people
prospered. The sickness began in earnest when the eternal contagion was allowed free access
into our societal body in the 1880s. Like syphilis, its insidious influence has slowly eaten
away at our bodies and souls to the present point of insanity.
Bob... it's late and I must retire. However, I felt I owe you some sort of rebuttal.
I must admit, your vernacular leaves me somewhat puzzled and at a loss as to form any
cohesive and concise reply.
My references to Christendom were generalities. One can always find exceptions to any
definitive statement where weak humankind are concerned.
Suffice it to say that the European Christian peoples who inhabited this continent in the
18th & 19th Centuries were heartier and humbler folk than those alive today. "Generally"
speaking... they were God-fearing... guided by an ethos of humility and respect... divorce
was unheard of... children had a mother AND a father present... music and other communal
entertainments were wholesome... they had a pride in the forebearers' accomplishments... they
were taught a sound understanding of the 3 "R"'s... etc, etc...
"Generally" speaking... ALL of the above-mentioned attributes are absent today in a
majority of our citizenry. Think about that. Before (((they))) poisoned our reputable
wellspring, people were FAR better off.
So, yes... Christians had Inquisitions, Crusades, Wars, Conquests, etc... but, they also
had a value system which served as the basis for far-greater deeds, art, architecture and
civilization. Put on a scale, I'd say their philosophy has given the world far more "good"
than "bad". Only my humble opinion.
The social engineering - the cultural Marxism and other gambits used by the Parasite -
merits much (very public) attention to its goals, authors and techniques.
For the time being, the nation is involved in the uncivil war.
The geographical boundaries although somewhat still existing are not, nor ever will be, as
before, so clearly defined. The writer himself made this point. A fractured nation of special
interests with their various greviances sprinkled (forgive the pun) liberally throughout
every state, city, town, village, Berg, family or more accurately what is left of the family
.
Lies, corruption, distraction at every turn, and I would say a great majority are
oblivious to the primary threats and the larger games afoot.
A population ripe for continued abuse and exploitation, as they are well fed , well
entertained, and as Mr. Roberts is fond of pointing out, largely overcome by insouciance ...
devil take the hindmost ..
No it will end or begin in with some cataclysmic event, an event so great, that not even
the greatest liars and deceivers that the world has ever known will be able to cover up the
event, thus all doubt shall be removed at once, and all former lofty considerations of party
affiliation, social status, education , health care, corrupt government and money systems ,
shall seem like quaint and pleasant abstract discussions of the more innocent time.
This is an incorrect view. neoliberal is about global corporatist dictatorship.
Fascism and neofascism are limited to a single country, and often to single ethnos or (in case of
neofacism) culture. So far we see that neofascism was a reaction of excesses of neoliberal
globalization.
The fact that both neoliberalism and neofascism are forms of corporatist dictatorship do not
chnge this fact.
"I see it more as a neoliberal desire to belong to some vague bigger global entity.
Plus the fact that since WW2 nationalism has become equated with fascism."
Yes, what a beautiful piece of propaganda and mind control, carried out by the people
behind this 'vague bigger global entity and facilitated by their 'Mainstream Media', to
create this neo-liberal desire.
In reality it is this 'vague bigger global entity' that embodies the essence of fascism -
i.e. corporatist-dictatorship.
Obama was a neocon, Trump is a neocon. what's new ?
Chinese leaders appeared to be acting on the advice of the 6th century BC philosopher and general Sun Tzu, who wrote in The Art
of War, "there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare."
Candidate Trump railed against the invasion of Iraq during his campaign, at one point blaming George W. Bush directly and saying,
"we should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East." As president-elect, Trump continued to promise a very
different foreign policy, one that would "stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be
involved with."
The election of Donald Trump gave the international community pause: Trump appeared unpredictable, eschewed tradition, and flouted
convention. He might well have followed through on his promise to move the U.S. away from its long embrace of forever war. China's
government in particular must have worried about such a move. If the U.S. focused on its internal problems and instead pursued a
restrained foreign policy that was constructive rather than destructive, it might pose more of an impediment to China's rise to global
power status.
But the Chinese need not have worried. With a continued troop presence in Afghanistan and Syria, a looming conflict with Iran,
and even talk of an intervention in Venezuela, Trump is keeping the U.S. on its perpetual wartime footing.
This is good news for Beijing, whose own foreign policy could not be more different. Rather than embracing a reactive and short-sighted
approach that all too often ignores second- and third-order consequences, the Chinese strategy appears cautious and long-ranging.
Its policymakers and technocrats think and plan in terms of decades, not months. And those plans, for now, are focused more on building
than bombing.
This is not to say that China's foreign policy is altruistic-it is certainly not. It is designed to cement China's role as a great
power by ensnaring as many countries as possible in its economic web. China is playing the long game while Washington expends resources
and global political capital on wars it cannot win. America's devotion to intervention is sowing the seeds of its own demise and
China will be the chief beneficiary.
So intelligence agencies are now charged with protection of elections from undesirable candidates; looks like a feature of neofascism...
Notable quotes:
"... The Department of Justice admitted in a Friday court filing that the FBI used more than one "Confidential Human Source," (also known as informants, or spies ) to infiltrate the Trump campaign through former adviser Carter Page, reports the Daily Caller ..."
"... Included in Hardy's declaration is an acknowledgement that the FBI's spies were in addition to the UK's Christopher Steele - a former MI6 operative who assembled the controversial and largely unproven "Steel Dossier" which the DOJ/FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Page. ..."
"... In addition to Steele, the FBI also employed 73-year-old University of Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, a US citizen, political veteran and longtime US Intelligence asset enlisted by the FBI to befriend and spy on three members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election . Halper received over $1 million in contracts from the Pentagon during the Obama years, however nearly half of that coincided with the 2016 US election. ..."
"... In short, the FBI's acknowledgement that they used multiple spies reinforces Stone's assertion that he was targeted by one. ..."
"... Stefan Halper's infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI's Operation Crossfire Hurricane - in which the agency sent former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of 2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer - who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails. ..."
"... Interestingly Downer - the source of the Papadopoulos intel, and Halper - who conned Papadopoulos months later, are linked through UK-based Haklyut & Co. an opposition research and intelligence firm similar to Fusion GPS - founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums ..."
"... Downer - a good friend of the Clintons, has been on their advisory board for a decade, while Halper is connected to Hakluyt through Director of U.S. operations Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. (h/t themarketswork.com ) ..."
The Department of Justice admitted in a
Friday court filing that the FBI used
more than one "Confidential Human Source," (also known as informants, or spies ) to infiltrate the Trump campaign through former
adviser Carter Page, reports the Daily Caller
.
"The FBI has protected information that would identify the identities of other confidential sources who provided information or
intelligence to the FBI" as well as "information provided by those sources," wrote David M. Hardy, the head of the FBI's Record/Information
Dissemination Section (RIDS), in court
papers submitted Friday.
Hardy and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys submitted the filings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
for the FBI's four applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page. The DOJ released heavily
redacted copies of the four FISA warrant applications on June 20, but USA Today reporter Brad Heath has sued for full copies of
the documents. - Daily Caller
Included in Hardy's declaration is an acknowledgement that the FBI's spies were in addition to the UK's Christopher Steele
- a former MI6 operative who assembled the controversial and largely unproven "Steel Dossier" which the DOJ/FBI used to obtain a
FISA warrant to spy on Page.
The DOJ says it redacted information in order to protect the identity of their confidential sources, which "includes nonpublic
information about and provided by Christopher Steele," reads the filing, " as well as information about and provided by other confidential
sources , all of whom were provided express assurances of confidentiality."
Government lawyers said the payment information is being withheld because disclosing specific payment amounts and dates could
"suggest the relative volume of information provided by a particular CHS. " That disclosure could potentially tip the source's
targets off and allow them to "take countermeasures, destroy or fabricate evidence, or otherwise act in a way to thwart the FBI's
activities." - Daily Caller
Steele, referred to as Source #1, met with several DOJ / FBI officials during the 2016 campaign, including husband and wife team
Bruce and Nellie Ohr. Bruce was the #4 official at the DOJ, while his CIA-linked wife Nellie was hired by Fusion GPS - who also employed
Steele, in the anti-Trump opposition research / counterintelligence effort funded by Trump's opponents, Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
In addition to Steele, the FBI also employed 73-year-old University of Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, a US citizen, political
veteran and longtime US Intelligence asset enlisted by the FBI to befriend and spy on three members of the Trump campaign during
the 2016 US election . Halper received over $1 million in contracts from the Pentagon during the Obama years, however nearly half
of that coincided with the 2016 US election.
Stefan Halper
Halper's involvement first came to light after the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross reported on his involvement with Carter Page and
George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide. Ross's reporting was confirmed by the NYT and WaPo .
In June, Trump campaign aides Roger Stone and Michael Caputo claimed that a meeting Stone took in late May, 2016 with a Russian
appears to have been an " FBI sting operation " in hindsight, following
bombshell reports in May
that the DOJ/FBI used a longtime FBI/CIA asset, Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, to perform espionage on the Trump campaign.
Roger Stone
When Stone arrived at the restaurant in Sunny Isles, he said, Greenberg was wearing a Make America Great Again T-shirt and
hat. On his phone, Greenberg pulled up a photo of himself with Trump at a rally, Stone said. -
WaPo
The meeting went nowhere - ending after Stone told Greenberg " You don't understand Donald Trump... He doesn't pay for anything
." The Post independently confirmed this account with Greenberg.
After the meeting, Stone received a text message from Caputo - a Trump campaign communications official who arranged the meeting
after Greenberg approached Caputo's Russian-immigrant business partner.
" How crazy is the Russian? " Caputo wrote according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted "big"
money, Stone replied: "waste of time." -
WaPo
In short, the FBI's acknowledgement that they used multiple spies reinforces Stone's assertion that he was targeted by one.
Further down the rabbit hole
Stefan Halper's infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI's Operation Crossfire
Hurricane - in which the agency sent former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of
2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer - who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had
Hillary Clinton's emails.
Interestingly Downer - the source of the Papadopoulos intel, and Halper - who conned Papadopoulos months later, are linked
through
UK-based Haklyut & Co. an opposition research and intelligence firm similar to Fusion GPS - founded by three former British intelligence
operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations
pay huge sums .
Alexander Downer
Downer - a good friend of the Clintons, has been on their advisory board for a decade, while Halper is connected to Hakluyt
through Director of U.S. operations Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has
co-authored two books. (h/t
themarketswork.com )
Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Downer said that in May 2016, Papadopoulos told him during a
conversation in London about Russians having Clinton emails.
That information was passed to other Australian government officials before making its way to U.S. officials. FBI agents flew
to London a day after "Crossfire Hurricane" started in order to interview Downer.
It is still not known what Downer says about his interaction with Papadopoulos, which TheDCNF is told occurred around May 10,
2016.
Also interesting via
Lifezette - " Downer is not the only Clinton fan in Hakluyt. Federal contribution records show several of the firm's U.S. representatives
made large contributions to two of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign organizations ."
Halper contacted Papadopoulos on September 2, 2016 according to The Caller - flying him out to London to work on a policy paper
on energy issues in Turkey, Cyprus and Israel - for which he was ultimately paid $3,000. Papadopoulos met Halper several times during
his stay, "having dinner one night at the Travellers Club, and Old London gentleman's club frequented by international diplomats."
They were accompanied by Halper's assistant, a Turkish woman named Azra Turk. Sources familiar with Papadopoulos's claims about
his trip say Turk flirted with him during their encounters and later on in email exchanges .
...
Emails were also brought up during Papadopoulos's meetings with Halper , though not by the Trump associate, according to sources
familiar with his version of events. T he sources say that during conversation, Halper randomly brought up Russians and emails.
Papadopoulos has told people close to him that he grew suspicious of Halper because of the remark. -
Daily Caller
Meanwhile, Halper targeted Carter Page two days after Page returned from a trip to Moscow.
Page's visit to Moscow, where he spoke at the New Economic School on July 8, 2016, is said to have piqued the FBI's interest
even further . Page and Halper spoke on the sidelines of an election-themed symposium held at Cambridge days later. Former Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 and a close colleague of Halper's, spoke at the event.
...
Page would enter the media spotlight in September 2016 after Yahoo! News reported that the FBI was investigating whether he
met with two Kremlin insiders during that Moscow trip.
It would later be revealed that the Yahoo! article was based on unverified information from Christopher Steele, the former
British spy who wrote the dossier regarding the Trump campaign . Steele's report, which was funded by Democrats, also claimed
Page worked with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on the collusion conspiracy. -
Daily Caller
A third target of Halper's was Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis, whose name was revealed by the Washington Post on Friday.
In late August 2016, the professor reached out to Clovis, asking if they could meet somewhere in the Washington area, according
to Clovis's attorney, Victoria Toensing.
"He said he wanted to be helpful to the campaign" and lend the Trump team his foreign-policy experience, Toensing said.
Clovis, an Iowa political figure and former Air Force officer, met the source and chatted briefly with him over coffee, on
either Aug. 31 or Sept. 1, at a hotel cafe in Crystal City, she said. Most of the discussion involved him asking Clovis his views
on China.
"It was two academics discussing China," Toensing said. " Russia never came up. " -
WaPo
Meanwhile, Bruce Ohr is still employed by the Department of Justice, and Fusion GPS continues its hunt for Trump dirt after having
partnered with former Feinstein aide and ex-FBI counterintelligence agent, Dan Jones.
It's been nearly three years since an army of professional spies was unleashed on Trump - and he's still the President, Steele
and Downer notwithstanding.
UK politicians in Skripal story behaved by cheap clowns. Their story with door knob was pathetic. They tried to invent
the legend with poisoning on the fly and that shows. There is definitely something else brewing here and Shamir proposed his
version with Skripal double dealings or something along those line is quite plausible.
We will never know, but I think British discredited themselves for the whole world in this story. Trump was not better will
using this tory to impose additional sanctions on Russia. This is just another proof that he is another neocon who during election
campaign like Obama played the role of isolationalist and then appointed Haley to UN and hired Pompeo as his Secretary of
state and Bolton as his security advisor -- a typical "bat and switch" operation in US politics.
Notable quotes:
"... Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly. ..."
"... As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home. ..."
"... There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was. ..."
"... However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services. ..."
"... Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. ..."
"... I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors. ..."
Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that
GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly
matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr
Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the
secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps
he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly.
Two GRU agents, supposedly experts on extraction (they allegedly sneaked the Ukrainian
president Yanukovych from Ukraine after the coup and saved him from lynching mob) were sent to
Salisbury to test the ground and make preparations for Skripal's return. As we had learned from
videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the
beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his
daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home.
There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually
been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if
the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan
Bandera was.
However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to
expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive
expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services.
Still, the Russians had no clue how the West had learned identities of so many diplomats
connected to GRU. They suspected that there was a mole, and a turncoat who delivered the stuff
to the enemy.
That is why Vladimir Putin decided to dare them. As he knew that the two men identified by
the British service had no connection to the alleged poisoning, he asked them to appear on the
RT in an interview with Ms Simonyan. By acting as village hicks, they were supposed to provoke
the enemy to disclose its source. The result was unexpected: instead of revealing the name of a
turncoat, the Belling Cat, a site used by the Western Secret Services for intentional leaks,
explained how the men were traced by using the stolen databases. Putin's plan misfired.
The Russian secret service is not dead. Intelligence services do suffer from enemy action
from time to time: the Cambridge Five infiltrated the upper reaches of the MI-5 and delivered
state secrets to Moscow for a long time, but the Intelligence Service survived. Le Carre's
novels were based on such a defeat of the intelligence. However they have a way to recover.
Identity of their top agents remain secret, and they are concealed from the enemy's eyes.
But in order to function properly, the Russians will have to clean their stables, remove
their databases from the market place and keep its citizenry reasonably safe. Lax, and
not-up-to-date agents do not apparently understand the degree the internet is being watched.
Considering it should have been done twenty years ago, and meanwhile a new generation of
Russians has came of age, perfectly prepared to sell whatever they can for cash, it is a
formidable task.
There is an additional reason to worry. Such a massive operation against Russian agents and
their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal
their full knowledge of enemy agents. It made president Putin worry; and he said this week: we'll
go to heaven as martyrs, the attackers will die as sinners. In face of multiple and recent
threats, this end of the world is quite possible.
Great story. If told many people would believe it. But now it is kind of late. So why it
wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair? Why it is the British media that has
initiative and Russian media is reactive and defensive? The story that Skripal wanted to
return and that two agents were lured in there should have been told right away and that it
turned out be MI5 provocation should have been insinuated. And the two agents should have
been interviewed on Russian media. Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian
reactions.
I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never
know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people
like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director
and actors.
@utu " Instead we get
defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions."
The reaction 'if we want to kill somebody that somebody does not survive' I cannot see as
inept and indolent.
Excellent piece by Israel Shamir which I think gives the correct explanation of the Skripal
poisoning. This was a classic fishing, 'click bait' operation which produced a very valuable
haul for Western Intelligence. The only question is whether Skripal cooperated with it
– which I think he did – not knowing that both he and his daughter were meant to
die. Hence Putin's rage against Skripal a few weeks ago ( calling him a scumbag traitor etc,
etc) after the Russian operatives were identified because retired agents are supposed to stay
retired.
Russia made a very serious mistake with the RT interview with the 2 operatives. Better not
to say anything if you can't give the whole story. The GU weren't happy to show their
incompetence, but compounded the original mistake with obvious lying. That was a propaganda
gift to the Western media and has helped convince original disbelievers of Russian
perfidy.
Russia needs to step up its game especially in the media dept.
@Anatoly Karlin " British
or American human capital, but there are certainly consummate professionals relative to what
passes for today's Russian intelligence services. "
On what this 'certainly' is based, I see no argument whatsoever.
Already a long time ago, I must admit, the CIA director had to admit to senator Moynihan that
he had lied about the CIA not laying mines in Havana harbour.
A professional in espionage does not get caught.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 'Secrecy', New Haven 1998
Anyone acquinted with Sept 11 understands that the USA's secret army, the CIA, was
involved.
Another blunder.
As far as I know British secret services never get caught.
How clever the Russians are, suppose quite clever, I for one do not think that the stupid
stories about for example Skripal have any truth in them.
Until now the asserted Russian meddling in USA elections have not been proved.
Do not know of anything credible that Russian intelligence people are said to have done.
But of course Russian intelligence does exist.
"A related problem is that since there is now a free market economy, with many more
attractive career options for talented people, the high quality people go to work in other
spheres, leaving the intelligence agencies with the dregs;" .
A direct result of erasing ideology so as to erase personality cult towards highly
respected people in former USSR .When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with
your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific
human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible
selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said,
almost everybody has a price .The challenge is finding out where that little bunch who have
not are ..Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage How to overcome this would be part of "what is to be done" ..
If the Russians wanted to kill them they would be dead. Period. It is all FN hoax.
The latest English came up with was that poison was smeared on the door handle and that both
touched the door handle. Give me a break. Such a idiocy. Just imagine the exit procedure
where both are touching the door knob.
And than both Russians went to garbage dump carrying the little bottle and thru it there.
What an exemplary citizen neat behavior by Russians,
All English story is such a stupid idiocy that it turns my stomach.
However, the presence of Russian spies in Salisbury can be explained by its nearness to
Porton Down, the secret British chemical lab and factory for manufacturing chemical weapons
applied by the White Helmets in Syria in their false-flag operation in Douma and other
places. It is possible that a resident of Salisbury (Mr Skripal?) had delivered samples
from Porton Down to the Russian intelligence agents. This makes much more sense than the
dubious story of Russians trying to poison an old ex-spy who did his stretch in a Russian
jail.
If Mr. Skripal has been poisoned by the stuff of which he himself took samples in Porton
Down, this would run completely parallel to the earlier poisoning of Mr. Alexander
Valterovich Litvinenko, who also became ill because of carrying poison (polonium) around.
If [Yulia Skripal] had not had the courage to make this call while slipping the
observance of British intelligence, she would probably be dead by now.
Both Skripals are most likely DEAD, murdered by British "intelligence"
services.
The formulaic and curiously uninterested treatment of the matter in the British media
seems inconsistent with the Skripals still being alive.
The article above suggests that the Skripals were unwitting or witting participants in a
sting to expose Russian intelligence agents. More importantly, Sergey Skripal appears to have
had a role in the creation of the DNC's "dossier" to undermine the Trump presidencey.
Whatever the background, Sergey Skripal became privy to important secrets that the Brits
and their seditious allies in the U.S. Deep State do not want exposed.
In the Skripal case the British have not explained why, after claiming to have found the
closest approach to a smoking gun in the form of traces of novichok in that hotel room, the
hotel was not then immediately quarantined.
And assuredly, with Putin's name on the line, the Russians have to do a better job if they
are to refute the standing accusations – the RT interview was something of a PR
disaster.
The Belloncat data, although superficially convincing, could so easily have been faked by
anybody with reasonable knowledge of Russian internet infrastructure and some proficiency in
Photoshop.
But I did not know about these massive intelligence security breaches in Russia. Wow,
that's huge. Even though it's not clear to me how this indicates Putin's plan misfired. If
anything he got exactly what he wanted: confirmation that the "West" had access to the entire
passport database. Knowing what your enemy has in intelligence is a huge win, now they can
work on correcting it (hard as it may be, it would be impossible without knowing).
But the fact is Russia has not really disputed the results so I am fairly confident that
not only was Belling Cat right, but Israel is right, and now we have the situation where
Russia knows that Western intelligence has full access to Russia's passport database.
@Tyrion 2 Had some
experiences with Chinese and Mossad spies, not to mention Russian Jewish hard-drug dealers.
Here are a few examples.
There was an AMES postdoc at UCSD, a Chinese applied-math brain who had a 10-plus female
handler. She'd stop by occasionally to check up on him. He always get extremely anxious when
she was around. Couldn't figure out if it was fear, sexual excitement, or a combination of
both.
There was an old Chinese man and his foxy young female protege, who enjoyed filming U.S.
military maneuvers along the San Diego coast. I observed their operation for days.
There was a swing-shift cleaning crew in a Southern California high-tech mfg facility that
was all Chinese, in an area that typically employed Latin American crews. Its head honcho was
a beautiful Chinese lady. They made it their job to sort through trash bins and save papers.
The feds busted them.
As far as the Mossad, I spent two years on a rental property in SD county, which was
occupied by them as well. Mostly Israeli kids using the property and a local Israeli-owned
vegetarian restaurant as their "scorpion den." Got fairly familiar with some of their
espionage work and methods.
I don't go looking for this stuff. I'm just able to recognize it. As an empath I can read
people, quite well. It's a natural gift.
Can't stomach Israel's insensitive nature. That's why you'll typically find me pointing
out their self-serving bullshit.
This is a pretty good article but also falls on its face at the end
Mr Shamir's 'inside' information confirms my own take on Petrov and Boshirov which I
published a few days after that RT interview with Ms Simonyan
I wrote this on Col Lang's blog on Sept 14
'Yeah those two 'tourists' do look the part don't they I would say they are probably GRU
or something similar but nobody 'poisoned' the Skripals that's total kabuki theater another
Potemkin village production from the reality masters
Something is afoot here though perhaps these two were lured to Salisbury as part of a
frame up plot, perhaps by Skripal himself or perhaps the Brits caught wind of their plans
to visit [on some standard spying mission, certainly not assassination] and put in motion
the elaborate hoax
Everybody there protested loudly including Andrey Martyanov [Smoothie] I also added
this
' I disagree with everyone here it seems these guys aren't tourists but they also didn't
try to kill anyone that's stupid
It's some sort of spy game
Here's one scenario double agent Skripal makes convincing noises about flipping back
someone at GRU [or some similar outfit] sends these two to Salisbury to check it out a very
stupid move which is why Putin is now miffed enough to display these guys publicly and
their field career surely over also a slap in the face to the silly Limeys for playing
dirty pool even in the cloak and dagger game there are unwritten rules '
This is now exactly the story that Mr Shamir is presenting here but he is a day late and a
dollar short
I also don't agree with his take that this is all somehow a big loss for Russian intel the
Brits are the ones who have painted themselves in a corner their Skripal story is a wet paper
bag waiting to fall apart the fact that they lured the Russians to Salisbury, under whatever
pretext, be it Skripal or Porton Down/white helmets etc was their only small tactical victory
because they could then later expose those two after months of Russian denials in order to
show the Russians were in fact somehow involved
But that exposure came months later all that time the Russians would have known that
Boshirov and Petrov had been captured on candid camera and would have had time to work on
their countermove
Mr Shamir writes this like the game is over that is ridiculous the Brits have no way out
of the Skripal hoax there was never any poisoning the original diagnosis of the Skripals in
the Salisbury hospital was opioid overdose that came out in the first BBC interview with the
hospital staff months after the 'poisoning'
It was not until 48 hours after the Skripals were admitted to hospital and the convenient
intervention of Porton Down that the medical diagnosis was 'changed' to nerve agent
poisoning
BUT this is an unsustainable story that WILL FALL APART the simple reason is medical and
chemical fact both nerve agents and agricultural pesticides are based on the exact
same chemical compound organophosphates
'There are nearly 3 million poisonings per year resulting in two hundred thousand
deaths.'
That is the simple reason why emergency doctors EVERYWHERE are trained to recognize and
treat this kind of poisoning especially in rural, agricultural areas like
Salisbury
That is why it took months for media to gain access to the medical staff at that hospital
the British spooks needed to do a lot of 'persuading' with medical professionals that would
have wanted no part in such trickery and fakery
But this is a ticking time bomb that is bound to blow up in the faces of the very stupid
Brits
So yes they pulled off a minor coup in luring those two to Salisbury but the game is very
very far from over
As for Skripal he is in on it for sure as I speculated in my original comment on the
matter..the Russian intel services are perfectly aware of this, yet Mr Shamir's supposedly
well connected source has zero knowledge of this which tells me this source is actually a
useless clown who 'knows' exactly what an internet commenter [myself] already knew two months
ago
PS the fact that the Brits supposedly have all kinds of database info on the Russian intel
apparatus and personnel files etc doesn't mean anything the author is a making a big deal out
of this, but his story lacks meat on its bones most 'intel' is open source material
anyway
As for sensitive stuff that may have been 'sold' by 'corrupt' bureaucrats one must ask if
such 'info' is actually real or a clever plant providing fake info is the oldest spy trick in
the book and this article simply takes for granted that such a trick would not have been
employed why not ?
@FB How would a fake
database leak include the real data on the two GRU agents that just happened to be sent to
UK? Maybe it was to make the data leak seem real?
In spycraft it is always impossible to know how deep the deception goes. That's why the
very article to which you are responding started with:
It is hard to evaluate the exact measure of things in the murky world of spies and
counter-spies, but it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the
subterranean battle.
I think that a clear strategy by the western "intelligence" services is starting to emerge
vis-a-vis the Russians. By accusing any Russian that they can get their hands on, of being a
spy, they want to scare the ordinary Russians from visiting the west, so afterwards any
Russian actually caught traveling to the west can be safely assumed to be a spy – since
by the calculations of the clever western intelligence – only someone who is actually a
spy while at the same time being Russian, would dare to travel to the west. How smart is
that?
Joking aside, it really is becoming unsafe for Russian nationals to travel to the west.
Even though the west reserves the generosity of calling somebody equal only for those that
are from the 3rd world – Russians clearly don't deserve such generosity.
Despite this, exceptions can be made and some unfortunate Russian soul could be accused of
being equal with those highly evolved westerners and against their will can be offered
protection from Mother Russia.
Pretty much like it happened to Yulia Skripal. She was only visiting her gastarbeiter
father in GB, who apparently expressed desire to return to Russia, against pretty much
everybody's wishes, and all of a sudden Yulia Skripal found herself bestowed with the western
generosity of being declared equal, and was disappeared from public eye in order to protect
her from those with whom she is clearly not equal – the Russians.
Thank God at least MI-6 proved equal to the task and discovered her equalness in a nick of
time and saved her. The moral of the story: Only democracy has the power to recognize who is
equal and who is not. Then, on the other hand, capitalism can keep acquiring new monikers
such as "democracy" – all they want, Russia still has better quality of equality,
despite ditching socialism.
@CalDre Yes I 'stubbornly'
refuse to take at face value this silly statement
it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean
battle.'
Because it's not backed up by anything other than hot air as for that supposed 'data'
about Petrov and Boshirov
that was put out by Bellingcat
Ie mickey mouse stuff as with everything these clowns do, it is meant only to bamboozle
the most utterly stupid bipeds
A very nice clue is the fact that a Russian website called 'The Insider' is Bellingcat's
acknowledged partner here
If you read the article in English they claim to have 'dug' up a lot of info from various
sources such the central Russian resident database and passenger check in data for their
flight to the UK
Big deal that Shamir is building a mountain out of a molehill is more than clear
In fact this entire Shamir tale appears to have one subtle purpose to publicize and
glorify the Bellingcat outfit
which irredeemably lost any credibility a few weeks back when illiterate poofter Eliott
Higgins refused a debate challenge by the distinguished MIT physicist and former presidential
advisor Ted Postol actually calling Postol an 'idiot' a move that astounded even those
willing to entertain Higgins on a semi-credible level
@Anatoly Karlin Be that as
it may, the "Western side" had (publicly known) Aldrich, Hanssen and Benghazi fiasco.
Boils down to, from the comment below:
When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market
.) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret
service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best
postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has
a price..
and
Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little"
advantage.
And, on top of it, in West, since the fall of The Wall, we've been having "Cooking the
Intelligence to Fit the Political Agenda".
This commenter begs to differ with M. Karlin's assessment (8) of the relative competence of
Russian sovok and CIA. "consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian
intelligence services"? Mais non.
CIA always gets caught. All they do is step on their crank, again and again. They depend
not on professionalism but on what Russ Baker describes as a strange mix of ruthlessness and
ineptitude. Both stem from impunity in municipal law.
For example: CIA torture and coercive interference got comprehensively exposed, worldwide,
in the '70s. What happened? Don Gregg gave the Church and Pike committees an ultimatum: Back
off or it's martial law. CIA got busted again in the '80s for the criminal enterprises under
the Iran/Contra rubric. By then CIA had installed Tom Polgar, Former Saigon Station Chief, as
chief investigator for the cognizant Senate Select committee, and Polgar assured Gregg that
his hearings would not be a repeat of the abortive Pike and Church flaps.
So CIA are clowns. They can afford to be clowns because they know they can get away with
it. Getting away with it is their only skill, and the only skill they need.
The persistent category error at this site is failing to realize that CIA is the state.
They rule the USA.
"... Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation. ..."
"... This article was originally published by The Nation . ..."
There have been plenty of purely criminal and commercial " rogue " operations by
intelligence agents in history, but also " rogue " ones that were purposefully
political. We know, for example, that both Soviet and US intelligence agencies - or groups of
agents - tried to disrupt the Eisenhower-Khrushchev détente of the late 1950s and early
1960s, and that some intelligence players tried to stop Khrushchev's formal recognition of West
Germany, also in the early 1960s.
It is reasonable to ask, therefore, whether the attacks on Skripal and Khashoggi were "
rogue " operations undertaken by political opponents of the leaders' policies at home
or abroad, with the help of one or another intelligence agency or agents. Motive is a - perhaps
the - crucial question. Why would Putin order such an operation in the UK at the very
moment when his government had undertaken a major Western public-relations campaign in
connection with the upcoming World Cup championship in Russia? And why would MbS risk a
Khashoggi scandal as he was assiduously promoting his image abroad as an enlightened
reform-minded Saudi leader?
We lack the evidence and official candor needed to study these questions, as is usually the
case with covert, secretive, disinforming intelligence operations. But the questions are
certainly reason enough not to rush to judgment, as many US pundits do. Saying " we do not
know " may be unmarketable in today's mass-media environment, but it is honest and the
right approach to potentially fruitful " analysis. "
2. We do know, however, that there has been fierce opposition in the US political-media
establishment to President Trump's policy of " cooperating with Russia ," including in
US intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and FBI - and at high levels of his own
administration.
We might consider Nikki Haley's resignation as UN ambassador in this light. Despite the
laurels heaped on her by anti-Trump media, and by Trump himself at their happy-hour farewell in
the White House, Haley was not widely admired by her UN colleagues. When appointed for
political reasons by Trump, she had no foreign-policy credentials or any expert knowledge of
other countries or of international relations generally. Judging by her performance as
ambassador, nor did she acquire much on the job, almost always reading even short comments from
prepared texts.
More to the point, Haley's statements regarding Russia at the UN were, more often than not,
dissimilar from Trump's -- indeed, implicitly in opposition to Trump's. (She did nothing, for
example, to offset charges in Washington that Trump's summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki, in
July, had been " treasonous .") Who wrote these statements for her, which were very
similar to statements regarding Russia that have been issued by US intelligence agencies since
early 2017? It is hard to imagine that Trump was unhappy to see her go, and easier to imagine
him pushing her toward the exit. A president needs a loyalist as secretary of state and at the
UN. Haley's pandering remarks at the White House about Trump's family suggests some deal had
been made to ease her out, with non-recrimination promises made on both sides. We will see if
opponents of Trump's Russia policy can put another spokesperson at the UN.
As to which aspects of US foreign policy Trump actually controls, we might ask more urgently
if he authorized, or was fully informed about, the joint US-NATO-Ukraine military air exercises
that got under way over Ukraine, abutting Russia, on October 8. Moscow regards these exercises
as a major " provocation ," and not unreasonably.
3. What do Trump's opponents want instead of " cooperation with Russia "? A much
harder line, including more " crushing " economic sanctions. Sanctions are more like
temper tantrums and road rage than actual national-security policy, and thus are often
counterproductive. We have some recent evidence. Russia's trade surplus has grown to more than
$100 billion. World prices for Russia's primary exports, oil and gas, have grown to over $80 a
unit while Moscow's federal budget is predicated on $53 a barrel. Promoters of anti-Russian
sanctions gloat that they have weakened the ruble. But while imposing some hardships on
ordinary citizens, the combination of high oil prices and a weaker ruble is ideal for Russian
state and corporate exporters. They sell abroad for inflated foreign currency and pay their
operating expenses at home in cheaper rubles. To risk a pun, they are " crushing it.
"
Congressional sanctions - for exactly what is not always clear - have helped Putin in
another way. For years, he has unsuccessfully tried to get " oligarchs " to repatriate
their wealth abroad. US sanctions on various " oligarchs " have persuaded them and
others to begin to do so, perhaps bringing back home as much as $90 billion already in
2018.
If nothing else, these new budgetary cash flows help Putin deal with his declining
popularity at home - he still has an approval rating well above 60 percent - due to the
Kremlin's decision to raise the pension age for men and women, from 60 to 65 and from 55 to 60
respectively. The Kremlin can use the additional revenue to increase the value of pensions,
supplement them with other social benefits, or to enact the age change over a longer period of
time.
It appears that Congress, particularly the Senate, has no Russia policy other than
sanctions. It might think hard about finding alternatives. One way to start would be with real
" hearings " in place of the ritualistic affirmation of orthodox policy by "
experts " that has long been its practice. There are more than a few actual
specialists out there who think different approaches to Moscow are long overdue.
4. All of these dangerous developments, indeed the new US-Russian Cold War itself, are elite
projects -- political, media, intelligence, etc. Voters were never really consulted. Nor do
they seem to approve. In August, Gallup asked its usual sample of Americans which policy toward
Russia they preferred. Fifty-eight percent wanted improved relations vs. only 36 percent who
wanted a tougher US policy with more sanctions. (Meanwhile, two-thirds of Russians surveyed by
an independent agency now see the United States as their country's number-one enemy, and about
three-fourths view China favorably.)
Will any of the US political figures already jockeying for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 2020 take these realities into account?
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York
University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation.
This article was originally published by The
Nation .
If you are finding your way out of the dark forest of propaganda there are two speeches by
Putin that I point people toward. First, at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Video
here : Transcript
here
Second, at the UN General Assembly September 2015, Video here : Transcript here .
I fail to see how any rational person could disagree with the sentiments he expresses.
Warning! You may become a Putin-bot!
The governor General Abdul Raziq, the police chief and the intelligence chief of Kandahar
have all been killed today. Bodyguards turned their guns on them. Two U.S. soldiers were
wounded. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan was present but not hurt.
Raziq was a brut, thief, killer, drug baron and the CIA's man in Kandahar.
In 2011 Matthieu Atkins portrait him:
Our Man in Kandahar Abdul Raziq and his men have received millions of dollars' worth of U.S. training and
equipment to help in the fight against the Taliban. But is our ally -- long alleged to be
involved in corruption and drug smuggling -- also guilty of mass murder?
The United States, specifically Cheney and Petraeus and Rodham, imposed the Imperial
Executor form of Federalist government upon a people who were a well-organized heirarchical
society while William the Conqueror was still head chopping Anglo-Saxons in bear skins.
Cheny wrote the Afghan petroleum and strategic resources laws *in English* at the
beginning of the 2001 invasion. The US imposed a new flag, a new pledge of allegiance, a new
national song and even a new national currency on the Afghan people, then imposed the first
imperial caesar, Karzai.
You break it, you own it!
For the $TRILLIONS hoovered up by Deep State and their war profiteering minions, we could
have put every Afghan male of military age through Harvard Business School.
Cheney, Petraeus and Rodham ALSO created the Federal Republican Guard ANA and ANP,
goombahs, renegade hijackers and shakedown artists who, like those same ANA/ANP 'personal
guards' mentioned in b's article, assassinated the governor and the others. And umm, yes,
I've been on the muzzle end of those ANA/ANP thugs in an attempted kidnapping, so been there,
done that.
AFA Russ' defense of William the Conqueror as some 'high point' of a Western Civilization
of Red Haired Yettis, they were still head-chopping each other in England while Afghanistan
ruled from East Persia to Western India, an advanced civilization far more ancient than
Anglo-Saxon bearskin cave dwelling knuckle draggers, at the time.
Of course, now today we have the White Scientocratic Triumphal Exceptionalist Civilization
and its Miracle of the Two Planes and Three Towers to prove it, even if Johnny and Jillian
can't read, write or do their ciphers.
just watched the Atlantic council's Championing the Frontlines of Freedom: Erasing the
"Grey Zone", only interesting thing to come out of the conference was Kurt Volker's (US
Special Representative for Ukraine) comments;
Escalating sanctions vs Russia every 1-2 months there will be new & expanded
sanctions on Russia.
Stable borders should not be a requirement to be a part of NATO, "Occupied" states can
be taken into NATO and receive support from NATO to liberate themselves (he stressed that
the US would not be escalate the conflict, but how the hell could anyone guarantee
that).
Opposition to Russia is now bipartisan, regardless of the Nov elections, US Senate
& Congress are unified against Russia
when asked how "We" (the Atlantic council) can make political elites care about Baltic
states (plus Ukraine/Georgia), WITHOUT knowing the historical and political details of
these states he, unsurprisingly answered "this is about spreading our liberal values"
(translation: the American people don't need to be informed about the region are changes
are non-negotiable). the long and the short of the 3 hour conference was the new cold war
vs Russia will continue indefinitely, I would say this is the start of another generation
conflict that will last 10-20 years at least
Ok i'l stick my neck out !
It's over for America ! That's my assessment their day is d d d done ! Am basing my view on
the worldwide picture politically, the mind set of the general public I talk to, the many
sites I visit on the net left and right. Plus overall wisdom and overstanding (a Rasta thing)
Empires fall, this one has more than had its day. If it was a buseness what does it produce ?
And at what cost? It just robs other peoples hard earned resources and assets! For all it's
wealth it treats it's own public like dirt milking them dry. It's intelligent public it
curupt's. Nature abbor's greed, and wil correct that imbalance.
I think Putin understands this, and understands as I do 'desperate people do desperate
things' hence his speech.
Censoring the truth on a massive network like the internet is truly impossible and plainly
desperate !!!
Fascism is always eclectic and its doctrine is composed of several sometimes contradicting each other ideas. "Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..." (Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..."
)
Some ideas are "sound bite only" and never are implemented and are present only to attract sheeple (looks
National Socialist Program ). he program championed
the right to employment , and called for the institution of
profit sharing , confiscation of
war profits , prosecution of usurers and profiteers,
nationalization of trusts , communalization of department stores,
extension of the old-age pension system, creation of a
national education program of all classes, prohibition
of child labor , and an end to the dominance of
investment capital "
There is also "bait and switch" element in any fascism movement. Original fascism was strongly anti-capitalist, militaristic and
"national greatness and purity" movement ("Make Germany great again"). It was directed against financial oligarchy and anti-semantic
element in it was strong partially because it associated Jews with bankers and financial industry in general. In a way "Jews" were codeword
for investment bankers.
For example " Arbeit Macht Frei " can be viewed as
a neoliberal slogan. Then does not mean that neoliberalism. with its cult of productivity, is equal to fascism, but that neoliberal
doctrine does encompass elements of the fascist doctrine including strong state, "law and order" mentality and relentless propaganda.
The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so often that it lost its meaning. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) originated
as a working-class political party . This is not true about
Trump whom many assume of having fascist leanings. His pro white working class rhetoric was a fig leaf used for duration or elections.
After that he rules as a typical Republican president favoring big business. And as a typical neocon in foreign policy.
From this point of view Trump can't be viewed even as pro-fascist leader because first of all he does not have his own political
movement, ideology and political program. And the second he does not strive for implementing uniparty state and abolishing the elections
which is essential for fascism political platform, as fascist despise corrupt democracy and have a cult of strong leader.
All he can be called is neo-fascist s his some of his views do encompass ideas taken from fascist ideology (including "law and order";
which also is a cornerstone element of Republican ideology) as well as idealization and mystification of the US past. But with Bannon
gone he also can't even pretend that he represents some coherent political movement like "economic nationalism" -- kind of enhanced
mercantilism.
Of course, that does not mean that previous fascist leaders were bound by the fascism political program, but at least they had one.
Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that, "To [Hitler,
the program] was little more than an effective, persuasive propaganda weapon for mobilizing and manipulating the masses. Once it had
brought him to power, it became pure decoration: 'unalterable', yet unrealized in its demands for nationalization and expropriation,
for land reform and 'breaking the shackles of finance capital'. Yet it nonetheless fulfilled its role as backdrop and pseudo-theory,
against which the future dictator could unfold his rhetorical and dramatic talents."
Notable quotes:
"... Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago. ..."
"... Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals, its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present, these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics. ..."
"... In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence. ..."
"... fascist myths distinguish themselves with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests and civilization-building achievements. ..."
"... The function of the mythic past, in fascist politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle. ..."
It's in the name of tradition that the anti-Semites base their "point of view." It's in the name of tradition, the long, historical
past and the blood ties with Pascal and Descartes, that the Jews are told, you will never belong here.
-- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
It is only natural to begin this book where fascist politics invariably claims to discover its genesis: in the past. Fascist
politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously
pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist
mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago.
Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals,
its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present,
these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics.
In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal
cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the
face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence.
These myths are generally based on fantasies of a nonexistent past uniformity, which survives in the traditions of the small towns
and countrysides that remain relatively unpolluted by the liberal decadence of the cities. This uniformity -- linguistic, religious,
geographical, or ethnic -- can be perfectly ordinary in some nationalist movements, but fascist myths distinguish themselves
with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests
and civilization-building achievements. For example, in the fascist imagination, the past invariably involves traditional, patriarchal
gender roles. The fascist mythic past has a particular structure, which supports its authoritarian, hierarchical ideology. That past
societies were rarely as patriarchal -- or indeed as glorious -- as fascist ideology represents them as being is beside the point.
This imagined history provides proof to support the imposition of hierarchy in the present, and it dictates how contemporary society
should look and behave.
In a 1922 speech at the Fascist Congress in Naples, Benito Mussolini declared:
We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. . . . Our myth is
the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total
reality, we subordinate everything.
The patriarchal family is one ideal that fascist politicians intend to create in society -- or return to, as they claim. The patriarchal
family is always represented as a central part of the nation's traditions, diminished, even recently, by the advent of liberalism
and cosmopolitanism. But why is patriarchy so strategically central to fascist politics?
In a fascist society, the leader of the nation is analogous to the father in the traditional patriarchal family. The leader is
the father of his nation, and his strength and power are the source of his legal authority, just as the strength and power of the
father of the family in patriarchy are supposed to be the source of his ultimate moral authority over his children and wife. The
leader provides for his nation, just as in the traditional family the father is the provider. The patriarchal father's authority
derives from his strength, and strength is the chief authoritarian value. By representing the nation's past as one with a patriarchal
family structure, fascist politics connects nostalgia to a central organizing hierarchal authoritarian structure, one that finds
its purest representation in these norms.
Gregor Strasser was the National Socialist -- Nazi -- Reich propaganda chief in the 1920s, before the post was taken over by Joseph
Goebbels. According to Strasser, "for a man, military service is the most profound and valuable form of participation -- for the
woman it is motherhood!" Paula Siber, the acting head of the Association of German Women, in a 1933 document meant to reflect official
National Socialist state policy on women, declares that "to be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious
force of one's soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life . . . the highest calling of the National Socialist
woman is not just to bear children, but consciously and out of total devotion to her role and duty as mother to raise children for
her people." Richard Grunberger, a British historian of National Socialism, sums up "the kernel of Nazi thinking on the women's question"
as "a dogma of inequality between the sexes as immutable as that between the races." The historian Charu Gupta, in her 1991 article
"Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany," goes as far as to argue that "oppression of women in Nazi Germany in fact furnishes
the most extreme case of anti-feminism in the 20th century."
Here, Mussolini makes clear that the fascist mythic past is intentionally mythical. The function of the mythic past, in fascist
politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity,
and struggle.
With the creation of a mythic past, fascist politics creates a link between nostalgia and the realization of fascist ideals. German
fascists also clearly and explicitly appreciated this point about the strategic use of a mythological past. The leading Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg, editor of the prominent Nazi newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter, writes in 1924, "the understanding of and the
respect for our own mythological past and our own history will form the first condition for more firmly anchoring the coming generation
in the soil of Europe's original homeland." The fascist mythic past exists to aid in changing the present.
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished
Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of Know How; Languages in Context;
More about Jason Stanley
This could have been such a helpful, insightful book. The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so
often that it has started to lose its meaning. I hoped that this book would provide a historical perspective on fascism by examining
actual fascist governments and drawing some parallels to the more egregious / worrisome trends in US & European politics. The
chapter titles in the table of contents were promising:
- The Mythic Past
- Propaganda
- Anti-Intellectual
- Unreality
- Hierarchy
- Victimhood
- Law & Order
- Sexual Anxiety
- Sodom & Gomorrah
- Arbeit Macht Frei
Ironically (given the book's subtitle) the author used his book divisively: to laud his left-wing political views and demonize
virtually all distinctively right-wing views. He uses the term "liberal democracy" inconsistently throughout, disengenuously equivocating
between the meaning of "representative democracy as opposed to autocratic or oligarchic government" (which most readers would
agree is a good thing) and "American left-wing political views" (which he treats as equally self-evidently superior if you are
a right-thinking person). Virtually all American right-wing political views are presented in straw-man form, defined in such a
way that they fit his definition of fascist politics.
I was expecting there to be a pretty heavy smear-job on President Trump and his cronies (much of it richly deserved...the man's
demagoguery and autocratic tendencies are frightening), but for this to turn into "let's find a way to define virtually everything
the Republicans are and do as fascist politics" was massively disappointing. The absurdly biased portrayal of all things conservative
and constant hymns of praise to all things and all people left-wing buried some good historical research and valid parallels under
an avalanche of partisanism.
If you want a more historical, less partisan view of the rise of fascist politics, I would highly recommend Darkness Over Germany
by E. Amy Buller (Review Here). It was written during World War II (based on interviews with Germans before WWII), so you will
have to draw your own contemporary parallels...but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
American politicians and media are becoming increasingly unhinged.
Threatening friends and allies with tariffs on automobiles, and using these threats to
impose unilateral trade agreements which include language designed to upend future trade with
China ("non-market economies") - as done recently with Mexico and Canada - will hasten the
isolation of the U.S., particularly when it demands European countries follow this line. The
opportunity to secure a gradual soft landing for the dissolution of its hegemonic moment
exists for the Americans, but its arrogant and delusional establishment will not turn from
its confrontational policy, ensuring a harsh reality lesson sooner than most might
predict.
If one had to identify the main reason behind the utter failure of the U.S. political
establishment and military leadership, both civilian and in uniform, to identify and prioritize
weapons programs and procurement that was truly in line with the national defense needs of the
country, it would be the institutional corruption of the U.S. military industrial complex. This
is not a fault of one party, but is the inevitable outcome of a thoroughly corrupted system
that both generates and wastes great wealth at the expense of the many for the benefit of the
few.
Massive defense budgets do not lead to powerful military forces nor sound national defense
strategy. The United States is the most glaring example of how a nation's treasure can be
wasted, its citizens robbed for generations, and its political processes undermined by an
industry bent on maximizing profitability by encouraging and exacerbating conflict. At this
point it is questionable that the United States' could remain economically viable without war,
so much of its GDP is connected in some way to the pursuit of conflict.
There is no doubt that the War Department was renamed the Department of Defense in an
Orwellian sleight of hand in 1947, just a few years after end of World War II. The military
industrial complex grew into a monolith during the war, and the only way to justify the
expansion of the complex, was by finding a new enemy to justify the new reality of a massive
standing military, something that the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids. This unlawful state
of affairs has persisted and expanded into a rotten, bloated edifice of waste. Wasted effort,
wasted wealth and the wasted lives of millions of people spanning every corner of the planet.
Tens of thousands of brave men and women in uniform, and millions of civilians of so many
nations, have been tossed into the blades of this immoral meat grinder for generations.
President Donald Trump was very proud to announce the largest U.S. military budget in the
nation's history last year. The United States spent (or more accurately, borrowed from
generations yet to come) no less than $874.4 billion USD. The declared base budget for 2017 was
$523.2 billion USD, yet there are also the Overseas Contingency Operations and Support budgets
that have to be considered in determining the total cost. The total DOD annual costs have
doubled from 2003 to the present. Yet, what has the DOD really accomplished with so much money
and effort? Very little of benefit to the U.S. tax payer for sure, and paradoxically the
exorbitant waste of the past fifteen years have left every branch of the U.S. military
weaker.
The U.S. Congress has the duty and responsibility of reigning in the military adventurism of
the executive branch. They have the sole authority to declare war, but more importantly, the
sole authority to approve the budget requests of the military. It is laughable to think that
the U.S. Congress will do anything to reign in military spending. The Congress and the Senate
are as equally guilty as the Executive in promoting and benefitting from the military
industrial complex. Envisioned as a bulwark against executive power, the U.S. Congress has
become an integral component of that complex. No Senator or Representative would dare to go
against the industry that employs so many constituents within their state, or pass up on the
benefits afforded them through the legalized insider-trading exclusive to them, or the
lucrative jobs that await them in the defense industry and the many think tanks that promote
continued prosecution of war.
"... the radical, scorched-earth leverage now being pursued in Trump's companion foreign
policy lunge is aimed, not just at returning the US to its status quo ante , but is
aimed rather at forcing the capitulation of all resistance to US hegemony." [Emphasis
original]
Crooke attempts to show Trump's put all his chips on Red: "But the crux of it is that when
you put 'all' on one colour or the other in roulette, you either win big, or lose all."
Pepe Escobar on Brazil's election as an example of the "Future of Western Democracy"
examined in an essay 3x the length of his asiatimes.com reports:
"Stripped to its essence, the Brazilian presidential elections represent a direct clash
between democracy and an early 21st Century, neofascism, indeed between civilization and
barbarism.
"Geopolitical and global economic reverberations will be immense. The Brazilian dilemma
illuminates all the contradictions surrounding the Right populist offensive across the West,
juxtaposed to the inexorable collapse of the Left. The stakes could not be higher ."
[My emphasis]
Yes, the two issues are linked. Pepe's piece makes it easier to see the strategic
reasoning behind the immigrant invasion unleashed by Turkey and EU response, but it was
planned by Obama, not Bannon and Trump.
@Greece 9
Nonsense, it sure was Obummer and his evil SOS 'genius'Hillary the Hun that sent wave after
wave of refugees to the EU with a little help from Erdy the Turd.
Let us not mince words here Greece: you cannot whitewash Obummer and his warmongering
ghouls and the same goes for dumping all responsibility on Trump and his warmongering
ghouls.
Remember prophets and false prophets in your warmongering book are eloquently described
and whitewashed too in recent times. The western ghouls all hide behind the Abrahamic texts
that salaciously awaits the apocalypse. As do all warmongers who hide behind their precious
divine scribbles.
I'm with karlof 1 here because no amount of propaganda will make me forget who are the
perpetrators of evil.
ut @ 24 said;"Remember prophets and false prophets in your warmongering book are eloquently
described and whitewashed too in recent times. The western ghouls all hide behind the
Abrahamic texts that salaciously awaits the apocalypse. As do all warmongers who hide behind
their precious divine scribbles.
Qatar is jubilating! Turkey, too! Saudi Arabia will be criticized and isolated as most GCC
countries would dissaprove and prefer to dissociate from such a crime. Dismembering the body
of a dead moslem man is a very serious crime in Islam.
Kuwait and Bahrein are already cozyng up with Syria, the UAE is slowly moving out the
Yemen war and reviewing ist relation with Syria.
Kashoogi's alleged martyr may save Yemenis lives and may have the Western world faced to
the reality that in the region, the evil is not Iran but their best friend, Saudi Arabia and
its smiling monster MBS.
Kashoogi may have succeeded unintentionally to destabilize MBS and probably trigger his
removal. The USA will have no problem in sacrificing MBS for the sake of keeping the Saudi
milking under control. The only problem will be that it will reflect on Kushner-MBS Grand
Palestinian plan.
Maybe Kashoogi's love for fiancee made him take the risk to get a divorce paper from the
Saudi Arabia consulate and be killed.
@75 Why should Trump make a big issue about some dead Arab? Because he was a journalist?
Trump hates journalists.
If bleeding heart progressives want to make a fuss so be it. He knows his base don't give
a shit about the world outside the USA as long as they buy American arms.
"the GRU's disregard for global values and rules that keep us all safe".
Like the values and rules that led the NSA to eavesdrop on Chancellor Merkel's phone calls
for years, and to use American Embassies as listening posts. Mutti Merkel was very
understanding, considering they were only doing it to keep us all safe.
"... This is not new and has been going for at least a century. And the US elites have a long tradition of false flags to to get the people of America riled up for war. ..."
"... As Petras says: "The ten theses define the nature of 21st century imperialism" because, I feel, they are the same values that defined the British Colonial Empire. ..."
Few, if any, believe what they hear and read from leaders and media publicists. Most people
choose to ignore the cacophony of voices, vices and virtues.
This paper provides a set of theses which purports to lay-out the basis for a dialogue
between and among those who choose to abstain from elections with the intent to engage them in
political struggle.
Thesis 1
US empire builders of all colors and persuasion practice donkey tactics; waving the carrot
and wielding the whip to move the target government on the chosen path.
In the same way, Washington offers dubious concessions and threatens reprisals, in order to
move them into the imperial orbit.
Washington applied the tactic successfully in several recent encounters. In 2003 the US
offered Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi a peaceful accommodation in exchange for
disarmament, abandonment of nationalist allies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In 2011,
the US with its European allies applied the whip – bombed Libya, financed and armed
retrograde tribal and terrorist forces, destroyed the infrastructure, murdered Gaddafi and
uprooted millions of Africans and Libyans. . . who fled to Europe. Washington recruited
mercenaries for their subsequent war against Syria in order to destroy the nationalist Bashar
Assad regime.
Washington succeeded in destroying an adversary but did not establish a puppet regime in the
midst of perpetual conflict.
The empire's carrot weakened its adversary, but the stick failed to recolonize Libya
..Moreover its European allies are obligated to pay the multi-billion Euro cost of absorbing
millions of uprooteded immigrants and the ensuing domestic political turmoil.
Thesis 2
Empire builders' proposal to reconfigure the economy in order to regain imperial supremacy
provokes domestic and overseas enemies. President Trump launched a global trade war, replaced
political accommodation with economic sanctions against Russia and a domestic protectionist
agenda and sharply reduced corporate taxes. He provoked a two-front conflict. Overseas, he
provoked opposition from European allies and China, while facing perpetual harassment from
domestic free market globalists and Russo-phobic political elites and ideologues.
Two front conflicts are rarely successful. Most successful imperialist conquer adversaries
in turn – first one and then the other.
Thesis 3
Leftists frequently reverse course: they are radicals out of office and reactionaries in
government, eventually falling between both chairs. We witness the phenomenal collapse of the
German Social Democratic Party, the Greek Socialist Party (PASOK), (and its new version Syriza)
and the Workers Party in Brazil. Each attracted mass support, won elections, formed alliances
with bankers and the business elite – and in the face of their first crises, are
abandoned by the populace and the elite.
Shrewd but discredited elites frequently recognize the opportunism of the Left, and in time
of distress, have no problem in temporarily putting up with Left rhetoric and reforms as long
as their economic interests are not jeopardized. The elite know that the Left signal left and
turn right.
Thesis 4
Elections, even ones won by progressives or leftists, frequently become springboards for
imperial backed coups. Over the past decade newly elected presidents, who are not aligned with
Washington, face congressional and/or judicial impeachment on spurious charges. The elections
provide a veneer of legitimacy which a straight-out military-coup lacks.
In Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela, 'legislatures' under US tutelage attempted to ouster
popular President. They succeeded in the former and failed in the latter.
When electoral machinery fails, the judicial system intervenes to impose restraints on
progressives, based on tortuous and convoluted interpretation of the law. Opposition leftists
in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador have been hounded by ruling party elites.
Thesis 5
Even crazy leaders speak truth to power. There is no question that President Trump suffers a
serious mental disorder, with midnight outbursts and nuclear threats against, any and all,
ranging from philanthropic world class sports figures (LeBron James) to NATO respecting EU
allies.
Yet in his lunacy, President Trump has denounced and exposed the repeated deceits and
ongoing fabrications of the mass media. Never before has a President so forcefully identified
the lies of the leading print and TV outlets. The NY Times , Washington Post
, the Financial Times, NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS have been thoroughly discredited
in the eyes of the larger public. They have lost legitimacy and trust. Where progressives have
failed, a war monger billionaire has accomplished, speaking a truth to serve many
injustices.
Thesis 6
When a bark turns into a bite, Trump proves the homely truth that fear invites aggression.
Trump has implemented or threatened severe sanctions against the EU, China, Iran, Russia,
Venezuela, North Korea and any country that fails to submit to his dictates. At first, it was
bombast and bluster which secured concessions.
Concessions were interpreted as weakness and invited greater threats. Disunity of opponents
encouraged imperial tacticians to divide and conquer. But by attacking all adversaries
simultaneously he undermines that tactic. Threats everywhere limits choices to dangerous
options at home and abroad.
Thesis 7
The master meddlers, of all times, into the politics of sovereign states are the
Anglo-American empire builders. But what is most revealing is the current ploy of accusing the
victims of the crimes that are committed against them.
After the overthrow of the Soviet regime, the US and its European acolytes 'meddled' on a
world-historic scale, pillaging over two trillion dollars of Soviet wealth and reducing Russian
living standards by two thirds and life expectancy to under sixty years – below the level
of Bangladesh.
With Russia's revival under President Putin, Washington financed a large army of self-styled
'non-governmental organizations' (NGO) to organize electoral campaigns, recruited moguls in the
mass media and directed ethnic uprisings. The Russians are retail meddlers compared to the
wholesale multi-billion-dollar US operators.
Moreover, the Israelis have perfected meddling on a grand scale – they intervene
successfully in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon. They set the Middle East agenda,
budget and priorities, and secure the biggest military handouts on a per-capita basis in US
history!
Apparently, some meddlers meddle by invitation and are paid to do it.
Thesis 8
Corruption is endemic in the US where it has legal status and where tens of millions of
dollars change hands and buy Congress people, Presidents and judges.
ORDER IT NOW
In the US the buyers and brokers are called 'lobbyists' – everywhere else they are
called fraudsters. Corruption (lobbying) grease the wheels of billion dollars military
spending, technological subsidies, tax evading corporations and every facet of government
– out in the open, all the time and place of the US regime.
Corruption as lobbying never evokes the least criticism from the mass media.
On the other hand, where corruption takes place under the table in Iran, China and Russia,
the media denounce the political elite – even where in China over 2 million officials,
high and the low are arrested and jailed.
When corruption is punished in China, the US media claim it is merely a 'political purge'
even if it directly reduces elite conspicuous consumption.
In other words, imperial corruption defends democratic value; anti-corruption is a hallmark
of authoritarian dictatorships.
Thesis 9
Bread and circuses are integral parts of empire building – especially in promoting
urban street mobs to overthrow independent and elected governments.
Imperial financed mobs – provided the cover for CIA backed coups in Iran (1954),
Ukraine (2014), Brazil (1964), Venezuela (2003, 2014 and 2017), Argentina (1956), Nicaragua
(2018), Syria (2011) and Libya (2011) among other places and other times.
Masses for empire draw paid and voluntary street fighters who speak for democracy and serve
the elite. The "mass cover" is especially effective in recruiting leftists who look to the
street for opinion and ignore the suites which call the shots.
Thesis 10
The empire is like a three-legged stool it promotes genocide, to secure magnicide and to
rule by homicide. Invasions kills millions, capture and kill rulers and then rule by homicide
– police assassinating dissenting citizens.
The cases are readily available: Iraq and Libya come to mind. The US and its allies invaded,
bombed and killed over a million Iraqis, captured and assassinated its leaders and installed a
police state.
A similar pattern occurred in Libya: the US and EU bombed, killed and uprooted several
million people, assassinated Ghadaffy and fomented a lawless terrorist war of clans, tribes and
western puppets.
"Western values" reveal the inhumanity of empires built to murder "a la carte" –
stripping the victim nations of their defenders, leaders and citizens.
Conclusion
The ten theses define the nature of 21 st century imperialism – its
continuities and novelties.
The mass media systematically write and speak lies to power: their message is to disarm
their adversaries and to arouse their patrons to continue to plunder the world.
When was the last time "Nation building" resulted in a livable country. Iraq? Libya?
Americans, and I am one, can barely keep their own country from sinking into a pit of decay.
Why "deliver Democracy" when Dubai makes much of the US look like shit in terms of
infrastructure, crime and poverty.
When was the last time "Nation building" resulted in a livable country.
Why "deliver Democracy" when Dubai makes much of the US look like shit
Because what a ZOG does with it's host nation has nothing to do with improving anything
for the occupied peoples.
Think of it like the Communist Manifesto. They thump it around, preaching utopia and
equality and all that sugar and honey. This is because they want you to buy what they are
selling. But they don't have any intention of ever delivering. None whatsoever.
All they're really trying to do is whip up an army of useful idiots to be used as blunt
instruments. And once these useful idiots are done fulfilling their role in the
redistribution of wealth and power, they are discarded only to realize too little too late
that they have been working against their own interests all along.
The same thing goes for exporting Democracy. It's never been about improving anyone's
lives. In the West or any of their target nations. It's been about whipping useful idiots up
into an army that can be used as a blunt instrument against the obstacles in the way of
(((someone's))) geopolitical ambitions.
This is not new and has been going for at least a century. And the US elites have a long
tradition of false flags to to get the people of America riled up for war.
False Flag Events Behind the Six Major Wars
False flags to fool Americans into the Spanish American War, WW1, WW2, Korean War, Vietnam
War and the War on terror.
Interesting is that a USA textbook already describes USA imperialism, without using the
word:
Barbara Hinckley, Sheldon Goldman, 'American Politics and Government, Structure, Processes,
Institutions and Policies', Glenview Ill., 1990
Vietnam was a mess for a decade at least and created an immigration crisis in
Australia. The US had a surplus budget when Clinton left office. When Bush left office, oil prices
were sky-high and the economy was dreadful. Who benefits. Israel? Syria is a mess that threatens their borders.
A great comment with the proper name calling for the ZUSA in relation to the current
situation in Turkey:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/08/how-turkeys-currency-crisis-came-to-pass.html#comments
Excerpts:
" The Dollar op indicates that the USA ( or rather those who pull the strings in the
US ) finally admits that our Ally is responsible for almost all mischievous events which
took place in Turkey.
The USA is not a country, but rather a useful contract killer on a larger scale
compared to the PKK-FETO-ISIS etc.
The US is now stepping forward fearlessly because 'the arms of the octopus', as Erdogan put
last week, has been severed in Turkey."
These two definitions do stick:
1. the US is manipulated by the puppeteers -- people (the US citizenry at large) have no
saying in the US decisions (mostly immoral and often imbecile); the well-being of the US is
not a factored in the decisions
2. the US has become a "contract killer" for the voracious puppeteers
Prof. Petras, thanks. A while back I read something called Confessions of an Economic Hit
Man (?) in which the writer describes his efforts to put other nations into debt to
American institutions and American-controlled or -influenced international institutions for
the ulterior purpose of political control. Sounded plausible enough, and I saw the author
speak on TV on his book tour.
How do any of us know we're living in a country gone massively wobbly? Can a German
sipping wine in Koblenz in 1936 even imagine Hitler's Germany will be a staple of American
cable shows eighty years hence, and not in a good way? Can a Russian in the same year imagine
that the latest round of arrests won't be leading to a Communist utopia now, or ever?
FWIW-my guess is America's imperial adventures are heavily structural, being that foreign
policy is strongly within the President's purview, and Congress can be counted on to
rubber-stamp military expeditions. Plus, empire offers a good distraction from domestic
politics, which are an intractable mess of rent-seeking, racial animus, and corporate
interests.
I don't like it much having to live in a racketeerized America, but there's not a whole
lot we can do.
Professor Petras glasses are becoming little bit foggy, but his scalpel still cuts to the
bone.
But this article is lecture for beginner class, or the aliens visitors who just landed on
Earth
Yet in his lunacy, President Trump has denounced and exposed the repeated deceits and
ongoing fabrications of the mass media.
A damned good article, Sir! And bless you for calling bankster propaganda anything
but "mainstream."
Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is
poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to
misleading a bewildered people.
-Walter Lippman, A Preface to Politics ( 1913 ), quoted in The Essential
Lippmann, pp. 516-517
Lippman was an Allied propagandist among many other things.
The 10 theories that led Petras to conclude "{the message is "to disarm their adversaries and
to arouse their patrons" to continue to plunder the world}" is an example, that the American
people are clueless about how events documented by Petras research, led Petras to conclude
the USA is about plunder of the world .
There is a distinct difference between USA governed Americans and the 527 persons that
govern Americans.
Access by Americans to the USA 1) in person with one of its 527 members, 2) by communication
or attempted communication via some type of expression or 3) by constitutionally allowed
regime change at election time. None of these methods work very well for Americans , if at
all; but they serve the entrenched members of the USA, massive in size corporations and
upstream wealthy owners, quite well.
Secondly, IMO, Mr. Petras either does not understand democracy or has chosen to make a
mockery of it?
The constitution that produced the USA produced not a democracy, but a Republic.
A republic which authorized a group ( an handful of people) to rule America by rules the USA
group
decides to impose. Since the group can control the meaning of the US Constitution as well
as change it's words, the group has, unlimited power to rule, no matter the subject matter or method
(possible exceptions might be said to be within the meaning of the bill of rights; but like
all contract
clauses, especially a contract of the type where one side can amend, ignore, change or
replace or use
its overwhelming military and police powers to enforce against the other side, leaving the
other side no
recourse, is not really a contract; it might better be called an instrument announcing the
assumption of
power which infringes inalienable human rights).
Therefore just because 527 members of the USA government might between themselves practice
Democracy does not mean the governed enjoy the same freedoms.
So the USA is ruled by puppets, 527 of them, puppets of the Oligarchs. Since the
ratification of the USA constitution, Americans have been governed by the USA [The US
constitution (ratified 1778) overthrew and disposed of the Articles of Confederation
(Government of America founded 1776). Not a shot was fired, but there was a war none-the-less
(read Federalist vs Anti-Federalist and have a look at the first few acts of the USA).
(Note: The AOC, was the American government that defeated the British Armies [1776-1783],
the 1776 American AOC American Government was the government that surveyed all of the land
taken from the British by the AOC after it defeated the entire British military and stopped
the British aristocrat owed, privately held corporate Empires from their continuous raping of
America and abuse of Americans. those who did the work.
The AOC was the very same American Government that hired G. Washington to defeat and chase
the British Aristocratic Corporate Colonial Empires out of America. The 1776 American AOC
Government was the very same government that granted freedom to its people (AOC really did
practice democracy, and really did try to divide and distribute the vast American lands taken
from the British Corporate Colonial Empire equally among the then living Americans. The AOC
ceased to exist when the US Constitution installed the USA by a self proclaimed regime
change process , called ratification). There were 11 presidents of the AOC, interestingly
enough, few have heard of them.
Once again the practice of political self-determination democracy is limited to the 525
USA members who have seats in the halls of the Congress of the USA or who occupy the offices
of the President of USA or the Vice-President of the USA. All persons in America, not among
the 527 salaried, elected members of the USA, are governed by the USA.
@Heisendude Israel has no constitution, and therefore no borders.
A constitution also describes borders.
An Israeli jew one asked Ben Gurion why Israel has no defined borders, the answer was
something like 'we do not want to define borders, if we did, we cannot expand'.
@Jeff Stryker Why does Israel assist all sorts of bandits, including, but not limited to,
ISIS, in Syria? Just recently Israel helped in extracting the White Helmets, a PR wing of
Nusra (Syrian branch of Al Qaida) from South Syria. Please explain.
@Anonymous Those 527 are bought and paid for lackeys. We don't know how many real owners
of the USA there are, don't know many of their names, but we do know that when those lackeys
imagine that they are somebodies and try to govern, they are eliminated (John Kennedy is the
most unambiguous example).
You may have heard of it. Globalism, N(J)ew World Order. That which the
(((internationalists))) are always working towards. A one world government with them at the
top, the ruling class.
Vietnam was a mess for a decade at least and created an immigration crisis in
Australia.
Australia is a white nation. All white nations are supposed to suffer and ultimately
collapse upon the creation of their New World Order. Vietnam was a complete success for the
one's who really wanted that war.
The US had a surplus budget when Clinton left office. When Bush left office, oil prices
were sky-high and the economy was dreadful.
Bush was a neocon, wars for Israel with that 'surplus' were the intention all along. As
wars under Hillary would have been as well. And as they potentially could still be if Trump
proves to be a lap dog for Israel as well. He campaigned on no pointless wars, but there's no
saying for sure until he either brings all our troops home or capitulates and signs Americans
up to be cash cows and cannon fodder for more Israeli geopolitical ambitions.
Who benefits.
Those same rootless cosmopolitans that always benefit from playing both sides of the
field, seeding conflict and then cashing in on the warmongering, genocidal depopulation and
population displacement in the name of their geopolitical ambitions.
Israel? Syria is a mess that threatens their borders.
Israel made that mess. Threatened their borders with war. Land theft. Y'know. Golan
Heights. Genocide land theft and displacement are all Israel does. Their borders have
expanded every year since their creation.
Everything that's happening in the Middle East is because of the Rothschild terror state
of Israel and the Zionist Jews who reside in it .. as well as in our various western
ZOGs.
Have you really never heard of the Oded Yinon Plan ? Their genocidal outline for
waging wars of aggression for the purpose of expanding their borders and becoming the
dominant regional superpower by balkanizing the surrounding Arab world.
The only nations of significance left on their check list are as follows : Syria, Iran,
Saudi Arabia. And many will argue that the House of Saud has always been crypto, helping
Israel behind the scenes. Their sudden post-coup cooperation with their former 'enemies' is
little more than a sign that they are needed as a wartime ally more in the current phase of
their Yinon Plan than as controlled opposition funding and arming ISIS while keeping the
public eye off of Israel's role in their creation and direction. Sure enough, it seems there
is a rather strong push for an alliance between KSA, Israel and the US for war with Iran.
Technological progress, particularly the progress in information technology is pushing
mankind with accelerated speed toward final solution and final settlement.
Corruption is endemic in the US where it has legal status and where tens of millions of
dollars change hands and buy Congress people, Presidents and judges.
Yep. I have been ranting for years calling for a Anti-Corruption Political Party Platform
by some group.
The corruption of our politicians is the cause of all the problems everyone else is ranting
about.
In some ways I think most people deserve what they are going to get eventually because
they ignore the corruption of their heroes .whether it be Trump, Hillary or any other.
I tell you sheeple .if someone will cheat and lie to others they will do the same thing to
you ..you are stone cold stupid if you think other wise.
@Biff Jeff and Mikeat are both correct if my friend's account of his participation in a
recent trade show there is true. My friend's wife is a ding bat Hillarybot and she got to
yammering to me after returning about all the wonderful diversity she saw in the streets of
Dubai, but I shut her down pretty quickly by pointing out that the diversity darlings in
Dubai were paid help for the Sheikdom and weren't even second class temporary residents by US
standards; that they can be (and are) summarily deported to some slave market in Yemen if
they don't mind their Ps and Qs VERY carefully in that society. She's also a wino, but
confessed that the Trader Joe's box grade merlot sold for about US$18 to $25 a goblet in a
tourist zone food and beverage joint. (and that didn't slow her down one bit) Hubby had to
watch her close, as obvious public drunkenness (even in the tourist zone) has high potential
for extreme justice.
The New Economy plan being promoted there is the development of a sort of Disneyworld on
steroids international vacation attraction, as the leaders seem to think that their oil is
going to run out soon.
@peterAUS CNN, Washpost and NYT since a very long time suffer from a serious mental
disorder.
It reminds me of Orwell's The Country of the Blind.
When the man who could see was cured all was well.
@DESERT FOX While the Fed is a focal point, it is not the central issue. If Americans,
were actually in voting control of the central issue Americans could and probably would
abolish the fed and destroy its income by removing the income tax laws, very early on.
But if the Fed and Income taxes are not the central issue, what is the central issue?
Could it be majority will "control of the structure and staffing of that structure" that
often people call government? Look back to the creation of the US Constitution! There the
central issue for the old British Aristocracy accustomed to having their way, was: can
Aristocrats stay in control (of the new American democracy) and if so, how should "such
control" be established so that British corporate power, British Aristocratic wealth and
British Class Privilege can all survive the American revolution? {PWP}.
The question was answered by developing a form of government that enabling the Oligarch
few to make the rules [rule of law] that could control the masses and to produce a government
that had a monopoly on the use of power, so that it could enforce the laws it makes, against
against the masses and fend off all challenges. The constitution blocked the people's right
to self determination; it empowered the privileged, it favored the wealthy, and most of all
it protected and saved pre-war British owned PWP as post war PWP.
Today those who operate the government do so in near perfect secrecy (interrupted only
occasionally by Snowden, Assange, and a few brave others). It spies on each person, records
each human breath taken by the masses, relates relationships between the masses, because
those in charge fear the power of the masses should the masses somehow find a way to impose
their will on how things are to be. How can rules made by Aristocrats in secret, be
considered to be outcomes established by self- determination of the masses who are to be
governed?
Ratification is the process that abolished Democracy in America. The story of those
who imposed ratification has not yet been told. Ratification was used to justify the
overthrow of the Articles of the Confederation (AOC was America's government from 1776 to
1789). To defeat the British empire the AOC hired the most wealthy man it could find to
organize an Army capable to defeat the British Military. The AOC warred on the British Armies
with the intent to stop colonial corporate empires from continuing to rape American
productivity and exploit the resources in America for the benefit of the British Corporate
Empires [Read the Declaration of Independence].
You might research.. How did George Washington achieve his massive, for its time, wealth?
I don't think tossing coins across the mile wide Potomac made him a dime? How did GW attain
such wealth in British owned, corporately controlled Colonial America? Why was George
Washington able to keep that British earned wealth after the British were chased out of
America? More importantly many gave their all, life, liberty and property to help chase the
British out, GW gave ..?
Title by land grants [Virginia and West Virginia] are traceable to GWs estate.
What the land grant landowners feared most was that the new American democracy, might
allow the masses to revoke or deny titles to real estate in America, if such title derived
from a foreign government (land grant). The Articles of Confederation government was talking
about dividing up all of the lands in America, and parceling it out, in equal portions, to
all living AOC governed America. Deeds from kings and queens of England, France, Spain,
Portugal, and the Netherlands to land in America would not be recognized in the chain of
title? Such lands would belong to the new AOC government or to the states who were members of
the AOC.
You might check out Article 6, (Para 1) of the US Constitution.. it says in part
" All Debts contracted and Engagements[land grants and British Corporate Charters] entered
into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States
under this Constitution, as under the confederation.
(meaning loans to British Banks would be repaid and land deals made with foreign nations
and corporations including those that resulted in creating a land Baron in British Colonial
America, were to be treated as valid land titles by US Constitution. Consider the plight of
Ex British Land Grant Barron Aristocrat [EBLGBA] who finds himself in now independent
democratic America? Real Americans might decide EBLGBAs were some kind of terrorist, or
spies. Under such circumstances, the EBLGA might look at Americans as a threat to their
Aristocracy, a threat to their PWP..
Example: A Spanish Land Grant property in America ( King of Spain gave 5 million acres of
land in America to ZZ in 1720 (ZZ is a Spanish Corporation ZZ doing business in America), the
land transaction was recognized as valid under British Colonial Law in America. But would
Independent AOC America recognize a deed issued by a Spanish King, or British Queen to Real
Estate in America?
After the Revolution, the question does a EBLGBA retain ownership in the American located
land that is now part of Independent America? Ain't no dam deed from a Spanish government
going to be valid in America. King of England cannot give a deed to land that is located in
independent America.
So if, a corporation, incorporated under British Law, claims it owns 5 million acres of
American land because the Queen of England deeded it the the corporation: does that mean the
5 million acres still belongs to British Corporation X, and of course to the person made
Aristocrat by virtue of ownership of the British Corporation). Is a British Corporation now
to be an American Corporation? British Landed Gentry (land grant owners) in independent post
war America, were quick to lobby for the constitution because the constitution protected
their ownership in land granted to them by a foreign king or queen in fact the constitution
protected the PWP.
I agree with your Zionist communist observation. It is imperative for all persons
interested in what is happening to study the takeover of Russia from the Tzar by Lenin and
his Zionist Communist because what the Zionist did to the Christians in Russia in 1917 seems
to be approaching for it to happen here in America and because that revolution was a part of
the organized Zionist [1896, Hertzl] movement to take control of all of the oil in the world.
Let us not forget, Lenin and crew exterminated 32 million White Russians nearly all of whom
were educated Christians living in the Ukraine.
As Petras says: "The ten theses define the nature of 21st century imperialism" because, I
feel, they are the same values that defined the British Colonial Empire.
So the USA is ruled by puppets, 527 of them, puppets of the Oligarchs. Since the
ratification of the USA constitution, Americans have been governed by the USA [The US
constitution (ratified 1778) overthrew and disposed of the Articles of Confederation
(Government of America founded 1776). Not a shot was fired, but there was a war
none-the-less (read Federalist vs Anti-Federalist and have a look at the first few acts of
the USA).
What a relief to find that there are a few (very few) others who have a clue. The
"constitution" was effectively a coup d'etat. We proles, peasants and other pissants have
been tax and debt slaves ever since, and the situation has continuously worsened. Lincoln's
war against Southern independence, establishment of the Federal Reserve, Wilson's and
especially FDR's wars, and infiltration of the US government and industry by Commies,
Zionists and other Eastern European goon-mafiosi scum have completely perverted what this
country is supposedly about.
I doubt the situation will ever begin to improve unless and until the mass of brainwashed
dupes understand what you wrote.
@Anon Please comment more often. Excellent info there.
You might research.. How did George Washington achieve his massive, for its time,
wealth?
True. Especially since the guy was a third rate, (probably mostly incompetent), Brit
military officer and terrorist who treated the men under his command like sh!t.
Reminds me of Ol Johnny Boy McCain and other such scum.
@jilles dykstra "Ben Gurion: 'we do not want to define borders, if we did, we cannot
expand'.
-- Right. Hence the mass slaughter in the Middle East.
Hapless Canada is going to accept the "humanitarian" terrorists from While Helmets
organization. The rescue is a joint Israel-Canada enterprise: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/435670-white-helmets-canada-syria/
-- -- -- -
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland (a committed banderist and admirer of Ukrainian
neo-Nazis) and Robin Wettlaufer (Canada's representative to the Syrian Opposition and a harsh
critic of Assad "regime") have been playing a key role in the evacuation of the White
Helmets. But there are some questions to Robin: "Did Canadians get to vote on whether or not
to bring potential terrorists or supporters of terrorists to Canada? No. No vote in the
Parliament, no public discussion. Why did the Canadian government refuse the entry of 100
injured Palestinian children from Gaza in 2014, a truly humanitarian effort, and yet will
fast-track the entry of potentially dangerous men with potential ties to terrorists?"
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/435670-white-helmets-canada-syria/
-- Guess Robin Wettlaufer, due to her ethnic solidarity, would be fine with these injured
Palestinian children being smothered by someone, but the well-financed White Helmets are the
extremely valuable material for realizing Oded Yinon plan for Eretz Israel (see Ben Gurion
answer).
The US had a surplus budget when Clinton left office
It turns out that 'budget surplus' does not mean what most people think it means. When your household has a budget surplus, its rate of debt accumulation reverses
(i.e., the total value of household debt falls). Credit cards get paid down, mortgages get
paid off, and eventually you end up with a large and growing positive net worth. That's what
running a 'budget surplus' means , right?
Not so for governments : the US government could run perpetual budget 'surpluses'
and still grow government debt without bound – because they do not account for things
the way they insist that we serfs account for things there are a bunch of their expenditures
that they simply don't count in their 'budget'.
It's a bit like if you were to only count the amount your household spent on
groceries , and declare your entire budget to be in 'surplus' or 'deficit' based on
whether or not there's change after you do your weekly shopping. Meanwhile, you're spending
more than you earn overall, and accumulating debt at an expanding rate.
Runaway debt is what destroys – whether it's families or countries.
There has only been one year since 1960 in which the US Federal Debt has fallen :
1969 .
During the much-touted "Clinton Surpluses", the US Federal Debt rose by almost a
quarter- trillion dollars . The first two Bush years had larger surpluses than
either of the two Clinton surpluses – but still added $160 billion to the
Federal debt.
I know those don't sound like big numbers anymore – much given that Bush added $602
billion per year on average, and Obama added twice Bush 's amount (1.19 trillion per
year).
"... Thanks to media, to this day very few people in the West know that towards the end of the 78-day war, US and UK deliberately targeted several completely civilian facilities (bridges, hospitals and schools) and in just a few days of such targeting killed about 200 civilians. ..."
Kiza
says: October
7, 2018 at 7:50 am GMT 500 Words @Quartermaster
I am not going to insult you personally, but as a cheap paid troll you have absolutely no clue
about the subject you are typing about for your Israeli masters. FB has not explained
everything perfectly but what he wrote is correct. It is not true that an airforce would target
radar installations only with HARM missiles, which all NATO countries and Israel have, but in
practice HARM are the only missiles to reliably target mobile air defence. During the attack on
Serbia, US flew more than 90% of NATO missions and it managed to destroy three missile
batteries and one radar station (using HARM). But the mobility of the Serbian immobile air
defences had two major effects:
1) Unlike Iraq, Serbia let NATO bomb targets without always switching on its air defences to be
detected and destroyed; this grossly reduced NATOs air effectiveness because with every bomber
they had to constantly send at least one support plane with jammers, HARMs etc. NATO tried to
claim a virtue out of this by saying that they were soft on Serbia and will get tougher, but in
reality their military attack was becoming difficult to manage, expensive and risky (the NATO
unity was beginning to fray).
2) It was a running joke in Serbia how NATO planes would attack some completely empty hill
(Serbia is a relatively hilly country), create literally free fireworks for the villagers, just
because there was an air defense installation on the hill maybe 5-10 hours ago. A similar joke
was how the Serbian military or even the local villagers would spread a strip of black builders
plastic over a river and NATO planes flying at above 5 km to avoid manpads would blast this $2
bridge with $200,000 worth of bombs (adding mission cost to the cost of bombs).
Regarding US F117, it was more "stealth" than F35 and similar stealth to the smaller F22,
but the Serbians used the Checkoslovakian TAMARA passive radar, using ionospheric scatter, and
also launched multiple operator guided missiles at F117 without a proper engagement radar to be
HARMed. Self-confident in stealth the pilots of F117 did not manoeuvre, thus it was easy to
predict their path even without the targeting and engagement radar.
Forcing US to retire F117 was the second costliest damage the Serbians have done (Lockheed
did not cry, through their lobbyists they turned the loss into an opportunity to sell more
rubbish). But the biggest cost to US was that Milosevic sold several unexploded cruise missiles
and all F117 parts to China and used the money to rebuild and repair all civilian buildings in
Serbia destroyed by NATO. Later, UK and US did a colour revolution in Serbia, got their hands
on Milosevic, who then died from a health "accident" in NATO jail.
@Cyrano
You are spot-on. The Serbian military fought NATO to a draw, proven by the fact that the
peace treaty signed in Kumanovo in FYRM, did not contain the Rambouye clauses and even left
Kosovo under Serbian jurisdiction as per UNSC 1244.
Even this military draw was forced on Serbia by increased bombardment of civilian targets
in Serbia combined with open threats of carpet bombing by US B57. Serbia is a fairly densely
populated country, no jungles to hide in as in Vietnam. The civilian targets were bombed to
show that they could do carpet bombing with impunity (with the help of MSM). Thanks to
media, to this day very few people in the West know that towards the end of the 78-day war,
US and UK deliberately targeted several completely civilian facilities (bridges, hospitals
and schools) and in just a few days of such targeting killed about 200 civilians.
Naturally, any agreements with the West are totally pointless. After the Kumanovo
agreement, US and UK organized a color revolution in Serbia, took Kosovo away and got their
Serbian puppets to agree to all Rambouye demands. Serbia did not lose the war, but it lost
the agreement peace with the West.
' to my knowledge the Serbians did not use a radiating radar to shoot-down one/two F117.
They used a passive radar, which does not emit at all, it only receives a rough and noisy
location of the stealth plane '
This is complete nonsense once again you choose to pontificate on things in which you have
no knowledge
In your earlier comment,
you identified this 'passive radar' allegedly used by the Serbs as the Czech 'Tamara' system
which the Serbs did not possess
Not only that but this kind of system is not used for guiding SAM shots, and is certainly
not any kind of 'anti-stealth' weapon this category of device is known as an emitter locator
system [ELS], and is used to listen in on radio emissions from hostile aircraft and to then
track them, by means of a number of geometrically deployed antennas that can then triangulate
the bearing and direction of the aircraft
However, the basic physics involved means that these emitter locators are effective at
tracking signals OTHER THAN the aircraft's onboard radar this would include the IFF
[identification friend or foe transponder signal] and other onboard radio emitters which are
OMNIDIRECTIONAL emitters
An aircraft radar's narrow pencil beam could not reach multiple [at least 2] ELS antenna
[which would be geographically dispersed] to provide the needed triangulation
' A topic which appears to crop up with monotonous regularity [is] Warsaw Pact equipment
"capable of detecting stealth aircraft".
These claims invariably involve either the Czech designed and built Tesla-Pardubice
KRTP-86 Tamara or ERA Vera Emitter Locating Systems, or the Ukrainian designed and built
Topaz Kolchuga series of Emitter Locating Systems.
More than often this equipment is described as 'anti-stealth radar', 'radar' or
'passive radar', all of which are completely incorrect.
Much of everything else you have farted out here regarding the Serb takedown of the F117
is similar bullshit
The
3′rd battery of the 250′th Air Defense missile Brigade, commanded by then Lt
Col Zoltan Dani killed both F117s [the second one made it back to Aviano, Italy but was
scrapped, as USAF Col Riccioni confirms in his F22 report I linked to earlier] as well as the
kill on the F16 of then 555′th squadron Commander, then Lt Col David Goldfein, who,
since 2016 happens to be Gen Goldfein and the USAF
Chief of Staff
Here is Goldfein's F16 canopy and tail feathers on display at the Belgrade Aviation
Museum
Incidentally, Col Riccioni mentions in that same report that Goldfein was doing 'other
than what he was supposed to be doing' when shot down I guess in today's USAF that means you
have the 'right stuff' to become The Chief
Also incidentally, the Goldfein kill was overseen by Col Dani's Deputy Maj Bosko Dotlic,
as Col Dani was off duty at the time
The point is that that one single S125 battery accounted for ALL the confirmed kills of
the Serb IADS in 1999 [although there are many more 'probable' kills that either ditched in
the Adriatic, or limped back but were scrapped]
This speaks to my earlier point about human competence and the 'hawks' and 'doves' just
like a small fraction of fighter pilots rack up the overwhelming majority of kills the same
goes for air defense commanders, submarine captains, tank commanders etc
You have spewed here a whole lot of garbage about 'secret' anti-stealth weapons and 'lucky
shots' etc which is a complete insult to the historical record and the great work by Col Dani
and his men and to the entire principle of working and training hard to achieve professional
competence in a military skill
Here is a picture of the side of the 3′rd Battery Command Cabin, with Three kills
stenciled in the F117 [black] on top a B2 [not confirmed] and Goldfein's F16 in white at
bottom
As per standard Russian air defense design doctrine, the S125 uses a separate
acquisition and tracking radar which DOES operate at a lower frequency in this case the
P15 'Flat Face'
which operates in the decimetric wavelength band [which is similar to ATC radar frequency of
about 1.2 to 1.4 GHz...ie L band]
As explained previously the acquisition radar serves to find and track the target at long
range and cues the engagement radar to scan a precise sector where the acquisition radar has
found the target the engagement radar's increased precision [due to its higher frequency and
antenna size] then provides pinpoint accuracy to guide the missile
It is this combination of separate radars working together that allows the targeting of
low observable aircraft and what the 3′rd Battery did was a textbook example of using
the equipment to its full potential despite the fact that this old radar technology was in
fact susceptible to jamming, which the Nato forces employed massively
Col Dani also trained his men hard to be able to disassemble their radar and launchers
within 90 minutes and load everything up on trucks and move to another location he also
exercised strict discipline with regard to emissions allowing the radar to be turned on only
for very short bursts at a time about a minute or two at most
This is all textbook Soviet operating procedure and the difference was the exceptional
work ethic and competence that Col Dani maintained in his unit
It should be noted here that the Serb air defense was in fact very successful overall war
is a game of survival and attrition and what the Serbs accomplished was noted by air combat
practitioners
'The air campaign over Kosovo severely affected the readiness rates of the United States
Air Force's Air Combat Command during that period. Units in the United States were the most
badly affected, as they were were stripped of their personnel and spare parts to support
ACC (Air Combat Command) and AMC (Air Mobility Command) units involved in Operation Allied
Force.
The Commander of the USAF's Air Combat Command, General Richard E Hawley, outlined this
in a speech to reporters on 29 April, 1999.[10] Further, many aircraft will have to be
replaced earlier than previously planned, as their planned fatigue life was prematurely
expended.
PGM inventories needed to be re-stocked, the warstock of the AGM-86C Conventional
Air-Launched Cruise Missile dropping to 100 or fewer rounds.[11] Of the more than 25,000
bombs and missiles expended, nearly 8,500 were PGMs, with the replacement cost estimated at
$US1.3 billion.[12]
Thus the USAF suffered from virtual attrition of its air force without having scored
a large number of kills in theatre. Even if the United States' best estimates of Serbian
casualties are used, the Serbians left Kosovo with a large part of their armoured forces
intact.
Incidentally, several years ago the downed USAF pilot Col Dale Zelko, traveled to Serbia
to visit the man who shot him down Col Dani a film The Second Meeting was made here is
a trailer
PS I will have more to say later, as you have littered this thread with all kinds of
technically incorrect crapola
@Johnny
Rico NATO failed to defeat the Yugoslav army so NATO targeted Serbian civilians. You have
suffered far more losses than you acknowledge so you started killing women and children. You
rained the main marked and the main hospital of my hometown with cluster bombs. That's why
Serbia accepted UN resolution 1244 and the Kumanovo agreement. Given the ultimatum in
Rambouillet, that's not what I would call a capitulation. The only reason Serbia signed was
because you threatened to mass murder Serbian civilians. Why would you threaten to massacre
civilians if you had so soundly defeated the Yugoslav army? Never have so many American
military died during training exercises than during the aggression against Serbia. We
consider you to be shit at war. Extremely armed fags who pee in their pants when they face
opposition. But believe what you want.
@Kiza
The Russians failed to defend Serbia in 1999. That's the Serbian approach.
Why on Earth would Russians defend Serbs who only remember "Russian" brothers when they're in
dire straits?
Why would the Russian "love" us more than we "love" them? What is their interest? Because
Serbs love "Tolstoevsky"?
Don't blame the Russian for Serbian failures. In true love as in a true contract, you have to
give in order to take. Russia has given us a lot with no expectance of return. If she
expected anything, we have given her nothing. We aren't Russia's spoiled child.
NATO failed to defeat the Yugoslav army so NATO targeted Serbian civilians.
Actually, they started to target civilian infrastructure. The objective was to intimidate
the regime in Belgrade into surrender by pushing the country towards stone age.
I guess you could be onto something here:
You have suffered far more losses than you acknowledge .
and
Never have so many American military died during training exercises than during the
aggression against Serbia.
As for
That's why Serbia accepted UN resolution 1244 and the Kumanovo agreement.
there was a little matter of Russia guaranteeing something too, I guess. While the
drunkard was in the Kremlin.
Perceptions aside (Argentinians still believe they sank Royal Navy aircraft carrier in
'82, for example) NATO delivered what its political masters wanted at the time.
Serbs lost .BADLY.
@Vojkan
Yes. It's pretty much standard American practice to bomb civilian infrastructure immediately,
regardless of the degree of resistance put up by the opposing military.
@Vojkan
I don't mean to interfere in inter-Serbian squabble, but I'll volunteer an opinion anyway. I
think you are exaggerating what Russia has done for Serbia for example. How so? As a proud
Balkaneer ( I am exaggerating here a little bit myself – the proud part) I have to say
that we in the Balkans have always benefited from the simple fact that usually Russia's
enemies are our enemies too, so when Russia takes care of their enemies, they automatically
take care of our enemies too.
But I don't think that the Russians would necessarily put their neck on the line for the
Balkan Slavs to defend them against enemies that are not their enemies as well. So,
unfortunately for Serbia, that equation didn't work for them in the 90's – simply put
– Serbia's enemies were not automatically Russia's enemies too. Russia was still trying
to be friends with the west. I forgot who it was, but some prominent Russian politician at
the time said: "We are not going to start nuclear war with US over Serbia".
But it seems that Serbia is always the canary in the mine – whenever someone attacks
Serbia – Russia is next. That's why that buffoon Yeltsin had to go. Friendship with the
west was over the moment they attacked Yugoslavia (Serbia). Now the Russia didn't start a
nuclear war over Serbia, but they still might have to – to defend themselves, and as
always Serbia will benefit from this – if anything is left over from this world after
things go nuclear.
@peterAUS
Serbs did lose badly. Albeit not on the battlefield. Though there never was a real
battlefield.
I have no reason to doubt the accounts of my friends in the military who sought in the rare
conversations I've had with them on the subject, to humble down their achievements.
I believe Russians capitalised on the Serb's defeat. I can't blame them for that. No one is
responsible for what happened to Serbs, as it happened, but Serbs. They're so keen on making
the wrong decisions for the sake of appearing glorious, you can't blame the devil for that.
It's their informed choice
@Beefcake
the Mighty To be fair, they only did it after they realised that the Serb military were
too smart to be depleted by aerial bombardment and that in order to defeat them, you'd have
to fight them on the ground. That's why NATO bombarded civilians. On a man to man basis,
Serbs and Russians are the best soldiers in the world. No navy seal, no marine, no SAS can
match them. Fighting for their homes gives them the little bit of adrenaline needed to
prevail.
@Cyrano
My point was never "Russians" are our brothers. My point is, whatever cultural, religious or
blood affinity I have with the Russians, they have their interests and we have ours. I cannot
expect of Russians to defend Serbia for "ses beaux yeaux". The same goes the other way
around. To some people Russia has "betrayed" Serbia, to some other Serbia has "betrayed"
Russia. Yet the West sees us as one whole, Russia and little "Russia". I didn't ask myself
before but now I love Russia infinetely more than the West. Russia has asked me nothing, has
given me nothing and is expecting nothing from me.
If we can have a mutually beneficial relationship with Russia, great. We will never have that
with the USA or the UK or Germany or France. They're guilty of the spoilation of Serbs' lives
and private properties. Russians never spoiled Serbs of anything.
@Frederick
V. Reed The idea of 'stealth' aircraft is in fact mostly a gimmick designed to enrich the
military contractors it doesn't actually work very well at all, as proved in 1999 when the
Serb air defense, using ancient Soviet surface to air missiles of 1950s vintage, shot down
the USAF F117 aircraft and damaged another that was then written off, and therefore counts as
a kill
–F117 canopy displayed at the Belgrade Aviation Museum
But let's look at the idea of 'low observable' aircraft technology in a little more
detail, and how it may be countered by air defense
Ufimtsev, working at the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, developed a coherent
theory on the behavior of radio wave scattering off solid objects he published his seminal
work Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction in 1962 the Soviet
military saw no real value in this and allowed it to be published
In 1971, the USAF translated this work into English and a couple of engineers at Lockheed
realized that Ufimtsev had provided the mathematical foundation to predict how radar waves
deflect off an aircraft it was a lightbulb moment the main insight of Ufimtsev's work was
that the size of a radar return was more a function of the edge geometry of the aircraft than
its actual size
Retired USAF Lt Colonel William B O'Connor, who flew the F117 gives a good telling of the
story
here
The end result is that the F117 and B2 were developed by programming Ufimtsev's math into
powerful computers in order to come up with aircraft shaping geometry that minimized radar
reflection subsequent 'low observable' aircraft like the F22 and F35 all build on this basic
physics
Now while the idea of reducing an aircraft's radar return sounds good in principle it has
a lot of real-world drawbacks for instance the shaping can only be optimized for one
particular aspect, such as a head-on if the aircraft turns into a bank for instance its radar
return will increase by as much as 100 fold owing to the simple fact that a banking aircraft
exposes its broad underbelly, which has no way to be optimized to also be 'stealthy' the
shaping cannot accomplish the same result of scattering radio waves off in all directions,
from all angles
There are other challenges the vertical tail surfaces will also bounce back radio waves
this is why a tailless, flying wing design like the B2 is better suited to the task but this
kind of configuration brings with it compromises in aircraft maneuverability and agility
Aside from the aircraft geometry, which is the main means of achieving 'low observability'
there are also special coatings that are designed to 'absorb' radio waves although this is
only of limited effectiveness and depends a lot on the thickness of the rubbery coating I had
the opportunity to physically examine a piece of the wreckage of that F117 shot down in
Serbia, and the thickness and weight of that coating was surprising it was about 1/16 inch
thick in places along the vertical stabilizers and seemed to weigh more than the underlying
composite honeycomb structure itself [typical of Lockheed lightweight structural design]
This additional weight is a major disadvantage of 'stealth' aircraft aircraft must be as
light as possible to perform well that is just basic physics but these logical design
considerations have seemingly been sidelined in what can only be explained as a money-making
gimmick that only detracts from actual aircraft capability
The F35 is far worse of course but Col Riccioni passed away before he could fully train
his guns on this very deficient aircraft
The fact of the matter is that the F117 was more 'stealthy' than the F22 or F35 this due
to its faceted design wherein the airframe shape was defined largely by a series of flat
plates [remember that the whole physics of radio reflection boils down to edge
geometry...]
The current MIC propaganda is that the faceted shape is not necessary due to improved
supercomputers that can calculate the math for curved surfaces well, the physical fact is
that curved surfaces reflect in all directions and no amount of 'supercomputing' can change
that Col Riccioni, who is no slouch in physics, having designed and taught the first
graduate-level course in astronautics at the USAF Academy, confirms that the F117 was a more
'stealthy' design than the F22 and the F35 is considered not as stealthy as the F22
As for defending against 'low observable' aircraft with surface to air missiles [SAMs] let
us review some of the pertinent factors that go into this equation a SAM system consists
basically of powerful radars that spot and track enemy aircraft and guide a missile shot to
the target the only way to kill a SAM system by means of an attacking aircraft is to target
its radars with a special type of missile that homes in on radio signals known as
anti-radiation missiles [HARMs] such as the US AGM88
The problem becomes one of reach how far can the SAM missiles reach and how far can the
HARMs reach ?
A long range SAM like the S300/400 wins this contest easily the S300 can hit targets as
far as 250 km away [400 km for S400] while the best Harms can reach about 150 km at most and
that's if fired at high aircraft speed and altitude so it becomes a question of how do you
get within the SAM missile kill zone to fire your Harm in the first place ?
In the 1999 bombing of Serbia, the US and 18 participating Nato allies mustered over 1,000
aircraft and fired a total of over 700 Harms at Serb air defenses, over the course of 78 days
but managed to knock out only three 1970s era mobile SAM units the 2K12 'Kub'
This campaign was truly a David vs Goliath match, yet the Serbs effectively fought the
alliance to a draw
NATO never fully succeeded in neutralizing the Serb IADS [integrated air defense
system], and NATO aircraft operating over Serbia and Kosovo were always within the
engagement envelopes of enemy SA-3 and SA-6 missiles -- envelopes that extended as high as
50,000 feet.
Because of that persistent threat, mission planners had to place such high-value
surveillance-and-reconnaissance platforms as the U-2 and JSTARS in less-than-ideal orbits
to keep them outside the lethal reach of enemy SAMs.
Even during the operation's final week, NATO spokesmen conceded that they could confirm
the destruction of only three of Serbia's approximately 25 known mobile SA-6
batteries.'
Lambeth notes that things could have been much different had the Serbs had the S300
'One SA-10/12 [early S300 variant] site in Belgrade and one in Pristina could have
provided defensive coverage over all of Serbia and Kosovo. They also could have threatened
Rivet Joint, Compass Call, and other key allied aircraft such as the airborne command and
control center and the Navy's E-2C operating well outside enemy airspace.
Fortunately for NATO, the Serb IADS did not include the latest-generation SAM equipment
currently available on the international arms market.'
Since 1999, the last major SEAD [suppression of enemy air defense] operation by Nato the
Russian air defense capabilities have only become more lethal the radars employed on the
S300/400 series are phased array types which are very difficult to jam and much more precise
in guiding a missile to the target
Phased array means that instead of a parabolic dish, the antenna consists of several
thousand individual antenna elements that are electronically steered in order to create a
very precise radar beam [instead of a dish antenna being mechanically rotated and tilted]
'With electronic beam steering, very low sidelobes and a narrow pencil beam mainlobe,
the 30N6 phased array is more difficult to detect and track by an aircraft's warning
receiver when not directly painted by the radar, and vastly more difficult to jam.
While it may have detectable backlobes, these are likely to be hard to detect from the
forward sector of the radar. As most anti-radiation missiles rely on sidelobes to home in,
the choice of engagement geometry is critical in attempting to kill a Flap Lid.'
Shown is the latest generation 92N6 'Grave Stone' engagement radar used with S300/400
systems the engagement radar actually guides the missile shot, while separate early warning
and acquisition and tracking radars first detect the target, then cue the engagement radar to
point to the target and guide the missile shot
In this scenario the weakest link of the S200 is eliminated its obsolete parabolic dish
type engagement radar the S200 missile is instead guided to the target by the formidable new
S300/400 radars
'In this arrangement, an SA-20/21 system with its high power aperture and highly jam
resistant acquisition and engagement radars prosecutes an engagement, but rather than
launching its organic 48N6 series missile rounds, it uses the SA-5 Gammon round instead
The challenge which a hybrid SA-5/SA-20/SA-21 system presents is considerable. The
SA-20/21 battery is highly mobile, and with modern digital frequency hopping radars, will
be difficult to jam.
Soft kill and hard kill become problematic. In terms of defeating the SA-5 component of
the hybrid, the only option is to jam the missile CW homing seeker, the effectiveness of
which will depend entirely on the vintage of the 5G24N series seeker and the capabilities
of the jamming equipment. If the customer opts for an upgrade to the seeker electronics,
the seeker may be digital and very difficult to jam.'
This could be the most important part of the story, since the Syrians have a large number
of S200 systems it is certain that a number of additional S300/400 radars have been delivered
as part of that '49 pieces' reported in Russian media and these powerful and fully mobile
radars [truck mounted] will be used to modernize the S200 network
It is worth noting also that SAM mobility is a key advance of the S300/400 systems the
various radars and the missile launchers are all mounted on large trucks and are designed for
five minute shoot and scoot this mobility proved key to the Nato difficulty with Serbian
SAMs, even though those old systems were not designed for that, but the Serbs nonetheless
would dismantle and move the fixed radars and launchers on a regular basis
In order to attack a SAM with an aircraft you first have to know where it is the only way
to know is when it turns on its radar at which point it may be too late if it is pointed at
you after taking the shot, the whole thing packs up and moves in five minutes flat [the
Patriot takes 30 minutes by comparison]
It should be noted here that these mobile Russian search and acquisition radars are
extremely powerful the 'Big Bird' series is in the same class as the Aegis radar mounted on
USN missile cruisers and destroyers
'The 64N6E Big Bird is the key to much of the improved engagement capability, and
ballistic missile intercept capability in the later S-300P variants.
This system operates in the 2 GHz band and is a phased array with a 30% larger aperture
than the US Navy SPY-1 Aegis radar, even accounting for its slightly larger wavelength it
amounts to a mobile land based Aegis class package. It has no direct equivalent in the
West.'
The final piece of the puzzle when it comes to countering 'stealth' aircraft is a special
category of radar designed specifically for that purpose these operate at much lower
frequencies [ie longer wavelength] which renders the stealth shaping useless since the
physics dictates that aircraft features shorter than the radar wavelength cannot produce the
desired scattering effect as Col Riccioni notes
[The F22's] radar signature is admittedly small in the forward quarter but only to
airborne radars. The aircraft is detectable by high-power, low-frequency ground based
radars
it is physically impossible to design shapes and radar absorptive material to
simultaneously defeat low power, high-frequency enemy fighter radars, and high power,
low-frequency ground based radars.'
The system uses a series of radars of varying wavelength each mounted on a mobile chassis
as with all the modern Russian SAM radars the long wavelength radar finds the 'stealth'
target easily and then cues a shorter wavelength radar to further pinpoint the target, which,
in turn, cues the engagement radar that guides the missile shot
Shown is such a deployment of three radars and a command vehicle in the background
All told, the upgrade of the Syrian air defenses now presents a very formidable system it
should be noted that the S200 missile when used with these powerful radars could be an
especially deadly combination this rocket was until 2009 the longest range SAM rocket in the
world, with a maximum range of up to 375 km
Unlike modern SAM missiles that use solid propellant rocket motors [basically a bottle
rocket] the S200 uses a real liquid fuel rocket engine it has a top speed of 2.5 km/s which
is actually faster than the S400 rockets and the liquid engine means it can be throttled to
decrease or increase its speed [minimum flying speed is 700 m/s] something that a solid
rocket cannot do
In the right hands, this combination of advanced S300 radars and the superb kinematic
performance of the S200 missile could be a deadly combination the fact that Syria has a lot
of these S200 missiles means that adding those S300 radars makes it a whole new ballgame we
already saw back in February when an S200 shot down an Israeli F16 in Israeli airspace there
are unconfirmed reports that a second aircraft was hit and possibly destroyed
The question of Israeli F35s trying to attack these mobile S300 SAMs is not really a
serious consideration for any air combat practitioner the F35 has terrible flight
characteristics such as very high wing loading, which directly affects its turning ability
[think of running with a 100 lb backpack and how that might affect your maneuverability]
The basic flight physics of this airplane are terrible, as many qualified experts have
pointed out it would be difficult to envisage how it could play a role in mounting an attack
against these Syrian S300s
The only realistic option to attack such an air defense zone would be to use the
mountainous terrain along the Levant coast and fly a nap of the earth mission with highly
maneuverable fighters like the F15 and F16 to try to hide from radar in the mountains and get
close enough to deliver a Harm missile to an S300 radar
But this would be a very risky mission especially considering that the Russians are flying
their AWACS planes over Syria, so even terrain following is not going to work in trying to
hide
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says that people having "poor" memories of NATO's
1999 bombing of Yugoslavia are wrong because the military bloc did this to protect civilians
and save lives.
"I stressed that we did this to protect civilians and to stop the Milosevic regime,"
Stoltenberg stated during a meeting with the students of Belgrade University.
The NATO secretary stated further that the bloc supports a "dialogue" between Serbia and its
breakaway region [now a self-proclaimed state] of Kosovo. According to him, Belgrade has to
"look into the future" for furher cooperation between the two sides.
The attitude showed by Stoltenberg is a common example how the US-NATO propaganda works. Any
actions, incluindg illegal military interventions, false flag provocations and mass civilian
casualties, are being explained by the need to "defend democracy", "protect civilians" and
"save lives".
"Also do not forget that all invisible stuff that US army had during the Clinton/HRC era,
were easily visible. F-117 in Serbia,"
See: Comment #43: (very detailed, links to open source US mil docs)
"The idea of 'stealth' aircraft is in fact mostly a gimmick designed to enrich the
military contractors it doesn't actually work very well at all, as proved in 1999 when the
Serb air defense, using ancient Soviet surface to air missiles of 1950s vintage, shot down
the USAF F117 aircraft and damaged another that was then written off, and therefore counts as
a kill "
Thanks for that link. That's an essay in itself, and I'm still reading it. Fascinating and
valuable background on stealth.
First takeaway for me is that the Russians invented stealth but considered it
impracticable at the time. The US designers took the Russian equations and ran with them,
throwing out many other considerations of plane-worthiness in order to promote this dud of a
magic bullet.
"... After all, from National Security Advisor John Bolton (the invasion of Iraq ) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (a longtime regime-change advocate) to CIA Director Gina Haspel ( black sites and torture ), Secretary of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis (former Marine general and CENTCOM commander ), and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (former Marine general and a commander in Iraq), those adolts and so many like them remain deeply implicated in the path the country took in those years of geopolitical dreaming. They were especially responsible for the decision to invest in the U.S. military (and little else), as well as in endless wars , in the years before Donald Trump came to power. And worse yet, they seem to have learned absolutely nothing from the process. ..."
"... Fear: Trump in the White House ..."
"... And so Donald Trump became the latest surge president, authorizing, however grudgingly, the dispatching of yet more American troops and air power to Afghanistan (just as he recently authorized an "indefinite military effort" in Syria in the wake of what we can only imagine was another such exchange). Of Mattis himself, in response to reports that he might be on the way out after the midterm elections, the president recently responded , "He'll stay we're very happy with him, we're having a lot of victories, we're having victories that people don't even know about." ..."
"... They proved to be neither the empire builders of their dreams, nor even empire preservers, but a crew of potential empire burners. ..."
"... Occupation (ongoing) and forced partition of Germany. Operation "Gladio" – destroying not pro-American political parties across Europe, like in Italia. Murder of neutral politicians like Olaf Palme. Should we remember Chile and president Aliende? Installing DHS operative Norriega as Panama dictator, then removing him. Did USA even had allies that were not vassals? ..."
"... Exactly right. But he also failed to mention that the NATO nations, the Anglo-Saxon nations, Japan, etc., are completely subsevient to the empire, and seem to be so by choice. No rats are jumping off the sinking ship. Sweden was neutral and independent during WW2 and the Cold War. But now it seems that Swedish rats jump ONTO the sinking ship. ..."
"... Stalin said that a country's political system follows its military. When the shooting stopped in Europe in 1945 the US had its forces in countries (UK, France, Italy, Germany, etc.) that, with the exception of Austria became American "allies", just as the Soviet army occupied countries became Soviet "allies". ..."
"... You can't pin the inevitable decline on Trump: It started a couple decades ago with rise of the New World Order. ..."
"... Last night, I stumbled across The Saker's Vineyard. He once wrote a blog post discussing how he was blacklisted in his native Switzerland after speaking out against NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. I asked him how he could get himself censored in a "neutral" country that's supposedly independent from NATO or the EU, and since when Switzerland had become a lapdog of NATO. ..."
Donald Trump is in the White House exactly because, in these years, so many Americans felt
instinctively that something was going off the tracks. (That shouldn't be a surprise, given the
striking lack of investment in, or upkeep of, the infrastructure of the greatest of all powers.)
He's there largely thanks to the crew that's now proudly referred
to -- for supposedly keeping him in line -- as "the adults in the room." Let me suggest a
small correction to that phrase to better reflect the 16 years in this not-so-new century
before he entered the Oval Office. How about "the adolts in the room"?
After all, from National Security Advisor John Bolton (the invasion of Iraq ) and Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo (a longtime
regime-change advocate) to CIA Director Gina Haspel (
black sites and torture ), Secretary of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis (former Marine
general and
CENTCOM commander ), and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (former Marine general and a
commander in Iraq),
those adolts and so many like them remain deeply implicated in the path the country took in
those years of geopolitical dreaming. They were especially responsible for the decision to
invest in the U.S. military (and little else), as well as
in endless wars , in the years before Donald Trump came to power. And worse yet, they seem
to have learned absolutely nothing from the process.
Take a recent example we know something about -- Afghanistan -- thanks to Fear: Trump
in the White House , Bob Woodward's bestselling new book. Only recently, an American
sergeant major, an adviser to Afghan troops, was gunned down
at a base near the Afghan capital, Kabul, in an "insider" or "green-on-blue" attack, a
commonplace of
that war. He was killed (and another American adviser wounded) by two allied Afghan police
officers in the wake of an American air strike in the same area in which more than a dozen of
their compatriots died. Forty-two years old and on the eve of retirement, the sergeant was on
his seventh combat tour of duty of this century and, had he had an eighth, he might have served
with an American
born after the 9/11 attacks.
In his book, Woodward describes a National Security Council meeting in August 2017, in which
the adolts in the room saved the president from his worst impulses. He describes how an
impatient Donald Trump "exploded, most particularly at his generals. You guys have created this
situation. It's been a disaster. You're the architects of this mess in Afghanistan You're smart
guys, but I have to tell you, you're part of the problem. And you haven't been able to fix it,
and you're making it worse I was against this from the beginning. He folded his arms. 'I want
to get out and you're telling me the answer is to get deeper in.'"
And indeed almost 16 years later that is exactly what Pompeo, Mattis, former National
Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and the rest of them were telling him. According to Woodward,
Mattis, for instance, argued forcefully "that if they pulled out, they would create another
ISIS-style upheaval What happened in Iraq under Obama with the emergence of ISIS will happen
under you, Mattis told Trump, in one of his sharpest declarations."
The reported presidential response: "'You are all telling me that I have to do this,' Trump
said grudgingly, 'and I guess that's fine and we'll do it, but I still think you're wrong. I
don't know what this is for. It hasn't gotten us anything. We've spent trillions,' he
exaggerated. 'We've lost all these lives.' Yet, he acknowledged, they probably could not cut
and run and leave a vacuum for al-Qaeda, Iran, and other terrorists."
And so Donald Trump became the latest surge
president, authorizing, however grudgingly, the dispatching of yet more American
troops and air
power to Afghanistan (just as he recently
authorized an "indefinite military effort" in Syria in the wake of what we can only imagine
was another such exchange). Of Mattis himself, in response to reports
that he might be on the way out after the midterm elections, the president recently
responded , "He'll stay we're very happy with him, we're having a lot of victories, we're
having victories that people don't even know about."
Perhaps that should be considered definitional for the Trump presidency, which is likely to
increasingly find itself in a world of "victories that people don't even know about." But don't
for a second think that The Donald was the
one who brought us to this state, though someday he will undoubtedly be seen as the
personification of it and of the decline that swept him into power. And for all that, for the
victories that people won't know about and the defeats that they will, he'll have the adolts in
the room to thank. They proved to be neither the empire builders of their dreams, nor even
empire preservers, but a crew of potential empire burners.
Believe me, folks, it's going to be anything but pretty. Welcome to that most unpredictable
and dangerous of entities, a dying empire. Only 27 years after the bells of triumph tolled
across Washington, it looks like those bells are now preparing to toll in mourning for it.
The main difference between US and the "lesser" empire USSR is how they got their "allies".
The USSR won their "allies" by the force of their military. The US won their allies by the
promise of economic prosperity.
When the "lesser" empire collapsed, US got delusional and decided to try their luck at
winning new allies (or more accurately – expanding their influence) with the force of
their military – who let's face it was never that impressive compared to other great
empires in history.
Conclusion: US should have stuck with what they were good at –
winning battles on the economic battlefield, not let the Cold War "victory" get to their
heads making them delusional that they can win any "hot" wars of any significance.
The US won their allies by the promise of economic prosperity.
Occupation (ongoing) and forced partition of Germany. Operation "Gladio" – destroying not pro-American political parties across Europe,
like in Italia. Murder of neutral politicians like Olaf Palme. Should we remember Chile and president Aliende? Installing DHS operative Norriega as Panama dictator, then removing him. Did USA even had allies that were not vassals?
Exactly right. But he also failed to mention that the NATO nations, the Anglo-Saxon nations,
Japan, etc., are completely subsevient to the empire, and seem to be so by choice. No rats
are jumping off the sinking ship. Sweden was neutral and independent during WW2 and the Cold
War. But now it seems that Swedish rats jump ONTO the sinking ship.
@Tulips
What about Switzerland? It's not a member of either NATO or the EU (unlike Sweden). It
remained neutral and independent during WWII and the Cold War. Last time I checked, it
doesn't even have any American bases.
"The USSR won their "allies" by the force of their military. The US won their allies by
the promise of economic prosperity."
Stalin said that a country's political system follows its military. When the shooting
stopped in Europe in 1945 the US had its forces in countries (UK, France, Italy, Germany,
etc.) that, with the exception of Austria became American "allies", just as the Soviet army
occupied countries became Soviet "allies".
In Asia US occupied Japan and South Korea became
US "allies". In Eastern Europe the Soviets arranged the political situation to ensure that
political opponents were removed from power.
In Italy and France in 1946 the democratically
elected Communists in the French and Italian governments were removed from power, not by
popular election.
There is enough symmetry here to suggest that your contention is dubious at
best. When I was a member of the US Army in Germany back during the Cold War I came to the
conclusion that I was there not so much to drive to the East German border to keep the Soviets
out of West Germany and points west as to be ready to drive on Bonn to ensure the West
Germans remained within the fold.
There is enough symmetry here to suggest that your contention is dubious at best.
I kind of both agree and disagree with what you are saying . It's true that there are
similarities in how both the US and USSR "won" their allies in Europe in WW2. The main
difference is that USSR won their allies by the power of their military alone, while US "won"
their allies by the power of their military while also being generously helped by the power
of the USSR military too.
If this wasn't true, the US would have "won" their allies (or at least it would have start
winning them) in 1990-91 instead of 1944-45 when the Germans were pretty much already beaten
to a pulp by the Russians.
To prove my theory that the biggest draw to being US ally is economic prosperity, not
being impressed by the power of their military and what they can offer in terms of
protection, it's the fact that the former Warsaw pact countries joined NATO after USSR was
gone and they didn't need any protection by anybody against anyone anymore. They joined NATO
for purely economic reasons, because they didn't want to miss the opportunity to kiss
American b*tts and in the process to profit from the pleasant gesture.
You can't pin the inevitable decline on Trump: It started a couple decades ago with rise of
the New World Order. If anything, TPTB will deliberately crash the global system to get the
NWO that Trump detailed back on the tracks.
@Josep
Come to think of it, now I can see why Tulips (#4) didn't mention Switzerland.
Last night, I stumbled across The Saker's Vineyard. He once wrote a blog post discussing
how he was blacklisted in his native Switzerland after speaking out against NATO's bombing of
Yugoslavia. I asked him how he could get himself censored in a "neutral" country that's
supposedly independent from NATO or the EU, and since when Switzerland had become a lapdog of
NATO. The next morning, he said:
The sad truth is that Switzerland, which truly used to be a neutral country, completely
caved in into NATO by the late 1980s. The visible first sign of that was when Switzerland
allowed NATO to use her airspace to bomb Yugoslavia and when she caved in to the blackmail
of international Jewish organizations and the Volcker Commission and paid over a billion
dollar in ransom money. There was a lot of resistance to this kind of behavior from the
common people and from some politicians (such as Christoph Blocher), but the globalists
still won. I rather not discuss that in more details.
Kind regards,
The Saker
"... Along these lines, the Trump Administration has informed Russia in April 2017 that the period of "strategic patience" is over (well, at least official 'cause being 'patient' didn't seem to deter regime change and covert ops) . They now employ a policy of "maximum pressure" instead. ..."
"... Also note: The Trump Administration has officially labeled Russia and China as enemies when they called them "recidivist" nations in the National Defense Authorization Act in late 2017. (Note: "recidivist" because Russia and China want to return to a world where there is not a hegemonic power, aka a "multi-polar" world). ..."
"... we're already within an ongoing Hybrid Third World War, which is more readily apparent with Trump's Trade War escalation. ..."
"... the "real" US economy is only 5 Trillion, only 25% of what's claimed as the total economy ..."
"... at's clearly happening--and it's been ongoing for quite awhile--for those with open eyes is the Class War between the 1% and 99%. The domestic battle within the Outlaw US Empire for Single Payer/Medicare For All healthcare is one theatre of the much larger ongoing war. ..."
"... Clearly, the upcoming financial crisis must spark a massive political upheaval larger than any ever seen before to prevent institution of the 2008 "solution." ..."
"... The primary dynamic of history is war. This has caused immense suffering. It is now becoming exponentially worse ..."
"... If we think of humankind as a large complex living entity, then like all such entities it will expire at some point. So in the larger picture, what we are moving towards is natural, and to be expected. ..."
It is rather surprising that the Democrats who have demonized Donald Trump at every turn
have voted in favour of the this extremely bloated defense budget, putting even more military
might into the hands of a President and Commander-in-Chief that they seem to despise and who
they are demonizing because of his alleged collusion with Russia.
We've been in WW3 for several years now. Bolton went "Full Monty" with his
declaration that U.S. forces will stay in Syria until Iran vacates. The introduction of a
Yemen War Powers Resolution in the House last week is a hopeful sign. A reason to root
for a Blue Wave in November. Dem leadership, already on record backing the War Powers
Resolution, would be obligated to block U.S. enabling genocide in Yemen.
I disagree with Eric Zusse's belief that USA wants to start WWIII. I think they want to
contain/constrain discontent of allies and citizenry as they attempt to destroy the Russian
and Chinese economies. War is only a last resort. But heightened military tensions mean that
the major protagonists have to divert resources to their military, causing a drag on the
economies.
Along these lines, the Trump Administration has informed Russia in April 2017 that the
period of "strategic patience" is over (well, at least official 'cause being 'patient' didn't
seem to deter regime change and covert ops) . They now employ a policy of "maximum pressure"
instead.
The big concern for me is that "maximum pressure" also means an elevated chance of
mistakes and miscalculations that could inadvertently cause WWIII.
Also note: The Trump Administration has officially labeled Russia and China as enemies
when they called them "recidivist" nations in the National Defense Authorization Act in late
2017. (Note: "recidivist" because Russia and China want to return to a world where there is
not a hegemonic power, aka a "multi-polar" world).
PS IMO Trump election and the Kavanaugh and Gina Haspel nominations are key to the pursuit
of global hegemony.
Most warnings have centered on a financial meltdown, as this article
reviews . As most know, IMO we're already within an ongoing Hybrid Third World War,
which is more readily apparent with Trump's Trade War escalation.
As noted in my link to Escobar's latest, the EU has devised a retaliatory mechanism to
shield itself and others from the next round of illegal sanctions Trump's promised to impose
after Mid-term elections.
In an open thread post, I linked to Hudson's latest audio-cast; here's what he said on the 10th
anniversary of the 2008 crash: "So this crash of 2008 was not a crash of the banks. The banks
were bailed out. The economy was left with all the junk mortgages in place, all the
fraudulent debts."
Another article I linked to in a comment to james averred the "real" US economy is
only 5 Trillion, only 25% of what's claimed as the total economy . Hudson again:
"Contrary to the idea that bailing out the banks helps the economy, the fact is that the
economy today cannot recover without a bank failure ." [My emphasis]
Wh at's clearly happening--and it's been ongoing for quite awhile--for those with open
eyes is the Class War between the 1% and 99%. The domestic battle within the Outlaw US Empire
for Single Payer/Medicare For All healthcare is one theatre of the much larger ongoing
war.
As Hudson's stated many times, the goal of the 1% is to reestablish Feudalism via
debt-peonage. All the other happenings geopolitically serve to mask this Class War within the
Outlaw US Empire. Clearly, the upcoming financial crisis must spark a massive political
upheaval larger than any ever seen before to prevent institution of the 2008 "solution."
Many predict that this crisis will be timed to occur in 2020 constituting the biggest
election meddling of all time.
The crisis will likely be blamed on China without any evidence for hacking Wall Street and
causing the subsequent crash -- a Financial False Flag to serve the same purpose as 911.
Much can occur and be obscured during wartime. The radical changes to USA from 1938-1948
is very instructive--the commonfolk were on the threshold of gaining control over the federal
government for the first time in US history only to have it blocked then reversed (forever?)
by FDR and the 1% who tried to overthrow him in 1933.
Same with the current War OF Terror's use to curtail longstanding civil liberties and
constitutional rights and much more. To accomplish what's being called "Bail-In" within the
USA, Martial Law would need to be emplaced since most of the public is to be robbed of
whatever cash they have, and World War would probably be the only way to get Martial Law
instituted--and accepted by the military which would be its enforcer.
A precedent exists for stealing money from the people--their gold--via Executive Order 6102 , which
used a law instituted during WW1 and still on the books.
The primary dynamic of history is war. This has caused immense suffering. It is now
becoming exponentially worse . Critical graphs are going off their charts. The end is
near.
If we think of humankind as a large complex living entity, then like all such entities
it will expire at some point. So in the larger picture, what we are moving towards is
natural, and to be expected.
Like individual humans, the human population as a whole can pursue activities that
maintain it's health, or it can indulge in activities that create disease and hasten it's
death. Humankind is deep in toxifying behaviors that signal it's demise in the near
future.
Imagine! After so many centuries of rivalries between great powers and that final showdown
between just two superpowers, it was all over (except for the bragging). Only one power, the
– by definition – greatest of all, was left on a planet obviously there for the
taking.
Yes, Russia still existed with its nuclear arsenal intact, but it was otherwise a husk of
its former imperial self. (Vladimir Putin's sleight-of-hand brilliance has been to give what
remains a rickety petro-state the look of a great power, as in MRGA, or Make Russia Great
Again.) In 1991, China had only relatively recently emerged from the chaos of the Maoist era
and was beginning its rise as a capitalist powerhouse overseen by a communist party –
and, until that moment, who would have believed that either? Its military was modest and its
leaders not faintly ready to challenge the U.S. It was far more intent on becoming a cog in the
global economic machinery that would produce endless products for American store shelves.
In fact, the only obvious challenges that remained came from a set of states so unimpressive
that no one would have thought to call them "great," no less "super" powers. They had already
come to be known
instead by the ragtag term "rogue states." Think theocratic Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and
Kim Il-sung's (soon to be Kim Jong-il's) North Korea, none then nuclear armed. A disparate crew
– the Iraqis and Iranians had been at war for eight years in the 1980s – they
looked like a pushover for well, you know who.
And the early results of American global preeminence couldn't have been more promising. Its
corporate power initially seemed to "
level " every playing field in sight, while conquering markets across the planet. Its
thoroughly high-tech military crushed the armed forces of one rogue power, Iraq, in a 100-hour
storm of a war in 1991. Amid a
blizzard of ticker tape and briefly
soaring approval ratings for President George H.W. Bush, this was seen by those in the know
as a preview of the world that was to be.
So what a perfect time – I'm talking about January 2000 – for some of the
greatest geopolitical dreamers of all, a crew that saw an "
unprecedented strategic
opportunity " in the new century to organize not half the planet, as in the Cold War, but
the whole damn thing. They took power by a
chad that year, already fearing that the process of creating the kind of military that
could truly do their bidding might be a slow one without "some catastrophic and catalyzing
event – like a new Pearl Harbor." On September 11, 2001, thanks to Osama bin Laden's
precision air assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they got their wish
– what screaming newspaper headlines promptly called
"a new day of infamy" or "the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century." Like their confreres
in 1991, the top officials of George W. Bush's administration were initially stunned by the
event, but soon found themselves swept up in a mood of soaring optimism about the future of
both the Republican Party and American power. Their dream, as they launched what they called
the Global War on Terror, would be nothing short of creating an eternal Pax
Republicana in the U.S. and a similarly never-ending Pax Americana first in the
Greater Middle East and then on a potentially planetary scale.
As their 2002 national security strategy put
it, the U.S. was to "build and maintain" military power "beyond challenge" so that no country
or even bloc of countries could ever again come close to matching it. For them, this was the
functional definition of global dominance. It gave the phrase of that moment, "shock and awe,"
new meaning.
A Smash-Up on the Horizon?
Of course, you remember this history as well as I do, so it shouldn't be hard for you to
jump into the future with me and land in September 2018, some 17 years later, when all those
plans to create a truly American planet had come to fruition and the U.S. was
dominant in a way no other country had ever been.
Whoops my mistake.
It is indeed 17 years later. Remarkably enough, though, the last superpower, the one with
the military that was, as President George W. Bush
put it, " the greatest force for
human liberation the world has ever known," is still fruitlessly fighting – and
still
losing ground – in the very first country it took on and supposedly "liberated": poor
Afghanistan. The Taliban is again on the rise there. Elsewhere, al-Qaeda, stronger
than ever , has franchised itself, multiplied, and in Iraq given birth to another terror
outfit, ISIS, whose own franchises are now multiplying across
parts of the planet. In no country in which the U.S. military intervened in this century or in
which it simply supported
allied forces in a conflict against seemingly weaker, less-well-armed enemies has there been an
obvious, lasting victory of the kind that seemed so self-evidently an American right and legacy
after 1991 and again 2001.
In fact, there may not be another example of a truly great power, seemingly at the height of
its strength and glory, so unable to impose its will, no matter the brutality and destructive
force employed. The United States had, of course, been able to do exactly that, often with
striking success (at least for a while), from Guatemala to Iran in the Cold War years, but
"alone" on the planet, it came up cold. Of those three rogue powers of the 1990s, for instance,
Iran and North Korea are now stronger (one of them even
nuclear-armed ) and neither, despite the
desires and plans of so many American officials, has been toppled. Meanwhile, Iraq, after a
U.S. invasion and occupation in 2003, has proven a never-ending disaster area.
Not that anyone's drawing lessons from any of this at the moment, perhaps because there's
that orange-haired guy in the Oval Office taking up so much of our time and attention or
because there's an understandable desire to duck the most obvious conclusion: that Planet
Earth, however small, is evidently still too big for one power, however economically
overwhelming or militarily dominant, to control. Think of the last 27 years of American history
as a demo for that old idiom: biting off more than you can chew.
In 2016, in what came to be known as the "homeland," American voters responded to that
reality in a visceral way. They elected as president a truly strange figure, a man who alone
among the country's politicians was peddling the idea that the U.S. was no longer great but,
like Putin's Russia, would have to be made great again. Donald Trump, as I
wrote during that campaign season, was the first presidential candidate to promote the idea
that the United States was in decline at a moment when politicians generally felt obliged to
affirm that the U.S. was the
greatest , most exceptional ,
most
indispensable place on the planet. And, of course, he won.
Admittedly, despite a near collapse a decade earlier, the economy is seemingly soaring,
while the stock market remains ebullient. In fact, it couldn't look sunnier, could it? I mean,
put aside the usual Trumpian tweets and the rest of the Washington sideshow, including those
Chinese (and Canadian) tariffs and the bluster and bombast of the
leakiest administration this side of the Titanic, and, as the president
so often says, things couldn't look rosier. The Dow Jones average has left past versions of
the same
in the dust . The unemployment rate is
somewhere near the bottom of the barrel (if you don't
count the actual unemployed). The economy is just booming along.
But tell me the truth: Can't you just feel it? Honestly, can't you?
You know as well as I do that there's something rotten in well, let's not blame Denmark but
you know perfectly well that something's not right here. You know that it's the
wallets and pocketbooks of the 1% that are really booming, expanding, exploding at the
moment; that the rich have inherited
, if not the Earth, then at least
American politics ; that the
wealth possessed by that 1% is now at
levels not seen since the eve of the Great Depression of 1929. And, honestly, can you doubt
that the next crash
is somewhere just over the horizon?
Meet the Empire Burners
Donald Trump is in the White House exactly because, in these years, so many Americans felt
instinctively that something was going off the tracks. (That shouldn't be a surprise, given the
striking lack of investment in, or upkeep of, the infrastructure of the greatest of all powers.)
He's there largely thanks to the crew that's now proudly referred
to – for supposedly keeping him in line – as "the adults in the room." Let me
suggest a small correction to that phrase to better reflect the 16 years in this not-so-new
century before he entered the Oval Office. How about "the adolts in the room"?
After all, from National Security Advisor John Bolton (the invasion of Iraq ) and Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo (a longtime
regime-change advocate) to CIA Director Gina Haspel (
black sites and torture ), Secretary of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis (former Marine
general and
CENTCOM commander ), and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (former Marine general and a
commander in Iraq),
those adolts and so many like them remain deeply implicated in the path the country took in
those years of geopolitical dreaming. They were especially responsible for the decision to
invest in the U.S. military (and little else), as well as
in endless wars , in the years before Donald Trump came to power. And worse yet, they seem
to have learned absolutely nothing from the process.
Take a recent example we know something about – Afghanistan – thanks to
Fear: Trump in the White
House , Bob Woodward's bestselling new book. Only recently, an American sergeant
major, an adviser to Afghan troops, was gunned down
at a base near the Afghan capital, Kabul, in an "insider" or "green-on-blue" attack, a
commonplace of
that war. He was killed (and another American adviser wounded) by two allied Afghan police
officers in the wake of an American air strike in the same area in which more than a dozen of
their compatriots died. Forty-two years old and on the eve of retirement, the sergeant was on
his seventh combat tour of duty of this century and, had he had an eighth, he might have served
with an American
born after the 9/11 attacks.
In his book, Woodward describes a National Security Council meeting in August 2017, in which
the adolts in the room saved the president from his worst impulses. He describes how an
impatient Donald Trump "exploded, most particularly at his generals. You guys have created this
situation. It's been a disaster. You're the architects of this mess in Afghanistan You're smart
guys, but I have to tell you, you're part of the problem. And you haven't been able to fix it,
and you're making it worse I was against this from the beginning. He folded his arms. 'I want
to get out and you're telling me the answer is to get deeper in.'"
And indeed almost 16 years later that is exactly what Pompeo, Mattis, former National
Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and the rest of them were telling him. According to Woodward,
Mattis, for instance, argued forcefully "that if they pulled out, they would create another
ISIS-style upheaval What happened in Iraq under Obama with the emergence of ISIS will happen
under you, Mattis told Trump, in one of his sharpest declarations."
The reported presidential response: "'You are all telling me that I have to do this,' Trump
said grudgingly, 'and I guess that's fine and we'll do it, but I still think you're wrong. I
don't know what this is for. It hasn't gotten us anything. We've spent trillions,' he
exaggerated. 'We've lost all these lives.' Yet, he acknowledged, they probably could not cut
and run and leave a vacuum for al-Qaeda, Iran, and other terrorists."
And so Donald Trump became the latest surge
president, authorizing, however grudgingly, the dispatching of yet more American
troops and air
power to Afghanistan (just as he recently
authorized an "indefinite military effort" in Syria in the wake of what we can only imagine
was another such exchange). Of Mattis himself, in response to reports
that he might be on the way out after the midterm elections, the president recently
responded , "He'll stay we're very happy with him, we're having a lot of victories, we're
having victories that people don't even know about."
Perhaps that should be considered definitional for the Trump presidency, which is likely to
increasingly find itself in a world of "victories that people don't even know about." But don't
for a second think that The Donald was the
one who brought us to this state, though someday he will undoubtedly be seen as the
personification of it and of the decline that swept him into power. And for all that, for the
victories that people won't know about and the defeats that they will, he'll have the adolts in
the room to thank. They proved to be neither the empire builders of their dreams, nor even
empire preservers, but a crew of potential empire burners.
Believe me, folks, it's going to be anything but pretty. Welcome to that most unpredictable
and dangerous of entities, a dying empire. Only 27 years after the bells of triumph tolled
across Washington, it looks like those bells are now preparing to toll in mourning for it.
The comment includes the following, quoted from a legal paper by Prof Ali Khan:
One might further argue that a new norm has been established in international
jurisprudence. International law is now subject to the authority of the United States
President. International law may still be learned and taught, using the metaphor of
partnership. It may still contain elements of the law of contracts. But its fundamental
nature has changed. The norms of international law are valid only if the President says so.
And if the President says a norm of international law is binding on other nations, it is,
even if the same norm is not binding on the United States.
It is interesting to consider the implications of the current status of Trump's presidency
vis-a-vis putative Austinian Sovereignty, since Trump's powers are so curtailed he does not
appear to have sovereignty over the US government. Would that imply that the US sovereignty
would be extinguished? (Whilst I don't believe the US/US President is an Austinian Sovereign
- rather it is a pretender to the throne - I think the argument still has a ring of truth in
it).
After 9/11," said US Navy Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran, "our focus was
supporting the ground fight, which meant we were operating that force a lot, and when you
operate the force a lot it eats up a lot of your cash, it eats up a lot of your service
life."
Operating a Nimitz-class carrier runs about $298 million per year, the Government
Accountability Office estimated in a 1997 study. The current carrier fleet is made up entirely
of Nimitz-class carriers, with the lone ship of the new Ford-class still undergoing sea
trials.
"Add on to this the cost of the air wing, the combat power behind the aircraft carrier," a
US Navy lieutenant commander wrote in thesis paper from 2012. "An average current air wing is
composed of four fighter/attack squadrons of 10-12 aircraft each, an electronic warfare
squadron of four aircraft, an airborne command and control squadron of four aircraft, two
onboard delivery aircraft and a helicopter squadron of six aircraft."
The workhorse F/A-18 carrier aircraft, according to the Office of the Under Secretary of
Defense Comptroller, costs about $10,507 to fly per hour. Brett Odom, former F/A-18 pilot and
financial expert at Fighter Sweep, has disputed the Pentagon's cost accounting, however, on the
grounds that it only covers marginal costs.
Odom estimated that the cost to pay pilots and support crews, conduct engine maintenance and
fuel the aircraft for an hour was $11,140 -- approximately in line with DoD's estimate. But
then there is the cost of the aircraft itself: an F/A-18 runs about $65 million. Odom refers to
this figure as capital cost. Incorporating the average acquisition cost smoothed out over an
expected life of 6,000 flight hours into the equation, the expert reached $22,000 in cost per
flight hour.
"There are valid reasons to ignore capital costs and treat them as sunk costs in certain
situations. However, by ignoring capital costs, the Department of Defense is implicitly stating
that its fighter aircraft are free, or -- like the pyramids -- they can be expected to function
forever," Odom wrote
for Fighter Sweep in 2016.
"This has all been building up" for 17 years "through overuse of the carrier force and naval
aviation," former Pentagon official Bob Work said in comments to USNI.
"When we kept two carriers in the Persian Gulf for a period of time, we kept telling the
senior leadership that this was going to have a downstream effect, and it would really put a
crimp maintenance-wise, and there would be gaps both in the Pacific as well as the Middle East.
That is coming home to roost," Work said.
While the US Navy carrier fleet was taxed abroad, Washington's defense budgets continued to
grow.
"It's fairly obvious that corporate interests for the defense industry like Raytheon and
others have driven a lot of our spending in the last 20 years or so, especially given the War
on Terror post-9/11," Daniel Sankey, a California-based financial policy analyst, said in an
interview with Sputnik News.
"We've carried this huge, outsized expenditure," he noted. "Eventually the money supply
starts going down. It's not infinite, even though the US pockets are pretty deep."
The carrier force is now facing the music of the Pentagon's "credit card wars" since 9/11,
conflicts that have been paid for with mostly borrowed funds. Brown University's Institute for
International and Public Affairs found that post-9/11 war expenses add up to about $5.6
trillion.
"You have a thoroughbred horse in the stable that you're running in a race every single day.
You cannot do that. Something's going to happen eventually," Secretary of the Navy Richard V.
Spencer told reporters in August.
"... The corporatist state naturally strives to perfect itself, imposing a "final solution" to the ASP (anti-social person) problem by mandating that henceforth no non-genetically-engineered babies may be born. The result is a very one-sided "race war" in which a few antisocial malcontents try to hold out against what amounts to a genocide against "uncorrected" humanity. The plot follows two of those ASP antiheroes as they throw rocks at the Israeli bulldozer of corporatist genocide. ..."
In El-Akkad's dystopian vision, the War on Muslims mutates into the War on Southerners --
but has nothing to do with race. Instead, the Yankee Terror State turns its savagery against
the New Rebels of the Free Southern States because those good ole boys and girls (of all shades
of skin pigmentation and sexual preference) refuse to give up fossil fuels, choosing instead to
secede from the Union.
Al-Akkad's vision of blue vs. red global-warming-driven war run amok in a near-future
America that has completely forgotten about the whole concept of race is surprisingly
plausible, at least while you are reading it. (Civil War I, after all, was really
about economics not race , so why shouldn't Civil War II also be over an economic issue?)
The plot turns on the adventures of Sarat, a young Red State woman of mixed and meaningless
(near-black Chicano and po' white trash) ancestry who awakens politically and goes after the
Blue State occupiers in pretty much the same way the Iraqi resistance went after George W.
Bush's storm troopers.
... ... ...
C.J. Hopkins offers a deeper, more accurate, vastly funnier, more genuinely subversive
vision. His far-future America, which bears an uncanny resemblance to our nightmarish present,
features drone-patrolled hyper-surveiled cities, each of which is divided by an Israeli-style
Wall complete with Israeli-style checkpoints and incursions featuring Israeli-style killings of
hapless untermenschen. But instead of Israelis vs. Palestinians, the divide here is between the
Normals on one side of the wall and the Anti-Socials on the other. The Normals -- good
corporate citizens who are submitting to pharmaceutical and genetic correction so they can work
and consume and conform and live meaningless lives like everybody else without batting an
eyelash -- are conditioned to fear and loathe the Antisocials, who retain enough humanity to
rebel, in whatever pathetically insignificant way, against corporatist dystopia.
Zone 23 , like American War , imagines the future as post-racial: Hopkins'
Normal vs. Antisocial divide isn't about race. But it is, nonetheless, very much about
behavioral genetics. In this (not so) far future, the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie,
Wisconsin has developed a variant-corrected version of the MAO-A gene. Inserted into embryos
via germline genetic engineering, this patented DNA produces "clears": people who are
intelligent but incurious, incapable of emotionally-driven fight-or-flight aggression
(including the most common defensive variety), "easily trained, highly responsive to visual and
verbal commands," and so on. In other words, perfect corporate citizens!
The corporatist state naturally strives to perfect itself, imposing a "final solution" to
the ASP (anti-social person) problem by mandating that henceforth no non-genetically-engineered
babies may be born. The result is a very one-sided "race war" in which a few antisocial
malcontents try to hold out against what amounts to a genocide against "uncorrected" humanity.
The plot follows two of those ASP antiheroes as they throw rocks at the Israeli bulldozer of
corporatist genocide.
Hopkins' ferociously funny yarn is not just a satire on our ever-worsening techno-dystopia.
In imagining a genetic basis to the difficulties many of us experience adjusting to
hyperconformist "technologically-enhanced" lifestyles, and in portraying individuals struggling
and flailing against the uber-civilization around them like flies caught a spider web, Zone
23 resonates with the great
critiques of technological civilization .
Neoliberal hegemony provides the foreign policy elite with many attractive career opportunities, since dominating the whole globe
is a very labor intensive enterprise. This is a classic example of parasitic rents under neoliberalism.
Also neocon elite that occupied the State Department and the US foreign policy in general brazenly thinks that it has know how for
intervention into politics of other countries that produce the desired effect. The whole school of "color revolution: was created to
this effect.
Notable quotes:
"... Read an excerpt from "The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities" here ..."
After the end of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy officials prided themselves on bringing communism to an end. Decades earlier,
they claimed victory over the defeat of fascism.
Both were viewed as part of the country's mission to spread liberal values – such as human rights and an open economy – to the
rest of the world, in hopes that other nations would become replicas of the United States. But a local scholar argues that this kind
of foreign policy, called "liberal hegemony," is doomed to fail, if it hasn't already.
Mearsheimer, a political science professor and co-director of the University of Chicago's Program on International Security Policy,
said liberal hegemony involves three tasks: spreading liberal democracy around the world; getting other nations "hooked" on capitalism
by creating an open, international economy; and including countries in international institutions that the U.S. has played a key
role in creating.
Ultimately, that kind of foreign policy will run up against nationalism and realism, Mearsheimer argues in his new book.
"With regards to nationalism, that's the most powerful ideology on the planet, and foreign countries do not like the United States
occupying them and trying to arrange their politics to pursue American interests," he told Chicago Tonight, citing the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan as examples.
"So as we begin to push towards Russia and China and think about regime change, which is what liberal hegemony is all about, you
get a realist backlash from countries like Russia and China," Mearsheimer continued. "And that's when you get something like the
Ukrainian crisis."
"... This system has been in place for decades, for instance any company dealing with Cuba that is listed on the US stock exchange, or operates in America or trades with American companies can be sanctioned, moreover any financial institution will be sanctioned for dealing with a blacklisted country - if the trade is in Dollars and/or the Financial institution is active in the US. ..."
"... This system is pretty solid, it can only be broken by a combination of alternatives and active countermeasures, like sanctions and freezing assets. ..."
I've blocked a few users and then unblocked them because I missed their "Talmudic-Satanic" responses (as you wisely put it)...
in particular, that Jew-lackey troll, Tommy 'Tit' Jensen!
Absolutely... we haven't heard from the dirty Yankee Jew troll lackey in a long time. Maybe the Jooz are reprogramming the
idiot because he's as effective as 'shite'!
The German barter system is claimed by some to have contributed directly to the outbreak of WW2.
We tend to forget that Germany was being sanctioned and just like today noble reasons were used to justify these sanctions,
but not all is what it seems to be if you dig a little deeper.
Germany challenged the Anglo-American financial system, just like today Russia and others are again challenging the Anglo-American
financial system (with the emphasis moved from the former to the latter).
The US and its junior partner (who loves to stir up trouble as witnessed the UK's role in numerous little and big fires) won't
give up with a fight though... maybe even the big one as both have to face existential threats to their regime and dominance.
The world can no longer accept this rule by diktat from US Congress, it openly undermines national governments and is nothing
less than economic blackmail and extortion of friend and foe alike.
If this independent clearinghouse is successful it will open the possibility to trade and do business again with Cuba and Venezuela
as well.
That said, Washington will certainly target ANY company that is traded on the US stock exchange, operates on US soil or with
US companies to comply with US law. Most internationally operating institutions will thus remain under "control" of US policy
makers.
But at least it is a signal that even "friendly" Europe is losing its patience.
Working against a common Satanic Zionist enemy, I hope it does work and the benefits of creating such a system will pave the
way for the destruction of the US dollar and then the US.
The common, brainwashed people you forget. Think of me here - not common but not to the level of PCR either - but CONSTANTLY
contacting all Reps. on the Hill, outing their lies and informing others. You would have me, an ally,destroyed along w/ignorant,
manipulated creatures.
Good signal, but as long as congress can punish international companies for doing business with sanctioned countries it will
be of limited effect.
Any company listed on the US stock exchange, operating in the US or dealing with US companies or even citizens is target of
sanctions.
This is a very effective straight jacket and Washington is fully aware of this as they apply their instruments of international
blackmail and economic coercion. War by any other means.
Failure to comply can lead up to fines of BILLIONS of Dollars.
Only the largest multinationals - predominantly in the energy or weapons business - will defy the US as can be seen with Nordstream
2 - but that battle is far from being over.
So alternative clearing alone is not enough, to stop this abuse of economic and legaslative power, there must be a international
mechanism to counter the fines given to international companies defying the US sanctions. If need be by counter fines or freezing
US assets abroad.
The EU is essentially reinventing the Arab hawala system. Nice. If other countries get the notion, US sanctions may be rendered
useless worldwide. In other words, the US has shot itself in the foot again by over-using its sanctions policy.
it might be a Good Idea To Exercise caution Regarding the EU, Because the US Originally Created the EU so that they could push
through Sanctions Against Russia Using the Unelected Bureaucrats Who are the Parasite's of the Union, because there maybe another
way that they can cover the Demise of the Dirty Dollar,
The problem is not just the banks. Trump has vowed to sanction companies doing business in Iran directly. This means stopping
them doing business with the US. Will Total and Airbus change their mind and go back into Iran when it means they will be shut
out of the US market? I doubt it.
This system has been in place for decades, for instance any company dealing with Cuba that is listed on the US stock exchange,
or operates in America or trades with American companies can be sanctioned, moreover any financial institution will be sanctioned
for dealing with a blacklisted country - if the trade is in Dollars and/or the Financial institution is active in the US.
This system is pretty solid, it can only be broken by a combination of alternatives and active countermeasures, like sanctions
and freezing assets.
The world cannot allow a single country to have such a stranglehold on international trade and relations, it is a textbook
example of absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Trump seems to embrace the concept of full spectrum dominance. America ueber alles.
That was mild, though, compared to the "bloodbath" (Kaplan's word) that ensued after
Mearsheimer teamed up with Harvard's own iconoclastic realist, Stephen M. Walt, to produce a
2006 magazine article on the U.S.-Israel relationship, later expanded into a book entitled
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign
Policy . The thesis was that pro-Israel groups in the United States had pushed the
country into policy decisions favored by Israel but contrary to American interests. Johns
Hopkins professor Eliot A. Cohen wasn't content merely to call it "inept, even kooky" and "a
wretched piece of scholarship." He also accused the authors of antisemitism and impugning the
patriotism of American Jews, including himself. Christopher Hitchens said it was "redeemed from
complete dullness and mediocrity only by being slightly but unmistakably smelly." Other
characterizations: "defiled by mendacity"; "piss-poor, monocausal social science"; "stunningly
deceptive"; and "pernicious."
If Mearsheimer, whom I have known as a friendly acquaintance for a number of years, does
indeed revel in the uproars he causes (and he certainly appears to), he's about to get a lot of
enjoyment. His latest book, The Great
Delusion: [neo]Liberal Dreams and International Realities , is a dagger pointed at the heart
of America's governing philosophy, progressive [neo]liberalism. His central thesis is that this
philosophy has distorted U.S. foreign policy since America's post-Cold War emergence as the
world's only superpower. The core of the problem, writes Mearsheimer, was America's post-Cold
War resolve to remake the world in its own image. The predictable result has been chaos,
bloodshed, an intractable refugee crisis besetting the Middle East and Europe, increased
tensions among major powers, curtailment of civil liberties at home, and generally an "abysmal
record of failure."
And yet no level of failure seems to blunt the passion for [neo]liberal hegemony among the
country's leaders, who cling to the policy and its underlying philosophy with the tenacity of
true believers. "A crusader impulse is deeply wired into [neo]liberal democracies, especially their
elites," writes Mearsheimer.
They can embrace that heady goal because of a rare historical development -- the emergence
of America as a unipolar power. The country today enjoys the luxury of not having a single
adversary capable of challenging its existence or global standing. Thus it can afford to
indulge its relentless impulse to spread its own governing philosophy throughout the globe. But
in the more normal circumstances of a multipolar world or particularly in a bipolar world,
there would be no such luxury. The imperatives of survival would then come into play, as they
always do except in a unipolar era, and [neo]liberal interventionism would be superseded by a
foreign policy more attuned to interrelationships of power. Realism and nationalism would
supplant today's crusader mentality.
Mearsheimer's exploration of realism here will be familiar to those who have read The
Tragedy of Great Power Politics , a painstaking exposition of that particular "ism." That
earlier book posits that fundamental realities guide nations in their relations with other
nations. First, the world is "anarchic," meaning there is no central authority or night
watchman to step in when a nation is threatened. Therefore, nations must rely upon themselves
for protection from any hazard, immediate or prospective. Given that they can't know precisely
the plans and ambitions of real or potential adversaries -- he calls this "the uncertainty of
intentions" -- the imperatives of survival dictate that they do whatever they can to maximize
their power based on what they can discern -- namely, the military capabilities of
potential rivals. This is the "tragedy" of great power politics -- the never-ending quest among
nations for protection through strength.
In other words, it's all about the hierarchy of power among nations. Stability comes through
an equilibrium of power, and great nations should foster diplomatic actions designed to
maintain a power balance in key strategic locations.
What's new in The Great Delusion is Mearsheimer's focus on nationalism and [neo]liberalism, as well as their relationship with realism. Exploring the three "isms" in tandem,
he writes, led him to conclude that "this trichotomy provided an ideal template for explaining
the failure of U.S. foreign policy since 1989." Mearsheimer is known for his spare, muscular,
unemotional prose, as well as his ability to marshal sturdy arguments that are intricately
intertwined. In this book, true to form, he constructs a fortress of syllogistic
argumentation.
There's a paradox in his trichotomy: while progressive [neo]liberalism dominates American
politics, including the country's foreign policy, realism and nationalism ultimately are more
powerful ideas. Mearsheimer notes, for example, that while [neo]liberalism and nationalism can
coexist in any polity, "when they clash, nationalism almost always wins." He adds that
"[neo]liberalism is also no match for realism."
When Mearsheimer uses the word [neo]liberalism, he means the classic, Lockean adherence to
individual rights, the rule of law, market economics, and the importance of private property.
But he draws a distinction between what he calls modus vivendi [neo]liberalism and a progressive
variety. Both promote the classical concept of individual rights, but modus vivendi [neo]liberals
conceive of rights narrowly, in terms of individual freedoms (sometimes called negative
rights). This means primarily the freedom to act without fear of government intrusion -- for
example, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to hold property. Progressives,
on the other hand, go beyond that to advocate positive rights -- equal opportunity, for example
-- that require active governmental intervention.
Also, modus vivendi [neo]liberals are skeptical of the efficacy and potential success of
governmental social engineering. Progressive [neo]liberals, by contrast, have great faith in
governmental activism that not only promotes individual rights but also pursues expansive
social engineering programs.
In terms of American history, progressive [neo]liberals are the political heirs of Alexander
Hamilton, Henry Clay, and, more recently, of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Modus
vivendi [neo]liberals trace their political lineage to Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and, more
recently, Ronald Reagan.
There is no doubt, says Mearsheimer, that progressive [neo]liberalism
has triumphed over modus vivendi [neo]liberalism. He writes: "The complexities and demands of life
in the modern world leave states with no choice but to be deeply engaged in social engineering,
including promoting positive rights." Hence political [neo]liberalism today is largely progressive
(with the modus vivendi people reduced to doing what they can to blunt the force of the
progressives). Mearsheimer is fine with that: "Within countries, I believe [neo]liberalism is a
genuine force for good." But when it dominates a nation's international relations, he
emphasizes, it inevitably breeds disaster.
This dichotomy poses an intriguing question: how can a philosophy be just right in guiding a
powerful nation's domestic politics but utterly wrong and destructive when applied to that same
nation's foreign policy? Can any philosophy be fundamentally flawed in the one realm while
being totally apt in the other? Perhaps an answer can be discerned through Mearsheimer's own
pointed and brilliant exploration of human nature as a fundamental factor in politics.
Progressive [neo]liberals tend to discount human nature, viewing it as malleable and changeable
through their cherished social engineering. Mearsheimer disagrees. "The more closely any ism
accords with human nature," he writes, "the more relevance it will have in the real world." He
makes clear he doesn't believe progressive [neo]liberalism accords with human nature much at
all.
Mearsheimer posits what he calls "two simple assumptions" about human nature. The first is
that man's ability to reason is limited, particularly when it comes to mastering the
fundamental questions of existence. Enlightenment thinkers heralded man's ability to reason to
ultimate answers as humans worked their way toward their own perfectibility. This is the
so-called Idea of Progress, so powerful in Western thought following the 18th century era of
the French philosophes. Mearsheimer rejects it. "Reason does not rule the world," he writes,
adding that "people who believe their critical faculties can help them find moral truth are
deluding themselves."
The second assumption, related to the first, is that "we are social animals at our core."
Given that there can be no reasoning to core principles, there will always be disagreements on
these fundamental and often emotional matters. That inevitably raises prospects for violence.
For protection, mankind must divide itself into a great number of social groups, and the most
fundamental of all human groups is the nation. "With the possible exception of the family,"
writes Mearsheimer, "allegiance to the nation usually overrides all other forms of an
individual's identity."
And this leads to Mearsheimer's view of the essence of social groups -- and, most
particularly, of nations. He identifies six fundamental features of nationhood:
1) a powerful sense of oneness and solidarity
2) a distinct culture, including such things as language, rituals, codes, music, as well
as religion, basic political and social values, and a distinct understanding of history
3) a sense of superiority leading to national pride
4) a deep sense of its own history, which often leads to myths that supersede historical
fact
5) sacred territory and a perceived imperative to protect lands believed to be a hallowed
homeland
6) and a deep sense of sovereignty and a resolve to protect national decision-making from
outside forces
These features are found in all nation-states, and nation-states are where nearly all
peoples of the world live. Hence these human impulses cannot be ignored or circumvented. And
yet [neo]liberalism (here and hereafter, in using the term we're talking about the country's
prevailing progressive [neo]liberalism) has declared war on many of these fundamental
features of nationalism, emanating in large measure from human nature. That's because [neo]liberalism has come to embrace two basic tenets of dubious provenance: first, humanity is an
individualist species, made up of "atomistic actors" and not social animals; and, second,
rights are inalienable and universal, belonging to everyone equally. Mearsheimer explains,
"This concern for rights is the basis of its universalism -- everyone on the planet has the
same inherent set of rights -- and this is what motivates [neo]liberal states to pursue ambitious
foreign policies."
This universalist ideology has always been there, lurking in the [neo]liberal consciousness.
Until recently it was seen most starkly in the humanitarian interventionism of Woodrow Wilson
-- hence the universally understood term "Wilsonism." One of his biographers, August Heckscher,
notes that he harbored a deep sense of national "honor" that he equated with America's
commitment to the rights of all peoples everywhere. Heckscher writes that "it was a vague
concept not necessarily identified with the basic interest of the [American] people." Indeed,
while Wilson took delight in the idea of deploying American power in behalf of humanity, the
idea of using it in behalf of U.S. interests left him cold. In taking America into World War I,
he bragged, "What we demand in this war is nothing peculiar to ourselves."
♦♦♦
This Wilsonian impulse was kept in check through most of the 20th century by the imperatives
of realism and the ideological force of nationalism. That ended with the conclusion of the Cold
War, when America emerged as the unchallenged global hegemon. The inevitable result was the
rise of [neo]liberal hegemony. What's interesting is how explosively it arrived on the scene, almost
immediately gaining dominance over American foreign policy and positioning itself to stamp out
any troublesome counterarguments. The universalist ideology presents a powerful allure, often
leading to feelings among foreign policy [neo]liberals, per Wilson, that they are engaging in a
monumental struggle of good and evil.
The result is that America has waged seven wars since the Cold War ended and has been at war
continuously since the month after 9/11. As Mearsheimer writes, "Once unleashed on the world
stage, a [neo]liberal unipole soon becomes addicted to war." It also becomes addicted to the concept
of regime change because that often is perceived as the only way to save peoples from
widespread rights violations.
Bill Clinton embraced [neo]liberal hegemony from the beginning of his presidency in 1993, and it
led him to military actions in Bosnia and Serbia, motivated largely by the humanitarian
impulse. George W. Bush took it to new levels after 9/11 with his invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan and his rhetoric that "the freedom we prize is not for us alone, it is the right
and the capacity of all mankind." Barack Obama suggested as he was leaving office that he
understood that the "Washington playbook" was "deeply flawed," as Mearsheimer puts it, but he
couldn't seem to break away from it. "He was ultimately no match for the foreign policy
establishment," writes Mearsheimer.
The book is particularly devastating in its description of America's aggressive policies
toward Russia. After outlining the conventional [neo]liberal view of Russian aggression against a
threatened West, he writes, "This account is false." The United States and its European allies,
he adds, "are mainly responsible for the crisis." He identifies the "taproot of the trouble" as
NATO expansion, "the central element in a larger strategy to move all of Eastern Europe,
including Ukraine, out of Russia's orbit and integrate it into the West."
Can America pull its foreign policy away from [neo]liberalism and reclaim a realism-based
approach? An end to today's unipolar world would quickly upend [neo]liberal hegemony. But the only
likely prospect for that would be the threat of a rising China, which of course would have the
downside of necessitating a dangerous confrontation with that country. If China were to falter
economically and thus be forced to abandon its pursuit of Asian hegemony, argues Mearsheimer,
there would be little prospect that America would embrace realism. The foreign policy
establishment is too wedded to hegemony and too entrenched at the pinnacle of foreign
policymaking.
Mearsheimer does believe Donald Trump's 2016 election demonstrated that [neo]liberal hegemony is
"vulnerable." After all, the New York billionaire challenged almost every aspect of [neo]liberal
interventionism, particularly the goal of spreading democracy around the world. But he predicts
that the "foreign policy elites will tame him just as they tamed his predecessor." Trump's
bellicose approach to Iran certainly suggests his campaign rhetoric won't guide his foreign
policy with any particular consistency. Perhaps, concludes Mearsheimer, persistent failure will
undermine the primacy of hegemon [neo]liberals.
In the meantime, a few thoughts might be in order on the dominance of American domestic
politics by those same progressive elites who have given us persistent foreign policy failures.
Many of the same [neo]liberal impulses that contributed to the hegemonic foreign policy that Mearsheimer decries have also undermined many of the foundations of America. And they can be
traced to the same faulty thinking about the human experience.
Consider Mearsheimer's six features of nationalism. One is culture. "Culture," he writes, "
is the glue that helps hold a society together." And yet the country's progressive [neo]liberals
have been attacking the American culture for years. Many do so under the banner of "civic
nationalism," which would supplant the country's cultural identity with nothing more than its [neo]liberal creed. Writes Mearsheimer, "Civic nationalism is not a useful concept . It is virtually
impossible for a nation to function effectively without a multifaceted culture." And yet the
assault by progressive [neo]liberals on the nation's culture has driven a wedge through the body
politic.
Or consider Mearsheimer's emphasis on "a sacred territory." Today's progressive [neo]liberals,
particularly among the elites, don't care a whit about the country's borders, as Mearsheimer
notes. "In the [neo]liberal story," he writes, "state borders are soft and permeable, because rights
transcend those boundaries." Then there's sovereignty. Mearsheimer writes that "[neo]liberalism
undermines sovereignty." He's talking primarily about America's penchant for invading other
countries in behalf of humanitarian goals, but progressive [neo]liberals don't care much about
American sovereignty either, as reflected in their lax immigration attitude. The push for
permeable borders doesn't suggest respect for American sovereignty. One could add to the list Mearsheimer's inclusion of a shared sense of history, also under relentless assault from
progressive [neo]liberals bent on tearing down what once was considered a hallowed American
story.
♦♦♦
These and other related issues are tearing America apart, and they have been introduced into
the political cauldron by the same progressive [neo]liberals who have been pushing America's drive
to spread [neo]liberal hegemony across the globe. Indeed, it is almost incontestable that these
domestic and foreign policy issues, along with the progressive [neo]liberal push for free trade and
supranational institutions that undermine American sovereignty, contributed significantly to
Trump's presidential election.
Although Mearsheimer doesn't discuss the American elites in detail, he sprinkles into his
argument several references to elite and establishment thinking as often being distinct from
broader public impulses and sensibilities. "[I]t is important to note," he writes, "that
[neo]liberal hegemony is largely an elite-driven policy." In another passage he notes that America's
foreign policy elites tend to be "cosmopolitan," which isn't to say, he adds, that most of them
are like Samuel Huntington's caricature of those Davos people "who have little need for
national loyalty" and see "national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing."
But, adds Mearsheimer, "some are not far off."
Yes, it's the progressive [neo]liberal elites who are driving America's push for humanitarian
hegemony, and Mearsheimer's book calls them out brilliantly. But those same elites are also
driving wedges through the American polity on powerful domestic issues, thus poisoning our
politics and fostering an ongoing crisis on the definition and meaning of America.
Mearsheimer's pungent critique of the elite's foreign policy recklessness could provide a sound
foundation for a broader critique of its destructive folly in a host of other civic areas as
well.
Lots of interesting information regarding conversations between Bill Clinton and Yeltsin
but allow me to focus on the NATO bombing of Serbia:
Although Clinton and Yeltsin enjoyed friendly relations, NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia
tempered Moscow's enthusiastic partnership with the West.
"Our people will certainly from now have a bad attitude with regard to America and with
NATO," the Russian president told Clinton in March 1999. "I remember how difficult it was for
me to try and turn the heads of our people, the heads of the politicians towards the West,
towards the United States, but I succeeded in doing that, and now to lose all that."
Yeltsin urged Clinton to renounce the strikes, for the sake of "our relationship" and
"peace in Europe."
The declassified White House Yeltsin files reveal the drama at the turning point in
US-Russia relations, when Yeltsin pleaded, threatened and despaired trying to make Clinton
call off the bombing of Yugoslavia.
"It is not known who will come after us and it is not known what will be the road of
future developments in strategic nuclear weapons," Yeltsin reminded his US
counterpart.
But Clinton wouldn't cede ground.
Clinton to Yeltsin on Milosevic: "It will be your decision if you decide to let this
bully destroy the relationship we worked hard for over six and a half years to build up I'm
sorry he is a Serb. I wish he were Irish or something else, but he is not."
"Milosevic is still a communist dictator and he would like to destroy the alliance that
Russia has built up with the US and Europe and essentially destroy the whole movement of your
region toward democracy and go back to ethnic alliances. We cannot allow him to dictate our
future," Clinton told Yeltsin.
It was much more than the all-out bombing campaign by NATO. Serbia resisted for more than
70 days by courage and intelligence including bagging at least one stealth aircraft and its
army remaining virtually untouched and ready to take on a NATO land invasion.
"... If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be. ..."
"... The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget since the height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. ..."
"... They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. ..."
"... US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give the illusion of competition. ..."
"... In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push. ..."
"... The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride toward war, ecocide and oppression. ..."
"... Reprinted with author's permission from Medium.com . ..."
"... Support Ms. Johnstone's work on Patreon or Paypal ..."
A new article from the Wall Street
Journal reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
lied to congress about the measures Saudi Arabia is taking to minimize the civilian
casualties in its catastrophic war on Yemen, and that he did so in order to secure two billion
dollars for war profiteers.
This is about as depraved as anything you could possibly imagine. US-made bombs have
been conclusively tied to civilian deaths in a war which has caused the single worst
humanitarian crisis on earth, a crisis which sees
scores of Yemeni children dying every single day and has
placed five million children at risk of death by starvation in a nation where families are
now eating
leaves to survive . CIA veteran Bruce Riedel
once said that "if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King
Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow, because the Royal Saudi Airforce cannot
operate without American and British support." Nobody other than war plutocrats benefits from
the US assisting Saudi Arabia in its monstrous crimes against humanity, and yet Pompeo chose to
override his own expert advisors on the matter for fear of hurting the income of those very war
plutocrats.
If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this
administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for
days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for
days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be.
It would be so very, very easy for Democratic party leaders and Democrat-aligned media to
hurt this administration at the highest level and cause irreparable political damage based on
this story. All they'd have to do is give it the same blanket coverage they've given the
stories about Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort which
end up leading nowhere remotely near impeachment or proof of collusion with the Russian
government. The footage of the starving children is right there, ready to be aired to pluck at
the heart strings of rank-and-file Americans day after day until Republicans have lost all hope
of victory in the midterms and in 2020; all they'd have to do is use it. But they don't. And
they won't.
The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by
a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and
Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget
since the
height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential
damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal
parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as
Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.
The reason for this is very simple: President Trump's ostensible political opposition does
not oppose President Trump. They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. This is the
reason they attack him on Russian collusion accusations which the brighter bulbs among them
know full well will never be proven and have no basis in reality. They don't stand up to Trump
because, as Julian Assange once said , they are
Trump.
In John Steinbeck's The Pearl, there are jewelry buyers set up around a fishing community
which are all owned by the same plutocrat, but they all pretend to be in competition with one
another. When the story's protagonist discovers an enormous and valuable pearl and goes to sell
it, they all gather round and individually bid far less than it is worth in order to trick him
into giving it away for almost nothing. US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream
parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give
the illusion of competition.
In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give
their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote
for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of
a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that
government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to
care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video
game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push.
The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start
waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them
the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace
whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride
toward war, ecocide and oppression.
If enough of us keep throwing sand in the gears of the lie
factory, we can wake
the masses up from the oligarchic lullaby they're being sung. And then maybe we'll be big
enough to have a shot at grabbing one of the real video game controllers.
Reprinted with author's permission from
Medium.com .
The week leading up to the funeral of Senator John McCain produced some of the most bizarre
media effusions seen in this country since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.
McCain, who never saw a war or regime change that he didn't like, was apparently in reality a
friend of democracy and freedom worldwide, a judgment that somehow ignores the hundreds of
thousands of presumed foreign devils who have died as a consequence of the policies he
enthusiastically promoted in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya.
McCain, who supported assassination of US citizens abroad and detention of them by military
commissions back at home, was hardly the upright warrior for justice eulogized in much of the
mainstream media. He was in fact for most of his life a corrupt cheerleader for the
Establishment and Military Industrial Complex. McCain was one of five Senators who, in return
for campaign contributions, improperly intervened in 1987 on behalf of Charles Keating,
Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, a target of a regulatory investigation by
the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently did not follow through with
proposed action against Lincoln.
Lincoln Savings and Loan finally did collapse in 1989, at a cost of $3.4 billion to the
federal government, which had insured the accounts, while an estimated 23,000 Lincoln
bondholders were defrauded, many losing their life savings. When the Keating story broke in
1989, the Phoenix New Times newspaper called McCain
the worst senator from any state in American history.
There was plenty of pushback on the McCain legacy coming from the alternative media, though
nothing in the mainstream where politicians and pundits from both the left and the right of the
political spectrum united in their songs of praise. Amidst all the eulogies one
article did, however, strike me as particularly bizarre. It was written by Jeffrey
Goldberg, Editor in Chief of The Atlantic , and is entitled " McCain would have
passed the Anne Frank test" with the sub-heading "The senator spent decades
demonstrating his willingness to fight powerful men who abused powerless people."
Goldberg, a leading neoconservative, casually reveals that he has had multiple discussions
with McCain, including some in "war zones" like Iraq. He quotes the Senator as saying "I hated
Saddam. He ruled through murder. Didn't we learn from Hitler that we can't let that happen?"
Goldberg notes that McCain's hatred "for all dictators burned hot" before hitting on a number
of other themes, including that, per the senator, it was Donald Rumsfeld's "arrogance and
incompetence that helped discredit the American invasion" of Iraq. Goldberg quotes McCain as
saying "He [Rumsfeld] was the worst."
Jeffrey Goldberg also claims a conversation with McCain in which he asserted that, even
though an Iraq war supporter, he had become frustrated with the effort to "renovate a despotic
Middle Eastern country." As he put it, "theory of the American case was no match for the
heartbreaking Middle East reality," which is yet another defense of U.S. interventionism with
the caveat that the Arabs might not be ready to make good use of the largesse.
Elsewhere Goldberg, echoing McCain, has attributed the disaster in Iraq to the
"incompetence of the Bush Administration," not to the policy of regime change itself,
presumably because the Pentagon was unsuccessful at killing enough Arabs quickly enough to suit
the neoconservatives. McCain's reported response to Goldberg's equivocation about Saddam
Hussein's Iraq was "But genocide! Genocide!"
... ... ...
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected] .
As a follow-up to my Aug 27th blog, I ask people to name McCain's most important
accomplishment during his long political career. They can think of none, but the TV tells
them McCain was great because he was a neocon. Senator Paul Laxalt saw more combat than
McCain and had an equally long and distinguished career. He was not a crazed neocon so our
media barely reported his death last month.
Here are two examples of McCain's bad character just this past year. McCain had always
opposed Obamacare and campaigned against it. The Republicans had tried to repeal it for
years. The election of President Trump also brought in more Republican congressmen. The House
easily repealed it, and the Senate finally had a majority to vote for a partial repeal. This
would be a big victory for the Republicans led by President Trump. When the vote was held,
McCain shocked everyone and voted against it, thus abandoning his principles and backstabbing
his party! This was applauded by the Democrats and the insurance companies who profit from
Obamacare. They praised McCain as a "maverick", although everyone knows this was done just to
thwart a Trump victory.
On his deathbed, McCain directed his staff not to invite his Presidential running mate
Sarah Palin to his funeral. She campaigned for him as a loyal teammate and never said a bad
word about McCain during the campaign or after their loss. McCain blamed her for his loss and
expressed this in a childish manner. Allow me to summarize his life. John McCain was as
selfish, spoiled brat who had no sense of decency.
As I have stated before it is with great sorrow that I note the passing of McCain. A more
just god would have prolonged the agony of cancer for may years to come so he could live in
misery, anguish, and pain, as penance for the lives he has destroyed here and abroad. I fear
that several such lifetimes in such suffering would be grossly inadequate recompense for what
he has wrought.
Small wonder that I have no belief in such an inordinately cruel and unjust god who allows
men like McCain to live and thrive and then vanish into the ether with his debts unpaid,
while the crew of USS Liberty live their lives in the knowledge of their betrayal by McCain's
father, and later McCain himself.
An orphaned child weeps in Iraq while America lauds this beast among men while he lived,
and sings his praises on his death. A curse on all his enablers.
This was a stirring editorial, Philip, and an much-needed rejection of John McCain's
artificial status as a 'great American'.
Indeed, the fact that such a murderous sycophant as McCain would receive extended,
bi-partisan honors by establishment 'liberals' and 'conservatives' alike, demonstrates what a
staged and loathsome cesspool of corruption has become Imperial Washington, not to mention
our vaunted Fourth Estate. I haven't felt this estranged from my own country since the last
time Bibi Netanyahu addressed both houses of Congress.
What on earth is the Anne Frank test ?
The Anne Frank story simply is of jews in hiding in the Netherlands in WWII, discovered in
1944, deported, where Anne Frank died in early 1945 died of typhoid, while others who stayed
in the same Amsterdam canal achterhuis, literally 'behind house', built later in the garden,
survived.
Before I continue, there is not a shred of doubt that the hiding place and the way they were
in hiding is not true.
However, if a fourteen year old wrote the diary, there are doubts.
Except for the text itself, how at the end of 1944 a ball point pen arrived in occupied
Netherlands, the last part is written by ballpoint, no explanation whatsoever.
Jews were in hiding all over the Netherlands, my mother told me how after the Canadians had
driven out the Germans, snow white people appeared in her small village, that she had known
nothing about, they had been inside for several, maybe five, years.
The effort to get food to them must not be underestimated, food was rationed strictly.
I will keep my fence. His policies regarding Carte Blanche' support for Israel, the invasion of
Iraq, Afghanistan, , interventions in Libya, Syria the Ukraine and pressing the matter on Iran
-- the Russia baiting and Russia conspiracies –
From reading these uppity remarks by Mr. Giraldi, it's obvious he didn't get the text
commanding all good Americans to get on their knees and worship the dead mass-murderer
psychopath McCain.
"He said that, in the post holocaust world, all civilized people, and the governments of
all civilized nations, should be intolerant of leaders who commit verified acts of genocide
"
"Verified?" John Boy using legalese to slither away from his participation in numerous acts
of genocide, both directly by dropping Napalm on Vietnamese civilians or as one of the US
Senate's most rabid war mongers, demanding that this nation or that country be bombed, invaded
and smashed, because McCain had set himself up as judge, jury and executioner? No facts needed,
verdict already in, GUILTY as usual, off with their heads.
If the ICC was actually functional and not just a tool of NATO, EU, Israel and its US
colony, McCain–along with a slew of other US and Israeli war criminals–would of
been dancing on air a long time ago.
I served among fighter jocks back in the 1970s. They're great guys, cut a good public
figure, they're patriotic, true believers in air power, and they enjoy the prestige of their
military occupation. They are also straight-line-only thinkers. They'd bristle at the idea that
they've been "handled" by anyone.
We had a retired Navy captain here who was elected county commissioner. Bristling with
energy and ideas, he had the security of his good government pension. So he thought. Bought by
a local zillionaire, he served prison time.
Fighter jocks simply won't "get" that the job of our political masters is to cripple and
puppetize nominally representative institutions by bribery, blackmail, extortion, and the like,
for the purpose of providing rhetorical cover for what they want to do.
You should and you should try to get others even more influential than yourself (I'm thinking
Pat Buchanan), to browbeat CBS to disclose that this Jeffrey Goldberg is an Israeli
citizen. He's on 'Face The Nation' almost as much as the lovely Margaret Brennan.
"That McCain enthusiastically became Goldberg's patsy is at least one good reason that we
should all be grateful that he never was elected president."
Yes, McCain did not appear to be particularly bright, but he was highly energized by the
"dueling banjos" of ambition and avarice (dumping his sick first wife for a younger, much
richer one), and hence a perfect mark for the wily Zionist manipulators.
"... Most here voted for or supported Obama whose record of incarcerating and persecuting journalists, punishing whistle-blowers, extra-judicial executions including citizens of the United States, placing children in cages, violent regime change abroad, spying on citizens, and expanding the security state was as bad or worse as that of Bush and Trump, in some cases by some margin. ..."
"... The current heroes of the 'resistance' lied America into Iraq or Libya, hacked into the computers of the elected representatives/lied about it, and support torture/enhanced interrogations, all under Obama. 'Liberals' lionize these clown criminals along with 'responsible' republicans whilst embracing open bigots such as Farrakhan. And, yes, if one is willing to share the podium with Farrakhan that's tacit support of his views. ..."
I'd suggest that the two strains of 'conservatism' that matter are:
a) maintaining oppression/rule over subordinate classes to prevent them up-ending the status quo (the Robin view) and
b) maintaining philosophical +/- cultural values fundamental to a civilised society, typically so-called enlightenment values,
freedom of mind, body and property etc. These are understood in a wide spectrum of concrete interpretations, from free-market
purists to social democrats, and don't therefore correspond to one kind of on-the-ground politics.
Progressives tend attack a) (a non-philosophical form of conservatism – it's just about preserving a power structure), and
usually claim that b) (the one that matters) doesn't exist or isn't 'conservative', or else ignore it.
We have the basic problem of same term, variable referents
(b) doesn't exist. Conservatives are, as a group, in eager favor of concentration camps for toddlers, the drug war, unrestrained
surveillance, American empire, civil forfeiture, mass incarceration, extrajudicial police execution, etc. etc. They have internal
disagreements on how much to do those things, but the consensus is for all of them without meaningful constraint. And they are
always justified in terms of (a).
Most here voted for or supported Obama whose record of incarcerating and persecuting journalists, punishing whistle-blowers,
extra-judicial executions including citizens of the United States, placing children in cages, violent regime change abroad, spying
on citizens, and expanding the security state was as bad or worse as that of Bush and Trump, in some cases by some margin.
The current heroes of the 'resistance' lied America into Iraq or Libya, hacked into the computers of the elected representatives/lied
about it, and support torture/enhanced interrogations, all under Obama. 'Liberals' lionize these clown criminals along with 'responsible'
republicans whilst embracing open bigots such as Farrakhan. And, yes, if one is willing to share the podium with Farrakhan that's
tacit support of his views.
Conservative as a political category post 1750 works and the basic argument of the OP holds. The comments not so much.
... "What we have is a desperate corporate media, dutifully parroting the nonsense from the US State Department, and investing
virtually nothing in on-the-ground investigative reporting. But real evidence? We are in very, VERY short supply of that."
... From article: He [Clegg] also argued that the country should lose the right to host the 2018 World Cup after Russian
troops allegedly downed the civilian airliner Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine last July. Well, there's evidence in itself. Ei incumbit
probatio qui dicit, non qui negat. (The burden of proof is on he who declares, not on he who denies). He wants to punish before the
publication o the report. It's like a mediaeval witch-hunt. The law of the jungle seems to be Clegg's guiding principle. No surprise
he's been banned.
..."I can only assume it is as badge of honour if you buy into all the dimwitted propaganda being published by the western corporate
media -- who seem to have a daily axe to grind against the Russian state, but who say nothing about the warmongering actions of the
US. I imagine I would have the same opinion of you if I was to uncritically swallow such toxic rubbish."
..."The only way to effectively block people from other regions (blanket censor them, in other words) would be to positively identify
the source. All that you would likely achieve is blocking actual individual commentators and letting through the government astroturfers.
Why you would want to resort to such tactics is worth asking. The 'Western side' may be losing the propaganda war with Russia because
our lies are bigger and harder to sell -- rather than Pooty-poot being cleverer. Repeated debunked claims in our media are also going
to be far more damaging than anything similar in Russia. The problem doesn't lie with those you are asserting to be 'trolls' that are
disputing the reporting -- the problem lies with the reporting.
Notable quotes:
"... But it's very suspect when you say things like "Putin's created a criminal war in East Ukraine" when it was Kiev which started the violence in reaction to the Russian Ukrainians voting for Federalization in response to the coup in Kiev. It means that everything else you write has to be treated as suspect. ..."
"... alpamysh ... you've merely regurgitated the standard NeoCon list of justifications for why a democratically-elected leader needed to be overthrown ..."
"... The article isn't worth the headline really. The new cold war is on and obviously they'll be barring each other. ..."
"... On the other hand the EU has also put an entry ban on leading Russian politicians, among which are the chairman of the Federation council, politicians from the state Duma and also close advisors to the Russian president Vladimir Putin. It is not anticipated that either side will lift the entry bans in the near future. (Excerpt and rough translation from German) ..."
"... "In December, Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve "its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion." She said the U.S. goal was to take "Ukraine into the future that it deserves," by which she meant into the West's orbit and away from Russia's. ..."
"... But President Yanukovych rejected a European Union plan that would have imposed harsh austerity on the already impoverished Ukraine. He accepted a more generous $15 billion loan from Russia, which also has propped up Ukraine's economy with discounted natural gas. Yanukovych's decision sparked anti-Russian street protests in Kiev, located in the country's western and more pro-European region. ..."
"... By late January, Nuland was discussing with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who should be allowed in the new government. ..."
"... "Yats is the guy," Nuland said in a phone call to Pyatt that was intercepted and posted online. "He's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the guy you know." By "Yats," Nuland was referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had served as head of the central bank, foreign minister and economic minister - and who was committed to harsh austerity. ..."
"... Well, there's evidence in itself. Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat. (The burden of proof is on he who declares, not on he who denies). He wants to punish before the publication o the report. It's like a mediaeval witch-hunt. The law of the jungle seems to be Clegg's guiding principle. No surprise he's been banned. ..."
"... "Putin wants sanctions" ... what a bunch of silly conjecture. As for "Putin style rule" and "Tzar" .. you presumably know that Russia held democratic elections which Putin won. ..."
"... let me guess, The list probably contains politicians whose real loyalty maybe is with the US? Judge from the 2 names mentioned, Malcolm Riffkind is Co-Vice Chair of the Global Panel Foundation – America – with Dr. Dov S. Zakheim, the former U.S Under-Secretary of Defense and Comptroller of the Armed Forces. ..."
"... your constant anti-Russia/Putin comments mark you as a shill/troll ..."
"... What we have is a desperate corporate media, dutifully parroting the nonsense from the US State Department, and investing virtually nothing in on-the-ground investigative reporting. But real evidence? We are in very, VERY short supply of that. ..."
"... I can only assume it is as badge of honour if you buy into all the dimwitted propaganda being published by the western corporate media - ..."
"... We're the global overlords, and so second-rate nations aren't allowed to reciprocate our petulant actions. When they do so it causes some people to question the assumed status of the 'Western' hegemony (and our claimed system of morally superior 'values'). We can't allow that sort of thing, Popeyes. ..."
"... The Guardian has a clear pro-EU/USA position on the new cold war against Russia. ..."
"... The 'Western side' may be losing the propaganda war with Russia because our lies are bigger and harder to sell -- rather than Pooty-poot being cleverer. ..."
"... The problem doesn't lie with those you are asserting to be 'trolls' that are disputing the reporting -- the problem lies with the reporting. ..."
JordanFromLondon -> Havingalavrov 31 May 2015 12:26
"Look at the Moscow apartment bombings"... look at any number of CIA false flag operations. As for "most of the national T.V
is Putin press." ... Murdoch has a controlling interest in printed press and a large share of TV news in Australia and the UK.
Maybe you are one of the CIA-employed agitators against Russia, or maybe you have a chip on your shoulder about a failed relationship
with a Russia bride. I can't be sure from your comments.
But it's very suspect when you say things like "Putin's created a criminal war in East Ukraine" when it was Kiev which
started the violence in reaction to the Russian Ukrainians voting for Federalization in response to the coup in Kiev. It means
that everything else you write has to be treated as suspect.
Huo Fu Yan 31 May 2015 12:24
I don't see a big issue with that list. If some people from that list travel anywhere, it will be considered wasting tax payer
money anyways. They aren't even embraced by a majority in their own countries, some of them belonging to totally irrelevant weird
initiative, shouting and crying about this and that.
For others on that list, being linked to military organisations, the should be banned naturally. As for vacation, I don't think
Russia was on those guys list either
JordanFromLondon -> alpamysh 31 May 2015 12:14
alpamysh ... you've merely regurgitated the standard NeoCon list of justifications for why a democratically-elected leader
needed to be overthrown(e.g. Egypt's Morsi). If we take your "Hitler was elected" argument, we can apply that one
to any election outcome. If you won your high school "class monitor" election ... we'll Hitler won an election too. It's nothing
more than a lazy smear by association. If we take your "rigs the right of the opposition" argument, well there goes Israel's claims
to democracy. They arrest/ban viable Arab opposition figures to prevent them standing in elections. Also, we have to eliminate
Ukraine, who have assassinated about 12 of Yanukovich's inner circle since the coup.
uzzername 31 May 2015 12:09
The article isn't worth the headline really. The new cold war is on and obviously they'll be barring each other.
Russia, along with the rest of BRICS is an emerging economy. While in the developed economies big corporations scramble for
every penny they rip off off the consumers, the BRICS are a goldmine for adventurous capitalists as you can score quite a bit
of dope in one scoop if you invest enough in it.
That's why some of them suits on the list are pissed off. Obvs not because their summer holiday in Siberia has gone into smithereens.
umweltAT2100 31 May 2015 12:04
According to a report in ARD (German state media) the entry ban is a reaction / retaliation in response to the entry ban imposed
on Russians in connection with the Crimea annexation. Approximately 200 people are on the Russian black list. The largest number
are from the USA, with the Republican John McCain declared "persona non grata", followed by Canadian politicians.
On the other hand the EU has also put an entry ban on leading Russian politicians, among which are the chairman of the
Federation council, politicians from the state Duma and also close advisors to the Russian president Vladimir Putin. It is not
anticipated that either side will lift the entry bans in the near future. (Excerpt and rough translation from German)
Russian entry ban for dozens of politicians – Moscow's black list is out. (Hermann Krause, ARD Radio studio, Moscow,
30.05.2015)
Russische Einreiseverbote für Dutzende Politiker Moskaus "schwarze Liste" ist raus. Von Hermann Krause, ARD-Hörfunkstudio Moskau,
30.05.2015
Victoria Nuland and the neocons to be more precise,
"In December, Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve "its European aspirations, we have
invested more than $5 billion." She said the U.S. goal was to take "Ukraine into the future that it deserves," by which she meant
into the West's orbit and away from Russia's.
But President Yanukovych rejected a European Union plan that would have imposed harsh austerity on the already impoverished
Ukraine. He accepted a more generous $15 billion loan from Russia, which also has propped up Ukraine's economy with discounted
natural gas. Yanukovych's decision sparked anti-Russian street protests in Kiev, located in the country's western and more pro-European
region.
Nuland was soon at work planning for "regime change," encouraging disruptive street protests by personally passing out cookies
to the anti-government demonstrators. She didn't seem to notice or mind that the protesters in Kiev's Maidan square had hoisted
a large banner honoring Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and
whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles.
By late January, Nuland was discussing with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who should be allowed in the new
government.
"Yats is the guy," Nuland said in a phone call to Pyatt that was intercepted and posted online. "He's got the economic
experience, the governing experience. He's the guy you know." By "Yats," Nuland was referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had served
as head of the central bank, foreign minister and economic minister - and who was committed to harsh austerity.
As Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. McCain cheered the demonstrators on, the street protests turned violent. Police clashed
with neo-Nazi bands, the ideological descendants of Bandera's anti-Russian Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi SS during
World War II.
With the crisis escalating and scores of people killed in the street fighting, Yanukovych agreed to a E.U.-brokered deal that
called for moving up scheduled elections and having the police stand down. The neo-Nazi storm troopers then seized the opening
to occupy government buildings and force Yanukovych and many of his aides to flee for their lives." https://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/02/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis/
JordanFromLondon -> alpamysh 31 May 2015 11:53
What proof do you have that the Russian elections were phony ? The results were in line with independent opinion polls. Which
referendums was phony ? The first Iraqi election after Sadam was toppled was certainly phony. The US military whisked away the
ballot boxes for a week after voting was completed before announcing that the Shia (60% of Iraqis) had failed to get a majority
(despite the 20% Bathist Sunni boycotting the election so only the 20% Kurds voted against the 60% Shia).
geedeesee -> SnarkyGrumpkin 31 May 2015 11:50
From article: He [Clegg] also argued that the country should lose the right to host the 2018 World Cup after Russian troops
allegedly downed the civilian airliner Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine last July.
Well, there's evidence in itself. Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat. (The burden of proof is on he who declares,
not on he who denies). He wants to punish before the publication o the report. It's like a mediaeval witch-hunt. The law of the
jungle seems to be Clegg's guiding principle. No surprise he's been banned.
JordanFromLondon -> Havingalavrov 31 May 2015 11:45
"Putin wants sanctions" ... what a bunch of silly conjecture. As for "Putin style rule" and "Tzar" .. you presumably know
that Russia held democratic elections which Putin won. That's more than many of the US/UK allies can say (take your pick
of the Gulf state leaders). Don't buy into the mindless anti-Russian propaganda doing the rounds. I suspect that it's intended
to soften public opnion for anti-Russian attrocities committed in our name to come.
Huo Fu Yan -> David Port 31 May 2015 11:36
It's true, 1/3 the list are politicians and military leader from Poland and baltics with no intend to enter Russia anyways.
The rest are merely people engaged in military organisations (should be banned naturally) or weird political groups and initiatives.
Furthermore, there are a few irrelevant politicians on the list for whatever reason. To be frank, a few people from that list
you wouldt want in your own country either.
meewaan 31 May 2015 11:07
let me guess, The list probably contains politicians whose real loyalty maybe is with the US? Judge from the 2 names mentioned,
Malcolm Riffkind is Co-Vice Chair of the Global Panel Foundation – America – with Dr. Dov S. Zakheim, the former U.S Under-Secretary
of Defense and Comptroller of the Armed Forces.
Not sure about banning Nick Clegg, - has his wife remunerated by her work for companies linked to the US? Take, for example,
Mrs Clegg's firm's advertisement (again, on its website) of the fact it makes considerable sums from helping rich people avoid
inheritance tax, saying that it offers 'personal estate planning advice and financial and tax-planning services to high net worth
individuals'.
'We combine sophisticated estate planning skills with international resources . . . We help U.S. and non-U.S. trustees and
beneficiaries transfer wealth efficiently through lifetime and testamentary trusts designed to minimise tax exposure.'
SuchindranathAiyer 31 May 2015 10:35
It required a "Tit for Tat" to establish that sanctions are working? Here is the geo-political back drop:
Reigan and Gorby arrived at certain agreements and understandings which Clinton (the husband) violated. He pulled Poland and
others into NATO and bombed Russian ally Belgrade, violating international law, while a helpless Russia fumed, for 84 days to
given Islam its first ethnically cleansed enclaves (Bosnia and Kosovo) after 1489.
Bush (the son), declared the "Star Wars" missile shield in direct violation of the Regan-Gorbachev agreements while Russia
continued to fume, but began to re arm and prepare itself for war. Apart from, of course, violating International Law and invading
Russian ally Iraq to distract anger over 9/11 from Saudi Arabia and its Nuclear-Terrorist sword arm Pakistan and threw thriving
communities of Jews, Christians, Yazidis, discos and bars that the Saudis, Qataris and Kuwaitis resented into the maws of Islam.
Russia fumed and continued to rearm and began to rally around Putin's nationalism. The US commenced "regime change" operations
in Russian (and Iraqi) Secular ally Syria, throwing even more Jews, Christians, Yazidis and Kurds into the maws of Islam. US was
to weakened by Iraq to wage war unilaterally in Syria. China and Russia blocked the US at the UN. Putin wrote an open letter to
Obama on Syria in the NY Times which gained traction with the American Citizens, bending Obama's nose and driving the US regime
change operation in Syria further under ground (covert). Prince Bandar (what an appropriate name!) head of Saudi intelligence
went ot Moscow to bribe Putin to back the putsch in Syria. Putin refused and told Bandar that if Islam tried a Beslan at Sochi,
he would bomb the Q'aba. This bent the Saudi nose. So the US commenced operation regime change in Ukraine. This sparked the secession
of Crime to Russia. The US fumed and fretted because its more develoed and intelligent NATO allies (France and Germany) would
not back the US backed fascist regime in Ukraine. The US shot down MH-17 in a false flag operation and started a canard against
Russia to revive NATO. There is a NATO now imposing US-Saudi conceived sanctions on Russia. We are now in the Second Cold War
so NATO won't go away. Russia and China will ally because, Clinton to Obama, the US has demonstrated the dangers of a unipolar
world, particularly as Islamic Petro Dollars own the decision and opinion makers of the West and have used the US military to
further the Islamic agenda as much as carry on with the old anti-Communist prejudices. (While Russia is not Totalitarian, China
is. India is really the last Soviet franchise in the World with its "Animal Farm" totalitarian Constitution and thinking which
is why the US is an ally of Pakistan and as hostile to India as to Russia. Consider that as recently as 2012, the man who lolls
in Lutyen's drawing room today moved "retrospective" legislation in the same Parliament that nationalized 20% of private (non
minority) education and removed the truth from Govt approved History text books, in the highest traditions of Nehru, Ambedkar
and Indira Gandhi.)
wilpost37 -> AbsolutelyFapulous 31 May 2015 10:33
Absolutely/Goman
Almost all the tourists of Crimea were Ukrainians before 2014. They stopped coming, and likely are spending their vacation
elsewhere.
Crimea is rebuilding its infrastructures (Kiev had neglected them for 22 years), and its tourist base.
It expects to have over 4 million visitors in 2015 and 5 million in 2016, because many Russians are no longer going to EU countries,
and are going to Crimea, Sochi, etc., instead. It will take time, but Crimea is a beautiful area.
Crimea became part of the Russian Empire by conquest over the Tartars in 1793.
The Tartars had been kidnapping nearby people (several million over many decades) and selling them to the Turks. Catherine
the Great put an end to that.
Khrushev was stupid to give it to Ukraine in 1954.
After the CIA/FBI-assisted coup of Kiev, the Crimean people, 67% Russian, feared for their future, as did the Donbas people.
SHappens 31 May 2015 10:24
"Just one thing remains unclear: did our European co-workers want these lists to minimise inconveniences for potential 'denied
persons' or to stage a political show?"
It is pretty clear that it turned out to be another media circus.
Socraticus -> alpamysh 31 May 2015 10:12
Lesson 1 - everyone on this site is a guest, you included
Lesson 2 - the majority of posters herein are actually westerners, not 'Russian trolls'
Lesson 3 - all politicians lie to advance their own social/economic/political agendas
Lesson 4 - all MSM distort/suppress the truth to support governmental narratives
Lesson 5 - many of us westerners actually bother to investigate the true facts
Lesson 6 - if a leader's being demonized its because they won't capitulate to the US
Lesson 7 - every illicit invasion is preceded by demonization of a leader/country
Lesson 8 - your constant anti-Russia/Putin comments mark you as a shill/troll
Lesson 9 - you can educate yourself or remain blind to facts - your choice
Lesson 10 - you will learn the consequences of your choices
UnsleepingMind -> EssoBlue 31 May 2015 10:12
You realise that Russia is one the most important members of the BRICS and that they group has recently established a development
bank? That's hardly the sign that the other BRICS nations are not reading from the same hymn sheet as Russia...
What did anyone expect flowers from russia from the unfair treatment it's getting. The west paying for Ukraine part nazi government
and creating a coup in a democratically ekected president last february. Then sanctioning the Russian people expecting them to
turn in yheir president. The west should be ashamed of what they accomplished that being fronting a proxy war against Russia.
Vijay Raghavan -> Huo Fu Yan 31 May 2015 09:54
Developing all-round military-to-military relations. China's armed forces will further their exchanges and cooperation with
the Russian military within the framework of the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia,
and foster a comprehensive, diverse and sustainable framework to promote military relations in more fields and at more levels
They made that statement in their white paper issued last week.Offcourse Guardian or BBC will not keep up with such "Breaking
News".
UnsleepingMind -> EssoBlue 31 May 2015 09:49
1) Yes, the BRICS countries are very much behind Russia.
2) Russia, unlike the US, has tabled a resolution to condemn Nazism and Nazi movements in the highest forum possible (the UN).
The US, along with Canada, and its puppet government in Ukraine, voted against it (in defiance of most of the world's nations).
You would think, with all the technology at the disposal of the US security state, that it might (just might) be able to provide
us with real, irrefutable evidence of a ground invasion. You know, perhaps some high resolution satellite imagery, the odd photo
of a modern Russian tank moving over the Ukrainian border, some chatter from the wires between embassy officials and security
personnel, etc., etc.
But of course we have nothing of the sort. What we have is a desperate corporate media, dutifully parroting the nonsense
from the US State Department, and investing virtually nothing in on-the-ground investigative reporting. But real evidence? We
are in very, VERY short supply of that.
UnsleepingMind -> ponott 31 May 2015 09:34
I can only assume it is as badge of honour if you buy into all the dimwitted propaganda being published by the western
corporate media -- who seem to have a daily axe to grind against the Russian state, but who say nothing about the warmongering
actions of the US. I imagine I would have the same opinion of you if I was to uncritically swallow such toxic rubbish.
UnsleepingMind -> alpamysh 31 May 2015 09:30
'Because we have the right to ban people who invade other countries'.
That's why we've recently arrested George Bush (who, with the help of Tony Blair invaded Iraq and Afghanistan), Barack Obama
(who bombed Libya, engineered coups in Honduras and Ukraine, and is now funding Islamic extremists in Syria)...
We reserve the right to ban, but we use that 'right' to ban official enemies (i.e. anyone daring to follow a geopolitical game
plan that is distinctly at odds with our own).
Also, your suggestion that Putin's Russia has invaded 'other countries' is preposterous. The western media has been spewing
this nonsense for months now and yet there is not a shred of real evidence (including hi-res satellite imagery) to back it up.
And if you are referring to Crimea, let me say this: Russia troops have been staged in Crimea for many, many years; moreover,
the people of Crimea voted to break with Ukraine in a recent referendum (not that that squares with your hectoring rhetoric).
PyrrhicVictory 31 May 2015 09:27
The doors of the gravy train for politicians like Clegg are fast closing. When we exit the EU, then the Brussels gravy train
will also be beyond him. He might, just might, having to start behaving like an honest politician for once and earn a decent wage
based on truth not lies.
johnsmith44 -> NegativeCamber 31 May 2015 09:25
Why dont you go spread democracy to some oil-producing Third World country, together with your poodles the brits? And make
sure you do it properly, so that monstrosities like ISIS are guaranteed?
ex-CIA personnel openly describing their involvement in the dowining of Korean Airlines passenger flight 007 over Siberia on
August 30, 1983 and I believe it becomes apparent who downed MH-17.
Jerome Fryer -> Popeyes 31 May 2015 09:11
We're the global overlords, and so second-rate nations aren't allowed to reciprocate our petulant actions. When they do
so it causes some people to question the assumed status of the 'Western' hegemony (and our claimed system of morally superior
'values'). We can't allow that sort of thing, Popeyes.
davidncldl 31 May 2015 09:10
The Guardian has a clear pro-EU/USA position on the new cold war against Russia. Mr Putin is their democratically
elected leader and he is enormously popular. Only an imbecile would be surprised or indignant about Russia retaliating for unjust
EU/US sanctions. What do the globalisers and bankers' friends at the Guardian expect? I imagine you think that the ruination of
the Venezuelan and Russian economies by the manipulation of the oil price is just "free market" activity.
Hass Castorp 31 May 2015 09:07
"More than 6,200 people have been killed in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists."
This is a language of propaganda, Guardian. Last i checked Guardian advertised to be a newspaper, not a bulletin of The Ministry
of Truth.
My reformulation; "More than 6200 (in some estimates up to 50.000) have been killed and up to 1 million civilians displaced
(who mostly fled to Russia) by Ukrainian government troops and private terrorist kommandos of Ukrainian oligarchs."
Jerome Fryer -> henry919 31 May 2015 09:03
The only way to effectively block people from other regions (blanket censor them, in other words) would be to positively identify
the source. All that you would likely achieve is blocking actual individual commentators and letting through the government astroturfers.
Why you would want to resort to such tactics is worth asking. The 'Western side' may be losing the propaganda war with
Russia because our lies are bigger and harder to sell -- rather than Pooty-poot being cleverer.
Repeated debunked claims in our media are also going to be far more damaging than anything similar in Russia. The problem
doesn't lie with those you are asserting to be 'trolls' that are disputing the reporting -- the problem lies with the reporting.
(If your argument must be protected against criticism then it is a weak argument.)
This is a very weak article, but it raises several important questions such as the role or neoliberal MSM in color revolution
against Trump and which social group constituted the voting block that brought Trump to victory. The author answers incorrectly on
both those questions.
I think overall Tremblay analysis of Trump (and by extension of national neoliberalism he promotes) is incorrect. Probably the largest group
of voters which voted for Trump were voters who were against neoliberal globalization and who now feel real distrust and aversion to
the ruling neoliberal elite.
Trump is probably right to view neoliberal journalists as enemies: they are tools of intelligence agencies which as agents of
Wall Street promote globalization
At the same time Trump turned to be Obama II: he instantly betrayed his voters after the election. His
election slogan "make Ameraca great again" bacem that same joke as Obama "Change we can believe in". And he proved to be as
jingoistic as Obama (A Nobel Pease Price laureate who was militarists dream come true)
In discussion of groups who votes for Trump the author forgot to mention part of professional which skeptically view neoliberal
globalization and its destrction of jobs (for example programmer jobs in the USA) as well as blue color
workers decimated by offshoring of major industries.
Notable quotes:
"... "Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. " ..."
"... Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas City, July 24, 2018) ..."
"... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." ..."
"... This is a White House where everybody lies ..."
"... I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ..."
"... The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda. ..."
"... ad hominem' ..."
"... Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical showman diva , behaving in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians. ..."
"... He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication. ..."
"... checks and balance ..."
"... The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current administration and for future ones. ..."
"Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what
you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. "
Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas
City, July 24, 2018)
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903-1950), English novelist, essayist, and social critic, (in '1984', Ch. 7, 1949)
" This is a White House where everybody lies ." Omarosa Manigault Newman (1974- ), former White House aide to President
Donald Trump, (on Sunday August 12, 2018, while releasing tapes recording conversations with Donald Trump.)
" I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ." Benjamin Franklin (
1706 –
1790 ), American inventor and US Founding Father, (in 'Words of
the Founding Fathers', 2012).
***
In this day and age, with instant information, how does a politician succeed in double-talking, in bragging, in scapegoating and
in shamefully distorting the truth, most of the time, without being unmasked as a charlatan and discredited? Why? That is the mysterious
and enigmatic question that one may ask about U. S. President Donald Trump, as a politician.
The most obvious answer is the fact that Trump's one-issue and cult-like followers do not care what he does or says and whether
or not he has declared a
war on truth and reality , provided he delivers the political and financial benefits they demand of him, based on their ideological
or pecuniary interests. These groups of voters live in their own reality and only their personal interests count.
1- Four groups of one-issue voters behind Trump
There are four groups of one-issue voters to
whom President Donald Trump has delivered the goodies:
Christian religious right voters, whose main political issue is to fill the U. S. Supreme Court with ultra conservative
judges. On that score, Donald Trump has been true to them by naming one such judge and in nominating a second one.
Super rich Zionists and the Pro-Israel Lobby, whose obsession is the state of Israel. Again, on that score, President
Donald Trump has fulfilled his promise to them and he has unilaterally moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in addition
to attacking the Palestinians and tearing up the 'Iran Deal'.
The one-percent Income earners and some corporate owners, whose main demand to Trump was substantial tax cuts and
deregulation. Once again, President Trump has fulfilled this group's wishes with huge tax cuts, mainly financed with future public
debt increases, which are going to be paid for by all taxpayers.
The NRA and the Pro-Gun Lobby, whose main obsession is to have the right to arm themselves to the teeth, including
with military assault weapons, with as few strings attached as possible. Here again President Donald Trump has sided with them
and against students who are increasingly in the line of fire in American schools.
With the strong support of these four monolithic lobbies -- his electoral base -- politician Donald Trump can count on the indefectible
support of between 35 percent and 40 percent of the American electorate. It is ironic that some of Trump's other policies, like reducing
health care coverage and the raising of import taxes, will hurt the poor and the middle class, even though some of Trump's victims
can be considered members of the above lobbies.
Moreover, some of Trump's supporters regularly rely on
hypocrisy and on excuses to exonerate their favorite
but flawed politician of choice. If any other politician from a different party were to say and do half of what Donald Trump does
and says, they would be asking for his impeachment.
There are three other reasons why Trump's rants, his
record-breaking lies , his untruths, his deceptions and his dictatorial-style attempts to
control information , in the eyes of his fanatical supporters, at least, are like water on the back of a duck. ( -- For the record,
according to the
Washington Post , as of early August, President Trump has made some 4,229 false claims, which amount to 7.6 a day, since his
inauguration.)
The first reason can be found in Trump's view that politics and even government business are first and foremost another form
of
entertainment , i.e. a sort of TV reality show, which must be scripted and acted upon. Trump thinks that is
OK to lie
and to ask his assistants to
lie
. In this new immoral world, the Trump phenomenon could be seen a sign of
post-democracy .
The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and
manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda.
When Trump attacks the media, he is in fact coaxing them to give him free coverage to spread his
insults , his fake accusations, his provocations, his constant
threats , his denials or reversals, his convenient
changes of subject or his political spins. Indeed, with his outrageous statements, his gratuitous accusations and his attacks
' ad hominem' , and by constantly bullying and insulting adversaries at home and foreign heads of states abroad, and
by issuing threats in repetition, right and left, Trump has forced the media to talk and journalists to write about him constantly,
on a daily basis, 24/7.
That suits him perfectly well because he likes to be the center of attention. That is how he can change the political rhetoric
when any negative issue gets too close to him. In the coming weeks and months, as the Special prosecutor
Robert Mueller's report is likely to be released, Donald Trump is not above resorting to some sort of "
Wag the Dog " political trickery, to change the topic and to possibly push the damaging report off the headlines.
In such a circumstance, it is not impossible that launching an illegal war of choice, say against Iran (a
pet
project of Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton), could then look very convenient to a crafty politician like Donald
Trump and to his warmonger advisors. Therefore, observers should be on the lookout to spot any development of the sort in the
coming weeks.
That one man and his entourage could whimsically consider launching a
war of aggression is a throwback to ancient times
and is a sure indication of the level of depravity to which current politics has fallen. This should be a justified and clear
case for impeachment .
Finally, some far-right media outlets, such as
Fox News and
Sinclair Broadcasting , have taken it upon themselves to systematically present Trump's lies and misrepresentations as some
'alternative' truths and facts.
Indeed, ever since 1987, when the Reagan administration abolished the
Fairness Doctrine for licensing public radio
and TV waves, and since a Republican dominated Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for the
mass conglomeration of local broadcasting
in the United States, extreme conservative news outlets, such as the Fox and Sinclair networks, have sprung up. They are well
financed, and they have essentially become powerful
political propaganda machines , erasing the line between facts and fiction, and regularly presenting fictitious alternative
facts as the truth.
In so doing, they have pushed public debates in the United States away from facts, reason and logic, at least for those listeners
and viewers for whom such outlets are the only source of information. It is not surprising that such far-right media have also
made Donald Trump the champion of their cause, maliciously branding anything inconvenient as 'fake' news, as Trump has done in
his own anti-media campaign and his sustained assault on the free press.
2- Show Politics and public affairs as a form of entertainment
Donald Trump does not seem to take politics and public affairs very seriously, at least when his own personal interests are involved.
Therefore, when things go bad, he never volunteers to take personal responsibility, contrary to what a true leader would do, and
he conveniently
shifts the blame on somebody else. This is a sign of immaturity or cowardice. Paraphrasing President Harry Truman, "the buck
never stops at his desk."
Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical
showman diva , behaving
in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than
a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians.
3- Trump VS the media and the journalists
Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who rarely holds scheduled press conferences. Why would he, since he considers journalists
to be his "enemies"! It doesn't seem to matter to him that freedom of the press is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution by the First
Amendment. He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if
he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication.
The ABC News network
has calculated that, as of last July, Trump has tweeted more than 3,500 times, slightly more than seven tweets a day. How could he
have time left to do anything productive! Coincidently, Donald Trump's number of tweets is not far away from the number of outright
lies and misleading claims that he has told and made since his inauguration.
The Washington Post has counted no less than 3,251 lies or misleading claims of his, through the end of May of this year, --
an average of 6.5 such misstatements per day of his presidency. Fun fact: Trump seems to accelerate the pace of his lies. Last year,
he told 5.5 lies per day, on average. Is it possible to have a more cynical view of politics!
The media in general, (and
not only American ones), then serve more or less voluntarily as so many resonance boxes for his daily 'tweets', most of which
are often devoid of any thought and logic.
Such a practice has the consequence of demeaning the public discourse in the pursuit of the common good and the general welfare
of the people to the level of a frivolous private enterprise, where expertise, research and competence can easily be replaced by
improvisation, whimsical arbitrariness and charlatanry. In such a climate, only the short run counts, at the expense of planning
for the long run.
Conclusion
All this leads to this conclusion: Trump's approach is not the way to run an efficient government. Notwithstanding the U.S. Constitution
and what it says about the need to have " checks and balance s" among different government branches, President Donald Trump
has de facto pushed aside the U.S. Congress and the civil servants in important government Departments, even his own
Cabinet
, whose formal meetings under Trump have been little more than photo-up happenings, to grab the central political stage for himself.
If such a development does not represent an ominous threat to American democracy, what does?
The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current
administration and for future ones.
The root of the current aggressive policy is the desire to preserve global neoliberal empire the US role as the metropolia
with the rest of the world as vassals.
Notable quotes:
"... The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at the margins. ..."
"... It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end ..."
"... There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. ..."
"... The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world. ..."
"... Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008 financial crash followed. I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one. ..."
"... Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions. ..."
"... The NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live with daily ..."
"... The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime. ..."
"... In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as Russia and the West. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on which the government now in power still depends. ..."
"... If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument -- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around him, as he acknowledged in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they are determined to preserve them. ..."
"... If you valued this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
"... You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies, a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved. ..."
"... How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few. ..."
"... Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40 percent of the public who opposed the war. ..."
"... "Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the disease which afflicts Washington." ..."
"... I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals. Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations of the World! ..."
"... That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's figure out how to begin. ..."
"... A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the neofeudal/futile system. ..."
"... When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? ..."
"... To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination: "Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the countries it invaded to be "Just like us." ..."
"... Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR, I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed, it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual "progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the history of the country squarely. ..."
"... Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski: ..."
"... "The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970 ..."
"... Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion, they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any mainstream cause or social movement. ..."
"... What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual benefit." ..."
"... Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a "peace dividend" following the end of WWII. ..."
"... To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/ . ..."
"... The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the "Statement of A. Wess Mitchell Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21 this year. The transcript is at : https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/082118_Mitchell_Testimony.pdf ..."
"... Quote the esteemed gentleman (inter alia): "It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American power. " ..."
"... Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0. In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum between 1990 and 2010. ..."
"... Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between "Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the geopolitical war between the two. ..."
"... Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus, what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948. Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing. ..."
"... There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail. ..."
"... Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off. ..."
"... I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know. ..."
"... +1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. ..."
"... And note (2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks ..."
"... Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy. ..."
"... Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro: "I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration." ..."
"... Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose, he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate. ..."
"... Many of the people involved in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance. ..."
"... Remember when "Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the world than have to share. ..."
"... Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal. Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well. https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/ ..."
"... "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence." ..."
The bitter reality is that U.S. foreign policy has no definable objective other than
blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of
U.S. global interests. This impoverished strategy reflects Washington's refusal to accept the
passing of its relatively brief post–Cold War moment of unipolar power.
There is an error all too common in American public opinion. Personalizing Washington's
regression into the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump,
deprives one of deeper understanding. This mistake was made during the steady attack on civil
liberties after the Sept. 11 tragedies and then during the 2003 invasion of Iraq: namely that
it was all George W. Bush's fault. It was not so simple then and is not now.
The crisis of U.S.
foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are systemic. Having little to do with
personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at
the margins.
Let us bring some history to this question of America as spoiler. What is the origin of this
undignified and isolating approach to global affairs?
It began with that hubristic triumphalism so evident in the decade after the Cold War's end.
What ensued had various names. There was the "end of history" thesis. American liberalism was humanity's highest
achievement, and nothing would supersede it.
There was also the "Washington consensus." The world was in agreement that free-market
capitalism and unfettered financial markets would see the entire planet to prosperity. The
consensus never extended far beyond the Potomac, but this sort of detail mattered little at the
time.
The neoliberal economic crusade accompanied by neoconservative politics had its intellectual
ballast, and off went its true-believing warriors around the world.
Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad. Then came the "color revolutions," which resulted
in the destabilization of large swathes of the former Soviet Union's borderlands. The 2008
financial crash followed. I was in Hong Kong at the time and recall thinking, "This is not just Lehman Brothers. An
economic model is headed into Chapter 11." One would have thought a fundamental rethink in
Washington might have followed these events. There has never been one.
The orthodoxy today remains what it was when it formed in the 1990s: The neoliberal crusade
must proceed. Our market-driven, "rules-based" order is still advanced as the only way out of
our planet's impasses.
A Strategic and Military Turn
Midway through the first Obama administration, a crucial turn began. What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly with
the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military dimensions.
The
NATO bombing campaign in Libya, ostensibly a humanitarian mission, became a regime-change
operation -- despite Washington's promises otherwise. Obama's "pivot to Asia" turned out to be
a neo-containment policy toward China. The "reset" with Russia, declared after Obama appointed
Hillary Clinton secretary of state, flopped and turned into the virulent animosity we now live
with daily.
The U.S.-cultivated coup in Kiev in 2014 was a major declaration of drastic turn in
policy towards Moscow. So was the decision, taken in 2012 at
the latest , to back the radical jihadists who were turning civil unrest in Syria into a
campaign to topple the Assad government in favor of another Islamist regime.
Spoilage as a poor excuse for a foreign policy had made its first appearances.
I count 2013 to 2015 as key years. At the start of this period, China began developing what
it now calls its Belt and Road
Initiative -- its hugely ambitious plan to stitch together the Eurasian landmass, Shanghai
to Lisbon. Moscow favored this undertaking, not least because of the key role Russia had to
play and because it fit well with President Vladimir Putin's Eurasian Economic
Union (EAEU), launched in 2014.
In 2015, the last of the three years I just noted, Russia intervened militarily and
diplomatically in the Syria conflict, in part to protect its southwest from Islamist extremism
and in part to pull the Middle East back from the near-anarchy then threatening it as well as
Russia and the West.
Meanwhile, Washington had cast China as an adversary and committed itself -- as it
apparently remains -- to regime change in Syria. Three months prior to the treaty that
established the EAEU, the Americans helped turn another case of civil unrest into a regime
change -- this time backing not jihadists in Syria but the crypto-Nazi militias in Ukraine on
which the government now in power still depends.
That is how we got the U.S.-as-spoiler foreign policy we now have.
If there is a president to blame -- and again, I see little point in this line of argument
-- it would have to be Barack Obama. To a certain extent, Obama was a creature of those around
him, as he acknowledged in his interview
with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic toward the end of his second term. From
that
"Anonymous" opinion piece published in The New York Times on Sept. 5, we know
Trump is too, to a greater extent than Obama may have feared in his worst moments.
The crucial question is why. Why do U.S. policy cliques find themselves bereft of
imaginative thinking in the face of an evolving world order? Why has there been not a single
original policy initiative since the years I single out, with the exception of the
now-abandoned 2015 accord governing Iran's nuclear programs? "Right now, our job is to create
quagmires until we get what we want," an administration official
told The Washington Post 's David Ignatius in August.
Can you think of a blunter confession of intellectual bankruptcy? I can't.
Global 'Equals' Like Us?
There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost all
facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my view,
but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques.
As I have argued numerous times elsewhere, parity between East and West is a 21st century
imperative. From Woodrow Wilson to the post-World War II settlement, an equality among all
nations was in theory what the U.S. considered essential to global order.
Now that this is upon us, however, Washington cannot accept it. It did not count on
non-Western nations achieving a measure of prosperity and influence until they were "just like
us," as the once famous phrase had it. And it has not turned out that way.
Think of Russia, China, and Iran, the three nations now designated America's principal
adversaries. Each one is fated to become (if it is not already) a world or regional power and a
key to stability -- Russia and China on a global scale, Iran in the Middle East. But each
stands resolutely -- and this is not to say with hostile intent -- outside the Western-led
order. They have different histories, traditions, cultures, and political cultures. And they
are determined to preserve them.
They signify the shape of the world to come -- a post-Western world in which the Atlantic
alliance must coexist with rising powers outside its orbit. Together, then, they signify
precisely what the U.S. cannot countenance. And if there is one attribute of neoliberal and
neoconservative ideology that stands out among all others, it is its complete inability to
accept difference or deviation if it threatens its interests.
This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is
Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist.
His web site is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist .
If you valued this original article, please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
This really is an excellent analysis. I would highlight the following point:
"There is a longstanding explanation for this paralysis. Seven decades of global hegemony,
the Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think about other than
the simplicities of East-West tension. Those planning and executing American diplomacy lost
all facility for imaginative thinking because there was no need of it. This holds true, in my
view, but there is more to our specific moment than mere sclerosis within the policy cliques
"
Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington.
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 6:03 pm
You don't mention corruption and profiteering, which go hand-in-hand with American
Exceptionalism and the National Security State (NSS) formed in 1947. The leader of the world
which is also an NSS requires enemies, so the National Security Strategy designates enemies,
a few of them in an Axis of Evil. Arming to fight them and dreaming up other reasons to go to
war, including a war on terror of all things, bring the desired vast expenditures, trillions
of dollars, which translate to vast profits to those involved.
This focus on war has its roots in the Christian bible and in a sense of manifest destiny
that has occupied Americans since before they were Americans, and the real Americans had to
be exterminated. It certainly (as stated) can't be blamed on certain individuals, it's
predominate and nearly universal. How many Americans were against the assault by the
Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq? Very few.
Homer Jay , September 14, 2018 at 10:09 pm
"How many Americans were against the assault by the Coalition of the Willing upon Iraq?
Very few."
Are you kidding me? Here is a list of polls of the American public regarding the Iraq War
2003-2007;
Even in the lead up the war when the public was force fed a diet comprised entirely of
State Dept. lies about WMDs by a sycophantic media, there was still a significant 25-40
percent of the public who opposed the war. You clearly are not American or you would remember
the vocal minority which filled the streets of big cities across this country. And again the
consent was as Chomsky says "manufactured." And it took only 1 year of the war for the
majority of the public to be against it. By 2007 60-70% of the public opposed the war.
Judging from your name you come from a country whose government was part of that coalition
of the willing. So should we assume that "very few" of your fellow country men and women were
against that absolute horror show that is the Iraq war?
Don Bacon , September 14, 2018 at 11:05 pm
You failed to address my major point, and instead picked on something you're wrong on.
PS: bevin made approximately the same point later (w/o the financial factor).
"Conformism and its consequences, probably derived in part from Puritanism and further
cemented by the alternating racisms of anti-indigenous and anti black attitudes- the history
of the lynch mob and various wars against the poor which ended up in the anti-communist
frenzies of the day before yesterday constitute the backbone of American history- is the
disease which afflicts Washington."
Archie1954 , September 14, 2018 at 2:39 pm
I have often wondered why the US was unable to accept the position of first among equals.
Why does it have to rule the World? I know it believes that its economic and political
systems are the best on the planet, but surely all other nations should be able to decide for
themselves, what systems they will accept and live under? Who gave the US the right to make
those decisions for everyone else? The US was more than willing to kill 20 million people
either directly or indirectly since the end of WWII to make its will sovereign in all nations
of the World!
Bob Van Noy , September 14, 2018 at 9:54 pm
Archie 1954, because 911 was never adequately investigated, our government was
inappropriately allowed to act in the so-called public interest in completely inappropriate
ways; so that in order for the Country to set things right, those decisions which were made
quietly, with little public discussion, would have to be exposed and the illegalities
addressed. But, as I'm sure you know, there are myriad other big government failures also
left unexamined, so where to begin?
That is why I invariably raise JFK's Assassination as a logical starting point. If a truly
independent commission would fix the blame, we could move on from there. Sam F., on this
forum, has mentioned a formal legal undertaking many times on this site, but now is the time
to begin the discussion for a formal Truth And Reconciliation Commission in America Let's
figure out how to begin.
So,"Who gave the US the right to make those decisions for everyone else?", certainly not
The People
A very good article. Spoiler and bully describe US foreign policy, and foreign policy is
in the driver's seat while domestic policy takes the pickings, hardly anything left for the
hollowed-out society where people live paycheck to paycheck, homelessness and other assorted
ills of a failing society continue to rise while oligarchs and the MIC rule the
neofeudal/futile system.
When are we going to make that connection of the wasteful
expenditure on military adventurism and the problem of poverty in the US? The Pentagon
consistently calls the shots, yet we consistently hear about unaccounted expenditures by the
Pentagon, losing amounts in the trillions, and never do they get audited.
nondimenticare , September 14, 2018 at 12:18 pm
I certainly agree that the policy is bereft, but not for all of the same reasons. There is
the positing of a turnaround as a basis for the current spoiler role: "What had been an
assertion of financial and economic power, albeit coercive in many instances, particularly
with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, took on further strategic and military
dimensions."
To substantiate this "crucial turn," Lawrence makes the unwarranted assumption that the
goal post Soviet Union was simply worldwide free-market capitalism, not global domination:
"Failures ensued. Iraq post–2003 is among the more obvious. Nobody ever planted
democracy or built free markets in Baghdad"; and the later statement that the US wanted the
countries it invaded to be "Just like us."
Though he doesn't mention (ignores) US meddling in Russia after the collapse of the USSR,
I presume from its absence that he attributes that, too, to the expansion of capital. Indeed,
it was that, but with the more malevolent goal of control. "Just like us" is the usual
"progressive" explanation for failures. "Controlled by us" was more like it, if we face the
history of the country squarely.
That is the blindness of intent that has led to the spoiler role.
Unfettered Fire , September 14, 2018 at 11:15 am
Is it really so wise to be speaking in terms of nationhood after we've undergone 50 years
of Kochian/libertarian dismantlement of the nation-state in favor of bank and transnational
governance? Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski:
"The "nation-state" as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state." ~
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages, 1970
"Make no mistake, what we are seeing in geopolitics today is indeed a magic show. The
false East/West paradigm is as powerful if not more powerful than the false Left/Right
paradigm. For some reason, the human mind is more comfortable believing in the ideas of
division and chaos, and it often turns its nose up indignantly at the notion of "conspiracy."
But conspiracies and conspirators can be demonstrated as a fact of history. Organization
among elitists is predictable.
Globalists themselves are drawn together by an ideology. They have no common nation, they
have no common political orientation, they have no common cultural background or religion,
they herald from the East just as they herald from the West. They have no true loyalty to any
mainstream cause or social movement.
What do they have in common? They seem to exhibit many of the traits of high level
narcissistic sociopaths, who make up a very small percentage of the human population. These
people are predators, or to be more specific, they are parasites. They see themselves as
naturally superior to others, but they often work together if there is the promise of mutual
benefit."
"In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the
private economy: that's where the decisions are made about what's produced, how much is
produced, what's consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the
resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the
political system can make some difference -- I don't want to say it's zero -- but the
differences are going to be very slight." ~ Noam Chomsky
Yet there is a thread that leads through US foreign policy. It all started with NSC 68.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68 . Already in
the 1950's, leading bankers were afraid of economic depression which would follow from a
"peace dividend" following the end of WWII.
To avoid this, and to avoid "socialism", the only
acceptable government spending was on defense. This mentality never ended. Today 50% of
discretionary govenmenrt spending is on the military. http://www.unz.com/article/americas-militarized-economy/
.
We live in a country of military socialism, in which military citizens have all types of
benefits, on condition they join the military-industrial-complex. This being so, there is no
need for real "intelligence", there is no need to "understand" what goes on is foreign
countries, there no need to be right about what might happen or worry about consequences.
What is important is stimulate the economy by spending on arms. From Korean war, when the US
dropped more bombs than it had on Nazi Germany, through Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
etc etc the US policy was a winning one not for those who got bombed (and could not fight
back) but for the weapons industry and military contractors. Is the NYTimes ever going to
discuss this aspect? Or any one in the MSM?
Walter , September 14, 2018 at 9:26 am
The "why" behind the US foreign policies was spoken with absolute honest clarity in the
"Statement of A. Wess Mitchell
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs" to the Senate on August 21
this year. The transcript is at :
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/082118_Mitchell_Testimony.pdf
Quote the esteemed gentleman (inter alia): "It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to
prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the
administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by
systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundamentals of American
power. "
Tellingly the "official" State Department copy is changed and omits the true spoken
words
I would propose that the Zionism aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" look it a map, Comrade The ISIS?Saudi?Zionist games divides the New
Silk Road and the Eurasian land mass and exists to throttle said pathways.
Interestingly the latter essay is attributed to Eldar Ismailov and Vladimir Papava
Brother Comrade Putin knows the game. The US has to maintain the fiction for the public
that it does not know the game, and is consequently obliged to maintain a vast public
delusion, hence "fake news" and all the rest.
OlyaPola , September 14, 2018 at 1:49 pm
"I would propose that the Zionism aspect exists due to the perceived necessity of "Forward
Operating Base Israel" lookit a map, Comrade"
Some have an attraction to book-ends. Once upon a time the Eurasian book-ends were Germany and Japan, and the Western Asian
book-ends Israel and Saudi Arabia. This "strategy" is based upon the notion that bookend-ness is a state of inertia which in
any interactive system is impossible except apparently to those embedded in "we the people
hold these truths to be self-evident".
Consequently some have an attraction to book-ends.
Patrick Lawrence's essay makes perfect sense only when it is applied to US foreign policy
since the end of WW2. It is conventional wisdom that the US is now engaged in Cold War 2.0.
In fact, Cold War 2.0 is an extension of Cold War 1.0. There was merely a 20 year interregnum
between 1990 and 2010.
Most analysts think that Cold War 1.0 was an ideological war between
"Communism" and "Democracy". The renewal of the Cold War against both Russia and China
however shows that the ideological war between East and West was really a cover for the
geopolitical war between the two.
Russia, China and Iran are the main geopolitical enemies of
the US as they stand in the way of the global, imperialist hegemony of the US. In order to
control the global periphery, i.e. the developing world and their emerging economies, the US
must contain and defeat the big three. This was as true in 1948 as it is in 2018. Thus,
what's happening today under Trump is no different than what occurred under Truman in 1948.
Whatever differences exist are mere window dressing.
Rob Roy , September 15, 2018 at 12:16 am
Mr. Etler,
I think you are mostly right except in the first Cold War, the Soviets and US Americans were
both involved in this "war." What you call Cold War 2.0 is in the minds and policies of only
the US. Russian is not in any way currently like the Soviet Union, yet the US acts in all
aspects of foreign attitude and policy as though that (very unpleasant period in today's
Russians' minds) still exists. It does not. You says there was "merely a 20 year interregnum"
and things have picked up and continued as a Cold War. Only in the idiocy of the USA,
certainly not in the minds of Russian leadership, particularly Putin's who now can be
distinguished as the most logical, realistic and competent leader in the world.
Thanks to H. Clinton being unable to become president, we have a full blown Russiagate which
the MSM propaganda continues to spread.
There is no Cold War 2.0. It's a fallacy to create a
false flag for regime change in Russia. Ms. Clinton, the Kagan family, the MIC, etc., figure
if we can take out Yanukovich and replace him with Fascists/Nazis, what could stop us from
doing the same to Russia. The good news: all empires fail.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 1:41 pm
"This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign policy. Among its many
consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability."
Mr. Lawrence is much too accommodating with his analysis. Imagine, linking US "foreign
policy" in the same thought as "global stability", as if the two were somehow related. On the
contrary, "global instability" seems to be our foreign policy goal, especially for those
regions that pose a threat to US hegemony. Why? Because it is difficult to extract a region's
wealth when its population is united behind a stable government that can't be bought off.
Conjuring up Heraclitus..Time is a River, constantly changing. And we face downstream,
unable to see the Future and gazing upon the Past.
The attempt has an effect, many effects, but it cannot stop Time.
The Russian and the Chinese have clinched the unification of the Earth Island, "Heartland"
This ended the ability to control global commerce by means of navies – the methods of
the Sea Peoples over the last 500 years are now failed. The US has no way of even seeing this
fact other than force and violence to restore the status quo ante .
Thus World War, as we see
Recollecting Heraclitus again, the universe is populated by opposites as we see, China and
Russia represent a cathodic opposite to the US
Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2018 at 1:29 pm
I guess I missed this one, Patrick. Great overview but let me put it in a slightly
different context. You start with the end of the cold war but I don't. I could go all the way
back to the early days of the country and our proclamation of manifest destiny. The US has
long thought that it was the one ring to rule them all. But for most of that time the
strength of individual members of the rest of the world constrained the US from running amok.
That constraint began to be lifted after the ruling clique in Europe committed seppuku in
WWI. It was completely lifted after WWII. But that was 75 years ago. This is now and most of
the world has recovered from the world wide destruction of human and physical capital known
as WWII. The US is going to have to learn how to live with constraints again but it will take
a shock. The US is going to have to lose at something big time. Europe cancelling the
sanctions? The sanctions on Russia don't mean squat to the US but it's costing Europe
billions. This highlights the reality that the "Western Alliance" (read NATO) is not really
an alliance of shared goals and objectives. It's an alliance of those terrified by fascism
and what it can do. They all decided that they needed a "great father" to prevent their
excesses again. One wonders if either the world or Europe would really like the US to come
riding in like the cavalry to places like Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. Blindly following
Washington's directions can be remarkably expensive for Europe and they get nothing but
refugees they can't afford. Something will ultimately have to give.
The one thing I was surprised you didn't mention was the US's financial weakness. It's
been a long time since the US was a creditor nation. We've been a debtor nation since at
least the 80s. The world doesn't need debtor nations and the only reason they need us is the
primacy of the US dollar. And there are numerous people hammering away at that.
Gerald Wadsworth , September 13, 2018 at 12:59 pm
Why are we trying to hem in China, Russia and Iran? Petro-dollar hegemony, pure and
simple. From our initial deal with Saudi Arabia to buy and sell oil in dollars only, to the
chaos we have inflicted globally to retain the dollar's rule and role in energy trading, we
are finding ourselves threatened – actually the position of the dollar as the sole
trading medium is what is threatened – and we are determined to retain that global
power over oil at all costs. With China and Russia making deals to buy and sell oil in their
own currencies, we have turned both those counties into our enemies du jour, inventing every
excuse to blame them for every "bad thing" that has and will happen, globally. Throw in
Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and a host of other countries who want to get out from under our
thumb, to those who tried and paid the price. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and
more. Our failed foreign policy is dictated by controlling, as Donald Rumsfeld once opined,
"our oil under their sand." Oil. Pure and simple.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 2:18 pm
I agree, Gerald. Enforcing the petro-dollar system seems to be the mainspring for much of
our recent foreign policy militarism. If it were to unravel, the dollar's value would tank,
and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases. Death Star's aren't cheap, ya
know.
Maxwell Quest , September 13, 2018 at 3:33 pm
I agree, Gerald. Along with ensuring access to "our" off-shore oil fields, enforcing the
petro-dollar system is equally significant, and seems to be the mainspring for much of our
recent foreign policy militarism. If this system were to unravel, the dollar's value would
tank, and then how could we afford our vast system of military bases which make the world
safe for democracy? Death Star's aren't cheap, ya know.
Anonymous Coward , September 13, 2018 at 10:40 pm
+1 Gerald Wadsworth. It's not necessarily "Oil pure and simple" but "Currency Pure and
Simple." If the US dollar is no longer the world's currency, the US is toast. Also note that
anyone trying to retain control of their currency and not letting "The Market" (private
banks) totally control them is a Great Devil we need to fight, e.g. Libya and China.
And note
(2) that Wall Street is mostly an extension of The City; the UK still thinks it owns the
entire world, and the UK has been owned by the banks ever since it went off tally sticks
MichaelWme , September 13, 2018 at 12:18 pm
It's called the Thucydides trap. NATO (US/UK/France/Turkey) have said they will force
regime change in Syria. Russia says it will not allow regime change in Syria. Fortunately, as
a Frenchman and an Austrian explained many years ago, and NATO experts say is true today,
regime change in Russia is a simple matter, about the same as Libya or Panamá. I
forget the details, but I assume things worked out well for the Frenchman and the Austrian,
and will work out about the same for NATO.
Putin said years ago, and I cannot quote him, but remember most of it, that it doesn't
matter who is the candidate for President, or what his campaign promises are, or how sincere
he is in making them, whenever they get in office, it is always the same policy.
Truer words were never spoken, and it is the reason why I know, at least, that Russia did
not interfere in the US elections. What would be the point, from his viewpoint, and it is not
only just his opinion. You cannot help but see at this point that that he said is obviously
true.
TJ , September 13, 2018 at 1:47 pm
What an excellent point. Why bother influencing the elections when it doesn't matter who
is elected -- the same policies will continue.
Bart Hansen , September 13, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Anastasia, I saved it: From Putin interview with Le Figaro: "I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the
same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is
elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing
dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones.
These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is
what happens with every administration."
rosemerry , September 14, 2018 at 8:02 am
Pres. Putin explained this several times when he was asked about preferring Trump to
Hillary Clinton, and he carefully said that he would accept whoever the US population chose,
he was used to dealing with Hillary and he knew that very little changed between
Administrations. This has been conveniently cast aside by the Dems, and Obama's disgraceful
expulsion of Russian diplomats started the avalanche of Russiagate.
Great to see Patrick Lawrence writing for Consortium News.
He ends his article with: "This is the logic of spoilage as a substitute for foreign
policy. Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global stability.
"
Speaking of consequences, how about the human toll this foreign policy has taken on so
many people in this world. To me, the gravest sin of all.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 8:46 am
I agree with Patric Lawrence when he states "Personalizing Washington's regression into
the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump, deprives one of
deeper understanding." and I also agree that 'Seven decades of global hegemony have left the
State Department, Cold War notwithstanding, left the State Department with little to think
about other than the simplicities of East-West tension.' But I seriously disagree when he
declares that: "The crisis of U.S. foreign policy -- a series of radical missteps -- are
systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the
next with little variance other than at the margins.'' Certainly the missteps are true, but I
would argue that the "personalities" are crucial to America's crisis of Foreign Policy. After
all it was likely that JFK's American University address was the public declaration of his
intention to lead America in the direction of better understanding of Sovereign Rights that
likely got him killed. It is precisely those "personalities" that we must understand and
identify before we can move on
Skip Scott , September 13, 2018 at 9:35 am
Bob-
I see what you're saying, but I believe Patrick is also right.
Many of the people involved
in JFK's murder are now dead themselves, yet the "system" that demands confrontation rather
than cooperation continues. These "personalities" are shills for that system, and if they are
not so willingly, they are either bribed or blackmailed into compliance.
Remember when
"Dubya" ran on a "kinder and gentler nation" foreign policy? Obama's "hope and change" that
became "more of the same"? And now Trump's views on both domestic and foreign policy
seemingly also doing a 180? There are "personalities" behind this "system", and they are
embedded in places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The people that run our banking
system and the global corporate empire demand the whole pie, they would rather blow up the
world than have to share.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 2:42 pm
You're completely right Skip, that's what we all must recognize and ultimately react to,
and against.
Thank you.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:46 pm
I would add that human beings are the key components in this system. The system is built
and shaped by them. Some are greedy, lying predators and some are honest and egalitarian. Bob
Parry was one of the latter, thankfully.
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:30 pm
Skip, very good points. For those interested further, here's an excellent talk on the
bankers behind the manufacutured wars, including the role of the Council on Foreign Relations
as a front organization and control mechanism. "The Shadows of Power; the CFR and decline of America" https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6124&v=wHa1r4nIaug
Joe Tedesky , September 13, 2018 at 9:42 am
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Bob Van Noy , September 13, 2018 at 2:51 pm
Many thanks Joe, I admire your persistence. Clearly Bob Woodward has been part of the
problem rather than the solution. The swamp is deep and murky
JWalters , September 13, 2018 at 6:36 pm
Bob and Joe, here's a solid review of Woodward's book Fear that points out his
consistent service to the oligarchy, including giving Trump a pass for killing the Iran deal.
Interesting background on Woodward in the comments as well.
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/09/woodward-national-security/
The document Gary Cohen removed off Trump's desk –
which you can read here – states an intent to end a free trade agreement with South
Korea.
"White House aides feared if Trump sent the letter, it could jeopardize a top-secret US
program that can detect North Korean missile launches within seven seconds."
Sounds like Trump wanted to play the "I am such a great deal maker, the GREATEST deal
maker of all times!" game with the South Koreans. Letter doesn't say anything about
withdrawing troops or missiles.
Funny how ***TOP-SECRET US PROGRAMS*** find their way into books and newspapers these
days, plentiful as acorns falling out of trees.
You're welcome, Joe. These things get confusing. Who knows anymore what is real and what
isn't?
Trump did indeed say something about ending military exercises and pulling troops out of
South Korea. His staff did indeed contradict him on this. It just wasn't in relation to the
letter Cohn "misplaced," AFAIK.
Nobody asked me, but if they did, I'd say the US interfered enough in Korean affairs by
killing a whole bunch of 'em in the Korean War. Leave'em alone. Let North and South try to
work it out. Tired of hearing about "regime change.'
Bob, you are right. I find it most interesting and sad at the same time that in Woodward's
new book 'Fear' that he describes a pan 'almost tragic incident' whereas Trump wanted to sign
a document removing our missiles and troops out of S Korea, but save for the steady hand of
his 'anonymous' staffers who yanked the document off his presidential desk . wow, close one
there we almost did something to enforce a peace. Can't have that though, we still have lots
to kill in pursue of liberty and freedom and the hegemonic way.
Were these 'anonymous' staffers the grandchildren of the staffers and bureaucracy that
undermined other presidents? Would their grandparents know who the Gunmen were on the grassy
knoll? Did these interrupters of Executive administrations fudge other presidents dreams and
hopes of a peaceful world? And in the end were these instigators rewarded by the war
industries they protected?
The problem is, is that this bureaucracy of war has out balanced any other rival agency,
as diversity of thought and mission is only to be dealt with if it's good for military
purposes. Too much of any one thing can be overbearingly bad for a person, and likewise too
much war means your country is doing something wrong.
Kiwiantz , September 13, 2018 at 8:20 am
Spoiler Nation of America! You got that dead right! China builds infrastructure in other
Countries & doesn't interfere with the citizens & their Sovereignty. Contrast that
with the United Spoiler States of America, they run roughshod over overs & just bomb the
hell out of Countries & leaves devastation & death wherever they go! And there is
something seriously wrong & demented with the US mindset concerning, the attacks on 9/11?
In Syria the US has ended up arming & supporting the very same organisation of Al
QaedaTerrorists, morphed into ISIS, that hijacked planes & flew them into American
targets! During 2017 & now in 2018, it defies belief how warped this US mentality is when
ISIS can so easily & on demand, fake a chemical attack to suck in the stupid American
Military & it's Airforce & get them to attack Syria, like lackeys taking orders from
Terrorist's! The US Airforce is the airforce of Al Qaeda & ISIS! Why? Because the US
can't stomach Russia, Syria & Iran winning & defeating Terrorism thus ending this
Proxy War they started! Russia can't be allowed to win at any cost because the humiliation
& loss of prestige that the US would suffer as a Unipolar Empire would signal the decline
& end of this Hegemonic Empire so they must continue to act as a spoiler to put off that
inevitable decline! America can't face reality that it's time in the sun as the last Empire,
is over!
Sally Snyder , September 13, 2018 at 7:57 am
Here is what Americans really think about the rabid anti-Russia hysteria coming from
Washington:
Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes.
Waynes World , September 13, 2018 at 7:37 am
Finally some words of truth about how we want our way not really democracy. A proper way
to look at the world is what you said toward the end a desire to make people's lives
better.
mike k , September 13, 2018 at 7:14 am
Simply put – the US is the world's biggest bully. This needs to stop. Fortunately
the bully's intended victims are joining together to defeat it's crazy full spectrum
dominance fantasies. Led by Russia and China, we can only hope for the success of the
resistance to US aggression.
This political, economic, military struggle is not the only problem the world is facing
now, but is has some priority due to the danger of nuclear war. Global pollution, climate
disaster, ecological collapse and species extinction must also be urgently dealt with if we
are to have a sustainable existence on Earth.
OlyaPola , September 13, 2018 at 4:39 am
Alpha : "America's three principal adversaries signify the shape of the world to come: a
post-Western world of coexistence. But neoliberal and neocon ideology is unable to to accept
global pluralism and multipolarity, argues Patrick Lawrence."
Omega: "Among its many consequences are countless lost opportunities for global
stability."
Framing is always a limiter of perception.
Among the consequences of the lateral trajectories from Alpha to Omega referenced above,
is the "unintended consequence" of the increase of the principal opponents, their resolve and
opportunities to facilitate the transcendence of arrangements based on coercion by
arrangements based on co-operation.
Opening Pandora's box was/is only perceived as wholly a disadvantage for those seeking to
deny lateral process.
HomoSapiensWannaBe , September 13, 2018 at 8:23 am
John Chuckman,
Wow. Thanks! I have just begun reading your commentaries this week and I am impressed with
how clearly you analyze and summarize key points about many topics.
Thank you so much for writing what are often the equivalent of books, but condensed into
easy to read and digest summaries.
I have ordered your book and look forward to reading that.
I don't know why so many people are having trouble realizing that the United States intends
to make the rules, not follow them, and to be the ultimate arbiter of its own behaviour. And
at its very core, this is an intent that recognizes no equal. Allies are great, America loves
to have them so that it can employ them as it sees fit, but does not recognize their
authority to hold Americans to any standard of conduct. Certainly this does not hold true at
the administrative levels – no American is going to get away with speeding on the
autobahn by saying indignantly, "Of course I wasn't speeding – I'm an AMERICAN!" But
speeding by an individual is hardly a national embarrassment. In any international context,
allies and enemies alike are going to have to just accept that no international rules
supersede American self-regulation, and you'll just have to be good with the concept that
America is scrupulously fair in meting out justice to its own subjects.
Oddly enough, American military members and contractors who are accused of various crimes
– which it stands to reason they committed, since Americans as a society are no better
and no worse than any other social group on the planet – their government elevates
their motivation to patriotism, the defending of home and family values. Presumably these
transcendent laws protect Americans who blast Iraqi civilians off of balconies for the hell
of it, as they did at Nisour Square in 2007. Please note that although eventually four
Blackwater employees were tried and convicted in US Federal Court, (a) it was 7 years after
the fact, (b) only one employee was found guilty of murder, while the remainder pleaded down
to manslaughter and lesser firearms charges which implied they were careless rather than
vicious, (c) 14 of 17 Iraqis killed were agreed by the USA to have been entirely without
cause, and (d) the original conviction was overturned by a US District Judge on the grounds
that all charges against Blackwater had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange
for immunity. The entire process weighed heavily in favour of Iraq just giving up in disgust,
and had it not persevered, there is every reason to believe Blackwater would have escaped any
prosecution. No doubt they were characterized throughout the process as American patriots who
were simply protecting their families and their nation and safeguarding American values.
One of the first moves in a humanitarian or policing mission involving the USA will be the
establishment of a status-of-forces agreement in which American soldiers accused of any crime
must be tried by a US court or under American authority. When American citizens are killed in
such scenarios, such as the four Blackwater contractors killed and whose burnt bodies were
hung from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq, a disproportionate vengeance is enacted which punishes
the whole population.
You all remember what happened to Fallujah; the American-led coalition invaded it twice,
and razed it to the ground in a display of violence that made even US allies nervous.
American contractors in Iraq were earning about $600.00 a day. It is pretty hard to
imagine they were all motivated by patriotism and family values.
@anarchyst I see stuff written about the Vietnam war and it never fails they don't talk
at all about the whole picture. The Vietnam war was a war to stop the spread of Communism in
Southeast Asia. In that aspect it won some and lost some. Vietnam had nothing to do with oil
or Colonialism. Any look at a map would show it's vast strategic location for the Communist.
It has one the best ports in Asia. They talk about Tet defeating us. Nothing could be further
from the truth. It ended forever the Viet Cong in the South. From then on all the attacks
were from the North. The next big attack...
And in Viet Nam the North sent 150,000 men south with as much armor as the Wehrmacht had
in many WW II engagements. That was in 1973, and of that 150,000 fewer than 50,000 men and no
armor returned to the North, at a cost of under 1,000 American casualties. Most would count
that an outstanding victory.
(Alas, in 1975 North Viet Nam had another army of over 100,000 and sent it South; the
Democratic Congress voted our South Vietnamese 20 cartridges and 2 hand grenades per man, but
refused naval and air support; Saigon predictably became Ho Chi Minh city as we pushed
helicopters off the decks of out carriers in our frantic evacuation; but that is hardly the
fault of the US military).
The South lost when they ran out of ammunition. During the time we were fighting in
Vietnam all the other Asian countries with their own Commies attacking them were fighting
also. Many of them won. The ones that fell like Cambodia paid a harsh price. By all
measurement of what we went to Vietnam for we didn't lose. It did stop the spread of
Communism to all Asia. Rarely in any wars do you get all you want.
The Democrat party has been saying that the Vets fought a losing war when in actuality the
Democrats directly are responsible for the loss of South Vietnam. There are only a few
highways leading South and they were packed with tanks and troop transport in 75. It would
have been a complete turkey shoot like the war in Kuwait. We even had battleships at that
time that could have pounded them from the coast. If we would have attacked it would have
probably caused them such a defeat that they would have never attacked again maybe even the
government of the North would have been overthrown by the people for such incompetence.
Unfortunately the Nixon was gone and Ford was directly told if he helped the Vietnamese with
air power he would be impeached.
The idea that the Vietnam vets died for nothing is a huge psyops by the Democrats. The
South had defeated all the guerillas. All they needed was support to hold off the North and
the Democrats sold them out. If the South Vietnamese had not fell it's very likely that the
Cambodian Genocide would have never happened.
The Democrats had said the war was lost so many times that they had to prove it so by
actually losing it.
we were fighting in Vietnam all the other Asian countries with their own Commies
attacking them were fighting also. Many of them won. The ones that fell like Cambodia paid
a harsh price.
On the other hand, the Khmer Rouge victory in Cambodia was precipitated by the U.S.
bombings:
Estimates vary widely on the number of civilian casualites inflicted by the campaign;
however,as many as 500,000 people died as a direct result of the bombings while perhaps
hundreds of thousands more died from the effects of displacement, disease or starvation
during this period.
The Khmer Rouge, previously a marginalized guerrilla group, propagandized the bombing
campaign to great effect; by the CIA's own intelligence estimates, the US bombing campaign
was a key factor in the increase in popular support for the Khmer Rouge rebels. After their
victory in 1975, the Khmer Rouge oversaw a period in which another one-to-two million
Cambodians died from execution, hunger and forced labour.
"... Obama, it turns out, was among the most militaristic White House occupants in American history, taking the imperial presidency to new heights. It has been said that Obama was the only president whose administration was enmeshed in multiple wars from beginning to end. His imperial ventures spanned many countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia along with proxy interventions in Yemen and Pakistan. ..."
"... Obama engineered two of the most brazen regime-change operations of the postwar era, in Libya (2011) and Ukraine (2014), leaving both nations reduced to a state of ongoing civil war and economic ruin. ..."
"... United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric recently decried this violence, noting the indiscriminate shelling by armed groups killing civilians, including children. Not to be outdone, the U.S. (joined by a few European states) issued a statement condemning the violence in Libya, reading in part: "We urge armed groups to immediately cease all military actions and warn those who tamper with security in Tripoli or elsewhere in Libya that they will be held accountable for any such actions." How thoughtful of those very military actors who, with U.N. blessing, brought nothing but endless death and destruction to the Libyan people. ..."
"... In Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin was being demonized as the "new Hitler", real fascists (or at least neo-fascists) were installed in power through the well-planned and generously-funded conspiracy of Obama's neocon functionaries, led by Victoria Nuland and cheered on by such visiting notables as John McCain, Joe Biden, and John Brennan -- all scheming to bring the Kiev regime into the NATO/European Union orbit. The puppet Poroshenko regime has since 2014 been given enough American economic and military largesse to finance its warfare against separatists in the Russian-speaking Donbass region, resulting in more than 10,000 deaths, with no end in sight. Following the gruesome pattern of Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Ukrainian society descends into deepening chaos and violence with no end in sight. ..."
"... It is easy to forget that it was the Obama administration that planned and carried out the first phases of the Mosul operation (begun in October 2016) which produced hundreds of thousands of casualties (with at least 40,000 dead), left a city of two million in Dresden-like state of rubble, and drove nearly a million civilians into exile. The same fate, on smaller scale, was brought to other Sunni-majority cities in Iraq, including Ramadi, Tikrit, and Fallujah (already destroyed by U.S. forces in 2004). Whatever the official goal, and however many secondary collaborators were involved, these were monstrous war crimes by any reckoning. ..."
"... In the months before Obama departed the White House he laid the groundwork for a new, more dangerous, Cold War with Russia. This agenda, negating earlier plans for a "reset" with the Putin government, would be multi-faceted – expanded NATO forces along Russian borders, renewed support for the oligarch Poroshenko in Ukraine, new and harsher economic sanctions, expulsion of diplomats, accelerated cyberwarfare, charges of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Not only has this strategy, eagerly advanced by the Clintonites and their media allies, brought new levels of insanity to American politics, it has left the two nuclear powers menacingly closer to armed confrontation than even at the peak of the Cold War. ..."
"... Obama's contributions to a more robust imperial presidency went further. Collaborating with Israel and Saudi Arabia, he stoked the Syrian civil war by lending "rebel" fighters crucial material, logistical, and military aid for what Clinton – anticipating electoral victory – believed would bring yet another cheerful episode of regime change, this one leaving the U.S. face-to-face with the Russians. During his tenure in office, moreover, Obama would deploy more special-ops troops around the globe (to more than 70 countries) than any predecessor. ..."
Obama, it turns out, was among the most militaristic White House occupants in American
history, taking the imperial presidency to new heights. It has been said that Obama was the
only president whose administration was enmeshed in multiple wars from beginning to end. His
imperial ventures spanned many countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia along
with proxy interventions in Yemen and Pakistan. He ordered nearly 100,000 bombs and
missiles delivered against defenseless targets, a total greater than that of the more
widely-recognized warmonger George W. Bush's total of 70,000 against five countries. Iraq alone
– where U.S. forces were supposed to have been withdrawn – was recipient of 41,000
bombs and missiles along with untold amounts of smaller ordnance. Meanwhile, throughout his
presidency Obama conducted hundreds of drone attacks in the Middle East, more than doubling
Bush's total, all run jointly (and covertly) by the CIA and Air Force.
Obama engineered two of the most brazen regime-change operations of the postwar era, in
Libya (2011) and Ukraine (2014), leaving both nations reduced to a state of ongoing civil war
and economic ruin. For the past seven years Libya has been overrun by an assortment of
militias, jihadic groups, and local strongmen – predictable result of the U.S./NATO
bombing offensive to destroy the secular nationalist (and modernizing) Kadafi regime. This was
purportedly Secretary of State Clinton's biggest moment of glory, her imperialist gloating on
full display following Kadafi's assassination. As this is written conditions in Libya worsen by
the day, reports surfacing of hundreds of people killed during violent clashes in the suburbs
of Tripoli as rival militias fight for control of the capital. Militias now exercise control
over ports, airfields, and much of the oil infrastructure. More tens of thousands of Libyans
are being forced from their homes, a development greeted with silence at CNN and kindred media
outlets.
United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric recently decried this violence, noting the
indiscriminate shelling by armed groups killing civilians, including children. Not to be
outdone, the U.S. (joined by a few European states) issued a statement condemning the violence
in Libya, reading in part: "We urge armed groups to immediately cease all military actions and
warn those who tamper with security in Tripoli or elsewhere in Libya that they will be held
accountable for any such actions." How thoughtful of those very military actors who, with U.N.
blessing, brought nothing but endless death and destruction to the Libyan people.
In Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin was being demonized as the "new Hitler", real fascists (or
at least neo-fascists) were installed in power through the well-planned and generously-funded
conspiracy of Obama's neocon functionaries, led by Victoria Nuland and cheered on by such
visiting notables as John McCain, Joe Biden, and John Brennan -- all scheming to bring the Kiev
regime into the NATO/European Union orbit. The puppet Poroshenko regime has since 2014 been
given enough American economic and military largesse to finance its warfare against separatists
in the Russian-speaking Donbass region, resulting in more than 10,000 deaths, with no end in
sight. Following the gruesome pattern of Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Ukrainian society
descends into deepening chaos and violence with no end in sight.
It is easy to forget that it was the Obama administration that planned and carried out
the first phases of the Mosul operation (begun in October 2016) which produced hundreds of
thousands of casualties (with at least 40,000 dead), left a city of two million in Dresden-like
state of rubble, and drove nearly a million civilians into exile. The same fate, on smaller
scale, was brought to other Sunni-majority cities in Iraq, including Ramadi, Tikrit, and
Fallujah (already destroyed by U.S. forces in 2004). Whatever the official goal, and however
many secondary collaborators were involved, these were monstrous war crimes by any
reckoning.
After calling for a nuclear-free world (and receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for that promise),
Obama reversed course and embarked on the most ambitious U.S. nuclear upgrading since the early
1950s – the same project inherited by Trump. Speaking in Prague in 2009, the president
called for total abolition of nukes, saying "the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of
those [nuclear] weapons have not . . . Our efforts to contain these dangers [must be] centered
on a global non-proliferation regime." A laudable objective to be sure. But for a price tag of
one trillion dollars (over two decades), Obama decided to create new missile delivery systems,
expand the arsenal of tactical warheads, and fund a new cycle of bombers and submarines –
all with little political or media notice. These initiatives violated the Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty prohibiting such moves, while essentially blocking any genuine efforts
toward nuclear reduction and nonproliferation.
In the months before Obama departed the White House he laid the groundwork for a new,
more dangerous, Cold War with Russia. This agenda, negating earlier plans for a "reset" with
the Putin government, would be multi-faceted – expanded NATO forces along Russian
borders, renewed support for the oligarch Poroshenko in Ukraine, new and harsher economic
sanctions, expulsion of diplomats, accelerated cyberwarfare, charges of Russian interference in
the 2016 elections. Not only has this strategy, eagerly advanced by the Clintonites and their
media allies, brought new levels of insanity to American politics, it has left the two nuclear
powers menacingly closer to armed confrontation than even at the peak of the Cold War.
Obama's contributions to a more robust imperial presidency went further. Collaborating
with Israel and Saudi Arabia, he stoked the Syrian civil war by lending "rebel" fighters
crucial material, logistical, and military aid for what Clinton – anticipating electoral
victory – believed would bring yet another cheerful episode of regime change, this one
leaving the U.S. face-to-face with the Russians. During his tenure in office, moreover, Obama
would deploy more special-ops troops around the globe (to more than 70 countries) than any
predecessor.
Many liberals and more than a few progressives – not to mention large sectors of the
media intelligentsia -- will find it difficult to reconcile the picture of an aggressively
imperialist Obama with the more familiar image of a thoughtful, articulate politician who laced
his talks with references to peace, arms control, and human rights. But this very dualism best
corresponds to the historical reality. In his book The Obama Syndrome
, Tariq Ali writes: "From Palestine through Iraq, Obama has acted as just another steward
of the American empire, pursuing the same aims as his predecessors, with the same means but
with more emollient rhetoric." He adds: "Historically, the model for the current variant of
imperial presidency is Woodrow Wilson, no less pious a Christian, whose every second word was
peace, democracy, or self-determination, while his armies invaded Mexico, occupied Haiti, and
attacked Russia [yes, Russia!], and his treaties handed one colony after another to his
partners in war. Obama is a hand-me-down version of the same, without even Fourteen Points to
betray."
As the 2018 midterm elections approach, Obama has chosen to depart from historical norm and
go on the attack against a Trump presidency viewed as signifying all that is evil. A Democratic
victory would reject Trump's "dark vision of the the nation and restore honesty, decency, and
lawfulness to the American government". In his first speech Obama said that orchestrated public
fear has created conditions "ripe for exploitation by politicians who have no compunction and
no shame about tapping into America's dark history of racial and ethnic and religious
division." Does Obama need to be reminded that such "dark history" also includes militarism and
imperialism?
Whatever one's view of the Trump phenomenon in its totality, the amount of death and
destruction he has brought to the world does not (yet) come close to Obama's record of warfare,
drone strikes, regime changes, military provocations, and global deployments. If neocon
interests have come to shape U.S. foreign policy, those interests have so far been more fully
embraced by Obama and the Clintonites than by Trump, despite the scary presence of Trump's
hawkish circle of lieutenants. Unfortunately, Obama's eight years of imperial aggression
elicited strikingly few liberal or progressive voices of dissent across the political and media
terrain. He enjoyed nearly complete immunity from protest at a time when even the smallest
vestiges of a once-vigorous American antiwar movement had disappeared from the scene.
CARL BOGGS is the author of several recent books, including Fascism Old and New
(2018), Origins of the Warfare State (2016), and Drugs, Power, and Politics (2015). He can be
reached at [email protected].
May 28, 2018 - A Memorial to the Great War Disaster
Books about World War I are not popular in the USA because they are depressing. The
world's great European powers destroyed a generation of men in pointless bloody battles. Few
Americans realize that World War I was America's worst foreign policy blunder that killed
millions and set the stage for World War II.
When the "Great War" began in 1914, royals and generals hoped for swift victories.
However, advances in technology, mostly machine guns and rapid fire artillery, allowed
concentrated firepower to annihilate attacking formations. The war in France bogged down into
a bloody stalemate and the construction of fortified positions ensured that any offensive
would grind to a stop. The king of England and Germany were first cousins who grew up
together, so a peaceful resolution was likely in 1916.
The problem was that British bankers had loaned its government lots of money and most
could not be repaid. They wanted to win the war so they could loot Germany by requiring
Germans to pay reparations so the British government could repay them. If they could lure the
powerful USA to join the war, victory was assured. They blocked peace efforts and used their
agents of influence to manipulate the USA into joining the war. Soon after President Wilson
was elected with the promise to stay out the war, he worked with Congress to declare war.
As a result, the war dragged on for two more bloody years before enough American men and
material arrived in France to turn the tide. The war was unpopular back home, leading Wilson
to censor the US mail by blocking anti-war newsletters and magazines. He threw thousands of
political opponents in jail, implemented a draft to fill out the Army, and sent these
reluctant Americans into battle with little training and poor equipment. The Americans fought
bravely, but the Germans had three years of combat experience and chewed up American units
foolishly thrown into frontal attacks that had little chance of success. After four years of
war, the Germans had no more manpower to replace losses, and surrendered based on a just
peace promised by President Wilson. That never happened and Germany was looted and
humiliated, which led to the rise of the Nazis and World War II.
So this Memorial Day, remember the 116,516 Americans President Wilson killed in that
senseless war. Moreover, the American intervention extended the war and resulted in World War
II. American GIs slaughter Germans so British bankers could collect debts, with interest! I
was inspired to write this blog post after reading the brilliant David Stockman's recent
essay about America's disastrous intervention in World War I.
https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2018/05/16/why-the-empire-never-sleeps-the-indispensable-nation-folly-part-2/
I have to agree with much of what stated in his reply. But I would like to also add my own
in-depth notes
I tend to concentrate my military studies on World War I (in addition to the "War for
Southern Independence" and the inter-war years (1919-1939)). And as everyone here has
concluded, World War I was an abomination of an atrocity.
Professor Bacevich, a man I have great respect for, did however make some minor but
critical errors in this piece.
Kaiser Wilhelm had no desire to enter into a world conflagration. When he realized that
events were spinning out of control, he did everything in his power to contact his cousin,
the Russian Czar, to request that Russian Mobilization be halted, the actual cause of the
start of the conflict. Due to the fact that diplomacy, unlike the military (which had adopted
wireless and wired communications), was still using traditional methods of face-to-face
discussion or formal letters for diplomacy, the Kaiser was unable to get through to his
cousin in time to stop what the Czar most likely could not halt in any event. Mobilization of
forces at the time had taken on a life of their own due to the technologies of modernized
train transport.
In 1915 or 1916, the German high command attempted to offer to negotiate peace with
Britain and France but Britain, with the war being run basically by Churchill (a warmonger of
the first order) refused to talk to the Germans, since he loathed them for whatever
reasons.
The war was won by Germany in the winter of 1917 at which point the megalomaniacal Woodrow
Wilson pushed the US into the conflict with his god-like notion that he could create peace on
Earth. The man was truly clinically insane (but functional) as much recent documentation has
attested to (see the late Thomas Fleming's, "Illusion of Victory" for a thrill ride through
Wilson's addled thinking).
Had the US not entered the war, there would have been an amenable peace developed in 1917
among the European belligerents. And probably as a result, no World War II.
England was the cause of the war indirectly with her centuries old "balance of power"
politics applied to continental Europe. In this vein, fearful of the loss of her dominance on
the high seas as a result of the Kaiser's excellent buildup of the Kaiserliche Marine
(Imperial Navy), which in turn would threaten her empire, the British military started to
collude with the French military, I believe as early as 1906, to develop joint operational
plans in case of war with Germany. This latter of course, the British were very much hoping
would happen. And with Churchill being one of the most influential cabinet members on the
matter, there was little doubt that Britain would need very little pretext to enter a
conflict.
However, it was France's alliance with Russia that was directly responsible for the
initiation of the entire conflagration. This alliance was centered upon loans to Russia from
France for Russian domestic development and French fears that if Germany attacked her she
would be left on her own to defend herself. Russia agreed in principal to ally herself with
France but used the French loans instead to rebuild her military (though it did her little
good against superior German arms).
Germany, bound in alliance with Austro-Hungary, did in fact support Austria's punitive
strike into Serbia and provided what some have called a "blank check", which provided for
military and financial support as a result of the alliance. Austria's military, one which had
a very spotty historical record of being on and off again as far as quality was concerned,
was definitively off in 1914 and was summarily defeated by superior Serbian Forces.
Franz-Josef of Austria had no expectation of a world war when he committed Austria to such
an incursion into Serbian territory and by that time no else did either as a result of the
assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand since royal assassinations had become pretty common
place in Europe from 1880 onward. However, on the Austrian side we have general Conrad von
Hotzendorf to thank for this strike at Serbia. He hated Serbia probably as much as Churchill
hated the Germans but Conrad had good reason to since the Balkan nation was always causing
all sorts of problems on the Austro-Hungarian borders. Unfortunately, Conrad was not all that
good a military man and cost Austrian hundreds of thousands of combatant deaths during the
conflict.
As a result, this assassination, a real non-event, has been touted to school children ever
since as the cause of World War I. In reality, it was simply window dressing for idiots in
the US educational system to latch onto.
The reaction of Russia to the attack on Serbia was to fully mobilize her military, which
up through World War II has always been seen as an imminent sign of war.
This automatically dragged France into war, which in turn dragged England as a result of
the secret military partnership. Austria then was forced to follow suit and formally declare
war, which brought the final player into the conflict, Germany, who with the exception of
some in the German high command really had questions about engaging in such a widening war,
which was supposed to be a localized conflict.
Seeing that there was no hope to ending the conflict on amenable terms, the Kaiser
abdicated in 1918 and fled for the Royal Netherlands where he was taken in and granted
political asylum. However, by this time General Ludendorf had become a de-facto military
dictator of Germany. And though both he and his senior military aide. Max Hoffman, , who did
the majority of the planning, developed superior battlefield strategy, Ludendorf's political
decisions caused untold problems for the German social infrastructure, some of which was a
reaction to the new pressures that US Forces were finally bringing to bare on German
arms.
The original number of deaths for World War I began at around ten million but had been
upgraded over the years to around twenty million. However, this does not take into account
the highly damaging effects of what would become known as the Spanish Flu in 1918. Recent
research into this aspect of the war is now postulating of up to sixty million deaths all
told.
The Spanish Flu was actually a very mild flu; not the devastating epidemic that again
idiot educators and historians have touted over the years. What made this particular strain
of Flu so devastating was not the virus itself but the need for adequate health-care and
recovery. However, within the field armies that were facing each other, the deprivations that
the war had brought to continental Europe, and the very poorly developed 33 US training camps
in the States, affected personnel and civilian populace did not have the proper facilities
and health-care required to allow them to recover quickly and properly from this disease. The
result was that patients lingered in terrible conditions making recovery impossible and
allowing death to ensue.
Finally, it was not just British bankers who wanted their loans paid back but the US banks
desired it as well for their own loans; a first in the annals of military history between
allies. However, the Wilson Administration never considered the US an ally to Britain or
France. It instead viewed itself as an "associated nation", whatever that meant. However,
Wilson was famously known for his ridiculous vagueness and slogans ("saving the world for
democracy", which even at the time no one could quite figure out the meaning of). As a
result, the US would not sign a peace agreement until 1922.
The World Wars (I and II) can be seen as an increasingly desperate attempt of a fading
British Empire to hold on to and maintain its power and hegemony, with the material, human,
and moral cost of the wars actually accelerating the empire's demise.
Likewise, the current endless "War on Terra" can be seen as an increasingly desperate
attempt of a fading American Empire to hold on to and maintain its power and hegemony, again
with the material, human, and moral cost of this war actually accelerating its demise.
But in the meantime, in both examples, the Bankers and the MIC just keep reaping their
profits, even at the expense of the empires they purportedly support and defend.
'There has never been a just [war], never an honorable one–on the part of the
instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so
many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful–as usual–will shout for
the war. The pulpit will– warily and cautiously–object–at first; the great,
big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be
a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is
no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side
will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing
and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently
the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this
curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of
furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers–as
earlier– but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation–pulpit and
all– will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who
ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen
will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man
will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and
refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that
the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of
grotesque self-deception'.
- Satan, in Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger" (1908)
Today, Washington need not even bother to propagandize the public into supporting its
war. By and large, members of the public are indifferent to its very existence. And given
our reliance on a professional military, shooting citizen-soldiers who want to opt out of
the fight is no longer required.
Yep, I was looking for a quote like this. We have a mercenary military now so the ruling
elite can send them anywhere they want with little agitation from the general public. That's
why I advised my son not to join, not that he was leaning in that direction anyway.
(Grin)
I posted this in another thread, but here it is more appropriate:
That's what happens when hubris replaces strategy. In the US today only MIC has a strategy:
produce any fakes necessary to keep the gravy train rolling. The leadership of the country is
wholly owned by MIC and allied forces (AIPAC is one of those) and mostly resembles biblical
blind lead by the blind
Andrew J. Bacevich is hard at work writing a book about how we got Donald J. Trump.
Buying his book would be a waste of money I can tell you for free.
Trump was elected out of the sheer desperation of a large number of Americans fed up to
death with a corrupt government and noxious [neo]liberalism. period.
Unfortunately he was a fraud ..but the most desperate are still clinging, hoping against
hope.
No, it's not the generals who have let us down, but the politicians to whom they
supposedly report and from whom they nominally take their orders.
I'd say both. The generals have greatly assisted in stringing along the trusting public,
always promising that victory is just around the corner, provided the public supports this or
that final effort. Petraeus in particular willingly played his part in misleading the public
about both Iraq and Afghanistan. His career would be a great case study for illuminating what
is wrong with the U.S. today.
As to the apparent failure of the Afghanistan war – one must be careful to separate
stated goals from real ones. What kind of "lasting success" can the U.S. possibly hope for
there? If they managed to defeat the Taliban, pacify the country, install a puppet regime to
govern it, and then leave, what would that achieve? The puppet regime would find itself
surrounded by powers antagonistic to the U.S., and the puppets would either cooperate with
them or be overthrown in no time. The U.S. are not interested in winning and leaving –
they want to continue disrupting the peaceful integration of East, West, and South Asia.
Afghanistan is ideally placed for this purpose, and so the U.S. are quite content with
dragging out that war, as a pretext for their continued presence in the region.
I would disagree on one point though: "Today, Washington need not even bother to
propagandize the public into supporting its war. By and large, members of the public are
indifferent to its very existence."
This is an error. A majority of the American public think that wasting trillions of
dollars on endless pointless foreign wars is a stupid idea, and they think that we would be
better off spending that money on ourselves. It's just that we don't live in a democracy, and
the corporate press constantly ignores the issue. But just because the press doesn't mention
something, doesn't mean that it does not exist.
So during the last presidential election Donald Trump echoed this view, why are we
throwing away all this money on stupid wars when we need that money at home? For this he was
attacked as a fascist and "literally Hitler" (really! It's jaw-dropping when you think about
it). Despite massive propaganda attacking Trump, and a personal style that could charitably
be called a jackass, Trump won the election in large part because indeed most American don't
like the status quo.
After the election, Trump started to deliver on his promises – and he was quickly
beaten down, his pragmatist nationalist advisors purged and replaced with defense-industry
chickenhawks, and now we are back to the old status quo. The public be damned.
No, the American people are not being propagandized into supporting these wars. They are
simply being ignored.
When are you going to stop insulting our intelligence with this Boy's State civics crap?
You're calling on political leaders to stop war, like they don't remember what CIA did to
JFK, RFK, Daschle, or Leahy. Or Paul Wellstone.
Your national command structure, CIA, has impunity for universal jurisdiction crime. They
can kill or torture anyone they want and get away with it. That is what put them in charge.
CIA kills anybody who gets in their way. You fail to comprehend Lenin's lesson: first destroy
the regime, then you can refrain from use of force. Until you're ready to take on CIA, your
bold phrases are silent and odorless farts of feckless self-absorption. Sack up and imprison
CIA SIS or GTFO.
I would disagree on one point though: "Today, Washington need not even bother to
propagandize the public into supporting its war. By and large, members of the public are
indifferent to its very existence."
This is an error. A majority of the American public think that wasting trillions of
dollars on endless pointless foreign wars is a stupid idea, and they think that we would be
better off spending that money on ourselves. It's just that we don't live in a democracy, and
the corporate press constantly ignores the issue. But just because the press doesn't mention
something, doesn't mean that it does not exist.
So during the last presidential election Donald Trump echoed this view, why are we
throwing away all this money on stupid wars when we need that money at home? For this he was
attacked as a fascist and "literally Hitler" (really! It's jaw-dropping when you think about
it). Despite massive propaganda attacking Trump, and a personal style that could charitably
be called a jackass, Trump won the election in large part because indeed most American don't
like the status quo.
After the election, Trump started to deliver on his promises - and he was quickly beaten
down, his pragmatist nationalist advisors purged and replaced with defense-industry
chickenhawks, and now we are back to the old status quo. The public be damned.
No, the American people are not being propagandized into supporting these wars. They are
simply being ignored. While I agree the slave-American is ignored, I think the elected,
salaried members of the elected government are also ignored.. The persons in charge are
Pharaohs and massively powerful global in scope corporations.
Abe Lincoln, McKinnley, Kennedy discovered that fact in their fate.
Organized Zionism was copted by the London bankers and their corporations 1897, since then
a string of events have emerged.. that like a Submarine, seeking a far off target, it must
divert to avoid being discovered, but soon, Red October returns to its intended path. here
the path is to take the oil from the Arabs.. and the people driving that submarine are
extremely wealthy Pharaohs and very well known major corporations.
I suggest to quit talking about the nation states and their leaders as if either could
beat their way out of a wet paper sack. instead starting talking about the corporations and
Pharaohs because they are global.
" The United States of
Amnesia ." That's what Gore Vidal once called us. We remember what we find it convenient to
remember and forget everything else. That forgetfulness especially applies to the history of
others. How could their past, way back when, have any meaning for us today?
Well, it just might. Take the European conflagration of 1914-1918, for example.
You may not have noticed. There's no reason why you should have, fixated as we all are on
the daily torrent of presidential tweets and the flood of mindless rejoinders they elicit. But
let me note for the record that the centenary of the conflict once known as The Great War is
well underway and before the present year ends will have concluded.
Indeed, a hundred years ago this month, the 1918 German Spring Offensive -- codenamed
Operation Michael -- was sputtering to an unsuccessful conclusion. A last desperate German
gamble, aimed at shattering Allied defenses and gaining a decisive victory, had fallen short.
In early August of that year, with large numbers of our own doughboys now on the front lines, a
massive Allied counteroffensive was to commence, continuing until the eleventh hour
of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when an armistice finally took effect and the guns
fell silent.
In the years that followed, Americans demoted The Great War. It became World War I, vaguely
related to but overshadowed by the debacle next in line, known as World War II. Today, the
average citizen knows little about that earlier conflict other than that it preceded and
somehow paved the way for an even more brutal bloodletting. Also, on both occasions, the bad
guys spoke German.
So, among Americans, the war of 1914-1918 became a neglected stepsister of sorts, perhaps in
part because the United States only got around to suiting up for that conflict about halfway
through the fourth quarter. With the war of 1939-1945 having been sacralized as the moment when
the Greatest Generation saved humankind, the war-formerly-known-as-The-Great-War collects dust
in the bottom drawer of American collective consciousness.
From time to time, some politician or newspaper columnist will resurrect the file labeled
"August 1914," the grim opening weeks of that war, and sound off about the dangers of
sleepwalking into a devastating conflict that nobody wants or understands. Indeed, with
Washington today having become a carnival of buncombe
so sublimely preposterous that even that great journalistic iconoclast H.L. Mencken might have
been struck dumb, ours is perhaps an apt moment for just such a reminder.
Yet a different aspect of World War I may possess even greater relevance to the American
present. I'm thinking of its duration: the longer it lasted, the less sense it made. But on it
went, impervious to human control like the sequence of Biblical plagues that God had inflicted on the
ancient Egyptians.
So the relevant question for our present American moment is this: once it becomes apparent
that a war is a mistake, why would those in power insist on its perpetuation, regardless of
costs and consequences? In short, when getting in turns out to have been a bad idea,
why is getting out so difficult, even (or especially) for powerful nations that
presumably should be capable of exercising choice on such matters? Or more bluntly, how did the
people in charge during The Great War get away with inflicting such extraordinary damage on the
nations and peoples for which they were responsible?
For those countries that endured World War I from start to finish -- especially Great
Britain, France, and Germany -- specific circumstances provided their leaders with an excuse
for suppressing second thoughts about the cataclysm they had touched off.
Among them were:
mostly compliant civilian populations deeply loyal to some version of
King and Country, further kept in line by unremitting
propaganda that minimized dissent; draconian discipline -- deserters and malingerers faced
firing squads -- that
maintained order in the ranks (most of the time) despite the unprecedented scope of the
slaughter; the comprehensive industrialization of war, which ensured a seemingly endless supply
of the weaponry, munitions, and other equipment necessary for outfitting mass conscript armies
and replenishing losses as they occurred.
Economists would no doubt add sunk costs to the mix. With so much treasure already
squandered and so many lives already lost, the urge to press on a bit longer in hopes of
salvaging at least some meager benefit in return for what (and who) had been done in was
difficult to resist.
Even so, none of these, nor any combination of them, can adequately explain why, in the
midst of an unspeakable orgy of self-destruction, with staggering losses and nations in ruin,
not one monarch or president or premier had the wit or gumption to declare: Enough! Stop this
madness!
Instead, the politicians sat on their hands while actual authority devolved onto the likes
of British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, French Marshals Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Petain,
and German commanders Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. In other words, to solve a
conundrum they themselves had created, the politicians of the warring states all deferred to
their warrior chieftains. For their part, the opposing warriors jointly subscribed to a
perverted inversion of strategy best summarized by Ludendorff
as "punch a hole [in the front] and let the rest follow." And so the conflict dragged on and
on.
The Forfeiture of Policy
Put simply, in Europe, a hundred years ago, war had become politically purposeless. Yet the
leaders of the world's principal powers -- including
Allow me to suggest that the United States should consider taking a page out of Lenin's
playbook. Granted, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, such a suggestion might
have smacked of treason. Today, however, in the midst of our
never-ending efforts to expunge terrorism, we might look to Lenin for guidance on how to
get our priorities straight.
As was the case with Great Britain, France, and Germany a century ago, the United States now
finds itself mired in a senseless war. Back then, political leaders in London, Paris, and
Berlin had abrogated control of basic policy to warrior chieftains. Today, ostensibly
responsible political leaders in Washington have done likewise. Some of those latter-day
American warrior chieftains who gather in the White House or testify on Capitol Hill may wear
suits rather than uniforms, but all remain enamored with the twenty-first-century equivalent of
Ludendorff's notorious dictum.
Of course, our post-9/11 military enterprise -- the undertaking once known as the Global War
on Terrorism -- differs from The Great War in myriad ways. The ongoing hostilities in which
U.S. forces are involved in various parts of the Islamic world do not qualify, even
metaphorically, as "great." Nor will there be anything great about an
armed conflict with Iran , should members of the current administration get their
apparent
wish to provoke one.
Today, Washington need not even bother to propagandize the public into supporting its war.
By and large, members of the public are indifferent to its very existence. And given our
reliance on a professional military, shooting citizen-soldiers who want to opt out of the fight
is no longer required.
There are also obvious differences in scale, particularly when it comes to the total number
of casualties involved. Cumulative deaths from the various U.S. interventions, large and small,
undertaken since 9/11, number in the hundreds of thousands . The precise tally
of those lost during the European debacle of 1914-1918 will never be known, but the total
probably surpassed
13 million .
Even so, similarities between the Great War as it unspooled and our own
not-in-the-least-great war(s) deserve consideration. Today, as then, strategy -- that is, the
principled use of power to achieve the larger interests of the state -- has ceased to exist.
Indeed, war has become an excuse for ignoring the absence of strategy.
For years now, U.S. military officers and at least some national security aficionados have
referred to ongoing military hostilities as " the Long War ." To describe our conglomeration of
spreading conflicts as "long" obviates any need to suggest when or under what circumstances (if
any) they might actually end. It's like the meteorologist forecasting a "long winter" or the
betrothed telling his or her beloved that theirs will be a "long engagement." The implicit
vagueness is not especially encouraging.
Some high-ranking officers of late have offered a more forthright explanation of what "long"
may really mean. In the Washington Post , the journalist Greg Jaffe
recently reported that "winning for much of the U.S. military's top brass has come to be
synonymous with staying put." Winning, according to Air Force General Mike Holmes, is simply
"not losing. It's staying in the game."
Not so long ago, America's armed forces adhered to a concept called victory , which
implied conclusive, expeditious, and economical mission accomplished. No more. Victory
, it turns out, is too tough to achieve, too restrictive, or, in the words of Army
Lieutenant General Michael Lundy, "too absolute." The United States military now grades itself
instead on a curve. As Lundy puts it, "winning is more of a continuum," an approach that allows
you to claim mission accomplishment without, you know, actually accomplishing anything.
It's like soccer for six-year-olds. Everyone tries hard so everyone gets a trophy.
Regardless of outcomes, no one goes home feeling bad. In the U.S. military's case, every
general gets a medal (or, more likely, a
chest full of them).
"These days," in the Pentagon, Jaffe writes, "senior officers talk about 'infinite
war.'"
I would like to believe that Jaffe is pulling our leg. But given that he's a conscientious
reporter with excellent sources, I fear he knows what he's talking about. If he's right, as far
as the top brass are concerned, the Long War has now officially gone beyond long. It has been
deemed endless and is accepted as such by those who preside over its conduct.
Strategic Abomination
In truth, infinite war is a strategic abomination, an admission of professional military
bankruptcy. Erster General-Quartiermeister Ludendorff might have endorsed the term,
but Ludendorff was a military fanatic.
Check that. Infinite war is a strategic abomination except for arms merchants, so-called
defense contractors, and the " emergency
men " (and women) devoted to climbing the greasy pole of what we choose to call the
national security establishment. In other words, candor obliges us to acknowledge that, in some
quarters, infinite war is a pure positive, carrying with it a promise of yet more profits,
promotions, and opportunities to come. War keeps the gravy train rolling. And, of course,
that's part of the problem.
Who should we hold accountable for this abomination? Not the generals, in my view. If they
come across as a dutiful yet unimaginative lot, remember that a lifetime of military service
rarely nurtures imagination or creativity. And let us at least credit our generals with this:
in their efforts to liberate or democratize or pacify or dominate the Greater Middle East they
have tried every military tactic and technique imaginable. Short of nuclear annihilation,
they've played just about every card in the Pentagon's deck -- without coming up with a winning
hand. So they come and go at regular intervals, each new commander promising success and
departing after a couple years to
make way for someone else to give it a try.
It tells us something about our prevailing standards of generalship that, by resurrecting an
old idea -- counterinsurgency -- and applying it with temporary success to one particular
theater of war, General David Petraeus acquired a reputation as a military genius. If Petraeus
is a military genius, so, too, is General George McClellan. After winning the Battle of Rich
Mountain in 1861, newspapers
dubbed McClellan "the Napoleon of the Present War." But the action at Rich Mountain decided
nothing and McClellan didn't win the Civil War any more than Petraeus won the Iraq War.
No, it's not the generals who have let us down, but the politicians to whom they supposedly
report and from whom they nominally take their orders. Of course, under the heading of
politician, we quickly come to our current commander-in-chief. Yet it would be manifestly
unfair to blame President Trump for the mess he inherited, even if he is presently engaged in
making matters worse .
The failure is a collective one, to which several presidents and both political parties have
contributed over the years. Although the carnage may not be as horrific today as it was on the
European battlefields on the Western and Eastern Fronts, members of our political class are
failing us as strikingly and repeatedly as the political leaders of Great Britain, France, and
Germany failed their peoples back then. They have abdicated responsibility for policy to our
own homegrown equivalents of Haig, Foch, Petain, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff. Their failure is
unforgivable.
Congressional midterm elections are just months away and another presidential election
already looms. Who will be the political leader with the courage and presence of mind to
declare: "Enough! Stop this madness!" Man or woman, straight or gay, black, brown, or white,
that person will deserve the nation's gratitude and the support of the electorate.
The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in
an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would
prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.
With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how
best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money
or more power...
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty
guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for
monopoly and vested interest.
Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is
directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power
of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
Real reason for western elite hatred of Russia is that it has destroyed neo con dreams of
full spectrum dominance in military affairs. Doubt US would have invaded Iraq in 2003 if
Russian military was as strong then as it us today.
In all areas held by jihadis the most difficult issue was how to blow them up and not the
civilians they were holding hostage. The Syrian and Russian strategy has been from the start
to let the jihadis do their thing, wait, never escalate but negotiate, so as to avoid
civilian casualties. This strategy has worked to win the war, and seems to be the same one
they're following in Idlib. In contrast to previous hawkish threats by FUKUS and Nato, the
propaganda mills are churning out much milder fare than previously. The Israelis have started
admitting they were supporting '12' terror groups in Syria, and French ex foreign minister of
defense, now 'minister for Europe and foreign affairs' Jean-Yves Le Drian, has declared that
Nato has lost the war, but Assad has not 'won the peace'. Assad and Putin have learnt the
lesson long ago, that they cannot negotiate with terrorists like Le Drian, and are better off
negotiating with Erdogan, AlQaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.
"... F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook" ..."
Perhaps they had a chance back during the Obama days when Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton proposed her amusing "Reset" in USA-Russia relations to the new Medvedew Presidency
following Putin's rotation to the seat of Prime Minister in March 2009. Had Washington been a
bit more perceptive and offered serious alternatives, it is conceivable that Washington would
today have a geopolitical isolation of their second major problem on the Eurasian Continent,
namely, the Peoples' Republic of China. Recently the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe
and Eurasia, Wess Mitchell, testified to the Senate where he candidly revealed the true reasons
for current Washington and London campaigns and sanctions against Russia. It has nothing to do
with faked allegations of US election interference; it has nothing to do with poorly-staged
false flag poisoning of the Russian Skripals. It's far more fundamental and takes us back to
the era before the First World War more than a century ago.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 21 August, Wess Mitchell, the
successor to Victoria Nuland, gave an extraordinarily honest statement of real US geopolitical
strategy towards Russia. It revealed a bit more honesty apparently than the US State Department
wanted, because they quickly sanitized their published version on the department website.
Censored!
In his opening remarks to the Senate committee members Mitchell stated:
"The starting point of the National Security Strategy is the recognition that America has
entered a period of big-power competition, and that past US policies have neither sufficiently
grasped the scope of this emerging trend nor adequately equipped our nation to succeed in
it.
Then he continues with the following extraordinary admission:
"Contrary to the hopeful assumptions of previous administrations, Russia and China are
serious competitors that are building up the material and ideological wherewithal to contest US
primacy and leadership in the 21st Century. It continues to be among the foremost national
security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by
hostile powers. The central aim of the administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation
to confront this challenge by systematically strengthening the military, economic and political
fundaments of American power."
In the State Department's later sanitized
version, the original text, "It continues to be among the foremost national security interests
of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers." And
the sentence, "The central aim of the administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation
to confront this challenge by systematically strengthening the military, economic and political
fundaments of American power," mysteriously were deleted. Because it was formal testimony
presented to the Senate, however, the Senate version remains true to his original text, at
least of 7 September, 2018. The State Department has been caught in a huge
blunder.
If we pause to reflect on the meaning behind the words of Wess Mitchell, it's pretty crude
and wholly illegal in terms of the UN Charter, though Washington today seems to have forgotten
that solemn document. Mitchell says US national security priority is to, " prevent the
domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers." He clearly means powers hostile to
efforts of Washington and NATO to dominate Eurasia, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union
more than a quarter century ago.
But, wait. Mitchell earlier cites the two dominant powers who combined, he says, are the
current prime foe of US global control. Mitchell states explicitly, "Russia and China are
serious competitors that are building up the material and ideological wherewithal to contest US
primacy and leadership." But US control of Eurasia then means US control of Russia, China and
environs. Eurasia is their land space. The Wess Mitchell Senate declaration is a kind of
obscene global rollout of the 19th Century USA Monroe Doctrine: Eurasia is ours and "hostile
powers" such as China or Russia who try to interfere in their own sovereign space, become de
facto "enemy." Then the formulation "building up the material and ideological wherewithal "
What's that supposed to mean as justification for Washington policy to prepare a military
response? Both nations are energetically moving, despite repeated Western economic warfare, to
build their economic infrastructure independent of NATO control. That is understandable. But
Mitchell admits it is for Washington Casus Belli.
To realize what a strategic blunder the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian
Affairs made with that one careless sentence and why the State Department rushed to delete his
remarks, a brief excursion into basic Anglo-American geopolitical doctrine is useful. Here,
discussion of the worldview of the godfather of geopolitics, British geographer Sir Halford
Mackinder is essential. In 1904 in a speech before the Royal Geographical Society in London,
Mackinder, a firm advocate of Empire, presented what is arguably one of the most influential
documents in world foreign policy of the past two hundred years since the Battle of Waterloo.
His short speech was titled "The Geographical Pivot of History."
Russia and Eurasian Pivot
Mackinder divided the world into two primary geographical powers: Sea power versus Land
power. On the dominant side was what he termed the "ring of bases" linking sea powers Britain,
USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Japan in domination of the world seas and of commerce
power. This ring of dominant sea-powers was inaccessible to any threat from land powers of
Eurasia or Euro-Asia as he termed the vast continent. Mackinder further noted that were the
Russian Empire able to expand over the lands of Euro-Asia and gain access to the vast resources
there to build a naval fleet, "the empire of the world might then be in sight." Mackinder
added, "This might happen if Germany were to ally herself with Russia."
What the world has experienced since that prophetic 1904 London speech of Mackinder is two
world wars, primarily aimed at breaking the German nation and its geopolitical threat to
Anglo-American global domination, and to destroy the prospect of a peaceful emergence of a
German-Russian Eurasia that, as Mackinder and British geopolitical strategists saw it, would
put the "empire of the world" in sight.
Those two world wars in effect sabotaged the "covering of all Eurasia with railways." Until,
that is, in 2013 when China first proposed covering all Eurasia with a network of high-speed
railways and infrastructure including energy pipelines and deep-water ports and Russia agreed
to join the effort.
The Washington-orchestrated coup d'etat in Ukraine in February, 2014 was explicitly aimed at
driving a bloody and deep wedge between Russia and Germany. At the time, Ukraine was the prime
energy pipeline link feeding the German industry with Russian gas. German exports of everything
from machine tools to cars to high-speed locomotives to build the rapidly-recovering Russian
economy was transforming the geopolitical balance of power in favor of an emerging
German-Russian-centered Eurasia to the detriment of Washington.
In an interview in January, 2015 following what he called "the most blatant coup in
history", the USA coup in Ukraine, Stratfor founder George Friedman, a student of Mackinder,
stated, " the most dangerous potential alliance, from the perspective of the United States, was
considered to be an alliance between Russia and Germany. This would be an alliance of German
technology and capital with Russian natural and human resources."
Desperate Measures
At this point Washington is becoming more than a little desperate to bring the genie back in
the bottle that their clumsy 2014 Coup d'etat in Ukraine caused to get out. That coup forced
Russia to take more seriously its potential strategic alliances in Eurasia and catalyzed
present Russia-China cooperation as well as the Russian engagement with key Eurasian neighbor
states in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Wess Mitchell's predecessor, Victoria Nuland, with her cocky hubris in Ukraine, when she was
caught telling her Kiev Ambassador, "F**k the EU," was noted across Eurasia. She gave the
Washington game away. It's not about principled diplomatic partnership. It's about power and
empire.
Now Wess Mitchell's admission that the US strategic policy is to "prevent domination of
Eurasia by hostile powers" tells Russia and tells China, had they had any doubts, that the war
is about a fundamental geopolitical contest to the end over who will dominate Eurasia -- it's
legitimate inhabitants, centered around China and Russia, or an imperial Anglo-American axis
that has been behind two world wars in the past century. Because Washington mismanaged the
Russian "Reset" that was meant to draw Russia into the NATO web, Washington today is forced to
wage a war on two fronts -- China and Russia -- war it is not prepared to win.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics
from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for
the online magazine "New Eastern
Outlook"
In a
September 10 speech to the Federalist Society, National Security Advisor John Bolton offered "a major announcement on US policy
toward the International Criminal Court." The US government, per Bolton, considers the court "fundamentally illegitimate. We will
not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC."
Bolton threatened sanctions against the court and those who resort to it or cooperate with it in investigations of war crimes
involving the United States or Israel. He also announced the first such sanction, closure of a Palestine Liberation Organization
office in Washington in retaliation for the state of Palestine's referral of charges against Israel for actions in the West Bank
and Gaza.
What's with this sudden interest in the court and its jurisdiction?
Why is Bolton suddenly so concerned with protecting notions of "sovereignty" (he uses the word nine times) that the US government
itself routinely ignores at its convenience, claiming global jurisdiction over individuals and organizations outside its own borders
in matters ranging from the 17-year "war on terror" to its financial regulation and sanctions schemes?
The answer, in a word: Afghanistan. The regime installed by the US after its 2001 invasion of that country, and maintained in
power by the US since then, ratified the Rome Statute in 2003. Crimes committed in Afghanistan since then, regardless of the perpetrators'
nationalities, therefore fall under the ICC's jurisdiction.
Bolton finds it unconscionable that an American – in particular an American soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or politician – accused
of crimes committed in Afghanistan might be tried in a court Afghanistan's government has duly accepted the authority of. So much
for "sovereignty."
Bolton wants it both ways. On one hand, the long arm of US law must reach everywhere, be it to a bank in Switzerland, to a hacker's
keyboard in the United Kingdom, or to a battlefield in the Middle East. On the other hand, no foreign arm of law must ever reach
a US citizen, regardless of the alleged crime or where it was committed.
Pretty messed up, but there's a simple solution. All the US government has to do is close its embassies and consulates in, withdraw
its troops from, and advise its citizens not to travel to, any of the 120-odd countries which recognize the International Criminal
Court as their judicial authority for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
Starting with Afghanistan.
Problem solved.
Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William
Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. He lives and works in north central Florida. This article is reprinted
with permission from William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis acknowledges that U.S. instructors are
training Ukrainian military units at a base in western Ukraine. Washington also has
approved two important arms sales to Kiev's ground forces in just the past nine months. The
first transaction in December 2017 was limited to small arms that at least could be portrayed
as purely defensive weapons. That agreement included the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems,
ammunition, and associated parts and accessories, a sale valued at $41.5 million.
A transaction in April 2018 was more serious. Not only was it larger
($47 million) , it included far more lethal weaponry, particularly 210
Javelin anti-tank missiles -- the kind of weapons that Barack Obama's administration had
declined to give Kiev.
Needless to say, the Kremlin
was not pleased about either sale. Moreover, Congress soon passed legislation in May that
authorized $250 million in military assistance, including lethal weaponry, to Ukraine in 2019.
Congress had twice voted for military support on a similar scale during the last years of
Obama's administration, but the White House blocked implementation. The Trump administration
cleared that obstacle out of the way in December 2017 at the same time that it approved the
initial small-weapons sale. The passage of the May 2018 legislation means that the path is now
open for a dramatic escalation of U.S. military backing for Kiev.
On September 1, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker disclosed during an interview
with TheGuardian that Washington's future military aid to Kiev would
likely involve weapons sales to Ukraine's air force and navy as well as the army. "The Javelins
are mainly symbolic and it's not clear if they would ever be used," Aric Toler, a research
scholar at the Atlantic Council, asserted
. One could well dispute his sanguine conclusion, but even Toler conceded: "Support for the
Ukrainian navy and air defence would be a big deal. That would be far more significant."
Volker's cavalier attitude about U.S. arms sales to a government locked in a crisis with
Russia epitomizes the arrogance and tone-deaf nature of the views that too many U.S. foreign
policy officials exhibit regarding the sensitive Ukraine issue. "We can have a conversation
with Ukraine like we would with any other country about what do they need. I think that there's
going to be some discussion about naval capability because as you know their navy was basically
taken by Russia [when the Soviet Union dissolved]. And so they need to rebuild a navy and they
have very limited air capability as well. I think we'll have to look at air defence."
One suspects that Americans would be incensed at comparable actions by Moscow if the
geo-strategic situations were reversed. Imagine if Russia (even a democratic Russia) had
emerged from the wreckage of the Cold War as the undisputed global superpower, and a weakened
United States had to watch as the Kremlin expanded a powerful, Russian-led military alliance to
America's borders, conducted alliance war games within sight of U.S. territory, interfered in
Canada's internal political affairs to oust a democratically elected pro-American government,
and then pursued growing military ties with the new, anti-U.S. government in Ottawa. Yet that
would be disturbingly similar to what Washington has done regarding NATO policy and U.S.
relations with Ukraine.
Moreover, although Kiev's cheerleaders in the Western (especially U.S.) media like to
portray Ukraine as a beleaguered democracy that plays the role of David to Russia's evil
Goliath, the reality is far murkier. Putin's government overstates matters when it alleges that
Ukraine's 2014 Maidan revolution was a U.S.-orchestrated coup that brought outright fascists to
power in Kiev. Nevertheless, that version contains more than a little truth. Prominent,
powerful U.S. figures, most notably the late Senator John McCain and Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, openly sided with
demonstrators seeking to unseat Ukraine's elected government. Indeed, Nuland was caught on tape with U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt scheming about the desired composition of a new government
in Kiev.
It is unfair to portray Ukraine's current administration led by President Petro Poroshenko
as a neo-fascist regime. Post-revolution elections appear to have been reasonably free and
fair, and there are major factions that are committed to genuine democratic values. But Ukraine
also is hardly a model of Western-style democracy. Not only is it afflicted with extensive
graft and corruption, but some extreme nationalist and even
neo-Nazi groups play a significant role in the "new" Ukraine. The notoriously fascist Azov
Battalion, for example, continues to occupy a prominent position in Kiev's efforts to defeat
separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region. Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the
self-declared Donetsk People's Republic in the pro-Russia rebel-occupied city of Donetsk,
was assassinated on September 1 and officials there and in Russia are blaming Kiev. The
Ukrainian government has denied involvement.
Other ultranationalist factions act as domestic militias that attempt to intimidate more
moderate Ukrainians. Even the Poroshenko government itself has adopted troubling censorship
measures and other autocratic policies. Officials in both the Obama and Trump administration
have taken a much too casual attitude toward U.S. cooperation
with extremist elements and a deeply flawed Ukrainian government.
Both the danger of stoking tensions with Moscow and becoming too close to a regime in Kiev
that exhibits disturbing features should caution the Trump administration against boosting
military aid to Ukraine. It is an unwise policy on strategic as well as moral grounds. Trump
administration officials should refuse to be intimidated or stampeded into forging a risky and
unsavory alliance with Kiev out of fear of being portrayed as excessively "soft" toward Russia.
Instead, the president and his advisers need to spurn efforts to increase U.S. support for
Ukraine. A good place to start would be to restore the Obama administration's refusal to
approve arms sales to Kiev. Washington must not pour gasoline on a geo-strategic fire that
could lead to a full-blown crisis between the United States and Russia.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato
Institute and a contributing editor at TAC , is the author of 10 books, the contributing
editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles on international affairs .
That has been my take on affairs sine some time: Trump is just the mouthpiece of, and strong-armed by the Media Military Industrial Intelligence Complex (MMIIC).
Full disclosure: I despise Trump for a great number of reasons.
Even fuller disclosure: I despise with a vengeance the Intel community, which has taken over the media and the DNC and are
the Jesuits of the MIC.
"... McCain was a protégé of neo-Conservative founder Senator Henry Scoop Jackson, a crazy servant of the British imperial agenda who constantly sought military confrontation with Russia. ..."
"... The British were so enamored of Jackson's views that they have dedicated an entire society of British intelligence spooks to him, the Henry Jackson Society. The former incarnation of this group was the Committee on Present Danger and the Project for a New American Century in the United States. ..."
"... Leading members of both groups hastily retreated to British mother ship after they led the mobilization for the failed and disastrous Iraq War here in the U.S. Sir Richard Dearlove, who has shepherded Christopher Steele and other British aspects of the coup against Donald Trump, is a leading member of this group. ..."
"... He was uniquely ruthless when it comes to advancing imperial goals, barnstorming from one conflict zone to another to personally recruit far right fanatics as American proxies ..."
"... He backed the installation of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood to govern Egypt, another failed and insane project. More than $5.6 trillion was spent chasing John McCain's idyll of democracy in Southwest Asia. Six thousand seven hundred Americans died, more than 50,000 were wounded, entire countries were reduced to rubble with accompanying genocide against their populations, the largest mass human migration ever was sent into Europe resembling something akin to the desperate mass flights of the Middle Ages. ..."
John McCain died and deserved a decent funeral based on his war record and his long, if destructive, public service. McCain and
others in Washington's arrogant and narcissistic elite decided before his death, however, to use McCain's demise to advance the coup
against the President, and to make claims about the late Senator and themselves which are totally and utterly false and delusional.
The funeral was a national media extravaganza achieving a status normally only enjoyed by former Presidents. It was, according to
New Yorker Magazine , also the "biggest resistance meeting yet." President Donald Trump was not invited so that the cowards
in the funeral crowd, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, could freely take potshots at the President. McCain picked these leaders
of the country's descent into hell deliberately, to romanticize his death, and to trash talk the current President, albeit, in eloquent
and lofty language and knowing allusions. In effect, they wrapped the murderous crimes of empire in the American flag.
McCain was a protégé of neo-Conservative founder Senator Henry Scoop Jackson, a crazy servant of the British imperial agenda
who constantly sought military confrontation with Russia.
The British were so enamored of Jackson's views that they have dedicated an entire society of British intelligence spooks
to him, the Henry Jackson Society. The former incarnation of this group was the Committee on Present Danger and the Project for a
New American Century in the United States.
Leading members of both groups hastily retreated to British mother ship after they led the mobilization for the failed and
disastrous Iraq War here in the U.S. Sir Richard Dearlove, who has shepherded Christopher Steele and other British aspects of the
coup against Donald Trump, is a leading member of this group.
Funding for McCain's political adventures came from his second wife, whose brewing company fortune was completely mixed up in
Arizona mob and mob funding during its earlier years.
With respect to McCain's activities, Max Blumenthal characterized them accurately in the August 27th Consortium News:
"McCain did not simply thunder for every major intervention in the post-Cold War era from the Senate floor. . .
He was uniquely ruthless when it comes to advancing imperial goals, barnstorming from one conflict zone to another to personally
recruit far right fanatics as American proxies . . .
In Libya and Syria, he cultivated affiliates of Al-Qaeda as allies, and in Ukraine, McCain recruited actual sig-heiling neo-Nazis.
. .
Following the NATO orchestrated murder of Libya's leader, McCain tweeted: "Qaddafi on his way out, Bashar Al Assad is next."
He backed the installation of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood to govern Egypt, another failed and insane project. More than
$5.6 trillion was spent chasing John McCain's idyll of democracy in Southwest Asia. Six thousand seven hundred Americans died, more
than 50,000 were wounded, entire countries were reduced to rubble with accompanying genocide against their populations, the largest
mass human migration ever was sent into Europe resembling something akin to the desperate mass flights of the Middle Ages.
It is these horrific actions by McCain, not the myth peddled at his funeral, which is the source of the conflict between Trump
and John McCain, and between Trump and George Bush and Barack Obama. Trump promised to end the imperial policy of endless religious
and population wars and Wall Street bailouts, and the voters responded resoundingly by electing him President.
@Iris"Marshall
Sam Shama, boasted here at U.R. about his being a Nazi Hunter and having collared a few."
Well, that's extraordinary, because in his comment 201 above, Sam Shama said:
"How do the Wiesenthals and the Klarsfelds, whoever they are, depend on everyday
Jews?"
As you know, French-Israeli Serge Klarsfeld and his German wife Beate are the most famous
"Nazi hunters" in Europe. They formed an association which located and brought to "justice"
some of the most famous names involved in Nazi occupation (Bousquet, Barbie, Papon,
Touvier,...).
How come Sam Shama doesn't know these most famous comrades? Split personality?
Schizophrenia? Pseudonym swapping? :-) :-)
https://images.sudouest.fr/2014/12/03/57ebc98866a4bd6726a8263e/widescreen/1000x500/serge-et-beate-klarsfeld-au-memorial-de-la-shoah.jpg
The famous comrades, and specifically the Simon Weisenthal Center of Nazi-hunters, suddenly
gone AWOL as soon as the US zionists began their mutually beneficial cooperation with
neo-Nazi in Ukraine.
Moreover, it seems that the Wiesenthals and the Klarsfelds simply melted away and
evaporated as soon as the Jewish State began sending the Israel-made weaponry to the neo-Nazi
in Ukraine.
The miserable Anti-Defamation League (of the anti-democratic methods) is now on a spot for
doing nothing with regard to the murderous activities (including the openly
anti-Jewish activities) of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine (the Kaganat of Nuland is a de facto
protectorate of the US). It seems that for the ADL, there are certain precious neo-Nazi (the
Israel-supported neo-Nazis in Ukraine) and the "bad" Nazis whose image has been helping the
ADL and the Wiesenthals and the Klarsfelds to demonstrate their allegiance to Jewish
"principles," while making good gesheft (reparation-extortion) on the tragedy of the WWII for
holo-biz.
There is more for the oh-so-sensitive crowd of holocaustians: The prime minister of
Ukraine (where the Nazism has been enjoying its very visible renaissance since 2014) is a
Jewish man Volodymyr Groysman who was miraculously "elected" by Ukrainians in 2016. It is
well known that Ukrainians en masse are not terribly predisposed towards the Jews: https://worldpolicy.org/2014/03/03/fears-of-anti-semitism-spread-in-ukraine/
To recap: The Jewish State and the US/EU zionists have been cultivating the close
relationships and collaboration with neo-Nazi leaders in Ukraine. Take note that none of the
Jewish Nazi collaborators has been punished for the material and political support of the
neo-Nazi movement in Eastern Europe. Why the EU puts people in jail for making an honest
research in the WWII but allows the zionists to support the neo-Nazi is not easy to
understand, considering the influence of the thoroughly dishonest and unprincipled Jewish
Lobby.
@Sam Shama On the
contrary. You haven't responded to the substantial issues from my first post, where I showed
that the CDN list did contain many Jewish names; your mealy-mouthed, code-worded, phrasing
notwithstanding.
Speaking of giving it a rest, I would think it is you who should consider it. Antisemitism
is a serious matter, Phillip. "Antisemitism is a serious matter, Phillip."
– Tell it to Bibi and the Kagans clan: https://worldpolicy.org/2014/03/03/fears-of-anti-semitism-spread-in-ukraine/
"FEARS OF ANTI-SEMITISM SPREAD IN UKRAINE"
@Sam Shama I don't
usually like taking retirees to task, but you are a special case. You actually threaten Jews
with harm every so often in idiotic, thinly veiled language. You should contemplate that.
"You actually threaten Jews with harm "
– Don't project. Your Jewish State and your zionist stink-tanks in the US/UK are the
greatest danger to the decent Jews.
"Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine:" https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/05/israel-is-arming-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/
One of the main financiers of the neo-Nazi formation "Azov" an Israeli citizen Kolomojsky:
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-47564dbc32c28a68f9407fd689f6b3c8-c
I keep telling you Sam that you aren't too smart everything you say just reinforces
everything that is criticized about your tribe ..and you just keep right on giving us more
proof.
First, I have no tribe. Merely logging and attempting to introduce a modicum of
balance in these flagrant displays of hatred.
Second, I don't claim any particular advantage in the department of smarts; only doing my
bit for the advancement of the various causes of humanity. In that, I am sure you claim
primacy, but do you know who said the following: "It is a profitable thing, if one is wise,
to seem foolish." Google's your friend. " flagrant displays of hatred "
– Listen to your Moldovan thug Avi Lieberman and your no less thuggish justice minister
Ayelet Shaked to get the real "flagrant displays of hatred:"
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/new-israeli-justice-minister-called-for-genocide-of-palestinians/article/432659
"Shaked made international headlines when she posted a highly controversial unpublished
article by the late Uri Elitzur, a close Netanyahu ally and an early leader of the movement
by Jewish settlers to colonize occupied Palestinian territories The post asserted that "the
entire Palestinian people is the enemy" and advocated genocide against the entire nation,
"including its elderly women, its cities and its villages, its property and its
infrastructure." Some excerpts: " They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on
all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers they should follow their sons [to
hell], nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they
raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there."
– Don't you like the facts of the Jewish State's financial, logistical, and military
support for ISIS / Al Qaeda ?
https://www.sott.net/article/386618-US-and-Israel-will-not-allow-the-elimination-of-Al-Qaeda-and-ISIS-in-southern-Syria-The-solution-is-Syrian-resistance
@annamaria The
famous comrades, and specifically the Simon Weisenthal Center of Nazi-hunters, suddenly gone
AWOL as soon as the US zionists began their mutually beneficial cooperation with neo-Nazi in
Ukraine.
Moreover, it seems that the Wiesenthals and the Klarsfelds simply melted away and evaporated
as soon as the Jewish State began sending the Israel-made weaponry to the neo-Nazi in
Ukraine.
The miserable Anti-Defamation League (of the anti-democratic methods) is now on a spot for
doing nothing with regard to the murderous activities (including the openly
anti-Jewish activities) of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine (the Kaganat of Nuland is a de facto
protectorate of the US). It seems that for the ADL, there are certain precious neo-Nazi (the
Israel-supported neo-Nazis in Ukraine) and the "bad" Nazis whose image has been helping the
ADL and the Wiesenthals and the Klarsfelds to demonstrate their allegiance to Jewish
"principles," while making good gesheft (reparation-extortion) on the tragedy of the WWII for
holo-biz.
There is more for the oh-so-sensitive crowd of holocaustians: The prime minister of Ukraine
(where the Nazism has been enjoying its very visible renaissance since 2014) is a Jewish man
Volodymyr Groysman who was miraculously "elected" by Ukrainians in 2016. It is well known
that Ukrainians en masse are not terribly predisposed towards the Jews:
https://worldpolicy.org/2014/03/03/fears-of-anti-semitism-spread-in-ukraine/
To recap: The Jewish State and the US/EU zionists have been cultivating the close
relationships and collaboration with neo-Nazi leaders in Ukraine. Take note that none of the
Jewish Nazi collaborators has been punished for the material and political support of the
neo-Nazi movement in Eastern Europe. Why the EU puts people in jail for making an honest
research in the WWII but allows the zionists to support the neo-Nazi is not easy to
understand, considering the influence of the thoroughly dishonest and unprincipled Jewish
Lobby. " it seems that the Wiesenthals and the Klarsfelds simply melted away and
evaporated as soon as the Jewish State began sending the Israel-made weaponry to the neo-Nazi
in Ukraine."
- 1- Indeed. The Klarsfelds don't open their big lecturing gob neither when Jewish French
citizens, born and brought up in France, with no links to Palestine, volunteer and join the
IDF to murder Palestinians. They are the higher share of IDF volunteers, ahead of Jewish US
citizens.
A war crime in broad daylight: French-Israeli IDF soldier coldly shooting in the head
wounded 21-year old Palestinian Abd Al Fatah Al Sharif.
- 2- Simon Wiesenthal, as you know, was an utter fraud and one of the biggest conmen of
the century. Among his many lies is his so-called incarceration at Auschwitz. Former members
of the German Army even stated that he was a collaborator.
- 3- I'll finish on a cheerful note , and a very good illustration of MSM's double
standards. Unreported by the press, unlike Corbyn's elusive anti-semitism, Ukraine's
Parliament Speaker has just declared that "Hitler was the biggest democrat". One can't make
this up.
"... The crisis in Ukraine is a direct result of the two policies of NATO expansion and EU enlargement, which led NATO to declare Ukraine (and Georgia) will be NATO members at numerous NATO summits and in other fora, led the EU to push too hard and too early for an association agreement with the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych government, and led the West, especially Washington, to lend opposition-promotion assistance to revolutionaries and endorse a clearly illegal oligarch-ultranationalist revolt in February 2014 despite an agreement that essentially ensured Yanukovych's departure from the presidency in ten months. In Syria, Putin's Russia has won. Regime change is over. ..."
Rather than dealing with secondary issues, those which are easiest to resolve, or those in
which we have common interests, contacts must address the core problems in the inter-state
US-Russian or larger Western-Russian relationship. Those issues are NATO expansion, EU
expansion, U.S. missile defense, Ukraine, Syria, and interference in each other's domestic
politics.
Rather, than expanding Western institutions in complete disregard of Russian
interests, the West must work closely with Moscow. The West must acknowledge its responsibility
in the making of the original crisis in Kiev, which equals if not exceeds that of Moscow's in
deepening the crisis in Crimea and Donbass.
The crisis in Ukraine is a direct result of the two
policies of NATO expansion and EU enlargement, which led NATO to declare Ukraine (and Georgia)
will be NATO members at numerous NATO summits and in other fora, led the EU to push too hard
and too early for an association agreement with the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych government, and
led the West, especially Washington, to lend opposition-promotion assistance to revolutionaries
and endorse a clearly illegal oligarch-ultranationalist revolt in February 2014 despite an
agreement that essentially ensured Yanukovych's departure from the presidency in ten months. In
Syria, Putin's Russia has won. Regime change is over.
The U.S. in its hubris miscalculated in
going a bridge too far. Ambition led to supply weapons either intentionally or accidentally --
and in denial of the obvious -- to Islamists and jihadists. This was a direct consequence of US
President Barak Obama's haste to carry forth his gravely misguided Muslim Brotherhood-based
regime change strategy in the Islamic world. Syria's longstanding ties to Moscow and the
presence of North Caucasus-based mujahedin within the ranks first of the Al Qa`ida-affiliated
'Jabhat al-Nusra' jihadi group and then of the Islamic State or ISIS prompted Putin's limited
and strategically successful intervention.
More globally, the West has been and remains the
'champion' when it comes to interference in the politics of other states. For financial reasons
alone, Russia cannot hold a candle to US efforts in this regard, no less those of the entire
West. Rather than seeking to dominate or willfully 'transforming' Eurasia in the Western image,
the West should more gently propose democratization and work on strengthening its own
democratic order to serve as a model for non- and less democratic states to emulate.
Those
living in non- or less democratic states who want change have access to all the information
they need on the Internet, except in the most authoritarian countries. Even in the latter,
access is possible if more difficult. The native population and opposition leaders understand
the intricacies of their nation's culture far better than outsiders do and can therefore better
fashion a peaceful, stable regime transformation. If this is not what they want, then they are
unlikely to establish a democratic order when they seize power.
Change the Goal and Strategy
The core problem in Western-Russian relations has been Western, especially, NATO expansion.
NATO expansion, carried forth on the back of EU expansion, effectively 'militarized' Western
democracy-promotion and EU expansion, insulting Russian 'honor' and trust in the West in the
wake of Cold War-ending Western promises that NATO would not expand beyond reunified Germany
and turning Russia away from democracy. Washington and Brussels must discard, therefore, its
basic goal of expanding the community of democracies in brinksmanship-like
fashion–everywhere and immediately, regardless of those expansions' effects on the
Russian and Chinese geostrategic calculation. This means abandoning the strategy of achieving
that goal: NATO and EU expansion. These two prongs of the main strategy, especially NATO
expansion, have added greater cost of driving Russia into China's increasingly powerful arms,
as I predicted a quarter of a century ago.
New Goal and Strategy
Regarding security, the West
should seek to integrate Europe and Eurasia first in the area of negotiating ongoing conflicts
and preventing new conflicts by reinvigorating the Organization of Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) as the main multilateral forum for Western-Eurasian relations. It should also
become the locus of negotiations between NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO) on building a new European security architecture (NESA). During the life of the NESA
negotiations, the West should institute an openly declared moratorium on NATO expansion. After
such the NESA is in place negotiations might begin with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) on a Eurasia-wide security architecture. Similarly, the European Union should learn from
its misbegotten unilateral expansionism and 'Eastern Partnership' and seek to negotiate a
gradual integration of the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
... ... ...
There is very likely to be some
agreement towards extending the START nuclear arms treaty by executive order as well as
negotiating a replacement treaty to be signed at the end of the first or beginning of a second
Trump term.
For the Ukrainian crisis, Trump might propose the creation of a US-Russian working
group to assist the Minsk process. Should Trump be convinced that only US involvement can
resolve the issue, perhaps the group could be incorporated into the Minsk process. He might
also hint that in return for some Moscow concessions on Ukraine, such as backing a more
expanded version of the proposed peacekeeping mission beyond the line of contact, he might be
willing to put pressure on Kiev to finally fulfill its Minsk agreement obligation to engage a
dialogue with the Donbass rebel regions' representatives:
(1) on the modalities related to
conducting elections in the Donbass,
(2) on a Ukrainian law to be adopted according to Minsk-2
'On the temporary order of local government in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk
regions,' or
(3) 'with respect to the future operation of these areas on the basis of the Law,'
or, for that matter,
(4) on any other subject related to the crisis. Washington pressure on
Kiev to talk directly with the rebels may be possible now that four years too late some of the
Washington institutions that supported the Maidan revolt and illegal overthrow of Yanukovych
such as the Atlantic Council and Freedom House, are waking up to the neofascist threat on the
edges of the Maidan regime and in society.
About the Author – Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., Expert Analyst at Corr
Analytics, http://www.canalyt.com and a
Senior Researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group,
San Jose, California, www.cetisresearch.org .
Dr. Hahn is the author of Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the 'New Cold
War (McFarland Publishers, 2017) and three previously and well-received books:
Russia's Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet
Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction Publishers, 2002); Russia's Islamic
Threat (Yale University Press, 2007); and The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global
Jihadism in Russia's North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014).He has
published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both
English and Russian language media and has served as a consultant and provided expert testimony
to the U.S. government.
Dr. Hahn also has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco
State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia. He
has been a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies and the Kennan Institute in Washington DC as well as the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University.
Lyttenburgh, July 7, 2018 at 6:25 am
"and agreed to meet in neighboring Sweden"
Finland.
"This suggests the level of distrust Putin has towards Washington, his low expectations for a successful summit, and the high
price he is likely to demand for concessions on his part."
It suggests nothing of the sort. You are too dramatic.
"[T]he approach of dealing with issues that are easiest to resolve or where we have common interests alone is insufficient
and a non-starter as far as putting the relationship where it should be. By definition, an approach that seeks to avoid areas
where there are disagreements will not resolve a deeply troubled relationship that is putting international security and
peace at risk. Only addressing the core differences complicating relations can a qualitatively new relationship be forged."
Finally someone is willing to admit that! You can't willy-nilly go and ask your neighbor to borrow some sugar after you
wrecked his fence and expect him to "cooperate" on such small issue out of sheer goodness.
"It also means abandoning the approach of designing policies from hubris rooted in the sense that Western democracy is
morally superior to authoritarianism. Although the latter is true"
In what way? I (and quite a lot of people) see particular Western "democracy" as morally bankrupt compared to what it
seemingly randomly calls "authoritarianism"
"In Syria, Putin's Russia has won."
And that writes a man who detest the term, devoting so much ink and time to show to the ignorant that, no – it's Russia's
Putin. Why not say Russia, or Moscow, or even "Pro-Assad coalition"?
"Rather than seeking to dominate or willfully 'transforming' Eurasia in the Western image, the West should more gently
propose democratization and work on strengthening its own democratic order to serve as a model for non- and less democratic
states to emulate."
What, you forgot the immortal words of Paul Wolfowitz so soon? For, you see, "We Are An Empire Now". Crawling back in the
shell won't help to solve the domestic very partisan issues – finding a common enemy does that. Your tactics are good for a
neutered housecat of a nation – not for the mighty Great Again (And Forever) lion which both the elite and the commoners of
the West consider their Republic.
" and turning Russia away from democracy."
Wrong. It turned Russia away from liberalism – not democracy. You know the difference, right? Because your following analysis
suggests otherwise:
"Washington and Brussels must discard, therefore, its basic goal of expanding the community of democracies"
"Putin's Russia" is democracy. As well as Poland under PiS, Hungary under Orban and Turkey under Erdogan. Hell, even Ukraine
is democracy! Democracy is just a mode of rule.
"driving Russia into China's increasingly powerful arms"
Yeah, that's bad for the US. For the rest – not so.
"During the life of the NESA negotiations, the West should institute an openly declared moratorium on NATO expansion."
Absolutely meaningless and easily revertible promise that runs directly against the West self-identification as the only
Empire on the planet.
The list of topics of your Grand Design that follows is too far fetch, unrealistic and abstract that they are basically the
equivalent of "charming" Russian naïve natives with the glass beads. As for your fanatical support of the free trade – it's
era has gone. Again. If you fail to grasp that it was precisely Russian objections of EU version of free trade coming to the
Ukraine which lead to 2013-14 conflict on Maidan – well, nothing can help you.
"Non-Western partners must also be willing to sacrifice some of their present interests for the sake of the benefits of
stability and cooperation that will accrue in future. "
Like I said – land for the glass beads.
"In Ukraine, the U.S. must get more involved in the Minsk 2 negotiating process."
No, they shouldn't.
"Without a clear signal from Trump that Washington is not interested in expanding NATO to Ukraine or using the crisis to
isolate Moscow through sanctions and the like and intends to lead the search for a solution, Moscow is unlikely to make any
meaningful concessions."
You don't see it, do you? It's Kiev for whom the conflict is more beneficial. It allows all sort of, yes, authoritarian
things and policies without fear of the "real war". You can silence all your critics with – "but Putin might attack us!" or
"are you a secret separ?!". Kiev has no other viable strategy but to commit an ethnic cleansing of DNR or LNR should they be
returned to it. Simple as that.
BTW – have you read Minsk II accords? How about Kiev fulfils its part first?
"Washington could be able to convince Moscow to abandon its support for the elements of the Iran presence in Syria and
Lebanon that arrived in the context of the Syrian civil war."
Nothing of the sort will happen. Sowing division among potential USA rivals is a viable tactic – but don't take everyone for
an idiot.
"There is very likely to be some agreement towards extending the START nuclear arms treaty"
Wanna bet, that there won't be? Also – nothing of the Ukraine, nothing on NATO. A little something on Syria (officially)
with, maybe, an unofficial concession of the defeat of the West-backed "unicorns".
Tl;dr. This is not about coming Trump-Putin summit. You are just venting off your fantasy about Bright Future. You present
solely pro-US perspective of the summit, enumerating things that Trump must "ask", nay, "demand" either for free or some
minor concessions on his part. Have you ever tried to think what Russia might want of the summit instead?
Salsibury Watchdog, July 11, 2018 at 2:19 am
"It also means abandoning the approach of designing policies from hubris rooted in the sense that Western democracy is
morally superior to authoritarianism. Although the latter is true"
Mr. Khan, if what Western elites are doing to other sovereign nations is 'a democracy' why is it done so covertly: through
murky slash funds, secrets coups and illegal bombings?
I've never seen a referendum asking people in the US whether they wanted to fund another war. Had they been asked, people
would've chosen affordable healthcare, housing and access to education instead, and you know it as well I do.
Yet you're still talking about 'Western democracy'?
"... According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, [on] 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. ..."
"... We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. ..."
"... What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War? ..."
The alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorists attacks, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, was
recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war, "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight
Soviet invaders".(Hugh Davies, "`Informers' point the finger at bin Laden; Washington on alert
for suicide bombers." The Daily Telegraph, London, 24 August 1998).
In 1979 the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in
Afghanistan:
"With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI, who wanted to turn the
Afghan Jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some
35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and
1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually, more than
100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad." (Ahmed Rashid,
"The Taliban: Exporting Extremism", Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999).
This project of the US intelligence apparatus was conducted with the active support of
Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which was entrusted in channelling covert
military aid to the Islamic brigades and financing, in liason with the CIA, the madrassahs and
Mujahideen training camps.
U.S. government support to the Mujahideen was presented to world public opinion as a
"necessary response" to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist
government of Babrak Kamal.
The CIA's military-intelligence operation in Afghanistan, which consisted in creating the
"Islamic brigades", was launched prior rather than in response to the entry of Soviet troops
into Afghanistan. In fact, Washington's intent was to deliberately trigger a civil war, which
has lasted for more than 25 years. (photo: CIA and ISI agents)
The CIA's role in laying the foundations of Al Qaeda is confirmed in an 1998 interview with
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who at the time was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy
Carter:
Brzezinski: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen
began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, [on] 24
December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed,
it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the
opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the
President in which I explained to him that in my opinion, this aid was going to induce a
Soviet military intervention.
Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you
yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we
knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Question:When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to
fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe
them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of
drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the
Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the
opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to
carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the
demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having
given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the
collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe
and the end of the Cold War? ( "The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan, Interview with
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser", Le Nouvel
Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998, published in English, Centre for Research on
Globalisation, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
, 5 October 2001, italics added.)
Consistent with Brzezinski's account, a "Militant Islamic Network" was created by the
CIA.
The "Islamic Jihad" (or holy war against the Soviets) became an integral part of the CIA's
intelligence ploy. It was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia, with a significant
part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:
"In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166 [which]
authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and it made clear that the
secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert
action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a
dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987 as well
as a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who travelled to the secret
headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There, the CIA
specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan
rebels."(Steve Coll, The Washington Post, July 19, 1992.)
The Taliban says that in order to end "this long war" the "lone option is to end the
occupation of Afghanistan and nothing more."
In June, the
17th American nominated to take command of the war, Lieutenant General Scott Miller,
appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee where Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) grilled him
on what he would do differently in order to bring the conflict to a conclusion. "I cannot
guarantee you a timeline or an end date," was Miller's confident reply .
Did the senators then send him packing? Hardly. He was, in fact, easily confirmed and starts
work this month. Nor is there any chance Congress will use its power of the purse to end the
war. The 2019 budget request for U.S. operations in Afghanistan -- topping out at
$46.3 billion -- will certainly be approved.
#Winning
All of this seeming futility brings us back to the Vietnam War, Kissinger, and that magic
number, 4,000,000,029,057 -- as well as the question of what an American military victory would
look like today. It might surprise you, but it turns out that winning wars is still
possible and, perhaps even more surprising, the U.S. military seems to be doing just that.
Let me explain.
In Vietnam, that military aimed to "
out-guerrilla the guerrilla ." It never did and the United States suffered a crushing
defeat. Henry Kissinger -- who presided over the last years of that conflict as national
security advisor and then secretary of state -- provided his own
concise take on one of the core tenets of asymmetric warfare: "The conventional army loses
if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose." Perhaps because that eternally
well-regarded but hapless statesman articulated it, that formula was bound -- like so
much else he
touched -- to crash
and burn .
In this century, the United States has found a way to turn Kissinger's martial maxim on its
head and so rewrite the axioms of armed conflict. This redefinition can be proved by a simple
equation:
Expressed differently, the United States has not won a major conflict since 1945; has a
trillion-dollar national security budget; has had 17 military commanders in the last 17
years in Afghanistan, a country plagued by 23,744 "
security incidents " (the most ever recorded) in 2017 alone; has spent around
$3 trillion , primarily on that war and the rest of the war on terror, including the
ongoing conflict in Iraq, which then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld swore , in 2002, would be
over in only "five days or five weeks or five months," but where approximately
5,000 U.S. troops remain today; and yet 74% of the American people still express high
confidence in the U.S. military.
Let the math and the implications wash over you for a moment. Such a calculus definitively
disproves the notion that "the conventional army loses if it does not win." It also helps
answer the question of victory in the war on terror. It turns out that the U.S. military, whose
budget and influence in Washington have only grown in these years, now wins simply by not
losing -- a multi-trillion-dollar conventional army held to the standards of success once
applied only to under-armed, under-funded guerilla groups.
Unlike in the Vietnam War years, three presidents and the Pentagon, unbothered by fiscal
constraints, substantive congressional opposition, or a significant antiwar movement, have been
effectively pursuing this strategy, which requires nothing more than a steady supply of troops,
contractors, and other assorted camp followers; an endless parade of Senate-sanctioned
commanders; and an annual outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars. By these standards, Donald
Trump's open-ended, timetable-free "Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia" may prove to be the
winningest war plan ever. As he described it:
"From now on, victory will have a clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating
ISIS, crushing al-Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass
terror attacks against America before they emerge."
Think about that for a moment. Victory's definition begins with "attacking our enemies" and
ends with the prevention of possible terror attacks. Let me reiterate: "victory" is defined as
"attacking our enemies." Under President Trump's strategy, it seems, every time the U.S. bombs
or shells or shoots at a member of one of those 20-plus terror groups in Afghanistan, the U.S.
is winning or, perhaps, has won. And this strategy is not specifically Afghan-centric. It can
easily be applied to American warzones in the Middle East and Africa -- anywhere, really.
Decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military has finally solved the conundrum
of how to "out-guerrilla the guerrilla." And it couldn't have been simpler. You just adopt the
same definition of victory. As a result, a conventional army -- at least the U.S. military --
now loses only if it stops fighting. So long as unaccountable commanders wage benchmark-free
wars without congressional constraint, the United States simply cannot lose. You can't argue
with the math. Call it the rule of 4,000,000,029,057.
That calculus and that sum also prove, quite clearly, that America's beleaguered
commander-in-chief has gotten a raw deal on his victory parade. With apologies to the American
Legion, the U.S. military is now -- under the new rules of warfare -- triumphant and deserves
the type of celebration proposed by President Trump. After almost two decades of warfare, the
armed forces have lowered the bar for victory to the level of their enemy, the Taliban. What
was once the mark of failure for a conventional army is now the benchmark for success. It's a
remarkable feat and deserving, at the very least, of furious flag-waving, ticker
tape , and all the age-old trappings of victory.
Military conquests are the most ephemeral. Colonisation lasts longer. A mere century or two
in the case of Europeans. But even 900 years was not sufficient for Greeks to remove the
military n cultural threat posed by the Semites n Iranians of Southwest Asia, from
Alexander's conquest in 323 BC till the Muslim "reconquista" of 632 AD. Only demographic
"conquest" works in the end. If your women are not out-reproducing their women, then your
military will fail spectacularly n quickly, as what had once been your population transforms
into theirs. At that point, far from victory parades, you get to see statues to your former
heros torn down, n the highest "patriotism" becomes enthusiastically opening the gates to
what had once been your people's deadliest enemies.
1. keep Israhell on the map.
2. keep oil-producers taking dollars and only dollars for their oil
3. keep the CIA's poppy fields in Afghanistan in full production
on 1: ongoing victory, Israhell is still there
on2: Iraq and Libya back on the petrodollar, Iran pending
on3: ongoing victory, CIA drug ops proceeding normally
in ZOG-ruled 'Murka, every day is a day of new victories.
Mr. Turse is a comic. What a beautiful summary of the situation.
See a group, Imagine a possible threat, if both occur, bingo group =converts to
=>terrorist
and each member converts to a subliminal threat. Imagine the psychology that can be applied
to that bit of information to produce next day propaganda. Let us not forget the real media
that displays the propaganda is owned by just 6 entities; global access to knowledge and real
truth is gated and directed by search engine magic these two facts are IMO a real global
threat to humanity.
Win by not losing/ In such a scenario increasing numbers in a terror group or increasing
numbers of, or broadening the global distribution of terror groups produces more terror
fodder. The competent imagination derives its threats from terror fodder ( fodder fits any
size imagination).
When ever it is needed, proof of any non self-inflicted terrorism can be conjured from the
imagination. As Mr Turse says proof of terrorism can be found in the definition, proof of
victory can be found in the attack (as Mr. Turse so adequately expressed), and both are
recorded in the history of terrorism, which can be found in the daily media presentations and
the MSM annual report "Dollars Spent Chasing Terrorist from the Imagination". a joint
publication of the Internationally linked intelligence services and the global college of
paranoia producing propaganda.
victory is found in the attack because dollars start to flow; the more dollars the greater
the victory.
But how much of this would be possible if the reserve currency were no longer the dollar?
What will happen when Russia, China, Iran and others produce a new reserve currency or
displace existing reserve currencies by assigning exchange value to the currency of each
nation? The issuer of reserve currency measures its money supply by the checks he writes
[their checks never bounce], everyone else measures their currency by the amount of the
reserve currency they are able to keep in the bank ( to prevent their checks from
bouncing].
@Sean
Because although Health and Education Keynesianisn would work as well as the Military
variant, it also leads to an organised population mobilising for social change. And while
wars do end eventually, social spending seems to increase over time without limit. I was
almost sold on that explanation to my honest question, until the phrase
wars do end eventually
Would wars "ending eventually", not render the MIC obsolete? Is it not the MIC that
thrives on perpetual wars with seemingly endless supplies of cash to fund their wars? Even in
periods of relative calm (if ever, since WWII that is), is it not the constant threat of war
that keeps the military monstrosity grinding away?
74% of Americans express high confidence in their military? I wonder if 74% of Americans are
even aware that we're at war. I read somewhere that U.S. generals now define victory as
getting the Taliban to the bargaining table.
"out-guerrilla the guerrilla." was coined by Col. David Hackworth as out "G" ing the G and
was shown to work in the Delta. Read his book "About Face" or "Steel my soldiers hearts"
Elites, read Bolsheviks or Freemasons win no war, they do not win over diseases, crime, idiot
bla, bla. They are making money on them and they always turn to both sides. To the criminal
gangsters, to the associations of the sick, to the losers in war, they can win in 20 years,
etc. etc. This article is foam, foam. The Elites are trying to do everything and nobody
understands anything, so the elite wins – the banker always has his blood money.
the United States has not won a major conflict since 1945; has a trillion-dollar
national security budget; has had 17 military commanders in the last 17 years in
Afghanistan, a country plagued by 23,744 "security incidents" (the most ever recorded) in
2017 alone; has spent around $3 trillion, primarily on that war and the rest of the war on
terror, including the ongoing conflict in Iraq, which then-defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld swore, in 2002, would be over in only "five days or five weeks or five months,"
but where approximately 5,000 U.S. troops remain today; and yet 74% of the American people
still express high confidence in the U.S. military.
Let me correct that 1st sentence for you: the United States has not REPEATED THE MISTAKE
OF WINNING a major conflict since 1945.
Why? Because as they quickly discovered, WW2 was the best thing that ever happened to the
US economy, and that lots more money is made fighting wars than winning one, as proven by the
above quoted figures.
December 24, 2013 The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases
The US Military has bases in *63* countries. According to Gelman, who examined 2005
official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of *737* bases in foreign lands.
Hi Nick Turse,
Given OBL and Afghanistan Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11 terror attacks, it appears
likely that the W. Bush regime launched war upon the Taliban exclusively for geopolitical
interests, minerals, i.e., lithium, and construction of natural gas pipelines directed
southeast to the subcontinent, India.
Fyi, approximately seven years ago, I saw a U.S. Veterans informational map which identified
the Neo-"Grunts" military bases as within close proximity to pipeline construction.
Consequently, for me, I see US military's incessant stay in "the graveyard of Empires" as a
stilted profit & loss (P&L) "'victory," but of course there's no (!) dividend for
dumb goyim American citizens, but voila, oodles for global energy companies, untouchable
Military-Industrial-$ecurity Complex, & killing "Poppy Fields," including Moneychanger
pharmaceutical-opioid trade!
In short, the incredible cost for U.S. military's GWOT & advanced targeting of Russia is
diabolically placed upon future generations of American taxpayers who, at the moment-of-their
birth, are in debt, & the Mom and Pop' "victory" is incarnate in a 'guvmint CHIP
card.
ZUSA wars "victory" is in the pockets of P&L-benefactors, and on Sunday afternoons, one
can feel the "bern" when fighter jets flyover NFL stadiums!
Thanks for the education, Mr. Turse!
@jilles
dykstra It did not in the civilised societies of north and western Europe. The nordic "
model " is dead , and it has been a bad example to the world . Sweden has 10 million people ,
Norway 4 , Danmark 6 . These little countries can not be a valid model for anyone .
Like Toynbee said nordics are kind of a failed egoistic subcivilization of the germans ,
english of russians , with which they never had the courage to integrate . They seem to be
happy in their autistic cold world , pretending to be a showroom for the UN perverts .
As to Vietnam the author is just clueless. Where was the so called crushing defeat? When we
Americans pulled out in 1971 to 1972 the NVA was still stymied and impotent. Our so called
allies hated us totally and the feeling was mutual. We actually had no allies in Vietnam
except the savage yard tribes. But yes after we pulled out the South collapsed fast as we
knew they would. They got exactly what they deserved. But it was a South Vietnamese defeat.
By 1975 our armies were long gone. Repeat, there were no American divisions, battallions or
platoons to lose. We were gone.
We still do not know exactly what Kissinger got from the Chinese at Paris in 1971-2, but
he and Nixon seemed happy enough, and we pulled out and ceded Vietnam. We do know this was
the exact time China began to cooperate with us in the Cold War against the Bolsheviks.
Specifically, we know the Chinese allowed our B-52′s, loaded with nukes, to overfly,
all along the Soviet border, and this continued to 1987, when the game was already up.
A couple of Ukraine-related items caught my attention this week.
The first is a
report by Baylor University professor Serhiy Kudelia which discusses how to bring peace to
Donbass. Kudelia starts by saying that Western states have regarded the resolution of the war
in Donbass as being dependent on changing Russian behaviour. This is insufficient, he says, for
'the successful reintegration of Donbas into Ukraine rests on designing a new institutional
framework that can provide long-term guarantees to civilians and separatist insurgents.'
Kudelia says that academic literature on conflict resolution would suggest four elements to
such a framework:
Autonomy for Donbass within Ukraine. Such autonomy would come with risks, by
entrenching local rulers with patronage networks outside of central control and with the
means to challenge central authority. To reduce these risks, Kudelia suggests giving autonomy
not just to the territories currently controlled by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's
Republics (DPR & LPR), but to the whole of Donbass, thereby bringing within the
autonomous region some more pro-Ukrainian elements of the population as well as groups not
connected to the DPR/LPR power structures. He also suggests devolution of power within the
autonomous region to weaken the potentially disruptive consequences of hostile elements
controlling the region's government.
Transformation of the rebel state and military structures into political
parties. Experience in other countries suggests that when this happens, the prospects of
a successful transition increase substantially.
Comprehensive and unconditional amnesty for everyone involved in the war. For
obvious reasons, rebel leaders won't agree to the first two proposals without an amnesty.
Past experience speaks to the necessity of this measure.
No elections in Donbass for two to three years. Kudelia notes that, 'Holding
elections in a volatile post-conflict environment creates ample opportunities for voter
intimidation, electoral fraud, and disinformation campaigns that could build on
conflict-related divisions.' Kudelia doesn't say who would rule Donbass in the meantime. I
would have to assume that it would mean that the existing authorities would remain in place.
That could be problematic.
With the exception of that last point, these are sensible suggestions. But when boiled down
to their essentials, they don't differ significantly from what is demanded in the Minsk
agreements -- i.e. special status for Donbass and an amnesty. As such, while I don't think that
the leadership of the DPR and LPR would like these proposals, my instincts tell me that they
would be quite acceptable to the Russian government, which would probably be able to coax the
DPR and LPR into agreeing to them. If implemented, the results would be something Moscow could
portray as a success of sorts.
And there's the rub. For that very reason, I can't see Kiev agreeing to any of this.
Kudelia's argument is founded on the idea that there's more going on in Donbass than Russian
aggression. Accepting that something has to be done to 'provide long-term guarantees to
civilians and separatist insurgents' means accepting that there are civilians and insurgents
who need reassuring, not just Russian troops and mercenaries. And that means changing the
entire narrative which Kiev has adopted about the war. So while Kudelia's proposals make sense
(after all, what's the alternative? How could Donbass be reintegrated into Ukraine without
autonomy and an amnesty?), what's lacking is any sense of how to get there.
A large part of the problem, it seems, is the attitude in Kiev. This becomes very clear in
the second item which caught my attention -- an article
on the website Coda entitled 'Now Healthcare is a Weapon of War in Ukraine.' The
article describes how the DPR and LPR are encouraging Ukrainians to come to rebel territory to
receive free medical treatment, and then using this as propaganda to win support for their
cause. This is despite the fact, as the article shows, that the medical facilities in the two
rebel republics are in a very poor state. Author Lily Hyde isn't able to confirm how many
Ukrainians have taken up the rebel offer of free medical aid, but does repeat a claim by the
rebel authorities that 1,200 people have done so.
What interests me here is not the sensationalist headlines about healthcare being
weaponized, but the question of why Ukrainians might feel it necessary to go to the effort of
crossing the front lines to get treatment. And the article provides an answer, namely that
parts of Donbass 'are trapped in a precarious limbo, still under Ukrainian government control
but cut off from key services like healthcare.' The war destroyed much of the healthcare system
in Donbass, but 'Ukraine provides no financial or other incentives for medics to work in
frontline areas', and has done little to repair shattered infrastructure. Healthcare seems to
be a lower priority than fighting 'terrorism'.
While the DPR and LPR use healthcare as a 'weapon' by providing it to people, Kiev has
'weaponized' health in another way -- by depriving people of it. As the article reports:
Kiev has not outlawed receiving medical treatment in occupied Donetsk or Luhnaks. But
collaborating with the separatists -- or supporting their propaganda efforts -- is illegal.
How exactly such charges are defined is not clear, but past experience has taught both
individuals and organizations to be wary of such accusations. The Ukrainian authorities have
investigated non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in Ukraine who have provided
foreign-funded medicines and other supplies to occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. NGOs working
there have been banned by the de fact authorities [of the DPR and LPR] on similar charges.
Doctors have found themselves placed on blacklists by both Ukrainian officials and the
separatists, accused of being 'terrorist collaborators' by one side, or of being spies by the
other.
Hyde contrasts the Ukrainian government's policies towards the DPR and LPR with that of
Georgia, where:
The government offers free healthcare for people from Abkhazia, a breakaway territory it
still claims which is now under de facto Russian occupation. The government is building a
modern hospital in the nearest town to the boundary line, aimed at people from Abkhazia.
Essentially, says Hyde, it's 'a question of attitude'. She cites Georgy Tuka, Ukraine's
Deputy Minister for Temporarily Occupied Territories -- '"There's a wish to punish people,"
Tuka acknowledged.'
That's quite an admission from a government minister.
Even if the details need fleshing out, the institutional framework required to reintegrate
Donbass into Ukraine has been pretty obvious for a long time now. The problem has been getting
people to accept it. It is indeed, therefore, 'a question of attitude'. Sadly, the prevailing
attitude stands firmly in the way of the institutional changes required for peace. The desire
seems to be to punish people, not to reach agreement with them in order to promote
reintegration and reconciliation. The issue, then, is whether this attitude can be changed (and
if so, how) or whether it is now so firmly entrenched that there is nothing which can be done.
Sadly, I fear that it may be the latter.
It's too late for the reintegration of Donbas into Ukraine, there
will be no implementation of any agreement.
-- Ukraine have gone full neo-Nazi
-- language law is offensive to all minorities not just Russian speakers
-- Russophobia is rampant
-- attacks on the orthodox church
Why would anyone in DPR/LPR want to be part of this.
I agree with the other commentators integration of the
Donbass into an aggressive nationalist Ukraine which is not capable of respecting
minority rights is not possible. A more sensible option would be for Ukraine to divide
into a nationalist part and a rusdophone part, this may be in a confederation like
Belgium. As you say the Kiev government wants complete victory rather than a peace based
on reconciliation the conflict will continue at low level if the Kiev regime believes
that they cannot win but will ignite into another major war if they believe that they
can. What should Russia do ? In my opinion provide suitable aid to the people of the
Donbass to ensure their survival and build institutions, a stable and peaceful
Pridnistrovye type situation is the best that can be achieved in the foreseeable future
Just a direct quote from prof. S Kudelia "Peace plan"
linked above:
" Rebel Disarmament, Demobilization, and Conversion
Reaching an agreement on power-sharing is one precondition for beginning to disarm
and demobilize combatants in civil wars. Another component is the inclusion of former
rebels in the competitive political process through "rebel-to-party transformations
Integration of the party tied to former rebel groups can eliminate potential spoilers,
develop stakeholding in the new system, provide non-violent means of conflict
resolution, make them more accountable to their constituency, and increase legitimacy
of the election process and new authority structures. However, some of the positive
effects from rebel conversion depend on the prior organizational structure of
separatist groups and their political wings. Groups with a highly integrated political
and military structure are the least likely to undergo a successful transformation into
an exclusively political force . This points to major challenges in achieving rebel
conversion in Donbas.
The leaders of the armed groups in Donbas have already established their own
political organizations, which participate in separatist-administered elections,
control local councils throughout the conflict region, and engage with residents. They
have turned into what a security analyst Benedetta Berti calls "hybrid
politico-military organizations" tightly linking political activities and armed
struggle. In both "republics" military and political wings are subordinated to a single
leader
However, an integrated political-military structure also presents three
important challenges for successful transition into the political arena. First, in
contrast to political wings of rebel forces in other countries, these organizations
emerged as key tools for separatist governance in DPR and LPR. Their ideological
program promotes independence for these regions and would be incompatible with
participation in Ukraine's institutional politics. Their reintegration would require a
major revision of their principles and goals with an emphasis on accommodation with the
Ukrainian state and acceptance of its jurisdiction over the entire region . Otherwise,
their inclusion in the political process risks deepening the war-based dividing lines
and hampering reconciliation. Second, the centrality of the leaders of these groups in
organizing an armed struggle against Ukrainian forces and their direct involvement in
the fighting delegitimizes them in Ukrainian public opinion and with the central
government . The recently adopted law on "temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk and
Luhansk oblasts" describes the ruling structure of the "republics" as an "occupational
administration of the Russian Federation." This further complicates their post-conflict
acceptance as legitimate regional representatives. Hence, leadership turnover in
separatist groups is a crucial precondition for the beginning of their direct talks
with the Ukrainian authorities . Finally, the current control that DPR/LPR leaders
exercise over the separatist military apparatus means that even following disarmament
and demobilization they would maintain some influence over local law enforcement. This,
in turn, would allow these leaders to rely on an informal personal militia after
demobilization or revive the military component of their organizations if they sensed a
threat to their power status.
The conversion of rebel groups into recognized political organizations could be
one of the most complex and contested elements of the transition."
Image
copyright
REUTERS
Image
caption
Alexander
Zakharchenko in a 2017 photo
A leader of Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, Alexander
Zakharchenko, has been killed in an explosion at a cafe in Donetsk city.
"The head of the DNR [Donetsk People's Republic]... has died as the
result of a terrorist attack," Zakharchenko's spokeswoman told AFP news
agency.
Russia's foreign ministry said it suspected Ukraine of organising the
latest killing.
The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement.
Some observers have attributed previous deaths of rebel leaders in
Donetsk to infighting among the rebels, or moves by Moscow to eliminate
inconvenient separatist leaders.
What are the two sides saying?
Rebel and Russian news reports say the separatists' "finance minister"
Alexander Timofeyev was wounded in the blast at the Separ cafe that
killed Zakharchenko.
Ukrainians suspected of being behind the blast were arrested nearby, a
security source was quoted as saying.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said "there is
every reason to believe that the Kiev regime is behind the murder".
She said the Kiev "party of war" was "violating its pledges about peace
and has decided on a bloodbath".
However, recent reports suggested that Zakharchenko had fallen out of
favour with Russia.
A spokeswoman for Ukraine's state security service, Yelena Gitlyanskaya,
rejected Moscow's accusations.
She said the killing was a result of "internal fighting... between the
terrorists and their Russian sponsors".
What is happening in eastern Ukraine?
Heavily armed rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk regions refuse to recognise
the Ukrainian government in Kiev.
The rebels seized large swathes of territory there in an uprising in
April 2014. Since then, thousands of people have died in fighting
between the rebels and Ukrainian government forces.
Moscow denies sending regular troops and heavy weapons to the
separatists, but admits that Russian "volunteers" are helping the
rebels.
There has been shooting on the frontline despite a "back-to-school
truce" that was supposed to take effect on Wednesday. International
monitors reported 70 ceasefire violations on that day alone.
Who was Alexander Zakharchenko?
He played a key role in the Russian-backed separatist military operation
from its very beginning.
In early 2014, soon after Ukraine's pro-Russian government was toppled
by the Maidan revolution, he took part in the seizure of the Donetsk
regional administration building by people saying they were protesting
against the new pro-Western authorities.
Later that year, he was chosen as the prime minister of the
self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic by its parliament, the
"Supreme Council".
He had been in the role ever since, assuming the title of president, and
was among the signatories of the stalled Minsk peace agreement.
He was wounded twice in combat, and survived a car bomb blast in August
2014.
Expensive weapon systems for export is Trump administration official policy, his Military
Keyseanism stance.
Notable quotes:
"... The US is to render substantial military assistance to a country with an economy in the doldrums , reforms that have foundered , a democracy that is in question , and corruption that is widespread . ..."
...
Kurt Volker , US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, said in an interview
with the Guardian published on September 1 that "Washington is ready to expand arms supplies to
Ukraine in order to build up the country's naval and air defense forces in the face of
continuing Russian support for
eastern separatists ." According to him, the Trump administration was "absolutely" prepared
to go further in supplying lethal weaponry to Ukrainian forces than the anti-tank
missiles it delivered in April .
Mr. Volker explained that "[t]hey need to rebuild a navy and they have very limited air
capability as well. I think we'll have to look at air defense."
The diplomat
believes Ukraine needs unmanned aerial vehicles, counter-battery radar systems, and
anti-sniper systems. The issue of lethal arms purchases has been discussed at the highest
level.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 allocated
$250m in military assistance to Ukraine, including lethal arms. The
US has delivered Javelin anti-tank missile systems to Kiev but this time the
ambassador talked about an incomparably larger deal. Former President Barack
Obama had been unconvinced that granting Ukraine lethal defensive weapons
would be the right decision, in view of the widespread corruption there. This
policy has changed under President Trump, who - among other things - approved deliveries
of anti-tank missiles to Kiev last December.
Ukraine has officially requested US air-defense systems. According to
Valeriy Chaly, Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, the Ukrainian
military wants to purchase at least three air-defense systems. The cost of
the deal is expected to exceed $2 billion, or about $750 million apiece. The
system in question was not specified, but it's generally believed to be the
Patriot.
Volker's statement was made at a time of rising tensions in the Sea of Azov,
which is legally shared by Ukraine and Russia. It is connected to
the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait. The rhetoric has heated up and ships
have been placed under arrest as this territorial dispute turns the area
into a flashpoint.
Russia has
slammed the US for backing Ukraine's violations of international law in
the area. According to a 2003 treaty, the Sea of Azov is a jointly
controlled territory that both countries are allowed to use freely.
The US military already runs a maritime operations center located within
Ukraine's Ochakov naval base. The facility is an operational-level warfare
command-and-control organization that is designed to deliver flexible
maritime support throughout the full range of military operations. Hundreds
of US and Canadian military instructors are
training Ukrainian personnel at the Yavorov firing range.
NATO has
granted Ukraine the status of an aspirant
country - a step that is openly provocative toward Russia. Macedonia,
Georgia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina are also aspirant nations. Last year,
Ukraine's parliament adopted
a resolution recognizing full membership in NATO as a foreign policy
goal. In 2008, NATO agreed that Ukraine along with Georgia should become a
full-fledged member. In March, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia announced the
formation of an alliance to oppose Russia.
The commedia dell'arte mourning of McCain is in full bloom. In a vulgar orgy of pompous,
bathetic praise from Congress and the media, he is being piously canonized. To counter this
shameless obsequy by attacking him for what he actually was would be an exercise in futility,
just as the endless ad hominem hatchet jobs on Trump accomplish nothing.
It's more useful to examine the grisly American disease of which he was a champion and
cynosure. The son and grandson of Admirals, a bred-in-the-bone military man, he flew a fighter
in Vietnam. Shot down -- and amazingly not summarily executed -- he was held as a POW, and
became a lifelong advocate of unlimited use of military force for American world
domination.
Nothing unusual in that. It is and has been the baseline political credo of all American
politicians since Monroe, at least, up to and including Trump, Hillary, Sanders, and Warren.
The surest way to the graveyard for political hopefuls is to be seen or slimed as "soft on
defense".
The fact that actual defense of the country has not been necessary since the War of 1812,
and is not now, and that the hoax only exists to suck our national wealth into the War Machine
has not been effectively articulated. The idea, false to its core, that America must spend
astronomic sums to "defend" its polity and its people has taken on the character of revealed
religion in a country where multitudes believe in angels and Endtimes.
This appropriation of the wealth of the people by the corporate forces of imperial murder
has not come suddenly. Oceans of innocent blood have drenched the world from our military
violence since Quincy Adams said of America that "she goes not abroad in search of monsters to
destroy".
World War II proved to Eisenhower's Military/Industrial/Congressio nal Complex the
obscene profit to be had from annihilating people, cities, and countries. Schumpeter
defined the War Machine far better than Ike did: "Created by the wars that required it, it now
creates the wars it requires."
Since 1945, America, by then firmly in its grasp, has relentlessly scoured the world behind
the gross and cynical lie of defense of freedom, to foment, ignite, and expand the brutal,
devastating, shock-and-awe gorefests the War Machine has to have. That Korea, Vietnam, and the
catalog of Middle Eastern horrors the US perpetrated were failures on a cosmic scale except as
cash cows for the War Machine has been of little concern to the most somnolent, propagandized,
passive public since that of the Third Reich. These national mass murder atrocities were sold
to Americans as defense of our indispensable "homeland" from barbarian, sub-human "others".
Some, such as Al Qaida were, absurdly, our Deep State's own creations.
It is commonly said and believed that the American public is not at fault for its profound,
intractable moral cowardice since War Machine swag has kept them in a combination insane
asylum, crack house, and human zoo. How else could they have lived with the intolerably bitter
truth that their country is the serial violator and exterminator, the voracious destroyer, of
so many millions of simple, guiltless, victim peoples?
This is where John McCain and his ilk comes in. Exploiting his bogus and accidental
credentials, he became a pitch man for the massive con of American purity and idealism as a
front for imperialist greed, and made a career promoting and lionizing the War Machine as it
raped the peoples of earth and robbed Americans blind in pursuit of its cancerous
enrichment.
Still, McCain was only a cracked and bent tool. He was always an effect, a symptom; never a
cause. The real driver of the War Machine is heartless, soulless, predatory Capitalism. Its
credo is exploitation of everything to maximize profit. In a closed system, competing capital
conflicts, collides. Greed eclipses reason and war results. The greatest capital concentration
requires the most terrible military, in which violence displaces conscience. There never has
been, and never can be, Capitalism without war.
Indoctrinated, baffled, saddled with a cesspool Congress and the deeply stupid, vulgarian
Trump, centrist Americans, desperate for refuge, rush mindlessly to the new War Party,
Democrats eager to use McCain's $700 billion dollar hogwallow "defense" bill, to insult and
provoke China and Russia, and to attack Iran. Hubris, false bravado, and panic rule; nowhere is
there self knowledge and with it, long overdue, sorrow, regret, and shame.
Karmic retribution--the pitiless hand of Nemesis--is all America deserves.
Paul Edwards is a writer and film-maker in Montana. He can be reached at: [email protected]
Facebook has deleted all of my posts from July 2017 to last week because I am, apparently, a
Russian Bot. For a while I could not add any new posts either, but we recently found a way
around that, at least for now. To those of you tempted to say "So what?", I would point out
that over two thirds of visitors to my website arrive via my posting of the articles to
Facebook and Twitter. Social media outlets like this blog, which offer an alternative to MSM
propaganda, are hugely at the mercy of these corporate gatekeepers.
Facebook's plunge into censorship is completely open and admitted, as is the fact it
is operated for Facebook by the Atlantic Council - the extreme neo-con group part funded by
NATO and whose board includes serial war criminal Henry Kissinger, Former CIA Heads Michael
Hayden and Michael Morrell, and George Bush's chief of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff ,
among a whole list of horrors .
The staff are worse than the Board. Their lead expert on Russian bot detection is an
obsessed nutter named Ben Nimmo, whose fragile grip on reality has been completely broken by
his elevation to be the internet's Witchfinder-General. Nimmo, grandly titled "Senior Fellow
for Information Defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab", is the go-to
man for Establishment rubbishing of citizen journalists, and as with Joseph McCarthy or Matthew
Clarke, one day society will sufficiently recover its balance for it to be generally
acknowledged that this kind of witch-hunt nonsense was not just an aberration, but a
manifestation of the evil it claimed to fight.
There is no Establishment cause Nimmo will not aid by labeling its opponents as Bots.
This from the Herald newspaper two days ago, where Nimmo uncovers the secret web
of Scottish Nationalist bots that dominate the internet, and had the temerity to question the
stitch-up of Alex Salmond.
Nimmo's proof? 2,000 people had used the hashtag #Dissolvetheunion on a total of 10,000
tweets in a week. That's five tweets per person on average. In a week. Obviously a massive
bot-plot, eh?
When Ben's great expose for the Herald was met with widespread ridicule , he doubled
down on it by producing his evidence - a list of the top ten bots he had uncovered in this
research. Except that they are almost all, to my certain knowledge, not bots but people . But
do not decry Ben's fantastic forensic skills, for which NATO and the CIA fund the Atlantic
Council. Ben's number one suspect was definitely a bot. He had got the evil kingpin. He had
seen through its identity despite its cunning disguise. That disguise included its name,
IsthisAB0T, and its profile, where it called itself a bot for retweets on Independence. Thank
goodness for Ben Nimmo, or nobody would ever have seen through that evil, presumably
Kremlin-hatched, plan.
No wonder the Atlantic Council advertise Nimmo and his team as " Digital Sherlocks ".
"... Washington – does not give a fuck about the economic well-being of Ukrainians, does not have even the brotherly connection
of being of the same ethnic group, and for so long as Ukraine is willing to suffer being poor in silence, for that long it will not
be a problem for its new 'partners'. ..."
A few are beginning to wake up to the reality that snatching Ukraine away from Russia was never about prosperity and security
for its people, and all about destabilizing what the west perceived as the quickening of an unwelcome regional influence, and
curbing it. The EU – and its string-puller, Washington – does not give a fuck about the economic well-being of Ukrainians,
does not have even the brotherly connection of being of the same ethnic group, and for so long as Ukraine is willing to suffer
being poor in silence, for that long it will not be a problem for its new 'partners'.
Nationalist Nazi nutjobs are always proposing the border be sealed ever-tighter, if it were feasible to build a stainless-steel
wall between Ukraine and Russia which reached to low earth orbit, they would vote for it. But the Great Wall Of Yatsenyuk never
materialized, he's enjoying his Florida condo, and there is no practical way to limit commerce between the two countries while
the people are increasingly motivated toward its continuing.
Ukraine is on the edge of collapse, and I don't think any force on earth can prevent its sliding over the edge. The west is
not going to pony up the $170 Billion or so it would take to rescue it; if it did so, Porky and his minions would steal most of
it for themselves, and Russia is unlikely to ever permit again the degree of fraternal closeness that existed between the two
countries, since it is clear it would take only another western intervention to render it once again an untrustworthy spoiler.
Once Nord Stream II is built, Ukraine will have lost its leverage and will be of no further significant value to the western purveyors
of destabilization.
More such core realization is necessary to prevent Ukraine from officially blaming its collapse on anyone but itself. The government
will try that course, naturally, and you don't need to be able to see very far into the future to know that it is Russia who will
be blamed, despite plenty of empirical evidence that Russian investors and Ukrainian refugees working in Russia were all that
kept it alive before the end. But in order that Ukrainians know in their heart of hearts that their government stepped on its
own dick over and over, and that they passively failed to correct it, there needs to be more such public confession. I can show
you plenty of analysis, in English, published before things went pear-shaped in the dying moments of 2013, which proposed that
severing trade relationships with Russia as the nationalists insisted would cost Ukraine just about exactly what the Rada now
says will happen, years too late. But they got one thing right – Ukraine and Russia cannot be brothers, not even friends, for
so long as Ukraine harbours that nutty nationalist element.
Give western Ukraine to Poland, and encourage all the nationalists
to go to the new paradise, and ensure that happens. They can bore the Poles with their raptures about Kievan Rus. Then maybe some
relationship could be salvaged.
This war is tremendous waste of resources on both sides with no clear
victory in sight. Killing of individual commanders does not change the
strategic situation. It just invites retaliation.
Although the war did increase the coherence of the Ukrainian society
(like any war does) the price is way too high.
Zakharchenko was a soldier and knew the risks, many others are ready to take his
place.
VV Putin could have occupied the whole so-called ukraine in the same manner he occupied
Crimea, even better, he could've sent volunteers to shoot CIA and Mossad agents during the
maidan events.Lots of volunteers.
He didnt.
Please consider that ukraine project is an infinite black hole sucking money and resources
(agents, weapons, influence) from the Hegemon, at the same time bringing him absolutely
nothing.
Especially the Debaltsevo cauldron was painful, as lots of modern artillery control gear
was lost in pristine state and sent directly to Moscow.Without considering the humiliation of
German and Canadian mercenaries being caught and released for indeterminate price.
In exchange the Hegemon learned that Russian artillery is still as dangerous as in '45, at
Saur Mogila whole battalions of Ukrainian army disappeared literally in minutes when caught
by Buratino fire.
Perhaps some remember the shellshocked Ukrainian infantry lieutenant, when interviewed by
CNN freshly out of Ilovaisk, screaming into the mic that *two meters, you must dig two
meters, or you die!* , well-intentioned American female reporter decidedly confused.
The show will go on until Hegemon decides that he had enough, and gives green light to the
ukrainian army to coup the govt, exterminate the nazi battalions, and begin a very slow and
painful ascension back into a semblance of normality first, then re-unification with the
Motherland next.
As usual, the most vulnerable, old people, women, workers will suffer the most, and the
guilty will go unpunished.
Looks like we came very close in the USA to classic definition of fascism: (1) Powerful
and continuing expressions of nationalism (yes); (2). Disdain for the importance of human
rights (NO, only for brown people); (3). Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying
cause (yes); (4) The supremacy of the military/avid militarism (yes); (5) Rampant sexism
(NO); (6) A controlled mass media (NO; only MSM; Internel is still not controlled) (7)
Obsession with national security (yes); (8) Religion and ruling elite tied together (yes;
Pence is a good example here); (9) Power of corporations protected (yes); (10) Power of labor
suppressed or eliminated (yes). (11) Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
(no); (12) Obsession with crime and punishment (yes); (13) Rampant cronyism and corruption
(yes); (14). Fraudulent elections (yes; via two party system)
Notable quotes:
"... Hitler and Netanyahu's statements reflect the viewpoint of Social Darwinism, an ideology that justifies elite dominance of society to its own ends. ..."
"... This idea "that Fascism (and Nazism) are a form of Liberalism" seems like a really important idea. ..."
"... That's my point: Arendt's totalitarianism theory is 100% false. There is no "totalitarianism" in reality: it is a Cold War myth, a mirage. Nazism and Communism had absolutely nothing in common (as she states). Different ideology, different genesis in Western school of thought, different goals, different economic systems etc. ..."
"... Propaganda warfare, prison systems, war strategies, logistics -- those are all universal methodologies, means to achieve an end, there are no patents in then. This is so true that the USA is using many methods (including torture in black sites) that, during the Cold War, its propaganda (which would cause Goebbels envy) stated only a "totalitarian" (i.e. a communist or a fascist) would do. ..."
"... I am saying that liberalism may subvert democracy and tend towards criminality [including genocide] and that seems an area that has been neglected when considering what the nature of Nazism/Fascism really is. ..."
"... The US had social liberalism following WWII although tainted somewhat by the CIA and MIC and lasting until the early 70's. There was essentially a civil war fought starting in 1963 at the elite level by neoliberal globalists and social liberal nationalists leading to a number of assassinations and ending with Nixons impeachment/resignation in 1973/74. The good guys lost and its been downhill ever since as the US descends Jacobs Neoliberal Ladder. ..."
"... Although you're right in the sense that Liberalism has some diversity over history, its cornerstone is freedom=private property. ..."
"... 'Totalitarianism' has roots in 'total mobilisation' and 'total war' – in the total regimentation of the population, driven by the capitalist great powers and their competition to conquer colonies and global hegemony. Hitler aspired to German revanchism, winning back and expanding Germany's 'living space' and colonial territories. He saw himself as heir to the colonial tradition, which he sought to radicalise. ..."
"... He first of all identified with the US example, seeking his own Far West in Eastern Europe and reducing the Slavs to the condition of slaves in service of the Herrenvolk. Decisively, this project met its definitive defeat at Stalingrad; this defeat was, at the same time, the beginning of a gigantic wave of anti-colonial revolts. ..."
(Neo-)Liberalism, imperialism, Nazism, etc. are all internationalist as well.
I know so many people on the western left who believe that invading Syria, Iran,
Venezuela, intervening in Africa, sanctions/punishments (war?) on Russia, Soros, colour
revolutions, etc. is all good and justified because it moves away from the nation state
towards internationalism.
Even what you call Arendt's "same techniques" is wrong: nazi Germany had a completely
different socioecomic and cultural structure than the USSR. Germany didn't even had eg
commissaries, they didn't even had a planified central economy. It was really just
liberalism: an USA that went wrong.
Someone recently told me that the whole of human history boils down to one thing, "one
tribe wants to take something from another tribe". I would put it another way, sharing
outside of the family unit is learned, taking is natural selection at its best.
So, having stated Arendt as your belief, you now deny it, saying that fascism is
different from communism. So what makes fascism then, apart from the technique of declaring
the unity of the nation behind the leader, which the commies also did? The only answer is
nationalism, as I said before.
To those who say Statements 1 and 3 illustrate reality: don't confuse bullying with
strength.
Hitler and Netanyahu's statements reflect the viewpoint of Social Darwinism, an ideology
that justifies elite dominance of society to its own ends.
The question we should be asking ourselves is whether nations that have achieved
military power, often through intimidating and brainwashing their own peoples, and smashing
down those who resist. should be allowed to continue in this way. And for what purpose?
Can the actions and policies of Nazi Germany and Israel be construed as those of
powerful and strong nations? If Israel chooses easy targets to attack, and relies on
bullying others and intimidating them by exploiting the Shoah, are its actions those of a
strong nation?
I have been brought up with the history and consequences of the potato famine and one
thing that always puzzled me was why the British Empire just allowed it to happen? It would
have cost little to the Empire and cast the British in a whole new light in the eyes of the
Irish.
This proposition that it was ideological (liberalism) is something of an eye opener to
me, social darwinism (let the weak die) is a very persuasive reason. And this does lead to
a direct correlation with Nazism/fascism.
The more recent books (Kershaw) on Hitler talk about the freedom of officials to do what
they want and take what they want as a reason why there are not written orders from Hitler
authorising (amongst other things) the genocide of those considered weak and undesirable.
This is obviously frustrating to the writers because they are unable to convincing find
sufficient written documentation supporting the administrative implementation of the
presumed 'ideology'; a frustrating inability to adequately explain Hitler, as it were.
This
idea that Nazism is some kind of souped up liberalism is more convincing than saying Hitler
was just too lazy to get out of bed in the mornings.
The key objection that I think that most people will instinctively have (because the
idea is so contrary to what we have been taught) is that (neo-)liberalism and democracy go
together. However, some of (neo-)liberalism's prime ideological advocates (Hayek, James M.
Buchanan) clearly wanted to minimise democratic interference and envisaged a time when
democracy was no longer of use and could be discarded.
This idea "that Fascism (and Nazism) are a form of Liberalism" seems like a really
important idea.
Thank you for taking us back to the Greeks! I offer in tandem this quotation from the
website of a Plato scholar who has long been one of my heroes, Bernard Suzanne (his site is
still available, an amazing source of ongoing study):
"Unless either the philosophers become kings in the cities or those who are nowadays called kings and rulers get to philosophizing truly and adequately, and this falls together upon the same person, political power and philosophy, while the many natures of those who are driven toward the one apart from the other are forcibly set aside, there will be no cessation of evils, my dear Glaucon, for cities, nor, methinks, for the human race." Plato, République, V, 473c11-d61
I will just add that the title "Republic" is a bad translation of the Greek word
"Politeia" - to my mind "Citizenry" fits better, bearing in mind that cities in Socrates'
day were the equivalent of small states. And in Shakespearean terms, it would be prudent to
say of that 'forcible setting aside of many natures' - "Aye, there's the rub!"
ADKC: ... why the British Empire just allowed it to happen?
It wasn't liberalism or social darwinism. As proven by the success of Irish outside
Ireland. It was pacifying the unruly Irish that lived next door to the greatest Empire yet known.
Today we would call it a crime against humanity.
Prior to the contrived Potato Famine was Enclosure. Perhaps you've read Sir Thomas
More's Utopia which describes well the outcome of that quite deliberate policy. It
would be nice to ascribe such doings to the Policy favored by Sir Francis Bacon who
advocated waging war on the poor continuously and mercilessly, deeming them The Hydra
threatening the wellbeing of the well off.
As many have written, the British rehearsed
their colonial policies first on the Irish and the aims had nothing to do with Liberalism
or any other ism aside from Authoritarianism, which is quite close to being a Totalitarian
System and is certainly argued as such. That Liberalism can be in any way associated with
Fascism means a basic lack of understanding of Liberalism's defining
characteristics .
That's my point: Arendt's totalitarianism theory is 100% false. There is no
"totalitarianism" in reality: it is a Cold War myth, a mirage. Nazism and Communism had
absolutely nothing in common (as she states). Different ideology, different genesis in
Western school of thought, different goals, different economic systems etc.
Hitler never
laid out any economic plan, it was implicit the liberal model was the model: he simply
wanted a traditional colonial power that could mirror the British Empire to the East. He
didn't invent racism or genocide.
It was not just a difference of "the Third Reich was nationalist and the USSR was not"
-- on the contrary, Socialism in one country was the victorious ideology post-Lenin, and
the Cuban, Vietnamese and Chinese (to a lesser extent) were all nationalist in substance.
Fidel Castro wasn't even communist when he led the Revolution!
There are no coincidence in "techniques". Unless you characterize anything as tributary
to the place who first invented it. In this sense, everybody who uses Law is Roman, or
anybody who goes to space is Soviet -- which is absurd.
Propaganda warfare, prison systems,
war strategies, logistics -- those are all universal methodologies, means to achieve an
end, there are no patents in then. This is so true that the USA is using many methods
(including torture in black sites) that, during the Cold War, its propaganda (which would
cause Goebbels envy) stated only a "totalitarian" (i.e. a communist or a fascist) would
do.
The USSR was a unique experiment, which dissolved suddenly and unexpectedly. In my
opinion, it was valuable in the sense it was the first experience of a State in which the
working class was in power (dictatorship of the proletariat). Yes, it failed -- but no new
economic system is born ready, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Even capitalism failed
for more than 300 years before finally working in the least of probable of places: tiny and
peripheral England.
There is pretty strong debate on the nature of the British reaction to the 1845 Irish
Potato Famine. Some sources say it was deliberate genocide on the part of the British.
Either Irish people starved to death or they fled overseas (and gave up their land,
language and culture) to survive. Others point to the monoculture that the introduction of
potatoes back in the 1600s created, and the population boom that resulted. Potatoes are a
very nutritious crop staple for poor people.
The famines that began afflicting India from the 1770s on (after the Indian
subcontintent started to come under British rule through the British East India Company)
and which the British always never dealt with adequately - even though previous empires in
India had always been able to stave off famine and starvation when monsoons failed to
arrive or were late and harvests ended up ruined - might shed some light on the British
treatment of the Irish Potato Famine.
In India. the Mughals and others who came before them prevented famine in areas that had
suffered crop failures by reducing taxation and giving afflicted areas stored grain (from
previous years' surpluses). Under British rule, India was heavily taxed (by having to
supply food for the empire) and the levels of taxation were maintained regardless of local
or regional conditions. In times when the monsoon failed and crops failed, communities
continued to suffer from the brunt of heavy taxation. Combined with the British destruction
of the Indian textile industry over the 1700s, which put thousands out of work, British
taxation and other imperial policies turned India into a massive poorhouse.
And yet the British State would describe itself (then and now) as liberal and
democratic. Even today the British State does not recognise that any "crime against humanity"
happened in Ireland regarding the potato famine.
To avoid any confusion:- I am not suggesting that there wasn't a crime, I am not
advocating social darwinism, I am not suggesting that the Irish were weak or inferior in
anyway. I am saying that liberalism may subvert democracy and tend towards criminality
[including genocide] and that seems an area that has been neglected when considering what
the nature of Nazism/Fascism really is.
Communism is state owned capitalism where state controls the means of production, fascism
and neoliberalism (classic liberalism)is private owned capitalism where the owners of
production (elites) control the government to an unhealthy degree. Social liberalism
(called socialism by some) is a mix of state and privately owned production, a mix
determined to maximize benefits to society with the people in control of government, and
capitalism and government serving the people and not just the elites
The US had social liberalism following WWII although tainted somewhat by the CIA and MIC
and lasting until the early 70's. There was essentially a civil war fought starting in 1963
at the elite level by neoliberal globalists and social liberal nationalists leading to a
number of assassinations and ending with Nixons impeachment/resignation in 1973/74. The
good guys lost and its been downhill ever since as the US descends Jacobs Neoliberal
Ladder.
Only in some kind of hell could a guy like Trump be elected. At least the Germans never
elected their racist and fascist leader
Although you're right in the sense that Liberalism has some diversity over history, its
cornerstone is freedom=private property.
If you take the first Constitution of the French
Revolution, you'll see right in the first articles that by freedom they consider the right
of the individual to fully enjoy his life and his private property ("industrie"). This
chunk of the Constitution remained in the next versions.
So, colonialism was a perfectly liberal policy: the workers you're exploiting are your
property, so you're enjoying your individual freedom. It was only with the socialist
uprisings of the 19th Century that property-less people (i.e. workers) begun to enjoy some
rights -- the most illustrative being the right to vote (non-censitary vote, universal
vote).
There's absolutely no documentation that demonstrate Hitler and/or Mussolini tried to
end liberalism and create a new economic system (like the Communist). Nazism and Fascism
are literally liberalism with a bombastic narrative (one with the quest of the Aryan Race
of its Lebensraum; the other trying to revive the Roman Empire), but all the basic elements
of liberalism are there: the main one being the preservation of private property.
P.S.: the concept of freedom of speech was different back then: all those rights only
belonged to the capitalist class; workers and slaves were not considered human beings. The
concept of the "universal man" only really came in vogue with Marx; before him, it was
widely believed the dominant class was of a different breed than that of an dominated
class.
We're discussing isms here. What ism's being advocated by the
testimony before the Outlaw US Empire's Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Wess
Mitchell:
"Russia and China are serious competitors that are building up the material and
ideological wherewithal to contest U.S. primacy and leadership in the 21st Century. It
continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to
prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers. The central aim of the
administration's foreign policy is to prepare our nation to confront this challenge by
systematically strengthening the military, economic and political fundaments of American
power."
Mitchell mentions a document I wasn't able to locate, the "Russia Integrated Strategy,"
but I was able to find what appears to be
its predecessor , "Russia Project Strategy, 2014-2017."
Surely, this conforms to the Outlaw US Empire's Imperialism via which its goal is the
Full Spectrum Domination (FSD) of the planet and its people. Some would consider that
Totalitarianism--the doctrine of total control. During its drive to attain FSD, certain
aspects must be masked from the Empire's public since relatively unfettered freedom is
featured as one of its alleged values, which is why the many undemocratic aspects of
various "trade" agreements are never discussed and negotiated in secret, for example. What
do we call a government that directly lies to its populous? What sort of ism is in
play?
Mitchell's testimony was done in public so it didn't remain secret very long, was
written about in Russian, then
the analysis was translated into English . Hopefully barflies and others will read
these documents and shudder, although I'm sure a few will say "So, what's new?" Well, this
goes far beyond the millennia long, ongoing Class War, and confirms what I've been saying
for awhile now--We're already within a Hybrid Third World War being waged by people who
want everything or nothing. What sort of ism's that? In my book, it's the worst form of
Authoritarianism anyone might imagine.
One of the things I find missing in the discussion so far is the anthropological
perspective. A short version would be that with the rise of monotheistic religions came the
rise of human hubris about humans place in the cosmos and limited variations of us/them
proscriptions about how life should be led....and the belief that everyone should believe
this way or be eliminated.
This arrangement was challenge during the (as yet finished) Enlightenment period that
began with the start of the scientific revolution in 1620. This period was the birth of
liberalism and the church and state came under increased scrutiny.....but not
rejection....blind faith still lives on.
Fast forward to the present where we have ongoing elimination of any and all cultures
not "Western" which is my biggest problem with our social order....it is reducing our
genetic ability to survive by the monoculture focus.....as well as being a heinous form of
social organization that favors the few over the many.
On to fascism....Fascism is not just defined by a single aspect but a combination that
show the face of the beast. The best description of fascism is a list of 14 points written
in 2004 by Dr. Laurence Britt, a political scientist. Dr. Britt studied the fascist regimes
of: Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet
(Chile). His points are as follows:
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the
fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens
caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and
demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled
with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to
realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the
population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even
demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy,
denial, and disinformation.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a
means to divert the people's attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures,
and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice -- relentless
propaganda and disinformation -- were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite
"spontaneous" acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals,
Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other
religions, secularists, homosexuals, and "terrorists." Active opponents of these regimes
were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial
infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was
allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an
expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals,
intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.
5. Rampant sexism
Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were
male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were
adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in
Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus
lending the regime cover for its abuses.
6. A controlled mass media
Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be
relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power
to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to
resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of
the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was
usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes' excesses.
7. Obsession with national security
Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite.
It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints.
Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting "national security," and
questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as
godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the
predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders
of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite's behavior was incompatible with the
precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion
that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the "godless." A
perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on
religion.
9. Power of corporations protected
Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of
large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw
the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed
states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite
were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests,
especially in the repression of "have-not" citizens.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the
political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed
or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright
contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were
anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to
national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled;
politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of
dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature
should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison
populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to
rampant abuse. "Normal" and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal
charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of
criminals or "traitors" was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more
police power.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to
enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive
financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of
government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth
from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national
security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely
unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.
14. Fraudulent elections
Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When
actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power
elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the
election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or
disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the
power elite.
Jr @ 138: Thanks for the link, but all I get from the endless semantics, is that the
English language is a lot like beauty, " in the eye of the beholder, or speaker.
English, or any language, can be used to inform or confuse.
How many of a similar sample of Germans in 1938 thought that their government would do
what it did? Consent must be manufactured. Caitlin Johnstone recently wrote this addition
to the genre
explaining how that's done .
I have a different perspective than psychohistorian.
For starters, I would see different causes of Enlightenment. It was a huge (if somewhat
misunderstood) ideological change in Europe, and such changes are caused by the profound
catastrophes undermining the trust in the status quo. While the scientific and other
cultural advances were definitely in place in 17 century Europe, a larger part of that
century were spent on horrific wars. If you add up their effects and compare to the
continent's population, it is hard to tell if 17 century was less horrible that World Wars
of 20-th century or not. And most of those wars were "religious", or had a major religious
component. In reaction, the thinkers and rulers got convinced that "reason" should have
primacy over "religion". Scientific advances played a role in fortifying the authority of
"reason", but ideas like defending one true faith and following rulers because of their
divine mandate were discredited by calamitous wars.
Advantages of "reason" were quite quickly noticed by elites, for example divine rights
of absolute rulers were patched by their enlightenment. Wars in Europe improved methods of
conscription, arming and disciplining the peasants and outright massacring and pillaging
was less evident than in 17-th century. But any discussion on fascism had to wait until
20-th century, because it made no sense in authoritarian systems of more traditional elites
-- manipulating public opinion makes little sense if public opinion matters only a little.
But as democracy became widespread AND the traditional elites got compromised once again by
WWI, radical movements emerged, including Communism and Fascism.
What I am trying to say is that mo st of points listed as features of fascism by
psychohistorian is "good old order" with appeals to "reason". Of course, all methods used
in the past are applied if handy, e.g. in Thailand divine mandate of the king is
energetically applied by the ruling military junta. To me, fascism is bit more specific.
For example, the cult of a uniquely qualified leader, championing the "common people",
projects of "national grandeur" that may include highway system and/or war of conquests,
rank intimidation augmenting more gentle "manipulation" etc.
But most of points listed by psychohistorian are more insidious features that follow
from "Iron law of oligarchy". Getting rid of them will require more effort than getting rid
of "true fascism".
vk, what text/interviews are you using for your claims about Arendt's theory of
totalitarianism? I mean, could you quote a specific place or paragraph? I come to her
thought through Life of Mind and Human Condition, and my take or sense of her ideas about
"totality" when it comes to social structures is that she gets it amazingly well how
contemporary technology destroys/yed the public realm by amplifying the organismic aspects
of the collective. Y'all talk about the ism of totalitarian being you find in Hannah's
writings, but it's like there's still something missing: the difference between the social
and the political isn't just a matter of concept but metaphysical. It isn't just
ideological but geo-metric. Social control isn't political when it reaches the point of
actualizing gods'-eyes-views, it has become self-aware bureaucracy -- what we already find
every day when our ego mistakes its beliefs about control for actions making history.
People forget the deepest slogan of The Party is GOD is POWER. If you believe war is not
peace and ignorance is not strength, then you have to figure out why Orwell wants you to
also start figuring out why god is not power.
Some like to amalgamate Nazism and communism into one, with the term 'totalitarianism'
covering both How would you analyse this concept?
'Totalitarianism' has roots in 'total mobilisation' and 'total war' – in the
total regimentation of the population, driven by the capitalist great powers and their
competition to conquer colonies and global hegemony. Hitler aspired to German revanchism,
winning back and expanding Germany's 'living space' and colonial territories. He saw
himself as heir to the colonial tradition, which he sought to radicalise.
He first of all identified with the US example, seeking his own Far West in
Eastern Europe and reducing the Slavs to the condition of slaves in service of the
Herrenvolk. Decisively, this project met its definitive defeat at Stalingrad; this defeat
was, at the same time, the beginning of a gigantic wave of anti-colonial
revolts.
A historical comparison is useful, here, for grasping how unserious the dominant
ideology's framing of 'totalitarianism' is. At the start of the nineteenth century
Napoleon sent a powerful army to Saint-Domingue with the mission of re-establishing
slavery, after it had been abolished thanks to the great black revolution led by
Toussaint Louverture.
We could indeed say that in the war that then raged, the attacked were no less
'savage' than the attackers. But we would cover ourselves in ridicule if we claimed that
we could reduce both sides to a common 'savagery' or a shared bloody
'totalitarianism'.
Much of the consideration of fascism here has been about the power and control of leaders
and elites. There is another side to the equation
One writer foretold the inevitable decline of the US toward fascism based on the social
construct used to establish law. At its' formation the US, like most of the West, had some
form of divinely sanctioned 'law' as the basis of its' civil code. While in theory law was
proclaimed to flow from democratic forms of government, the law was actually a projection
of a cultural/social ideal based on a religious text.
As that cultural/social/religious unity fractured in the face of secularism, humanism
and liberalism, there was a shift in the 'authority' that lay behind social law. The writer
I referred to indicated that cultural inertia would continue to carry the country for a
generation or two, but inevitably social/moral disintegration would occur. The result he
said would economic & social collapse which would in turn propel a movement toward
fascism.
Since then there has been a lot of evidence from evolutionary biology that suggests the
human predisposition to organize itself under some form of "authority structure" is
hard-wired into us.
"Not sure where the Romans and Genghiz Khan fit into that theory." dh |
We are not talking about wars but about societies in normal times. Both the Romans (see
eg Bread and Circuses) and the various post Genghiz states (the Mongol dynasty in China)
ruled by ensuring the general welfare of the population.
Incidentally there is no suggestion that the Irish were an 'inferior race'. Those
depending on the potato were weakened when there were no edible potatoes. The point is that
there was plenty of food to feed them but that liberal ideology did not allow of 'relief'
which would improve their fate.
Social Darwinism and Eugenics was certainly not owned by Fascists alone. Its alive and
well today and is used to justify neoliberal economics and imperialism. Pft at 43.
Yes.. I'd go further, the Fascists (as a standard narrow ex. Italy and Germany somewhat
before and during WW2) merely adopted parts of what was then mainstream 'Science' and/or
sociological accepted thinking, which itself was of course built on the zeitgeist, trends
in popular opinion etc. 'Modern' (late 18th - early 19th cent > 'misgenation', apartheid
laws, etc.) eugenics was very much a USA driven scientific trend. (Colonialist roots..)
Many got on the bandwagon - medicos, drug pedlers, breeders (of non-humans like chickens
and beef), socio pundits, pols, and more. Ex.
'Biologic' determinist credos (=> it's all in your genes) hold a strong sway in the
US today, stronger imho than in any other country, sticking out my neck as of course I know
little to nothing about 2/10 or far more of the world.
The fundamentalist and rigidly deterministic stance of course serves repressive
policies: ppl are born bad and 'need prison' etc.
Another nefarious result, e.g. 'ppl are born gender dysphoric' so need corrective
measures (surgery, drug dependence) is another, exploitative, side of the same coin.
The primary link between neoliberalism and fascism is their insistence that the weak go to
the wall. Communism denies this so did all societies before the British empire of the
C19th.
It is inconceivable that any previous society would have condoned the positions adopted by
the British government in Ireland during the 'Potato famine' or the policies pursued during
successive Bengal famines.
For those unfamiliar with the history of what occurred in Ireland it is worth recalling
that during the years in which the potato harvest failed entirely there were massive
shipments of food out of Ireland, vast quantities of meat, butter, cheese, barley and other
grains, were despatched to England and elsewhere for sale.
Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College Oxford, said of the liberal Political
Economists that he distrusted them and had done so since being told by one of them that,
while it was true that more than a million Irish people had died of starvation during the
famine, "He said that he wasn't sure that that that was enough."
For Bengal see, for example, Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts.
"... That she equated the two is intellectually dishonest, but hey, it was the height of the Cold War, there was poetic license to lie in the academic world. ..."
@ Posted by: Charles R | Sep 2, 2018 12:49:09 AM | 145
Her book in question is The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Possibly her most famous
book and the one which skyrocketed her career in the USA (and to the CIA, to which she was a
collaborator).
Also, in an article about modernism (I don't know how it was published in English), in the
last paragraphs, she mentions her "research on totalitarianism", and then goes on stating
that what united nazism and communism was the adoption of a "grand narrative" (see the
coincidence with post-modernism? Not a mere coincidence, for sure): the nazi adopting the
"grand narrative" of race struggle and the communist the one of class struggle. That she
equated the two is intellectually dishonest, but hey, it was the height of the Cold War,
there was poetic license to lie in the academic world.
I was born right at the end of the Cold War. I probably belong to the first generation of
historians born "post-Cold-War". And the first thing that amazed me was the sheer quantity of
pure lies and myths that pervaded Cold War era thought and science. It wasn't some
"conspiracy theory" level lies -- those very carefully crafted lies, extremely difficult to
debunk -- no, it was pure ideology, lies that can be easily debunked with a first look at
primary sources or with five minutes in internet research. Future historians (of the 22nd
Century) will probably see the Cold War era until today as a dark age for science.
Even Marxist production of this era suffered a lot: Marx must have had spinned in his tomb
like never before during the post-war era.
-//-
@ Posted by: les7 | Sep 2, 2018 3:36:39 AM | 149
Since then there has been a lot of evidence from evolutionary biology that suggests the
human predisposition to organize itself under some form of "authority structure" is
hard-wired into us.
The homo sapiens is an apex superpredator, a species of the fifth trophic level (level 5).
To top it off, we are also omnivorous, which makes us even more deadly and voracious.
Apex predators are not cannibal (the higher the trophic level, the lower the energy level,
so it wouldn't be energetically advantageous for apex predators to eat/hunt themselves. The
meat of apex predators have very low nutrition levels and are usually full of parasites and
other poisonous residues (e.g. dolphin meat is full of mercury, not edible for humans).
However, apex predator can and do kill themselves in territorial disputes -- be it among
themselves, be it with another apex predator species.
So, it is only natural that humans kill themselves for resources. It is in our nature.
However, there's a situation where apex predators stop killing themselves: when the
environment has enough for everybody. It will not be Teletubbies, where everybody will hug
and love themselves, but they would tolerate themselves. For example, you may want to kill a
stranger in the street -- but if that stranger is your children's doctor, then you'll think
twice, you'll tolerate his existence just because it is in your economic interest to keep him
alive.
That's what Marx was all about: capitalism increased interdependency, so are now, relative
to total population, killing ourselves less. The only reason the USA just don't nuke
everybody is that it depends on the rest of the world for trade. If we develop the productive
forces further, we could have a situation were the excedent would be so big that nobody would
have to exploit nobody (a fully-automated society). Again, Marx never stated communism would
be a hippie utopia: humans would still get happy, sad, anger, grief, violence for passional
motives would still happen, people would still cry when a parent would die etc. etc. What he
envisaged was a society without class.
-//-
Now, the last time about liberalism.
Liberalism is an umbrella term (although not as umbrella as illuminism) to designate the
legitimating of capitalism over four centuries. Liberalism was not just philosophy: it was an
economic theory etc.
What unites liberals of all sorts of kinds is the fact that, ultimately, the acted to
preserve or advocate for capitalism.
Liberalism can be better described thus as the way of life of capitalism; the way
capitalism perceives itself over time.
The separation we do nowadays between liberalism and nazifascism comes from neoliberal
propaganda.
Neoliberalism (new liberalism) was born in the 40s, in Mont Pelerin, and its doctrine
stated that 1) post-war social-democracy in Western Europe = socialism and should be combated
and 2) what happened between the WWI (1914) and WWII (1945) was an abortion of History, and
the world should continue from where it stopped (i.e. with the old liberalism).
That's why I consider neoliberalism more like the "return of the liberals" than "the new
liberalism", albeit it, I confess, from the point of view of the economists, the latter
definition suits better. New liberalism because they conceded liberalism collapsed in 1914
and needed to be updated (this happened with Friedman's monetarism); Return of the liberals
because, albeit it was born in the 40s, it was just in 1979, with the election of Margaret
Thatcher in the UK, that it would really come to power in a worldwide level (there was
already a neoliberal experiment in Pinochet's Chile, some years before).
But I think the definite empirical proof totalitarianism is a Cold War myth and that
nazifascism is really liberalism is that this new rise of the "far-right/alt-right" is not
coming from socialist countries (North Korea, Cuba, China and Vietnam), but from capitalist,
Western Democracies (Italy, France, USA, UK, Australia, Japan -- albeit Japan never gave up
fascism to begin with --, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Austria and Ukraine). It was from
the liberals' womb that fascism was (re)born, not "communism". This is a fact, a fact we can
observe today, with our own senses.
Now, you can rationalized that many of these countries are from the ex-Iron Curtain. But
1) it only happened after they turned capitalist, not while they were under the USSR and 2)
those Iron Curtain countries were actually full-fledged Nazi countries before the USSR
liberated them in 1945, so they had a nazi past and culture as a nationalist narrative
against USSR hegemony; the Ukraine has a sui generis history, that involved a triple side
civil war (White, Black and Red Armies), so, albeit they were part of the USSR, they too had
a Nazi past.
"... During the Cold War, a cold warrior called Hannah Arendt published a book (with a CIA editor) that laid out the most famous version of the theory of totalitarianism. ..."
"... The theory of totalitarianism states that communism and fascism are the sides of the same coin. Arendt's central argument was that both communism and nazism were brother ideologies because both adopt a central, all-encompassing historical narrative: nazism adopting the narrative of the struggle between the races and communism adopting the narrative of struggle between classes. ..."
"... Yes, she equate racism to class struggle (which is a false dichotomy, because class struggle is empirically observable towards all written history we have available today, while race war is a modern late 19th Century invention). ..."
"... The Cold War ended and Arendt's theory was proved wrong: the USSR dissolved over the weight of its own internal contradictions. But the idea that nazifascism and communism were brother ideologies stuck in the West. ..."
"... Thanks karlof1 I look forward to you posts here. I am sure the elite could be identified as fascist as the concentration of wealth and power was certainly in their hands then after centuries of mercantile plunder. Equally they bundled the wealth generated from the progress of automation from horse drawn farm machinery through to steam power etc. ..."
"... As for American Fascism, the entire mindset of American Exceptionalism combined with the doctrine of Manifest Destiny provide it with a substantial foundation. ..."
"... "Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes ..."
"... Yes, he saw it but IMO was too soft toward it. I'd be remiss not to mention Bertram Gross's bold 1980 book Friendly Fascism and Sheldon Wolin's Inverted Totalitarianism . ..."
Fascism (and Nazism) is a form of Liberalism. But we need to clarify one of the most
persuading Cold War myths: the myth of totalitarianism.
(huge parenthesis alert)
-//-
During the Cold War, a cold warrior called Hannah Arendt published
a book (with a CIA
editor) that laid out the most famous version of the theory of totalitarianism.
The theory of totalitarianism states that communism and fascism are the sides of the same
coin. Arendt's central argument was that both communism and nazism were brother ideologies
because both adopt a central, all-encompassing historical narrative: nazism adopting the
narrative of the struggle between the races and communism adopting the narrative of struggle
between classes.
Yes, she equate racism to class struggle (which is a false dichotomy,
because class struggle is empirically observable towards all written history we have
available today, while race war is a modern late 19th Century invention).
Arendt's totalitarianism theory helped to give birth to modern liberal leftism, more
specifically, post-modernism, which states that there's no "long term narrative" in human
history (i.e. there's no class war; or class war was a random phenomenon of the late
19th-early 20th Centuries) and that there's no truth: only points of view based on the
observer's immediate observation.
Alongside post-modernism, there was, at the same time, a rehabilitation of Christianism,
as a part of the ideological war against communism/socialism in the Cold War: that meant a
tendency to secularism and reason begun to be reversed in the West from the 70s onwards. Such
"imbecilization" process is not new: it happened during the decline of the Roman Empire,
during the late Severan dinasty and throughout the crisis of the Third Century and progressed
with the reforms of Diocletian, reaching its appex with Constantine and Justinian. This
period of time saw the economy of Rome collapse, while Christianism flourished.
So yes, everytime society tries to progress, the Western elite calls 911-Christianism to
the rescue, it is not new: it is important to notice that, after the French Revolution, the
legitimizing narrative was that the Roman Republic was being revived (Napoleon was in love
with Ancient Rome, and read all of Caesar's Commentaries ) -- what Marx called the
"farce" in the Brummaire -- and that both the British and the American empires like to
mirror themselves with the Roman Empire (and many of modern laws and principles are based on
Roman jurists). So, there's a lot of inspiration there by the Western elites.
But Arendt came out with another very important conclusion: that a totalitarian society
can not disintegrate from within, only from the outside. Put it in other terms, the peoples of
totalitarian states can never do a revolution, only be liberated by an alien liberal society.
At the time, there was no perspective the USSR would ever go away, and there was plenty of
demand to ideologies that legitimized rising military spending and invasions in the Third
World.
The Cold War ended and Arendt's theory was proved wrong: the USSR dissolved over the
weight of its own internal contradictions. But the idea that nazifascism and communism were
brother ideologies stuck in the West.
-//-
Nazifascism is a mode of liberalism (classic liberalism) because that's what history shows
us: both Hitler and Mussolini were born and created during the apex of liberalism, in liberal
countries and received liberal education. Both declared the communists as their main enemies
once they got to power. Both economies remained highly decentralized, liberal style, during
the WWII. If you take out both lunatic narratives, you wouldn't be able to discern, e.g., a
typical German Aryan family in Berlin from a typical suburban family in the 60s USA.
Communism/socialism both came from classical Social-Democracy (not the post-war version,
the original version). Classical Social-Democracy has a very well documented paternity: Karl
Marx.
Marx took the term "socialism" from the nowadays so-called "utopian socialists", a
movement from France, whose main intellectual was Proudhon. Those "utopian socialists" come
from the old late-feudal artisan class, the class which lost the most with industrialization.
Communism (as in communist parties) come from the late 19th Century/early 20th Century schism
between the German and Russian Social-Democrat parties. At the time, the German one made a
turn to the right (which would culminate, decades later, with it supporting the German
bourgeoisie in WWI, a pivotal episode to the rise of Nazism in the 30s), and Lenin, in order
to make the ideological differences clear, changed the name to "communist". So, whatever
point of view you adopt, neither communism nor socialism come from liberalism, so it doesn't
even belong to the same branch as nazifascism.
The last "common ancestor" of both Social-Democracy and Liberalism is illuminism. But
"illuminism" was not a school or ideology per se, but an umbrella term to designate a
significant change in thought after the 16th Century. If you take the concept of Reason as
the condition sine qua non to designate something illuminist, then the only existing "child"
of "illuminism" today is Marxism.
Controlled dissent relies on obscuring the Pincer Movement being used to corral Freedom
and Liberty.
'(Commercial consumerism is) consistent with banal economic relations and routine familial
and social patterns, and, as a means towards those ends, imprisonimg...the authentic, strong,
free, vital human beings who learned to break loose and live heroic lives, in defiance of
(Judaic) 'static legalism'.
Simplicity is the panacea for the evils of the present. In short, back to Nature. We must
look to the Artist, not to the Scientist as our teacher and guide, for the artist was the
genius who knew the goal and the way ...through the ideals which the new 'vitalist' culture
intended to displace decadent 'civilization': childlike simplicity, natural spontaneity, an
Olympian will to risk and dare, an unerring intuition into the hidden and transcendent, a
sense of awe and mystery, an abundance of unrestrained passions, and an exhilirating torrent
of energy.'
(Vision and Violence, Arthur Mendel)
So Nietzche, but also Euell Gibbons and Carlos Casteňeda were 'Back to Nature' NAZIs.
Nietzche saw Judaic culture of regimental Bolshevism as the 'unpure enemy', and eugenic
extermination as the solution, while the Hippies saw 'The Pigs' (regimental military
Bolshevism) as the unclean enemy, and 'Get Back to the Land and Set My Soul Free' as the
solution. They're both a form of Fascism.
If you don't 'turn on, tune, in and drop out', if you won't let your hair grow long as you
can show it, and wear beads braided in your beard and hemp sandals, write graffiti about AGW
and fossil fuels, and eat meal worms and cannabis cookies, then you are an 'unclean pig'.
The End of History Rational Supra-National State, versus the Hot Money Pay-for-Play
Uber-Capitalist Renegades. Regimental Bolshevism and Iconoclastic Fascism are just the
two-sided Janus-faced nature of our human reality. Rodham the Bolshevik versus Trump the
Fascist. Lose-lose.
Lose-lose most especially in USA, because State-Corporate Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty
represents the unholy union of these two anti-human forces. Think Israel joining with the
Syrian 'rebels' (sic). Think the globalist ECB/IMF/WB finance marauders aligning with the
NATO Wehrmacht.
That's the NWO Spawn of Satan. They are One. Netanyahu is your Father. Come into the
Light. Use the Force, Luke. A
Oh, and be sure to get your vaccinations!
@22 ex-Reedie nails it. All three quotes were pre-empted by Thucydides so very many
centuries ago, when he has the Athenians responding to the Melians appeal to decency with
"the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".
Before, of course, the Athenians slaughtered the Melians.
But the other side of the coin is, of course, "he who lives by the sword dies by the
sword".
The Siege of Melos is a classic example: the Athenians conquered the Melians and then
colonized Melos (sound familiar?). And then.... in the long run lost the Peloponnesian War
and all those colonists were sent packing.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Cock of the walk one day, a feather duster the next.
It's a long way to the top, and a quick ride to the bottom.
All concepts that would be utterly foreign to Netanyahu.
Until, that is, it happens to him and his Zionist throwbacks to the 19th century.
" It is not just by chance that Netanyahoo sounds like Hitler. Both, Theodore Herzl, the
founder of Zionism, and Adolph Hitler developed their political awareness around the turn of
the century "
Interestingly, the Indian fascists of the Hindutva movement, of which the RSS organisation
is the mothership, also have intellectual links to the Nazis... The romantic irrationalist
texts from which the European fascists drew their inspiration were translated into Marathi
and read avidly, by the brahmins of western India where Hindutva ideology was incubated.
It is important to make a distinction between Hinduism, the religion, and 'Hindutva' which
is a political ideology. Hindutva is more old-fascism than neo-fascism. The RSS, the
mothership of this ideology, has been organising their movement for nearly a hundred years.
And it is follows quite well the old-fascist pattern. The mothership sends expeditionary
contingents into each area of social life and captures it - nazi youth, nazi unions, nazi
lawyers, etc. The present phase is probably best captured by the old nazi term,
'gleichschaltung' , the attempt to force social institutions into the fascist mould... there
seems to be now an ongoing attempt to capture the universities, the media, the supreme court
etc. in India.
Those interested can check out the following books
1. Walter Andersen and S Damle Brotherhood in Saffron...
(a reliable objective description of the RSS.. unfortunately out-of-print for decades, but it
should be available in the Univ.of Heidelberg South Asia institute library . no electronic
copy seems to be available, if anyone has a link, please post. Andersen and Damle have a new
book to be published this year)
2. MS Golwalkar We or out nationhood defined and Bunch of Thoughts.
MSG was the second head and most important ideologue of the RSS who admired nazi 'race
pride'. he wrote,
"To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging
the country of the semitic races -- the Jews... Race pride at its highest has been manifested
here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having
differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us
in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."
and
"the foreign races [he meant other religions too] in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu
culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must
entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, ie of the
Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay
in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no
privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen's rights."
Thanks karlof1 I look forward to you posts here. I am sure the elite could be identified
as fascist as the concentration of wealth and power was certainly in their hands then after
centuries of mercantile plunder. Equally they bundled the wealth generated from the progress
of automation from horse drawn farm machinery through to steam power etc.
I guess the englander workers could be coerced or press ganged into supporting their
fascist lords as they were to support the various wars and defense needs. I doubt that one
should class the workers and common folk as naturally fascist though. Cowed into compliance
from centuries of oppression seems a better description.
Engels was a mighty keen observer and knew well the ways of the ruling class
industrialists.
"...since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question
between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they
must..." Thucydides - he said it in Melian Dialogue.
But the quote should be read in context...and is itself a paraphrase of Athenian
Policy,
It is also True. Yes indeed, fascists do sometimes say true things...it happens. I do not
like fascists, but I do like truth, doesn't everybody?
Gramsci's thinking thrives in many fields, being a safe haven for political and
intellectual organizations midway between the pure abandonment of Marxism and unrestricted
adherence to neoliberal "democracy".
Gramsci became the prostitute of the neoliberals, as he was before that of the recycled
Stalinists when against "Trotskyism", whatever this was.
Social Darwinism and Eugenics was certainly not owned by Fascists alone. Its alive and well
today and is used to justify neoliberal economics and imperialism. The strong (cognitive or
physical) rule the weak. Any attempt at equalizing the disparity is labelled as Socialism and
is opposed in part for fears it promotes dysgenics.
Darwin had it right I think. Or maybe it was the ancient Greeks. I'm trying pretty hard to
keep up here ,eugenics might be partly responsible for that.
Thank Christ somebody broke in with news of that guy getting blowed up. Somebody said
Canada might be the culprit. Well, suck me dry and call me Dusty, I never heard of that
motherfucker and neither have any of my friends at the bar. Maybe it's because of that gal
who had a granddad that was a Uke who liked Nazi invaders better than the Russians. But she's
pretty busy right now trying deal with other stuff. Like the biggest trade deal in the
world.
I had been going to propose that the answer to all three questions was "Thrasymachus" (from
Plato's Republic) - but I see in checking my source that all that fine young man did actually
say was that justice is the advantage of the stronger, using as an example the rulers of
cities who order things to their own advantage. And indeed, the statement is refuted, which
causes the frightening man to blush...But best to read the original, as what Thrasymachus
represents looms larger in that setting and in the labyrinthian dialogue upon whose threshold
he makes his claim.
Posted by: juliania | Aug 31, 2018 6:45:58 PM |
link
England is now divided down the middle politically, as is a whole list of country's, to many
to mention. left and right increasingly polarized ! Perhaps the most important being
the USA. If
we look at the right wing street violence in Germany this week, we see what is going to
happen all the way round very soon.
This weeks violent aggressive protest is much much bigger
than people realize ! It was aimed at innocent people in the street, it was apparently
protesting about victims of western military aggression emigrating to Germany. But not
addressing the root couse of why they became victims, but the problems
caused by their emigration to Germany.
Last Sunday these nazi's and there sympathizers numbered 6000 but the truth is a large
proportion of the police present were on their side. Looking the other way when violence
occurred failing to arrest people doing the nazi salute. The coalition
government has a large
part of extreme right wing politicians.
These next weeks determine which way western country's will swing. We can stop the nazi's on
the street's or we can except the consequences.
Whatever thing Trump and his minions (American allies, "Western Civilization") are doing
right now, they are just restructuring already existing trade deals at best.
-//-
As for the "Greek" discussion. It's not a surprise Hitler took at least some inspiration
from the ancient Greek. From the 19th to early 20th Century, there was some kind of "Greek
revival" in Germany's academic circles. Take Nietzsche for example: he dialogues with the
Greeks (mainly Plato and Socrates) many times. Even that so-called Nazi historian (forgot his
name) focused on the ancient Greek. Hell, even Marx did his doctorate thesis over Epicurus.
So, Hitler essentially lived in the end of a "philellene" period of Germany.
As far as the strong protecting the weak, the human animal is a prime example of this as
the mother and infant must be protected for several years before either can fend for
themselves. Another well known example is the mother bear protecting her cubs--don't mess
with either!
There's no superiority/inferiority involved as such in either example as both
are natural mechanisms. The concept of social castes/classes was very well established
millennia ago with numerous ideas put forth to justify their existence, many of which still
operate today. Many of those ideas are present within the Monthly
Review article I linked to yesterday.
Engels may or may not have coined the term
Social Murder, but even the Whigs agreed as this passage shows:
"In 1844, Frederick Engels wrote that 'English society daily and hourly commits what the
working-men's organs, with perfect correctness, characterize as social murder. It has placed
the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long [and] it
undermines the vital force of these workers gradually, little by little, and so hurries them
to the grave before their time.'24 Anyone who thinks that Engels was not an objective witness
should compare his judgement to that of the influential Whig journal the
Edinburgh
Review :
"Out of every two persons who die in the east of London, one perishes from preventable
causes. From twenty to thirty thousand of the labouring population of London are killed every
year by causes which, if we chose, we might expel by a current of water. Though we do not
take these persons out of their houses and murder them, we do the same thing in effect, -- we
neglect them in their poisonous homes, and leave them there to a lingering but a certain
death."
It's very easy to see why Marx and Engels characterized what they observed in England and
Europe as Class War. But can the English of the mid 1800s be characterized as fascist, or
perhaps just the elite?
...As for American Fascism, the entire mindset of American Exceptionalism combined with
the doctrine of Manifest Destiny provide it with a substantial foundation.
Combined with the
implied imperialism within JQ Adams speech that outlined what became known as The Monroe
Doctrine, White, Anglo-Saxon superiority was further institutionalized. Social-Darwinism is
quite complex to discuss despite it being a relatively simple concept on the surface.
Wikipedia's
page is rather good on this topic and shows Herbert Spencer published his ideas before
Darwin published his revolutionary book. Vice-President Henry Wallace is the most prominent
American citizen I know of to write boldly about American Fascism In his famous NY
Times op/ed The Dangers of
American Fascism that concludes thusly:
"Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and
eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about
this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward
certain races, creeds and classes."
Yes, he saw it but IMO was too soft toward it. I'd be remiss not to mention Bertram
Gross's bold 1980 book Friendly Fascism and Sheldon Wolin's Inverted
Totalitarianism .
This discussion is getting out of hand. vk 99 is not right (to be
polite).
Laguerre | Sep 1, 2018 2:48:22 PM | 114
Nazifascism is a mode of liberalism (classic liberalism)
because that's what history shows us: both Hitler and Mussolini were
born and created during the apex of liberalism...
Communism and Fascism are not the same thing, as in the theory of
Arendt. They merely used the same techniques. Nor is fascism really
liberalism. Perhaps a reaction, but not even that.
The states in which Hitler and Mussolini grew up were not liberal
democracies, but rather monarchical autocracies, which had failed. So
reactions to that.
The demonstration is that Neo-Nazis today are not in any way liberal,
but rather far right, based on uber-nationalism. That is the basis also
of 1930s fascism. Nationalism taken to an extreme, and employing
totalitarian techniques.
Neoliberalism did improved that conditions of top 20% population, but not the rest, who
actually lost the standard of living achived under the New Deal capitalism
Notable quotes:
"... Financial capitalism under the neoliberal 'ideology' that has started in the early 70s, has offered a fake prosperity - all based on debt - for the masses in Western societies, for a couple of decades. Through this way, the ruling class managed to 'hypnotize' the majority, hiding the enormous fraud. This 'hypnosis' made societies compromise with the wars and destruction outside the Western soil. ..."
"... When this illusion collapsed, the ugly picture of reality paralyzed the societies. The police state became stronger under the pretext of terrorism to crush any thoughts for uprising against the fake democracy. ..."
"... the warmongers of the regime don't even bother to search for pretexts to conduct new wars. ..."
Financial capitalism under the neoliberal 'ideology' that has started in the early 70s,
has offered a fake prosperity - all based on debt - for the masses in Western societies, for a
couple of decades. Through this way, the ruling class managed to 'hypnotize' the majority,
hiding the enormous fraud. This 'hypnosis' made societies compromise with the wars and
destruction outside the Western soil.
As long as this colourful circus was performing on the stage of a deceptive ideological
framework, very few bothered to question and condemn the undemocratic nature of the West. And
they were often being characterized as 'radicals' by the establishment machine. When this illusion collapsed, the ugly picture of reality paralyzed the societies. The
police state became stronger under the pretext of terrorism to crush any thoughts for uprising
against the fake democracy.
The more people wake up and realize the authoritarian nature of the regime, the more it will
becoming more authoritarian. Just think for a moment: it's not only the increasing censorship,
the brutality of the police state. It is also the fact that the warmongers of the regime
don't even bother to search for pretexts to conduct new wars.
Varoufakis says that Europe and the United States were never set up as democracies. And that it
is impossible for our sophisticated societies to become sustainable without democracy. It is
highly questionable whether our societies are indeed sophisticated apart from the technological
progress. Yet, there is no doubt that they are walking away from real democracy instead of
trying to approach it. So, instead of becoming sustainable, they become increasingly unstable,
which fatally leads to their final collapse.
Seems to me that, as President, Trump is performing in ways that are analogous to how he
performed as a real estate mogul, Recall that he'd make deals which he subsequently would
violate, at the same time threatening to countersue anyone demanding in court that Trump make
good on whatever his original commitment. Suing, that is, with the intent to financially bust
whoever might dare to challenge him in court. The business-man's equivalent to a
President's threat to unleash "Shock and Awe" upon any nation not adhering to his
diktats.
Thus,, whether as a real estate mogul or President, Trump's deal-making modus operandi
remains consistent: Go one way first, then turnabout. While his initial move is may be
positive (Singapore,Helsinki), subsequent events (increased sanctions, cancelling diplomatic
meetings) can quickly turn negative.
Whether these turnarounds are planned in or forced by minders, perhaps not even Trump
himself knows, but based upon the direction our nation is headed under his leadership, for
sure, he's not to be trusted – no more than he was as a real estate mogul.
mike k , August 30, 2018 at 9:25 pm
America longs to live in a past that never really happened, We are poorly equipped to deal
with the rapidly changing real world around us. We are in a hopeless effort to turn back the
clock to an illusory America. Donald Trump continues to play on this futile nostalgia.
What is catching up to the U.S., is that all of this off shoring of product and
productivity over these last fifty years has weaken the once mighty Post America that was
able by default after WWII to be the world's sole provider. The almost near monopolized
leverage once enjoyed by the U.S. has been thoroughly diluted by American corporations
finding greater value to go aboard to manufacture and farm, as the American consumer loses
mightily to dead end wage jobs.
The sanctions so as imposed by the U.S. have only driven sanctioned countries to coalesce
amongst each other out of need. This along with tariffs is driving America's friends right
into the arms of the already solvent sanctioned countries, who are doing their best to steer
clear of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. Where there is a will, will find
away, is no better pronounced as it is in these sanctioned and tariffed countries of various
interest who are now exploring, while erecting new foundations of finance, and trade, where
the U.S. is no where to be found. It is only a matter of time when the U.S. will be all
dressed up with nowhere to go.
Keep your eye on China. The Chinese are developing a Navy which will rival U.S. seagoing
supremacy. Add to this that China is dispatching troops to such places as Syria, and
Afghanistan, as it would now appear China has nothing to lose, as the Trade War escalates.
I'm not saying Trade should not be dealt with, but the less we give in to China the more
anti-hegemon pronounced the Chinese will be with their total world foreign policies. The U.S.
will learn to respect China's relationships with other sovereign nations not so loved by U.S.
foreign policy, as China appears to be stepping up their game. Unipolar must be replaced with
Multipolar sovereign nations.
Let's face it, the U.S. is out of control. These people now running it are not the same
people who won WWII, but they are certainly the unpleasant reminders of an era of some 70
years or so, where the U.S. began losing wars while enriching the rich at the same time, all
due to it's commitment towards dealing out death for the sake of profit. Seventy years ago
the rest of the world was not in any shape to oppose such might, but this isn't 70 years ago,
and the world is starting to say, enough is enough.
Dave P. , August 31, 2018 at 4:50 pm
Excellent comments, Joe. There is this very relevant article in Strategic Culture today by
M.K. Bhadrakumar.
It is very timely mail, only if it can get to the President. From the article by
Bhadrakumar:
"On the other hand, the Russia-China alliance will also be a "unique community of values",
as NATO keeps proclaiming itself. Conceivably, these "values" will include strict adherence
to international law and the UN Charter, respect for national sovereignty – no Libya or
Iraq-style interventions, for example – and the peaceful resolution of disputes and
differences without the use of force. However, one cardinal difference with the NATO will be
that unlike the latter, which takes cover behind inchoate "values" such as "liberty", "rule
of law", "democracy", et al, the Russian-Chinese alliance will be focused and purposive on
the strengthening of a multipolar world order.
Arguably, the Russian-Chinese alliance will be in sync with the spirit of our times
– unlike NATO, which must constantly justify its raison d'etre through the
juxtaposition of an "enemy", caught up in the tragic predicament of having to stir up
paranoia and xenophobia among member states in order to simply keep the herd from wandering
away toward greener pastures.
Where the Russia-China alliance has an advantage is that it is a new type of alliance that
allows the two countries to pursue their national interests while also creating space for
each other through mutual support and foreign-policy coordination to maneuver optimally in
the prevailing volatile international environment where it is no longer possible for any
single power to exercise global hegemony. Indeed, the Sino-Russian coordination is working
well in the Syrian conflict, the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Iran nuclear issue or the
struggle against terrorism and has become a factor of peace and regional stability."
I hope the Rulers in the West can understand this message. But it does not look very
likely to happen. It is increasingly clear that this country is run by people who are
megalomaniacs. The Ruling Powers across the Atlantic are no better either. The political
climate in the World is getting very unstable. In this World with nuclear weapons,
accidentally or intentionally, some catastrophe to happen is just around the corner.
"... A quite astonishing article recently appeared in the New York Times, astonishing even by the standards of that newspaper, which featured Judith Miller and Michael Gordon in the Pentagon-sponsored lie machine that led up to the catastrophic war against Iraq. ..."
"... The article , entitled "Kremlin Sources Go Quiet, Leaving CIA in the Dark about Putin's Plans for Midterms," claims that the United States has had a number of spies close to the Russian president "who have provided crucial details" that have now stopped reporting at a critical time with midterm elections coming up. The reporting is sourced to " American officials familiar with the intelligence" who " spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal classified information." ..."
"... Having Brennan as a source is an indication that the two journalists were desperate and were willing to cite anyone. ..."
"... And then there are the narratives that the journalists accept to make their whole story credible. As the title of the article suggests, they believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a "plan" for America's midterm elections. To support that conjecture they cite recent assertions from both corporate and government leaders that there has been meddling in cyber systems and on social media over the past few months, though it is interesting to note that no evidence has been provided to link such activity to Russia. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... And finally, then there is an odd whine from a former CIA Russia expert John Sipher blaming the intelligence failure on the likelihood that the Agency Station in Moscow is tiny and ineffective because "The Russians kicked out a whole bunch of our people" in their expulsion of sixty American diplomats/spies in March. Sipher is inter alia confirming to Moscow that many of those expelled were, in fact, CIA. ..."
A quite astonishing article recently appeared in the New York Times, astonishing even by
the standards of that newspaper, which featured Judith Miller and Michael Gordon in the
Pentagon-sponsored lie machine that led up to the catastrophic war against Iraq.
The
article , entitled "Kremlin Sources Go Quiet, Leaving CIA in the Dark about Putin's Plans
for Midterms," claims that the United States has had a number of spies close to the Russian
president "who have provided crucial details" that have now stopped reporting at a critical
time with midterm elections coming up. The reporting is sourced to " American officials
familiar with the intelligence" who " spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to reveal classified information."
After reading the piece, my first reaction was that Judith Miller was back but the byline
clearly read Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg . Noms de plume , perhaps? The
article is so astonishingly bad on so many levels that it could have been featured in Marvel
Comics instead of the Gray Lady. First of all, if American intelligence truly has in the
Kremlin high level human agents, referred to as humint, it would not be publicizing the fact
for fear that Moscow would intensify its search for the traitors and discover who they were. No
intelligence officer speaking either openly or anonymously would make that kind of fatal
mistake by leaking such information to a journalist.
If indeed the source of the leak was a genuine intelligence officer it suggests a different,
more plausible interpretation. The CIA might, in fact, have no high-level agents at all at the
Kremlin level and is intent on having the Russians waste time and energy looking for the moles.
There is additional evidence in the article that the agent story might be a fabrication. The
authors assert that the CIA agents in Moscow provided critical information relating to the
alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The nature of that information, if it
existed at all, is something less than transparent and the piece cites no less an authority on
Moscow's subversion than ex-Agency Director John Brennan, who connived at electing Hillary when
he was at CIA and has had an axe to grind ever since. Having Brennan as a source is an
indication that the two journalists were desperate and were willing to cite anyone.
And then there are the narratives that the journalists accept to make their whole story
credible. As the title of the article suggests, they believe that Russian President Vladimir
Putin has a "plan" for America's midterm elections. To support that conjecture they cite recent
assertions from both corporate and government leaders that there has been meddling in cyber
systems and on social media over the past few months, though it is interesting to note that no
evidence has been provided to link such activity to Russia.
So, does Putin have a plan? The New York Times apparently believes he does. And
what would that plan involve? The Times thinks it is no less than "a broad chaos
campaign to undermine faith in American democracy." It also cites Director of National
Intelligence Dan Coats as affirming that Putin is "intent on undermining American democratic
systems." Think about that for a moment. Why would Russia want to damage an already oftentimes
dysfunctional system of government? To replace it with what? A dictatorship might be more
effective and even warlike, contrary to Russia's own interests. Why mess with something that is
already messy all by itself?
The article also hurls out other lies and half-truths. It assumes that Russia was trying to
change the outcome of the 2016 US election, for which there is no evidence at all, and it also
claims that Putin is killing off spies, citing the Skripal case in Britain, for which proof of
an actual Russian connection has never been presented.
And finally, then there is an odd whine from a former CIA Russia expert John Sipher
blaming the intelligence failure on the likelihood that the Agency Station in Moscow is tiny
and ineffective because "The Russians kicked out a whole bunch of our people" in their
expulsion of sixty American diplomats/spies in March. Sipher is inter alia confirming to Moscow
that many of those expelled were, in fact, CIA.
He also needs to recall that the persona non grata (PNG) move was in response to
the US expelling sixty Russians and closing two diplomatic facilities over Skripal, which means
the United States deliberately took self-inflicted steps that it should have known would
cripple its ability to spy in Moscow. And now it is complaining because it doesn't know what is
going on.
*
Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence
officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA
Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter
Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a
frequent contributor to Global Research.
"... The mass media and political leaders of the US have resorted to denouncing competitors and adversaries as spies engaged in criminal theft of vital political, economic and military know-how. ..."
"... Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. ..."
The mass media and political leaders of the US have resorted to denouncing competitors
and adversaries as spies engaged in criminal theft of vital political, economic and military
know-how.
The spy-mania has spread every place and all the time, it has become an essential element in
driving national criminal hearings, global economic warfare and military budgets.
In this paper we will analyze and discuss the use and abuse of spy-mongering by (1)
identifying the accused countries which are targeted; (2) the instruments of the spy
conspiracy; (3) the purpose of the 'spy attacks'.
Spies, Spies Everywhere: A Multi-Purpose Strategy
Washington's 'spy-strategy' resorts to multiple targets, focusing on different sectors of
activities.
Russia has been accused of poisoning adversaries, using overseas operatives in England. The
evidence is non-existent. The accusation revolves around an instant lethal poison which in fact
did not lead to death.
No Russian operative was identified. The only 'evidence' was that Russia possessed the
poison- as did the US and other countries. The events took place in England and the British
government played a major role in pointing the finger toward Russia and in launching a global
media campaign which was amplified in the US and in the EU.
The UK expelled Russian diplomats and threatened sanctions. The Trump regime picked up the
cudgels, increasing economic sanctions and demanding that Russia 'confess' to its 'homicidal
behavior'. The poison plot resonated with the Democratic Party campaign against Trump ,
accusing Russia of meddling in the Presidential election, on Trump's behalf. No evidence was
presented. But the less the evidence, the longer the investigation and the wider the
conspiratorial net; it now includes overseas business people, students and diplomats.
US conspiracy officials targeted China, accusing the Chinese government of stealing US
technology, scientific research and patents. China's billion dollar "Belt and Road" agreement
with over sixty countries was presented as a communist plot to dominate countries, grab their
resources, generate debt dependency and to recruit overseas networks of covert operatives. In
fact, China's plans were public, accepted by most of the US allies and membership was even
offered to the US.
Iran was accused of plotting to establish overseas terrorist military operations in Yemen,
Iraq and Syria – targeting the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. No evidence was ever
presented. In fact, massive US and EU supplied arms and advisors to Saudi Arabia's overt terror
bombing of Houthi-led Yemen cities and populations. Iran backed the Syrian government in
opposition to the US backed armed mercenaries. Iranian advisers in Syria were bombed by Israel
– and never retaliated.
The US policy elite resort to conspiratorial plots and spying depends heavily on the mass
media to repeat and elaborate on the charges endlessly, depending on self-identified experts
and ex-pats from the targeted country. In effect the media is the message. Media-state
collaboration is reinforced by the application of sanctions -- the punishment proves guilt!
In the case of Russia, the conspirators demonize President Putin; he is 'guilty' because he
was an ex-official of the police; he was accused of 'seizing' Crimea which voted to rejoin
Russia. In other words, plots are linked to unrelated activity, personality disorders and to US
self-inflicted defeats!
L abeling is another tool common to conspiracy plotters; China is a 'dictatorship' intent on
taking over the world -- therefore, it could only defeat the US through spying and stealing
secrets and assets from the US.
Iran is labelled a 'terrorist state' which allows the US to violate the international
nuclear agreement and to support Israeli demands for economic sanctions. No evidence is ever
presented that Iran invaded or terrorized any state.
The Political Strategy Behind Conspiracy Terrorists
There are several important motives for the US government to resort to conspiracy plots.
By accusing countries of crimes, it hopes that the accused will respond by revealing their
inability or unwillingness to engage in the action falsely attributed to them. Pentagon plots
put adversaries on the defensive – spending time and energy answering to the US agenda
rather than pursuing and advancing their own.
For example, the US claims that China is stealing economic technology to promote its
superiority, is designed to pressure China to downplay or modify its long-term plan for
strategic growth. While China will not give general credence to US conspiracy practitioners, it
has downplayed the slogans designed to motivate its scientists to "Make China Great'.
Likewise, the US conspiracy practitioners accusation that Iran is 'meddling' in Yemen and
Syria is designed to distract world opinion from the US military support for Saudi Arabia's
terror bombing in Yemen and Israel's missile attacks in Syria.
Plot accusations have had some effect in Syria. Russia has demanded or asked Iran to
withdraw fifty miles from the Israeli border. Apparently Iran has lowered its support for
Yemen.
Russia has been blanketed with unsubstantiated accusations of intervening in the Ukraine,
which distracts attention from Washington's support for the mob-led coup.
The UK claim that Russia planted a deadly poison, was concocted in order to distract
attention from the Brexit fiasco and Prime Minister May's effort to entice the US to sign a
major trade agreement.
How Successful are Conspiratorial Politics?
The greatest success of the US conspiracy practitioners has been in convincing the US mass
media to act as an arm of the CIA-Pentagon-Congressional and Presidential interventionist
agenda.
Secondly, the conspiracy has had an impact on both political parties – especially the
Democratic leadership, which has waged a political war accusing Trump of plotting with Russia,
to defeat Clinton in the presidential elections. However, Democratic conspiracy advocates have
sacrificed their popular electorate who are more interested in economic issues then in regime
plots – and may lose to the Republicans in the fall 2018 Congressional elections.
Thirdly, the plot and spy line has some impact on the EU but not on their public. Moreover,
the EU is more concerned with President Trump's trade war and made overtures to Russia.
Fourthly, China , Iran and Russia have moved closer economically in response to the
conspiracy plots and trade wars.
Conclusion: The Perils of Power Grabbers
Conspiratorial plots have a narrow audience, mostly the US mass media and elite . They seem
to have a short-term impact in justifying sanctions and trade wars. The media plotters having
called wolf and proved nothing ,have lost credibility among a wide swath of the public.
Moreover, the conspiracy has not resulted in any basic shifts in the orientation of their
adversaries, nor has it shaped the electoral agenda for the majority of US voters.
The conspiracy advocates have discredited themselves by the transparency of their
fabrications and the flimsiness of their evidence. In the long-run, historians will provide a
footnote on the bankruptcy of US foreign and domestic policy based on plots and
conspiracies.
*
Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for
Research on Globalization.
"... The main contradiction, though is between the American nationalist impulse and the inexorable movement of capitalism to dissolve national barriers. We are witnessing the dissolution of the Manifest Destiny, the ideology which states the American national interests are equal to those of world capitalism. ..."
I'm not surprised by what is happening to the USA after Trump's victory. The American
oligarchy is not homogenous: there are a plethora of interests at the top.
But, in my opinion, what offends the elite the most is that Trump is eroding America's
soft power, its image to the rest of the world, its allies and enemies. Remember: this is not
1946 anymore, the USA can't keep its alliance through infrastructure investment a la Marshall
Plan, so appearances are as important as ever.
Now, as I've already stated many times here in this blog, there are three main
orientations/doctrines in the American elite:
establishment/mainstream/Wolfowitz Doctrine/Russophobia, which states Russia is the
threat to the USA because it inherited the USSR's nuclear arsenal and kept 90% of its
territory and people
"Clash of Civilizations"/Sinophobia, which states China is the new enemy because it is
a big and represents the culture of the "East", against the culture of the "West". This is
Trump's doctrine, possibly (probably) infused to him by Steven Bannon, and
The Chicoms, which states China is both the cultural/commercial main rival and the
successor state of the USSR (as the torch-bearer of socialism in the world). These
orientations clash all the time, so one time one is dominant, another time another one is
dominant etc.
The main contradiction, though is between the American nationalist impulse and the
inexorable movement of capitalism to dissolve national barriers. We are witnessing the
dissolution of the Manifest Destiny, the ideology which states the American national
interests are equal to those of world capitalism.
So, in a desperate move to keep the MD alive and reverse Mackinder's prophecy (that
Eurasia is the natural center of human civilization), the Americans need a way to balkanize
Russia. See, for example, this article of 2014, where an Ukrainian ideologue connected to the
West (through Radio Free Europe/Liberty), revives Brzezinski's 1997 plan of dissecting Russia
in 8 parts (of which only 3-4 would be sovereign countries):
" it is under $500 million and is likely mostly money from Ukrainians working in
Russia. I do not see any corporate level investment happening in the current climate.
"
The above linked RBK article goes on to read:
According to the presented data, during the period from January to June, the Ukraine
received $1,259 billion, of which $436 million came from Russia. In second place was Cyprus,
which invested $219 million and in third place amongst the largest investors was the
Netherlands ($207.7 million).
In addition, contributions were made to the Ukraine economy by Austria ($58.7 million),
Poland ($54.1), France ($46.9) and the UK ($43.4).
The report says that almost 60% of these funds ($750 million) were invested in the
financial and insurance sphere; 9.6% of of the funds were invested by the Ukrainian
authorities into the wholesale and retail trade; 8.2% into industry and 7.9 per cent. into
information and telecommunications.
In mid-August, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said that Russia had been
the main trading partner of the Ukraine since 2014 and because of this the return of the
Crimea and the resolution of the conflict in the Donbass were becoming impossible. "There is
no plan for victory in this state. Because you are not behaving like people who want a
victory. You are already slaves", he said.
In response to Yushchenko's statement, the ex-head of the Ukrainian Ministry of the
Economy, Viktor Suslov, said that the words of the former Ukrainian leader were "absurd" and
considered any damage to Kiev caused by breaking off trade with Russia as being
"colossal".
Doesn't sound like all of this money sloely consists of that sent off to "Independent"
Ukraine by economic migrants from that country who are eking out a living in the Evil
Empire.
Verkhovna Rada Deputy Vadym Rabinovich on air of TV channel "112 Ukraine" said that the
termination of trade with Russia will destroy Ukrainian economy.
According to him, Russia remains the largest trading partner of the Ukraine, as trade
turnover between the two countries is growing every month.
"The trade balance with Russia is growing every month for one simple reason: the free
economic zone with Europe has brought us only losses", said Rabinovich.
He noted that the interruption of trade between Moscow and Kiev is fraught with the
loss, of "approximately one third of the gross national product".
"With all of the stupidity that you have done in the country, then with another
unbalanced step you'll destroy the economy", summed up the Rada deputy.
Earlier, former head of the Main Department of the Ukrainian security Service, Vasily
Vovk, proposed that the border with Russia be completely blocked and that ties with her be
cut.
A few are beginning to wake up to the reality that snatching Ukraine away from Russia was
never about prosperity and security for its people, and all about destabilizing what the west
perceived as the quickening of an unwelcome regional influence, and curbing it. The EU
– and its string-puller, Washington – does not give a fuck about the economic
well-being of Ukrainians, does not have even the brotherly connection of being of the same
ethnic group, and for so long as Ukraine is willing to suffer being poor in silence, for that
long it will not be a problem for its new 'partners'.
Nationalist Nazi nutjobs are always proposing the border be sealed ever-tighter, if it
were feasible to build a stainless-steel wall between Ukraine and Russia which reached to low
earth orbit, they would vote for it. But the Great Wall Of Yatsenyuk never materialized, he's
enjoying his Florida condo, and there is no practical way to limit commerce between the two
countries while the people are increasingly motivated toward its continuing.
Ukraine is on the edge of collapse, and I don't think any force on earth can prevent its
sliding over the edge. The west is not going to pony up the $170 Billion or so it would take
to rescue it; if it did so, Porky and his minions would steal most of it for themselves, and
Russia is unlikely to ever permit again the degree of fraternal closeness that existed
between the two countries, since it is clear it would take only another western intervention
to render it once again an untrustworthy spoiler. Once Nord Stream II is built, Ukraine will
have lost its leverage and will be of no further significant value to the western purveyors
of destabilization.
More such core realization is necessary to prevent Ukraine from officially blaming its
collapse on anyone but itself. The government will try that course, naturally, and you don't
need to be able to see very far into the future to know that it is Russia who will be blamed,
despite plenty of empirical evidence that Russian investors and Ukrainian refugees working in
Russia were all that kept it alive before the end. But in order that Ukrainians know in their
heart of hearts that their government stepped on its own dick over and over, and that they
passively failed to correct it, there needs to be more such public confession. I can show you
plenty of analysis, in English, published before things went pear-shaped in the dying moments
of 2013, which proposed that severing trade relationships with Russia as the nationalists
insisted would cost Ukraine just about exactly what the Rada now says will happen, years too
late. But they got one thing right – Ukraine and Russia cannot be brothers, not even
friends, for so long as Ukraine harbours that nutty nationalist element. Give western Ukraine
to Poland, and encourage all the nationalists to go to the new paradise, and ensure that
happens. They can bore the Poles with their raptures about Kievan Rus. Then maybe some
relationship could be salvaged.
"... I was not sure whether Trump was controlled opposition or simply a useful scapegoat for the economic crisis that globalists are clearly engineering. Now it appears that he is both. ..."
"... Many businessmen end up dealing with elitist controlled banks at some point in their careers. But when Trump entered office and proceeded to load his cabinet with ghouls from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Council on Foreign Relations and give Wilber Ross the position of Commerce Secretary, it became obvious that Trump is in fact a puppet for the banks. ..."
"... If one examines the history of fake coups, there is ALWAYS an element of orchestrated division, sometimes between the globalists and their own puppets. This is called 4th Generation warfare, in which almost all divisions are an illusion and the real target is the public psyche. ..."
"... the overall picture is not as simple as "Left vs. Right." Instead, we need to look at the situation more like a chess board, and above that chess board looms the globalists, attempting to control all the necessary pieces on BOTH sides. Every provocation by leftists is designed to elicit a predictable response from conservatives to the point that we become whatever the globalists want us to become. ..."
"... Therefore it is not leftists that present the greatest threat to individual liberty, but the globalist influenced Trump administration. A failed coup on the part of the left could be used as a rationale for incremental and unconstitutional "safeguards." And conservatives may be fooled into supporting these measures as the threat is overblown. ..."
At that time I was certain that the globalists would find great use for a Trump presidency,
more so in fact than a Clinton presidency. However, I was not sure whether Trump was controlled
opposition or simply a useful scapegoat for the economic crisis that globalists are clearly
engineering. Now it appears that he is both.
Trump's history was already suspicious. He was bailed out of his considerable debts
surrounding his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City in the early 1990s by
Rothschild banking agent Wilber Ross , which saved him from embarrassment and
possibly saved his entire fortune . This alone was not necessarily enough to deny Trump the
benefit of the doubt in my view.
Many businessmen end up dealing with elitist controlled banks at some point in their
careers. But when Trump entered office and proceeded to load his cabinet with ghouls from
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Council on Foreign Relations and give Wilber Ross the position of
Commerce Secretary, it became obvious that Trump is in fact a puppet for the banks.
Some liberty movement activists ignore this reality and attempt to argue around the facts of
Trump's associations. "What about all the media opposition to Trump? Doesn't this indicate he's
not controlled?" they say. I say, not really.
If one examines the history of fake coups, there is ALWAYS an element of orchestrated
division, sometimes between the globalists and their own puppets. This is called 4th Generation
warfare, in which almost all divisions are an illusion and the real target is the public
psyche.
This is not to say that leftist opposition to Trump and conservatives is not real. It
absolutely is. The left has gone off the ideological deep end into an abyss of rabid frothing
insanity, but the overall picture is not as simple as "Left vs. Right." Instead, we need to
look at the situation more like a chess board, and above that chess board looms the globalists,
attempting to control all the necessary pieces on BOTH sides. Every provocation by leftists is
designed to elicit a predictable response from conservatives to the point that we become
whatever the globalists want us to become.
... ... ...
As this is taking place, conservatives are growing more sensitive to the notion of a leftist
coup, from silencing of conservative voices to an impeachment of Trump based on fraudulent
ideas of "Russian collusion."
To be clear, the extreme left has no regard for individual liberties or constitutional law.
They use the Constitution when it suits them, then try to tear it down when it doesn't suit
them. However, the far-left is also a paper tiger; it is not a true threat to conservative
values because its membership marginal, it is weak, immature and irrational. Their only power
resides in their influence within the mainstream media, but with the MSM fading in the face of
the alternative media, their social influence is limited. It is perhaps enough to organize a
"coup," but it would inevitably be a failed coup.
Therefore it is not leftists that present the greatest threat to individual liberty, but the
globalist influenced Trump administration. A failed coup on the part of the left could be used
as a rationale for incremental and unconstitutional "safeguards." And conservatives may be
fooled into supporting these measures as the threat is overblown.
I have always said that the only people that can destroy conservative principles are
conservatives. Conservatives diminish their own principles every time they abandon their
conscience and become exactly like the monsters they hope to defeat. And make no mistake, the
globalists are well aware of this strategy.
Carroll Quigley, a pro-globalist professor and the author of Tragedy and Hope, a book
published decades ago which outlined the plan for a one world economic and political system, is
quoted in his address ' Dissent: Do We Need It
':
"They say, "The Congress is corrupt." I ask them, "What do you know about the Congress? Do
you know your own Congressman's name?" Usually they don't. It's almost a reflex with them,
like seeing a fascist pig in a policeman. To them, all Congressmen are crooks. I tell them
they must spend a lot of time learning the American political system and how it functions,
and then work within the system. But most of them just won't buy that. They insist the system
is totally corrupt. I insist that the system, the establishment, whatever you call it, is so
balanced by diverse forces that very slight pressures can produce perceptible results.
For example, I've talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the
future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were
consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are
pretty generally in this group."
Is a "failed coup" being staged in order to influence conservatives to become the very
"fascists" the left accuses us of being? The continuing narrative certainly suggests that this
is the game plan.
* * *
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"During his 32 years in the US Senate, the real John McCain was a consistent warmonger ,
advocating US military intervention in Africa, South America, Korea, and almost everywhere.
He sang "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" before a veterans group, and called demonstrators
against Henry Kissinger "despicable scum." The record of his public calls for coups,
invasions, blockades, bombings and assassinations to advance US military and economic
domination of the planet is far too long to list.
All this explains why corporate media are lifting up their whitewashed and manufactured
version of John McCain. He's one of their own, a genuine war criminal and loyal servant of
capital. Lifting him up, creating and embellishing his heroic story lifts up and legitimizes
the rule of the rich. Now they'll be looking for parks, schools and airports to name after
him. Just as the elementary school in Aaron Magruder's Boondocks was named after J. Edgar
Hoover, we'll soon see John McCain's name staring back at us from what little public property
is left. Get ready for it."
Ahhh but there is much more to the story here look and read:
Always before god and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills.
... The whole of nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal
victory of the strong over the weak.
Who is paraphrased here?
The first state to adopt evolutionary ethics would prevail over all others in the struggle
for existence. ... Extermination and war then became moral goods to eliminate the weak.
And who said this?
The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or
for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in
the end peace is made with the strong.
2. Wilhelm Schallmayer, co-founder of the German eugenics movement in the early 20th
century, paraphrased here .
3. Benjamin Netanyahoo on August
29 2018 at the Negev Nuclear Weapon Center (Also here .)
Also:
It is not just by chance that Netanyahoo sounds like Hitler. Both, Theodore Herzl, the
founder of Zionism, and Adolph Hitler developed their political awareness around the turn of
the century in imperial Vienna. Social Darwinism was the rage of that time. Fascists and
Zionists drank from the same poisoned well.
Besides - did you know that Hitler did not want to exterminate the Jews? An Arab made him do
that. A Muslim. That is according
to one Benjamin Netanyahoo, currently prime minister of the Zionist entity in
Palestine:
In a speech before the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Netanyahu described a meeting
between Husseini and Hitler in November, 1941: "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at
the time, he wanted to expel the Jew. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, 'If
you expel them, they'll all come here (to Palestine).' According to Netanyahu, Hitler then
asked: "What should I do with them?" and the mufti replied: "Burn them."
The account is, of course, historically nonsense.
Related:
The administration of the Hindu supremacist Narendra Modi in India launched an
arrest campaign to silence its critics. Its demonetization program, a first step to introduce a degressive bank
transaction tax , did not achieve the desired results but
created an economic mess . Modi's re-election is in danger. The accusations against the
arrested people imply, correctly in my view, that the government of India is fascist:
I figured one of those quotes had to have been from Winston Churchill. Though on second
thought, his forte was more in the denigration of brown-skinned people.
When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "made in Germany"; it will not be
marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course,
"Americanism."
Professor Halford E. Luccock of the Divinity School of Yale University in a sermon at the
Riverside Church, Riverside Drive and 122d Street, NYC. September 1938.
So what.
1 and 3 are not even arguments, they are plain old description of reality as it is.
As for point 2, that's that old German arrogance, how the hell do you know what the genome
"wants". Taken form what we know today, a eugenic state would initiate a program of forced
miscegenation.
Such is the arrogance of evolutionary ethics. And so too, we pay the price of a system
built on such folly. Certainly no better than those who claim divine sanction to slaughter
and destroy.
"The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or
for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in
the end peace is made with the strong."
It is ironic that Netanyahoo should say that. Netanyahoo himself is extremely weak and
unstable due to his corruption and the criminal probes against him. He flexes his muscles and
violently bullies the Palestinians and illegally bombs Syria to assert a strength that is
nonexistent. Israel is weak against its neighbours especially Hezbollah and Syria, its IDF is
weak and ineffective against Hezbollah and the Syrian army, and in its insane paranoia it is
so fanning the flames of conflict that it risks inciting (or may even itself initiate) a war
that realistically could result in its own annihilation.
Russia's foreign minister is the latest official to warn the US against using a possible
chemical weapons provocation to justify a new strike against Syrian forces. He said Moscow
warned the West not to play with fire in Syria.
Sergey Lavrov reiterated the warning that a staged chemical weapons attack in Syria's
Idlib province may trigger a US-led attack on the forces loyal to Damascus.
READ MORE: US & allies can have missiles ready to strike Syria within 24 hours –
Russian Foreign Ministry
Earlier, the Russian military reported that a group of militants in Syria was preparing a
provocation, in which chlorine gas would be used to frame the Syrian government forces. The
incident would be used by the US and its allies to justify a new attack against the country,
similar to what happened in April, according to the claim.
Amid international tensions, Russia has launched a massive naval exercise in the
Mediterranean Sea, which involves 25 ships and 30 aircraft, including Tu-160 strategic
bombers.
The US earlier stated that it would retaliate to a possible a chemical attack by the
Syrian government, using more firepower than it did in April. The previous tripartite strike
by the US, the UK and France targeted what they called sites involved in chemical weapons
research. It came in response to an alleged use of an improvised chlorine bomb against a
militant-held area. Russia insists that the incident had been staged with the goal of
triggering the Western response.
\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It will take the US and its allies just 24 hours to ready its missile-strike group for an
attack against Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. The statement comes amid warnings of
a possible false-flag chemical attack.
Earlier, the Pentagon denied Moscow's claim that Washington was building up military
forces in the region. One of the US warships, USS 'The Sullivans,' left the Persian Gulf
after media reports about an increased American military presence in the area, according to
Zakharova.
While rejecting news of its growing presence in the region, the "US military forgot to
mention that they can build up missile capabilities to strike Syria in just 24 hours. The
strike group of the United States, France and the UK currently consists of planes, strategic
and tactical aircraft at bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Crete," Zakharova said.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that a false flag chemical weapons attack is being planned in
Syria's Idlib province to frame Damascus and use as a pretext for a new strike. Eight
canisters of chlorine were delivered to a village near Jisr al-Shughur city, and a group of
militants, trained in the handling of chemical weapons by the British private military
contractor Olive Group, arrived in the area, according to Defense Ministry.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the planned provocation is
aimed only at preventing the expulsion of terrorists from the de-escalation zone in Idlib. He
also accused the US of trying to get rid of another "dissident regime" in Syria, as was the
case in Iraq and Libya.
\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The second of these RT links is being totally censored by Google and DuckDuckGo. I think
something big is up. Perhaps WW-III.
Hitler's inspiration for the specifics of Nazism was Sparta (while the political system in
itself was inspired from Fascism). It's amazing (and one of the most glaring examples of
liberal self-censorship) that people don't know about this fact.
For people who don't know, (the famous version of) Sparta was a post-communist polis of
Classical Greece, born from the reforms of mythological Lycourgos in the 9th Century BCE.
Apart from the apparent military discipline, Classical Sparta was famous for two things:
1) it didn't killed the male population of the conquered poleis in the Peloponnese and
captured and assimilated the adult female population; instead, it enslaved them, and
institutionalized their status (the helots). It was impossible, in theses, for a helot to
become a Spartiate, so the helots population became much larger than the Spartiate population
over time. The most amazing fact here is that, albeit some helot revolts probably happened,
they were never victorious. Hitler rationalized it as Spartiate genetic superiority.
2) the Spartiates allegedly practiced eugenics among themselves. This was immortalized in
our times by the popular movie "300", where they threw defective newborns over a cliff. This
cliff really exists and there are many skeletons found there by archaeologists, but none of
them are from babies or even children -- only adult males were found (probably criminals;
there was no prisonal system in the ancient world because it would be very expensive:
penalties were usually execution for the common guy -- and throwing from a cliff was a very
traditional way of execution, practiced by the Romans since the kingdom times -- and exile
for the powerful). Again, Hitler rationalized this (probably myth) as the cause for (1).
But the rationalization behind those three quotes is wrong: yes, it is true that "might"
is an essential ingredient for "right", but might doesn't come from intrinsic characteristics
of a given people (be it genetic or religious).
For the first case, Darwin's Natural Selection theory is clear: it only happens because
reproduction is random. Factors such as geographical isolation are hindering factors of
natural selections. In other words, artificial selection (eugenics) is a bad way of doing
natural selection: it is always the environment that should decide who reproduces and who
doesn't, human breeding should always be random (i.e. by chance) if we want to keep our
genetic diversity at the healthies state possible.
For the second case, just empirical investigation is enough: a religion only consolidates
itself as dominant ex post facto, i.e. after the domination is done. Religion is only to
reinforce consensus of the power. But religion by itself doesn't generate power: Islam, for
example, was born as a necessity of the merchants of Mecca to initiate a bellicose expansion
through the Arabian peninsula (and beyond). But it was economic necessity which gave birth to
the religion, not the religion that gave birth to the economic necessity.
-//-
As for Modi. It was a known fact his monetary policy would fail. The Chinese had already
warned, days after it was approved:
His demonetisation policy only didn't result in the immediate collapse of his government
because most Indian people don't have access to such big notes to begin with. He gained
significant popular support from the poorest rural areas with this:
Could have been Churchill, Kissinger, Poppy Bush, Henry Ford, Lloyd Blankfein, Patton,
Sherman, John McCain, Ollie North, any member of the Cheney family, either of the Kagan
brothers plus Nudelman, Andrew Jackson, Karl Rove, Pliny the elder, or hundreds of other
like-minded heroes whom made sincere, heartfelt remarks such as these.
Now JEB or Dubya or Nikki Haley, or Betsy DeVoss, for example, don't have the brain cells
to put together sentences like these, but they uphold this worldview for a trust fund or a
paycheck.
Full title of Darwin's magnum opus: 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life'. Presumably, though, favoured
by nature, not by human intervention. Therein lies the problem: Man has a mind, a will and an
awareness of the past, and for thinkers like Samuel Butler and Marx, Darwin (who was
influenced by Malthus) had advanced scientific thought a lot, but had not given a full
picture.
@8 I did a duck-duck-go and google search on "missiles ready to strike Syria within 24 hours"
and both popped up the RT article at the head of the search.
"Meglio viviere un giorno da leone che cento da pecore." " Better to live a day as lion then
100 days as a sheep. "
Benito Mussolini circa 1924. Fascist and Zionist LA MEME CHOSE
Agree totally with b's take on Netanyahu. What an a-hole.
I am eagerly awaiting b's commentary on the neo-Nazi mobs in Germany. No doubt the rise of
fascism in Europe is related to U.S. driven wars in the Middle East which have produced
hundreds of thousands of refugees, but what can be done about it? I should think that step
number one is to cease hostilities in Syria, thus allowing civil society to normalize. This
would stem the outward flow of refugees and encourage the inward flow of many who would want
to return to their homeland.
Communists and Jews were in concentration camps in Germany since 1933 in Dachau eight years
before the meeting, starved, exploited to collapse and death in quarries. In fact most of
first Jews were communists, candidates from KPD arrested before elections of April 1933
conducted under emergency law with Hitler's designated as Kantzler.
"We hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the
Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what
is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do
that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong
do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
A summary of Athenian statements to the Melians, Book V, 5.89-[1]
Melian Dialogue
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides
The final clause is often quoted by many people, among them Noam Chomsky.
The Melian Dialogue is a brilliant fictionalized recreation of the pre-siege negotiations
between Athens and Melos. It is important to note that, from a military point of view, the
brutal genocidal siege, while initially successful, was short-lived, successfully over-turned
by the Spartans, and ultimately regretted by many Athenians (Cf. example of hubris).
Perhaps more revealing is the spirit in which Thucycides is quoted: Triumphantly,
realistically, or lamentably.
The Twitter link on the Netanyahu quote is a gold mine! Simply scroll down!
'Russian interference???' 'We're working to prevent Iran from establishing military
presence in Syria. We won't relent in pursuit of this goal as we did not relent in bringing
about the cancellation of the bad nuclear deal w/ Iran, a goal seen impossible when I put it
on the intl agenda several years ago
10:05 - 29. 8. 2018'
Posted by: Northern Observer | Aug 31, 2018 10:10:13 AM | 5
1 and 3 are not even arguments, they are plain old description of reality as it
is.
Not quite.
In (1) the second sentence could pass as an observation, but the first one cannot. It
contains the verb "has to" so it is not a passive statement but the assertive one. It implies
a necessity and desire.
In (3), yes, from that quote alone it is not clear is Bibi identifies himself with the weak,
or with the strong. So, you might be right, it could be that he just cynically describes the
world as is, without endorsing it. However, it clear IMO on which side he prefers to be.
But, I do not see that kind of attitude much different than for example of my realtor who
told that I should install alarm in my apartment so that a prospective burglar chooses
someone else's place to rob, instead of mine.
Or a car dealer who sells huge 4x4 SUV monsters to moms telling them that it is safer for her
children, because in case of collision, passengers in larger vehicle are less injured than in
the smaller one. And moms do buy them. And put a sticker on the back 'Baby in car' what I
find quite ironic.
"Surely some will always be stronger than others. The real question is whether the strong
have an obligation to help the weak." dh
There is no question about it: unless the strong assist the weak the community will dissolve.
Society depends upon mutual aid and without society the strongest individual perishes and
disappears.
Nothing is more mistaken than to regard the ravings of fascists and the fantasies of
eugenicists as 'common sense' axioms. In reality man is a social creature almost uniquely
unable to survive alone.
Hitler and Netanyahu were/are whistling in the dark, attempting to banish their consciousness
of the inevitable fate of the unjust whose actions are a stench in the nostrils of
humanity-Karma.
Will Israel survive until 2030?
In his report , Garrie says: "The Russian Foreign Minister has condemned the terrorist
act and has accused the Kiev regime of committing an act of state terrorism." I've yet to see
Lavrov's statement, but I trust Garrie.
As for American Fascism, the entire mindset of American Exceptionalism combined with the
doctrine of Manifest Destiny provide it with a substantial foundation. Combined with the
implied imperialism within JQ Adams speech that outlined what became known as The Monroe
Doctrine, White, Anglo-Saxon superiority was further institutionalized. Social-Darwinism is
quite complex to discuss despite it being a relatively simple concept on the surface.
Wikipedia's page
is rather good on this topic and shows Herbert Spencer published his ideas before Darwin
published his revolutionary book. Vice-President Henry Wallace is the most prominent American
citizen I know of to write boldly about American Fascism In his famous NY Times op/ed
The Dangers of
American Fascism that concludes thusly:
"Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and
eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this
conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain
races, creeds and classes."
Yes, he saw it but IMO was too soft toward it. I'd be remiss not to mention Bertram
Gross's bold 1980 book Friendly Fascism and Sheldon Wolin's Inverted
Totalitarianism .
Northern Observer - "1 and 3 are not even arguments, they are plain old description of
reality as it is"
Not so. The Primitive Darwinists took no account of feedback, or inter-related systems.
The super-tiger eats all the prey and then dies out. There has to be a balance.
But that's a mechanistic refutation of the Primitive Darwinist argument, not that much
better than the argument itself. To be human surely means something different in any case,
unless we are to succumb to mechanistic determinism.
I thought it comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, who is after all blamed as a
father/idelogue of Nazim.
"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power
itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling
that power is increasing -- that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more
power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of
our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to
perish."
As far as the strong protecting the weak, the human animal is a prime example of this as the
mother and infant must be protected for several years before either can fend for themselves.
Another well known example is the mother bear protecting her cubs--don't mess with either!
There's no superiority/inferiority involved as such in either example as both are natural
mechanisms. The concept of social castes/classes was very well established millennia ago with
numerous ideas put forth to justify their existence, many of which still operate today. Many
of those ideas are present within the Monthly
Review article I linked to yesterday. Engels may or may not have coined the term
Social Murder, but even the Whigs agreed as this passage shows:
"In 1844, Frederick Engels wrote that 'English society daily and hourly commits what the
working-men's organs, with perfect correctness, characterize as social murder. It has placed
the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long [and] it
undermines the vital force of these workers gradually, little by little, and so hurries them
to the grave before their time.'24 Anyone who thinks that Engels was not an objective witness
should compare his judgement to that of the influential Whig journal the Edinburgh
Review :
"Out of every two persons who die in the east of London, one perishes from preventable
causes. From twenty to thirty thousand of the labouring population of London are killed every
year by causes which, if we chose, we might expel by a current of water. Though we do not
take these persons out of their houses and murder them, we do the same thing in effect, -- we
neglect them in their poisonous homes, and leave them there to a lingering but a certain
death."
It's very easy to see why Marx and Engels characterized what they observed in England and
Europe as Class War. But can the English of the mid 1800s be characterized as fascist, or
perhaps just the elite?
"...since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question
between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they
must..." Thucydides - he said it in Melian Dialogue.
But the quote should be read in context...and is itself a paraphrase of Athenian
Policy,
It is also True. Yes indeed, fascists do sometimes say true things...it happens. I do not
like fascists, but I do like truth, doesn't everybody?
Gramsci's thinking thrives in many fields, being a safe haven for political and
intellectual organizations midway between the pure abandonment of Marxism and unrestricted
adherence to neoliberal "democracy".
Gramsci became the prostitute of the neoliberals, as he was before that of the recycled
Stalinists when against "Trotskyism", whatever this was.
Social Darwinism and Eugenics was certainly not owned by Fascists alone. Its
alive and well today and is used to justify neoliberal economics and imperialism. The strong
(cognitive or physical) rule the weak. Any attempt at equalizing the disparity is labelled as
Socialism and is opposed in part for fears it promotes dysgenics.
Social Darwinism and Eugenics was certainly not owned by Fascists alone. Its alive and well
today and is used to justify neoliberal economics and imperialism. The strong (cognitive or
physical) rule the weak. Any attempt at equalizing the disparity is labelled as Socialism and
is opposed in part for fears it promotes dysgenics.
So since this blog entry is dedicated on "The delusions of grandeur that the
United States of America suffer", I will let you on a little secret....
I am doing this because USA is literally a midget and that is not my personal oppinion.
USA is as defenceless as a baby cockroach trying to find its way out of a stinky poophole using
as a nest.
God has a very strange sense of humor it seems.
For the love of me I can't figure out why He chose these clowns to pretend they are the
global superpower in order for Mankind to be bullied around.
It must be our collective sins!
I can understand, Rome, Persia, Greece, China, India, even some portions of European
history, but USA is a total joke.
... ... ...
So since this blog entry is dedicated on "The delusions of grandeur that the United States
of America suffer", I will let you on a little secret....
I am doing this because USA is literally a midget and that is not my personal oppinion.
USA is as defenceless as a baby cockroach trying to find its way out of a stinky poophole
using as a nest.
God has a very strange sense of humor it seems.
For the love of me I can't figure out why He chose these clowns to pretend they are the
global superpower in order for Mankind to be bullied around.
It must be our collective sins!
I can understand, Rome, Persia, Greece, China, India, even some portions of European
history, but USA is a total joke.
Darwin had it right I think. Or maybe it was the ancient Greeks. I'm trying pretty hard to
keep up here,eugenics might be partly responsible for that.
Thank Christ somebody broke in with news of that guy getting blowed up. Somebody said
Canada might be the culprit. Well, suck me dry and call me Dusty, I never heard of that
motherfucker and neither have any of my friends at the bar. Maybe it's because of that gal
who had a granddad that was a Uke who liked Nazi invaders better than the Russians. But she's
pretty busy right now trying deal with other stuff. Like the biggest trade deal in the
world.
I had been going to propose that the answer to all three questions was "Thrasymachus" (from
Plato's Republic) - but I see in checking my source that all that fine young man did actually
say was that justice is the advantage of the stronger, using as an example the rulers of
cities who order things to their own advantage. And indeed, the statement is refuted, which
causes the frightening man to blush...But best to read the original, as what Thrasymachus
represents looms larger in that setting and in the labyrinthian dialogue upon whose threshold
he makes his claim.
So back to current affairs !
England is now devided down the middle politically, as is a whole list of country's, to many
to mention. left and right increaseingly polerised ! Perhaps the most important being usa. If
we look at the right wing street violence in Germany this week, we see what is going to
happen all the way round very soon. This weeks violent aggressive protest is much much bigger
than people realise ! It was aimed at inocent people in the street, it was apparently
protesting about victems of western military aggression being in Germany. But not stateing
their victems, but the problem.
Last Sunday these nazi's and there simperfiers numbered 6000 but the truth is a large
proportion of the police present were on there side. Looking the other way when violence
occurred failing to arrest people doing the nazi salute. The coalition govenment has a large
part extreme right wing.
These next weeks determine which way western country's will swing. We can stop the nazi's on
the street's or we can except the consequences.
Whatever thing Trump and his minions (American allies, "Western Civilization") are doing
right now, they are just reestructuring already existing trade deals at best.
-//-
As for the "Greek" discussion. It's not a surprise Hitler took at least some inspiration
from the ancient Greek. From the 19th to early 20th Century, there was some kind of "Greek
revival" in Germany's academic circles. Take Nietzsche for example: he dialogues with the
Greeks (mainly Plato and Socrates) many times. Even that so-called Nazi historian (forgot his
name) focused on the ancient Greek. Hell, even Marx did his doctorate thesis over Epicurus.
So, Hitler essentially lived in the end of a "philellene" period of Germany.
I have been a student of the history of hemispheres and I see this as an abrupt redirect.
Several heavily destructive wars have been fought over this in just the last 55 years. LAND
REFORM is on the economic agenda. At the IMF indeed.
Even at this late stage, the right wing can be stopped peacefully! By sheer weight of numbers
alone. tomorrow again they plan a large demonstration. It's now time for the German public to
stand up against the reemergence of full blown hitler style fascism taking over there
country. And lastly a warning as shocking as it is you can no longer trust your police, they
are no longer on your side or on the side of law and order. I don't say this lightly ! I have
been following events closely !
Netanyahoo and David Irving arguing in the same direction regarding Hitler and
the slaughter of Europe's Jews. Wow.
Thanks, b, I didn't see the (scroll down) so leapt right to search engines and in: Vision and
Violence
Arthur P. Mendel · 1999 · Philosophy
from the Google Books access, found some pretty dundew'd up stuff. Are these really
quotations? Wow, eugenics must have been a thrill ride in the 1930s for a gimp.
"... Developing the tradition charted by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic The Power Elite , in his latest book, Professor Peter Phillips starts by reviewing the transition from the nation state power elites described by authors such as Mills to a transnational power elite centralized on the control of global capital. ..."
Developing the tradition charted by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic The Power Elite
, in his latest book, Professor Peter Phillips starts by reviewing the transition from the
nation state power elites described by authors such as Mills to a transnational power elite
centralized on the control of global capital.
Thus, in his just-released study Giants: The Global
Power Elite , Phillips, a professor of political sociology at Sonoma State University
in the USA, identifies the world's top seventeen asset management firms, such as BlackRock and
J.P Morgan Chase, each with more than one trillion dollars of investment capital under
management, as the 'Giants' of world capitalism. The seventeen firms collectively manage more
than $US41.1 trillion in a self-invested network of interlocking capital that spans the
globe.
This $41 trillion represents the wealth invested for profit by thousands of millionaires,
billionaires and corporations. The seventeen Giants operate in nearly every country in the
world and are 'the central institutions of the financial capital that powers the global
economic system'. They invest in anything considered profitable, ranging from 'agricultural
lands on which indigenous farmers are replaced by power elite investors' to public assets (such
as energy and water utilities) to war.
In addition, Phillips identifies the most important networks of the Global Power Elite and
the individuals therein. He names 389 individuals (a small number of whom are women and a token
number of whom are from countries other than the United States and the wealthier countries of
Western Europe) at the core of the policy planning nongovernmental networks that manage,
facilitate and defend the continued concentration of global capital. The Global Power Elite
perform two key uniting functions, he argues: they provide ideological justifications for their
shared interests (promulgated through their corporate media), and define the parameters of
action for transnational governmental organizations and capitalist nation-states.
More precisely, Phillips identifies the 199 directors of the seventeen global financial
Giants and offers short biographies and public information on their individual net wealth.
These individuals are closely interconnected through numerous networks of association including
the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Conference, university affiliations,
various policy councils, social clubs, and cultural enterprises. For a taste of one of these
clubs, see this account of The Links in New York. As Phillips
observes: 'It is certainly safe to conclude they all know each other personally or know of each
other in the shared context of their positions of power.'
The Giants, Phillips documents, invest in each other but also in many hundreds of investment
management firms, many of which are near-Giants. This results in tens of trillions of dollars
coordinated in a single vast network of global capital controlled by a very small number of
people. 'Their constant objective is to find enough safe investment opportunities for a return
on capital that allows for continued growth. Inadequate capital-placement opportunities lead to
dangerous speculative investments, buying up of public assets, and permanent war spending.'
Because the directors of these seventeen asset management firms represent the central core
of international capital, 'Individuals can retire or pass away, and other similar people will
move into their place, making the overall structure a self-perpetuating network of global
capital control. As such, these 199 people share a common goal of maximum return on investments
for themselves and their clients, and they may seek to achieve returns by any means necessary
– legal or not . the institutional and structural arrangements within the money
management systems of global capital relentlessly seek ways to achieve maximum return on
investment, and the conditions for manipulations – legal or not – are always
present.'
Like some researchers before him, Phillips identifies the importance of those transnational
institutions that serve a unifying function. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, G20,
G7, World Trade Organization (WTO),
World Economic Forum (WEF), Trilateral
Commission, Bilderberg Group ,
Bank for International Settlements, Group of 30 (G30), the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Monetary
Conference serve as institutional mechanisms for consensus building within the transnational
capitalist class, and power elite policy formulation and implementation. 'These international
institutions serve the interests of the global financial Giants by supporting policies and
regulations that seek to protect the free, unrestricted flow of capital and debt collection
worldwide.'
But within this network of transnational institutions, Phillips identifies two very
important global elite policy-planning organizations: the Group of Thirty (which has 32 members) and the extended executive
committee of the Trilateral Commission
(which has 55 members). These nonprofit corporations, which each have a research and support
staff, formulate elite policy and issue instructions for their implementation by the
transnational governmental institutions like the G7, G20, IMF, WTO, and World Bank. Elite
policies are also implemented following instruction of the relevant agent, including
governments, in the context. These agents then do as they are instructed. Thus, these 85
members (because two overlap) of the Group of Thirty and the Trilateral Commission comprise a
central group of facilitators of global capitalism, ensuring that 'global capital remains safe,
secure, and growing'.
So, while many of the major international institutions are controlled by nation-state
representatives and central bankers (with proportional power exercised by dominant financial
supporters such as the United States and European Union countries), Phillips is more concerned
with the transnational policy groups that are nongovernmental because these organizations 'help
to unite TCC power elites as a class' and the individuals involved in these organizations
facilitate world capitalism. 'They serve as policy elites who seek the continued growth of
capital in the world.'
Developing this list of 199 directors of the largest money management firms in the world,
Phillips argues, is an important step toward understanding how capitalism works globally today.
These global power elite directors make the decisions regarding the investment of trillions of
dollars. Supposedly in competition, the concentrated wealth they share requires them to
cooperate for their greater good by identifying investment opportunities and shared risk
agreements, and working collectively for political arrangements that create advantages for
their profit-generating system as a whole.
Their fundamental priority is to secure an average return on investment of 3 to 10 percent,
or even more. The nature of any investment is less important than what it yields: continuous
returns that support growth in the overall market. Hence, capital investment in tobacco
products, weapons of war, toxic chemicals, pollution, and other socially destructive goods and
services are judged purely by their profitability. Concern for the social and environmental
costs of the investment are non-existent. In other words, inflicting death and destruction are
fine because they are profitable.
So what is the global elite's purpose? In a few sentences Phillips characterizes it thus:
The elite is largely united in support of the US/NATO military empire that prosecutes a
repressive war against resisting groups – typically labeled 'terrorists' – around
the world. The real purpose of 'the war on terror' is defense of transnational globalization,
the unimpeded flow of financial capital around the world, dollar hegemony and access to oil; it
has nothing to do with repressing terrorism which it generates, perpetuates and finances to
provide cover for its real agenda. This is why the United States has a long history of CIA and
military interventions around the world ostensibly in defense of 'national
interests'.
An interesting point that emerges for me from reading Phillips thoughtful analysis is that
there is a clear distinction between those individuals and families who have wealth and those
individuals who have (sometimes significantly) less wealth (which, nevertheless, is still
considerable) but, through their positions and connections, wield a great deal of power. As
Phillips explains this distinction, 'the sociology of elites is more important than particular
elite individuals and their families'. Just 199 individuals decide how more than $40 trillion
will be invested. And this is his central point. Let me briefly elaborate.
There are some really wealthy families in the world, notably including the families
Rothschild (France and the United Kingdom), Rockefeller (USA), Goldman-Sachs (USA), Warburgs
(Germany), Lehmann (USA), Lazards (France), Kuhn Loebs (USA), Israel Moses Seifs (Italy),
Al-Saud (Saudi Arabia), Walton (USA), Koch (USA), Mars (USA), Cargill-MacMillan (USA) and Cox
(USA). However, not all of these families overtly seek power to shape the world as they
wish.
Similarly, the world's extremely wealthy individuals such as Jeff Bezos (USA), Bill Gates
(USA), Warren Buffett (USA), Bernard Arnault (France), Carlos Slim Helu (Mexico) and Francoise
Bettencourt Meyers (France) are not necessarily connected in such a way that they exercise
enormous power. In fact, they may have little interest in power as such, despite their obvious
interest in wealth.
In essence, some individuals and families are content to simply take advantage of how
capitalism and its ancilliary governmental and transnational instruments function while others
are more politically engaged in seeking to manipulate major institutions to achieve outcomes
that not only maximize their own profit and hence wealth but also shape the world itself.
So if you look at the list of 199 individuals that Phillips identifies at the centre of
global capital, it does not include names such as Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch, Walton or even
Rothschild, Rockefeller or Windsor (the Queen of England) despite their well-known and
extraordinary wealth. As an aside, many of these names are also missing from the lists compiled
by groups such as Forbes and
Bloomberg , but their
absence from these lists is for a very different reason given the penchant for many really
wealthy individuals and families to avoid certain types of publicity and their power to ensure
that they do.
In contrast to the names just listed, in Phillips' analysis names like Laurence (Larry) Fink
(Chairman and CEO of BlackRock), James (Jamie) Dimon (Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase) and
John McFarlane (Chairman of Barclays Bank), while not as wealthy as those listed immediately
above, wield far more power because of their positions and connections within the global elite
network of 199 individuals.
Predictably then, Phillips observes, these three individuals have similar lifestyles and
ideological orientations. They believe capitalism is beneficial for the world and while
inequality and poverty are important issues, they believe that capital growth will eventually
solve these problems. They are relatively non-expressive about environmental issues, but
recognize that investment opportunities may change in response to climate 'modifications'. As
millionaires they own multiple homes. They attended elite universities and rose quickly in
international finance to reach their current status as giants of the global power elite. 'The
institutions they manage have been shown to engage in illegal collusions with others, but the
regulatory fines by governments are essentially seen as just part of doing business.'
In short, as I would characterize this description: They are devoid of a legal or moral
framework to guide their actions, whether in relation to business, fellow human beings, war or
the environment and climate. They are obviously typical of the elite.
Any apparent concern for people, such as that expressed by Fink and Dimon in response to the
racist violence in Charlottesville, USA in August 2017, is simply designed to promote
'stability' or more precisely, a stable (that is, profitable) investment and consumer
climate.
The lack of concern for people and issues that might concern many of us is also evident from
a consideration of the agenda at elite gatherings. Consider the International Monetary
Conference. Founded in 1956, it is a private yearly meeting of the top few hundred bankers in
the world. The American Bankers Association (ABA) serves as the secretariat for the conference.
But, as Phillips notes: 'Nothing on the agenda seems to address the socioeconomic consequences
of investments to determine the impacts on people and the environment.' A casual perusal of the
agenda at any elite gathering reveals that this comment applies equally to any elite forum.
See, for example, the agenda of the recent WEF meeting in
Davos . Any talk of 'concern' is misleading rhetoric.
Hence, in the words of Phillips: The 199 directors of the global Giants are 'a very select
set of people. They all know each other personally or know of each other. At least 69 have
attended the annual World Economic Forum, where they often serve on panels or give public
presentations. They mostly attended the same elite universities, and interact in upperclass
social setting[s] in the major cities of the world. They all are wealthy and have significant
stock holdings in one or more of the financial Giants. They are all deeply invested in the
importance of maintaining capital growth in the world. Some are sensitive to environmental and
social justice issues, but they seem to be unable to link these issues to global capital
concentration.'
Of course, the global elite cannot manage the world system alone: the elite requires agents
to perform many of the functions necessary to control national societies and the individuals
within them. 'The interests of the Global Power Elite and the TCC are fully recognized by major
institutions in society. Governments, intelligence services, policymakers, universities, police
forces, military, and corporate media all work in support of their vital interests.'
In other words, to elaborate Phillips' point and extend it a little, through their economic
power, the Giants control all of the instruments through which their policies are implemented.
Whether it be governments, national military forces, 'military contractors' or mercenaries
(with at least $200 billion spent on private security globally, the industry currently employs
some fifteen million people worldwide) used both in 'foreign' wars but also likely deployed in
future for domestic control, key 'intelligence' agencies, legal systems and police forces,
major nongovernment organizations, or the academic, educational, 'public relations propaganda',
corporate media, medical, psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries, all instruments are fully
responsive to elite control and are designed to misinform, deceive, disempower, intimidate,
repress, imprison (in a jail or psychiatric ward), exploit and/or kill (depending on the
constituency) the rest of us, as is readily evident.
Defending Elite Power
Phillips observes that the power elite continually worries about rebellion by the 'unruly
exploited masses' against their structure of concentrated wealth. This is why the US military
empire has long played the role of defender of global capitalism. As a result, the United
States has more than 800 military bases (with some scholars suggesting 1,000) in 70 countries
and territories. In comparison, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia have about 30 foreign
bases. In addition, US military forces are now deployed in 70 percent of the world's nations
with US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) having troops in 147 countries, an increase of 80
percent since 2010. These forces conduct counterterrorism strikes regularly, including drone
assassinations and kill/capture raids.
'The US military empire stands on hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and continues
to support repressive, exploitative governments that cooperate with global capital's imperial
agenda. Governments that accept external capital investment, whereby a small segment of a
country's elite benefits, do so knowing that capital inevitably requires a return on investment
that entails using up resources and people for economic gain. The whole system continues wealth
concentration for elites and expanded wretched inequality for the masses .
'Understanding permanent war as an economic relief valve for surplus capital is a vital part
of comprehending capitalism in the world today. War provides investment opportunity for the
Giants and TCC elites and a guaranteed return on capital. War also serves a repressive function
of keeping the suffering masses of humanity afraid and compliant.'
As Phillips elaborates: This is why defense of global capital is the prime reason that NATO
countries now account for 85 percent of the world's military spending; the United States spends
more on the military than the rest of the world combined.
In essence, 'the Global Power Elite uses NATO and the US military empire for its worldwide
security. This is part of an expanding strategy of US military domination around the world,
whereby the US/ NATO military empire, advised by the power elite's Atlantic Council , operates in service to the
Transnational Corporate Class for the protection of international capital everywhere in the
world'.
This entails 'further pauperization of the bottom half of the world's population and an
unrelenting downward spiral of wages for 80 percent of the world. The world is facing economic
crisis, and the neoliberal solution is to spend less on human needs and more on security. It is
a world of financial institutions run amok, where the answer to economic collapse is to print
more money through quantitative easing, flooding the population with trillions of new
inflation-producing dollars. It is a world of permanent war, whereby spending for destruction
requires further spending to rebuild, a cycle that profits the Giants and global networks of
economic power. It is a world of drone killings, extrajudicial assassinations, death, and
destruction, at home and abroad.'
Where is this all heading?
So what are the implications of this state of affairs? Phillips responds unequivocally:
'This concentration of protected wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war,
starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation are reaching a
species-level threat. We realize that humankind is in danger of possible extinction'.
He goes on to state that the Global Power Elite is probably the only entity 'capable of
correcting this condition without major civil unrest, war, and chaos' and elaborates an
important aim of his book: to raise awareness of the importance of systemic change and the
redistribution of wealth among both the book's general readers but also the elite, 'in the hope
that they can begin the process of saving humanity.' The book's postscript is a 'A Letter to
the Global Power Elite', co-signed by Phillips and 90 others, beseeching the elite to act
accordingly.
'It is no longer acceptable for you to believe that you can manage capitalism to grow its
way out of the gross inequalities we all now face. The environment cannot accept more pollution
and waste, and civil unrest is everywhere inevitable at some point. Humanity needs you to step
up and insure that trickle-down becomes a river of resources that reaches every child, every
family, and all human beings. We urge you to use your power and make the needed changes for
humanity's survival.'
But he also emphasizes that nonviolent social movements, using the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights as a moral code, can accelerate the process of redistributing wealth by pressuring
the elite into action.
Conclusion
Peter Phillips has written an important book. For those of us interested in understanding
elite control of the world, this book is a vital addition to the bookshelf. And like any good
book, as you will see from my comments both above and below, it raised more questions for me
even while it answered many.
For this reason I do not share his faith in moral appeals to the elite, as articulated in
the letter in his postscript. It is fine to make the appeal but history offers no evidence to
suggest that there will be any significant response. The death and destruction inflicted by
elites is highly profitable, centuries-old and ongoing. It will take powerful,
strategically-focused nonviolent campaigns (or societal collapse) to compel the necessary
changes in elite behavior. Hence, I fully endorse his call for nonviolent social movements to
compel elite action where we cannot make the necessary changes without their involvement. See
'A Nonviolent Strategy to End Violence and Avert Human Extinction' and Nonviolent Campaign Strategy .
Fundamentally, Giants: The Global
Power Elite is a call to action. Professor Peter Phillips is highly aware of our
predicament – politically, socially, economically, environmentally and climatically
– and the critical role played by the global power elite in generating that
predicament.
If we cannot persuade the global power elite to respond sensibly to that predicament, or
nonviolently compel it to do so, humanity's time on Earth is indeed limited.
*
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence.
He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are
violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?' His email address
is [email protected]
and his website is here . He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research.
Once the spy agencies become the controlling element a government degenerates into a
regime or imperium depending upon its level of power.
The rule of law is sidelined and a cynical form of dictatorship develops.
Britain, the US and all anglophone countries are exhibiting the results of this sort of
evolution.
It is more dangerous now than when the historical odious tyrannies ran riot during the
'30s and '40s of last century because technology has advanced to the point that their
continuance is a threat to our survival as a species.
"... Maximum pressure usually just provokes maximum resistance, and it leads to more of the behavior that the pressure campaign was supposed to stop. ..."
"... Our policymakers rarely, if ever, learn much of anything from our government's past blunders and crimes. If they acknowledge that previous policies failed, they are reluctant to admit that the policies were certain to fail. It is much more common for policymakers and pundits to blame the failure of our policies abroad on the inadequacies of our proxies and allies or the designs of our adversaries. The fact that these policies can be undone so easily by obvious and foreseeable problems does not seem to matter. There are not many that are willing to accept that a policy failed because it was inherently unsound. ..."
"... Real learning is impossible without a willingness to question and then discard faulty assumptions, and far too many of our policymakers and political leaders won't ever get rid of certain assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Once someone takes for granted that the U.S. has both the right and the authority to meddle in the affairs of other states and dictate their policies to them on pain of collective punishment and/or war, he is likely to see the pursuit of regime change in other lands as being almost synonymous with American "leadership" itself. ..."
"... "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Upton Sinclair. ..."
"... The largest donor to re-election campaigns are the military industrial complex, and it is always in their best interest to start or continue more wars. Since they are the ones that control the money, it is always in the interest of elected representatives to support starting or continuing wars. ..."
"... "When will we ever learn?" When will war cease to be profitable for those that have, or claim, War Powers? ..."
"... One should not mistake the useful "bolt-on" careerists that might or might not be true believers in the Great Gamble with the profiteers that have the actual power. The oligarchs and the arms manufacturers do not care whether the policies are wrong or right, failed or successful, as long as there is blood money to be made. If anything, failure in perpetuity is a guarantor of future cash flow and continued rent extraction. ..."
"... When it comes to their relationship with the world, empires do not learn. They bully. Why should the policy makers learn? They are the invincable empire. They can bully and pounce without consequences, no matter the outcome. Learning is for weaklings who need that in order to survive. ..."
"... As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent "failed" policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers -- that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: "follow the money." ..."
"... When you do so, I believe you will find U.S. policies in the Middle East to have been wildly successful, so successful that the gains they have produced for the movers and shakers in the petrochemical, financial, and weapons industries (which is approximately to say, for those who have the greatest influence in determining U.S. foreign policies) must surely be counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars. ..."
Thomas Pickering explains that the Trump
administration's Iran policy is doomed to fail on its own terms:
The policy of maximum pressure and unachievable demands is based on deeply flawed
assumptions about Iran and the wise use of American power.
Pickering is describing Trump's Iran policy here, but he could just as easily be talking
about the president's handling of many other issues. The Trump administration insists on
demanding that other governments capitulate, make sweeping concessions that would overturn most
of their current policies, and then punishes them if the other side refuses to comply with
insane ultimatums. No one responds well to being dictated to, and that is particularly true of
regimes that have made opposition to the U.S. a major part of their reigning ideology.
Maximum pressure usually just provokes maximum resistance, and it leads to more of the
behavior that the pressure campaign was supposed to stop.
Later on in his column, Pickering reviews the sorry record of U.S.-sponsored regime change
and then asks:
When will we ever learn?
If the last two decades are anything to go by, the answer is never. Our policymakers
rarely, if ever, learn much of anything from our government's past blunders and crimes. If they
acknowledge that previous policies failed, they are reluctant to admit that the policies were
certain to fail. It is much more common for policymakers and pundits to blame the failure of
our policies abroad on the inadequacies of our proxies and allies or the designs of our
adversaries. The fact that these policies can be undone so easily by obvious and foreseeable
problems does not seem to matter. There are not many that are willing to accept that a policy
failed because it was inherently unsound.
"We" never learn because so many of our political leaders and analysts don't think that our
failed policies were wrong in themselves. The only thing that they are interested in knowing is
how to implement the same bad ideas more "effectively" the next time. These are the people that
still think that preventive war and regime change are appropriate policy options when done the
"right" way. Real learning is impossible without a willingness to question and then discard
faulty assumptions, and far too many of our policymakers and political leaders won't ever get
rid of certain assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Once someone takes for granted
that the U.S. has both the right and the authority to meddle in the affairs of other states and
dictate their policies to them on pain of collective punishment and/or war, he is likely to see
the pursuit of regime change in other lands as being almost synonymous with American
"leadership" itself.
While I appreciate your optimism I am far more cynical. Our leaders won't learn for the
same reason tobacco companies rejected evidence that smoking is bad for you.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his
not understanding it!" Upton Sinclair.
The largest donor to re-election campaigns are the military industrial complex, and it is
always in their best interest to start or continue more wars. Since they are the ones that
control the money, it is always in the interest of elected representatives to support
starting or continuing wars.
There is no money to be made in peace. Everything else, sadly, is just window
dressing.
A sound conclusion based on accumulated evidence is hard to refute. But 2 decades? Nah,
more like 5, at least for those who remember Vietnam, a case in which political affiliation
ultimately didn't matter to those pursuing the inevitable conclusion of the mistakes they
believed they could set right. LBJ got us into it and Nixon, having committed treason by
secretly undermining the peace negotiations while running in '68, 'finished the job' by
keeping us there 4 more years, at a huge cost in American lives that far exceeded the
casualty toll in the more recent debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The real reason why is because the US is so rich even George W Bush's $2 Trillion blunder
in Iraq is something a $20T economy can shrug off. How long that remains the case against a
resurgent China is anyone's guess.
"our political leaders and analysts don't think that our failed policies were wrong in
themselves"
One should not mistake the useful "bolt-on" careerists that might or might not be true
believers in the Great Gamble with the profiteers that have the actual power. The oligarchs
and the arms manufacturers do not care whether the policies are wrong or right, failed or
successful, as long as there is blood money to be made. If anything, failure in perpetuity is
a guarantor of future cash flow and continued rent extraction.
Mr. Larison is an American Republican in the original sense of the word in my view. But I
get the feeling he does not realize that when it comes to foreign policy, the US is not a
republic. It is an empire. It only is a republic at home.
When it comes to their relationship with the world, empires do not learn. They bully. Why
should the policy makers learn? They are the invincable empire. They can bully and pounce
without consequences, no matter the outcome.
Learning is for weaklings who need that in order to survive.
Empires do not learn, they fall. Either military or financially. Till that day comes, no learning!
Good to hear from Tom Pickering. I'm very glad his generation retains its voice and
contributes to the foreign policy debate. Sometimes it seems like it's all punk kids and
neocons who either don't know what the hell they're talking about or are lobbying for a
foreign country. More Pickering please, and less of the other stuff.
As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no
persistent "failed" policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the
actual powers -- that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have
been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that
invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: "follow the money."
When you do so, I believe you will find U.S. policies in the Middle East to have been
wildly successful, so successful that the gains they have produced for the movers and
shakers in the petrochemical, financial, and weapons industries (which is approximately to
say, for those who have the greatest influence in determining U.S. foreign policies) must
surely be counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
So U.S. soldiers get killed, so Palestinians get insulted, robbed, and confined to a set
of squalid concentration areas, so the "peace process" never gets far from square one,
etc., etc. -- none of this makes the policies failures; these things are all surface froth,
costs not born by the policy makers themselves but by the cannon-fodder masses, the bovine
taxpayers at large, and foreigners who count for nothing.
If the paeans to McCain by diverse political climbers seems detached from reality, it's
because they reflect the elite view of U.S. military interventions as a chess game, with the
millions killed by unprovoked aggression mere statistics.
Kinesis is not just a cryptocurrency, Kinesis combines the best of the old world and the
new, bringing the most stable and secure forms of currency, gold and silver, to the consumer,
in digital form.
As the Cold War entered its final act in 1985, journalist Helena Cobban participated in an
academic conference at an upscale resort near Tucson, Arizona, on U.S.-Soviet interactions in
the Middle East. When she attended what was listed as the "Gala Dinner with keynote speech",
she quickly learned that the virtual theme of the evening was, "Adopt a Muj."
"I remember mingling with all of these wealthy Republican women from the Phoenix suburbs and
being asked, 'Have you adopted a muj?" Cobban told me. "Each one had pledged money to sponsor a
member of the Afghan mujahedin in the name of beating the communists. Some were even seated at
the event next to their personal 'muj.'"
The keynote speaker of the evening, according to Cobban, was a hard-charging freshman member
of Congress named John McCain.
During the Vietnam war, McCain had been captured by the North Vietnamese Army after being
shot down on his way to bomb a civilian lightbulb factory. He spent two years in solitary
confinement and underwent torture that left him with crippling injuries. McCain returned from
the war with a deep, abiding loathing of his former captors, remarking as late as 2000, "I hate
the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." After he was criticized for the racist remark,
McCain
refused to apologize. "I was referring to my prison guards," he said, "and I will continue
to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture
of my friends."
'Hanoi Hilton' prison where McCain was tortured. (Wikimedia Commons)
McCain's visceral resentment informed his vocal support for the mujahedin as well as the
right-wing contra death squads in Central America -- any proxy group sworn to the destruction
of communist governments.
So committed was McCain to the anti-communist cause that in the mid-1980s he had joined
the advisory board of the United States Council for World Freedom, the American affiliate of
the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, a former leader of WACL's
British chapter who had turned against the group in 1974, described the organization as "a
collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and
corrupt self-seekers. It has evolved into an anti-Semitic international."
Joining McCain in the organization were notables such as Jaroslav Stetsko, the Croatian Nazi
collaborator who helped oversee the extermination of 7,000 Jews in 1941; the brutal Argentinian
former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla; and Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Sandoval Alarcon.
Then-President Ronald Reagan honored the group for playing"a leadership role in drawing
attention to the gallant struggle now being waged by the true freedom fighters of our
day."
Being Lauded as a Hero
On the occasion of his death, McCain is being honored in much the same way -- as a patriotic
hero and freedom fighter for democracy. A stream of hagiographies is pouring forth from the
Beltway press corps that he described as his true political base. Among McCain's most
enthusiastic groupies is CNN's Jake Tapper, whom he chose as his personal stenographer for a
2000 trip to Vietnam. When the former CNN host Howard Kurtz asked Tapper in February, 2000,
"When you're on the [campaign] bus, do you make a conscious effort not to fall under the
magical McCain spell?"
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Ocasio-Cortez: Called McCain 'an unparalleled example of human decency.'
But the late senator has also been treated to gratuitous tributes from an array of prominent
liberals, from George Soros to his soft
power-pushing client, Ken Roth, along with three fellow directors of
Human Rights Watch and "democratic socialist" celebrity Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who hailed McCain as
"an unparalleled example of human decency." Rep. John Lewis, the favorite civil rights symbol
of the Beltway political class, weighed in as well to
memorialize McCain as a "warrior for peace."
If the paeans to McCain by this diverse cast of political climbers and Davos denizens seemed
detached from reality, that's because they perfectly reflected the elite view of American
military interventions as akin to a game of chess, and the millions of dead left in the wake of
the West's unprovoked aggression as mere statistics.
There were few figures in recent American life who dedicated themselves so personally to the
perpetuation of war and empire as McCain. But in Washington, the most defining aspect of his
career was studiously overlooked, or waved away as the trivial idiosyncrasy of a noble servant
who nonetheless deserved everyone's reverence.
McCain did not simply thunder for every major intervention of the post-Cold War era from the
Senate floor, while pushing for sanctions and assorted campaigns of subterfuge on the side. He
was uniquely ruthless when it came to advancing imperial goals, barnstorming from one conflict
zones to another to personally recruit far-right fanatics as American proxies.
In Libya and Syria, he cultivated affiliates of Al Qaeda as allies, and in Ukraine, McCain
courted actual, sig-heiling neo-Nazis.
While McCain's Senate office functioned as a clubhouse for arms industry lobbyists and
neocon operatives, his fascistic allies waged a campaign of human devastation that will
continue until long after the flowers dry up on his grave.
American media may have sought to bury this legacy with the senator's body, but it is what
much of the outside world will remember him for.
'They are Not al-Qaeda'
McCain with Abdelhakim Belhaj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a former Al
Qaeda affiliate.
When a violent insurgency swept through Libya in 2011, McCain parachuted into the country to
meet with leaders of the main insurgent outfit, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG),
battling the government of Moamar Gaddafi. His goal was to make kosher this band of hardline
Islamists in the eyes of the Obama administration, which was considering a military
intervention at the time.
What happened next is well documented, though it is scarcely discussed by a Washington
political class that depended on the Benghazi charade to deflect from the real scandal of
Libya's societal destruction. Gaddafi's motorcade was
attacked by NATO jets , enabling a band of LIFG fighters to capture him,
sodomize him with a bayonet, then murder him and leave his body to rot in a
butcher shop in Misrata while rebel fanboys snapped cellphone selfies of his fetid corpse.
A slaughter of Black
citizens of Libya by the racist sectarian militias recruited by McCain immediately followed
the killing of the pan-African leader. ISIS took over Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte while
Belhaj's militia took control of Tripoli, and a war of the warlords began. Just as Gaddafi had
warned , the ruined country became a staging ground for migrant smugglers on the
Mediterranean, fueling the rise of the far-right across Europe and enabling the return of slavery to
Africa.
Many might describe Libya as a failed state, but it also represents a successful realization
of the vision McCain and his allies have advanced on the global stage.
Following the NATO-orchestrated murder of Libya's leader, McCain tweeted , "Qaddafi on his way
out, Bashar al Assad is next."
McCain's Syrian Boondoggle
Like Libya, Syria had resisted aligning with the West and was suddenly confronted with a
Salafi-jihadi insurgency armed by the CIA. Once again, McCain made it his personal duty to
market Islamist insurgents to America as a cross between the Minutemen and the Freedom Riders
of the civil rights era. To do so, he took under his wing a youthful DC-based Syria-American
operative named Mouaz Moustafa who had been a consultant to the Libyan Transitional Council
during the run-up to the NATO invasion.
In May 2013, Moustafa convinced McCain to take an illegal trip across the Syrian border and
meet some freedom fighters. An Israeli millionaire named Moti Kahana who coordinated efforts
between the Syrian opposition and the Israeli military through his NGO, Amaliah, claimed to have "financed the opposition group
which took senator John McCain to visit war-torn Syria."
"This could be like his Benghazi moment," Moustafa remarked excitedly in a scene from a
documentary, "Red
Lines," that depicted his efforts for regime change. "[McCain] went to Benghazi, he came
back, we bombed."
During his brief excursion into Syria, McCain met with a group of CIA-backed insurgents and
blessed their struggle. "The senator wanted to assure the Free Syrian Army that the American
people support their cry for freedom, support their revolution," Moustafa said in an interview
with CNN. McCain's office promptly released a photo showing the senatorposing beside a beaming
Moustafa and two grim-looking gunmen.
Days later, the men were
named by the Lebanese Daily Star as Mohammad Nour and Abu Ibrahim. Both had been implicated
in the kidnapping a year prior of 11 Shia pilgrims, and were identified by one of the
survivors. McCain and Moustafa returned to the U.S. the targets of
mockery from Daily Show host John Stewart and the subject of harshly critical reports from
across the media spectrum. At a town hall in Arizona, McCain was berated by constituents, including Jumana
Hadid, a Syrian Christian woman who warned that the sectarian militants he had cozied up to
threatened her community with genocide.
McCain with then-FSA commander Salam Idriss, an insurgent later exposed for kidnapping Shia
pilgrims.
But McCain pressed ahead anyway. On Capitol Hill, he introduced another
shady young operative into his interventionist theater. Named Elizabeth O'Bagy, she was a
fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, an arms industry-funded think tank directed by
Kimberly Kagan of the neoconservative Kagan clan. Behind the scenes, O'Bagy was consulting for
Moustafa at his Syrian Emergency Task Force, a clear conflict of interest that her top Senate
patron was well aware of. Before the Senate, McCain cited a Wall Street Journal editorial by
O'Bagy to support his assessment of the Syrian rebels as predominately "moderate," and
potentially Western-friendly.
Days later, O'Bagy was
exposed for faking her PhD in Arabic studies. As soon as the humiliated Kagan fired O'Bagy,
the academic fraudster took another pass through the Beltway's revolving door, striding into
the halls of Congress as McCain's newest foreign policy aide.
McCain ultimately failed to see the Islamist "revolutionaries" he glad handled take control
of Damascus. Syria's government held on thanks to help from his mortal enemies in Tehran and
Moscow, but not before a billion dollar CIA arm-and-equip operation helped spawn one of the
worst refugee crises in post-war history. Luckily for McCain, there were other intrigues
seeking his attention, and new bands of fanatical rogues in need of his blessing. Months after
his Syrian boondoggle, the ornery militarist turned his attention to Ukraine, then in the
throes of an upheaval stimulated by U.S. and EU-funded soft power NGO's.
Coddling the
Neo-Nazis of Ukraine
On December 14, 2013, McCain materialized in Kiev for a meeting
with Oleh Tyanhbok , an unreconstructed fascist who had emerged as a top opposition leader.
Tyanhbok had co-founded the fascist Social-National Party, a far-right political outfit that
touted itself as the "last hope of the white race, of humankind as such." No fan of Jews, he
had complained that
a "Muscovite-Jewish mafia" had taken control of his country, and had been photographed throwing
up a sieg heil Nazi salute during a speech.
None of this apparently mattered to McCain. Nor did the scene of Right Sector neo-Nazis
filling up
Kiev's Maidan Square while he appeared on stage to egg them on.
"Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better!" McCain proclaimed to
cheering throngs while Tyanhbok stood by his side. The only issue that mattered to him at the
time was the refusal of Ukraine's elected president to sign a European Union austerity plan,
opting instead for an economic deal with Moscow.
McCain met with Social-National Party co-founder Oleh Tyanhbok.
McCain was so committed to replacing an independent-minded government with a NATO vassal
that he even mulled a military assault on Kiev. "I do not see a military option and that is
tragic," McCain lamented in an interview about the crisis. Fortunately for him, regime change
arrived soon after his appearance on the Maidan, and Tyanhbok's allies rushed in to fill the
void.
By the end of the year, the Ukrainian military had become bogged down in a bloody trench war
with pro-Russian, anti-coup separatists in the country's east. A militia affiliated with the
new government in Kiev called Dnipro-1 was
accused by Amnesty International observers of blocking humanitarian aid into a
separatist-held area, including food and clothing for the war torn population.
Six months later, McCain appeared
at Dnipro-1's training base alongside Sen.'s Tom Cotton and John Barasso. "The people of my
country are proud of your fight and your courage," McCain told an assembly of soldiers from the
militia. When he completed his remarks, the fighters belted out a World War II-era salute made
famous by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators: "Glory to Ukraine!"
Today, far-right nationalists occupy key posts in Ukraine's pro-Western government. The
speaker of its parliament is
Andriy Parubiy , a co-founder with Tyanhbok of the Social-National Party and leader of the
movement to honor World World Two-era Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera. On the cover of
his 1998 manifesto, "View From The Right," Parubiy appeared in a Nazi-style brown shirt with a
pistol strapped to his waist. In June 2017, McCain and Republican Speaker of the House Paul
Ryan
welcomed Parubiy on Capitol Hill for what McCain called a "good meeting." It was a shot in
the arm for the fascist forces sweeping across Ukraine.
McCain with Dnipro-1 militants on June 20, 2015
The past months in Ukraine have seen a
state sponsored neo-Nazi militia called C14 carrying out a pogromist rampage against
Ukraine's Roma population, the country's parliament erecting an exhibition honoring Nazi
collaborators, and the Ukrainian military formally approving the pro-Nazi
"Glory to Ukraine" greeting as its own official salute.
Ukraine is now the sick man of Europe, a perpetual aid case bogged down in an endless war in
its east. In a testament to the country's demise since its so-called "Revolution of Dignity,"
the deeply unpopular President Petro Poroshenko has promised White House National Security
Advisor John Bolton that his country -- once a plentiful source of coal on par with
Pennsylvania -- will now purchase coal from the
U.S. Once again, a regime change operation that generated a failing, fascistic state stands as
one of McCain's greatest triumphs.
McCain's history conjures up memory of one of the most inflammatory statements by Sarah
Palin, another cretinous fanatic he foisted onto the world stage. During a characteristically
rambling stump speech in October 2008, Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling
around with terrorists." The line was dismissed as ridiculous and borderline slander, as it
should have been. But looking back at McCain's career, the accusation seems richly ironic.
By any objective standard, it was McCain who had palled around with terrorists, and who
wrested as much resources as he could from the American taxpayer to maximize their mayhem.
Here's hoping that the societies shattered by McCain's proxies will someday rest in peace.
"... Here is an except from "A Colony in a Nation" by Chris Hayes that she recently discussed (Chris Hayes is also the author of Twilight of the Elites ) ..."
"... ...we have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves: A territory that isn't actually free. A place controlled from outside rather than within. A place where the mechanisms of representation don't work enough to give citizens a sense of ownership over their own government. A place where the law is a tool of control rather than a foundation for prosperity. ..."
"... A Colony in a Nation is not primarily a history lesson, though it does provide a serious, empathetic look at the problems facing the Colony, as well as at the police officers tasked with making rapid decisions in a gun-rich environment. ..."
"... Elsewhere, Hayes examines his own experiences with the law, such as an incident when he was almost caught accidentally smuggling "about thirty dollars' worth of marijuana stuffed into my eyeglass case" into the 2000 Republican National Convention. Hayes got away without so much as a slap on the wrist, protected by luck, circumstances and privilege. ..."
Here is an except from "A Colony in a Nation" by Chris Hayes that she recently discussed (Chris
Hayes is also the author of Twilight of the Elites )
...we have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep
sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves: A territory that isn't actually free. A
place controlled from outside rather than within. A place where the mechanisms of representation
don't work enough to give citizens a sense of ownership over their own government. A place where
the law is a tool of control rather than a foundation for prosperity.
... ... ...
A Colony in a Nation is not primarily a history lesson, though it does provide a serious,
empathetic look at the problems facing the Colony, as well as at the police officers tasked with
making rapid decisions in a gun-rich environment.
Hayes takes us through his less-than-successful experience putting himself in the latter's
shoes by trying out an unusual training tool, a virtually reality simulator: "We're only one scene
in, and already the self-righteous liberal pundit has drawn his weapon on an unarmed man holding
a cinder block."
Elsewhere, Hayes examines his own experiences with the law, such as an incident when he
was almost caught accidentally smuggling "about thirty dollars' worth of marijuana stuffed into
my eyeglass case" into the 2000 Republican National Convention. Hayes got away without so much
as a slap on the wrist, protected by luck, circumstances and privilege.
For black men living in the Colony, encounters with the police are much more fraught. Racial
profiling and minor infractions can lead to "being swept into the vortex of a penal system that
captures more than half the black men his age in his neighborhood... an adulthood marked by prison,
probation, and dismal job prospects...."
"... There is consensus between commentators who have studied the effects of neo-liberalism that it has become all pervasive and is the key to ensuring that the rich remain rich, while the poor and the merely well to do continue on a perpetual hamster's wheel, going nowhere and never improving their lot in life while they serve their masters. ..."
"... Monbiot says of this largely anonymous scourge: "Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulations should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous, a reward for utility and a genera-tor of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve." ..."
"... Senior cadres co-opted Unfortunately, history shows that some key senior cadres of the ANC were all too keen to be coopted into the neo-liberal fold and any attempts to put forward radical measures that would bring something fresh to the table to address the massive inequalities of the past were and continue to be kept off the table and we are still endlessly fed the neo-liberal trickle-down baloney. ..."
SA is cursed with neo-liberal trickle-down baloney stifling radical economicchangeKevin Humphrey, The New Age, Johannesburg, 1 December 2016
South Africa's massive inequalities are abundantly obvious to even the most casual observer. When the ANC won the elections in
1994, it came armed with a left-wing pedigree second to none, having fought a protracted liberation war in alliance with progressive
forces which drew in organised labour and civic groupings.
At the dawn of democracy the tight knit tripartite alliance also carried in its wake a patchwork of disparate groupings who, while
clearly supportive of efforts to rid the country of apartheid, could best be described as liberal. It was these groupings that first
began the clamour of opposition to all left-wing, radical or revolutionary ideas that has by now become the constant backdrop to
all conversations about the state of our country, the economy, the education system, the health services, everything. Thus was the
new South Africa introduced to its own version of a curse that had befallen all countries that gained independence from oppressors,
neo-colonialism.
By the time South Africa was liberated, neo-colonialism, which as always sought to buy off the libera-tors with the political
kingdom while keep-ing control of the economic kingdom, had perfected itself into what has become an era where neo-liberalism reigns
supreme. But what exactly is neo-liberalism? George Monbiot says: "Neo-liberalism sees competi-tion as the defining characteristic
of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process
that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that 'the market' delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning."
Never improving
There is consensus between commentators who have studied the effects of neo-liberalism that it has become all pervasive and
is the key to ensuring that the rich remain rich, while the poor and the merely well to do continue on a perpetual hamster's wheel,
going nowhere and never improving their lot in life while they serve their masters.
Monbiot says of this largely anonymous scourge: "Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and
regulations should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade
unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is
recast as virtuous, a reward for utility and a genera-tor of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a
more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve."
Nelson Mandela
South Africa's sad slide into neo-liberalism was given impetus at Davos in 1992 where Nelson Mandela had this to say to the assembled
super rich: "We visualise a mixed economy, in which the private sector would play a central and critical role to ensure the creation
of wealth and jobs. Future economic policy will also have to address such questions as security of investments and the right to repatriate
earnings, realistic exchange rates, the rate of inflation and the fiscus."
Further insight into this pivotal moment was provided by Anthony Sampson, Mandela's official biographer who wrote: "It was not
until February 1992, when Mandela went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he finally turned against nationalisation.
He was lionised by the world's bankers and industrialists at lunches and dinners."
This is not to cast any aspersions on Mandela, he had to make these decisions at the time to protect our democratic transition.
But these utterances should have been accom-panied by a behind the scenes interrogation of all the ANC's thoughts on how to proceed
in terms of the economy delivering socialist orientated solutions without falling into the minefield of neo-liberal traps that lay
in wait for our emerging country.
Senior cadres co-opted Unfortunately, history shows that some key senior cadres of the ANC were all too keen
to be coopted into the neo-liberal fold and any attempts to put forward radical measures that would bring something fresh to the
table to address the massive inequalities of the past were and continue to be kept off the table and we are still endlessly fed the
neo-liberal trickle-down baloney.
Now no one dares to express any type of radical approach to our economic woes unless it is some loony populist. Debate around
these important issues is largely missing and the level of commentary on all important national questions is shockingly shallow.
Anti-labour, anti-socialist, anti-poor, anti-black The status quo as set by the largely white-owned media revolves
around key neo-liberal slogans mas-querading as commentary that is anti-labour, anti-socialist and anti-poor, which sadly translates
within our own context as anti-black and therefore repugnantly racist.
We live in a country where the black, over-whelmingly poor majority of our citizens have voted for a much revered liberation movement
that is constantly under attack from within and without by people who do not have their best interests at heart and are brilliant
at manipulating outcomes to suit themselves on a global scale.
Kevin Humphrey is associate executive editor of The New Age
Sure, if you have a population that is well-educated and trained to think about issues,
keep well-informed and the like, you can hope to run a functional democracy, even if people
have to work a lot to make their system run.
Thing is, such a population will change sooner or later, and just like later generations
tend to forget how horrible wars are and go back to warmongering, or how later generations
forget what hard-working is, and might ruin what earlier generations built, the reason for
being fully invested in your country's politics and how to do it well will sooner or later
disappear from living memory.
That's why I want to create an easier starting situation for the people - so that, without
being 100% fail-proof, the system won't collapse as quickly and as totally as it is doing
nowadays in the West. So, you have to take into account many people might tend to go for the
easy path and be a bit lazy - all the while we should work hard to improve people's global
intelligence and information and knowledge awareness.
Of course, in the long run, I hope we'll get a better more intelligent, wiser and more
knowledgeable mankind, but we still have to prepare and plan for flaws, accidents, mistakes
and failures.
Note that I don't oppose your reasoning and proposals/wishes, I want to put some checks
and failsafes mechanisms as much as possible.
... ... ...
Russ 65
What bothers me the most is that, if we don't move our behind, whatever happens to mankind of
things go to shit, change the global economic system and stop ruining the planet, we'll take
a huge part of the other species down with us - there won't be many species bigger than a cat
left around when this will be over. And frankly, if I'm ready to allow mankind to choose to
destroy itself (which would already sadden me), like any sentient species who deserves free
will and choice, I'm quite upset that mankind thinks it can choose for the whole biosphere
and can go around killing off thousands of other species like there's no tomorrow.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Aug 27, 2018 5:32:07 PM |
77
@77 ff... believing in the goodness of the usa, is like believing in the tooth fairy..
unfortunately a good number of americans continue like this and are completely in the dark on
the horrors being committed by their good ol usa... selling patriotism, flag waving,
honouring the troops and all the rest of it is meant to keep the herd believing in the
goodness of the usa.. it is complete bs, but hey - bs is good for the garden, which happens
to be the military/financial complex at this point..
And if authoritarian governments happen to relatively low IQ societies (like Germany
in 1933?), we might ponder this:
A truly authoritarian leader would have the sole power to :
– declare war unilaterally and frequently;
– issue 300,000 national security letters, administrative subpoenas with gag orders that
enjoin recipients from ever divulging they've been served;
– control information at all times than any monarch in history under the National
Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.
–torture, kidnap and assassinate anyone anywhere at will.
Personal freedom in an authoritarian state would be limited by
– secretly banning 50,000 people from flying and refusing requests for an explanation
– imprisoning 2,000,000 people without trial
– executing 2,000 people each year prior to arrest.
In a real an authoritarian state there would be
– warrantless surveillance of private phone and email conversations by the NSA;
– SWAT team raiding homes;
– shootings of unarmed citizens by police;
– harsh punishment of schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance;
– endless wars;
– out-of-control spending;
– militarized police;
–roadside strip searches;
– roving TSA sweeps;
– privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans;
– fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on citizens' private transactions;
– militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition
"... Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict, civil war. ..."
"... Anybody who trusts the Democrats to save us from the evil machinations of the Neocons is as hopelessly stupid as anyone who trusts the Neocons to save us from the evil machinations of the Democrats. ..."
"... These new Democrats will never vote for less spending. There previous career was based on having abundant and in some cases unlimited Federal funds at their fingertips. ..."
Ron Unz has linked to WSWS.org several times in the past as WSWS was targeted by the Deep
State/Google etc. cabal to make it disappear into the "memory hole."
The only activism I've seen from progressives in the past two years has nothing to do
with economic concerns; their energy is entirely focused on race, gender, and sexuality.
The cultural-Marxist troika.
Just one of many good point you make. The only thing I'd add is in relation to:
Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict, civil
war.
As Reg mentions: conflict among the masses is very much the plan. Divide et
impera.
And my stupid [neo]liberal friends still think the democrats are going to save them, and then
on to super – duper – special stupid, they think their vote for a democrat is
going to have an impact. On to ludicrous stupid – it's all the republicans fault.
Identity politics at its finest.
Unfixable, and circling the drain.
The Alarmist, June 8, 2018 at 11:03 am GMT • 100 Words
"Center-right" and "business oriented?"
Try Oligarch-centric.
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, from the fall of
Constantinople: Sultan Mehmed II rounded up the surviving oligarchs of
the Empire and asked them why they had withheld their riches and
resources from supporting the Empire's final defense against his
conquest, to which the oligarchs replied that they were saving their
riches for his most excellent majesty. He had them brutally executed.
Jake, June 8, 2018 at 11:13 am GMT
Anybody who trusts the Democrats to save us from the evil
machinations of the Neocons is as hopelessly stupid as anyone who trusts
the Neocons to save us from the evil machinations of the Democrats.
At the upper levels there is no difference between the Demonrats and the
Republicons as all are controlled by the Zionists and congress would by
more accurately called the lower house of the Knesset..
prusmc, June 8, 2018 at 1:18 pm GMT • 100 Words
@anon
These new Democrats will never vote for less spending. There
previous career was based on having abundant and in some cases unlimited
Federal funds at their fingertips.
It is a mistake to think they will be any different than Maxine
Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jerold Nadler or Luis Guitirez. Senator Joe
Manchin of West Virginia is about a unconventional as we can expect the
new congressional majority members to be.
jacques sheete, June 8, 2018 at 1:44 pm GMT
@Anon
The ultra rich use the poor to attack the middle so they can
distract everyone else from uniting
That, in fact, is the practical aim of government in general.
Parties, schmarties it's all one huge extortion racket.
"... I lost all respect for him first on his treatment of his first wife when he returned from captivity. I notice that no one in the media mentioned her existence. ..."
Of course, you already know that because the headlines are dominating the news coverage.
Most of the coverage is also lionizing him as some kind of hero who defended America from his
time as a POW in Vietnam to his attacks on Russia for supposedly trying to undermine American
democracy. The fact is, and I know this because I've documented some of it in the course of my
own work in recent years, he was a warmonger supreme. McCain never met a war–especially a
regime change war–he didn't like, nor a terrorist he couldn't endorse as a "freedom
fighter," especially, as in the case of Syria, if that terrorist was in the service of the
regime change war he endorsed. In Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, a million or more people have
died and tens of millions more are suffering as a result of these wars that McCain did so much
to bring about.
In a short but to-the-point piece. Sputnik summarizes
McCain's extreme Russophobia and his love for the Nazi regime in Kiev. Vladimir Putin was being
charitable when, as Sputnik recounts, he told Oliver Stone that McCain was a patriot, but one
who couldn't accept that the world had changed. "People with such convictions, like the Senator
you mentioned, they still live in the Old World," Putin said. "And they're reluctant to look
into the future, they are unwilling to recognize how fast the world is changing." That Putin
was able to say that says more about his genuine humanity than it does about McCain, who gave
up whatever humanity he had a long time ago.
Anyone fighting for a genuine peace in the world will not mourn the passing of John McCain.
I endorse Willy B's view of McCain. From dealing with him personally i would say that he
was indeed a fighter. He would fight anyone who disagreed with him about anything. RIP
The beatification of McCain by our media is a symptom of a decadent political and media
culture that sees no need to look, see, or hear anything beyond the most superficial
analysis. That culture does nothing more than use stock images, phrases, and slogans that
trigger blind acceptance by much of the population. (Present company excepted of course.)
That's my biggest issue. The MSM fawned over him so much he was a virtual cult hero. I
could not watch CNN for more than a total of about 5 minutes over the weekend because they
were pouring it on so thick. Jack Tapper would have married the guy.
If you interview his colleagues and they want to wax eloquent and you let them, fine, I
get that. But it is unseemly for the hosts themselves to join in and remind us that they are
now basically state media.
Anna Cabrera jumped in and said, in regard to his hawkishness, 'He always wanted to spread
freedom around to the less fortunate'.
Were they really praising McCain or was it a form of self worship, because McCain and his
kind always assured us that we in the U.S. was always 100% right and our enemies were 100%
wrong and needed to be vanquished. If CNN hosts entertained different ideas, they would
actually have to work for a living.
Had McCain said nice things about Trump, I can assure you this little love fest we are
witnessing right now would be playing out a bit differently right now.
He was an abomination and stupid beyond words. I am very grateful I will no longer have to
listen to his hate speech directed against any and all in the world who disagreed with him.
His allies Al-Qaeda in Syria I am sure are mourning his passing along with the false flag
specialist of the world. He would have been instrumental in any upcoming false flag trying to
incite a WWIII conflagration between the US and Russia. The only time in life he would have
had peace would have been the 15 minutes he knew the nuclear missiles were flying toward
Russia. This tells you everything you need to know about the man. The current hagiography is
ridiculous when you realize his own co-workers in the Senate hated him almost to a man minus
his BFF Graham. He is property of the Heavens now and no longer our problem here on
Earth.
This quasi-religious veneration of politicians is unseemly. It is profane. It is
unbecoming of us as a people, and it has transformed the majority of public offices into ones
that are truly attractive only to men who are unfit to hold them.
As much as one single man is responsible for anything, John McCain
is responsible for the Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine Wars. Any memorial that doesn't include
this is propaganda.
Sidney Schanberg, the Journalist of "The Killing Fields" wrote a damning story about
McCain helping cover up evidence of left behind US POWs in Vietnam.
https://www.theamericancons...
John McCain was a flawed man, just like the rest of us. I did not agree with many of his
policy prescriptions but he seemed genuine in his pursuit of what he thought was right.
Anyone who has to stand up in front of the world for all to see and take a political position
will find many who agree and many who disagree with only history providing 20-20 hindsight.
In 20 years will readers of this Blog go to the achieves and find any stupidity in some of
the comments made this past year? It would be an interesting experiment.
I did not agree with many of his policy prescriptions but he seemed genuine in his
pursuit of what he thought was right.
the question is was he "genuine"? And if so, what is that?
jdledell reverts to to standard etiquette here. But he does not quite utter the ultimate
one: May he rest in peace. Does he?
For me the outsider it looks that McCain, may have been the 'partisan spearheader ' within
a larger American institutional representative consensus. What's the core and what is the
reason for that phenomenon? Nitwit question, I admit. ...
It might only take a few days after I've written a comment here or elsewhere to see that
something I wrote sounded stupid or just me getting way ahead of myself. I try and remember
my place when I comment but sometimes dumb stuff gets through. I love this blog.
Wow...looking for perfection, are we? Why don't we try a reasoned analysis of McCain's
good and bad points---he did some good and some bad. I, personally, am not as upset about his
war-mongering (although you are certainly correct) but am quite upset that he put Sarah Palin
forward into the national spotlight as a possible President. Dear Merciful, what was he
thinking! That is probably the single most anti-democracy and anti-American move of his
career.
As a time traveler left behind from that period and someone who led the clandestine search
for MIAs and remains I must tell you that I do not think any MIAs were left behind in SE
Asia. My operation in Defense HUMINT searched diligently across SE Asia for years and found
lots of remains which were reported to the Hickam AFB facility but never any MIAs. There were
a few deserters from US forces who chose to remain SE Asia but that was their business and we
left them alone once we found them.
Col Lang , a bit off topic here , but do you know if there's french operatives (those who
assigned / lived among the tribes) are left abandoned when french pulled out ? i recall
reading about it in Bernard Fall's book
No, There were some few of the GCMA who chose to stay. But, in general, it was our
montagnard allies and those of the French who were abandoned to the the mercies of the ethnic
communist enemies.
Col. Lang -- I'm glad you addressed this MIA issue. IMHO, the MIA hagiography may well
have been the beginning of the conspiracy theory/fake news extravaganza that we live under
today.
My spook project was based in SE Asia where we could get into all these countries
surreptitiously. They reported to me for command and control and product to JCRC. Based on
our data among other research they did they asked the VN government, etc. for access to the
sites. This was in the early '90s. There was a liaison office in DIA that kept the Congress
and the families at bay while we searched.
Reasoned analysis? Perhaps you should ask those who were at the other end of your
country's gun barrel whether it is possible to have a reasoned analysis about this man. The
millions who suffered and died because of this "imperfect" Mc Cain surely must not be sorry
this man has passed away. Neither am I. There are evil people whose disappearance lets
mankind breath a sigh of relief.
Like every person Sen. McCain had good and bad. While we can admire his grit and courage
as a POW and empathize with his suffering in Vietnam, we should not airbrush his incessant
campaigning and support for all the regime change interventions that killed millions of
innocent civilians.
I very much dislike this type of relativistic thinking, because you can say the same about
literally anything, making such a statement almost entirely meaningless.
Yes McCain was a neo-conservative who as a senator advocated wars of aggression. However,
it was Bush and Cheney who made the decision to go into Iraq - not McCain. Why lay all the
responsibility for millions of innocent deaths on just John McCain.
McCain is being promoted as a great American hero. IMO he does not deserve that. I have
known brave men who were not the fils a papa of a four star and they were and are ignored. In
the ME, he, Lieberman and Graham were just puppets of Israel.
I don't disagree. All I am saying is that there are still one or two O-6s out there that
get the honorary title of Commodore when a task-organized unit that does not rate a flag
officer arises. That is both in the USN and USCG.
I can write only as a citizen who has little influence in politics, if any. These are my
thoughts::
First, I did vote for him when he was running for POTUS. But I held my nose in doing so..
We really had two terrible choices that year. Obama or McCain. I think I liked voting for his
choice of VP mostly because it set the talking heads into such a state of shock.
I lost all respect for him first on his treatment of his first wife when he returned from
captivity. I notice that no one in the media mentioned her existence.
Then his "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" "joke" just seemed shockingly nasty to me. Suggesting
bombing of people as a joke?
The McCain / Graham duo of the neocon philosophy would always cause me to turn off the TV.
Did no one in the media ever want to do any real investigation of the consequences of the War
in Iraq?
I was taught not to speak ill of the dead. And I try not to dwell on the death of Mccain
right now. So, I've kept my television off. As a committed Christian, I know Who is sitting
in judgement of McCain, and I trust His judgement will be fair and honest and the judgement
will be from the heart of a "father" in regard to a "son" who, as we all have, had flaws as
well as strengths.
He is now with his Maker, as some day we each will be.
In other words, Diana, his bomb, bomb, Iran shocked you a lot less then did the idea Obama
could become president? Notice, I am not judging you. My own possibly ill-guided choice would
have been based on the fact that he was one of the few that voted against the Iraq War.
You remember your reasoning in 2007?
How exactly did the soccer Mom surface in that context? Arbitrary choice, wasn't aware of
the history of its use in elections. By the way. But whenever I hear or read Palin "soccer
mom" pops up on my mind, Followed let's say by the flags on her desk and rumors around Weekly
Standard's influencing the choice.
I voted for Obama twice because I could not live with the prospect of the alternatives.
Obama, IMO turned out to be a crypto-revolutionary. we don't need a revolution in the US. We
need good government and we are getting it with regard to the economy.
His views on many things I disagreed with strongly, but compared to so many herd-minded
pusillanimous creatures which hold office in both houses these days..his courage stands out.
His finest hour:
In the alt-right/far left scenario, we are supposed to dismiss the actual wishes of
Ukrainians, Estonians, Poles, Georgians and other peoples who hate Russia (and love the US)
as being simply irrelevant. Or, worse backed by shadowy Western forces.
Or how about we wish these East European countries well but we choose not to take their
side in whatever feud they have going with Russia? Maybe the people who "love the US" love
the worst aspects of America? Maybe a lot of them come across as greasy little hustlers on
the make? Ever think of that?
Anyone who has spent time in Ukraine knows how deep hatred of Russia goes, especially
in Western Ukraine.
And that's precisely why countries like Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland shouldn't be
in NATO. We should never have included countries with deep resentments against, and hazy
borders with Russia. The geniuses running the West should have encouraged the creation of a
lots of neutral states -- like Finland and Austria -- rather than expand NATO eastward.
who has spent time in Ukraine knows how deep hatred of Russia goes
I don't know where is Ukraine you spent your time and in what company, but this is
complete BS. The South-Eastern Ukraine hates the Western Ukrainian "banderovtsi" as much as
the Russians do if not more -- after all, the followers of Bandera operated mostly on the
Ukrainian soil. There are deranged individuals in every country, of course, and Ukraine has
been subjected lately to intense hate propaganda as well as repressions, but there is no
hatred of Russia. This is contradicted by both sociology and everyday behavior of Ukrainian,
which move to Russia in droves, spend time in Russia, support Russian sport teams, etc.
we are supposed to dismiss the actual wishes of Ukrainians, Estonians, Poles, Georgians
and other peoples who hate Russia (and love the US)
Nobody is asking about what the real Ukrainians, Estonians, Georgians or even Poles
actually think, least of all the US. There are almost as many Georgians living in Russia as
there are in Georgia, and they show no desire to move back. In 2008 during the conflict,
their biggest fear was that they'd be deported.
The Ukraine's Maidan was a violent coup, where a few thousand militants armed and trained
abroad overthrew a government elected by the entire country. Protests that immediately
started all over the country were suppressed with force -- the one in Donbass still is.
How could anyone with an access to Internet remain unaware of these facts is beyond
me.
That's an interesting point. Even if true, doesn't matter. One could wonder ..who are the
people populating Ukrainian Armed Forces? Or who are the guys, in Ukrainian Armed Forces,
presently engaged against Donbass? All of them. Including those is logistics/maintenance
depots far away from the (current) line of separation?
The will to fight against "Russia" ranges from a deep hate to simply not wishing to go
against the (current) Ukrainian government. The former are in those "shock" battalions. The
later are manning the logistics train. And everything in between.
Now .if/when a real shooting starts, as soon as Russia, as expected (and desired) by the
most of readers here, starts delivering ordnance into operational depth of Donbass enemy, the
ratio hate/don't care shall shift, hard and fast. Not in Russian favor, I suspect.
Why should anyone freaking care and put his ass in the line of fire because you bunch of
primitives hate Russia? Between having a nuclear cataclysm because you pathetic dwarfs of
nations are frustrated to have a neighbour you can't bully and Russia obliterating you, I say
let Russia obliterate you, thus we won't have to suffer the ear-hurting dissonnance of your
incessant whining any more. Though I doubt Russia would stomp on you. When you see shit, you
don't stomp on it, you don't want you don't want your shoes to stink, you just walk around
it.
Or who are the guys, in Ukrainian Armed Forces, presently engaged against Donbass?
Besides those in "volunteer battalions", which tend to be nationalistic with distinct Nazi
overtones, people in the regular Armed Forces are there for the money. There are very few
paying jobs in today's Ukraine, so men enlist and hope for the best.
the ratio hate/don't care shall shift, hard and fast. Not in Russian favor, I
suspect.
That could've been the case in 2014. Today I very much doubt it. Even the Right Sector
people are fed up with the current power in Kiev, and even the dumbest nationalists are
beginning to realize what a deep hole the country is in. Normal people all over the
South-East are hoping and praying for the Russians to come. The problem is the Russians
aren't coming.
"... further signs of the usa coming apart at the seams and getting closer to some type of war.. ..."
"... the msm only holds trumps feet to the fire domestically to let him know that if he strays from supporting the financial/military complex, he is toast.. they never do it when he is carrying water for this same complex... ..."
"... i think it is hard to hold out any hope for trump being different then the ongoing succession of presidents.. that are all serving the plutocracy at this point, and trump is no exception... the only difference is we are getting closer to the wheels coming off the usa here.. ..."
thanks b.. further signs of the usa coming apart at the seams and
getting closer to some type of war.. it seems like a reckless ride
from here on in..
there is no way anyone in their right mind would enter into an agreement
with the usa.. and even when they do, as in the examples of north korea
here, or iran recently - the usa backs out of them!! that is not the kind
of dance partner anyone would want to tango with..
the msm only holds trumps feet to the fire domestically to let him
know that if he strays from supporting the financial/military complex, he
is toast.. they never do it when he is carrying water for this same complex...
it is hard to tell the difference between trump and the hawks in his
present gov't especially in light of his tweets.. maybe someone hacked his
twitter account, but i doubt it.. those are his tweets, not bolton or pompeo's..
i think it is hard to hold out any hope for trump being different
then the ongoing succession of presidents.. that are all serving the plutocracy
at this point, and trump is no exception... the only difference is we are
getting closer to the wheels coming off the usa here..
"... What started as small moments of defiance a few years ago are turning into full-throated shouts of opposition as the US pushes its leverage in financial markets to step on the necks of anyone who doesn't toe the line. ..."
"... What we are seeing is the culmination of a long-term plan by global elites to tighten the financial noose around the world through overlapping trade and tariff structures and weaponizing the dollar's position at the center of global financial interdependence. ..."
"... So, everyday another round of sanctions makes the case against continuing to do business with the US stronger. Everyday another global player speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and makes contingency plans for a world without the dollar at the center of it all. ..."
"... Maas openly accused the US of weaponizing the dollar and disrupting the very foundations of global trade, which is correct, to achieve its goals of regime change in Turkey and Iran. Maas mainly tied this to Trump's pulling out of the JCPOA but the reality is far bigger than this. ..."
"... The Magnitsky Act and its progenitors around the world are a major evolution in the US's ability to bring financial pain to anyone who it disapproves of. Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws also into this framework. ..."
What started as small moments of defiance a few years ago are turning into full-throated
shouts of opposition as the US pushes its leverage in financial markets to step on the necks of
anyone who doesn't toe the line.
And Trump feeds off this by casting everyone as a leach who has been sucking off the US's
breast for decades. It doesn't matter the issue, to Trump US economic fragility is a hammer and
every trade and military partner a nail to be bashed over the head to pay their way.
What we are seeing is the culmination of a long-term plan by global elites to tighten
the financial noose around the world through overlapping trade and tariff structures and
weaponizing the dollar's position at the center of global financial interdependence.
Trump is against that in principle, but not against the US maintaining as much of the empire
as possible.
So, everyday another round of sanctions makes the case against continuing to do business
with the US stronger. Everyday another global player speaks with Russian President Vladimir
Putin and makes contingency plans for a world without the dollar at the center of it
all.
The latest major one was with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This meeting wasn't expected
to provide anything concrete, only vague assurances that projects like the Nordstream 2
pipeline goes through.
But, no breakthroughs on Crimea or Ukraine were expected nor delivered. It was, however, an
opportunity for both Putin and Merkel to be humanized in the European media. Between Putin's
attending Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl's wedding as well as the garden party photo
op background for their talk, this meeting between them was a bit of a 'charm tour' to assist
Merkel in the polls while expanding on Putin's humanity post World Cup and Helsinki.
That said, however, the statement by Merkel's Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, about the need
for a new financial payment system which bypasses the US-dominated SWIFT system was the big
bombshell.
Maas openly accused the US of weaponizing the dollar and disrupting the very foundations
of global trade, which is correct, to achieve its goals of regime change in Turkey and Iran.
Maas mainly tied this to Trump's pulling out of the JCPOA but the reality is far bigger than
this.
The Magnitsky Act and its progenitors around the world are a major evolution in the US's
ability to bring financial pain to anyone who it disapproves of. Know Your Customer (KYC) and
Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws also into this framework.
While KYC and AML laws can at least have the appearance of validity in attempting to stop
illegal activity, targeted sanctioning is simply Orwellian.
It politicizes any and all economic activity the world over. Just look at the recent reasons
for these sanctions – unproven allegations of chemical weapons usage and electioneering.
Recent actions by the US have driven this point home to its 'allies' with stunning clarity.
Why do you think Putin brought up Bill Browder's name at the Helsinki press conference? He
knows that Browder's story is a lie and it's a lie that has been used as the foundation for the
type of political repression we're seeing today.
The US is blocking the simplest of transactions in the dollar now, claiming that any use of
the dollar is a global privilege which it can revoke at a whim. Aside from the immorality of
this, that somehow dollars you traded goods or services for on the open market are still
somehow the property of the U.S to claw back whenever it is politically convenient, this
undermines the validity of the dollar as a rational medium of exchange for trade.
This is why after the first round of sanctions over the reunification with Crimea Putin
ordered the development of a national electronic payment system. He rightly understood that
Russia needed a means by which to conduct business that was independent of US political
meddling.
So, to me, if Heiko Maas is serious about the threat posed by continued use of the dollar in
EU trade, he should look to Putin for guidance on building a system separate from SWIFT.
Moreover, Maas' statement didn't go out to the world without Merkel's approval. This tells
me that this was likely the major topic of conversation between her and Putin over the weekend.
Because a payment system that skirts the dollar is one the US can't control.
It took the Russians longer than they should have to develop MIR. Putin complained about how
slow things went because too many within the Bank of Russia and the financial community could
be thought of as fifth columnists for the West.
It's also why development of the crypto-ruble and Russia's policy on cryptocurrencies has
been so slow. It took Putin publicly ordering the work done by a certain time to get these
tasks completed. In the end, it shouldn't take the EU long to spin up a SWIFT-compliant
internal alternative. It is, after all, just code.
And that's why so many of the US's former satraps are now flexing their geopolitical muscle.
The incentives aren't there anymore to keep quiet and go along. Alternatives exist and will be
utilized.
I don't expect the EU brass to do much about this issue, the threat may be all that is
needed to call Trump's bluff. But, if in the near future you see an announcement of MIR being
accepted somewhere in the EU don't be surprised.
Because what used to be a node of political stability and investor comfort is now a tool of
chaos and abuse. And abusing your customers is never a winning business model in the long run.
Customers of the dollar will remind the US of that before this is over.
Primitive analysis. Traditional imperial view. The only good thing is that it does
acknowledge the disaster of Iraq invasion and Lybia. But those are oil rich countries and the US
decided to conquer them exactly due to this.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Specifically, it suggests that U.S. influence is always a good thing and that its diminution (whether by accident or by design) is something to mourn. ..."
"... The United States is still the 800-pound gorilla in the international system and other global actors will inevitably pay close attention to whatever Uncle Sam is doing ..."
"... For foreign-policy practitioners, having lots of influence and being fully engaged is also a heady experience; it means foreign governments will take your calls, treat you with deference and respect when you visit, and sometimes they follow your advice (or at least pretend to). ..."
"... But "influence" (a notoriously nebulous term) is merely a means to some end; it is not an end itself. Having lots of influence is not necessarily a good thing if you have no idea what to do with it, or if what you choose to do is wrong-headed, or if you end up shouldering burdens and bearing responsibility for mishaps and miscues that you lacked the wisdom or foresight to avoid. ..."
"... After 9/11, the Bush administration decided the United States needed more ..."
"... The "global war on terror" dragged the United States into Somalia and Yemen too, with baleful effects in both places, and the United States is now using its remaining "influence" to support a brutal Saudi military campaign in Yemen, thereby bearing indirect responsibility for the world's most severe humanitarian crisis. ..."
"... I could go on, but the point should be clear. The United States had plenty of influence during this period, but it's hard to argue that it exercised that influence with much wisdom or success. ..."
Earlier this week, David Ignatius at the Washington Post published an interesting
column ruing the decline of U.S. "influence" in the Middle East. His central theme is that U.S.
"disengagement" from the region is allowing local actors to chart their own courses, and that
many of them are now making bad decisions. In his view, the prospects for positive change in
the region are receding and that we will all be worse off as a result.
It's a thoughtful column and
worth reading . It's also a revealing one, because it rests on one of those unspoken
assumptions that are articles of faith in the U.S. foreign-policy community. Specifically,
it suggests that U.S. influence is always a good thing and that its diminution (whether by
accident or by design) is something to mourn. But if you've been paying attention to the
results of U.S. policy over the past quarter-century -- especially in the Middle East but also
in some other places -- that position may not be the hill you want to die defending.
Look, it's easy to understand why American foreign-policy elites like having lots of
"influence." To some degree it's unavoidable. The United States is still the 800-pound
gorilla in the international system and other global actors will inevitably pay close attention
to whatever Uncle Sam is doing .
For foreign-policy practitioners, having lots of influence and being fully engaged is
also a heady experience; it means foreign governments will take your calls, treat you with
deference and respect when you visit, and sometimes they follow your advice (or at least
pretend to).
If you're in the foreign-policy business, it's a helluva a lot more gratifying to represent
the United States than to be out there pitching on behalf of a small or weak country whose
voice does not carry.
But "influence" (a notoriously nebulous term) is merely a means to some end; it is not
an end itself. Having lots of influence is not necessarily a good thing if you have no idea
what to do with it, or if what you choose to do is wrong-headed, or if you end up shouldering
burdens and bearing responsibility for mishaps and miscues that you lacked the wisdom or
foresight to avoid.
Which brings me, naturally, to the Middle East, where American influence is now supposedly
waning. What's the track record of U.S. influence over the recent past?
One could argue that U.S. influence was a net positive for much of the Cold War. The U.S.
role in the Middle East was fairly limited: Washington backed a number of allies for some
combination of economic, strategic, and domestic political reasons, and it worked hard to limit
the Soviet role in the region and to make sure that oil and gas kept flowing to markets around
the world. And until the first Gulf War in 1991, Washington did all this without having to send
its own ground or air forces to the region for any length of time and without having to fight
any costly wars. Instead, the United States relied on diplomacy, intelligence cooperation, and
foreign assistance and generally acted like an "offshore balancer," relying on local allies and
keeping its own forces over the horizon. It even switched sides once or twice when strategic
circumstances dictated. U.S. policy wasn't a perfect success, perhaps, but on the whole this
approach worked pretty well.
But U.S. influence in the region -- though considerable -- had been almost entirely negative
ever since. For starters, despite having enormous potential leverage at their disposal,
successive Democratic and Republican administrations mishandled the Oslo peace process, fueling
extremism and helping make the two-state solution that the United States favored a dead letter
by 2018. Unconditional U.S. support for its various Middle East clients also helped inspire
groups like al Qaeda, and the policy of " dual
containment " adopted by the Clinton administration in 1993 helped turn Osama bin Laden's
attention away from his local enemies (i.e., the House of Saud) and toward the "far enemy,"
with the results we all saw on Sept. 11, 2001.
After 9/11, the Bush administration decided the United States needed more
influence in the region, and it tried to kick-start a democratic transition by toppling Saddam
Hussein and establishing a pro-American democracy in Iraq. That misguided exercise of
"influence" led to heightened Iranian influence and the rise of the Islamic State, squandered
several trillion dollars and thousands of lives, distracted two successive administrations, and
struck a severe blow to U.S. prestige. Remarkably, the Obama administration repeated this error
on a smaller scale in Libya, helping topple Muammar al-Qaddafi even though it had no idea what
would come after him.
The "global war on terror" dragged the United States into Somalia and Yemen too, with
baleful effects in both places, and the United States is now using its remaining "influence" to
support a brutal Saudi military campaign in Yemen, thereby bearing indirect responsibility for
the world's most severe humanitarian crisis. And let's not forget how U.S. "influence"
first pressed Egypt to democratize after President Hosni Mubarak was driven from power, and
then tacitly embraced the military coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi, and now turns a blind eye to
the repression and corruption that continues to afflict Egypt.
I could go on, but the point should be clear. The United States had plenty of influence
during this period, but it's hard to argue that it exercised that influence with much wisdom or
success. Both Democrats and Republicans bear responsibility for these repeated debacles;
their common failures are one of the few examples of bipartisanship left in our polarized
polity.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international
relations at Harvard University. @stephenwalt
"... Trump's authorization for the establishment of a "US Space Force" as an additional military branch was one of the more egregious trashing of a longstanding international treaty. ..."
"... In June 2018, America's Israeli-style harassment was also meted out to former Spanish Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. He was denied a US visa waiver because he had visited Iran in 2013 to attend President Hassan Rouhani's inauguration. ..."
On December 6, 2017, Trump announced official US recognition of Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel. In 1980, a UN Security Council abstention permitted
the adoption of Resolution 478. The measure supplemented the earlier Resolutions
252, 267, 271, 298, and 465, which required that all UN member states, including
the United States, are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal Israeli
occupation of East Jerusalem. The passage of Resolution 478 resulted in nations
that had moved their embassies to Jerusalem, including Costa Rica and El Salvador,
moving them back to Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, or Herzliya. Trump's action reversed
that action, with Guatemala, Paraguay, and Honduras moving their embassies back
to Jerusalem.
On May 8, 2018, Trump renounced the US signature on the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran, the nuclear agreement with Iran. Even though
the pact was signed by the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Germany, the
European Union and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, Trump, taking
his cues from the Israeli war hawk, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, decided,
once again, to make the United States an outlier. Trump effectively gave the
back of his hand to the international community to placate Netanyahu. Moreover,
Trump threatened "secondary sanctions" against foreign nations and firms that
continued to engage in commerce with Iran after a November 4, 2018 deadline.
Trump's authorization for the establishment of a "US Space Force" as
an additional military branch was one of the more egregious trashing of a longstanding
international treaty. The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities
of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and
Other Celestial Bodies, known simply as the "Outer Space Treaty," established
the basis for international space law. The original signatories were the United
States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom. Since 1967, 107 nations have fully
ratified the treaty, which bans the placement of weapons of mass destruction
in Earth orbit and the establishment of military bases, installations, and fortifications
on the Moon and other celestial bodies.
Trump's creation of a military Space Force to supplant the civilian National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in US space operations and his call
for space to be a "new warfighting domain" effectively violate US treaty obligations.
The US Air Force's X-37B robotic space planes, smaller versions of NASA's
discontinued space shuttle orbiter, are believed to have carried out top secret
military-oriented missions since 2010. Trump's creation of a Space Force represents
a public admission of America's desire to militarize space, even as the Air
Force remains mum on the actual purpose of the X-37B program.
The basis in international law for the Outer Space Treaty was the Antarctic
Treaty of 1959. The Antarctic Treaty bans military activity of the continent.
Only scientific research in Antarctica is permitted under the Antarctic Treaty
System. However, Trump's disregard for the entire international treaty system
has placed the Antarctic Treaty in as much jeopardy as the Outer Space Treaty.
The suspected presence of rare earth minerals and gas hydrates under melting
Antarctic ice shelves has Trump's cronies in the mining and fossil fuel industries
anxious to undermine the Antarctica Treaty and open the continent to commercial
exploitation.
Considering the schoolmarmish haughtiness of Trump's ambassador to the UN,
former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, someone who had no foreign policy
experience before taking over at the US Mission to the UN, the 1947 US-UN treaty,
titled the "Agreement Between the United Nations and the United States of America
Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations," may also be violated. The
imposition of draconian visa bans and other sanctions and travel restrictions
on government officials of Iran, Turkey, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua,
Cuba, China, Chad, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Laos, Syria,
Somalia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Eritrea places in jeopardy US law that requires
the facilitation of travel for delegations of UN member states and official
observers to and from the UN headquarters in New York.
Trump's total disregard for international laws and treaties may eventually
see leaders and diplomats of foreign nations detained or arrested when they
arrive in New York to attend UN sessions. Such harassment began in earnest just
a few weeks after Trump was inaugurated as president. In February 2017, former
Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was caught up in Trump's visa
ban against visitors from Muslim nations. Bondevik was detained at Dulles International
Airport outside of Washington and subjected to questioning about an Iranian
visa in his diplomatic passport.
In June 2018, America's Israeli-style harassment was also meted out to
former Spanish Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. He
was denied a US visa waiver because he had visited Iran in 2013 to attend President
Hassan Rouhani's inauguration. Solana told Spanish television, "It's a
bit of a mean decision... I don't think it's good because some people have to
visit these complicated countries to keep negotiations alive." Trump's renunciation
of the US signature on the Iran nuclear deal showed the world what Trump and
his neo-conservative advisers think about peace "negotiations." Although the
general purpose visa waiver ban was instituted by Barack Obama, the Trump administration
has been violating the spirit and intent of the US-UN Treaty by applying it
to those, like Bondevik and Solana, possessing diplomatic passports.
Trump has made no secret of his disdain for foreign government officials
and the countries they represent. During a briefing on the Indian sub-continent,
Trump reportedly delighted in referring to Nepal as "nipple" and Bhutan as "button."
According to the "tell-all" book by former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault
Newman, Trump, after viewing a video of his pushing aside Montenegro Prime Minister
Duško Marković at the 2017 NATO summit, called him a "whiny punk bitch." Trump
referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as "meek and mild" over a
rift on US-Canadian trade policy.
One of Trump's first phone calls as president with a foreign leader resulted
in Trump complaining that his discussions with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull were "most unpleasant." Before warming to North Korean leader Kim Jong
UN, Trump referred to him as "little rocket man." During remarks at the UN in
September 2017, Trump referred to Namibia as "Nambia." Later, he called African
countries and Haiti "shithole" countries.
Cities that have served as hosts for international summits and meetings have
also earned Trump's scorn. He called Brussels a "hell hole," London a magnet
for Muslim terrorist immigrants, and Paris not being Paris any longer because
of Muslim immigrants.
Trump, ever the America Firster – a phrase invented by pro-Hitler politicians
in the 1930s – has decimated international law on issues ranging from the environment
and outer space to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and international guarantees
for the right of the Palestinians. Trump's tearing up of international treaties
signed by his predecessors with the chiefs of various Native American tribes
warrants it own article. Mr. Trump's damage to international relations represents
a historical watershed event and it will take decades to recover from the current
"dark ages" of American diplomacy.
"... The people known as " neo-conservatives " form a group of Trotskyist intellectuals (thus opposed to the concept of nation-states), militants of Social Democrats USA, which worked with the CIA and MI6 to fight the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Today they conserve the control of a common Intelligence agency connected with the " Five Eyes " (Australia, Canada, New-Zealand, UK, USA) - the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) ..."
"... they have popularised the idea of " democratising " régimes by way of " Colour Revolutions ", or directly by means of war. ..."
"... If we look a little closer, we may note that his entire career since the collapse of the USSR has been centred around Iran, but not necessarily in opposition to it. For example, during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran fought alongside Saudi Arabia under the orders of the Pentagon. ..."
"... According to Pompeo, the aim of this new group is not to change the régime, but to force Iran to change its politics. This strategy appears while the Islamic Republic is navigating a major economic and political crisis. ..."
"... Contrary to the image we were presented in the West, Ayatollah Khomeiny's revolution was not clerical, but anti-imperialist. The protests can therefore either lead to a change of the régime, or to the continuation of the Khomeinist Revolution, but without the clergy. It is this second option which is represented by ex-President Ahmadinejad (today under house arrest) and his ex-Vice-Ppresident Baghaie (imprisoned for 15 years and held incommunicado). ..."
"... On 15 August, in other words, on the day before Pompeo's announcement, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recognised that he had been in error when he allowed Cheikh Hassan Rohani's team to negotiate the JCPoA agreement with the Obama administration ..."
"... Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who makes a distinction between the policies of Presidents Obama and Trump, wrote to the new President just after his election [ 7 ]. He demonstrated that he shared Donald Trump's analysis of the Obama-Clinton global system and its painful consequences for the rest of the world and also for the citizens of the United States. ..."
The people known as " neo-conservatives " form a group of Trotskyist intellectuals
(thus opposed to the concept of nation-states), militants of Social Democrats
USA, which worked with the CIA and MI6 to fight the Soviet Union. They were
associated with Ronald Reagan's power structure, then followed through all the
US political mutations, remaining in power under Bush Senior, Clinton, Bush
Junior and Obama.
Today they conserve the control of a common Intelligence agency
connected with the " Five Eyes " (Australia, Canada, New-Zealand, UK, USA) -
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) [
3 ]. Partisans of the " World Revolution ", they have popularised the idea
of " democratising " régimes by way of " Colour Revolutions ", or directly by
means of war.
In 2006, they created the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group within the
Bush Junior administration. It was directed by Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter
of Vice-President Dick Cheney. At first, they were housed with the Secretariat
of Defense, then transferred to the Vice-President's offices. The group had
five sections.
The transfer of weapons to Iran and Syria from Bahreïn, the United Arab Emirates
and Oman ;
The support for the Trotskyists and their allies, in Iran (the Peoples' Mujaheddin)
and Syria (Riad al-Türk, Georges Sabra and Michel Kilo) ;
The surveillance of Iranian and Syrian bank networks ;
The infiltration of pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian groups in the " Greater Middle
East " ;
The penetration of the medias in the region in order to broadcast US propaganda.
In 2007, this group was officially disbanded. In reality, it was absorbed
by an even more secret structure tasked with the strategy for global democracy
(Global Democracy Strategy). This unit, under the command of neo-conservative
Elliott Abrams (who was involved in the " Iran-Contras affair "), and James
Jeffrey, spread this sort of work to other regions of the world.
It is this Group which supervised the planning for the war against Syria.
When the new President had a long meeting with Abrams at the White House,
the US Press, which is violently anti-Trump, presented him as the first possible
Secretary of State for the Trump administration. It obviously came to nothing.
However, the fact that ambassador James Jeffrey has just been nominated as
a special representative for Syria makes the accusation that the Trump administration
was attempting to resuscitate this strategy more credible.
Jeffrey is a career " diplomat ". He organised the application of the Dayton
agreements in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was on post in Kuwaït during the Iraqi
invasion. In 2004, under the orders of John Negroponte, he supervised the transition
from the Coalition Provisional Authority (which was a private company [
4 ]) to the post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi government. Then he joined Condolleezza
Rice's cabinet in Washington, and participated in the Coalition Provisional
Authority. He was one of the theorists for US military redeployment in Iraq
(the Surge), implemented by General Petraeus. He was also the assistant of National
Security Advisor Stephen Hadley during the war in Georgia, then Bush Junior's
ambassador in Turkey and Obama's ambassador in Iraq.
If we look a little closer, we may note that his entire career since the
collapse of the USSR has been centred around Iran, but not necessarily in opposition
to it. For example, during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran fought alongside
Saudi Arabia under the orders of the Pentagon. On the other hand, in Iraq, Jeffrey
opposed the influence of Teheran. But when Georgia attacked South Ossetia and Abkhasia, he did not defend President Saakachvili, since he knew that he had
rented two airports to Israël to facilitate an attack on Iran.
Mike Pompeo named Brian Hook as the head of the Iran Action Group. He is
an interventionist who was the assistant for Condoleezza Rice, working with
international organisations. Until now, he was tasked with elaborating strategies
for the State Department.
According to Pompeo, the aim of this new group is not to change the régime,
but to force Iran to change its politics. This strategy appears while the Islamic
Republic is navigating a major economic and political crisis. While the clergy
(doubly represented by the Cheikh President and by the Supreme Leader of the
Islamic Revolution) is clinging to power, there are demonstrations against it
all over the country.
Contrary to the image we were presented in the West, Ayatollah Khomeiny's revolution was not clerical, but anti-imperialist. The protests can
therefore either lead to a change of the régime, or to the continuation of the
Khomeinist Revolution, but without the clergy. It is this second option which
is represented by ex-President Ahmadinejad (today under house arrest) and his
ex-Vice-Ppresident Baghaie (imprisoned for 15 years and held incommunicado).
On 21 May last, before the Heritage Foundation, Mike Pompeo presented his
12 objectives for Iran [
5 ]. At first glance, this seemed to be a long list of demands which are
impossible to satisfy. However, when we look closer, points 1 to 3 relative
to the nuclear question do not go as far as the JCPoA. Point 4 concerning ballistic
missiles is unacceptable. Points 5 to 12 aim to convince Iran to give up the
idea of exporting its revolution by force of arms.
On 15 August, in other words, on the day before Pompeo's announcement, the
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recognised
that he had been in error when he allowed Cheikh Hassan Rohani's team to negotiate
the JCPoA agreement with the Obama administration [
6 ]. Note that the Supreme Leader had authorised these negotiations before
Rohani's election, and that he – and the eviction of Ahmadinejad's movement
– had been part of the preparatory discussions.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who makes a distinction between the policies of Presidents
Obama and Trump, wrote to the new President just after his election [
7 ]. He demonstrated that he shared Donald Trump's analysis of the Obama-Clinton
global system and its painful consequences for the rest of the world and also
for the citizens of the United States.
When the demonstrations began in December 2017, the Rohani government accused
Ahmadinejad of being responsible. In March 2018, the ex-President clinched his
break with the Supreme Leader by revealing that Khamenei's office had misappropriated
80 billion rials belonging to humanitarian and religious foundations [
8 ]. Two weeks before Pompeo's announcement, although he was under house
arrest, he called for the resignation of President Rohani [
9 ].
Everything therefore points to the idea that although the Obama administration
supported Rohani, Trump's administration supports Ahmadinejad's party. Just
as when President Carter and his advisor Brzeziński launched "Operation Eagle
Claw " against the Revolution, while President Reagan supported Imam Khomeiny
(October Surprise).
In other words, the White House could be quite comfortable with a return
to power of Ahmadinejad's party, on the condition that Iran agrees to export
its Revolution only by the debate of ideas.
"... Brennan was caught spying on the Senate Intelligence Commitee in violation of the Constitution and subsequently lied about it and allegedly directed personnel under his command to lie about to the Senate and the IG ..."
"... Congress fears the intelligence agencies and takes orders from them, not the other way around as envisaged in the constitution or spelled out in legislation. ..."
"... Let Trump try to control the agencies by firing all of their top officers, slashing their budgets, freezing their funds or shutting down their operations, even specific projects, and watch congress come to their rescue in a New York minute. ..."
"... Congress will save any significant component of intel or the pentagon before they'd rescue Social Security or any other social program. If pressed for an answer as to which of the "usual suspects" really whacked Kennedy, I suspect most folks would put their money on the CIA, the FBI or some combination of the major intel agencies. ..."
"... The neoliberal globalists, I fear, have taken that phrase "drowning government in the bathtub" all too literally. ..."
Brennan was caught spying on the Senate Intelligence Commitee in violation
of the Constitution and subsequently lied about it and allegedly directed personnel
under his command to lie about to the Senate and the IG
He could easily be brought up on rather serious charges.
Abby , August 18, 2018 at 11:23 pm
He also leaked classified information to the press as did others and
they could have been prosecuted under the espionage act. They will be losing
their security clearances soon too. The information that they leaked was
the NSA information on Flynn to the Washington post. But of course the Obama
justice department only prosecuted people who exposed Washington's dirty
secrets.
Realist , August 17, 2018 at 1:21 am
Yes, what Kenneth might like to see happen may be admirable but not going
to happen in 2018 or 19, which is practically a different universe from
1975 and for exactly the reasons you specify. This country and its self-appointed
minders have changed massively in 45 years. Besides, 1975 was a year after
Watergate was finally resolved with Nixon and Agnew's resignations and Congress
may have been feeling its oats, going so far as to defund the Vietnam war!
Imagine defunding ANY of the multiple wars ongoing!
Congress fears the intelligence agencies and takes orders from them,
not the other way around as envisaged in the constitution or spelled out
in legislation. Schumer let that feline out of the sack when he warned
the president not to mess with them.
Let Trump try to control the agencies by firing all of their top
officers, slashing their budgets, freezing their funds or shutting down
their operations, even specific projects, and watch congress come to their
rescue in a New York minute.
We saw how the CIA worked around congressionally-imposed budgetary restraints
in Iran-Contra: by secretly running drugs from Columbia to LA, selling arms
to Iran and using the proceeds to fund death squads in Central America.
Congress didn't have the guts to take that investigation to it logical conclusion
of impeachments and/or indictments. Why?
Congress will save any significant component of intel or the pentagon
before they'd rescue Social Security or any other social program. If pressed
for an answer as to which of the "usual suspects" really whacked Kennedy,
I suspect most folks would put their money on the CIA, the FBI or some combination
of the major intel agencies.
Unfettered Fire , August 17, 2018 at 12:11 pm
The neoliberal globalists, I fear, have taken that phrase "drowning
government in the bathtub" all too literally.
Rosa Brooks' book How War Became Everything and Everything Became
the Military exposes the vast expansion and added responsibilities of
the MIC, as governmental departments continue to be dismantled and privatized.
She even said in a book circuit lecture that she thought the idea of
Congress "declaring war" was antiquated and cute. Well, how long will it
be when the very hollowed out structures of Capitol Hill and the White House
are considered antiquated and cute?
What if the plan all along has been to fold up this whole democratic
experiment and move HQ into some new multi-billion dollar Pentagon digs?
Remember the words of Strobe Talbott:
"Within the next hundred years nationhood as we know it will be obsolete;
all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty
wasn't such a great idea after all."
This nation had better wake up fast if it wants to salvage the currency
authorizing power of government and restore its role in the economy, before
it's no longer an option and the private bankers, today's money lenders
in the temple, govern for good.
"The bank strategy continues: "If we can privatize the economy, we
can turn the whole public sector into a monopoly. We can treat what
used to be the government sector as a financial monopoly. Instead of
providing free or subsidized schooling, we can make people pay $50,000
to get a college education, or $50,000 just to get a grade school education
if families choose to go to New York private schools. We can turn the
roads into toll roads. We can charge people for water, and we can charge
for what used to be given for free under the old style of Roosevelt
capitalism and social democracy."
This idea that governments should not create money implies that they
shouldn't act like governments. Instead, the de facto government should
be Wall Street. Instead of governments allocating resources to help the
economy grow, Wall Street should be the allocator of resources – and should
starve the government to "save taxpayers" (or at least the wealthy). Tea
Party promoters want to starve the government to a point where it can be
"drowned in the bathtub."
But if you don't have a government that can fund itself, then who is
going to govern, and on whose terms? The obvious answer is, the class with
the money: Wall Street and the corporate sector. They clamor for a balanced
budget, saying, "We don't want the government to fund public infrastructure.
We want it to be privatized in a way that will generate profits for the
new owners, along with interest for the bondholders and the banks that fund
it; and also, management fees. Most of all, the privatized enterprises should
generate capital gains for the stockholders as they jack up prices for hitherto
public services.
You can see how to demoralize a country if you can stop the government
from spending money into the economy. That will cause austerity, lower living
standards and really put the class war in business. So what Trump is suggesting
is to put the class war in business, financially, with an exclamation point."
I agree that Brennan should have his clearance revoked, and frankly so
should anyone after they leave government. The thing is, I just got done
reading "The Devil's Chessboard", and it is quite clear that Allen Dulles
still ran things after he was fired by JFK, and was most likely the coordinator
of the assassination.
I doubt that Trump has any more control of the CIA than JFK had.
Until people like Brennan are capable of being prosecuted in a court
of law, our so-called "Intelligence" agencies don't give a rat's ass what
the president orders. In fact, they probably give "suggestions" that are
in fact orders.
Right now I think they are trying to figure out a way to get him
out of office without having to actually kill him.
backwardsevolution , August 18, 2018 at 8:22 am
Hi, Skip. The Devil's Chessboard sounds like a good book; I'll have to
read it. Yes, I think whoever gets to the top of the CIA is probably one
mean, bad monster of a human being.
I too think they'd love to assassinate Trump, but I don't think they
dare. There are too many people who just don't believe the government
anymore, and Trump's supporters would blow the roof off if anything happened
to him. They've got to be worried about that because they're the ones with
all the guns. Ha!
I think they're desperately racing against time, trying to nail Trump
before he nails them. The evidence is slowly trickling out (because the
FBI and DOJ are stalling) re the Steele dossier/Russiagate/spying, etc.
From the evidence gathered so far, it's pretty evident that the upper
layer of the DOJ, FBI and CIA are rotten to the core and should be dismantled
ASAP. If all Trump does while being in office is bring these guys down,
then he will have done a great service.
"... The 78 day all-out NATO bombing of Serbia was the act that, I believe, shocked/energized Russia's patriotic elements into action. The fact that little Serbia, after years of severe sanctions and every dirty trick imaginable would not buckle to the empire showed Russia that the Empire was not invincible. ..."
For me, I would say that the ' few days of bombing Serbia ' in 1999 ripped any last
vestiges of belief that the West was here to help mega violently (deliberate bombing
of the Chinese embassy) away from everyone. Of course plenty happened in the years running up
to that event The other is when China joined the WTO on 11/12/2001 and hit the ground running
– they were expected to behave meekly and ask the great white men for their advice and
follow it.
The 78 day all-out NATO bombing of Serbia was the act that, I
believe, shocked/energized Russia's patriotic elements into action. The
fact that little Serbia, after years of severe sanctions and every dirty
trick imaginable would not buckle to the empire showed Russia that the
Empire was not invincible.
The deliberate attack on the Chinese embassy IIRC triggered waves of spontaneous
demonstrations in China of such intensity that the Chinese government had to take means to
dampen. But, the message was not lost on the leadership.
Those acts of hubris and cruelty by the Empire may have been the beginning of its end.
"... If it's really true that the centre cannot hold, The Empire is going to have an increasingly hard time cloaking its lies. Of course, the west could simply return to the values of brotherhood and the common struggle it continues to espouse but never really seriously practiced. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen. ..."
So let's start with America's next big war -- the Gulf War against Iraq, Take One. John
McCain voted for war . Were
there casualties? You could say that; 294 Americans died in the Gulf War. The UK lost 47. It's
worth noting, as an aside, that Syria was a US ally in the Gulf War, and had 2 of its soldiers
killed. How about Iraqis? Well, nobody seems to have kept a very accurate count -- they were,
after all, the enemy, and killing them was encouraged -- and the official American
count is established from Iraqi prisoner-of-war records, and was featured in a report
commissioned by the US Air Force. It estimates 20,000-22,000 combat deaths overall, in both the
air and ground campaigns. Was that a slaughter? You tell me. And before we move on from the
Gulf War, John McCain voted (after
the war was over) against providing automatic annual cost-of-living adjustments for certain
veterans' benefits.
Four years later, McCain supported an appropriations bill that underfunded the Departments
of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies by $8.9 billion. The following year, McCain
voted against an amendment to increase spending on veterans programs by $13 billion. As of the
year 2000, 183,000 U.S. veterans of the Gulf War, more than a quarter of the U.S. troops who
participated, had been declared permanently disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
You may only be 'slaughtered' if you are dead, but the irrevocable changes for the worse in
the quality of life for thousands of Americans who were only doing what their country ordered
them to do should count for something, what do you say?
This from the American senator who famously could not remember how
many houses he and his wife owned . For the record, the number of homes, ranches, condos,
and lofts, together worth a combined estimated $13,823,269.00, was ten.
Gee; I'm starting to get a little mad at McCain. Well, let's move on.
In 2003, the US government of the day decided that Saddam Hussein had not learned his lesson
the first time, and so this time he had to go. Accordingly, the USA polled its allies for
military forces who were not otherwise occupied, and had another go at it. John McCain said
hell yes, let's get it on. American military
casualties , 4,287 killed, 30,187 wounded. A bit more of a slaughter than the first
attempt. The advent of ceramic-plate body armor protected the soldier's body core, so that many
more survived injuries that would have been so horrific they would surely have killed them. The
downside is that many lived who lost limbs too badly damaged to save, and were crippled for
whatever life remained to them. The Iraqi casualty figures were again an estimate,
although better documented; by the most reliable count, somewhere between 182,000 and 204,000
Iraqis were killed. Needlessly and pointlessly slaughtered, many of them; American troops grew
so fearful as a result of the steady drip of casualties among their own that they frequently
opened fire on families in cars with children simply because they did not obey instructions in
a language they did not speak or understand. At Mahmudiya, in March 2006, Private Steven Green
and his co-conspirators raped and
killed 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza, killed her family and set her body afire to blur the
details of the crime. When Iraqi soldiers arrived on the scene, Green and his fellow murderers
blamed it on Sunni insurgents.
The following year, President Bush approved a 'surge' of 20,000 additional troops, which
John McCain so energetically agitated for that it became known informally as 'the McCain
doctrine'. That's after he claimed in 2004 that if an elected government in Iraq asked that US
forces leave, they would have to go even if they were not happy with the security situation. He
also recognized, the following year, that Iraqis resented the American military presence, and
the sooner and more dramatically it could be reduced, the better it would be for everyone. I
guess if you lay claim to both sides of the argument, you're bound to convince someone that you
know what you're doing.
That same year, 2007, John McCain
voted against a requirement for specifying minimum time periods between deployments for
soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. When they need you
back in the meat-grinder, you go, never mind how many times you've already been there. Let's
just keep in mind, before we leave Iraq, that the entire case for war the second time around
was fabricated with wild tales of awful weapons Saddam supposedly had which could kill
Americans while they were still in America , and so he had to be dealt with. When it was
suggested to the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that America should concentrate on
Afghanistan, since that is where the backers of the 9-11 strike against America had fled, he
mused
that there were 'no good targets in Afghanistan' , although there were 'lots of good
targets in Iraq'. Some researchers suggest he was after a 'teachable moment' for America's
enemies which would convince them of America's irresistible power. While John McCain assessed
that Donald Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense ever, his complaint was not that
Rumsfeld was not killing enough people, but that he showed insufficient commitment to winning
the war.
Libya. Hoo, boy. In 2009, John McCain -- together with fellow die-faster-please senators Joe
Lieberman and Lindsey Graham --
visited Tripoli , to discuss Libya's acquisition of American military equipment. John
McCain assured Gadaffi (his son, actually) that America was eager to provide Libya with the
equipment it needed. Hardly more than a year later, he espoused the position that Gadaffi must
be removed from power because he had American blood on his hands from the Lockerbie bombing. In
2011, he visited the Libyan 'rebels', and
publicly urged Washington to consider a ground attack to forcibly remove Gaddafi from
power. Just a friendly public service reminder; the Lockerbie bombing was most likely carried
out by Syria, was -- according to pretty reliable testimony -- rigged by
the American intelligence services to finger Libya , and probably the stupidest thing
Gaddafi ever did was to admit to it anyway and pay compensation, in an effort to move on.
Anyway, more war. What the fuck is it with this guy?
Well, even something so grim as war has its comic moments. What else would you call it when
NATO claims, with a straight face, that the enemy is hiding his
tanks and artillery from its watchful eye inside the water pipes of the Great Man-Made
River? What they actually wanted was an excuse to bomb it -- which they did, as well as the
pumping stations which brought abundant fresh water to the coastal region, in the certain
knowledge that it would create a crisis for the civilian population. Which, by the bye, is
against just about every convention on the subject ever written.
Well, even something so grim as war has its comic moments. What else would you call it when
NATO claims, with a straight face, that the enemy is hiding his
tanks and artillery from its watchful eye inside the water pipes of the Great Man-Made
River? What they actually wanted was an excuse to bomb it – which they did, as well
as the pumping stations which brought abundant fresh water to the coastal region, in the
certain knowledge that it would create a crisis for the civilian population. Which, by the bye,
is against just about every convention on the subject ever written.
Here are some of the pipe sections, when they were being trucked to the assembly point. As
the article suggests, these sections are 4 meters across; but remember, that's at their widest
point. They are only 4 meters for about a foot, because a water pipe is a circle.
Libya mostly used the T-72 Main Battle Tank, and those would be the ones NATO wanted to
eliminate, since the others were considerably older. A T-72, width-wise, would just fit in a
4-meter water pipe, as it is 3.6 meters wide . However,
it's also over 45 tons in weight. The concrete rings were designed to carry free-flowing water,
not a 45-ton tank. Would they take that kind of weight, distributed only over a 7-meter length?
Where is there an entry point to the water-pipe that is the same width as the widest diameter
of the pipe? As discussed, the water pipe is 4 meters wide at its widest point. But the T-72 is
2.3 meters high. The tank would only fit if it was as high as a lunchbox, because the 4-meter
width narrows dramatically from the widest point; it's a circle. Even where it did fit, it
would be supported only on the outer edges of its tracks, and you have to cut the 4-meter
measurement approximately in half, because the upper portion of the tank would have to be above
the point where the tracks touched on each side. The idea was preposterous from the outset, and
it speaks to what fucking simpletons western government believes make up its populations that
they would dare to put such nutjobbery in print. A T-72 could not fit in a 4-meter water pipe.
The notion was demonstrably foolish. But NATO wanted to destroy the water system, so it made up
a reason that would allow it to be a well-meaning potential victim of deadly violence.
According to The Guardian – the same source that told you Gadaffi was hiding
his tanks in the plumbing – the death toll in the Libyan civil war prior to the NATO
intervention was about 1000-2000. According to the National Transitional Council, the outfit
the west engineered to rule post-Gaddafi Libya,
the final butcher's bill was about 30,000 dead . The very day after NATO folded its tents
– figuratively speaking, as the western role was entirely air support for the
flip-flop-wearing rebels – and went home, al Qaeda
raised its black flag over the Benghazi courthouse .
Caitlin Johnstone claimed John McCain used his political career to advocate for military
interventions which resulted in the slaughter of large numbers of human beings. Is that
accurate? What say you, members of the jury? In each of the cases above, John McCain used his
political influence, over and above his vote, to argue, advocate, hector and plead for military
intervention by the armed forces of the United States of America and such coalition partners as
could be rounded up. In each of the cases above, the necessity of toppling the evildoing
dictator was exaggerated out of all proportion, portrayed as an instant and refreshing
liberation for his people, and as only the first phase of a progressive plan which would turn
the subject country into a prosperous, western-oriented market democracy. In each of the cases
above the country is now a divided and ruined failed state whose pre-war situation was
significantly better than its miserable present. And in each of the cases above, a lot of
people were killed who could otherwise have reasonably expected to be alive today.
Also, each of the cases above is chronologically separated from the others by a sufficient
span for it to be quite evident what a cluster-fuck the previous operation was, so that anyone
disposed to learn from his mistakes might have approached the situation differently as it
gained momentum, argued for caution based on previously-recorded clusterfuckery, pleaded for
reason to prevail and for improved dialogue to be a priority. Not John McCain. He learned
precisely the square root of nothing from previous catastrophes, and plunged into the next
catastrophe with the enthusiasm most remarked among those who are not all there, as the
vernacular describes it. He not only voted for war every time, he expended considerable effort
in cajoling and persuading the reluctant to go along.
Perhaps the introduction here of the definition for 'warmonger' would be helpful
to the jury. To wit; "O ne who advocates or attempts to stir up war. A person who fosters
warlike ideas or advocates war." Synonyms: hawk, aggressor, belligerent, militarist, jingoist,
sabre-rattler. There, John; I just saved you the trouble of writing an epitaph.
Will the world be a better place once John McCain is gone? Difficult to say, really, and the
present state of affairs in the world argues strongly that it will not. But it will certainly
be no poorer for his passing, and if he were to be replaced politically by an individual who
took the trouble to do a little research, muse on previous experience, and review all the
available options before voting to send in the Marines why, that would be a victory for
everyone in a world where victory is increasingly not even a possibility.
Was Caitlin Johnstone right? Broadly speaking, and going on the information available at the
time her statement was made, yes; she was.
More dirt on McCain, whose source I now forget, but, if I rightly recall, it was a comment
made by a US citizen on some blog way back. I have posted it before:
Allow me to disparage Mr. McCain (again), with facts. By several accounts ("Why Does
the Nightingale Sing", for example), he only got into the Naval Academy for a free college
degree because Dad and GrandDad were Admirals, and he should have been kicked out several
times if not for that too. He was a lousy pilot who got into trouble often and crashed two
aircraft because of neglect. He was shot down on his third mission over Vietnam, and getting
captured is not heroic.
What happened over there is difficult to pin down, but upon returning from POW status,
he passed a physical and regained flight status as a pilot. Yet after he finished 20 years of
service that allowed generous retirement pay, he obtained a 100% VA disability rating
allowing him to collect some $40,000 a year tax free too! The LA Times mentioned this when
McCain was insisting he was fit to serve as commander in Chief. He now hauls in over $240,000
a year from the Feds for military retirement, 100% VA disability, social security retirement,
while all the while working full-time in the US Senate. So is he retired, or disabled, or
gainfully employed? He is all three! This is textbook case of abuse and why or system needs
reform to protect workers against rich welfare kings like McCain.
McCain's loyal wife was disabled in a serious auto accident while he was a POW. Soon
after he returned, McCain dumped her for a wealthy woman 20 years younger. The Reagans were
so angry they never spoke to him again. He then married his new babe before he officially got
divorced, so there's that bigamy thing.
I don't know why any Arizonian votes for this crazed man, especially since he's a big
advocate for open borders. At a union meeting, he told workers illegals are needed because
Americans are too lazy to work farm fields, even for $50 an hour.
McCain has never labored his entire life, always on the government dole now earning ten
times minimum wage worker pay, whose increase he opposes.
McCain grew up wealthy and enjoyed free government health care his entire life, yet
thinks it's nothing commoners deserve. While running for president and attacking the poor a
rare good reporter asked how many houses he owned. He was unsure, but thought maybe
seven.
McCain is walking talking proof that sociopaths are fast-tracked for success. There never
was a man, in my opinion, in US politics that was more exploitative, coldly calculating and
utterly ruthless than that bag of shit.
But, Mark said it much better with style, slashing wit and evidence.
Thanks, Mark, for another analysis of the opinion-management being rolled out across the
media.
The stand-out memory I have of the great Ken Kesey novel "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"
is the description of a "pecking party" inside a battery hen building in which one bird is
injured, a speck of blood appears and the crazed neighbours peck it to death. Unfortunately
they get spattered and their neighbours take up the pecking a bloodbath ensues. That seems
like a decent analogy to the current attempts to close down any alternative to official
narrative promotion.
Thanks, Cortes, and to all my well-wishers. I loved 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', it
was at least as memorable as 'Flowers for Algernon' for me, and I read them both at around
the same point in my life, when I was in my early 20's.
If it's really true that the centre cannot hold, The Empire is going to have an
increasingly hard time cloaking its lies. Of course, the west could simply return to the
values of brotherhood and the common struggle it continues to espouse but never really
seriously practiced. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
"Flowers For Algernon" is such a stunning work it's a real shame that it's not better
known (at least in the UK).
On the news management front, I get the sense that the narrative is slipping away from
control. Over a couple of months I've noticed that the free "Metro" papers have been left
unread in largish amounts on some buses (busy routes) -- when they were being snaffled up
until recently. People can sense that they are being herded, I think, and resent it.
"... Brennan was caught spying on the Senate Intelligence Commitee in violation of the Constitution and subsequently lied about it and allegedly directed personnel under his command to lie about to the Senate and the IG ..."
"... Congress fears the intelligence agencies and takes orders from them, not the other way around as envisaged in the constitution or spelled out in legislation. ..."
"... Let Trump try to control the agencies by firing all of their top officers, slashing their budgets, freezing their funds or shutting down their operations, even specific projects, and watch congress come to their rescue in a New York minute. ..."
"... Congress will save any significant component of intel or the pentagon before they'd rescue Social Security or any other social program. If pressed for an answer as to which of the "usual suspects" really whacked Kennedy, I suspect most folks would put their money on the CIA, the FBI or some combination of the major intel agencies. ..."
"... The neoliberal globalists, I fear, have taken that phrase "drowning government in the bathtub" all too literally. ..."
Brennan was caught spying on the Senate Intelligence Commitee in violation
of the Constitution and subsequently lied about it and allegedly directed personnel
under his command to lie about to the Senate and the IG
He could easily be brought up on rather serious charges.
Abby , August 18, 2018 at 11:23 pm
He also leaked classified information to the press as did others and
they could have been prosecuted under the espionage act. They will be losing
their security clearances soon too. The information that they leaked was
the NSA information on Flynn to the Washington post. But of course the Obama
justice department only prosecuted people who exposed Washington's dirty
secrets.
Realist , August 17, 2018 at 1:21 am
Yes, what Kenneth might like to see happen may be admirable but not going
to happen in 2018 or 19, which is practically a different universe from
1975 and for exactly the reasons you specify. This country and its self-appointed
minders have changed massively in 45 years. Besides, 1975 was a year after
Watergate was finally resolved with Nixon and Agnew's resignations and Congress
may have been feeling its oats, going so far as to defund the Vietnam war!
Imagine defunding ANY of the multiple wars ongoing!
Congress fears the intelligence agencies and takes orders from them,
not the other way around as envisaged in the constitution or spelled out
in legislation. Schumer let that feline out of the sack when he warned
the president not to mess with them.
Let Trump try to control the agencies by firing all of their top
officers, slashing their budgets, freezing their funds or shutting down
their operations, even specific projects, and watch congress come to their
rescue in a New York minute.
We saw how the CIA worked around congressionally-imposed budgetary restraints
in Iran-Contra: by secretly running drugs from Columbia to LA, selling arms
to Iran and using the proceeds to fund death squads in Central America.
Congress didn't have the guts to take that investigation to it logical conclusion
of impeachments and/or indictments. Why?
Congress will save any significant component of intel or the pentagon
before they'd rescue Social Security or any other social program. If pressed
for an answer as to which of the "usual suspects" really whacked Kennedy,
I suspect most folks would put their money on the CIA, the FBI or some combination
of the major intel agencies.
Unfettered Fire , August 17, 2018 at 12:11 pm
The neoliberal globalists, I fear, have taken that phrase "drowning
government in the bathtub" all too literally.
Rosa Brooks' book How War Became Everything and Everything Became
the Military exposes the vast expansion and added responsibilities of
the MIC, as governmental departments continue to be dismantled and privatized.
She even said in a book circuit lecture that she thought the idea of
Congress "declaring war" was antiquated and cute. Well, how long will it
be when the very hollowed out structures of Capitol Hill and the White House
are considered antiquated and cute?
What if the plan all along has been to fold up this whole democratic
experiment and move HQ into some new multi-billion dollar Pentagon digs?
Remember the words of Strobe Talbott:
"Within the next hundred years nationhood as we know it will be obsolete;
all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty
wasn't such a great idea after all."
This nation had better wake up fast if it wants to salvage the currency
authorizing power of government and restore its role in the economy, before
it's no longer an option and the private bankers, today's money lenders
in the temple, govern for good.
"The bank strategy continues: "If we can privatize the economy, we
can turn the whole public sector into a monopoly. We can treat what
used to be the government sector as a financial monopoly. Instead of
providing free or subsidized schooling, we can make people pay $50,000
to get a college education, or $50,000 just to get a grade school education
if families choose to go to New York private schools. We can turn the
roads into toll roads. We can charge people for water, and we can charge
for what used to be given for free under the old style of Roosevelt
capitalism and social democracy."
This idea that governments should not create money implies that they
shouldn't act like governments. Instead, the de facto government should
be Wall Street. Instead of governments allocating resources to help the
economy grow, Wall Street should be the allocator of resources – and should
starve the government to "save taxpayers" (or at least the wealthy). Tea
Party promoters want to starve the government to a point where it can be
"drowned in the bathtub."
But if you don't have a government that can fund itself, then who is
going to govern, and on whose terms? The obvious answer is, the class with
the money: Wall Street and the corporate sector. They clamor for a balanced
budget, saying, "We don't want the government to fund public infrastructure.
We want it to be privatized in a way that will generate profits for the
new owners, along with interest for the bondholders and the banks that fund
it; and also, management fees. Most of all, the privatized enterprises should
generate capital gains for the stockholders as they jack up prices for hitherto
public services.
You can see how to demoralize a country if you can stop the government
from spending money into the economy. That will cause austerity, lower living
standards and really put the class war in business. So what Trump is suggesting
is to put the class war in business, financially, with an exclamation point."
I agree that Brennan should have his clearance revoked, and frankly so
should anyone after they leave government. The thing is, I just got done
reading "The Devil's Chessboard", and it is quite clear that Allen Dulles
still ran things after he was fired by JFK, and was most likely the coordinator
of the assassination.
I doubt that Trump has any more control of the CIA than JFK had.
Until people like Brennan are capable of being prosecuted in a court
of law, our so-called "Intelligence" agencies don't give a rat's ass what
the president orders. In fact, they probably give "suggestions" that are
in fact orders.
Right now I think they are trying to figure out a way to get him
out of office without having to actually kill him.
backwardsevolution , August 18, 2018 at 8:22 am
Hi, Skip. The Devil's Chessboard sounds like a good book; I'll have to
read it. Yes, I think whoever gets to the top of the CIA is probably one
mean, bad monster of a human being.
I too think they'd love to assassinate Trump, but I don't think they
dare. There are too many people who just don't believe the government
anymore, and Trump's supporters would blow the roof off if anything happened
to him. They've got to be worried about that because they're the ones with
all the guns. Ha!
I think they're desperately racing against time, trying to nail Trump
before he nails them. The evidence is slowly trickling out (because the
FBI and DOJ are stalling) re the Steele dossier/Russiagate/spying, etc.
From the evidence gathered so far, it's pretty evident that the upper
layer of the DOJ, FBI and CIA are rotten to the core and should be dismantled
ASAP. If all Trump does while being in office is bring these guys down,
then he will have done a great service.
"... The 78 day all-out NATO bombing of Serbia was the act that, I believe, shocked/energized Russia's patriotic elements into action. The fact that little Serbia, after years of severe sanctions and every dirty trick imaginable would not buckle to the empire showed Russia that the Empire was not invincible. ..."
For me, I would say that the ' few days of bombing Serbia ' in 1999 ripped any last
vestiges of belief that the West was here to help mega violently (deliberate bombing
of the Chinese embassy) away from everyone. Of course plenty happened in the years running up
to that event The other is when China joined the WTO on 11/12/2001 and hit the ground running
– they were expected to behave meekly and ask the great white men for their advice and
follow it.
The 78 day all-out NATO bombing of Serbia was the act that, I
believe, shocked/energized Russia's patriotic elements into action. The
fact that little Serbia, after years of severe sanctions and every dirty
trick imaginable would not buckle to the empire showed Russia that the
Empire was not invincible.
The deliberate attack on the Chinese embassy IIRC triggered waves of spontaneous
demonstrations in China of such intensity that the Chinese government had to take means to
dampen. But, the message was not lost on the leadership.
Those acts of hubris and cruelty by the Empire may have been the beginning of its end.
"... If it's really true that the centre cannot hold, The Empire is going to have an increasingly hard time cloaking its lies. Of course, the west could simply return to the values of brotherhood and the common struggle it continues to espouse but never really seriously practiced. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen. ..."
So let's start with America's next big war -- the Gulf War against Iraq, Take One. John
McCain voted for war . Were
there casualties? You could say that; 294 Americans died in the Gulf War. The UK lost 47. It's
worth noting, as an aside, that Syria was a US ally in the Gulf War, and had 2 of its soldiers
killed. How about Iraqis? Well, nobody seems to have kept a very accurate count -- they were,
after all, the enemy, and killing them was encouraged -- and the official American
count is established from Iraqi prisoner-of-war records, and was featured in a report
commissioned by the US Air Force. It estimates 20,000-22,000 combat deaths overall, in both the
air and ground campaigns. Was that a slaughter? You tell me. And before we move on from the
Gulf War, John McCain voted (after
the war was over) against providing automatic annual cost-of-living adjustments for certain
veterans' benefits.
Four years later, McCain supported an appropriations bill that underfunded the Departments
of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies by $8.9 billion. The following year, McCain
voted against an amendment to increase spending on veterans programs by $13 billion. As of the
year 2000, 183,000 U.S. veterans of the Gulf War, more than a quarter of the U.S. troops who
participated, had been declared permanently disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
You may only be 'slaughtered' if you are dead, but the irrevocable changes for the worse in
the quality of life for thousands of Americans who were only doing what their country ordered
them to do should count for something, what do you say?
This from the American senator who famously could not remember how
many houses he and his wife owned . For the record, the number of homes, ranches, condos,
and lofts, together worth a combined estimated $13,823,269.00, was ten.
Gee; I'm starting to get a little mad at McCain. Well, let's move on.
In 2003, the US government of the day decided that Saddam Hussein had not learned his lesson
the first time, and so this time he had to go. Accordingly, the USA polled its allies for
military forces who were not otherwise occupied, and had another go at it. John McCain said
hell yes, let's get it on. American military
casualties , 4,287 killed, 30,187 wounded. A bit more of a slaughter than the first
attempt. The advent of ceramic-plate body armor protected the soldier's body core, so that many
more survived injuries that would have been so horrific they would surely have killed them. The
downside is that many lived who lost limbs too badly damaged to save, and were crippled for
whatever life remained to them. The Iraqi casualty figures were again an estimate,
although better documented; by the most reliable count, somewhere between 182,000 and 204,000
Iraqis were killed. Needlessly and pointlessly slaughtered, many of them; American troops grew
so fearful as a result of the steady drip of casualties among their own that they frequently
opened fire on families in cars with children simply because they did not obey instructions in
a language they did not speak or understand. At Mahmudiya, in March 2006, Private Steven Green
and his co-conspirators raped and
killed 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza, killed her family and set her body afire to blur the
details of the crime. When Iraqi soldiers arrived on the scene, Green and his fellow murderers
blamed it on Sunni insurgents.
The following year, President Bush approved a 'surge' of 20,000 additional troops, which
John McCain so energetically agitated for that it became known informally as 'the McCain
doctrine'. That's after he claimed in 2004 that if an elected government in Iraq asked that US
forces leave, they would have to go even if they were not happy with the security situation. He
also recognized, the following year, that Iraqis resented the American military presence, and
the sooner and more dramatically it could be reduced, the better it would be for everyone. I
guess if you lay claim to both sides of the argument, you're bound to convince someone that you
know what you're doing.
That same year, 2007, John McCain
voted against a requirement for specifying minimum time periods between deployments for
soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. When they need you
back in the meat-grinder, you go, never mind how many times you've already been there. Let's
just keep in mind, before we leave Iraq, that the entire case for war the second time around
was fabricated with wild tales of awful weapons Saddam supposedly had which could kill
Americans while they were still in America , and so he had to be dealt with. When it was
suggested to the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that America should concentrate on
Afghanistan, since that is where the backers of the 9-11 strike against America had fled, he
mused
that there were 'no good targets in Afghanistan' , although there were 'lots of good
targets in Iraq'. Some researchers suggest he was after a 'teachable moment' for America's
enemies which would convince them of America's irresistible power. While John McCain assessed
that Donald Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense ever, his complaint was not that
Rumsfeld was not killing enough people, but that he showed insufficient commitment to winning
the war.
Libya. Hoo, boy. In 2009, John McCain -- together with fellow die-faster-please senators Joe
Lieberman and Lindsey Graham --
visited Tripoli , to discuss Libya's acquisition of American military equipment. John
McCain assured Gadaffi (his son, actually) that America was eager to provide Libya with the
equipment it needed. Hardly more than a year later, he espoused the position that Gadaffi must
be removed from power because he had American blood on his hands from the Lockerbie bombing. In
2011, he visited the Libyan 'rebels', and
publicly urged Washington to consider a ground attack to forcibly remove Gaddafi from
power. Just a friendly public service reminder; the Lockerbie bombing was most likely carried
out by Syria, was -- according to pretty reliable testimony -- rigged by
the American intelligence services to finger Libya , and probably the stupidest thing
Gaddafi ever did was to admit to it anyway and pay compensation, in an effort to move on.
Anyway, more war. What the fuck is it with this guy?
Well, even something so grim as war has its comic moments. What else would you call it when
NATO claims, with a straight face, that the enemy is hiding his
tanks and artillery from its watchful eye inside the water pipes of the Great Man-Made
River? What they actually wanted was an excuse to bomb it -- which they did, as well as the
pumping stations which brought abundant fresh water to the coastal region, in the certain
knowledge that it would create a crisis for the civilian population. Which, by the bye, is
against just about every convention on the subject ever written.
Well, even something so grim as war has its comic moments. What else would you call it when
NATO claims, with a straight face, that the enemy is hiding his
tanks and artillery from its watchful eye inside the water pipes of the Great Man-Made
River? What they actually wanted was an excuse to bomb it – which they did, as well
as the pumping stations which brought abundant fresh water to the coastal region, in the
certain knowledge that it would create a crisis for the civilian population. Which, by the bye,
is against just about every convention on the subject ever written.
Here are some of the pipe sections, when they were being trucked to the assembly point. As
the article suggests, these sections are 4 meters across; but remember, that's at their widest
point. They are only 4 meters for about a foot, because a water pipe is a circle.
Libya mostly used the T-72 Main Battle Tank, and those would be the ones NATO wanted to
eliminate, since the others were considerably older. A T-72, width-wise, would just fit in a
4-meter water pipe, as it is 3.6 meters wide . However,
it's also over 45 tons in weight. The concrete rings were designed to carry free-flowing water,
not a 45-ton tank. Would they take that kind of weight, distributed only over a 7-meter length?
Where is there an entry point to the water-pipe that is the same width as the widest diameter
of the pipe? As discussed, the water pipe is 4 meters wide at its widest point. But the T-72 is
2.3 meters high. The tank would only fit if it was as high as a lunchbox, because the 4-meter
width narrows dramatically from the widest point; it's a circle. Even where it did fit, it
would be supported only on the outer edges of its tracks, and you have to cut the 4-meter
measurement approximately in half, because the upper portion of the tank would have to be above
the point where the tracks touched on each side. The idea was preposterous from the outset, and
it speaks to what fucking simpletons western government believes make up its populations that
they would dare to put such nutjobbery in print. A T-72 could not fit in a 4-meter water pipe.
The notion was demonstrably foolish. But NATO wanted to destroy the water system, so it made up
a reason that would allow it to be a well-meaning potential victim of deadly violence.
According to The Guardian – the same source that told you Gadaffi was hiding
his tanks in the plumbing – the death toll in the Libyan civil war prior to the NATO
intervention was about 1000-2000. According to the National Transitional Council, the outfit
the west engineered to rule post-Gaddafi Libya,
the final butcher's bill was about 30,000 dead . The very day after NATO folded its tents
– figuratively speaking, as the western role was entirely air support for the
flip-flop-wearing rebels – and went home, al Qaeda
raised its black flag over the Benghazi courthouse .
Caitlin Johnstone claimed John McCain used his political career to advocate for military
interventions which resulted in the slaughter of large numbers of human beings. Is that
accurate? What say you, members of the jury? In each of the cases above, John McCain used his
political influence, over and above his vote, to argue, advocate, hector and plead for military
intervention by the armed forces of the United States of America and such coalition partners as
could be rounded up. In each of the cases above, the necessity of toppling the evildoing
dictator was exaggerated out of all proportion, portrayed as an instant and refreshing
liberation for his people, and as only the first phase of a progressive plan which would turn
the subject country into a prosperous, western-oriented market democracy. In each of the cases
above the country is now a divided and ruined failed state whose pre-war situation was
significantly better than its miserable present. And in each of the cases above, a lot of
people were killed who could otherwise have reasonably expected to be alive today.
Also, each of the cases above is chronologically separated from the others by a sufficient
span for it to be quite evident what a cluster-fuck the previous operation was, so that anyone
disposed to learn from his mistakes might have approached the situation differently as it
gained momentum, argued for caution based on previously-recorded clusterfuckery, pleaded for
reason to prevail and for improved dialogue to be a priority. Not John McCain. He learned
precisely the square root of nothing from previous catastrophes, and plunged into the next
catastrophe with the enthusiasm most remarked among those who are not all there, as the
vernacular describes it. He not only voted for war every time, he expended considerable effort
in cajoling and persuading the reluctant to go along.
Perhaps the introduction here of the definition for 'warmonger' would be helpful
to the jury. To wit; "O ne who advocates or attempts to stir up war. A person who fosters
warlike ideas or advocates war." Synonyms: hawk, aggressor, belligerent, militarist, jingoist,
sabre-rattler. There, John; I just saved you the trouble of writing an epitaph.
Will the world be a better place once John McCain is gone? Difficult to say, really, and the
present state of affairs in the world argues strongly that it will not. But it will certainly
be no poorer for his passing, and if he were to be replaced politically by an individual who
took the trouble to do a little research, muse on previous experience, and review all the
available options before voting to send in the Marines why, that would be a victory for
everyone in a world where victory is increasingly not even a possibility.
Was Caitlin Johnstone right? Broadly speaking, and going on the information available at the
time her statement was made, yes; she was.
More dirt on McCain, whose source I now forget, but, if I rightly recall, it was a comment
made by a US citizen on some blog way back. I have posted it before:
Allow me to disparage Mr. McCain (again), with facts. By several accounts ("Why Does
the Nightingale Sing", for example), he only got into the Naval Academy for a free college
degree because Dad and GrandDad were Admirals, and he should have been kicked out several
times if not for that too. He was a lousy pilot who got into trouble often and crashed two
aircraft because of neglect. He was shot down on his third mission over Vietnam, and getting
captured is not heroic.
What happened over there is difficult to pin down, but upon returning from POW status,
he passed a physical and regained flight status as a pilot. Yet after he finished 20 years of
service that allowed generous retirement pay, he obtained a 100% VA disability rating
allowing him to collect some $40,000 a year tax free too! The LA Times mentioned this when
McCain was insisting he was fit to serve as commander in Chief. He now hauls in over $240,000
a year from the Feds for military retirement, 100% VA disability, social security retirement,
while all the while working full-time in the US Senate. So is he retired, or disabled, or
gainfully employed? He is all three! This is textbook case of abuse and why or system needs
reform to protect workers against rich welfare kings like McCain.
McCain's loyal wife was disabled in a serious auto accident while he was a POW. Soon
after he returned, McCain dumped her for a wealthy woman 20 years younger. The Reagans were
so angry they never spoke to him again. He then married his new babe before he officially got
divorced, so there's that bigamy thing.
I don't know why any Arizonian votes for this crazed man, especially since he's a big
advocate for open borders. At a union meeting, he told workers illegals are needed because
Americans are too lazy to work farm fields, even for $50 an hour.
McCain has never labored his entire life, always on the government dole now earning ten
times minimum wage worker pay, whose increase he opposes.
McCain grew up wealthy and enjoyed free government health care his entire life, yet
thinks it's nothing commoners deserve. While running for president and attacking the poor a
rare good reporter asked how many houses he owned. He was unsure, but thought maybe
seven.
McCain is walking talking proof that sociopaths are fast-tracked for success. There never
was a man, in my opinion, in US politics that was more exploitative, coldly calculating and
utterly ruthless than that bag of shit.
But, Mark said it much better with style, slashing wit and evidence.
Thanks, Mark, for another analysis of the opinion-management being rolled out across the
media.
The stand-out memory I have of the great Ken Kesey novel "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"
is the description of a "pecking party" inside a battery hen building in which one bird is
injured, a speck of blood appears and the crazed neighbours peck it to death. Unfortunately
they get spattered and their neighbours take up the pecking a bloodbath ensues. That seems
like a decent analogy to the current attempts to close down any alternative to official
narrative promotion.
Thanks, Cortes, and to all my well-wishers. I loved 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', it
was at least as memorable as 'Flowers for Algernon' for me, and I read them both at around
the same point in my life, when I was in my early 20's.
If it's really true that the centre cannot hold, The Empire is going to have an
increasingly hard time cloaking its lies. Of course, the west could simply return to the
values of brotherhood and the common struggle it continues to espouse but never really
seriously practiced. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
"Flowers For Algernon" is such a stunning work it's a real shame that it's not better
known (at least in the UK).
On the news management front, I get the sense that the narrative is slipping away from
control. Over a couple of months I've noticed that the free "Metro" papers have been left
unread in largish amounts on some buses (busy routes) -- when they were being snaffled up
until recently. People can sense that they are being herded, I think, and resent it.
"My strong suspicion is that 'Russiagate' is a kind of nemesis, arising
from the fact that key figures in British and American intelligence have, over
a protracted period of time, got involved in intrigues where they are way out
of their depth. The unintended consequences of these have meant that people
like Brennan and Younger, and also Hannigan, have ended up having to resort
to desperate measures to cover their backsides."
Brennan exposed "intelligence community" as a forth branch of government.
The branch more powerful that then the other three combined.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the
intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency,
unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable
practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations
that could arguably land some people in prison.
The main suspicion is that Steele's involvement may
have been less in crafting the dossier, than making it possible to conceal
its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could
also be the case that Nellie Ohr's sudden interest in radio transmissions
had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with
Steele.
Notable quotes:
"... Los Angeles Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... It's a misnomer to term these people representatives of a hidden "deep state." In recent years, they have been amply visible on television and newspaper op-ed pages. Instead, they see and present themselves as members of a fully empowered and essential fourth branch of government. ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... To be fair, Brennan may only be a symptom of this profound American crisis, some say the worst since the Civil War. ..."
Brennan's allegation was unprecedented. No such high-level intelligence official
had ever before accused a sitting president of treason, still more in collusion
with the Kremlin. (Impeachment discussions of Presidents Nixon and Clinton,
to take recent examples, did not include allegations involving Russia.)
Brennan clarified his charge : "Treasonous, which is to betray one's trust
and to aid and abet the enemy." Coming from Brennan, a man presumed to be in
possession of related dark secrets,
as he strongly hinted , the charge was fraught with alarming implications.
Brennan made clear he hoped for Trump's impeachment, but in another time, and
in many other countries, his charge would suggest that Trump should be removed
from the presidency urgently by any means, even a coup. No one, it seems, has
even noted this extraordinary implication with its tacit threat to American
democracy. (Perhaps because the disloyalty allegation against Trump has been
customary ever since mid-2016, even before he became president, when an array
of influential publications and writers -- among them a former acting CIA director
-- began branding him Putin's "puppet," "agent," "client," and "Manchurian candidate."
The
Los Angeles Times even saw fit to print an article suggesting that
the military might have to remove Trump if he were to be elected, thereby having
the very dubious distinction of predating Brennan.)
Why did Brennan, a calculating man, risk leveling such a charge, which might
reasonably be characterized as sedition? The most plausible explanation is that
he sought to deflect growing attention to his role as the "Godfather" of the
entire Russiagate narrative, as Cohen argued back in February. If so, we need
to know Brennan's unvarnished views on Russia.
They are set out with astonishing (perhaps unknowing) candor in
a New York Times op-ed of August 17. They are those of Joseph McCarthy
and J. Edgar Hoover in their prime. Western "politicians, political parties,
media outlets, think tanks and influencers are readily manipulated, wittingly
and unwittingly, or even bought outright, by Russian operatives not only to
collect sensitive information but also to distribute propaganda and disinformation.
I was well aware of Russia's ability to work surreptitiously within the United
States, cultivating relationships with individuals who wield actual or potential
power. These Russian agents are well trained in the art of deception. They troll
political, business and cultural waters in search of gullible or unprincipled
individuals who become pliant in the hands of their Russian puppet masters.
Too often, those puppets are found." All this, Brennan assures readers, is based
on his "deep insight." All the rest of us, it seems, are constantly susceptible
to "Russian puppet masters" under our beds, at work, on our computers. Clearly,
there must be no "cooperation" with the Kremlin's grand "Puppet Master," as
Trump said he wanted early on. (People who wonder what and when Obama knew about
the unfolding Russiagate saga need to ask why he would keep such a person so
close for so long.)
And yet, scores of former intelligence and military officials rallied around
this unvarnished John Brennan, even though, they said, they did not entirely
share his opinions. This too is revealing. They did so, it seems clear enough,
out of their professional corporate identity, which Brennan represented and
Trump was degrading by challenging the intelligences agencies' (implicitly including
his own) Russiagate allegations against him. It's a misnomer to term these people
representatives of a hidden "deep state." In recent years, they have been amply
visible on television and newspaper op-ed pages. Instead, they see and present
themselves as members of a fully empowered and essential fourth branch of government.
This too has gone largely undiscussed while nightingales of the fourth branch
-- such as
David Ignatius and
Joe Scarborough in the pages of the The Washington Post -- have
been in full voice.
The result is, of course -- and no less ominous -- to criminalize any advocacy
of "cooperating with Russia," or détente, as Trump sought to do in Helsinki
with Putin. Still more, a full-fledged Russophobic hysteria is sweeping through
the American political-media establishment, from Brennan and -- pending actual
evidence against her -- those who engineered the arrest of Maria Butina (imagine
how this endangers young Americans networking in Russia) to the senators now
preparing new "crippling sanctions" against Moscow and the editors and producers
at the Times , Post , CNN, and MSNBC. (However powerful, how
representative are these elites when surveys indicate that a majority of the
American people still prefer good relations with Moscow?)
As the dangers grow
of actual war with Russia -- again, from Ukraine and the Baltic region to Syria
-- the capacity of US policy-makers, above all the president, are increasingly
diminished. To be fair, Brennan may only be a symptom of this profound American
crisis, some say the worst since the Civil War.
Finally, there was a time when many Democrats, certainly liberal Democrats,
could be counted on to resist this kind of hysteria and, yes, spreading neo-McCarthyism.
(Brennan's defenders accuse Trump of McCarthyism, but Brennan's charge of treason
without presenting any actual evidence was quintessential McCarthy.) After all,
civil liberties, including freedom of speech, are directly involved -- and not
only Brennan's and Trump's. But Democratic members of Congress and pro-Democratic
media outlets are in the forefront of the new anti-Russian hysteria, with only
a few exceptions. Thus a generally liberal historian
tells CNN viewers that "Brennan is an American hero. His tenure at the CIA
was impeccable. We owe him so much." Elsewhere the same historian
assures readers , "There has always been a bipartisan spirit of support
since the CIA was created in the Cold War." In the same vein, two Post
reporters write of the FBI's "
once venerated reputation ."
"... Here, for instance, is what I wrote about our Afghan War in 2008, almost seven years after it began, when the U.S. Air Force took out a bridal party, including the bride herself and at least 26 other women and children en route to an Afghan wedding. And that would be just one of eight U.S. wedding strikes I toted up by the end of 2013 in three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, that killed almost 300 potential revelers. "We have become a nation of wedding crashers," I wrote, "the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses, tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home." ..."
"... Thought of another way, the U.S. military is now heading into record territory in Afghanistan. In the mid-1970s, the rare American who had heard of that country knew it only as a stop on the hippie trail . If you had then told anyone here that, by 2018, the U.S. would have been at war there for 27 years ( 1979-1989 and 2001-2018), he or she would have laughed in your face. And yet here we are, approaching the mark for one of Europe's longest, most brutal struggles, the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century. Imagine that. ..."
"... raison d'être ..."
"... Afganistan is the graveyard of poor empires. It's the playground of the rich American empire, a place to test weapons, test men, gain battle experience, get promotions, and generally keep the military-industrial complex in top health. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. ..."
"... As shown in this article there is a very interesting connection between growing wealth inequality in the United States and American wars: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-american-wars-lead-to-increased.html ..."
"... it's not a war; it's an occupation. More cops get killed/wounded in USA proper then military personnel in that "war". 2017, 46 U.S. police officers were killed by felons in the line of duty; 17 military personnel in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Yes , the US military industrial complex is rich and in top health as you say , but what I see is that the health of the US as a whole , physical and mental , is going down in the last 50 years . Maybe the metastasis of the " healthy " military cancer are killing the American host . ..."
Fair warning. Stop reading right now if you want, because I'm going to repeat
myself. What choice do I have, since my subject is the Afghan War (America's
second Afghan War, no less)? I
began writing about that war in October 2001, almost 17 years ago, just
after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. That was how I inadvertently launched
the unnamed listserv that would, a year later, become TomDispatch .
Given the website's continuing focus on America's forever wars (a phrase I first
used in
2010 ), what choice have I had but to write about Afghanistan ever since?
So think of this as the war piece to end all war pieces. And let the repetition
begin!
Here, for instance, is what I
wrote about our Afghan War in 2008, almost seven years after it began, when
the U.S. Air Force took out a bridal party, including the bride herself and
at least 26 other women and children en route to an Afghan wedding. And that
would be just one of eight U.S. wedding strikes I
toted up by the end of 2013 in three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen,
that killed almost 300 potential revelers. "We have become a nation of wedding
crashers," I wrote, "the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses,
tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home."
Here's what I
wrote about Afghanistan in 2009, while considering the metrics of "a war
gone to hell": "While Americans argue feverishly and angrily over what kind
of money, if any, to put into health care, or decaying infrastructure, or other
key places of need, until recently just about no one in the mainstream raised
a peep about the fact that, for nearly eight years (not to say much of the last
three decades), we've been pouring billions of dollars, American military know-how,
and American lives into a black hole in Afghanistan that is, at least in significant
part, of our own creation."
Here's what I
wrote in 2010, thinking about how "forever war" had entered the bloodstream
of the twenty-first-century U.S. military (in a passage in which you'll notice
a name that became more familiar in the Trump era): "And let's not leave out
the Army's incessant planning for the distant future embodied in a recently
published report, 'Operating Concept, 2016-2028,' overseen by Brigadier General
H.R. McMaster, a senior adviser to Gen. David Petraeus. It opts to ditch 'Buck
Rogers' visions of futuristic war, and instead to imagine counterinsurgency
operations, grimly referred to as 'wars of exhaustion,' in one, two, many Afghanistans
to the distant horizon."
Here's what I
wrote in 2012, when Afghanistan had superseded Vietnam as the longest war
in American history: "Washington has gotten itself into a situation on the Eurasian
mainland so vexing and perplexing that Vietnam has finally been left in the
dust. In fact, if you hadn't noticed -- and weirdly enough no one has -- that
former war finally seems to have all but vanished."
Here's what I
wrote in 2015, thinking about the American taxpayer dollars that had, in
the preceding years, gone into Afghan "roads to nowhere, ghost soldiers, and
a $43 million gas station" built in the middle of nowhere, rather than into
this country: "Clearly, Washington had gone to war like a drunk on a bender,
while the domestic infrastructure began to fray. At $109 billion by 2014, the
American reconstruction program in Afghanistan was already, in today's dollars,
larger than the Marshall Plan (which helped put all of devastated Western Europe
back on its feet after World War II) and still the country was a shambles."
And here's what I
wrote last year thinking about the nature of our never-ending war there:
"Right now, Washington is whistling past the graveyard. In Afghanistan and Pakistan
the question is no longer whether the U.S. is in command, but whether it can
get out in time. If not, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Indians,
who exactly will ride to our rescue? Perhaps it would be more prudent to stop
hanging out in graveyards. They are, after all, meant for burials, not resurrections."
And that's just to dip a toe into my writings on America's all-time most
never-ending war.
What Happened After History Ended
... ... ...
In reality, when it comes to America's
spreading wars , especially the one in Afghanistan, history didn't end at
all. It just stumbled onto some graveyard version of a Möbius strip. In contrast
to the past empires that found they ultimately couldn't defeat Afghanistan's
insurgent tribal warriors, the U.S. has -- as Bush administration officials
suspected at the time -- proven unique. Just not in the way they imagined.
Their dreams couldn't have been more ambitious. As they launched the invasion
of Afghanistan, they were already looking past the triumph to come to Saddam
Hussein's Iraq and the glories that would follow once his regime had been "decapitated,"
once U.S. forces, the most technologically advanced ever, were
stationed for an eternity in the heart of the oil heartlands of the Greater
Middle East. Not that anyone remembers anymore, but Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and the rest of that crew of geopolitical dreamers
wanted it all.
What they got was no less unique in history: a great power at the seeming
height of its strength and glory, with destructive capabilities beyond imagining
and a military unmatched on the planet, unable to score a single decisive victory
across an increasingly large swath of the planet or impose its will, however
brutally, on seemingly far weaker, less well-armed opponents. They could not
conquer, subdue, control, pacify, or win the hearts and minds or anything else
of enemies who often fought their
trillion-dollar foe using weaponry valued at the
price
of a pizza . Talk about bleeding wounds!
A War of Abysmal Repetition
Thought of another way, the U.S. military is now heading into record
territory in Afghanistan. In the mid-1970s, the rare American who had heard
of that country knew it only as a stop on the
hippie trail . If you had then told anyone here that, by 2018, the U.S.
would have been at war there for 27 years (
1979-1989 and 2001-2018), he or she would have laughed in your face. And
yet here we are, approaching the mark for one of Europe's longest, most brutal
struggles, the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century. Imagine that.
... ... ...
Almost 17 years and, coincidentally enough,
17 U.S. commanders later, think of it as a war of abysmal repetition. Just
about everything in the U.S. manual of military tactics has evidently been tried
(including dropping "the mother of all bombs," the
largest non-nuclear munition in that military's arsenal), often time and
again, and nothing has even faintly done the trick -- to which the Pentagon's
response is invariably a version of the classic
misquoted
movie line, "Play it again, Sam."
And yet, amid all that repetition,
people are
still dying ; Afghans and others are being
uprooted and
displaced across Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and deep into Africa;
wars and terror outfits are spreading. And here's a simple enough fact that's
worth repeating: the endless, painfully ignored failure of the U.S. military
(and civilian) effort in Afghanistan is where it all began and where it seems
never to end.
A Victory for Whom?
Every now and then, there's the odd bit of news that reminds you we don't
have to be in a world of repetition. Every now and then, you see something and
wonder whether it might not represent a new development, one that possibly could
lead out of (or far deeper into) the graveyard of empires.
As a start, though it's been easy to forget in these years, other countries
are affected by the ongoing disaster of a war in Afghanistan. Think, for instance,
of Pakistan (with a newly elected, somewhat
Trumpian president who has been a
critic of America's Afghan War and of U.S. drone strikes in his country),
Iran, China, and Russia. So here's something I can't remember seeing in the
news before: the military intelligence chiefs of those four countries all
met recently in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, officially to discuss
the growth of Islamic State-branded insurgents in Afghanistan. But who knows
what was really being discussed? And the same applies to the
visit of Iran's armed forces chief of staff to Pakistan in July and the
return visit of that country's chief of staff to Iran in early August. I
can't tell you what's going on, only that these are not the typically repetitive
stories of the last 17 years.
And hard as it might be to believe, even when it comes to U.S. policy, there's
been the odd headline that might pass for new. Take the recent private, direct
talks with the Taliban in Qatar's capital, Doha,
initiated by the Trump administration and seemingly ongoing. They might
-- or
might not -- represent
something new , as might President Trump himself, who, as far as anyone
can tell, doesn't think that Afghanistan is "
the right war ." He has, from time to time, even indicated that he might
be in favor of ending the American role, of "
getting the hell out of there," as he reportedly told Senator Rand Paul,
and that's unique in itself (though he and his advisers seem to be raring to
go when it comes to what could be the next Afghanistan:
Iran ).
But should the man who would never want to be known as the president who
lost the longest war in American history try to follow through on a withdrawal
plan, he's likely to have a few problems on his hands. Above all, the Pentagon
and the country's field commanders seem to be hooked on America's "
infinite " wars. They exhibit not the slightest urge to stop them. The Afghan
War and the others that have flowed from it represent both their raison
d'être and their meal ticket. They represent the only thing the U.S. military
knows how to do in this century. And one thing is guaranteed: if they don't
agree with the president on a withdrawal strategy, they have the power and ability
to make a man who would do anything to avoid marring his own image as a winnner
look worse than you could possibly imagine. Despite that military's supposedly
apolitical role in this country's affairs, its leaders are uniquely capable
of blocking any attempt to end the Afghan War.
And with that in mind, almost 17 years later, don't think that victory is
out of the question either. Every day that the U.S. military stays in Afghanistan
is indeed a victory for well, not George W. Bush, or Barack Obama, and certainly
not Donald Trump, but the now long-dead Osama bin Laden. The calculation couldn't
be simpler. Thanks to his "
precision" weaponry -- those 19 suicidal hijackers in commercial jets --
the nearly 17 years of wars he's sparked across much of the Muslim world cost
a man from one of Saudi Arabia's
wealthiest families a mere
$400,000 to $500,000 . They've cost American taxpayers, minimally,
$5.6 trillion dollars with no end in sight. And every day the Afghan War
and the others that have followed from it continue is but another triumphant
day for him and his followers.
A sad footnote to this history of extreme repetition: I wish this essay,
as its title suggests, were indeed the war piece to end all war pieces. Unfortunately,
it's a reasonable bet that, in August 2019, or August 2020, not to speak of
August 2021, I'll be repeating all of this yet again.
Afganistan is the graveyard of poor empires. It's the playground
of the rich American empire, a place to test weapons, test men, gain
battle experience, get promotions, and generally keep the military-industrial
complex in top health. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.
All very human. If America wasn't doing it, somebody else would.
Its all about pipelines, rare-earth elements and drug money for CIA black
ops.
15 years of American efforts to suppress opium growing and the heroin
trade in that country (at historic lows, by the way, when the U.S. invaded
in 2001).
And many record harvests after the US invasion.
' In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can
bet it was planned that way ' Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Unless Washington shifts from a program of funding wars by deficit financing
to funding wars through direct taxation, wars being fought by the United
States will continue to contribute to America's growing income inequality.
About the only thing I take away from this insufferably droll, repetitive
piece on America at war forever, is how powerless the both the writer and
the reader are. All we can do is read these depressing articles which remind
us of a war we can do absolutely nothing about. Very shitty and depressing,
just like USA!
Pretty much. Besides, it's not a war; it's an occupation. More cops
get killed/wounded in USA proper then military personnel in that "war".
2017, 46 U.S. police officers were killed by felons in the line of duty;
17 military personnel in Afghanistan.
The article's point/issue is simply overblown. That's why people don't
pay attention to it.
BS; it's an alien invasion = Nuremberg-class war crime.
More cops get killed/wounded in USA proper
This looks very much like the "tu quoque" or the appeal to hypocrisy
fallacy plus 'oranges vs. apples.' What the good US-burghers do in their
own country is entirely their business, and IF it looks like they act like
antediluvian neanderthal savages [a direct result of their risible 'education'
+ night & day TV, perhaps] THEN tough luck for the cops. It probably doesn't
help that the US-cops are just as much free with the lead as their oppressed
subjects. And don't think that the same sort of savagery won't impact someone
near you; a quick glance into abc.net.au/news/justin reveals horrendous
'social situations,' like bodies in barrels, say, or aggravated home invasions,
etc., also caused by defective education plus importing 'cheap' labour.
That's why people don't pay attention to it
More BS; the sheeple ignore US/Z aggression everywhere it occurs because
the corrupt&venal MSM+PFBCs [= publicly financed broadcasters, like the
AusBC] sell the powerless population pups = the sheeple get actively, deliberately
brainwashed [cf. Lügenpresse ]. Apologists for [here terrorist] criminals
make themselves accessories = assign themselves guilt and should be punished
after being tried & found so guilty.
" The U.S. has spent 25 trillion since the Vietnam War, what do they
have to show for it? " Jack Ma Ali Baba
" The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept the majority of people
from ever questioning the inequity of a private for profit fraudulent banking
system where most people drudge along, paying heavey taxes for which they
get nothing in return." Gore Vidal
(War) "It's something we do all the time because we're good at it. And
we're good at it because we're used to it. And we're used to it because
we do it all the time." Sergeant Michael Dunne played by Paul Gross in Passchendaele
the Movie
I'm not sure, but I don't think we are good at it anymore. But it appears
to me that the Russians, Iranians, Syrians and Houthi's are and that really
scares us. But it does make a lot of money for some people, careers for
others and the MSM loves it for the ratings and avoiding telling the truth.
Your opening photo is of two of the dumbest son-of-a-bitches to ever
hold the office of President of The United States. Indicative of the shit
slide this country is on.
"Afghans and others are being uprooted and displaced across Asia,
South Asia, the Middle East, and deep into Africa ."
So the strategy is to depopulate the country of its indigenous peoples
until "we" outnumber them? Never mind the damage these re-settled folks
are doing to Western Europe, not to mention other places.
.generally keep the military-industrial complex in top health
Yes , the US military industrial complex is rich and in top health
as you say , but what I see is that the health of the US as a whole , physical
and mental , is going down in the last 50 years . Maybe the metastasis of
the " healthy " military cancer are killing the American host .
The same happened to most of the empires , got drunk on blood and fell
.
"My strong suspicion is that 'Russiagate' is a kind of nemesis, arising
from the fact that key figures in British and American intelligence have, over
a protracted period of time, got involved in intrigues where they are way out
of their depth. The unintended consequences of these have meant that people
like Brennan and Younger, and also Hannigan, have ended up having to resort
to desperate measures to cover their backsides."
Brennan exposed "intelligence community" as a forth branch of government.
The branch more powerful that then the other three combined.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the
intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency,
unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable
practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations
that could arguably land some people in prison.
The main suspicion is that Steele's involvement may
have been less in crafting the dossier, than making it possible to conceal
its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could
also be the case that Nellie Ohr's sudden interest in radio transmissions
had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with
Steele.
Notable quotes:
"... Los Angeles Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... It's a misnomer to term these people representatives of a hidden "deep state." In recent years, they have been amply visible on television and newspaper op-ed pages. Instead, they see and present themselves as members of a fully empowered and essential fourth branch of government. ..."
"... The Washington Post ..."
"... To be fair, Brennan may only be a symptom of this profound American crisis, some say the worst since the Civil War. ..."
Brennan's allegation was unprecedented. No such high-level intelligence official
had ever before accused a sitting president of treason, still more in collusion
with the Kremlin. (Impeachment discussions of Presidents Nixon and Clinton,
to take recent examples, did not include allegations involving Russia.)
Brennan clarified his charge : "Treasonous, which is to betray one's trust
and to aid and abet the enemy." Coming from Brennan, a man presumed to be in
possession of related dark secrets,
as he strongly hinted , the charge was fraught with alarming implications.
Brennan made clear he hoped for Trump's impeachment, but in another time, and
in many other countries, his charge would suggest that Trump should be removed
from the presidency urgently by any means, even a coup. No one, it seems, has
even noted this extraordinary implication with its tacit threat to American
democracy. (Perhaps because the disloyalty allegation against Trump has been
customary ever since mid-2016, even before he became president, when an array
of influential publications and writers -- among them a former acting CIA director
-- began branding him Putin's "puppet," "agent," "client," and "Manchurian candidate."
The
Los Angeles Times even saw fit to print an article suggesting that
the military might have to remove Trump if he were to be elected, thereby having
the very dubious distinction of predating Brennan.)
Why did Brennan, a calculating man, risk leveling such a charge, which might
reasonably be characterized as sedition? The most plausible explanation is that
he sought to deflect growing attention to his role as the "Godfather" of the
entire Russiagate narrative, as Cohen argued back in February. If so, we need
to know Brennan's unvarnished views on Russia.
They are set out with astonishing (perhaps unknowing) candor in
a New York Times op-ed of August 17. They are those of Joseph McCarthy
and J. Edgar Hoover in their prime. Western "politicians, political parties,
media outlets, think tanks and influencers are readily manipulated, wittingly
and unwittingly, or even bought outright, by Russian operatives not only to
collect sensitive information but also to distribute propaganda and disinformation.
I was well aware of Russia's ability to work surreptitiously within the United
States, cultivating relationships with individuals who wield actual or potential
power. These Russian agents are well trained in the art of deception. They troll
political, business and cultural waters in search of gullible or unprincipled
individuals who become pliant in the hands of their Russian puppet masters.
Too often, those puppets are found." All this, Brennan assures readers, is based
on his "deep insight." All the rest of us, it seems, are constantly susceptible
to "Russian puppet masters" under our beds, at work, on our computers. Clearly,
there must be no "cooperation" with the Kremlin's grand "Puppet Master," as
Trump said he wanted early on. (People who wonder what and when Obama knew about
the unfolding Russiagate saga need to ask why he would keep such a person so
close for so long.)
And yet, scores of former intelligence and military officials rallied around
this unvarnished John Brennan, even though, they said, they did not entirely
share his opinions. This too is revealing. They did so, it seems clear enough,
out of their professional corporate identity, which Brennan represented and
Trump was degrading by challenging the intelligences agencies' (implicitly including
his own) Russiagate allegations against him. It's a misnomer to term these people
representatives of a hidden "deep state." In recent years, they have been amply
visible on television and newspaper op-ed pages. Instead, they see and present
themselves as members of a fully empowered and essential fourth branch of government.
This too has gone largely undiscussed while nightingales of the fourth branch
-- such as
David Ignatius and
Joe Scarborough in the pages of the The Washington Post -- have
been in full voice.
The result is, of course -- and no less ominous -- to criminalize any advocacy
of "cooperating with Russia," or détente, as Trump sought to do in Helsinki
with Putin. Still more, a full-fledged Russophobic hysteria is sweeping through
the American political-media establishment, from Brennan and -- pending actual
evidence against her -- those who engineered the arrest of Maria Butina (imagine
how this endangers young Americans networking in Russia) to the senators now
preparing new "crippling sanctions" against Moscow and the editors and producers
at the Times , Post , CNN, and MSNBC. (However powerful, how
representative are these elites when surveys indicate that a majority of the
American people still prefer good relations with Moscow?)
As the dangers grow
of actual war with Russia -- again, from Ukraine and the Baltic region to Syria
-- the capacity of US policy-makers, above all the president, are increasingly
diminished. To be fair, Brennan may only be a symptom of this profound American
crisis, some say the worst since the Civil War.
Finally, there was a time when many Democrats, certainly liberal Democrats,
could be counted on to resist this kind of hysteria and, yes, spreading neo-McCarthyism.
(Brennan's defenders accuse Trump of McCarthyism, but Brennan's charge of treason
without presenting any actual evidence was quintessential McCarthy.) After all,
civil liberties, including freedom of speech, are directly involved -- and not
only Brennan's and Trump's. But Democratic members of Congress and pro-Democratic
media outlets are in the forefront of the new anti-Russian hysteria, with only
a few exceptions. Thus a generally liberal historian
tells CNN viewers that "Brennan is an American hero. His tenure at the CIA
was impeccable. We owe him so much." Elsewhere the same historian
assures readers , "There has always been a bipartisan spirit of support
since the CIA was created in the Cold War." In the same vein, two Post
reporters write of the FBI's "
once venerated reputation ."
"... Here, for instance, is what I wrote about our Afghan War in 2008, almost seven years after it began, when the U.S. Air Force took out a bridal party, including the bride herself and at least 26 other women and children en route to an Afghan wedding. And that would be just one of eight U.S. wedding strikes I toted up by the end of 2013 in three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, that killed almost 300 potential revelers. "We have become a nation of wedding crashers," I wrote, "the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses, tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home." ..."
"... Thought of another way, the U.S. military is now heading into record territory in Afghanistan. In the mid-1970s, the rare American who had heard of that country knew it only as a stop on the hippie trail . If you had then told anyone here that, by 2018, the U.S. would have been at war there for 27 years ( 1979-1989 and 2001-2018), he or she would have laughed in your face. And yet here we are, approaching the mark for one of Europe's longest, most brutal struggles, the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century. Imagine that. ..."
"... raison d'être ..."
"... Afganistan is the graveyard of poor empires. It's the playground of the rich American empire, a place to test weapons, test men, gain battle experience, get promotions, and generally keep the military-industrial complex in top health. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. ..."
"... As shown in this article there is a very interesting connection between growing wealth inequality in the United States and American wars: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-american-wars-lead-to-increased.html ..."
"... it's not a war; it's an occupation. More cops get killed/wounded in USA proper then military personnel in that "war". 2017, 46 U.S. police officers were killed by felons in the line of duty; 17 military personnel in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Yes , the US military industrial complex is rich and in top health as you say , but what I see is that the health of the US as a whole , physical and mental , is going down in the last 50 years . Maybe the metastasis of the " healthy " military cancer are killing the American host . ..."
Fair warning. Stop reading right now if you want, because I'm going to repeat
myself. What choice do I have, since my subject is the Afghan War (America's
second Afghan War, no less)? I
began writing about that war in October 2001, almost 17 years ago, just
after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. That was how I inadvertently launched
the unnamed listserv that would, a year later, become TomDispatch .
Given the website's continuing focus on America's forever wars (a phrase I first
used in
2010 ), what choice have I had but to write about Afghanistan ever since?
So think of this as the war piece to end all war pieces. And let the repetition
begin!
Here, for instance, is what I
wrote about our Afghan War in 2008, almost seven years after it began, when
the U.S. Air Force took out a bridal party, including the bride herself and
at least 26 other women and children en route to an Afghan wedding. And that
would be just one of eight U.S. wedding strikes I
toted up by the end of 2013 in three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen,
that killed almost 300 potential revelers. "We have become a nation of wedding
crashers," I wrote, "the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses,
tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home."
Here's what I
wrote about Afghanistan in 2009, while considering the metrics of "a war
gone to hell": "While Americans argue feverishly and angrily over what kind
of money, if any, to put into health care, or decaying infrastructure, or other
key places of need, until recently just about no one in the mainstream raised
a peep about the fact that, for nearly eight years (not to say much of the last
three decades), we've been pouring billions of dollars, American military know-how,
and American lives into a black hole in Afghanistan that is, at least in significant
part, of our own creation."
Here's what I
wrote in 2010, thinking about how "forever war" had entered the bloodstream
of the twenty-first-century U.S. military (in a passage in which you'll notice
a name that became more familiar in the Trump era): "And let's not leave out
the Army's incessant planning for the distant future embodied in a recently
published report, 'Operating Concept, 2016-2028,' overseen by Brigadier General
H.R. McMaster, a senior adviser to Gen. David Petraeus. It opts to ditch 'Buck
Rogers' visions of futuristic war, and instead to imagine counterinsurgency
operations, grimly referred to as 'wars of exhaustion,' in one, two, many Afghanistans
to the distant horizon."
Here's what I
wrote in 2012, when Afghanistan had superseded Vietnam as the longest war
in American history: "Washington has gotten itself into a situation on the Eurasian
mainland so vexing and perplexing that Vietnam has finally been left in the
dust. In fact, if you hadn't noticed -- and weirdly enough no one has -- that
former war finally seems to have all but vanished."
Here's what I
wrote in 2015, thinking about the American taxpayer dollars that had, in
the preceding years, gone into Afghan "roads to nowhere, ghost soldiers, and
a $43 million gas station" built in the middle of nowhere, rather than into
this country: "Clearly, Washington had gone to war like a drunk on a bender,
while the domestic infrastructure began to fray. At $109 billion by 2014, the
American reconstruction program in Afghanistan was already, in today's dollars,
larger than the Marshall Plan (which helped put all of devastated Western Europe
back on its feet after World War II) and still the country was a shambles."
And here's what I
wrote last year thinking about the nature of our never-ending war there:
"Right now, Washington is whistling past the graveyard. In Afghanistan and Pakistan
the question is no longer whether the U.S. is in command, but whether it can
get out in time. If not, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Indians,
who exactly will ride to our rescue? Perhaps it would be more prudent to stop
hanging out in graveyards. They are, after all, meant for burials, not resurrections."
And that's just to dip a toe into my writings on America's all-time most
never-ending war.
What Happened After History Ended
... ... ...
In reality, when it comes to America's
spreading wars , especially the one in Afghanistan, history didn't end at
all. It just stumbled onto some graveyard version of a Möbius strip. In contrast
to the past empires that found they ultimately couldn't defeat Afghanistan's
insurgent tribal warriors, the U.S. has -- as Bush administration officials
suspected at the time -- proven unique. Just not in the way they imagined.
Their dreams couldn't have been more ambitious. As they launched the invasion
of Afghanistan, they were already looking past the triumph to come to Saddam
Hussein's Iraq and the glories that would follow once his regime had been "decapitated,"
once U.S. forces, the most technologically advanced ever, were
stationed for an eternity in the heart of the oil heartlands of the Greater
Middle East. Not that anyone remembers anymore, but Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and the rest of that crew of geopolitical dreamers
wanted it all.
What they got was no less unique in history: a great power at the seeming
height of its strength and glory, with destructive capabilities beyond imagining
and a military unmatched on the planet, unable to score a single decisive victory
across an increasingly large swath of the planet or impose its will, however
brutally, on seemingly far weaker, less well-armed opponents. They could not
conquer, subdue, control, pacify, or win the hearts and minds or anything else
of enemies who often fought their
trillion-dollar foe using weaponry valued at the
price
of a pizza . Talk about bleeding wounds!
A War of Abysmal Repetition
Thought of another way, the U.S. military is now heading into record
territory in Afghanistan. In the mid-1970s, the rare American who had heard
of that country knew it only as a stop on the
hippie trail . If you had then told anyone here that, by 2018, the U.S.
would have been at war there for 27 years (
1979-1989 and 2001-2018), he or she would have laughed in your face. And
yet here we are, approaching the mark for one of Europe's longest, most brutal
struggles, the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century. Imagine that.
... ... ...
Almost 17 years and, coincidentally enough,
17 U.S. commanders later, think of it as a war of abysmal repetition. Just
about everything in the U.S. manual of military tactics has evidently been tried
(including dropping "the mother of all bombs," the
largest non-nuclear munition in that military's arsenal), often time and
again, and nothing has even faintly done the trick -- to which the Pentagon's
response is invariably a version of the classic
misquoted
movie line, "Play it again, Sam."
And yet, amid all that repetition,
people are
still dying ; Afghans and others are being
uprooted and
displaced across Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and deep into Africa;
wars and terror outfits are spreading. And here's a simple enough fact that's
worth repeating: the endless, painfully ignored failure of the U.S. military
(and civilian) effort in Afghanistan is where it all began and where it seems
never to end.
A Victory for Whom?
Every now and then, there's the odd bit of news that reminds you we don't
have to be in a world of repetition. Every now and then, you see something and
wonder whether it might not represent a new development, one that possibly could
lead out of (or far deeper into) the graveyard of empires.
As a start, though it's been easy to forget in these years, other countries
are affected by the ongoing disaster of a war in Afghanistan. Think, for instance,
of Pakistan (with a newly elected, somewhat
Trumpian president who has been a
critic of America's Afghan War and of U.S. drone strikes in his country),
Iran, China, and Russia. So here's something I can't remember seeing in the
news before: the military intelligence chiefs of those four countries all
met recently in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, officially to discuss
the growth of Islamic State-branded insurgents in Afghanistan. But who knows
what was really being discussed? And the same applies to the
visit of Iran's armed forces chief of staff to Pakistan in July and the
return visit of that country's chief of staff to Iran in early August. I
can't tell you what's going on, only that these are not the typically repetitive
stories of the last 17 years.
And hard as it might be to believe, even when it comes to U.S. policy, there's
been the odd headline that might pass for new. Take the recent private, direct
talks with the Taliban in Qatar's capital, Doha,
initiated by the Trump administration and seemingly ongoing. They might
-- or
might not -- represent
something new , as might President Trump himself, who, as far as anyone
can tell, doesn't think that Afghanistan is "
the right war ." He has, from time to time, even indicated that he might
be in favor of ending the American role, of "
getting the hell out of there," as he reportedly told Senator Rand Paul,
and that's unique in itself (though he and his advisers seem to be raring to
go when it comes to what could be the next Afghanistan:
Iran ).
But should the man who would never want to be known as the president who
lost the longest war in American history try to follow through on a withdrawal
plan, he's likely to have a few problems on his hands. Above all, the Pentagon
and the country's field commanders seem to be hooked on America's "
infinite " wars. They exhibit not the slightest urge to stop them. The Afghan
War and the others that have flowed from it represent both their raison
d'être and their meal ticket. They represent the only thing the U.S. military
knows how to do in this century. And one thing is guaranteed: if they don't
agree with the president on a withdrawal strategy, they have the power and ability
to make a man who would do anything to avoid marring his own image as a winnner
look worse than you could possibly imagine. Despite that military's supposedly
apolitical role in this country's affairs, its leaders are uniquely capable
of blocking any attempt to end the Afghan War.
And with that in mind, almost 17 years later, don't think that victory is
out of the question either. Every day that the U.S. military stays in Afghanistan
is indeed a victory for well, not George W. Bush, or Barack Obama, and certainly
not Donald Trump, but the now long-dead Osama bin Laden. The calculation couldn't
be simpler. Thanks to his "
precision" weaponry -- those 19 suicidal hijackers in commercial jets --
the nearly 17 years of wars he's sparked across much of the Muslim world cost
a man from one of Saudi Arabia's
wealthiest families a mere
$400,000 to $500,000 . They've cost American taxpayers, minimally,
$5.6 trillion dollars with no end in sight. And every day the Afghan War
and the others that have followed from it continue is but another triumphant
day for him and his followers.
A sad footnote to this history of extreme repetition: I wish this essay,
as its title suggests, were indeed the war piece to end all war pieces. Unfortunately,
it's a reasonable bet that, in August 2019, or August 2020, not to speak of
August 2021, I'll be repeating all of this yet again.
Afganistan is the graveyard of poor empires. It's the playground
of the rich American empire, a place to test weapons, test men, gain
battle experience, get promotions, and generally keep the military-industrial
complex in top health. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.
All very human. If America wasn't doing it, somebody else would.
Its all about pipelines, rare-earth elements and drug money for CIA black
ops.
15 years of American efforts to suppress opium growing and the heroin
trade in that country (at historic lows, by the way, when the U.S. invaded
in 2001).
And many record harvests after the US invasion.
' In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can
bet it was planned that way ' Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Unless Washington shifts from a program of funding wars by deficit financing
to funding wars through direct taxation, wars being fought by the United
States will continue to contribute to America's growing income inequality.
About the only thing I take away from this insufferably droll, repetitive
piece on America at war forever, is how powerless the both the writer and
the reader are. All we can do is read these depressing articles which remind
us of a war we can do absolutely nothing about. Very shitty and depressing,
just like USA!
Pretty much. Besides, it's not a war; it's an occupation. More cops
get killed/wounded in USA proper then military personnel in that "war".
2017, 46 U.S. police officers were killed by felons in the line of duty;
17 military personnel in Afghanistan.
The article's point/issue is simply overblown. That's why people don't
pay attention to it.
BS; it's an alien invasion = Nuremberg-class war crime.
More cops get killed/wounded in USA proper
This looks very much like the "tu quoque" or the appeal to hypocrisy
fallacy plus 'oranges vs. apples.' What the good US-burghers do in their
own country is entirely their business, and IF it looks like they act like
antediluvian neanderthal savages [a direct result of their risible 'education'
+ night & day TV, perhaps] THEN tough luck for the cops. It probably doesn't
help that the US-cops are just as much free with the lead as their oppressed
subjects. And don't think that the same sort of savagery won't impact someone
near you; a quick glance into abc.net.au/news/justin reveals horrendous
'social situations,' like bodies in barrels, say, or aggravated home invasions,
etc., also caused by defective education plus importing 'cheap' labour.
That's why people don't pay attention to it
More BS; the sheeple ignore US/Z aggression everywhere it occurs because
the corrupt&venal MSM+PFBCs [= publicly financed broadcasters, like the
AusBC] sell the powerless population pups = the sheeple get actively, deliberately
brainwashed [cf. Lügenpresse ]. Apologists for [here terrorist] criminals
make themselves accessories = assign themselves guilt and should be punished
after being tried & found so guilty.
" The U.S. has spent 25 trillion since the Vietnam War, what do they
have to show for it? " Jack Ma Ali Baba
" The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept the majority of people
from ever questioning the inequity of a private for profit fraudulent banking
system where most people drudge along, paying heavey taxes for which they
get nothing in return." Gore Vidal
(War) "It's something we do all the time because we're good at it. And
we're good at it because we're used to it. And we're used to it because
we do it all the time." Sergeant Michael Dunne played by Paul Gross in Passchendaele
the Movie
I'm not sure, but I don't think we are good at it anymore. But it appears
to me that the Russians, Iranians, Syrians and Houthi's are and that really
scares us. But it does make a lot of money for some people, careers for
others and the MSM loves it for the ratings and avoiding telling the truth.
Your opening photo is of two of the dumbest son-of-a-bitches to ever
hold the office of President of The United States. Indicative of the shit
slide this country is on.
"Afghans and others are being uprooted and displaced across Asia,
South Asia, the Middle East, and deep into Africa ."
So the strategy is to depopulate the country of its indigenous peoples
until "we" outnumber them? Never mind the damage these re-settled folks
are doing to Western Europe, not to mention other places.
.generally keep the military-industrial complex in top health
Yes , the US military industrial complex is rich and in top health
as you say , but what I see is that the health of the US as a whole , physical
and mental , is going down in the last 50 years . Maybe the metastasis of
the " healthy " military cancer are killing the American host .
The same happened to most of the empires , got drunk on blood and fell
.
This is partially incorrect view on Trump foreign policy. At the center of
which is careful retreat for enormous expenses of keeping the global neoliberal
empire, plus military Keyseanism to revive the us economy. Which means
tremendous pressure of arm sales as the only way to improve trade balance.
NATO was always an instrument of the USA hegemony,
so Trump behavior is perfectly compatible with this view -- he just downgraded vassals
refusing usual formal respect for them, as they do no represent independent nations.
That's why he addressed them with the contempt. He aptly remarked that German stance
of relying on Russia hydrocarbons and still claiming the it needs the USA defense
is pure hypocrisy. On the other side china, Russia and North Korea can't be considered
the USA vassals.
China is completely dependent on the USA for advanced technologies so their
dreams of becoming the world hegemon is such exist are premature.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington's dominance over the world economy had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive edge. ..."
"... By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed "populist" Donald Trump to power. ..."
"... Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus. ..."
"... On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent. ..."
"... Instead of reigning confidently over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy, Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests. ..."
"... Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed) advantage of the United States. ..."
"... As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous world, filled with a wide range of threats." ..."
"... Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation for Washington's global power since the 1950s ..."
"... Donald Trump acted more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. ..."
"... Beijing's low-cost infrastructure loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding construction of the Mediterranean's busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England, a $6 billion railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70% percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market without peer on the planet. ..."
"... In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters opened by global warming, Beijing began planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious Russian and Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's northern coast to Europe. ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. ..."
"... In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every successful empire," observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate states and their leaders. ..."
"... China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters, not 26 letters. ..."
"... During Japan's occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed to propagate their similarly particularistic culture. ..."
"... A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful effect." ..."
...Although they started this century on generally amicable terms, China
and the U.S. have, in recent years, moved toward military competition and open
economic conflict. When China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 2001, Washington was confident that Beijing would play by the established
rules and become a compliant member of an American-led international community.
There was almost
no awareness of what might happen when a fifth of humanity joined the world
system as an economic equal for the first time in five centuries.
By the time Xi Jinping became China's seventh president, a decade of rapid
economic growth averaging 11% annually and currency reserves surging toward
an unprecedented $4 trillion had created the economic potential for a rapid,
radical shift in the global balance of power. After just a few months in office,
Xi began tapping those vast reserves to launch a bold geopolitical gambit, a
genuine challenge to U.S. dominion over Eurasia and the world beyond. Aglow
in its status as the world's sole superpower after "winning" the Cold War, Washington
had difficulty at first even grasping such newly developing global realities
and was slow to react.
China's bid couldn't have been more fortuitous in its timing. After nearly
70 years as the globe's hegemon, Washington's dominance over the world economy
had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive
edge.
By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization
that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in
democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed
"populist" Donald Trump to power.
Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive
and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both
Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus.
Within months of Trump's entry into the Oval Office, the world was already
witnessing a sharp rivalry between Xi's advocacy of a new form of global collaboration
and Trump's version of economic nationalism. In the process, humanity seems
to be entering a rare historical moment when national leadership and global
circumstances have coincided to create an opening for a major shift in the nature
of the world order.
Trump's Disruptive Foreign Policy
Despite their constant
criticism of Donald Trump's leadership, few among Washington's corps of
foreign policy experts have grasped his full impact on the historic foundations
of American global power. The world order that Washington built after World
War II rested upon what I've
called a "delicate duality": an American imperium of raw military and economic
power married to a community of sovereign nations, equal under the rule of law
and governed through international institutions such as the United Nations and
the World Trade Organization.
On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier
apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a
global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on
hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first
power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent.
Even after the Cold War ended, former national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski
warned that Washington would remain the world's preeminent power only as
long as it maintained its geopolitical dominion over Eurasia. In the decade
before Trump's election, there were, however, already signs that America's hegemony
was on a downward trajectory as its share of global economic power fell from
50% in 1950 to just
15% in 2017. Many financial forecasts now
project that China will surpass the U.S. as the world's number one economy
by 2030, if not before.
In this era of decline, there has emerged from President Trump's torrent
of tweets and off-the-cuff remarks a surprisingly coherent and grim vision of
America's place in the present world order. Instead of reigning confidently
over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy,
Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly
troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal
trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by
self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests.
Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed)
advantage of the United States. In place of the usual democratic allies
like Canada and Germany, he is trying to weave a web of personal ties to avowedly
nationalist and autocratic leaders of a sort he clearly admires: Vladimir Putin
in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Adel Fatah el-Sisi
in Egypt, and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Instead of old alliances like NATO, Trump favors loose coalitions of like-minded
countries. As he sees it, a resurgent America will carry the world along, while
crushing terrorists and dealing in uniquely personal ways with rogue states
like Iran and North Korea.
His version of a foreign policy has found its fullest
statement in his administration's December 2017 National Security Strategy.
As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous
world, filled with a wide range of threats." But in less than a year of his
leadership, it insisted, "We have renewed our friendships in the Middle East
to help drive out terrorists and extremists America's allies are now contributing
more to our common defense, strengthening even our strongest alliances." Humankind
will benefit from the president's "beautiful vision" that "puts America First"
and promotes "a balance of power that favors the United States." The whole world
will, in short, be "lifted by America's renewal."
Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips
has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly
by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation
for Washington's global power since the 1950s. During the president's first
foreign trip in May 2017, he promptly
voiced withering complaints about the supposed refusal of Washington's European
allies to pay their "fair share" of NATO's military costs, leaving the U.S.
stuck with the bill and, in a fashion unknown to American presidents, refused
even to endorse the alliance's core principle of collective defense. It was
a position so extreme in terms of the global politics of the previous half-century
that he was later forced to formally
back down . (By then, however, he had registered his contempt for those
allies in an unforgettable fashion.)
During a second, no-less-divisive NATO visit in July, he charged that
Germany was "a captive of Russia" and pressed the allies to immediately
double their share of defense spending to a staggering 4% of gross domestic
product (a
level even Washington, with its monumental Pentagon budget, hasn't reached)
-- a demand they all ignored. Just days later, he again questioned the very
idea of a common defense,
remarking that if "tiny" NATO ally Montenegro decided to "get aggressive,"
then "congratulations, you're in World War III."
Moving on to England, he promptly kneecapped close ally Theresa May, telling
a British
tabloid that the prime minister had bungled her country's Brexit withdrawal
from the European Union and "killed off any chance of a vital U.S. trade deal."
He then went on to Helsinki for a summit with Vladimir Putin, where he visibly
abased himself before NATO's nominal nemesis, completely enough that there were
even brief, angry
protests
from leaders of his own party.
During Trump's major Asia tour in November 2017, he
addressed the Asian-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) in Vietnam, offering
an extended "tirade" against multilateral trade agreements, particularly the
WTO. To counter intolerable "trade abuses," such as "product dumping, subsidized
goods, currency manipulation, and predatory industrial policies," he swore that
he would always "put America first" and not let it "be taken advantage of anymore."
Having denounced a litany of trade violations that he termed nothing less than
"economic aggression" against America, he
invited everyone there to share his "Indo-Pacific dream" of the world as
a "beautiful constellation" of "strong, sovereign, and independent nations,"
each working like the United States to build "wealth and freedom."
Responding to such a display of narrow economic nationalism from the globe's
leading power, Xi Jinping had a perfect opportunity to play the world statesman
and he took it,
calling upon APEC to support an economic order that is "more open, inclusive,
and balanced." He spoke of China's future economic plans as an historic bid
for "interconnected development to achieve common prosperity on the Asian, European,
and African continents."
As China has lifted 60 million of its own people out of poverty in just a
few years and was committed to its complete eradication by 2020, so he urged
a more equitable world order "to bring the benefits of development to countries
across the globe." For its part, China, he assured his listeners, was ready
to make "$2 trillion of outbound investment" -- much of it for the development
of Eurasia and Africa (in ways, of course, that would link that vast region
more closely to China). In other words, he sounded like a twenty-first century
Chinese version of a twentieth-century American president, while Donald
Trump
acted
more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. As
if to put another nail in the coffin of American global dominion, the remaining
11 Trans-Pacific trade pact partners, led by Japan and Canada,
announced major progress in finalizing that agreement -- without the United
States.
In addition to undermining NATO, America's Pacific alliances, long its historic
fulcrum for the defense of North America and the dominance of Asia, are eroding,
too. Even after 10 personal meetings and frequent phone calls between Japan's
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump during his first 18 months in office,
the president's America First trade policy has
placed a "major strain" on Washington's most crucial alliance in the region.
First, he ignored Abe's
pleas and cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and then, as
if his message hadn't been strong enough, he promptly imposed heavy
tariffs on Japanese steel imports. Similarly, he's
denounced the Canadian prime minister as "dishonest" and
mimicked Indian Prime Minister Modi's accent, even as he made chummy with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and then
claimed ,
inaccurately , that his country was "no longer a nuclear threat."
It all adds up to a formula for further decline at a faster pace.
Beijing's Grand Strategy
While Washington's influence in Asia recedes, Beijing's grows ever stronger.
As China's currency reserves
climbed rapidly from $200 billion in 2001 to a peak of $4 trillion in 2014,
President Xi launched a new initiative of historic import. In September 2013,
speaking in Kazakhstan, the heart of Asia's ancient Silk Road caravan route,
he
proclaimed a "one belt, one road initiative" aimed at economically integrating
the enormous Eurasian land mass around Beijing's leadership. Through "unimpeded
trade" and infrastructure investment, he suggested, it would be possible to
connect "the Pacific and the Baltic Sea" in a proposed "economic belt along
the Silk Road," a region "inhabited by close to 3 billion people." It could
become, he predicted, "the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential."
Within a year, Beijing had
established a Chinese-dominated Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank
with 56 member nations and an impressive $100 billion in capital, while launching
its own $40 billion Silk Road Fund for
private equity projects. When China convened what it called a "belt and
road summit" of 28 world leaders in Beijing in May 2017, Xi could, with good
reason,
hail his initiative as the "project of the century."
Although the U.S. media has often described the individual projects involved
in his "one belt, one road" project as
wasteful ,
sybaritic ,
exploitative , or even
neo-colonial , its sheer scale and scope merits closer consideration. Beijing
is expected to
put a mind-boggling $1.3 trillion into the initiative by 2027, the largest
investment in human history, more than 10 times the famed American Marshall
Plan, the only comparable program, which
spent a more modest $110 billion (when adjusted for inflation) to rebuild
a ravaged Europe after World War II.
Beijing's low-cost infrastructure
loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding
construction of the Mediterranean's
busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England,
a $6 billion
railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport
corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments
could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70%
percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market
without peer on the planet.
Underlying this flurry of flying dirt and flowing concrete, the Chinese leadership
seems to have a design for transcending the vast distances that have historically
separated Asia from Europe. As a start, Beijing is building a comprehensive
network of trans-continental gas and oil pipelines to import fuels from Siberia
and Central Asia for its own population centers. When the system is complete,
there will be an integrated inland energy grid (including Russia's extensive
network of pipelines) that will extend 6,000 miles across Eurasia, from the
North Atlantic to the South China Sea. Next, Beijing is working to link Europe's
extensive rail network with its own expanded high-speed rail system via transcontinental
lines through Central Asia, supplemented by spur lines running due south to
Singapore and southwest through Pakistan.
Finally, to facilitate sea transport around the sprawling continent's southern
rim, China has already bought into or is in the process of building more than
30 major port facilities, stretching from the Straits of Malacca across
the Indian Ocean, around Africa, and along
Europe's extended coastline. In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters
opened by global warming, Beijing began
planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious
Russian and
Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's
northern coast to Europe.
Though Eurasia is its prime focus, China is also pursuing economic expansion
in Africa and Latin America to create what might be dubbed the strategy of the
four continents. To tie Africa into its projected Eurasian network, Beijing
already had doubled its
annual trade there by 2015 to $222 billion, three times that of the United
States, thanks to a massive infusion of capital expected to reach a trillion
dollars by 2025. Much of it is financing the sort of commodities extraction
that has already made the continent China's second largest source of crude oil.
Similarly, Beijing has
invested heavily in Latin America, acquiring, for instance, control over
90% of Ecuador's oil reserves. As a result, its commerce with that continent
doubled in a decade, reaching $244 billion in 2017, topping U.S. trade with
what once was known as its own "backyard."
A Conflict with Consequences
This contest between Xi's globalism and Trump's nationalism has not been
safely confined to an innocuous marketplace of ideas. Over the past four years,
the two powers have engaged in an escalating military rivalry and a cutthroat
commercial competition. Apart from a
shadowy struggle for
dominance in space and cyberspace, there has also been a visible, potentially
volatile naval arms race to control the sea lanes surrounding Asia, specifically
in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. In a 2015 white paper, Beijing
stated
that "it is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force
structure commensurate with its national security." Backed by lethal land-based
missiles, jet fighters, and a global satellite system, China has built just
such a modernized fleet of 320 ships, including nuclear submarines and its first
aircraft carriers.
Within two years, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson
reported
that China's "growing and modernized fleet" was "shrinking" the traditional
American advantage in the Pacific, and warned that "we must shake off any vestiges
of comfort or complacency." Under Trump's latest $700-billion-plus defense budget,
Washington has responded to this challenge with a crash program to build 46
new ships, which will
raise its total to 326 by 2023. As China builds new naval bases bristling
with armaments in the Arabian and South China seas, the U.S. Navy has begun
conducting assertive "freedom-of-navigation" patrols near many of those same
installations, heightening the potential for conflict.
It is in the commercial realm of trade and tariffs, however, where competition
has segued into overt conflict. Acting on his
belief that "trade wars are good and easy to win," President Trump
slapped heavy tariffs, targeted above all at China, on steel imports in
March and, just a few weeks later, punished that country's intellectual property
theft by
promising tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports. When those tariffs
finally hit in July, China immediately
retaliated against what it called "typical trade bullying" with similar
tariffs on U.S. goods. The Financial Times
warned that this "tit-for-tat" can escalate into a "full bore trade war
that will be very bad for the global economy." As Trump
threatened to tax $500 billion more in Chinese imports and
issued confusing, even contradictory demands that made it unlikely Beijing
could ever comply, observers became
concerned that a long-lasting trade war could destabilize what the New
York Times called the "mountain of debt" that sustains much of China's
economy. In Washington, the usually taciturn Federal Reserve chairman issued
an uncommon
warning that "trade tensions could pose serious risks to the U.S. and global
economy."
China as Global Hegemon?
Although a withering of Washington's global reach, abetted and possibly accelerated
by the Trump presidency, is already underway, the shape of any future world
order is still anything but clear. At present, China is the sole state with
the obvious requisites for becoming the planet's new hegemon. Its phenomenal
economic rise, coupled with its expanding military and growing technological
prowess, provide that country with the obvious fundamentals for superpower status.
Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement
of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. Apart
from its rising economic and military clout, China, like its sometime ally Russia,
has a self-referential culture, non-democratic political structures, and a developing
legal system that could deny it some of the key instruments for global leadership.
In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every
successful empire,"
observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate
a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate
states and their leaders. Successful imperial transitions driven by the
hard power of guns and money also require the soft-power salve of cultural suasion
for sustained and successful global dominion. Spain espoused Catholicism and
Hispanism, the Ottomans Islam, the Soviets communism, France a cultural
francophonie , and Britain an Anglophone culture.
Indeed, during its century of global dominion from 1850 to 1940, Britain
was the exemplar par excellence of such soft power, evincing an enticing
cultural ethos of fair play and free markets that it propagated through the
Anglican church, the English language and its literature, and the virtual invention
of modern athletics (cricket, soccer, tennis, rugby, and rowing). Similarly,
at the dawn of its global dominion, the United States courted allies worldwide
through soft-power programs promoting democracy and development. These were
made all the more palatable by the appeal of such things as Hollywood films,
civic organizations like
Rotary International , and popular sports like basketball and baseball.
China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters,
not 26 letters. Its communist ideology and popular culture are remarkably, even
avowedly, particularistic. And you don't have to look far for another Asian
power that attempted Pacific dominion without the salve of soft power. During
Japan's
occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being
hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed
to propagate their similarly particularistic culture.
As command-economy states for much of the past century, neither China nor
Russia developed an independent judiciary or the autonomous rules-based order
that undergirds the modern international system. From the foundation of the
Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1899 through the formation of
the International Court of Justice under the U.N.'s 1945 charter, the world's
nations have aspired to the resolution of conflicts via arbitration or litigation
rather than armed conflict. More broadly, the modern globalized economy is held
together by a web of conventions, treaties, patents, and contracts grounded
in law.
From its founding in 1949, the People's Republic of China gave primacy to
the party and state, slowing the growth of an autonomous legal system and the
rule of law. A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance
came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague
ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China
Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful
effect." Beijing's Foreign Ministry simply
dismissed the adverse decision as "invalid" and without "binding force."
President Xi
insisted China's "territorial sovereignty and maritime rights" were unchanged,
while the state Xinhua news agency
called the ruling "naturally null and void."
If Donald Trump's vision of world disorder is a sign of the American future
and if Beijing's projected $2 trillion in infrastructure investments, history's
largest by far, succeed in unifying the commerce and transport of Asia, Africa,
and Europe, then perhaps the currents of financial power and global leadership
will indeed transcend all barriers and flow inexorably toward Beijing, as if
by natural law. But if that bold initiative ultimately fails, then for the first
time in five centuries the world may face an imperial transition without a clear
successor as global hegemon. Moreover, it will do so on a planet where the "
new normal " of
climate change -- the heating of the atmosphere and the
oceans , the intensification of flood, drought, and
fire , the rising seas that will
devastate coastal cities, and the
cascading damage to a densely populated world -- could mean that the very
idea of a global hegemon is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Alfred W. McCoy, a
TomDispatch regular , is the Harrington professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity
in the Global Drug Trade , the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture
of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years, and the recently published
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global
Power (Dispatch Books).
This is partially incorrect view on Trump foreign policy. At the center of
which is careful retreat for enormous expenses of keeping the global neoliberal
empire, plus military Keyseanism to revive the us economy. Which means
tremendous pressure of arm sales as the only way to improve trade balance.
NATO was always an instrument of the USA hegemony,
so Trump behavior is perfectly compatible with this view -- he just downgraded vassals
refusing usual formal respect for them, as they do no represent independent nations.
That's why he addressed them with the contempt. He aptly remarked that German stance
of relying on Russia hydrocarbons and still claiming the it needs the USA defense
is pure hypocrisy. On the other side china, Russia and North Korea can't be considered
the USA vassals.
China is completely dependent on the USA for advanced technologies so their
dreams of becoming the world hegemon is such exist are premature.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington's dominance over the world economy had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive edge. ..."
"... By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed "populist" Donald Trump to power. ..."
"... Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus. ..."
"... On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent. ..."
"... Instead of reigning confidently over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy, Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests. ..."
"... Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed) advantage of the United States. ..."
"... As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous world, filled with a wide range of threats." ..."
"... Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation for Washington's global power since the 1950s ..."
"... Donald Trump acted more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. ..."
"... Beijing's low-cost infrastructure loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding construction of the Mediterranean's busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England, a $6 billion railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70% percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market without peer on the planet. ..."
"... In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters opened by global warming, Beijing began planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious Russian and Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's northern coast to Europe. ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. ..."
"... In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every successful empire," observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate states and their leaders. ..."
"... China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters, not 26 letters. ..."
"... During Japan's occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed to propagate their similarly particularistic culture. ..."
"... A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful effect." ..."
...Although they started this century on generally amicable terms, China
and the U.S. have, in recent years, moved toward military competition and open
economic conflict. When China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 2001, Washington was confident that Beijing would play by the established
rules and become a compliant member of an American-led international community.
There was almost
no awareness of what might happen when a fifth of humanity joined the world
system as an economic equal for the first time in five centuries.
By the time Xi Jinping became China's seventh president, a decade of rapid
economic growth averaging 11% annually and currency reserves surging toward
an unprecedented $4 trillion had created the economic potential for a rapid,
radical shift in the global balance of power. After just a few months in office,
Xi began tapping those vast reserves to launch a bold geopolitical gambit, a
genuine challenge to U.S. dominion over Eurasia and the world beyond. Aglow
in its status as the world's sole superpower after "winning" the Cold War, Washington
had difficulty at first even grasping such newly developing global realities
and was slow to react.
China's bid couldn't have been more fortuitous in its timing. After nearly
70 years as the globe's hegemon, Washington's dominance over the world economy
had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive
edge.
By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization
that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in
democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed
"populist" Donald Trump to power.
Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive
and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both
Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus.
Within months of Trump's entry into the Oval Office, the world was already
witnessing a sharp rivalry between Xi's advocacy of a new form of global collaboration
and Trump's version of economic nationalism. In the process, humanity seems
to be entering a rare historical moment when national leadership and global
circumstances have coincided to create an opening for a major shift in the nature
of the world order.
Trump's Disruptive Foreign Policy
Despite their constant
criticism of Donald Trump's leadership, few among Washington's corps of
foreign policy experts have grasped his full impact on the historic foundations
of American global power. The world order that Washington built after World
War II rested upon what I've
called a "delicate duality": an American imperium of raw military and economic
power married to a community of sovereign nations, equal under the rule of law
and governed through international institutions such as the United Nations and
the World Trade Organization.
On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier
apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a
global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on
hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first
power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent.
Even after the Cold War ended, former national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski
warned that Washington would remain the world's preeminent power only as
long as it maintained its geopolitical dominion over Eurasia. In the decade
before Trump's election, there were, however, already signs that America's hegemony
was on a downward trajectory as its share of global economic power fell from
50% in 1950 to just
15% in 2017. Many financial forecasts now
project that China will surpass the U.S. as the world's number one economy
by 2030, if not before.
In this era of decline, there has emerged from President Trump's torrent
of tweets and off-the-cuff remarks a surprisingly coherent and grim vision of
America's place in the present world order. Instead of reigning confidently
over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy,
Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly
troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal
trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by
self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests.
Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed)
advantage of the United States. In place of the usual democratic allies
like Canada and Germany, he is trying to weave a web of personal ties to avowedly
nationalist and autocratic leaders of a sort he clearly admires: Vladimir Putin
in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Adel Fatah el-Sisi
in Egypt, and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Instead of old alliances like NATO, Trump favors loose coalitions of like-minded
countries. As he sees it, a resurgent America will carry the world along, while
crushing terrorists and dealing in uniquely personal ways with rogue states
like Iran and North Korea.
His version of a foreign policy has found its fullest
statement in his administration's December 2017 National Security Strategy.
As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous
world, filled with a wide range of threats." But in less than a year of his
leadership, it insisted, "We have renewed our friendships in the Middle East
to help drive out terrorists and extremists America's allies are now contributing
more to our common defense, strengthening even our strongest alliances." Humankind
will benefit from the president's "beautiful vision" that "puts America First"
and promotes "a balance of power that favors the United States." The whole world
will, in short, be "lifted by America's renewal."
Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips
has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly
by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation
for Washington's global power since the 1950s. During the president's first
foreign trip in May 2017, he promptly
voiced withering complaints about the supposed refusal of Washington's European
allies to pay their "fair share" of NATO's military costs, leaving the U.S.
stuck with the bill and, in a fashion unknown to American presidents, refused
even to endorse the alliance's core principle of collective defense. It was
a position so extreme in terms of the global politics of the previous half-century
that he was later forced to formally
back down . (By then, however, he had registered his contempt for those
allies in an unforgettable fashion.)
During a second, no-less-divisive NATO visit in July, he charged that
Germany was "a captive of Russia" and pressed the allies to immediately
double their share of defense spending to a staggering 4% of gross domestic
product (a
level even Washington, with its monumental Pentagon budget, hasn't reached)
-- a demand they all ignored. Just days later, he again questioned the very
idea of a common defense,
remarking that if "tiny" NATO ally Montenegro decided to "get aggressive,"
then "congratulations, you're in World War III."
Moving on to England, he promptly kneecapped close ally Theresa May, telling
a British
tabloid that the prime minister had bungled her country's Brexit withdrawal
from the European Union and "killed off any chance of a vital U.S. trade deal."
He then went on to Helsinki for a summit with Vladimir Putin, where he visibly
abased himself before NATO's nominal nemesis, completely enough that there were
even brief, angry
protests
from leaders of his own party.
During Trump's major Asia tour in November 2017, he
addressed the Asian-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) in Vietnam, offering
an extended "tirade" against multilateral trade agreements, particularly the
WTO. To counter intolerable "trade abuses," such as "product dumping, subsidized
goods, currency manipulation, and predatory industrial policies," he swore that
he would always "put America first" and not let it "be taken advantage of anymore."
Having denounced a litany of trade violations that he termed nothing less than
"economic aggression" against America, he
invited everyone there to share his "Indo-Pacific dream" of the world as
a "beautiful constellation" of "strong, sovereign, and independent nations,"
each working like the United States to build "wealth and freedom."
Responding to such a display of narrow economic nationalism from the globe's
leading power, Xi Jinping had a perfect opportunity to play the world statesman
and he took it,
calling upon APEC to support an economic order that is "more open, inclusive,
and balanced." He spoke of China's future economic plans as an historic bid
for "interconnected development to achieve common prosperity on the Asian, European,
and African continents."
As China has lifted 60 million of its own people out of poverty in just a
few years and was committed to its complete eradication by 2020, so he urged
a more equitable world order "to bring the benefits of development to countries
across the globe." For its part, China, he assured his listeners, was ready
to make "$2 trillion of outbound investment" -- much of it for the development
of Eurasia and Africa (in ways, of course, that would link that vast region
more closely to China). In other words, he sounded like a twenty-first century
Chinese version of a twentieth-century American president, while Donald
Trump
acted
more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. As
if to put another nail in the coffin of American global dominion, the remaining
11 Trans-Pacific trade pact partners, led by Japan and Canada,
announced major progress in finalizing that agreement -- without the United
States.
In addition to undermining NATO, America's Pacific alliances, long its historic
fulcrum for the defense of North America and the dominance of Asia, are eroding,
too. Even after 10 personal meetings and frequent phone calls between Japan's
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump during his first 18 months in office,
the president's America First trade policy has
placed a "major strain" on Washington's most crucial alliance in the region.
First, he ignored Abe's
pleas and cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and then, as
if his message hadn't been strong enough, he promptly imposed heavy
tariffs on Japanese steel imports. Similarly, he's
denounced the Canadian prime minister as "dishonest" and
mimicked Indian Prime Minister Modi's accent, even as he made chummy with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and then
claimed ,
inaccurately , that his country was "no longer a nuclear threat."
It all adds up to a formula for further decline at a faster pace.
Beijing's Grand Strategy
While Washington's influence in Asia recedes, Beijing's grows ever stronger.
As China's currency reserves
climbed rapidly from $200 billion in 2001 to a peak of $4 trillion in 2014,
President Xi launched a new initiative of historic import. In September 2013,
speaking in Kazakhstan, the heart of Asia's ancient Silk Road caravan route,
he
proclaimed a "one belt, one road initiative" aimed at economically integrating
the enormous Eurasian land mass around Beijing's leadership. Through "unimpeded
trade" and infrastructure investment, he suggested, it would be possible to
connect "the Pacific and the Baltic Sea" in a proposed "economic belt along
the Silk Road," a region "inhabited by close to 3 billion people." It could
become, he predicted, "the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential."
Within a year, Beijing had
established a Chinese-dominated Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank
with 56 member nations and an impressive $100 billion in capital, while launching
its own $40 billion Silk Road Fund for
private equity projects. When China convened what it called a "belt and
road summit" of 28 world leaders in Beijing in May 2017, Xi could, with good
reason,
hail his initiative as the "project of the century."
Although the U.S. media has often described the individual projects involved
in his "one belt, one road" project as
wasteful ,
sybaritic ,
exploitative , or even
neo-colonial , its sheer scale and scope merits closer consideration. Beijing
is expected to
put a mind-boggling $1.3 trillion into the initiative by 2027, the largest
investment in human history, more than 10 times the famed American Marshall
Plan, the only comparable program, which
spent a more modest $110 billion (when adjusted for inflation) to rebuild
a ravaged Europe after World War II.
Beijing's low-cost infrastructure
loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding
construction of the Mediterranean's
busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England,
a $6 billion
railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport
corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments
could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70%
percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market
without peer on the planet.
Underlying this flurry of flying dirt and flowing concrete, the Chinese leadership
seems to have a design for transcending the vast distances that have historically
separated Asia from Europe. As a start, Beijing is building a comprehensive
network of trans-continental gas and oil pipelines to import fuels from Siberia
and Central Asia for its own population centers. When the system is complete,
there will be an integrated inland energy grid (including Russia's extensive
network of pipelines) that will extend 6,000 miles across Eurasia, from the
North Atlantic to the South China Sea. Next, Beijing is working to link Europe's
extensive rail network with its own expanded high-speed rail system via transcontinental
lines through Central Asia, supplemented by spur lines running due south to
Singapore and southwest through Pakistan.
Finally, to facilitate sea transport around the sprawling continent's southern
rim, China has already bought into or is in the process of building more than
30 major port facilities, stretching from the Straits of Malacca across
the Indian Ocean, around Africa, and along
Europe's extended coastline. In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters
opened by global warming, Beijing began
planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious
Russian and
Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's
northern coast to Europe.
Though Eurasia is its prime focus, China is also pursuing economic expansion
in Africa and Latin America to create what might be dubbed the strategy of the
four continents. To tie Africa into its projected Eurasian network, Beijing
already had doubled its
annual trade there by 2015 to $222 billion, three times that of the United
States, thanks to a massive infusion of capital expected to reach a trillion
dollars by 2025. Much of it is financing the sort of commodities extraction
that has already made the continent China's second largest source of crude oil.
Similarly, Beijing has
invested heavily in Latin America, acquiring, for instance, control over
90% of Ecuador's oil reserves. As a result, its commerce with that continent
doubled in a decade, reaching $244 billion in 2017, topping U.S. trade with
what once was known as its own "backyard."
A Conflict with Consequences
This contest between Xi's globalism and Trump's nationalism has not been
safely confined to an innocuous marketplace of ideas. Over the past four years,
the two powers have engaged in an escalating military rivalry and a cutthroat
commercial competition. Apart from a
shadowy struggle for
dominance in space and cyberspace, there has also been a visible, potentially
volatile naval arms race to control the sea lanes surrounding Asia, specifically
in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. In a 2015 white paper, Beijing
stated
that "it is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force
structure commensurate with its national security." Backed by lethal land-based
missiles, jet fighters, and a global satellite system, China has built just
such a modernized fleet of 320 ships, including nuclear submarines and its first
aircraft carriers.
Within two years, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson
reported
that China's "growing and modernized fleet" was "shrinking" the traditional
American advantage in the Pacific, and warned that "we must shake off any vestiges
of comfort or complacency." Under Trump's latest $700-billion-plus defense budget,
Washington has responded to this challenge with a crash program to build 46
new ships, which will
raise its total to 326 by 2023. As China builds new naval bases bristling
with armaments in the Arabian and South China seas, the U.S. Navy has begun
conducting assertive "freedom-of-navigation" patrols near many of those same
installations, heightening the potential for conflict.
It is in the commercial realm of trade and tariffs, however, where competition
has segued into overt conflict. Acting on his
belief that "trade wars are good and easy to win," President Trump
slapped heavy tariffs, targeted above all at China, on steel imports in
March and, just a few weeks later, punished that country's intellectual property
theft by
promising tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports. When those tariffs
finally hit in July, China immediately
retaliated against what it called "typical trade bullying" with similar
tariffs on U.S. goods. The Financial Times
warned that this "tit-for-tat" can escalate into a "full bore trade war
that will be very bad for the global economy." As Trump
threatened to tax $500 billion more in Chinese imports and
issued confusing, even contradictory demands that made it unlikely Beijing
could ever comply, observers became
concerned that a long-lasting trade war could destabilize what the New
York Times called the "mountain of debt" that sustains much of China's
economy. In Washington, the usually taciturn Federal Reserve chairman issued
an uncommon
warning that "trade tensions could pose serious risks to the U.S. and global
economy."
China as Global Hegemon?
Although a withering of Washington's global reach, abetted and possibly accelerated
by the Trump presidency, is already underway, the shape of any future world
order is still anything but clear. At present, China is the sole state with
the obvious requisites for becoming the planet's new hegemon. Its phenomenal
economic rise, coupled with its expanding military and growing technological
prowess, provide that country with the obvious fundamentals for superpower status.
Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement
of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. Apart
from its rising economic and military clout, China, like its sometime ally Russia,
has a self-referential culture, non-democratic political structures, and a developing
legal system that could deny it some of the key instruments for global leadership.
In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every
successful empire,"
observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate
a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate
states and their leaders. Successful imperial transitions driven by the
hard power of guns and money also require the soft-power salve of cultural suasion
for sustained and successful global dominion. Spain espoused Catholicism and
Hispanism, the Ottomans Islam, the Soviets communism, France a cultural
francophonie , and Britain an Anglophone culture.
Indeed, during its century of global dominion from 1850 to 1940, Britain
was the exemplar par excellence of such soft power, evincing an enticing
cultural ethos of fair play and free markets that it propagated through the
Anglican church, the English language and its literature, and the virtual invention
of modern athletics (cricket, soccer, tennis, rugby, and rowing). Similarly,
at the dawn of its global dominion, the United States courted allies worldwide
through soft-power programs promoting democracy and development. These were
made all the more palatable by the appeal of such things as Hollywood films,
civic organizations like
Rotary International , and popular sports like basketball and baseball.
China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters,
not 26 letters. Its communist ideology and popular culture are remarkably, even
avowedly, particularistic. And you don't have to look far for another Asian
power that attempted Pacific dominion without the salve of soft power. During
Japan's
occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being
hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed
to propagate their similarly particularistic culture.
As command-economy states for much of the past century, neither China nor
Russia developed an independent judiciary or the autonomous rules-based order
that undergirds the modern international system. From the foundation of the
Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1899 through the formation of
the International Court of Justice under the U.N.'s 1945 charter, the world's
nations have aspired to the resolution of conflicts via arbitration or litigation
rather than armed conflict. More broadly, the modern globalized economy is held
together by a web of conventions, treaties, patents, and contracts grounded
in law.
From its founding in 1949, the People's Republic of China gave primacy to
the party and state, slowing the growth of an autonomous legal system and the
rule of law. A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance
came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague
ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China
Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful
effect." Beijing's Foreign Ministry simply
dismissed the adverse decision as "invalid" and without "binding force."
President Xi
insisted China's "territorial sovereignty and maritime rights" were unchanged,
while the state Xinhua news agency
called the ruling "naturally null and void."
If Donald Trump's vision of world disorder is a sign of the American future
and if Beijing's projected $2 trillion in infrastructure investments, history's
largest by far, succeed in unifying the commerce and transport of Asia, Africa,
and Europe, then perhaps the currents of financial power and global leadership
will indeed transcend all barriers and flow inexorably toward Beijing, as if
by natural law. But if that bold initiative ultimately fails, then for the first
time in five centuries the world may face an imperial transition without a clear
successor as global hegemon. Moreover, it will do so on a planet where the "
new normal " of
climate change -- the heating of the atmosphere and the
oceans , the intensification of flood, drought, and
fire , the rising seas that will
devastate coastal cities, and the
cascading damage to a densely populated world -- could mean that the very
idea of a global hegemon is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Alfred W. McCoy, a
TomDispatch regular , is the Harrington professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity
in the Global Drug Trade , the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture
of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years, and the recently published
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global
Power (Dispatch Books).
"... Indeed, Brennan's retaining a Top Secret code word clearance had nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with enhancing his market value for those poor sods who actually pay him to mouth off as an "expert" on television and in the newspapers ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Even John Brennan's supporters are shy about defending the former CIA Director's more extravagant claims. James Clapper, the ex-Director of National Intelligence, has described Brennan's comments as "overheated." ..."
"... The John Brennan backstory is important. In 2016 he was Barack Obama's CIA Director and also simultaneously working quite hard to help Hillary Clinton become president, which some might regard at a minimum as a conflict of interest. After Clinton lost, he continued his attacks on Trump. He apparently played a part in the notoriously salacious Steele dossier, which was surfaced in January just before the inauguration. The dossier included unverifiable information and was maliciously promoted by Brennan and others in the intelligence and law enforcement community. And even after Trump assumed office, Brennan continued to prove to be unrelenting. ..."
"... there has to be a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at least some of that information might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first place. ..."
"... it is clear that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate began. ..."
"... Since that time, Brennan has tweeted President Donald Trump, asserting that "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history." He has attacked the president for congratulating President Vladimir Putin over his victory in Russian national elections. He said that the U.S. President is "wholly in the pocket of Putin," definitely "afraid of the president of Russia" and that the Kremlin "may have something on him personally. The fact that he has had this fawning attitude toward Mr. Putin continues to say to me that he does have something to fear and something very serious to fear." And he then administered what might be considered the coup de main ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... This behavior by Brennan is no surprise to those who know him and have worked with him. An ambitious crawler with a checkered history, he was strongly disliked by his peers at CIA, largely because of his lack of any sense of restraint and his reputation for over-the-top vindictiveness. He notoriously flunked out of spy training at the Agency, forcing him to instead become an analyst, so he went after the Clandestine Service in his reorganization of CIA after he became Director. ..."
"... John Brennan has always been a failure as an intelligence officer even as he successfully climbed the promotion ladder. He was the CIA's Chief of Station (COS) in Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers were bombed , killing 19 Americans, a disaster which he incorrectly blamed on the Iranians. He was deputy executive director on 9/11 and was complicit in that intelligence failure. He subsequently served as CIA chief of staff when his boss George Tenet concocted phony stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He also approved of the Agency torture and rendition programs and was complicit in the destruction of Libya as well as the attempt to do the same to Syria. ..."
"... After Obama was re-elected in 2012, he was able to overcome objections and appoint Brennan CIA Director. Conniving as ever, Brennan then ordered the Agency to read the communications of the congressional committee then engaged in investigating CIA torture, the very program that he had been complicit in. ..."
"... Brennan then denied to Congress under oath that any such intramural spying had occurred, afterwards apologizing when the truth came out. Moon of Alabama characterizes him as " always ruthless, incompetent and dishonest." ..."
"... Indeed, he should be answerable for torture, renditions, extrajudicial killing of foreigners and targeted murder of American citizens. Those constitute war crimes and in the not too distant past Japanese and German officers were hanged for such behavior. One has to hope that Brennan's day of judgment will eventually come and he will have to pay for his multiple crimes against humanity. ..."
"... Brennan should be in prison for the lies and accusations he has made. He is as corrupt as they come. Brennan is at the center of an Obama/Clinton directed scam to discredit Trump. Trump, love him or hate him, was elected by the American people. Brennan and his ilk may not like it but that does not mean they have the right to bend the country to their collective wills. Time to throw the book at these malcontents. ..."
"... What does it say about Obama that he favored a character like Brennan? ..."
"... Paranoids project a lot and accuse others of everything dark they ( paranoids ) have inside , blaming others for their own`s paranoid violent drives ..."
"... Brennan is part of Obama's swamp that Trump promised to drain. I hope others like Susan Rice and Clapper will follow. ..."
"... Unhinged and dumb. IMHO, they're easier to manipulate by the Puppet Masters. You can't have Groton & Yale-educated types like in Allen Dulles' day because they might go off the Puppet Master playbook and start calling audibles out in the field. ..."
"... Brennan is such a small part of a massively corrupt behind the scene picture. There are probably 2000 or 3000 more who need the same treatment immediately. ..."
"... I hope the issue of whether or not the POTUS has the authority to Trump all security clearance goes to court, because if its outcome is positive for Trump, maybe Trump will Trump Bush's and Clinton clearances. That would make the job of the AG quite a bit easier. ..."
"... Brennan is an idiot. Just listen to him and watch him. And having missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11 and Iraqi WMD, why does the press suddenly hold the intelligence community in such high regard? The truth is the MSM will do anything to nail Trump not that I particularly like him although compared to HC ..."
"... On the contrary, Brennan is just the kind of person who rises up the ranks in government. And look at Gina, his successor, should she even be where she is ? ..."
"... Oh sure, we can pick on Brennan, he's a funny-looking asskisser, thick as mince, but making it all his fault obscures the blindingly obvious fact that Hillary was the institutional choice of CIA. The other CIA talking heads are distancing themselves from Brennan simply because he bends over backwards to please his Project Mockingbird producers. He's hamming it up and embarrassing them, that's all. ..."
"... CIA installed four presidents: Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama. Hillary was supposed to be next but she couldn't even beat her handpicked loser asshole in a rigged election. So CIA is going berserk. Trump's war is with CIA, not Brennan. ..."
"... I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan? DC is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather than life in prison at our expense. . ..."
"... On the brighter side, in Dante's Inferno , the hottest circle of Hell is reserved for traitors. Hope Mr. Brennan likes warm weather. ..."
"... In a contemporary newspaper account of the creation of the OSS (forerunner of CIA) the OSS was described as "five Jews working in a converted vault in Washington DC". Described in James Bamford's "Body of Secrets". The CIA has always been Israel's club. Even before it was called CIA ..."
"... Brennan voted for the communist party as a youth. Perhaps youthful flightiness could be taken in stride but a tendency to flip-flop from one form of utopianism to another is often a lifetime trait of unstable people, much like some switch religions constantly. ..."
"... There really is a swamp to drain. There really is a lot of fake news. There really are people within our government, intelligence agencies, and media who, whether through malicious intent or just stupidity, are "enemies of the people." ..."
"... After a major air disaster with large loss of life, the standard TV reporting template is to send a news crew to the arrival airport to get coverage of the distraught relatives. On 9/11 there were 4 simultaneous air disasters with approx 500 dead. How many extended TV reports at the 4 arrival airports, with hundreds of 'grieving relatives/friends' did you see? I saw zero. ..."
"... Brennan sounds like a hog that doesn't wash itself of his own sins while he is carrying out his paymasters' wish. He thinks that he is indispensable to the powers that be he may want to remember the late Alphonse D'Amato of New York, who was chucked aside once he had used up his senatorial cudgel to extract gelt out of the Swiss banks ..."
"... It is absolutely terrifying to recognize that very many in those "elites" never became real adults in their lives and psychologically (mentally?) are still at the high school maturity level. All political tops are messy, soaked in palace intrigues and clash of egos larger than cathedrals, but this particular case is something else entirely and it has a lot to do with overall precipitous decline, both intellectual and moral, of American party and government so called "elites". ..."
"... The talking head types typically heard in US mass media are overly suspect and coddled. From the FBI, there's Frank Figluizzi and Josh Campbell. A rare exception to that spin is Tucker Carlson hosting former NSA official William Binney. ..."
"... I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan? DC is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather than life in prison at our expense. ..."
"... Trump is imperfect but he must be doing something right because the entire establishment is out to get him. I've never seen anything like it in my life. ..."
"... CIA Democrat Party Hack John Brennan says: "Sometimes my IRISH comes out in my Tweets." ..."
"... What Giraldi calls a "failure of intelligence" is probably about as far as most ex-CIA officer would go on 9/11, at least in public. Whether or not some part the intelligence community was actually complicit in the execution of 9/11 is another matter, though discussing it here only distracts from the main thrust of the article. ..."
"... I think we used to all think that the spooks were at least guided by some moral principles, in their goals, if not in their operations, but bozos like Brennan, Morell, Tenet, Heyden, etc, clearly show that this is not the case. ..."
"... Brennan is not the first to use hyperbole to monetize a scandal. Not the first to take advantage of his proximity to the President. And I agree with Sen Burr's statement. But that's not the point. I'm concerned by what he did as CIA director as the Trump/Russia relationship developed. ..."
"... I totally agree with you about Brennan requesting an FBI investigation. But rather than looking into non-existent Russian operations, if he were truly doing his job he should be calling for an investigation into Zion-gate ..."
The battle between many former intelligence chiefs and the White House is
becoming a gift that keeps on giving to the mass media, which is characteristically
deeply immersed in Trump derangement syndrome in attacking the president for
his having
stripped former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. One
of the
most ludicrous claims , cited in the Washington Post on Sunday,
was that the Trump move was intended to "stifle free speech." While I am quite
prepared to believe a lot of things about the serial maladroit moves and explanations
coming out of the White House, how one equates removing Brennan's security clearance
to compromising his ability to speak freely escapes me. Indeed, Brennan has
been speaking out with his usual vitriol nearly everywhere in the media ever
since he lost the clearance, rather suggesting that his loss has given him a
platform which has actually served to enhance his ability to speak his mind.
He should thank Donald Trump for that.
Indeed, Brennan's retaining a Top Secret code word clearance had nothing
to do with free speech and everything to do with enhancing his market value
for those poor sods who actually pay him to mouth off as an "expert" on television
and in the newspapers. Are you listening New York Times and
NBC ? Brennan's clearance did not mean that he had any real insight
into current intelligence on anything, having lost that access when he left
his job with the government. It only meant that he could sound authoritative
and well informed by relying on his former status, enabling him to con you media
folks out of your money on a recurrent basis.
It has sometimes been suggested that free speech is best exercised when it
is somehow connected to the brain's prefrontal lobes, enabling some thought
process before the words come out of the mouth. It might be argued that Brennan
has been remarkably deficient in that area, which is possibly why he looks so
angry in all his photographs. Even John Brennan's supporters are shy about
defending the former CIA Director's more extravagant claims. James Clapper,
the ex-Director of National Intelligence,
has described Brennan's comments as "overheated."
The John Brennan backstory is important. In 2016 he was Barack Obama's
CIA Director and also simultaneously working quite hard to help Hillary Clinton
become president, which some might regard at a minimum as a conflict of interest.
After Clinton lost, he continued his attacks on Trump. He apparently played
a part in the notoriously salacious Steele dossier, which was surfaced in January
just before the inauguration. The dossier included unverifiable information
and was maliciously promoted by Brennan and others in the intelligence and law
enforcement community. And even after Trump assumed office, Brennan continued
to prove to be unrelenting.
In May 2017, Brennan
testified before Congress that during the 2016 campaign
he had " encountered and [was] aware of information and intelligence that
revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons
involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian
efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or
not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." Politico
was also in on the chase and picked up on Brennan's bombshell in an article
entitled
Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides .
What Brennan did not describe, because it was "classified," was how he developed
the information regarding the Trump campaign in the first place. We know
from Politico and other sources that it derived from foreign intelligence
services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians, and there has to be
a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at least some of that information
might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first
place. But whatever the provenance of the intelligence, it is clear
that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into
a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump
were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at
the time. That is how Russiagate began.
Since that time, Brennan
has tweeted President Donald Trump, asserting that "When the full extent
of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you
will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history."
He
has attacked the president for congratulating President Vladimir Putin over
his victory in Russian national elections. He said that the U.S. President is
"wholly in the pocket of Putin," definitely "afraid of the president of Russia"
and that the Kremlin "may have something on him personally. The fact that he
has had this fawning attitude toward Mr. Putin continues to say to me that he
does have something to fear and something very serious to fear." And he then
administered what might be considered the coup de main , saying that
the president should be impeached for "treasonous" behavior after Trump
stood next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a news conference
in Finland and cast doubt on the conclusion of the intelligence agencies that
Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump's decision to pull Brennan's clearance attracted an immediate tweeted
response from the ex-CIA Director: "This action is part of a broader effort
by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics. It should gravely
worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of
speaking out." He also added, in a New York Times
op-ed , that "Mr. Trump's claims of no collusion [with Russia] are, in a
word, hogwash," though he provided no evidence to support his claim and failed
to explain how exactly one washes a hog. There has subsequently been an avalanche
of suitably angry Brennan appearances all over the Sunday talk shows, a development
that will undoubtedly continue for the immediate future.
The claim that Trump is a Russian agent is not a new one, having also been
made repeatedly by Brennan CIA associate the grim and inscrutable Michael Morell,
who flaunts his
insider expertise both at The Times and on CBS. Regarding both
gentlemen, one might note that it is an easy mark to allege something sensational
that you don't have to prove, but the claim nevertheless constitutes a very
serious assertion of criminal behavior that might well meet the Constitutional
standard for treason, which comes with a death penalty. It is notable that in
spite of the gravity of the charge, Brennan and Morell have been either unable
or unwilling to substantiate it in any detail. Even a usually tone-deaf Congress
has noted that there is a problem with Brennan's credibility on the issue, not
to mention his integrity. Richard Burr, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, has
observed that
"Director Brennan's recent statements purport to know as fact that the
Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power. If Director Brennan's statement
is based on intelligence he received while still leading the CIA, why didn't
he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017?
If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office,
it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge
of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel,
not The New York Times ."
This behavior by Brennan is no surprise to those who know him and have
worked with him. An ambitious crawler with a checkered history, he was strongly
disliked by his peers at CIA, largely because of his lack of any sense of restraint
and his reputation for over-the-top vindictiveness. He notoriously flunked out
of spy training at the Agency, forcing him to instead become an analyst, so
he went after the Clandestine Service in his reorganization of CIA after he
became Director.
John Brennan has always been a failure as an intelligence officer even
as he successfully climbed the promotion ladder. He was the CIA's Chief of Station
(COS) in Saudi Arabia
when
the Khobar Towers were bombed , killing 19 Americans, a disaster which he
incorrectly blamed on the Iranians. He was deputy executive director on 9/11
and was complicit in that intelligence failure. He subsequently served as CIA
chief of staff when his boss George Tenet concocted phony stories about Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction. He also approved of the Agency torture and rendition
programs and was complicit in the destruction of Libya as well as the attempt
to do the same to Syria.
Barack Obama wanted Brennan to be his CIA Director but his record with the
Agency torture and rendition programs made approval by the Senate problematical.
Instead, he became the president's homeland security advisor and deputy national
security advisor for counterterrorism, where he did even more damage, expanding
the parameters of the death by drone operations and sitting down with the POTUS
for the
Tuesday morning counterterrorism sessions spent refining the kill list of
American citizens.
After Obama was re-elected in 2012, he was able to overcome objections
and appoint Brennan CIA Director. Conniving as ever, Brennan then ordered the
Agency to read the communications of the congressional committee then engaged
in investigating CIA torture, the very program that he had been complicit in.
Brennan then denied to Congress under oath that any such intramural spying
had occurred, afterwards apologizing when the truth came out. Moon of Alabama
characterizes him as " always ruthless, incompetent and dishonest."
So the real John Brennan emerges as an unlikely standard bearer for the First
Amendment. He has an awful lot of baggage and is far from the innocent victim
of a madman Trump that is being portrayed in much of the media. Indeed,
he should be answerable for torture, renditions, extrajudicial killing of foreigners
and targeted murder of American citizens. Those constitute war crimes and in
the not too distant past Japanese and German officers were hanged for such behavior.
One has to hope that Brennan's day of judgment will eventually come and he will
have to pay for his multiple crimes against humanity.
The question seems stark to me as to how in the hell did brennan ever
get accepted by the cia in the first place. Was he vetted all? With his
psychological makeup, his past political affiliations (or inclinations),
he seems from the outside as a candidate mostly likely to be rejected out
of hand beyond the first step.
And then we have his rise through the ranks to Director-one could ask
WTF? Who were his handlers?
Perhaps Mr. Brennan is guilty of using the psychological tactic of "projection"
against President Trump? All the things he accuses President Trump of ("treason"
perhaps), he is actually guilty of himself.
How an admitted supporter of CPUSA and Gus Hall voter even got past the
SBI investigation is enough to mystify one. He must have had strong supporters
and the top of the house in his young days.
"He was deputy executive director on 9/11 and was complicit in
that intelligence failure."
Shame on you Philip. Years of research has convinced me that it was not
a failure at all but rather one of their greatest hits. I usually like your
commentary but salting your rhetoric with lies to promote the false CIA
narrative is not acceptable.
AMF
The PBS NewsHour segment with CIA Director John Brennan, included
this quote from him:
" We see what he has done in places like Crimea and Ukraine
and in Syria. he tends to flex muscles, not just on himself, but
also in terms of Russia's military capabilities. He plays by his
own rules in terms of what it is that he does in some of these theaters
of conflict.
So I don't think we underestimated him. He has sought to advance
Russia's interests in areas where there have been political vacuums
and conflicts. But he doesn't ascribe to the same types of rules
that we do, for example, in law of armed conflict. What the Russians
have done in Syria in terms of some of the scorched-earth policy
that they have pursued that have led to devastation and thousands
upon thousands of innocent deaths, that's not something that the
United States would ever do in any of these military conflicts."
Own rules as in what Turkey has done in northern Cyprus and the Clinton
led NATO in Kosovo? It was a shameful example of journalism on the part
of PBS to let Brennan's comments go unchallenged. PBS had earlier run
a pro-CrowdStrike feature. It's not as if there aren't any expert cyber
security/ intelligence sources offering a different perspective.
As for the devastation of thousands of civilians during war (raised
by Brennan), consider some past US actions like what happened in Japan
during WW II, the Cold War activity in Southeast Asia, as well as post-Cold
War actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The collateral damage emphasis
has been hypocritically applied. Along with the subjectively dubious
comments of Hayden and Nance, the above excerpted comments from Brennan
are indicative of a (past and present) politicized element within US
Intel.
Not very outstanding personality, He had his moment on the sun when Libyan
and Syrian war crimes by Hillary and Obama were prepared. He is now in the
shade and his brain is feed for mold and mildew.
Brennan should be in prison for the lies and accusations he has made.
He is as corrupt as they come. Brennan is at the center of an Obama/Clinton
directed scam to discredit Trump. Trump, love him or hate him, was elected
by the American people. Brennan and his ilk may not like it but that does
not mean they have the right to bend the country to their collective wills.
Time to throw the book at these malcontents.
"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political
corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced
demagogue in the dustbin of history."
Methinks Brennan was looking in the mirror when he first mouthed that
truth, which is actually about the former CIA Director. Why these
intelligence people maintain that Top Secret(TS) clearance after they retire,
resign or get tossed during a change in the WH is beyond me. It's great
for them, as they can burnish that TS as credentials when getting hired
by CNN or FOX to blather on about something, usually enhancing some lie
or propaganda those pseudo-news outlets are promoting.
But the bigger problem is that some or maybe many are Israel-Firsters,
who have loyalty to that Apartheid nightmare and most likely pass on info
to their Israeli buddies that they should not have gotten.
That is called treason and is one more reason why their TS clearance
should be revoked when they leave government work.
A powerful, pointed essay to be shared widely. That Mr. Brennan's shameful
acts listed here go back to the last Bush presidency can also help to enlighten
those still gulled by the Red/Blue puppet show.
The notion that anyone high up in the CIA might ever be convicted of
war crimes under the rule of Imperial Washington, though, is sadly laughable.
Notice that Senator Burr still refers to Mr. Brennan as "Director Brennan."
The way these people think of themselves is not only annoying, but maintains
a system in which they're above the law.
One suggested edit: " Japanese and German officers were [hanged] for
such behavior."
Obama favored the Muslim Brotherhood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood. The Nobel Prize of
" peace " winner bombed a few arab countries from Libia to Afganistan ,
and organized " color revolutions " ( coups d` Etat ) in many other arab
and non arab countries . Obama provoked millions of arabs refugees escaping
from wars and invading Europe . Obama provoked the coup d`Etat and war in
Ukraina
Great article Philip, as usual. I am your biggest fan ..roasting here
in the south of Turkey watching the unfolding debacle on par with the suns
relentlessness.
" He was deputy executive director on 9/11 and was complicit in
that intelligence failure. "
Is meant here that for some reason that I still do not understand the
plotters failed to make use of the hijacked planes to fly into the towers,
the Pentagon and into Camp David ? In my usual immodest opinion Sept 11
was blundering along, so that two other planes than the 'hijacked' ones
flew into the towers, the first had some bulge under the plane, the second
had no windows, what flew into the Pentagon was something small, and the
Pennsylvania plane 'atomised' in mid air, according to the coroner.
But, with a complete failure, I must admit that the improvisation was
not bad, and had success, with help of the USA's media. BTW, on a German
site is explained what profit the Jewish owners of the Towers made, $ five
billion, seen in Germany by the insurer, Allianz, as insurance fraud. In
order to be able to pay Allianz fired 3000 employees. Alas, the article
has disappeared, too shocking, maybe.
You are assuming a level of competence on the CIA. No one there predicted
the collapse of the Soviet Union, they said Iraq had WMDs, and now made
up this nonsense about Trump. They are the same folks who brought us the
Bay of Pigs more than half a century ago. Too bad Kennedy didn't get to
break them up into a million pieces and scatter them in the wind like he
wanted to do.
Why does the CIA hire unhinged people like Brennan and Philip Mudd?
Unhinged and dumb. IMHO, they're easier to manipulate by the Puppet
Masters. You can't have Groton & Yale-educated types like in Allen Dulles'
day because they might go off the Puppet Master playbook and start calling
audibles out in the field.
Saying as Giraldi did that 911 was a failure of intelligence is a coverup
for the fact that Israel and the Zionist controlled deep state did 911 and
Giraldi and every thinking America knows that Israel and the deep state
did it and got away with it.
Brennan and the majority of the deep state are under Zionist control
and the fact that they let Israel and the Zionists get away with 911 means
that Brennan and every one of the 17 intel agencies that had knowledge of
911 is a traitor to America and the fact that Israel got away with killing
3000 Americans proves that Zionists and Israel have total control of every
facet of the U.S. government.
May God help America as we are a captive nation of zionists.
Already posted under the current Buchanan column, but more likely to
learn something here:
OK, I admit that I haven't researched it myself. But shouldn't a column
on this topic state briefly what a "security clearance" is and explain what
is had enabled Mr. Brennan, once he left government employ, to access? Is
it like a password or something? What is the practical effect of its revocation?
"With 4 million Americans holding top-secret clearances [Buchanan],"
this sounds like the Battle of Molehill Mountain.
Thanks to anyone who helps to provide some context.
Brennan is such a small part of a massively corrupt behind the scene
picture. There are probably 2000 or 3000 more who need the same treatment
immediately.
Trumping security clearance at termination from any job that requires
them; in government, military or in the private sector, should be automatic,
without exception. Trump all non active or non essential clearances would
reduce the power of and the number of corporate lobbyist, private mercenaries,
global gun slingers and creators of the privately owned 24/7 promoted, highly
spied on fake news stories and many corrupt crossboard activities..
I hope the issue of whether or not the POTUS has the authority to
Trump all security clearance goes to court, because if its outcome is positive
for Trump, maybe Trump will Trump Bush's and Clinton clearances. That would
make the job of the AG quite a bit easier.
This idea of trumping security clearances has some real promise as a
way to restore some modicum of democracy in the USA. But Trumping Security
Clearance should be rule based. Trump needs to issue a presidential order..
worded something like this. All security clearances in the USA are issued
on a as needed basis, and shall terminate as soon as the need is resolved,
or the person holding the clearance is terminated from the job for which
the clearance was issued.
Brennan is an idiot. Just listen to him and watch him. And having
missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11 and Iraqi WMD, why does the press suddenly
hold the intelligence community in such high regard? The truth is the MSM
will do anything to nail Trump not that I particularly like him although
compared to HC .
On the contrary, Brennan is just the kind of person who rises up
the ranks in government. And look at Gina, his successor, should she even
be where she is ?
Oh sure, we can pick on Brennan, he's a funny-looking asskisser,
thick as mince, but making it all his fault obscures the blindingly obvious
fact that Hillary was the institutional choice of CIA. The other CIA talking
heads are distancing themselves from Brennan simply because he bends over
backwards to please his Project Mockingbird producers. He's hamming it up
and embarrassing them, that's all.
You don't get near the White House without doing lots of favors for CIA.
Trump laundered money for the CIA agents who looted Russia. Hillary was
of course senior Nomenklatura and next in line. Cord Meyer recruited her
husband at Oxford, and she helped frame Nixon with CIA's Watergate burlesque
(read Russ Baker.) She's the Queen of Mena.
CIA installed four presidents: Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama. Hillary
was supposed to be next but she couldn't even beat her handpicked loser
asshole in a rigged election. So CIA is going berserk. Trump's war is with
CIA, not Brennan.
I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan? DC
is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather than
life in prison at our expense. .
Maybe we should start constructing skyscrapers out of the bodies of birds,
like the ones that crashed this Swedish jet?
'Russia hacked the birds': Social media mocks Swedish paranoia after birds
take down fighter jet
He'd have a lot of company there: pretty much every American federal
official in the last few decades, as well as most Russian officials who
were in power from ~1989 to ~2000. That circle must be really crowded, like
Washington, DC.
In a contemporary newspaper account of the creation of the OSS (forerunner
of CIA) the OSS was described as "five Jews working in a converted vault
in Washington DC". Described in James Bamford's "Body of Secrets". The CIA
has always been Israel's club. Even before it was called CIA.
Brennan voted for the communist party as a youth. Perhaps youthful
flightiness could be taken in stride but a tendency to flip-flop from one
form of utopianism to another is often a lifetime trait of unstable people,
much like some switch religions constantly. Why promote someone like
this to such a high position? This Russian Manchurian Candidate business
is bizarre and casts doubt about his mental health. In addition there were
rumors about him having converted to Islam while posted in Saudi Arabia.
Just some of the usual rumor-mongering that goes on, I thought. Then I looked
at him in testimony on YouTube. I was struck by his weirdly rhapsodic way
of describing Islam that seemed to go beyond merely playing up to them.
In addition he calls Jerusalem by the Arabic name of Al-Quds, something
no one here does and seems strange for a CIA head to do that. People like
this are the cream of the crop, guardians of our security and well-being?
Brennen is one of the Most untrustworth political gangsters among the
totally corrupted Amerian political class. That the fawning Media does Not
dismiss this crook as an so-called expert speaks for itself. President Trump
should revoke all Security clearances from the Obama crooks.
John Brennan is a traitor to America. At this point, this is basically
undeniable to any rational observer who has assessed the verifiable details
of his career. It is mind-boggling that he was ever accepted to any position
within our government and the CIA. The level of incompetence within the
US government and intelligence agencies is terrifying. The only good thing
about this idiot's irrational blabbering in the media is that it has the
potential to cause even many liberals to finally grasp how stupid, petty,
and dangerous the actions of the socialist-leaning left in our government,
intelligence agencies, and media are. There really is a swamp to drain.
There really is a lot of fake news. There really are people within our government,
intelligence agencies, and media who, whether through malicious intent or
just stupidity, are "enemies of the people."
In a more just world, John Brennan would be hanged and all of America
would cheer.
Is meant here that for some reason that I still do not understand
the plotters failed to make use of the hijacked planes to fly into the
towers, the Pentagon and into Camp David?
There were no 'hijacked planes'. The hijack ruse was a sleight of hand
distraction. It's like the old movie plane crash trick: Set up your camera
to frame a hill in extreme long shot. A plane dives into the frame from
the right and disappears behind the hill. The moment it goes behind the
hill, special effects set off a large pyro charge and there's a huge fireball.
Oh no, the plane crashed behind the hill!
Scheduled flights must have taken off with the requisite squawk codes,
but where they went & who was on them if any, is anyone's guess. What's
clear (in the same way it's clear Oswald wasn't sniping on Nov 22 '63) is
the scheduled jets didn't fly into towers/buildings. UAV aircraft did.
After a major air disaster with large loss of life, the standard
TV reporting template is to send a news crew to the arrival airport to get
coverage of the distraught relatives. On 9/11 there were 4 simultaneous
air disasters with approx 500 dead. How many extended TV reports at the
4 arrival airports, with hundreds of 'grieving relatives/friends' did you
see? I saw zero.
A security clearance is granted on a strict need-to-know basis.
I fail to see how these former ranking intelligence officials like John
Brennan maintain the need-to-know after they have left public service.
When the Central Intelligence Agency was established by President Truman
on September 18, 1947, one justification was that the United States had
been caught off-guard by the surprise Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor,
and therefore it was necessary to coordinate all intelligence activities
under a single head, or director, who would have direct access to the president,
and there would be no more such surprises.
Of course, all that about Pearl Harbor is a cock 'n' bull story from
top to bottom, just like 9/11 is. FDR knew exactly what was going on. In
fact, no one had worked harder to bring it about than the President himself.
Just as Stalin had been successful in tricking Hitler into attacking the
Soviet Union, so too was Roosevelt successful in goading the Japanese to
attack Pearl Harbor. It was the plan all along: Let the enemy strike the
first blow, then seize the moral high ground, from which lofty summit the
enemy can be vilified and demonized with propaganda including the most astonishingly
poisonous accusations, like an industrialized program in Nazi Germany to
exterminate the Jews.
But Truman wasn't done yet. In 1952, he established the National Security
Agency, ostensibly because the CIA was doing a poor job with communications
intelligence.
Now, in the wake of 9/11–where the initial story was that we were "blindsided"–
we've got 17 different intelligence agencies, with a new position created
to coordinate them all. Whatever it is all these guys are doing, about the
only thing we can be sure of is that they will have few problems getting
the budget to do it, and instead of intelligence, we get propaganda and
chaos.
Brennan sounds like a hog that doesn't wash itself of his own sins
while he is carrying out his paymasters' wish. He thinks that he is indispensable
to the powers that be he may want to remember the late Alphonse D'Amato
of New York, who was chucked aside once he had used up his senatorial cudgel
to extract gelt out of the Swiss banks. Trump isn't going to be either
impeached or gotten rid off, simply because he works for the same crowd
and the only difference between him and lowly spook is that the former is
part of the ruling class, while the latter is just a peon used to distract
the dumbed down public!
It is absolutely terrifying to recognize that very many in those
"elites" never became real adults in their lives and psychologically (mentally?)
are still at the high school maturity level. All political tops are messy,
soaked in palace intrigues and clash of egos larger than cathedrals, but
this particular case is something else entirely and it has a lot to do with
overall precipitous decline, both intellectual and moral, of American party
and government so called "elites".
I didn't quite get that about Baer as well. The only basis perhaps is
that Baer might be less of a propagandist when compared to Mudd and Brennan.
The talking head types typically heard in US mass media are overly
suspect and coddled. From the FBI, there's Frank Figluizzi and Josh Campbell.
A rare exception to that spin is Tucker Carlson hosting former NSA official
William Binney.
I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan?
DC is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather
than life in prison at our expense.
I don't believe he's being singled out. Much attention is focused on
him, on account of the absurd things he spews in high profile settings.
He deserves to get severely rebuked, long with a good number in mass media
and body politic who handle him with kid gloves.
The NSA, military intelligence outfits and other groups can provide information
gathering services to the United States government and the President of
the United States.
John Brennan... is completely and totally representative of the kind
of CIA government worker human filth that steals money from the US government
while damaging the best interests of the United States.
If General George Washington and General Andrew Jackson were alive, John
Brennan would be forcefully exiled from the United States for his actions
against the United States of America.
So if Trump is a CIA asset, why are they doing everything in their power
to get rid of him, short of killing him (so far..)? The fact of the
matter is that both Hillary and Jeb Bush were the Deep State candidates,
either was supposed to win, didn't matter which as both would be puppets
anyway.
Neither Bernie Sanders nor Trump were supposed to win, the Democrats
did their part in getting rid of Sanders, the Republicans tried, and failed,
to get rid of Trump (again, so far..)
Trump is imperfect but he must be doing something right because the
entire establishment is out to get him. I've never seen anything like it
in my life.
Hardly anything memorable has been written about the botched CIA operation
in Laos during the Vietnam War. Under the guise Air America , the CIA spent
millions if not billions of dollars in a futile attempt to stop the Pathet
Lao. Lots of innocent lives lost but no one held accountable at the highest
levels of our government. But then again that seems to be the same story
involving inept leadership and corruption in all the conflicts the US has
been engaged in since WWII.
What Giraldi calls a "failure of intelligence" is probably about
as far as most ex-CIA officer would go on 9/11, at least in public. Whether
or not some part the intelligence community was actually complicit in the
execution of 9/11 is another matter, though discussing it here only distracts
from the main thrust of the article.
I think we used to all think that the spooks were at least guided
by some moral principles, in their goals, if not in their operations, but
bozos like Brennan, Morell, Tenet, Heyden, etc, clearly show that this is
not the case.
Obviously, it's only about power and being in the game; whichever way
the wind blows they have to be in on it in order to apply pressure on whoever
turns up on top. At no level do they even care whether the general direction
is moral or criminal. They simply play all sides of the table for best agency,
deep state, or personal interest – no other consideration comes even in
play. The image they portray on television is as realistic as the depiction
of Ozzie and Harriet was to a real marriage.
Trump revoking Brennan's security clearance doesn't move me. His freedom
of speech is not stifled; it gives him a larger platform.
Brennan is not the first to use hyperbole to monetize a scandal.
Not the first to take advantage of his proximity to the President. And I
agree with Sen Burr's statement. But that's not the point. I'm concerned
by what he did as CIA director as the Trump/Russia relationship developed.
It's abundantly clear to me that Director Brennan acted appropriately
and the Mueller investigation is legitimate and necessary.
Abundantly clear, eh, PintOrTwo? Perhaps it was so clear to you after
having a pint or two?
I expect he would "(use) that information to request an FBI investigation
into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers
(to) Trump". To do otherwise would be egregious.
I totally agree with you about Brennan requesting an FBI investigation.
But rather than looking into non-existent Russian operations, if he were
truly doing his job he should be calling for an investigation into Zion-gate
– i.e., the massive interference into US politics wielded by the Zionists
through their network of organizations, aka The Lobby . Why concentrate
on the ant when the elephant is standing right in front of you? You wouldn't
be engaging in deflection, would you, PintOrTwoOrThree?
When the state keeps a secret it subordinates the human right to know.
There are very few things that reach that standard. When the state enables
an abuse of a secret, it endangers everyone's freedoms and liberties.
There can be no greater abuse of free speech than state secrets, and
therefore no greater duty of the state to both prove the need to keep the
knowledge secret and to prevent anyone from wrongfully using or abusing
the knowledge kept secret.
When someone on the inside, committed to preserving the secret in trust
realizes that the trust has been abused and that the trust is regularly
abused, and decides as a matter of conscious to endure the consequences,
by stepping forward to disclose failures of the state with regard to the
knowledge kept secret, that brave person becomes known as a whistle blower.
In effect that whistle blower is speaking for all of us, he or she becomes
the protector of human rights because only he or she knows, outside of the
state, that the state is infringing a human right.
Human rights always trump state rights. Unless the whistle blower exposed
the wrong doings or abuse, the state is left to continue its wrongdoing.
Exposed, the state must explain its behavior, suffer the consequences, and
protect the whistle blowers. Its unfortunate that the whistle blower is
treated much like the woman abused, in court, the victim is made to look
to be the criminal.
overall precipitous decline, both intellectual and moral, of American
"elites".
I'm not sure whether, on balance, that bodes well or ill. For Americans,
probably ill, but from the RoW's perspective it may simply mean that the
Empire dies that much more quickly. Barring somebody doing something really
stupid. EG: "Assessing" in their ignorance that they can win a nuclear exchange
when they inevitably find themselves at their wit's end, of course.
That you don't care is evidenced by your trust in The Guardian and AP
as reliable sources for news and information, I mean, fool me once and all
that but dozens of times should be more than enough for anyone who does
care.
In the long run it may even be a bitter but life-saving medicine. BTW,
OT–can you, please, get me to your excellent economic post about GDP "growing"
while in reality shrinking. I hope you recall which one, I lost the link
to it, sadly.
Anon (76) below is the interpretive guidance for US human rights law
relating to the right to seek and obtain information – Article 18 – supreme
law of the land.
"... Indeed, Brennan's retaining a Top Secret code word clearance had nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with enhancing his market value for those poor sods who actually pay him to mouth off as an "expert" on television and in the newspapers ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Even John Brennan's supporters are shy about defending the former CIA Director's more extravagant claims. James Clapper, the ex-Director of National Intelligence, has described Brennan's comments as "overheated." ..."
"... The John Brennan backstory is important. In 2016 he was Barack Obama's CIA Director and also simultaneously working quite hard to help Hillary Clinton become president, which some might regard at a minimum as a conflict of interest. After Clinton lost, he continued his attacks on Trump. He apparently played a part in the notoriously salacious Steele dossier, which was surfaced in January just before the inauguration. The dossier included unverifiable information and was maliciously promoted by Brennan and others in the intelligence and law enforcement community. And even after Trump assumed office, Brennan continued to prove to be unrelenting. ..."
"... there has to be a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at least some of that information might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first place. ..."
"... it is clear that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate began. ..."
"... Since that time, Brennan has tweeted President Donald Trump, asserting that "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history." He has attacked the president for congratulating President Vladimir Putin over his victory in Russian national elections. He said that the U.S. President is "wholly in the pocket of Putin," definitely "afraid of the president of Russia" and that the Kremlin "may have something on him personally. The fact that he has had this fawning attitude toward Mr. Putin continues to say to me that he does have something to fear and something very serious to fear." And he then administered what might be considered the coup de main ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... This behavior by Brennan is no surprise to those who know him and have worked with him. An ambitious crawler with a checkered history, he was strongly disliked by his peers at CIA, largely because of his lack of any sense of restraint and his reputation for over-the-top vindictiveness. He notoriously flunked out of spy training at the Agency, forcing him to instead become an analyst, so he went after the Clandestine Service in his reorganization of CIA after he became Director. ..."
"... John Brennan has always been a failure as an intelligence officer even as he successfully climbed the promotion ladder. He was the CIA's Chief of Station (COS) in Saudi Arabia when the Khobar Towers were bombed , killing 19 Americans, a disaster which he incorrectly blamed on the Iranians. He was deputy executive director on 9/11 and was complicit in that intelligence failure. He subsequently served as CIA chief of staff when his boss George Tenet concocted phony stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He also approved of the Agency torture and rendition programs and was complicit in the destruction of Libya as well as the attempt to do the same to Syria. ..."
"... After Obama was re-elected in 2012, he was able to overcome objections and appoint Brennan CIA Director. Conniving as ever, Brennan then ordered the Agency to read the communications of the congressional committee then engaged in investigating CIA torture, the very program that he had been complicit in. ..."
"... Brennan then denied to Congress under oath that any such intramural spying had occurred, afterwards apologizing when the truth came out. Moon of Alabama characterizes him as " always ruthless, incompetent and dishonest." ..."
"... Indeed, he should be answerable for torture, renditions, extrajudicial killing of foreigners and targeted murder of American citizens. Those constitute war crimes and in the not too distant past Japanese and German officers were hanged for such behavior. One has to hope that Brennan's day of judgment will eventually come and he will have to pay for his multiple crimes against humanity. ..."
"... Brennan should be in prison for the lies and accusations he has made. He is as corrupt as they come. Brennan is at the center of an Obama/Clinton directed scam to discredit Trump. Trump, love him or hate him, was elected by the American people. Brennan and his ilk may not like it but that does not mean they have the right to bend the country to their collective wills. Time to throw the book at these malcontents. ..."
"... What does it say about Obama that he favored a character like Brennan? ..."
"... Paranoids project a lot and accuse others of everything dark they ( paranoids ) have inside , blaming others for their own`s paranoid violent drives ..."
"... Brennan is part of Obama's swamp that Trump promised to drain. I hope others like Susan Rice and Clapper will follow. ..."
"... Unhinged and dumb. IMHO, they're easier to manipulate by the Puppet Masters. You can't have Groton & Yale-educated types like in Allen Dulles' day because they might go off the Puppet Master playbook and start calling audibles out in the field. ..."
"... Brennan is such a small part of a massively corrupt behind the scene picture. There are probably 2000 or 3000 more who need the same treatment immediately. ..."
"... I hope the issue of whether or not the POTUS has the authority to Trump all security clearance goes to court, because if its outcome is positive for Trump, maybe Trump will Trump Bush's and Clinton clearances. That would make the job of the AG quite a bit easier. ..."
"... Brennan is an idiot. Just listen to him and watch him. And having missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11 and Iraqi WMD, why does the press suddenly hold the intelligence community in such high regard? The truth is the MSM will do anything to nail Trump not that I particularly like him although compared to HC ..."
"... On the contrary, Brennan is just the kind of person who rises up the ranks in government. And look at Gina, his successor, should she even be where she is ? ..."
"... Oh sure, we can pick on Brennan, he's a funny-looking asskisser, thick as mince, but making it all his fault obscures the blindingly obvious fact that Hillary was the institutional choice of CIA. The other CIA talking heads are distancing themselves from Brennan simply because he bends over backwards to please his Project Mockingbird producers. He's hamming it up and embarrassing them, that's all. ..."
"... CIA installed four presidents: Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama. Hillary was supposed to be next but she couldn't even beat her handpicked loser asshole in a rigged election. So CIA is going berserk. Trump's war is with CIA, not Brennan. ..."
"... I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan? DC is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather than life in prison at our expense. . ..."
"... On the brighter side, in Dante's Inferno , the hottest circle of Hell is reserved for traitors. Hope Mr. Brennan likes warm weather. ..."
"... In a contemporary newspaper account of the creation of the OSS (forerunner of CIA) the OSS was described as "five Jews working in a converted vault in Washington DC". Described in James Bamford's "Body of Secrets". The CIA has always been Israel's club. Even before it was called CIA ..."
"... Brennan voted for the communist party as a youth. Perhaps youthful flightiness could be taken in stride but a tendency to flip-flop from one form of utopianism to another is often a lifetime trait of unstable people, much like some switch religions constantly. ..."
"... There really is a swamp to drain. There really is a lot of fake news. There really are people within our government, intelligence agencies, and media who, whether through malicious intent or just stupidity, are "enemies of the people." ..."
"... After a major air disaster with large loss of life, the standard TV reporting template is to send a news crew to the arrival airport to get coverage of the distraught relatives. On 9/11 there were 4 simultaneous air disasters with approx 500 dead. How many extended TV reports at the 4 arrival airports, with hundreds of 'grieving relatives/friends' did you see? I saw zero. ..."
"... Brennan sounds like a hog that doesn't wash itself of his own sins while he is carrying out his paymasters' wish. He thinks that he is indispensable to the powers that be he may want to remember the late Alphonse D'Amato of New York, who was chucked aside once he had used up his senatorial cudgel to extract gelt out of the Swiss banks ..."
"... It is absolutely terrifying to recognize that very many in those "elites" never became real adults in their lives and psychologically (mentally?) are still at the high school maturity level. All political tops are messy, soaked in palace intrigues and clash of egos larger than cathedrals, but this particular case is something else entirely and it has a lot to do with overall precipitous decline, both intellectual and moral, of American party and government so called "elites". ..."
"... The talking head types typically heard in US mass media are overly suspect and coddled. From the FBI, there's Frank Figluizzi and Josh Campbell. A rare exception to that spin is Tucker Carlson hosting former NSA official William Binney. ..."
"... I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan? DC is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather than life in prison at our expense. ..."
"... Trump is imperfect but he must be doing something right because the entire establishment is out to get him. I've never seen anything like it in my life. ..."
"... CIA Democrat Party Hack John Brennan says: "Sometimes my IRISH comes out in my Tweets." ..."
"... What Giraldi calls a "failure of intelligence" is probably about as far as most ex-CIA officer would go on 9/11, at least in public. Whether or not some part the intelligence community was actually complicit in the execution of 9/11 is another matter, though discussing it here only distracts from the main thrust of the article. ..."
"... I think we used to all think that the spooks were at least guided by some moral principles, in their goals, if not in their operations, but bozos like Brennan, Morell, Tenet, Heyden, etc, clearly show that this is not the case. ..."
"... Brennan is not the first to use hyperbole to monetize a scandal. Not the first to take advantage of his proximity to the President. And I agree with Sen Burr's statement. But that's not the point. I'm concerned by what he did as CIA director as the Trump/Russia relationship developed. ..."
"... I totally agree with you about Brennan requesting an FBI investigation. But rather than looking into non-existent Russian operations, if he were truly doing his job he should be calling for an investigation into Zion-gate ..."
The battle between many former intelligence chiefs and the White House is
becoming a gift that keeps on giving to the mass media, which is characteristically
deeply immersed in Trump derangement syndrome in attacking the president for
his having
stripped former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. One
of the
most ludicrous claims , cited in the Washington Post on Sunday,
was that the Trump move was intended to "stifle free speech." While I am quite
prepared to believe a lot of things about the serial maladroit moves and explanations
coming out of the White House, how one equates removing Brennan's security clearance
to compromising his ability to speak freely escapes me. Indeed, Brennan has
been speaking out with his usual vitriol nearly everywhere in the media ever
since he lost the clearance, rather suggesting that his loss has given him a
platform which has actually served to enhance his ability to speak his mind.
He should thank Donald Trump for that.
Indeed, Brennan's retaining a Top Secret code word clearance had nothing
to do with free speech and everything to do with enhancing his market value
for those poor sods who actually pay him to mouth off as an "expert" on television
and in the newspapers. Are you listening New York Times and
NBC ? Brennan's clearance did not mean that he had any real insight
into current intelligence on anything, having lost that access when he left
his job with the government. It only meant that he could sound authoritative
and well informed by relying on his former status, enabling him to con you media
folks out of your money on a recurrent basis.
It has sometimes been suggested that free speech is best exercised when it
is somehow connected to the brain's prefrontal lobes, enabling some thought
process before the words come out of the mouth. It might be argued that Brennan
has been remarkably deficient in that area, which is possibly why he looks so
angry in all his photographs. Even John Brennan's supporters are shy about
defending the former CIA Director's more extravagant claims. James Clapper,
the ex-Director of National Intelligence,
has described Brennan's comments as "overheated."
The John Brennan backstory is important. In 2016 he was Barack Obama's
CIA Director and also simultaneously working quite hard to help Hillary Clinton
become president, which some might regard at a minimum as a conflict of interest.
After Clinton lost, he continued his attacks on Trump. He apparently played
a part in the notoriously salacious Steele dossier, which was surfaced in January
just before the inauguration. The dossier included unverifiable information
and was maliciously promoted by Brennan and others in the intelligence and law
enforcement community. And even after Trump assumed office, Brennan continued
to prove to be unrelenting.
In May 2017, Brennan
testified before Congress that during the 2016 campaign
he had " encountered and [was] aware of information and intelligence that
revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons
involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian
efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or
not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals." Politico
was also in on the chase and picked up on Brennan's bombshell in an article
entitled
Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides .
What Brennan did not describe, because it was "classified," was how he developed
the information regarding the Trump campaign in the first place. We know
from Politico and other sources that it derived from foreign intelligence
services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians, and there has to be
a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at least some of that information
might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first
place. But whatever the provenance of the intelligence, it is clear
that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into
a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump
were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at
the time. That is how Russiagate began.
Since that time, Brennan
has tweeted President Donald Trump, asserting that "When the full extent
of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you
will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history."
He
has attacked the president for congratulating President Vladimir Putin over
his victory in Russian national elections. He said that the U.S. President is
"wholly in the pocket of Putin," definitely "afraid of the president of Russia"
and that the Kremlin "may have something on him personally. The fact that he
has had this fawning attitude toward Mr. Putin continues to say to me that he
does have something to fear and something very serious to fear." And he then
administered what might be considered the coup de main , saying that
the president should be impeached for "treasonous" behavior after Trump
stood next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a news conference
in Finland and cast doubt on the conclusion of the intelligence agencies that
Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump's decision to pull Brennan's clearance attracted an immediate tweeted
response from the ex-CIA Director: "This action is part of a broader effort
by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics. It should gravely
worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of
speaking out." He also added, in a New York Times
op-ed , that "Mr. Trump's claims of no collusion [with Russia] are, in a
word, hogwash," though he provided no evidence to support his claim and failed
to explain how exactly one washes a hog. There has subsequently been an avalanche
of suitably angry Brennan appearances all over the Sunday talk shows, a development
that will undoubtedly continue for the immediate future.
The claim that Trump is a Russian agent is not a new one, having also been
made repeatedly by Brennan CIA associate the grim and inscrutable Michael Morell,
who flaunts his
insider expertise both at The Times and on CBS. Regarding both
gentlemen, one might note that it is an easy mark to allege something sensational
that you don't have to prove, but the claim nevertheless constitutes a very
serious assertion of criminal behavior that might well meet the Constitutional
standard for treason, which comes with a death penalty. It is notable that in
spite of the gravity of the charge, Brennan and Morell have been either unable
or unwilling to substantiate it in any detail. Even a usually tone-deaf Congress
has noted that there is a problem with Brennan's credibility on the issue, not
to mention his integrity. Richard Burr, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, has
observed that
"Director Brennan's recent statements purport to know as fact that the
Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power. If Director Brennan's statement
is based on intelligence he received while still leading the CIA, why didn't
he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017?
If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office,
it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge
of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel,
not The New York Times ."
This behavior by Brennan is no surprise to those who know him and have
worked with him. An ambitious crawler with a checkered history, he was strongly
disliked by his peers at CIA, largely because of his lack of any sense of restraint
and his reputation for over-the-top vindictiveness. He notoriously flunked out
of spy training at the Agency, forcing him to instead become an analyst, so
he went after the Clandestine Service in his reorganization of CIA after he
became Director.
John Brennan has always been a failure as an intelligence officer even
as he successfully climbed the promotion ladder. He was the CIA's Chief of Station
(COS) in Saudi Arabia
when
the Khobar Towers were bombed , killing 19 Americans, a disaster which he
incorrectly blamed on the Iranians. He was deputy executive director on 9/11
and was complicit in that intelligence failure. He subsequently served as CIA
chief of staff when his boss George Tenet concocted phony stories about Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction. He also approved of the Agency torture and rendition
programs and was complicit in the destruction of Libya as well as the attempt
to do the same to Syria.
Barack Obama wanted Brennan to be his CIA Director but his record with the
Agency torture and rendition programs made approval by the Senate problematical.
Instead, he became the president's homeland security advisor and deputy national
security advisor for counterterrorism, where he did even more damage, expanding
the parameters of the death by drone operations and sitting down with the POTUS
for the
Tuesday morning counterterrorism sessions spent refining the kill list of
American citizens.
After Obama was re-elected in 2012, he was able to overcome objections
and appoint Brennan CIA Director. Conniving as ever, Brennan then ordered the
Agency to read the communications of the congressional committee then engaged
in investigating CIA torture, the very program that he had been complicit in.
Brennan then denied to Congress under oath that any such intramural spying
had occurred, afterwards apologizing when the truth came out. Moon of Alabama
characterizes him as " always ruthless, incompetent and dishonest."
So the real John Brennan emerges as an unlikely standard bearer for the First
Amendment. He has an awful lot of baggage and is far from the innocent victim
of a madman Trump that is being portrayed in much of the media. Indeed,
he should be answerable for torture, renditions, extrajudicial killing of foreigners
and targeted murder of American citizens. Those constitute war crimes and in
the not too distant past Japanese and German officers were hanged for such behavior.
One has to hope that Brennan's day of judgment will eventually come and he will
have to pay for his multiple crimes against humanity.
The question seems stark to me as to how in the hell did brennan ever
get accepted by the cia in the first place. Was he vetted all? With his
psychological makeup, his past political affiliations (or inclinations),
he seems from the outside as a candidate mostly likely to be rejected out
of hand beyond the first step.
And then we have his rise through the ranks to Director-one could ask
WTF? Who were his handlers?
Perhaps Mr. Brennan is guilty of using the psychological tactic of "projection"
against President Trump? All the things he accuses President Trump of ("treason"
perhaps), he is actually guilty of himself.
How an admitted supporter of CPUSA and Gus Hall voter even got past the
SBI investigation is enough to mystify one. He must have had strong supporters
and the top of the house in his young days.
"He was deputy executive director on 9/11 and was complicit in
that intelligence failure."
Shame on you Philip. Years of research has convinced me that it was not
a failure at all but rather one of their greatest hits. I usually like your
commentary but salting your rhetoric with lies to promote the false CIA
narrative is not acceptable.
AMF
The PBS NewsHour segment with CIA Director John Brennan, included
this quote from him:
" We see what he has done in places like Crimea and Ukraine
and in Syria. he tends to flex muscles, not just on himself, but
also in terms of Russia's military capabilities. He plays by his
own rules in terms of what it is that he does in some of these theaters
of conflict.
So I don't think we underestimated him. He has sought to advance
Russia's interests in areas where there have been political vacuums
and conflicts. But he doesn't ascribe to the same types of rules
that we do, for example, in law of armed conflict. What the Russians
have done in Syria in terms of some of the scorched-earth policy
that they have pursued that have led to devastation and thousands
upon thousands of innocent deaths, that's not something that the
United States would ever do in any of these military conflicts."
Own rules as in what Turkey has done in northern Cyprus and the Clinton
led NATO in Kosovo? It was a shameful example of journalism on the part
of PBS to let Brennan's comments go unchallenged. PBS had earlier run
a pro-CrowdStrike feature. It's not as if there aren't any expert cyber
security/ intelligence sources offering a different perspective.
As for the devastation of thousands of civilians during war (raised
by Brennan), consider some past US actions like what happened in Japan
during WW II, the Cold War activity in Southeast Asia, as well as post-Cold
War actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The collateral damage emphasis
has been hypocritically applied. Along with the subjectively dubious
comments of Hayden and Nance, the above excerpted comments from Brennan
are indicative of a (past and present) politicized element within US
Intel.
Not very outstanding personality, He had his moment on the sun when Libyan
and Syrian war crimes by Hillary and Obama were prepared. He is now in the
shade and his brain is feed for mold and mildew.
Brennan should be in prison for the lies and accusations he has made.
He is as corrupt as they come. Brennan is at the center of an Obama/Clinton
directed scam to discredit Trump. Trump, love him or hate him, was elected
by the American people. Brennan and his ilk may not like it but that does
not mean they have the right to bend the country to their collective wills.
Time to throw the book at these malcontents.
"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political
corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced
demagogue in the dustbin of history."
Methinks Brennan was looking in the mirror when he first mouthed that
truth, which is actually about the former CIA Director. Why these
intelligence people maintain that Top Secret(TS) clearance after they retire,
resign or get tossed during a change in the WH is beyond me. It's great
for them, as they can burnish that TS as credentials when getting hired
by CNN or FOX to blather on about something, usually enhancing some lie
or propaganda those pseudo-news outlets are promoting.
But the bigger problem is that some or maybe many are Israel-Firsters,
who have loyalty to that Apartheid nightmare and most likely pass on info
to their Israeli buddies that they should not have gotten.
That is called treason and is one more reason why their TS clearance
should be revoked when they leave government work.
A powerful, pointed essay to be shared widely. That Mr. Brennan's shameful
acts listed here go back to the last Bush presidency can also help to enlighten
those still gulled by the Red/Blue puppet show.
The notion that anyone high up in the CIA might ever be convicted of
war crimes under the rule of Imperial Washington, though, is sadly laughable.
Notice that Senator Burr still refers to Mr. Brennan as "Director Brennan."
The way these people think of themselves is not only annoying, but maintains
a system in which they're above the law.
One suggested edit: " Japanese and German officers were [hanged] for
such behavior."
Obama favored the Muslim Brotherhood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood. The Nobel Prize of
" peace " winner bombed a few arab countries from Libia to Afganistan ,
and organized " color revolutions " ( coups d` Etat ) in many other arab
and non arab countries . Obama provoked millions of arabs refugees escaping
from wars and invading Europe . Obama provoked the coup d`Etat and war in
Ukraina
Great article Philip, as usual. I am your biggest fan ..roasting here
in the south of Turkey watching the unfolding debacle on par with the suns
relentlessness.
" He was deputy executive director on 9/11 and was complicit in
that intelligence failure. "
Is meant here that for some reason that I still do not understand the
plotters failed to make use of the hijacked planes to fly into the towers,
the Pentagon and into Camp David ? In my usual immodest opinion Sept 11
was blundering along, so that two other planes than the 'hijacked' ones
flew into the towers, the first had some bulge under the plane, the second
had no windows, what flew into the Pentagon was something small, and the
Pennsylvania plane 'atomised' in mid air, according to the coroner.
But, with a complete failure, I must admit that the improvisation was
not bad, and had success, with help of the USA's media. BTW, on a German
site is explained what profit the Jewish owners of the Towers made, $ five
billion, seen in Germany by the insurer, Allianz, as insurance fraud. In
order to be able to pay Allianz fired 3000 employees. Alas, the article
has disappeared, too shocking, maybe.
You are assuming a level of competence on the CIA. No one there predicted
the collapse of the Soviet Union, they said Iraq had WMDs, and now made
up this nonsense about Trump. They are the same folks who brought us the
Bay of Pigs more than half a century ago. Too bad Kennedy didn't get to
break them up into a million pieces and scatter them in the wind like he
wanted to do.
Why does the CIA hire unhinged people like Brennan and Philip Mudd?
Unhinged and dumb. IMHO, they're easier to manipulate by the Puppet
Masters. You can't have Groton & Yale-educated types like in Allen Dulles'
day because they might go off the Puppet Master playbook and start calling
audibles out in the field.
Saying as Giraldi did that 911 was a failure of intelligence is a coverup
for the fact that Israel and the Zionist controlled deep state did 911 and
Giraldi and every thinking America knows that Israel and the deep state
did it and got away with it.
Brennan and the majority of the deep state are under Zionist control
and the fact that they let Israel and the Zionists get away with 911 means
that Brennan and every one of the 17 intel agencies that had knowledge of
911 is a traitor to America and the fact that Israel got away with killing
3000 Americans proves that Zionists and Israel have total control of every
facet of the U.S. government.
May God help America as we are a captive nation of zionists.
Already posted under the current Buchanan column, but more likely to
learn something here:
OK, I admit that I haven't researched it myself. But shouldn't a column
on this topic state briefly what a "security clearance" is and explain what
is had enabled Mr. Brennan, once he left government employ, to access? Is
it like a password or something? What is the practical effect of its revocation?
"With 4 million Americans holding top-secret clearances [Buchanan],"
this sounds like the Battle of Molehill Mountain.
Thanks to anyone who helps to provide some context.
Brennan is such a small part of a massively corrupt behind the scene
picture. There are probably 2000 or 3000 more who need the same treatment
immediately.
Trumping security clearance at termination from any job that requires
them; in government, military or in the private sector, should be automatic,
without exception. Trump all non active or non essential clearances would
reduce the power of and the number of corporate lobbyist, private mercenaries,
global gun slingers and creators of the privately owned 24/7 promoted, highly
spied on fake news stories and many corrupt crossboard activities..
I hope the issue of whether or not the POTUS has the authority to
Trump all security clearance goes to court, because if its outcome is positive
for Trump, maybe Trump will Trump Bush's and Clinton clearances. That would
make the job of the AG quite a bit easier.
This idea of trumping security clearances has some real promise as a
way to restore some modicum of democracy in the USA. But Trumping Security
Clearance should be rule based. Trump needs to issue a presidential order..
worded something like this. All security clearances in the USA are issued
on a as needed basis, and shall terminate as soon as the need is resolved,
or the person holding the clearance is terminated from the job for which
the clearance was issued.
Brennan is an idiot. Just listen to him and watch him. And having
missed the fall of the USSR, 9/11 and Iraqi WMD, why does the press suddenly
hold the intelligence community in such high regard? The truth is the MSM
will do anything to nail Trump not that I particularly like him although
compared to HC .
On the contrary, Brennan is just the kind of person who rises up
the ranks in government. And look at Gina, his successor, should she even
be where she is ?
Oh sure, we can pick on Brennan, he's a funny-looking asskisser,
thick as mince, but making it all his fault obscures the blindingly obvious
fact that Hillary was the institutional choice of CIA. The other CIA talking
heads are distancing themselves from Brennan simply because he bends over
backwards to please his Project Mockingbird producers. He's hamming it up
and embarrassing them, that's all.
You don't get near the White House without doing lots of favors for CIA.
Trump laundered money for the CIA agents who looted Russia. Hillary was
of course senior Nomenklatura and next in line. Cord Meyer recruited her
husband at Oxford, and she helped frame Nixon with CIA's Watergate burlesque
(read Russ Baker.) She's the Queen of Mena.
CIA installed four presidents: Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama. Hillary
was supposed to be next but she couldn't even beat her handpicked loser
asshole in a rigged election. So CIA is going berserk. Trump's war is with
CIA, not Brennan.
I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan? DC
is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather than
life in prison at our expense. .
Maybe we should start constructing skyscrapers out of the bodies of birds,
like the ones that crashed this Swedish jet?
'Russia hacked the birds': Social media mocks Swedish paranoia after birds
take down fighter jet
He'd have a lot of company there: pretty much every American federal
official in the last few decades, as well as most Russian officials who
were in power from ~1989 to ~2000. That circle must be really crowded, like
Washington, DC.
In a contemporary newspaper account of the creation of the OSS (forerunner
of CIA) the OSS was described as "five Jews working in a converted vault
in Washington DC". Described in James Bamford's "Body of Secrets". The CIA
has always been Israel's club. Even before it was called CIA.
Brennan voted for the communist party as a youth. Perhaps youthful
flightiness could be taken in stride but a tendency to flip-flop from one
form of utopianism to another is often a lifetime trait of unstable people,
much like some switch religions constantly. Why promote someone like
this to such a high position? This Russian Manchurian Candidate business
is bizarre and casts doubt about his mental health. In addition there were
rumors about him having converted to Islam while posted in Saudi Arabia.
Just some of the usual rumor-mongering that goes on, I thought. Then I looked
at him in testimony on YouTube. I was struck by his weirdly rhapsodic way
of describing Islam that seemed to go beyond merely playing up to them.
In addition he calls Jerusalem by the Arabic name of Al-Quds, something
no one here does and seems strange for a CIA head to do that. People like
this are the cream of the crop, guardians of our security and well-being?
Brennen is one of the Most untrustworth political gangsters among the
totally corrupted Amerian political class. That the fawning Media does Not
dismiss this crook as an so-called expert speaks for itself. President Trump
should revoke all Security clearances from the Obama crooks.
John Brennan is a traitor to America. At this point, this is basically
undeniable to any rational observer who has assessed the verifiable details
of his career. It is mind-boggling that he was ever accepted to any position
within our government and the CIA. The level of incompetence within the
US government and intelligence agencies is terrifying. The only good thing
about this idiot's irrational blabbering in the media is that it has the
potential to cause even many liberals to finally grasp how stupid, petty,
and dangerous the actions of the socialist-leaning left in our government,
intelligence agencies, and media are. There really is a swamp to drain.
There really is a lot of fake news. There really are people within our government,
intelligence agencies, and media who, whether through malicious intent or
just stupidity, are "enemies of the people."
In a more just world, John Brennan would be hanged and all of America
would cheer.
Is meant here that for some reason that I still do not understand
the plotters failed to make use of the hijacked planes to fly into the
towers, the Pentagon and into Camp David?
There were no 'hijacked planes'. The hijack ruse was a sleight of hand
distraction. It's like the old movie plane crash trick: Set up your camera
to frame a hill in extreme long shot. A plane dives into the frame from
the right and disappears behind the hill. The moment it goes behind the
hill, special effects set off a large pyro charge and there's a huge fireball.
Oh no, the plane crashed behind the hill!
Scheduled flights must have taken off with the requisite squawk codes,
but where they went & who was on them if any, is anyone's guess. What's
clear (in the same way it's clear Oswald wasn't sniping on Nov 22 '63) is
the scheduled jets didn't fly into towers/buildings. UAV aircraft did.
After a major air disaster with large loss of life, the standard
TV reporting template is to send a news crew to the arrival airport to get
coverage of the distraught relatives. On 9/11 there were 4 simultaneous
air disasters with approx 500 dead. How many extended TV reports at the
4 arrival airports, with hundreds of 'grieving relatives/friends' did you
see? I saw zero.
A security clearance is granted on a strict need-to-know basis.
I fail to see how these former ranking intelligence officials like John
Brennan maintain the need-to-know after they have left public service.
When the Central Intelligence Agency was established by President Truman
on September 18, 1947, one justification was that the United States had
been caught off-guard by the surprise Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor,
and therefore it was necessary to coordinate all intelligence activities
under a single head, or director, who would have direct access to the president,
and there would be no more such surprises.
Of course, all that about Pearl Harbor is a cock 'n' bull story from
top to bottom, just like 9/11 is. FDR knew exactly what was going on. In
fact, no one had worked harder to bring it about than the President himself.
Just as Stalin had been successful in tricking Hitler into attacking the
Soviet Union, so too was Roosevelt successful in goading the Japanese to
attack Pearl Harbor. It was the plan all along: Let the enemy strike the
first blow, then seize the moral high ground, from which lofty summit the
enemy can be vilified and demonized with propaganda including the most astonishingly
poisonous accusations, like an industrialized program in Nazi Germany to
exterminate the Jews.
But Truman wasn't done yet. In 1952, he established the National Security
Agency, ostensibly because the CIA was doing a poor job with communications
intelligence.
Now, in the wake of 9/11–where the initial story was that we were "blindsided"–
we've got 17 different intelligence agencies, with a new position created
to coordinate them all. Whatever it is all these guys are doing, about the
only thing we can be sure of is that they will have few problems getting
the budget to do it, and instead of intelligence, we get propaganda and
chaos.
Brennan sounds like a hog that doesn't wash itself of his own sins
while he is carrying out his paymasters' wish. He thinks that he is indispensable
to the powers that be he may want to remember the late Alphonse D'Amato
of New York, who was chucked aside once he had used up his senatorial cudgel
to extract gelt out of the Swiss banks. Trump isn't going to be either
impeached or gotten rid off, simply because he works for the same crowd
and the only difference between him and lowly spook is that the former is
part of the ruling class, while the latter is just a peon used to distract
the dumbed down public!
It is absolutely terrifying to recognize that very many in those
"elites" never became real adults in their lives and psychologically (mentally?)
are still at the high school maturity level. All political tops are messy,
soaked in palace intrigues and clash of egos larger than cathedrals, but
this particular case is something else entirely and it has a lot to do with
overall precipitous decline, both intellectual and moral, of American party
and government so called "elites".
I didn't quite get that about Baer as well. The only basis perhaps is
that Baer might be less of a propagandist when compared to Mudd and Brennan.
The talking head types typically heard in US mass media are overly
suspect and coddled. From the FBI, there's Frank Figluizzi and Josh Campbell.
A rare exception to that spin is Tucker Carlson hosting former NSA official
William Binney.
I am not denying Brennan's guilt. But why single out Brennan?
DC is teeming with war criminals, most of which deserve the noose, rather
than life in prison at our expense.
I don't believe he's being singled out. Much attention is focused on
him, on account of the absurd things he spews in high profile settings.
He deserves to get severely rebuked, long with a good number in mass media
and body politic who handle him with kid gloves.
The NSA, military intelligence outfits and other groups can provide information
gathering services to the United States government and the President of
the United States.
John Brennan... is completely and totally representative of the kind
of CIA government worker human filth that steals money from the US government
while damaging the best interests of the United States.
If General George Washington and General Andrew Jackson were alive, John
Brennan would be forcefully exiled from the United States for his actions
against the United States of America.
So if Trump is a CIA asset, why are they doing everything in their power
to get rid of him, short of killing him (so far..)? The fact of the
matter is that both Hillary and Jeb Bush were the Deep State candidates,
either was supposed to win, didn't matter which as both would be puppets
anyway.
Neither Bernie Sanders nor Trump were supposed to win, the Democrats
did their part in getting rid of Sanders, the Republicans tried, and failed,
to get rid of Trump (again, so far..)
Trump is imperfect but he must be doing something right because the
entire establishment is out to get him. I've never seen anything like it
in my life.
Hardly anything memorable has been written about the botched CIA operation
in Laos during the Vietnam War. Under the guise Air America , the CIA spent
millions if not billions of dollars in a futile attempt to stop the Pathet
Lao. Lots of innocent lives lost but no one held accountable at the highest
levels of our government. But then again that seems to be the same story
involving inept leadership and corruption in all the conflicts the US has
been engaged in since WWII.
What Giraldi calls a "failure of intelligence" is probably about
as far as most ex-CIA officer would go on 9/11, at least in public. Whether
or not some part the intelligence community was actually complicit in the
execution of 9/11 is another matter, though discussing it here only distracts
from the main thrust of the article.
I think we used to all think that the spooks were at least guided
by some moral principles, in their goals, if not in their operations, but
bozos like Brennan, Morell, Tenet, Heyden, etc, clearly show that this is
not the case.
Obviously, it's only about power and being in the game; whichever way
the wind blows they have to be in on it in order to apply pressure on whoever
turns up on top. At no level do they even care whether the general direction
is moral or criminal. They simply play all sides of the table for best agency,
deep state, or personal interest – no other consideration comes even in
play. The image they portray on television is as realistic as the depiction
of Ozzie and Harriet was to a real marriage.
Trump revoking Brennan's security clearance doesn't move me. His freedom
of speech is not stifled; it gives him a larger platform.
Brennan is not the first to use hyperbole to monetize a scandal.
Not the first to take advantage of his proximity to the President. And I
agree with Sen Burr's statement. But that's not the point. I'm concerned
by what he did as CIA director as the Trump/Russia relationship developed.
It's abundantly clear to me that Director Brennan acted appropriately
and the Mueller investigation is legitimate and necessary.
Abundantly clear, eh, PintOrTwo? Perhaps it was so clear to you after
having a pint or two?
I expect he would "(use) that information to request an FBI investigation
into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers
(to) Trump". To do otherwise would be egregious.
I totally agree with you about Brennan requesting an FBI investigation.
But rather than looking into non-existent Russian operations, if he were
truly doing his job he should be calling for an investigation into Zion-gate
– i.e., the massive interference into US politics wielded by the Zionists
through their network of organizations, aka The Lobby . Why concentrate
on the ant when the elephant is standing right in front of you? You wouldn't
be engaging in deflection, would you, PintOrTwoOrThree?
When the state keeps a secret it subordinates the human right to know.
There are very few things that reach that standard. When the state enables
an abuse of a secret, it endangers everyone's freedoms and liberties.
There can be no greater abuse of free speech than state secrets, and
therefore no greater duty of the state to both prove the need to keep the
knowledge secret and to prevent anyone from wrongfully using or abusing
the knowledge kept secret.
When someone on the inside, committed to preserving the secret in trust
realizes that the trust has been abused and that the trust is regularly
abused, and decides as a matter of conscious to endure the consequences,
by stepping forward to disclose failures of the state with regard to the
knowledge kept secret, that brave person becomes known as a whistle blower.
In effect that whistle blower is speaking for all of us, he or she becomes
the protector of human rights because only he or she knows, outside of the
state, that the state is infringing a human right.
Human rights always trump state rights. Unless the whistle blower exposed
the wrong doings or abuse, the state is left to continue its wrongdoing.
Exposed, the state must explain its behavior, suffer the consequences, and
protect the whistle blowers. Its unfortunate that the whistle blower is
treated much like the woman abused, in court, the victim is made to look
to be the criminal.
overall precipitous decline, both intellectual and moral, of American
"elites".
I'm not sure whether, on balance, that bodes well or ill. For Americans,
probably ill, but from the RoW's perspective it may simply mean that the
Empire dies that much more quickly. Barring somebody doing something really
stupid. EG: "Assessing" in their ignorance that they can win a nuclear exchange
when they inevitably find themselves at their wit's end, of course.
That you don't care is evidenced by your trust in The Guardian and AP
as reliable sources for news and information, I mean, fool me once and all
that but dozens of times should be more than enough for anyone who does
care.
In the long run it may even be a bitter but life-saving medicine. BTW,
OT–can you, please, get me to your excellent economic post about GDP "growing"
while in reality shrinking. I hope you recall which one, I lost the link
to it, sadly.
Anon (76) below is the interpretive guidance for US human rights law
relating to the right to seek and obtain information – Article 18 – supreme
law of the land.
"... But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States' geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike. ..."
"... But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it. ..."
"... In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it ..."
"But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked
in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded
by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it
launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States'
geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike.
The character of world economy has undergone a major transformation in the past decade in
which economic growth, to the extent it that it occurs, is not driven by the development of
production and new investments but by the flow of money from one source of speculative and
parasitic activity to the next."
"But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the
capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the
ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means
considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it.
This is the lesson from the past decade which, in every country, has seen a deepening
attack on wages, social conditions and living standards as wealth is redistributed up the
income scale, raising social inequality to unprecedented heights.
In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous
benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the
parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of
parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it."
"... The U.S. sets the main goals in negotiating with anyone and does not retreat an inch from the self-asserted goals. ..."
"... The U.S. does not offer anything in cash or immediate in return for what it receives in cash. It simply makes strong promises and tries to enchant the other side by mere promises. ..."
"... And in the final step, when things are over and the U.S. has received the cash, the immediate benefits, it breaches the same promises. ..."
The Iranian Supreme Leader even posted a special graphic summary to summarize and explain
the Iranian position:
This is the U.S. formula for negotiation:
Because U.S. officials depend on power and money, they consider
negotiations as a business deal.
The U.S. sets the main goals in negotiating with anyone and does
not retreat an inch from the self-asserted goals.
They demand the other side to give them immediate benefits and if
the other party refrains from giving in, the U.S. officials will create
an uproar so that their partner would give up.
The U.S. does not offer anything in cash or immediate in return for
what it receives in cash. It simply makes strong promises and tries
to enchant the other side by mere promises.
And in the final step, when things are over and the U.S. has received
the cash, the immediate benefits, it breaches the same promises.
This is the U.S.'s method of negotiation. Now, should one
negotiate with such a duplicitous government?
"... The U.S. sets the main goals in negotiating with anyone and does not retreat an inch from the self-asserted goals. ..."
"... The U.S. does not offer anything in cash or immediate in return for what it receives in cash. It simply makes strong promises and tries to enchant the other side by mere promises. ..."
"... And in the final step, when things are over and the U.S. has received the cash, the immediate benefits, it breaches the same promises. ..."
The Iranian Supreme Leader even posted a special graphic summary to summarize and explain
the Iranian position:
This is the U.S. formula for negotiation:
Because U.S. officials depend on power and money, they consider
negotiations as a business deal.
The U.S. sets the main goals in negotiating with anyone and does
not retreat an inch from the self-asserted goals.
They demand the other side to give them immediate benefits and if
the other party refrains from giving in, the U.S. officials will create
an uproar so that their partner would give up.
The U.S. does not offer anything in cash or immediate in return for
what it receives in cash. It simply makes strong promises and tries
to enchant the other side by mere promises.
And in the final step, when things are over and the U.S. has received
the cash, the immediate benefits, it breaches the same promises.
This is the U.S.'s method of negotiation. Now, should one
negotiate with such a duplicitous government?
"... But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States' geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike. ..."
"... But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it. ..."
"... In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it ..."
"But to an extent hardly imaginable in 2008, all the world's leading economies are locked
in a perpetually escalating cycle of economic warfare. This global trade war is spearheaded
by the Trump White House, which sees trade sanctions and tariffs, such as the onslaught it
launched against Turkey, as an integral component of its drive to secure the United States'
geopolitical and economic interests at the expense of friend and foe alike.
The character of world economy has undergone a major transformation in the past decade in
which economic growth, to the extent it that it occurs, is not driven by the development of
production and new investments but by the flow of money from one source of speculative and
parasitic activity to the next."
"But while they are deeply divided as to their economic and geo-political objectives, the
capitalist ruling classes are united on one essential question. However the next stage of the
ongoing breakdown of world capitalism proceeds, they will all strive by whatever means
considered necessary to make the working class the world over pay for it.
This is the lesson from the past decade which, in every country, has seen a deepening
attack on wages, social conditions and living standards as wealth is redistributed up the
income scale, raising social inequality to unprecedented heights.
In 2008, capitalist governments around the world, above all in the US, derived enormous
benefit from the decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade unions and the
parties of the political establishment. The rescue operation they carried out on behalf of
parasitic and criminal finance capital would not have been possible without it."
"... The dominant corporate U.S. media routinely exaggerates the degree of difference and choice between the candidates run by the nation's two corporate-dominated political organizations, the Democrats and the Republicans. It never notes that the two reigning parties agree about far more than they differ on, particularly when it comes to fundamental and related matters of business class power and American Empire. It shows U.S. protestors engaged in angry confrontations with police and highlights isolated examples of protestor violence but it downplays peaceful protest and never pays serious attention to the important societal and policy issues that have sparked protest or to the demands and recommendations advanced by protest movements. ..."
"... Newscasters who want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine art of evasion with great skill they skirt around the most important parts of a story. With much finesse, they say a lot about very little, serving up heaps of junk news filled with so many empty calories and so few nutrients. Thus do they avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power while giving every appearance of judicious moderation and balance. It is enough to take your breath away ..."
"... In U.S. "mainstream" media, Washington's aims are always benevolent and democratic. Its clients and allies are progressive, its enemies are nefarious, and its victims are invisible and incidental. The U.S. can occasionally make "mistakes" and "strategic blunders" on the global stage, but its foreign policies are never immoral, criminal, or imperialist in nature as far as that media is concerned. This is consistent with the doctrine of "American Exceptionalism," according to which the U.S., alone among great powers in history, seeks no selfish or imperial gain abroad. It is consistent also with "mainstream" U.S. media's heavy reliance on "official government sources" (the White House, the Defense Department, and the State Department) and leading business public relations and press offices for basic information on current events. ..."
"... U.S. citizens regularly see images of people who are angry at the U.S. around the world. The dominant mass media never gives them any serious discussion of the US policies and actions that create that anger. Millions of Americans are left to ask in childlike ignorance "Why do they hate us? What have we done?" ..."
"... If transmitting Washington's lies about Iraq were something to be fired about, then U.S. corporate media authorities would have to get rid of pretty much of all their top broadcasters. ..."
"... The U.S. corporate media's propagandistic service to the nation's reigning and interrelated structures of Empire and inequality is hardly limited to its news and public affairs wings. Equally if not more significant in that regard is that media's vast "entertainment" sector, which is loaded with political and ideological content ..."
"... Seen broadly in its many-sided and multiply delivered reality, U.S. corporate media's dark, power-serving mission actually goes further than the manufacture of consent. A deeper goal is the manufacture of mass idiocy, with "idiocy" understood in the original Greek and Athenian sense not of stupidity but of childish selfishness and willful indifference to public affairs and concerns. (An "idiot" in Athenian democracy was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private instead of public affairs.). As the U.S. Latin Americanist Cathy Schneider noted, the U.S.-backed military coup and dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet "transformed Chile, both culturally and politically, from a country of active participatory grassroots communities, to a land of disconnected, apolitical individuals"[7] – into a nation of "idiots" understood in this classic Athenian sense. ..."
"... To be sure, a narrow and reactionary sort of public concern and engagement does appear and take on a favorable light in this corporate media culture. It takes the form of a cruel, often even sadistically violent response to unworthy and Evil Others who are perceived as failing to obey prevalent national and neoliberal cultural codes. Like the U.S. ruling class that owns it, the purportedly anti-government corporate media isn't really opposed to government as such. It's opposed to what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called "the left hand of the state" – the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the non-affluent majority. ..."
"... The generation of mass idiocy in the more commonly understood sense of sheer stupidity is also a central part of U.S. "mainstream" media's mission. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in the constant barrage of rapid-fire advertisements that floods U.S. corporate media. ..."
"... There's nothing surprising about the fact that the United States' supposedly "free" and "independent" media functions as a means of mass indoctrination for the nation's economic and imperial elite ..."
"... A second explanation is the power of advertisers. U.S. media managers are naturally reluctant to publish or broadcast material that might offend the large corporations that pay for broadcasting by purchasing advertisements. ..."
"... A third great factor is U.S. government media policy and regulation on behalf of oligopolistic hyper-concentration. The U.S. corporate media is hardly a "natural" outcome of a "free market." It's the result of government protections and subsidies that grant enormous "competitive" advantages to the biggest and most politically/plutocratically influential media firms. ..."
"... In this writer's experience, the critical Left analysis of the U.S. "mainstream" media as a tool for "manufacturing consent" and idiocy developed above meets four objections from defenders of the U.S. media system, A first objection notes that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times (FT), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and other major U.S. corporate media outlets produce a significant amount of, informative, high-quality and often candid reporting and commentary that Left thinkers and activists commonly cite to support their cases for radical and democratic change. ..."
"... The observation that Leftists commonly use and cite information from the corporate media they harshly criticize is correct but it is easy to account for the apparent anomaly within the critical Left framework by noting that that media crafts two very different versions of U.S. policy, politics, society, "life," and current events for two different audiences. Following the work of the brilliant Australian propaganda critic Alex Carey, we can call the first audience the "grassroots."[14] It comprises the general mass of working and lower-class citizens. ..."
"... The second target group comprises the relevant political class of U.S. citizens from at most the upper fifth of society. This is who reads the Times, the Post, WSJ, and FT, for the most part. Call this audience (again following Carey) the "treetops": the "people who matter" and who deserve and can be trusted with something more closely approximating the real story because their minds have been properly disciplined and flattered by superior salaries, significant on-the-job labor autonomy, and "advanced" and specialized educational and professional certification. ..."
"... To everyday Americans' credit, corporate media has never been fully successful in stamping out popular resistance and winning over the hearts and minds of the U.S. populace. ..."
"... The U.S. elite is no more successful in its utopian (or dystopian) quest to control every American heart and mind than it is in its equally impossible ambition of managing events across a complex planet from the banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C ..."
Consistent with its possession as a leading and money-making asset of the nation's wealthy
elite, the United States corporate and commercial mass media is a bastion of power-serving
propaganda and deadening twaddle designed to keep the U.S. citizenry subordinated to capital
and the imperial U.S. state. It regularly portrays the United States as a great model of
democracy and equality. It sells a false image of the U.S. as a society where the rich enjoy
opulence because of hard and honest work and where the poor are poor because of their laziness
and irresponsibility. The nightly television news broadcasts and television police and law and
order dramas are obsessed with violent crime in the nation's Black ghettoes and Latino barrios,
but they never talk about the extreme poverty, the absence of opportunity imposed on those
neighborhoods by the interrelated forces of institutional racism, capital flight, mass
structural unemployment, under-funded schools, and mass incarceration. The nightly television
weather reports tells U.S. citizens of ever new record high temperatures and related forms of
extreme weather but never relate these remarkable meteorological developments to anthropogenic
climate change.
The dominant corporate U.S. media routinely exaggerates the degree of difference and choice
between the candidates run by the nation's two corporate-dominated political organizations, the
Democrats and the Republicans. It never notes that the two reigning parties agree about far
more than they differ on, particularly when it comes to fundamental and related matters of
business class power and American Empire. It shows U.S. protestors engaged in angry
confrontations with police and highlights isolated examples of protestor violence but it
downplays peaceful protest and never pays serious attention to the important societal and
policy issues that have sparked protest or to the demands and recommendations advanced by
protest movements.
As the prolific U.S. Marxist commentator Michael Parenti once remarked, US "Newscasters who
want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine art of evasion with great skill they skirt
around the most important parts of a story. With much finesse, they say a lot about very
little, serving up heaps of junk news filled with so many empty calories and so few nutrients.
Thus do they avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power while giving every
appearance of judicious moderation and balance. It is enough to take your breath away." [1]
Selling Empire
U.S. newscasters and their print media counterparts routinely parrot and disseminate the
false foreign policy claims of the nation's imperial elite. Earlier this year, U.S. news
broadcasters dutiful relayed to U.S. citizens the Obama administration's preposterous assertion
that social-democratic Venezuela is a repressive, corrupt, and authoritarian danger to its own
people and the U.S. No leading national U.S. news outlet dared to note the special absurdity of
this charge in the wake of Obama and other top U.S. officials' visit to Riyadh to guarantee
U.S. support for the new king of Saudi Arabia, the absolute ruler of a leading U.S. client
state that happens to be the most brutally oppressive and reactionary government on Earth.
In U.S. "mainstream" media, Washington's aims are always benevolent and democratic. Its
clients and allies are progressive, its enemies are nefarious, and its victims are invisible
and incidental. The U.S. can occasionally make "mistakes" and "strategic blunders" on the
global stage, but its foreign policies are never immoral, criminal, or imperialist in nature as
far as that media is concerned. This is consistent with the doctrine of "American
Exceptionalism," according to which the U.S., alone among great powers in history, seeks no
selfish or imperial gain abroad. It is consistent also with "mainstream" U.S. media's heavy
reliance on "official government sources" (the White House, the Defense Department, and the
State Department) and leading business public relations and press offices for basic information
on current events.
As the leading Left U.S. intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman showed in their
classic text Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Orwellian
double standards are rife in the dominant U.S. media's coverage and interpretation of global
affairs. Elections won in other countries by politicians that Washington approves because those
politicians can be counted on to serve the interests of U.S. corporations and the military are
portrayed in U.S. media as good and clean contests. But when elections put in power people who
can't be counted on to serve "U.S. interests," (Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro for example),
then U.S. corporate media portrays the contests as "rigged" and "corrupt." When Americans or
people allied with Washington are killed or injured abroad, they are "worthy victims" and
receive great attention and sympathy in that media. People killed, maimed, displaced and
otherwise harmed by the U.S. and U.S. clients and allies are anonymous and "unworthy victims"
whose experience elicits little mention or concern.[2]
U.S. citizens regularly see images of people who are angry at the U.S. around the world. The
dominant mass media never gives them any serious discussion of the US policies and actions that
create that anger. Millions of Americans are left to ask in childlike ignorance "Why do they
hate us? What have we done?"
In February of 2015, an extraordinary event occurred in U.S. news media – the firing
of a leading national news broadcaster, Brian Williams of NBC News. Williams lost his position
because of some lies he told in connection with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A naïve
outsider might think that Williams was fired because he repeated the George W. Bush
administration's transparent fabrications about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
and Saddam's supposed connection to 9/11. Sadly but predictably enough, that wasn't his
problem. Williams lost his job because he falsely boasted that he had ridden on a helicopter
that was forced down by grenade fire during the initial U.S. invasion. If transmitting
Washington's lies about Iraq were something to be fired about, then U.S. corporate media
authorities would have to get rid of pretty much of all their top broadcasters.
More than Entertainment
The U.S. corporate media's propagandistic service to the nation's reigning and interrelated
structures of Empire and inequality is hardly limited to its news and public affairs wings.
Equally if not more significant in that regard is that media's vast "entertainment" sector,
which is loaded with political and ideological content but was completely ignored in Herman and
Chomsky's groundbreaking Manufacturing Consent. [3] One example is the Hollywood movie "Zero
Dark Thirty," a 2012 "action thriller" that dramatized the United States' search for Osama
bin-Laden after the September 11, 2001 jetliner attacks. The film received critical acclaim and
was a box office-smash. It was also a masterpiece of pro-military, pro-CIA propaganda,
skillfully portraying U.S. torture practices "as a dirty, ugly business that is necessary to
protect America" (Glenn Greenwald[4]) and deleting the moral debate that erupted over the CIA's
"enhanced interrogation techniques." Under the guise of a neutral, documentary-like
façade, Zero Dark Thirty normalized and endorsed torture in ways that were all the more
effective because of its understated, detached, and "objective" veneer. The film also marked a
distressing new frontier in U.S. military-"embedded" filmmaking whereby the movie-makers
receive technical and logistical support from the Pentagon in return for producing elaborate
public relations on the military's behalf.
The 2014-15 Hollywood blockbuster American Sniper is another example. The film's audiences
is supposed to marvel at the supposedly noble feats, sacrifice, and heroism of Chris Kyle, a
rugged, militantly patriotic, and Christian-fundamentalist Navy SEALS sniper who participated
in the U.S. invasion of Iraq to fight "evil" and to avenge the al Qaeda jetliner attacks of
September 11, 2001. Kyle killed 160 Iraqis over four tours of "duty" in "Operational Iraqi
Freedom." Viewers are never told that the Iraqi government had nothing to do with the 9/11
attacks or al Qaeda or that the U.S. invasion was one of the most egregiously criminal and
brazenly imperial and mass-murderous acts in the history of international violence. Like Zero
Dark Thirty's apologists, American Sniper's defenders claim that the film takes a neutral
perspective of "pure storytelling," with no ideological bias. In reality, the movie is filled
with racist and imperial distortions, functioning as flat-out war propaganda.[5]
These are just two among many examples that could be cited of U.S. "entertainment" media's
regular service to the American Empire. Hollywood and other parts of the nation's vast
corporate entertainment complex plays the same power-serving role in relation to domestic
("homeland") American inequality and oppression structures of class and race. [6]
Manufacturing Idiocy
Seen broadly in its many-sided and multiply delivered reality, U.S. corporate media's dark,
power-serving mission actually goes further than the manufacture of consent. A deeper goal is
the manufacture of mass idiocy, with "idiocy" understood in the original Greek and Athenian
sense not of stupidity but of childish selfishness and willful indifference to public affairs
and concerns. (An "idiot" in Athenian democracy was characterized by self-centeredness and
concerned almost exclusively with private instead of public affairs.). As the U.S. Latin
Americanist Cathy Schneider noted, the U.S.-backed military coup and dictatorship headed by
Augusto Pinochet "transformed Chile, both culturally and politically, from a country of active
participatory grassroots communities, to a land of disconnected, apolitical individuals"[7]
– into a nation of "idiots" understood in this classic Athenian sense.
In the U.S., where violence is not as readily available to elites as in 1970s Latin America,
corporate America seeks the same terrible outcome through its ideological institutions,
including above all its mass media. In U.S. movies, television sit-coms, television dramas,
television reality-shows, commercials, state Lottery advertisements, and video games, the
ideal-type U.S. citizen is an idiot in this classic sense: a person who cares about little more
than his or her own well-being, consumption, and status. This noble American idiot is
blissfully indifferent to the terrible prices paid by others for the maintenance of reigning
and interrelated oppressions structures at home and abroad.
A pervasive theme in this media culture is the notion that people at the bottom of the
nation's steep and interrelated socioeconomic and racial pyramids are the "personally
irresponsible" and culturally flawed makers of their own fate. The mass U.S. media's version of
Athenian idiocy "can imagine," in the words of the prolific Left U.S. cultural theorist Henry
Giroux "public issues only as private concerns." It works to "erase the social from the
language of public life so as to reduce" questions of racial and socioeconomic disparity to
"private issues of individual character and cultural depravity. Consistent with "the central
neoliberal tenet that all problems are private rather than social in nature," it portrays the
only barriers to equality and meaningful democratic participation as "a lack of principled
self-help and moral responsibility" and bad personal choices by the oppressed. Government
efforts to meaningfully address and ameliorate (not to mention abolish) societal disparities of
race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality and the like are portrayed as futile,
counterproductive, naïve, and dangerous.[8]
To be sure, a narrow and reactionary sort of public concern and engagement does appear and
take on a favorable light in this corporate media culture. It takes the form of a cruel, often
even sadistically violent response to unworthy and Evil Others who are perceived as failing to
obey prevalent national and neoliberal cultural codes. Like the U.S. ruling class that owns it,
the purportedly anti-government corporate media isn't really opposed to government as such.
It's opposed to what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called "the left hand of the state"
– the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the
non-affluent majority. It celebrates and otherwise advances the "right hand of the state"[9]:
the portions of government that serve the opulent minority, dole out punishment for the poor,
and attacks those perceived as nefariously resisting the corporate and imperial order at home
and abroad. Police officers, prosecutors, military personnel, and other government authorities
who represent the "right hand of the state" are heroes and role models in this media. Public
defenders, other defense attorneys, civil libertarians, racial justice activists, union
leaders, antiwar protesters and the like are presented at best as naïve and irritating
"do-gooders" and at worst as coddlers and even agents of evil.
The generation of mass idiocy in the more commonly understood sense of sheer stupidity is
also a central part of U.S. "mainstream" media's mission. Nowhere is this more clearly evident
than in the constant barrage of rapid-fire advertisements that floods U.S. corporate media. As
the American cultural critic Neil Postman noted thirty years ago, the modern U.S. television
commercial is the antithesis of the rational economic consideration that early Western
champions of the profits system claimed to be the enlightened essence of capitalism. "Its
principal theorists, even its most prominent practitioners," Postman noted, "believed
capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature,
well-informed, and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest." Commercials
make "hash" out of this idea. They are dedicated to persuading consumers with wholly irrational
claims. They rely not on the reasoned presentation of evidence and logical argument but on
suggestive emotionalism, infantilizing manipulation, and evocative, rapid-fire imagery.[10]
The same techniques poison U.S. electoral politics. Investment in deceptive and manipulative
campaign commercials commonly determines success or failure in mass-marketed election contests
between business-beholden candidates that are sold to the audience/electorate like brands of
toothpaste and deodorant. Fittingly enough, the stupendous cost of these political
advertisements is a major factor driving U.S. campaign expenses so high (the 2016 U.S.
presidential election will cost at least $5 billion) as to make candidates ever more dependent
on big money corporate and Wall Street donors.
Along the way, mass cognitive competence is assaulted by the numbing, high-speed ubiquity of
U.S. television and radio advertisements. These commercials assault citizens' capacity for
sustained mental focus and rational deliberation nearly sixteen minutes of every hour on cable
television, with 44 percent of the individual ads now running for just 15 seconds. This is a
factor in the United States' long-bemoaned epidemic of "Attention Deficit Disorder."
Seventy years ago, the brilliant Dutch left Marxist Anton Pannekoek offered some chilling
reflections on the corporate print and broadcast media's destructive impact on mass cognitive
and related social resistance capacities in the United States after World War II:
"The press is of course entirely in hands of big capital [and it] dominates the spiritual
life of the American people. The most important thing is not even the hiding of all truth about
the reign of big finance. Its aim still more is the education to thoughtlessness. All attention
is directed to coarse sensations, everything is avoided that could arouse thinking. Papers are
not meant to be read – the small print is already a hindrance – but in a rapid
survey of the fat headlines to inform the public on unimportant news items, on family triflings
of the rich, on sexual scandals, on crimes of the underworld, on boxing matches. The aim of the
capitalist press all over the world, the diverting of the attention of the masses from the
reality of social development, nowhere succeed with such thoroughness as in America."
"Still more than by the papers the masses are influenced by broadcasting and film. These
products of most perfect science, destined at one time to the finest educational instruments of
mankind, now in the hands of capitalism have been turned into the strongest means to uphold its
rule by stupefying the mind. Because after nerve-straining fatigue the movie offers relaxation
and distraction by means of simple visual impressions that make no demand on the intellect, the
masses get used to accepting thoughtlessly all its cunning and shrewd propaganda. It reflects
the ugliest sides of middle-class society. It turns all attention either to sexual life, in
this society – by the absence of community feelings and fight for freedom – the
only source of strong passions, or to brute violence; masses educated to rough violence instead
of to social knowledge are not dangerous to capitalism "[11]
Pannekoek clearly saw an ideological dimension (beyond just diversion and stupefaction) in
U.S. mass media's "education to thoughtlessness" through movies as well as print
sensationalism. He would certainly be impressed and perhaps depressed by the remarkably
numerous, potent, and many-sided means of mass distraction and indoctrination that are
available to the U.S. and global capitalist media in the present digital and Internet era.
The "entertainment" wing of its vast corporate media complex is critical to the considerable
"soft" ideological "power" the U.S. exercises around the world even as its economic hegemony
wanes in an ever more multipolar global system (and as its "hard" military reveals significant
limits within and beyond the Middle East). Relatively few people beneath the global capitalist
elite consume U.S. news and public affairs media beyond the U.S., but "American" (U.S.) movies,
television shows, video games, communication devices, and advertising culture are ubiquitous
across the planet.
Explaining "Mainstream" Media Corporate Ownership
There's nothing surprising about the fact that the United States' supposedly "free" and
"independent" media functions as a means of mass indoctrination for the nation's economic and
imperial elite. The first and most important explanation for this harsh reality is concentrated
private ownership – the fundamental fact that that media is owned primarily by giant
corporations representing wealthy interests who are deeply invested in U.S. capitalism and
Empire. Visitors to the U.S. should not be fooled by the large number and types of channels and
stations on a typical U.S. car radio or television set or by the large number and types of
magazines and books on display at a typical Barnes & Noble bookstore. Currently in the
U.S., just six massive and global corporations – Comcast, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS, The
News Corporation and Disney – together control more than 90 percent of the nation's print
and electronic media, including cable television, airwaves television, radio, newspapers,
movies, video games, book publishing, comic books, and more. Three decades ago, 50 corporations
controlled the same amount of U.S. media.
Each of the reigning six companies is a giant and diversified multi-media conglomerate with
investments beyond media, including "defense" (the military). Asking reporters and commentators
at one of those giant corporations to tell the unvarnished truth about what's happening in the
U.S. and the world is like asking the company magazine published by the United Fruit Company to
the tell the truth about working conditions in its Caribbean and Central American plantations
in the 1950s. It's like asking the General Motors company newspaper to tell the truth about
wages and working conditions in GM's auto assembly plants around the world.
As the nation's media becomes concentrated into fewer corporate hands, media personnel
become ever more insecure in their jobs because they have fewer firms to whom to sell their
skills. That makes them even less willing than they might have been before to go outside
official sources, to question the official line, and to tell the truth about current events and
the context in which they occur.
Advertisers
A second explanation is the power of advertisers. U.S. media managers are naturally
reluctant to publish or broadcast material that might offend the large corporations that pay
for broadcasting by purchasing advertisements. As Chomsky has noted in a recent interview,
large corporations are not only the major producers of the United States' mass and commercial
media. They are also that media's top market, something that deepens the captivity of nation's
supposedly democratic and independent media to big capital:
"The reliance of a journal on advertisers shapes and controls and substantially determines
what is presented to the public the very idea of advertiser reliance radically distorts the
concept of free media. If you think about what the commercial media are, no matter what, they
are businesses. And a business produces something for a market. The producers in this case,
almost without exception, are major corporations. The market is other businesses –
advertisers. The product that is presented to the market is readers (or viewers), so these
are basically major corporations providing audiences to other businesses, and that
significantly shapes the nature of the institution."[12]
At the same time, both U.S. corporate media managers and the advertisers who supply revenue
for their salaries are hesitant to produce content that might alienate the affluent people who
count for an ever rising share of consumer purchases in the U.S. It is naturally those with the
most purchasing power who are naturally most targeted by advertisers.
Government Policy
A third great factor is U.S. government media policy and regulation on behalf of
oligopolistic hyper-concentration. The U.S. corporate media is hardly a "natural" outcome of a
"free market." It's the result of government protections and subsidies that grant enormous
"competitive" advantages to the biggest and most politically/plutocratically influential media
firms. Under the terms of the 1934 Communications Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act,
commercial, for-profit broadcasters have almost completely free rein over the nation's airwaves
and cable lines. There is no substantive segment of the broadcast spectrum set aside for truly
public interest and genuinely democratic, popular not-for profit media and the official
"public" broadcasting networks are thoroughly captive to corporate interests and to right-wing
politicians who take giant campaign contributions from corporate interests. Much of the 1996
bill was written by lobbyists working for the nations' leading media firms. [13]
A different form of state policy deserves mention. Under the Obama administration, we have
seen the most aggressive pursuit and prosecution in recent memory of U.S. journalists who step
outside the narrow parameters of pro-U.S. coverage and commentary – and of the
whistleblowers who provide them with leaked information. That is why Edward Snowden lives in
Russia, Glenn Greenwald lives in Brazil, Chelsea Manning is serving life in a U.S. military
prison, and Julian Assange is trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. A leading New York
Times reporter and author, James Risen, has been threatened with imprisonment by the White
House for years because of his refusal to divulge sources.
Treetops v. Grassroots Audiences
In this writer's experience, the critical Left analysis of the U.S. "mainstream" media as a
tool for "manufacturing consent" and idiocy developed above meets four objections from
defenders of the U.S. media system, A first objection notes that the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Financial Times (FT), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
and other major U.S. corporate media outlets produce a significant amount of, informative,
high-quality and often candid reporting and commentary that Left thinkers and activists
commonly cite to support their cases for radical and democratic change. Left U.S. media critics
like Chomsky and Herman are said to be hypocrites because they obviously find much that is of
use as Left thinkers in the very media that they criticize for distorting reality in accord
with capitalist and imperial dictates.
The observation that Leftists commonly use and cite information from the corporate media
they harshly criticize is correct but it is easy to account for the apparent anomaly within the
critical Left framework by noting that that media crafts two very different versions of U.S.
policy, politics, society, "life," and current events for two different audiences. Following
the work of the brilliant Australian propaganda critic Alex Carey, we can call the first
audience the "grassroots."[14] It comprises the general mass of working and lower-class
citizens. As far as the business elites who own and manage the U.S. mass media and the
corporations that pay for that media with advertising purchases are concerned, this "rabble"
cannot be trusted with serious, candid, and forthright information. Its essential role in
society is to keep quiet, work hard, be entertained (in richly propagandistic and ideological
ways, we should remember), buy things, and generally do what they're told. They are to leave
key societal decisions to those that the leading 20th century U.S. public intellectual and
media-as-propaganda enthusiast Walter Lippman called "the responsible men." That "intelligent,"
benevolent, "expert," and "responsible" elite (responsible, indeed, for such glorious
accomplishments as the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq, the Great
Recession, global warming, and the rise of the Islamic State) needed, in Lippman's view, to be
protected from what he called "the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd."[15] The deluded
mob, the sub-citizenry, the dangerous working class majority is not the audience for elite
organs like the Times, the Post, and the Journal.
The second target group comprises the relevant political class of U.S. citizens from at most
the upper fifth of society. This is who reads the Times, the Post, WSJ, and FT, for the most
part. Call this audience (again following Carey) the "treetops": the "people who matter" and
who deserve and can be trusted with something more closely approximating the real story because
their minds have been properly disciplined and flattered by superior salaries, significant
on-the-job labor autonomy, and "advanced" and specialized educational and professional
certification. This elite includes such heavily indoctrinated persons as corporate managers,
lawyers, public administrators, and (most) tenured university professors. Since these elites
carry out key top-down societal tasks of supervision, discipline, training, demoralization,
co-optation, and indoctrination – all essential to the rule of the real economic elite
and the imperial system – they cannot be too thoroughly misled about current events and
policy without deleterious consequences for the smooth functioning of the dominant social and
political order. They require adequate information and must not be overly influenced by the
brutal and foolish propaganda generated for the "bewildered herd." At the same time,
information and commentary for the relevant and respectable business and political classes and
their "coordinator class" servants and allies often contains a measure of reasoned and sincere
intra-elite political and policy debate – debate that is always careful not to stray
beyond narrow U.S. ideological parameters. That is why a radical Left U.S. thinker and activist
can find much that is of use in U.S. "treetops" media. Such a thinker or activist would,
indeed, be foolish not to consult these sources.
"P"BS and N"P"R
A second objection to the Left critique of U.S. "mainstream" media claims that the U.S.
public enjoys a meaningful alternative to the corporate media in the form of the nation's
Public Broadcasting Service (television) and National Public Radio (NPR). This claim should not
be taken seriously. Thanks to U.S. "public" media's pathetically weak governmental funding, its
heavy reliance on corporate sponsors, and its constant harassment by right wing critics inside
and beyond the U.S. Congress, N"P"R and "P"BS are extremely reluctant to question dominant U.S.
ideologies and power structures.
The tepid, power-serving conservatism of U.S. "public" broadcasting is by longstanding
political and policy design. The federal government allowed the formation of the "public"
networks only on the condition that they pose no competitive market or ideological challenge to
private commercial media, the profits system, and U.S. global foreign policy. "P"BS and N"P"R
are "public" in a very limited sense. They not function for the public over and against
corporate, financial, and imperial power to any significant degree.
"The Internet Will Save Us"
A third objection claims that the rise of the Internet creates a "Wild West" environment in
which the power of corporate media is eviscerated and citizens can find and even produce all
the "alternative media" they require. This claim is misleading but it should not be reflexively
or completely dismissed. In the U.S. as elsewhere, those with access to the Internet and the
time and energy to use it meaningfully can find a remarkable breadth and depth of information
and trenchant Left analysis at various online sites. The Internet also broadens U.S. citizens
and activists' access to media networks beyond the U.S. – to elite sources that are much
less beholden of course to U.S. propaganda and ideology. At the same time, the Internet and
digital telephony networks have at times shown themselves to be effective grassroots organizing
tools for progressive U.S. activists.
Still, the democratic and progressive impact of the Internet in the U.S. is easily
exaggerated. Left and other progressive online outlets lack anything close to the financial,
technical, and organizational and human resources of the corporate news media, which has its
own sophisticated Internet. There is nothing in Left other citizen online outlets that can
begin to remotely challenge the "soft" ideological and propagandistic power of corporate
"entertainment" media. The Internet's technical infrastructure is increasingly dominated by an
"ISP cartel" led by a small number of giant corporations. As the leading left U.S. media
analyst Robert McChesney notes:
"By 2014, there are only a half-dozen or so major players that dominate provision of
broadband Internet access and wireless Internet access. Three of them – Verizon,
AT&T, and Comcast – dominate the field of telephony and Internet access, and have
set up what is in effect a cartel. They no longer compete with each other in any meaningful
sense. As a result, Americans pay far more for cellphone and broadband Internet access than
most other advanced nations and get much lousier service These are not 'free market'
companies in any sense of the term. Their business model, going back to pre-Internet days,
has always been capturing government monopoly licenses for telephone and cable TV services.
Their 'comparative advantage' has never been customer service; it has been world-class
lobbying.' [16]
Along the way, the notion of a great "democratizing," Wild West" and "free market" Internet
has proved politically useful for the corporate media giants. The regularly trumpet the great
Internet myth to claim that the U.S. public and regulators don't need to worry about corporate
media power and to justify their demands for more government subsidy and protection. At the
same time, finally, we know from the revelations of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and others
that the nation's leading digital and Internet-based e-mail (Google and Yahoo), telephony (e.g.
Verizon), and "social network" (Facebook above all) corporations have collaborated with the
National Security Agency and with the nation's local, state, and federal police in the
surveillance of U.S. citizens' and activists' private communications.[17]
Solutions
The fourth objection accuses Left media critics of being overly negative, "carping" critics
who offer no serious alternatives to the nation's current corporate-owned corporate-managed
commercial and for-profit media system. This is a transparently false and mean-spirited charge.
Left U.S. media criticism is strongly linked to a smart and impressive U.S. media reform
movement that advances numerous and interrelated proposals for the creation of a genuinely
public and democratically run non-commercial and nonprofit U.S. media system. Some of the
demand and proposals of this movement include public ownership and operation of the Internet as
a public utility; the break-up of the leading media oligopolies; full public funding of public
broadcasting; limits on advertising in commercial media; the abolition of political
advertisements; the expansion of airwave and broadband access for alternative media outlets;
publicly-funded nonprofit and non-commercial print journalism; the abolition of government and
corporate surveillance, monitoring, and commercial data-mining of private communication and
"social networks."[18] With regard to the media as with numerous other areas, we should recall
Chomsky's sardonic response to the standard conservative claim that the Left offers criticisms
but no solutions: "There is an accurate translation for that charge: 'they present solutions
and I don't like them.'"[19]
A False Paradox
The propagandistic and power-serving mission and nature of dominant U.S, corporate mass
media might seem ironic and even paradoxical in light of the United States' strong free speech
and democratic traditions. In fact, as Carey and Chomsky have noted, the former makes perfect
sense in light of the latter. In nations where popular expression and dissent is routinely
crushed with violent repression, elites have little incentive to shape popular perceptions in
accord with elite interests. The population is controlled primarily through physical coercion.
In societies where it is not generally considered legitimate to put down popular expression
with the iron heel of armed force and where dissenting opinion is granted a significant measure
of freedom of expression, elites are heavily and dangerously incentivized to seek to
manufacture mass popular consent and idiocy. The danger is deepened by the United States'
status as the pioneer in the development of mass consumer capitalism, advertising, film, and
television. Thanks to that history, corporate America has long stood in the global vanguard
when it comes to developing the technologies, methods, art, and science of mass persuasion and
thought control.[20]
It is appropriate to place quotation marks around the phrase "mainstream media" when writing
about dominant U.S. corporate media. During the Cold War era, U.S. officials and media never
referred to the Soviet Union's state television and radio or its main state newspapers as
"mainstream Russian media." American authorities referred to these Russian media outlets as
"Soviet state media" and treated that media as means for the dissemination of Soviet
"propaganda" and ideology. There is no reason to consider the United States' corporate and
commercial media as any more "mainstream" than the leading Soviet media organs were back in
their day. It is just as dedicated as the onetime Soviet state media to advancing the doctrinal
perspectives of its host nation's reigning elite -- and far more effective.
Its success is easily exaggerated, however. To everyday Americans' credit, corporate media
has never been fully successful in stamping out popular resistance and winning over the hearts
and minds of the U.S. populace. A recent Pew Research poll showed that U.S. "millennials"
(young adults 18-29 years old) have a more favorable response to the word "socialism" than to
"capitalism" – a remarkable finding on the limits of corporate media and other forms of
elite ideological power in the U.S. The immigrant worker uprising of May 2006, the Chicago
Republic Door and Window plant occupation of 2008, the University of California student
uprisings of 2009 and 2010, the Wisconsin public worker rebellion in early 2011, the Occupy
Movement of late 2011, and Fight for Fifteen (for a $15 an hour minimum wage) and Black Lives
Matter movements of 2014 and 2015 show that U.S. corporate and imperial establishment has not
manufactured anything like comprehensive and across the board mass consent and idiocy in the
U,S. today. The U.S. elite is no more successful in its utopian (or dystopian) quest to control
every American heart and mind than it is in its equally impossible ambition of managing events
across a complex planet from the banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C. The struggle for
popular self-determination, democracy, justice, and equality lives on despite the influence of
corporate media.
"... The dominant corporate U.S. media routinely exaggerates the degree of difference and choice between the candidates run by the nation's two corporate-dominated political organizations, the Democrats and the Republicans. It never notes that the two reigning parties agree about far more than they differ on, particularly when it comes to fundamental and related matters of business class power and American Empire. It shows U.S. protestors engaged in angry confrontations with police and highlights isolated examples of protestor violence but it downplays peaceful protest and never pays serious attention to the important societal and policy issues that have sparked protest or to the demands and recommendations advanced by protest movements. ..."
"... Newscasters who want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine art of evasion with great skill they skirt around the most important parts of a story. With much finesse, they say a lot about very little, serving up heaps of junk news filled with so many empty calories and so few nutrients. Thus do they avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power while giving every appearance of judicious moderation and balance. It is enough to take your breath away ..."
"... In U.S. "mainstream" media, Washington's aims are always benevolent and democratic. Its clients and allies are progressive, its enemies are nefarious, and its victims are invisible and incidental. The U.S. can occasionally make "mistakes" and "strategic blunders" on the global stage, but its foreign policies are never immoral, criminal, or imperialist in nature as far as that media is concerned. This is consistent with the doctrine of "American Exceptionalism," according to which the U.S., alone among great powers in history, seeks no selfish or imperial gain abroad. It is consistent also with "mainstream" U.S. media's heavy reliance on "official government sources" (the White House, the Defense Department, and the State Department) and leading business public relations and press offices for basic information on current events. ..."
"... U.S. citizens regularly see images of people who are angry at the U.S. around the world. The dominant mass media never gives them any serious discussion of the US policies and actions that create that anger. Millions of Americans are left to ask in childlike ignorance "Why do they hate us? What have we done?" ..."
"... If transmitting Washington's lies about Iraq were something to be fired about, then U.S. corporate media authorities would have to get rid of pretty much of all their top broadcasters. ..."
"... The U.S. corporate media's propagandistic service to the nation's reigning and interrelated structures of Empire and inequality is hardly limited to its news and public affairs wings. Equally if not more significant in that regard is that media's vast "entertainment" sector, which is loaded with political and ideological content ..."
"... Seen broadly in its many-sided and multiply delivered reality, U.S. corporate media's dark, power-serving mission actually goes further than the manufacture of consent. A deeper goal is the manufacture of mass idiocy, with "idiocy" understood in the original Greek and Athenian sense not of stupidity but of childish selfishness and willful indifference to public affairs and concerns. (An "idiot" in Athenian democracy was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private instead of public affairs.). As the U.S. Latin Americanist Cathy Schneider noted, the U.S.-backed military coup and dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet "transformed Chile, both culturally and politically, from a country of active participatory grassroots communities, to a land of disconnected, apolitical individuals"[7] – into a nation of "idiots" understood in this classic Athenian sense. ..."
"... To be sure, a narrow and reactionary sort of public concern and engagement does appear and take on a favorable light in this corporate media culture. It takes the form of a cruel, often even sadistically violent response to unworthy and Evil Others who are perceived as failing to obey prevalent national and neoliberal cultural codes. Like the U.S. ruling class that owns it, the purportedly anti-government corporate media isn't really opposed to government as such. It's opposed to what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called "the left hand of the state" – the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the non-affluent majority. ..."
"... The generation of mass idiocy in the more commonly understood sense of sheer stupidity is also a central part of U.S. "mainstream" media's mission. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in the constant barrage of rapid-fire advertisements that floods U.S. corporate media. ..."
"... There's nothing surprising about the fact that the United States' supposedly "free" and "independent" media functions as a means of mass indoctrination for the nation's economic and imperial elite ..."
"... A second explanation is the power of advertisers. U.S. media managers are naturally reluctant to publish or broadcast material that might offend the large corporations that pay for broadcasting by purchasing advertisements. ..."
"... A third great factor is U.S. government media policy and regulation on behalf of oligopolistic hyper-concentration. The U.S. corporate media is hardly a "natural" outcome of a "free market." It's the result of government protections and subsidies that grant enormous "competitive" advantages to the biggest and most politically/plutocratically influential media firms. ..."
"... In this writer's experience, the critical Left analysis of the U.S. "mainstream" media as a tool for "manufacturing consent" and idiocy developed above meets four objections from defenders of the U.S. media system, A first objection notes that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times (FT), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and other major U.S. corporate media outlets produce a significant amount of, informative, high-quality and often candid reporting and commentary that Left thinkers and activists commonly cite to support their cases for radical and democratic change. ..."
"... The observation that Leftists commonly use and cite information from the corporate media they harshly criticize is correct but it is easy to account for the apparent anomaly within the critical Left framework by noting that that media crafts two very different versions of U.S. policy, politics, society, "life," and current events for two different audiences. Following the work of the brilliant Australian propaganda critic Alex Carey, we can call the first audience the "grassroots."[14] It comprises the general mass of working and lower-class citizens. ..."
"... The second target group comprises the relevant political class of U.S. citizens from at most the upper fifth of society. This is who reads the Times, the Post, WSJ, and FT, for the most part. Call this audience (again following Carey) the "treetops": the "people who matter" and who deserve and can be trusted with something more closely approximating the real story because their minds have been properly disciplined and flattered by superior salaries, significant on-the-job labor autonomy, and "advanced" and specialized educational and professional certification. ..."
"... To everyday Americans' credit, corporate media has never been fully successful in stamping out popular resistance and winning over the hearts and minds of the U.S. populace. ..."
"... The U.S. elite is no more successful in its utopian (or dystopian) quest to control every American heart and mind than it is in its equally impossible ambition of managing events across a complex planet from the banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C ..."
Consistent with its possession as a leading and money-making asset of the nation's wealthy
elite, the United States corporate and commercial mass media is a bastion of power-serving
propaganda and deadening twaddle designed to keep the U.S. citizenry subordinated to capital
and the imperial U.S. state. It regularly portrays the United States as a great model of
democracy and equality. It sells a false image of the U.S. as a society where the rich enjoy
opulence because of hard and honest work and where the poor are poor because of their laziness
and irresponsibility. The nightly television news broadcasts and television police and law and
order dramas are obsessed with violent crime in the nation's Black ghettoes and Latino barrios,
but they never talk about the extreme poverty, the absence of opportunity imposed on those
neighborhoods by the interrelated forces of institutional racism, capital flight, mass
structural unemployment, under-funded schools, and mass incarceration. The nightly television
weather reports tells U.S. citizens of ever new record high temperatures and related forms of
extreme weather but never relate these remarkable meteorological developments to anthropogenic
climate change.
The dominant corporate U.S. media routinely exaggerates the degree of difference and choice
between the candidates run by the nation's two corporate-dominated political organizations, the
Democrats and the Republicans. It never notes that the two reigning parties agree about far
more than they differ on, particularly when it comes to fundamental and related matters of
business class power and American Empire. It shows U.S. protestors engaged in angry
confrontations with police and highlights isolated examples of protestor violence but it
downplays peaceful protest and never pays serious attention to the important societal and
policy issues that have sparked protest or to the demands and recommendations advanced by
protest movements.
As the prolific U.S. Marxist commentator Michael Parenti once remarked, US "Newscasters who
want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine art of evasion with great skill they skirt
around the most important parts of a story. With much finesse, they say a lot about very
little, serving up heaps of junk news filled with so many empty calories and so few nutrients.
Thus do they avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power while giving every
appearance of judicious moderation and balance. It is enough to take your breath away." [1]
Selling Empire
U.S. newscasters and their print media counterparts routinely parrot and disseminate the
false foreign policy claims of the nation's imperial elite. Earlier this year, U.S. news
broadcasters dutiful relayed to U.S. citizens the Obama administration's preposterous assertion
that social-democratic Venezuela is a repressive, corrupt, and authoritarian danger to its own
people and the U.S. No leading national U.S. news outlet dared to note the special absurdity of
this charge in the wake of Obama and other top U.S. officials' visit to Riyadh to guarantee
U.S. support for the new king of Saudi Arabia, the absolute ruler of a leading U.S. client
state that happens to be the most brutally oppressive and reactionary government on Earth.
In U.S. "mainstream" media, Washington's aims are always benevolent and democratic. Its
clients and allies are progressive, its enemies are nefarious, and its victims are invisible
and incidental. The U.S. can occasionally make "mistakes" and "strategic blunders" on the
global stage, but its foreign policies are never immoral, criminal, or imperialist in nature as
far as that media is concerned. This is consistent with the doctrine of "American
Exceptionalism," according to which the U.S., alone among great powers in history, seeks no
selfish or imperial gain abroad. It is consistent also with "mainstream" U.S. media's heavy
reliance on "official government sources" (the White House, the Defense Department, and the
State Department) and leading business public relations and press offices for basic information
on current events.
As the leading Left U.S. intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman showed in their
classic text Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Orwellian
double standards are rife in the dominant U.S. media's coverage and interpretation of global
affairs. Elections won in other countries by politicians that Washington approves because those
politicians can be counted on to serve the interests of U.S. corporations and the military are
portrayed in U.S. media as good and clean contests. But when elections put in power people who
can't be counted on to serve "U.S. interests," (Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro for example),
then U.S. corporate media portrays the contests as "rigged" and "corrupt." When Americans or
people allied with Washington are killed or injured abroad, they are "worthy victims" and
receive great attention and sympathy in that media. People killed, maimed, displaced and
otherwise harmed by the U.S. and U.S. clients and allies are anonymous and "unworthy victims"
whose experience elicits little mention or concern.[2]
U.S. citizens regularly see images of people who are angry at the U.S. around the world. The
dominant mass media never gives them any serious discussion of the US policies and actions that
create that anger. Millions of Americans are left to ask in childlike ignorance "Why do they
hate us? What have we done?"
In February of 2015, an extraordinary event occurred in U.S. news media – the firing
of a leading national news broadcaster, Brian Williams of NBC News. Williams lost his position
because of some lies he told in connection with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A naïve
outsider might think that Williams was fired because he repeated the George W. Bush
administration's transparent fabrications about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
and Saddam's supposed connection to 9/11. Sadly but predictably enough, that wasn't his
problem. Williams lost his job because he falsely boasted that he had ridden on a helicopter
that was forced down by grenade fire during the initial U.S. invasion. If transmitting
Washington's lies about Iraq were something to be fired about, then U.S. corporate media
authorities would have to get rid of pretty much of all their top broadcasters.
More than Entertainment
The U.S. corporate media's propagandistic service to the nation's reigning and interrelated
structures of Empire and inequality is hardly limited to its news and public affairs wings.
Equally if not more significant in that regard is that media's vast "entertainment" sector,
which is loaded with political and ideological content but was completely ignored in Herman and
Chomsky's groundbreaking Manufacturing Consent. [3] One example is the Hollywood movie "Zero
Dark Thirty," a 2012 "action thriller" that dramatized the United States' search for Osama
bin-Laden after the September 11, 2001 jetliner attacks. The film received critical acclaim and
was a box office-smash. It was also a masterpiece of pro-military, pro-CIA propaganda,
skillfully portraying U.S. torture practices "as a dirty, ugly business that is necessary to
protect America" (Glenn Greenwald[4]) and deleting the moral debate that erupted over the CIA's
"enhanced interrogation techniques." Under the guise of a neutral, documentary-like
façade, Zero Dark Thirty normalized and endorsed torture in ways that were all the more
effective because of its understated, detached, and "objective" veneer. The film also marked a
distressing new frontier in U.S. military-"embedded" filmmaking whereby the movie-makers
receive technical and logistical support from the Pentagon in return for producing elaborate
public relations on the military's behalf.
The 2014-15 Hollywood blockbuster American Sniper is another example. The film's audiences
is supposed to marvel at the supposedly noble feats, sacrifice, and heroism of Chris Kyle, a
rugged, militantly patriotic, and Christian-fundamentalist Navy SEALS sniper who participated
in the U.S. invasion of Iraq to fight "evil" and to avenge the al Qaeda jetliner attacks of
September 11, 2001. Kyle killed 160 Iraqis over four tours of "duty" in "Operational Iraqi
Freedom." Viewers are never told that the Iraqi government had nothing to do with the 9/11
attacks or al Qaeda or that the U.S. invasion was one of the most egregiously criminal and
brazenly imperial and mass-murderous acts in the history of international violence. Like Zero
Dark Thirty's apologists, American Sniper's defenders claim that the film takes a neutral
perspective of "pure storytelling," with no ideological bias. In reality, the movie is filled
with racist and imperial distortions, functioning as flat-out war propaganda.[5]
These are just two among many examples that could be cited of U.S. "entertainment" media's
regular service to the American Empire. Hollywood and other parts of the nation's vast
corporate entertainment complex plays the same power-serving role in relation to domestic
("homeland") American inequality and oppression structures of class and race. [6]
Manufacturing Idiocy
Seen broadly in its many-sided and multiply delivered reality, U.S. corporate media's dark,
power-serving mission actually goes further than the manufacture of consent. A deeper goal is
the manufacture of mass idiocy, with "idiocy" understood in the original Greek and Athenian
sense not of stupidity but of childish selfishness and willful indifference to public affairs
and concerns. (An "idiot" in Athenian democracy was characterized by self-centeredness and
concerned almost exclusively with private instead of public affairs.). As the U.S. Latin
Americanist Cathy Schneider noted, the U.S.-backed military coup and dictatorship headed by
Augusto Pinochet "transformed Chile, both culturally and politically, from a country of active
participatory grassroots communities, to a land of disconnected, apolitical individuals"[7]
– into a nation of "idiots" understood in this classic Athenian sense.
In the U.S., where violence is not as readily available to elites as in 1970s Latin America,
corporate America seeks the same terrible outcome through its ideological institutions,
including above all its mass media. In U.S. movies, television sit-coms, television dramas,
television reality-shows, commercials, state Lottery advertisements, and video games, the
ideal-type U.S. citizen is an idiot in this classic sense: a person who cares about little more
than his or her own well-being, consumption, and status. This noble American idiot is
blissfully indifferent to the terrible prices paid by others for the maintenance of reigning
and interrelated oppressions structures at home and abroad.
A pervasive theme in this media culture is the notion that people at the bottom of the
nation's steep and interrelated socioeconomic and racial pyramids are the "personally
irresponsible" and culturally flawed makers of their own fate. The mass U.S. media's version of
Athenian idiocy "can imagine," in the words of the prolific Left U.S. cultural theorist Henry
Giroux "public issues only as private concerns." It works to "erase the social from the
language of public life so as to reduce" questions of racial and socioeconomic disparity to
"private issues of individual character and cultural depravity. Consistent with "the central
neoliberal tenet that all problems are private rather than social in nature," it portrays the
only barriers to equality and meaningful democratic participation as "a lack of principled
self-help and moral responsibility" and bad personal choices by the oppressed. Government
efforts to meaningfully address and ameliorate (not to mention abolish) societal disparities of
race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality and the like are portrayed as futile,
counterproductive, naïve, and dangerous.[8]
To be sure, a narrow and reactionary sort of public concern and engagement does appear and
take on a favorable light in this corporate media culture. It takes the form of a cruel, often
even sadistically violent response to unworthy and Evil Others who are perceived as failing to
obey prevalent national and neoliberal cultural codes. Like the U.S. ruling class that owns it,
the purportedly anti-government corporate media isn't really opposed to government as such.
It's opposed to what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called "the left hand of the state"
– the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the
non-affluent majority. It celebrates and otherwise advances the "right hand of the state"[9]:
the portions of government that serve the opulent minority, dole out punishment for the poor,
and attacks those perceived as nefariously resisting the corporate and imperial order at home
and abroad. Police officers, prosecutors, military personnel, and other government authorities
who represent the "right hand of the state" are heroes and role models in this media. Public
defenders, other defense attorneys, civil libertarians, racial justice activists, union
leaders, antiwar protesters and the like are presented at best as naïve and irritating
"do-gooders" and at worst as coddlers and even agents of evil.
The generation of mass idiocy in the more commonly understood sense of sheer stupidity is
also a central part of U.S. "mainstream" media's mission. Nowhere is this more clearly evident
than in the constant barrage of rapid-fire advertisements that floods U.S. corporate media. As
the American cultural critic Neil Postman noted thirty years ago, the modern U.S. television
commercial is the antithesis of the rational economic consideration that early Western
champions of the profits system claimed to be the enlightened essence of capitalism. "Its
principal theorists, even its most prominent practitioners," Postman noted, "believed
capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature,
well-informed, and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest." Commercials
make "hash" out of this idea. They are dedicated to persuading consumers with wholly irrational
claims. They rely not on the reasoned presentation of evidence and logical argument but on
suggestive emotionalism, infantilizing manipulation, and evocative, rapid-fire imagery.[10]
The same techniques poison U.S. electoral politics. Investment in deceptive and manipulative
campaign commercials commonly determines success or failure in mass-marketed election contests
between business-beholden candidates that are sold to the audience/electorate like brands of
toothpaste and deodorant. Fittingly enough, the stupendous cost of these political
advertisements is a major factor driving U.S. campaign expenses so high (the 2016 U.S.
presidential election will cost at least $5 billion) as to make candidates ever more dependent
on big money corporate and Wall Street donors.
Along the way, mass cognitive competence is assaulted by the numbing, high-speed ubiquity of
U.S. television and radio advertisements. These commercials assault citizens' capacity for
sustained mental focus and rational deliberation nearly sixteen minutes of every hour on cable
television, with 44 percent of the individual ads now running for just 15 seconds. This is a
factor in the United States' long-bemoaned epidemic of "Attention Deficit Disorder."
Seventy years ago, the brilliant Dutch left Marxist Anton Pannekoek offered some chilling
reflections on the corporate print and broadcast media's destructive impact on mass cognitive
and related social resistance capacities in the United States after World War II:
"The press is of course entirely in hands of big capital [and it] dominates the spiritual
life of the American people. The most important thing is not even the hiding of all truth about
the reign of big finance. Its aim still more is the education to thoughtlessness. All attention
is directed to coarse sensations, everything is avoided that could arouse thinking. Papers are
not meant to be read – the small print is already a hindrance – but in a rapid
survey of the fat headlines to inform the public on unimportant news items, on family triflings
of the rich, on sexual scandals, on crimes of the underworld, on boxing matches. The aim of the
capitalist press all over the world, the diverting of the attention of the masses from the
reality of social development, nowhere succeed with such thoroughness as in America."
"Still more than by the papers the masses are influenced by broadcasting and film. These
products of most perfect science, destined at one time to the finest educational instruments of
mankind, now in the hands of capitalism have been turned into the strongest means to uphold its
rule by stupefying the mind. Because after nerve-straining fatigue the movie offers relaxation
and distraction by means of simple visual impressions that make no demand on the intellect, the
masses get used to accepting thoughtlessly all its cunning and shrewd propaganda. It reflects
the ugliest sides of middle-class society. It turns all attention either to sexual life, in
this society – by the absence of community feelings and fight for freedom – the
only source of strong passions, or to brute violence; masses educated to rough violence instead
of to social knowledge are not dangerous to capitalism "[11]
Pannekoek clearly saw an ideological dimension (beyond just diversion and stupefaction) in
U.S. mass media's "education to thoughtlessness" through movies as well as print
sensationalism. He would certainly be impressed and perhaps depressed by the remarkably
numerous, potent, and many-sided means of mass distraction and indoctrination that are
available to the U.S. and global capitalist media in the present digital and Internet era.
The "entertainment" wing of its vast corporate media complex is critical to the considerable
"soft" ideological "power" the U.S. exercises around the world even as its economic hegemony
wanes in an ever more multipolar global system (and as its "hard" military reveals significant
limits within and beyond the Middle East). Relatively few people beneath the global capitalist
elite consume U.S. news and public affairs media beyond the U.S., but "American" (U.S.) movies,
television shows, video games, communication devices, and advertising culture are ubiquitous
across the planet.
Explaining "Mainstream" Media Corporate Ownership
There's nothing surprising about the fact that the United States' supposedly "free" and
"independent" media functions as a means of mass indoctrination for the nation's economic and
imperial elite. The first and most important explanation for this harsh reality is concentrated
private ownership – the fundamental fact that that media is owned primarily by giant
corporations representing wealthy interests who are deeply invested in U.S. capitalism and
Empire. Visitors to the U.S. should not be fooled by the large number and types of channels and
stations on a typical U.S. car radio or television set or by the large number and types of
magazines and books on display at a typical Barnes & Noble bookstore. Currently in the
U.S., just six massive and global corporations – Comcast, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS, The
News Corporation and Disney – together control more than 90 percent of the nation's print
and electronic media, including cable television, airwaves television, radio, newspapers,
movies, video games, book publishing, comic books, and more. Three decades ago, 50 corporations
controlled the same amount of U.S. media.
Each of the reigning six companies is a giant and diversified multi-media conglomerate with
investments beyond media, including "defense" (the military). Asking reporters and commentators
at one of those giant corporations to tell the unvarnished truth about what's happening in the
U.S. and the world is like asking the company magazine published by the United Fruit Company to
the tell the truth about working conditions in its Caribbean and Central American plantations
in the 1950s. It's like asking the General Motors company newspaper to tell the truth about
wages and working conditions in GM's auto assembly plants around the world.
As the nation's media becomes concentrated into fewer corporate hands, media personnel
become ever more insecure in their jobs because they have fewer firms to whom to sell their
skills. That makes them even less willing than they might have been before to go outside
official sources, to question the official line, and to tell the truth about current events and
the context in which they occur.
Advertisers
A second explanation is the power of advertisers. U.S. media managers are naturally
reluctant to publish or broadcast material that might offend the large corporations that pay
for broadcasting by purchasing advertisements. As Chomsky has noted in a recent interview,
large corporations are not only the major producers of the United States' mass and commercial
media. They are also that media's top market, something that deepens the captivity of nation's
supposedly democratic and independent media to big capital:
"The reliance of a journal on advertisers shapes and controls and substantially determines
what is presented to the public the very idea of advertiser reliance radically distorts the
concept of free media. If you think about what the commercial media are, no matter what, they
are businesses. And a business produces something for a market. The producers in this case,
almost without exception, are major corporations. The market is other businesses –
advertisers. The product that is presented to the market is readers (or viewers), so these
are basically major corporations providing audiences to other businesses, and that
significantly shapes the nature of the institution."[12]
At the same time, both U.S. corporate media managers and the advertisers who supply revenue
for their salaries are hesitant to produce content that might alienate the affluent people who
count for an ever rising share of consumer purchases in the U.S. It is naturally those with the
most purchasing power who are naturally most targeted by advertisers.
Government Policy
A third great factor is U.S. government media policy and regulation on behalf of
oligopolistic hyper-concentration. The U.S. corporate media is hardly a "natural" outcome of a
"free market." It's the result of government protections and subsidies that grant enormous
"competitive" advantages to the biggest and most politically/plutocratically influential media
firms. Under the terms of the 1934 Communications Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act,
commercial, for-profit broadcasters have almost completely free rein over the nation's airwaves
and cable lines. There is no substantive segment of the broadcast spectrum set aside for truly
public interest and genuinely democratic, popular not-for profit media and the official
"public" broadcasting networks are thoroughly captive to corporate interests and to right-wing
politicians who take giant campaign contributions from corporate interests. Much of the 1996
bill was written by lobbyists working for the nations' leading media firms. [13]
A different form of state policy deserves mention. Under the Obama administration, we have
seen the most aggressive pursuit and prosecution in recent memory of U.S. journalists who step
outside the narrow parameters of pro-U.S. coverage and commentary – and of the
whistleblowers who provide them with leaked information. That is why Edward Snowden lives in
Russia, Glenn Greenwald lives in Brazil, Chelsea Manning is serving life in a U.S. military
prison, and Julian Assange is trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. A leading New York
Times reporter and author, James Risen, has been threatened with imprisonment by the White
House for years because of his refusal to divulge sources.
Treetops v. Grassroots Audiences
In this writer's experience, the critical Left analysis of the U.S. "mainstream" media as a
tool for "manufacturing consent" and idiocy developed above meets four objections from
defenders of the U.S. media system, A first objection notes that the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Financial Times (FT), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
and other major U.S. corporate media outlets produce a significant amount of, informative,
high-quality and often candid reporting and commentary that Left thinkers and activists
commonly cite to support their cases for radical and democratic change. Left U.S. media critics
like Chomsky and Herman are said to be hypocrites because they obviously find much that is of
use as Left thinkers in the very media that they criticize for distorting reality in accord
with capitalist and imperial dictates.
The observation that Leftists commonly use and cite information from the corporate media
they harshly criticize is correct but it is easy to account for the apparent anomaly within the
critical Left framework by noting that that media crafts two very different versions of U.S.
policy, politics, society, "life," and current events for two different audiences. Following
the work of the brilliant Australian propaganda critic Alex Carey, we can call the first
audience the "grassroots."[14] It comprises the general mass of working and lower-class
citizens. As far as the business elites who own and manage the U.S. mass media and the
corporations that pay for that media with advertising purchases are concerned, this "rabble"
cannot be trusted with serious, candid, and forthright information. Its essential role in
society is to keep quiet, work hard, be entertained (in richly propagandistic and ideological
ways, we should remember), buy things, and generally do what they're told. They are to leave
key societal decisions to those that the leading 20th century U.S. public intellectual and
media-as-propaganda enthusiast Walter Lippman called "the responsible men." That "intelligent,"
benevolent, "expert," and "responsible" elite (responsible, indeed, for such glorious
accomplishments as the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq, the Great
Recession, global warming, and the rise of the Islamic State) needed, in Lippman's view, to be
protected from what he called "the trampling and roar of the bewildered herd."[15] The deluded
mob, the sub-citizenry, the dangerous working class majority is not the audience for elite
organs like the Times, the Post, and the Journal.
The second target group comprises the relevant political class of U.S. citizens from at most
the upper fifth of society. This is who reads the Times, the Post, WSJ, and FT, for the most
part. Call this audience (again following Carey) the "treetops": the "people who matter" and
who deserve and can be trusted with something more closely approximating the real story because
their minds have been properly disciplined and flattered by superior salaries, significant
on-the-job labor autonomy, and "advanced" and specialized educational and professional
certification. This elite includes such heavily indoctrinated persons as corporate managers,
lawyers, public administrators, and (most) tenured university professors. Since these elites
carry out key top-down societal tasks of supervision, discipline, training, demoralization,
co-optation, and indoctrination – all essential to the rule of the real economic elite
and the imperial system – they cannot be too thoroughly misled about current events and
policy without deleterious consequences for the smooth functioning of the dominant social and
political order. They require adequate information and must not be overly influenced by the
brutal and foolish propaganda generated for the "bewildered herd." At the same time,
information and commentary for the relevant and respectable business and political classes and
their "coordinator class" servants and allies often contains a measure of reasoned and sincere
intra-elite political and policy debate – debate that is always careful not to stray
beyond narrow U.S. ideological parameters. That is why a radical Left U.S. thinker and activist
can find much that is of use in U.S. "treetops" media. Such a thinker or activist would,
indeed, be foolish not to consult these sources.
"P"BS and N"P"R
A second objection to the Left critique of U.S. "mainstream" media claims that the U.S.
public enjoys a meaningful alternative to the corporate media in the form of the nation's
Public Broadcasting Service (television) and National Public Radio (NPR). This claim should not
be taken seriously. Thanks to U.S. "public" media's pathetically weak governmental funding, its
heavy reliance on corporate sponsors, and its constant harassment by right wing critics inside
and beyond the U.S. Congress, N"P"R and "P"BS are extremely reluctant to question dominant U.S.
ideologies and power structures.
The tepid, power-serving conservatism of U.S. "public" broadcasting is by longstanding
political and policy design. The federal government allowed the formation of the "public"
networks only on the condition that they pose no competitive market or ideological challenge to
private commercial media, the profits system, and U.S. global foreign policy. "P"BS and N"P"R
are "public" in a very limited sense. They not function for the public over and against
corporate, financial, and imperial power to any significant degree.
"The Internet Will Save Us"
A third objection claims that the rise of the Internet creates a "Wild West" environment in
which the power of corporate media is eviscerated and citizens can find and even produce all
the "alternative media" they require. This claim is misleading but it should not be reflexively
or completely dismissed. In the U.S. as elsewhere, those with access to the Internet and the
time and energy to use it meaningfully can find a remarkable breadth and depth of information
and trenchant Left analysis at various online sites. The Internet also broadens U.S. citizens
and activists' access to media networks beyond the U.S. – to elite sources that are much
less beholden of course to U.S. propaganda and ideology. At the same time, the Internet and
digital telephony networks have at times shown themselves to be effective grassroots organizing
tools for progressive U.S. activists.
Still, the democratic and progressive impact of the Internet in the U.S. is easily
exaggerated. Left and other progressive online outlets lack anything close to the financial,
technical, and organizational and human resources of the corporate news media, which has its
own sophisticated Internet. There is nothing in Left other citizen online outlets that can
begin to remotely challenge the "soft" ideological and propagandistic power of corporate
"entertainment" media. The Internet's technical infrastructure is increasingly dominated by an
"ISP cartel" led by a small number of giant corporations. As the leading left U.S. media
analyst Robert McChesney notes:
"By 2014, there are only a half-dozen or so major players that dominate provision of
broadband Internet access and wireless Internet access. Three of them – Verizon,
AT&T, and Comcast – dominate the field of telephony and Internet access, and have
set up what is in effect a cartel. They no longer compete with each other in any meaningful
sense. As a result, Americans pay far more for cellphone and broadband Internet access than
most other advanced nations and get much lousier service These are not 'free market'
companies in any sense of the term. Their business model, going back to pre-Internet days,
has always been capturing government monopoly licenses for telephone and cable TV services.
Their 'comparative advantage' has never been customer service; it has been world-class
lobbying.' [16]
Along the way, the notion of a great "democratizing," Wild West" and "free market" Internet
has proved politically useful for the corporate media giants. The regularly trumpet the great
Internet myth to claim that the U.S. public and regulators don't need to worry about corporate
media power and to justify their demands for more government subsidy and protection. At the
same time, finally, we know from the revelations of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and others
that the nation's leading digital and Internet-based e-mail (Google and Yahoo), telephony (e.g.
Verizon), and "social network" (Facebook above all) corporations have collaborated with the
National Security Agency and with the nation's local, state, and federal police in the
surveillance of U.S. citizens' and activists' private communications.[17]
Solutions
The fourth objection accuses Left media critics of being overly negative, "carping" critics
who offer no serious alternatives to the nation's current corporate-owned corporate-managed
commercial and for-profit media system. This is a transparently false and mean-spirited charge.
Left U.S. media criticism is strongly linked to a smart and impressive U.S. media reform
movement that advances numerous and interrelated proposals for the creation of a genuinely
public and democratically run non-commercial and nonprofit U.S. media system. Some of the
demand and proposals of this movement include public ownership and operation of the Internet as
a public utility; the break-up of the leading media oligopolies; full public funding of public
broadcasting; limits on advertising in commercial media; the abolition of political
advertisements; the expansion of airwave and broadband access for alternative media outlets;
publicly-funded nonprofit and non-commercial print journalism; the abolition of government and
corporate surveillance, monitoring, and commercial data-mining of private communication and
"social networks."[18] With regard to the media as with numerous other areas, we should recall
Chomsky's sardonic response to the standard conservative claim that the Left offers criticisms
but no solutions: "There is an accurate translation for that charge: 'they present solutions
and I don't like them.'"[19]
A False Paradox
The propagandistic and power-serving mission and nature of dominant U.S, corporate mass
media might seem ironic and even paradoxical in light of the United States' strong free speech
and democratic traditions. In fact, as Carey and Chomsky have noted, the former makes perfect
sense in light of the latter. In nations where popular expression and dissent is routinely
crushed with violent repression, elites have little incentive to shape popular perceptions in
accord with elite interests. The population is controlled primarily through physical coercion.
In societies where it is not generally considered legitimate to put down popular expression
with the iron heel of armed force and where dissenting opinion is granted a significant measure
of freedom of expression, elites are heavily and dangerously incentivized to seek to
manufacture mass popular consent and idiocy. The danger is deepened by the United States'
status as the pioneer in the development of mass consumer capitalism, advertising, film, and
television. Thanks to that history, corporate America has long stood in the global vanguard
when it comes to developing the technologies, methods, art, and science of mass persuasion and
thought control.[20]
It is appropriate to place quotation marks around the phrase "mainstream media" when writing
about dominant U.S. corporate media. During the Cold War era, U.S. officials and media never
referred to the Soviet Union's state television and radio or its main state newspapers as
"mainstream Russian media." American authorities referred to these Russian media outlets as
"Soviet state media" and treated that media as means for the dissemination of Soviet
"propaganda" and ideology. There is no reason to consider the United States' corporate and
commercial media as any more "mainstream" than the leading Soviet media organs were back in
their day. It is just as dedicated as the onetime Soviet state media to advancing the doctrinal
perspectives of its host nation's reigning elite -- and far more effective.
Its success is easily exaggerated, however. To everyday Americans' credit, corporate media
has never been fully successful in stamping out popular resistance and winning over the hearts
and minds of the U.S. populace. A recent Pew Research poll showed that U.S. "millennials"
(young adults 18-29 years old) have a more favorable response to the word "socialism" than to
"capitalism" – a remarkable finding on the limits of corporate media and other forms of
elite ideological power in the U.S. The immigrant worker uprising of May 2006, the Chicago
Republic Door and Window plant occupation of 2008, the University of California student
uprisings of 2009 and 2010, the Wisconsin public worker rebellion in early 2011, the Occupy
Movement of late 2011, and Fight for Fifteen (for a $15 an hour minimum wage) and Black Lives
Matter movements of 2014 and 2015 show that U.S. corporate and imperial establishment has not
manufactured anything like comprehensive and across the board mass consent and idiocy in the
U,S. today. The U.S. elite is no more successful in its utopian (or dystopian) quest to control
every American heart and mind than it is in its equally impossible ambition of managing events
across a complex planet from the banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C. The struggle for
popular self-determination, democracy, justice, and equality lives on despite the influence of
corporate media.
In A Corporatist System Of Government, Corporate Censorship Is State Censorship
August 10, 2018 •
92 Comments
In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between
corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship, argues
Caitlin Johnstone in this commentary.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Last year, representatives of Facebook,
Twitter, and Google were instructed on the US Senate floor that it is their responsibility to
"quell information rebellions" and adopt a "mission statement" expressing their commitment to
"prevent the fomenting of discord."
" Civil wars don't start with gunshots, they start with words," the representatives were
told. "America's war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media
battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and
easily transform us into the Divided States of America."
Today Twitter has silenced three important anti-war voices on its platform: it has
suspended Daniel
McAdams, the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute, suspended Scott Horton of the
Scott Horton Show , and completely removed the account of prominent
Antiwar.com writer Peter Van Buren.
I'm about to talk about the censorship of Alex Jones and Infowars now, so let me get the
"blah blah I don't like Alex Jones" thing out of the way so that my social media notifications
aren't inundated with people saying "Caitlin didn't say the 'blah blah I don't like Alex Jones'
thing!" I shouldn't have to, because this isn't actually about Alex Jones, but here it is:
I don't like Alex Jones. He's made millions saying the things disgruntled right-wingers want
to hear instead of telling the truth; he throws in disinfo with his info, which is the same as
lying all the time. He's made countless false predictions and his sudden sycophantic support
for a US president has helped lull the populist right into complacency when they should be
holding Trump to his non-interventionist campaign pledges, making him even more worthless than
he was prior to 2016.
But this isn't about defending Alex Jones. He just happens to be the thinnest edge of the
wedge.
Infowars has been censored from Facebook, Youtube (which is part of Google), Apple, Spotify,
and now even Pinterest, all within hours of each other. This happens to have occurred at the
same time Infowars was circulating a petition with tens of thousands
of signatures calling on President Trump to pardon WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange,
who poses a much greater threat to establishment narratives than Alex Jones ever has. Assange's
mother also reports that this
mass removal of Infowars' audience occurred less than 48 hours after she was approached to do
an interview by an Infowars producer.
In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between
corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. Because
legalized bribery in the form of corporate lobbying and campaign donations has given wealthy Americans the
ability to control the U.S. government's policy and behavior while ordinary Americans have no
effective influence whatsoever, the U.S. unquestionably has a corporatist system of government.
Large, influential corporations are inseparable from the state, so their use of censorship is
inseparable from state censorship.
This is especially true of the vast mega-corporations of Silicon Valley, whose extensive
ties to U.S. intelligence agencies are well-documented . Once you're assisting
with the construction of the US military's drone program , receiving grants from the CIA and NSA for mass surveillance, or having your site's content
regulated by NATO's propaganda arm , you don't get to pretend you're a private,
independent corporation that is separate from government power. It is possible in the current
system to have a normal business worth a few million dollars, but if you want to get to
billions of dollars in wealth control in a system where money translates directly to political
power, you need to work with existing power structures like the CIA and the Pentagon, or else
they'll work with your competitors instead of you
Censorship Through Private Proxy
And yet every time I point to the dangers of a few Silicon Valley plutocrats controlling all
new media political discourse with an iron fist, Democratic Party loyalists all turn into a
bunch of hardline free market Ayn Rands. "It's not censorship!" they exclaim. "It's a private
company and can do whatever it wants with its property!"
They do this because they know their mainstream, plutocrat-friendly "centrist" views will never be censored. Everyone
else is on the chopping block, however. Leftist sites have already had their views slashed by a manipulation of Google's algorithms, and it won't be
long before movements like BDS and Antifa and skeptics of the establishment Syria and Russia
narratives can be made to face mass de-platforming on the same exact pretext as Infowars.
This is a setup. Hit the soft target so your oligarch-friendly censorship doesn't look like
what it is, then once you've manufactured consent, go on to shut down the rest of dissenting
media bit by bit.
Don't believe that's the plan? Let's ask sitting US Senator Chris Murphy: " Infowars is the
tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our
nation apart," Murphy tweeted in response
to the news. "These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our
democracy depends on it."
That sure sounds an awful lot like the warnings issued to the Silicon Valley representatives
on the Senate floor at the beginning of this article, no? This is headed somewhere dark.
We're going to have to find a way to keep the oligarchs from having their cake and eating it
too. Either (A) corporations are indeed private organizations separate from the government, in
which case the people need to get money out of politics and government agencies out of Silicon
Valley so they can start acting like it, and insist that their owners can't be dragged out on
to the Senate floor and instructed on what they can and can't do with their business, or (B)
these new media platforms get treated like the government agencies they function as, and the
people get all the First Amendment protection that comes with it. Right now the social
engineers are double-dipping in a way that will eventually give the alliance of corporate
plutocrats and secretive government agencies the ability to fully control the public's access
to ideas and information.
If they accomplish that, it's game over for humanity. Any hope of the public empowering
itself over the will of a few sociopathic, ecocidal, omnicidal oligarchs will have been
successfully quashed. We are playing for all the chips right now. We have to fight this. We
have no choice.
This
commentary was originally published on CaitlinJohnstone.com .
Ms. Johnstone is right. Government pressure on corporations works but the media in all its
forms does a pretty good job of sowing discord without government interference. There are so
few instances where the government and the major media are not in sync, they are hard to
find. As to allowing the lonely voices of worthy organizations like Consortium News, why
should they bother. Allowing them creates the pretense of free speech. If they become
dangerous, the mood of our elected officials is to fix the problem as Ms. Johnstone rightly
notes. The defense of freedom of speech by government and the major media is very selective,
and the use of the calling fire in a loaded theatre standard is a big enough vehicle for
suppression to drive a truck through, a whole convoy in fact.
As an aside, watching Sixty Minutes on their hit piece about Russian interference in our
elections was an example of sloppy journalism that seems to be the norm. when it is about
Russia. I was about to say they never used to be like that, but I think that is probably not
true.
Bulls-eye!!!! especially on Democratic party loyalists who perform a much more important
function for plutocracy than the Republicans and the Tea Party – to rally around fake
progressive politics dripping out of the DNC, and effectively drain off the pressure building
for true progressive politics.
cjonsson1 , August 12, 2018 at 1:50 pm
This is a good example of Caitlin explaining what is going on in the American media wars
which is crucial for people to know.
Our access to information, other than government propaganda, is becoming very limited because
the few major social network corporations are owned by a few wealthy individuals or private
government contractors. They are monopolies which should be designated public utilities, and
regulated as such, or broken up into smaller entities, allowing for competition.
It is important to preserve what is left of our freedom of expression and our free press. The
ability to comment on reporting and discuss it with others is diminishing while sources are
becoming more and more restricted.
Government and big business fight the public for control of information and opinion. We have
to collectively save our stake in democracy by rejecting censorship.
You make some very good points. Alas, I disagree about Alex Jones. The very few times I've
listened to his videos, it seemed to me every last thing he said was absolutely true and
correct. So I don't know where the idea comes from that he speaks disinformation. He's
sometimes obnoxious and hard to watch. But that's a different thing. His words are accurate,
particularly about the globalists, the deep state, US-Russia relations, and Trump.
"It is possible in the current system to have a normal business worth a few million
dollars, but if you want to get to billions of dollars in wealth control in a system where
money translates directly to political power, you need to work with existing power structures
like the CIA and the Pentagon, or else they'll work with your competitors instead of
you."
Actually, If companies get big, they become potential big tools/weapons for the war-making
State, at which point they will be offered a deal that they can't refuse, as one would expect
within this gangster Corporatocracy. Look at Wikileaks. Mozilla simply jumped on the fake
news bandwagon, so they are now safe, as Aaron Kesel at Activist Post points out. Lavabit's
owner, Ladar Levinson had principles and was loyal to his customers (including Edward
Snowden) whom he didn't want to betray just because the Corporatocracy State demanded it, and
so he shut down. He revived his company once he figured out ways to shield his customers from
the war-making State that attacks us all in the name of 'national security'.
So, it's a little more dire than the government just deciding to favor your competitors,
which of course the amazing Caitlin knows.
With all of this capture by tech giants, innovators, by the war-making State (Randolph
Bourne), How will end? I have more than one answer to that. One of those answers is the
obvious one: Ramped up counterrevolution, in the area of cyberspace mainly, in the State's
war against the people. And such a war is underway as any number of authors have demonstrated
thoroughly. And its not (just) Russia attacking the people. Jeff Halper wrote "War Against
The People." Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes edited "The Secure And The Dispossessed." Douglas
Valentine wrote "The Phoenix Program," which he notes wasn't confined to Vietnam. Noam
Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote the devastating two-volume "Political Economy Of Human
Rights," which included "The Washington Connection And Third World Fascism." And Edward
Herman wrote: "The Real Terror Network." All of those books and many others talk about
counterrevolution and the counterinsurgency (State terrorism) that goes with it.
And counterrevolution and counterinsurgency doesn't have to be of the extreme variety,
such as in South Vietnam when the US was torturing that country to death. Caitlin has talked
about how the State (New Zealand) went to work on her friend, Suzie Dawson. Read the account.
It's quite illuminating.
What do you call 'thinking' that is against 'thinking' (and what we consider to be a part
of innovation that leads to inventions that elevate society? It's called counterrevolution.
That's where our corrupt tech giants have gone. It won't end well for them, even if they
think otherwise and even if they feel safe because they are with the big guy. There's a
bigger guy who has that big guy in his sights.
Somehow I had missed those words from our elected "representatives" in Congressional
hearing. What these political pimps and whores don't want us to do is get together and agree
to dispel the bullshit that we're up to our necks in right now.
As far as I know this is the first piece I've read by Caitlin Johnstone, and I agree with
her general premise that this is more than just ominous. More and more of our elected
"representatives" talk and act like alien totalitarians.
The good news is that Trump's "trade" and saber-rattling belligerence is finally awakening
the rest of humanity to the fundamental non-starter of a unipolar anything. That one entity
so militarily, politically, and economically dominant that it can cause pain and suffering
wherever and whenever it decides. It is ironic that Trump's MAGA is the act in this play that
will dethrone the USA. The downside is that the 99% control NOTHING (this is true across most
of the planet.) Another downside is that the megalomaniacs in power will not concede power
without a cataclysmic conflict. But nothing is set in stone, though the indications don't
look promising.
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary
opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had
the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
"But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the
human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion,
still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the
opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is always a great benefit
– the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision
with error."
– JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873) English political economist, philosopher
Realist , August 11, 2018 at 3:12 am
Something must be getting into the water supply either by accident or design to induce the
mass hypnosis that has so many presumably intelligent people believing that we must all walk
in lockstep on every policy the elites want. Maybe we are all zombified from the massive
amounts of Xanax, Valium, Oxycontin and other mind-numbing psychoactive agents our population
consumes and pisses, unmetabolized, into the water table to be recycled into our drinking
water, obviating the need for a personal prescription to enjoy (suffer) the effects.
It's a real pity if the totally transparent sham scare stories they have disseminated are
alone enough to convince most of the people to give up their constitutional rights and
privacy. Clearly the tactic of the big lie doesn't work on every last individual or sites
like this one would not have an audience. That is why they want to shut us down, and Alex
Jones, though not a member of this journal club, is just the first step towards an outcome
that will encompass everyone remaining outside an all pervasive Groupthink.
Ideas, beliefs, memes, values, customs, habits and such are not received universally from
some inspirational force on high. (You are simply told to believe that from earliest
childhood.) They are spread through the population like a virus from mind-to-mind contact,
whether in person or via some modality of mass communication, like the TV or the internet.
The object of censorship, as per Alex Jones or Ron Paul most recently, is to extirpate the
source of "infection" as close to its point of origin as possible, before it can be spread to
too many carriers for transmission to others. People tend to believe what they hear and what
they hear comes from their regular contacts. Shut down their favorite talk show host or
internet site and they become starved for new "seditious" ideas. If they never hear a truth,
chances are they won't think it up themselves and certainly not act upon it.
Another thing I am pretty sure of: if their attempts at propaganda, psy-ops and mind
control do not work to their satisfaction, unadorned thuggery will become the new standard. I
know, I know, some of our number already get a taste of that.
Dave P. , August 11, 2018 at 5:46 pm
Realist –
"Another thing I am pretty sure of: if their attempts at propaganda, psy-ops and mind
control do not work to their satisfaction, unadorned thuggery will become the new standard .
. . "
You have it absolutely right. There have been markers all along since G.W. Bush/Cheney
rule, clear indicators of this new Future.
But some of us are so desperate to have a better and peaceful future for the humanity on
this planet that we get our hopes high for any silver lining in the sky – Obama's hope
and change, now Trump's getting along with Russia and stopping interventions abroad.
Now it seems like there is this new hoax the Democrats are going to perpetrate, candidates
with some type of socialist orientation, like Bernie Sanders supposedly has been or is. The
politicians in both parties are accomplished ConMen, in service of the real Masters –
MIC, Wall Street Finance, Media and Entertainment, working to bring this new Future. Bernie
Sanders is no different.
Skip Scott , August 12, 2018 at 7:08 am
"Now it seems like there is this new hoax the Democrats are going to perpetrate,
candidates with some type of socialist orientation, like Bernie Sanders supposedly has been
or is. "
I have noticed this ploy as well. They are willing to have a few faux progressives to keep
the progressive wing of the party from abandoning them altogether. They use Sanders, and now
this new Ocasio-Cortez, to sell their "big tent" narrative, and then co-op them when it comes
to all the important issues. They also constantly sell the idea that voting for third party
candidates is a waste of time, so you have to settle for "the lesser of evils" when it comes
time for a new president. I don't know how long they can keep playing the same con-game
before people see through it, but if it happens again in 2020, I think we are doomed.
Realist , August 12, 2018 at 10:01 am
The Democratic incumbent running for the senate in Florida (Bill Nelson) has made me so
angry by yet again using the party con against Russia that I could never vote for him even
though his opponent is the horrendous Governor Rick Scott (who plead guilty to defrauding
Medicare to the tune of a billion dollars for his Columbia HMO system prior to his election).
I cannot abide such theft of taxpayer money in broad daylight, but I also cannot accept
Nelson's spewing lies that Russia has actively hacked the Florida voter roles, plans to
delete registrations and disrupt the November elections. You know who's really more likely to
do those things? The Democratic and Republican parties.
Nelson is just making pre-emptive excuses for the loss that he sees coming. If he believes
his desperate gambit can work, he must think the voters are damned idiots to believe that
Russia would persist in perpetrating sabotage against American interests putting them
constantly in the crosshairs of our politicians and media. He must think that Floridians will
buy any tall tale that their elected officials tell them, totally unsupported by any
evidence. We are to believe that Assad never stops trying to poison his own people and that
Putin never stops interfering in American elections. (Why should Putin favor Rick Scott?
Because he admires American crooks?) If you truly believe such accusations, it is probably
logical that you would favor WAR with that country. I will vote for someone from the
Baader-Meinhof gang or the Taliban Party (if there is such a beast) before either Nelson or
Scott. Or I won't vote at all.
Zero Hedge tonight has an interesting article by Charles Hugh Smith, "The Grand Irony of
Russiagate: US Becomes More Like USSR Every Day". The clampdown in the old Soviet Union
before its collapse has parallels to what's going on in US now.
Jeff Harrison , August 10, 2018 at 5:12 pm
From Wikipedia. Fascism:
Fascism (/?fæ??z?m/) is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism,[1][2]
characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong
regimentation of society and of the economy.
The Cheetos-in-chief would love to wield dictatorial power and has tried to do so in the
past as have his predecessors (Obama, yeah, well, we had to torture some folks::Shrub you're
with us or against us.). Senator Chris Murphy essentially telling these companies who to kick
off their platforms, the regimentation of society and the economy is continuing apace as
companies are forced to comply with government demands that the government should never be
able to make but they do for "national security reasons"
Pfui. As I've said before the US has become a fascistic police state.
MBeaver , August 11, 2018 at 10:50 pm
Many other western countries, too. The only thing missing to "fit" fascism is the
nationalism. They completely gave up their national identity for neoliberal agendas. I wont
look for a new term, because its as close to fascism as anything else, especially since the
definition of leftism and socialism has changed a lot since fascism was invented (by a
socialist), so why shouldnt the definition of fascism a tiny bit?
But it exposes people who always cry "its not fascism" because nationalism is missing, as
accomplices at the very least.
Also, as an objective person, you should at least admit, that "cheeto-in-chief" is
actually trying hard to keep the promises he made. I havent seen that in a western leader in
a very VERY long time. Its just very obvious that the president isnt almighty and the deep
state is very powerful. Thanks to Trump its become evident to even fools, that the USA is
much more corrupt than even any conspiracy theorist would have thought just a few years
ago.
jaycee , August 10, 2018 at 4:27 pm
The idea that discordant speech is somehow a threat to the nation or democracy is so
looney and bereft of fact that it is actually painful to contemplate how many otherwise
intelligent persons seem to have internalized the notion. Obviously, Trump's election victory
severely damaged the Establishment's confidence in the ability to "manufacture consent" to
the degree that fundamental concepts of free speech are now in the cross-hairs. They will
destroy the Republic in order to save it.
When the corporate state speaks of "hate speech" and "community standards" – one can
be sure they are not referring to Madeline Albright's stunning defense for killing of a half
a million Iraqi children with sanctions as "worth it." Nor would the corporate state ever
categorize as "hate speech" the daily attack by a wide variety of U.S. officials and media
pundits, not only on the Russian government, but on the very – "character" – of
the Russian people as a whole.
Our actual and very real – "community standards" – in the U.S. include the
complete normalization of illegal immoral endless aggressive war-making in violation of
international law (not to mention regime change by jihadists, drone murders, economic
warfare, political assassinations, etc.) – along with the despicable demonization of
official enemies – in other words the total "normalization of hate-speech."
"Violations" of these widely held U.S. "community standards" & "hate-speech standards"
involves plain and simply any – "challenge" – to them or deviation from them. In
other words to speak words not sufficiently 'anti-Russian' today is considered a form of
"hate speech" in MSM and in political discourse. To suggest peace rather than war with Russia
might be a good idea is to violate precious "community standards" which today tolerate only
mindless fact-free warmongering in public discourse. You really can't make this stuff up!
Dave P. , August 10, 2018 at 5:48 pm
Excellent comments. So true.
We are heading towards some sort of dark ages, and at very fast pace.
Maxwell Quest , August 10, 2018 at 10:00 pm
Gary, pointing out the shameless and bald-faced hypocrisy as you did can sometimes shake
the stupefaction from an open-minded reader. Sadly, though, arguments such as these just seem
to bounce off the Russiagaters, having no effect. Conversely, these very same people couldn't
lavish enough praise on the peace prize winner Obama, whether he was bailing out the corrupt
banks, letting the lobbyists craft Obamacare, trafficking arms through Benghazi, or droning
some wedding party in the desert.
What do both of these examples have in common? Easy, the state media was able to control
the narrative in each case, and these same hypnotized drones ate it up hook, line and sinker.
This brings us right back to why internet-based censorship is the hot topic of the day, since
it is the single most threat to complete state control over the public mind.
Dave P. , August 10, 2018 at 11:09 pm
Well said. Obama is not gone yet. He is still out there selling his philosophy of
promoting the Wall street and corrupt banks, and droning and killing the weak and innocents
all over the world , for the right cause so to speak – spreading freedom and democracy.
And liberals buy it. What a World we live in!
He, along with Clintons, is the main instigator of "Russia Gate", which may lead the human
life to extinction on Earth.
Realist , August 11, 2018 at 2:24 am
Dave
Yes, anything is permitted (by Washington) as long as it is in the name of "freedom and
democracy." So say the leaders of our exceptional country.
Realist , August 11, 2018 at 2:22 am
Damn straight, Maxwell.
Mildly Facetious , August 11, 2018 at 4:16 pm
Yes, anything is permitted (by Washington) as long as it is in the name of "freedom and
democracy." So say the leaders of our exceptional country.
??????????????????????????
They do this because they know their mainstream, plutocrat-friendly "centrist" views will
never be censored.
Everyone else is on the chopping block, however.
Leftist sites have already had their views slashed by a manipulation of Google's
algorithms, and it won't be long before movements like BDS and Antifa and skeptics of the
establishment Syria and Russia narratives can be made to face mass de-platforming on the same
exact pretext as Infowars.
-- - compare that, if you've a clue, (not to obfuscate your subject), Caitlan Johnstone,
with, not mere censorship, but the Protection of 'Confidential' information such as the
Industrial Pharma INDUSTRY OF DEATH (shades -of -nazi-germany??? )via INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION
and PRESCRIBING OF OPIOIDS as if Huxley's "Soma" or/and a preview of " The Chemical and
Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. – Practical Instructions for Beta
Embryro-Store Workers /// as in government forced vaccinations along with Facebook enforced
capitulation of any/all -- Personal Sovereign Belief/s massively defaulting and bowing the
knee and Becoming Persuaded and Trapped into inescapable Autocracy, by reason of Darwin-esk
dissembling and a dis-informed election to Dissent Into The Maelstrom of the sinking ship of
American Exceptionalism, -- as if God could/would "forgive" all-of-the-collective Brutality
of Bombs, bullets, Uranium Munitions / CRIPPLING Sanctions imposted -- support of brutal
dictators Who massacred INNOCENT Civilians in order to obtain/secure US MILITARY FUNDS, in
order to secure autocratic/authoritative CONTROL
We are engulfed in a Molding Faze of acceptance of/into a totally new Reality strangely
built upon Nazi science/experiments, now Entering an/the Age of Space-Age manipulation of
DNA, Gene Manipulation -- origins of species ordered inside test tubes.
George Gilder prophetically saw this in this and more in his prescient 1990's book,
MICROCOSM. --
George Gilder and his Discovery Institute were far Ahead – of -the -curve in this
'Facebook" era of Futurisms .
Please find and consider his book, esp as it relates to technological possibilities and
the New Wonders (Brave New Worlds) of Gene splicing / manipulation .
In A Corporatist System Of Government, Corporate Censorship Is State Censorship
August 10, 2018 •
92 Comments
In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between
corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship, argues
Caitlin Johnstone in this commentary.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Last year, representatives of Facebook,
Twitter, and Google were instructed on the US Senate floor that it is their responsibility to
"quell information rebellions" and adopt a "mission statement" expressing their commitment to
"prevent the fomenting of discord."
" Civil wars don't start with gunshots, they start with words," the representatives were
told. "America's war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media
battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and
easily transform us into the Divided States of America."
Today Twitter has silenced three important anti-war voices on its platform: it has
suspended Daniel
McAdams, the executive director of the Ron Paul Institute, suspended Scott Horton of the
Scott Horton Show , and completely removed the account of prominent
Antiwar.com writer Peter Van Buren.
I'm about to talk about the censorship of Alex Jones and Infowars now, so let me get the
"blah blah I don't like Alex Jones" thing out of the way so that my social media notifications
aren't inundated with people saying "Caitlin didn't say the 'blah blah I don't like Alex Jones'
thing!" I shouldn't have to, because this isn't actually about Alex Jones, but here it is:
I don't like Alex Jones. He's made millions saying the things disgruntled right-wingers want
to hear instead of telling the truth; he throws in disinfo with his info, which is the same as
lying all the time. He's made countless false predictions and his sudden sycophantic support
for a US president has helped lull the populist right into complacency when they should be
holding Trump to his non-interventionist campaign pledges, making him even more worthless than
he was prior to 2016.
But this isn't about defending Alex Jones. He just happens to be the thinnest edge of the
wedge.
Infowars has been censored from Facebook, Youtube (which is part of Google), Apple, Spotify,
and now even Pinterest, all within hours of each other. This happens to have occurred at the
same time Infowars was circulating a petition with tens of thousands
of signatures calling on President Trump to pardon WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange,
who poses a much greater threat to establishment narratives than Alex Jones ever has. Assange's
mother also reports that this
mass removal of Infowars' audience occurred less than 48 hours after she was approached to do
an interview by an Infowars producer.
In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between
corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. Because
legalized bribery in the form of corporate lobbying and campaign donations has given wealthy Americans the
ability to control the U.S. government's policy and behavior while ordinary Americans have no
effective influence whatsoever, the U.S. unquestionably has a corporatist system of government.
Large, influential corporations are inseparable from the state, so their use of censorship is
inseparable from state censorship.
This is especially true of the vast mega-corporations of Silicon Valley, whose extensive
ties to U.S. intelligence agencies are well-documented . Once you're assisting
with the construction of the US military's drone program , receiving grants from the CIA and NSA for mass surveillance, or having your site's content
regulated by NATO's propaganda arm , you don't get to pretend you're a private,
independent corporation that is separate from government power. It is possible in the current
system to have a normal business worth a few million dollars, but if you want to get to
billions of dollars in wealth control in a system where money translates directly to political
power, you need to work with existing power structures like the CIA and the Pentagon, or else
they'll work with your competitors instead of you
Censorship Through Private Proxy
And yet every time I point to the dangers of a few Silicon Valley plutocrats controlling all
new media political discourse with an iron fist, Democratic Party loyalists all turn into a
bunch of hardline free market Ayn Rands. "It's not censorship!" they exclaim. "It's a private
company and can do whatever it wants with its property!"
They do this because they know their mainstream, plutocrat-friendly "centrist" views will never be censored. Everyone
else is on the chopping block, however. Leftist sites have already had their views slashed by a manipulation of Google's algorithms, and it won't be
long before movements like BDS and Antifa and skeptics of the establishment Syria and Russia
narratives can be made to face mass de-platforming on the same exact pretext as Infowars.
This is a setup. Hit the soft target so your oligarch-friendly censorship doesn't look like
what it is, then once you've manufactured consent, go on to shut down the rest of dissenting
media bit by bit.
Don't believe that's the plan? Let's ask sitting US Senator Chris Murphy: " Infowars is the
tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our
nation apart," Murphy tweeted in response
to the news. "These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our
democracy depends on it."
That sure sounds an awful lot like the warnings issued to the Silicon Valley representatives
on the Senate floor at the beginning of this article, no? This is headed somewhere dark.
We're going to have to find a way to keep the oligarchs from having their cake and eating it
too. Either (A) corporations are indeed private organizations separate from the government, in
which case the people need to get money out of politics and government agencies out of Silicon
Valley so they can start acting like it, and insist that their owners can't be dragged out on
to the Senate floor and instructed on what they can and can't do with their business, or (B)
these new media platforms get treated like the government agencies they function as, and the
people get all the First Amendment protection that comes with it. Right now the social
engineers are double-dipping in a way that will eventually give the alliance of corporate
plutocrats and secretive government agencies the ability to fully control the public's access
to ideas and information.
If they accomplish that, it's game over for humanity. Any hope of the public empowering
itself over the will of a few sociopathic, ecocidal, omnicidal oligarchs will have been
successfully quashed. We are playing for all the chips right now. We have to fight this. We
have no choice.
This
commentary was originally published on CaitlinJohnstone.com .
Ms. Johnstone is right. Government pressure on corporations works but the media in all its
forms does a pretty good job of sowing discord without government interference. There are so
few instances where the government and the major media are not in sync, they are hard to
find. As to allowing the lonely voices of worthy organizations like Consortium News, why
should they bother. Allowing them creates the pretense of free speech. If they become
dangerous, the mood of our elected officials is to fix the problem as Ms. Johnstone rightly
notes. The defense of freedom of speech by government and the major media is very selective,
and the use of the calling fire in a loaded theatre standard is a big enough vehicle for
suppression to drive a truck through, a whole convoy in fact.
As an aside, watching Sixty Minutes on their hit piece about Russian interference in our
elections was an example of sloppy journalism that seems to be the norm. when it is about
Russia. I was about to say they never used to be like that, but I think that is probably not
true.
Bulls-eye!!!! especially on Democratic party loyalists who perform a much more important
function for plutocracy than the Republicans and the Tea Party – to rally around fake
progressive politics dripping out of the DNC, and effectively drain off the pressure building
for true progressive politics.
cjonsson1 , August 12, 2018 at 1:50 pm
This is a good example of Caitlin explaining what is going on in the American media wars
which is crucial for people to know.
Our access to information, other than government propaganda, is becoming very limited because
the few major social network corporations are owned by a few wealthy individuals or private
government contractors. They are monopolies which should be designated public utilities, and
regulated as such, or broken up into smaller entities, allowing for competition.
It is important to preserve what is left of our freedom of expression and our free press. The
ability to comment on reporting and discuss it with others is diminishing while sources are
becoming more and more restricted.
Government and big business fight the public for control of information and opinion. We have
to collectively save our stake in democracy by rejecting censorship.
You make some very good points. Alas, I disagree about Alex Jones. The very few times I've
listened to his videos, it seemed to me every last thing he said was absolutely true and
correct. So I don't know where the idea comes from that he speaks disinformation. He's
sometimes obnoxious and hard to watch. But that's a different thing. His words are accurate,
particularly about the globalists, the deep state, US-Russia relations, and Trump.
"It is possible in the current system to have a normal business worth a few million
dollars, but if you want to get to billions of dollars in wealth control in a system where
money translates directly to political power, you need to work with existing power structures
like the CIA and the Pentagon, or else they'll work with your competitors instead of
you."
Actually, If companies get big, they become potential big tools/weapons for the war-making
State, at which point they will be offered a deal that they can't refuse, as one would expect
within this gangster Corporatocracy. Look at Wikileaks. Mozilla simply jumped on the fake
news bandwagon, so they are now safe, as Aaron Kesel at Activist Post points out. Lavabit's
owner, Ladar Levinson had principles and was loyal to his customers (including Edward
Snowden) whom he didn't want to betray just because the Corporatocracy State demanded it, and
so he shut down. He revived his company once he figured out ways to shield his customers from
the war-making State that attacks us all in the name of 'national security'.
So, it's a little more dire than the government just deciding to favor your competitors,
which of course the amazing Caitlin knows.
With all of this capture by tech giants, innovators, by the war-making State (Randolph
Bourne), How will end? I have more than one answer to that. One of those answers is the
obvious one: Ramped up counterrevolution, in the area of cyberspace mainly, in the State's
war against the people. And such a war is underway as any number of authors have demonstrated
thoroughly. And its not (just) Russia attacking the people. Jeff Halper wrote "War Against
The People." Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes edited "The Secure And The Dispossessed." Douglas
Valentine wrote "The Phoenix Program," which he notes wasn't confined to Vietnam. Noam
Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote the devastating two-volume "Political Economy Of Human
Rights," which included "The Washington Connection And Third World Fascism." And Edward
Herman wrote: "The Real Terror Network." All of those books and many others talk about
counterrevolution and the counterinsurgency (State terrorism) that goes with it.
And counterrevolution and counterinsurgency doesn't have to be of the extreme variety,
such as in South Vietnam when the US was torturing that country to death. Caitlin has talked
about how the State (New Zealand) went to work on her friend, Suzie Dawson. Read the account.
It's quite illuminating.
What do you call 'thinking' that is against 'thinking' (and what we consider to be a part
of innovation that leads to inventions that elevate society? It's called counterrevolution.
That's where our corrupt tech giants have gone. It won't end well for them, even if they
think otherwise and even if they feel safe because they are with the big guy. There's a
bigger guy who has that big guy in his sights.
Somehow I had missed those words from our elected "representatives" in Congressional
hearing. What these political pimps and whores don't want us to do is get together and agree
to dispel the bullshit that we're up to our necks in right now.
As far as I know this is the first piece I've read by Caitlin Johnstone, and I agree with
her general premise that this is more than just ominous. More and more of our elected
"representatives" talk and act like alien totalitarians.
The good news is that Trump's "trade" and saber-rattling belligerence is finally awakening
the rest of humanity to the fundamental non-starter of a unipolar anything. That one entity
so militarily, politically, and economically dominant that it can cause pain and suffering
wherever and whenever it decides. It is ironic that Trump's MAGA is the act in this play that
will dethrone the USA. The downside is that the 99% control NOTHING (this is true across most
of the planet.) Another downside is that the megalomaniacs in power will not concede power
without a cataclysmic conflict. But nothing is set in stone, though the indications don't
look promising.
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary
opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had
the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
"But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the
human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion,
still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the
opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is always a great benefit
– the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision
with error."
– JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873) English political economist, philosopher
Realist , August 11, 2018 at 3:12 am
Something must be getting into the water supply either by accident or design to induce the
mass hypnosis that has so many presumably intelligent people believing that we must all walk
in lockstep on every policy the elites want. Maybe we are all zombified from the massive
amounts of Xanax, Valium, Oxycontin and other mind-numbing psychoactive agents our population
consumes and pisses, unmetabolized, into the water table to be recycled into our drinking
water, obviating the need for a personal prescription to enjoy (suffer) the effects.
It's a real pity if the totally transparent sham scare stories they have disseminated are
alone enough to convince most of the people to give up their constitutional rights and
privacy. Clearly the tactic of the big lie doesn't work on every last individual or sites
like this one would not have an audience. That is why they want to shut us down, and Alex
Jones, though not a member of this journal club, is just the first step towards an outcome
that will encompass everyone remaining outside an all pervasive Groupthink.
Ideas, beliefs, memes, values, customs, habits and such are not received universally from
some inspirational force on high. (You are simply told to believe that from earliest
childhood.) They are spread through the population like a virus from mind-to-mind contact,
whether in person or via some modality of mass communication, like the TV or the internet.
The object of censorship, as per Alex Jones or Ron Paul most recently, is to extirpate the
source of "infection" as close to its point of origin as possible, before it can be spread to
too many carriers for transmission to others. People tend to believe what they hear and what
they hear comes from their regular contacts. Shut down their favorite talk show host or
internet site and they become starved for new "seditious" ideas. If they never hear a truth,
chances are they won't think it up themselves and certainly not act upon it.
Another thing I am pretty sure of: if their attempts at propaganda, psy-ops and mind
control do not work to their satisfaction, unadorned thuggery will become the new standard. I
know, I know, some of our number already get a taste of that.
Dave P. , August 11, 2018 at 5:46 pm
Realist –
"Another thing I am pretty sure of: if their attempts at propaganda, psy-ops and mind
control do not work to their satisfaction, unadorned thuggery will become the new standard .
. . "
You have it absolutely right. There have been markers all along since G.W. Bush/Cheney
rule, clear indicators of this new Future.
But some of us are so desperate to have a better and peaceful future for the humanity on
this planet that we get our hopes high for any silver lining in the sky – Obama's hope
and change, now Trump's getting along with Russia and stopping interventions abroad.
Now it seems like there is this new hoax the Democrats are going to perpetrate, candidates
with some type of socialist orientation, like Bernie Sanders supposedly has been or is. The
politicians in both parties are accomplished ConMen, in service of the real Masters –
MIC, Wall Street Finance, Media and Entertainment, working to bring this new Future. Bernie
Sanders is no different.
Skip Scott , August 12, 2018 at 7:08 am
"Now it seems like there is this new hoax the Democrats are going to perpetrate,
candidates with some type of socialist orientation, like Bernie Sanders supposedly has been
or is. "
I have noticed this ploy as well. They are willing to have a few faux progressives to keep
the progressive wing of the party from abandoning them altogether. They use Sanders, and now
this new Ocasio-Cortez, to sell their "big tent" narrative, and then co-op them when it comes
to all the important issues. They also constantly sell the idea that voting for third party
candidates is a waste of time, so you have to settle for "the lesser of evils" when it comes
time for a new president. I don't know how long they can keep playing the same con-game
before people see through it, but if it happens again in 2020, I think we are doomed.
Realist , August 12, 2018 at 10:01 am
The Democratic incumbent running for the senate in Florida (Bill Nelson) has made me so
angry by yet again using the party con against Russia that I could never vote for him even
though his opponent is the horrendous Governor Rick Scott (who plead guilty to defrauding
Medicare to the tune of a billion dollars for his Columbia HMO system prior to his election).
I cannot abide such theft of taxpayer money in broad daylight, but I also cannot accept
Nelson's spewing lies that Russia has actively hacked the Florida voter roles, plans to
delete registrations and disrupt the November elections. You know who's really more likely to
do those things? The Democratic and Republican parties.
Nelson is just making pre-emptive excuses for the loss that he sees coming. If he believes
his desperate gambit can work, he must think the voters are damned idiots to believe that
Russia would persist in perpetrating sabotage against American interests putting them
constantly in the crosshairs of our politicians and media. He must think that Floridians will
buy any tall tale that their elected officials tell them, totally unsupported by any
evidence. We are to believe that Assad never stops trying to poison his own people and that
Putin never stops interfering in American elections. (Why should Putin favor Rick Scott?
Because he admires American crooks?) If you truly believe such accusations, it is probably
logical that you would favor WAR with that country. I will vote for someone from the
Baader-Meinhof gang or the Taliban Party (if there is such a beast) before either Nelson or
Scott. Or I won't vote at all.
Zero Hedge tonight has an interesting article by Charles Hugh Smith, "The Grand Irony of
Russiagate: US Becomes More Like USSR Every Day". The clampdown in the old Soviet Union
before its collapse has parallels to what's going on in US now.
Jeff Harrison , August 10, 2018 at 5:12 pm
From Wikipedia. Fascism:
Fascism (/?fæ??z?m/) is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism,[1][2]
characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong
regimentation of society and of the economy.
The Cheetos-in-chief would love to wield dictatorial power and has tried to do so in the
past as have his predecessors (Obama, yeah, well, we had to torture some folks::Shrub you're
with us or against us.). Senator Chris Murphy essentially telling these companies who to kick
off their platforms, the regimentation of society and the economy is continuing apace as
companies are forced to comply with government demands that the government should never be
able to make but they do for "national security reasons"
Pfui. As I've said before the US has become a fascistic police state.
MBeaver , August 11, 2018 at 10:50 pm
Many other western countries, too. The only thing missing to "fit" fascism is the
nationalism. They completely gave up their national identity for neoliberal agendas. I wont
look for a new term, because its as close to fascism as anything else, especially since the
definition of leftism and socialism has changed a lot since fascism was invented (by a
socialist), so why shouldnt the definition of fascism a tiny bit?
But it exposes people who always cry "its not fascism" because nationalism is missing, as
accomplices at the very least.
Also, as an objective person, you should at least admit, that "cheeto-in-chief" is
actually trying hard to keep the promises he made. I havent seen that in a western leader in
a very VERY long time. Its just very obvious that the president isnt almighty and the deep
state is very powerful. Thanks to Trump its become evident to even fools, that the USA is
much more corrupt than even any conspiracy theorist would have thought just a few years
ago.
jaycee , August 10, 2018 at 4:27 pm
The idea that discordant speech is somehow a threat to the nation or democracy is so
looney and bereft of fact that it is actually painful to contemplate how many otherwise
intelligent persons seem to have internalized the notion. Obviously, Trump's election victory
severely damaged the Establishment's confidence in the ability to "manufacture consent" to
the degree that fundamental concepts of free speech are now in the cross-hairs. They will
destroy the Republic in order to save it.
When the corporate state speaks of "hate speech" and "community standards" – one can
be sure they are not referring to Madeline Albright's stunning defense for killing of a half
a million Iraqi children with sanctions as "worth it." Nor would the corporate state ever
categorize as "hate speech" the daily attack by a wide variety of U.S. officials and media
pundits, not only on the Russian government, but on the very – "character" – of
the Russian people as a whole.
Our actual and very real – "community standards" – in the U.S. include the
complete normalization of illegal immoral endless aggressive war-making in violation of
international law (not to mention regime change by jihadists, drone murders, economic
warfare, political assassinations, etc.) – along with the despicable demonization of
official enemies – in other words the total "normalization of hate-speech."
"Violations" of these widely held U.S. "community standards" & "hate-speech standards"
involves plain and simply any – "challenge" – to them or deviation from them. In
other words to speak words not sufficiently 'anti-Russian' today is considered a form of
"hate speech" in MSM and in political discourse. To suggest peace rather than war with Russia
might be a good idea is to violate precious "community standards" which today tolerate only
mindless fact-free warmongering in public discourse. You really can't make this stuff up!
Dave P. , August 10, 2018 at 5:48 pm
Excellent comments. So true.
We are heading towards some sort of dark ages, and at very fast pace.
Maxwell Quest , August 10, 2018 at 10:00 pm
Gary, pointing out the shameless and bald-faced hypocrisy as you did can sometimes shake
the stupefaction from an open-minded reader. Sadly, though, arguments such as these just seem
to bounce off the Russiagaters, having no effect. Conversely, these very same people couldn't
lavish enough praise on the peace prize winner Obama, whether he was bailing out the corrupt
banks, letting the lobbyists craft Obamacare, trafficking arms through Benghazi, or droning
some wedding party in the desert.
What do both of these examples have in common? Easy, the state media was able to control
the narrative in each case, and these same hypnotized drones ate it up hook, line and sinker.
This brings us right back to why internet-based censorship is the hot topic of the day, since
it is the single most threat to complete state control over the public mind.
Dave P. , August 10, 2018 at 11:09 pm
Well said. Obama is not gone yet. He is still out there selling his philosophy of
promoting the Wall street and corrupt banks, and droning and killing the weak and innocents
all over the world , for the right cause so to speak – spreading freedom and democracy.
And liberals buy it. What a World we live in!
He, along with Clintons, is the main instigator of "Russia Gate", which may lead the human
life to extinction on Earth.
Realist , August 11, 2018 at 2:24 am
Dave
Yes, anything is permitted (by Washington) as long as it is in the name of "freedom and
democracy." So say the leaders of our exceptional country.
Realist , August 11, 2018 at 2:22 am
Damn straight, Maxwell.
Mildly Facetious , August 11, 2018 at 4:16 pm
Yes, anything is permitted (by Washington) as long as it is in the name of "freedom and
democracy." So say the leaders of our exceptional country.
??????????????????????????
They do this because they know their mainstream, plutocrat-friendly "centrist" views will
never be censored.
Everyone else is on the chopping block, however.
Leftist sites have already had their views slashed by a manipulation of Google's
algorithms, and it won't be long before movements like BDS and Antifa and skeptics of the
establishment Syria and Russia narratives can be made to face mass de-platforming on the same
exact pretext as Infowars.
-- - compare that, if you've a clue, (not to obfuscate your subject), Caitlan Johnstone,
with, not mere censorship, but the Protection of 'Confidential' information such as the
Industrial Pharma INDUSTRY OF DEATH (shades -of -nazi-germany??? )via INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION
and PRESCRIBING OF OPIOIDS as if Huxley's "Soma" or/and a preview of " The Chemical and
Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. – Practical Instructions for Beta
Embryro-Store Workers /// as in government forced vaccinations along with Facebook enforced
capitulation of any/all -- Personal Sovereign Belief/s massively defaulting and bowing the
knee and Becoming Persuaded and Trapped into inescapable Autocracy, by reason of Darwin-esk
dissembling and a dis-informed election to Dissent Into The Maelstrom of the sinking ship of
American Exceptionalism, -- as if God could/would "forgive" all-of-the-collective Brutality
of Bombs, bullets, Uranium Munitions / CRIPPLING Sanctions imposted -- support of brutal
dictators Who massacred INNOCENT Civilians in order to obtain/secure US MILITARY FUNDS, in
order to secure autocratic/authoritative CONTROL
We are engulfed in a Molding Faze of acceptance of/into a totally new Reality strangely
built upon Nazi science/experiments, now Entering an/the Age of Space-Age manipulation of
DNA, Gene Manipulation -- origins of species ordered inside test tubes.
George Gilder prophetically saw this in this and more in his prescient 1990's book,
MICROCOSM. --
George Gilder and his Discovery Institute were far Ahead – of -the -curve in this
'Facebook" era of Futurisms .
Please find and consider his book, esp as it relates to technological possibilities and
the New Wonders (Brave New Worlds) of Gene splicing / manipulation .
"... The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr. Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign, and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness). ..."
"... The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn up the temperature with some nuclear fire. ..."
"... This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse them of "aggression." ..."
"... The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between men and women. ..."
"... "We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish and hazardous endeavor. " ..."
"... And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the "Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify. ..."
"... The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend, not just nationally, but world wide... ..."
The faction that used to be the Democratic party can be described with some precision these days as a three-headed monster driving
the nation toward danger, darkness, and incoherence.
Anyone interested in defending what remains of the sane center of American politics take heed:
The first head is the one infected with the toxic shock of losing the 2016 election. The illness took hold during the campaign
that year when the bureaucracy under President Obama sent its lymphocytes and microphages in the "intel community" -- especially
the leadership of the FBI -- to attack the perceived disease that the election of Donald Trump represented. The "doctors" of this
Deep State diagnosed the condition as "Russian collusion." An overdue second opinion by doctors outside the Deep State adduced later
that the malady was actually an auto-immune disease.
The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr.
Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign,
and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible.
With the disease now revealed by hard evidence, the chief surgeon called into the case, Robert Mueller, is left looking ridiculous
-- and perhaps subject to malpractice charges -- for trying to remove an appendix-like organ called the Manifort from the body politic
instead of attending to the cancerous mess all around him. Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New
York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded
with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness).
The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support
arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists
in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn
up the temperature with some nuclear fire. They are apparently in deep confab with the first head and its Russia collusion storyline.
Note all the current talk about Russia already meddling in the 2018 midterm election, a full-fledged pathogenic hallucination.
This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse
them of "aggression." We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression.
We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest
failed state.We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international
currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish
and hazardous endeavor. The sane center never would have stood for this arrant recklessness. The world community is not fooled, though.
More and more, they recognize the USA as a national borderline personality, capable of any monstrous act.
The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human
nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication
of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between
men and women. Those differences must be abolished, and replaced with chimeras that enable a childish game of pretend, men pretending
to be women and vice-versa in one way or another: LBGTQetc. Anything BUT the dreaded "cis-hetero" purgatory of men and women acting
like men and women. The horror .
Its companion is the race hustle and its multicultural operating system. The objective has become transparent over the past year,
with rising calls to punish white people for the supposed "privilege" of being Caucasian and pay "reparations" in one way or another
to underprivileged "people of color." This comes partly from the infantile refusal to understand that life is difficult for everybody,
and that the woes and sorrows of being in this world require fortitude and intelligence to get through -- with the final reward being
absolutely the same for everybody.
"We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust
up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest
failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international
currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a
foolish and hazardous endeavor. "
And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the
"Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into
a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify.
I was talking to someone, who knows a lot about the 'inner workings' and we were discussing, not only the US, but Europe's
situation as well.
The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend,
not just nationally, but world wide...
"... Sanders and his "Sandernistas" rarely talked about ending US illegal wars of aggression in 2016. If liberal/progressives had insisted that Bernie take an anti-war platform and a reduction of the Empire's military-industrial-complex, then Bernie might well be in the White House now, instead of Trump. Instead most of the Sandernistas told liberal/progressives to shut up about the wars. ..."
"... They said it would be political suicide for Bernie to bring up war during a presidential campaign. Sandernistas said not to worry, because Bernie was secretly antiwar. We fell for that one with Obama, who committed more war crimes than George W. Bush. ..."
"... The Empire's "destructive suction tube" is waging all sorts of wars: military, economic and propaganda. It is waging economic terrorism against the Global South. The Empire-backed World Bank, IMF and gangster banking monopolies force austerity on the poor of the world. Those poor countries in the Global South that are under attack by the Empire's economic terrorist organizations do not get to have Bernie's socialism. Not only do I agree with Andre that we do not deserve Bernie's social programs, nor do we have funds or the energies for them. Bernie and the Sandernistas rarely spoke about rehabilitation of America's poor; it was all about the middle class. Silence is betrayal. ..."
"... The Empire always wants enemies. The public never seems to question why the most powerful military the world has ever known, supposedly has so many poor weak enemies threatening it. It is all a pretext for the Empire to extract wealth from the Global South for the benefit of oligarchs. ..."
"... The Empire never stops plotting to overthrow revolutionary leaders. Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Russia, Cuba and North Korea are under attack because they want to go their own way. There will be economic warfare, propaganda warfare, and political warfare, and when those don't work to impose conformity and compliance; there is always the military option. For the Empire "all options are always on the table", including the nuclear option. The Empire would rather see the destruction of the entire world, than to coexist with a threat to its hegemony. ..."
"... Now the cry goes out that the Russians are coming! Those like myself that lived through the Cold War are seeing history repeated. The paranoia, propaganda, lies, repression, persecution and provocations are déjà vu. The US has encircled Russia with military bases, and plays war games on its border. We are told, and we are supposed to believe that Russia is the aggressor and an expansionist threat. ..."
"... Georgia attacks South Ossetia, and we are told that Russia invaded Georgia. The US midwifes a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, but it is Russia that is blamed for destabilizing Ukraine. Crimea has a referendum to rejoin Russia, and we are told that the Russians used military force to annex Crimea. The US has criminally invaded Syria, but we are told that Russia invaded Syria, even though they are there legally. ..."
"... We are supposed to be afraid that Putin will "destroy the West's democracy" by sowing dissention, chaos and meddling in US elections. If anybody wants to destroy America's democracy, then they are several decades too late. It has already been mostly destroyed. The Bill of Rights has been eviscerated, except for the 2 nd Amendment, which is enabling the worst fascistic elements in the US to heavily arm themselves. The police are militarized. The US has secret police, secret courts, and secret prisons. ..."
"... Andre has much to say on all the above issues in his book "Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism". The book is a collection of many of his great writing of the past few years. Shorter versions of his essays have been published in articles by non-Western media, such as the New Eastern Outlook (NEO) as well as Western alternative media such as The Greanville Post. ..."
"... In every direction one turns now they face a barrage of propaganda put out by the Empire. Most Americans are isolated and know very little about the rest of the world. For many people the mainstream media is their only source for information. What they get is a steady stream of propaganda that Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Russia are evil. They believe it, just like when I was a child, I believed the US propaganda during the Cold War. Russia was both feared and ridiculed when I was growing up. I was told that communism never works, and that Russia cannot even make toilets that flush. Imagine how surprised I was when I finally went to Russia and found out that their toilets work just fine. ..."
"... In the Empire one is only valuable for what they have to sell. It is all about dollars and cents, and the logic of the market. The market determines the value of everything, including people. If it has a market price, then it has value. If not then it is worthless and of no value, according to the market. ..."
"... I do not want to undermine Andre Vltchek or David Pear, even though Andre tends to get carried away, IMHO. I'd like to correct at least one thing. Regarding Georgian aggression against South Ossetia, at the beginning the US media (including all TV channels) reported events as they were: Georgia attacked South Ossetia, Georgian troops are shelling Tskhinval, killed many Ossetian civilians and Russian peacekeepers. Then they got their marching orders and turned the story the opposite way: Russia invaded Georgia. Their assumption was that the US public is too dumb to remember what was said the day before. The sad thing is, they were right. ..."
"... As far as Syria is concerned, the lies were there from day one. Thanks to propaganda, most Americans don't even know that Russia and Iran are in Syria legally, on the invitation of its legitimate government represented in the UN, whereas the US is there illegally by both international and US law. ..."
"... The same is true about Yemen: genocidal war by Saudis and other Gulf satrapies against Yemen was always presented as something good, whereas Yemeni resistance to foreign occupiers as something bad. The US in Yemen went the whole mile, showing its true colors for all to see: in the fight against Houthis it allied itself not only with Saudis, but even with their copycats ISIS, created and armed by the US for Saudi money. ..."
A lot of people are not going to like Andre's book "
Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism ", I can tell you that right now. The first to
hate it will be the Empire, because they fear truth-tellers more than bomb-throwers. The next
who will not like Andre's book will be the smug critics who want to nitpick his every word. I
am not talking about the Deep State and its Mockingbirds. I am talking about the so-called
liberal/progressives; especially the ones that never get off of the "proverbial couches of
spinelessness", which Andre speaks of. You have to be brave to put up with their shit. This is
the time when we should be organizing and supporting each other, instead of criticizing, and
letting the Empire divide us. Andre is a revolutionary writer and doer that is on a mission
that is bigger than himself.
As Andre says: "Obedient and cowardly masses hate those who are different". Different is an
understatement to describe Andre Vitchek. You'll not find many like him in Europe or North
America. You may have to go to South America, Africa, Asia, or Russia to find such uniquely
honest voices.
Russia is the perfect metaphor for Andre: Russia is neither Europe nor Asia; it is both and
neither. Like Russia, Andre is unique. He is neither this nor that. He is a writer,
philosopher, photo journalist, pamphleteer, activist, witness and doer. He is all of those
things, but above all he is a humanist and an artist. He is an optimistic pessimist. Only a
hopeless optimist would say:
"One day, hopefully soon, humanism will win over dark nihilism; people will live for other
people and not for some cold profits, religious dogmas and "Western values".
Western values, now that is an oxymoron if there ever was one. Andre is a pessimist that
sees and writes about the anti-humanism and the soullessness of so-called Western values. He
exposes it for what it is: gray, cold and without spirit.
Andre says he is a Communist in an era when being a communist is not fashionable. Most
liberal/progressives are afraid to mention John Maynard Keynes, let alone Marx, Lenin and
Mao.
For a while in 2016 pseudo-socialism was popular among supporters of Bernie Sanders, whom
claimed to be a socialist. He promised his followers what every poll shows that most Americans
want: universal healthcare, low cost higher education, better infrastructure, strong economic
safety nets, and $15 dollars an hour minimum wage. Where have all these so-called socialists
gone now that Bernie disillusioned them? Chasing illusionary Russian spies, it seems.
Sanders and his "Sandernistas" rarely talked about ending US illegal wars of aggression in
2016. If liberal/progressives had insisted that Bernie take an anti-war platform and a
reduction of the Empire's military-industrial-complex, then Bernie might well be in the White
House now, instead of Trump. Instead most of the Sandernistas told liberal/progressives to shut
up about the wars.
They said it would be political suicide for Bernie to bring up war during a
presidential campaign. Sandernistas said not to worry, because Bernie was secretly antiwar. We
fell for that one with Obama, who committed more war crimes than George W. Bush.
Andre has the guts to say that liberal/progressives do not deserve free college, universal
healthcare and all the goodies that Bernie was selling us, while also peddling the trillion
dollar F-35 boondoggle. I agree with Andre, especially since Bernie sold out his loyal
followers, and sheep dogged for warmongering Hillary. We do not deserve social programs at
home, while the Empire is killing millions of people with all the US illegal wars of
aggression. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
"A time comes when silence is betrayal -- I knew that America would never invest the
necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam
continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube."
The Empire's "destructive suction tube" is waging all sorts of wars: military, economic and
propaganda. It is waging economic terrorism against the Global South. The Empire-backed World
Bank, IMF and gangster banking monopolies force austerity on the poor of the world. Those poor
countries in the Global South that are under attack by the Empire's economic terrorist
organizations do not get to have Bernie's socialism. Not only do I agree with Andre that we do
not deserve Bernie's social programs, nor do we have funds or the energies for them. Bernie and
the Sandernistas rarely spoke about rehabilitation of America's poor; it was all about the
middle class. Silence is betrayal.
Whatever the Empire does in foreign lands, sooner or later the chickens come home to roost.
The Empire keeps crushing countries of the Global South whose leaders want to use their
country's natural resources for their own people. Anti-colonial revolutionaries like Castro,
Che and Ho were personally vilified for not embracing the Empire's neocolonial model of
capitalism. The Empire conspires to overthrow governments that nationalize their country's
natural resources, and have social programs for the people.
The Empire always wants enemies. The public never seems to question why the most powerful
military the world has ever known, supposedly has so many poor weak enemies threatening it. It
is all a pretext for the Empire to extract wealth from the Global South for the benefit of
oligarchs.
The Empire never stops plotting to overthrow revolutionary leaders. Venezuela, Iran, Yemen,
Syria, Russia, Cuba and North Korea are under attack because they want to go their own way.
There will be economic warfare, propaganda warfare, and political warfare, and when those don't
work to impose conformity and compliance; there is always the military option. For the Empire
"all options are always on the table", including the nuclear option. The Empire would rather
see the destruction of the entire world, than to coexist with a threat to its hegemony.
Now the cry goes out that the Russians are coming! Those like myself that lived through the
Cold War are seeing history repeated. The paranoia, propaganda, lies, repression, persecution
and provocations are déjà vu. The US has encircled Russia with military bases,
and plays war games on its border. We are told, and we are supposed to believe that Russia is
the aggressor and an expansionist threat.
Georgia attacks South Ossetia, and we are told that Russia invaded Georgia. The US midwifes
a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, but it is Russia that is blamed for
destabilizing Ukraine. Crimea has a referendum to rejoin Russia, and we are told that the
Russians used military force to annex Crimea. The US has criminally invaded Syria, but we are
told that Russia invaded Syria, even though they are there legally.
We are supposed to be afraid that Putin will "destroy the West's democracy" by sowing
dissention, chaos and meddling in US elections. If anybody wants to destroy America's
democracy, then they are several decades too late. It has already been mostly destroyed. The
Bill of Rights has been eviscerated, except for the 2 nd Amendment, which is
enabling the worst fascistic elements in the US to heavily arm themselves. The police are
militarized. The US has secret police, secret courts, and secret prisons.
Nationalism that breeds repression at home and wars abroad is running amok. The people no
longer have the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Protesters are
restricted to so-called free-speech zones, and they are subject to indiscriminate mass arrest.
The people are told to obey the government, but it is the government that is supposed to obey
the people in a democracy. Those that don't worship the flag, and praise militarism are accused
of being unpatriotic.
Andre has much to say on all the above issues in his book "Revolutionary Optimism, Western
Nihilism". The book is a collection of many of his great writing of the past few years. Shorter
versions of his essays have been published in articles by non-Western media, such as the New
Eastern Outlook (NEO) as well as Western alternative media such as The Greanville Post.
Andre writes about the Empire's many crimes. Terrible crimes have been committed against
millions of people who have done the West no harm, and were of no threat. The Empire and its
vassal states punish people of the Global South for being born in countries with vast natural
resources that the Empire covets. Andre gives these victims a voice and a human face.
Andre's writings are not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. He will pound the
truth into you on every page, and you may not be able to put his book down, as I could not. The
reader realizes that Andre is on a mission. Part of that mission is to be the conscience of the
world, and to make sure that the victimized are not forgotten and that they are not alone.
Andre has a great capacity for empathy. His writing, videos and documentaries cry out for the world
to have empathy too. The world is empathy deficient.
Even for those that already intellectually know the truths that Andre writes about, will
have that truth pound into their hearts and souls. Unfortunately, the people that are ignorant
of the truth are the most likely ones not to read Andre. We all know people like that. They are
our brother-in-law, neighbors, and the students and professors in our institutions of so-called
higher learning. Our schools do not teach the important truths and philosophies anymore. They
have just become vocational schools turning out accountants, lawyers, propagandist,
stockbrokers, and super sales people to keep churning money in the economy, so that it flows up
the food chain.
In every direction one turns now they face a barrage of propaganda put out by the Empire.
Most Americans are isolated and know very little about the rest of the world. For many people
the mainstream media is their only source for information. What they get is a steady stream of
propaganda that Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Russia are evil. They
believe it, just like when I was a child, I believed the US propaganda during the Cold War.
Russia was both feared and ridiculed when I was growing up. I was told that communism never
works, and that Russia cannot even make toilets that flush. Imagine how surprised I was when I
finally went to Russia and found out that their toilets work just fine.
When I mentioned the above story to someone who was regurgitating anti-Putin propaganda he
asked me a rhetorical question:
"As for Russia, besides the toilets flushing, was there anything you wanted to buy there
besides vodka and nesting dolls? Or do they have anything that you would wish that we imported
(like Japanese cars or Chinese clothing or Swiss watches, etc.)?"
I know that Andre gets the stupidity of that question. In the Empire one is only valuable
for what they have to sell. It is all about dollars and cents, and the logic of the market. The
market determines the value of everything, including people. If it has a market price, then it
has value. If not then it is worthless and of no value, according to the market.
Andre writes about things that are priceless and have great value. They are the things of
life that make us human, instead of robots. There is no market for love and living a fulfilling
life. It is free if one knows how to find it. Andre helps to show us the way.
Excerpt from Thomas Sowell's book Intellectuals and Society:
What preferences are revealed by the actual behavior of intellectuals -- especially in
their social crusades -- and how do such revealed preferences compare with their rhetoric?
The professed beliefs of intellectuals center about their concern for others -- especially
for the poor, for minorities, for "social justice" and for protecting endangered species and
saving the environment, for example. Their rhetoric is too familiar and too pervasive to
require elaboration here. The real question, however, is: What are their revealed
preferences?
The phrase "unintended consequences" has become a cliché precisely because so many
policies and programs intended, for example, to better the situation of the less fortunate
have in fact made their situation worse, that it is no longer possible to regard good
intentions as automatic harbingers of good results. Anyone whose primary concern is in
improving the lot of the less fortunate would therefore, by this time, after decades of
experience with negative "unintended consequences," see a need not only to invest time and
efforts to turn good intentions into policies and programs, but also to invest time and
efforts afterwards into trying to ferret out answers as to what the actual consequences of
those policies and programs have been.
Moreover, anyone whose primary concern was improving the lot of the less fortunate would
also be alert and receptive to other factors from beyond the vision of the intellectuals,
when those other factors have been found empirically to have helped advance the well-being of
the less fortunate, even if in ways not contemplated by the intelligentsia and even if in
ways counter to the beliefs or visions of the intelligentsia.
[MORE]
In short, one of the ways to test whether expressed concerns for the well-being of the less
fortunate represent primarily a concern for that well-being or a use of the less fortunate as
a means to condemn society, or to seek either political or moral authority over society -- to
be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil -- would be to see the revealed
preferences of intellectuals in terms of how much time and energy they invest in promoting
their vision, as compared to how much time and energy they invest in scrutinizing (1) the
actual consequences of things done in the name of that vision and (2) benefits to the less
fortunate created outside that vision and even counter to that vision.
Crusaders for a "living wage" or to end "sweatshop labor" in the Third World, for example,
may invest great amounts of time and energy promoting those goals but virtually none in
scrutinizing the many studies done in countries around the world to discover the actual
consequences of minimum wage laws in general or of "living wage" laws in particular. These
consequences have included such things as higher levels of unemployment and longer periods of
unemployment, especially for the least skilled and least experienced segments of the
population. Whether one agrees with or disputes these studies, the crucial question here is
whether one bothers to read them at all.
If the real purpose of social crusades is to make the less fortunate better off, then the
actual consequences of such policies as wage control become central and require
investigation, in order to avoid "unintended consequences" which have already become widely
recognized in the context of many other policies. But if the real purpose of social crusades
is to proclaim oneself to be on the side of the angels, then such investigations have a low
priority, if any priority at all, since the goal of being on the side of the angels is
accomplished when the policies have been advocated and then instituted, after which social
crusaders can move on to other issues. The revealed preference of many, if not most, of the
intelligentsia has been to be on the side of the angels.
The same conclusion is hard to avoid when looking at the response of intellectuals to
improvements in the condition of the poor that follow policies or circumstances which offer
no opportunities to be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. For example,
under new economic policies beginning in the 1990s, tens of millions of people in India have
risen above that country's official poverty level. In China, under similar policies begun
earlier, a million people a month have risen out of poverty. Surely anyone concerned with the
fate of the less fortunate would want to know how this desirable development came about for
such vast numbers of very poor people -- and therefore how similar improvements might be
produced elsewhere in the world. But these and other dramatic increases in living standards,
based ultimately on the production of more wealth, arouse little or no interest among most
intellectuals.
However important for the poor, these developments offer no opportunities for the
intelligentsia to be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil -- and that is what
their revealed preferences show repeatedly to be their real priority. Questions about what
policies or conditions increase or decrease the rate of growth of output seldom arouse the
interest of most intellectuals, even though such changes have done more to reduce poverty --
in both rich and poor countries -- than changes in the distribution of income have done.
French writer Raymond Aron has suggested that achieving the ostensible goals of the left
without using the methods favored by the left actually provokes resentments:
"In fact the European Left has a grudge against the United States mainly because the
latter has succeeded by means which were not laid down in the revolutionary code. Prosperity,
power, the tendency towards uniformity of economic conditions -- these results have been
achieved by private initiative, by competition rather than State intervention, in other words
by capitalism, which every well-brought-up intellectual has been taught to despise."
Another excerpt from Intellectuals and Society:
One of the sources of the credibility and influence of intellectuals with the vision of
the anointed is that they are often seen as people promoting the interests of the less
fortunate, rather than people promoting their own financial self-interest. But financial
self-interests are by no means the only self-interests, nor necessarily the most dangerous
self-interests. As T.S. Eliot put it:
"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or
they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of
themselves."
Can you still really call them "revolutionaries" when the ideas and strategies are 150 years
old? When every leftist for generations has been saying the same things, is it still a
visionary act of courage?
I'd welcome a truly revolutionary solution. I'm not convinced it's coming from this
tradition.
I do not want to undermine Andre Vltchek or David Pear, even though Andre tends to get
carried away, IMHO. I'd like to correct at least one thing. Regarding Georgian aggression
against South Ossetia, at the beginning the US media (including all TV channels) reported
events as they were: Georgia attacked South Ossetia, Georgian troops are shelling Tskhinval,
killed many Ossetian civilians and Russian peacekeepers. Then they got their marching orders
and turned the story the opposite way: Russia invaded Georgia. Their assumption was that the
US public is too dumb to remember what was said the day before. The sad thing is, they were
right.
As far as Syria is concerned, the lies were there from day one. Thanks to propaganda, most
Americans don't even know that Russia and Iran are in Syria legally, on the invitation of its
legitimate government represented in the UN, whereas the US is there illegally by both
international and US law.
The same is true about Yemen: genocidal war by Saudis and other Gulf satrapies against
Yemen was always presented as something good, whereas Yemeni resistance to foreign occupiers
as something bad. The US in Yemen went the whole mile, showing its true colors for all to
see: in the fight against Houthis it allied itself not only with Saudis, but even with their
copycats ISIS, created and armed by the US for Saudi money.
" Georgia attacks South Ossetia, "
It did, with huge loans Israeli military hardware was bought, Israel was in the process of
upgrading Migs in Georgia.
President at the time Saaskiville now is in Ukrainian prison, or under investigation by
Kiev.
If he still has a nationality, I do not know.
The Georgian attack was a fiasco, there is just a tunnel between N and S Ossetia.
The Georgian plan was to block the exit to the south, to prevent Russian tanks getting
through.
This had to be done with artillery, firing over a mountain, guided by two Israeli drones.
Russia succeeded in the signals from the drones reaching a satellite, so no blocking, the
tanks came to the rescue.
To this day the Georgian people are paying for the loans.
Israeli technology seems not first class.
Correction: Saakashvili is not in prison, even though he richly deserves to be (just ask
Ossetians: they'd love to hang him for his crimes, but can't get their hands on him, more's
the pity). In fact, his Ukrainian citizenship was revoked, he is now in the Netherlands, of
all places.
As to Israel, it may not be the technology issue. Israel tends to hedge its bets. They
like to get their shekels anywhere they can, but certainly won't go out on a limb for
something worthless and inconsequential, like Georgia.
Vltchek is a privileged fool and some kind of evil propagandist. Look at the places he stays, always 4- or 5-star hotels (except when he stays in a place
where there are none), who pays for all of that?
Perhaps he is independently wealthy on a grand scale. Don't think so. In the immortal words of P.K. Dick in A Scanner Darkly , he is as phony as a
three-dollar bill.
That is a very simplistic view (and implies that you have read very little of
Vltchek). I stopped about two years ago, he is so full of lies, it was tiring to see them.
Have an old comment on this site (when stupid Counterpunch was still publishing his
semi-deranged articles, not that Counterpunch has not gone even worse since) except that his
articles are absent, a small improvement, more than made up for by the newly added other
bullshit artists.
Vltchek is either super-wealthy or subsidized by somebody, it sure is not the Russian
state or any of its arms.
"... The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr. Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign, and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness). ..."
"... The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn up the temperature with some nuclear fire. ..."
"... This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse them of "aggression." ..."
"... The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between men and women. ..."
"... "We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish and hazardous endeavor. " ..."
"... And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the "Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify. ..."
"... The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend, not just nationally, but world wide... ..."
The faction that used to be the Democratic party can be described with some precision these days as a three-headed monster driving
the nation toward danger, darkness, and incoherence.
Anyone interested in defending what remains of the sane center of American politics take heed:
The first head is the one infected with the toxic shock of losing the 2016 election. The illness took hold during the campaign
that year when the bureaucracy under President Obama sent its lymphocytes and microphages in the "intel community" -- especially
the leadership of the FBI -- to attack the perceived disease that the election of Donald Trump represented. The "doctors" of this
Deep State diagnosed the condition as "Russian collusion." An overdue second opinion by doctors outside the Deep State adduced later
that the malady was actually an auto-immune disease.
The agents actually threatening the health of the state came from the intel community itself: Mr. Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr.
Comey, Mr. Strzok, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ohr, Ms. Yates. Ms. Page, et. al. who colluded with pathogens in the DNC, the Hillary campaign,
and the British intel service to chew up and spit out Mr. Trump as expeditiously as possible.
With the disease now revealed by hard evidence, the chief surgeon called into the case, Robert Mueller, is left looking ridiculous
-- and perhaps subject to malpractice charges -- for trying to remove an appendix-like organ called the Manifort from the body politic
instead of attending to the cancerous mess all around him. Meanwhile, the Deep State can't stop running its mouth -- The New
York Times , CNN, WashPo , et al -- in an evermore hysterical reaction to the truth of the matter: the Deep State itself colluded
with Russia (and perhaps hates itself for it, a sure recipe for mental illness).
The second head of this monster is a matrix of sinister interests seeking to incite conflict with Russia in order to support
arms manufacturers, black box "security" companies, congressmen-on-the-take, and an army of obscenely-rewarded Washington lobbyists
in concert with the military and a rabid neocon intellectual think-tank camp wishing to replay the cold war and perhaps even turn
up the temperature with some nuclear fire. They are apparently in deep confab with the first head and its Russia collusion storyline.
Note all the current talk about Russia already meddling in the 2018 midterm election, a full-fledged pathogenic hallucination.
This second head functions by way of a displacement-projection dynamic. We hold war games on the Russian border and accuse
them of "aggression." We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression.
We bust up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest
failed state.We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international
currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a foolish
and hazardous endeavor. The sane center never would have stood for this arrant recklessness. The world community is not fooled, though.
More and more, they recognize the USA as a national borderline personality, capable of any monstrous act.
The third head of this monster is the one aflame with identity politics. It arises from a crypto-gnostic wish to change human
nature to escape the woes and sorrows of the human condition -- for example, the terrible tensions of sexuality. Hence, the multiplication
of new sexual categories as a work-around for the fundamental terrors of human reproduction as represented by the differences between
men and women. Those differences must be abolished, and replaced with chimeras that enable a childish game of pretend, men pretending
to be women and vice-versa in one way or another: LBGTQetc. Anything BUT the dreaded "cis-hetero" purgatory of men and women acting
like men and women. The horror .
Its companion is the race hustle and its multicultural operating system. The objective has become transparent over the past year,
with rising calls to punish white people for the supposed "privilege" of being Caucasian and pay "reparations" in one way or another
to underprivileged "people of color." This comes partly from the infantile refusal to understand that life is difficult for everybody,
and that the woes and sorrows of being in this world require fortitude and intelligence to get through -- with the final reward being
absolutely the same for everybody.
"We engineer and pay for a coup against the elected government of Ukraine, and accuse Russia of aggression. We bust
up one nation after another in Middle East and complain indignantly when Russia acts to keep Syria from becoming the latest
failed state. We disrupt the Russian economy with sanctions, and the Russian banking system with a cut-off of SWIFT international
currency clearing privileges, and accuse them of aggression. This mode of behavior used to be known as "poking the bear," a
foolish and hazardous endeavor. "
And this shit has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and the
"Harvard Boys" helped turn Russia into
a corrupt Oligarchy, something the Left was first to identify.
I was talking to someone, who knows a lot about the 'inner workings' and we were discussing, not only the US, but Europe's
situation as well.
The rising of the Populist parties in the UK, Germany, especially Italy and now Sweden, portends an interesting trend,
not just nationally, but world wide...
"... Sanders and his "Sandernistas" rarely talked about ending US illegal wars of aggression in 2016. If liberal/progressives had insisted that Bernie take an anti-war platform and a reduction of the Empire's military-industrial-complex, then Bernie might well be in the White House now, instead of Trump. Instead most of the Sandernistas told liberal/progressives to shut up about the wars. ..."
"... They said it would be political suicide for Bernie to bring up war during a presidential campaign. Sandernistas said not to worry, because Bernie was secretly antiwar. We fell for that one with Obama, who committed more war crimes than George W. Bush. ..."
"... The Empire's "destructive suction tube" is waging all sorts of wars: military, economic and propaganda. It is waging economic terrorism against the Global South. The Empire-backed World Bank, IMF and gangster banking monopolies force austerity on the poor of the world. Those poor countries in the Global South that are under attack by the Empire's economic terrorist organizations do not get to have Bernie's socialism. Not only do I agree with Andre that we do not deserve Bernie's social programs, nor do we have funds or the energies for them. Bernie and the Sandernistas rarely spoke about rehabilitation of America's poor; it was all about the middle class. Silence is betrayal. ..."
"... The Empire always wants enemies. The public never seems to question why the most powerful military the world has ever known, supposedly has so many poor weak enemies threatening it. It is all a pretext for the Empire to extract wealth from the Global South for the benefit of oligarchs. ..."
"... The Empire never stops plotting to overthrow revolutionary leaders. Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Russia, Cuba and North Korea are under attack because they want to go their own way. There will be economic warfare, propaganda warfare, and political warfare, and when those don't work to impose conformity and compliance; there is always the military option. For the Empire "all options are always on the table", including the nuclear option. The Empire would rather see the destruction of the entire world, than to coexist with a threat to its hegemony. ..."
"... Now the cry goes out that the Russians are coming! Those like myself that lived through the Cold War are seeing history repeated. The paranoia, propaganda, lies, repression, persecution and provocations are déjà vu. The US has encircled Russia with military bases, and plays war games on its border. We are told, and we are supposed to believe that Russia is the aggressor and an expansionist threat. ..."
"... Georgia attacks South Ossetia, and we are told that Russia invaded Georgia. The US midwifes a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, but it is Russia that is blamed for destabilizing Ukraine. Crimea has a referendum to rejoin Russia, and we are told that the Russians used military force to annex Crimea. The US has criminally invaded Syria, but we are told that Russia invaded Syria, even though they are there legally. ..."
"... We are supposed to be afraid that Putin will "destroy the West's democracy" by sowing dissention, chaos and meddling in US elections. If anybody wants to destroy America's democracy, then they are several decades too late. It has already been mostly destroyed. The Bill of Rights has been eviscerated, except for the 2 nd Amendment, which is enabling the worst fascistic elements in the US to heavily arm themselves. The police are militarized. The US has secret police, secret courts, and secret prisons. ..."
"... Andre has much to say on all the above issues in his book "Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism". The book is a collection of many of his great writing of the past few years. Shorter versions of his essays have been published in articles by non-Western media, such as the New Eastern Outlook (NEO) as well as Western alternative media such as The Greanville Post. ..."
"... In every direction one turns now they face a barrage of propaganda put out by the Empire. Most Americans are isolated and know very little about the rest of the world. For many people the mainstream media is their only source for information. What they get is a steady stream of propaganda that Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Russia are evil. They believe it, just like when I was a child, I believed the US propaganda during the Cold War. Russia was both feared and ridiculed when I was growing up. I was told that communism never works, and that Russia cannot even make toilets that flush. Imagine how surprised I was when I finally went to Russia and found out that their toilets work just fine. ..."
"... In the Empire one is only valuable for what they have to sell. It is all about dollars and cents, and the logic of the market. The market determines the value of everything, including people. If it has a market price, then it has value. If not then it is worthless and of no value, according to the market. ..."
"... I do not want to undermine Andre Vltchek or David Pear, even though Andre tends to get carried away, IMHO. I'd like to correct at least one thing. Regarding Georgian aggression against South Ossetia, at the beginning the US media (including all TV channels) reported events as they were: Georgia attacked South Ossetia, Georgian troops are shelling Tskhinval, killed many Ossetian civilians and Russian peacekeepers. Then they got their marching orders and turned the story the opposite way: Russia invaded Georgia. Their assumption was that the US public is too dumb to remember what was said the day before. The sad thing is, they were right. ..."
"... As far as Syria is concerned, the lies were there from day one. Thanks to propaganda, most Americans don't even know that Russia and Iran are in Syria legally, on the invitation of its legitimate government represented in the UN, whereas the US is there illegally by both international and US law. ..."
"... The same is true about Yemen: genocidal war by Saudis and other Gulf satrapies against Yemen was always presented as something good, whereas Yemeni resistance to foreign occupiers as something bad. The US in Yemen went the whole mile, showing its true colors for all to see: in the fight against Houthis it allied itself not only with Saudis, but even with their copycats ISIS, created and armed by the US for Saudi money. ..."
A lot of people are not going to like Andre's book "
Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism ", I can tell you that right now. The first to
hate it will be the Empire, because they fear truth-tellers more than bomb-throwers. The next
who will not like Andre's book will be the smug critics who want to nitpick his every word. I
am not talking about the Deep State and its Mockingbirds. I am talking about the so-called
liberal/progressives; especially the ones that never get off of the "proverbial couches of
spinelessness", which Andre speaks of. You have to be brave to put up with their shit. This is
the time when we should be organizing and supporting each other, instead of criticizing, and
letting the Empire divide us. Andre is a revolutionary writer and doer that is on a mission
that is bigger than himself.
As Andre says: "Obedient and cowardly masses hate those who are different". Different is an
understatement to describe Andre Vitchek. You'll not find many like him in Europe or North
America. You may have to go to South America, Africa, Asia, or Russia to find such uniquely
honest voices.
Russia is the perfect metaphor for Andre: Russia is neither Europe nor Asia; it is both and
neither. Like Russia, Andre is unique. He is neither this nor that. He is a writer,
philosopher, photo journalist, pamphleteer, activist, witness and doer. He is all of those
things, but above all he is a humanist and an artist. He is an optimistic pessimist. Only a
hopeless optimist would say:
"One day, hopefully soon, humanism will win over dark nihilism; people will live for other
people and not for some cold profits, religious dogmas and "Western values".
Western values, now that is an oxymoron if there ever was one. Andre is a pessimist that
sees and writes about the anti-humanism and the soullessness of so-called Western values. He
exposes it for what it is: gray, cold and without spirit.
Andre says he is a Communist in an era when being a communist is not fashionable. Most
liberal/progressives are afraid to mention John Maynard Keynes, let alone Marx, Lenin and
Mao.
For a while in 2016 pseudo-socialism was popular among supporters of Bernie Sanders, whom
claimed to be a socialist. He promised his followers what every poll shows that most Americans
want: universal healthcare, low cost higher education, better infrastructure, strong economic
safety nets, and $15 dollars an hour minimum wage. Where have all these so-called socialists
gone now that Bernie disillusioned them? Chasing illusionary Russian spies, it seems.
Sanders and his "Sandernistas" rarely talked about ending US illegal wars of aggression in
2016. If liberal/progressives had insisted that Bernie take an anti-war platform and a
reduction of the Empire's military-industrial-complex, then Bernie might well be in the White
House now, instead of Trump. Instead most of the Sandernistas told liberal/progressives to shut
up about the wars.
They said it would be political suicide for Bernie to bring up war during a
presidential campaign. Sandernistas said not to worry, because Bernie was secretly antiwar. We
fell for that one with Obama, who committed more war crimes than George W. Bush.
Andre has the guts to say that liberal/progressives do not deserve free college, universal
healthcare and all the goodies that Bernie was selling us, while also peddling the trillion
dollar F-35 boondoggle. I agree with Andre, especially since Bernie sold out his loyal
followers, and sheep dogged for warmongering Hillary. We do not deserve social programs at
home, while the Empire is killing millions of people with all the US illegal wars of
aggression. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
"A time comes when silence is betrayal -- I knew that America would never invest the
necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam
continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube."
The Empire's "destructive suction tube" is waging all sorts of wars: military, economic and
propaganda. It is waging economic terrorism against the Global South. The Empire-backed World
Bank, IMF and gangster banking monopolies force austerity on the poor of the world. Those poor
countries in the Global South that are under attack by the Empire's economic terrorist
organizations do not get to have Bernie's socialism. Not only do I agree with Andre that we do
not deserve Bernie's social programs, nor do we have funds or the energies for them. Bernie and
the Sandernistas rarely spoke about rehabilitation of America's poor; it was all about the
middle class. Silence is betrayal.
Whatever the Empire does in foreign lands, sooner or later the chickens come home to roost.
The Empire keeps crushing countries of the Global South whose leaders want to use their
country's natural resources for their own people. Anti-colonial revolutionaries like Castro,
Che and Ho were personally vilified for not embracing the Empire's neocolonial model of
capitalism. The Empire conspires to overthrow governments that nationalize their country's
natural resources, and have social programs for the people.
The Empire always wants enemies. The public never seems to question why the most powerful
military the world has ever known, supposedly has so many poor weak enemies threatening it. It
is all a pretext for the Empire to extract wealth from the Global South for the benefit of
oligarchs.
The Empire never stops plotting to overthrow revolutionary leaders. Venezuela, Iran, Yemen,
Syria, Russia, Cuba and North Korea are under attack because they want to go their own way.
There will be economic warfare, propaganda warfare, and political warfare, and when those don't
work to impose conformity and compliance; there is always the military option. For the Empire
"all options are always on the table", including the nuclear option. The Empire would rather
see the destruction of the entire world, than to coexist with a threat to its hegemony.
Now the cry goes out that the Russians are coming! Those like myself that lived through the
Cold War are seeing history repeated. The paranoia, propaganda, lies, repression, persecution
and provocations are déjà vu. The US has encircled Russia with military bases,
and plays war games on its border. We are told, and we are supposed to believe that Russia is
the aggressor and an expansionist threat.
Georgia attacks South Ossetia, and we are told that Russia invaded Georgia. The US midwifes
a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, but it is Russia that is blamed for
destabilizing Ukraine. Crimea has a referendum to rejoin Russia, and we are told that the
Russians used military force to annex Crimea. The US has criminally invaded Syria, but we are
told that Russia invaded Syria, even though they are there legally.
We are supposed to be afraid that Putin will "destroy the West's democracy" by sowing
dissention, chaos and meddling in US elections. If anybody wants to destroy America's
democracy, then they are several decades too late. It has already been mostly destroyed. The
Bill of Rights has been eviscerated, except for the 2 nd Amendment, which is
enabling the worst fascistic elements in the US to heavily arm themselves. The police are
militarized. The US has secret police, secret courts, and secret prisons.
Nationalism that breeds repression at home and wars abroad is running amok. The people no
longer have the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Protesters are
restricted to so-called free-speech zones, and they are subject to indiscriminate mass arrest.
The people are told to obey the government, but it is the government that is supposed to obey
the people in a democracy. Those that don't worship the flag, and praise militarism are accused
of being unpatriotic.
Andre has much to say on all the above issues in his book "Revolutionary Optimism, Western
Nihilism". The book is a collection of many of his great writing of the past few years. Shorter
versions of his essays have been published in articles by non-Western media, such as the New
Eastern Outlook (NEO) as well as Western alternative media such as The Greanville Post.
Andre writes about the Empire's many crimes. Terrible crimes have been committed against
millions of people who have done the West no harm, and were of no threat. The Empire and its
vassal states punish people of the Global South for being born in countries with vast natural
resources that the Empire covets. Andre gives these victims a voice and a human face.
Andre's writings are not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. He will pound the
truth into you on every page, and you may not be able to put his book down, as I could not. The
reader realizes that Andre is on a mission. Part of that mission is to be the conscience of the
world, and to make sure that the victimized are not forgotten and that they are not alone.
Andre has a great capacity for empathy. His writing, videos and documentaries cry out for the world
to have empathy too. The world is empathy deficient.
Even for those that already intellectually know the truths that Andre writes about, will
have that truth pound into their hearts and souls. Unfortunately, the people that are ignorant
of the truth are the most likely ones not to read Andre. We all know people like that. They are
our brother-in-law, neighbors, and the students and professors in our institutions of so-called
higher learning. Our schools do not teach the important truths and philosophies anymore. They
have just become vocational schools turning out accountants, lawyers, propagandist,
stockbrokers, and super sales people to keep churning money in the economy, so that it flows up
the food chain.
In every direction one turns now they face a barrage of propaganda put out by the Empire.
Most Americans are isolated and know very little about the rest of the world. For many people
the mainstream media is their only source for information. What they get is a steady stream of
propaganda that Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Russia are evil. They
believe it, just like when I was a child, I believed the US propaganda during the Cold War.
Russia was both feared and ridiculed when I was growing up. I was told that communism never
works, and that Russia cannot even make toilets that flush. Imagine how surprised I was when I
finally went to Russia and found out that their toilets work just fine.
When I mentioned the above story to someone who was regurgitating anti-Putin propaganda he
asked me a rhetorical question:
"As for Russia, besides the toilets flushing, was there anything you wanted to buy there
besides vodka and nesting dolls? Or do they have anything that you would wish that we imported
(like Japanese cars or Chinese clothing or Swiss watches, etc.)?"
I know that Andre gets the stupidity of that question. In the Empire one is only valuable
for what they have to sell. It is all about dollars and cents, and the logic of the market. The
market determines the value of everything, including people. If it has a market price, then it
has value. If not then it is worthless and of no value, according to the market.
Andre writes about things that are priceless and have great value. They are the things of
life that make us human, instead of robots. There is no market for love and living a fulfilling
life. It is free if one knows how to find it. Andre helps to show us the way.
Excerpt from Thomas Sowell's book Intellectuals and Society:
What preferences are revealed by the actual behavior of intellectuals -- especially in
their social crusades -- and how do such revealed preferences compare with their rhetoric?
The professed beliefs of intellectuals center about their concern for others -- especially
for the poor, for minorities, for "social justice" and for protecting endangered species and
saving the environment, for example. Their rhetoric is too familiar and too pervasive to
require elaboration here. The real question, however, is: What are their revealed
preferences?
The phrase "unintended consequences" has become a cliché precisely because so many
policies and programs intended, for example, to better the situation of the less fortunate
have in fact made their situation worse, that it is no longer possible to regard good
intentions as automatic harbingers of good results. Anyone whose primary concern is in
improving the lot of the less fortunate would therefore, by this time, after decades of
experience with negative "unintended consequences," see a need not only to invest time and
efforts to turn good intentions into policies and programs, but also to invest time and
efforts afterwards into trying to ferret out answers as to what the actual consequences of
those policies and programs have been.
Moreover, anyone whose primary concern was improving the lot of the less fortunate would
also be alert and receptive to other factors from beyond the vision of the intellectuals,
when those other factors have been found empirically to have helped advance the well-being of
the less fortunate, even if in ways not contemplated by the intelligentsia and even if in
ways counter to the beliefs or visions of the intelligentsia.
[MORE]
In short, one of the ways to test whether expressed concerns for the well-being of the less
fortunate represent primarily a concern for that well-being or a use of the less fortunate as
a means to condemn society, or to seek either political or moral authority over society -- to
be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil -- would be to see the revealed
preferences of intellectuals in terms of how much time and energy they invest in promoting
their vision, as compared to how much time and energy they invest in scrutinizing (1) the
actual consequences of things done in the name of that vision and (2) benefits to the less
fortunate created outside that vision and even counter to that vision.
Crusaders for a "living wage" or to end "sweatshop labor" in the Third World, for example,
may invest great amounts of time and energy promoting those goals but virtually none in
scrutinizing the many studies done in countries around the world to discover the actual
consequences of minimum wage laws in general or of "living wage" laws in particular. These
consequences have included such things as higher levels of unemployment and longer periods of
unemployment, especially for the least skilled and least experienced segments of the
population. Whether one agrees with or disputes these studies, the crucial question here is
whether one bothers to read them at all.
If the real purpose of social crusades is to make the less fortunate better off, then the
actual consequences of such policies as wage control become central and require
investigation, in order to avoid "unintended consequences" which have already become widely
recognized in the context of many other policies. But if the real purpose of social crusades
is to proclaim oneself to be on the side of the angels, then such investigations have a low
priority, if any priority at all, since the goal of being on the side of the angels is
accomplished when the policies have been advocated and then instituted, after which social
crusaders can move on to other issues. The revealed preference of many, if not most, of the
intelligentsia has been to be on the side of the angels.
The same conclusion is hard to avoid when looking at the response of intellectuals to
improvements in the condition of the poor that follow policies or circumstances which offer
no opportunities to be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. For example,
under new economic policies beginning in the 1990s, tens of millions of people in India have
risen above that country's official poverty level. In China, under similar policies begun
earlier, a million people a month have risen out of poverty. Surely anyone concerned with the
fate of the less fortunate would want to know how this desirable development came about for
such vast numbers of very poor people -- and therefore how similar improvements might be
produced elsewhere in the world. But these and other dramatic increases in living standards,
based ultimately on the production of more wealth, arouse little or no interest among most
intellectuals.
However important for the poor, these developments offer no opportunities for the
intelligentsia to be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil -- and that is what
their revealed preferences show repeatedly to be their real priority. Questions about what
policies or conditions increase or decrease the rate of growth of output seldom arouse the
interest of most intellectuals, even though such changes have done more to reduce poverty --
in both rich and poor countries -- than changes in the distribution of income have done.
French writer Raymond Aron has suggested that achieving the ostensible goals of the left
without using the methods favored by the left actually provokes resentments:
"In fact the European Left has a grudge against the United States mainly because the
latter has succeeded by means which were not laid down in the revolutionary code. Prosperity,
power, the tendency towards uniformity of economic conditions -- these results have been
achieved by private initiative, by competition rather than State intervention, in other words
by capitalism, which every well-brought-up intellectual has been taught to despise."
Another excerpt from Intellectuals and Society:
One of the sources of the credibility and influence of intellectuals with the vision of
the anointed is that they are often seen as people promoting the interests of the less
fortunate, rather than people promoting their own financial self-interest. But financial
self-interests are by no means the only self-interests, nor necessarily the most dangerous
self-interests. As T.S. Eliot put it:
"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or
they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of
themselves."
Can you still really call them "revolutionaries" when the ideas and strategies are 150 years
old? When every leftist for generations has been saying the same things, is it still a
visionary act of courage?
I'd welcome a truly revolutionary solution. I'm not convinced it's coming from this
tradition.
I do not want to undermine Andre Vltchek or David Pear, even though Andre tends to get
carried away, IMHO. I'd like to correct at least one thing. Regarding Georgian aggression
against South Ossetia, at the beginning the US media (including all TV channels) reported
events as they were: Georgia attacked South Ossetia, Georgian troops are shelling Tskhinval,
killed many Ossetian civilians and Russian peacekeepers. Then they got their marching orders
and turned the story the opposite way: Russia invaded Georgia. Their assumption was that the
US public is too dumb to remember what was said the day before. The sad thing is, they were
right.
As far as Syria is concerned, the lies were there from day one. Thanks to propaganda, most
Americans don't even know that Russia and Iran are in Syria legally, on the invitation of its
legitimate government represented in the UN, whereas the US is there illegally by both
international and US law.
The same is true about Yemen: genocidal war by Saudis and other Gulf satrapies against
Yemen was always presented as something good, whereas Yemeni resistance to foreign occupiers
as something bad. The US in Yemen went the whole mile, showing its true colors for all to
see: in the fight against Houthis it allied itself not only with Saudis, but even with their
copycats ISIS, created and armed by the US for Saudi money.
" Georgia attacks South Ossetia, "
It did, with huge loans Israeli military hardware was bought, Israel was in the process of
upgrading Migs in Georgia.
President at the time Saaskiville now is in Ukrainian prison, or under investigation by
Kiev.
If he still has a nationality, I do not know.
The Georgian attack was a fiasco, there is just a tunnel between N and S Ossetia.
The Georgian plan was to block the exit to the south, to prevent Russian tanks getting
through.
This had to be done with artillery, firing over a mountain, guided by two Israeli drones.
Russia succeeded in the signals from the drones reaching a satellite, so no blocking, the
tanks came to the rescue.
To this day the Georgian people are paying for the loans.
Israeli technology seems not first class.
Correction: Saakashvili is not in prison, even though he richly deserves to be (just ask
Ossetians: they'd love to hang him for his crimes, but can't get their hands on him, more's
the pity). In fact, his Ukrainian citizenship was revoked, he is now in the Netherlands, of
all places.
As to Israel, it may not be the technology issue. Israel tends to hedge its bets. They
like to get their shekels anywhere they can, but certainly won't go out on a limb for
something worthless and inconsequential, like Georgia.
Vltchek is a privileged fool and some kind of evil propagandist. Look at the places he stays, always 4- or 5-star hotels (except when he stays in a place
where there are none), who pays for all of that?
Perhaps he is independently wealthy on a grand scale. Don't think so. In the immortal words of P.K. Dick in A Scanner Darkly , he is as phony as a
three-dollar bill.
That is a very simplistic view (and implies that you have read very little of
Vltchek). I stopped about two years ago, he is so full of lies, it was tiring to see them.
Have an old comment on this site (when stupid Counterpunch was still publishing his
semi-deranged articles, not that Counterpunch has not gone even worse since) except that his
articles are absent, a small improvement, more than made up for by the newly added other
bullshit artists.
Vltchek is either super-wealthy or subsidized by somebody, it sure is not the Russian
state or any of its arms.
"Washington allies with ISIS as great power conflict trumps "war on terror"
7 August 2018
The "National Defense Strategy" document released at the beginning of this year declared
bluntly that the nearly two-decade focus by the US military on the so-called "global war on
terrorism" had come to an end. In its place, a new strategic orientation was being introduced
based on preparing for "great power" confrontation, i.e., war with nuclear-armed Russia and
China.
This was the first such defense strategy to be issued by the Pentagon in over a decade and
expressed the urgency with which Washington views the preparations for a third world war.
A particularly crude and criminal outcome of this policy shift is becoming increasingly
apparent in three major theaters where US forces are engaged in active combat operations.
Reports from Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan provide firm evidence that the US and its local
proxies are allying themselves with and employing the services of elements of ISIS and Al
Qaeda in the pursuit of Washington's broader strategic interests.
In Yemen, hundreds, if not thousands, of fighters from Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP), branded by the US government as the "most dangerous" affiliate of the loose
international Al Qaeda network, have been recruited by Washington's closest allies in the
Arab world, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to fight as foot soldiers in the
near-genocidal US-backed war that these Persian Gulf oil monarchies have been waging against
the impoverished country of Yemen since 2015.
According to an investigative report published Monday by the Associated Press, the
Saudi-led coalition "cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities
and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash Hundreds
more were recruited to join the coalition itself."
It added that "Key participants in the pacts said the US was aware of the arrangements and
held off on any drone strikes."
"Elements of the US military are clearly aware that much of what the US is doing in Yemen
is aiding AQAP and there is much angst about that," Michael Horton, a senior analyst at the
Jamestown Foundation, a CIA-connected Washington think tank, told the AP.
"However, supporting the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against what the US views as
Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling AQAP and even stabilizing Yemen," Horton
added.
This is a gross understatement. Washington is providing indispensable military support for
a war that has reduced millions of Yemenis to the brink of starvation. It is prepared to wipe
out much of the country's population in order to bolster its strategic position and that of
the reactionary Arab regimes with which it is allied against the perceived threat of Iranian
influence to US regional hegemony.
The war has escalated in recent days in the ongoing siege of the Yemeni Red Sea Port of
Hodeidah, which was green-lighted by the Trump administration. The UN has warned that a
quarter of a million people could lose their lives in this operation, while millions more
across the country may die of starvation if it shuts down the port, the sole lifeline for
food, fuel and medicine for at least 70 percent of the population.
Recruiting Al Qaeda fighters to slaughter Yemenis in this immense and bloody war crime is
entirely consistent with US policy.
In regard to Syria, meanwhile, Russia's Defense Ministry last Thursday issued a statement
warning that ISIS has increasingly concentrated its forces in the area around al-Tanaf, near
the Syrian-Iraqi border, where the US military maintains a military base and has unilaterally
declared a 34-mile exclusion zone around it. US troops there have provided training to
so-called "rebels" opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad and appear to be
providing a security screen for ISIS."
"Under the mantle of the "war on terrorism," successive US governments, Democratic and
Republican alike, have not only conducted wars whose victims number in the millions, but also
carried out an unrelenting attack on democratic rights, from domestic spying to censoring the
Internet.
The emerging international alliance between the Pentagon and ISIS only serves to expose
the real interests underlying these policies, which are bound up with the waging of war to
offset US imperialism's loss of economic preeminence and defend its crumbling global
hegemony, and domestic repression to sustain a social order characterized by the most extreme
inequality in modern American history."
"While many of the countries that have received detainees have chosen to keep quiet about
the repatriations, the Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday that the Republic of Macedonia had taken
custody of a group of foreign fighters.
"Today's transfer of Foreign Terrorist Fighters to their country of origin, Macedonia, marks
a significant milestone in the much-needed cooperative effort to combat the global threat of
terrorism," Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told CNN."
Huh? Are the Westie media not even pretending any more, that they are fighting
against the terrorists? Most of us know that was B.S. anyhow, but the broader
(ignoramuses) public, the kind of morons who watch CNN every day, were not ever supposed to
be let in on that little secret.
"... So why should you care? Why does that matter to you or me? Well, like most emerging market financial crisis there is the danger of contagion . ..."
"... Turkey's economy is four times the size of Greece, and roughly equal in size to Lehman Brothers circa 2008. ..."
"... Turkey's other borders face six nations: Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Nakhchivan, a territory affiliated with Azerbaijan. Five of those are involved in ongoing armed conflicts or outright war. ..."
"... NATO has long outlived its' usefulness. Cancel its' stipend and bring our soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and women home! Put them to work here. Fighting fires. ..."
"... NATO only seems to be useful to the hegemony that supports it. Peace is not it's mission. ..."
By now you've probably heard that Turkey is having a financial crisis, and Trump appears to be pouring gasoline on it.
But you may not understand what is happening, or you may not know why it's important.
So let's do a quick recap
.
Turkey's currency fell to a new record low today. Year to date it's lost almost half its value, leading some investors and
lenders inside and outside of Turkey to lose confidence in the Turkish economy.
...
"Ninety percent of external public and private sector debt is denominated in foreign currencies," he said.
Here's the problem. Because of the country's falling currency, that debt just got a lot more expensive.
A Turkish business now effectively owes twice as much as it did at the beginning of the year. "You are indebted in the U.S.
dollar or euro, but your revenue is in your local currency," explained Lale Akoner, a market strategist with Bank of New York
Mellon's Asset Management business. She said Turkey's private sector currently owes around $240 billion in foreign debt.
This is all about hot money that has been washing around in a world of artificially low interest rates, and now, finally, an
external shock happened. As it
always happens .
The bid-ask spread, or the difference between the price dealers are willing to buy and sell the lira at, has widened beyond
the gap seen at the depth of the global financial crisis in 2008, following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s collapse.
So why should you care? Why does that matter to you or me? Well, like most emerging market financial crisis there is the
danger of contagion
.
The turmoil follows a similar currency crash in Argentina that led to a rescue by the International Monetary Fund. In recent
days, the Russian ruble, Indian rupee and South African rand have also tumbled dramatically.
Investors are waiting for the next domino to fall. They're on the lookout for signs of a repeat of the 1997-1998 Asian financial
crisis that began when the Thai baht imploded.
A minor currency devaluation of the Thai baht in 1997 eventually led to 20% of the world's population being thrust into poverty.
It led to Russia defaulting in 1998, LTCM requiring a Federal Reserve bailout, and eventually Argentina defaulting in 2001.
Turkey's economy is four times the size of Greece, and roughly equal in size to Lehman Brothers circa 2008.
The markets want Turkey to run to the IMF for a loan, but that would require a huge interest rate hike and austerity measures
that would thrust Turkey into a long depression. However, that isn't the
biggest obstacle .
The second is that Erdogan would have to bury his hatchet with the United States, which remains the IMF's largest shareholder.
Without U.S. support, Turkey has no chance of securing an IMF bailout program.
There is another danger, a political one and not so much an economic one, that could have dramatic implications.
If Erdogan isn't overthrown, or humbled, then there is an ironclad certainty that Turkey will
leave NATO and
the West.
Turkey, unlike Argentina, does not seem poised to turn to the International Monetary Fund in order to stave off financial collapse,
nor to mend relations with Washington.
If anything, the Turkish President looks to be doubling down in challenging the US and the global financial markets -- two
formidable opponents.
...
Turkey would probably no longer view the US as a reliable partner and strategic ally.
Whoever ends up leading the country, a wounded Turkey would most likely seek to shift the center of gravity away from the West
and toward Russia, Iran and Eurasia.
It would make Turkey less in tune with US and European objectives in the Middle East, meaning Turkey would seek to assert a
more independent security and defense policy.
Erdogan has warned Trump that Turkey would
"seek new friends" , although Russia and China haven't yet stepped up to the plate to bat for him.
Russia, Iran and China do have a common interest when in comes to undermining the
petrodollar . Pulling Turkey into their sphere of influence would be a coup.
Turkey lies at a historic, strategic crossroad. The
bridge between the peaceful West and the war-ridden dictatorships of the East that the West likes to bomb.
On its Western flank, Turkey borders Greece and Bulgaria, Western-facing members of the European Union. A few years ago, Turkey
-- a member of NATO -- was preparing the join Europe as a full member.
Turkey's other borders face six nations: Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Nakhchivan, a territory affiliated with
Azerbaijan. Five of those are involved in ongoing armed conflicts or outright war.
Losing Turkey would be a huge setback for NATO, the MIC, and the permanent war machine.
more struggling economies are starting to get it. Trade wealth for the rulers (IMF supporters) to be paid by the rest of us.
Fight back. Squeeze the bankers balls. Can't have our resources, now way, no how, without a fight.
in a flailing Turkey? Weren't there some outside potential takers encouraging China when it floated its currency proposal?
Nastarana on Tue, 08/14/2018 - 8:41pm
NATO has long outlived its' usefulness. Cancel its' stipend and bring our soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and women home! Put them to work here. Fighting fires.
Patrolling our shores for drug running and toxic dumping. Teaching school, 10 kids per class maximum. Refurbishing buildings and
housing stock. Post Cold War, an military alliance with Turkey makes no sense.
"... It looks as if Zuckerman's 'nightmare situation' has come about. I don't know that these were ever proven reserves, and in fact I have the impression that the supposed energy bounty of the Caspian did not turn out quite as imagined, but Washington once thought – not long ago, either – that it was imperative America controlled the Caspian region because it was about 'America's energy security'. Which is another way of saying 'America must have control over and access to every oil-producing region on the planet.' ..."
"... Richardson was correct, though, that Russia 'does not share America's values'. In fact, Americans do not share America's values, in the sense that most Americans by far would not support the actions of the Saudi military in Yemen, the clever false-flag operations of the White Helmets in Syria, the deliberate destabilization of Venezuela, regime-change operations to the right and left in order to obtain governments who will facilitate American commercial and political control, and many other things that official America considers just important tools in the American Global Dominance Toolbox. ..."
"... Washington has long nurtured the dream of being Europe's primary, if not only, energy supplier, and owning the Caspian (had the reserves expectations played out) would have brought them closer to their dream. ..."
The other backstory being that NATO wanted to stick its nose in the Caspian Sea, but has been
pushed out. Not sure exactly what the pretext was. I have a piece in VZGLIAD that explains the whole
thing, but I haven't worked through it yet, will probably do a piece on my own blog in the
near future. But I have a couple of other projects in the queue first.
Dick Cheney, among others, was convinced that the Caspian Basin holds massive deposits of oil
and gas and is strategically significant for that reason.
"Central Asian resources may revert back to the control of Russia or to a Russian led
alliance. This would be a nightmare situation. We had better wake up to the dangers or one
day the certainties on which we base our prosperity will be certainties no more. The
potential prize in oil and gas riches in the Caspian sea, valued up to $4 trillion, would
give Russia both wealth and strategic dominance. The potential economic rewards of Caspian
energy will draw in their train Western military forces to protect our investment if
necessary."
Mortimer Zuckerman
Editor, U.S. News and World Report
"This is about America's energy security. Its also about preventing strategic inroads
by those who don't share our values. We are trying to move these newly independent countries
toward the West. We would like to see them reliant on Western commercial and political
interests. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian and it's important
that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
Bill Richardson
Then-U.S. Secretary Energy (1998-2000)
It looks as if Zuckerman's 'nightmare situation' has come about. I don't know that these
were ever proven reserves, and in fact I have the impression that the supposed energy bounty
of the Caspian did not turn out quite as imagined, but Washington once thought – not
long ago, either – that it was imperative America controlled the Caspian region because
it was about 'America's energy security'. Which is another way of saying 'America must have
control over and access to every oil-producing region on the planet.'
Richardson was correct, though, that Russia 'does not share America's values'. In fact,
Americans do not share America's values, in the sense that most Americans by far would not
support the actions of the Saudi military in Yemen, the clever false-flag operations of the
White Helmets in Syria, the deliberate destabilization of Venezuela, regime-change operations
to the right and left in order to obtain governments who will facilitate American commercial
and political control, and many other things that official America considers just important
tools in the American Global Dominance Toolbox.
Washington has long nurtured the dream of being Europe's primary, if not only, energy
supplier, and owning the Caspian (had the reserves expectations played out) would have
brought them closer to their dream. A pipeline network would have carried Caspian oil and gas
to Europe. Agreement among the Caspian nations was most definitely not in American interests,
and if you dig you will probably find American interventions to prevent that from coming
about.
Well Canada has rather upset the apple cart, hasn't it? On the one hand, western moralizing
and sermonizing other states about what they should do used to be only restricted to mostly
enemy states, preferably much less rich ones, on the other hand values only mean something if
you actually are willing to pay a literal price in either money, blood or both.
The financial papers are saying that this will damage SA's the confidence of foreign
investors, precisely those SA is trying to attract so that it can start to diversify its
economy away from petroleum based products, but we have yet to see if this will have a
noticeable effect, rather than just a wish effect.
The US has said Sweet FA, along with the rest of the sermonizing weapon selling west, so
Canada has very little support from its allies. So far. Germany should be an obvious
supporter but if pissing of the Saudis makes it more dependent on Russia ergo there are
plenty of reasons that can be wheeled out to keep treading lightly.
It looks to me as just another sign of the existing order breaking down, whether or not
Canada back tracks or not. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.
As for the so-called free and democratic media, well they only further discredit
themselves publicly.
Meanwhile, I just checked out the Canada headlines and this jumped out:
Global Affairs Canada would not say whether Canadian taxpayers are financing the sale, and
would not provide any other details about the arms deal
Few details are available about the proposed sale of weapons, as the Canadian
government says such information is commercially sensitive. It has declined to name the
company selling the guns or indicate how many rifles would be sent to Ukraine. However
Conservative MP James Bezan, who has been in contact with the Canadian company that has the
agreement to supply the rifles to Ukraine, confirmed the deal's likely timeline. He declined
to name the firm since the sale still has to be finalized.
Nicolas Moquin, a spokesman for the Canadian Joint Operations Command Headquarters,
said the Canadian military has been providing sniper and counter-sniper training to Ukraine's
security forces since September 2015. He said Canada is not looking at this time of providing
additional sniper training to coincide with the delivery of new weapons .
####
OR, is this just Canada selling sniper rifles that are not necessarily of Canadian
origin?
According the the video below with Canadian MP James Barazan, he says there are large
numbers of weapons such as assault rifles, sniper systems, mortar systems, counter battery
radar etc. sitting in warehouses in Jordan (& Toronto) that were supposed to go to
Kurdistan.
Yes,, the world order is falling apart. For some reason, this state of affairs reminds me of
the observation that married couples who are heading toward divorce are on that path not
because of a lack of communications but because they are now communicating for the first
time.
Ukraine is awash in small arms – they could give them out with a box of tea at the
supermarket as a promotion, and it would still take months to work through their supply. The
last thing they need is more rifles. On the other hand, new ones will probably fetch a good
price on e-Bay.
"Washington allies with ISIS as great power conflict trumps "war on terror"
7 August 2018
The "National Defense Strategy" document released at the beginning of this year declared
bluntly that the nearly two-decade focus by the US military on the so-called "global war on
terrorism" had come to an end. In its place, a new strategic orientation was being introduced
based on preparing for "great power" confrontation, i.e., war with nuclear-armed Russia and
China.
This was the first such defense strategy to be issued by the Pentagon in over a decade and
expressed the urgency with which Washington views the preparations for a third world war.
A particularly crude and criminal outcome of this policy shift is becoming increasingly
apparent in three major theaters where US forces are engaged in active combat operations.
Reports from Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan provide firm evidence that the US and its local
proxies are allying themselves with and employing the services of elements of ISIS and Al
Qaeda in the pursuit of Washington's broader strategic interests.
In Yemen, hundreds, if not thousands, of fighters from Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP), branded by the US government as the "most dangerous" affiliate of the loose
international Al Qaeda network, have been recruited by Washington's closest allies in the
Arab world, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to fight as foot soldiers in the
near-genocidal US-backed war that these Persian Gulf oil monarchies have been waging against
the impoverished country of Yemen since 2015.
According to an investigative report published Monday by the Associated Press, the
Saudi-led coalition "cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities
and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash Hundreds
more were recruited to join the coalition itself."
It added that "Key participants in the pacts said the US was aware of the arrangements and
held off on any drone strikes."
"Elements of the US military are clearly aware that much of what the US is doing in Yemen
is aiding AQAP and there is much angst about that," Michael Horton, a senior analyst at the
Jamestown Foundation, a CIA-connected Washington think tank, told the AP.
"However, supporting the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against what the US views as
Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling AQAP and even stabilizing Yemen," Horton
added.
This is a gross understatement. Washington is providing indispensable military support for
a war that has reduced millions of Yemenis to the brink of starvation. It is prepared to wipe
out much of the country's population in order to bolster its strategic position and that of
the reactionary Arab regimes with which it is allied against the perceived threat of Iranian
influence to US regional hegemony.
The war has escalated in recent days in the ongoing siege of the Yemeni Red Sea Port of
Hodeidah, which was green-lighted by the Trump administration. The UN has warned that a
quarter of a million people could lose their lives in this operation, while millions more
across the country may die of starvation if it shuts down the port, the sole lifeline for
food, fuel and medicine for at least 70 percent of the population.
Recruiting Al Qaeda fighters to slaughter Yemenis in this immense and bloody war crime is
entirely consistent with US policy.
In regard to Syria, meanwhile, Russia's Defense Ministry last Thursday issued a statement
warning that ISIS has increasingly concentrated its forces in the area around al-Tanaf, near
the Syrian-Iraqi border, where the US military maintains a military base and has unilaterally
declared a 34-mile exclusion zone around it. US troops there have provided training to
so-called "rebels" opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad and appear to be
providing a security screen for ISIS."
"Under the mantle of the "war on terrorism," successive US governments, Democratic and
Republican alike, have not only conducted wars whose victims number in the millions, but also
carried out an unrelenting attack on democratic rights, from domestic spying to censoring the
Internet.
The emerging international alliance between the Pentagon and ISIS only serves to expose
the real interests underlying these policies, which are bound up with the waging of war to
offset US imperialism's loss of economic preeminence and defend its crumbling global
hegemony, and domestic repression to sustain a social order characterized by the most extreme
inequality in modern American history."
"While many of the countries that have received detainees have chosen to keep quiet about
the repatriations, the Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday that the Republic of Macedonia had taken
custody of a group of foreign fighters.
"Today's transfer of Foreign Terrorist Fighters to their country of origin, Macedonia, marks
a significant milestone in the much-needed cooperative effort to combat the global threat of
terrorism," Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon told CNN."
Huh? Are the Westie media not even pretending any more, that they are fighting
against the terrorists? Most of us know that was B.S. anyhow, but the broader
(ignoramuses) public, the kind of morons who watch CNN every day, were not ever supposed to
be let in on that little secret.
"... So why should you care? Why does that matter to you or me? Well, like most emerging market financial crisis there is the danger of contagion . ..."
"... Turkey's economy is four times the size of Greece, and roughly equal in size to Lehman Brothers circa 2008. ..."
"... Turkey's other borders face six nations: Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Nakhchivan, a territory affiliated with Azerbaijan. Five of those are involved in ongoing armed conflicts or outright war. ..."
"... NATO has long outlived its' usefulness. Cancel its' stipend and bring our soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and women home! Put them to work here. Fighting fires. ..."
"... NATO only seems to be useful to the hegemony that supports it. Peace is not it's mission. ..."
By now you've probably heard that Turkey is having a financial crisis, and Trump appears to be pouring gasoline on it.
But you may not understand what is happening, or you may not know why it's important.
So let's do a quick recap
.
Turkey's currency fell to a new record low today. Year to date it's lost almost half its value, leading some investors and
lenders inside and outside of Turkey to lose confidence in the Turkish economy.
...
"Ninety percent of external public and private sector debt is denominated in foreign currencies," he said.
Here's the problem. Because of the country's falling currency, that debt just got a lot more expensive.
A Turkish business now effectively owes twice as much as it did at the beginning of the year. "You are indebted in the U.S.
dollar or euro, but your revenue is in your local currency," explained Lale Akoner, a market strategist with Bank of New York
Mellon's Asset Management business. She said Turkey's private sector currently owes around $240 billion in foreign debt.
This is all about hot money that has been washing around in a world of artificially low interest rates, and now, finally, an
external shock happened. As it
always happens .
The bid-ask spread, or the difference between the price dealers are willing to buy and sell the lira at, has widened beyond
the gap seen at the depth of the global financial crisis in 2008, following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s collapse.
So why should you care? Why does that matter to you or me? Well, like most emerging market financial crisis there is the
danger of contagion
.
The turmoil follows a similar currency crash in Argentina that led to a rescue by the International Monetary Fund. In recent
days, the Russian ruble, Indian rupee and South African rand have also tumbled dramatically.
Investors are waiting for the next domino to fall. They're on the lookout for signs of a repeat of the 1997-1998 Asian financial
crisis that began when the Thai baht imploded.
A minor currency devaluation of the Thai baht in 1997 eventually led to 20% of the world's population being thrust into poverty.
It led to Russia defaulting in 1998, LTCM requiring a Federal Reserve bailout, and eventually Argentina defaulting in 2001.
Turkey's economy is four times the size of Greece, and roughly equal in size to Lehman Brothers circa 2008.
The markets want Turkey to run to the IMF for a loan, but that would require a huge interest rate hike and austerity measures
that would thrust Turkey into a long depression. However, that isn't the
biggest obstacle .
The second is that Erdogan would have to bury his hatchet with the United States, which remains the IMF's largest shareholder.
Without U.S. support, Turkey has no chance of securing an IMF bailout program.
There is another danger, a political one and not so much an economic one, that could have dramatic implications.
If Erdogan isn't overthrown, or humbled, then there is an ironclad certainty that Turkey will
leave NATO and
the West.
Turkey, unlike Argentina, does not seem poised to turn to the International Monetary Fund in order to stave off financial collapse,
nor to mend relations with Washington.
If anything, the Turkish President looks to be doubling down in challenging the US and the global financial markets -- two
formidable opponents.
...
Turkey would probably no longer view the US as a reliable partner and strategic ally.
Whoever ends up leading the country, a wounded Turkey would most likely seek to shift the center of gravity away from the West
and toward Russia, Iran and Eurasia.
It would make Turkey less in tune with US and European objectives in the Middle East, meaning Turkey would seek to assert a
more independent security and defense policy.
Erdogan has warned Trump that Turkey would
"seek new friends" , although Russia and China haven't yet stepped up to the plate to bat for him.
Russia, Iran and China do have a common interest when in comes to undermining the
petrodollar . Pulling Turkey into their sphere of influence would be a coup.
Turkey lies at a historic, strategic crossroad. The
bridge between the peaceful West and the war-ridden dictatorships of the East that the West likes to bomb.
On its Western flank, Turkey borders Greece and Bulgaria, Western-facing members of the European Union. A few years ago, Turkey
-- a member of NATO -- was preparing the join Europe as a full member.
Turkey's other borders face six nations: Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Nakhchivan, a territory affiliated with
Azerbaijan. Five of those are involved in ongoing armed conflicts or outright war.
Losing Turkey would be a huge setback for NATO, the MIC, and the permanent war machine.
more struggling economies are starting to get it. Trade wealth for the rulers (IMF supporters) to be paid by the rest of us.
Fight back. Squeeze the bankers balls. Can't have our resources, now way, no how, without a fight.
in a flailing Turkey? Weren't there some outside potential takers encouraging China when it floated its currency proposal?
Nastarana on Tue, 08/14/2018 - 8:41pm
NATO has long outlived its' usefulness. Cancel its' stipend and bring our soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and women home! Put them to work here. Fighting fires.
Patrolling our shores for drug running and toxic dumping. Teaching school, 10 kids per class maximum. Refurbishing buildings and
housing stock. Post Cold War, an military alliance with Turkey makes no sense.
"... It looks as if Zuckerman's 'nightmare situation' has come about. I don't know that these were ever proven reserves, and in fact I have the impression that the supposed energy bounty of the Caspian did not turn out quite as imagined, but Washington once thought – not long ago, either – that it was imperative America controlled the Caspian region because it was about 'America's energy security'. Which is another way of saying 'America must have control over and access to every oil-producing region on the planet.' ..."
"... Richardson was correct, though, that Russia 'does not share America's values'. In fact, Americans do not share America's values, in the sense that most Americans by far would not support the actions of the Saudi military in Yemen, the clever false-flag operations of the White Helmets in Syria, the deliberate destabilization of Venezuela, regime-change operations to the right and left in order to obtain governments who will facilitate American commercial and political control, and many other things that official America considers just important tools in the American Global Dominance Toolbox. ..."
"... Washington has long nurtured the dream of being Europe's primary, if not only, energy supplier, and owning the Caspian (had the reserves expectations played out) would have brought them closer to their dream. ..."
The other backstory being that NATO wanted to stick its nose in the Caspian Sea, but has been
pushed out. Not sure exactly what the pretext was. I have a piece in VZGLIAD that explains the whole
thing, but I haven't worked through it yet, will probably do a piece on my own blog in the
near future. But I have a couple of other projects in the queue first.
Dick Cheney, among others, was convinced that the Caspian Basin holds massive deposits of oil
and gas and is strategically significant for that reason.
"Central Asian resources may revert back to the control of Russia or to a Russian led
alliance. This would be a nightmare situation. We had better wake up to the dangers or one
day the certainties on which we base our prosperity will be certainties no more. The
potential prize in oil and gas riches in the Caspian sea, valued up to $4 trillion, would
give Russia both wealth and strategic dominance. The potential economic rewards of Caspian
energy will draw in their train Western military forces to protect our investment if
necessary."
Mortimer Zuckerman
Editor, U.S. News and World Report
"This is about America's energy security. Its also about preventing strategic inroads
by those who don't share our values. We are trying to move these newly independent countries
toward the West. We would like to see them reliant on Western commercial and political
interests. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian and it's important
that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
Bill Richardson
Then-U.S. Secretary Energy (1998-2000)
It looks as if Zuckerman's 'nightmare situation' has come about. I don't know that these
were ever proven reserves, and in fact I have the impression that the supposed energy bounty
of the Caspian did not turn out quite as imagined, but Washington once thought – not
long ago, either – that it was imperative America controlled the Caspian region because
it was about 'America's energy security'. Which is another way of saying 'America must have
control over and access to every oil-producing region on the planet.'
Richardson was correct, though, that Russia 'does not share America's values'. In fact,
Americans do not share America's values, in the sense that most Americans by far would not
support the actions of the Saudi military in Yemen, the clever false-flag operations of the
White Helmets in Syria, the deliberate destabilization of Venezuela, regime-change operations
to the right and left in order to obtain governments who will facilitate American commercial
and political control, and many other things that official America considers just important
tools in the American Global Dominance Toolbox.
Washington has long nurtured the dream of being Europe's primary, if not only, energy
supplier, and owning the Caspian (had the reserves expectations played out) would have
brought them closer to their dream. A pipeline network would have carried Caspian oil and gas
to Europe. Agreement among the Caspian nations was most definitely not in American interests,
and if you dig you will probably find American interventions to prevent that from coming
about.
Well Canada has rather upset the apple cart, hasn't it? On the one hand, western moralizing
and sermonizing other states about what they should do used to be only restricted to mostly
enemy states, preferably much less rich ones, on the other hand values only mean something if
you actually are willing to pay a literal price in either money, blood or both.
The financial papers are saying that this will damage SA's the confidence of foreign
investors, precisely those SA is trying to attract so that it can start to diversify its
economy away from petroleum based products, but we have yet to see if this will have a
noticeable effect, rather than just a wish effect.
The US has said Sweet FA, along with the rest of the sermonizing weapon selling west, so
Canada has very little support from its allies. So far. Germany should be an obvious
supporter but if pissing of the Saudis makes it more dependent on Russia ergo there are
plenty of reasons that can be wheeled out to keep treading lightly.
It looks to me as just another sign of the existing order breaking down, whether or not
Canada back tracks or not. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.
As for the so-called free and democratic media, well they only further discredit
themselves publicly.
Meanwhile, I just checked out the Canada headlines and this jumped out:
Global Affairs Canada would not say whether Canadian taxpayers are financing the sale, and
would not provide any other details about the arms deal
Few details are available about the proposed sale of weapons, as the Canadian
government says such information is commercially sensitive. It has declined to name the
company selling the guns or indicate how many rifles would be sent to Ukraine. However
Conservative MP James Bezan, who has been in contact with the Canadian company that has the
agreement to supply the rifles to Ukraine, confirmed the deal's likely timeline. He declined
to name the firm since the sale still has to be finalized.
Nicolas Moquin, a spokesman for the Canadian Joint Operations Command Headquarters,
said the Canadian military has been providing sniper and counter-sniper training to Ukraine's
security forces since September 2015. He said Canada is not looking at this time of providing
additional sniper training to coincide with the delivery of new weapons .
####
OR, is this just Canada selling sniper rifles that are not necessarily of Canadian
origin?
According the the video below with Canadian MP James Barazan, he says there are large
numbers of weapons such as assault rifles, sniper systems, mortar systems, counter battery
radar etc. sitting in warehouses in Jordan (& Toronto) that were supposed to go to
Kurdistan.
Yes,, the world order is falling apart. For some reason, this state of affairs reminds me of
the observation that married couples who are heading toward divorce are on that path not
because of a lack of communications but because they are now communicating for the first
time.
Ukraine is awash in small arms – they could give them out with a box of tea at the
supermarket as a promotion, and it would still take months to work through their supply. The
last thing they need is more rifles. On the other hand, new ones will probably fetch a good
price on e-Bay.
This is an interesting analysis shedding some light on how the US intelligence services have gone rogue...
Notable quotes:
"... Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr. Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence. ..."
"... the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough. ..."
"... That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment. ..."
"... He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So, where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail? ..."
"... The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance -- which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US "intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit up." ..."
"... The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on. ..."
"... "What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task." ..."
"... "The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact." ..."
"... But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts. ..."
"... Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria. ..."
"... Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
In today's United States, the term "espionage" doesn't get too much
use outside of some specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage,
but with regard to Americans' own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they
prefer the term "intelligence." This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how you
look at things.
First of all, US "intelligence" is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has
been traditionally played, and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and
China. Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and
conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you
are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else.
In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days
torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged
in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and
that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate
negotiating future spy swaps.
In recent years, the US intelligence agencies have decided that torturing prisoners is a
good idea, but they have mostly been torturing innocent bystanders, not professional spies,
sometimes forcing them to invent things, such as "Al Qaeda." There was no such thing before US
intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists.
Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr.
Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own
spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They
poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no
evidence.
There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia, and British spies working
in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules (since that supposedly
super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their "secret" lab in Porton Down doesn't
work right and is only fatal 20% of the time).
There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it
needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the
prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An
alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be
following due process and rules of evidence, they don't add much value.
A different standard applies to traitors; here, sending them through the courts is
acceptable and serves a high moral purpose, since here the source is the person on trial and
the method -- treason -- can be divulged without harm. But this logic does not apply to proper,
professional spies who are simply doing their jobs, even if they turn out to be double agents.
In fact, when counterintelligence discovers a spy, the professional thing to do is to try to
recruit him as a double agent or, failing that, to try to use the spy as a channel for
injecting disinformation.
Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert
Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail
server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it's
been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that
they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet.
Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn't have been done by anyone working remotely from
Russia.
Furthermore, it is an exercise in futility for a US official to indict Russian citizens in
Russia. They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the
Russian Constitution: "61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of
Russia or extradited to another state."
Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars to interpret this sentence, or he can
just read it and weep. Yes, the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule
against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough.
That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked
into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system
has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done
bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged
hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping
a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment.
He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC
officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie
Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian
hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So,
where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail?
Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia to cooperate on criminal
investigations, Putin offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller. He even offered to
have Mueller sit in on the proceedings. But in return he wanted to question US officials who
may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder, who is due to
begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who, by the way, donated copious
amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign.
In response, the US Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians from questioning US
officials. And instead of issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed,
at least one US official made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US
instead. Again, which part of 61.1 don't they understand?
The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the
traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance --
which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best
ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such
quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US
"intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit
up."
The "intelligence" the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but; in fact, the
stupider it is the better, because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make
unintelligent decisions. In fact, they consider facts harmful -- be they about Syrian chemical
weapons, or conspiring to steal the primary from Bernie Sanders, or Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden -- because facts require accuracy and rigor
while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy. In this, their actual
objective is easily discernible.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its
allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom
aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and
overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they
are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and
so on.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag
operations, à la 9/11, to fake false flag operations, à la fake East Gouta
chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story is
perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were
harmed in the process of concocting this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly
forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips. It is now a pure
confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a
conspiracy theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled. A
light-hearted answer would have been:
"What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They
were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to
claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped
lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available,
is an impossible task."
A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:
"The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig
the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to
prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately
be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as
conspiracy theory, not as fact."
And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:
"The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to
which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to
me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their
dismissal."
But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake
answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake
intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and
ultimately futile conflicts.
Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of
religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the
Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American
efforts in Iraq and Syria.
The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593.
Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is
too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the
US, that's your bill so far for the various US intelligence "oopsies."
The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like
a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their "mistakes" have cost the
country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of
them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of
the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million
per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence
community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US
intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.
There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.
First, we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that
the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where
grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average, toward
an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine that such
incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for
their mistakes.
Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has
been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic
and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile
conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How
that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable
definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at
it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better
than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be
perpetual liars."
Looks like the aim of US sanctions is to ratchet the hostility up with Russia to the level of
a full blown cold war. Ukraine can be a victim.
Notable quotes:
"... Meanwhile, you'll get bogged down in Ukraine. You'll face tough choices (sanctions will get North Korea-style quickly, and even Chinese sympathy will get questionable), like should you spend your scarce resources on modern weaponry or a large security force to keep Ukraine pacified? ..."
"... Very few people in Russia would want Ukraine now. The consensus is: "good riddance". In Ukraine, on the other hand, there are people who want Russia to invade. Some are waiting for someone else to liberate them from Nazis (they apparently are not familiar with Protestant wisdom that God helps those who help themselves), some pray for a pretext to invite NATO/US (as if anyone is willing to die for them). ..."
We'll need an anti-sanctions law regardless of whether or not we are going to invade.
Well, I'd say it's a precondition to invading Ukraine. If you're incapable of
making such a simple law, you're sure as hell incapable of invading Ukraine. And you do need
the law if you want to avoid the sanctions creating the perverse incentives inside Russia, like
the biggest banks not having branches in the Crimea. Decoupling from the US dollar is no help,
since US sanctions are extraterritorial, if you didn't notice, so they affect euro or even
Chinese yuan denominated transactions, too.
Eastern Europeans will never mobilise. What would mass mobilisation even look like in a
country like Hungary? Instead, they'll petition USA to station more of its troops in Eastern
Europe. A lot more, like hundreds of thousands more.
Within living memory, Hungary had armed forces of 150,000 troops and 1,500 main
battle tanks (admittedly, the majority were somewhat obsolete), with hundreds of fighter and
light bomber jets (MiG-21s and Su-22s etc.), and we were the slackers in the Eastern Bloc, not
spending on defense as much as other neighbors of us. Increasing defense spending to 2% of GDP
is what's the plan. If you invaded and occupied the whole of Ukraine, it could easily go up to
4-5%.
Of course, the Americans might come in numbers, too. But you're delusional here:
Doing so will impose costs on the USA. Actually, this is one of the few ways Russia could
impose tangible costs on USA: by stoking tensions in Eastern Europe.
We have no military industry to speak of. Most of our neighbors do have some, but
even they are nowhere near self-sufficiency. You can guess who we'll buy our weapons from.
Poland recently offered to pay for an American base on its soil. So it won't be much of a cost
for the US, it might actually be quite beneficial.
Meanwhile, you'll get bogged down in Ukraine. You'll face tough choices (sanctions will
get North Korea-style quickly, and even Chinese sympathy will get questionable), like should
you spend your scarce resources on modern weaponry or a large security force to keep Ukraine
pacified?
Mass deportations is the best part about occupying the Ukraine!
Stalin's USSR at the height of its power only deported much smaller populations.
You'd need a lot of people to achieve that. But let's assume you'll manage to do that. It will,
of course, create a huge backlash against Russia: popular opinion will get united against
Russians. (Defense spending quickly up to 5% of GDP or higher.) The Ukrainians in our countries
will of course enter the workforce and join anti-Russian ragtag militias to control the border.
Instead they would have to contend with an insurgency in Eastern Poland
So the people ethnically cleansed from their homes will rise up against NATO in
support of Russia. This is a seriously dumb idea.
Very few people in Russia would want Ukraine now. The consensus is: "good riddance". In
Ukraine, on the other hand, there are people who want Russia to invade. Some are waiting for
someone else to liberate them from Nazis (they apparently are not familiar with Protestant
wisdom that God helps those who help themselves), some pray for a pretext to invite NATO/US
(as if anyone is willing to die for them).
This reminds me of an old Russian joke.
An old hag sits on the bench and screams: "Help! They are raping me!"
Another one passes by and asks: "Have you gone completely mad?"
The first one answers: "Everyone is entitled to a pleasant dream!"
Don't worry about my IQ woes – they are non-existent. I am a stable genius –
just like Donald Trump. Your IQ issues are – on the other hand – very easy to
fix. All you have to do is admit that you are Russian and you immediately gain 20-30 IQ
points. Of course, this will come at the expense of Russia, but then again. everything you've
ever done in your history came at the expense of Russia. All the Russians ever wanted was to
have a brotherly nation in Ukraine. They have a brother all right, unfortunately that brother
has a Down syndrome.
Any Russian ruler who tries to return Crimea will be overthrown in no time. As Russia
gradually disengages from the US-dominated financial system, the costs will go down. Russia
has already created its own payment system similar to that of Visa and Mastercard, as well as
its own money transfer system similar to SWIFT. On the other hand, if Russia fails to
disengage from dollar-dominated system, the losses would be much greater than Crimea. It
might even turn into a shithole, like Ukraine.
Insurance is more often a scam than not: Lehman Brothers enjoyed pretty high ratings until
their crash. What's more, banks were insured against the risks of sub-prime mortgages they
held. Remember what happened in 2008?
As to the future, nobody has the crystal ball. Can you tell how much a Big Mac will cost
in the US five or ten years from now? $4? $40? $400? $4,000? Your guess is as good as mine.
Ponzi schemes have a habit of crashing and nobody worked out a way of predicting when exactly
the crash will occur.
This might be in the cards. The US sanctions actually squeezed Russian comprador (5th
column) oligarchs, who were always subservient to the West, sent their families there, and
are siphoning off their money offshore, more than anything. If Putin uses this to expropriate
their stolen riches, which he might do (98% of Russian population would be cheering; they'd
cheer even more if Putin hangs those bastards, but that's unlikely), these sanctions would be
yet another example of the US shooting itself in the foot. The US is getting pretty good at
that lately, always screaming that it hurts afterwards.
"... So will a good Christian like Mike Pompeo reconcile these obvious falsehoods, self deception. With every letter, he will be denying the very God he professes to believe in. ..."
"... Trump and his administration are the reveal of the true nature of modern American political Christianity. This is what it always was ..."
"... But The People are not exactly conscientious objector on the issue of Yemen and the crimes committed in our name either. The Republic might rot from the head, but the rot has certainly spread far and wide. ..."
A senior general urged Saudi officials to conduct a thorough investigation into an
airstrike that killed at least 40 children in Yemen, the Pentagon said Monday, an indication
of U.S. concern about allied nations' air operations against Houthi militants.
The general's request actually shows how little concern the U.S. has for how the Saudi
coalition conducts its war effort. If the U.S. were concerned with how the war was being
fought, our officials wouldn't be asking the perpetrators of atrocities to investigate their
own crimes. It is pointless to urge the Saudis to conduct an investigation into their own war
crime when we already know that they will find that they did nothing wrong. As the
Post article notes later on, the coalition's investigations predictably excuse their
actions:
According to Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director for Human Rights Watch, Saudi
investigators had cleared coalition military officials of legal responsibility in virtually
all investigations the JIAT had conducted.
The pattern of Saudi coalition conduct over the last three years is clear. Their forces
commit numerous documented war crimes, and then when they "investigate" those crimes they
determine that their forces are guilty of nothing. It would have been laughable to ask the
Saudis to investigate themselves back in 2015, and to do the same over three years later is
inexcusable. It is an invitation to whitewashing heinous, illegal acts. The U.S. will not
honestly call out the coalition members for their crimes against Yemeni civilians because our
government is
deeply complicit in those crimes, and so we are treated to this pantomime farce where we
send officers to call for investigations whose results have been predetermined even before the
crimes were committed. The entire policy is a disgrace, and it brings dishonor on everyone
ordered to participate in it.
There needs to be an independent, international inquiry into war crimes committed by all
sides in Yemen. All parties to the conflict are assuredly guilty of war crimes, and all parties
should be held accountable for what they have done to Yemen's civilians. As long as the U.S.
enables Saudi coalition crimes and then shields them from scrutiny, our government is
implicated in both the crime and the cover-up. Congress could put a stop to this if they
were willing to do their jobs and assume their proper responsibilities, but for more than three
years they have shirked their duties and acquiesced in a despicable and indefensible policy in
Yemen.
"The entire policy is a disgrace, and it brings dishonor on everyone ordered to
participate in it."
For all that they're doing it at the order of even more disgusting civilians, this has got
a be a low point in the history of the American military. The word "Yemen" on a resume or CV
will make military people stink for the rest of their lives. Like "My Lai" or "Dishonorable
Discharge".
We are getting a preview of the letters Mike Pompeo will be signing off on to Congress.
So will a good Christian like Mike Pompeo reconcile these obvious falsehoods, self
deception. With every letter, he will be denying the very God he professes to believe
in.
"The entire policy is a disgrace, and it brings dishonor on everyone ordered to participate
in it."
Conduct unbecoming.
The higher the rank of the officers involving themselves in this – in following
unconstitutional orders to participate in an illegal campaign of aggressive war and
collective punishment – the worse it gets. It would be a heroic act for a private
– or even the officer piloting a refueling tanker – to speak out against this, a
general has much less of a claim to honor and acquiescence both.
If The People really supported those who serve, they would rally to every conscientious
objector – even the misguided ones – because anybody who has the honor and
integrity to question orders is preferable to those that pay no heed to the meaning of their
oath.
But The People are not exactly conscientious objector on the issue of Yemen and the
crimes committed in our name either. The Republic might rot from the head, but the rot has
certainly spread far and wide.
Looks like the aim of US sanctions is to ratchet the hostility up with Russia to the level of
a full blown cold war. Ukraine can be a victim.
Notable quotes:
"... Meanwhile, you'll get bogged down in Ukraine. You'll face tough choices (sanctions will get North Korea-style quickly, and even Chinese sympathy will get questionable), like should you spend your scarce resources on modern weaponry or a large security force to keep Ukraine pacified? ..."
"... Very few people in Russia would want Ukraine now. The consensus is: "good riddance". In Ukraine, on the other hand, there are people who want Russia to invade. Some are waiting for someone else to liberate them from Nazis (they apparently are not familiar with Protestant wisdom that God helps those who help themselves), some pray for a pretext to invite NATO/US (as if anyone is willing to die for them). ..."
We'll need an anti-sanctions law regardless of whether or not we are going to invade.
Well, I'd say it's a precondition to invading Ukraine. If you're incapable of
making such a simple law, you're sure as hell incapable of invading Ukraine. And you do need
the law if you want to avoid the sanctions creating the perverse incentives inside Russia, like
the biggest banks not having branches in the Crimea. Decoupling from the US dollar is no help,
since US sanctions are extraterritorial, if you didn't notice, so they affect euro or even
Chinese yuan denominated transactions, too.
Eastern Europeans will never mobilise. What would mass mobilisation even look like in a
country like Hungary? Instead, they'll petition USA to station more of its troops in Eastern
Europe. A lot more, like hundreds of thousands more.
Within living memory, Hungary had armed forces of 150,000 troops and 1,500 main
battle tanks (admittedly, the majority were somewhat obsolete), with hundreds of fighter and
light bomber jets (MiG-21s and Su-22s etc.), and we were the slackers in the Eastern Bloc, not
spending on defense as much as other neighbors of us. Increasing defense spending to 2% of GDP
is what's the plan. If you invaded and occupied the whole of Ukraine, it could easily go up to
4-5%.
Of course, the Americans might come in numbers, too. But you're delusional here:
Doing so will impose costs on the USA. Actually, this is one of the few ways Russia could
impose tangible costs on USA: by stoking tensions in Eastern Europe.
We have no military industry to speak of. Most of our neighbors do have some, but
even they are nowhere near self-sufficiency. You can guess who we'll buy our weapons from.
Poland recently offered to pay for an American base on its soil. So it won't be much of a cost
for the US, it might actually be quite beneficial.
Meanwhile, you'll get bogged down in Ukraine. You'll face tough choices (sanctions will
get North Korea-style quickly, and even Chinese sympathy will get questionable), like should
you spend your scarce resources on modern weaponry or a large security force to keep Ukraine
pacified?
Mass deportations is the best part about occupying the Ukraine!
Stalin's USSR at the height of its power only deported much smaller populations.
You'd need a lot of people to achieve that. But let's assume you'll manage to do that. It will,
of course, create a huge backlash against Russia: popular opinion will get united against
Russians. (Defense spending quickly up to 5% of GDP or higher.) The Ukrainians in our countries
will of course enter the workforce and join anti-Russian ragtag militias to control the border.
Instead they would have to contend with an insurgency in Eastern Poland
So the people ethnically cleansed from their homes will rise up against NATO in
support of Russia. This is a seriously dumb idea.
Very few people in Russia would want Ukraine now. The consensus is: "good riddance". In
Ukraine, on the other hand, there are people who want Russia to invade. Some are waiting for
someone else to liberate them from Nazis (they apparently are not familiar with Protestant
wisdom that God helps those who help themselves), some pray for a pretext to invite NATO/US
(as if anyone is willing to die for them).
This reminds me of an old Russian joke.
An old hag sits on the bench and screams: "Help! They are raping me!"
Another one passes by and asks: "Have you gone completely mad?"
The first one answers: "Everyone is entitled to a pleasant dream!"
Don't worry about my IQ woes – they are non-existent. I am a stable genius –
just like Donald Trump. Your IQ issues are – on the other hand – very easy to
fix. All you have to do is admit that you are Russian and you immediately gain 20-30 IQ
points. Of course, this will come at the expense of Russia, but then again. everything you've
ever done in your history came at the expense of Russia. All the Russians ever wanted was to
have a brotherly nation in Ukraine. They have a brother all right, unfortunately that brother
has a Down syndrome.
Any Russian ruler who tries to return Crimea will be overthrown in no time. As Russia
gradually disengages from the US-dominated financial system, the costs will go down. Russia
has already created its own payment system similar to that of Visa and Mastercard, as well as
its own money transfer system similar to SWIFT. On the other hand, if Russia fails to
disengage from dollar-dominated system, the losses would be much greater than Crimea. It
might even turn into a shithole, like Ukraine.
Insurance is more often a scam than not: Lehman Brothers enjoyed pretty high ratings until
their crash. What's more, banks were insured against the risks of sub-prime mortgages they
held. Remember what happened in 2008?
As to the future, nobody has the crystal ball. Can you tell how much a Big Mac will cost
in the US five or ten years from now? $4? $40? $400? $4,000? Your guess is as good as mine.
Ponzi schemes have a habit of crashing and nobody worked out a way of predicting when exactly
the crash will occur.
This might be in the cards. The US sanctions actually squeezed Russian comprador (5th
column) oligarchs, who were always subservient to the West, sent their families there, and
are siphoning off their money offshore, more than anything. If Putin uses this to expropriate
their stolen riches, which he might do (98% of Russian population would be cheering; they'd
cheer even more if Putin hangs those bastards, but that's unlikely), these sanctions would be
yet another example of the US shooting itself in the foot. The US is getting pretty good at
that lately, always screaming that it hurts afterwards.
"... So will a good Christian like Mike Pompeo reconcile these obvious falsehoods, self deception. With every letter, he will be denying the very God he professes to believe in. ..."
"... Trump and his administration are the reveal of the true nature of modern American political Christianity. This is what it always was ..."
"... But The People are not exactly conscientious objector on the issue of Yemen and the crimes committed in our name either. The Republic might rot from the head, but the rot has certainly spread far and wide. ..."
A senior general urged Saudi officials to conduct a thorough investigation into an
airstrike that killed at least 40 children in Yemen, the Pentagon said Monday, an indication
of U.S. concern about allied nations' air operations against Houthi militants.
The general's request actually shows how little concern the U.S. has for how the Saudi
coalition conducts its war effort. If the U.S. were concerned with how the war was being
fought, our officials wouldn't be asking the perpetrators of atrocities to investigate their
own crimes. It is pointless to urge the Saudis to conduct an investigation into their own war
crime when we already know that they will find that they did nothing wrong. As the
Post article notes later on, the coalition's investigations predictably excuse their
actions:
According to Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director for Human Rights Watch, Saudi
investigators had cleared coalition military officials of legal responsibility in virtually
all investigations the JIAT had conducted.
The pattern of Saudi coalition conduct over the last three years is clear. Their forces
commit numerous documented war crimes, and then when they "investigate" those crimes they
determine that their forces are guilty of nothing. It would have been laughable to ask the
Saudis to investigate themselves back in 2015, and to do the same over three years later is
inexcusable. It is an invitation to whitewashing heinous, illegal acts. The U.S. will not
honestly call out the coalition members for their crimes against Yemeni civilians because our
government is
deeply complicit in those crimes, and so we are treated to this pantomime farce where we
send officers to call for investigations whose results have been predetermined even before the
crimes were committed. The entire policy is a disgrace, and it brings dishonor on everyone
ordered to participate in it.
There needs to be an independent, international inquiry into war crimes committed by all
sides in Yemen. All parties to the conflict are assuredly guilty of war crimes, and all parties
should be held accountable for what they have done to Yemen's civilians. As long as the U.S.
enables Saudi coalition crimes and then shields them from scrutiny, our government is
implicated in both the crime and the cover-up. Congress could put a stop to this if they
were willing to do their jobs and assume their proper responsibilities, but for more than three
years they have shirked their duties and acquiesced in a despicable and indefensible policy in
Yemen.
"The entire policy is a disgrace, and it brings dishonor on everyone ordered to
participate in it."
For all that they're doing it at the order of even more disgusting civilians, this has got
a be a low point in the history of the American military. The word "Yemen" on a resume or CV
will make military people stink for the rest of their lives. Like "My Lai" or "Dishonorable
Discharge".
We are getting a preview of the letters Mike Pompeo will be signing off on to Congress.
So will a good Christian like Mike Pompeo reconcile these obvious falsehoods, self
deception. With every letter, he will be denying the very God he professes to believe
in.
"The entire policy is a disgrace, and it brings dishonor on everyone ordered to participate
in it."
Conduct unbecoming.
The higher the rank of the officers involving themselves in this – in following
unconstitutional orders to participate in an illegal campaign of aggressive war and
collective punishment – the worse it gets. It would be a heroic act for a private
– or even the officer piloting a refueling tanker – to speak out against this, a
general has much less of a claim to honor and acquiescence both.
If The People really supported those who serve, they would rally to every conscientious
objector – even the misguided ones – because anybody who has the honor and
integrity to question orders is preferable to those that pay no heed to the meaning of their
oath.
But The People are not exactly conscientious objector on the issue of Yemen and the
crimes committed in our name either. The Republic might rot from the head, but the rot has
certainly spread far and wide.
This is an interesting analysis shedding some light on how the US intelligence services have gone rogue...
Notable quotes:
"... Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr. Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence. ..."
"... the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough. ..."
"... That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment. ..."
"... He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So, where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail? ..."
"... The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance -- which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US "intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit up." ..."
"... The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on. ..."
"... "What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task." ..."
"... "The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact." ..."
"... But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts. ..."
"... Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria. ..."
"... Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
In today's United States, the term "espionage" doesn't get too much
use outside of some specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage,
but with regard to Americans' own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they
prefer the term "intelligence." This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how you
look at things.
First of all, US "intelligence" is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has
been traditionally played, and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and
China. Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and
conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you
are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else.
In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days
torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged
in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and
that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate
negotiating future spy swaps.
In recent years, the US intelligence agencies have decided that torturing prisoners is a
good idea, but they have mostly been torturing innocent bystanders, not professional spies,
sometimes forcing them to invent things, such as "Al Qaeda." There was no such thing before US
intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists.
Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr.
Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own
spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They
poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no
evidence.
There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia, and British spies working
in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules (since that supposedly
super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their "secret" lab in Porton Down doesn't
work right and is only fatal 20% of the time).
There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it
needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the
prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An
alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be
following due process and rules of evidence, they don't add much value.
A different standard applies to traitors; here, sending them through the courts is
acceptable and serves a high moral purpose, since here the source is the person on trial and
the method -- treason -- can be divulged without harm. But this logic does not apply to proper,
professional spies who are simply doing their jobs, even if they turn out to be double agents.
In fact, when counterintelligence discovers a spy, the professional thing to do is to try to
recruit him as a double agent or, failing that, to try to use the spy as a channel for
injecting disinformation.
Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert
Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail
server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it's
been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that
they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet.
Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn't have been done by anyone working remotely from
Russia.
Furthermore, it is an exercise in futility for a US official to indict Russian citizens in
Russia. They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the
Russian Constitution: "61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of
Russia or extradited to another state."
Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars to interpret this sentence, or he can
just read it and weep. Yes, the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule
against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough.
That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked
into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system
has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done
bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged
hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping
a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment.
He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC
officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie
Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian
hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So,
where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail?
Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia to cooperate on criminal
investigations, Putin offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller. He even offered to
have Mueller sit in on the proceedings. But in return he wanted to question US officials who
may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder, who is due to
begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who, by the way, donated copious
amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign.
In response, the US Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians from questioning US
officials. And instead of issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed,
at least one US official made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US
instead. Again, which part of 61.1 don't they understand?
The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the
traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance --
which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best
ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such
quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US
"intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit
up."
The "intelligence" the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but; in fact, the
stupider it is the better, because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make
unintelligent decisions. In fact, they consider facts harmful -- be they about Syrian chemical
weapons, or conspiring to steal the primary from Bernie Sanders, or Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden -- because facts require accuracy and rigor
while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy. In this, their actual
objective is easily discernible.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its
allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom
aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and
overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they
are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and
so on.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag
operations, à la 9/11, to fake false flag operations, à la fake East Gouta
chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story is
perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were
harmed in the process of concocting this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly
forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips. It is now a pure
confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a
conspiracy theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled. A
light-hearted answer would have been:
"What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They
were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to
claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped
lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available,
is an impossible task."
A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:
"The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig
the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to
prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately
be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as
conspiracy theory, not as fact."
And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:
"The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to
which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to
me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their
dismissal."
But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake
answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake
intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and
ultimately futile conflicts.
Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of
religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the
Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American
efforts in Iraq and Syria.
The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593.
Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is
too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the
US, that's your bill so far for the various US intelligence "oopsies."
The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like
a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their "mistakes" have cost the
country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of
them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of
the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million
per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence
community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US
intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.
There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.
First, we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that
the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where
grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average, toward
an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine that such
incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for
their mistakes.
Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has
been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic
and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile
conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How
that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable
definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at
it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better
than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be
perpetual liars."
Marxism provides one of the best analysis of capitalism; problems start when Marxists propose
alternatives.
Notable quotes:
"... Such demand-compression occurs above all through the imposition of an income deflation on the petty producers, and on the working population in general, in the Third World. This was done in the colonial period through two means: one, "deindustrialization" or the displacement of local craft production by imports of manufactures from the capitalist sector; and two, the "drain of surplus" where a part of the taxes extracted from petty producers was simply taken away in the form of exported goods without any quid pro quo ..."
"... I mean by the term "imperialism" the arrangement that the capitalist system sets up for imposing income deflation on the working population of the Third World for countering the threat of inflation that would otherwise erode the value of money in the metropolis and make the system unviable. "Imperialism" in this sense characterizes both the colonial and the contemporary periods. ..."
"... The fact that the diffusion of capitalism to the Third World has proceeded by leaps and bounds of late, with its domestic corporate-financial oligarchy getting integrated into globalized finance capital, and the fact that workers in the metropolis have also been facing an income squeeze under globalization, are important new developments; but they do not negate the basic tendency of the system to impose income deflation upon the working population of the Third World, a tendency that remains at the very core of the system. ..."
"... any state activism, other than for promoting its own exclusive and direct interest, is anathema for finance capital, which is why, not surprisingly, "sound finance" and "fiscal responsibility" are back in vogue today, when finance capital, now globalized, is in ascendancy. Imperialism is thus a specifically capitalist way of obtaining the commodities it requires for itself, but which are produced outside its own domain. ..."
"... dirigiste regimes ..."
"... With the reassertion of the dominance of finance, in the guise now of an international ..."
"... Contemporary imperialism therefore is the imperialism of international finance capital which is served by nation-states (for any nation-state that defies the will of international finance capital runs the risk of capital flight from, and hence the insolvency of, its economy). The US, being the leading capitalist state, plays the leading role in promoting and protecting the interests of international finance capital. But talking about a specific US imperialism, or a German or British or French imperialism obscures this basic fact. ..."
"... Indeed, a good deal of discussion about whether the world is heading toward multi-polarity or the persistence of US dominance misses the point that the chief actor in today's world is international or globalized finance capital, and not US or German or British finance capital. ..."
"... US military intervention all over the world, in order to acquire a proper meaning has to be located within the broader setting of the imperialism of international finance capital. ..."
C.J. Polychroniou: How do you define imperialism and what imperialist tendencies do you detect as inherent in the
brutal expansion of the logic of capitalism in the neoliberal global era?
Prabhat Patnaik: The capitalist sector of the world, which began by being located, and
continues largely to be located, in the temperate region, requires as its raw materials and
means of consumption a whole range of primary commodities which are not available or
producible, either at all or in adequate quantities, within its own borders. These commodities
have to be obtained from the tropical and sub-tropical region within which almost the whole of
the Third World is located; and the bulk of them (leaving aside minerals) are produced by a set
of petty producers (peasants). What is more, they are subject to "increasing supply price," in
the sense that as demand for them increases in the capitalist sector, larger quantities of them
can be obtained, if at all, only at higher prices, thanks to the fixed size of the tropical
land mass.
This means an ex ante tendency toward accelerating inflation as capital
accumulation proceeds, undermining the value of money under capitalism and hence the viability
of the system as a whole. To prevent this, the system requires that with an increase in demand
from the capitalist sector, as capital accumulation proceeds, there must be a compression of
demand elsewhere for these commodities, so that the net demand does not increase, and
increasing supply price does not get a chance to manifest itself at all.
Such demand-compression occurs above all through the imposition of an income deflation on
the petty producers, and on the working population in general, in the Third World. This was
done in the colonial period through two means: one, "deindustrialization" or the displacement
of local craft production by imports of manufactures from the capitalist sector; and two, the
"drain of surplus" where a part of the taxes extracted from petty producers was simply taken
away in the form of exported goods without any quid pro quo . The income of the
working population of the Third World, and hence its demand, was thus kept down; and
metropolitan capitalism's demand for such commodities was met without any inflationary threat
to the value of money. Exactly a similar process of income deflation is imposed now upon the
working population of the Third World by the neoliberal policies of globalization.
I mean by the term "imperialism" the arrangement that the capitalist system sets up for
imposing income deflation on the working population of the Third World for countering the
threat of inflation that would otherwise erode the value of money in the metropolis and make
the system unviable. "Imperialism" in this sense characterizes both the colonial and the
contemporary periods.
We recognize the need for a reserve army of labor to ward off the threat to the value of
money arising from wage demands of workers. Ironically, however, we do not recognize the
parallel and even more pressing need of the system (owing to increasing supply price) for the
imposition of income deflation on the working population of the Third World for warding off a
similar threat.
The fact that the diffusion of capitalism to the Third World has proceeded by leaps and
bounds of late, with its domestic corporate-financial oligarchy getting integrated into
globalized finance capital, and the fact that workers in the metropolis have also been facing
an income squeeze under globalization, are important new developments; but they do not negate
the basic tendency of the system to impose income deflation upon the working population of the
Third World, a tendency that remains at the very core of the system.
Those who argue that imperialism is no longer a relevant analytic construct point to the
multifaceted aspects of today's global economic exchanges and to a highly complex process
involved in the distribution of value which, simply put, cannot be reduced to imperialism. How
do you respond to this line of thinking?
Capitalism today is of course much more complex, with an enormous financial superstructure.
But that paradoxically makes inflation even more threatening. The value of this vast array of
financial assets would collapse in the event of inflation, bringing down this superstructure,
which incidentally is the reason for the current policy obsession with "inflation targeting."
This makes the imperialist arrangement even more essential. The more complex capitalism
becomes, the more it needs its basic simple props.
I should clarify here that if "land-augmenting" measures [such as irrigation, high-yielding
seeds and better production practices] could be introduced in the Third World, then,
notwithstanding the physical fixity of the tropical land mass, the threat of increasing supply
price -- and with it, [the threat] of inflation -- could be warded off without any income
deflation. Indeed, on the contrary, the working population of the Third World would be better
off through such measures. But these measures require state support and state expenditure, a
fact that Marx had recognized long ago. But any state activism, other than for promoting its
own exclusive and direct interest, is anathema for finance capital, which is why, not
surprisingly, "sound finance" and "fiscal responsibility" are back in vogue today, when finance
capital, now globalized, is in ascendancy. Imperialism is thus a specifically capitalist way of
obtaining the commodities it requires for itself, but which are produced outside its own
domain.
The post-decolonization dirigiste regimes [regimes directed by a central authority]
in the Third World had actually undertaken land-augmentation measures. Because of this, even as
exports of commodities to the metropolis had risen to sustain the biggest boom ever witnessed
in the history of capitalism, per capita food grain availability had also increased in those
countries. But I see that period as a period of retreat of metropolitan capitalism, enforced by
the wound inflicted upon it by the Second World War. With the reassertion of the dominance of
finance, in the guise now of an international finance capital, the Third World states
have withdrawn from supporting petty producers, a process of income deflation is in full swing,
and the imperialist arrangement is back in place, because of which we can see once more a
tendency toward a secular decline in per capita food grain availability in the Third World as
in the colonial period.
There is a third way -- apart from a greater obsession with inflation aversion and a yoking
of Third World states to promoting the interests of globalized finance rather than defending
domestic petty producers -- in which contemporary capitalism strengthens the imperialist
arrangement. It may be thought that the value of imports of Third World commodities into the
capitalist metropolis is so small that we are exaggerating the inflation threat from that
source to metropolitan currencies. This smallness itself, of course, is an expression of an
acutely exploitative relationship. In addition, however, the threat to the Third World
currencies themselves from a rise in the prices of these commodities becomes acute in a regime
of free cross-border financial flows as now, which threatens the entire world trade and
payments system and hence makes income deflation particularly urgent. Hence the need for the
imperialist arrangement becomes even more acute.
Not long ago, even liberals like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times were arguing that
"McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" (that is, the US Air Force). Surely,
this is a crude version of imperialism, but what about today's US imperialism? Isn't it still
alive and kicking?
The world that Lenin had written about consisted of nation-based, nation-state-supported
financial oligarchies engaged in intense inter-imperialist rivalry for repartitioning the world
through wars. When [Marxist theorist] Karl Kautsky had suggested the possibility of a truce
among rival powers for a peaceful division of the world, Lenin had pointed to the fact that the
phenomenon of uneven development under capitalism would necessarily subvert any such specific
truce. The world we have today is characterized by the hegemony of international
finance capital which is interested in preventing any partitioning of the world, so
that it can move around freely across the globe.
Contemporary imperialism therefore is the imperialism of international finance capital which
is served by nation-states (for any nation-state that defies the will of international finance
capital runs the risk of capital flight from, and hence the insolvency of, its economy). The
US, being the leading capitalist state, plays the leading role in promoting and protecting the
interests of international finance capital. But talking about a specific US imperialism, or a
German or British or French imperialism obscures this basic fact.
Indeed, a good deal of discussion about whether the world is heading toward multi-polarity
or the persistence of US dominance misses the point that the chief actor in today's world is
international or globalized finance capital, and not US or German or British finance capital.
So, the concept of imperialism that [Utsa Patnaik and I] are talking about belongs to a
different terrain of discourse from the concept of US imperialism per se . The latter,
though it is, of course, empirically visible because of US military intervention all over the
world, in order to acquire a proper meaning has to be located within the broader setting of the
imperialism of international finance capital.
Some incidentally have seen the muting of inter-imperialist rivalry in today's world as a
vindication of Kautsky's position over that of Lenin. This, however, is incorrect, since both
of them were talking about a world of national finance capitals which contemporary capitalism
has gone beyond.
... ... ...
One final question: How should radical movements and organizations, in both the core and the
periphery of the world capitalist economy, be organizing to combat today's imperialism?
Obviously, the issue of imperialism is important not for scholastic reasons, but because of
the praxis that a recognition of its role engenders. From what I have been arguing, it is clear
that since globalization involves income deflation for the peasantry and petty producers, and
since their absorption into the ranks of the active army of labor under capitalism does not
occur because of the paucity of jobs that are created even when rates of output growth are
high, there is a tendency toward an absolute immiserization of the working population.
For the petty producers, this tendency operates directly; and for others, it operates through
the driving down of the "reservation wage" owing to the impoverishment of petty producers.
Such immiserization is manifest above all in the decline in per capita food grain
absorption, both directly and indirectly (the latter via processed foods and feed grains). An
improvement in the conditions of living of the working population of the Third World then
requires a delinking from globalization (mainly through capital controls, and also
trade controls to the requisite extent) by an alternative state, based on a worker-peasant
alliance, that pursues a different trajectory of development. Such a trajectory would emphasize
peasant-agriculture-led growth, land redistribution (so as to limit the extent of
differentiation within the peasantry) and the formation of voluntary cooperatives and
collectives for carrying forward land-augmentation measures, and even undertaking
value-addition activities, including industrialization.
Small Third World countries would no doubt find it difficult to adopt such a program because
of their limited resource base and narrow home market. But they will have to come together with
other small countries to constitute larger, more viable units. But the basic point is that the
question of "making globalization work" or "having globalization with a human face" simply does
not arise.
The problem with this praxis is that it is not only the bourgeoisie in the Third World
countries, but even sections of the middle-class professionals who have been beneficiaries of
globalization, who would oppose any such delinking. But the world capitalist crisis, which is a
consequence of this finance-capital-led globalization itself, is causing disaffection among
these middle-class beneficiaries. They, too, would now be more willing to support an
alternative trajectory of development that breaks out of the straitjacket imposed by
imperialism.
Trump speaks at Washington rally against the Iran deal back in September 2015. Credit:
Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA/Newscom Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson
chide Trump for his dangerous Iran obsession:
The United States' treatment of Iran as a serious strategic competitor is deeply
illogical. Iran imperils no core U.S. interests.
Trump's Iran obsession is probably the most conventional part of his foreign policy and it
is also the most irrational. The president's reflexive hostility to Iran is one of the few
constants in his view of the world, and it is one that aligns him most closely with his party's
hawks and parts of the foreign policy establishment. This has been clear for several years ever
since
Trump declared his
opposition to thenuclear
deal and surrounded
himself with hard-liners .
The Iran obsession is among the worst aspects of Trump's presidency, but it is also one of the
least surprising. Over the last eighteen months, Trump's Iran obsession has become more of a
derangement ,
and it is putting the U.S. and Iran on a collision course at the expense of our relations with
many other states and our own economic interests. The risk of unnecessary war continues to rise
because the president and his allies insist on making maximalist demands of Iran while imposing
stringent sanctions on the country without justification.
As Simon and Stevenson capably explain, there is no valid reason to view Iran as a major
threat to the U.S. Contrary to the fevered warnings about Iranian "expansionism," Iranian
military power in the region is quite limited:
Yet Iran's foreign policy has evolved essentially on the basis of opportunistic realism
rather than especially aggressive revisionism, and, as noted, it has a sparse military
presence in the region.
There is certainly no reason for our government to treat Iran as if it were a major
competitor. Our government's fixation on Iran as the source of all the region's problems
exaggerates Iran's influence and puts the U.S. at odds with a regional power whose interests
are sometimes aligned with our own. The obsession simply makes no sense:
Casting Iran as a major strategic rival simply doesn't make sense in terms of traditional
international relations considerations such as threat- and power-balancing.
The authors list a number of causes for the unwarranted obsession with Iran, including
"pro-Israel" influence and the influence of the Saudis and Emiratis in Washington, and I agree
with them. Our political leaders' enthusiasm for engaging in threat inflation and credulously
accepting the threat inflation of others would has to figure prominently in any explanation as
well. Obsessing over a non-existent Iranian threat to U.S. interests obviously has nothing to
do with American security, and it represents an unhealthy subordination of American interests
to those of its reckless regional clients. Indulging those clients in their paranoia about Iran
will only stoke more regional conflicts and ensure that the U.S. becomes more deeply involved
in those wars, and the result will be greater costs for the U.S. and greater turmoil,
instability, and loss of life throughout the region.
Obama's Yemen obsession is probably the most conventional part of his foreign policy and it
is also the most irrational.
Cluster bombs, drone strikes, covert kill teams and, most importantly, the backing for
Saudi Arabia and the UAE to cross the blood-red line and commence an aggressive illegal
bombing campaign, invasion and occupation of Yemeni territory did not start with Trump.
Direct participation of US military logistics personnel and US military assets in this
military aggression – while other US forces operate in the same territory under the
"separate but equal" Authorization To Use Military Force – did not start with
Trump.
Trump might apply his Reverse Midas Touch to this aspect of Obama's legacy as well, but
just because Obama manufactured another transient executive "achievement" in JCOPA does not
mean that his policy with respect to Yemen was any more irrational than Trump's policy
towards Iran, or that Obama's willingness to hire out US military forces to support Saudi
aggression for 100 billion dollars in blood money is any less venal, corrupt and despicable
than Trump's willingness to do the same.
Mattis didn't become fixated on Iran when he joined the Trump administration either,
although he might just be blaming – in the absence of conclusive evidence – Iran
today for the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing targeting Reagan's negligent use of the Marine
Corps. That is even less of a defensible foundation for foreign policy and military
aggression that profiteering.
It is a good guess that Obama's obsession with Yemen was rooted in printer cartridges,
shoe bombs, and the fear to have any terrorist attack "succeed". For Obama & Co. the fear
of the Next Big Blowback led them to Yemen. It would appear that Pence has supplied the Trump
administration with a Grand Unified Theory that all campaigns in the Great War On Terror
ultimately lead to Tehran – or the Trump administration made him their willing
mouthpiece.
Pence is so desperate to connect terrorism to Iran that he has to reach back almost 40yrs to
pin an at best Hezbollah pre-cursor organization on them. Isn't it more telling that
Hezbollah has avoided attacking U.S. troops during their entire existence? Pence doesn't seem
alarmed about the 3,000+ Americans who died on U.S. soil in NYC that we can attribute to the
Saudis and their cohorts.
BTW the Khobar tower bombings was Al Qaeda. The Saudis extracted confessions in their
torture chambers. There was no corroborating evidence that it was a branch of Hezbollah.
Here's the Video of Schoolchildren Just Moments Before Being Massacred by U.S.-Backed Saudi
Bombing
"This blood is on America's hands, as long as we keep sending the bombs that kill so many
Yemenis."
"... "Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed." ..."
"... "Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in." ..."
"... "In reality, Saudi Arabia's and the United States' rhetoric aside, a brutal regional regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess." ..."
"... Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying weapons but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the MIC. ..."
"... "Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed." ..."
"... "By backing the Saudi coalition's war in Yemen with weapons, aerial refueling, and targeting assistance, the United States is complicit in the atrocities taking place there." -- Sen. Bernie Sanders ..."
ya right.
Like all wars, most media, including Common Dreams, either sugarcoat them or obfuscate the
real purpose. And of course the politicians do that even better, like Sanders, who just a few
years ago was begging Saudi Arabia to "get their hands dirty", just at the time that the U.S.
proxy war in Yemen heated up with their lapdog Saudi Arabia getting their hands dirty indeed.
The problem of course is that it's not just the U.S. supplying the bombs and military
guidance, it's that it's actually another U.S. proxy war using it's favorite terrorists and
terrorist supporting countries for it's imperialist agenda.
"Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in
Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need
for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This
means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they
were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed."
"Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say,
but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its
unfortunate stand-in."
"In reality, Saudi Arabia's and the United States' rhetoric aside, a brutal regional
regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from
abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess."
Actually it's larger than that, it's part of the larger imperialist struggle against China
and Russia, control of the Bab-el-Mandeb oil chokepoint and control of oil and other
resources in the MENA.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying weapons
but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the MIC.
@Big Al
don't get the why/when for if they
ever do amerika won't be amerika anymore
and that could go both ways, for better
or for worse
and you're correct in Sanders won't say
it but Bernie shouldn't be the one stop
cure all, their need to be many more voices
but the crickets are most abundant.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying weapons
but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the MIC.
ya right.
Like all wars, most media, including Common Dreams, either sugarcoat them or obfuscate
the real purpose. And of course the politicians do that even better, like Sanders, who
just a few years ago was begging Saudi Arabia to "get their hands dirty", just at the
time that the U.S. proxy war in Yemen heated up with their lapdog Saudi Arabia getting
their hands dirty indeed. The problem of course is that it's not just the U.S. supplying
the bombs and military guidance, it's that it's actually another U.S. proxy war using
it's favorite terrorists and terrorist supporting countries for it's imperialist
agenda.
"Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda
in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so
the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be
necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after
the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up
collapsed."
"Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per
say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia
as its unfortunate stand-in."
"In reality, Saudi Arabia's and the United States' rhetoric aside, a brutal regional
regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from
abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess."
Actually it's larger than that, it's part of the larger imperialist struggle against
China and Russia, control of the Bab-el-Mandeb oil chokepoint and control of oil and
other resources in the MENA.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying
weapons but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the
MIC.
#4 don't get the
why/when for if they
ever do amerika won't be amerika anymore
and that could go both ways, for better
or for worse
and you're correct in Sanders won't say
it but Bernie shouldn't be the one stop
cure all, their need to be many more voices
but the crickets are most abundant.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying
weapons but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the
MIC.
(the other so called progressive heroes) are saying,
"By backing the Saudi coalition's war in Yemen with weapons, aerial refueling, and
targeting assistance, the United States is complicit in the atrocities taking place
there."
-- Sen. Bernie Sanders
is basically propaganda. Clearly he's making it sound like the U.S. is supplying weapons
and some military assistance and therefore is complicit in the atrocities that Saudi Arabia
and it's "coalition" are perpetrating in "their" war, which in turn leads people to believe
(and the progressive hero politicians to propose) the U.S. simply needs to stop supplying
those weapons and military assistance, i.e., get out of Saudi's war. But that misses the
history of U.S. interest and involvement in Yemen, it's real role in the near genocide
happening there and the overall agenda of those controlling our government. And that is why
most Americans, including most progressives, don't know what is really going on in Yemen. Our
political "representatives" and the 90% owned by six rich bastard corporations oligarchy
media won't tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's why people still
believe the war in Syria is a civil war. It's why people believe the Russia cold war
propaganda. That's all they hear and the only way to get the real truth is to dig for it and
try to make sense of the big picture along with the true history of this country and our
government and political system.
Not to mention he's a fucking hypocrite.
"Even worse, after the Saudis started bombing Yemen with U.S. government backing earlier
this year, killing thousands and leading to what the UN is now calling a "humanitarian
catastrophe," and suffering that is "almost incomprehensible," Sanders continued. In another
interview, again with Wolf Blitzer in May, Sanders did correctly note that as a result of the
Iraq invasion, "we've destabilized the region, we've given rise to Al-Qaeda, ISIS." But then
he actually called for more intervention: "What we need now, and this is not easy stuff, I
think the President is trying, you need to bring together an international coalition, Wolf,
led by the Muslim countries themselves! Saudi Arabia is the third largest military budget in
the world, they're going to have to get their hands dirty in this fight. We should be
supporting, but at the end of the day this is [a] fight over what Islam is about, the soul of
Islam, we should support those countries taking on ISIS."
(Note on Truthdig article: also propaganda inserted by both Sanders and the author by
insinuating the U.S. wars in the MENA "gave rise" to ISIS. That is not true, ISIS was
created, aided and abetted FOR the wars in the MENA and beyond.)
"... "The currency of our country is targeted directly by the US president," ..."
"... "This attack, initiated by the biggest player in the global financial system, reveals a similar situation in all developing countries." ..."
"... "All of our action plan and measures are ready," ..."
"... "Together with our banks, we prepared our action plan regarding the situation with our real sector companies, including Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is the sector that is affected by the fluctuation the most," ..."
"... "Together with our banks and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA), we will take the necessary measures quickly." ..."
"... "It is making an operation against Turkey Its aim is to force Turkey to surrender in every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and the Turkish nation kneel down," ..."
"... "We have seen your play and we challenge you." ..."
Turkey has accused Donald Trump of leading an attack on its national currency. The lira lost
about 40 percent of its value against the US dollar this year and, to reduce its volatility,
Ankara has prepared an urgent action plan. "The currency of our country is targeted
directly by the US president," Finance Minister Berat Albayrak told the Hurriyet.
"This attack, initiated by the biggest player in the global financial system, reveals a
similar situation in all developing countries."
The Turkish lira took a massive hit against the dollar on Friday following Trump's decision
to double tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Turkey to 20 percent and 50 percent.
Overall, the national currency lost roughly about 40 percent of its value this year.
To calm down the markets, the government instructed its institutions to implement a series
of actions on Monday. "All of our action plan and measures are ready," Albayrak said,
without elaborating.
"Together with our banks, we prepared our action plan regarding the situation with our
real sector companies, including Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is the sector
that is affected by the fluctuation the most," the minister
said . "Together with our banks and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency
(BRSA), we will take the necessary measures quickly."
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile slammed the US decision to impose new tariffs on
steel and aluminum imports.
"It is making an operation against Turkey Its aim is to force Turkey to surrender in
every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and the Turkish nation kneel down,"
Erdogan said
in Trabzon on Sunday. "We have seen your play and we challenge you."
Trump speaks at Washington rally against the Iran deal back in September 2015. Credit:
Olivier Douliery/Sipa USA/Newscom Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson
chide Trump for his dangerous Iran obsession:
The United States' treatment of Iran as a serious strategic competitor is deeply
illogical. Iran imperils no core U.S. interests.
Trump's Iran obsession is probably the most conventional part of his foreign policy and it
is also the most irrational. The president's reflexive hostility to Iran is one of the few
constants in his view of the world, and it is one that aligns him most closely with his party's
hawks and parts of the foreign policy establishment. This has been clear for several years ever
since
Trump declared his
opposition to thenuclear
deal and surrounded
himself with hard-liners .
The Iran obsession is among the worst aspects of Trump's presidency, but it is also one of the
least surprising. Over the last eighteen months, Trump's Iran obsession has become more of a
derangement ,
and it is putting the U.S. and Iran on a collision course at the expense of our relations with
many other states and our own economic interests. The risk of unnecessary war continues to rise
because the president and his allies insist on making maximalist demands of Iran while imposing
stringent sanctions on the country without justification.
As Simon and Stevenson capably explain, there is no valid reason to view Iran as a major
threat to the U.S. Contrary to the fevered warnings about Iranian "expansionism," Iranian
military power in the region is quite limited:
Yet Iran's foreign policy has evolved essentially on the basis of opportunistic realism
rather than especially aggressive revisionism, and, as noted, it has a sparse military
presence in the region.
There is certainly no reason for our government to treat Iran as if it were a major
competitor. Our government's fixation on Iran as the source of all the region's problems
exaggerates Iran's influence and puts the U.S. at odds with a regional power whose interests
are sometimes aligned with our own. The obsession simply makes no sense:
Casting Iran as a major strategic rival simply doesn't make sense in terms of traditional
international relations considerations such as threat- and power-balancing.
The authors list a number of causes for the unwarranted obsession with Iran, including
"pro-Israel" influence and the influence of the Saudis and Emiratis in Washington, and I agree
with them. Our political leaders' enthusiasm for engaging in threat inflation and credulously
accepting the threat inflation of others would has to figure prominently in any explanation as
well. Obsessing over a non-existent Iranian threat to U.S. interests obviously has nothing to
do with American security, and it represents an unhealthy subordination of American interests
to those of its reckless regional clients. Indulging those clients in their paranoia about Iran
will only stoke more regional conflicts and ensure that the U.S. becomes more deeply involved
in those wars, and the result will be greater costs for the U.S. and greater turmoil,
instability, and loss of life throughout the region.
Obama's Yemen obsession is probably the most conventional part of his foreign policy and it
is also the most irrational.
Cluster bombs, drone strikes, covert kill teams and, most importantly, the backing for
Saudi Arabia and the UAE to cross the blood-red line and commence an aggressive illegal
bombing campaign, invasion and occupation of Yemeni territory did not start with Trump.
Direct participation of US military logistics personnel and US military assets in this
military aggression – while other US forces operate in the same territory under the
"separate but equal" Authorization To Use Military Force – did not start with
Trump.
Trump might apply his Reverse Midas Touch to this aspect of Obama's legacy as well, but
just because Obama manufactured another transient executive "achievement" in JCOPA does not
mean that his policy with respect to Yemen was any more irrational than Trump's policy
towards Iran, or that Obama's willingness to hire out US military forces to support Saudi
aggression for 100 billion dollars in blood money is any less venal, corrupt and despicable
than Trump's willingness to do the same.
Mattis didn't become fixated on Iran when he joined the Trump administration either,
although he might just be blaming – in the absence of conclusive evidence – Iran
today for the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing targeting Reagan's negligent use of the Marine
Corps. That is even less of a defensible foundation for foreign policy and military
aggression that profiteering.
It is a good guess that Obama's obsession with Yemen was rooted in printer cartridges,
shoe bombs, and the fear to have any terrorist attack "succeed". For Obama & Co. the fear
of the Next Big Blowback led them to Yemen. It would appear that Pence has supplied the Trump
administration with a Grand Unified Theory that all campaigns in the Great War On Terror
ultimately lead to Tehran – or the Trump administration made him their willing
mouthpiece.
Pence is so desperate to connect terrorism to Iran that he has to reach back almost 40yrs to
pin an at best Hezbollah pre-cursor organization on them. Isn't it more telling that
Hezbollah has avoided attacking U.S. troops during their entire existence? Pence doesn't seem
alarmed about the 3,000+ Americans who died on U.S. soil in NYC that we can attribute to the
Saudis and their cohorts.
BTW the Khobar tower bombings was Al Qaeda. The Saudis extracted confessions in their
torture chambers. There was no corroborating evidence that it was a branch of Hezbollah.
Here's the Video of Schoolchildren Just Moments Before Being Massacred by U.S.-Backed Saudi
Bombing
"This blood is on America's hands, as long as we keep sending the bombs that kill so many
Yemenis."
"... "Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed." ..."
"... "Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in." ..."
"... "In reality, Saudi Arabia's and the United States' rhetoric aside, a brutal regional regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess." ..."
"... Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying weapons but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the MIC. ..."
"... "Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed." ..."
"... "By backing the Saudi coalition's war in Yemen with weapons, aerial refueling, and targeting assistance, the United States is complicit in the atrocities taking place there." -- Sen. Bernie Sanders ..."
ya right.
Like all wars, most media, including Common Dreams, either sugarcoat them or obfuscate the
real purpose. And of course the politicians do that even better, like Sanders, who just a few
years ago was begging Saudi Arabia to "get their hands dirty", just at the time that the U.S.
proxy war in Yemen heated up with their lapdog Saudi Arabia getting their hands dirty indeed.
The problem of course is that it's not just the U.S. supplying the bombs and military
guidance, it's that it's actually another U.S. proxy war using it's favorite terrorists and
terrorist supporting countries for it's imperialist agenda.
"Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in
Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need
for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This
means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they
were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed."
"Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say,
but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its
unfortunate stand-in."
"In reality, Saudi Arabia's and the United States' rhetoric aside, a brutal regional
regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from
abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess."
Actually it's larger than that, it's part of the larger imperialist struggle against China
and Russia, control of the Bab-el-Mandeb oil chokepoint and control of oil and other
resources in the MENA.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying weapons
but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the MIC.
@Big Al
don't get the why/when for if they
ever do amerika won't be amerika anymore
and that could go both ways, for better
or for worse
and you're correct in Sanders won't say
it but Bernie shouldn't be the one stop
cure all, their need to be many more voices
but the crickets are most abundant.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying weapons
but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the MIC.
ya right.
Like all wars, most media, including Common Dreams, either sugarcoat them or obfuscate
the real purpose. And of course the politicians do that even better, like Sanders, who
just a few years ago was begging Saudi Arabia to "get their hands dirty", just at the
time that the U.S. proxy war in Yemen heated up with their lapdog Saudi Arabia getting
their hands dirty indeed. The problem of course is that it's not just the U.S. supplying
the bombs and military guidance, it's that it's actually another U.S. proxy war using
it's favorite terrorists and terrorist supporting countries for it's imperialist
agenda.
"Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda
in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so
the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be
necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after
the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up
collapsed."
"Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per
say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia
as its unfortunate stand-in."
"In reality, Saudi Arabia's and the United States' rhetoric aside, a brutal regional
regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from
abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess."
Actually it's larger than that, it's part of the larger imperialist struggle against
China and Russia, control of the Bab-el-Mandeb oil chokepoint and control of oil and
other resources in the MENA.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying
weapons but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the
MIC.
#4 don't get the
why/when for if they
ever do amerika won't be amerika anymore
and that could go both ways, for better
or for worse
and you're correct in Sanders won't say
it but Bernie shouldn't be the one stop
cure all, their need to be many more voices
but the crickets are most abundant.
Sanders won't say that and most media will simply blame it on the U.S. supplying
weapons but they don't get into the why, typically blaming it on the MIC being the
MIC.
(the other so called progressive heroes) are saying,
"By backing the Saudi coalition's war in Yemen with weapons, aerial refueling, and
targeting assistance, the United States is complicit in the atrocities taking place
there."
-- Sen. Bernie Sanders
is basically propaganda. Clearly he's making it sound like the U.S. is supplying weapons
and some military assistance and therefore is complicit in the atrocities that Saudi Arabia
and it's "coalition" are perpetrating in "their" war, which in turn leads people to believe
(and the progressive hero politicians to propose) the U.S. simply needs to stop supplying
those weapons and military assistance, i.e., get out of Saudi's war. But that misses the
history of U.S. interest and involvement in Yemen, it's real role in the near genocide
happening there and the overall agenda of those controlling our government. And that is why
most Americans, including most progressives, don't know what is really going on in Yemen. Our
political "representatives" and the 90% owned by six rich bastard corporations oligarchy
media won't tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's why people still
believe the war in Syria is a civil war. It's why people believe the Russia cold war
propaganda. That's all they hear and the only way to get the real truth is to dig for it and
try to make sense of the big picture along with the true history of this country and our
government and political system.
Not to mention he's a fucking hypocrite.
"Even worse, after the Saudis started bombing Yemen with U.S. government backing earlier
this year, killing thousands and leading to what the UN is now calling a "humanitarian
catastrophe," and suffering that is "almost incomprehensible," Sanders continued. In another
interview, again with Wolf Blitzer in May, Sanders did correctly note that as a result of the
Iraq invasion, "we've destabilized the region, we've given rise to Al-Qaeda, ISIS." But then
he actually called for more intervention: "What we need now, and this is not easy stuff, I
think the President is trying, you need to bring together an international coalition, Wolf,
led by the Muslim countries themselves! Saudi Arabia is the third largest military budget in
the world, they're going to have to get their hands dirty in this fight. We should be
supporting, but at the end of the day this is [a] fight over what Islam is about, the soul of
Islam, we should support those countries taking on ISIS."
(Note on Truthdig article: also propaganda inserted by both Sanders and the author by
insinuating the U.S. wars in the MENA "gave rise" to ISIS. That is not true, ISIS was
created, aided and abetted FOR the wars in the MENA and beyond.)
Marxism provides one of the best analysis of capitalism; problems start when Marxists propose
alternatives.
Notable quotes:
"... Such demand-compression occurs above all through the imposition of an income deflation on the petty producers, and on the working population in general, in the Third World. This was done in the colonial period through two means: one, "deindustrialization" or the displacement of local craft production by imports of manufactures from the capitalist sector; and two, the "drain of surplus" where a part of the taxes extracted from petty producers was simply taken away in the form of exported goods without any quid pro quo ..."
"... I mean by the term "imperialism" the arrangement that the capitalist system sets up for imposing income deflation on the working population of the Third World for countering the threat of inflation that would otherwise erode the value of money in the metropolis and make the system unviable. "Imperialism" in this sense characterizes both the colonial and the contemporary periods. ..."
"... The fact that the diffusion of capitalism to the Third World has proceeded by leaps and bounds of late, with its domestic corporate-financial oligarchy getting integrated into globalized finance capital, and the fact that workers in the metropolis have also been facing an income squeeze under globalization, are important new developments; but they do not negate the basic tendency of the system to impose income deflation upon the working population of the Third World, a tendency that remains at the very core of the system. ..."
"... any state activism, other than for promoting its own exclusive and direct interest, is anathema for finance capital, which is why, not surprisingly, "sound finance" and "fiscal responsibility" are back in vogue today, when finance capital, now globalized, is in ascendancy. Imperialism is thus a specifically capitalist way of obtaining the commodities it requires for itself, but which are produced outside its own domain. ..."
"... dirigiste regimes ..."
"... With the reassertion of the dominance of finance, in the guise now of an international ..."
"... Contemporary imperialism therefore is the imperialism of international finance capital which is served by nation-states (for any nation-state that defies the will of international finance capital runs the risk of capital flight from, and hence the insolvency of, its economy). The US, being the leading capitalist state, plays the leading role in promoting and protecting the interests of international finance capital. But talking about a specific US imperialism, or a German or British or French imperialism obscures this basic fact. ..."
"... Indeed, a good deal of discussion about whether the world is heading toward multi-polarity or the persistence of US dominance misses the point that the chief actor in today's world is international or globalized finance capital, and not US or German or British finance capital. ..."
"... US military intervention all over the world, in order to acquire a proper meaning has to be located within the broader setting of the imperialism of international finance capital. ..."
C.J. Polychroniou: How do you define imperialism and what imperialist tendencies do you detect as inherent in the
brutal expansion of the logic of capitalism in the neoliberal global era?
Prabhat Patnaik: The capitalist sector of the world, which began by being located, and
continues largely to be located, in the temperate region, requires as its raw materials and
means of consumption a whole range of primary commodities which are not available or
producible, either at all or in adequate quantities, within its own borders. These commodities
have to be obtained from the tropical and sub-tropical region within which almost the whole of
the Third World is located; and the bulk of them (leaving aside minerals) are produced by a set
of petty producers (peasants). What is more, they are subject to "increasing supply price," in
the sense that as demand for them increases in the capitalist sector, larger quantities of them
can be obtained, if at all, only at higher prices, thanks to the fixed size of the tropical
land mass.
This means an ex ante tendency toward accelerating inflation as capital
accumulation proceeds, undermining the value of money under capitalism and hence the viability
of the system as a whole. To prevent this, the system requires that with an increase in demand
from the capitalist sector, as capital accumulation proceeds, there must be a compression of
demand elsewhere for these commodities, so that the net demand does not increase, and
increasing supply price does not get a chance to manifest itself at all.
Such demand-compression occurs above all through the imposition of an income deflation on
the petty producers, and on the working population in general, in the Third World. This was
done in the colonial period through two means: one, "deindustrialization" or the displacement
of local craft production by imports of manufactures from the capitalist sector; and two, the
"drain of surplus" where a part of the taxes extracted from petty producers was simply taken
away in the form of exported goods without any quid pro quo . The income of the
working population of the Third World, and hence its demand, was thus kept down; and
metropolitan capitalism's demand for such commodities was met without any inflationary threat
to the value of money. Exactly a similar process of income deflation is imposed now upon the
working population of the Third World by the neoliberal policies of globalization.
I mean by the term "imperialism" the arrangement that the capitalist system sets up for
imposing income deflation on the working population of the Third World for countering the
threat of inflation that would otherwise erode the value of money in the metropolis and make
the system unviable. "Imperialism" in this sense characterizes both the colonial and the
contemporary periods.
We recognize the need for a reserve army of labor to ward off the threat to the value of
money arising from wage demands of workers. Ironically, however, we do not recognize the
parallel and even more pressing need of the system (owing to increasing supply price) for the
imposition of income deflation on the working population of the Third World for warding off a
similar threat.
The fact that the diffusion of capitalism to the Third World has proceeded by leaps and
bounds of late, with its domestic corporate-financial oligarchy getting integrated into
globalized finance capital, and the fact that workers in the metropolis have also been facing
an income squeeze under globalization, are important new developments; but they do not negate
the basic tendency of the system to impose income deflation upon the working population of the
Third World, a tendency that remains at the very core of the system.
Those who argue that imperialism is no longer a relevant analytic construct point to the
multifaceted aspects of today's global economic exchanges and to a highly complex process
involved in the distribution of value which, simply put, cannot be reduced to imperialism. How
do you respond to this line of thinking?
Capitalism today is of course much more complex, with an enormous financial superstructure.
But that paradoxically makes inflation even more threatening. The value of this vast array of
financial assets would collapse in the event of inflation, bringing down this superstructure,
which incidentally is the reason for the current policy obsession with "inflation targeting."
This makes the imperialist arrangement even more essential. The more complex capitalism
becomes, the more it needs its basic simple props.
I should clarify here that if "land-augmenting" measures [such as irrigation, high-yielding
seeds and better production practices] could be introduced in the Third World, then,
notwithstanding the physical fixity of the tropical land mass, the threat of increasing supply
price -- and with it, [the threat] of inflation -- could be warded off without any income
deflation. Indeed, on the contrary, the working population of the Third World would be better
off through such measures. But these measures require state support and state expenditure, a
fact that Marx had recognized long ago. But any state activism, other than for promoting its
own exclusive and direct interest, is anathema for finance capital, which is why, not
surprisingly, "sound finance" and "fiscal responsibility" are back in vogue today, when finance
capital, now globalized, is in ascendancy. Imperialism is thus a specifically capitalist way of
obtaining the commodities it requires for itself, but which are produced outside its own
domain.
The post-decolonization dirigiste regimes [regimes directed by a central authority]
in the Third World had actually undertaken land-augmentation measures. Because of this, even as
exports of commodities to the metropolis had risen to sustain the biggest boom ever witnessed
in the history of capitalism, per capita food grain availability had also increased in those
countries. But I see that period as a period of retreat of metropolitan capitalism, enforced by
the wound inflicted upon it by the Second World War. With the reassertion of the dominance of
finance, in the guise now of an international finance capital, the Third World states
have withdrawn from supporting petty producers, a process of income deflation is in full swing,
and the imperialist arrangement is back in place, because of which we can see once more a
tendency toward a secular decline in per capita food grain availability in the Third World as
in the colonial period.
There is a third way -- apart from a greater obsession with inflation aversion and a yoking
of Third World states to promoting the interests of globalized finance rather than defending
domestic petty producers -- in which contemporary capitalism strengthens the imperialist
arrangement. It may be thought that the value of imports of Third World commodities into the
capitalist metropolis is so small that we are exaggerating the inflation threat from that
source to metropolitan currencies. This smallness itself, of course, is an expression of an
acutely exploitative relationship. In addition, however, the threat to the Third World
currencies themselves from a rise in the prices of these commodities becomes acute in a regime
of free cross-border financial flows as now, which threatens the entire world trade and
payments system and hence makes income deflation particularly urgent. Hence the need for the
imperialist arrangement becomes even more acute.
Not long ago, even liberals like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times were arguing that
"McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" (that is, the US Air Force). Surely,
this is a crude version of imperialism, but what about today's US imperialism? Isn't it still
alive and kicking?
The world that Lenin had written about consisted of nation-based, nation-state-supported
financial oligarchies engaged in intense inter-imperialist rivalry for repartitioning the world
through wars. When [Marxist theorist] Karl Kautsky had suggested the possibility of a truce
among rival powers for a peaceful division of the world, Lenin had pointed to the fact that the
phenomenon of uneven development under capitalism would necessarily subvert any such specific
truce. The world we have today is characterized by the hegemony of international
finance capital which is interested in preventing any partitioning of the world, so
that it can move around freely across the globe.
Contemporary imperialism therefore is the imperialism of international finance capital which
is served by nation-states (for any nation-state that defies the will of international finance
capital runs the risk of capital flight from, and hence the insolvency of, its economy). The
US, being the leading capitalist state, plays the leading role in promoting and protecting the
interests of international finance capital. But talking about a specific US imperialism, or a
German or British or French imperialism obscures this basic fact.
Indeed, a good deal of discussion about whether the world is heading toward multi-polarity
or the persistence of US dominance misses the point that the chief actor in today's world is
international or globalized finance capital, and not US or German or British finance capital.
So, the concept of imperialism that [Utsa Patnaik and I] are talking about belongs to a
different terrain of discourse from the concept of US imperialism per se . The latter,
though it is, of course, empirically visible because of US military intervention all over the
world, in order to acquire a proper meaning has to be located within the broader setting of the
imperialism of international finance capital.
Some incidentally have seen the muting of inter-imperialist rivalry in today's world as a
vindication of Kautsky's position over that of Lenin. This, however, is incorrect, since both
of them were talking about a world of national finance capitals which contemporary capitalism
has gone beyond.
... ... ...
One final question: How should radical movements and organizations, in both the core and the
periphery of the world capitalist economy, be organizing to combat today's imperialism?
Obviously, the issue of imperialism is important not for scholastic reasons, but because of
the praxis that a recognition of its role engenders. From what I have been arguing, it is clear
that since globalization involves income deflation for the peasantry and petty producers, and
since their absorption into the ranks of the active army of labor under capitalism does not
occur because of the paucity of jobs that are created even when rates of output growth are
high, there is a tendency toward an absolute immiserization of the working population.
For the petty producers, this tendency operates directly; and for others, it operates through
the driving down of the "reservation wage" owing to the impoverishment of petty producers.
Such immiserization is manifest above all in the decline in per capita food grain
absorption, both directly and indirectly (the latter via processed foods and feed grains). An
improvement in the conditions of living of the working population of the Third World then
requires a delinking from globalization (mainly through capital controls, and also
trade controls to the requisite extent) by an alternative state, based on a worker-peasant
alliance, that pursues a different trajectory of development. Such a trajectory would emphasize
peasant-agriculture-led growth, land redistribution (so as to limit the extent of
differentiation within the peasantry) and the formation of voluntary cooperatives and
collectives for carrying forward land-augmentation measures, and even undertaking
value-addition activities, including industrialization.
Small Third World countries would no doubt find it difficult to adopt such a program because
of their limited resource base and narrow home market. But they will have to come together with
other small countries to constitute larger, more viable units. But the basic point is that the
question of "making globalization work" or "having globalization with a human face" simply does
not arise.
The problem with this praxis is that it is not only the bourgeoisie in the Third World
countries, but even sections of the middle-class professionals who have been beneficiaries of
globalization, who would oppose any such delinking. But the world capitalist crisis, which is a
consequence of this finance-capital-led globalization itself, is causing disaffection among
these middle-class beneficiaries. They, too, would now be more willing to support an
alternative trajectory of development that breaks out of the straitjacket imposed by
imperialism.
"... "The currency of our country is targeted directly by the US president," ..."
"... "This attack, initiated by the biggest player in the global financial system, reveals a similar situation in all developing countries." ..."
"... "All of our action plan and measures are ready," ..."
"... "Together with our banks, we prepared our action plan regarding the situation with our real sector companies, including Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is the sector that is affected by the fluctuation the most," ..."
"... "Together with our banks and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA), we will take the necessary measures quickly." ..."
"... "It is making an operation against Turkey Its aim is to force Turkey to surrender in every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and the Turkish nation kneel down," ..."
"... "We have seen your play and we challenge you." ..."
Turkey has accused Donald Trump of leading an attack on its national currency. The lira lost
about 40 percent of its value against the US dollar this year and, to reduce its volatility,
Ankara has prepared an urgent action plan. "The currency of our country is targeted
directly by the US president," Finance Minister Berat Albayrak told the Hurriyet.
"This attack, initiated by the biggest player in the global financial system, reveals a
similar situation in all developing countries."
The Turkish lira took a massive hit against the dollar on Friday following Trump's decision
to double tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Turkey to 20 percent and 50 percent.
Overall, the national currency lost roughly about 40 percent of its value this year.
To calm down the markets, the government instructed its institutions to implement a series
of actions on Monday. "All of our action plan and measures are ready," Albayrak said,
without elaborating.
"Together with our banks, we prepared our action plan regarding the situation with our
real sector companies, including Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is the sector
that is affected by the fluctuation the most," the minister
said . "Together with our banks and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency
(BRSA), we will take the necessary measures quickly."
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile slammed the US decision to impose new tariffs on
steel and aluminum imports.
"It is making an operation against Turkey Its aim is to force Turkey to surrender in
every field from finance to politics, to make Turkey and the Turkish nation kneel down,"
Erdogan said
in Trabzon on Sunday. "We have seen your play and we challenge you."
"... Coalition attacks on Yemeni markets are unfortunately all too common. The Saudis and their allies know they can strike civilian targets with impunity because the Western governments that arm and support them never call them out for what they do. ..."
There was another Saudi coalition airstrike on a
crowded market in northern Yemen today. Dozens of civilians have been killed and dozens more
injured. Many of the dead and injured were children whose school bus was hit in the attack:
Coalition attacks on Yemeni
markets are unfortunately all too common. The Saudis and their allies know they can strike
civilian targets with impunity because the Western governments that arm and support them never
call them out for what they do. The U.S. continues to arm and refuel coalition planes
despite ample evidence that the coalition has been deliberately attacking civilian targets. At
the very least, the coalition hits civilian targets with such regularity that they are
ignoring whatever
procedures they are supposed to be following to prevent that. The weapons that the U.S.,
Britain, and other arms suppliers provide them are being used to slaughter wedding-goers,
hospital patients, and schoolchildren, and U.S. refueling of coalition planes allows them to
carry out more of these attacks than they otherwise could. Today's attack ranks as one of the
worst.
Saada has come under some of the most intense attacks from the coalition bombing campaign.
The coalition illegally
declared the entire area a military target three years ago, and ever since they have been
blowing up
homes ,
markets ,
schools ,
water treatment systems, and
hospitals without any regard for the innocent civilians that are killed and injured.
The official U.S. line on support for the war is that even more civilians would be killed if
the U.S. weren't supporting the coalition. Our government has never provided any evidence to
support this, and the record shows that civilian casualties from Saudi coalition airstrikes
have
increased over the last year. The Saudis and their allies either don't listen to any of the
advice they're receiving, or they know they won't pay any price for ignoring it. As long as the
U.S. arms and refuels coalition planes while they slaughter Yemeni civilians in attacks like
this one, our government is implicated in the war crimes enabled by our unstinting military
assistance. Congress can and must halt that assistance immediately.
Update: CNN reports on the
aftermath of the airstrike:
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a hospital it supports in
Saada had received 29 dead bodies of "mainly children" under 15 years of age, and 40 injured,
including 30 children.
"(The hospital) is very busy. They've been receiving wounded and dead since the morning
and it is non-stop ," ICRC head of communications and spokesperson Mirella Hodeib told
CNN.
Second Update: The Associated Press
reports that the death toll stands at 43 with another 63 injured.
Third Update: The death toll has reportedly risen to 50 . 77 were
injured.
Of course I have no right to surprise or shock. They've already targeted hospitals,
foreign doctors and nurses, first responders, wedding parties, and funerals.
School buses.
We used to make movies about killing people who do things like this. Now we help them do
it.
The repetitive frequency and intensity of these attacks on hospitals, schools, markets and
other civilian gatherings, coupled with the indifference of the guilty national governments
and their international enablers, signals that the world and human species is passing through
a mass psychosis. This psychosis is playing itself out at all levels. Fascism, which is very
current as a national psychology, is generally speaking, a coping strategy for dealing with
nasty chaos. This coping strategy is designed around generating even more chaos, since that
is a familiar and therefore more comfortable pattern of behavior; and that does provide a
delusion of stability. A good example would be the sanctions just declared by the Trump
Administration on Iranian commerce. In an intrinsically connected global market, these
sanctions are so thorough that they qualify as a blockade, within a contingency plan for
greater global conflict. But those who destroy hospitals, schools, school buses and public
celebrations are not, otherwise, forward looking nice people. We are descending into a nasty
fascist war psychosis. Just shake it. Live. Long and well.
"even more civilians would be killed if the U.S. weren't supporting the coalition"
If we did not hand them satellite images, did not service, repair and refuel their planes,
and did not sell them the bombs, then they would . kill more civilians how? They could not
even reach their targets, let alone drop explosives they do not have.
What Would Mohammad Do? Buy bombs from the Russians? Who have better quality control and
fewer duds, hence more victims?
What Would Mohammad Do? Get the UAE to hire Blackwater to poison the wells across
Yemen?
How exactly do the profiteers in our country, that get counted out blood money for every
single Yemeni killed, propose that the Saudis and Emiratis would make this worse?
But, good to know that our "smart" and "precise" munitions can still hit a school bus.
Made In America!
The coverage in the media has been predictably cowardly and contemptible in the aftermath of
this story. I read articles from CNN and MSNBC and they were variations on "school bus
bombed", in the passive tense – with no mention of who did it or who is supporting them
in the headline, ad if the bombings were natural disasters.
Fox, predictably, was even worse and led with "Biblical relics endangered by war", which
speaks volumes about the presumed priorities of their viewership.
This, and not anything to do with red meat domestic politics, is the worst media
malpractice of our time. "Stop directly helping the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks drop
bombs on school children" should be the absolute easiest possible moral issue for our media
to take a stand on and yet they treat it like it's radioactive.
Speaking as someone who considers themselves a liberal I am infuriated by the Democrats
response. How can the party leadership not see that if they keep flogging the horse of
Russian trolls and shrugging their shoulders over American given (not sold – *given*)
bombs being dropped on schools and hospitals, no one is ever going to take the supposed
Democratic anti-war platform seriously again. The Republicans can afford to be tarde by
association with these atrocities. The Democrats can't.
I wonder how many Democrats are in the same boat as me right now: I may not like Trump or
the Christian conservatives but fights over the Supreme Court or coal plants or a healthcare
law look terribly petty compared to the apparent decision by Saudi Arabia to kill literally
millions. For the first time in my life I'm seriously wishing there was a third-party
candidate I could support and the congressional elections just so I could send a message on
this.
@Hunter C
Vote Libertarian Party. You won't agree with a lot of their domestic agenda, but they're not
going to win, so it doesn't matter. The noninterventionist foreign policy is your message.
"Following an attack this morning on a bus driving children in Dahyan Market, northern
Saada, (an ICRC-supported) hospital has received dozens of dead and wounded," the
organisation said on Twitter without giving more details.
In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, the coalition called the strike
a "legitimate military action"
The Comment section:
"The US provides the in-flight refueling that makes these bombing sorties possible. The
"Five Eyes" provides the surveillance that picks the targets, and the navigation to hit
them.
KSA is doing precisely what the AZ Empire requires of it. Just as the British Royals and
their banker sponsors dictated over a century ago, so does the Empire direct these heinous
crimes today.
If the Saud Royals ever did go "rogue," they'd be taken out just as the AZ [American
Zionist] Empire has done time and time again."
"There is also the documented presence of American forces and officers in the operations room
of the Saudi coalition." https://twitter.com/abcdaee198/status/1027649243568386055
"Why is it that the Zionist media were up in arms every time White Helmets were digging
Syrian children out of rubble or dousing them with hoses? Dozens of children were slaughtered
in Yemen, and many more maimed and injured and hundreds of thousands are being subjected to
famine but there's only deafening silence on the Zionist-run media."
"Imagine the reaction if the Russians or Syrians had blown up a busload of kids."
-- On the same topic: Israel demanded -- and BBC changed its headline. In a headline, BBC
claimed that "Israeli air strikes 'kill pregnant woman and baby.'" After some time, BBC
changed its title to "Gaza air strikes 'kill woman and child' after rockets hit Israel:
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250275
Obama spoke about mothers sending their children to school in his acceptance speech for
the
Nobel Peace Prize.
He contrasted reality vs hope
and we learned which one he would deliver.
Obama in Oslo, December 10, 2009,:
"Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty
still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what
few coins she has to send that child to school
-- because she believes that
a cruel world still
has a place for that child's dreams.
Let us live by their example.
We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us,
and still strive for justice .
We can admit the intractability of deprivation,
and still strive for dignity.
Clear-eyed,
we can understand that there will be war,
and still strive for peace.
We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that's the
hope
of all the world; and at this moment of challenge,
that must be our work here on Earth.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
One week later Obama shredded dozens of women and children in Yemen
and covered it up.
I've written many times Obama was Bush II - BUT F...KING TRUMP IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE NOW!
So why are you giving us the ancient history deflection???????????
The pic provides an example of how the Outlaw US Empire implements its global population
control policy--all bombs, no kids. Twitterverse is madder than a wet hen. One went to
Trump's twitter to ask where's his outrage over these kid's real deaths, not the staged ones
he launched missiles at Syria over. It deserves to be retweeted millions of times.
Unfortunately, sadists are incapable of being shamed; they just grin at such pics while
congratulating themselves. Betcha the Trump dossier got it backwards--It was Trump who pissed
all over the Russian women.
Almasdarnews. Com. Are reporting a massive Israile army convoy heading for Gaza bigger than
enything seen since 2014 ! This looks serious ! The whole dam world picture is looking way
beyond serious !!!
kudos the exceptional nation in support of those other exceptional nations - ksa and
israel...
everyone else on the planet want to know when this horror will end...
Ahh, thats why. The Saudis are incompetent and vile, but trust the us to be
even more incompetent and even more vile and putrid.
This is horrible! I see it and can not really do much. It is a never ending story of innocent
people being killed off. But it does nurture a solid and hot hate to those people who are
architects of this. They feel safe and secured, but they are sitting on a volcano, and when it
goes, they will go too. Maybe a Gadaffi end.
Posted by: Den Lille Abe , Aug 9, 2018 4:42:25 PM |
13
Ahh, thats why. The Saudis are incompetent and vile, but trust the us to be even more
incompetent and even more vile and putrid.
This is horrible! I see it and can not really do much. It is a never ending story of innocent
people being killed off. But it does nurture a solid and hot hate to those people who are
architects of this. They feel safe and secured, but they are sitting on a volcano, and when
it goes, they will go too. Maybe a Gadaffi end.
Posted by: Den Lille Abe | Aug 9, 2018 4:42:25 PM |
13 /div
Hate is a hefty spice; it can make you blind to reason, it can make you oblivious to truth,
and make you inoculated against love. But hate controlled, is also a drug that is powerful
and useful, hate nurtured and fed can move mountains and empires. Hate is good in manageable
doses and wrecking in large ones. But take it at own risk.
They are claiming these are legitimate military targets, they targeted 'militants', the
Houthis use 'child soldiers', and use human shields. I bet Nikki Haley still thinks they are
the most wonderful people ever, on the front lines, fighting against the real monsters,
Iran.
What's that supposed to mean??? Trump is President! Aren't you excusing Trump by dredging
up Obama's shet? That excuse not to criticize Trump is getting real old.
@15 Nah, Christian, you are clearly wrong. Nikki would consider KSA to have the 2nd most
wonderful people ever, with the USA holding the Bronze Medal position. There is no doubt who
she holds as The Chosen People.
Don't let this stuff get normalised ! That's why they do it in plain site. It desensitises
the dumb public
i e trump supporters in u s, torys in uk. We should be feeling outrage and hatered towards
the people that
do this . Including our own governments.
No one is excusing Trump. The point that needs to be emphasized is that the War Party has
two wings: repubs and dems. Every last president since WWII has put the interests of imperial
conquest over the interests of the American people. Bill Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump
(as well as all of their wannabes Gore, Kerry, McCain HRC) were and are war mongers. They are
united in their lust for killing children (don't forget Madeline Albright with her "it was
worth it" over the 500,000 babies Clinton killed through sanctions).
This evening #switch off bbc is trending number one on Twitter and number four world wide!
Time we all pushback. on the net,on the streets, everywhere we can.no justice no peace !
Mark2 opines It desensitises the dumb public i e trump supporters
Are you serious? You should listen to my college educated colleagues (more than half with
professional degrees) most of whom are democrats and not one who voted for Trump. When it
comes to war against Syria, Libya, threats against Russia they are true blooded war mongers.
Actually worse than Trump supporters because they in general oppose those wars or war
threats.
Toivos @ 23
Dumb is as dumb does! They come in all shapes sizes and political party's . Trumps a greedy
pig puts children in cages and is a kkk racist don't make excuses he's a monster full
stop!
Don't give me eny of that o but, o but blah blah.!!!
It already is normalized. Go look at many of the comments on MSM (left and right) and so
called progressive sites. Hopefully those are all astroturfers but I suspect many are real
folks. Its luny tunes. They live in the Matrix and are blissfully unaware. Like something out
of 1984 during the 2 minute hate but its 24/7 , or maybe walking dead if the WD could type or
talk.
Another sterling example of how the US teaches its allies to be incompetent, vicious and
cowardly in targeting and killing those least able to fight back.
O Canada! Recently, I praised them as "New Trumpland". But why did they forget that silence
can be golden? Apparently, it dawned on PM that his party is called "liberal" and thus it
must make "liberal calls"*. But what cause should be selected? Massacres and starvation of
cute emaciated children? Conservative predecessor of current PM got ca. 7 G USD contract for
"vehicles" (motorized infantly?) for KSA, and Trudeau will not endanger precious Canadian
jobs. After leaving the task to the Foreign Minister (Freedland, Feminazi**), the plight of
women right activists in KSA with family members in Canada.
Canada cannot yield to Saudi Arabia's deranged overreaction
The regime's reaction to a couple of tweets is more about snuffing out its own country's
voices of dissent
Iyad El-Baghdadi, Amarnath Amarasingam · for CBC News · Posted: Aug 09, 2018
4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: August 9
If Canada folds, some fear that a line would be drawn in the sand, and behind that line,
petty Arab dictators could do what they want with their activist communities, without as much
as a complaint from the world. (Cliff Owen/Associated Press)
=====
Of course Canada cannot yield. For starters, it is unclear what would appease the irate
Crown Prince. Perhaps Trudeau and Friedland coming together to KSA to submit to a public
flogging. But judging from the titles I have seen, Canadians cherish "delicate balance", and
they though that an occasional complaint that is not 100% aligned with USA and principal
customers of Canadian products should be safe.
Agreed. When it comes to knowing the Truth of the Outlaw US Empire's overseas deeds, most
people are illiterate/ignorant. They hang the flag aside their front porch and feel
righteous. The only reason we don't have multitudes of people saluting whoever's POTUS and
chanting Sieg Heil is because in the back of their tiny minds they somehow know that's
incorrect behavior but don't know why. Some provided feedback on Michael Hudson's going
autobiographical saying his upbringing seemed unreal--faked--thus showing how little they
know of WW2 Home Front US history when people were much more informed and politically
savvy.
It seems safe to say that Animal Farm & 1984 have both put down
extensive roots within the Outlaw US Empire to the point where digging up and destroying
those weeds will cause major social damage. Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs is how
the saying goes. But a positive outcome isn't the only possibility.
We need to remember this' the about left or right ! That's just devide and rule. This about
the 1% killing off the 99%
Agend 21.what they are doing to Yemen people now they will do to you next.
The deliberate targeting of civilians is Outlaw US Empire policy since WW2 despite it
being a War Crime. Guernica was an outrage, but Powell had it covered up since spoke directly
to US actions since the paint dried in 1937. The School Bus was yet another of all too many
Guernicas that have occurred since. Someone mentioned desensitized. Yes, on an International
Scale. It was an act of Terror, but how many are describing it as such? BigLie Media? Not a
chance if they show/mention it at all.
I'm not sure we should generalize about Canadians. Trudeau is trying to satisfy his base
and presumably staying true to his own liberal convictions. But I've met Canadians who
dislike him intensely. They do not think gender politics, welcoming refugees, settling native
land claims, lecturing Saudi Arabia etc. is the best way to maintain a high standard of
living.
Israel demanded - and BBC changed its headline. In a headline, BBC claimed that "Israeli air
strikes 'kill pregnant woman and baby.'" After some time, BBC changed its title to "Gaza air
strikes 'kill woman and child' after rockets hit Israel https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250275
A good comment from HistoryHacker (Guardian web page), I thought I share it:
"Let's see: in 1913 the British grabbed Iranian oil and made it their property. Six
years later, Britain imposed another agreement and took over Iran's treasury and the army.
During the Second World War, Britain's requisitioning of food led to famine and widespread
disease. Shortly after that war, Iran's own efforts to establish its nascent democracy and
nationalize the oil industry were thwarted. And by whom? Eisenhower joined the systematic
British looting, and, sadly, by 1953, the blossoming Iranian democracy was completely
destroyed by the covert operation of the American CIA and British MI6, known as Operation
Ajax. In place of the democracy was installed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a US-British puppet, a
despot deeply hated by his own people.
America picked up the baton, and here's Trump going bat crazy!
What could Iranians possibly think?! What do you think?"
@36 I knew that PB. Excuse my inadequate attempt to emulate your tone.
But I think it's true that Canadians enjoy a high standard of living mainly because of
things like water, oil, minerals, wheat, lumber etc. and most prefer not to get involved in
Saudi Arabian politics.
I hope that Canada will finally lead heavy public condemnation of the Saudi-UAE coalition
murderous actions in Yemen. Canada has nothing to loose anymore, it is high time it take a
serious stand on the 3 years human rights abuse of the Yemenis.
It should indirectly send a dissaproval message to the USA on its complicity in these war
crimes...
Maybe it is time for Canada, to reinstate diplomatic relation with Iran to snub the Saudis
and the USA, but I am dreaming...
.
"But I think it's true that Canadians enjoy a high standard of living mainly because of
things like water, oil, minerals, wheat, lumber etc. "
Not quite. It's because of water, oil, minerals, wheat lumber, etc., AND they don't breed
like rodents.
India has plenty of resources - adjusting for the cold climate in Canada, probably about
as much as Canada, effectively. It's just that these resources don't go that far split up 1.4
billion ways and counting.
And Yemen? With very little water, and one of the highest fertility rates in the world,
what do you expect?
What to make of the new sanctions put in place by the State Dept against Russia?
What about those on Iran?
Are these implemented to generate WAR?
Whether it be against Russia, Iran or China, The US attitude is orchestrated by
Zion/Israel.
Why deal with the US when Israel is the culprit?
Wiping out Israel is the solution. Obliterating Israel will certainly ease
the World's woes.
Of course, targeted assassinations should be carried out.
Short of this, Netanyahu should be kept waiting for days whitout being able
to meet Putin. His ambassador should be expelled and the Russian Ambassador to Israel
recalled.
Sanction Israel in every way possible. Break the Gaza Siege. Wipe out Israel's
Navy. Down its jets over Lebanon. Kill its Jericho rockets at lift off.
There is also the documented presence of American forces and officers in the operations
room of the Saudi coalition....These guys have not been sent there by Obama...I guess....
But what most makes me feel sick is not that American commenters out there, well payed or
volunteer, insist after two years already on this cantinele, what takes me out of my nerves
is that the Russians insist...in throwing balls out with certain issues....
But what could have really happened? Just yesterday or the day before I was reading that
Israel and Hamas were in negotiations...From that to this...I wonder what could be the
breaking point...
Talks
were a ruse as usual . Supposedly, a cease fire was in place but was broken as reported
at the link. Ongoing protests against the "Nationality Law" continue and go unreported as
usual. The continuing murder of Gazans serves as cover.
@37, "But I think it's true that Canadians enjoy a high standard of living mainly because of
things like water, oil, minerals, wheat, lumber etc. and most prefer not to get involved in
Saudi Arabian politics."
As a lifelong Canuckistani, my view is that Canada is the world's largest mine - and it is
not mine.
@45 But I understand it's not as easy to get mining permits as it used to be. Lot of
environmentalists and first nations lawyers involved. Which is why Canadian mining companies
move to Africa.
the USA will perhaps suffer blowback, both at home and in many places 'strategic' to its
Empire, for generation or two to come, for all the horrible and savage war crimes perpetuated
by it and its allies on the poor people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia,
Palestine, and especially now Yemen, the poorest of the poor - the sorrows of Empire
The US provides the in-flight refueling that makes these bombing sorties possible. The "Five
Eyes" provides the surveillance that picks the targets, and the navigation to hit them.
KSA is doing precisely what the AZ Empire requires of it. Just as the British Royals and
their banker sponsors dictated over a century ago, so does the Empire direct these heinous
crimes today.
If the Saud Royals ever did go "rogue," they'd be taken out just as the AZ Empire has done
time and time again.
CarlD, the purpose of sanctions is to hurt the citizens of a country enough that they will
rise up and revolt against their ruling class.
The AZ Empire has been striving for complete global dominance for a long time, and that
means either destroying Russia and China or at least installing "friendly" governments.
Hence, sanctions, "trade wars," and infiltration to foment "color revolutions."
Pence's new Space Command is a blatant telltale that the twice-hacked and never-audited
Pentagon has a massive hemorrhage of funds and Trump will be demanding ANOTHER $40B budget
increase for Pentagon to paper over a huge Deep Purple Hole in the Bucket.
So Saudis sanction Canada but will still let the oil flow to them (2billion a year) and the
US sanctions Russia but will still buy space rockets from them , and they will still sell
them to us. Trade war with China but they still buy US Treasuries to finance US debt. British
owned BBC rents out their studios to RT to help Russia with their propaganda
Woodrow Wilson : "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me
privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and
manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized,
so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak
above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
Today some call them ruling or power elites, global elites for the most part. Elites is an
interesting word whose origins come from the french word for chosen and latin word for
elect.
1. Wealth from natural resources. This is a bit of mixed blessing, because with some
exceptions, mining is very capital intensive, so the profit margins are so-so, and job
creation is also so-so. Canada is blessed with nice mix of extracting industries,
agriculture, "normal" manufacturing, financial centers etc. They also have somewhat
reasonable spending in terms value for money in health and military sectors, saving ca. 10%
of GDP between the two compared with the less rational southern neighbor Perhaps this is
still short of 10%, but USA also wastes money and human resources on prison complex and other
inanities.
2. Liberal Canada. Domestically, I do not know enough, but "harmonizing with USA" could
please some conservatives while being too expensive to implement. On foreign policy they
stick to the worst of liberalism, not standing much for anything, even for their beloved
Vilna Ukrayina, although converting Ukraine to land of milk and honey with capable military
and a reasonable level of corruption is beyond capacity of any foreign power. But they
implemented what used to be totally unjustifiable insult, "feminazi". That said,
conservatives learned from Trump to raise mind boggling issue and gain in polls, lately, how
to stop hordes of "deplorables" crossing the border. I guess a cheapish solution would be to
create a network of recreational trails with very confusing mapping (even GPS) and totally
confusing signage, and plant some smilax = green briar or other thorny plants to impede
hiking according to compass directions. A note on GPS maps based on satellite pictures:
software has very hard time telling dead ends from actually passable trail connections.
3. Populist-progressive Canada of my dreams. Declare the conflicts with KSA and Trump to
be matters of national dignity, punish KSA by stopping delivery of military vehicles per
Harper's contract and purchases of oil, replace the latter with Iranian. Would Trump dare to
impose secondary sanctions, fine American companies in Canada.
Why is it that the Zionist media were up in arms every time White Helmets were digging Syrian
children out of rubble or dousing them with hoses?
Dozens of children were slaughtered in Yemen, and many more maimed and injured and
hundreds of thousands are being subjected to famine but there's only deafening silence on the
Zionist-run media.
Syrian children had propaganda value; Yemeni children have no value at all. Americans,
Zionists and Saudis are sick and depraved.
A little correction to Circe, Aug 9 11:18:38 PM. SELECTED Syrian children were newsworthy, a
recent massacre by ISIS in Sweida was newsworthy only as an example of a failure by "the
regime". An earlier example, when majority of people of Greater Aleppo lived in the western
part controlled by Damascus, "Aleppo" meant only the eastern part, controlled by the
"moderate" rebels, and victims of moderate massacres and shelling were totally un-newsworthy.
Natural resources drive 20 per cent of the economy -- and about 10 per cent of all the
jobs in Canada. These natural resources also help Canada attract manufacturing and value
added business that utilize domestically produced metals, fuel and timber (as opposed to more
expensive imports) Profit motive is overstated, large companies are focused more on income
growth and market share. The jobs that are produced are good paying jobs as well
I'd rather have more good paying capital intensive industries than low pay labour
intensive service and manufacturing industries that may generate more profits but which end
up mostly in CEO and top managements bank accounts
Frankly, the mystery is why America has not invaded Canada and taken over since we last
tried in 1812. :>)
Mark2 @ 31 said:"We need to remember this' the about left or right ! That's just devide and
rule. This about the 1% killing off the 99% "
Yep, bottom line statement. From austerity to all neoliberal policies, and the world-wide
wars now going on, are basically nothing more than class warfare directed at the 99% to
enrich the already rich.
Frankly, the mystery is why America has not invaded Canada and taken over since we last tried
in 1812. :>)
Posted by: Pft | Aug 10, 2018 12:06:44 AM | 61
Absorbing Canada could undermine political balance in USA leading to such calamities like
socialized medicine, legal marijuana etc. Keeping them on Puerto Rico status is not tenable
given the ethnic composition -- too many English speaking whites. If we could just annex
Alberta...
Bang on cue, TG @ 39 uses a comment about Canada's standard of living (brought about in part
by its governments' spending on transport infrastructure - in particular, transcontinental
railways - that stimulated job growth and enabled the agricultural and manufactured wealth of
the provinces to be spread across the nation and to be exported overseas) to push a racist
opinion about how poor countries are at fault for being poor because their people don't have
access to birth control measures made in rich countries.
...
..for all the horrible and savage war crimes perpetuated by it and its allies on the poor
people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Palestine, and especially now Yemen, the
poorest of the poor - the sorrows of Empire.
Posted by: michaelj72 | Aug 9, 2018 9:12:39 PM | 47
White man's burden...
A phrase used to justify European imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries; it is the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The phrase implies that imperialism
was motivated by a high-minded desire of whites to uplift people of color.
Part of the targeting assurance happens by looking at unexpected "gaps" in electronic
communication signals. When there is a lot of cellphone communication noise" where is is
suddenly absent, despite presence of humans, indicated an interesting anomaly for target
acquisitions.
To confuse the enemy, these "silent spots" should be mirrored in different locations. They
counter The selectief bias.
During WWII, RAF lost planes to German AAA. They wondered where armor them up?
Counterintuitively, the mathematician Abraham Wald explained that, if a plane makes it back
safely despite a bunch of bullet holes in its wings, it means that bullet holes in the wings
aren't very dangerous.
Where you really need the armor, are the areas that, on average, don't have any bullet
holes.
Why? Because planes with bullet holes in those places never made it back. That's why you
don't see any bullet holes there on the ones that do return.
Posted by: CarlD @ 51 "And who is behind all of this?"
Wouldn't you agree that the PTSB are, as Paul Simon wrote, A Loose Affiliation of
Billionaires?
The way I see it, the pinnacle of the pyramid are members of the dynasties that have
controlled the finance system for centuries. Rothschilds, Warburgs, the Vatican, the European
Royal Families and such. They profit off of everything, since all revenues generated by all
industries pass through their sticky fingers, in addition to their Central Banking cabal that
almost every country on earth is fully beholden to.
They are not a monolith, in that they compete with one another, but they all share
interest in keeping this system in place.
Then, at the next level down there are the members of the Nouveau Riche, like the
Rockefellers and Carneigies whose wealth was only generated a couple generations ago, and the
even newer rich who do not have dynastic power (yet), but do wield enough wealth to influence
the actions of the Empire, like the MIC "Daddy Warbucks" and tech industry newcomers.
And of course, there are the upper-level managers of Empire like Kissinger, Brzezenski,
Soros, etc.
We have seen images of dead children of warfare before. I am not sure if it helps the antiwar
cause. I will have to go read Susan Sontag's "The Pain of Others." In any case, thanks for
posting it, b.
Will DJT order a retaliatory strike on KSA after being so moved by these photos like he
was when the children of the fake gas attacks in Syria were being paraded around on the msm?
I think not. Sad!
Posted by: Pft | Aug 10, 2018 12:06:44 AM | 61:
"Frankly, the mystery is why America has not invaded Canada and taken over since we last
tried in 1812. :>)"
Canada and the US are both members of the Five Eyes. Clearly, their roles in the great
chessboard are different. But the way I see it, the nation-states are fictions that serve the
charade of representative democratic self-rule.
"... Although he was a brilliant orator, Hitler's failures are too innumerable to list. [Link] He was certainly a failure as a painter and his General staff considered him an incompetent military strategist (fortunately for the Allies.) However, Hitler was merely the right man at the right time and place to achieve power. As Ross explains, Hitler was , "the result of a large protest movement colliding with complex patterns of elite self-interest, in a culture increasingly prone to aggressive mythmaking and irrationality." That sounds all too close to home, doesn't it? ..."
"... Enter Donald Trump; the right man at the right time and place. He's a brute, a bully, and a demagogue, but he understands the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times and he adjusts his message to appeal to his base. ..."
"... I have known many bullies; on the playground and in the boardroom. A bully may achieve short-term gain, but for long-term pain. It is very easy to destroy corporate culture, but extremely difficult, if not impossible, to mend a toxic workplace after the bully was dismissed. Now, extrapolate this to the world under Donald Trump. ..."
"... After his first meeting with Trump, he wrote that Trump "saw every unknown person as a threat and that his first instinct was to annihilate that threat. 'He's like a velociraptor. He has to be boss, and if you don't show him deference he kills you.'" ..."
"... If everything is so awesome, why are Americans drinking themselves to death in record numbers?" [Link] ..."
We're told that great leaders make history. Like so much of what we are taught, that's a
load of bunk. Yes, great leaders make it into the history books, but they do not make history.
You make history. I make history. All we dirt people together make history. Government-run
schools don't teach us this because it makes us easier to control.
The "Great Man Theory" [Link] tells us that history can be
largely explained by the impact of great leaders. This theory was popularized in the 1800's by
the historian and social commentator Thomas Carlyle [Link] The Great Man Theory downplays the
importance of economic and practical explanations. It is an appealing theory because its
simplicity offers the path of least resistance. That should ring an alarm.
Herbert Spencer [Link] forcefully disagreed with the "Great
Man Theory." He believed that great leaders were merely products of their social environment.
"Before he can remake his society, his society must make him." Tolstoy went so far as to call
great leaders "history's slaves." However, this middle ground still misses the mark.
At the other extreme is "history from below" [Link] aka 'the people's history.'
"History from below" takes the perspective of common people rather than leaders. It emphasizes
the daily life of ordinary people that develop opinions and trends " as opposed to great people
introducing ideas or initiating events." Unfortunately, this too is only half the equation, and
it is no surprise that it appeals to Leftist and Marxist agendas.
Having studied politics and history ever since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963,
I determined that although history is partly the environments and individuals shaping each
other reciprocally, it is more than that. It is you and I who make history with every decision
we make, every dollar we spend, everything we learn, every vote we cast and every opinion we
voice. It's even what we don't do. It is mostly organic and cannot easily be explained in a
simple, linear fashion the way the aforementioned political philosophers tried.
Great leaders are merely the right person at the right time and place. However, they do not
lead so much as follow from the front. They stick their finger in the air to see which way the
wind blows. They may be brutes, bullies or demagogues, but they are sensitive enough to
understand the zeitgeist , the spirit of the times and so, they adjust their message
accordingly.
That is one reason Jimmy Carter was a failed President. He was a nice guy, but he did not
get an accurate reading of the times. Instead, he acted on the wishful thinking that is
characteristic of liberals.
One of the significant shortcomings of many political philosophers is their ignorance of
human nature. That is why Collectivism in all its forms appeals to the downtrodden. "Share and
share alike" is a beautiful ideal so long as you get other people's stuff, but the flip side of
the coin is not quite so appealing.
I heard a radio interview with a self-avowed Communist:
"So do you believe in 'share and share alike?"
"Yes, I do."
"And, if you had more than one house, you'd give them away and keep just one for
yourself?"
"Yes. I would."
"And, if you had more than one vehicle, you'd give them away and keep just one for
yourself?"
"Yes, I would."
"And, if you had more than one shirt "
"Whoa, wait a minute! I have more than one shirt."
I can't remember the rest of the interview as I was laughing too hard.
The Great Man Theory is one extreme, its critics are somewhere in the middle and 'the
history of the people' is at the other end of the spectrum. Despite this, we are still
fascinated by great leaders. That is human nature. Whether we are slaves at heart, or lack
self-confidence or some other explanation is endlessly debatable. However, the fact remains
that we are fascinated by great leaders and our inability to understand them further disproves
the accepted theories.
Adolph Hitler is the ultimate example of our fascination with a great man. According to Alex
Ross's "The Hitler Vortex," [Link]
tens of thousands of books have been written about Hitler. "Books have been written about
Hitler's youth, his years in Vienna and Munich, his service in the First World War, his
assumption of power, his library, his taste in art, his love of film, his relations with women,
and his predilections in interior design ('Hitler at Home')."
Tens of thousands of books failed to explain Hitler. Ross, too, does no better when he
writes, "What set Hitler apart from most authoritarian figures in history was his conception of
himself as an artist-genius who used politics as his métier. It is a mistake to call him
a failed artist; for him, politics and war were a continuation of art by other means." WTF? Are
we to believe Hitler was simply an artist who used the world as his canvas? Equally pointless
is the notion that, "Hitler debased the Romantic cult of genius to incarnate himself as a
transcendent leader hovering above the fray."
Although he was a brilliant orator, Hitler's failures are too innumerable to list.
[Link] He
was certainly a failure as a painter and his General staff considered him an incompetent
military strategist (fortunately for the Allies.) However, Hitler was merely the right man at
the right time and place to achieve power. As Ross explains, Hitler was , "the result of a
large protest movement colliding with complex patterns of elite self-interest, in a culture
increasingly prone to aggressive mythmaking and irrationality." That sounds all too close to
home, doesn't it?
Enter Donald Trump; the right man at the right time and place. He's a brute, a bully, and a
demagogue, but he understands the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times and he adjusts his message
to appeal to his base.
I have known many bullies; on the playground and in the boardroom. A bully may achieve
short-term gain, but for long-term pain. It is very easy to destroy corporate culture, but
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to mend a toxic workplace after the bully was
dismissed. Now, extrapolate this to the world under Donald Trump.
John Feeley is the former U.S. Ambassador to Panama portrayed in The New Yorker magazine
article "The Diplomat Who Quit the Trump Administration." [Link]After his first meeting with Trump, he wrote that Trump "saw every unknown person as a threat
and that his first instinct was to annihilate that threat. 'He's like a velociraptor. He has to
be boss, and if you don't show him deference he kills you.'"
Feeley fears that "the country was embracing an attitude that was profoundly inimical to
diplomacy 'If we do that we will become weaker and less prosperous.'" He is correct in that
regard. China is building a large, new embassy at the mouth of the Panama Canal visible to
every ship "as they enter a waterway that once symbolized the global influence of the United
States."
Feeley is also correct in warning that the Trump administration's gutting the diplomatic
corps will have negative repercussions. Throughout Latin America, leftist leaders are in
retreat, and popular movements reject corrupt governance. Yet, America is losing "the greatest
opportunity to recoup the moral high ground that we have had in decades." Instead, the U.S. is
abandoning the region to China. Feeley calls it "a self-inflicted Pearl Harbor."
China is replacing U.S. influence in Latin America and Chinese banks "provided more than a
hundred and fifty billion dollars in loan commitments to the region In less than two decades,
trade between China and Latin America has increased twenty-seven-fold." Although that began
long before Trump, "We're not just walking off the field. We're taking the ball and throwing a
finger at the rest of the world."
Feeley says that he felt betrayed by what he regarded as "the traditional core values of the
United States." Sorry, Feeley, but America lost its core values long before Trump was elected.
Trump is not the cause; he is the symptom, the result of the declining American Empire.
Hunters know that one of the most dangerous animals is a wounded one. The same is correct
about failing empires because they are a danger not only to others but to their own citizens as
well. The elites are running out the clock in order to loot as much as they can before it hits
the fan.
We dirt people will continue to suffer from stagnant wage growth while the so-called
increase in national wealth goes to a tiny minority.
[link]
Moreover, nobody wins a trade war that raises consumer prices even if Trump eventually
triumphs.
The economy staggers under the weight of phony wars, fake finances, fake GDP, fake CPI, fake
employment, fake pensions and fake everything.
[Link] The national debt increases $1 trillion every year, consumer debt is at an all-time
high
[Link] while the tax cuts benefit only the ultra-wealthy. Also, the fake news tells us
everything is wonderful. Don't believe it. "If everything is so awesome, why are Americans
drinking themselves to death in record numbers?"
[Link]
It is said that every few generations, money returns to its rightful owners. That is what's
happening now.
America emerged relatively unscathed from the Second World War whereas many other countries
were bombed back into the Stone Age. The Marshal Plan helped rebuild countries that were to
become both America's future customers and its competitors. America's busy factories
transformed from war production to consumer goods, the demand for which was created by "the
Father of Spin" Edward Bernays' marketing propaganda. [Link]
As well, the U.S. stole the gold that the Nazis had stolen from others, [Link]
and that wealth in addition to robust, productive capacity temporarily propelled the U.S. far
ahead of other nations. However, it would not last. Eventually, the undeserved prosperity of
the 1950's and '60's began to run out of steam as other nations rebuilt and competed with the
U.S. President Nixon defaulting on the dollar in 1971 by "closing the gold window" signaled the
end of America's good times . The subsequent debt creation now unconstricted by a gold basis
helped to cushion the blow for several decades, but wealth was now flowing to Asia along with
factory jobs.
For 5,000 years, China was a world superpower with only a short, two-century hiatus that is
now ending as China again emerges as an economic superpower. Such a massive shift in wealth
cannot be attributed to either leadership or the people below. It is a painful reversion to the
mean. All the finger-pointing and wailing and gnashing of teeth not even bombastic Trump and
his tariffs can stem the tide and make America great again as money continues to flow back to
its rightful owners.
The USA is a declining, bankrupt, warmongering police state and most of its indoctrinated
citizens think they live in a free, peaceful country.
China is a corrupt police state, but most of its citizens know it.
We have met the enemy, and he is us. The future awaits.
"... Coalition attacks on Yemeni markets are unfortunately all too common. The Saudis and their allies know they can strike civilian targets with impunity because the Western governments that arm and support them never call them out for what they do. ..."
There was another Saudi coalition airstrike on a
crowded market in northern Yemen today. Dozens of civilians have been killed and dozens more
injured. Many of the dead and injured were children whose school bus was hit in the attack:
Coalition attacks on Yemeni
markets are unfortunately all too common. The Saudis and their allies know they can strike
civilian targets with impunity because the Western governments that arm and support them never
call them out for what they do. The U.S. continues to arm and refuel coalition planes
despite ample evidence that the coalition has been deliberately attacking civilian targets. At
the very least, the coalition hits civilian targets with such regularity that they are
ignoring whatever
procedures they are supposed to be following to prevent that. The weapons that the U.S.,
Britain, and other arms suppliers provide them are being used to slaughter wedding-goers,
hospital patients, and schoolchildren, and U.S. refueling of coalition planes allows them to
carry out more of these attacks than they otherwise could. Today's attack ranks as one of the
worst.
Saada has come under some of the most intense attacks from the coalition bombing campaign.
The coalition illegally
declared the entire area a military target three years ago, and ever since they have been
blowing up
homes ,
markets ,
schools ,
water treatment systems, and
hospitals without any regard for the innocent civilians that are killed and injured.
The official U.S. line on support for the war is that even more civilians would be killed if
the U.S. weren't supporting the coalition. Our government has never provided any evidence to
support this, and the record shows that civilian casualties from Saudi coalition airstrikes
have
increased over the last year. The Saudis and their allies either don't listen to any of the
advice they're receiving, or they know they won't pay any price for ignoring it. As long as the
U.S. arms and refuels coalition planes while they slaughter Yemeni civilians in attacks like
this one, our government is implicated in the war crimes enabled by our unstinting military
assistance. Congress can and must halt that assistance immediately.
Update: CNN reports on the
aftermath of the airstrike:
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a hospital it supports in
Saada had received 29 dead bodies of "mainly children" under 15 years of age, and 40 injured,
including 30 children.
"(The hospital) is very busy. They've been receiving wounded and dead since the morning
and it is non-stop ," ICRC head of communications and spokesperson Mirella Hodeib told
CNN.
Second Update: The Associated Press
reports that the death toll stands at 43 with another 63 injured.
Third Update: The death toll has reportedly risen to 50 . 77 were
injured.
Of course I have no right to surprise or shock. They've already targeted hospitals,
foreign doctors and nurses, first responders, wedding parties, and funerals.
School buses.
We used to make movies about killing people who do things like this. Now we help them do
it.
The repetitive frequency and intensity of these attacks on hospitals, schools, markets and
other civilian gatherings, coupled with the indifference of the guilty national governments
and their international enablers, signals that the world and human species is passing through
a mass psychosis. This psychosis is playing itself out at all levels. Fascism, which is very
current as a national psychology, is generally speaking, a coping strategy for dealing with
nasty chaos. This coping strategy is designed around generating even more chaos, since that
is a familiar and therefore more comfortable pattern of behavior; and that does provide a
delusion of stability. A good example would be the sanctions just declared by the Trump
Administration on Iranian commerce. In an intrinsically connected global market, these
sanctions are so thorough that they qualify as a blockade, within a contingency plan for
greater global conflict. But those who destroy hospitals, schools, school buses and public
celebrations are not, otherwise, forward looking nice people. We are descending into a nasty
fascist war psychosis. Just shake it. Live. Long and well.
"even more civilians would be killed if the U.S. weren't supporting the coalition"
If we did not hand them satellite images, did not service, repair and refuel their planes,
and did not sell them the bombs, then they would . kill more civilians how? They could not
even reach their targets, let alone drop explosives they do not have.
What Would Mohammad Do? Buy bombs from the Russians? Who have better quality control and
fewer duds, hence more victims?
What Would Mohammad Do? Get the UAE to hire Blackwater to poison the wells across
Yemen?
How exactly do the profiteers in our country, that get counted out blood money for every
single Yemeni killed, propose that the Saudis and Emiratis would make this worse?
But, good to know that our "smart" and "precise" munitions can still hit a school bus.
Made In America!
The coverage in the media has been predictably cowardly and contemptible in the aftermath of
this story. I read articles from CNN and MSNBC and they were variations on "school bus
bombed", in the passive tense – with no mention of who did it or who is supporting them
in the headline, ad if the bombings were natural disasters.
Fox, predictably, was even worse and led with "Biblical relics endangered by war", which
speaks volumes about the presumed priorities of their viewership.
This, and not anything to do with red meat domestic politics, is the worst media
malpractice of our time. "Stop directly helping the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks drop
bombs on school children" should be the absolute easiest possible moral issue for our media
to take a stand on and yet they treat it like it's radioactive.
Speaking as someone who considers themselves a liberal I am infuriated by the Democrats
response. How can the party leadership not see that if they keep flogging the horse of
Russian trolls and shrugging their shoulders over American given (not sold – *given*)
bombs being dropped on schools and hospitals, no one is ever going to take the supposed
Democratic anti-war platform seriously again. The Republicans can afford to be tarde by
association with these atrocities. The Democrats can't.
I wonder how many Democrats are in the same boat as me right now: I may not like Trump or
the Christian conservatives but fights over the Supreme Court or coal plants or a healthcare
law look terribly petty compared to the apparent decision by Saudi Arabia to kill literally
millions. For the first time in my life I'm seriously wishing there was a third-party
candidate I could support and the congressional elections just so I could send a message on
this.
@Hunter C
Vote Libertarian Party. You won't agree with a lot of their domestic agenda, but they're not
going to win, so it doesn't matter. The noninterventionist foreign policy is your message.
"Following an attack this morning on a bus driving children in Dahyan Market, northern
Saada, (an ICRC-supported) hospital has received dozens of dead and wounded," the
organisation said on Twitter without giving more details.
In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, the coalition called the strike
a "legitimate military action"
The Comment section:
"The US provides the in-flight refueling that makes these bombing sorties possible. The
"Five Eyes" provides the surveillance that picks the targets, and the navigation to hit
them.
KSA is doing precisely what the AZ Empire requires of it. Just as the British Royals and
their banker sponsors dictated over a century ago, so does the Empire direct these heinous
crimes today.
If the Saud Royals ever did go "rogue," they'd be taken out just as the AZ [American
Zionist] Empire has done time and time again."
"There is also the documented presence of American forces and officers in the operations room
of the Saudi coalition." https://twitter.com/abcdaee198/status/1027649243568386055
"Why is it that the Zionist media were up in arms every time White Helmets were digging
Syrian children out of rubble or dousing them with hoses? Dozens of children were slaughtered
in Yemen, and many more maimed and injured and hundreds of thousands are being subjected to
famine but there's only deafening silence on the Zionist-run media."
"Imagine the reaction if the Russians or Syrians had blown up a busload of kids."
-- On the same topic: Israel demanded -- and BBC changed its headline. In a headline, BBC
claimed that "Israeli air strikes 'kill pregnant woman and baby.'" After some time, BBC
changed its title to "Gaza air strikes 'kill woman and child' after rockets hit Israel:
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250275
Obama spoke about mothers sending their children to school in his acceptance speech for
the
Nobel Peace Prize.
He contrasted reality vs hope
and we learned which one he would deliver.
Obama in Oslo, December 10, 2009,:
"Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty
still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what
few coins she has to send that child to school
-- because she believes that
a cruel world still
has a place for that child's dreams.
Let us live by their example.
We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us,
and still strive for justice .
We can admit the intractability of deprivation,
and still strive for dignity.
Clear-eyed,
we can understand that there will be war,
and still strive for peace.
We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that's the
hope
of all the world; and at this moment of challenge,
that must be our work here on Earth.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
One week later Obama shredded dozens of women and children in Yemen
and covered it up.
I've written many times Obama was Bush II - BUT F...KING TRUMP IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE NOW!
So why are you giving us the ancient history deflection???????????
The pic provides an example of how the Outlaw US Empire implements its global population
control policy--all bombs, no kids. Twitterverse is madder than a wet hen. One went to
Trump's twitter to ask where's his outrage over these kid's real deaths, not the staged ones
he launched missiles at Syria over. It deserves to be retweeted millions of times.
Unfortunately, sadists are incapable of being shamed; they just grin at such pics while
congratulating themselves. Betcha the Trump dossier got it backwards--It was Trump who pissed
all over the Russian women.
Almasdarnews. Com. Are reporting a massive Israile army convoy heading for Gaza bigger than
enything seen since 2014 ! This looks serious ! The whole dam world picture is looking way
beyond serious !!!
kudos the exceptional nation in support of those other exceptional nations - ksa and
israel...
everyone else on the planet want to know when this horror will end...
Ahh, thats why. The Saudis are incompetent and vile, but trust the us to be
even more incompetent and even more vile and putrid.
This is horrible! I see it and can not really do much. It is a never ending story of innocent
people being killed off. But it does nurture a solid and hot hate to those people who are
architects of this. They feel safe and secured, but they are sitting on a volcano, and when it
goes, they will go too. Maybe a Gadaffi end.
Posted by: Den Lille Abe , Aug 9, 2018 4:42:25 PM |
13
Ahh, thats why. The Saudis are incompetent and vile, but trust the us to be even more
incompetent and even more vile and putrid.
This is horrible! I see it and can not really do much. It is a never ending story of innocent
people being killed off. But it does nurture a solid and hot hate to those people who are
architects of this. They feel safe and secured, but they are sitting on a volcano, and when
it goes, they will go too. Maybe a Gadaffi end.
Posted by: Den Lille Abe | Aug 9, 2018 4:42:25 PM |
13 /div
Hate is a hefty spice; it can make you blind to reason, it can make you oblivious to truth,
and make you inoculated against love. But hate controlled, is also a drug that is powerful
and useful, hate nurtured and fed can move mountains and empires. Hate is good in manageable
doses and wrecking in large ones. But take it at own risk.
They are claiming these are legitimate military targets, they targeted 'militants', the
Houthis use 'child soldiers', and use human shields. I bet Nikki Haley still thinks they are
the most wonderful people ever, on the front lines, fighting against the real monsters,
Iran.
What's that supposed to mean??? Trump is President! Aren't you excusing Trump by dredging
up Obama's shet? That excuse not to criticize Trump is getting real old.
@15 Nah, Christian, you are clearly wrong. Nikki would consider KSA to have the 2nd most
wonderful people ever, with the USA holding the Bronze Medal position. There is no doubt who
she holds as The Chosen People.
Don't let this stuff get normalised ! That's why they do it in plain site. It desensitises
the dumb public
i e trump supporters in u s, torys in uk. We should be feeling outrage and hatered towards
the people that
do this . Including our own governments.
No one is excusing Trump. The point that needs to be emphasized is that the War Party has
two wings: repubs and dems. Every last president since WWII has put the interests of imperial
conquest over the interests of the American people. Bill Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump
(as well as all of their wannabes Gore, Kerry, McCain HRC) were and are war mongers. They are
united in their lust for killing children (don't forget Madeline Albright with her "it was
worth it" over the 500,000 babies Clinton killed through sanctions).
This evening #switch off bbc is trending number one on Twitter and number four world wide!
Time we all pushback. on the net,on the streets, everywhere we can.no justice no peace !
Mark2 opines It desensitises the dumb public i e trump supporters
Are you serious? You should listen to my college educated colleagues (more than half with
professional degrees) most of whom are democrats and not one who voted for Trump. When it
comes to war against Syria, Libya, threats against Russia they are true blooded war mongers.
Actually worse than Trump supporters because they in general oppose those wars or war
threats.
Toivos @ 23
Dumb is as dumb does! They come in all shapes sizes and political party's . Trumps a greedy
pig puts children in cages and is a kkk racist don't make excuses he's a monster full
stop!
Don't give me eny of that o but, o but blah blah.!!!
It already is normalized. Go look at many of the comments on MSM (left and right) and so
called progressive sites. Hopefully those are all astroturfers but I suspect many are real
folks. Its luny tunes. They live in the Matrix and are blissfully unaware. Like something out
of 1984 during the 2 minute hate but its 24/7 , or maybe walking dead if the WD could type or
talk.
Another sterling example of how the US teaches its allies to be incompetent, vicious and
cowardly in targeting and killing those least able to fight back.
O Canada! Recently, I praised them as "New Trumpland". But why did they forget that silence
can be golden? Apparently, it dawned on PM that his party is called "liberal" and thus it
must make "liberal calls"*. But what cause should be selected? Massacres and starvation of
cute emaciated children? Conservative predecessor of current PM got ca. 7 G USD contract for
"vehicles" (motorized infantly?) for KSA, and Trudeau will not endanger precious Canadian
jobs. After leaving the task to the Foreign Minister (Freedland, Feminazi**), the plight of
women right activists in KSA with family members in Canada.
Canada cannot yield to Saudi Arabia's deranged overreaction
The regime's reaction to a couple of tweets is more about snuffing out its own country's
voices of dissent
Iyad El-Baghdadi, Amarnath Amarasingam · for CBC News · Posted: Aug 09, 2018
4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: August 9
If Canada folds, some fear that a line would be drawn in the sand, and behind that line,
petty Arab dictators could do what they want with their activist communities, without as much
as a complaint from the world. (Cliff Owen/Associated Press)
=====
Of course Canada cannot yield. For starters, it is unclear what would appease the irate
Crown Prince. Perhaps Trudeau and Friedland coming together to KSA to submit to a public
flogging. But judging from the titles I have seen, Canadians cherish "delicate balance", and
they though that an occasional complaint that is not 100% aligned with USA and principal
customers of Canadian products should be safe.
Agreed. When it comes to knowing the Truth of the Outlaw US Empire's overseas deeds, most
people are illiterate/ignorant. They hang the flag aside their front porch and feel
righteous. The only reason we don't have multitudes of people saluting whoever's POTUS and
chanting Sieg Heil is because in the back of their tiny minds they somehow know that's
incorrect behavior but don't know why. Some provided feedback on Michael Hudson's going
autobiographical saying his upbringing seemed unreal--faked--thus showing how little they
know of WW2 Home Front US history when people were much more informed and politically
savvy.
It seems safe to say that Animal Farm & 1984 have both put down
extensive roots within the Outlaw US Empire to the point where digging up and destroying
those weeds will cause major social damage. Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs is how
the saying goes. But a positive outcome isn't the only possibility.
We need to remember this' the about left or right ! That's just devide and rule. This about
the 1% killing off the 99%
Agend 21.what they are doing to Yemen people now they will do to you next.
The deliberate targeting of civilians is Outlaw US Empire policy since WW2 despite it
being a War Crime. Guernica was an outrage, but Powell had it covered up since spoke directly
to US actions since the paint dried in 1937. The School Bus was yet another of all too many
Guernicas that have occurred since. Someone mentioned desensitized. Yes, on an International
Scale. It was an act of Terror, but how many are describing it as such? BigLie Media? Not a
chance if they show/mention it at all.
I'm not sure we should generalize about Canadians. Trudeau is trying to satisfy his base
and presumably staying true to his own liberal convictions. But I've met Canadians who
dislike him intensely. They do not think gender politics, welcoming refugees, settling native
land claims, lecturing Saudi Arabia etc. is the best way to maintain a high standard of
living.
Israel demanded - and BBC changed its headline. In a headline, BBC claimed that "Israeli air
strikes 'kill pregnant woman and baby.'" After some time, BBC changed its title to "Gaza air
strikes 'kill woman and child' after rockets hit Israel https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250275
A good comment from HistoryHacker (Guardian web page), I thought I share it:
"Let's see: in 1913 the British grabbed Iranian oil and made it their property. Six
years later, Britain imposed another agreement and took over Iran's treasury and the army.
During the Second World War, Britain's requisitioning of food led to famine and widespread
disease. Shortly after that war, Iran's own efforts to establish its nascent democracy and
nationalize the oil industry were thwarted. And by whom? Eisenhower joined the systematic
British looting, and, sadly, by 1953, the blossoming Iranian democracy was completely
destroyed by the covert operation of the American CIA and British MI6, known as Operation
Ajax. In place of the democracy was installed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a US-British puppet, a
despot deeply hated by his own people.
America picked up the baton, and here's Trump going bat crazy!
What could Iranians possibly think?! What do you think?"
@36 I knew that PB. Excuse my inadequate attempt to emulate your tone.
But I think it's true that Canadians enjoy a high standard of living mainly because of
things like water, oil, minerals, wheat, lumber etc. and most prefer not to get involved in
Saudi Arabian politics.
I hope that Canada will finally lead heavy public condemnation of the Saudi-UAE coalition
murderous actions in Yemen. Canada has nothing to loose anymore, it is high time it take a
serious stand on the 3 years human rights abuse of the Yemenis.
It should indirectly send a dissaproval message to the USA on its complicity in these war
crimes...
Maybe it is time for Canada, to reinstate diplomatic relation with Iran to snub the Saudis
and the USA, but I am dreaming...
.
"But I think it's true that Canadians enjoy a high standard of living mainly because of
things like water, oil, minerals, wheat, lumber etc. "
Not quite. It's because of water, oil, minerals, wheat lumber, etc., AND they don't breed
like rodents.
India has plenty of resources - adjusting for the cold climate in Canada, probably about
as much as Canada, effectively. It's just that these resources don't go that far split up 1.4
billion ways and counting.
And Yemen? With very little water, and one of the highest fertility rates in the world,
what do you expect?
What to make of the new sanctions put in place by the State Dept against Russia?
What about those on Iran?
Are these implemented to generate WAR?
Whether it be against Russia, Iran or China, The US attitude is orchestrated by
Zion/Israel.
Why deal with the US when Israel is the culprit?
Wiping out Israel is the solution. Obliterating Israel will certainly ease
the World's woes.
Of course, targeted assassinations should be carried out.
Short of this, Netanyahu should be kept waiting for days whitout being able
to meet Putin. His ambassador should be expelled and the Russian Ambassador to Israel
recalled.
Sanction Israel in every way possible. Break the Gaza Siege. Wipe out Israel's
Navy. Down its jets over Lebanon. Kill its Jericho rockets at lift off.
There is also the documented presence of American forces and officers in the operations
room of the Saudi coalition....These guys have not been sent there by Obama...I guess....
But what most makes me feel sick is not that American commenters out there, well payed or
volunteer, insist after two years already on this cantinele, what takes me out of my nerves
is that the Russians insist...in throwing balls out with certain issues....
But what could have really happened? Just yesterday or the day before I was reading that
Israel and Hamas were in negotiations...From that to this...I wonder what could be the
breaking point...
Talks
were a ruse as usual . Supposedly, a cease fire was in place but was broken as reported
at the link. Ongoing protests against the "Nationality Law" continue and go unreported as
usual. The continuing murder of Gazans serves as cover.
@37, "But I think it's true that Canadians enjoy a high standard of living mainly because of
things like water, oil, minerals, wheat, lumber etc. and most prefer not to get involved in
Saudi Arabian politics."
As a lifelong Canuckistani, my view is that Canada is the world's largest mine - and it is
not mine.
@45 But I understand it's not as easy to get mining permits as it used to be. Lot of
environmentalists and first nations lawyers involved. Which is why Canadian mining companies
move to Africa.
the USA will perhaps suffer blowback, both at home and in many places 'strategic' to its
Empire, for generation or two to come, for all the horrible and savage war crimes perpetuated
by it and its allies on the poor people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia,
Palestine, and especially now Yemen, the poorest of the poor - the sorrows of Empire
The US provides the in-flight refueling that makes these bombing sorties possible. The "Five
Eyes" provides the surveillance that picks the targets, and the navigation to hit them.
KSA is doing precisely what the AZ Empire requires of it. Just as the British Royals and
their banker sponsors dictated over a century ago, so does the Empire direct these heinous
crimes today.
If the Saud Royals ever did go "rogue," they'd be taken out just as the AZ Empire has done
time and time again.
CarlD, the purpose of sanctions is to hurt the citizens of a country enough that they will
rise up and revolt against their ruling class.
The AZ Empire has been striving for complete global dominance for a long time, and that
means either destroying Russia and China or at least installing "friendly" governments.
Hence, sanctions, "trade wars," and infiltration to foment "color revolutions."
Pence's new Space Command is a blatant telltale that the twice-hacked and never-audited
Pentagon has a massive hemorrhage of funds and Trump will be demanding ANOTHER $40B budget
increase for Pentagon to paper over a huge Deep Purple Hole in the Bucket.
So Saudis sanction Canada but will still let the oil flow to them (2billion a year) and the
US sanctions Russia but will still buy space rockets from them , and they will still sell
them to us. Trade war with China but they still buy US Treasuries to finance US debt. British
owned BBC rents out their studios to RT to help Russia with their propaganda
Woodrow Wilson : "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me
privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and
manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized,
so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak
above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
Today some call them ruling or power elites, global elites for the most part. Elites is an
interesting word whose origins come from the french word for chosen and latin word for
elect.
1. Wealth from natural resources. This is a bit of mixed blessing, because with some
exceptions, mining is very capital intensive, so the profit margins are so-so, and job
creation is also so-so. Canada is blessed with nice mix of extracting industries,
agriculture, "normal" manufacturing, financial centers etc. They also have somewhat
reasonable spending in terms value for money in health and military sectors, saving ca. 10%
of GDP between the two compared with the less rational southern neighbor Perhaps this is
still short of 10%, but USA also wastes money and human resources on prison complex and other
inanities.
2. Liberal Canada. Domestically, I do not know enough, but "harmonizing with USA" could
please some conservatives while being too expensive to implement. On foreign policy they
stick to the worst of liberalism, not standing much for anything, even for their beloved
Vilna Ukrayina, although converting Ukraine to land of milk and honey with capable military
and a reasonable level of corruption is beyond capacity of any foreign power. But they
implemented what used to be totally unjustifiable insult, "feminazi". That said,
conservatives learned from Trump to raise mind boggling issue and gain in polls, lately, how
to stop hordes of "deplorables" crossing the border. I guess a cheapish solution would be to
create a network of recreational trails with very confusing mapping (even GPS) and totally
confusing signage, and plant some smilax = green briar or other thorny plants to impede
hiking according to compass directions. A note on GPS maps based on satellite pictures:
software has very hard time telling dead ends from actually passable trail connections.
3. Populist-progressive Canada of my dreams. Declare the conflicts with KSA and Trump to
be matters of national dignity, punish KSA by stopping delivery of military vehicles per
Harper's contract and purchases of oil, replace the latter with Iranian. Would Trump dare to
impose secondary sanctions, fine American companies in Canada.
Why is it that the Zionist media were up in arms every time White Helmets were digging Syrian
children out of rubble or dousing them with hoses?
Dozens of children were slaughtered in Yemen, and many more maimed and injured and
hundreds of thousands are being subjected to famine but there's only deafening silence on the
Zionist-run media.
Syrian children had propaganda value; Yemeni children have no value at all. Americans,
Zionists and Saudis are sick and depraved.
A little correction to Circe, Aug 9 11:18:38 PM. SELECTED Syrian children were newsworthy, a
recent massacre by ISIS in Sweida was newsworthy only as an example of a failure by "the
regime". An earlier example, when majority of people of Greater Aleppo lived in the western
part controlled by Damascus, "Aleppo" meant only the eastern part, controlled by the
"moderate" rebels, and victims of moderate massacres and shelling were totally un-newsworthy.
Natural resources drive 20 per cent of the economy -- and about 10 per cent of all the
jobs in Canada. These natural resources also help Canada attract manufacturing and value
added business that utilize domestically produced metals, fuel and timber (as opposed to more
expensive imports) Profit motive is overstated, large companies are focused more on income
growth and market share. The jobs that are produced are good paying jobs as well
I'd rather have more good paying capital intensive industries than low pay labour
intensive service and manufacturing industries that may generate more profits but which end
up mostly in CEO and top managements bank accounts
Frankly, the mystery is why America has not invaded Canada and taken over since we last
tried in 1812. :>)
Mark2 @ 31 said:"We need to remember this' the about left or right ! That's just devide and
rule. This about the 1% killing off the 99% "
Yep, bottom line statement. From austerity to all neoliberal policies, and the world-wide
wars now going on, are basically nothing more than class warfare directed at the 99% to
enrich the already rich.
Frankly, the mystery is why America has not invaded Canada and taken over since we last tried
in 1812. :>)
Posted by: Pft | Aug 10, 2018 12:06:44 AM | 61
Absorbing Canada could undermine political balance in USA leading to such calamities like
socialized medicine, legal marijuana etc. Keeping them on Puerto Rico status is not tenable
given the ethnic composition -- too many English speaking whites. If we could just annex
Alberta...
Bang on cue, TG @ 39 uses a comment about Canada's standard of living (brought about in part
by its governments' spending on transport infrastructure - in particular, transcontinental
railways - that stimulated job growth and enabled the agricultural and manufactured wealth of
the provinces to be spread across the nation and to be exported overseas) to push a racist
opinion about how poor countries are at fault for being poor because their people don't have
access to birth control measures made in rich countries.
...
..for all the horrible and savage war crimes perpetuated by it and its allies on the poor
people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Palestine, and especially now Yemen, the
poorest of the poor - the sorrows of Empire.
Posted by: michaelj72 | Aug 9, 2018 9:12:39 PM | 47
White man's burden...
A phrase used to justify European imperialism in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries; it is the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The phrase implies that imperialism
was motivated by a high-minded desire of whites to uplift people of color.
Part of the targeting assurance happens by looking at unexpected "gaps" in electronic
communication signals. When there is a lot of cellphone communication noise" where is is
suddenly absent, despite presence of humans, indicated an interesting anomaly for target
acquisitions.
To confuse the enemy, these "silent spots" should be mirrored in different locations. They
counter The selectief bias.
During WWII, RAF lost planes to German AAA. They wondered where armor them up?
Counterintuitively, the mathematician Abraham Wald explained that, if a plane makes it back
safely despite a bunch of bullet holes in its wings, it means that bullet holes in the wings
aren't very dangerous.
Where you really need the armor, are the areas that, on average, don't have any bullet
holes.
Why? Because planes with bullet holes in those places never made it back. That's why you
don't see any bullet holes there on the ones that do return.
Posted by: CarlD @ 51 "And who is behind all of this?"
Wouldn't you agree that the PTSB are, as Paul Simon wrote, A Loose Affiliation of
Billionaires?
The way I see it, the pinnacle of the pyramid are members of the dynasties that have
controlled the finance system for centuries. Rothschilds, Warburgs, the Vatican, the European
Royal Families and such. They profit off of everything, since all revenues generated by all
industries pass through their sticky fingers, in addition to their Central Banking cabal that
almost every country on earth is fully beholden to.
They are not a monolith, in that they compete with one another, but they all share
interest in keeping this system in place.
Then, at the next level down there are the members of the Nouveau Riche, like the
Rockefellers and Carneigies whose wealth was only generated a couple generations ago, and the
even newer rich who do not have dynastic power (yet), but do wield enough wealth to influence
the actions of the Empire, like the MIC "Daddy Warbucks" and tech industry newcomers.
And of course, there are the upper-level managers of Empire like Kissinger, Brzezenski,
Soros, etc.
We have seen images of dead children of warfare before. I am not sure if it helps the antiwar
cause. I will have to go read Susan Sontag's "The Pain of Others." In any case, thanks for
posting it, b.
Will DJT order a retaliatory strike on KSA after being so moved by these photos like he
was when the children of the fake gas attacks in Syria were being paraded around on the msm?
I think not. Sad!
Posted by: Pft | Aug 10, 2018 12:06:44 AM | 61:
"Frankly, the mystery is why America has not invaded Canada and taken over since we last
tried in 1812. :>)"
Canada and the US are both members of the Five Eyes. Clearly, their roles in the great
chessboard are different. But the way I see it, the nation-states are fictions that serve the
charade of representative democratic self-rule.
"... Although he was a brilliant orator, Hitler's failures are too innumerable to list. [Link] He was certainly a failure as a painter and his General staff considered him an incompetent military strategist (fortunately for the Allies.) However, Hitler was merely the right man at the right time and place to achieve power. As Ross explains, Hitler was , "the result of a large protest movement colliding with complex patterns of elite self-interest, in a culture increasingly prone to aggressive mythmaking and irrationality." That sounds all too close to home, doesn't it? ..."
"... Enter Donald Trump; the right man at the right time and place. He's a brute, a bully, and a demagogue, but he understands the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times and he adjusts his message to appeal to his base. ..."
"... I have known many bullies; on the playground and in the boardroom. A bully may achieve short-term gain, but for long-term pain. It is very easy to destroy corporate culture, but extremely difficult, if not impossible, to mend a toxic workplace after the bully was dismissed. Now, extrapolate this to the world under Donald Trump. ..."
"... After his first meeting with Trump, he wrote that Trump "saw every unknown person as a threat and that his first instinct was to annihilate that threat. 'He's like a velociraptor. He has to be boss, and if you don't show him deference he kills you.'" ..."
"... If everything is so awesome, why are Americans drinking themselves to death in record numbers?" [Link] ..."
We're told that great leaders make history. Like so much of what we are taught, that's a
load of bunk. Yes, great leaders make it into the history books, but they do not make history.
You make history. I make history. All we dirt people together make history. Government-run
schools don't teach us this because it makes us easier to control.
The "Great Man Theory" [Link] tells us that history can be
largely explained by the impact of great leaders. This theory was popularized in the 1800's by
the historian and social commentator Thomas Carlyle [Link] The Great Man Theory downplays the
importance of economic and practical explanations. It is an appealing theory because its
simplicity offers the path of least resistance. That should ring an alarm.
Herbert Spencer [Link] forcefully disagreed with the "Great
Man Theory." He believed that great leaders were merely products of their social environment.
"Before he can remake his society, his society must make him." Tolstoy went so far as to call
great leaders "history's slaves." However, this middle ground still misses the mark.
At the other extreme is "history from below" [Link] aka 'the people's history.'
"History from below" takes the perspective of common people rather than leaders. It emphasizes
the daily life of ordinary people that develop opinions and trends " as opposed to great people
introducing ideas or initiating events." Unfortunately, this too is only half the equation, and
it is no surprise that it appeals to Leftist and Marxist agendas.
Having studied politics and history ever since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963,
I determined that although history is partly the environments and individuals shaping each
other reciprocally, it is more than that. It is you and I who make history with every decision
we make, every dollar we spend, everything we learn, every vote we cast and every opinion we
voice. It's even what we don't do. It is mostly organic and cannot easily be explained in a
simple, linear fashion the way the aforementioned political philosophers tried.
Great leaders are merely the right person at the right time and place. However, they do not
lead so much as follow from the front. They stick their finger in the air to see which way the
wind blows. They may be brutes, bullies or demagogues, but they are sensitive enough to
understand the zeitgeist , the spirit of the times and so, they adjust their message
accordingly.
That is one reason Jimmy Carter was a failed President. He was a nice guy, but he did not
get an accurate reading of the times. Instead, he acted on the wishful thinking that is
characteristic of liberals.
One of the significant shortcomings of many political philosophers is their ignorance of
human nature. That is why Collectivism in all its forms appeals to the downtrodden. "Share and
share alike" is a beautiful ideal so long as you get other people's stuff, but the flip side of
the coin is not quite so appealing.
I heard a radio interview with a self-avowed Communist:
"So do you believe in 'share and share alike?"
"Yes, I do."
"And, if you had more than one house, you'd give them away and keep just one for
yourself?"
"Yes. I would."
"And, if you had more than one vehicle, you'd give them away and keep just one for
yourself?"
"Yes, I would."
"And, if you had more than one shirt "
"Whoa, wait a minute! I have more than one shirt."
I can't remember the rest of the interview as I was laughing too hard.
The Great Man Theory is one extreme, its critics are somewhere in the middle and 'the
history of the people' is at the other end of the spectrum. Despite this, we are still
fascinated by great leaders. That is human nature. Whether we are slaves at heart, or lack
self-confidence or some other explanation is endlessly debatable. However, the fact remains
that we are fascinated by great leaders and our inability to understand them further disproves
the accepted theories.
Adolph Hitler is the ultimate example of our fascination with a great man. According to Alex
Ross's "The Hitler Vortex," [Link]
tens of thousands of books have been written about Hitler. "Books have been written about
Hitler's youth, his years in Vienna and Munich, his service in the First World War, his
assumption of power, his library, his taste in art, his love of film, his relations with women,
and his predilections in interior design ('Hitler at Home')."
Tens of thousands of books failed to explain Hitler. Ross, too, does no better when he
writes, "What set Hitler apart from most authoritarian figures in history was his conception of
himself as an artist-genius who used politics as his métier. It is a mistake to call him
a failed artist; for him, politics and war were a continuation of art by other means." WTF? Are
we to believe Hitler was simply an artist who used the world as his canvas? Equally pointless
is the notion that, "Hitler debased the Romantic cult of genius to incarnate himself as a
transcendent leader hovering above the fray."
Although he was a brilliant orator, Hitler's failures are too innumerable to list.
[Link] He
was certainly a failure as a painter and his General staff considered him an incompetent
military strategist (fortunately for the Allies.) However, Hitler was merely the right man at
the right time and place to achieve power. As Ross explains, Hitler was , "the result of a
large protest movement colliding with complex patterns of elite self-interest, in a culture
increasingly prone to aggressive mythmaking and irrationality." That sounds all too close to
home, doesn't it?
Enter Donald Trump; the right man at the right time and place. He's a brute, a bully, and a
demagogue, but he understands the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times and he adjusts his message
to appeal to his base.
I have known many bullies; on the playground and in the boardroom. A bully may achieve
short-term gain, but for long-term pain. It is very easy to destroy corporate culture, but
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to mend a toxic workplace after the bully was
dismissed. Now, extrapolate this to the world under Donald Trump.
John Feeley is the former U.S. Ambassador to Panama portrayed in The New Yorker magazine
article "The Diplomat Who Quit the Trump Administration." [Link]After his first meeting with Trump, he wrote that Trump "saw every unknown person as a threat
and that his first instinct was to annihilate that threat. 'He's like a velociraptor. He has to
be boss, and if you don't show him deference he kills you.'"
Feeley fears that "the country was embracing an attitude that was profoundly inimical to
diplomacy 'If we do that we will become weaker and less prosperous.'" He is correct in that
regard. China is building a large, new embassy at the mouth of the Panama Canal visible to
every ship "as they enter a waterway that once symbolized the global influence of the United
States."
Feeley is also correct in warning that the Trump administration's gutting the diplomatic
corps will have negative repercussions. Throughout Latin America, leftist leaders are in
retreat, and popular movements reject corrupt governance. Yet, America is losing "the greatest
opportunity to recoup the moral high ground that we have had in decades." Instead, the U.S. is
abandoning the region to China. Feeley calls it "a self-inflicted Pearl Harbor."
China is replacing U.S. influence in Latin America and Chinese banks "provided more than a
hundred and fifty billion dollars in loan commitments to the region In less than two decades,
trade between China and Latin America has increased twenty-seven-fold." Although that began
long before Trump, "We're not just walking off the field. We're taking the ball and throwing a
finger at the rest of the world."
Feeley says that he felt betrayed by what he regarded as "the traditional core values of the
United States." Sorry, Feeley, but America lost its core values long before Trump was elected.
Trump is not the cause; he is the symptom, the result of the declining American Empire.
Hunters know that one of the most dangerous animals is a wounded one. The same is correct
about failing empires because they are a danger not only to others but to their own citizens as
well. The elites are running out the clock in order to loot as much as they can before it hits
the fan.
We dirt people will continue to suffer from stagnant wage growth while the so-called
increase in national wealth goes to a tiny minority.
[link]
Moreover, nobody wins a trade war that raises consumer prices even if Trump eventually
triumphs.
The economy staggers under the weight of phony wars, fake finances, fake GDP, fake CPI, fake
employment, fake pensions and fake everything.
[Link] The national debt increases $1 trillion every year, consumer debt is at an all-time
high
[Link] while the tax cuts benefit only the ultra-wealthy. Also, the fake news tells us
everything is wonderful. Don't believe it. "If everything is so awesome, why are Americans
drinking themselves to death in record numbers?"
[Link]
It is said that every few generations, money returns to its rightful owners. That is what's
happening now.
America emerged relatively unscathed from the Second World War whereas many other countries
were bombed back into the Stone Age. The Marshal Plan helped rebuild countries that were to
become both America's future customers and its competitors. America's busy factories
transformed from war production to consumer goods, the demand for which was created by "the
Father of Spin" Edward Bernays' marketing propaganda. [Link]
As well, the U.S. stole the gold that the Nazis had stolen from others, [Link]
and that wealth in addition to robust, productive capacity temporarily propelled the U.S. far
ahead of other nations. However, it would not last. Eventually, the undeserved prosperity of
the 1950's and '60's began to run out of steam as other nations rebuilt and competed with the
U.S. President Nixon defaulting on the dollar in 1971 by "closing the gold window" signaled the
end of America's good times . The subsequent debt creation now unconstricted by a gold basis
helped to cushion the blow for several decades, but wealth was now flowing to Asia along with
factory jobs.
For 5,000 years, China was a world superpower with only a short, two-century hiatus that is
now ending as China again emerges as an economic superpower. Such a massive shift in wealth
cannot be attributed to either leadership or the people below. It is a painful reversion to the
mean. All the finger-pointing and wailing and gnashing of teeth not even bombastic Trump and
his tariffs can stem the tide and make America great again as money continues to flow back to
its rightful owners.
The USA is a declining, bankrupt, warmongering police state and most of its indoctrinated
citizens think they live in a free, peaceful country.
China is a corrupt police state, but most of its citizens know it.
We have met the enemy, and he is us. The future awaits.
A new excerpt
from a book by
C.J. Chivers, a former U.S. infantry captain and New York Times war correspondent,
tells the story of a young man from New York City who joined the U.S. army and was send to the
Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. While the man, one Robert Soto, makes it out alive, several of
his comrades and many Afghans die during his time in Afghanistan to no avail.
The piece includes remarkably strong words about the strategic (in)abilities of U.S.
politicians, high ranking officers and pundits:
On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad,
with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures,
have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their
organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly
expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and
politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under
different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center
in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost
as if distant war is a presumed government action.
That description is right but it does not touche the underlying causes. The story of the
attempted U.S. occupation of the Korengal valley, which Civers again describes, has been the
theme of several books and movies. It demonstrates the futility of fighting a population that
does not welcome occupiers. But most of the authors, including Chivers, get one fact wrong. The
war with the people of the Korengal valley was started out of shear stupidity and
ignorance.
The main military outpost in the valley was build on a former sawmill. Chivers writes:
On a social level, it could not have been much worse. It was an unforced error of occupation,
a set of foreign military bunkers built on the grounds of a sawmill and lumber yard formerly
operated by Haji Mateen, a local timber baron. The American foothold put some of the valley's
toughest men out of work, the same Afghans who knew the mountain trails. Haji Mateen now
commanded many of the valley's fighters, under the banner of the Taliban.
Unfortunately Chivers does not explain why the saw mill was closed. Ten years ago a piece by
Elizabeth Rubin touched on this:
As the Afghans tell the story, from the moment the Americans arrived in 2001, the Pech Valley
timber lords and warlords had their ear. Early on, they led the Americans to drop bombs on
the mansion of their biggest rival -- Haji Matin. The air strikes killed several members of
his family, according to local residents, and the Americans arrested others and sent them to
the prison at Bagram Air Base. The Pech Valley fighters working alongside the Americans then
pillaged the mansion. And that was that. Haji Matin, already deeply religious, became
ideological and joined with Abu Ikhlas, a local Arab linked to the foreign jihadis.
Years before October 2004, before regular U.S. soldiers came into the Korengal valley, U.S.
special forces combed through the region looking for 'al-Qaeda'. They made friends with a
timber baron in Pech valley, a Pashtun of the Safi tribe, who claimed that his main competitor
in the (illegal) timber trade who lived in the nearby Korengal river valley was a Taliban and
'al-Qaeda'. That was not true. Haji Matin was a member of a Nuristani tribe that spoke
Pashai . These were a
distinct people with their own language who
were and are traditional hostile to any centralized government (pdf), even to the Taliban's
Islamic Emirate.
The U.S. special forces lacked any knowledge of the local society. But even worse was that
they lacked the curiosity to research and investigate the social terrain. They simply trusted
their new 'friend', the smooth talking Pashtun timber baron, and called in jets to destroy his
competitor's sawmill and home. This started a local war of attrition which defeated the U.S.
military. In 2010 the U.S. military, having achieved nothing, retreated from Korengal. (The
sawmill episode was described in detail in a 2005(?) blog post by a former special force
soldier who took part in it. It since seems to have been removed from the web.)
Back to Chivers' otherwise well written piece. He looks at the results two recent (and
ongoing) U.S. wars:
The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, each of which the United States spent hundreds of
billions of dollars to build and support, are fragile, brutal and uncertain. The nations they
struggle to rule harbor large contingents of irregular fighters and terrorists who have been
hardened and made savvy, trained by the experience of fighting the American military
machine.
...
Billions of dollars spent creating security partners also deputized pedophiles, torturers and
thieves. National police or army units that the Pentagon proclaimed essential to their
countries' futures have disbanded. The Islamic State has sponsored or encouraged terrorist
attacks across much of the world -- exactly the species of crime the global "war on terror"
was supposed to prevent.
The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose. They are
planned by incompetent people. The most recent Pentagon ideas for the U.S. war on Afghanistan
depend on less restricted bombing rules. Yesterday one predictable and self defeating
consequence
was again visible:
An American airstrike killed at least a dozen Afghan security forces during intense fighting
with the Taliban near the Afghan capital, officials said Tuesday.
...
Shamshad Larawi, a spokesman for the governor, said that American airstrikes had been called
in for support, but that because of a misunderstanding, the planes mistakenly targeted an
Afghan police outpost.
...
Haji Abdul Satar, a tribal elder from Azra, said he counted 19 dead, among them 17 Afghan
police officers and pro-government militia members and two civilians.
...
In the first six months of this year, United States forces dropped nearly 3,000 bombs across
Afghanistan, nearly double the number for the same period last year and more than five times
the number for the first half of 2016. ... Civilian casualties from aerial bombardments have
increased considerably as a result, the United Nations says.
One argument made by the Pentagon generals when they pushed Trump to allow more airstrikes
was that these would cripple the Taliban's alleged opium trade and its financial resources.
But, as the Wall Street Journalreports
, that plan, like all others before it, did not work at all:
Nine months of targeted airstrikes on opium production sites across Afghanistan have failed
to put a significant dent in the illegal drug trade that provides the Taliban with hundreds
of millions of dollars, according to figures provided by the U.S. military.
...
So far, the air campaign has wiped out about $46 million in Taliban revenue, less than a
quarter of the money the U.S. estimates the insurgents get from the illegal drug trade. U.S.
military officials estimate the drug trade provides the Taliban with 60% of its revenue.
...
Poppy production hit record highs in Afghanistan last year , where they are the country's
largest cash crop, valued at between $1.5 billion and $3 billion.
More than 200 airstrikes on "drug-related targets" have hardly made a dent in the Taliban's
war chest. The military war planners again failed.
At the end of the Chivers piece its protagonist, Robert Soto, rightfully vents about the
unaccountability of such military 'leaders':
Still he wondered: Was there no accountability for the senior officer class? The war was
turning 17, and the services and the Pentagon seemed to have been given passes on all the
failures and the drift. Even if the Taliban were to sign a peace deal tomorrow, there would
be no rousing sense of victory, no parade. In Iraq, the Islamic State metastasized in the
wreckage of the war to spread terror around the world. The human costs were past counting,
and the whitewash was both institutional and personal, extended to one general after another,
including many of the same officers whose plans and orders had either fizzled or failed to
create lasting success, and yet who kept rising . Soto watched some of them as they were
revered and celebrated in Washington and by members of the press, even after past plans were
discredited and enemies retrenched.
Since World War II, during which the Soviets, not the U.S., defeated the Nazis, the U.S. won
no war. The only exception is the turkey shooting of the first Gulf war. But even that war
failed in its larger political aim of dethroning Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. population and its 'leaders' simply know too little about the world to prevail in
an international military campaign. They lack curiosity. The origin of the Korengal failure is
a good example for that.
U.S. wars
are rackets , run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations. They enriche
few at the cost of everyone else.
Wars should not be 'a presumed government action', but the last resort to defend ones
country. We should do our utmost to end all of them.
you know, it is just as easy to influence a foreign society by making movies (Bollywood in
this case) with a certain bent, the one you want people to follow. After a few years of
seeing the Taliban as villains, there would be no fresh recruits and mass desertion. But, the
weapons manufacturers wouldn't be making their enormous profits. This same effect can be seen
in American society, where the movies coming out of Hollywood started becoming very
aggressive in tone around the time that Ronald Reagan became president. Movies went from The
Deer Hunter to Rambo and Wall Street. Is it any wonder that even the progressive Left in the
USA thinks it is ok to attack their political adversaries and that violence is justified?
This is the power of movies and the media.
Thank you 'b' this post as always is a true in depth education !
If you run for president of the United States of America enytime soon you'v got my vote !
bjd @1 highlights an important truth similar to that exposed by Joseph Heller in
Cache-22 and by Hudson's Balance-of-Payments revelation he revealed yet again
at
this link I posted yesterday . Most know the aggressive war against Afghanistan was
already planned and on the schedule prior to 911 and would have occurred regardless since
after Serbia the Outlaw US Empire felt it could do and get away with anything. 911 simply
provided BushCo with Carte-Blache, but it wasn't enough of a window to fulfill their desired
destruction of 7 nations in 5 years for their Zionist Patron.
IMO, as part of its plan to control the Heartland, those running the Outlaw US Empire
never had any plan to leave Afghanistan; rather once there, they'd stay and occupy it just as
the Empire's done everywhere since WW2. The Empire's very much like a leech; its occupations
are parasitic as Hudson demonstrated, and work at the behest of corporate interests as Smedly
Butler so eloquently illustrated.
As with Vietnam, the only way to get NATO forces to leave is for Afghanis to force them
out with their rifles. Hopefully, they will be assisted by SCO nations and Afghanistan will
cease being a broken nation by 2030.
The Wall Street Journal article on the Taliban's ties to the local drug trade also the
reveals deliberate omission practiced by the MSM, which keeps its readers actively
misinformed. Estimating illegal drug revenues contribute as much as $200 million to the
Taliban, the article fails to put that in proper context: that figure represents merely
7%-13% of total production receipts (estimated at 1.5 to 3 billion dollars). Most informed
persons know exactly who reaps the rewards of more than 80% of the Afghan drug products, and
why this much larger effort is not the focus of "targeted airstrikes."
1. "The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose........
Since World War II, during which the Soviets, not the U.S., defeated the Nazis, the U.S. won
no war. The only exception is the turkey shooting of the first Gulf war."
2 "U.S. wars are rackets, run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations.
They enriche few at the cost of everyone else"
Your points in 1 ignore the reality expressed by 2. The real strategic aims and purposes
are not those provided for public consumption. Winning wars is not the objective, the length
and cost of wars is far more important than results. Enriching and empowering the few over
the many is the entire point of it all
And lets put an end to "US " responsibility for all evils. Its a shared responsibility.
None of this is possible without the cooperation of Uk and its commonwealth nations, EU,
Japan and the various international organizations that allow the dollar to be weaponized such
as IMF/World Bank and BIS not to mention the various tax havens which support covert
operations and looting of assets obtained in these wars (military or economic).
Until the rest of the world is prepared to do something about it they are willing
accomplices in all of this.
The global elites are globalists, they dont think in national terms. Its a global elitist
cabal at work that is hiding behind the cover of US hegemony.
karlof1 @ 4 said:"The Empire's very much like a leech; its occupations are parasitic as
Hudson demonstrated, and work at the behest of corporate interests as Smedly Butler so
eloquently illustrated."
You bet.. The operative words being " work at the behest of corporate interests "
And so it goes around the globe. Question is; How to get this information to the herded
bovines the general public has become?
Without a major network to disseminate such info, we're all just spinning our wheels. Oh,
but, the therapy is good..
Very interesting stories - especially re: the timber mill warlord competition.
Defoliants are still used in warfare - especially "by accident". Carpet bombing is still
legal. If NATO wanted to wipe out the poppies, it surely could do so.
Pft at 6, reminded me of this zinger:
The nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. -
The Brzez
jayc @5 implies it, and I'll say it more directly: US soldiers guard poppy fields in
Afghanistan. I'm also reminded of Alfred C McCoy's famous 1972 work The Politics of Heroin in
Southeast Asia.
The nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal
creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in
terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. - The Brzez
Posted by: fast freddy | Aug 8, 2018 6:18:02 PM | 9
This gem hides a deep truth. One has to replace "creative" and "far in advance", instead,
we have power relationships. And those power relationships resemble central planning of the
Communist states, concept that is attractive in abstraction, but centralization cannot cope
with complexities of societies and economies, in part because the central institutions are
inevitably beset by negative selection: people rise due to their adroit infighting skills
rather than superior understanding of what those institutions are supposed to control.
Ultimately, this proces leads to decay and fall. "Nation states" themselves are not immune to
such cycles and are at different stages of the cycle creative-decadent-falling. However,
international finance lacks observable "refreshing" mechanisms of nation states.
War as always is financial racket, $trillion stolen, MIC thrives, took over with CIA all
prerogatives of power and has million agents in US alone in every institution government and
corporate.
I call it success of ruling elite. B war would stop tomorrow if it was unsuccessful read
unprofitable for those who wage it. Nazi death camps were most profitable enterprises in
third Reich.
For some reason, when the US wars are admitted to be civil wars, no one questions whose side
did the US take until it is too late and so very few tune in. Incompetence is the excuse. It
reminds me of that adage to not blame on malice that which can be explained by stupidity but
stupidity has been used to excuse a lot of malice. It's one reason why "military
intelligence" resides at the top of oxymorons along with "congressional ethics" and
"humanitarian intervention."
It is amazing to think that the US has been in Afghanistan for 17 years and supposedly
knows where the opium and its processors are and yet could not take it out. (The pix of
soldiers patrolling poppy fields is rich.) The initial excuse years ago was that the US
needed to support the warlords who grew/sold it. What is the excuse now? Incompetence,
corruption, laziness?
The US likes the idea of opium products going into Iran and Russia ... who have protested
to no avail. A bit of indirect subversion.
The US likes opium products going into the US. It makes for broken citizens who lack zeal for
knowledge, and therefore, comprehension; and the will to organize against the PTB.
Importantly, being illegal, opiate use feeds the pigs who own the prison-industrial complex.
Given the current, longstanding dynamics within the Outlaw US Empire, I don't see any
possibility of the required reforms ever having an opportunity to get enacted. The
situation's very similar to Nazi Germany's internal dynamic--the coercive forces of the State
and its allies will not allow any diminution of their power. Within the Empire, thousands of
Hydra heads would need to be rapidly severed for any revolt to succeed, and that requires a
large, easily infiltrated organization to accomplish. Invasion by an allied group of nations
invites a nuclear holocaust I can't condone. I think the best the world can do is force the
Empire to retreat from its 800+ bases and sequester it behind the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
until it self-destructs or drastically reforms itself--Containment. But for that to work,
almost every comprador government would need to be changed and their personages imprisoned,
exiled or executed--another close to impossible task. Ideally, the ballot box would
work--ideally--but that requires deeply informed voters and highly idealistic, strongly
principled, creative, and fearless candidates, along with an honest media.
Yeah, writing can be good therapy. But I'm no more cheery than when I began. Must be time
for intoxicants.
The world does not need to force the Evil Empire to retreat from its 1,000 (and counting)
military bases around the planet.
All the world needs to do is trade with Iran, Venezuela or some other outsider nation. The
Evil Empire will be so busy trying to punish everyone who trades with these countries by
extending sanctions against the outsiders to their trading partners that the Empire
effectively ends up having sanctioned everyone away and it becomes the victim of its
sanctioning.
The 1,000+ military bases around the globe are then effectively on their own and the
soldiers and administrators inside can either stay there and starve, throw in their lot with
the host nation's citizenry or beg to be allowed to return home.
thanks b... as long as the americans support the troops, lol - all will be well apparently...
jesus.. meanwhile - the support for the 1% bomb makers and etc continues... maybe it is the
mutual fund money that folks are concerned about maintaining..
"In the first six months of this year, United States forces dropped nearly 3,000 bombs
across Afghanistan." what is that? about 17 or 18 bombs a day or something? what about the
drones? they have to be put to use too... best to get someone who is involved in their own
turf war in afgan to give out the targets.. brilliant... usa war planning is mostly destroy
and destroy and honour the troops and wave their stupid american flag and that is about it...
sorry, but that is what it looks like to me..
its not so much they want to end the war on terror or the war on drugs.........they just want
to say one thing to cover their asses and do another thing completely..
no matter what there should of been one general who got it right.....but we see it was
never about peace .... it was always about war and its profits. anyone who didn't take orders
or even had a hint of the right strategy would be Hung like dirty boots to dry.
what is the right strategy? leave. just as other empires did. before you call on your
faces
to be even more frank....its not even about the money as that is not as important than
having a nation of 300m regurgitate the news that they are there for 17 years to be the
police of the world. because USA are the good ones... that they need to buy the biggest
trucks which can't even fit in normal parking spaces because they have land mines(I mean
ieds...) to avoid and need to haul 5tons of cargo to their construction job all while
watching out for terrorists and trump Hillary divisions. is disorienting and it is
deliberate. just as having a war last without a reason is deliberate while they entertain the
masses with games..
@23dh... same deal here in canuckle head ville... people remain ignorant of what there money
is ''''invested'''' in... could be saudi arabia for all the canucks think... btw - thanks for
the laugh on the other thread... you made a couple of good jokes somewhere the past few days!
i don't have much free time to comment at the moment..
McCoy, in "The Politics of Heroin" gives a more complete picture:
In 1996, following four years of civil war among rival resistance factions, the Taliban's
victory caused further expansion of opium cultivation. After capturing Kabul in September,
the Taliban drove the Uzbek and Tajik warlords into the country's northeast, where they
formed the Northern Alliance and clung to some 10 percent of Afghanistan's territory. Over
the next three years, a seesaw battle for the Shamali plain north of Kabul raged until the
Taliban finally won control in 1999 by destroying the orchards and irrigation in a prime
food-producing region, generating over 100,000 refugees and increasing the country's
dependence on opium.
Once in power, the Taliban made opium its largest source of taxation. To raise revenues
estimated at $20-$25 million in 1997, the Taliban collected a 5 to 10 percent tax in kind on
all opium harvested, a share that they then sold to heroin laboratories; a flat tax of $70
per kilogram on heroin refiners; and a transport tax of $250 on every kilogram exported. The
head of the regime's anti-drug operations in Kandahar, Abdul Rashid, enforced a rigid ban on
hashish "because it is consumed by Afghans, Muslims." But, he explained, "Opium is
permissible because it is consumed by kafirs [unbelievers] in the West and not by Muslims or
Afghans." A Taliban governor, Mohammed Hassan, added: "Drugs are evil and we would like to
substitute poppies with another cash crop, but it's not possible at the moment because we do
not have international recognition."
More broadly, the Taliban's policies provided stimulus, both direct and indirect, for a
nationwide expansion of opium cultivation. . . Significantly, the regime's ban on the
employment and education of women created a vast pool of low-cost labor to sustain an
accelerated expansion of opium production. . . . In northern and eastern Afghanistan, women
of all ages played " a fundamental role in the cultivation of the opium poppy"---planting,
weeding, harvesting, cooking for laborers, and processing by-products such as oil. The
Taliban not only taxed and encouraged opium cultivation, they protected and promoted exports
to international markets.
In retrospect, however, the Taliban's most important contribution to the illicit traffic
was its support for large-scale heroin refining.
. . .
Instead of eradication, the UN's annual opium surveys showed that Taliban rule had doubled
Afghanistan's opium production from 2,250 tons in 1996 to 4,600 tons in 1999--equivalent to
75 percent of world illicit production. (508-509)
. . .
War on the Taliban
All this [heroin] traffic across Central Asia depended on high-volume heroin production in
politically volatile Afghanistan. In July 2000, as a devastating drought entered its second
year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban's leader Mullah Omar ordered
a sudden ban on opium cultivation in a bid for international recognition. (p.517)
B's article assumes that the operative purpose of the US military is to win wars. This isn't
the case. The US military largely a business enterprise whose objective is to make money for
the plutocracy that largely controls them. That being the case, the Afghanistan war has been
a great success. If the US 'won' it, it would cease; if the Taliban conquered, it would
cease. In this form of military stagnation it continues, and the money roles in making the
ammunition, equipment, etc.
The military budget is largely an institution for transferring the tax money of the
population from the people to the plutocracy. Military stagnation serves this purpose better
than winning or losing.
If there is one standout factor which makes makes all this profitable mayhem possible then
it's the successful campaign by the Elites to persuade the Public that Secrecy is a
legitimate variation of Privacy.
It is not.
Impregnable Government Secrecy is ALWAYS a cover for erroneous interpretations of an
inconvenient Law - or straight-out cover for criminal activity.
It's preposterous to believe that a government elected by The People has a legitimate right
to create schemes which must be kept Secret from The People.
This is especially true in the case of Military/Defense. There wouldn't be a CIC on earth who
doesn't have up-to-date and regularly updated info on the hardware and capabilities of every
ally and every potential foe. The People have a legitimate right to know what the CIC, and
the rest of the world, already knows.
And that's just the most glaring example of the childish deception being perpetrated in
the name of Secrecy. If governments were to be stripped of the power to conduct Our affairs
in Secret then the scrutiny would oblige them to behave more competently. And we could weed
out the drones and nitwits before they did too much damage.
@30 Right. I notice they avoid mentioning the Badawis who are central to the issue. I guess
helping Justin out isn't very high on Donald's list of priorities.
i forget who said it and the exact phrasing, but the best explanation i've seen is
"why is the US there? it answers itself: to be there".
vast opium money for the deep state vermin.
profits for the bomb makers (you know, the respectable corporate ones as opposed to the
quaint do-it-yourselfers).
lithium deposits that probably rival those in bolivia as well as other untapped
profitable resources (probably, anyway; i could see oil and gas coming out of those ancient
valleys).
it's also an occupation as opposed to a "win and get out" war. these military welfare
queens think they can win a staring contest with the descendants of people who bitchslapped
every would-be conqueror since alexander the great. ask the russians how well that went for
them.
the west supports israel's 70+ years of colonizing palestine (plus the 3 or 4 decades of
dumbness before it with balfour and such) and still has troops in south goddamn korea. as
long as the tap flows they'll keep drinking that sweet tasty tax welfare.
A new excerpt
from a book by
C.J. Chivers, a former U.S. infantry captain and New York Times war correspondent,
tells the story of a young man from New York City who joined the U.S. army and was send to the
Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. While the man, one Robert Soto, makes it out alive, several of
his comrades and many Afghans die during his time in Afghanistan to no avail.
The piece includes remarkably strong words about the strategic (in)abilities of U.S.
politicians, high ranking officers and pundits:
On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad,
with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures,
have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their
organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly
expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and
politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under
different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center
in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost
as if distant war is a presumed government action.
That description is right but it does not touche the underlying causes. The story of the
attempted U.S. occupation of the Korengal valley, which Civers again describes, has been the
theme of several books and movies. It demonstrates the futility of fighting a population that
does not welcome occupiers. But most of the authors, including Chivers, get one fact wrong. The
war with the people of the Korengal valley was started out of shear stupidity and
ignorance.
The main military outpost in the valley was build on a former sawmill. Chivers writes:
On a social level, it could not have been much worse. It was an unforced error of occupation,
a set of foreign military bunkers built on the grounds of a sawmill and lumber yard formerly
operated by Haji Mateen, a local timber baron. The American foothold put some of the valley's
toughest men out of work, the same Afghans who knew the mountain trails. Haji Mateen now
commanded many of the valley's fighters, under the banner of the Taliban.
Unfortunately Chivers does not explain why the saw mill was closed. Ten years ago a piece by
Elizabeth Rubin touched on this:
As the Afghans tell the story, from the moment the Americans arrived in 2001, the Pech Valley
timber lords and warlords had their ear. Early on, they led the Americans to drop bombs on
the mansion of their biggest rival -- Haji Matin. The air strikes killed several members of
his family, according to local residents, and the Americans arrested others and sent them to
the prison at Bagram Air Base. The Pech Valley fighters working alongside the Americans then
pillaged the mansion. And that was that. Haji Matin, already deeply religious, became
ideological and joined with Abu Ikhlas, a local Arab linked to the foreign jihadis.
Years before October 2004, before regular U.S. soldiers came into the Korengal valley, U.S.
special forces combed through the region looking for 'al-Qaeda'. They made friends with a
timber baron in Pech valley, a Pashtun of the Safi tribe, who claimed that his main competitor
in the (illegal) timber trade who lived in the nearby Korengal river valley was a Taliban and
'al-Qaeda'. That was not true. Haji Matin was a member of a Nuristani tribe that spoke
Pashai . These were a
distinct people with their own language who
were and are traditional hostile to any centralized government (pdf), even to the Taliban's
Islamic Emirate.
The U.S. special forces lacked any knowledge of the local society. But even worse was that
they lacked the curiosity to research and investigate the social terrain. They simply trusted
their new 'friend', the smooth talking Pashtun timber baron, and called in jets to destroy his
competitor's sawmill and home. This started a local war of attrition which defeated the U.S.
military. In 2010 the U.S. military, having achieved nothing, retreated from Korengal. (The
sawmill episode was described in detail in a 2005(?) blog post by a former special force
soldier who took part in it. It since seems to have been removed from the web.)
Back to Chivers' otherwise well written piece. He looks at the results two recent (and
ongoing) U.S. wars:
The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, each of which the United States spent hundreds of
billions of dollars to build and support, are fragile, brutal and uncertain. The nations they
struggle to rule harbor large contingents of irregular fighters and terrorists who have been
hardened and made savvy, trained by the experience of fighting the American military
machine.
...
Billions of dollars spent creating security partners also deputized pedophiles, torturers and
thieves. National police or army units that the Pentagon proclaimed essential to their
countries' futures have disbanded. The Islamic State has sponsored or encouraged terrorist
attacks across much of the world -- exactly the species of crime the global "war on terror"
was supposed to prevent.
The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose. They are
planned by incompetent people. The most recent Pentagon ideas for the U.S. war on Afghanistan
depend on less restricted bombing rules. Yesterday one predictable and self defeating
consequence
was again visible:
An American airstrike killed at least a dozen Afghan security forces during intense fighting
with the Taliban near the Afghan capital, officials said Tuesday.
...
Shamshad Larawi, a spokesman for the governor, said that American airstrikes had been called
in for support, but that because of a misunderstanding, the planes mistakenly targeted an
Afghan police outpost.
...
Haji Abdul Satar, a tribal elder from Azra, said he counted 19 dead, among them 17 Afghan
police officers and pro-government militia members and two civilians.
...
In the first six months of this year, United States forces dropped nearly 3,000 bombs across
Afghanistan, nearly double the number for the same period last year and more than five times
the number for the first half of 2016. ... Civilian casualties from aerial bombardments have
increased considerably as a result, the United Nations says.
One argument made by the Pentagon generals when they pushed Trump to allow more airstrikes
was that these would cripple the Taliban's alleged opium trade and its financial resources.
But, as the Wall Street Journalreports
, that plan, like all others before it, did not work at all:
Nine months of targeted airstrikes on opium production sites across Afghanistan have failed
to put a significant dent in the illegal drug trade that provides the Taliban with hundreds
of millions of dollars, according to figures provided by the U.S. military.
...
So far, the air campaign has wiped out about $46 million in Taliban revenue, less than a
quarter of the money the U.S. estimates the insurgents get from the illegal drug trade. U.S.
military officials estimate the drug trade provides the Taliban with 60% of its revenue.
...
Poppy production hit record highs in Afghanistan last year , where they are the country's
largest cash crop, valued at between $1.5 billion and $3 billion.
More than 200 airstrikes on "drug-related targets" have hardly made a dent in the Taliban's
war chest. The military war planners again failed.
At the end of the Chivers piece its protagonist, Robert Soto, rightfully vents about the
unaccountability of such military 'leaders':
Still he wondered: Was there no accountability for the senior officer class? The war was
turning 17, and the services and the Pentagon seemed to have been given passes on all the
failures and the drift. Even if the Taliban were to sign a peace deal tomorrow, there would
be no rousing sense of victory, no parade. In Iraq, the Islamic State metastasized in the
wreckage of the war to spread terror around the world. The human costs were past counting,
and the whitewash was both institutional and personal, extended to one general after another,
including many of the same officers whose plans and orders had either fizzled or failed to
create lasting success, and yet who kept rising . Soto watched some of them as they were
revered and celebrated in Washington and by members of the press, even after past plans were
discredited and enemies retrenched.
Since World War II, during which the Soviets, not the U.S., defeated the Nazis, the U.S. won
no war. The only exception is the turkey shooting of the first Gulf war. But even that war
failed in its larger political aim of dethroning Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. population and its 'leaders' simply know too little about the world to prevail in
an international military campaign. They lack curiosity. The origin of the Korengal failure is
a good example for that.
U.S. wars
are rackets , run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations. They enriche
few at the cost of everyone else.
Wars should not be 'a presumed government action', but the last resort to defend ones
country. We should do our utmost to end all of them.
you know, it is just as easy to influence a foreign society by making movies (Bollywood in
this case) with a certain bent, the one you want people to follow. After a few years of
seeing the Taliban as villains, there would be no fresh recruits and mass desertion. But, the
weapons manufacturers wouldn't be making their enormous profits. This same effect can be seen
in American society, where the movies coming out of Hollywood started becoming very
aggressive in tone around the time that Ronald Reagan became president. Movies went from The
Deer Hunter to Rambo and Wall Street. Is it any wonder that even the progressive Left in the
USA thinks it is ok to attack their political adversaries and that violence is justified?
This is the power of movies and the media.
Thank you 'b' this post as always is a true in depth education !
If you run for president of the United States of America enytime soon you'v got my vote !
bjd @1 highlights an important truth similar to that exposed by Joseph Heller in
Cache-22 and by Hudson's Balance-of-Payments revelation he revealed yet again
at
this link I posted yesterday . Most know the aggressive war against Afghanistan was
already planned and on the schedule prior to 911 and would have occurred regardless since
after Serbia the Outlaw US Empire felt it could do and get away with anything. 911 simply
provided BushCo with Carte-Blache, but it wasn't enough of a window to fulfill their desired
destruction of 7 nations in 5 years for their Zionist Patron.
IMO, as part of its plan to control the Heartland, those running the Outlaw US Empire
never had any plan to leave Afghanistan; rather once there, they'd stay and occupy it just as
the Empire's done everywhere since WW2. The Empire's very much like a leech; its occupations
are parasitic as Hudson demonstrated, and work at the behest of corporate interests as Smedly
Butler so eloquently illustrated.
As with Vietnam, the only way to get NATO forces to leave is for Afghanis to force them
out with their rifles. Hopefully, they will be assisted by SCO nations and Afghanistan will
cease being a broken nation by 2030.
The Wall Street Journal article on the Taliban's ties to the local drug trade also the
reveals deliberate omission practiced by the MSM, which keeps its readers actively
misinformed. Estimating illegal drug revenues contribute as much as $200 million to the
Taliban, the article fails to put that in proper context: that figure represents merely
7%-13% of total production receipts (estimated at 1.5 to 3 billion dollars). Most informed
persons know exactly who reaps the rewards of more than 80% of the Afghan drug products, and
why this much larger effort is not the focus of "targeted airstrikes."
1. "The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose........
Since World War II, during which the Soviets, not the U.S., defeated the Nazis, the U.S. won
no war. The only exception is the turkey shooting of the first Gulf war."
2 "U.S. wars are rackets, run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations.
They enriche few at the cost of everyone else"
Your points in 1 ignore the reality expressed by 2. The real strategic aims and purposes
are not those provided for public consumption. Winning wars is not the objective, the length
and cost of wars is far more important than results. Enriching and empowering the few over
the many is the entire point of it all
And lets put an end to "US " responsibility for all evils. Its a shared responsibility.
None of this is possible without the cooperation of Uk and its commonwealth nations, EU,
Japan and the various international organizations that allow the dollar to be weaponized such
as IMF/World Bank and BIS not to mention the various tax havens which support covert
operations and looting of assets obtained in these wars (military or economic).
Until the rest of the world is prepared to do something about it they are willing
accomplices in all of this.
The global elites are globalists, they dont think in national terms. Its a global elitist
cabal at work that is hiding behind the cover of US hegemony.
karlof1 @ 4 said:"The Empire's very much like a leech; its occupations are parasitic as
Hudson demonstrated, and work at the behest of corporate interests as Smedly Butler so
eloquently illustrated."
You bet.. The operative words being " work at the behest of corporate interests "
And so it goes around the globe. Question is; How to get this information to the herded
bovines the general public has become?
Without a major network to disseminate such info, we're all just spinning our wheels. Oh,
but, the therapy is good..
Very interesting stories - especially re: the timber mill warlord competition.
Defoliants are still used in warfare - especially "by accident". Carpet bombing is still
legal. If NATO wanted to wipe out the poppies, it surely could do so.
Pft at 6, reminded me of this zinger:
The nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. -
The Brzez
jayc @5 implies it, and I'll say it more directly: US soldiers guard poppy fields in
Afghanistan. I'm also reminded of Alfred C McCoy's famous 1972 work The Politics of Heroin in
Southeast Asia.
The nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal
creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in
terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. - The Brzez
Posted by: fast freddy | Aug 8, 2018 6:18:02 PM | 9
This gem hides a deep truth. One has to replace "creative" and "far in advance", instead,
we have power relationships. And those power relationships resemble central planning of the
Communist states, concept that is attractive in abstraction, but centralization cannot cope
with complexities of societies and economies, in part because the central institutions are
inevitably beset by negative selection: people rise due to their adroit infighting skills
rather than superior understanding of what those institutions are supposed to control.
Ultimately, this proces leads to decay and fall. "Nation states" themselves are not immune to
such cycles and are at different stages of the cycle creative-decadent-falling. However,
international finance lacks observable "refreshing" mechanisms of nation states.
War as always is financial racket, $trillion stolen, MIC thrives, took over with CIA all
prerogatives of power and has million agents in US alone in every institution government and
corporate.
I call it success of ruling elite. B war would stop tomorrow if it was unsuccessful read
unprofitable for those who wage it. Nazi death camps were most profitable enterprises in
third Reich.
For some reason, when the US wars are admitted to be civil wars, no one questions whose side
did the US take until it is too late and so very few tune in. Incompetence is the excuse. It
reminds me of that adage to not blame on malice that which can be explained by stupidity but
stupidity has been used to excuse a lot of malice. It's one reason why "military
intelligence" resides at the top of oxymorons along with "congressional ethics" and
"humanitarian intervention."
It is amazing to think that the US has been in Afghanistan for 17 years and supposedly
knows where the opium and its processors are and yet could not take it out. (The pix of
soldiers patrolling poppy fields is rich.) The initial excuse years ago was that the US
needed to support the warlords who grew/sold it. What is the excuse now? Incompetence,
corruption, laziness?
The US likes the idea of opium products going into Iran and Russia ... who have protested
to no avail. A bit of indirect subversion.
The US likes opium products going into the US. It makes for broken citizens who lack zeal for
knowledge, and therefore, comprehension; and the will to organize against the PTB.
Importantly, being illegal, opiate use feeds the pigs who own the prison-industrial complex.
Given the current, longstanding dynamics within the Outlaw US Empire, I don't see any
possibility of the required reforms ever having an opportunity to get enacted. The
situation's very similar to Nazi Germany's internal dynamic--the coercive forces of the State
and its allies will not allow any diminution of their power. Within the Empire, thousands of
Hydra heads would need to be rapidly severed for any revolt to succeed, and that requires a
large, easily infiltrated organization to accomplish. Invasion by an allied group of nations
invites a nuclear holocaust I can't condone. I think the best the world can do is force the
Empire to retreat from its 800+ bases and sequester it behind the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
until it self-destructs or drastically reforms itself--Containment. But for that to work,
almost every comprador government would need to be changed and their personages imprisoned,
exiled or executed--another close to impossible task. Ideally, the ballot box would
work--ideally--but that requires deeply informed voters and highly idealistic, strongly
principled, creative, and fearless candidates, along with an honest media.
Yeah, writing can be good therapy. But I'm no more cheery than when I began. Must be time
for intoxicants.
The world does not need to force the Evil Empire to retreat from its 1,000 (and counting)
military bases around the planet.
All the world needs to do is trade with Iran, Venezuela or some other outsider nation. The
Evil Empire will be so busy trying to punish everyone who trades with these countries by
extending sanctions against the outsiders to their trading partners that the Empire
effectively ends up having sanctioned everyone away and it becomes the victim of its
sanctioning.
The 1,000+ military bases around the globe are then effectively on their own and the
soldiers and administrators inside can either stay there and starve, throw in their lot with
the host nation's citizenry or beg to be allowed to return home.
thanks b... as long as the americans support the troops, lol - all will be well apparently...
jesus.. meanwhile - the support for the 1% bomb makers and etc continues... maybe it is the
mutual fund money that folks are concerned about maintaining..
"In the first six months of this year, United States forces dropped nearly 3,000 bombs
across Afghanistan." what is that? about 17 or 18 bombs a day or something? what about the
drones? they have to be put to use too... best to get someone who is involved in their own
turf war in afgan to give out the targets.. brilliant... usa war planning is mostly destroy
and destroy and honour the troops and wave their stupid american flag and that is about it...
sorry, but that is what it looks like to me..
its not so much they want to end the war on terror or the war on drugs.........they just want
to say one thing to cover their asses and do another thing completely..
no matter what there should of been one general who got it right.....but we see it was
never about peace .... it was always about war and its profits. anyone who didn't take orders
or even had a hint of the right strategy would be Hung like dirty boots to dry.
what is the right strategy? leave. just as other empires did. before you call on your
faces
to be even more frank....its not even about the money as that is not as important than
having a nation of 300m regurgitate the news that they are there for 17 years to be the
police of the world. because USA are the good ones... that they need to buy the biggest
trucks which can't even fit in normal parking spaces because they have land mines(I mean
ieds...) to avoid and need to haul 5tons of cargo to their construction job all while
watching out for terrorists and trump Hillary divisions. is disorienting and it is
deliberate. just as having a war last without a reason is deliberate while they entertain the
masses with games..
@23dh... same deal here in canuckle head ville... people remain ignorant of what there money
is ''''invested'''' in... could be saudi arabia for all the canucks think... btw - thanks for
the laugh on the other thread... you made a couple of good jokes somewhere the past few days!
i don't have much free time to comment at the moment..
McCoy, in "The Politics of Heroin" gives a more complete picture:
In 1996, following four years of civil war among rival resistance factions, the Taliban's
victory caused further expansion of opium cultivation. After capturing Kabul in September,
the Taliban drove the Uzbek and Tajik warlords into the country's northeast, where they
formed the Northern Alliance and clung to some 10 percent of Afghanistan's territory. Over
the next three years, a seesaw battle for the Shamali plain north of Kabul raged until the
Taliban finally won control in 1999 by destroying the orchards and irrigation in a prime
food-producing region, generating over 100,000 refugees and increasing the country's
dependence on opium.
Once in power, the Taliban made opium its largest source of taxation. To raise revenues
estimated at $20-$25 million in 1997, the Taliban collected a 5 to 10 percent tax in kind on
all opium harvested, a share that they then sold to heroin laboratories; a flat tax of $70
per kilogram on heroin refiners; and a transport tax of $250 on every kilogram exported. The
head of the regime's anti-drug operations in Kandahar, Abdul Rashid, enforced a rigid ban on
hashish "because it is consumed by Afghans, Muslims." But, he explained, "Opium is
permissible because it is consumed by kafirs [unbelievers] in the West and not by Muslims or
Afghans." A Taliban governor, Mohammed Hassan, added: "Drugs are evil and we would like to
substitute poppies with another cash crop, but it's not possible at the moment because we do
not have international recognition."
More broadly, the Taliban's policies provided stimulus, both direct and indirect, for a
nationwide expansion of opium cultivation. . . Significantly, the regime's ban on the
employment and education of women created a vast pool of low-cost labor to sustain an
accelerated expansion of opium production. . . . In northern and eastern Afghanistan, women
of all ages played " a fundamental role in the cultivation of the opium poppy"---planting,
weeding, harvesting, cooking for laborers, and processing by-products such as oil. The
Taliban not only taxed and encouraged opium cultivation, they protected and promoted exports
to international markets.
In retrospect, however, the Taliban's most important contribution to the illicit traffic
was its support for large-scale heroin refining.
. . .
Instead of eradication, the UN's annual opium surveys showed that Taliban rule had doubled
Afghanistan's opium production from 2,250 tons in 1996 to 4,600 tons in 1999--equivalent to
75 percent of world illicit production. (508-509)
. . .
War on the Taliban
All this [heroin] traffic across Central Asia depended on high-volume heroin production in
politically volatile Afghanistan. In July 2000, as a devastating drought entered its second
year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban's leader Mullah Omar ordered
a sudden ban on opium cultivation in a bid for international recognition. (p.517)
B's article assumes that the operative purpose of the US military is to win wars. This isn't
the case. The US military largely a business enterprise whose objective is to make money for
the plutocracy that largely controls them. That being the case, the Afghanistan war has been
a great success. If the US 'won' it, it would cease; if the Taliban conquered, it would
cease. In this form of military stagnation it continues, and the money roles in making the
ammunition, equipment, etc.
The military budget is largely an institution for transferring the tax money of the
population from the people to the plutocracy. Military stagnation serves this purpose better
than winning or losing.
If there is one standout factor which makes makes all this profitable mayhem possible then
it's the successful campaign by the Elites to persuade the Public that Secrecy is a
legitimate variation of Privacy.
It is not.
Impregnable Government Secrecy is ALWAYS a cover for erroneous interpretations of an
inconvenient Law - or straight-out cover for criminal activity.
It's preposterous to believe that a government elected by The People has a legitimate right
to create schemes which must be kept Secret from The People.
This is especially true in the case of Military/Defense. There wouldn't be a CIC on earth who
doesn't have up-to-date and regularly updated info on the hardware and capabilities of every
ally and every potential foe. The People have a legitimate right to know what the CIC, and
the rest of the world, already knows.
And that's just the most glaring example of the childish deception being perpetrated in
the name of Secrecy. If governments were to be stripped of the power to conduct Our affairs
in Secret then the scrutiny would oblige them to behave more competently. And we could weed
out the drones and nitwits before they did too much damage.
@30 Right. I notice they avoid mentioning the Badawis who are central to the issue. I guess
helping Justin out isn't very high on Donald's list of priorities.
i forget who said it and the exact phrasing, but the best explanation i've seen is
"why is the US there? it answers itself: to be there".
vast opium money for the deep state vermin.
profits for the bomb makers (you know, the respectable corporate ones as opposed to the
quaint do-it-yourselfers).
lithium deposits that probably rival those in bolivia as well as other untapped
profitable resources (probably, anyway; i could see oil and gas coming out of those ancient
valleys).
it's also an occupation as opposed to a "win and get out" war. these military welfare
queens think they can win a staring contest with the descendants of people who bitchslapped
every would-be conqueror since alexander the great. ask the russians how well that went for
them.
the west supports israel's 70+ years of colonizing palestine (plus the 3 or 4 decades of
dumbness before it with balfour and such) and still has troops in south goddamn korea. as
long as the tap flows they'll keep drinking that sweet tasty tax welfare.
Here are ten bombshell revelations and fascinating new details to lately come out of both Sy
Hersh's new book, Reporter , as well as
interviews he's given since publication...
1) On a leaked Bush-era intelligence memo outlining the neocon plan to remake the Middle
East
(Note: though previously alluded to only anecdotally by General Wesley Clark in his memoir and in a 2007
speech , the below passage from Seymour Hersh is to our knowledge the first time this
highly classified memo has been quoted . Hersh's account appears to corroborate now retired
Gen. Clark's assertion that days after 9/11 a classified memo outlining plans to foster regime
change in "7 countries in
5 years" was being circulated among intelligence officials.)
From Reporter: A Memoir
pg. 306 -- A few months after the invasion of Iraq, during an interview overseas with a general
who was director of a foreign intelligence service, I was provided with a copy of a Republican
neocon plan for American dominance in the Middle East. The general was an American ally, but
one who was very rattled by the Bush/Cheney aggression. I was told that the document leaked to
me initially had been obtained by someone in the local CIA station. There was reason to be
rattled: The document declared that the war to reshape the Middle East had to begin "with the
assault on Iraq. The fundamental reason for this... is that the war will start making the U.S.
the hegemon of the Middle East. The correlative reason is to make the region feel in its bones,
as it were, the seriousness of American intent and determination." Victory in Iraq would lead
to an ultimatum to Damascus, the "defanging" of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat's Palestine
Liberation Organization, and other anti-Israeli groups. America's enemies must understand that
"they are fighting for their life: Pax Americana is on its way, which implies their
annihilation." I and the foreign general agreed that America's neocons were a menace to
civilization.
From Reporter: A Memoir
pages 306-307 -- Donald Rumsfeld was also infected with neocon fantasy. Turkey had refused to
permit America's Fourth Division to join the attack of Iraq from its territory, and the
division, with its twenty-five thousand men and women, did not arrive in force inside Iraq
until mid-April, when the initial fighting was essentially over. I learned then that Rumsfeld
had asked the American military command in Stuttgart, Germany, which had responsibility for
monitoring Europe, including Syria and Lebanon, to begin drawing up an operational plan for an
invasion of Syria. A young general assigned to the task refused to do so, thereby winning
applause from my friends on the inside and risking his career. The plan was seen by those I
knew as especially bizarre because Bashar Assad, the ruler of secular Syria, had responded to
9/11 by sharing with the CIA hundreds of his country's most sensitive intelligence files on the
Muslim Brotherhood in Hamburg, where much of the planning for 9/11 was carried out... Rumsfeld
eventually came to his senses and back down, I was told...
3) On the Neocon deep state which seized power after 9/11
From Reporter: A Memoir
pages 305-306 -- I began to comprehend that eight or nine neoconservatives who were political
outsiders in the Clinton years had essentially overthrown the government of the United States
-- with ease . It was stunning to realize how fragile our Constitution was. The intellectual
leaders of that group -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle -- had not hidden their
ideology and their belief in the power of the executive but depicted themselves in public with
a great calmness and a self-assurance that masked their radicalism . I had spent many hours
after 9/11 in conversations with Perle that, luckily for me, helped me understand what was
coming. (Perle and I had been chatting about policy since the early 1980s, but he broke off
relations in 1993 over an article I did for The New Yorker linking him, a fervent supporter of
Israel, to a series of meetings with Saudi businessmen in an attempt to land a
multibillion-dollar contract from Saudi Arabia . Perle responded by publicly threatening to sue
me and characterizing me as a newspaper terrorist. He did not sue.
Meanwhile, Cheney had emerged as a leader of the neocon pack. From 9/11 on he did all he
could to undermine congressional oversight. I learned a great deal from the inside about his
primacy in the White House , but once again I was limited in what I would write for fear of
betraying my sources...
I came to understand that Cheney's goal was to run his most important military and
intelligence operations with as little congressional knowledge, and interference, as possible.
I was fascinating and important to learn what I did about Cheney's constant accumulation of
power and authority as vice president , but it was impossible to even begin to verify the
information without running the risk that Cheney would learn of my questioning and have a good
idea from whom I was getting the information.
4) On Russian meddling in the US election
From the recent
Independent interview based on his autobiography -- Hersh has vociferously strong opinions
on the subject and smells a rat. He states that there is "a great deal of animosity towards
Russia. All of that stuff about Russia hacking the election appears to be preposterous." He has
been researching the subject but is not ready to go public yet.
Hersh quips that the last time he heard the US defense establishment have high confidence,
it was regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He points out that the NSA only has moderate confidence in Russian
hacking. It is a point that has been made before; there has been no national intelligence
estimate in which all 17 US intelligence agencies would have to sign off. "When the intel
community wants to say something they say it High confidence effectively means that they don't
know."
5) On the Novichok poisoning
From the recent
Independent interview -- Hersh is also on the record as stating that the official version
of the
Skripal poisoning does not stand up to scrutiny. He tells me: "The story of novichok
poisoning has not held up very well. He [Skripal] was most likely talking to British
intelligence services about Russian organised crime." The unfortunate turn of events with the
contamination of other victims is suggestive, according to Hersh, of organised crime elements
rather than state-sponsored actions –though this files in the face of the UK government's
position.
Hersh modestly points out that these are just his opinions. Opinions or not, he is scathing
on Obama –
"a trimmer articulate [but] far from a radical a middleman". During his Goldsmiths talk, he
remarks that liberal critics underestimate Trump at their peril.
He ends the Goldsmiths talk with an anecdote about having lunch with his sources in the
wake of 9/11 . He vents his anger at the agencies for not sharing information. One of his
CIA sources fires back: "Sy you still don't get it after all these years – the FBI
catches bank robbers, the CIA robs banks." It is a delicious, if cryptic aphorism.
* * *
6) On the Bush-era 'Redirection' policy of arming Sunni radicals to counter Shia Iran, which
in a 2007 New Yorker article
Hersh accurately predicted
would set off war in Syria
From the
Independent interview : [Hersh] tells me it is "amazing how many times that story has been
reprinted" . I ask about his argument that US policy was designed to neutralize the Shia sphere
extending from Iran to Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and hence redraw the Sykes-Picot
boundaries for the 21st century.
He goes on to say that Bush and Cheney "had it in for Iran", although he denies the idea
that Iran was heavily involved in Iraq: "They were providing intel, collecting intel The US did
many cross-border hunts to kill ops [with] much more aggression than Iran"...
He believes that the Trump administration has no memory of this approach. I'm sure though
that the military-industrial complex has a longer memory...
I press him on the RAND and Stratfor reports including one authored by Cheney and Paul
Wolfowitz in which they envisage deliberate ethno-sectarian partitioning of Iraq . Hersh
ruefully states that: "The day after 9/11 we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing
that George Kennan warned us never to do – to expand NATO too far."
* * *
7) On the official 9/11 narrative
From the
Independent interview : We end up ruminating about 9/11, perhaps because it is another
narrative ripe for deconstruction by sceptics. Polling shows that a significant proportion of
the American public believes there is more to the truth. These doubts have been reinforced by
the declassification of the suppressed 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report last year
undermining the version that a group of terrorists acting independently managed to pull off the
attacks. The implication is that they may well have been state-sponsored with the Saudis
potentially involved.
Hersh tells me: "I don't necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
We really don't have an ending to the story. I've known people in the [intelligence] community.
We don't know anything empirical about who did what" . He continues: "The guy was living in a
cave. He really didn't know much English. He was pretty bright and he had a lot of hatred for
the US. We respond by attacking the Taliban. Eighteen years later How's it going guys?"
8) On the media and the morality of the powerful
From a recent
The Intercept interview and book review -- If
Hersh were a superhero, this would be his origin story. Two hundred and seventy-four pages
after the Chicago anecdote, he describes his coverage of a massive
slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991 after a ceasefire had ended the
Persian Gulf War. America's indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, "a reminder of the
Vietnam War's MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it's a murdered or raped gook, there is no crime." It
was also, he adds, a reminder of something else: "I had learned a domestic version of that rule
decades earlier" in Chicago. "Reporter" demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that rule:
The powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including mass murder.
The powerful lie constantly about their predations.
The natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with it.
"... A good hypothesis is, that Olof Palme was assassinated by a US stay-behind group, consisting of Nazi military and police. ..."
"... I think VG is quite correct in this: it was a test. And the test was of the neocon/humanitarian intervention marriage. Yes, the USA has doe a lot of this sort of thing in its history, but there has always been some opposition inside the USA. This time, they figured it out and "humanitarian bombing" was born. We have seen a lot more humanitarian bombing since. ..."
"... It was Gore, in consultation with Hillary Clinton, who decided to launch the criminal bombing of Serbia, informing PM Primakov after taking a phone call meant for the president. ..."
"... By launching an illegal attack on Russia's ally, the VP and the future Sec. of State, were offering a foreshadowing of the hawkish and belligerent anti-Russian policy that was to follow for the next 17 years. ..."
"... Western populations for the most part are so thoroughly brainwashed they still cling to the belief they live in civilized countries and their militaries keep them safe from barbarians. ..."
"... Gary I agree whole heartedly with every word you wrote. I would add to how intriguing it would be to learn of the high deception played during the passage of the Federal Reserve back in 1913. Then I'd push out of the way those who blocked Claude Pepper from endorsing Henry Wallace into the 1944 Democratic Convention. This alone may have changed the course of the establishment of the CIA, and avoided the disaster that is happening in Palestine to this day. ..."
"... I do believe the assassination era was the biggest turning point, as it sent a strong message to the would be seekers of sane government policies who would incur such tragedy if explored. Joe ..."
"... I believe there are many questions that need answering about NATO. For instance: July 14, 2018 The Diabolical "Work" of NATO and Its Allies: Why Are These War Criminals Still Free? ..."
By Vladimir Golstein in Belgrade Special to Consortium News
Right across the street from my hotel,
tucked behind tall office buildings, is the rather large Church of St. Mark. Hidden in St.
Mark's shadows is a tiny Russian Orthodox church. The Church of the Holy Trinity, known simply
as the Russian Church, is famous for holding the remains of Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel ,
the Russian Civil War leader of the Whites. It is hard to find, but luckily, a friend took me
there.
As we were looking around the church, not particularly interested in Wrangel, a couple of
Russians asked me to take their picture in front of his tomb. Trying to find a proper angle for
the picture, I noticed a small plaque on a wall nearby. It listed the names of Russians who
died fighting for Yugoslav Serbs during the conflict with separatist Albanians in Kosovo and
the subsequent NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in
1999.
As we left the church, we took a small path toward the top of the park. There we observed
another brutal sign of that war: a destroyed building next to the TV center. It too had a
plaque. It screamed, " Zashto " (For What? Why?). Below it were the names of all the TV
people NATO killed during that attack. In all, as many as 2,500 civilians may have been killed
by NATO, according to the then Yugoslav government, though the real number may never
be known.
On the one hand, the question Zashto is both idle and provocative. It implies a
laceration of wounds, a refusal to forget and to start anew. On the other, there is an obvious
need to find an answer to this question simply to prevent future destruction and senseless
murders.
We won't find answers to this question in the official narratives, which tell us that the
noble Clinton administration decided to stop flagrant violations of human rights in the
extremely complex situation in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo by bombing
the Serbs into respecting minorities both on its own and on neighboring territories. (In fact
the large exodus of Kosovo Albanians to Albania proper only began after NATO bombs started to
fall.)
Testing the Limits
Russians who died fighting for Yugoslavia. (Photo by Vladimir Golstein)
Behind these official stories, a much sadder picture emerges. Why did these people die? Why
did this NATO operation go ahead without UN Security Council authorization
nor proof of self-defense, requirements of the UN Charter? Was it to satisfy the lust for power
of U.S. and NATO leaders, of liberal interventionists like Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton,
and Susan Rice? To assuage the Clinton administration's guilt over its failure to respond to the 1994 genocide
in Rwanda? Was it to set up America's largest military base in Europe since the
Vietnam War, Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo? For American access to Kosovo's vast mineral wealth and
other business opportunities, including for
Ms. Albright ? Or was it to finally kill off a rather successful Yugoslav experiment in the
"third way" between the West and the Soviet Union?
It seems these people had to die for all those reasons and to put into practice the
doctrines of responsibility to protect ( R2P ) and
full spectrum dominance , doctrines cooked up by liberal interventionists and neocons in
Washington. Those who died were essentially guinea pigs of a New World Order experiment to see
how far the world could be pushed to implement R2P, a policy that could be used to mask
imperial ambitions.
And it worked. Yugoslavia was unable to stand up to the power of NATO operating outside the
mandate of its obsolete charter: namely to defend Western Europe against an alleged Soviet
threat. Indeed one could argue that with the Cold War over, another motive for the attack on
Yugoslavia was to provide NATO with a justification to exist. (It would later go even further
afield outside its legal theater of operation, into Afghanistan and then Libya.)
Russia could do little to help the Serbs. Then the Chinese Embassy was hit
as well, as a test it seems, though The New York Timessaid
it was a mistake. The Chinese did nothing.
Thus was R2P implemented -- with no protection for Yugoslav Serbs. They had to die in the
experiment to explore the limits of U.S. power and the limits of its resistance.
If my memory serves me correctly, President Bill Clinton had set up a summit meeting with
Russian President Yevgeny Primakov here in the USA. Primakov was in flight on his way here
for that summit meeting when President of Vice, Al Gore, without Clinton's permission or
knowledge, called Primakov, in flight, to tell him NATO had decided to bomb Kosovo. Primakov immediately ordered his plane to
turn around and return to Russia, thus cancelling the summit meeting...
Aurora , August 7, 2018 at 8:55 pm
In Russia that is known as "The Primakov Loop."
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Thanks Vladimir. The Serbs are demonized by so many, especially the Germans-many believe
it was because they fought so valiantly against the Nazis in WW2. Diana Johnstone has written
"Fools' Crusade- Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions", and Michel Collon "Media Lies and
the Conquest of Kosovo", but books with this point of view are not readily publicised. Nor is
the fact that after his death (no trial had yet taken place) Slobodan Milosovic was finally
found nOT to have been responsible for all the murderous acts he was accused/assumed to be
responsible for.
We can note now of course the Russian reaction to the "annexation of Crimea" after a
referendum, no bloodshed and the referendum also of Russians all over the Federation, while
Kosovo was ripped from Serbia by trickery and not consent, and we see how it is now. Russia
is sanctioned, the people who overthrew the Ukrainian government are not mentioned, Crimea is
not allowed to return to Russia. Slight difference from the "nation" of Kososvo!
Thomas Binder , August 6, 2018 at 6:35 am
The war against #Serbia under #R2P was the #MilitaryIndustrialFinancialMedialComplex'es
ruling the #USA/#NATO/#ISR/#SAU empire (#PNAC's) test for eternal war against #AlQaeda
outside international law & interference of #USLegislators for getting full-spectrum
dominance.
Jackson , August 5, 2018 at 2:21 pm
NATO should have been disbanded after the fall of the Soviets. When you arm people and
train them to kill, they will look for an enemy to fight. War becomes inevitable.
jose , August 5, 2018 at 6:00 pm
It is hard to disagree with your post. Nato, disgracefully, has become a terrorist
organization that has dedicated itself to be the paw of the western elite. Shamefully, other
countries have joined Yugoslavia as victims of Nato criminality. Well done Jackson.
Björn Lindgren , August 5, 2018 at 7:25 am
FOR REASON OF STATE, FOR REASON OF INTEREST
There might be still more reasons for the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Germany had put its mind into destabilizing Yugoslavia to get a "Hinterland". Added to
this, a revenge motive: Nazi Germany occupation of Yugoslavia failed, and this has never been
forgotten. And lastly, Yugoslavia was a member of the non-alignment movement, not obeying
US-NATO.
And, of course, after the collapse of the Warsaw pact, NATO had no enemy, no purpose.
But, it invented one: full US spectrum global dominance.
Sweden has also been punished to obey the US.
During the years of PM Olof Palme, Sweden was also a member of the non-alignment movement.
Palme was educated in and friendly to the US, but critized the US war in Vietnam. (Nixon
hated Palme, and withdraw the US diplomats from Sweden).
1992 foreign submarines penetrated Swedish waters repeatedly.
The submarine incident at Hårsfjärden, a marine base, was not made by Russia,
but was made by US and British submarines. Afterwards, both Caspar Weinberger and Sir Keith
Speed confirmed this. Weinberger even thanked Sweden for not blowing up the US mini-sub
(which we could have done. (Read, "Hårsfjärden. Det hemliga ubåtskriget mot
Sverige," by Ola Tunander).
Purpose: pushing Sweden westward.
Already in the mid 50s, William Colby, later head of the CIA, was in Sweden organizing
stay-behind groups, recruting Swedish voluntary ex-soldiers from the Finnish wars against
Soviet Union. In the 50-s these people were organized in "Sveaborg", a Nazi group.
A good hypothesis is, that Olof Palme was assassinated by a US stay-behind group,
consisting of Nazi military and police.
Which, of course, had to be stonewalled "for reason of state". Today, Sweden is "cooperating" shamelessly with NATO, invite, and have excersices with
NATO. This week, the Swedish government annonced that it will purchase US "Patriot"
anti-missiles with "ballistic capability" (Hey, hey!).
Supporting the insane belligerent US and UK nuclear armament (for a nuclear first-strike?)
against neoliberal, oligarchic Russia, which is planning to keep up in the race towards the
abyss. That is, Sweden is now d e f a c t o a member of NATO, without the Swedish people or
parliament have had a say. NATO which eventually is falling apart, and with a lunatic US
president and his military government in the White House, in a US empire collapsing. The peace aspirations of Sweden are long forgotten. And so, is the Helsinki Conference and
agreement (1975-1983) for common security, disarmamanet , and a nuclear-free zone in
Europe.
The question is if Germany, France, UK (with Corbyn in 10 Downing) and Russia will
organize a new Helsinki Conference and Agreement?
Maybe, "for reasons of interest".
--
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 4:01 pm
Thanks so much for this comprehensive addition to the discussion. Sweden indeed has been
placed in an invidious position.
Pretending that NATO has any purpose even vaguely related to peace is laughable.
David G , August 6, 2018 at 6:01 pm
Great comment, Björn Lindgren. Many thanks.
The withering away of Swedish neutrality into an empty formality has become so obvious,
but never remarked upon in the U.S. I'm sure most cable TV talking heads just assume Sweden
is in NATO – indeed, I've heard the error made, albeit corrected after the next
commercial break.
I appreciate reading your committed, highly informed perspective. Maybe you could submit
an article on this under-reported subject to Consortium News?
Excellent article in the eve of 20th anniversary of NATO aggression on Yugoslavia which
will be marked by Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, March 23, 24rth, 2019.
NATO 1999 aggression was meant to be precedent and turning point in global conduct toward
globalization of military interventionism (Avganistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.). Willy Wimmer wrote
to Schoerder on May 2nd, 2000, USA position: "The war against Yugoslavia was conducted in
order to correct the mistake of General Eisenhower from the 2ndWW. Subsequently, for
strategic reasons, USA troops had to be stationed there ". And: "It is clear that it is the
precedent to be recalled any time" The Bondstil base in Kosovo was only the first in the
ensuing chain of new USA bases in Bulgaria (4), Rumania (4), Albania (2), Baltic states
I think VG is quite correct in this: it was a test. And the test was of the
neocon/humanitarian intervention marriage. Yes, the USA has doe a lot of this sort of thing
in its history, but there has always been some opposition inside the USA. This time, they
figured it out and "humanitarian bombing" was born. We have seen a lot more humanitarian
bombing since.
Branko Mikasinovich , August 4, 2018 at 4:45 pm
A great and truthful article about Western Policy, NATO and US. A courageous and
informative analysis of Mr. Golstein. Thank you.
ToivoS , August 4, 2018 at 1:18 pm
Goldstein writes Russia could do little to help the Serbs. Then the Chinese Embassy was
hit as well, as a test it seems, though The New York Times said it was a mistake. The Chinese
did nothing.
Actually the Chinese did do something. They changed their attitude towards the US. I have
yet to meet a Chinese national who believes that the embassy hit was a "mistake". They and
their government view it as a deliberate attack on their sovereignty. But they realized they
were not in a position respond so they then began military planning for possible conflict
between China and the US Navy in the Western Pacific. In 2000 they started a 10 plan to
achieve the ability to sink any US aircraft carrier within a 1000 km of their shores. We
won't know if they have achieved that ability until a real test is conducted. But that is the
something they have done.
FB , August 8, 2018 at 9:24 am
Good point Toivos The Chinese have never forgotten the Belgrade embassy bombing and they
never will. Ask any Chinese today, even those living in the West the Chinese are an ancient people
with a long and proud memory the embassy bombing was a step too far. All of these hubristic missteps will come back to haunt the empire
Theo , August 4, 2018 at 10:51 am
I remember well the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia under the pretext to stop the genocide
that was allegedly committed by the Serbs. The saddest thing for me was that Germany was
participating in the bombing campaign. My father who was in Yugoslavia as a Wehrmacht soldier
was outraged as were many others. After almost sixty years German bombers were over Serbia
again. My dad used to say German soldiers on foreign soil had never been good neither for the
foreign country nor for Germany. That's why until today the Germans have an aversion to all
military and the deployment of German soldiers in foreign countries is not very popular.
David G , August 4, 2018 at 11:16 am
The 1999 air attacks were the coup de grace, but I think Germany had the (dis)honor of
leading the vivisection of Yugoslavia from the start.
As Vladimir Golstein rhetorically asks: "Or was it to finally kill off a rather successful
Yugoslav experiment in the 'third way' between the West and the Soviet Union?"
Indeed it was, and that surely appealed to all the Western powers. But Germany was
particularly interested in removing a possible continental rival, and took the lead in making
sure it happened – not at all to absolve the U.S., under whose aegis it was ultimately
operating.
Antiwar7 , August 4, 2018 at 11:42 am
The German people and the German government are different. The German government has had
an anti-Serb animus for over 150 years: that's clear. But the German people, as Theo's dad
shows, can be very nice. My father was a POW in Germany for 4 years during WWII, and most of
the German people he encountered were quite nice to him.
Theo , August 4, 2018 at 3:56 pm
You are right. The vivisection of Yugoslavia began when Germany recognized the independence
of Slovenia before any other country did. The German government with Genscher as foreign
minister didn't consult with any of the European allies. Especially France was not amused at
all.
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 4:04 pm
It was Germany, 9 days after reunification, which led the removal of Croatia from
Yugoslavia and beginning the breakup of a successful multicultural country.
Juan P. Zenter , August 4, 2018 at 7:29 am
Yugoslavia was a federation of states and was, thus, an obstacle to consolidating EU and
NATO power in Southeastern Europe. Once the federation was destroyed, the individual states
that comprised it could be absorbed by EU/NATO. That was the ultimate outcome of NATO bombing
there, despite all denials about that being the intent.
Thanks for the article, the photo of the beautiful church, and the reflection on this
horrible chapter from the book of atrocities disguised as "humanitarian" to fool the masses.
This also helped Bill and Hillary Clinton distract the American public from the Monica
Lewinsky affair.
j. D. D. , August 4, 2018 at 7:59 pm
I don't see it that way. Rather, as President Clinton was hit with the Lewinsky scandal
and put on the defensive immediately following his speech to NY's Council on Foreign Relations
in which he called for "a new world financial archithitecture," VP Al Gore, who later shunned
the president, saw the opportunity to determine policy. It was Gore, in consultation with
Hillary Clinton, who decided to launch the criminal bombing of Serbia, informing PM Primakov
after taking a phone call meant for the president. Whereupon the PM turned around his flight
in mid-air over the Atlantic and returned to Russia. By launching an illegal attack on
Russia's ally, the VP and the future Sec. of State, were offering a foreshadowing of the
hawkish and belligerent anti-Russian policy that was to follow for the next 17 years.
FB , August 8, 2018 at 9:31 am
Disagree these are minor details that are meaningless. Yugoslavia had already been systematically dismembered starting the very instant after
German unification and the fall of the Soviet Union. Coincidence ? Maybe a child could believe it by 1999, the final chapter of the dismemberment, Kosovo,
was ready, after several years of laying careful groundwork of subversion, propaganda and
agitation
The Nato war of aggression in 1999 would have proceeded no matter what to think that the
Lewisnky nonsense had anything to do with anything is ridiculous
nonsense factory , August 3, 2018 at 11:50 pm
One major factor in the NATO bombing and the overall agenda in the region was control of
territory for a proposed gas/oil pipeline export route from Central Asia to Europe. The
creation of Camp Bondsteel was directly related to that goal, and the chief contractor
(KBR-Halliburton) played the same role there that they did in the construction of numerous
military bases in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
That's been a dominant theme in U.S. foreign policy and military strategy circles ever
since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Numerous routes have been proposed –
trans-Afghanistan pipeline, the Nabucco pipeline, etc., all with the same goal –
getting Central Asia fossil fuels (leased to US and British majors like Exxon, Chevron, BP,
etc.) to global markets while bypassing Iran and Russia.
Monbiot in the Guardian, 2001 (when it was still a fairly decent paper, rather than a
gung-ho enforcer of the Blairite neoliberal agenda), said this:
"For the past few weeks, a freelance researcher called Keith Fisher has been doggedly
documenting a project which has, as far as I can discover, has been little-reported in any
British, European or American newspaper. It is called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, and it's due
for approval at the end of next month. Its purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the
Caspian sea. . ."
"In November 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary, spelt out his policy on the
extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This is about America's energy security," he
explained. "It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values.
We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We would like to see
them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way.
We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us
that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right. . ."
Paul Stuart, in the WSWS, 2002, noted:
"According to leaked comments to the press, European politicians now believe that the US
used the bombing of Yugoslavia specifically in order to establish Camp Bondsteel. Before the
start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Washington Post insisted, "With the
Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights in the Balkans to
protect Caspian Sea oil."" https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/04/oil-a29.html
Forward project of American imperial power in the name of control of energy resources and
the cash flows arising from them, in a nutshell. Or, "business as usual since the 1950s".
Since JFK, it's all been done under the cover of "humanitarian intervention" and "protecting
democracy" which is why so many American citizens have no idea what the true aims of these
wars have really been
MH , August 7, 2018 at 2:13 pm
Sadly, Monbiot's column aside, the Guardian's coverage of what most of us here think of as
a war against Yugoslav independence was unabashedly pro-NATO and anti-Serb. The outlet did
it's best to confuse otherwise war skeptical liberals -- by demonizing the Serbs as
bloodthirsty savages purveying late 1930s genocide -- about the true character of "the
west's" aggression against the Serbs. Unlike Iraq, where the Graundiad reversed their pro-war
stance, the paper only doubled down on its anti-Serb biases, culminating in trumpets and
coronets for Hague's prosecutors ludicrously inept (at best) handling of Milosevic's
trial.
Bob Van Noy , August 3, 2018 at 8:11 pm
Thank you Vladimir Golstein for this article. I'm sure you know the answers to the
questions you ask in the paragraph titled "Testing the Limlts". The answer to each of them is
given to us and to the world in F. William Engdahl's devastating book entitled "Manifest
Destiny" : Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance. I say devastating because Mr. Engdahl
thoroughly describes a series of American administrations responsible for all of these crimes
and more.
It will be up to us (American Citizens) to educate ourselves as to the real history of our
government acting secretly, without broad consensus, and illegally. This article is a good
beginning but the discussion needs to be broadened and further documented. Then we can begin
to find a resolution.
How one can wonder how the German population stood aside while the Nazis committed their
atrocities while at the same time not speaking out at our own apparent daily military
excesses is beyond me.
irina , August 4, 2018 at 12:01 am
Not to mention meekly paying for these daily military excesses, with no protest.
christina garcia , August 4, 2018 at 1:02 am
here is an historical answer, My Grandfather and Grandmother were born in Koenigsberg
Prussia what is now known as Kaliningrad. The City of Emanuel Kant and not quite in the
1930's fans of National Socialism. My Grandfather owned a brick factory and a saw mill . They
were capitalists, not National Socialists. And you JIMBOBLA , fyi, My Opa was caught by the
Russian Army 1943, my family was totally disunited. It took the Red Cross 3 years to find my
family members and repatriate them .The Nazi organization disliked capitalism . I can prove
every single sentence I wrote. Please be careful when you write Nazism
Sam F , August 4, 2018 at 8:48 am
If you disagree, you should really address the issue of "how the German population stood
aside while the Nazis committed their atrocities." Are you arguing that Nazi atrocities were
justified by the USSR dispersing a family in 1943 Kaliningrad, during a war in which Nazis
killed over 20 million Russians? It would be interesting to hear an argument with substance
and references.
christina garcia , August 4, 2018 at 1:04 am
it is beyond you because you never experienced these atrocities
Milojkovic , August 5, 2018 at 8:11 pm
Dear Christina, I am very sorry about what happened to your family. They probably didn't
have a choice, otherwise the Nazis would have hurt them. Maybe you'd have never been born if
they dared to resist actively. Probably good people, unfairly caught in the whirlwind of
history and human brutality. They were then retaliated against by other Nazi victims without
deserving so, just because of their ethnicity. I am a Serb, living in U.S. Trust me, I can
relate. I was here in U.S. during those terrible days of 1999, living through them as if in a
daze. Life is now "kinda back to normal", but I try my best not to think just how big a part
of me had died in that bombing. My grandfather, who was just a peasant but a very devoted
Christian, died in a horrible pain from the terminal stomach cancer because there was no pain
medication for him; plus the pharmaceutical factories were bombed after having been accused
of being able to produce chemical weapons in a coordinated NATO propaganda just days before.
In agony, he was trying to undress himself, and was screaming and running around the garden.
Several of our family members were killed by Wehrmacht in WW II. I think that Germany had no
business participating in this bombing. Look up Varvarin bridge. It was shameful. And yes,
unfortunately, it was a German hand holding the match that lit up the powder keg that was
Yugoslavia in early 90's.
Consortium's Fan , August 7, 2018 at 10:28 am
Did YOU, Christina Garcia, experience atrocities? Judging by you comment, I am confidently
saying you DIDN'T. You know NOTHING about atrocities. Read and watch films about Nazi doings.
And compare them to "dispersing a family" in a wartime. A recent film worth seeing is
SOBIBOR, entirely based on archives, – a Nazi concentration camp in Poland's Sobibor
– hence the name. Educate yourself.
Lois Gagnon , August 3, 2018 at 5:37 pm
Western populations for the most part are so thoroughly brainwashed they still cling to
the belief they live in civilized countries and their militaries keep them safe from
barbarians. Unf*cking believable.
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 4:11 pm
The likelihood of damage being caused by the USA NOT intervening anywhere must be
vanishingly small!!!!!
Realist , August 3, 2018 at 5:24 pm
To U.S. authorities, foreign lives simply do not matter. No need to conduct any
"intelligence assessment" to determine their culpability. They shamelessly commit mass murder
right out in the open with impunity.
What makes you think USA lives matter to them. I see no evidence of that either.
Realist , August 3, 2018 at 11:39 pm
Nothing makes me think that. Why do you think I chose the phraseology that I did? It
gained currency in reaction to the murderous abuses by American police on our own
streets.
LarcoMarco , August 4, 2018 at 1:50 pm
It gained currency when that other Donald (Rumsfeld) essentially said that G.I's were
cannon fodder.
REDPILLED , August 4, 2018 at 4:54 pm
That despicable attitude long predates war criminal Rumsfeld: "Military men are just dumb,
stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."? Henry Kissinger
Drew Hunkins , August 3, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Michael Parenti's book "To Kill a Nation" is the best book on the criminal NATO war on
Yugoslavia. Followed closely by Diana Johnstone's seminal book "Fool's Crusade."
Antiwar7 , August 4, 2018 at 11:45 am
Agreed: those are excellent books, the best English language works on the breakup of
Yugoslavia.
Isn't it sad that the most enduring monuments the U.S. is leaving for it's worldly legacy
are but artifacts of war and destruction. We could have done much better than this.
Joe – Exactly. I sometimes find myself thinking the "what if" to the U.S. mayhem of
just my own lifetime. "What if" the CIA hadn't coordinated the assassinations of JFK and
Lumumba, as well as of course the murder or overthrow of dozens of elected leaders in former
colonies who simply aspired to helping their own people, rather than acting as proxies to the
continuing pillage by U.S. & Western capitalism. What if instead those leaders were
allowed to lead their nations into a non-aligned world and not forced to be beholden to
either the U.S. or Soviet systems by threats of U.S. military and economic violence? What if
Malcolm and MLK and RFK had not been murdered by forces connected to the U.S. ruling
institutions, and had instead by now had become elder statesmen in a more humane and
democratic U.S. system that would stand in stark contrast to the insane neoliberal capitalist
freak show which has been forced upon the world, and who's mystical – "invisible hand"
– can be found tightly wrapped around the throats of the poor everywhere?
Yes Joe I agree, I think we could have lived in a very different world had not the greed
and pathology of U.S. and Western oligarchy quite intentionally and violently destroyed any
possibility of a more humane and egalitarian world by routinely murdering those more humane
leaders who could have helped us reach it. That possibility of a more humane world was
replaced instead with the odious Maggie Thatcher's "there is no alternative" global nightmare
of continued neocolonial pillage euphemistically called neoliberal capitalism. Only the
fine-tuning of the rational for mass murder has changed. Now we have "duty to protect"
– which translated from 'newspeak' means = "we now must bomb and kill you because we
care about you so very, very much." Sort of a Western postmodern version of earlier
justifications for slaughtering the indigenous in order to – "save their souls" I
suppose. We in the West have created this current version of global "reality" through
absolutely amoral unrelenting mass violence over 500+ years now, and sadly there does not
seem to be any real evidence of a change of heart or direction in our global mayhem.
Joe Tedesky , August 3, 2018 at 9:24 pm
Gary I agree whole heartedly with every word you wrote. I would add to how intriguing it
would be to learn of the high deception played during the passage of the Federal Reserve back
in 1913. Then I'd push out of the way those who blocked Claude Pepper from endorsing Henry
Wallace into the 1944 Democratic Convention. This alone may have changed the course of the
establishment of the CIA, and avoided the disaster that is happening in Palestine to this
day.
Thatcher & Reagan surly introduced us into this new economy which is often said to be
doing so great, and there we are ruined by an overly eager Fed lender along with an out of
sight Defense budget. Your job isn't there, and with that you are told to blame the union.
Ah, the Union wasn't that what Margaret & Ronny sabotaged eventually . nice work.
I do believe the assassination era was the biggest turning point, as it sent a strong
message to the would be seekers of sane government policies who would incur such tragedy if
explored. Joe
Joe – I quite agree. The assassination era was the huge turning point, but as you
point out the corruption and manipulation of democracy by the oligarchy goes way back. Yes,
imagine if Wallace had been the VP for FDR? Had Wallace's nomination not been sabotaged,
perhaps the Dulles brothers would have spent their remaining time on earth learning
woodworking skills in prison workshop after being convicted for the treason of their Nazi
dealings – instead of leading the CIA and State Dept. into the corrupt secrecy of
multiple regime changes, assassinations, and endless insane cold war posturing. The Dulles
CIA era, including it's loving embrace of the Nazi war criminals, seems to have a been in
retrospect a very dark prelude leading up to the assassination era to follow. Ike certainly
had some foreboding of the evil to come given his parting comments.
REDPILLED , August 4, 2018 at 5:04 pm
A brief recommended reading list:
The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
by David Talbot
The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the attack on U.S. Democracy by Peter
Dale Scott
The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Mike
Lofgren
Bob Van Noy , August 4, 2018 at 8:35 am
Joe and Gary, very nice and well informed thread, thank you. Clearly we all share the
history that both of you mentioned and we also see through the now crumbling obfuscation. It
will become our new duty to use that past experience and a new hope to help make an official
case for correcting the official record and reclaiming Democracy. Actually it's a worthy
endeavor and we're uniquely positioned to help
Consortium's Fan , August 7, 2018 at 10:42 am
"Sort of a Western postmodern version of earlier justifications for slaughtering the
indigenous in order to – "save their souls" I suppose."
Or even earlier justifications (by the Holy Inquisition in the Middle Ages) to burn people
alive to "save their souls".
Realist , August 4, 2018 at 6:03 pm
Excellent point, Joe. I wonder how different the history books will look if this country
somehow manages to shed the warmongering hegemonists who have been in control for at least
the last 70 years (or, one might argue, from its inception).
I'd also like to see an English translation of the current world history books, used in
the schools of China, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, Cuba, Vietnam or dozens of other
countries not part of the American World Empire. I'll bet American actions and motives are
not portrayed to be as noble and pure as the driven snow. I'll bet even Mexico has a quite
different take. Canada? You stopped our invasion in 1812, aided the slaves sent to you via
the Underground Railway and refused to cooperate in the Vietnam fiasco. What happened since
then? Now you extradite AWOL GI's who don't want to go back to the numerous "sand boxes" we
play in. I'll bet those books, if ever published in English, would not be allowed on public
library shelves in the U.S.
I believe there are many questions that need answering about NATO. For instance:
July 14, 2018
The Diabolical "Work" of NATO and Its Allies: Why Are These War Criminals Still Free?
NATO's recent meeting or summit in Brussels July 11 – 12, 2018, could be described
as a gathering of heinous hypocrites. [1] There are millions of people dead, millions are
refugees, their countries have been destroyed and our ruling hypocrites spout the words "rule
of law." Has there ever been a gang of human reptiles (are they even human?) so evil, dressed
in expensive suits [and dresses] and operating out of houses of power called "parliaments"
and other houses of ill repute? These criminals, or gangsters, or bandits, or reprobates (Add
your own epithet) are up to their filthy necks in the blood of the victims of their planned
carnage.
Yet it was reported: "The summit will also discuss the fight against terrorism." Gee! Does
that statement about fighting "terrorism" smack of hypocrisy? There is evidence that NATO and
its members have, in fact, been consorting with, and supporting, terrorists. [2]
[much more info at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-diabolical-work-of-nato-and-its.html
"... At some point the Western Powers decided the that old Communist Apparachik Milosevic would be the Bad Guy and the Croatian freedom-loving "our bastards" the good guys to be internationally recognized and thus enflamed the passion of secession. The thing just flew apart. And afterwards we had to bomb the country in order to save it. ..."
I vividly recall the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. I was nine-years-old and we were not
wired for cable then. There also was no remote control for the 27″ Zenith color
console. I was forced to watch some of the coverage for those reasons. Sarajevo was held up
as a utopian city where Serbs, Croats and Muslims all lived in a beautiful city peacefully.
It was so beautiful said the announcers. And in less than a decade that Olympic stadium
was turned into a cemetery as those peaceful Croats, Serbs and Muslims slaughtered each
other. Once the Soviet Army withdrew from Yugoslavia and the nation disintegrated back into
its ethnic lines, the killings started.
Imagine what is coming in the United States where the simmering hatreds are invited and
exploited by not three distinct groups, but hundreds. Image what is to come when
"historically aggrieved" peoples who have been weaponized for generations to despise their
non-homogenous neighbors.
The erasure of common nationhood and the instilling of grievance as a caste system will
see the US descend into chaotic slaughter the likes of which have never been seen before.
When Pakistan separated from India after the British pulled out, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus
slaughtered each other, stopping trains filled with refugees being repatriated into their new
nations and slaughtering every one of them. Americans have been so denuded of historical
understanding that these histories are unknown.
The malevolence of humanity seething just under the surface until the opportunity arises
for it to burst forth is forgotten by placated propagandized people. What people in world
history have been more propagandized and placated than Americans who have been viewing
carefully crafted scripts since their eyes were first able to focus on a tv screen and whose
desperately poor are morbidly obese?
Stocking a warehouse to the rafters with volatile materials, packing them in so tightly
until they near critical mass, now add in some agitation -- and light a match. The most
devastating weapon ever devised in not the hydrogen bomb, it is a population bomb. A 100
megaton nuclear weapon destroys cleanly -- one flash and a wind storm -- it's all over aside
from lingering sunshine units. In a thousand years the land will forget what had
happened.
A population bomb where the very people have been weaponized will prove far more
devastating and remain scarring the land for eons and that common memory lives on in the
survivors igniting anew every few decades.
Once the Soviet Army withdrew from Yugoslavia and the nation disintegrated back into its
ethnic lines, the killings started.
That never happened though because the Soviet Army was never in Yugoslavia in the first
place. It was Tito who maintained order with an iron fist.
At some point the Western Powers decided the that old Communist Apparachik Milosevic
would be the Bad Guy and the Croatian freedom-loving "our bastards" the good guys to be
internationally recognized and thus enflamed the passion of secession. The thing just flew
apart. And afterwards we had to bomb the country in order to save it.
"It did not take National Socialism long to rally workers, most of whom were either
unemployed or still very young, into the SA [Sturmangriff, Stormtroopers, "brown shirts"]. To a
large extent, however, these workers were revolutionary in a dull sort of way and still
maintained an authoritarian attitude. For this reason National Socialist propaganda was
contradictory; it's content was determined by the class for which it was intended. Only in its
manipulation of the mystical feelings of the masses was it clear and consistent.
In talks with followers of the National Socialist party and especially with members of the
SA, it was clearly brought out that the revolutionary phraseology of National Socialism was the
decisive factor in the winning over of these masses. One heard National Socialists deny that
Hitler
represented capital. One heard SA men warn Hitler that he must not betray the cause of the
"revolution." One heard SA men say that Hitler was the German Lenin . Those who went over to
National Socialism from Social Democracy and the liberal central parties were, without
exception, revolutionary minded masses who were either nonpolitical or politically undecided
prior to this. Those who went over from the Communist party were often revolutionary elements
who simply could not make any sense of many of the German Communist party's contradictory
political slogans. In part they were men upon whom the external features of Hitler's party,
it's military character, its assertiveness, etc., made a big impression.
"Open avowal of dictatorship is much less dangerous than sham democracy. The first one can
fight; sham democracy is insidious."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Even more
essential, however, is the identification of the individuals in the masses with the
"führer." The more helpless the "mass-individual" has become, owing to his upbringing, the
more pronounced is his identification with the führer, and the more the childish need for
protection is disguised in the form of a feeling at one with the führer. This inclination
to identify is the psychological basis of national narcissism, i.e., of the self-confidence
that individual man derives from the "greatness of the nation."
The reactionary lower
middle-class man perceives himself in the führer, in the authoritarian state. On
the basis of this identification he feels himself to be a defender of the "national heritage,"
of the "nation," which does not prevent him, likewise on the basis of this identification, from
simultaneously despising "the masses" and confronting them as an individual. The wretchedness
of his material and sexual situation is so overshadowed by the exalting idea of belonging to a
master race and having a brilliant führer that, as time goes on, he ceases to realize how
completely he has sunk to a position of insignificant, blind allegiance.
The worker who is conscious of his skills -- he, in short, who has rid himself of his
submissive structure, who identifies with his work and not with the führer, with the
international working masses and not with the national homeland -- represents the opposite of
this. He feels himself to be a leader , not on the basis of his identification with the
führer, but on the basis of his consciousness of performing work that is vitally necessary
for society's existence."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"It was one
of the greatest errors in evaluating dictatorship to say that the dictator forces himself on
society against its own will. In reality, every dictator in history was nothing but the
accentuation of already existing state ideas which he had only to exaggerate in order to gain
power"
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Race
theorists, who are as old as imperialism itself, want to achieve racial purity in peoples whose
interbreeding, as a result of the expansion of world economy, is so far advanced that racial
purity can have meaning only to a numbskull."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Power, no matter what kind of power it is, without a foundation in truth, is a
dictatorship, more or less and in one way or another, for it is always based on man's fear of
the social responsibility and personal burden that "freedom" entails."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"The word fascism is not a word of abuse any more than the word capitalism is. It is a
concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian,
one-party system, hence totalitarian, a system in which power takes priority over objective
interests, and facts are distorted for political purposes. Hence, there are "fascist Jews,"
just as there are "fascist Democrats."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Finally, we arrive at the question of the so-called nonpolitical man. Hitler not only established his
power from the very beginning with masses of people who were until then essentially
nonpolitical; he also accomplished his last step to victory in March of 1933 in a "legal"
manner, by mobilizing no less than five million nonvoters, that is to say, nonpolitical people.
The Left parties had made every effort to win over the indifferent masses, without posing the
question as to what it means "to be indifferent or nonpolitical."
If an industrialist and large estate owner champions a rightist party, this is easily
understood in terms of his immediate economic interests. In his case a leftist orientation
would be at variance with his social situation and would, for that reason, point to irrational
motives. If an industrial worker has a leftist orientation, this too is by all mean rationally
consistent -- it derives from his economic and social position in industry. If, however, a
worker, an employee, or an official has a rightist orientation, this must be ascribed to a lack
of political clarity, i.e., he is ignorant of his social position. The more a man who belongs
to the broad working masses is nonpolitical, the more susceptible he is to the ideology of
political reaction. To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive
psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of
social responsibility. The analysis of this defense against consciousness of one's social
responsibility yields clear insights into a number of dark questions concerning the behavior of
the broad nonpolitical strata. In the case of the average intellectual "who wants nothing to do
with politics," it can easily be shown that immediate economic interests and fears related to
his social position, which is dependent upon public opinion, lie at the basis of his
noninvolvement. These fears cause him to make the most grotesque sacrifices with respect to his
knowledge and convictions. Those people who are engaged in the production process in one way or
another and are nonetheless socially irresponsible can be divided into two major groups. In the
case of the one group the concept of politics is unconsciously associated with the idea of
violence and physical danger, i.e., with an intense fear, which prevents them from facing life
realistically. In the case of the other group, which undoubtedly constitutes the majority,
social irresponsibility is based on personal conflicts and anxieties, of which the sexual
anxiety is the predominant one. [ ] Until now the revolutionary movement has misunderstood this
situation. It attempted to awaken the "nonpolitical" man by making him conscious solely of his
unfulfilled economic interests. Experience teaches that the majority of these "nonpolitical"
people can hardly be made to listen to anything about their socio-economic situation, whereas
they are very accessible to the mystical claptrap of a National Socialist, despite the fact
that the latter makes very little mention of economic interests. [This] is explained by the
fact that severe sexual conflicts (in the broadest sense of the word), whether conscious or
unconscious, inhibit rational thinking and the development of social responsibility. They make
a person afraid and force him into a shell. If, now, such a self-encapsulated person meets a
propagandist who works with faith and mysticism, meets, in other words, a fascist who works
with sexual, libidinous methods, he turns his complete attention to him. This is not because
the fascist program makes a greater impression on him than the liberal program, but because in
his devotion to the führer and the führer's ideology, he experiences a momentary
release from his unrelenting inner tension. Unconsciously, he is able to give his conflicts a
different form and in this way to "solve" them."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"When, then, the Social Democrat worker found himself in the economic crisis which degraded
him to the status of a coolie, the development of his revolutionary sentiments was severely
retarded by the conservative structuralization that had been taking shape in him for decades.
Either he remained in the camp of the Social Democrats, notwithstanding his criticism and
rejection of their policies, or he went over to the NSDAP [Nazi party] in search of a better
replacement. Irresolute and indecisive, owing to the deep contradiction between revolutionary
and conservative sentiments, disappointed by his own leadership, he followed the line of least
resistance. Whether he would give up his conservative tendencies and arrive at a complete
consciousness of his actual responsibility in the production process, i.e., at a revolutionary
consciousness, depended solely on the correct or incorrect leadership of the revolutionary
party. Thus the communist assertion that it was the Social Democrat policies that put fascism
in the saddle was correct from a psychological viewpoint. Disappointment in Social
Democracy, accompanied by the contradiction between wretchedness and conservative thinking,
must lead to fascism if there are no revolutionary organizations. For example, following
the fiasco of the Labor party's policies in England, in 1930–31, fascism began to
infiltrate the workers who, then, in the election of 1931, cut away to the Right, instead of
going over to communism."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Hence, what he wants -- and it is openly admitted -- is to implement nationalistic
imperialism with methods he has borrowed from Marxism , including its technique of
mass organization. But the success of this mass organization is to be ascribed to the masses
and not to Hitler . It was man's
authoritarian freedom-fearing structure that enabled his propaganda to take root. Hence, what
is important about Hitler sociologically does not issue from his personality but from the
importance attached to him by the masses. And what makes the problem all the more
complex is the fact that Hitler held the masses, with whose help he wanted to carry out his
imperialism, in complete contempt."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"As bitter as it may be, the fact remains: It is the irresponsibleness of masses
of people that lies at the basis of fascism of all countries, nations, and races, etc. Fascism
is the result of man's distortion over thousands of years. It could have developed in any
country or nation. It is not a character trait that is confined specifically to the Germans or
Italians. It is manifest in every single individual of the world. The Austrian saying "Da
kann man halt nix machen" expresses this fact just as the American saying "Let George do
it." That this situation was brought about by a social development which goes back thousands of
years does not alter the fact itself. It is man himself who is responsible and not "historical
developments." It was the shifting of the responsibility from living man to "historical
developments" that caused the downfall of the socialist freedom movements. However, the
events of the past twenty years demand the responsibility of the working masses of people.
If we take "freedom" to mean first and foremost the responsibility of each
individual to shape personal, occupational, and social existence in a rational way, then it
can be said that there is no greater fear than the fear of the creation of general
freedom. Unless this basic problem is given complete priority and solved, there will never
be a freedom capable of lasting more than one or two generations."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"It did not
take National Socialism long to rally workers, most of whom were either unemployed or still
very young, into the SA [Sturmangriff, Stormtroopers, "brown shirts"]. To a large extent,
however, these workers were revolutionary in a dull sort of way and still maintained an
authoritarian attitude. For this reason National Socialist propaganda was contradictory; it's
content was determined by the class for which it was intended. Only in its manipulation of the
mystical feelings of the masses was it clear and consistent.
In talks with followers of the National Socialist party and especially with members of the
SA, it was clearly brought out that the revolutionary phraseology of National Socialism was the
decisive factor in the winning over of these masses. One heard National Socialists deny that
Hitler
represented capital. One heard SA men warn Hitler that he must not betray the cause of the
"revolution." One heard SA men say that Hitler was the German Lenin . Those who went over to
National Socialism from Social Democracy and the liberal central parties were, without
exception, revolutionary minded masses who were either nonpolitical or politically undecided
prior to this. Those who went over from the Communist party were often revolutionary elements
who simply could not make any sense of many of the German Communist party's contradictory
political slogans. In part they were men upon whom the external features of Hitler's party,
it's military character, its assertiveness, etc., made a big impression.
"National Socialism made use of various means in dealing with various classes, and made
various promises depending upon the social class it needed at a particular time. In the spring
of 1933, for example, it was the revolutionary character of the Nazi movement that was
given particular emphasis in Nazi propaganda in an effort to win over the industrial workers,
and the first of May was "celebrated," but only after the aristocracy had been appeased in
Potsdam. To ascribe the success solely to political swindle, however, would be to become
entangled in a contradiction with the basic idea of freedom, and would practically exclude the
possibility of a social revolution. What must be answered is: Why do the masses allow
themselves to be politically swindled? The masses had every possibility of evaluating the
propaganda of the various parties. Why didn't they see that, while promising the workers that
the owners of the means of production would be disappropriated, Hitler promised the capitalists that
their rights would be protected?"
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Yet, it was precisely our failure to differentiate between work and politics, between
reality and illusion; it was precisely our mistake of conceiving of politics as a rational
human activity comparable to the sowing of seeds or the construction of buildings that was
responsible for the fact that a painter who
failed to make the grade was able to plunge the whole world into misery. And I have
stressed again and again that the main purpose of this book -- which, after all, was not
written merely for the fun of it -- was to demonstrate these catastrophic errors in human
thinking and to eliminate irrationalism from politics. It is an essential part of our social
tragedy that the farmer, the industrial worker, the physician, etc., do not influence social
existence solely through their social activities, but also and even predominantly through their
political ideologies. For political activity hinders objective and professional activity; it
splits every profession into inimical ideologic groups; creates a dichotomy in the body of
industrial workers; limits the activity of the medical profession and harms the patients. In
short, it is precisely political activity that prevents the realization of that which it
pretends to fight for: peace, work, security, international cooperation, free objective speech,
freedom of religion, etc."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
Around 35 years ago, I was sitting in my college dorm-room closely reading the New York
Times as I did each and every morning when I noticed an astonishing article about the
controversial new Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir.
Back in those long-gone days, the Gray Lady was strictly a black-and-white print
publication, lacking the large color photographs of rap stars and long stories about dieting
techniques that fill so much of today's news coverage, and it also seemed to have a far harder
edge in its Middle East reporting. A year or so earlier, Shamir's predecessor Menacham Begin
had allowed his Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to talk him into invading Lebanon and besieging
Beirut, and the subsequent massacre of Palestinian women and children in the Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps had outraged the world and angered America's government. This eventually led to
Begin's resignation, with Shamir, his Foreign Minister, taking his place.
Prior to his surprising 1977 election victory, Begin had spent decades in the political
wilderness as an unacceptable right-winger, and Shamir had an even more extreme background,
with the American mainstream media freely reporting his long involvement in all sorts of
high-profile assassinations and terrorist attacks during the 1940s, painting him as a very bad
man indeed.
Given Shamir's notorious activities, few revelations would have shocked me, but this one
did. Apparently, during the late 1930s, Shamir and his small Zionist faction had become great
admirers of the Italian Fascists and German Nazis, and after World War II broke out, they had
made repeated attempts to contact Mussolini and the German leadership in 1940 and 1941, hoping
to enlist in the Axis Powers as their Palestine affiliate, and undertake a campaign of attacks
and espionage against the local British forces, then share in the political booty after
Hitler's inevitable triumph.
Now the Times clearly viewed Shamir in a very negative light, but it seemed
extremely unlikely to me that they would have published such a remarkable story without being
absolutely sure of their facts. Among other things, there were long excerpts from the official
letters sent to Mussolini ferociously denouncing the "decadent" democratic systems of Britain
and France that he was opposing, and assuring Il Duce that such ridiculous political
notions would have no future place in the totalitarian Jewish client state they hoped to
establish under his auspices in Palestine.
As it happens, both Germany and Italy were preoccupied with larger geopolitical issues at
the time, and given the small size of Shamir's Zionist faction, not much seems to have ever
come of those efforts. But the idea of the sitting Prime Minister of the Jewish State having
spent his early wartime years as an unrequited Nazi ally was certainly something that sticks in
one's mind, not quite conforming to the traditional narrative of that era which I had always
accepted.
Most remarkably, the revelation of Shamir's pro-Axis past seems to have had only a
relatively minor impact upon his political standing within Israeli society. I would think that
any American political figure found to have supported a military alliance with Nazi Germany
during the Second World War would have had a very difficult time surviving the resulting
political scandal, and the same would surely be true for politicians in Britain, France, or
most other western nations. But although there was certainly some embarrassment in the Israeli
press, especially after the shocking story reached the international headlines, apparently most
Israelis took the whole matter in stride, and Shamir stayed in office for another year, then
later served a second, much longer term as Prime Minister during 1986-1992. The Jews of Israel
apparently regarded Nazi Germany quite differently than did most Americans, let alone most
American Jews.
... ... ...
Over the years I've occasionally made half-hearted attempts to locate the Times
article about Shamir that had long stuck in my memory, but have had no success, either because
it was removed from the Times archives or more likely because my mediocre search
skills proved inadequate. But I'm almost certain that the piece had been prompted by the 1983
publication of Zionism in the
Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner, an anti-Zionist of the Trotskyite persuasion
and Jewish origins. I only very recently discovered that book, which really tells an extremely
interesting story.
Brenner, born in 1937, has spent his entire life as an unreconstructed hard-core leftist,
with his enthusiasms ranging from Marxist revolution to the Black Panthers, and he is obviously
a captive of his views and his ideology. At times, this background impairs the flow of his
text, and the periodic allusions to "proletarian," "bourgeoisie," and "capitalist classes"
sometimes grow a little wearisome, as does his unthinking acceptance of all the shared beliefs
common to his political circle. But surely only someone with that sort of fervent ideological
commitment would have been willing to devote so much time and effort to investigating that
controversial subject and ignoring the endless denunciations that resulted, which even included
physical assaults by Zionist partisans.
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In any event, his documentation seems completely airtight, and some years after the original
appearance of his book, he published a companion volume entitled 51 Documents: Zionist
Collaboration with the Nazis , which simply provides English translations of all the raw
evidence behind his analytical framework, allowing interested parties to read the material and
draw their own conclusions.
Among other things, Brenner provides considerable evidence that the larger and somewhat more
mainstream right-wing Zionist faction later led by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was
almost invariably regarded as a Fascist movement during the 1930s, even apart from its warm
admiration for Mussolini's Italian regime. This was hardly such a dark secret in that period
given that its main Palestine newspaper carried a regular column by a top ideological leader
entitled "Diary of a Fascist." During one of the major international Zionist conferences,
factional leader Vladimir Zabotinsky entered the hall with his brown-shirted followers in full
military formation, leading the chair to ban the wearing of uniforms in order to avoid a riot,
and his faction was soon defeated politically and eventually expelled from the Zionist umbrella
organization. This major setback was largely due to the widespread hostility the group had
aroused after two of its members were arrested by British police for the recent assassination
of Chaim Arlosoroff, one of the highest-ranking Zionist officials based in Palestine.
The cover of the 2014 paperback edition of Brenner's book displays the commemorative medal
struck by Nazi Germany to mark its Zionist alliance, with a Star-of-David on the front face and
a Swastika on the obverse. But oddly enough, this symbolic medallion actually had absolutely no
connection with the unsuccessful attempts by Shamir's small faction to arrange a Nazi military
alliance during World War II.
Although the Germans paid little attention to the entreaties of that minor organization, the
far larger and more influential mainstream Zionist movement of Chaim Weizmann and David
Ben-Gurion was something else entirely. And during most of the 1930s, these other Zionists had
formed an important economic partnership with Nazi Germany, based upon an obvious commonality
of interests. After all, Hitler regarded Germany's one percent Jewish population as a
disruptive and potentially dangerous element which he wanted gone, and the Middle East seemed
as good a destination for them as any other. Meanwhile, the Zionists had very similar
objectives, and the creation of their new national homeland in Palestine obviously required
both Jewish immigrants and Jewish financial investment.
... ... ...
The importance of the Nazi-Zionist pact for Israel's establishment is difficult to
overstate. According to a 1974 analysis in Jewish Frontier cited by Brenner, between
1933 and 1939 over 60% of all the investment in Jewish Palestine came from Nazi Germany. The
worldwide impoverishment of the Great Depression had drastically reduced ongoing Jewish
financial support from all other sources, and Brenner reasonably suggests that without Hitler's
financial backing, the nascent Jewish colony, so tiny and fragile, might easily have shriveled
up and died during that difficult period.
Such a conclusion leads to fascinating hypotheticals. When I first stumbled across
references to the Ha'avara Agreement on websites here and there, one of the commenters
mentioning the issue half-jokingly suggested that if Hitler had won the war, statues would
surely have been built to him throughout Israel and he would today be recognized by Jews
everywhere as the heroic Gentile leader who had played the central role in reestablishing a
national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine after almost 2000 years of bitter
exile.
This sort of astonishing counter-factual possibility is not nearly as totally absurd as it
might sound to our present-day ears. We must recognize that our historical understanding of
reality is shaped by the media, and media organs are controlled by the winners of major wars
and their allies, with inconvenient details often excluded to avoid confusing the public. It is
undeniably true that in his 1924 book Mein Kampf , Hitler had written all sorts of
hostile and nasty things about Jews, especially those who were recent immigrants from Eastern
Europe, but when I read the book back in high school, I was a little surprised to discover that
these anti-Jewish sentiments hardly seemed central to his text. Furthermore, just a couple of
years earlier, a vastly more prominent public figure such as British Minister Winston Churchill
had published
sentiments nearly as hostile and nasty , focusing on the monstrous crimes being committed
by Bolshevik Jews. In Albert Lindemann's Esau's Tears , I was surprised to discover
that the author of the famous Balfour Declaration, the foundation of the Zionist project, was
apparently also quite hostile to Jews, with an element of his motivation probably being his
desire to exclude them from Britain.
Once Hitler consolidated power in Germany, he quickly outlawed all other political
organizations for the German people, with only the Nazi Party and Nazi political symbols being
legally permitted. But a special exception was made for German Jews, and Germany's local
Zionist Party was accorded complete legal status, with Zionist marches, Zionist uniforms, and
Zionist flags all fully permitted. Under Hitler, there was strict censorship of all German
publications, but the weekly Zionist newspaper was freely sold at all newsstands and street
corners. The clear notion seemed to be that a German National Socialist Party was the proper
political home for the country's 99% German majority, while Zionist National Socialism would
fill the same role for the tiny Jewish minority.
In 1934, Zionist leaders invited an important SS official to spend six months visiting the
Jewish settlement in Palestine, and upon his return, his very favorable impressions of the
growing Zionist enterprise were published as a massive 12-part-series in Joseph Goebbel's
Der Angriff , the flagship media organ of the Nazi Party, bearing the descriptive
title "A Nazi Goes to Palestine." In his very angry 1920 critique of Jewish Bolshevik activity,
Churchill had argued that Zionism was locked in a fierce battle with Bolshevism for the soul of
European Jewry, and only its victory might ensure amicable future relations between Jew and
Gentile. Based on available evidence, Hitler and many of the other Nazi leaders seemed to have
reached a somewhat similar conclusion by the mid-1930s.
During that era extremely harsh sentiments regarding Diaspora Jewry were sometimes found in
rather surprising quarters. After the controversy surrounding Shamir's Nazi ties erupted into
the headlines, Brenner's material became the grist for an important article by Edward Mortimer,
the longtime Middle East expert at the august Times of London , and the 2014 edition
of the book includes some choice extracts from Mortimer's February 11, 1984 Times
piece:
Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that "each country can absorb only a limited
number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many
Jews"?
No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Organization
and later still the first president of the state of Israel.
And where might you find the following assertion, originally composed in 1917 but
republished as late as 1936: "The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both
physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness
of social obligation, knows no order nor discipline"?
Not in Der Sturmer but in the organ of the Zionist youth organization, Hashomer
Hatzair.
As the above quoted statement reveals, Zionism itself encouraged and exploited self-hatred
in the Diaspora. It started from the assumption that anti-Semitism was inevitable and even in
a sense justified so long as Jews were outside the land of Israel.
It is true that only an extreme lunatic fringe of Zionism went so far as to offer to join
the war on Germany's side in 1941, in the hope of establishing "the historical Jewish state
on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich."
Unfortunately this was the group which the present Prime Minister of Israel chose to
join.
The very uncomfortable truth is that the harsh characterizations of Diaspora Jewry found in
the pages of Mein Kampf were not all that different from what was voiced by Zionism's
founding fathers and its subsequent leaders, so the cooperation of those two ideological
movements was not really so totally surprising.
However, uncomfortable truths do remain uncomfortable. Mortimer had spent nineteen years at
the Times , the last dozen of them as the foreign specialist and leader-writer on
Middle Eastern affairs. But the year after he wrote that article including those controversial
quotations, his
career at that newspaper ended , leading to an unusual gap in his employment history, and
that development may or may not be purely coincidental.
Also quite ironic was the role of Adolf Eichmann, whose name today probably ranks as one of
the most famous half-dozen Nazis in history, due to his postwar 1960 kidnapping by Israeli
agents, followed by his public show-trial and execution as a war-criminal. As it happens,
Eichmann had been a central Nazi figure in the Zionist alliance, even studying Hebrew and
apparently becoming something of a philo-Semite during the years of his close collaboration
with top Zionist leaders.
Brenner is a captive of his ideology and his beliefs, accepting without question the
historical narrative with which he was raised. He seems to find nothing so strange about
Eichmann being a philo-Semitic partner of the Jewish Zionists during the late 1930s and then
suddenly being transformed into a mass-murderer of the European Jews in the early 1940s,
willingly committing the monstrous crimes for which the Israelis later justly put him to
death.
This is certainly possible, but I really wonder. A more cynical observer might find it a
very odd coincidence that the first prominent Nazi the Israelis made such an effort to track
down and kill had been their closest former political ally and collaborator. After Germany's
defeat, Eichmann had fled to Argentina and lived there quietly for a number of years until his
name resurfaced in a celebrated mid-1950s controversy surrounding one of his leading Zionist
partners, then living in Israel as a respected government official, who was denounced as a Nazi
collaborator, eventually ruled innocent after a celebrated trial, but later assassinated by
former members of Shamir's faction.
Following that controversy in Israel, Eichmann supposedly gave a long personal interview to
a Dutch Nazi journalist, and although it wasn't published at the time, perhaps word of its
existence may have gotten into circulation. The new state of Israel was just a few years old at
that time, and very politically and economically fragile, desperately dependent upon the
goodwill and support of America and Jewish donors worldwide. Their remarkable former Nazi
alliance was a deeply-suppressed secret, whose public release might have had absolutely
disastrous consequences.
According to the version of the interview later published as a two-part story in Life
Magazine , Eichmann's statements seemingly did not touch on the deadly topic of the 1930s
Nazi-Zionist partnership. But surely Israeli leaders must have been terrified that they might
not be so lucky the next time, so we may speculate that Eichmann's elimination suddenly became
a top national priority, and he was tracked down and captured in 1960. Presumably, harsh means
were employed to persuade him not to reveal any of these dangerous pre-war secrets at his
Jerusalem trial, and one might wonder if the reason he was famously kept in an enclosed glass
booth was to ensure that the sound could quickly be cut off if he started to stray from the
agreed upon script. All of this analysis is totally speculative, but Eichmann's role as a
central figure in the 1930s Nazi-Zionist partnership is undeniable historical fact.
Just as we might imagine, America's overwhelmingly pro-Israel publishing industry was hardly
eager to serve as a public conduit for Brenner's shocking revelations of a close Nazi-Zionist
economic partnership, and he mentions that his book agent uniformly received rejections from
each firm he approached, based on a wide variety of different excuses. However, he finally
managed to locate an extremely obscure publisher in Britain willing to take on the project, and
his book was released in 1983, initially receiving no reviews other than a couple of harsh and
perfunctory denunciations, though Soviet Izvestia took some interest in his findings
until they discovered that he was a hated Trotskyite.
His big break came when Shamir suddenly became Israel's Prime Minister, and he brought his
evidence of former Nazi ties to the English-language Palestinian press, which put it into
general circulation. Various British Marxists, including the notorious "Red Ken" Livingstone of
London, organized a speaking tour for him, and when a group of right-wing Zionist militants
attacked one of the events and inflicted injuries, the story of the brawl caught the attention
of the mainstream newspapers. Soon afterward the discussion of Brenner's astonishing
discoveries appeared in the Times of London and entered the international media.
Presumably, the New York Times article that had originally caught my eye ran sometime
during this period.
Public relations professionals are quite skilled at minimizing the impact of damaging
revelations, and pro-Israel organizations have no shortage of such individuals. Just before the
1983 release of his remarkable book, Brenner suddenly discovered that a young pro-Zionist
author named Edwin Black was furiously working on a similar project, apparently backed by
sufficient financial resources that he was employing an army of fifty researchers to allow him
to complete his project in record time.
Since the entire embarrassing subject of a Nazi-Zionist partnership had been kept away from
the public eye for almost five decades, this timing surely seems more than merely coincidental.
Presumably word of Brenner's numerous unsuccessful efforts at securing a mainstream publisher
during 1982 had gotten around, as had as his eventual success in locating a tiny one in
Britain. Having failed to prevent publication of such explosive material, pro-Israel groups
quietly decided that their next best option was trying to seize control of the topic
themselves, allowing disclosure of those parts of the story that could not be concealed but
excluding items of greatest danger, while portraying the sordid history in the best possible
light.
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Black's book, The Transfer Agreement , may have arrived a year later than Brenner's
but was clearly backed by vastly greater publicity and resources. It was released by Macmillan,
a leading publisher, ran nearly twice the length of Brenner's short book, and carried powerful
endorsements by leading figures from the firmament of Jewish activism, including the Simon
Weisenthal Center, the Israel Holocaust Memorial, and the American Jewish Archives. As a
consequence, it received long if not necessarily favorable reviews in influential publications
such as The New Republic and Commentary .
In all fairness, I should mention that in the Foreword to his book, Black claims that his
research efforts had been totally discouraged by nearly everyone he approached, and as a
consequence, he had been working on the project with solitary intensity for many years. This
implies the near-simultaneous release of the two books was purely due to chance. But such a
picture is hardly consistent with his glowing testimonials from so many prominent Jewish
leaders, and personally I find Brenner's claim that Black was assisted by fifty researchers far
more convincing.
Since both Black and Brenner were describing the same basic reality and relying upon many of
the same documents, in most respects the stories they tell are generally similar. But Black
carefully excludes any mention of offers of Zionist military cooperation with the Nazis, let
alone the repeated attempts by Shamir's Zionist faction to officially join the Axis Powers
after the war had broken out, as well as numerous other details of a particularly embarrassing
nature.
Assuming Black's book was published for the reasons I suggested, I think that the strategy
of the pro-Israel groups largely succeeded, with his version of the history seeming to have
quickly supplanted Brenner's except perhaps in strongly leftist or anti-Zionist circles.
Googling each combination of the title and author, Black's book gets eight times as many hits,
and his Amazon sales ranks and numbers of reviews are also larger by roughly that same factor.
Most notably, neither the Wikipedia articles on "The Transfer Agreement" and
"The
Ha'avara Agreement" contain any mention of Brenner's research whatsoever, even
though his book was published earlier, was far broader, and only he provided the underlying
documentary evidence. As a personal example of the current situation, I was quite unaware of
the entire Ha'avara history until just a few years ago when I encountered some website
comments mentioning Black's book, leading me to purchase and read it. But even then, Brenner's
far more wide-ranging and explosive volume remained totally unknown to me until very
recently.
Once World War II began, this Nazi-Zionist partnership quickly lapsed for obvious reasons.
Germany was now at war with the British Empire, and financial transfers to British-run
Palestine were no longer possible. Furthermore, the Arab Palestinians had grown quite hostile
to the Jewish immigrants whom they rightfully feared might eventually displace them, and once
the Germans were forced to choose between maintaining their relationship with a relatively
small Zionist movement or winning the political sympathy of a vast sea of Middle Eastern Arabs
and Muslims, their decision was a natural one. The Zionists faced a similar choice, and
especially once wartime propaganda began so heavily blackening the German and Italian
governments, their long previous partnership was not something they wanted widely known.
However, at exactly this same moment a somewhat different and equally long-forgotten
connection between Jews and Nazi Germany suddenly moved to the fore.
Like most people everywhere, the average German, whether Jewish or Gentile, was probably not
all that political, and although Zionism had for years been accorded a privileged place in
German society, it is not entirely clear how many ordinary German Jews paid much attention to
it. The tens of thousands who emigrated to Palestine during that period were probably motivated
as much by economic pressures as by ideological commitment. But wartime changed matters in
other ways.
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This was even more true for the German government. The outbreak of a world war against a
powerful coalition of the British and French empires, later augmented by both Soviet Russia and
the United States, imposed the sorts of enormous pressures that could often overcome
ideological scruples. A few years ago, I discovered a fascinating 2002 book by Bryan Mark Rigg,
Hitler's Jewish Soldiers , a scholarly treatment of exactly what the title implies.
The quality of this controversial historical analysis is indicated by the glowing jacket-blurbs
from numerous academic experts and an extremely favorable treatment by an eminent scholar in
The American Historical Review .
Obviously, Nazi ideology was overwhelmingly centered upon race and considered racial purity
a crucial factor in national cohesion. Individuals possessing substantial non-German ancestry
were regarded with considerable suspicion, and this concern was greatly amplified if that
admixture was Jewish. But in a military struggle against an opposing coalition possessing many
times Germany's population and industrial resources, such ideological factors might be overcome
by practical considerations, and Rigg persuasively argues that some 150,000 half-Jews or
quarter-Jews served in the armed forces of the Third Reich, a percentage probably not much
different than their share of the general military-age population.
Germany's long-integrated and assimilated Jewish population had always been
disproportionately urban, affluent, and well-educated. As a consequence it is not entirely
surprising that a large proportion of these part-Jewish soldiers who served Hitler were
actually combat officers rather than merely rank-and-file conscripts, and they included at
least 15 half-Jewish generals and admirals, and another dozen quarter-Jews holding those same
high ranks. The most notable example was Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Hermann Goering's powerful
second-in-command, who played such an important operational role in creating the Luftwaffe.
Milch certainly had a Jewish father, and according to some much less substantiated claims,
perhaps even a Jewish mother as well, while his sister was married to an SS general.
Admittedly, the racially-elite SS itself generally had far stricter ancestry standards, with
even a trace of non-Aryan parentage normally seen as disqualifying an individual from
membership. But even here, the situation was sometimes complicated, since there were widespread
rumors that Reinhard Heydrich, the second-ranking figure in that very powerful organization,
actually had considerable Jewish ancestry. Rigg investigates that claim without coming to any
clear conclusions, though he does seem to think that the circumstantial evidence involved may
have been used by other high-ranking Nazi figures as a point of leverage or blackmail against
Heydrich, who stood as one of the most important figures in the Third Reich.
As a further irony, most of these individuals traced their Jewish ancestry through their
father rather than their mother, so although they were not Jewish according to rabbinical law,
their family names often reflected their partly Semitic origins, though in many cases Nazi
authorities attempted to studiously overlook this glaringly obvious situation. As an extreme
example noted by an academic reviewer of the book, a half-Jew bearing the distinctly non-Aryan
name of Werner Goldberg actually had his photograph prominently featured in a 1939 Nazi
propaganda newspaper, with the caption describing him as the "The Ideal German Soldier."
The author conducted more than 400 personal interviews of the surviving part-Jews and their
relatives, and these painted a very mixed picture of the difficulties they had encountered
under the Nazi regime, which varied enormously depending upon particular circumstances and the
personalities of those in authority over them. One important source of complaint was that
because of their status, part-Jews were often denied the military honors or promotions they had
rightfully earned. However, under especially favorable conditions, they might also be legally
reclassified as being of "German Blood," which officially eliminated any taint on their
status.
Even official policy seems to have been quite contradictory and vacillating. For example,
when the civilian humiliations sometimes inflicted upon the fully Jewish parents of serving
half-Jews were brought to Hitler's attention, he regarded that situation as intolerable,
declaring that either such parents must be fully protected against such indignities or all the
half-Jews must be discharged, and eventually in April 1940 he issued a decree requiring the
latter. However, this order was largely ignored by many commanders, or implemented through a
honor-system that almost amounted to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," so a considerable fraction of
half-Jews remained in the military if they so wished. And then in July 1941, Hitler somewhat
reversed himself, issuing a new decree that allowed "worthy" half-Jews who had been discharged
to return to the military as officers, while also announcing that after the war, all
quarter-Jews would be reclassified as fully "German Blood" Aryan citizens.
It has been said that after questions were raised about the Jewish ancestry of some of his
subordinates, Goring once angrily responded "I will decide who is a Jew!" and that attitude
seems to reasonably capture some of the complexity and subjective nature of the social
situation.
Interestingly enough, many of part-Jews interviewed by Rigg recalled that prior to Hitler's
rise to power, the intermarriage of their parents had often provoked much greater hostility
from the Jewish rather than the Gentile side of their families, suggesting that even in
heavily-assimilated Germany, the traditional Jewish tendency toward ethnic exclusivity had
still remained a powerful factor in that community.
Although the part-Jews in German military service were certainly subject to various forms of
mistreatment and discrimination, perhaps we should compare this against the analogous situation
in our own military in those same years with regard to America's Japanese or black minorities.
During that era, racial intermarriage was legally prohibited across a large portion of the US,
so the mixed-race population of those groups was either almost non-existent or very different
in origin. But when Japanese-Americans were allowed to leave their wartime concentration camps
and enlist in the military, they were entirely restricted to segregated all-Japanese units, but
with the officers generally being white. Meanwhile, blacks were almost entirely barred from
combat service, though they sometimes served in strictly-segregated support roles. The notion
that an American with any appreciable trace of African, Japanese, or for that matter Chinese
ancestry might serve as a general or even an officer in the U.S. military and thereby exercise
command authority over white American troops would have been almost unthinkable. The contrast
with the practice in Hitler's own military is quite different than what Americans might naively
assume.
This paradox is not nearly as surprising as one might assume. The non-economic divisions in
European societies had almost always been along lines of religion, language, and culture rather
than racial ancestry, and the social tradition of more than a millennium could not easily be
swept away by merely a half-dozen years of National Socialist ideology. During all those
earlier centuries, a sincerely-baptized Jew, whether in Germany or elsewhere, was usually
considered just as good a Christian as any other. For example, Tomas de Torquemada, the most
fearsome figure of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition, actually came from a family of Jewish
converts.
Even wider racial differences were hardly considered of crucial importance. Some of the
greatest heroes of particular national cultures, such as Russia's Alexander Pushkin and
France's Alexandre Dumas, had been individuals with significant black African ancestry, and
this was certainly not considered any sort of disqualifying characteristic.
By contrast, American society from its inception had always been sharply divided by race,
with other differences generally constituting far smaller impediments to intermarriage and
amalgamation. I've seen widespread claims that when the Third Reich devised its 1935 Nuremberg
Laws restricting marriage and other social arrangements between Aryans, non-Aryans, and
part-Aryans, its experts drew upon some of America's long legal experience in similar matters,
and this seems quite plausible. Under that new Nazi statute, pre-existing mixed-marriages
received some legal protection, but henceforth Jews and half-Jews could only marry each other,
while quarter-Jews could only marry regular Aryans. The obvious intent was to absorb that
latter group into mainstream German society, while isolating the more heavily-Jewish
population.
Ironically enough, Israel today is one of very few countries with a similar sort of strictly
racially-based criteria for citizenship status and other privileges, with
the Jewish-only immigration policy now often determined by DNA testing , and marriages
between Jews and non-Jews legally prohibited. A few years ago, the world media also carried
the
remarkable story of a Palestinian Arab sentenced to prison for rape because he had
consensual sexual relations with a Jewish woman by passing himself off as a fellow Jew.
Since Orthodox Judaism is strictly matrilineal and controls Israeli law, even Jews of other
branches can experience unexpected difficulties due to conflicts between personal ethnic
identity and official legal status. The vast majority of the wealthier and more influential
Jewish families worldwide do not follow Orthodox religious traditions, and over the
generations, they have often taken Gentile wives. However, even if the latter had converted to
Judaism, their conversions are considered invalid by the Orthodox Rabbinate, and none of their
resulting descendants are considered Jewish. So if some members of these families later develop
a deep commitment to their Jewish heritage and immigrate to Israel, they are sometimes outraged
to discover that they are officially classified as "goyim" under Orthodox law and legally
prohibited from marrying Jews. These major political controversies periodically erupt and
sometimes
reach the international medi a.
Now it seems to me that any American official who proposed racial DNA tests to decide upon
the admission or exclusion of prospective immigrants would have a very difficult time remaining
in office, with the Jewish-activists of organizations like the ADL probably leading the attack.
And the same would surely be true for any prosecutor or judge who non-whites to prison for the
crime of "passing" as whites and thereby managing to seduce women from that latter group. A
similar fate would befall advocates of such policies in Britain, France, or most other Western
nations, with the local ADL-type organization certainly playing an important role. Yet in
Israel, such existing laws merely occasion a little temporary embarrassment when they are
covered in the international media, and then invariably remain in place after the commotion has
died down and been forgotten. These sorts of issues are considered of little more importance
than were the past wartime Nazi ties of the Israeli prime minister throughout most of the
1980s.
But perhaps the solution to this puzzling difference in public reaction lies in an old joke.
A leftist wit once claimed that the reason America has never had a military coup is that it is
the only country in the world that lacks an American embassy to organize such activities. And
unlike the U.S., Britain, France, and many other predominately-white countries, Israel has no
domestic Jewish-activist organization filling the powerful role of the ADL.
Over the last few years, many outside observers have noted a seemingly very odd political
situation in Ukraine. That unfortunate country possesses powerful militant groups, whose public
symbols, stated ideology, and political ancestry all unmistakably mark them as Neo-Nazis. Yet
those
violent Neo-Nazi elements are all being bankrolled and controlled by a Jewish Oligarch who holds dual
Israeli citizenship. Furthermore, that peculiar alliance had been mid-wifed and blessed by some
of America's leading Jewish Neocon figures, such as Victoria Nuland, who have successfully used
their media influence to keep such explosive facts away from the American public.
At first glance,
a close relationship between Jewish Israelis and European Neo-Nazis seems as grotesque and
bizarre a misalliance as one could imagine, but after recently reading Brenner's fascinating
book, my perspective quickly shifted. Indeed, the main difference between then and now is that
during the 1930s, Zionist factions represented a very insignificant junior partner to a
powerful Third Reich, while these days it is the Nazis who occupy the role of eager suppliants
to the formidable power of International Zionism, which now so heavily dominates the American
political system and through it, much of the world.
"... A good hypothesis is, that Olof Palme was assassinated by a US stay-behind group, consisting of Nazi military and police. ..."
"... I think VG is quite correct in this: it was a test. And the test was of the neocon/humanitarian intervention marriage. Yes, the USA has doe a lot of this sort of thing in its history, but there has always been some opposition inside the USA. This time, they figured it out and "humanitarian bombing" was born. We have seen a lot more humanitarian bombing since. ..."
"... It was Gore, in consultation with Hillary Clinton, who decided to launch the criminal bombing of Serbia, informing PM Primakov after taking a phone call meant for the president. ..."
"... By launching an illegal attack on Russia's ally, the VP and the future Sec. of State, were offering a foreshadowing of the hawkish and belligerent anti-Russian policy that was to follow for the next 17 years. ..."
"... Western populations for the most part are so thoroughly brainwashed they still cling to the belief they live in civilized countries and their militaries keep them safe from barbarians. ..."
"... Gary I agree whole heartedly with every word you wrote. I would add to how intriguing it would be to learn of the high deception played during the passage of the Federal Reserve back in 1913. Then I'd push out of the way those who blocked Claude Pepper from endorsing Henry Wallace into the 1944 Democratic Convention. This alone may have changed the course of the establishment of the CIA, and avoided the disaster that is happening in Palestine to this day. ..."
"... I do believe the assassination era was the biggest turning point, as it sent a strong message to the would be seekers of sane government policies who would incur such tragedy if explored. Joe ..."
"... I believe there are many questions that need answering about NATO. For instance: July 14, 2018 The Diabolical "Work" of NATO and Its Allies: Why Are These War Criminals Still Free? ..."
By Vladimir Golstein in Belgrade Special to Consortium News
Right across the street from my hotel,
tucked behind tall office buildings, is the rather large Church of St. Mark. Hidden in St.
Mark's shadows is a tiny Russian Orthodox church. The Church of the Holy Trinity, known simply
as the Russian Church, is famous for holding the remains of Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel ,
the Russian Civil War leader of the Whites. It is hard to find, but luckily, a friend took me
there.
As we were looking around the church, not particularly interested in Wrangel, a couple of
Russians asked me to take their picture in front of his tomb. Trying to find a proper angle for
the picture, I noticed a small plaque on a wall nearby. It listed the names of Russians who
died fighting for Yugoslav Serbs during the conflict with separatist Albanians in Kosovo and
the subsequent NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in
1999.
As we left the church, we took a small path toward the top of the park. There we observed
another brutal sign of that war: a destroyed building next to the TV center. It too had a
plaque. It screamed, " Zashto " (For What? Why?). Below it were the names of all the TV
people NATO killed during that attack. In all, as many as 2,500 civilians may have been killed
by NATO, according to the then Yugoslav government, though the real number may never
be known.
On the one hand, the question Zashto is both idle and provocative. It implies a
laceration of wounds, a refusal to forget and to start anew. On the other, there is an obvious
need to find an answer to this question simply to prevent future destruction and senseless
murders.
We won't find answers to this question in the official narratives, which tell us that the
noble Clinton administration decided to stop flagrant violations of human rights in the
extremely complex situation in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo by bombing
the Serbs into respecting minorities both on its own and on neighboring territories. (In fact
the large exodus of Kosovo Albanians to Albania proper only began after NATO bombs started to
fall.)
Testing the Limits
Russians who died fighting for Yugoslavia. (Photo by Vladimir Golstein)
Behind these official stories, a much sadder picture emerges. Why did these people die? Why
did this NATO operation go ahead without UN Security Council authorization
nor proof of self-defense, requirements of the UN Charter? Was it to satisfy the lust for power
of U.S. and NATO leaders, of liberal interventionists like Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton,
and Susan Rice? To assuage the Clinton administration's guilt over its failure to respond to the 1994 genocide
in Rwanda? Was it to set up America's largest military base in Europe since the
Vietnam War, Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo? For American access to Kosovo's vast mineral wealth and
other business opportunities, including for
Ms. Albright ? Or was it to finally kill off a rather successful Yugoslav experiment in the
"third way" between the West and the Soviet Union?
It seems these people had to die for all those reasons and to put into practice the
doctrines of responsibility to protect ( R2P ) and
full spectrum dominance , doctrines cooked up by liberal interventionists and neocons in
Washington. Those who died were essentially guinea pigs of a New World Order experiment to see
how far the world could be pushed to implement R2P, a policy that could be used to mask
imperial ambitions.
And it worked. Yugoslavia was unable to stand up to the power of NATO operating outside the
mandate of its obsolete charter: namely to defend Western Europe against an alleged Soviet
threat. Indeed one could argue that with the Cold War over, another motive for the attack on
Yugoslavia was to provide NATO with a justification to exist. (It would later go even further
afield outside its legal theater of operation, into Afghanistan and then Libya.)
Russia could do little to help the Serbs. Then the Chinese Embassy was hit
as well, as a test it seems, though The New York Timessaid
it was a mistake. The Chinese did nothing.
Thus was R2P implemented -- with no protection for Yugoslav Serbs. They had to die in the
experiment to explore the limits of U.S. power and the limits of its resistance.
If my memory serves me correctly, President Bill Clinton had set up a summit meeting with
Russian President Yevgeny Primakov here in the USA. Primakov was in flight on his way here
for that summit meeting when President of Vice, Al Gore, without Clinton's permission or
knowledge, called Primakov, in flight, to tell him NATO had decided to bomb Kosovo. Primakov immediately ordered his plane to
turn around and return to Russia, thus cancelling the summit meeting...
Aurora , August 7, 2018 at 8:55 pm
In Russia that is known as "The Primakov Loop."
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Thanks Vladimir. The Serbs are demonized by so many, especially the Germans-many believe
it was because they fought so valiantly against the Nazis in WW2. Diana Johnstone has written
"Fools' Crusade- Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions", and Michel Collon "Media Lies and
the Conquest of Kosovo", but books with this point of view are not readily publicised. Nor is
the fact that after his death (no trial had yet taken place) Slobodan Milosovic was finally
found nOT to have been responsible for all the murderous acts he was accused/assumed to be
responsible for.
We can note now of course the Russian reaction to the "annexation of Crimea" after a
referendum, no bloodshed and the referendum also of Russians all over the Federation, while
Kosovo was ripped from Serbia by trickery and not consent, and we see how it is now. Russia
is sanctioned, the people who overthrew the Ukrainian government are not mentioned, Crimea is
not allowed to return to Russia. Slight difference from the "nation" of Kososvo!
Thomas Binder , August 6, 2018 at 6:35 am
The war against #Serbia under #R2P was the #MilitaryIndustrialFinancialMedialComplex'es
ruling the #USA/#NATO/#ISR/#SAU empire (#PNAC's) test for eternal war against #AlQaeda
outside international law & interference of #USLegislators for getting full-spectrum
dominance.
Jackson , August 5, 2018 at 2:21 pm
NATO should have been disbanded after the fall of the Soviets. When you arm people and
train them to kill, they will look for an enemy to fight. War becomes inevitable.
jose , August 5, 2018 at 6:00 pm
It is hard to disagree with your post. Nato, disgracefully, has become a terrorist
organization that has dedicated itself to be the paw of the western elite. Shamefully, other
countries have joined Yugoslavia as victims of Nato criminality. Well done Jackson.
Björn Lindgren , August 5, 2018 at 7:25 am
FOR REASON OF STATE, FOR REASON OF INTEREST
There might be still more reasons for the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Germany had put its mind into destabilizing Yugoslavia to get a "Hinterland". Added to
this, a revenge motive: Nazi Germany occupation of Yugoslavia failed, and this has never been
forgotten. And lastly, Yugoslavia was a member of the non-alignment movement, not obeying
US-NATO.
And, of course, after the collapse of the Warsaw pact, NATO had no enemy, no purpose.
But, it invented one: full US spectrum global dominance.
Sweden has also been punished to obey the US.
During the years of PM Olof Palme, Sweden was also a member of the non-alignment movement.
Palme was educated in and friendly to the US, but critized the US war in Vietnam. (Nixon
hated Palme, and withdraw the US diplomats from Sweden).
1992 foreign submarines penetrated Swedish waters repeatedly.
The submarine incident at Hårsfjärden, a marine base, was not made by Russia,
but was made by US and British submarines. Afterwards, both Caspar Weinberger and Sir Keith
Speed confirmed this. Weinberger even thanked Sweden for not blowing up the US mini-sub
(which we could have done. (Read, "Hårsfjärden. Det hemliga ubåtskriget mot
Sverige," by Ola Tunander).
Purpose: pushing Sweden westward.
Already in the mid 50s, William Colby, later head of the CIA, was in Sweden organizing
stay-behind groups, recruting Swedish voluntary ex-soldiers from the Finnish wars against
Soviet Union. In the 50-s these people were organized in "Sveaborg", a Nazi group.
A good hypothesis is, that Olof Palme was assassinated by a US stay-behind group,
consisting of Nazi military and police.
Which, of course, had to be stonewalled "for reason of state". Today, Sweden is "cooperating" shamelessly with NATO, invite, and have excersices with
NATO. This week, the Swedish government annonced that it will purchase US "Patriot"
anti-missiles with "ballistic capability" (Hey, hey!).
Supporting the insane belligerent US and UK nuclear armament (for a nuclear first-strike?)
against neoliberal, oligarchic Russia, which is planning to keep up in the race towards the
abyss. That is, Sweden is now d e f a c t o a member of NATO, without the Swedish people or
parliament have had a say. NATO which eventually is falling apart, and with a lunatic US
president and his military government in the White House, in a US empire collapsing. The peace aspirations of Sweden are long forgotten. And so, is the Helsinki Conference and
agreement (1975-1983) for common security, disarmamanet , and a nuclear-free zone in
Europe.
The question is if Germany, France, UK (with Corbyn in 10 Downing) and Russia will
organize a new Helsinki Conference and Agreement?
Maybe, "for reasons of interest".
--
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 4:01 pm
Thanks so much for this comprehensive addition to the discussion. Sweden indeed has been
placed in an invidious position.
Pretending that NATO has any purpose even vaguely related to peace is laughable.
David G , August 6, 2018 at 6:01 pm
Great comment, Björn Lindgren. Many thanks.
The withering away of Swedish neutrality into an empty formality has become so obvious,
but never remarked upon in the U.S. I'm sure most cable TV talking heads just assume Sweden
is in NATO – indeed, I've heard the error made, albeit corrected after the next
commercial break.
I appreciate reading your committed, highly informed perspective. Maybe you could submit
an article on this under-reported subject to Consortium News?
Excellent article in the eve of 20th anniversary of NATO aggression on Yugoslavia which
will be marked by Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, March 23, 24rth, 2019.
NATO 1999 aggression was meant to be precedent and turning point in global conduct toward
globalization of military interventionism (Avganistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.). Willy Wimmer wrote
to Schoerder on May 2nd, 2000, USA position: "The war against Yugoslavia was conducted in
order to correct the mistake of General Eisenhower from the 2ndWW. Subsequently, for
strategic reasons, USA troops had to be stationed there ". And: "It is clear that it is the
precedent to be recalled any time" The Bondstil base in Kosovo was only the first in the
ensuing chain of new USA bases in Bulgaria (4), Rumania (4), Albania (2), Baltic states
I think VG is quite correct in this: it was a test. And the test was of the
neocon/humanitarian intervention marriage. Yes, the USA has doe a lot of this sort of thing
in its history, but there has always been some opposition inside the USA. This time, they
figured it out and "humanitarian bombing" was born. We have seen a lot more humanitarian
bombing since.
Branko Mikasinovich , August 4, 2018 at 4:45 pm
A great and truthful article about Western Policy, NATO and US. A courageous and
informative analysis of Mr. Golstein. Thank you.
ToivoS , August 4, 2018 at 1:18 pm
Goldstein writes Russia could do little to help the Serbs. Then the Chinese Embassy was
hit as well, as a test it seems, though The New York Times said it was a mistake. The Chinese
did nothing.
Actually the Chinese did do something. They changed their attitude towards the US. I have
yet to meet a Chinese national who believes that the embassy hit was a "mistake". They and
their government view it as a deliberate attack on their sovereignty. But they realized they
were not in a position respond so they then began military planning for possible conflict
between China and the US Navy in the Western Pacific. In 2000 they started a 10 plan to
achieve the ability to sink any US aircraft carrier within a 1000 km of their shores. We
won't know if they have achieved that ability until a real test is conducted. But that is the
something they have done.
FB , August 8, 2018 at 9:24 am
Good point Toivos The Chinese have never forgotten the Belgrade embassy bombing and they
never will. Ask any Chinese today, even those living in the West the Chinese are an ancient people
with a long and proud memory the embassy bombing was a step too far. All of these hubristic missteps will come back to haunt the empire
Theo , August 4, 2018 at 10:51 am
I remember well the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia under the pretext to stop the genocide
that was allegedly committed by the Serbs. The saddest thing for me was that Germany was
participating in the bombing campaign. My father who was in Yugoslavia as a Wehrmacht soldier
was outraged as were many others. After almost sixty years German bombers were over Serbia
again. My dad used to say German soldiers on foreign soil had never been good neither for the
foreign country nor for Germany. That's why until today the Germans have an aversion to all
military and the deployment of German soldiers in foreign countries is not very popular.
David G , August 4, 2018 at 11:16 am
The 1999 air attacks were the coup de grace, but I think Germany had the (dis)honor of
leading the vivisection of Yugoslavia from the start.
As Vladimir Golstein rhetorically asks: "Or was it to finally kill off a rather successful
Yugoslav experiment in the 'third way' between the West and the Soviet Union?"
Indeed it was, and that surely appealed to all the Western powers. But Germany was
particularly interested in removing a possible continental rival, and took the lead in making
sure it happened – not at all to absolve the U.S., under whose aegis it was ultimately
operating.
Antiwar7 , August 4, 2018 at 11:42 am
The German people and the German government are different. The German government has had
an anti-Serb animus for over 150 years: that's clear. But the German people, as Theo's dad
shows, can be very nice. My father was a POW in Germany for 4 years during WWII, and most of
the German people he encountered were quite nice to him.
Theo , August 4, 2018 at 3:56 pm
You are right. The vivisection of Yugoslavia began when Germany recognized the independence
of Slovenia before any other country did. The German government with Genscher as foreign
minister didn't consult with any of the European allies. Especially France was not amused at
all.
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 4:04 pm
It was Germany, 9 days after reunification, which led the removal of Croatia from
Yugoslavia and beginning the breakup of a successful multicultural country.
Juan P. Zenter , August 4, 2018 at 7:29 am
Yugoslavia was a federation of states and was, thus, an obstacle to consolidating EU and
NATO power in Southeastern Europe. Once the federation was destroyed, the individual states
that comprised it could be absorbed by EU/NATO. That was the ultimate outcome of NATO bombing
there, despite all denials about that being the intent.
Thanks for the article, the photo of the beautiful church, and the reflection on this
horrible chapter from the book of atrocities disguised as "humanitarian" to fool the masses.
This also helped Bill and Hillary Clinton distract the American public from the Monica
Lewinsky affair.
j. D. D. , August 4, 2018 at 7:59 pm
I don't see it that way. Rather, as President Clinton was hit with the Lewinsky scandal
and put on the defensive immediately following his speech to NY's Council on Foreign Relations
in which he called for "a new world financial archithitecture," VP Al Gore, who later shunned
the president, saw the opportunity to determine policy. It was Gore, in consultation with
Hillary Clinton, who decided to launch the criminal bombing of Serbia, informing PM Primakov
after taking a phone call meant for the president. Whereupon the PM turned around his flight
in mid-air over the Atlantic and returned to Russia. By launching an illegal attack on
Russia's ally, the VP and the future Sec. of State, were offering a foreshadowing of the
hawkish and belligerent anti-Russian policy that was to follow for the next 17 years.
FB , August 8, 2018 at 9:31 am
Disagree these are minor details that are meaningless. Yugoslavia had already been systematically dismembered starting the very instant after
German unification and the fall of the Soviet Union. Coincidence ? Maybe a child could believe it by 1999, the final chapter of the dismemberment, Kosovo,
was ready, after several years of laying careful groundwork of subversion, propaganda and
agitation
The Nato war of aggression in 1999 would have proceeded no matter what to think that the
Lewisnky nonsense had anything to do with anything is ridiculous
nonsense factory , August 3, 2018 at 11:50 pm
One major factor in the NATO bombing and the overall agenda in the region was control of
territory for a proposed gas/oil pipeline export route from Central Asia to Europe. The
creation of Camp Bondsteel was directly related to that goal, and the chief contractor
(KBR-Halliburton) played the same role there that they did in the construction of numerous
military bases in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
That's been a dominant theme in U.S. foreign policy and military strategy circles ever
since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Numerous routes have been proposed –
trans-Afghanistan pipeline, the Nabucco pipeline, etc., all with the same goal –
getting Central Asia fossil fuels (leased to US and British majors like Exxon, Chevron, BP,
etc.) to global markets while bypassing Iran and Russia.
Monbiot in the Guardian, 2001 (when it was still a fairly decent paper, rather than a
gung-ho enforcer of the Blairite neoliberal agenda), said this:
"For the past few weeks, a freelance researcher called Keith Fisher has been doggedly
documenting a project which has, as far as I can discover, has been little-reported in any
British, European or American newspaper. It is called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, and it's due
for approval at the end of next month. Its purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the
Caspian sea. . ."
"In November 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary, spelt out his policy on the
extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This is about America's energy security," he
explained. "It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values.
We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We would like to see
them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way.
We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us
that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right. . ."
Paul Stuart, in the WSWS, 2002, noted:
"According to leaked comments to the press, European politicians now believe that the US
used the bombing of Yugoslavia specifically in order to establish Camp Bondsteel. Before the
start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Washington Post insisted, "With the
Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly over rights in the Balkans to
protect Caspian Sea oil."" https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/04/oil-a29.html
Forward project of American imperial power in the name of control of energy resources and
the cash flows arising from them, in a nutshell. Or, "business as usual since the 1950s".
Since JFK, it's all been done under the cover of "humanitarian intervention" and "protecting
democracy" which is why so many American citizens have no idea what the true aims of these
wars have really been
MH , August 7, 2018 at 2:13 pm
Sadly, Monbiot's column aside, the Guardian's coverage of what most of us here think of as
a war against Yugoslav independence was unabashedly pro-NATO and anti-Serb. The outlet did
it's best to confuse otherwise war skeptical liberals -- by demonizing the Serbs as
bloodthirsty savages purveying late 1930s genocide -- about the true character of "the
west's" aggression against the Serbs. Unlike Iraq, where the Graundiad reversed their pro-war
stance, the paper only doubled down on its anti-Serb biases, culminating in trumpets and
coronets for Hague's prosecutors ludicrously inept (at best) handling of Milosevic's
trial.
Bob Van Noy , August 3, 2018 at 8:11 pm
Thank you Vladimir Golstein for this article. I'm sure you know the answers to the
questions you ask in the paragraph titled "Testing the Limlts". The answer to each of them is
given to us and to the world in F. William Engdahl's devastating book entitled "Manifest
Destiny" : Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance. I say devastating because Mr. Engdahl
thoroughly describes a series of American administrations responsible for all of these crimes
and more.
It will be up to us (American Citizens) to educate ourselves as to the real history of our
government acting secretly, without broad consensus, and illegally. This article is a good
beginning but the discussion needs to be broadened and further documented. Then we can begin
to find a resolution.
How one can wonder how the German population stood aside while the Nazis committed their
atrocities while at the same time not speaking out at our own apparent daily military
excesses is beyond me.
irina , August 4, 2018 at 12:01 am
Not to mention meekly paying for these daily military excesses, with no protest.
christina garcia , August 4, 2018 at 1:02 am
here is an historical answer, My Grandfather and Grandmother were born in Koenigsberg
Prussia what is now known as Kaliningrad. The City of Emanuel Kant and not quite in the
1930's fans of National Socialism. My Grandfather owned a brick factory and a saw mill . They
were capitalists, not National Socialists. And you JIMBOBLA , fyi, My Opa was caught by the
Russian Army 1943, my family was totally disunited. It took the Red Cross 3 years to find my
family members and repatriate them .The Nazi organization disliked capitalism . I can prove
every single sentence I wrote. Please be careful when you write Nazism
Sam F , August 4, 2018 at 8:48 am
If you disagree, you should really address the issue of "how the German population stood
aside while the Nazis committed their atrocities." Are you arguing that Nazi atrocities were
justified by the USSR dispersing a family in 1943 Kaliningrad, during a war in which Nazis
killed over 20 million Russians? It would be interesting to hear an argument with substance
and references.
christina garcia , August 4, 2018 at 1:04 am
it is beyond you because you never experienced these atrocities
Milojkovic , August 5, 2018 at 8:11 pm
Dear Christina, I am very sorry about what happened to your family. They probably didn't
have a choice, otherwise the Nazis would have hurt them. Maybe you'd have never been born if
they dared to resist actively. Probably good people, unfairly caught in the whirlwind of
history and human brutality. They were then retaliated against by other Nazi victims without
deserving so, just because of their ethnicity. I am a Serb, living in U.S. Trust me, I can
relate. I was here in U.S. during those terrible days of 1999, living through them as if in a
daze. Life is now "kinda back to normal", but I try my best not to think just how big a part
of me had died in that bombing. My grandfather, who was just a peasant but a very devoted
Christian, died in a horrible pain from the terminal stomach cancer because there was no pain
medication for him; plus the pharmaceutical factories were bombed after having been accused
of being able to produce chemical weapons in a coordinated NATO propaganda just days before.
In agony, he was trying to undress himself, and was screaming and running around the garden.
Several of our family members were killed by Wehrmacht in WW II. I think that Germany had no
business participating in this bombing. Look up Varvarin bridge. It was shameful. And yes,
unfortunately, it was a German hand holding the match that lit up the powder keg that was
Yugoslavia in early 90's.
Consortium's Fan , August 7, 2018 at 10:28 am
Did YOU, Christina Garcia, experience atrocities? Judging by you comment, I am confidently
saying you DIDN'T. You know NOTHING about atrocities. Read and watch films about Nazi doings.
And compare them to "dispersing a family" in a wartime. A recent film worth seeing is
SOBIBOR, entirely based on archives, – a Nazi concentration camp in Poland's Sobibor
– hence the name. Educate yourself.
Lois Gagnon , August 3, 2018 at 5:37 pm
Western populations for the most part are so thoroughly brainwashed they still cling to
the belief they live in civilized countries and their militaries keep them safe from
barbarians. Unf*cking believable.
rosemerry , August 6, 2018 at 4:11 pm
The likelihood of damage being caused by the USA NOT intervening anywhere must be
vanishingly small!!!!!
Realist , August 3, 2018 at 5:24 pm
To U.S. authorities, foreign lives simply do not matter. No need to conduct any
"intelligence assessment" to determine their culpability. They shamelessly commit mass murder
right out in the open with impunity.
What makes you think USA lives matter to them. I see no evidence of that either.
Realist , August 3, 2018 at 11:39 pm
Nothing makes me think that. Why do you think I chose the phraseology that I did? It
gained currency in reaction to the murderous abuses by American police on our own
streets.
LarcoMarco , August 4, 2018 at 1:50 pm
It gained currency when that other Donald (Rumsfeld) essentially said that G.I's were
cannon fodder.
REDPILLED , August 4, 2018 at 4:54 pm
That despicable attitude long predates war criminal Rumsfeld: "Military men are just dumb,
stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."? Henry Kissinger
Drew Hunkins , August 3, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Michael Parenti's book "To Kill a Nation" is the best book on the criminal NATO war on
Yugoslavia. Followed closely by Diana Johnstone's seminal book "Fool's Crusade."
Antiwar7 , August 4, 2018 at 11:45 am
Agreed: those are excellent books, the best English language works on the breakup of
Yugoslavia.
Isn't it sad that the most enduring monuments the U.S. is leaving for it's worldly legacy
are but artifacts of war and destruction. We could have done much better than this.
Joe – Exactly. I sometimes find myself thinking the "what if" to the U.S. mayhem of
just my own lifetime. "What if" the CIA hadn't coordinated the assassinations of JFK and
Lumumba, as well as of course the murder or overthrow of dozens of elected leaders in former
colonies who simply aspired to helping their own people, rather than acting as proxies to the
continuing pillage by U.S. & Western capitalism. What if instead those leaders were
allowed to lead their nations into a non-aligned world and not forced to be beholden to
either the U.S. or Soviet systems by threats of U.S. military and economic violence? What if
Malcolm and MLK and RFK had not been murdered by forces connected to the U.S. ruling
institutions, and had instead by now had become elder statesmen in a more humane and
democratic U.S. system that would stand in stark contrast to the insane neoliberal capitalist
freak show which has been forced upon the world, and who's mystical – "invisible hand"
– can be found tightly wrapped around the throats of the poor everywhere?
Yes Joe I agree, I think we could have lived in a very different world had not the greed
and pathology of U.S. and Western oligarchy quite intentionally and violently destroyed any
possibility of a more humane and egalitarian world by routinely murdering those more humane
leaders who could have helped us reach it. That possibility of a more humane world was
replaced instead with the odious Maggie Thatcher's "there is no alternative" global nightmare
of continued neocolonial pillage euphemistically called neoliberal capitalism. Only the
fine-tuning of the rational for mass murder has changed. Now we have "duty to protect"
– which translated from 'newspeak' means = "we now must bomb and kill you because we
care about you so very, very much." Sort of a Western postmodern version of earlier
justifications for slaughtering the indigenous in order to – "save their souls" I
suppose. We in the West have created this current version of global "reality" through
absolutely amoral unrelenting mass violence over 500+ years now, and sadly there does not
seem to be any real evidence of a change of heart or direction in our global mayhem.
Joe Tedesky , August 3, 2018 at 9:24 pm
Gary I agree whole heartedly with every word you wrote. I would add to how intriguing it
would be to learn of the high deception played during the passage of the Federal Reserve back
in 1913. Then I'd push out of the way those who blocked Claude Pepper from endorsing Henry
Wallace into the 1944 Democratic Convention. This alone may have changed the course of the
establishment of the CIA, and avoided the disaster that is happening in Palestine to this
day.
Thatcher & Reagan surly introduced us into this new economy which is often said to be
doing so great, and there we are ruined by an overly eager Fed lender along with an out of
sight Defense budget. Your job isn't there, and with that you are told to blame the union.
Ah, the Union wasn't that what Margaret & Ronny sabotaged eventually . nice work.
I do believe the assassination era was the biggest turning point, as it sent a strong
message to the would be seekers of sane government policies who would incur such tragedy if
explored. Joe
Joe – I quite agree. The assassination era was the huge turning point, but as you
point out the corruption and manipulation of democracy by the oligarchy goes way back. Yes,
imagine if Wallace had been the VP for FDR? Had Wallace's nomination not been sabotaged,
perhaps the Dulles brothers would have spent their remaining time on earth learning
woodworking skills in prison workshop after being convicted for the treason of their Nazi
dealings – instead of leading the CIA and State Dept. into the corrupt secrecy of
multiple regime changes, assassinations, and endless insane cold war posturing. The Dulles
CIA era, including it's loving embrace of the Nazi war criminals, seems to have a been in
retrospect a very dark prelude leading up to the assassination era to follow. Ike certainly
had some foreboding of the evil to come given his parting comments.
REDPILLED , August 4, 2018 at 5:04 pm
A brief recommended reading list:
The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
by David Talbot
The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the attack on U.S. Democracy by Peter
Dale Scott
The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Mike
Lofgren
Bob Van Noy , August 4, 2018 at 8:35 am
Joe and Gary, very nice and well informed thread, thank you. Clearly we all share the
history that both of you mentioned and we also see through the now crumbling obfuscation. It
will become our new duty to use that past experience and a new hope to help make an official
case for correcting the official record and reclaiming Democracy. Actually it's a worthy
endeavor and we're uniquely positioned to help
Consortium's Fan , August 7, 2018 at 10:42 am
"Sort of a Western postmodern version of earlier justifications for slaughtering the
indigenous in order to – "save their souls" I suppose."
Or even earlier justifications (by the Holy Inquisition in the Middle Ages) to burn people
alive to "save their souls".
Realist , August 4, 2018 at 6:03 pm
Excellent point, Joe. I wonder how different the history books will look if this country
somehow manages to shed the warmongering hegemonists who have been in control for at least
the last 70 years (or, one might argue, from its inception).
I'd also like to see an English translation of the current world history books, used in
the schools of China, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, Cuba, Vietnam or dozens of other
countries not part of the American World Empire. I'll bet American actions and motives are
not portrayed to be as noble and pure as the driven snow. I'll bet even Mexico has a quite
different take. Canada? You stopped our invasion in 1812, aided the slaves sent to you via
the Underground Railway and refused to cooperate in the Vietnam fiasco. What happened since
then? Now you extradite AWOL GI's who don't want to go back to the numerous "sand boxes" we
play in. I'll bet those books, if ever published in English, would not be allowed on public
library shelves in the U.S.
I believe there are many questions that need answering about NATO. For instance:
July 14, 2018
The Diabolical "Work" of NATO and Its Allies: Why Are These War Criminals Still Free?
NATO's recent meeting or summit in Brussels July 11 – 12, 2018, could be described
as a gathering of heinous hypocrites. [1] There are millions of people dead, millions are
refugees, their countries have been destroyed and our ruling hypocrites spout the words "rule
of law." Has there ever been a gang of human reptiles (are they even human?) so evil, dressed
in expensive suits [and dresses] and operating out of houses of power called "parliaments"
and other houses of ill repute? These criminals, or gangsters, or bandits, or reprobates (Add
your own epithet) are up to their filthy necks in the blood of the victims of their planned
carnage.
Yet it was reported: "The summit will also discuss the fight against terrorism." Gee! Does
that statement about fighting "terrorism" smack of hypocrisy? There is evidence that NATO and
its members have, in fact, been consorting with, and supporting, terrorists. [2]
[much more info at link below] http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-diabolical-work-of-nato-and-its.html
"... At some point the Western Powers decided the that old Communist Apparachik Milosevic would be the Bad Guy and the Croatian freedom-loving "our bastards" the good guys to be internationally recognized and thus enflamed the passion of secession. The thing just flew apart. And afterwards we had to bomb the country in order to save it. ..."
I vividly recall the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. I was nine-years-old and we were not
wired for cable then. There also was no remote control for the 27″ Zenith color
console. I was forced to watch some of the coverage for those reasons. Sarajevo was held up
as a utopian city where Serbs, Croats and Muslims all lived in a beautiful city peacefully.
It was so beautiful said the announcers. And in less than a decade that Olympic stadium
was turned into a cemetery as those peaceful Croats, Serbs and Muslims slaughtered each
other. Once the Soviet Army withdrew from Yugoslavia and the nation disintegrated back into
its ethnic lines, the killings started.
Imagine what is coming in the United States where the simmering hatreds are invited and
exploited by not three distinct groups, but hundreds. Image what is to come when
"historically aggrieved" peoples who have been weaponized for generations to despise their
non-homogenous neighbors.
The erasure of common nationhood and the instilling of grievance as a caste system will
see the US descend into chaotic slaughter the likes of which have never been seen before.
When Pakistan separated from India after the British pulled out, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus
slaughtered each other, stopping trains filled with refugees being repatriated into their new
nations and slaughtering every one of them. Americans have been so denuded of historical
understanding that these histories are unknown.
The malevolence of humanity seething just under the surface until the opportunity arises
for it to burst forth is forgotten by placated propagandized people. What people in world
history have been more propagandized and placated than Americans who have been viewing
carefully crafted scripts since their eyes were first able to focus on a tv screen and whose
desperately poor are morbidly obese?
Stocking a warehouse to the rafters with volatile materials, packing them in so tightly
until they near critical mass, now add in some agitation -- and light a match. The most
devastating weapon ever devised in not the hydrogen bomb, it is a population bomb. A 100
megaton nuclear weapon destroys cleanly -- one flash and a wind storm -- it's all over aside
from lingering sunshine units. In a thousand years the land will forget what had
happened.
A population bomb where the very people have been weaponized will prove far more
devastating and remain scarring the land for eons and that common memory lives on in the
survivors igniting anew every few decades.
Once the Soviet Army withdrew from Yugoslavia and the nation disintegrated back into its
ethnic lines, the killings started.
That never happened though because the Soviet Army was never in Yugoslavia in the first
place. It was Tito who maintained order with an iron fist.
At some point the Western Powers decided the that old Communist Apparachik Milosevic
would be the Bad Guy and the Croatian freedom-loving "our bastards" the good guys to be
internationally recognized and thus enflamed the passion of secession. The thing just flew
apart. And afterwards we had to bomb the country in order to save it.
"It did not take National Socialism long to rally workers, most of whom were either
unemployed or still very young, into the SA [Sturmangriff, Stormtroopers, "brown shirts"]. To a
large extent, however, these workers were revolutionary in a dull sort of way and still
maintained an authoritarian attitude. For this reason National Socialist propaganda was
contradictory; it's content was determined by the class for which it was intended. Only in its
manipulation of the mystical feelings of the masses was it clear and consistent.
In talks with followers of the National Socialist party and especially with members of the
SA, it was clearly brought out that the revolutionary phraseology of National Socialism was the
decisive factor in the winning over of these masses. One heard National Socialists deny that
Hitler
represented capital. One heard SA men warn Hitler that he must not betray the cause of the
"revolution." One heard SA men say that Hitler was the German Lenin . Those who went over to
National Socialism from Social Democracy and the liberal central parties were, without
exception, revolutionary minded masses who were either nonpolitical or politically undecided
prior to this. Those who went over from the Communist party were often revolutionary elements
who simply could not make any sense of many of the German Communist party's contradictory
political slogans. In part they were men upon whom the external features of Hitler's party,
it's military character, its assertiveness, etc., made a big impression.
"Open avowal of dictatorship is much less dangerous than sham democracy. The first one can
fight; sham democracy is insidious."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Even more
essential, however, is the identification of the individuals in the masses with the
"führer." The more helpless the "mass-individual" has become, owing to his upbringing, the
more pronounced is his identification with the führer, and the more the childish need for
protection is disguised in the form of a feeling at one with the führer. This inclination
to identify is the psychological basis of national narcissism, i.e., of the self-confidence
that individual man derives from the "greatness of the nation."
The reactionary lower
middle-class man perceives himself in the führer, in the authoritarian state. On
the basis of this identification he feels himself to be a defender of the "national heritage,"
of the "nation," which does not prevent him, likewise on the basis of this identification, from
simultaneously despising "the masses" and confronting them as an individual. The wretchedness
of his material and sexual situation is so overshadowed by the exalting idea of belonging to a
master race and having a brilliant führer that, as time goes on, he ceases to realize how
completely he has sunk to a position of insignificant, blind allegiance.
The worker who is conscious of his skills -- he, in short, who has rid himself of his
submissive structure, who identifies with his work and not with the führer, with the
international working masses and not with the national homeland -- represents the opposite of
this. He feels himself to be a leader , not on the basis of his identification with the
führer, but on the basis of his consciousness of performing work that is vitally necessary
for society's existence."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"It was one
of the greatest errors in evaluating dictatorship to say that the dictator forces himself on
society against its own will. In reality, every dictator in history was nothing but the
accentuation of already existing state ideas which he had only to exaggerate in order to gain
power"
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Race
theorists, who are as old as imperialism itself, want to achieve racial purity in peoples whose
interbreeding, as a result of the expansion of world economy, is so far advanced that racial
purity can have meaning only to a numbskull."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Power, no matter what kind of power it is, without a foundation in truth, is a
dictatorship, more or less and in one way or another, for it is always based on man's fear of
the social responsibility and personal burden that "freedom" entails."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"The word fascism is not a word of abuse any more than the word capitalism is. It is a
concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian,
one-party system, hence totalitarian, a system in which power takes priority over objective
interests, and facts are distorted for political purposes. Hence, there are "fascist Jews,"
just as there are "fascist Democrats."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Finally, we arrive at the question of the so-called nonpolitical man. Hitler not only established his
power from the very beginning with masses of people who were until then essentially
nonpolitical; he also accomplished his last step to victory in March of 1933 in a "legal"
manner, by mobilizing no less than five million nonvoters, that is to say, nonpolitical people.
The Left parties had made every effort to win over the indifferent masses, without posing the
question as to what it means "to be indifferent or nonpolitical."
If an industrialist and large estate owner champions a rightist party, this is easily
understood in terms of his immediate economic interests. In his case a leftist orientation
would be at variance with his social situation and would, for that reason, point to irrational
motives. If an industrial worker has a leftist orientation, this too is by all mean rationally
consistent -- it derives from his economic and social position in industry. If, however, a
worker, an employee, or an official has a rightist orientation, this must be ascribed to a lack
of political clarity, i.e., he is ignorant of his social position. The more a man who belongs
to the broad working masses is nonpolitical, the more susceptible he is to the ideology of
political reaction. To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive
psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of
social responsibility. The analysis of this defense against consciousness of one's social
responsibility yields clear insights into a number of dark questions concerning the behavior of
the broad nonpolitical strata. In the case of the average intellectual "who wants nothing to do
with politics," it can easily be shown that immediate economic interests and fears related to
his social position, which is dependent upon public opinion, lie at the basis of his
noninvolvement. These fears cause him to make the most grotesque sacrifices with respect to his
knowledge and convictions. Those people who are engaged in the production process in one way or
another and are nonetheless socially irresponsible can be divided into two major groups. In the
case of the one group the concept of politics is unconsciously associated with the idea of
violence and physical danger, i.e., with an intense fear, which prevents them from facing life
realistically. In the case of the other group, which undoubtedly constitutes the majority,
social irresponsibility is based on personal conflicts and anxieties, of which the sexual
anxiety is the predominant one. [ ] Until now the revolutionary movement has misunderstood this
situation. It attempted to awaken the "nonpolitical" man by making him conscious solely of his
unfulfilled economic interests. Experience teaches that the majority of these "nonpolitical"
people can hardly be made to listen to anything about their socio-economic situation, whereas
they are very accessible to the mystical claptrap of a National Socialist, despite the fact
that the latter makes very little mention of economic interests. [This] is explained by the
fact that severe sexual conflicts (in the broadest sense of the word), whether conscious or
unconscious, inhibit rational thinking and the development of social responsibility. They make
a person afraid and force him into a shell. If, now, such a self-encapsulated person meets a
propagandist who works with faith and mysticism, meets, in other words, a fascist who works
with sexual, libidinous methods, he turns his complete attention to him. This is not because
the fascist program makes a greater impression on him than the liberal program, but because in
his devotion to the führer and the führer's ideology, he experiences a momentary
release from his unrelenting inner tension. Unconsciously, he is able to give his conflicts a
different form and in this way to "solve" them."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"When, then, the Social Democrat worker found himself in the economic crisis which degraded
him to the status of a coolie, the development of his revolutionary sentiments was severely
retarded by the conservative structuralization that had been taking shape in him for decades.
Either he remained in the camp of the Social Democrats, notwithstanding his criticism and
rejection of their policies, or he went over to the NSDAP [Nazi party] in search of a better
replacement. Irresolute and indecisive, owing to the deep contradiction between revolutionary
and conservative sentiments, disappointed by his own leadership, he followed the line of least
resistance. Whether he would give up his conservative tendencies and arrive at a complete
consciousness of his actual responsibility in the production process, i.e., at a revolutionary
consciousness, depended solely on the correct or incorrect leadership of the revolutionary
party. Thus the communist assertion that it was the Social Democrat policies that put fascism
in the saddle was correct from a psychological viewpoint. Disappointment in Social
Democracy, accompanied by the contradiction between wretchedness and conservative thinking,
must lead to fascism if there are no revolutionary organizations. For example, following
the fiasco of the Labor party's policies in England, in 1930–31, fascism began to
infiltrate the workers who, then, in the election of 1931, cut away to the Right, instead of
going over to communism."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Hence, what he wants -- and it is openly admitted -- is to implement nationalistic
imperialism with methods he has borrowed from Marxism , including its technique of
mass organization. But the success of this mass organization is to be ascribed to the masses
and not to Hitler . It was man's
authoritarian freedom-fearing structure that enabled his propaganda to take root. Hence, what
is important about Hitler sociologically does not issue from his personality but from the
importance attached to him by the masses. And what makes the problem all the more
complex is the fact that Hitler held the masses, with whose help he wanted to carry out his
imperialism, in complete contempt."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"As bitter as it may be, the fact remains: It is the irresponsibleness of masses
of people that lies at the basis of fascism of all countries, nations, and races, etc. Fascism
is the result of man's distortion over thousands of years. It could have developed in any
country or nation. It is not a character trait that is confined specifically to the Germans or
Italians. It is manifest in every single individual of the world. The Austrian saying "Da
kann man halt nix machen" expresses this fact just as the American saying "Let George do
it." That this situation was brought about by a social development which goes back thousands of
years does not alter the fact itself. It is man himself who is responsible and not "historical
developments." It was the shifting of the responsibility from living man to "historical
developments" that caused the downfall of the socialist freedom movements. However, the
events of the past twenty years demand the responsibility of the working masses of people.
If we take "freedom" to mean first and foremost the responsibility of each
individual to shape personal, occupational, and social existence in a rational way, then it
can be said that there is no greater fear than the fear of the creation of general
freedom. Unless this basic problem is given complete priority and solved, there will never
be a freedom capable of lasting more than one or two generations."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"It did not
take National Socialism long to rally workers, most of whom were either unemployed or still
very young, into the SA [Sturmangriff, Stormtroopers, "brown shirts"]. To a large extent,
however, these workers were revolutionary in a dull sort of way and still maintained an
authoritarian attitude. For this reason National Socialist propaganda was contradictory; it's
content was determined by the class for which it was intended. Only in its manipulation of the
mystical feelings of the masses was it clear and consistent.
In talks with followers of the National Socialist party and especially with members of the
SA, it was clearly brought out that the revolutionary phraseology of National Socialism was the
decisive factor in the winning over of these masses. One heard National Socialists deny that
Hitler
represented capital. One heard SA men warn Hitler that he must not betray the cause of the
"revolution." One heard SA men say that Hitler was the German Lenin . Those who went over to
National Socialism from Social Democracy and the liberal central parties were, without
exception, revolutionary minded masses who were either nonpolitical or politically undecided
prior to this. Those who went over from the Communist party were often revolutionary elements
who simply could not make any sense of many of the German Communist party's contradictory
political slogans. In part they were men upon whom the external features of Hitler's party,
it's military character, its assertiveness, etc., made a big impression.
"National Socialism made use of various means in dealing with various classes, and made
various promises depending upon the social class it needed at a particular time. In the spring
of 1933, for example, it was the revolutionary character of the Nazi movement that was
given particular emphasis in Nazi propaganda in an effort to win over the industrial workers,
and the first of May was "celebrated," but only after the aristocracy had been appeased in
Potsdam. To ascribe the success solely to political swindle, however, would be to become
entangled in a contradiction with the basic idea of freedom, and would practically exclude the
possibility of a social revolution. What must be answered is: Why do the masses allow
themselves to be politically swindled? The masses had every possibility of evaluating the
propaganda of the various parties. Why didn't they see that, while promising the workers that
the owners of the means of production would be disappropriated, Hitler promised the capitalists that
their rights would be protected?"
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
"Yet, it was precisely our failure to differentiate between work and politics, between
reality and illusion; it was precisely our mistake of conceiving of politics as a rational
human activity comparable to the sowing of seeds or the construction of buildings that was
responsible for the fact that a painter who
failed to make the grade was able to plunge the whole world into misery. And I have
stressed again and again that the main purpose of this book -- which, after all, was not
written merely for the fun of it -- was to demonstrate these catastrophic errors in human
thinking and to eliminate irrationalism from politics. It is an essential part of our social
tragedy that the farmer, the industrial worker, the physician, etc., do not influence social
existence solely through their social activities, but also and even predominantly through their
political ideologies. For political activity hinders objective and professional activity; it
splits every profession into inimical ideologic groups; creates a dichotomy in the body of
industrial workers; limits the activity of the medical profession and harms the patients. In
short, it is precisely political activity that prevents the realization of that which it
pretends to fight for: peace, work, security, international cooperation, free objective speech,
freedom of religion, etc."
― Wilhelm Reich , The Mass Psychology of
Fascism
Here are ten bombshell revelations and fascinating new details to lately come out of both Sy
Hersh's new book, Reporter , as well as
interviews he's given since publication...
1) On a leaked Bush-era intelligence memo outlining the neocon plan to remake the Middle
East
(Note: though previously alluded to only anecdotally by General Wesley Clark in his memoir and in a 2007
speech , the below passage from Seymour Hersh is to our knowledge the first time this
highly classified memo has been quoted . Hersh's account appears to corroborate now retired
Gen. Clark's assertion that days after 9/11 a classified memo outlining plans to foster regime
change in "7 countries in
5 years" was being circulated among intelligence officials.)
From Reporter: A Memoir
pg. 306 -- A few months after the invasion of Iraq, during an interview overseas with a general
who was director of a foreign intelligence service, I was provided with a copy of a Republican
neocon plan for American dominance in the Middle East. The general was an American ally, but
one who was very rattled by the Bush/Cheney aggression. I was told that the document leaked to
me initially had been obtained by someone in the local CIA station. There was reason to be
rattled: The document declared that the war to reshape the Middle East had to begin "with the
assault on Iraq. The fundamental reason for this... is that the war will start making the U.S.
the hegemon of the Middle East. The correlative reason is to make the region feel in its bones,
as it were, the seriousness of American intent and determination." Victory in Iraq would lead
to an ultimatum to Damascus, the "defanging" of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat's Palestine
Liberation Organization, and other anti-Israeli groups. America's enemies must understand that
"they are fighting for their life: Pax Americana is on its way, which implies their
annihilation." I and the foreign general agreed that America's neocons were a menace to
civilization.
From Reporter: A Memoir
pages 306-307 -- Donald Rumsfeld was also infected with neocon fantasy. Turkey had refused to
permit America's Fourth Division to join the attack of Iraq from its territory, and the
division, with its twenty-five thousand men and women, did not arrive in force inside Iraq
until mid-April, when the initial fighting was essentially over. I learned then that Rumsfeld
had asked the American military command in Stuttgart, Germany, which had responsibility for
monitoring Europe, including Syria and Lebanon, to begin drawing up an operational plan for an
invasion of Syria. A young general assigned to the task refused to do so, thereby winning
applause from my friends on the inside and risking his career. The plan was seen by those I
knew as especially bizarre because Bashar Assad, the ruler of secular Syria, had responded to
9/11 by sharing with the CIA hundreds of his country's most sensitive intelligence files on the
Muslim Brotherhood in Hamburg, where much of the planning for 9/11 was carried out... Rumsfeld
eventually came to his senses and back down, I was told...
3) On the Neocon deep state which seized power after 9/11
From Reporter: A Memoir
pages 305-306 -- I began to comprehend that eight or nine neoconservatives who were political
outsiders in the Clinton years had essentially overthrown the government of the United States
-- with ease . It was stunning to realize how fragile our Constitution was. The intellectual
leaders of that group -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle -- had not hidden their
ideology and their belief in the power of the executive but depicted themselves in public with
a great calmness and a self-assurance that masked their radicalism . I had spent many hours
after 9/11 in conversations with Perle that, luckily for me, helped me understand what was
coming. (Perle and I had been chatting about policy since the early 1980s, but he broke off
relations in 1993 over an article I did for The New Yorker linking him, a fervent supporter of
Israel, to a series of meetings with Saudi businessmen in an attempt to land a
multibillion-dollar contract from Saudi Arabia . Perle responded by publicly threatening to sue
me and characterizing me as a newspaper terrorist. He did not sue.
Meanwhile, Cheney had emerged as a leader of the neocon pack. From 9/11 on he did all he
could to undermine congressional oversight. I learned a great deal from the inside about his
primacy in the White House , but once again I was limited in what I would write for fear of
betraying my sources...
I came to understand that Cheney's goal was to run his most important military and
intelligence operations with as little congressional knowledge, and interference, as possible.
I was fascinating and important to learn what I did about Cheney's constant accumulation of
power and authority as vice president , but it was impossible to even begin to verify the
information without running the risk that Cheney would learn of my questioning and have a good
idea from whom I was getting the information.
4) On Russian meddling in the US election
From the recent
Independent interview based on his autobiography -- Hersh has vociferously strong opinions
on the subject and smells a rat. He states that there is "a great deal of animosity towards
Russia. All of that stuff about Russia hacking the election appears to be preposterous." He has
been researching the subject but is not ready to go public yet.
Hersh quips that the last time he heard the US defense establishment have high confidence,
it was regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He points out that the NSA only has moderate confidence in Russian
hacking. It is a point that has been made before; there has been no national intelligence
estimate in which all 17 US intelligence agencies would have to sign off. "When the intel
community wants to say something they say it High confidence effectively means that they don't
know."
5) On the Novichok poisoning
From the recent
Independent interview -- Hersh is also on the record as stating that the official version
of the
Skripal poisoning does not stand up to scrutiny. He tells me: "The story of novichok
poisoning has not held up very well. He [Skripal] was most likely talking to British
intelligence services about Russian organised crime." The unfortunate turn of events with the
contamination of other victims is suggestive, according to Hersh, of organised crime elements
rather than state-sponsored actions –though this files in the face of the UK government's
position.
Hersh modestly points out that these are just his opinions. Opinions or not, he is scathing
on Obama –
"a trimmer articulate [but] far from a radical a middleman". During his Goldsmiths talk, he
remarks that liberal critics underestimate Trump at their peril.
He ends the Goldsmiths talk with an anecdote about having lunch with his sources in the
wake of 9/11 . He vents his anger at the agencies for not sharing information. One of his
CIA sources fires back: "Sy you still don't get it after all these years – the FBI
catches bank robbers, the CIA robs banks." It is a delicious, if cryptic aphorism.
* * *
6) On the Bush-era 'Redirection' policy of arming Sunni radicals to counter Shia Iran, which
in a 2007 New Yorker article
Hersh accurately predicted
would set off war in Syria
From the
Independent interview : [Hersh] tells me it is "amazing how many times that story has been
reprinted" . I ask about his argument that US policy was designed to neutralize the Shia sphere
extending from Iran to Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and hence redraw the Sykes-Picot
boundaries for the 21st century.
He goes on to say that Bush and Cheney "had it in for Iran", although he denies the idea
that Iran was heavily involved in Iraq: "They were providing intel, collecting intel The US did
many cross-border hunts to kill ops [with] much more aggression than Iran"...
He believes that the Trump administration has no memory of this approach. I'm sure though
that the military-industrial complex has a longer memory...
I press him on the RAND and Stratfor reports including one authored by Cheney and Paul
Wolfowitz in which they envisage deliberate ethno-sectarian partitioning of Iraq . Hersh
ruefully states that: "The day after 9/11 we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing
that George Kennan warned us never to do – to expand NATO too far."
* * *
7) On the official 9/11 narrative
From the
Independent interview : We end up ruminating about 9/11, perhaps because it is another
narrative ripe for deconstruction by sceptics. Polling shows that a significant proportion of
the American public believes there is more to the truth. These doubts have been reinforced by
the declassification of the suppressed 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report last year
undermining the version that a group of terrorists acting independently managed to pull off the
attacks. The implication is that they may well have been state-sponsored with the Saudis
potentially involved.
Hersh tells me: "I don't necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
We really don't have an ending to the story. I've known people in the [intelligence] community.
We don't know anything empirical about who did what" . He continues: "The guy was living in a
cave. He really didn't know much English. He was pretty bright and he had a lot of hatred for
the US. We respond by attacking the Taliban. Eighteen years later How's it going guys?"
8) On the media and the morality of the powerful
From a recent
The Intercept interview and book review -- If
Hersh were a superhero, this would be his origin story. Two hundred and seventy-four pages
after the Chicago anecdote, he describes his coverage of a massive
slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991 after a ceasefire had ended the
Persian Gulf War. America's indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, "a reminder of the
Vietnam War's MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it's a murdered or raped gook, there is no crime." It
was also, he adds, a reminder of something else: "I had learned a domestic version of that rule
decades earlier" in Chicago. "Reporter" demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that rule:
The powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including mass murder.
The powerful lie constantly about their predations.
The natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with it.
Around 35 years ago, I was sitting in my college dorm-room closely reading the New York
Times as I did each and every morning when I noticed an astonishing article about the
controversial new Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir.
Back in those long-gone days, the Gray Lady was strictly a black-and-white print
publication, lacking the large color photographs of rap stars and long stories about dieting
techniques that fill so much of today's news coverage, and it also seemed to have a far harder
edge in its Middle East reporting. A year or so earlier, Shamir's predecessor Menacham Begin
had allowed his Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to talk him into invading Lebanon and besieging
Beirut, and the subsequent massacre of Palestinian women and children in the Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps had outraged the world and angered America's government. This eventually led to
Begin's resignation, with Shamir, his Foreign Minister, taking his place.
Prior to his surprising 1977 election victory, Begin had spent decades in the political
wilderness as an unacceptable right-winger, and Shamir had an even more extreme background,
with the American mainstream media freely reporting his long involvement in all sorts of
high-profile assassinations and terrorist attacks during the 1940s, painting him as a very bad
man indeed.
Given Shamir's notorious activities, few revelations would have shocked me, but this one
did. Apparently, during the late 1930s, Shamir and his small Zionist faction had become great
admirers of the Italian Fascists and German Nazis, and after World War II broke out, they had
made repeated attempts to contact Mussolini and the German leadership in 1940 and 1941, hoping
to enlist in the Axis Powers as their Palestine affiliate, and undertake a campaign of attacks
and espionage against the local British forces, then share in the political booty after
Hitler's inevitable triumph.
Now the Times clearly viewed Shamir in a very negative light, but it seemed
extremely unlikely to me that they would have published such a remarkable story without being
absolutely sure of their facts. Among other things, there were long excerpts from the official
letters sent to Mussolini ferociously denouncing the "decadent" democratic systems of Britain
and France that he was opposing, and assuring Il Duce that such ridiculous political
notions would have no future place in the totalitarian Jewish client state they hoped to
establish under his auspices in Palestine.
As it happens, both Germany and Italy were preoccupied with larger geopolitical issues at
the time, and given the small size of Shamir's Zionist faction, not much seems to have ever
come of those efforts. But the idea of the sitting Prime Minister of the Jewish State having
spent his early wartime years as an unrequited Nazi ally was certainly something that sticks in
one's mind, not quite conforming to the traditional narrative of that era which I had always
accepted.
Most remarkably, the revelation of Shamir's pro-Axis past seems to have had only a
relatively minor impact upon his political standing within Israeli society. I would think that
any American political figure found to have supported a military alliance with Nazi Germany
during the Second World War would have had a very difficult time surviving the resulting
political scandal, and the same would surely be true for politicians in Britain, France, or
most other western nations. But although there was certainly some embarrassment in the Israeli
press, especially after the shocking story reached the international headlines, apparently most
Israelis took the whole matter in stride, and Shamir stayed in office for another year, then
later served a second, much longer term as Prime Minister during 1986-1992. The Jews of Israel
apparently regarded Nazi Germany quite differently than did most Americans, let alone most
American Jews.
... ... ...
Over the years I've occasionally made half-hearted attempts to locate the Times
article about Shamir that had long stuck in my memory, but have had no success, either because
it was removed from the Times archives or more likely because my mediocre search
skills proved inadequate. But I'm almost certain that the piece had been prompted by the 1983
publication of Zionism in the
Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner, an anti-Zionist of the Trotskyite persuasion
and Jewish origins. I only very recently discovered that book, which really tells an extremely
interesting story.
Brenner, born in 1937, has spent his entire life as an unreconstructed hard-core leftist,
with his enthusiasms ranging from Marxist revolution to the Black Panthers, and he is obviously
a captive of his views and his ideology. At times, this background impairs the flow of his
text, and the periodic allusions to "proletarian," "bourgeoisie," and "capitalist classes"
sometimes grow a little wearisome, as does his unthinking acceptance of all the shared beliefs
common to his political circle. But surely only someone with that sort of fervent ideological
commitment would have been willing to devote so much time and effort to investigating that
controversial subject and ignoring the endless denunciations that resulted, which even included
physical assaults by Zionist partisans.
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In any event, his documentation seems completely airtight, and some years after the original
appearance of his book, he published a companion volume entitled 51 Documents: Zionist
Collaboration with the Nazis , which simply provides English translations of all the raw
evidence behind his analytical framework, allowing interested parties to read the material and
draw their own conclusions.
Among other things, Brenner provides considerable evidence that the larger and somewhat more
mainstream right-wing Zionist faction later led by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was
almost invariably regarded as a Fascist movement during the 1930s, even apart from its warm
admiration for Mussolini's Italian regime. This was hardly such a dark secret in that period
given that its main Palestine newspaper carried a regular column by a top ideological leader
entitled "Diary of a Fascist." During one of the major international Zionist conferences,
factional leader Vladimir Zabotinsky entered the hall with his brown-shirted followers in full
military formation, leading the chair to ban the wearing of uniforms in order to avoid a riot,
and his faction was soon defeated politically and eventually expelled from the Zionist umbrella
organization. This major setback was largely due to the widespread hostility the group had
aroused after two of its members were arrested by British police for the recent assassination
of Chaim Arlosoroff, one of the highest-ranking Zionist officials based in Palestine.
The cover of the 2014 paperback edition of Brenner's book displays the commemorative medal
struck by Nazi Germany to mark its Zionist alliance, with a Star-of-David on the front face and
a Swastika on the obverse. But oddly enough, this symbolic medallion actually had absolutely no
connection with the unsuccessful attempts by Shamir's small faction to arrange a Nazi military
alliance during World War II.
Although the Germans paid little attention to the entreaties of that minor organization, the
far larger and more influential mainstream Zionist movement of Chaim Weizmann and David
Ben-Gurion was something else entirely. And during most of the 1930s, these other Zionists had
formed an important economic partnership with Nazi Germany, based upon an obvious commonality
of interests. After all, Hitler regarded Germany's one percent Jewish population as a
disruptive and potentially dangerous element which he wanted gone, and the Middle East seemed
as good a destination for them as any other. Meanwhile, the Zionists had very similar
objectives, and the creation of their new national homeland in Palestine obviously required
both Jewish immigrants and Jewish financial investment.
... ... ...
The importance of the Nazi-Zionist pact for Israel's establishment is difficult to
overstate. According to a 1974 analysis in Jewish Frontier cited by Brenner, between
1933 and 1939 over 60% of all the investment in Jewish Palestine came from Nazi Germany. The
worldwide impoverishment of the Great Depression had drastically reduced ongoing Jewish
financial support from all other sources, and Brenner reasonably suggests that without Hitler's
financial backing, the nascent Jewish colony, so tiny and fragile, might easily have shriveled
up and died during that difficult period.
Such a conclusion leads to fascinating hypotheticals. When I first stumbled across
references to the Ha'avara Agreement on websites here and there, one of the commenters
mentioning the issue half-jokingly suggested that if Hitler had won the war, statues would
surely have been built to him throughout Israel and he would today be recognized by Jews
everywhere as the heroic Gentile leader who had played the central role in reestablishing a
national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine after almost 2000 years of bitter
exile.
This sort of astonishing counter-factual possibility is not nearly as totally absurd as it
might sound to our present-day ears. We must recognize that our historical understanding of
reality is shaped by the media, and media organs are controlled by the winners of major wars
and their allies, with inconvenient details often excluded to avoid confusing the public. It is
undeniably true that in his 1924 book Mein Kampf , Hitler had written all sorts of
hostile and nasty things about Jews, especially those who were recent immigrants from Eastern
Europe, but when I read the book back in high school, I was a little surprised to discover that
these anti-Jewish sentiments hardly seemed central to his text. Furthermore, just a couple of
years earlier, a vastly more prominent public figure such as British Minister Winston Churchill
had published
sentiments nearly as hostile and nasty , focusing on the monstrous crimes being committed
by Bolshevik Jews. In Albert Lindemann's Esau's Tears , I was surprised to discover
that the author of the famous Balfour Declaration, the foundation of the Zionist project, was
apparently also quite hostile to Jews, with an element of his motivation probably being his
desire to exclude them from Britain.
Once Hitler consolidated power in Germany, he quickly outlawed all other political
organizations for the German people, with only the Nazi Party and Nazi political symbols being
legally permitted. But a special exception was made for German Jews, and Germany's local
Zionist Party was accorded complete legal status, with Zionist marches, Zionist uniforms, and
Zionist flags all fully permitted. Under Hitler, there was strict censorship of all German
publications, but the weekly Zionist newspaper was freely sold at all newsstands and street
corners. The clear notion seemed to be that a German National Socialist Party was the proper
political home for the country's 99% German majority, while Zionist National Socialism would
fill the same role for the tiny Jewish minority.
In 1934, Zionist leaders invited an important SS official to spend six months visiting the
Jewish settlement in Palestine, and upon his return, his very favorable impressions of the
growing Zionist enterprise were published as a massive 12-part-series in Joseph Goebbel's
Der Angriff , the flagship media organ of the Nazi Party, bearing the descriptive
title "A Nazi Goes to Palestine." In his very angry 1920 critique of Jewish Bolshevik activity,
Churchill had argued that Zionism was locked in a fierce battle with Bolshevism for the soul of
European Jewry, and only its victory might ensure amicable future relations between Jew and
Gentile. Based on available evidence, Hitler and many of the other Nazi leaders seemed to have
reached a somewhat similar conclusion by the mid-1930s.
During that era extremely harsh sentiments regarding Diaspora Jewry were sometimes found in
rather surprising quarters. After the controversy surrounding Shamir's Nazi ties erupted into
the headlines, Brenner's material became the grist for an important article by Edward Mortimer,
the longtime Middle East expert at the august Times of London , and the 2014 edition
of the book includes some choice extracts from Mortimer's February 11, 1984 Times
piece:
Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that "each country can absorb only a limited
number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many
Jews"?
No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Organization
and later still the first president of the state of Israel.
And where might you find the following assertion, originally composed in 1917 but
republished as late as 1936: "The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both
physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness
of social obligation, knows no order nor discipline"?
Not in Der Sturmer but in the organ of the Zionist youth organization, Hashomer
Hatzair.
As the above quoted statement reveals, Zionism itself encouraged and exploited self-hatred
in the Diaspora. It started from the assumption that anti-Semitism was inevitable and even in
a sense justified so long as Jews were outside the land of Israel.
It is true that only an extreme lunatic fringe of Zionism went so far as to offer to join
the war on Germany's side in 1941, in the hope of establishing "the historical Jewish state
on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich."
Unfortunately this was the group which the present Prime Minister of Israel chose to
join.
The very uncomfortable truth is that the harsh characterizations of Diaspora Jewry found in
the pages of Mein Kampf were not all that different from what was voiced by Zionism's
founding fathers and its subsequent leaders, so the cooperation of those two ideological
movements was not really so totally surprising.
However, uncomfortable truths do remain uncomfortable. Mortimer had spent nineteen years at
the Times , the last dozen of them as the foreign specialist and leader-writer on
Middle Eastern affairs. But the year after he wrote that article including those controversial
quotations, his
career at that newspaper ended , leading to an unusual gap in his employment history, and
that development may or may not be purely coincidental.
Also quite ironic was the role of Adolf Eichmann, whose name today probably ranks as one of
the most famous half-dozen Nazis in history, due to his postwar 1960 kidnapping by Israeli
agents, followed by his public show-trial and execution as a war-criminal. As it happens,
Eichmann had been a central Nazi figure in the Zionist alliance, even studying Hebrew and
apparently becoming something of a philo-Semite during the years of his close collaboration
with top Zionist leaders.
Brenner is a captive of his ideology and his beliefs, accepting without question the
historical narrative with which he was raised. He seems to find nothing so strange about
Eichmann being a philo-Semitic partner of the Jewish Zionists during the late 1930s and then
suddenly being transformed into a mass-murderer of the European Jews in the early 1940s,
willingly committing the monstrous crimes for which the Israelis later justly put him to
death.
This is certainly possible, but I really wonder. A more cynical observer might find it a
very odd coincidence that the first prominent Nazi the Israelis made such an effort to track
down and kill had been their closest former political ally and collaborator. After Germany's
defeat, Eichmann had fled to Argentina and lived there quietly for a number of years until his
name resurfaced in a celebrated mid-1950s controversy surrounding one of his leading Zionist
partners, then living in Israel as a respected government official, who was denounced as a Nazi
collaborator, eventually ruled innocent after a celebrated trial, but later assassinated by
former members of Shamir's faction.
Following that controversy in Israel, Eichmann supposedly gave a long personal interview to
a Dutch Nazi journalist, and although it wasn't published at the time, perhaps word of its
existence may have gotten into circulation. The new state of Israel was just a few years old at
that time, and very politically and economically fragile, desperately dependent upon the
goodwill and support of America and Jewish donors worldwide. Their remarkable former Nazi
alliance was a deeply-suppressed secret, whose public release might have had absolutely
disastrous consequences.
According to the version of the interview later published as a two-part story in Life
Magazine , Eichmann's statements seemingly did not touch on the deadly topic of the 1930s
Nazi-Zionist partnership. But surely Israeli leaders must have been terrified that they might
not be so lucky the next time, so we may speculate that Eichmann's elimination suddenly became
a top national priority, and he was tracked down and captured in 1960. Presumably, harsh means
were employed to persuade him not to reveal any of these dangerous pre-war secrets at his
Jerusalem trial, and one might wonder if the reason he was famously kept in an enclosed glass
booth was to ensure that the sound could quickly be cut off if he started to stray from the
agreed upon script. All of this analysis is totally speculative, but Eichmann's role as a
central figure in the 1930s Nazi-Zionist partnership is undeniable historical fact.
Just as we might imagine, America's overwhelmingly pro-Israel publishing industry was hardly
eager to serve as a public conduit for Brenner's shocking revelations of a close Nazi-Zionist
economic partnership, and he mentions that his book agent uniformly received rejections from
each firm he approached, based on a wide variety of different excuses. However, he finally
managed to locate an extremely obscure publisher in Britain willing to take on the project, and
his book was released in 1983, initially receiving no reviews other than a couple of harsh and
perfunctory denunciations, though Soviet Izvestia took some interest in his findings
until they discovered that he was a hated Trotskyite.
His big break came when Shamir suddenly became Israel's Prime Minister, and he brought his
evidence of former Nazi ties to the English-language Palestinian press, which put it into
general circulation. Various British Marxists, including the notorious "Red Ken" Livingstone of
London, organized a speaking tour for him, and when a group of right-wing Zionist militants
attacked one of the events and inflicted injuries, the story of the brawl caught the attention
of the mainstream newspapers. Soon afterward the discussion of Brenner's astonishing
discoveries appeared in the Times of London and entered the international media.
Presumably, the New York Times article that had originally caught my eye ran sometime
during this period.
Public relations professionals are quite skilled at minimizing the impact of damaging
revelations, and pro-Israel organizations have no shortage of such individuals. Just before the
1983 release of his remarkable book, Brenner suddenly discovered that a young pro-Zionist
author named Edwin Black was furiously working on a similar project, apparently backed by
sufficient financial resources that he was employing an army of fifty researchers to allow him
to complete his project in record time.
Since the entire embarrassing subject of a Nazi-Zionist partnership had been kept away from
the public eye for almost five decades, this timing surely seems more than merely coincidental.
Presumably word of Brenner's numerous unsuccessful efforts at securing a mainstream publisher
during 1982 had gotten around, as had as his eventual success in locating a tiny one in
Britain. Having failed to prevent publication of such explosive material, pro-Israel groups
quietly decided that their next best option was trying to seize control of the topic
themselves, allowing disclosure of those parts of the story that could not be concealed but
excluding items of greatest danger, while portraying the sordid history in the best possible
light.
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Black's book, The Transfer Agreement , may have arrived a year later than Brenner's
but was clearly backed by vastly greater publicity and resources. It was released by Macmillan,
a leading publisher, ran nearly twice the length of Brenner's short book, and carried powerful
endorsements by leading figures from the firmament of Jewish activism, including the Simon
Weisenthal Center, the Israel Holocaust Memorial, and the American Jewish Archives. As a
consequence, it received long if not necessarily favorable reviews in influential publications
such as The New Republic and Commentary .
In all fairness, I should mention that in the Foreword to his book, Black claims that his
research efforts had been totally discouraged by nearly everyone he approached, and as a
consequence, he had been working on the project with solitary intensity for many years. This
implies the near-simultaneous release of the two books was purely due to chance. But such a
picture is hardly consistent with his glowing testimonials from so many prominent Jewish
leaders, and personally I find Brenner's claim that Black was assisted by fifty researchers far
more convincing.
Since both Black and Brenner were describing the same basic reality and relying upon many of
the same documents, in most respects the stories they tell are generally similar. But Black
carefully excludes any mention of offers of Zionist military cooperation with the Nazis, let
alone the repeated attempts by Shamir's Zionist faction to officially join the Axis Powers
after the war had broken out, as well as numerous other details of a particularly embarrassing
nature.
Assuming Black's book was published for the reasons I suggested, I think that the strategy
of the pro-Israel groups largely succeeded, with his version of the history seeming to have
quickly supplanted Brenner's except perhaps in strongly leftist or anti-Zionist circles.
Googling each combination of the title and author, Black's book gets eight times as many hits,
and his Amazon sales ranks and numbers of reviews are also larger by roughly that same factor.
Most notably, neither the Wikipedia articles on "The Transfer Agreement" and
"The
Ha'avara Agreement" contain any mention of Brenner's research whatsoever, even
though his book was published earlier, was far broader, and only he provided the underlying
documentary evidence. As a personal example of the current situation, I was quite unaware of
the entire Ha'avara history until just a few years ago when I encountered some website
comments mentioning Black's book, leading me to purchase and read it. But even then, Brenner's
far more wide-ranging and explosive volume remained totally unknown to me until very
recently.
Once World War II began, this Nazi-Zionist partnership quickly lapsed for obvious reasons.
Germany was now at war with the British Empire, and financial transfers to British-run
Palestine were no longer possible. Furthermore, the Arab Palestinians had grown quite hostile
to the Jewish immigrants whom they rightfully feared might eventually displace them, and once
the Germans were forced to choose between maintaining their relationship with a relatively
small Zionist movement or winning the political sympathy of a vast sea of Middle Eastern Arabs
and Muslims, their decision was a natural one. The Zionists faced a similar choice, and
especially once wartime propaganda began so heavily blackening the German and Italian
governments, their long previous partnership was not something they wanted widely known.
However, at exactly this same moment a somewhat different and equally long-forgotten
connection between Jews and Nazi Germany suddenly moved to the fore.
Like most people everywhere, the average German, whether Jewish or Gentile, was probably not
all that political, and although Zionism had for years been accorded a privileged place in
German society, it is not entirely clear how many ordinary German Jews paid much attention to
it. The tens of thousands who emigrated to Palestine during that period were probably motivated
as much by economic pressures as by ideological commitment. But wartime changed matters in
other ways.
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This was even more true for the German government. The outbreak of a world war against a
powerful coalition of the British and French empires, later augmented by both Soviet Russia and
the United States, imposed the sorts of enormous pressures that could often overcome
ideological scruples. A few years ago, I discovered a fascinating 2002 book by Bryan Mark Rigg,
Hitler's Jewish Soldiers , a scholarly treatment of exactly what the title implies.
The quality of this controversial historical analysis is indicated by the glowing jacket-blurbs
from numerous academic experts and an extremely favorable treatment by an eminent scholar in
The American Historical Review .
Obviously, Nazi ideology was overwhelmingly centered upon race and considered racial purity
a crucial factor in national cohesion. Individuals possessing substantial non-German ancestry
were regarded with considerable suspicion, and this concern was greatly amplified if that
admixture was Jewish. But in a military struggle against an opposing coalition possessing many
times Germany's population and industrial resources, such ideological factors might be overcome
by practical considerations, and Rigg persuasively argues that some 150,000 half-Jews or
quarter-Jews served in the armed forces of the Third Reich, a percentage probably not much
different than their share of the general military-age population.
Germany's long-integrated and assimilated Jewish population had always been
disproportionately urban, affluent, and well-educated. As a consequence it is not entirely
surprising that a large proportion of these part-Jewish soldiers who served Hitler were
actually combat officers rather than merely rank-and-file conscripts, and they included at
least 15 half-Jewish generals and admirals, and another dozen quarter-Jews holding those same
high ranks. The most notable example was Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Hermann Goering's powerful
second-in-command, who played such an important operational role in creating the Luftwaffe.
Milch certainly had a Jewish father, and according to some much less substantiated claims,
perhaps even a Jewish mother as well, while his sister was married to an SS general.
Admittedly, the racially-elite SS itself generally had far stricter ancestry standards, with
even a trace of non-Aryan parentage normally seen as disqualifying an individual from
membership. But even here, the situation was sometimes complicated, since there were widespread
rumors that Reinhard Heydrich, the second-ranking figure in that very powerful organization,
actually had considerable Jewish ancestry. Rigg investigates that claim without coming to any
clear conclusions, though he does seem to think that the circumstantial evidence involved may
have been used by other high-ranking Nazi figures as a point of leverage or blackmail against
Heydrich, who stood as one of the most important figures in the Third Reich.
As a further irony, most of these individuals traced their Jewish ancestry through their
father rather than their mother, so although they were not Jewish according to rabbinical law,
their family names often reflected their partly Semitic origins, though in many cases Nazi
authorities attempted to studiously overlook this glaringly obvious situation. As an extreme
example noted by an academic reviewer of the book, a half-Jew bearing the distinctly non-Aryan
name of Werner Goldberg actually had his photograph prominently featured in a 1939 Nazi
propaganda newspaper, with the caption describing him as the "The Ideal German Soldier."
The author conducted more than 400 personal interviews of the surviving part-Jews and their
relatives, and these painted a very mixed picture of the difficulties they had encountered
under the Nazi regime, which varied enormously depending upon particular circumstances and the
personalities of those in authority over them. One important source of complaint was that
because of their status, part-Jews were often denied the military honors or promotions they had
rightfully earned. However, under especially favorable conditions, they might also be legally
reclassified as being of "German Blood," which officially eliminated any taint on their
status.
Even official policy seems to have been quite contradictory and vacillating. For example,
when the civilian humiliations sometimes inflicted upon the fully Jewish parents of serving
half-Jews were brought to Hitler's attention, he regarded that situation as intolerable,
declaring that either such parents must be fully protected against such indignities or all the
half-Jews must be discharged, and eventually in April 1940 he issued a decree requiring the
latter. However, this order was largely ignored by many commanders, or implemented through a
honor-system that almost amounted to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," so a considerable fraction of
half-Jews remained in the military if they so wished. And then in July 1941, Hitler somewhat
reversed himself, issuing a new decree that allowed "worthy" half-Jews who had been discharged
to return to the military as officers, while also announcing that after the war, all
quarter-Jews would be reclassified as fully "German Blood" Aryan citizens.
It has been said that after questions were raised about the Jewish ancestry of some of his
subordinates, Goring once angrily responded "I will decide who is a Jew!" and that attitude
seems to reasonably capture some of the complexity and subjective nature of the social
situation.
Interestingly enough, many of part-Jews interviewed by Rigg recalled that prior to Hitler's
rise to power, the intermarriage of their parents had often provoked much greater hostility
from the Jewish rather than the Gentile side of their families, suggesting that even in
heavily-assimilated Germany, the traditional Jewish tendency toward ethnic exclusivity had
still remained a powerful factor in that community.
Although the part-Jews in German military service were certainly subject to various forms of
mistreatment and discrimination, perhaps we should compare this against the analogous situation
in our own military in those same years with regard to America's Japanese or black minorities.
During that era, racial intermarriage was legally prohibited across a large portion of the US,
so the mixed-race population of those groups was either almost non-existent or very different
in origin. But when Japanese-Americans were allowed to leave their wartime concentration camps
and enlist in the military, they were entirely restricted to segregated all-Japanese units, but
with the officers generally being white. Meanwhile, blacks were almost entirely barred from
combat service, though they sometimes served in strictly-segregated support roles. The notion
that an American with any appreciable trace of African, Japanese, or for that matter Chinese
ancestry might serve as a general or even an officer in the U.S. military and thereby exercise
command authority over white American troops would have been almost unthinkable. The contrast
with the practice in Hitler's own military is quite different than what Americans might naively
assume.
This paradox is not nearly as surprising as one might assume. The non-economic divisions in
European societies had almost always been along lines of religion, language, and culture rather
than racial ancestry, and the social tradition of more than a millennium could not easily be
swept away by merely a half-dozen years of National Socialist ideology. During all those
earlier centuries, a sincerely-baptized Jew, whether in Germany or elsewhere, was usually
considered just as good a Christian as any other. For example, Tomas de Torquemada, the most
fearsome figure of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition, actually came from a family of Jewish
converts.
Even wider racial differences were hardly considered of crucial importance. Some of the
greatest heroes of particular national cultures, such as Russia's Alexander Pushkin and
France's Alexandre Dumas, had been individuals with significant black African ancestry, and
this was certainly not considered any sort of disqualifying characteristic.
By contrast, American society from its inception had always been sharply divided by race,
with other differences generally constituting far smaller impediments to intermarriage and
amalgamation. I've seen widespread claims that when the Third Reich devised its 1935 Nuremberg
Laws restricting marriage and other social arrangements between Aryans, non-Aryans, and
part-Aryans, its experts drew upon some of America's long legal experience in similar matters,
and this seems quite plausible. Under that new Nazi statute, pre-existing mixed-marriages
received some legal protection, but henceforth Jews and half-Jews could only marry each other,
while quarter-Jews could only marry regular Aryans. The obvious intent was to absorb that
latter group into mainstream German society, while isolating the more heavily-Jewish
population.
Ironically enough, Israel today is one of very few countries with a similar sort of strictly
racially-based criteria for citizenship status and other privileges, with
the Jewish-only immigration policy now often determined by DNA testing , and marriages
between Jews and non-Jews legally prohibited. A few years ago, the world media also carried
the
remarkable story of a Palestinian Arab sentenced to prison for rape because he had
consensual sexual relations with a Jewish woman by passing himself off as a fellow Jew.
Since Orthodox Judaism is strictly matrilineal and controls Israeli law, even Jews of other
branches can experience unexpected difficulties due to conflicts between personal ethnic
identity and official legal status. The vast majority of the wealthier and more influential
Jewish families worldwide do not follow Orthodox religious traditions, and over the
generations, they have often taken Gentile wives. However, even if the latter had converted to
Judaism, their conversions are considered invalid by the Orthodox Rabbinate, and none of their
resulting descendants are considered Jewish. So if some members of these families later develop
a deep commitment to their Jewish heritage and immigrate to Israel, they are sometimes outraged
to discover that they are officially classified as "goyim" under Orthodox law and legally
prohibited from marrying Jews. These major political controversies periodically erupt and
sometimes
reach the international medi a.
Now it seems to me that any American official who proposed racial DNA tests to decide upon
the admission or exclusion of prospective immigrants would have a very difficult time remaining
in office, with the Jewish-activists of organizations like the ADL probably leading the attack.
And the same would surely be true for any prosecutor or judge who non-whites to prison for the
crime of "passing" as whites and thereby managing to seduce women from that latter group. A
similar fate would befall advocates of such policies in Britain, France, or most other Western
nations, with the local ADL-type organization certainly playing an important role. Yet in
Israel, such existing laws merely occasion a little temporary embarrassment when they are
covered in the international media, and then invariably remain in place after the commotion has
died down and been forgotten. These sorts of issues are considered of little more importance
than were the past wartime Nazi ties of the Israeli prime minister throughout most of the
1980s.
But perhaps the solution to this puzzling difference in public reaction lies in an old joke.
A leftist wit once claimed that the reason America has never had a military coup is that it is
the only country in the world that lacks an American embassy to organize such activities. And
unlike the U.S., Britain, France, and many other predominately-white countries, Israel has no
domestic Jewish-activist organization filling the powerful role of the ADL.
Over the last few years, many outside observers have noted a seemingly very odd political
situation in Ukraine. That unfortunate country possesses powerful militant groups, whose public
symbols, stated ideology, and political ancestry all unmistakably mark them as Neo-Nazis. Yet
those
violent Neo-Nazi elements are all being bankrolled and controlled by a Jewish Oligarch who holds dual
Israeli citizenship. Furthermore, that peculiar alliance had been mid-wifed and blessed by some
of America's leading Jewish Neocon figures, such as Victoria Nuland, who have successfully used
their media influence to keep such explosive facts away from the American public.
At first glance,
a close relationship between Jewish Israelis and European Neo-Nazis seems as grotesque and
bizarre a misalliance as one could imagine, but after recently reading Brenner's fascinating
book, my perspective quickly shifted. Indeed, the main difference between then and now is that
during the 1930s, Zionist factions represented a very insignificant junior partner to a
powerful Third Reich, while these days it is the Nazis who occupy the role of eager suppliants
to the formidable power of International Zionism, which now so heavily dominates the American
political system and through it, much of the world.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston
Churchill
Notable quotes:
"... As if living out one of Aesop's Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets. ..."
"... The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction. ..."
"... However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater Good of Global Leadership. ..."
"... These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson's telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic "ever onward and upwards" drive to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned. ..."
"... Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly 40 years ago. ..."
"... Capitalism is a society where billionaire capitalists own vast companies, banks, shares, and much of the land as well. Elected governments are bent to the will of the big corporations which the capitalists own. ..."
"... America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers and billionaires of any developed capitalist country. ..."
"... Contrary to the propaganda pushed by the business press, between 67% and 72% percent of corporations had zero tax liabilities after credits and exemptions while their workers and employees paid between 25 – 30% in taxes. The rate for the minority of corporations, which paid any tax, was 14%. ..."
"... According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative esti ..."
"... Meanwhile US corporations in crisis received over $14.4 trillion dollars (Bloomberg claimed 12.8 trillion) in public bailout money, split between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, mostly from US tax payers, who are overwhelmingly workers, employees and pensioners. ..."
"... The problem is both the US and the UK have lost citizenry-control. Both countries have shadow governments and media operatives that work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall world-government objective (Neo-Marxism). ..."
"... The so-called elites behind the curtain are after total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not be a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who will negotiate with each other as to which levers to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization. ..."
The colossal project to re-colonialize the world started with United States President Ronald Reagan eagerly backed by United Kingdom
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and over the next 20 years seemed to sweep all before it.
But we can now see that the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 marked the turn
of the tide.
Since then one super-ambitious project of nation destruction and rebuilding after another generated by Washington and eagerly
embraced by its main Western European allies has collapsed spectacularly.
As if living out one of Aesop's Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives
and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets.
The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the
following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton's Third
Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction.
Nevertheless, US and Western confidence in the triumph of liberal, free trade and democratic ideals around the world has remained
almost totally impervious to the sobering lessons of recalcitrant global realities. The great reawakening of Western imperial and
capitalist resolve heralded by Reagan and championed by his loyal spear carriers, Thatcher and her successors as prime ministers
of the United Kingdom continued unabated: Until 2016.
Two epochal events happened that year :
The British people, to the astonishment most of all of their own leaders, pundits and self-selected Platonic guides and "betters'
voted for Brexit : They opted by a narrow but decisive vote of 48 percent to 52 percent to leave the 28-nation European Union.
The disruptions and chaos set in motion by that fateful outcome have still only begun to work their way through the political
and economic systems of Europe.
Second, Donald Trump, even more amazingly was elected president of the United States to the limitless fury of the American
"Deep State" which continues unabated in its relentless and frantic efforts to topple him.
However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for
American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global
imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater
Good of Global Leadership.
A decade and a half of endless, fruitless, ultra-expensive global wars entered into by the feckless and stupid George W. Bush
and continued by the complacent and superficial Barack Obama advanced this process of weariness and rejection.
Two years after the election of Trump and the British people's vote for Brexit, the great surge of the West that outlasted the
Soviet Union is clearly on the ebb : Now the United States is exhausted, the EU is falling apart and NATO is an empty shell – a paper
tiger if you will. Why is this happening and can it be reversed?
Free Trade was never the universal panacea it has been ludicrously claimed to be now for more than 240 years since Adam Smith
published his Wealth of Nations . On the contrary, the cold, remorseless facts of economic history clearly show that protective tariffs
to safeguard domestic manufactures and advantageous export-driven balance of payment surpluses are the true path to economic growth
and sustainable, lasting national power and wealth.
The idea that democracy – at least in the narrow, highly structured, manipulative and patchy form practiced in the United States
is some sort of universal guarantee for happiness, national stability and growth has also been repeatedly confounded.
Instead, the Western democratic states have fallen into exactly the same intellectual pit that trapped and eventually wrecked
the Soviet Union. They have launched a worldwide ideological crusade and poured wealth and resources into it to ignoring the well-being
and advancement of their own domestic economies and populations.
Far from bringing eternal and universal world peace – the alluring Holy Grail of every dangerous idealistic idiot since Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Immanuel Kant – these policies only brought failure, frustration and rising military death lists for the countries that
pursued them instead.
This year, new hammer blows are following on the Reagan-Thatcher-spawned era of revived Anglo-American global leadership and domination.
The British themselves have palpably failed to cave out any secure or even plausible economic prospects for themselves in the
world once they leave the EU. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya all remain wrecked societies shattered by the repeated air strikes
that Western compassion and reverence for human rights and democracy have visited upon them.
Now India and Pakistan – two English-speaking democracies and members of the once British-led Commonwealth of Nations, still so
dear to Queen Elizabeth II's aging heart – have opted to bury their existential rivalry and jointly join the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization – confirming it as the premier and by far the most powerful security alliance on the planet.
These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson's telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They
are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic "ever onward and upwards" drive
to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned.
Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to
resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly
40 years ago.
And they had better move fast. Jefferson's firebell is tolling and the sands of time are running out.
Capitalism is a society where billionaire capitalists own vast companies, banks, shares, and much of the land as well. Elected
governments are bent to the will of the big corporations which the capitalists own. To achieve genuine socialism, this ownership
of the world's wealth by the 1% must be ended. Capitalism means that a great deal of our society's resources, needed to produce
the things we need, are privately owned.
Capitalism is based on the private ownership of the productive forces (factories, offices, science and technique)
The bosses of the big corporate enterprises always threaten that if wages and conditions are not worsened, they will take their
business to another country where wages are lower.
America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers
and billionaires of any developed capitalist country.
Contrary to the propaganda pushed by the business press, between 67% and 72% percent of corporations had zero tax liabilities
after credits and exemptions while their workers and employees paid between 25 – 30% in taxes. The rate for the minority of corporations,
which paid any tax, was 14%.
According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues
every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative estimate.
The largest US corporations sheltered over $2.5 trillion dollars in overseas tax havens where they paid no taxes or single
digit tax rates.
Meanwhile US corporations in crisis received over $14.4 trillion dollars (Bloomberg claimed 12.8 trillion) in public bailout
money, split between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, mostly from US tax payers, who are overwhelmingly workers, employees
and pensioners.
You confuse free market capitalism with corporate cronyism, then suggest socialism is the answer? Why do you think that socialism
is the default panacea? Have you considered other alternatives? What of the pitfalls of socialism?
The problem is both the US and the UK have lost citizenry-control. Both countries have shadow governments and media operatives
that work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall world-government objective (Neo-Marxism).
The so-called
elites behind the curtain are after total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not
be a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who
will negotiate with each other as to which levers to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization.
But
the tightknit Cabal has more work to do to infiltrate deeper into world governments.
The EU's Parliament is a proto-type test
to tweak how they must proceed. As the Cabal coalesces their power, more draconian rulership will become apparent. The noose will
tighten slowly so as to be un-noticeable. Certain events are planned that will cause citizenry to demand totalitarianism (for
safety reasons). For the Cabal, it'll be like taking candy from a baby.
This, in a nutshell, is the outline of how the West loses
its democracy.
The Ministry of Plenty ( Newspeak : Miniplenty ) is in control of
Oceania's planned
economy .
It oversees rationing of food , supplies , and goods . As told in Goldstein's book, the
economy of Oceania is very important, and it's necessary to have the public continually create
useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the
means of
production .
This is the central theme of Oceania's idea that a poor, ignorant populace is
easier to rule over than a wealthy, well-informed one. Telescreens often make reports on how Big Brother has been able
to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down (see §
Ministry of Truth ).
The Ministry hands out statistics which are "nonsense". When Winston is adjusting some
Ministry of Plenty's figures, he explains this:
But actually, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not
even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of
the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world,
not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as
much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of time
you were expected to make them up out of your head.
Like the other ministries, the Ministry of Plenty seems to be entirely misnamed, since it
is, in fact, responsible for maintaining a state of perpetual poverty , scarcity and financial shortages.
However, the name is also apt, because, along with the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of
Plenty's other purpose is to convince the populace that they are living in a state of perpetual
prosperity. Orwell made a similar reference to the Ministry of Plenty in his allegorical work
Animal Farm
when, in the midst of a blight upon the farm, Napoleon the pig orders the silo to
be filled with sand, then to place a thin sprinkling of grain on top, which fools human
visitors into being dazzled about Napoleon's boasting of the farm's superior economy.
A department of the Ministry of Plenty is charged with organizing state lotteries . These are very popular among the
proles, who buy tickets and hope to win the big prizes – a completely vain hope as the
big prizes are in fact not awarded at all, the Ministry of Truth participating in the scam and
publishing every week the names of non-existent big winners.
"... There are too many lucrative salaries on the line that depend on that trillion dollars a year military budget to allow Russia to end up being bogeyman number one. ..."
"... They are fighting for their own lifestyles. And I think that speaks to a broader point that the Russiagate narrative is one that sustains privilege because, really, who does it threaten? ..."
"... And of course, Russia has no huge, powerful lobby in Washington. Russia has no major economic power in the U.S. So attacking Russia really hurts nobody domestically in a position of privilege and influence. And meanwhile, attacking Russia serves a double benefit of allowing people to deflect from other interests much more powerful than Russia that are doing real damage here at home, as Paul has been talking about. ..."
"... While the importance of the existential threat of Russia, the importance of that narrative to the military-industrial complex, is I think that's only one piece of why the American state and large sections of the American oligarchy see Russia so much as a threat. They keep using the word 'adversary.' ..."
"... The United States wants what they call in some of their documents Full Spectrum Dominance. They want global hegemony. Global hegemony means hegemony in every region of the world. They do not like it when any power emerges. The challenges for regional hegemonic because that's obviously part of global hegemony. So they don't like the fact that Russia has a major economy; and not one of the biggest economies, by any means, but a major economy. A big army. Of course, nuclear weapons. So they don't like that it has, kind of, independent will in this region. It's not a global competitor. ..."
"... In the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a free-for-all plundering of all the natural resources and state resources, privatization mania. And the U.S., the Americans thought they'd get a much bigger piece of this. I don't think they thought, after all these years of trying, they thought, bringing down the Soviet Union, in truth the Soviet Union fell mostly for internal reasons. And bureaucrats within the party and the state became the oligarchs, became the billionaires. They seized a lot of these assets, not the West and the Americans. ..."
"... And the out of the chaos emerges a Russian state, led by Putin, to create some sense of normalcy, turn it into a kind of a normal capitalist country, with laws, to some extent, so you can do business and commerce. And one of the things that state did is it didn't allow the West to just hocus pocus, I forget the term, they didn't just allow the West to come in and pick up all these resources and privatization directly themselves. ..."
"... So different parts of the U.S. state have different agendas connected to different sections of capital that have their other agendas, but none of this justifies this McCarthyite level of Cold War rhetoric. ..."
"... And Kissinger observed to Nixon, he says: In 20 years your successor, if he's as wise as you, will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese. And then he went on to say: Right now we need the Chinese to correct the Russians, and to discipline the Russians. ..."
"... The, the metaphysical vision of the world- and don't forget, Hitler had quite a metaphysical vision of the world. The, the role of, the mission of the aryan nation to take over the world and march into a new era of civilization and all this was all intertwined with, with a metaphysical, quasi-fanatical religious view of the world. ..."
"... Putin is very close to the Russian Orthodox Church. He's been promoting this kind of nationalism intertwined with religious messaging through the church. He promotes this kind of stuff in Western Europe. Putin has been nurturing the far right in Western Europe. So this jives, the agenda of the people around Trump and Putin have similar views of the world. ..."
"... So yeah, the idea of some kind of accommodation with Russia because of the coming trade war, and who knows what kind of war, with China, yeah, this is definitely, I think, part of the equation. The shorter-term play is Iran. They are, this group, this cabal in Washington, is fixated on regime change in Iran. I actually am not sure how they, why they see that fits the China strategy, but I don't know that it matters, because that's their play. And they've been talking about it for years, since the late night 1990s. And this document, Project for a New American Century. Undoing the Iranian revolution has been absolutely at the core of these people's foreign policy. ..."
Watch Part 2 of Paul Jay and Aaron Mate's interactive discussion with viewers about the
controversy over Trump's visit to Helsinki – From a live recording on July 18th, 2018
AARON MATE: I want to read a comment from a viewer, Kristen Lee, who writes: There
are too many lucrative salaries on the line that depend on that trillion dollars a year
military budget to allow Russia to end up being bogeyman number one. To not end up-. To have
Russia not end up being boogeymen number one, I believe. They are fighting for their own
lifestyles. And I think that speaks to a broader point that the Russiagate narrative is one
that sustains privilege because, really, who does it threaten? I mean, yes, it threatens Trump.
But we already know that there's a huge cross-section of the elite that despises Trump,
including many Republicans who campaigned against him during the campaign.
And of course, Russia has no huge, powerful lobby in Washington. Russia has no major
economic power in the U.S. So attacking Russia really hurts nobody domestically in a position
of privilege and influence. And meanwhile, attacking Russia serves a double benefit of allowing
people to deflect from other interests much more powerful than Russia that are doing real
damage here at home, as Paul has been talking about.
PAUL JAY: Could I just, could I just then-.
AARON MATE: Let me ask you about China, first. Because we're-.
PAUL JAY: Before we do China, before we do China, let me just add one thing to this,
which I think-. While the importance of the existential threat of Russia, the importance of
that narrative to the military-industrial complex, is I think that's only one piece of why the
American state and large sections of the American oligarchy see Russia so much as a threat.
They keep using the word 'adversary.' .
And the reason why I think there's a several pieces to it, and I said this in the interview
the other day, one, the United States does not like regional powers that are not under the
American thumb. They don't want anyone, they-. The United States wants what they call in
some of their documents Full Spectrum Dominance. They want global hegemony. Global hegemony
means hegemony in every region of the world. They do not like it when any power emerges. The
challenges for regional hegemonic because that's obviously part of global hegemony. So they
don't like the fact that Russia has a major economy; and not one of the biggest economies, by
any means, but a major economy. A big army. Of course, nuclear weapons. So they don't like that
it has, kind of, independent will in this region. It's not a global competitor.
But there's another piece to this. Russia has oil. They don't like an oil state, a country
that has such massive oil supply, not being under the U.S. umbrella, U.S. hegemony. That's,
that's number two. Number three, they don't like the way Putin and that state emerged. You
know, if people are watching the series that I'm doing of interviews with Alexander Buzgalin,
we're telling the whole story of the emergence of Putin out of the collapsed Soviet state,
Soviet system. In the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a
free-for-all plundering of all the natural resources and state resources, privatization mania.
And the U.S., the Americans thought they'd get a much bigger piece of this. I don't think they
thought, after all these years of trying, they thought, bringing down the Soviet Union, in
truth the Soviet Union fell mostly for internal reasons. And bureaucrats within the party and
the state became the oligarchs, became the billionaires. They seized a lot of these assets, not
the West and the Americans.
And the out of the chaos emerges a Russian state, led by Putin, to create some sense of
normalcy, turn it into a kind of a normal capitalist country, with laws, to some extent, so you
can do business and commerce. And one of the things that state did is it didn't allow the West
to just hocus pocus, I forget the term, they didn't just allow the West to come in and pick up
all these resources and privatization directly themselves.
So this Putin's state's been to some extent blocking the U.S. from turning this Russia, as
they have with most most other areas of the world- of course the other big exception is China
and Iran- under, into the American global capitalist system, where the Americans are the
dominant power. And they even had ways to do that. But these things jive, don't always jive, I
should say, which is the economic incorporation of Russia into, into global capitalism, into,
even into the EU, for example, or something, some structure like that, does not jive with the
narrative of an existential threat that serves this massive military expenditure.
So different parts of the U.S. state have different agendas connected to different
sections of capital that have their other agendas, but none of this justifies this McCarthyite
level of Cold War rhetoric.
AARON MATE: Right. So in terms of China, as we're talking about other possible
explanation for Trump's desire to work with Russia that go beyond him being a potential
intelligence asset, or that Putin has kompromat on Trump, which really is right now the
dominant corporate media narrative and question. You've been laying out some- I want to focus
on China for a second, and actually read to you, Paul, a quote. This is John Pomfret. He's a
historian. And he writes about Kissinger talking to Nixon after Kissinger returned from China
as part of the Nixon administration's overture to China in the early '70s. And Kissinger
observed to Nixon, he says: In 20 years your successor, if he's as wise as you, will wind up
leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese. And then he went on to say: Right now we need
the Chinese to correct the Russians, and to discipline the Russians.
So I find that interesting, because it's a way to help understand what might have motivated
Nixon's overtures to China back then. But also I think that might help us understand what might
motivate Trump's overtures to Russia. Now, obviously China has been a huge obsession of Trump.
He talks about it constantly. He's launching a trade war right now. And it's quite likely, I
think, he recognizes that if he really wants to confront China, a far bigger world power than
Russia is, especially, obviously, economically, that he might need to enlist Russia for that
task.
PAUL JAY: I certainly think there's part of it. How conscious Trump himself is of
these kind of geostrategic assessments and plans, I don't know. Trump's a very smart con man. I
don't know that he has a big geopolitical brain. But that being said, he's got people around
him, including John Bolton, who are actually quite smart and have real geopolitical brains, and
are fanatics.
The, my guess is the short-term play, and I don't see this- I think it's ridiculous that
Trump is Putin's stooge, and all of this. The agenda of this group that's in power and that
Trump represents the interests of, this isn't just a one man band, even if he flies off the
handle in a one-man way. But this agenda of Iran and China, this was very well articulated by
Steve Bannon before and after the victory of Trump in the election. This has economic interests
which they, of course, China is the real economic competitor in the world that's a threat to
American dominance. But it also has an ideological framing for it. And that's the defense of
Western Christian civilization. And I think they believe in this stuff. Bannon himself is
connected to Opus Dei in the Catholic Church. He's connected to Cardinal Burke. They're waging
a war against Pope Francis. They want to overthrow the Pope. And it's really as open as that.
They don't like, they're shocked that they've got a pope that's a social democrat. The, the
metaphysical vision of the world- and don't forget, Hitler had quite a metaphysical vision of
the world. The, the role of, the mission of the aryan nation to take over the world and march
into a new era of civilization and all this was all intertwined with, with a metaphysical,
quasi-fanatical religious view of the world.
Well I think they have this. So China does not fit the plan of saving Western civilization.
But Russia does. And Putin is very close to the Russian Orthodox Church. He's been
promoting this kind of nationalism intertwined with religious messaging through the church. He
promotes this kind of stuff in Western Europe. Putin has been nurturing the far right in
Western Europe. So this jives, the agenda of the people around Trump and Putin have similar
views of the world. And it is a far right, far right view of the world.
So yeah, the idea of some kind of accommodation with Russia because of the coming trade
war, and who knows what kind of war, with China, yeah, this is definitely, I think, part of the
equation. The shorter-term play is Iran. They are, this group, this cabal in Washington, is
fixated on regime change in Iran. I actually am not sure how they, why they see that fits the
China strategy, but I don't know that it matters, because that's their play. And they've been
talking about it for years, since the late night 1990s. And this document, Project for a New
American Century. Undoing the Iranian revolution has been absolutely at the core of these
people's foreign policy.
So there are, all these things are interconnected. And you know, dividing Russia from China,
and having clearly some kind of alliance there, it's also in the interests of Putin, and it's
very much in the interest of this, of this cabal. I think we should even stop talking and being
so focused on Trump. Because if they bring down Trump the individual, they'll find some other,
some other individual to come play a similar role. And he won't, this, whoever he or she is
won't be such a clown.
"... The peculiar dialectic between power and powerlessness is shadowed by a necessary third component, the perfect target. These are the people who are identified as the threat that the powerful and the powerless must come together to defeat. ..."
"... The U.S. is not in a pre-fascist period. Globalization is forcing fundamental structural changes on American society, affecting the economy as well as personal life. One key question involves a president's vision and the practices of his administration. Do fundamental social changes foster greater efforts to protect (and increase) the wealth and social power of the privileged or does it signal a sea change -- like the post-WW-II consumer revolution -- that enhances the quality and longevity of the lives of the many? ..."
"... With hollow bravado, one with apparently little thought about consequences, Trump Tweets new federal policies, offers false apologies and ceaselessly attacks on the media. For Trump and his administration, all information questioning a Trump Team statement suggests possible treason. ..."
"... For two-plus centuries, the U.S. has been a battleground between power and powerlessness. Through each era of contestation, a perfect target has been identified and exploited to help assure the position of those contesting for power. Four of the most revealing "perfect targets" are the Native People, African-American slaves and free people, Catholics and Communists. Each illuminates the social struggle between the powerful and powerless, thus providing a valuable snapshot into America's evolving culture. ..."
"... The Know Nothing movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became the American Party that flourished during the late-40s and early-50s. It got its name when members where asked the party's positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. Catholics became the perfect target. ..."
"... The post-WW-II period was the age of Sen. Joe McCarthy, of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and New York's Archbishop Francis Spellman -- and Roy Cohn, Trump's consigliere ..."
"... The dance of power/powerlessness shadowed by the perfect target is being exploited by Trump and his followers. Trump knows how to play this dialect given his narcissistic personality and likely compensation for learning disabilities. ..."
"... David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] ; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com . ..."
Now a year-and-a-half into the Trump presidency, it's become a truism that the president's
support is anchored in a deep sense of social and political powerlessness felt by many
Americans, especially older, white men. An early 2016
Rand poll comparing Donald Trump and Ted Cruz supporters found that those who agreed with
the statement "people like me don't have any say about what the government does" preferred
Trump -- and by a whopping 86.5 percent majority.
This sense of powerlessness turned out to be a more reliable predictor of Trump support than
all the other issues that dogged the 2016 campaign, including immigration, income, education,
the economy and his abusive sexual exploits. And it still does.
In 1941, the then-radical psycho-theorist, Erich Fromm, published Escape from
Freedom . In it, he warned:
The annihilation of the individual self and the attempt to overcome thereby the unbearable
feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other side is
the attempt to become part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to
submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation,
conscience, or a psychic compulsion.
Like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, Fromm was then worried about the growing threat of
totalitarianism. In particular, these thinkers, among others, were concerned about how the
deepening sense of powerlessness among what was then referred to as "the masses" had
contributed to the enormous increase in the power of the leader, whether Hitler, Mussolini,
Franco or Stalin.
The peculiar dialectic between power and powerlessness is shadowed by a necessary third
component, the perfect target. These are the people who are identified as the threat that the
powerful and the powerless must come together to defeat. In pre-WW-II Germany, the perfect
target were the Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies, people that Nazi's claimed were
different, thus threatening the purity of ordinary Germans' "Saxon heritage." The threat can
come in any form, be it class, race, nationality, religion or political ideology -- or whatever
is a distinguishing characteristic of those targeted.
Pres. Trump has up to now played the perfect-target dance with great success. As a candidate
and now in the Oval Office, he's ranted successfully against "illegal" immigrants, whether
long-time residents, married to a citizen and with American children, have a criminal record,
served in the military or recent arrivals. In one Tweet, he opined: "They [Democrats] don't
care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and
infest our Country, like MS-13. They can't win on their terrible policies, so they view them as
potential voters!"
Democrats are the problem. They don't care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no
matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can't win
on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!
The Trump administration may have recently overplayed its perfect-target hand with the
forceful separation of seized immigrant parents from their children, no matter at what age.
From purely bureaucratic and media-relations perspectives, it's been a mess. No matter whether
the immigrants might be "illegal," they are still people, parent and child, and -- in Christian
America -- family still matters. Equally revealing, the Congress has yet to underwrite building
a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico.
The U.S. is not in a pre-fascist period. Globalization is forcing fundamental structural
changes on American society, affecting the economy as well as personal life. One key question
involves a president's vision and the practices of his administration. Do fundamental social
changes foster greater efforts to protect (and increase) the wealth and social power of the
privileged or does it signal a sea change -- like the post-WW-II consumer revolution -- that
enhances the quality and longevity of the lives of the many?
Trump is effectively exploiting the power/powerless minuet to maximize his own wealth and
that among others of the 1 percent. His -- and his administration's -- efforts are designed to
(moderately) upset the post-WW-II alliance between the federal government and private corporate
interests. The alliance has long been a revolving door for both Democrats and Republicans --
and the Trump Team is spinning the door.
The Trump apparatus is pushing the revolving door further to the right. Every federal
department and agency, including the Supreme Court, appears to include, if not run by, someone
drawn from the military, a corporation or bank, an industry association, a lobbying firm, a
religious group or a conservative thinktank.
Trump and his administration, ably assisted by a get-what-you-can Republican-controlled
Congress and Senate, seem more like that of Herbert Hoover and the great denial of what
everyone knew was coming rather than that of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the making of a modern
super-state. With hollow bravado, one with apparently little thought about consequences,
Trump Tweets new federal policies, offers false apologies and ceaselessly attacks on the media.
For Trump and his administration, all information questioning a Trump Team statement suggests
possible treason.
***
For two-plus centuries, the U.S. has been a battleground between power and
powerlessness. Through each era of contestation, a perfect target has been identified and
exploited to help assure the position of those contesting for power. Four of the most revealing
"perfect targets" are the Native People, African-American slaves and free people, Catholics and
Communists. Each illuminates the social struggle between the powerful and powerless, thus
providing a valuable snapshot into America's evolving culture.
No clearer or more honest statement as to the social role of the perfect target was made by
Pres. Andrew Jackson on December 6, 1830, in his Message to Congress, "On Indian Removal." It
was issued seven months after he signed the removal law that authorized to grant unsettled
lands west of the Mississippi to Anglos or white people in exchange for Indian lands within
existing state borders. He stated, in part
:
It [the act] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites;
free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and
under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening
their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and
through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an
interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
Four European states -- Netherlands, Great Britain and France as well Spain -- invaded and
conquered parts of what was once the vast North America territory and was then home to
innumerable tribes of Native Peoples.
The first African slaves arrived in North America in 1619 in Jamestown. Over the following
four centuries many Americans believed that Africans -- and their descendants,
African-Americans -- were not fully human, but rather subhuman. It was long an essential belief
among colonial revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson as well as Confederate secessionists and
those of the today's alt-right. As Jefferson wrote
:
I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct
race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the
endowments both of body and mind. This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of
faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.
The U.S. Constitution embodied this racism in granting African and African-American males
3/5 th voting rights compared to white citizens.
The Know Nothing
movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became
the American Party that flourished during the late-40s and early-50s. It got its name when
members where asked the party's positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together
Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most
especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. Catholics became the perfect target.
Know-Nothing adherents felt that Catholics, as followers of the Pope, were not loyal
Americans and were going to take over the country. It had strong support in the North that
witnessed large-scale Irish immigration after 1848. The American Party captured the
Massachusetts legislature in 1854 and, in 1856, backed Millard Fillmore for president, who
secured nearly 1 million votes, a quarter of all votes cast.
And then there were
communists . It's nearly impossible to image just how awful it was for those who challenged
the nation's official belief system during the post-WW-II era of 1945 to 1960. Alleged
"communists" included Soviet Union agents, non-party trade unionists as well as professors,
teachers, publishers and nonviolent civil-rights activists. And then there were the
pornographers, homosexual and other alleged deviants who challenged the status quo.
The post-WW-II period was the age of Sen. Joe McCarthy, of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
and New York's Archbishop Francis Spellman -- and Roy Cohn, Trump's consigliere . It
saw hundreds lose their jobs, dozens arrested and jailed. And the powerful found their perfect
target in two innocent New Yorkers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who they arrested, convicted
and executed -- they were prosecuted by Cohn.
***
The dance of power/powerlessness shadowed by the perfect target is being exploited by
Trump and his followers. Trump knows how to play this dialect given his narcissistic
personality and likely compensation for learning disabilities. Since the campaign, his
perfect perfect target has been non-documented immigrants. He's also targeted
Democrats, the news media and NATO.
Trump needs a perfect enemy. In this way he is very much like other authoritarian leaders,
whether all-powerful rulers like Hitler, Stalin or Mao or merely a failed petty tyrant like
Nixon or -- pick your favorite Latin American, African or Asian dictator.
So, keep your eyes on Trump's ever-changing perfect target for it signals where the pin-ball
bouncing around in his brain lands. And where it lands sets national policy by targeting those
he thinks can distract Americans from understanding his profound failings. Who's next?
Join
the debate on Facebook More articles by: David Rosen
David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New
York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected]
; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com .
On your last paragraph, I've been nursing that hope as far as the ME goes for a while as well. Ever since the Jerusalem decision.
As for European NATO, isn't that already shot? Turkey unreliable at one end. The UK at odds with the mainland at the other,
if all the disaster talk isn't just theatre and maybe if it is. European NATO no longer looks like a credible alliance. Not an
alliance at all should Trump remove or cause to be removed the American glue holding it all together.
But the Colonel's item 8 is going to weigh on the conscience of the West for a long time.
On #8: I would bet that not 1 in 100 Americans know anything about the place at all, never mind the current slaughter. There will
be nothing for them to forget. I'm not trying to be flippant either. Unfortunately, most of my countrymen are simply fat, dumb,
and happy; and content to stay that way.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston
Churchill
Notable quotes:
"... As if living out one of Aesop's Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets. ..."
"... The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction. ..."
"... However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater Good of Global Leadership. ..."
"... These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson's telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic "ever onward and upwards" drive to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned. ..."
"... Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly 40 years ago. ..."
"... Capitalism is a society where billionaire capitalists own vast companies, banks, shares, and much of the land as well. Elected governments are bent to the will of the big corporations which the capitalists own. ..."
"... America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers and billionaires of any developed capitalist country. ..."
"... Contrary to the propaganda pushed by the business press, between 67% and 72% percent of corporations had zero tax liabilities after credits and exemptions while their workers and employees paid between 25 – 30% in taxes. The rate for the minority of corporations, which paid any tax, was 14%. ..."
"... According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative esti ..."
"... Meanwhile US corporations in crisis received over $14.4 trillion dollars (Bloomberg claimed 12.8 trillion) in public bailout money, split between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, mostly from US tax payers, who are overwhelmingly workers, employees and pensioners. ..."
"... The problem is both the US and the UK have lost citizenry-control. Both countries have shadow governments and media operatives that work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall world-government objective (Neo-Marxism). ..."
"... The so-called elites behind the curtain are after total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not be a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who will negotiate with each other as to which levers to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization. ..."
The colossal project to re-colonialize the world started with United States President Ronald Reagan eagerly backed by United Kingdom
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and over the next 20 years seemed to sweep all before it.
But we can now see that the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 marked the turn
of the tide.
Since then one super-ambitious project of nation destruction and rebuilding after another generated by Washington and eagerly
embraced by its main Western European allies has collapsed spectacularly.
As if living out one of Aesop's Fables, the hammer of US kinetic power so eagerly embraced at the urging of neo-conservatives
and neoliberals alike following the collapse of communism exhausted the Western welders of the weapon instead of their targets.
The reckless resort to indiscriminate military power in the US-dominated invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the
following campaigns to topple the governments of Syria and Libya created unexpected consequences comparable to Isaac Newton's Third
Law of Motion – Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction.
Nevertheless, US and Western confidence in the triumph of liberal, free trade and democratic ideals around the world has remained
almost totally impervious to the sobering lessons of recalcitrant global realities. The great reawakening of Western imperial and
capitalist resolve heralded by Reagan and championed by his loyal spear carriers, Thatcher and her successors as prime ministers
of the United Kingdom continued unabated: Until 2016.
Two epochal events happened that year :
The British people, to the astonishment most of all of their own leaders, pundits and self-selected Platonic guides and "betters'
voted for Brexit : They opted by a narrow but decisive vote of 48 percent to 52 percent to leave the 28-nation European Union.
The disruptions and chaos set in motion by that fateful outcome have still only begun to work their way through the political
and economic systems of Europe.
Second, Donald Trump, even more amazingly was elected president of the United States to the limitless fury of the American
"Deep State" which continues unabated in its relentless and frantic efforts to topple him.
However, the motives of the scores of millions of Americans who voted for Trump were perfectly clear: They were opting for
American nationalism instead of American Empire. They were sickened by the clear results of 70 years of post-World War II global
imperium that had arrogantly and casually allowed US domestic industry and society to wither on the vine for the supposed Greater
Good of Global Leadership.
A decade and a half of endless, fruitless, ultra-expensive global wars entered into by the feckless and stupid George W. Bush
and continued by the complacent and superficial Barack Obama advanced this process of weariness and rejection.
Two years after the election of Trump and the British people's vote for Brexit, the great surge of the West that outlasted the
Soviet Union is clearly on the ebb : Now the United States is exhausted, the EU is falling apart and NATO is an empty shell – a paper
tiger if you will. Why is this happening and can it be reversed?
Free Trade was never the universal panacea it has been ludicrously claimed to be now for more than 240 years since Adam Smith
published his Wealth of Nations . On the contrary, the cold, remorseless facts of economic history clearly show that protective tariffs
to safeguard domestic manufactures and advantageous export-driven balance of payment surpluses are the true path to economic growth
and sustainable, lasting national power and wealth.
The idea that democracy – at least in the narrow, highly structured, manipulative and patchy form practiced in the United States
is some sort of universal guarantee for happiness, national stability and growth has also been repeatedly confounded.
Instead, the Western democratic states have fallen into exactly the same intellectual pit that trapped and eventually wrecked
the Soviet Union. They have launched a worldwide ideological crusade and poured wealth and resources into it to ignoring the well-being
and advancement of their own domestic economies and populations.
Far from bringing eternal and universal world peace – the alluring Holy Grail of every dangerous idealistic idiot since Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Immanuel Kant – these policies only brought failure, frustration and rising military death lists for the countries that
pursued them instead.
This year, new hammer blows are following on the Reagan-Thatcher-spawned era of revived Anglo-American global leadership and domination.
The British themselves have palpably failed to cave out any secure or even plausible economic prospects for themselves in the
world once they leave the EU. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya all remain wrecked societies shattered by the repeated air strikes
that Western compassion and reverence for human rights and democracy have visited upon them.
Now India and Pakistan – two English-speaking democracies and members of the once British-led Commonwealth of Nations, still so
dear to Queen Elizabeth II's aging heart – have opted to bury their existential rivalry and jointly join the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization – confirming it as the premier and by far the most powerful security alliance on the planet.
These developments, to echo US President Thomas Jefferson's telling phrase nearly 200 years ago, are grave warnings. They
are firebells in the night. They serve notice to Washington and London that their facilely optimistic "ever onward and upwards" drive
to reshape the entire human race in their own image must be abandoned.
Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom is a remotely united society any more. Both of them need to turn inward to
resolve their own problems and abandon the fantastic quest to reassert global dominance that Reagan and Thatcher launched nearly
40 years ago.
And they had better move fast. Jefferson's firebell is tolling and the sands of time are running out.
Capitalism is a society where billionaire capitalists own vast companies, banks, shares, and much of the land as well. Elected
governments are bent to the will of the big corporations which the capitalists own. To achieve genuine socialism, this ownership
of the world's wealth by the 1% must be ended. Capitalism means that a great deal of our society's resources, needed to produce
the things we need, are privately owned.
Capitalism is based on the private ownership of the productive forces (factories, offices, science and technique)
The bosses of the big corporate enterprises always threaten that if wages and conditions are not worsened, they will take their
business to another country where wages are lower.
America has the greatest inequalities, highest mortality rate, most regressive taxes, and largest public subsidies for bankers
and billionaires of any developed capitalist country.
Contrary to the propaganda pushed by the business press, between 67% and 72% percent of corporations had zero tax liabilities
after credits and exemptions while their workers and employees paid between 25 – 30% in taxes. The rate for the minority of corporations,
which paid any tax, was 14%.
According to the US Internal Revenue Service, billionaire tax evasion amounts to $458 billion dollars in lost public revenues
every year – almost a trillion dollars every two years by this conservative estimate.
The largest US corporations sheltered over $2.5 trillion dollars in overseas tax havens where they paid no taxes or single
digit tax rates.
Meanwhile US corporations in crisis received over $14.4 trillion dollars (Bloomberg claimed 12.8 trillion) in public bailout
money, split between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, mostly from US tax payers, who are overwhelmingly workers, employees
and pensioners.
You confuse free market capitalism with corporate cronyism, then suggest socialism is the answer? Why do you think that socialism
is the default panacea? Have you considered other alternatives? What of the pitfalls of socialism?
The problem is both the US and the UK have lost citizenry-control. Both countries have shadow governments and media operatives
that work unseen to manipulate sentiment and events in-line with an overall world-government objective (Neo-Marxism).
The so-called
elites behind the curtain are after total control which is why we will continue toward totalitarian dictatorship. It will not
be a one-man show nor will it be readily recognizable as such, rather there will be a Cabal of select ultra-wealthy liberals who
will negotiate with each other as to which levers to pull and valves to turn in order to "guide" culture and civilization.
But
the tightknit Cabal has more work to do to infiltrate deeper into world governments.
The EU's Parliament is a proto-type test
to tweak how they must proceed. As the Cabal coalesces their power, more draconian rulership will become apparent. The noose will
tighten slowly so as to be un-noticeable. Certain events are planned that will cause citizenry to demand totalitarianism (for
safety reasons). For the Cabal, it'll be like taking candy from a baby.
This, in a nutshell, is the outline of how the West loses
its democracy.
The Ministry of Plenty ( Newspeak : Miniplenty ) is in control of
Oceania's planned
economy .
It oversees rationing of food , supplies , and goods . As told in Goldstein's book, the
economy of Oceania is very important, and it's necessary to have the public continually create
useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the
means of
production .
This is the central theme of Oceania's idea that a poor, ignorant populace is
easier to rule over than a wealthy, well-informed one. Telescreens often make reports on how Big Brother has been able
to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down (see §
Ministry of Truth ).
The Ministry hands out statistics which are "nonsense". When Winston is adjusting some
Ministry of Plenty's figures, he explains this:
But actually, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not
even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of
the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world,
not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as
much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of time
you were expected to make them up out of your head.
Like the other ministries, the Ministry of Plenty seems to be entirely misnamed, since it
is, in fact, responsible for maintaining a state of perpetual poverty , scarcity and financial shortages.
However, the name is also apt, because, along with the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of
Plenty's other purpose is to convince the populace that they are living in a state of perpetual
prosperity. Orwell made a similar reference to the Ministry of Plenty in his allegorical work
Animal Farm
when, in the midst of a blight upon the farm, Napoleon the pig orders the silo to
be filled with sand, then to place a thin sprinkling of grain on top, which fools human
visitors into being dazzled about Napoleon's boasting of the farm's superior economy.
A department of the Ministry of Plenty is charged with organizing state lotteries . These are very popular among the
proles, who buy tickets and hope to win the big prizes – a completely vain hope as the
big prizes are in fact not awarded at all, the Ministry of Truth participating in the scam and
publishing every week the names of non-existent big winners.
"... There are too many lucrative salaries on the line that depend on that trillion dollars a year military budget to allow Russia to end up being bogeyman number one. ..."
"... They are fighting for their own lifestyles. And I think that speaks to a broader point that the Russiagate narrative is one that sustains privilege because, really, who does it threaten? ..."
"... And of course, Russia has no huge, powerful lobby in Washington. Russia has no major economic power in the U.S. So attacking Russia really hurts nobody domestically in a position of privilege and influence. And meanwhile, attacking Russia serves a double benefit of allowing people to deflect from other interests much more powerful than Russia that are doing real damage here at home, as Paul has been talking about. ..."
"... While the importance of the existential threat of Russia, the importance of that narrative to the military-industrial complex, is I think that's only one piece of why the American state and large sections of the American oligarchy see Russia so much as a threat. They keep using the word 'adversary.' ..."
"... The United States wants what they call in some of their documents Full Spectrum Dominance. They want global hegemony. Global hegemony means hegemony in every region of the world. They do not like it when any power emerges. The challenges for regional hegemonic because that's obviously part of global hegemony. So they don't like the fact that Russia has a major economy; and not one of the biggest economies, by any means, but a major economy. A big army. Of course, nuclear weapons. So they don't like that it has, kind of, independent will in this region. It's not a global competitor. ..."
"... In the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a free-for-all plundering of all the natural resources and state resources, privatization mania. And the U.S., the Americans thought they'd get a much bigger piece of this. I don't think they thought, after all these years of trying, they thought, bringing down the Soviet Union, in truth the Soviet Union fell mostly for internal reasons. And bureaucrats within the party and the state became the oligarchs, became the billionaires. They seized a lot of these assets, not the West and the Americans. ..."
"... And the out of the chaos emerges a Russian state, led by Putin, to create some sense of normalcy, turn it into a kind of a normal capitalist country, with laws, to some extent, so you can do business and commerce. And one of the things that state did is it didn't allow the West to just hocus pocus, I forget the term, they didn't just allow the West to come in and pick up all these resources and privatization directly themselves. ..."
"... So different parts of the U.S. state have different agendas connected to different sections of capital that have their other agendas, but none of this justifies this McCarthyite level of Cold War rhetoric. ..."
"... And Kissinger observed to Nixon, he says: In 20 years your successor, if he's as wise as you, will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese. And then he went on to say: Right now we need the Chinese to correct the Russians, and to discipline the Russians. ..."
"... The, the metaphysical vision of the world- and don't forget, Hitler had quite a metaphysical vision of the world. The, the role of, the mission of the aryan nation to take over the world and march into a new era of civilization and all this was all intertwined with, with a metaphysical, quasi-fanatical religious view of the world. ..."
"... Putin is very close to the Russian Orthodox Church. He's been promoting this kind of nationalism intertwined with religious messaging through the church. He promotes this kind of stuff in Western Europe. Putin has been nurturing the far right in Western Europe. So this jives, the agenda of the people around Trump and Putin have similar views of the world. ..."
"... So yeah, the idea of some kind of accommodation with Russia because of the coming trade war, and who knows what kind of war, with China, yeah, this is definitely, I think, part of the equation. The shorter-term play is Iran. They are, this group, this cabal in Washington, is fixated on regime change in Iran. I actually am not sure how they, why they see that fits the China strategy, but I don't know that it matters, because that's their play. And they've been talking about it for years, since the late night 1990s. And this document, Project for a New American Century. Undoing the Iranian revolution has been absolutely at the core of these people's foreign policy. ..."
Watch Part 2 of Paul Jay and Aaron Mate's interactive discussion with viewers about the
controversy over Trump's visit to Helsinki – From a live recording on July 18th, 2018
AARON MATE: I want to read a comment from a viewer, Kristen Lee, who writes: There
are too many lucrative salaries on the line that depend on that trillion dollars a year
military budget to allow Russia to end up being bogeyman number one. To not end up-. To have
Russia not end up being boogeymen number one, I believe. They are fighting for their own
lifestyles. And I think that speaks to a broader point that the Russiagate narrative is one
that sustains privilege because, really, who does it threaten? I mean, yes, it threatens Trump.
But we already know that there's a huge cross-section of the elite that despises Trump,
including many Republicans who campaigned against him during the campaign.
And of course, Russia has no huge, powerful lobby in Washington. Russia has no major
economic power in the U.S. So attacking Russia really hurts nobody domestically in a position
of privilege and influence. And meanwhile, attacking Russia serves a double benefit of allowing
people to deflect from other interests much more powerful than Russia that are doing real
damage here at home, as Paul has been talking about.
PAUL JAY: Could I just, could I just then-.
AARON MATE: Let me ask you about China, first. Because we're-.
PAUL JAY: Before we do China, before we do China, let me just add one thing to this,
which I think-. While the importance of the existential threat of Russia, the importance of
that narrative to the military-industrial complex, is I think that's only one piece of why the
American state and large sections of the American oligarchy see Russia so much as a threat.
They keep using the word 'adversary.' .
And the reason why I think there's a several pieces to it, and I said this in the interview
the other day, one, the United States does not like regional powers that are not under the
American thumb. They don't want anyone, they-. The United States wants what they call in
some of their documents Full Spectrum Dominance. They want global hegemony. Global hegemony
means hegemony in every region of the world. They do not like it when any power emerges. The
challenges for regional hegemonic because that's obviously part of global hegemony. So they
don't like the fact that Russia has a major economy; and not one of the biggest economies, by
any means, but a major economy. A big army. Of course, nuclear weapons. So they don't like that
it has, kind of, independent will in this region. It's not a global competitor.
But there's another piece to this. Russia has oil. They don't like an oil state, a country
that has such massive oil supply, not being under the U.S. umbrella, U.S. hegemony. That's,
that's number two. Number three, they don't like the way Putin and that state emerged. You
know, if people are watching the series that I'm doing of interviews with Alexander Buzgalin,
we're telling the whole story of the emergence of Putin out of the collapsed Soviet state,
Soviet system. In the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a
free-for-all plundering of all the natural resources and state resources, privatization mania.
And the U.S., the Americans thought they'd get a much bigger piece of this. I don't think they
thought, after all these years of trying, they thought, bringing down the Soviet Union, in
truth the Soviet Union fell mostly for internal reasons. And bureaucrats within the party and
the state became the oligarchs, became the billionaires. They seized a lot of these assets, not
the West and the Americans.
And the out of the chaos emerges a Russian state, led by Putin, to create some sense of
normalcy, turn it into a kind of a normal capitalist country, with laws, to some extent, so you
can do business and commerce. And one of the things that state did is it didn't allow the West
to just hocus pocus, I forget the term, they didn't just allow the West to come in and pick up
all these resources and privatization directly themselves.
So this Putin's state's been to some extent blocking the U.S. from turning this Russia, as
they have with most most other areas of the world- of course the other big exception is China
and Iran- under, into the American global capitalist system, where the Americans are the
dominant power. And they even had ways to do that. But these things jive, don't always jive, I
should say, which is the economic incorporation of Russia into, into global capitalism, into,
even into the EU, for example, or something, some structure like that, does not jive with the
narrative of an existential threat that serves this massive military expenditure.
So different parts of the U.S. state have different agendas connected to different
sections of capital that have their other agendas, but none of this justifies this McCarthyite
level of Cold War rhetoric.
AARON MATE: Right. So in terms of China, as we're talking about other possible
explanation for Trump's desire to work with Russia that go beyond him being a potential
intelligence asset, or that Putin has kompromat on Trump, which really is right now the
dominant corporate media narrative and question. You've been laying out some- I want to focus
on China for a second, and actually read to you, Paul, a quote. This is John Pomfret. He's a
historian. And he writes about Kissinger talking to Nixon after Kissinger returned from China
as part of the Nixon administration's overture to China in the early '70s. And Kissinger
observed to Nixon, he says: In 20 years your successor, if he's as wise as you, will wind up
leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese. And then he went on to say: Right now we need
the Chinese to correct the Russians, and to discipline the Russians.
So I find that interesting, because it's a way to help understand what might have motivated
Nixon's overtures to China back then. But also I think that might help us understand what might
motivate Trump's overtures to Russia. Now, obviously China has been a huge obsession of Trump.
He talks about it constantly. He's launching a trade war right now. And it's quite likely, I
think, he recognizes that if he really wants to confront China, a far bigger world power than
Russia is, especially, obviously, economically, that he might need to enlist Russia for that
task.
PAUL JAY: I certainly think there's part of it. How conscious Trump himself is of
these kind of geostrategic assessments and plans, I don't know. Trump's a very smart con man. I
don't know that he has a big geopolitical brain. But that being said, he's got people around
him, including John Bolton, who are actually quite smart and have real geopolitical brains, and
are fanatics.
The, my guess is the short-term play, and I don't see this- I think it's ridiculous that
Trump is Putin's stooge, and all of this. The agenda of this group that's in power and that
Trump represents the interests of, this isn't just a one man band, even if he flies off the
handle in a one-man way. But this agenda of Iran and China, this was very well articulated by
Steve Bannon before and after the victory of Trump in the election. This has economic interests
which they, of course, China is the real economic competitor in the world that's a threat to
American dominance. But it also has an ideological framing for it. And that's the defense of
Western Christian civilization. And I think they believe in this stuff. Bannon himself is
connected to Opus Dei in the Catholic Church. He's connected to Cardinal Burke. They're waging
a war against Pope Francis. They want to overthrow the Pope. And it's really as open as that.
They don't like, they're shocked that they've got a pope that's a social democrat. The, the
metaphysical vision of the world- and don't forget, Hitler had quite a metaphysical vision of
the world. The, the role of, the mission of the aryan nation to take over the world and march
into a new era of civilization and all this was all intertwined with, with a metaphysical,
quasi-fanatical religious view of the world.
Well I think they have this. So China does not fit the plan of saving Western civilization.
But Russia does. And Putin is very close to the Russian Orthodox Church. He's been
promoting this kind of nationalism intertwined with religious messaging through the church. He
promotes this kind of stuff in Western Europe. Putin has been nurturing the far right in
Western Europe. So this jives, the agenda of the people around Trump and Putin have similar
views of the world. And it is a far right, far right view of the world.
So yeah, the idea of some kind of accommodation with Russia because of the coming trade
war, and who knows what kind of war, with China, yeah, this is definitely, I think, part of the
equation. The shorter-term play is Iran. They are, this group, this cabal in Washington, is
fixated on regime change in Iran. I actually am not sure how they, why they see that fits the
China strategy, but I don't know that it matters, because that's their play. And they've been
talking about it for years, since the late night 1990s. And this document, Project for a New
American Century. Undoing the Iranian revolution has been absolutely at the core of these
people's foreign policy.
So there are, all these things are interconnected. And you know, dividing Russia from China,
and having clearly some kind of alliance there, it's also in the interests of Putin, and it's
very much in the interest of this, of this cabal. I think we should even stop talking and being
so focused on Trump. Because if they bring down Trump the individual, they'll find some other,
some other individual to come play a similar role. And he won't, this, whoever he or she is
won't be such a clown.
"... The peculiar dialectic between power and powerlessness is shadowed by a necessary third component, the perfect target. These are the people who are identified as the threat that the powerful and the powerless must come together to defeat. ..."
"... The U.S. is not in a pre-fascist period. Globalization is forcing fundamental structural changes on American society, affecting the economy as well as personal life. One key question involves a president's vision and the practices of his administration. Do fundamental social changes foster greater efforts to protect (and increase) the wealth and social power of the privileged or does it signal a sea change -- like the post-WW-II consumer revolution -- that enhances the quality and longevity of the lives of the many? ..."
"... With hollow bravado, one with apparently little thought about consequences, Trump Tweets new federal policies, offers false apologies and ceaselessly attacks on the media. For Trump and his administration, all information questioning a Trump Team statement suggests possible treason. ..."
"... For two-plus centuries, the U.S. has been a battleground between power and powerlessness. Through each era of contestation, a perfect target has been identified and exploited to help assure the position of those contesting for power. Four of the most revealing "perfect targets" are the Native People, African-American slaves and free people, Catholics and Communists. Each illuminates the social struggle between the powerful and powerless, thus providing a valuable snapshot into America's evolving culture. ..."
"... The Know Nothing movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became the American Party that flourished during the late-40s and early-50s. It got its name when members where asked the party's positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. Catholics became the perfect target. ..."
"... The post-WW-II period was the age of Sen. Joe McCarthy, of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and New York's Archbishop Francis Spellman -- and Roy Cohn, Trump's consigliere ..."
"... The dance of power/powerlessness shadowed by the perfect target is being exploited by Trump and his followers. Trump knows how to play this dialect given his narcissistic personality and likely compensation for learning disabilities. ..."
"... David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] ; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com . ..."
Now a year-and-a-half into the Trump presidency, it's become a truism that the president's
support is anchored in a deep sense of social and political powerlessness felt by many
Americans, especially older, white men. An early 2016
Rand poll comparing Donald Trump and Ted Cruz supporters found that those who agreed with
the statement "people like me don't have any say about what the government does" preferred
Trump -- and by a whopping 86.5 percent majority.
This sense of powerlessness turned out to be a more reliable predictor of Trump support than
all the other issues that dogged the 2016 campaign, including immigration, income, education,
the economy and his abusive sexual exploits. And it still does.
In 1941, the then-radical psycho-theorist, Erich Fromm, published Escape from
Freedom . In it, he warned:
The annihilation of the individual self and the attempt to overcome thereby the unbearable
feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other side is
the attempt to become part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to
submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation,
conscience, or a psychic compulsion.
Like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, Fromm was then worried about the growing threat of
totalitarianism. In particular, these thinkers, among others, were concerned about how the
deepening sense of powerlessness among what was then referred to as "the masses" had
contributed to the enormous increase in the power of the leader, whether Hitler, Mussolini,
Franco or Stalin.
The peculiar dialectic between power and powerlessness is shadowed by a necessary third
component, the perfect target. These are the people who are identified as the threat that the
powerful and the powerless must come together to defeat. In pre-WW-II Germany, the perfect
target were the Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies, people that Nazi's claimed were
different, thus threatening the purity of ordinary Germans' "Saxon heritage." The threat can
come in any form, be it class, race, nationality, religion or political ideology -- or whatever
is a distinguishing characteristic of those targeted.
Pres. Trump has up to now played the perfect-target dance with great success. As a candidate
and now in the Oval Office, he's ranted successfully against "illegal" immigrants, whether
long-time residents, married to a citizen and with American children, have a criminal record,
served in the military or recent arrivals. In one Tweet, he opined: "They [Democrats] don't
care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and
infest our Country, like MS-13. They can't win on their terrible policies, so they view them as
potential voters!"
Democrats are the problem. They don't care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no
matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can't win
on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!
The Trump administration may have recently overplayed its perfect-target hand with the
forceful separation of seized immigrant parents from their children, no matter at what age.
From purely bureaucratic and media-relations perspectives, it's been a mess. No matter whether
the immigrants might be "illegal," they are still people, parent and child, and -- in Christian
America -- family still matters. Equally revealing, the Congress has yet to underwrite building
a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico.
The U.S. is not in a pre-fascist period. Globalization is forcing fundamental structural
changes on American society, affecting the economy as well as personal life. One key question
involves a president's vision and the practices of his administration. Do fundamental social
changes foster greater efforts to protect (and increase) the wealth and social power of the
privileged or does it signal a sea change -- like the post-WW-II consumer revolution -- that
enhances the quality and longevity of the lives of the many?
Trump is effectively exploiting the power/powerless minuet to maximize his own wealth and
that among others of the 1 percent. His -- and his administration's -- efforts are designed to
(moderately) upset the post-WW-II alliance between the federal government and private corporate
interests. The alliance has long been a revolving door for both Democrats and Republicans --
and the Trump Team is spinning the door.
The Trump apparatus is pushing the revolving door further to the right. Every federal
department and agency, including the Supreme Court, appears to include, if not run by, someone
drawn from the military, a corporation or bank, an industry association, a lobbying firm, a
religious group or a conservative thinktank.
Trump and his administration, ably assisted by a get-what-you-can Republican-controlled
Congress and Senate, seem more like that of Herbert Hoover and the great denial of what
everyone knew was coming rather than that of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the making of a modern
super-state. With hollow bravado, one with apparently little thought about consequences,
Trump Tweets new federal policies, offers false apologies and ceaselessly attacks on the media.
For Trump and his administration, all information questioning a Trump Team statement suggests
possible treason.
***
For two-plus centuries, the U.S. has been a battleground between power and
powerlessness. Through each era of contestation, a perfect target has been identified and
exploited to help assure the position of those contesting for power. Four of the most revealing
"perfect targets" are the Native People, African-American slaves and free people, Catholics and
Communists. Each illuminates the social struggle between the powerful and powerless, thus
providing a valuable snapshot into America's evolving culture.
No clearer or more honest statement as to the social role of the perfect target was made by
Pres. Andrew Jackson on December 6, 1830, in his Message to Congress, "On Indian Removal." It
was issued seven months after he signed the removal law that authorized to grant unsettled
lands west of the Mississippi to Anglos or white people in exchange for Indian lands within
existing state borders. He stated, in part
:
It [the act] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites;
free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and
under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening
their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and
through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an
interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
Four European states -- Netherlands, Great Britain and France as well Spain -- invaded and
conquered parts of what was once the vast North America territory and was then home to
innumerable tribes of Native Peoples.
The first African slaves arrived in North America in 1619 in Jamestown. Over the following
four centuries many Americans believed that Africans -- and their descendants,
African-Americans -- were not fully human, but rather subhuman. It was long an essential belief
among colonial revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson as well as Confederate secessionists and
those of the today's alt-right. As Jefferson wrote
:
I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct
race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the
endowments both of body and mind. This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of
faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.
The U.S. Constitution embodied this racism in granting African and African-American males
3/5 th voting rights compared to white citizens.
The Know Nothing
movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became
the American Party that flourished during the late-40s and early-50s. It got its name when
members where asked the party's positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together
Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most
especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. Catholics became the perfect target.
Know-Nothing adherents felt that Catholics, as followers of the Pope, were not loyal
Americans and were going to take over the country. It had strong support in the North that
witnessed large-scale Irish immigration after 1848. The American Party captured the
Massachusetts legislature in 1854 and, in 1856, backed Millard Fillmore for president, who
secured nearly 1 million votes, a quarter of all votes cast.
And then there were
communists . It's nearly impossible to image just how awful it was for those who challenged
the nation's official belief system during the post-WW-II era of 1945 to 1960. Alleged
"communists" included Soviet Union agents, non-party trade unionists as well as professors,
teachers, publishers and nonviolent civil-rights activists. And then there were the
pornographers, homosexual and other alleged deviants who challenged the status quo.
The post-WW-II period was the age of Sen. Joe McCarthy, of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
and New York's Archbishop Francis Spellman -- and Roy Cohn, Trump's consigliere . It
saw hundreds lose their jobs, dozens arrested and jailed. And the powerful found their perfect
target in two innocent New Yorkers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who they arrested, convicted
and executed -- they were prosecuted by Cohn.
***
The dance of power/powerlessness shadowed by the perfect target is being exploited by
Trump and his followers. Trump knows how to play this dialect given his narcissistic
personality and likely compensation for learning disabilities. Since the campaign, his
perfect perfect target has been non-documented immigrants. He's also targeted
Democrats, the news media and NATO.
Trump needs a perfect enemy. In this way he is very much like other authoritarian leaders,
whether all-powerful rulers like Hitler, Stalin or Mao or merely a failed petty tyrant like
Nixon or -- pick your favorite Latin American, African or Asian dictator.
So, keep your eyes on Trump's ever-changing perfect target for it signals where the pin-ball
bouncing around in his brain lands. And where it lands sets national policy by targeting those
he thinks can distract Americans from understanding his profound failings. Who's next?
Join
the debate on Facebook More articles by: David Rosen
David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New
York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected]
; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com .
On your last paragraph, I've been nursing that hope as far as the ME goes for a while as well. Ever since the Jerusalem decision.
As for European NATO, isn't that already shot? Turkey unreliable at one end. The UK at odds with the mainland at the other,
if all the disaster talk isn't just theatre and maybe if it is. European NATO no longer looks like a credible alliance. Not an
alliance at all should Trump remove or cause to be removed the American glue holding it all together.
But the Colonel's item 8 is going to weigh on the conscience of the West for a long time.
On #8: I would bet that not 1 in 100 Americans know anything about the place at all, never mind the current slaughter. There will
be nothing for them to forget. I'm not trying to be flippant either. Unfortunately, most of my countrymen are simply fat, dumb,
and happy; and content to stay that way.
"... The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and the rise of Obama . Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the world's remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in depth in the documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin. ..."
"... This feature is followed by an interview with writer, ecological campaigner, and Deep State researcher Mark Robinowitz . Originally recorded and aired in January 2018, Robinowitz helps delineate the factions of power shaping the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, as well as the players within the National Security State, including the neocons, that appear to be manipulating him and his presidency, possibly maneuvering him towards an impeachment within the next year. ..."
"... Robbie Martin is a journalist, musician and documentary film-maker. He is co-host with his sister Abby Martin of Media Roots Radio. A Very Heavy Agenda can be streamed or purchased here . Soundtrack for Film and music for these series from Fluorescent Grey (Robbie Martin). ..."
"... Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture practitioner and publisher of oilempire.us as well as jfkmoon.org . He is based in Eugene, Oregon. ..."
"... from the period between 2014 to 2018, it was like an exponentially rising climate of propaganda against Russia coming from the U.S. media ..."
"... they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality. ..."
"... And how it only took, you know, certain nudges and pushes and policy papers , and here we are. They essentially got their way, and Russia has never been more demonized since the fall of communism and the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. ..."
"... she had over 200 basically hit piece stories written about her within the span of a week, and I was just in this kind of depressed place checking in with her making sure she was doing okay, and not basically getting too stressed out from all this media pressure and this barrage of negative stories. So I was just watching these videos basically from the neocon think-tank that I believe was behind the smear campaign against her. ..."
"... Foreign Policy Initiative is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. ..."
"... Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the Obama era. ..."
"... the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which arguably that is the neocon prize but see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran. ..."
"... That's one of their foreign policy platforms they've sort of brushed under the rug, because that's one of The reason I'm giving that example is because that's how they have managed to cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say, hey we're kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin's bad, and let's really go after him. Let's overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe. ..."
"... So the first one is that how right after 9/11, several of these neocons, I think it's Don and Fred Kagan, went on TV and radio kind of immediately after for at least a 24-hour 48-hour period after 9/11 and basically blamed Palestinians for the attack, and were basically outright calling for the U.S. to attack Palestine. And even saying that they had no evidence but we should just go and attack them. So could you talk about what happened there, and what was the effect there? Everyone kind of forgets about this but what happened there, and what do you think the effect of that was? ..."
"... Because, and this is important to know, that Don Kagan is one of the only three authors credited as writing Rebuilding America's Defenses, the infamous paper that PNAC released that says we need a new Pearl Harbor, a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor. ..."
"... Don Kagan is someone who just, mostly an obscure figure in this, but I'd like to believe that if he was saying that on the radio within 24 hours of 9/11, that it was something being heavily discussed within that community behind the scenes. And h e and his son Fred Kagan are two of the most intellectual, influential neoconservatives in DC. Fred Kagan is behind the Iraq surge, he is also behind the Afghanistan s urge for Obama, directly working under David Petraeus. So these are not just like random neocons. It's important to stress that they are some of the most influential neocon brain-trust type people in DC even though they're so relatively obscure They're not household names. ..."
"... The news media played footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attacks in the middle of a national emergency at 12 p.m. while thousands of people were still missing during the World Trade Center attacks. So this is the kind of stuff that U.S. media was doing. ..."
"... And then also something else interesting Don Kagan brings up in the recording, and maybe you were going to mention this next, but I'll just say it because it's so weird, as he says what would have happened, and keep in mind this is 9/12-01, one day after 9/11. He says, what would have happened if the terrorists had Anthrax on that plane? ..."
Robert Kagan. William Kristol. Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle. John Bolton. Elliott Abrams.
Gary Schmitt. These are a few of the names generally associated with a strain of far-right
political thought called neoconservatism. [1][2]
Politically, the neocons favour a world in which the United States adopts a much more
aggressive military posture, and utilizes its military might to not only contain terrorist and
related threats to its security, but force regime change in regions like the Middle East. They
further take on the task of 'nation-building' all in the name of creating a safer world for
'democracy.' It was the neocons who promoted the stratagem of pre-emptive military action.
[3]
The neocons enjoyed a robust period of influence under the Bush-Cheney administration. The
9/11 attacks and the triggering of a 'war on terrorism' enabled a series of foreign policy
choices, most notably the War on Afghanistan and the War on Iraq, which aligned with the aims
and aspirations of the group once referred to by President George Bush Sr. as the 'crazies in
the basement.'[4]
The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and
the rise of Obama . Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as
strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but
they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the
world's remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in
depth in the documentary series, A Very
Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin.
In part one of a special two part interview by Global Research News Hour guest contributor
Scott Price , Martin describes the inspiration behind making the film, the post 9/11 atmosphere
in which the neocons flourished, and the neocons' role in fostering the new Cold War mentality
which contributed to the smearing of his better-known sister, former RT host Abby Martin .
This feature is followed by an interview with writer, ecological campaigner, and Deep
State researcher Mark Robinowitz . Originally recorded and
aired in January 2018, Robinowitz helps delineate the factions of power shaping the outcome
of the 2016 presidential election, as well as the players within the National Security State,
including the neocons, that appear to be manipulating him and his presidency, possibly
maneuvering him towards an impeachment within the next year.
Robbie Martin is a journalist, musician and documentary film-maker. He is co-host with
his sister Abby Martin of Media
Roots Radio. A Very Heavy Agenda can be streamed or purchased here . Soundtrack for Film and music for these series from
Fluorescent Grey (Robbie
Martin).
Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture
practitioner and publisher of oilempire.us
as well as jfkmoon.org . He is based in
Eugene, Oregon.
Transcript – Interview with Robbie Martin, July 2018
... ... ...
And of course, right after the Sochi Olympics, is when the Euromaidan protest in Ukraine,
it kind of boiled over to the point where there were, you know, walls of flaming tires all over
Euromaidan – basically a war zone. And of course the Ukrainian government fell due to a
coup which many believe, including myself, was partially U.S. sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
And then things from there, Scott, just started to spiral out of contro , and from the period between 2014 to 2018, it
was like an exponentially rising climate of propaganda against Russia coming from the U.S. media, and when I made my film series, I didn't I made it before
the election, s o I didn't realize how hysterical it was going to get after the election, and
frankly, I had no idea it was going to get this bad, to the point that it's got now.
I know that doesn't quite answer your question about my inspiration, but it 's kind of a
long answer to your question is my film itself is essentially.. was tracking the neocon
influence and how the neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that
constructed the blueprints to the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing
this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality.
And how it only took, you know, certain nudges and pushes and policy papers , and here we
are. They essentially got their way, and Russia has never been more demonized since the fall
of communism and the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. So that's I don't know if that was too
long of an answer for your question , but that's what was sort of my inspiration for how I made
it. My sister was also kind of a part of the story because some of these neocons actually tried
to smear her while she was working for RT.
... ... ...
RM: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think at first, I was really fascinated by the
psychology of these key neoconservatives. I was watching, at first I didn't even know I was
going to make a film. I was kind of in this weird place mentally, my sister had just been put
through the wringer, she had over 200 basically hit piece stories written about her within the
span of a week, and I was just in this kind of depressed place checking in with her making sure
she was doing okay, and not basically getting too stressed out from all this media pressure and
this barrage of negative stories. So I was just watching these videos basically from the neocon
think-tank that I believe was behind the smear campaign against her.
So I was watching videos from this think tank, they were called the
Foreign Policy Initiative, and I quickly learned maybe over 48 hour period, oh, the
Foreign Policy Initiative
is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think
tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. Once I
realized that, then I just then I was obsessed with watching these videos. I watched probably
every single video on their YouTube channel, and the majority of them were incredibly boring,
very dry. And I was already in a depressed place, so, you know, it was kind of just putting me
into this weird state where I was watching nothing but these dry foreign policy think tank
videos for weeks on end.
Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from
the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more
candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more
clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the
Obama era. Once I saw this, I became fascinated with his psychology. And I was already sort of
fascinated with Bill Kristol's psychology, you know , going back to when I was a young man when
I would watch Fox News you know during the Iraq War, I would watch Bill Kristol, and I found
him fascinating back then because he seemed on a different level than most other, you know, war
hawks that would go on Fox News.
But it was really Robert Kagan though that made me think, you know, his own words are so
fascinating and so candid and so revealing without adding any editorial content that I wonder
if this will work, if I present it just simply in his own words.
... ... ...
But I think one way to describe why they're so important and they're still so influential is
because they managed to, a very small handful of them, maybe less than a dozen figures, managed
to convince the rest of, what people describe as the DC blob, the sort of foreign policy
consensus in DC overall, the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and
make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community
into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with
the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which arguably that is the neocon prize but
see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these
neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact
that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran.
That's one of their foreign policy platforms they've sort of brushed under the rug, because
that's one of The reason I'm giving that example is because that's how they have managed to
cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say,
hey we're kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin's bad, and let's really go
after him. Let's overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially
convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe.
So yes, it's true that there are not that many actual literal neocons, but a lot of people
now who are sort of anti-war, do work in anti-war or do foreign policy critique, they don't see
much of a difference any more between sort of the neoliberal foreign policy group in DC, which
is most of it, and the actual neocons anymore. Because they have essentially merged in a
non-partisan fashion, and it's been very surreal to watch, especially after the 2016 election
when you actually saw neocons saying well you should vote for Hillary. For the first time ever
they all said that you shouldn't vote for a R epublican.
That's so I don't know that fully answers your question, but I think to su m it up it's
because the neocons have influenced everybody. So now that they've been able to do that you
don't really need that many of them around you know making that much trouble because everybody
is carrying out their agenda essentially. In this DC foreign policy think-tank.
GR: Yeah I think the way you kind of describe it in maybe it's I don't know if you
personally describe it, but I wrote it down in my notes about how neoconservatism is almost
like a species and it kind of evolved over the last 20 years in a way? So I think what you're
talking about how there's a shift to Hillary, and, but I mean that shift is more that the
neoconservative line really became the mainstream line, whereas, you know, maybe in the early
2000s, like, there was a larger perception, yes, they were in the White House, but these people
are also crazy, whereas now is kind of like the mainstream, which is quite scary. Which is
something I think we'll talk about in a little bit. But kind of what I was talking about a bit
before what I referenced was that I was a teenager when 9/11 happened, and it really shaped my
generation and the world that I'm living in now
But as I was watching the 3-part documentary, there were several things that I was like kind
of blown away by how these things kind of just went down the memory hole, and I want to talk
about those things because several of these things I vaguely kind of remember now but for some
odd reason I had totally forgotten about them, and they're not really within the wider
narrative of 9/11 and the war on terror.
So the first one is that how right after 9/11, several of these neocons, I think it's Don
and Fred Kagan, went on TV and radio kind of immediately after for at least a 24-hour 48-hour
period after 9/11 and basically blamed Palestinians for the attack, and were basically outright
calling for the U.S. to attack Palestine. And even saying that they had no evidence but we
should just go and attack them. So could you talk about what happened there, and what was the
effect there? Everyone kind of forgets about this but what happened there, and what do you
think the effect of that was?
RM: You just opened up a really big can of worms with that question. Well, to fully answer
that it would require a totally separate interview, but I'll do my best to answer it in this
short time that we have. What you're describing is, what I would say, is the neocons flipping
up and revealing too much of an early iteration of their script, than the rest of the consensus
was ready to reveal or get on board with. And perhaps, even, they jumped ahead with something
that the rest of the neocons already decided, we can't go there. Because, and this is important
to know, that Don Kagan is one of the only three authors credited as writing Rebuilding
America's Defenses, the infamous paper that PNAC released that says we need a new Pearl Harbor,
a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.
Don Kagan is someone who just, mostly an obscure figure in this, but I'd like to believe
that if he was saying that on the radio within 24 hours of 9/11, that it was something being
heavily discussed within that community behind the scenes. And h e and his son Fred Kagan are
two of the most intellectual, influential neoconservatives in DC. Fred Kagan is behind the Iraq
surge, he is also behind the Afghanistan s urge for Obama, directly working under David
Petraeus. So these are not just like random neocons. It's important to stress that they are
some of the most influential neocon brain-trust type people in DC even though they're so
relatively obscure They're not household names.
So to hear both of them saying that we need to clean out Palestine with the U.S. Delta Force
raids and the full panoply of U.S. military tools and arsenal, it's a very shocking thing to
hear. Even though I've long believed that neocons are some of the most evil people on the
planet, that was even surprising for me to hear. That they went ahead and openly said that the
U.S. military should do that, and actually, in their broadcast they make it clear that they
don't even care who's behind 9/11. Which is strange. They say that if we run around tracing the
actual perpetrators, we're just going to be wasting our time and we won't get anywhere. So what
they are saying is that we should just go attack all these countries anyways because even if
they're behind it or not, they hate us and want to kill us.
And Palestine was one of their primary targets to retaliate against in response to 9/11. Now
that's very strange when you look at the day of 9/11, and I've actually done a podcast on this,
I call it the Palestinian Frame-up, on 9/11, there were four separate incidences that were run
throughout U.S. media throughout the day of 9/11 that were attempting to blame Palestinians for
the attacks before Bin Laden became the primary culprit that the U.S. media latched on to. So I
find that very strange.
And I'm not going to try to explain it here during this interview, but you can look into
that. It's all documented. The news media played footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating
the attacks in the middle of a national emergency at 12 p.m. while thousands of people were
still missing during the World Trade Center attacks. So this is the kind of stuff that U.S.
media was doing.
So it's very interesting for me to see neocons actually piggy-backing on that and saying we
should attack Palestine. And that's a rare thing, I think, to find neocons slipping up that
badly. And I guess I find that clip particularly fascinating because it's really one of the
only ones like that out there, and to my knowledge, I'm the first one to find it by combing
through all these archives. I've never heard of it before, never even heard of any neocon s
saying that before on record.
And then also something else interesting Don Kagan brings up in the recording, and maybe you
were going to mention this next, but I'll just say it because it's so weird, as he says what
would have happened, and keep in mind this is 9/12-01, one day after 9/11. He says, what would
have happened if the terrorists had Anthrax on that plane?
GR: Right. Yeah.
RM: And on October 5, weaponized anthrax was sent through the U.S. mail. While the Bush
Administration was already inoculated with Cipro. the antibiotic taken to prevent Anthrax
infection. So there's a lot of interesting and very scary questions that are raised just by
that single clip. and I'm to this day it's still a mystery to me.
GR: That was Part 1 of the Global Research News Hour special with Robbie Martin on his
documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda that explores the rise and continued influence of the
neoconservatives. Part 2 will air next week where we will explore the anthrax attacks, the role
of Vice in spreading U.S. propaganda. You can buy or stream A Very Heavy Agenda at
averyheavyagenda.com. Music for this special provided by Fluorescent Grey, AKA Robbie Martin.
For the Global Research News Hour, I'm Scott Price.
-end of transcript-
Global Research News Hour Summer 2018 Series Part 5
Looks like "My way or the highway diplomacy" is the only one Trump masters in his long life.
Trump tries fully leverage the US global power before it dissipates ...
Notable quotes:
"... The track record is not encouraging. By constantly expanding its demands, the United States may have given the impression that its negotiations are not in good faith, and that rather than trying to reach a diplomatic resolution, it is simply trying to punish the target. ..."
"... The most hawkish sanctions advocates aren't interested in using sanctions to resolve conflicts. Many Iran hawks advocated piling on additional sanctions against Iran both before and after Trump's decision to renege on the JCPOA, and they insisted on making demands that Iran couldn't possibly accept. Their goal was never to "fix" the deal or find a diplomatic solution to other issues, but to create a pretext for punishing Iran for "refusing" the demands that had been designed to be rejected. Pompeo's list of demands has the same purpose. ..."
warn that
the Trump administration's overuse of sanctions is eroding whatever effectiveness they might have:
The track record is not encouraging. By constantly expanding its demands, the United States may have given the impression
that its negotiations are not in good faith, and that rather than trying to reach a diplomatic resolution, it is simply trying
to punish the target. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's 12 points for resetting relations with Tehran tied so many goals to
each sanction program so as to render such measures useless as conflict-resolution tools.
The most hawkish sanctions advocates aren't interested in using sanctions to resolve conflicts. Many Iran hawks advocated
piling on additional sanctions against Iran both before and after Trump's decision to renege on the JCPOA, and they insisted on making
demands that Iran couldn't possibly accept. Their goal was never to "fix" the deal or find a diplomatic solution to other issues,
but to create a pretext for punishing Iran for "refusing" the demands that had been designed to be rejected. Pompeo's list of demands
has the same purpose.
Opponents of the nuclear deal hated the JCPOA because it worked and removed the main excuse for punishing and isolating Iran,
so as far as they're concerned punishment is the reason for the sanctions. That is why there is nothing Iran can do short of surrender
to get them lifted, and that is why Iran has no incentive to deal with the Trump administration. Iran sees the reimposition of sanctions
as entirely incompatible with dialogue, and they are right to do so. Iran hawks have been pushing for more sanctions on Iran for
the purpose of sabotaging any further engagement, and Trump has given them exactly what they wanted. Far from trying to reach a diplomatic
resolution of any outstanding issues, Iran hawks are determined to make that impossible. They want to maintain the illusion that
the U.S. is still open to talking while doing everything possible to make negotiations politically radioactive for the other side.
Iranian leaders aren't falling for it, and neither should we.
"... The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and the rise of Obama . Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the world's remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in depth in the documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin. ..."
"... This feature is followed by an interview with writer, ecological campaigner, and Deep State researcher Mark Robinowitz . Originally recorded and aired in January 2018, Robinowitz helps delineate the factions of power shaping the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, as well as the players within the National Security State, including the neocons, that appear to be manipulating him and his presidency, possibly maneuvering him towards an impeachment within the next year. ..."
"... Robbie Martin is a journalist, musician and documentary film-maker. He is co-host with his sister Abby Martin of Media Roots Radio. A Very Heavy Agenda can be streamed or purchased here . Soundtrack for Film and music for these series from Fluorescent Grey (Robbie Martin). ..."
"... Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture practitioner and publisher of oilempire.us as well as jfkmoon.org . He is based in Eugene, Oregon. ..."
"... from the period between 2014 to 2018, it was like an exponentially rising climate of propaganda against Russia coming from the U.S. media ..."
"... they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality. ..."
"... And how it only took, you know, certain nudges and pushes and policy papers , and here we are. They essentially got their way, and Russia has never been more demonized since the fall of communism and the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. ..."
"... she had over 200 basically hit piece stories written about her within the span of a week, and I was just in this kind of depressed place checking in with her making sure she was doing okay, and not basically getting too stressed out from all this media pressure and this barrage of negative stories. So I was just watching these videos basically from the neocon think-tank that I believe was behind the smear campaign against her. ..."
"... Foreign Policy Initiative is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. ..."
"... Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the Obama era. ..."
"... the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which arguably that is the neocon prize but see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran. ..."
"... That's one of their foreign policy platforms they've sort of brushed under the rug, because that's one of The reason I'm giving that example is because that's how they have managed to cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say, hey we're kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin's bad, and let's really go after him. Let's overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe. ..."
"... So the first one is that how right after 9/11, several of these neocons, I think it's Don and Fred Kagan, went on TV and radio kind of immediately after for at least a 24-hour 48-hour period after 9/11 and basically blamed Palestinians for the attack, and were basically outright calling for the U.S. to attack Palestine. And even saying that they had no evidence but we should just go and attack them. So could you talk about what happened there, and what was the effect there? Everyone kind of forgets about this but what happened there, and what do you think the effect of that was? ..."
"... Because, and this is important to know, that Don Kagan is one of the only three authors credited as writing Rebuilding America's Defenses, the infamous paper that PNAC released that says we need a new Pearl Harbor, a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor. ..."
"... Don Kagan is someone who just, mostly an obscure figure in this, but I'd like to believe that if he was saying that on the radio within 24 hours of 9/11, that it was something being heavily discussed within that community behind the scenes. And h e and his son Fred Kagan are two of the most intellectual, influential neoconservatives in DC. Fred Kagan is behind the Iraq surge, he is also behind the Afghanistan s urge for Obama, directly working under David Petraeus. So these are not just like random neocons. It's important to stress that they are some of the most influential neocon brain-trust type people in DC even though they're so relatively obscure They're not household names. ..."
"... The news media played footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attacks in the middle of a national emergency at 12 p.m. while thousands of people were still missing during the World Trade Center attacks. So this is the kind of stuff that U.S. media was doing. ..."
"... And then also something else interesting Don Kagan brings up in the recording, and maybe you were going to mention this next, but I'll just say it because it's so weird, as he says what would have happened, and keep in mind this is 9/12-01, one day after 9/11. He says, what would have happened if the terrorists had Anthrax on that plane? ..."
Robert Kagan. William Kristol. Paul Wolfowitz. Richard Perle. John Bolton. Elliott Abrams.
Gary Schmitt. These are a few of the names generally associated with a strain of far-right
political thought called neoconservatism. [1][2]
Politically, the neocons favour a world in which the United States adopts a much more
aggressive military posture, and utilizes its military might to not only contain terrorist and
related threats to its security, but force regime change in regions like the Middle East. They
further take on the task of 'nation-building' all in the name of creating a safer world for
'democracy.' It was the neocons who promoted the stratagem of pre-emptive military action.
[3]
The neocons enjoyed a robust period of influence under the Bush-Cheney administration. The
9/11 attacks and the triggering of a 'war on terrorism' enabled a series of foreign policy
choices, most notably the War on Afghanistan and the War on Iraq, which aligned with the aims
and aspirations of the group once referred to by President George Bush Sr. as the 'crazies in
the basement.'[4]
The neocons did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Republicans from office, and
the rise of Obama . Indeed, the clout of this group and their grip on power is arguably as
strong as ever. Not only did they continue to shape the U.S. foreign policy establishment, but
they have managed to alter what constitutes acceptable public and media discourse within the
world's remaining superpower. The trajectory of neocon influence in Washington is explored in
depth in the documentary series, A Very
Heavy Agenda, by independent journalist and film-maker Robbie Martin.
In part one of a special two part interview by Global Research News Hour guest contributor
Scott Price , Martin describes the inspiration behind making the film, the post 9/11 atmosphere
in which the neocons flourished, and the neocons' role in fostering the new Cold War mentality
which contributed to the smearing of his better-known sister, former RT host Abby Martin .
This feature is followed by an interview with writer, ecological campaigner, and Deep
State researcher Mark Robinowitz . Originally recorded and
aired in January 2018, Robinowitz helps delineate the factions of power shaping the outcome
of the 2016 presidential election, as well as the players within the National Security State,
including the neocons, that appear to be manipulating him and his presidency, possibly
maneuvering him towards an impeachment within the next year.
Robbie Martin is a journalist, musician and documentary film-maker. He is co-host with
his sister Abby Martin of Media
Roots Radio. A Very Heavy Agenda can be streamed or purchased here . Soundtrack for Film and music for these series from
Fluorescent Grey (Robbie
Martin).
Mark Robinowitz is a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture
practitioner and publisher of oilempire.us
as well as jfkmoon.org . He is based in
Eugene, Oregon.
Transcript – Interview with Robbie Martin, July 2018
... ... ...
And of course, right after the Sochi Olympics, is when the Euromaidan protest in Ukraine,
it kind of boiled over to the point where there were, you know, walls of flaming tires all over
Euromaidan – basically a war zone. And of course the Ukrainian government fell due to a
coup which many believe, including myself, was partially U.S. sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
And then things from there, Scott, just started to spiral out of contro , and from the period between 2014 to 2018, it
was like an exponentially rising climate of propaganda against Russia coming from the U.S. media, and when I made my film series, I didn't I made it before
the election, s o I didn't realize how hysterical it was going to get after the election, and
frankly, I had no idea it was going to get this bad, to the point that it's got now.
I know that doesn't quite answer your question about my inspiration, but it 's kind of a
long answer to your question is my film itself is essentially.. was tracking the neocon
influence and how the neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that
constructed the blueprints to the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing
this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality.
And how it only took, you know, certain nudges and pushes and policy papers , and here we
are. They essentially got their way, and Russia has never been more demonized since the fall
of communism and the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. So that's I don't know if that was too
long of an answer for your question , but that's what was sort of my inspiration for how I made
it. My sister was also kind of a part of the story because some of these neocons actually tried
to smear her while she was working for RT.
... ... ...
RM: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think at first, I was really fascinated by the
psychology of these key neoconservatives. I was watching, at first I didn't even know I was
going to make a film. I was kind of in this weird place mentally, my sister had just been put
through the wringer, she had over 200 basically hit piece stories written about her within the
span of a week, and I was just in this kind of depressed place checking in with her making sure
she was doing okay, and not basically getting too stressed out from all this media pressure and
this barrage of negative stories. So I was just watching these videos basically from the neocon
think-tank that I believe was behind the smear campaign against her.
So I was watching videos from this think tank, they were called the
Foreign Policy Initiative, and I quickly learned maybe over 48 hour period, oh, the
Foreign Policy Initiative
is actually a re-branded, reopened version of the Project for The New American Century think
tank, which was the most infamous neocon think tank that was behind the Iraq War. Once I
realized that, then I just then I was obsessed with watching these videos. I watched probably
every single video on their YouTube channel, and the majority of them were incredibly boring,
very dry. And I was already in a depressed place, so, you know, it was kind of just putting me
into this weird state where I was watching nothing but these dry foreign policy think tank
videos for weeks on end.
Finally I got to Robert Kagan. And I was listening to him, and it struck me differently from
the way that most other neoconservatives would talk, because I perceived him as being more
candid about the way American foreign policy has actually conducted itself, and also more
clever with the way that I perceived him as, re-branding, repackaging neocon rhetoric for the
Obama era. Once I saw this, I became fascinated with his psychology. And I was already sort of
fascinated with Bill Kristol's psychology, you know , going back to when I was a young man when
I would watch Fox News you know during the Iraq War, I would watch Bill Kristol, and I found
him fascinating back then because he seemed on a different level than most other, you know, war
hawks that would go on Fox News.
But it was really Robert Kagan though that made me think, you know, his own words are so
fascinating and so candid and so revealing without adding any editorial content that I wonder
if this will work, if I present it just simply in his own words.
... ... ...
But I think one way to describe why they're so important and they're still so influential is
because they managed to, a very small handful of them, maybe less than a dozen figures, managed
to convince the rest of, what people describe as the DC blob, the sort of foreign policy
consensus in DC overall, the neocons managed to rebrand themselves, massage their rhetoric, and
make themselves seem less crazy in order to influence the larger DC foreign policy community
into basically accepting and going along with almost all their foreign policy platforms, with
the exception of overtly wanting to invade Iran which arguably that is the neocon prize but
see, a lot of these smarter neocons like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, and a lot of these
neocons who managed to convince the blob, they have hidden, and not been open about the fact
that they want to overthrow the regime of Iran.
That's one of their foreign policy platforms they've sort of brushed under the rug, because
that's one of The reason I'm giving that example is because that's how they have managed to
cross the aisle, so to speak, in DC and put a hand out to the neoliberal think tanks and say,
hey we're kind of on the same side in this, and we all think Putin's bad, and let's really go
after him. Let's overthrow Assad. So these are things that the neocons managed to essentially
convince and influence the rest of the DC foreign policy community to believe.
So yes, it's true that there are not that many actual literal neocons, but a lot of people
now who are sort of anti-war, do work in anti-war or do foreign policy critique, they don't see
much of a difference any more between sort of the neoliberal foreign policy group in DC, which
is most of it, and the actual neocons anymore. Because they have essentially merged in a
non-partisan fashion, and it's been very surreal to watch, especially after the 2016 election
when you actually saw neocons saying well you should vote for Hillary. For the first time ever
they all said that you shouldn't vote for a R epublican.
That's so I don't know that fully answers your question, but I think to su m it up it's
because the neocons have influenced everybody. So now that they've been able to do that you
don't really need that many of them around you know making that much trouble because everybody
is carrying out their agenda essentially. In this DC foreign policy think-tank.
GR: Yeah I think the way you kind of describe it in maybe it's I don't know if you
personally describe it, but I wrote it down in my notes about how neoconservatism is almost
like a species and it kind of evolved over the last 20 years in a way? So I think what you're
talking about how there's a shift to Hillary, and, but I mean that shift is more that the
neoconservative line really became the mainstream line, whereas, you know, maybe in the early
2000s, like, there was a larger perception, yes, they were in the White House, but these people
are also crazy, whereas now is kind of like the mainstream, which is quite scary. Which is
something I think we'll talk about in a little bit. But kind of what I was talking about a bit
before what I referenced was that I was a teenager when 9/11 happened, and it really shaped my
generation and the world that I'm living in now
But as I was watching the 3-part documentary, there were several things that I was like kind
of blown away by how these things kind of just went down the memory hole, and I want to talk
about those things because several of these things I vaguely kind of remember now but for some
odd reason I had totally forgotten about them, and they're not really within the wider
narrative of 9/11 and the war on terror.
So the first one is that how right after 9/11, several of these neocons, I think it's Don
and Fred Kagan, went on TV and radio kind of immediately after for at least a 24-hour 48-hour
period after 9/11 and basically blamed Palestinians for the attack, and were basically outright
calling for the U.S. to attack Palestine. And even saying that they had no evidence but we
should just go and attack them. So could you talk about what happened there, and what was the
effect there? Everyone kind of forgets about this but what happened there, and what do you
think the effect of that was?
RM: You just opened up a really big can of worms with that question. Well, to fully answer
that it would require a totally separate interview, but I'll do my best to answer it in this
short time that we have. What you're describing is, what I would say, is the neocons flipping
up and revealing too much of an early iteration of their script, than the rest of the consensus
was ready to reveal or get on board with. And perhaps, even, they jumped ahead with something
that the rest of the neocons already decided, we can't go there. Because, and this is important
to know, that Don Kagan is one of the only three authors credited as writing Rebuilding
America's Defenses, the infamous paper that PNAC released that says we need a new Pearl Harbor,
a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.
Don Kagan is someone who just, mostly an obscure figure in this, but I'd like to believe
that if he was saying that on the radio within 24 hours of 9/11, that it was something being
heavily discussed within that community behind the scenes. And h e and his son Fred Kagan are
two of the most intellectual, influential neoconservatives in DC. Fred Kagan is behind the Iraq
surge, he is also behind the Afghanistan s urge for Obama, directly working under David
Petraeus. So these are not just like random neocons. It's important to stress that they are
some of the most influential neocon brain-trust type people in DC even though they're so
relatively obscure They're not household names.
So to hear both of them saying that we need to clean out Palestine with the U.S. Delta Force
raids and the full panoply of U.S. military tools and arsenal, it's a very shocking thing to
hear. Even though I've long believed that neocons are some of the most evil people on the
planet, that was even surprising for me to hear. That they went ahead and openly said that the
U.S. military should do that, and actually, in their broadcast they make it clear that they
don't even care who's behind 9/11. Which is strange. They say that if we run around tracing the
actual perpetrators, we're just going to be wasting our time and we won't get anywhere. So what
they are saying is that we should just go attack all these countries anyways because even if
they're behind it or not, they hate us and want to kill us.
And Palestine was one of their primary targets to retaliate against in response to 9/11. Now
that's very strange when you look at the day of 9/11, and I've actually done a podcast on this,
I call it the Palestinian Frame-up, on 9/11, there were four separate incidences that were run
throughout U.S. media throughout the day of 9/11 that were attempting to blame Palestinians for
the attacks before Bin Laden became the primary culprit that the U.S. media latched on to. So I
find that very strange.
And I'm not going to try to explain it here during this interview, but you can look into
that. It's all documented. The news media played footage of Palestinians allegedly celebrating
the attacks in the middle of a national emergency at 12 p.m. while thousands of people were
still missing during the World Trade Center attacks. So this is the kind of stuff that U.S.
media was doing.
So it's very interesting for me to see neocons actually piggy-backing on that and saying we
should attack Palestine. And that's a rare thing, I think, to find neocons slipping up that
badly. And I guess I find that clip particularly fascinating because it's really one of the
only ones like that out there, and to my knowledge, I'm the first one to find it by combing
through all these archives. I've never heard of it before, never even heard of any neocon s
saying that before on record.
And then also something else interesting Don Kagan brings up in the recording, and maybe you
were going to mention this next, but I'll just say it because it's so weird, as he says what
would have happened, and keep in mind this is 9/12-01, one day after 9/11. He says, what would
have happened if the terrorists had Anthrax on that plane?
GR: Right. Yeah.
RM: And on October 5, weaponized anthrax was sent through the U.S. mail. While the Bush
Administration was already inoculated with Cipro. the antibiotic taken to prevent Anthrax
infection. So there's a lot of interesting and very scary questions that are raised just by
that single clip. and I'm to this day it's still a mystery to me.
GR: That was Part 1 of the Global Research News Hour special with Robbie Martin on his
documentary series, A Very Heavy Agenda that explores the rise and continued influence of the
neoconservatives. Part 2 will air next week where we will explore the anthrax attacks, the role
of Vice in spreading U.S. propaganda. You can buy or stream A Very Heavy Agenda at
averyheavyagenda.com. Music for this special provided by Fluorescent Grey, AKA Robbie Martin.
For the Global Research News Hour, I'm Scott Price.
-end of transcript-
Global Research News Hour Summer 2018 Series Part 5
Looks like "My way or the highway diplomacy" is the only one Trump masters in his long life.
Trump tries fully leverage the US global power before it dissipates ...
Notable quotes:
"... The track record is not encouraging. By constantly expanding its demands, the United States may have given the impression that its negotiations are not in good faith, and that rather than trying to reach a diplomatic resolution, it is simply trying to punish the target. ..."
"... The most hawkish sanctions advocates aren't interested in using sanctions to resolve conflicts. Many Iran hawks advocated piling on additional sanctions against Iran both before and after Trump's decision to renege on the JCPOA, and they insisted on making demands that Iran couldn't possibly accept. Their goal was never to "fix" the deal or find a diplomatic solution to other issues, but to create a pretext for punishing Iran for "refusing" the demands that had been designed to be rejected. Pompeo's list of demands has the same purpose. ..."
warn that
the Trump administration's overuse of sanctions is eroding whatever effectiveness they might have:
The track record is not encouraging. By constantly expanding its demands, the United States may have given the impression
that its negotiations are not in good faith, and that rather than trying to reach a diplomatic resolution, it is simply trying
to punish the target. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's 12 points for resetting relations with Tehran tied so many goals to
each sanction program so as to render such measures useless as conflict-resolution tools.
The most hawkish sanctions advocates aren't interested in using sanctions to resolve conflicts. Many Iran hawks advocated
piling on additional sanctions against Iran both before and after Trump's decision to renege on the JCPOA, and they insisted on making
demands that Iran couldn't possibly accept. Their goal was never to "fix" the deal or find a diplomatic solution to other issues,
but to create a pretext for punishing Iran for "refusing" the demands that had been designed to be rejected. Pompeo's list of demands
has the same purpose.
Opponents of the nuclear deal hated the JCPOA because it worked and removed the main excuse for punishing and isolating Iran,
so as far as they're concerned punishment is the reason for the sanctions. That is why there is nothing Iran can do short of surrender
to get them lifted, and that is why Iran has no incentive to deal with the Trump administration. Iran sees the reimposition of sanctions
as entirely incompatible with dialogue, and they are right to do so. Iran hawks have been pushing for more sanctions on Iran for
the purpose of sabotaging any further engagement, and Trump has given them exactly what they wanted. Far from trying to reach a diplomatic
resolution of any outstanding issues, Iran hawks are determined to make that impossible. They want to maintain the illusion that
the U.S. is still open to talking while doing everything possible to make negotiations politically radioactive for the other side.
Iranian leaders aren't falling for it, and neither should we.
"... "We could not prevent the slaughter of the Serbs by the Croatians, including elderly people and children " – UNPROFOR French Lieutenant-General Jean Cot ..."
"... " The decision to launch Operation Storm is not controversial; what is controversial, however, is 'the successful effort' of some Croatian officials headed by President Franjo Tudjman to 'exploit the circumstances' and implement the plan to drive Serbs out of Krajina ." -- ICTY prosecutor Alain Tieger ..."
"... Just remember that at that time, US government offered $5 million reward for the capture of war criminal Ante Gotovina, making him the ICTY most wanted man. He was at that time sheltered by Croatian government, and through the notorious Vatican' "Rat Channels", that were used at the end of WWII to facilitate the escape of Nazis, he was hidden (among the other Croatian war criminals) in a Catholic monastery, to be smuggled to Tenerife, where he was eventually captured by the Spanish police, in 2005. ..."
"... " It is important that these [Serb] civilians start moving and then the army will follow them, and when the columns start moving, they will have a psychological effect on each other. That means we provide them with an exit, while on the other hand we feign (pretend) to guarantee civilian human rights and the like " -- ..."
"... Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, during War Council meeting in July 1995 ..."
"... "American concern is that if General Gotovina is arrested he may carry out a threat to disclose previously unknown extent of US covert involvement in the Krajina offensive " ..."
23 Years Ago the US Backed a Brutal Croatian Ethnic Cleansing of SerbsMiodrag Novakovic (
FBReporter ) Sat, Aug
4, 2018 | 4,303
445 If there was a
nation that could safely conclude from its own historical experience that "Crime Pays", than it
must be the newest EU member, Croatia. In the modern history this tiny Catholic nation
committed one of the most horrific genocides in WWII over Serbian Orthodox Christian population
residing in Croatia and Bosnia, murdering at least one million people; and recently in 1995,
Croatia conducted (under US supervision) the biggest and permanent ethnic cleansing "military
operation" against its (again) Serbian population, expelling over 200,000 of them in just three
days (the real number of ethnically cleansed Serbs from Croatia during the wars in 90ies, is at
least twice larger)- unofficially becoming the most ethnic cleanse European state.
If you believe, that Croats "en masse", would be ashamed of such reputation, then you are
dead wrong. Actually most of them are very proud, and for the last 23 years they are
celebrating it very loudly, and doing everything in their power to prevent (after being
pressured by the international community) the return of hundreds of thousands of Serbs to their
ancient land, and to avoid returning of their stolen property, mostly (real estates, farm
lands, etc.).
"We could not prevent the slaughter of the Serbs by the Croatians, including elderly
people and children " – UNPROFOR French Lieutenant-General Jean Cot
Elderly Krajina' resident murdered in his home by Croatian soldiers. His guilt- He was a
Serb
WHEN WESTERN "DEMOCRACIES" ORCHESTRATE ETHNIC CLEANSINGS
Of course, if would be unreasonable, for this evident and well documented war crimes, and
crimes against humanity, to blame only Croats. If their hands are soaked in the blood, of
innocent Serbian civilians, up to their arms, then the hands of their Western sponsors
(namely USA and Germany) are soaked in the blood at least up to their elbows. Simply Croats
would never get away with "such perfect crime", if they were not backed, in every possible
way, by their American and German sponsors.
This week will mark 22 years, since on August 4th 1995, Croatia lunched so called
military-police operation, named Storm, against Serb' held and controlled Krajina region.
Croats backed by US military-logistic & air support, CIA intelligence drone
reconnaissance, and open political support from Washington, completed their "operation" in
just three days. On August 7th they declared "victory".
Their "victory resulted": in a complete ethnic cleansing of Krajina region, and a murder
of at least 2,000 Serbs; vast majority of them were defenseless civilians. Official sources
claim that: 1,192 Serbian civilians were killed or missing, and around 200,000 thousands
(entire Krajina population) were expelled from their ancient land. Their property was
destroyed, looted and stolen, by the Croatian "soldiers" (who performed this "operation"
under direct Washington' supervision, while UNPROFOR peacekeepers assigned for the protection
of UN designated "Krajina Safe Zone" just stood by, doing almost nothing to prevent the
slaughter).
Croatian "soldiers" in "liberated Krajina"
IMPERATIVE WAS TO ESTABLISH US MILITARY
PRESENCE IN YUGOSLAVIA
To understand this US complicity, and its direct military involvement, in such horrendous
atrocity against one ethnic group, in one, of many, civil wars, which erupted, when former
Socialist Yugoslavia "fell apart", again with covert or overt Western support, we have to
look here at the wider picture-
When the Clinton' government, together with their major European allies, decided in 90ies,
that the best American interest in the Balkans will be to back armed rebellion of the
separatist administrative regions in Western Yugoslavia, and openly support the breakup of,
internationally recognized, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, while it was still the UN member,
they consciously opened the Pandora box.
They openly sided politically & militarily with Slovenian and Croatian Catholics from
the Western Yugoslavian Republics, and with Islamic fundamentalists from Bosnia, in their
civil and religious wars against Orthodox Christian Serbs living outside, then administrative
Republic of Serbia (and later in 1999, US & NATO started another illegal war against
Serbia, on behalf of Islamic Albanian separatists from Kosovo, ultimately "stealing" this
Southern Serbian province).
Croatian and Bosnian Serbs, who simply wanted to remain in their Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, and not to be "taken away" by Catholic and Islamic separatists, and not to be
stripped of their constitutional rights, under existing Yugoslavian laws, naturally rebelled
against such illegal and violent Yugoslavian outcome, and they subsequently declared own
autonomy within the Yugoslavian separatist' regions.
And then all hell broke loose
The historical roots of such American approach, could be found in the Western (mainly
British and American) support of "Anti-Stalin" communist leader of post-WWII Yugoslavia
Marshal Josip Broz Tito (who was Croat himself), who provided Western leaders with assurances
that he will, not only keep Yugoslavia outside the Soviet bloc, but he would align militarily
his country with NATO alliance as well; and later in Reagan' presidential directive NSDD133,
from 1984, which outlined US strategic interest to expand its military presence to
Yugoslavia.
Croatian and US military leadership celebrating "joint operation"- the biggest ethnic
cleansing in Europe since WWII
THEY ARE KILLING "LITTLE RUSSIANS" TOO, AREN'T THEY
?
The "only" obstacle to this US (read NATO) expansionist policy in the former Yugoslavia,
was Serbian (majority) population, which was, due to its traditional friendship with Russia,
considered as "problematic" and had to be decimated, "broken into pieces", and Republic of
Serbia to be disabled as an independent state, during so called "spontaneous" civil wars in
90s.
I am not trying here to state that in the Western society exist some unexplained hatred
against Serbs (in same time, there is a lots of prejudice, and media & Hollywood bias,
picturing Serbs primarily as "bad guys"), actually I believe that people and their
politicians in the West could not care less about Serbs (Serbians), and most of them have no
clue where to find Serbia on the geographic map. But in same time, as we can observe these
days in the West, particularly in United States, there is a lot of unfounded and unreasonable
hatred for the Russians
And if we are familiar with the popular saying among Western diplomats, that "Serbs are
Little Russians", then is not difficult to put two and two together, and understand their
desire to "disable" any Russian-friendly nation in the region.
As long as you are a Serb, regardless of your age, for Croats and their US sponsors, you
are a "fair game"
CROATIAN WAR CRIMES AGAINST SERBS WERE SO EVIDENT, AND ON SUCH LARGE
SCALE, THAT WESTERN CONTROLLED ICTY HAD NO CHOICE, BUT TO SENTENCE CROATIAN LEADERSHIP
Western controlled ICTY (International Crime Tribunal for Yugoslavia) reluctantly brought
charges for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, against (war time) ultra-nationalistic Croatian
leadership and group of its generals. But in the wake of overwhelming evidence and
international outcry, they had little choice.
In 2001 ICTY brought charges for war crimes against Croatian president general Franjo
Tudjman (who will be remembered for publically saying "that he was very proud that his wife
was neither Jew or Serb"), Croatian defence minister Gojko Susak (prior to war- open Neo-Nazi
ideologist), and two other former (renegade) Yugoslav Army generals, (promoted into supreme
commanders of Croatian army) Janko Bobetko and Zvonimir Cermenko. Their indictment was
actually travesty of justice, because at the time they were charged, all of them (with
exception of General Janko Bobetko), were already dead (by natural cause). General Bobetko
died one year after indictment, before he could be delivered to ICTY.
" The decision to launch Operation Storm is not controversial; what is
controversial, however, is 'the successful effort' of some Croatian officials headed by
President Franjo Tudjman to 'exploit the circumstances' and implement the plan to drive
Serbs out of Krajina ." -- ICTY prosecutor Alain Tieger
When the indictment of Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, for
their war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Croatian Serbs in Krajina, during "operation" Storm
in 1995, was announced in 2008- Serbs who survived US sponsored pogrom and ethnic cleansing,
were naively hoping that at last some justice will be served.
Even, with such unprecedented obstruction of ICTY by Croatian government, Catholic Church
and wider Croatian society, who concealed and destroyed many war documents, facilitated
escape and concealment of indicted Croatian war criminals, and intimidated not only victims
and witnesses, but ICTY leadership as well- the trial of those three Croatian generals came
to conclusion in 2011, and after the overwhelming evidence (the evidence, Croats were not
able to conceal or destroy), Gotovina was sentenced to 24 years, Markac to 18 years, while
Cermak was acquitted.
Serbian victims hoped that at the end at least some justice was served- but they were
wrong again. There is a Serbian saying: "A crow doesn't pick out another crow's eyes."-
In 2012, ICTY appeal chamber overturned the decision of lower chamber, and unconditionally
acquitted Croatian war criminals Gotovina and Markac for all crimes. Entire Croatia and its
diaspora erupted in joy and massive celebration.
Their historical experience that Crime Pays have been proven yet again
Serbian children getting starved to death and slaughtered by knife in a first-ever death
camp for children and infants established by Croats in Jastrebarsko, Sisak, Stara
Gradiska, Independent State of Croatia in WW2
Even, after the ICTY had proved (from the audio and written transcript of Croatian war
leadership meeting in July 1995) – that there was very credible evidence of existence
of a joint criminal enterprise, with intent to forcibly remove ethnic Serbs from Croatia, and
that civilian areas in Krajina, including the subsequent civilian refugee columns, were
indiscriminately shelled by Croatian artillery, and bombed & machine gunned by Croatian
air-force – that did not prevent the real ICTY masters to pervert the course of
justice.
One would wander who and what was behind such obvious and embarrassing justice travesty,
demonstrated in this example. What had forced American controllers of ICTY to change their
mind, and influence the tribunal to free of any charges, these obvious and heavy documented,
war criminals?
Just remember that at that time, US government offered $5 million reward for the
capture of war criminal Ante Gotovina, making him the ICTY most wanted man. He was at that
time sheltered by Croatian government, and through the notorious Vatican' "Rat Channels",
that were used at the end of WWII to facilitate the escape of Nazis, he was hidden (among
the other Croatian war criminals) in a Catholic monastery, to be smuggled to Tenerife,
where he was eventually captured by the Spanish police, in 2005.
Serbian civilians fleeing US/CRO joint operation "Storm" were bombed, machine-gunned, and
ran by Croatian tanks, mercilessly- thousands of innocent people just
perished
INTERNATIONAL "POST-MORTEM" RESPONSE
It is worth to mention accusations and reactions, to such perversion of justice by ICTY,
from some highest international bodies and public persons, at that time-
US Security Council, on August 10th 1995 issued "post-mortem" (when ethnic cleansing of
Serbs was already completed) resolution #1009, demanding from Croatia to halt military
operation, and condemning targeting of UN peacekeepers (during the operation Storm, Croats
had killed three UN soldiers) – but UNSC failed to request a withdrawal of the Croatian
forces, and de-facto accepted new "ethnically cleanse" reality!?
The only UN official, who was fully aware of the horrific aspect of this US sponsored
"operation", and who was trying to prevent further Croatian atrocities against Serbian
population, was, at that time, the Head of UN mission in Yugoslavia, Thorvald Stoltenberg,
who urged UN Secretary Yasushi Akashi to request NATO strikes against Croatian army, to
prevent further atrocities against civilians.
Of course, that never happened, especially if we know that Croatian operation Storm, was
directly supervised by the retired US generals (via Pentagon military contractor MPRI), while
US Air Force conducted air raids against Serbian Air Defense systems in Krajina, and CIA
officers operated surveillance drones, which provided intelligence for advancing Croatian
troops, from two Croatian bases in Adriatic.
Even, EU negotiator Carl Bildt, and US ambassador in Croatia Peter Galbraith, publically
condemned Croatian atrocities in Krajina- but they too stayed short of requesting some
concrete and punitive measures.
" It is important that these [Serb] civilians start moving and then the army will
follow them, and when the columns start moving, they will have a psychological effect on
each other. That means we provide them with an exit, while on the other hand we feign
(pretend) to guarantee civilian human rights and the like " --Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, during War Council meeting in July 1995
The only ones from UN troops who tried to prevent Croatian atrocities, and in couple
occasions fought bravely against bloody-thirsty Croatian soldiers, where Canadian
peacekeepers from "Patricia Company", but they too, where upon return to Canada, silenced and
their experience never got real media traction. Their testimony simply did not fit with the
Western agenda, that Serbs are the only bad guys
THE REAL ATROCIOUS OUTCOME OF THE
BIGGEST ETHNIC CLEANSING IN POST-WWII EUROPE IS MUCH HIGHER, THEN THE OFFICIAL FIGURES
STATE
While ICTY prosecutors accepted the fact that some 200,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed
in just couple of days from Krajina region, they "lowered" the number of murdered Serbian
civilians to 324. Serbian sources on the ground documented 1,192 dead or missing civilians,
while Croatian Helsinki Committee documented 677 killed.
Human Rights Watch documented at least 5,000 Serbian homes razed to the ground by Croatian
forces, and HRW accused Croats for summary executions of elderly and disabled Serbs, who
stayed behind due to inability or unwillingness to leave their homes. We can only imagine if
the entire defenseless Serbian civilian population stayed behind, and faced bloody-thirsty
Croatian soldiers- in that case we would be talking here about a full scale genocide, not
"just" the ethnic cleansing!?
To better understand what kind of "Croatian justice" were facing defenseless Serbian
civilians, who decided not to leave their homes during operation Storm, here is one excerpt
from Wikipedia, describing one of many of Croatian "post-Storm" atrocities against innocent
civilians-
"The Varivode massacre was a mass killing that occurred on 28 September 1995 in the
village of Varivode , Croatia during the Croatian War of Independence . According to United
Nations officials, soldiers of the Croatian Army (HV) and Croatian police killed nine
Croatian Serb villagers, all of whom were between the ages of 60 and 85. [4] After
the war, six former Croatian soldiers were tried for committing crimes in the village, but
were all eventually released due to lack of evidence On the night of 28 September 1995,
Croatian soldiers entered the village of Varivode and killed nine elderly Serb villagers.
The civilians that were killed were Jovan Berić, Marko Berić, Milka Berić,
Radivoje Berić, Marija Berić, Dušan Dukić, Jovo Berić,
Špiro Berić and Mirko Pokrajac. After the executions occurred, the bodies were
buried in a cemetery near the village without the knowledge of the families of the victims.
[4] After the
massacre, Croatian authorities denied reports of widespread atrocities targeting Serbs and
said that they were propaganda. Later, the government blamed the atrocities on
uncontrollable elements within the Croatian Army and Croatian police. [25]
Christiane Amanpour 's report from October 1995 said that the "United Nations believes 12
Serb civilians were massacred." [25] In the
first one hundred days following Operation Storm, at least 150 Serb civilians were
summarily executed, and many hundreds disappeared as part of a widespread campaign of
revenge against Croatia's Serb minority. [26] The bodies of the
killed Serbs were never exhumed, autopsies were never performed and much of the evidence
that could have been used against the perpetrators of the crime was discarded. [27]
Despite this, six Croatian soldiers were tried for committing crimes in the village. The
soldiers were Ivan Jakovljević, Peri Perković, Neđeljko Mijić, Zlatko
Ladović, Ivica Petrić and Nikola Rašić. However, in 2002 they were
all released due to the lack of evidence against them. [27] In
July 2012, the Supreme Court of Croatia ruled that the Republic of Croatia was responsible
for the deaths of the nine Serb villagers who were killed in Varivode. The Supreme Court
declared, "two months after the conclusion of Operation Storm, an act of terrorism was
committed against the Serb inhabitants of Varivode for the purpose of causing fear,
hopelessness and to spread feelings of personal insecurity among the citizens." [35] –
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varivode_massacre
By 2012, Croatian government received 6,390 reports about committed war crimes against
Serbian civilians, during and after operation Storm, but did little or nothing to bring the
perpetrators to justice.
To make things worse and more humiliating for surviving Krajina Serbs, Croatian government
is still refusing to return (or reimburse) 140,000 Serbian homes, stolen from ethnic Serbs.
795 Serbs, presumed dead, are still missing, 1,604 bodies were retrieved- according to NGO
"Veritas".
Croats were attacking Krajina using the strategy of "Scorched Earth", with unconditional
US support
DID THE CROATS SUCCESSFULLY BLACKMAIL U.S. GOVERNMENT INTO SUBMISSION,
FORCING THEM TO OVERTURN THE INITIAL ICTY RULING!?
Defense ministers celebrating the joint outcome of the biggest ethnic cleansing in Europe
since WWII- Left: US William Perry, Right: CRO Gojkos Susak
The initial ICTY ruling in 2011, which sentenced Croatian generals Gotovina and Markac to
long term imprisonment, was expected, and very well supported by the "conclusive evidence".
Even, according to many international experts, this sentencing was not enough tough, and did
not cover the full scale of war crimes and atrocities, committed by Croatian political and
military leadership, during and in the aftermath of operation Storm. Still, many Serbian
victims were satisfied that they finally achieved at least some justice
So, when in November 2012 ICTY appeal chamber ruled that Croatian generals are innocent of
all charges and free to go, the news came to many as a complete shock, and reaffirmed them in
a belief that ICTY tribunal is just another NATO war tool, in their efforts to punish and
humiliate, not only the Serbian government, but the numerous Serbian victims of civil wars in
90ies, whose executors were never (and probably never will be) brought to justice.
The ruling was very controversial, not only because it ignored all the hard evidence,
including the forensics and the testimony of the international observers, but because the
formal excuse for the liberating judgment was – that in the prosecutor documents were
missing the Croatian artillery log books, that according to the Appeal chamber, were the only
document that would prove the Croatian intent to drive Serbian population from Krajina. The
same books were previously repeatedly requested by the ICTY prosecutors, and Croatia did not
even deny its existence, but simply refused to cooperate with ICTY and hand them over.
Finally, when in 2008 Croatia was warned by European leaders that non-cooperation with ICTY
might affect the prospect of its EU membership – somebody from the Croatian leadership
simply destroyed these books, and they informed Hague tribunal that Artillery logs no longer
exist. Even such provocative and blunt obstruction of the international justice by the
Croatian government, did not result in any repercussions for them, and practically they were
forgiven for their deeds. Crime pays – doesn't it?
Anyway, ICTY tribunal had plenty of other evidence, proving the intentional destruction of
Serbian civilian infrastructure was very well documented by the international observers, and
in April 2011 ICTY had no choice but to sentence general Gotovina to 24 years, and general
Markac to 18 years.
Another fact that indicates that Appeal chamber' ruling was the political one, and result
of some external interference was its split decision – the chamber ruled by the
majority decision 3 – 2, implying that there were serious doubts and disagreements, by
at least two of the Appeal chamber judges.
"American concern is that if General Gotovina is arrested he may carry out a threat
to disclose previously unknown extent of US covert involvement in the Krajina offensive
"– London Times, June 14th, 2003.
Gotovina was arrested, but only shortly, until Croatian blackmail convinced their US
masters, to pull strings in ICTY, and free him unconditionally
CROATIAN OFFICIALS
PROVIDED A PLENTY OF EVIDENCE THAT U.S. GOVERNMENT WAS INVOLVED IN "STORM" MILITARILY, AND
HAD A FULL CONTROL OVER WAR (CRIMES) ACTIVITIES THAT TOOK PLACE ON THE GROUND
As soon the ICTY indictments against Croatian leaders were announced in 2001, the Croatian
government, NGOs, public, and very well organized and connected diaspora, displayed anger and
disagreement, promising that they will do everything in their power to obstruct ICTY
investigations and prevent trials against their "national heroes". When in 2011, the first
instance judgment by ICTY was issued and Croatian generals were sentenced to long term
imprisonment, the Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and President Ivo Josipovic publicly
expressed their shock and rejection of the ruling, promising to help to overturn the
judgment, on appeal!?
And they started their campaign – of obstruction of justice, of abetting the accused
war criminals, of the intimidation, and finally, of the blackmail, of ICTY and US officials
–
On July 4th, 2002, NGO associated with Croatian government "Croatian World Congress-
CWC" filed complaint with ICTY citing what proofs, about US direct involvement in ethnic
cleansing of Krajina, they have:
" US officials aided General Gotovina and the Croatian army in operation Storm by
violating UN arms embargo and allowing Croatia to obtain weapons US officials established a
CIA base inside General Gotovina' military base, which provided the US officials with
real-time video footage of events transpiring on the ground during Operation Storm (and
thus imputing to them knowledge of events on the ground ), but also from which they could
provide such intelligence data to General Gotovina to assist him in conducting Operation
Storm . If General Gotovina carried out pre-planed campaign to deport 150,000 to 200,000
Croatian Serbian civilians, the CIA base was not only used to provide knowledge to US
officials of such plan and course of conduct on the part of General Gotovina , but was also
used to assist General Gotovina in achieving the goals of his alleged plan . The US
official gave the green light for the Operation and provided diplomatic and political
support for it . The US officials at all times had the ability to halt the military
operations . Accordingly, the US officials named in the complaint should be indicted for
having aided and abetted General Gotovina. "
Ethnic cleansing in Krajina was the joint US/CRO criminal enterprise History will be the
judge
If you read carefully through this CWC statement (threat), they are not even trying to
deny Gotovina' war crimes, they are just implying bluntly, that if their lovely General was
sentenced, they would gladly provide ICTY with the evidence of Croatian-American "Joint
criminal enterprise to forcibly remove the Serb population from Croatia ", as it states the
ICTY indictment from 2001, of course omitting the US participation (which was the very secret
deal, at least until Croatian officials started "mouthing" their "American friends").
Croatian complaint to ICTY specifically named the highest US officials, alleging that
they, along General Gotovina, committed too war crimes against Serbian population:
"On behalf of the Croatian World Congress, a non-governmental organization that is a
member of the United Nations with advisory status, you are hereby notified pursuant to
Article 18(1) of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia of the existence of information concerning serious violations of international
humanitarian law (hereinafter "IHL"), namely that officials of the United States of
America, including but not limited to William Jefferson Clinton , Anthony Lake , Samuel
Berger , Richard Holbrooke , Peter Galbraith and/or George J. Tenet (hereinafter
collectively referred to as "U.S. officials"), aided and abetted Croatian General Ante
Gotovina , who was indicted by your office on 8 June 2001."
War Criminals at work together- Croatian general Kresimir Cosic and US supreme commander
general Wesley Clark
We are not going here to present detailed evidence of US crimes, committed during the
operation Storm. Of course, the Croatian war crimes on the ground were very brutal,
systematic and savage, they did "the physical work", but from the evidence provided by
numerous Croatian officials and their organizations, it is very obvious, that operation Storm
would never happen, or if happened never would be successful, without US military support and
direct supervision, or without US approval.
Just to give you "a taste" what kind of American support Croats were enjoying during their
atrocious operation against innocent Serbian civilians, will present you with some documented
facts:
The Green Light for the operation came a couple days prior the assault- President Clinton
passed the order directly to US military attaché in Zagreb Colonel Richard Herrick;
Herrick passed order to Croatian head of military intelligence Markica Rebic (the others
involved directly were defense minister Gojko Susak, Miro Tudjman and Miro Medimurac, heads
of Secret Service and Intelligence Service). US masters were so pleased with Rebic' service,
that they rewarded him with Meritorious Service Medal, delivered to him by Ambassador
Galbraith in 1996. The other people from USG involved in this joint criminal enterprise with
Croats, in addition to Clinton, were Anthony Lake and William Perry. US masters imposed the
time limit on operation Storm- it had to be completed in 5 days.
Long before the Storm, in 1992 USG with Croatian approval established CIA reconnaissance
base on island of Brac, from where CIA operators were flying unmanned aircraft spying on
Serbian positions in Krajina, Bosnia and part of Serbia itself. USG requested that this
cooperation to be held a top secret, so outsiders don't find that US is taking sides in the
Balkans' civil wars. But it did not stay for too long the top secret. On January 1st, 1994,
Croatian state security apprehended a spy on the base perimeter. They delivered him right
away to General Gotovina, to find out it was their German ally, precisely it was German
military attaché Hans Schwan.
This incident alerted USG, which wanted to conceal any covert activities on behalf of CG,
so they promptly removed CIA base to new secret location, in Sepurina, near city of Zadar.
This new location was covered by three security layers, to ensure the full secrecy. From new
base CIA started immediately collecting photographic and video evidence of Serbian activities
in Krajina and Bosnia, and passing them to Croats, and to Pentagon. There was 24 hours, 6
member intelligence crew, present on site- consisting of three CIA and three Croatian
military officers.
Croatian military base Sepurine, near Zadar, from which CIA operated drones, aiding
operation Storm, and providing live video feed of "military activities" on the ground to
Pentagon
"STORM" WASN'T THE FIRST ETHNIC CLEANSING, UNDERTAKEN BY
CROATIA AND US, AS A JOINT CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE:
It is interesting that disgruntled (by ICTY indictment) Croatian Officials and Croatian
World Congress body, in their complaint to ICTY, are providing the evidence about USG
intelligence and logistical support for another Croatian genocidal operation, named Flash,
that took place in Western Slavonia, between May 1st and 3rd, 1995, which resulted in
another complete ethnic cleansing of Serbian population- prior to the operation this area
was populated by 29,000 Serbs, after Flash, only 1,500 remained.
The number of killed civilians is unknown because Croats prevented UNPROFOR troops from
accessing the area, until they did "the sanitation" (read: removing the evidence of their
crimes, because entire Serbian refugee columns were massacred and overran by Croatian
tanks). Estimates of killed civilians rage between one hundred to couple thousands. Another
example of "the successful US-CRO joint criminal enterprise"?
The interesting details, revealed here by Croatian sources, is- that US military
attaché Herrick was attached to the Croatian mobile military command, during the
genocidal operation Flash, supervising it directly- and the head of CIA branch in Zagreb
Marc Kelton was directly coordinating expulsion of Slavonia' Serbs, with Croatian president
Tudjman son Miro.
In the eve of the attack on Krajina, on August 4th 1995, between midnight and 4 a.m.
Croatian forces were ordered to turn off all telecommunication devices, to unable US air
force to electronically disable all Serbian communications.
The outcome of Joint US/CRO "justice"
According to NATO spokesman Jim Mitchell in Aviano, Italy, two US military planes EA-6B
Prowlers were dispatched to Krajina air space. USAF planes, on the top of jamming Serbian
telecommunications, destroyed the airport Udbine, and Radar and Serbian Air Defense near
Knin, in order to prevent any Serbian air support or defence, against invading Croatian
forces.
Here, US military attaché Herrick was replaced by the Colonel John Sadler, who was
embedded with Gotovina command unit, directly supervising operation Storm. Pentagon was also
directly monitoring the operation via live video feed.
Shortly after the biggest joint (US/CRO) ethnic cleansing in Europe was completed, US head
of DIA General Colonel Patrick Hughes visited Croatia to coordinate further military actions
against Serbs in Bosnia and if necessary in Republic of Serbia
Hitler, it has been reported, in 'Secret History of the Twentieth Century' by
Herbert Dorsey, commended the USA for having 'gunned down the millions of Redskins to
a few hundred thousand.' This way of 'winning the West' type-casts American as
imperialist and certainly sympathetic with much we associated with fascism. America
lead the world in race-based lawmaking to safeguard the historically white character
of the country. Including immigration legislation to guarantee the predominance of
northern Europe and shut the doors on Jews, Italians, Asians and others. Nazi
commentators called this keeping out the 'undesirables.' The eugenics movement took
root in the United States in the early 1900's.
This article concerns the largest ethnic cleansing in Balkans that was committed
by Croatia with US operational support. The US committed multiple war crimes in the
Balkans in the 1990's.
After the 1990's the US has clearly emerged the fascist rogue state of the 21st
century.
Last week, US State Department officials met with Taliban leaders in
Qatar. At the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not invited. The
officials discussed ceasefires and an end to the war. Meanwhile, the US inspector general
charged with monitoring US spending on Afghanistan reconstruction has reported that since
2008, the US has completely wasted at the least $15.5 billion. He believes that's just the
tip of the iceberg, though. Will President Trump do the smart thing and negotiate peace and
leave? Tune in to today's Ron Paul Liberty Report:
"... "My film itself is essentially was tracking the neocon influence and how the neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that constructed the blueprints for the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality." ..."
"... – Robbie Martin, from this week's program. ..."
"My film itself is essentially was tracking the neocon influence and how the
neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that constructed the blueprints
for the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0
mentality."
"... While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than " a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
"... So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you didn't seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours. ..."
"... You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was "deeply involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated by DNC! Everybody knows... ..."
"... Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't need a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB ..."
"... Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate by the democrats. ..."
It has been clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be
involved in 2018. It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the
Russian oligarchs.
However, Sanders had already committed the unforgivable
sin of criticizing the Democratic establishment candidate from the left. There is simply no way of coming back from that treason.
Despite his stance, Sanders has also been constantly presented as another Russian agent, with the Washington Post (11/12/17) asking
its readers, "When Russia interferes with the 2020 election on behalf of Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders, how will liberals
respond?" The message is clear: The progressive wave rising across America is and will be a consequence of Russia, not of the
failures of the system, nor of the Democrats.
It isn't just progressive politicians that are all traitors. Movements like Black Lives Matter are also traitors for Russia.
It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the Russian oligarchs.
Hey, Bernie. The American people were the ones who should have decided who won the primary, not Hillary, the DNC and the delegates.
That you are blaming Her loss on Russia instead of admitting that the American people rejected her makes you nothing more than
a democratic puppet. How embarrassing for you.
Every Black voter should abandon the DP until they apologize for their disrespect for the BLM and saying that they only started
protesting cops killing Blacks because Russia manipulated them into doing so.
Eichenwald thinks that our intelligence agencies are patriots who have spent their lives working on keeping us safe does he?
I agree with Dmitry Orlov's take on them.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as
possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on
ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially
organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on.
....
the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial,
economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest
single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your
own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself.
While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than
" a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. "
And let's not forget how many
coups
and false flag events they had a hand in creating that have cost so much misery and death.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false
flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story
is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting
this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips.
It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy
theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
The real puppets are the ones who believe in this silly story that Russia is pulling Trump's strings and that the GOP are also
Russian puppets. Good grief!
The others show that there are others out there that have seen through this propaganda crap. I'd like to see the breakdown
of Hillary supporters that believe Russia Gate and the Bernie supporters that don't. Most of the Trump supporters think it's phony
so what made Hillary's believe in something that everyone should be laughing at?
You deserve a lot of credit. Russia interfered in your favor, yet you are man enough to admit that they interfered. Thank
you Bernie!
So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you
didn't seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours.
You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was
"deeply involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated
by DNC! Everybody knows...
Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't
need a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB
Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will
fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate
by the democrats.
The democrats (and media cohorts) have become an apocolyptic death cult. The language that comes from them is infused with
the language of conspiracies, violence, treason, aggression and demonization.
And here is the thing, Bernie to survive electorally will have to become a cult member. Effectively he will have to be pro-war
with Russia. He will be giving from the the Left supposed support for aggressive action andmilitarism toward Russia.
I fear that if a democrat becomes president in 2020 (it won't be Bernie), is elected president that in the year of the midterms
in 2022, the US will start a real war with Russia which has a highly likehood of going nuclear.
"... -- William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), from memory ..."
"... @thanatokephaloides ..."
"... Finally there's the meeting that Assange's lawyer set up with congress for him to testify to congress and tell them where he got the DNC emails that showed how they rigged the primary. Comey and Schaffer shot that down because it would have killed Russia Gate. Dead and buried and the country could move on. ..."
"... In this case, it is NOT a matter of opinion. It is a matter of FACT. The physical proof that we have right now tells us that the Wikileaks documents did not come from a "hack." We also have physical evidence that someone (no doubt Crowdstrike) manipulated copies of the leaked documents and embedded awkward amateurish evidence to make them look like they were taken by a "Russian" hacker. Here's how we know that: ..."
"... Assange's diplomatic trip to the US in mid-2017 to testify before Congress and prove where the documents came from was emergency-blocked by Comey and Rosenstein. As a consequence, Assange immediately released the extensive Vault 7 documents to the American people so we could forensically recognize the signature techniques that the US intelligence agencies would use to alter downloaded DNC documents and embed fake Russian "fingerprints." We have seen the physical evidence that that occurred. ..."
"... The US has no real physical evidence of a Russian hack or they would never have released the fake evidence. Yet they continue their attack to harm Russia's economy and the continue their attempts to provoke a hot war with Russia. The US motive for this has nothing to do with their fake hacking narrative; it is about crippling Russia (and China) to forestall the rapid rise of Eurasia, which is stripping the Neocons and war-profiteering corporations of their dream for the US to achieve total domination over all other nations. The Entitled Elite want their New American Century back! Their Empire was supposed to rule the world.... ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than " a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
"... third run ..."
"... ~~Author Unknown ..."
"... ~~Martin Luther King Jr. ..."
"... @Unabashed Liberal ..."
"... @Unabashed Liberal ..."
"... ~~Martin Luther King Jr. ..."
"... Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate by the democrats. ..."
Russiagate may technically be about Trump, but in fact most of the "traitors" and Putin Puppets are progressives on the left.
Russiagate officially started in 2015 long before
the DNC hack and the Democratic primaries.
Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin
Russiagate never was actually about Russia. It's the Democrats' version of Obama's birth certificate. As
Caitlin Johnstone puts it, Russiagate is 9/11 minus 9/11.
TWIT:
Kurt Eichenwald
@kurteichenwald
Bottom line: You either support the patriots in our intelligence community and law enforcement who work endlessly for our
national security, and all of the intelligence agencies of our allies, or you support Putin.
You're either a patriot, a traitor or an idiot. Choose.
10:51 AM-16 Jul 2018
In reality, Russiagate started with Ralph Nader and the
2000 election .
They said a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush. You have a moral duty to vote for the Democrat and to be pragmatic. Your Naderite
purity came at the expense of the poor. Only affluent selfish white guys could afford this type of virtue signaling. In fact,
maybe some of these people were really Republicans in disguise. There were no Russian bots to blame just yet, but clearly some
liberals are unable to imagine good faith criticism of Democrats coming from the left.
The terms " virtue signaling", " purity pony", and of course "White Berniebro" weren't coined yet, but the the stereotype they
describe was formed in 2000. Gore lost and Nader and all his voters, in swing states or not, were vilified. They were worse than
Republicans. They were traitors. Of all the factors that caused Gore's loss, the only one that Democratic partisans really cared
about was Nader.
People that voted for Nader became responsible for the Iraq War, while Democrats who voted for Bush and the Iraq War got a free
pass. Liberals, besides their obvious double-standards when allocating responsibility, made the dubious claim that morality requires
being pragmatic in your voting. And then, as if to prove the basis of their claims to be false, they approach their target audience
in a non-pragmatic way.
The anger on open display is the opposite of pragmatic politics. They don't try to persuade people to vote for the Democrat. They
demand it. It is a moral litmus test, or rather, a judgement of one's very soul. Good people know they have to vote for the Democrat.
Bad people vote for Republicans and the very worst people of all claim to be left, but vote for Stein or maybe even voted for
Clinton, but criticized her. Democratic partisans have no interest in what you say about an issue if they perceive it as in any
way an attack or a criticism of a Democrat. If you are a third party advocate you can forget about being taken seriously on any
issue because you have already self identified as a Satanist and you need to be exorcised from the body politic. Even if you say
you support the Democrat as the lesser evil, you speak as one of the damned and deserve no mercy. Sanders played the game in 2016
exactly the way people said Nader should have played it and he and his supporters were still dismissed.
Like Nader before her, Stein is the absolute
worst traitor of all . Worse than Trump himself.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent. https://t.co/qkDUe6yADd
Maddow cast suspicion on Stein's silence over alleged Russian attempts to interfere with the election to benefit Donald Trump, who
she claimed during her own campaign would govern no differently than Hillary Clinton.
"So everybody's like, 'Wow, how come this like super, super aggressive opposition that we saw from these third-party candidates
-- how come they haven't said anything since this scandal has broken?'" Maddow said.
"I don't know, Jill -- I can't pronounce it in Russian," Maddow said, with apparent sarcasm.
Bernie Sanders, OTOH, did everything he was told he should do. He supported the Democratic establishment candidate, and believed
the Russiagate story.
It has been clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be
involved in 2018. It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the
Russian oligarchs.
However, Sanders had already committed the unforgivable
sin of criticizing the Democratic establishment candidate from the left. There is simply no way of coming back from that treason.
Despite his stance, Sanders has also been constantly presented as another Russian agent, with the Washington Post (11/12/17) asking
its readers, "When Russia interferes with the 2020 election on behalf of Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders, how will liberals
respond?" The message is clear: The progressive wave rising across America is and will be a consequence of Russia, not of the
failures of the system, nor of the Democrats.
It isn't just progressive politicians that are all traitors. Movements like Black Lives Matter are also traitors for Russia.
That's because you, Russia, funded riots in Ferguson. See 0 hour I have your connections to Trump archived via Schiller and
Scavino https://t.co/aTUDlCGkYi
If you are still confused about what is treason and what isn't, ask yourself the question: Does the issue advance the narrative
that the Democratic Party is a force for absolute good?
Oh my god: this is how deranged official Washington is. The President of the largest Dem Party think tank (funded in part by
dictators) genuinely believes Chelsea Manning's candidacy is a Kremlin plot. Conspiracy theorists thrive more in mainstream DC
than on internet fringes pic.twitter.com/e8g314iQHT
We still have the 2018 election, and then the long lead-up to the 2020 election. There is nothing to indicate that the rhetoric
won't get a lot more insane. The general indifference of the public doesn't seem to discourage the media and pundits. So how will
it likely look in Fall 2020? Probably like it looked in
1952 .
The purpose of advancing the Communist issue was not to fix the Communist problem -- it was to exploit that problem for political
and ideological advantage. That is how the Republican Party could produce its unhinged 1952 platform, which charged that the Democrats
"have shielded traitors to the Nation in high places," "work unceasingly to achieve their goal of national socialism," and "by
a long succession of vicious acts, so undermined the foundations of our Republic as to threaten its existence." (Does that kind
of talk strike you as overheated? Then you, too, are failing to take the Russia issue seriously.)
There is little to no danger for conservatives and Republicans. All of the danger is for progressives and socialists, and the
angry mob is the Democratic establishment trying to silence left-wing ideas. In comparison, the danger of the GOP to the left-wing
is trivial.
Russiagate officially started in 2015 long before the DNC hack and the Democratic primaries.
I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that people keep posting it as common knowledge and factual -- especially on this
site. Old dkos habits are hard to break, I guess. The speed at which the files were STOLEN prove it was done from within the network.
Not from Russia, or from a van parked down the street. I can only guess that the DNC can't reveal whose network account was used
to do so, because it would blow the bullshit lie of a hack out of the water.
The speed at which the files were STOLEN prove it was done from within the network. Not from Russia, or from a van parked
down the street. I can only guess that the DNC can't reveal whose network account was used to do so, because it would blow
the bullshit lie of a hack out of the water.
There was NO hack.
emphasis in original.
The term usually used by the perpetrator classes for this sort of thing is: "inside job" . And, as
with all other inside jobs, the question really is: "Who's the insider?"
"The easiest way to raise a revolutionary army is to use someone else's; especially if it belongs to your enemy." -- William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), from memory
I've seen an article debunking the "hack was a leak" story, but it makes no difference anyway. In my book, the leak/hack just
created a more informed electorate, and that's good for American democracy.
@Deja
The truth is contained in the emails, not in their journey. Remember who else is telling you that the contents of the emails is
less important than how they got there - the Democrats.
@Deja
hypothesis has problems. Don't get me wrong, I think it holds more promise than the 'hack' hypothesis. But right now, really,
we got shit for proof either way? Would honestly look forward to your proof either way, sans the critique of the essayist. Might
I suggest that you criticize the point, not the person, please? Questions remain.
- DNC leak vs hack remains unproven (servers not provided)
- one party consent is complicated. On the tape, there was 3rd party on speaker phone. Were they in one party consent jurisdiction
as well?
- How was CNN able to confirm that this tape was recorded in NY?
in it. This is the point that matters to me. Assange has stated that the emails didn't come from Russia. Craig Murray said
that he was involved with the person who got the information from the DNC computers and that there was no connection to Russia.
The CIAs Vault 7 shows how evidence on computers can be manipulated to make it seem like someone's dawg did the deed. I think
it'd be very sloppy for trained hackers to leave their own footprints on the scene don't you think?
Finally there's the meeting that Assange's lawyer set up with congress for him to testify to congress and tell them where
he got the DNC emails that showed how they rigged the primary. Comey and Schaffer shot that down because it would have killed
Russia Gate. Dead and buried and the country could move on.
It matters profoundly. Knowing the facts surrounding critical political events or social earthquakes can be
epigenetic events. Hard truths can trigger conscious evolution while we are alive and your advanced gene expressions can be
physically inherited, changing the species.
By exercising our own critical thinking and working very hard to see through narratives to the core realities in the universe
and in all things -- we are physically evolving the species into better and more enlightened generations of humans.
In this case, it is NOT a matter of opinion. It is a matter of FACT. The physical proof that we have right now tells us
that the Wikileaks documents did not come from a "hack." We also have physical evidence that someone (no doubt Crowdstrike) manipulated
copies of the leaked documents and embedded awkward amateurish evidence to make them look like they were taken by a "Russian"
hacker. Here's how we know that:
Assange's diplomatic trip to the US in mid-2017 to testify before Congress and prove where the documents came from was
emergency-blocked by Comey and Rosenstein. As a consequence, Assange immediately released the extensive Vault 7 documents to the
American people so we could forensically recognize the signature techniques that the US intelligence agencies would use to alter
downloaded DNC documents and embed fake Russian "fingerprints." We have seen the physical evidence that that occurred.
The US has no real physical evidence of a Russian hack or they would never have released the fake evidence. Yet they continue
their attack to harm Russia's economy and the continue their attempts to provoke a hot war with Russia. The US motive for this
has nothing to do with their fake hacking narrative; it is about crippling Russia (and China) to forestall the rapid rise of Eurasia,
which is stripping the Neocons and war-profiteering corporations of their dream for the US to achieve total domination over all
other nations. The Entitled Elite want their New American Century back! Their Empire was supposed to rule the world....
If that is what your instincts tell you, you should trust them. It's a biological imperative.
It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the Russian oligarchs.
Hey, Bernie. The American people were the ones who should have decided who won the primary, not Hillary, the DNC and the delegates.
That you are blaming Her loss on Russia instead of admitting that the American people rejected her makes you nothing more than
a democratic puppet. How embarrassing for you.
Every Black voter should abandon the DP until they apologize for their disrespect for the BLM and saying that they only started
protesting cops killing Blacks because Russia manipulated them into doing so.
Eichenwald thinks that our intelligence agencies are patriots who have spent their lives working on keeping us safe does he?
I agree with Dmitry Orlov's take on them.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as
possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on
ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially
organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on.
....
the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic
and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest single
continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your
own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you
are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than " a skeptical attitude
toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. "
And let's not forget how many
coups
and false flag events they had a hand in creating that have cost so much misery and death.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false
flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story
is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting
this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips.
It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy
theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
The real puppets are the ones who believe in this silly story that Russia is pulling Trump's strings and that the GOP are also
Russian puppets. Good grief!
meaning the 'Russia Ruse'--IMO, has been an exercise in setting up a scenario under which the PtB can put in place a system
geared toward major social media 'censorship,' and, a face-saving exercise for FSC--just in case she decides to make a third
run in 2020. Heaven forbid!
Mollie/Blue Onyx (Reverting to my original handle)
"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will
be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving." ~~Author Unknown
"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments
are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way." ~~Martin Luther King Jr.
"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong." ~~W. R. Purche
"... has been an exercise in setting up a scenario under which the PtB can put in place a system geared toward major social
media 'censorship,'
Yup. Dan Coates directory of national intelligence came out and accused Russsia of engaging in a "messaging campaign". So how
does one stop this messaging campaign. Well, back in the day, the answer was to answer bad speech with more and better speech.
Well, with Russiagate both the media and dem/gop establishment have to come to demand censorship from the major social media
platforms. And they have responded. At first they actually didn't and thought the Russia charges were trivial. Until that is,
they were theatened by House and Senate reps. And then they hopped to it.
And just a number of days ago, Facebook proudly announced they took down some nefarious pages who seemed to be engaging in
a message campaign. And turns out they shut down a real group organizing an anti-fascist rally. There are other examples like
this.
The censorship will continue becoming more and more brazen. (BTW, youtube started ths process earlier demonitizing and hurting
a lot of popular, but alternative voices.)
BTW--the Young Turks showed the Coats clip and claimed "see the Russians are still hacking our elections".
I'm truly getting concerned regarding the direction our government appears to be taking when it comes to 'freedom of expression/speech.'
Strangely, many on the 'left' don't seem very concerned. Indeed, because the MSM is so intent on going after DT, many so-called
progressives--including the supposedly more liberal (cough, cough) lawmakers--have become major cheerleaders of the corporatist
media. Go figure.
Mollie/Blue Onyx (Reverting to my original handle)
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went." ~~Will Rogers
"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments
are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way." ~~Martin Luther King Jr.
"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong." ~~W. R. Purche
as well as every other person in Trump's administration that is working against him. This is insubordination and if Trump continues
to let them run their mouths then I believe that he is in on this scam and is playing along with it. Why? Look at what has been
happening since he became president. From the increasing Russian sanctions to the internet censorship to the increased military
budget with money that goes to fighting cyber warfare and many other things that are being done because of this new and improved
false flag.
As you stated YouTube has been removing lots of videos, Facebook and Twitter have been censoring alternative media sites that
are not playing along with Russia Gate and Google changed its algorithms so that traffic to those sites are down up to 90% according
to WSWS.
I once thought that this would eventually be exposed for the scam it is, but not any more. It's here to stay. And just like
in 1984 where there was that place where history was changed to fit the narrative of the day, we are seeing that here. Things
that happened last decade are being blamed on Russia hacking. I wouldn't be surprised if the KKK and Jim Crow were blamed on Russia.
This is how out of control it's gotten. And I was so looking forward to seeing Rachel trying to explain to her viewers how she
got things so wrong.
@snoopydawg
His erratic actions are the perfect distraction for the capitalist pigs the same as the "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Marxist Communist
Fascist Socialist Radical Leftist Feminazi SJW" crap that went on during the last capitalist puppet presidency. Either way, the
world still burns and the pigs make out like bandits in the process. Keeping the plebs at each other's throats is just a bonus
for them.
@snoopydawg
Remember whom you are discussing. Alas, you must be a Russian wolfhound to think R. Madcow could ever be wrong. Apologize, then
stand in the corner until after the midterms when the GRU hauls off recalcitrant Dims and Repugnants failing to swear fealty to
Vladimir Vladimirovich.
"Russiagate is like a mirage. It looks so real from a distance you'll swear it's there and mock anyone who says otherwise,
but once you get up close and examine its component parts you find it's made of nothing but innuendo, spin, unsubstantiated claims
and dishonest omissions.
2:45 PM · Aug 3, 2018"
"
@caitoz
·
Aug 3
Nothing wrong with wanting a full investigation. There's something very, very wrong with pressuring a US president to continually
escalate dangerous cold war tensions with a nuclear superpower without ever backing down based on an "idea" with no evidence.
"
@snoopydawg
Bernie will not be able to say "Oh evil Russia but let's not go to war with them." Diplomacy itself finally became full criminalized
and made tresonous when Trump meet Putin in Finland. Any level of moderation will be attacked as soft on Putin and treasonous.
And I write "pro-war" and not "anti-Russian". One cannot be anti-Russian in any moderate way. Being anti-Russian means supporting
a harsh and aggressive military stance toward their nation. The Russians are after all destroying Western civilization and this
cannot be meant with diplomacy.
And from what I can, every national democratic candidate for House and Senate will follow suite.
For reference, these are the only 10 senators who voted AGAINST giving Trump a $717 billion war budget:
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
Ed Markey
Kirsten Gillibrand
Dick Durban
Kamala Harris
Jeff Merkley
Ron Wyden
Mike Lee (R)
Marco Rubio (R)
So much for #Resistance huh?
The others show that there are others out there that have seen through this propaganda crap. I'd like to see the breakdown
of Hillary supporters that believe Russia Gate and the Bernie supporters that don't. Most of the Trump supporters think it's phony
so what made Hillary's believe in something that everyone should be laughing at?
You deserve a lot of credit. Russia interfered in your favor, yet you are man enough to admit that they interfered. Thank
you Bernie!
So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you didn't
seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours.
You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was "deeply
involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated by
DNC! Everybody knows...
Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't need
a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB
Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will
fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate
by the democrats.
The democrats (and media cohorts) have become an apocolyptic death cult. The language that comes from them is infused with
the language of conspiracies, violence, treason, aggression and demonization.
And here is the thing, Bernie to survive electorally will have to become a cult member. Effectively he will have to be pro-war
with Russia. He will be giving from the the Left supposed support for aggressive action andmilitarism toward Russia.
I fear that if a democrat becomes president in 2020 (it won't be Bernie), is elected president that in the year of the midterms
in 2022, the US will start a real war with Russia which has a highly likehood of going nuclear.
for the John S. McCain 2019 National Defense Authorization Bill ( subtitled 'The Sneeze
Wrong, We're Comin' to Fuck You Up Act' ). Here's the very lengthy summary of provisions
in the House version from govtrack.us , although it may
have changed slightly since the House and Senate conference agreements.
Let's start with the House: 'House Democrats vote for record US military spending', Patrick
Martin, 28 July 2018, wsws.org
"By an overwhelming bipartisan vote Thursday, the US House of Representatives approved the
largest military authorization bill in American history. The National Defense Authorization Act
approves $716 billion to fund US military aggression around the world, and gives President
Trump the power to order cyberwarfare attacks on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea without
further congressional action.
... ... ...
"Particularly ominous are the sections of the NDAA on cyberwarfare. The bill
authorizes the Pentagon to conduct "unattributed" cyber operations without having to comply
with the usual restrictions on covert operations, such as requiring a Presidential Finding
which is submitted to key leaders of Congress. According to the bill "clandestine military
activity or operation in cyberspace shall be considered a traditional military activity.
It pre-authorizes US military cyber operations if the president determines that (1) there is
"an active, systematic, and ongoing campaign of attacks against the Government or people of the
United States in cyberspace, including attempting to influence American elections and
democratic political processes" and (2) that Russia, China, North Korea or Iran are
responsible. In that event, the president may order US cyberwar forces "to take appropriate and
proportional action in foreign cyberspace to disrupt, defeat, and deter such attacks."
This provision effectively gives Trump and any successor, Democrat or Republican, the power
to launch a full-scale cyberwar without further congressional authorization , merely on his own
declaration that the United States is under attack."
Sounds like we continue to waste a ton of borrowed cash on last generation tech.
One new US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
Two new Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines armed with atomic weapons
13 other new warships
77 new joint strike fighters
Basically Trump's bought himself his own shiny new aircraft carrier battle group.
I'm sure it will be a simply fantastic fleet.
The best fleet ever in the history of the oceans.
I hear they want to call the carrier 'Trump class'.
That'll show China who's boss in the
Western Pacific.
Just one thing though:
The Virginia-class was intended in
part as a less expensive alternative to the Seawolf-class submarines ( $1.8 billion vs $2.8
billion), whose production run was stopped after just three boats had been completed. To
reduce costs, the Virginia-class submarines use many "commercial off-the-shelf" (COTS)
components, especially in their computers and data networks.
Sounds totally secure to me!
I'm sure the Russians or Chinese EW is nowhere near powerful enough to
hack/disable/commandeer the 'off-the-shelf-tech' that runs our latest generation nuclear
powered submarine.
To reduce costs, the Virginia-class submarines use many "commercial off-the-shelf"
(COTS) components, especially in their computers and data networks.
Sounds totally secure to me!
The idea that we're dependent on Microsoft Windows to operate our current Naval
vessels, with little or no manual over-ride even available much less trained or used, makes
my skin crawl!
The only way that this can happen is if a whole lot of people get really desperate really
fast. So expect more cuts to education, health care for civilians, and all sorts of new exciting
waivers that will allow us to form our own Legion Etangere.
And everybody knows there will be an "incident" at the Trump military parade. It's
practically guaranteed, and you know the CIA is going to have a full three months to cook
something up. Hell, they've been waiting for this kind of chance for years.
I remember reporting years ago that the imperialism budget had surpassed a trillion per
year. Estimates prior to Obama's sequester budget were around 1.2 trillion per year for total
costs. Wrote many an article about it and yet here we are, still writing and reading articles
about it and not doing shit to stop it.
Boycott the duopoly, boycott this political system, demand democracy, demand power to the
people. It's so far past time for talking it's pathetic.
Gawd knows that the officers are getting too much money and perks without putting their
asses on the line.
The bill "restates our commitment to NATO and our partners," Smith said. "It extends the
prohibition on military cooperation with Russia. It declares that Russia violated the
Chemical Weapons Convention
Okay. No working with Russia on defeating ISIS. Not that we're doing this, just the
opposite. We're funding and protecting ISIS from Syria and Russia. But what chemical weapons
has Russia used in recent times? This country has been the ones using them in our various
wars. Stupid congress.
"... "We could not prevent the slaughter of the Serbs by the Croatians, including elderly people and children " – UNPROFOR French Lieutenant-General Jean Cot ..."
"... " The decision to launch Operation Storm is not controversial; what is controversial, however, is 'the successful effort' of some Croatian officials headed by President Franjo Tudjman to 'exploit the circumstances' and implement the plan to drive Serbs out of Krajina ." -- ICTY prosecutor Alain Tieger ..."
"... Just remember that at that time, US government offered $5 million reward for the capture of war criminal Ante Gotovina, making him the ICTY most wanted man. He was at that time sheltered by Croatian government, and through the notorious Vatican' "Rat Channels", that were used at the end of WWII to facilitate the escape of Nazis, he was hidden (among the other Croatian war criminals) in a Catholic monastery, to be smuggled to Tenerife, where he was eventually captured by the Spanish police, in 2005. ..."
"... " It is important that these [Serb] civilians start moving and then the army will follow them, and when the columns start moving, they will have a psychological effect on each other. That means we provide them with an exit, while on the other hand we feign (pretend) to guarantee civilian human rights and the like " -- ..."
"... Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, during War Council meeting in July 1995 ..."
"... "American concern is that if General Gotovina is arrested he may carry out a threat to disclose previously unknown extent of US covert involvement in the Krajina offensive " ..."
23 Years Ago the US Backed a Brutal Croatian Ethnic Cleansing of SerbsMiodrag Novakovic (
FBReporter ) Sat, Aug
4, 2018 | 4,303
445 If there was a
nation that could safely conclude from its own historical experience that "Crime Pays", than it
must be the newest EU member, Croatia. In the modern history this tiny Catholic nation
committed one of the most horrific genocides in WWII over Serbian Orthodox Christian population
residing in Croatia and Bosnia, murdering at least one million people; and recently in 1995,
Croatia conducted (under US supervision) the biggest and permanent ethnic cleansing "military
operation" against its (again) Serbian population, expelling over 200,000 of them in just three
days (the real number of ethnically cleansed Serbs from Croatia during the wars in 90ies, is at
least twice larger)- unofficially becoming the most ethnic cleanse European state.
If you believe, that Croats "en masse", would be ashamed of such reputation, then you are
dead wrong. Actually most of them are very proud, and for the last 23 years they are
celebrating it very loudly, and doing everything in their power to prevent (after being
pressured by the international community) the return of hundreds of thousands of Serbs to their
ancient land, and to avoid returning of their stolen property, mostly (real estates, farm
lands, etc.).
"We could not prevent the slaughter of the Serbs by the Croatians, including elderly
people and children " – UNPROFOR French Lieutenant-General Jean Cot
Elderly Krajina' resident murdered in his home by Croatian soldiers. His guilt- He was a
Serb
WHEN WESTERN "DEMOCRACIES" ORCHESTRATE ETHNIC CLEANSINGS
Of course, if would be unreasonable, for this evident and well documented war crimes, and
crimes against humanity, to blame only Croats. If their hands are soaked in the blood, of
innocent Serbian civilians, up to their arms, then the hands of their Western sponsors
(namely USA and Germany) are soaked in the blood at least up to their elbows. Simply Croats
would never get away with "such perfect crime", if they were not backed, in every possible
way, by their American and German sponsors.
This week will mark 22 years, since on August 4th 1995, Croatia lunched so called
military-police operation, named Storm, against Serb' held and controlled Krajina region.
Croats backed by US military-logistic & air support, CIA intelligence drone
reconnaissance, and open political support from Washington, completed their "operation" in
just three days. On August 7th they declared "victory".
Their "victory resulted": in a complete ethnic cleansing of Krajina region, and a murder
of at least 2,000 Serbs; vast majority of them were defenseless civilians. Official sources
claim that: 1,192 Serbian civilians were killed or missing, and around 200,000 thousands
(entire Krajina population) were expelled from their ancient land. Their property was
destroyed, looted and stolen, by the Croatian "soldiers" (who performed this "operation"
under direct Washington' supervision, while UNPROFOR peacekeepers assigned for the protection
of UN designated "Krajina Safe Zone" just stood by, doing almost nothing to prevent the
slaughter).
Croatian "soldiers" in "liberated Krajina"
IMPERATIVE WAS TO ESTABLISH US MILITARY
PRESENCE IN YUGOSLAVIA
To understand this US complicity, and its direct military involvement, in such horrendous
atrocity against one ethnic group, in one, of many, civil wars, which erupted, when former
Socialist Yugoslavia "fell apart", again with covert or overt Western support, we have to
look here at the wider picture-
When the Clinton' government, together with their major European allies, decided in 90ies,
that the best American interest in the Balkans will be to back armed rebellion of the
separatist administrative regions in Western Yugoslavia, and openly support the breakup of,
internationally recognized, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, while it was still the UN member,
they consciously opened the Pandora box.
They openly sided politically & militarily with Slovenian and Croatian Catholics from
the Western Yugoslavian Republics, and with Islamic fundamentalists from Bosnia, in their
civil and religious wars against Orthodox Christian Serbs living outside, then administrative
Republic of Serbia (and later in 1999, US & NATO started another illegal war against
Serbia, on behalf of Islamic Albanian separatists from Kosovo, ultimately "stealing" this
Southern Serbian province).
Croatian and Bosnian Serbs, who simply wanted to remain in their Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, and not to be "taken away" by Catholic and Islamic separatists, and not to be
stripped of their constitutional rights, under existing Yugoslavian laws, naturally rebelled
against such illegal and violent Yugoslavian outcome, and they subsequently declared own
autonomy within the Yugoslavian separatist' regions.
And then all hell broke loose
The historical roots of such American approach, could be found in the Western (mainly
British and American) support of "Anti-Stalin" communist leader of post-WWII Yugoslavia
Marshal Josip Broz Tito (who was Croat himself), who provided Western leaders with assurances
that he will, not only keep Yugoslavia outside the Soviet bloc, but he would align militarily
his country with NATO alliance as well; and later in Reagan' presidential directive NSDD133,
from 1984, which outlined US strategic interest to expand its military presence to
Yugoslavia.
Croatian and US military leadership celebrating "joint operation"- the biggest ethnic
cleansing in Europe since WWII
THEY ARE KILLING "LITTLE RUSSIANS" TOO, AREN'T THEY
?
The "only" obstacle to this US (read NATO) expansionist policy in the former Yugoslavia,
was Serbian (majority) population, which was, due to its traditional friendship with Russia,
considered as "problematic" and had to be decimated, "broken into pieces", and Republic of
Serbia to be disabled as an independent state, during so called "spontaneous" civil wars in
90s.
I am not trying here to state that in the Western society exist some unexplained hatred
against Serbs (in same time, there is a lots of prejudice, and media & Hollywood bias,
picturing Serbs primarily as "bad guys"), actually I believe that people and their
politicians in the West could not care less about Serbs (Serbians), and most of them have no
clue where to find Serbia on the geographic map. But in same time, as we can observe these
days in the West, particularly in United States, there is a lot of unfounded and unreasonable
hatred for the Russians
And if we are familiar with the popular saying among Western diplomats, that "Serbs are
Little Russians", then is not difficult to put two and two together, and understand their
desire to "disable" any Russian-friendly nation in the region.
As long as you are a Serb, regardless of your age, for Croats and their US sponsors, you
are a "fair game"
CROATIAN WAR CRIMES AGAINST SERBS WERE SO EVIDENT, AND ON SUCH LARGE
SCALE, THAT WESTERN CONTROLLED ICTY HAD NO CHOICE, BUT TO SENTENCE CROATIAN LEADERSHIP
Western controlled ICTY (International Crime Tribunal for Yugoslavia) reluctantly brought
charges for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, against (war time) ultra-nationalistic Croatian
leadership and group of its generals. But in the wake of overwhelming evidence and
international outcry, they had little choice.
In 2001 ICTY brought charges for war crimes against Croatian president general Franjo
Tudjman (who will be remembered for publically saying "that he was very proud that his wife
was neither Jew or Serb"), Croatian defence minister Gojko Susak (prior to war- open Neo-Nazi
ideologist), and two other former (renegade) Yugoslav Army generals, (promoted into supreme
commanders of Croatian army) Janko Bobetko and Zvonimir Cermenko. Their indictment was
actually travesty of justice, because at the time they were charged, all of them (with
exception of General Janko Bobetko), were already dead (by natural cause). General Bobetko
died one year after indictment, before he could be delivered to ICTY.
" The decision to launch Operation Storm is not controversial; what is
controversial, however, is 'the successful effort' of some Croatian officials headed by
President Franjo Tudjman to 'exploit the circumstances' and implement the plan to drive
Serbs out of Krajina ." -- ICTY prosecutor Alain Tieger
When the indictment of Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, for
their war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Croatian Serbs in Krajina, during "operation" Storm
in 1995, was announced in 2008- Serbs who survived US sponsored pogrom and ethnic cleansing,
were naively hoping that at last some justice will be served.
Even, with such unprecedented obstruction of ICTY by Croatian government, Catholic Church
and wider Croatian society, who concealed and destroyed many war documents, facilitated
escape and concealment of indicted Croatian war criminals, and intimidated not only victims
and witnesses, but ICTY leadership as well- the trial of those three Croatian generals came
to conclusion in 2011, and after the overwhelming evidence (the evidence, Croats were not
able to conceal or destroy), Gotovina was sentenced to 24 years, Markac to 18 years, while
Cermak was acquitted.
Serbian victims hoped that at the end at least some justice was served- but they were
wrong again. There is a Serbian saying: "A crow doesn't pick out another crow's eyes."-
In 2012, ICTY appeal chamber overturned the decision of lower chamber, and unconditionally
acquitted Croatian war criminals Gotovina and Markac for all crimes. Entire Croatia and its
diaspora erupted in joy and massive celebration.
Their historical experience that Crime Pays have been proven yet again
Serbian children getting starved to death and slaughtered by knife in a first-ever death
camp for children and infants established by Croats in Jastrebarsko, Sisak, Stara
Gradiska, Independent State of Croatia in WW2
Even, after the ICTY had proved (from the audio and written transcript of Croatian war
leadership meeting in July 1995) – that there was very credible evidence of existence
of a joint criminal enterprise, with intent to forcibly remove ethnic Serbs from Croatia, and
that civilian areas in Krajina, including the subsequent civilian refugee columns, were
indiscriminately shelled by Croatian artillery, and bombed & machine gunned by Croatian
air-force – that did not prevent the real ICTY masters to pervert the course of
justice.
One would wander who and what was behind such obvious and embarrassing justice travesty,
demonstrated in this example. What had forced American controllers of ICTY to change their
mind, and influence the tribunal to free of any charges, these obvious and heavy documented,
war criminals?
Just remember that at that time, US government offered $5 million reward for the
capture of war criminal Ante Gotovina, making him the ICTY most wanted man. He was at that
time sheltered by Croatian government, and through the notorious Vatican' "Rat Channels",
that were used at the end of WWII to facilitate the escape of Nazis, he was hidden (among
the other Croatian war criminals) in a Catholic monastery, to be smuggled to Tenerife,
where he was eventually captured by the Spanish police, in 2005.
Serbian civilians fleeing US/CRO joint operation "Storm" were bombed, machine-gunned, and
ran by Croatian tanks, mercilessly- thousands of innocent people just
perished
INTERNATIONAL "POST-MORTEM" RESPONSE
It is worth to mention accusations and reactions, to such perversion of justice by ICTY,
from some highest international bodies and public persons, at that time-
US Security Council, on August 10th 1995 issued "post-mortem" (when ethnic cleansing of
Serbs was already completed) resolution #1009, demanding from Croatia to halt military
operation, and condemning targeting of UN peacekeepers (during the operation Storm, Croats
had killed three UN soldiers) – but UNSC failed to request a withdrawal of the Croatian
forces, and de-facto accepted new "ethnically cleanse" reality!?
The only UN official, who was fully aware of the horrific aspect of this US sponsored
"operation", and who was trying to prevent further Croatian atrocities against Serbian
population, was, at that time, the Head of UN mission in Yugoslavia, Thorvald Stoltenberg,
who urged UN Secretary Yasushi Akashi to request NATO strikes against Croatian army, to
prevent further atrocities against civilians.
Of course, that never happened, especially if we know that Croatian operation Storm, was
directly supervised by the retired US generals (via Pentagon military contractor MPRI), while
US Air Force conducted air raids against Serbian Air Defense systems in Krajina, and CIA
officers operated surveillance drones, which provided intelligence for advancing Croatian
troops, from two Croatian bases in Adriatic.
Even, EU negotiator Carl Bildt, and US ambassador in Croatia Peter Galbraith, publically
condemned Croatian atrocities in Krajina- but they too stayed short of requesting some
concrete and punitive measures.
" It is important that these [Serb] civilians start moving and then the army will
follow them, and when the columns start moving, they will have a psychological effect on
each other. That means we provide them with an exit, while on the other hand we feign
(pretend) to guarantee civilian human rights and the like " --Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, during War Council meeting in July 1995
The only ones from UN troops who tried to prevent Croatian atrocities, and in couple
occasions fought bravely against bloody-thirsty Croatian soldiers, where Canadian
peacekeepers from "Patricia Company", but they too, where upon return to Canada, silenced and
their experience never got real media traction. Their testimony simply did not fit with the
Western agenda, that Serbs are the only bad guys
THE REAL ATROCIOUS OUTCOME OF THE
BIGGEST ETHNIC CLEANSING IN POST-WWII EUROPE IS MUCH HIGHER, THEN THE OFFICIAL FIGURES
STATE
While ICTY prosecutors accepted the fact that some 200,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed
in just couple of days from Krajina region, they "lowered" the number of murdered Serbian
civilians to 324. Serbian sources on the ground documented 1,192 dead or missing civilians,
while Croatian Helsinki Committee documented 677 killed.
Human Rights Watch documented at least 5,000 Serbian homes razed to the ground by Croatian
forces, and HRW accused Croats for summary executions of elderly and disabled Serbs, who
stayed behind due to inability or unwillingness to leave their homes. We can only imagine if
the entire defenseless Serbian civilian population stayed behind, and faced bloody-thirsty
Croatian soldiers- in that case we would be talking here about a full scale genocide, not
"just" the ethnic cleansing!?
To better understand what kind of "Croatian justice" were facing defenseless Serbian
civilians, who decided not to leave their homes during operation Storm, here is one excerpt
from Wikipedia, describing one of many of Croatian "post-Storm" atrocities against innocent
civilians-
"The Varivode massacre was a mass killing that occurred on 28 September 1995 in the
village of Varivode , Croatia during the Croatian War of Independence . According to United
Nations officials, soldiers of the Croatian Army (HV) and Croatian police killed nine
Croatian Serb villagers, all of whom were between the ages of 60 and 85. [4] After
the war, six former Croatian soldiers were tried for committing crimes in the village, but
were all eventually released due to lack of evidence On the night of 28 September 1995,
Croatian soldiers entered the village of Varivode and killed nine elderly Serb villagers.
The civilians that were killed were Jovan Berić, Marko Berić, Milka Berić,
Radivoje Berić, Marija Berić, Dušan Dukić, Jovo Berić,
Špiro Berić and Mirko Pokrajac. After the executions occurred, the bodies were
buried in a cemetery near the village without the knowledge of the families of the victims.
[4] After the
massacre, Croatian authorities denied reports of widespread atrocities targeting Serbs and
said that they were propaganda. Later, the government blamed the atrocities on
uncontrollable elements within the Croatian Army and Croatian police. [25]
Christiane Amanpour 's report from October 1995 said that the "United Nations believes 12
Serb civilians were massacred." [25] In the
first one hundred days following Operation Storm, at least 150 Serb civilians were
summarily executed, and many hundreds disappeared as part of a widespread campaign of
revenge against Croatia's Serb minority. [26] The bodies of the
killed Serbs were never exhumed, autopsies were never performed and much of the evidence
that could have been used against the perpetrators of the crime was discarded. [27]
Despite this, six Croatian soldiers were tried for committing crimes in the village. The
soldiers were Ivan Jakovljević, Peri Perković, Neđeljko Mijić, Zlatko
Ladović, Ivica Petrić and Nikola Rašić. However, in 2002 they were
all released due to the lack of evidence against them. [27] In
July 2012, the Supreme Court of Croatia ruled that the Republic of Croatia was responsible
for the deaths of the nine Serb villagers who were killed in Varivode. The Supreme Court
declared, "two months after the conclusion of Operation Storm, an act of terrorism was
committed against the Serb inhabitants of Varivode for the purpose of causing fear,
hopelessness and to spread feelings of personal insecurity among the citizens." [35] –
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varivode_massacre
By 2012, Croatian government received 6,390 reports about committed war crimes against
Serbian civilians, during and after operation Storm, but did little or nothing to bring the
perpetrators to justice.
To make things worse and more humiliating for surviving Krajina Serbs, Croatian government
is still refusing to return (or reimburse) 140,000 Serbian homes, stolen from ethnic Serbs.
795 Serbs, presumed dead, are still missing, 1,604 bodies were retrieved- according to NGO
"Veritas".
Croats were attacking Krajina using the strategy of "Scorched Earth", with unconditional
US support
DID THE CROATS SUCCESSFULLY BLACKMAIL U.S. GOVERNMENT INTO SUBMISSION,
FORCING THEM TO OVERTURN THE INITIAL ICTY RULING!?
Defense ministers celebrating the joint outcome of the biggest ethnic cleansing in Europe
since WWII- Left: US William Perry, Right: CRO Gojkos Susak
The initial ICTY ruling in 2011, which sentenced Croatian generals Gotovina and Markac to
long term imprisonment, was expected, and very well supported by the "conclusive evidence".
Even, according to many international experts, this sentencing was not enough tough, and did
not cover the full scale of war crimes and atrocities, committed by Croatian political and
military leadership, during and in the aftermath of operation Storm. Still, many Serbian
victims were satisfied that they finally achieved at least some justice
So, when in November 2012 ICTY appeal chamber ruled that Croatian generals are innocent of
all charges and free to go, the news came to many as a complete shock, and reaffirmed them in
a belief that ICTY tribunal is just another NATO war tool, in their efforts to punish and
humiliate, not only the Serbian government, but the numerous Serbian victims of civil wars in
90ies, whose executors were never (and probably never will be) brought to justice.
The ruling was very controversial, not only because it ignored all the hard evidence,
including the forensics and the testimony of the international observers, but because the
formal excuse for the liberating judgment was – that in the prosecutor documents were
missing the Croatian artillery log books, that according to the Appeal chamber, were the only
document that would prove the Croatian intent to drive Serbian population from Krajina. The
same books were previously repeatedly requested by the ICTY prosecutors, and Croatia did not
even deny its existence, but simply refused to cooperate with ICTY and hand them over.
Finally, when in 2008 Croatia was warned by European leaders that non-cooperation with ICTY
might affect the prospect of its EU membership – somebody from the Croatian leadership
simply destroyed these books, and they informed Hague tribunal that Artillery logs no longer
exist. Even such provocative and blunt obstruction of the international justice by the
Croatian government, did not result in any repercussions for them, and practically they were
forgiven for their deeds. Crime pays – doesn't it?
Anyway, ICTY tribunal had plenty of other evidence, proving the intentional destruction of
Serbian civilian infrastructure was very well documented by the international observers, and
in April 2011 ICTY had no choice but to sentence general Gotovina to 24 years, and general
Markac to 18 years.
Another fact that indicates that Appeal chamber' ruling was the political one, and result
of some external interference was its split decision – the chamber ruled by the
majority decision 3 – 2, implying that there were serious doubts and disagreements, by
at least two of the Appeal chamber judges.
"American concern is that if General Gotovina is arrested he may carry out a threat
to disclose previously unknown extent of US covert involvement in the Krajina offensive
"– London Times, June 14th, 2003.
Gotovina was arrested, but only shortly, until Croatian blackmail convinced their US
masters, to pull strings in ICTY, and free him unconditionally
CROATIAN OFFICIALS
PROVIDED A PLENTY OF EVIDENCE THAT U.S. GOVERNMENT WAS INVOLVED IN "STORM" MILITARILY, AND
HAD A FULL CONTROL OVER WAR (CRIMES) ACTIVITIES THAT TOOK PLACE ON THE GROUND
As soon the ICTY indictments against Croatian leaders were announced in 2001, the Croatian
government, NGOs, public, and very well organized and connected diaspora, displayed anger and
disagreement, promising that they will do everything in their power to obstruct ICTY
investigations and prevent trials against their "national heroes". When in 2011, the first
instance judgment by ICTY was issued and Croatian generals were sentenced to long term
imprisonment, the Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and President Ivo Josipovic publicly
expressed their shock and rejection of the ruling, promising to help to overturn the
judgment, on appeal!?
And they started their campaign – of obstruction of justice, of abetting the accused
war criminals, of the intimidation, and finally, of the blackmail, of ICTY and US officials
–
On July 4th, 2002, NGO associated with Croatian government "Croatian World Congress-
CWC" filed complaint with ICTY citing what proofs, about US direct involvement in ethnic
cleansing of Krajina, they have:
" US officials aided General Gotovina and the Croatian army in operation Storm by
violating UN arms embargo and allowing Croatia to obtain weapons US officials established a
CIA base inside General Gotovina' military base, which provided the US officials with
real-time video footage of events transpiring on the ground during Operation Storm (and
thus imputing to them knowledge of events on the ground ), but also from which they could
provide such intelligence data to General Gotovina to assist him in conducting Operation
Storm . If General Gotovina carried out pre-planed campaign to deport 150,000 to 200,000
Croatian Serbian civilians, the CIA base was not only used to provide knowledge to US
officials of such plan and course of conduct on the part of General Gotovina , but was also
used to assist General Gotovina in achieving the goals of his alleged plan . The US
official gave the green light for the Operation and provided diplomatic and political
support for it . The US officials at all times had the ability to halt the military
operations . Accordingly, the US officials named in the complaint should be indicted for
having aided and abetted General Gotovina. "
Ethnic cleansing in Krajina was the joint US/CRO criminal enterprise History will be the
judge
If you read carefully through this CWC statement (threat), they are not even trying to
deny Gotovina' war crimes, they are just implying bluntly, that if their lovely General was
sentenced, they would gladly provide ICTY with the evidence of Croatian-American "Joint
criminal enterprise to forcibly remove the Serb population from Croatia ", as it states the
ICTY indictment from 2001, of course omitting the US participation (which was the very secret
deal, at least until Croatian officials started "mouthing" their "American friends").
Croatian complaint to ICTY specifically named the highest US officials, alleging that
they, along General Gotovina, committed too war crimes against Serbian population:
"On behalf of the Croatian World Congress, a non-governmental organization that is a
member of the United Nations with advisory status, you are hereby notified pursuant to
Article 18(1) of the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia of the existence of information concerning serious violations of international
humanitarian law (hereinafter "IHL"), namely that officials of the United States of
America, including but not limited to William Jefferson Clinton , Anthony Lake , Samuel
Berger , Richard Holbrooke , Peter Galbraith and/or George J. Tenet (hereinafter
collectively referred to as "U.S. officials"), aided and abetted Croatian General Ante
Gotovina , who was indicted by your office on 8 June 2001."
War Criminals at work together- Croatian general Kresimir Cosic and US supreme commander
general Wesley Clark
We are not going here to present detailed evidence of US crimes, committed during the
operation Storm. Of course, the Croatian war crimes on the ground were very brutal,
systematic and savage, they did "the physical work", but from the evidence provided by
numerous Croatian officials and their organizations, it is very obvious, that operation Storm
would never happen, or if happened never would be successful, without US military support and
direct supervision, or without US approval.
Just to give you "a taste" what kind of American support Croats were enjoying during their
atrocious operation against innocent Serbian civilians, will present you with some documented
facts:
The Green Light for the operation came a couple days prior the assault- President Clinton
passed the order directly to US military attaché in Zagreb Colonel Richard Herrick;
Herrick passed order to Croatian head of military intelligence Markica Rebic (the others
involved directly were defense minister Gojko Susak, Miro Tudjman and Miro Medimurac, heads
of Secret Service and Intelligence Service). US masters were so pleased with Rebic' service,
that they rewarded him with Meritorious Service Medal, delivered to him by Ambassador
Galbraith in 1996. The other people from USG involved in this joint criminal enterprise with
Croats, in addition to Clinton, were Anthony Lake and William Perry. US masters imposed the
time limit on operation Storm- it had to be completed in 5 days.
Long before the Storm, in 1992 USG with Croatian approval established CIA reconnaissance
base on island of Brac, from where CIA operators were flying unmanned aircraft spying on
Serbian positions in Krajina, Bosnia and part of Serbia itself. USG requested that this
cooperation to be held a top secret, so outsiders don't find that US is taking sides in the
Balkans' civil wars. But it did not stay for too long the top secret. On January 1st, 1994,
Croatian state security apprehended a spy on the base perimeter. They delivered him right
away to General Gotovina, to find out it was their German ally, precisely it was German
military attaché Hans Schwan.
This incident alerted USG, which wanted to conceal any covert activities on behalf of CG,
so they promptly removed CIA base to new secret location, in Sepurina, near city of Zadar.
This new location was covered by three security layers, to ensure the full secrecy. From new
base CIA started immediately collecting photographic and video evidence of Serbian activities
in Krajina and Bosnia, and passing them to Croats, and to Pentagon. There was 24 hours, 6
member intelligence crew, present on site- consisting of three CIA and three Croatian
military officers.
Croatian military base Sepurine, near Zadar, from which CIA operated drones, aiding
operation Storm, and providing live video feed of "military activities" on the ground to
Pentagon
"STORM" WASN'T THE FIRST ETHNIC CLEANSING, UNDERTAKEN BY
CROATIA AND US, AS A JOINT CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE:
It is interesting that disgruntled (by ICTY indictment) Croatian Officials and Croatian
World Congress body, in their complaint to ICTY, are providing the evidence about USG
intelligence and logistical support for another Croatian genocidal operation, named Flash,
that took place in Western Slavonia, between May 1st and 3rd, 1995, which resulted in
another complete ethnic cleansing of Serbian population- prior to the operation this area
was populated by 29,000 Serbs, after Flash, only 1,500 remained.
The number of killed civilians is unknown because Croats prevented UNPROFOR troops from
accessing the area, until they did "the sanitation" (read: removing the evidence of their
crimes, because entire Serbian refugee columns were massacred and overran by Croatian
tanks). Estimates of killed civilians rage between one hundred to couple thousands. Another
example of "the successful US-CRO joint criminal enterprise"?
The interesting details, revealed here by Croatian sources, is- that US military
attaché Herrick was attached to the Croatian mobile military command, during the
genocidal operation Flash, supervising it directly- and the head of CIA branch in Zagreb
Marc Kelton was directly coordinating expulsion of Slavonia' Serbs, with Croatian president
Tudjman son Miro.
In the eve of the attack on Krajina, on August 4th 1995, between midnight and 4 a.m.
Croatian forces were ordered to turn off all telecommunication devices, to unable US air
force to electronically disable all Serbian communications.
The outcome of Joint US/CRO "justice"
According to NATO spokesman Jim Mitchell in Aviano, Italy, two US military planes EA-6B
Prowlers were dispatched to Krajina air space. USAF planes, on the top of jamming Serbian
telecommunications, destroyed the airport Udbine, and Radar and Serbian Air Defense near
Knin, in order to prevent any Serbian air support or defence, against invading Croatian
forces.
Here, US military attaché Herrick was replaced by the Colonel John Sadler, who was
embedded with Gotovina command unit, directly supervising operation Storm. Pentagon was also
directly monitoring the operation via live video feed.
Shortly after the biggest joint (US/CRO) ethnic cleansing in Europe was completed, US head
of DIA General Colonel Patrick Hughes visited Croatia to coordinate further military actions
against Serbs in Bosnia and if necessary in Republic of Serbia
Hitler, it has been reported, in 'Secret History of the Twentieth Century' by
Herbert Dorsey, commended the USA for having 'gunned down the millions of Redskins to
a few hundred thousand.' This way of 'winning the West' type-casts American as
imperialist and certainly sympathetic with much we associated with fascism. America
lead the world in race-based lawmaking to safeguard the historically white character
of the country. Including immigration legislation to guarantee the predominance of
northern Europe and shut the doors on Jews, Italians, Asians and others. Nazi
commentators called this keeping out the 'undesirables.' The eugenics movement took
root in the United States in the early 1900's.
This article concerns the largest ethnic cleansing in Balkans that was committed
by Croatia with US operational support. The US committed multiple war crimes in the
Balkans in the 1990's.
After the 1990's the US has clearly emerged the fascist rogue state of the 21st
century.
Last week, US State Department officials met with Taliban leaders in
Qatar. At the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not invited. The
officials discussed ceasefires and an end to the war. Meanwhile, the US inspector general
charged with monitoring US spending on Afghanistan reconstruction has reported that since
2008, the US has completely wasted at the least $15.5 billion. He believes that's just the
tip of the iceberg, though. Will President Trump do the smart thing and negotiate peace and
leave? Tune in to today's Ron Paul Liberty Report:
"... "My film itself is essentially was tracking the neocon influence and how the neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that constructed the blueprints for the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0 mentality." ..."
"... – Robbie Martin, from this week's program. ..."
"My film itself is essentially was tracking the neocon influence and how the
neoconservatives from the Bush era that pushed the Iraq war, that constructed the blueprints
for the Iraq war, how they also were the earliest pioneers pushing this Russiagate Cold War 2.0
mentality."
"... While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than " a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
"... So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you didn't seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours. ..."
"... You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was "deeply involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated by DNC! Everybody knows... ..."
"... Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't need a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB ..."
"... Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate by the democrats. ..."
It has been clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be
involved in 2018. It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the
Russian oligarchs.
However, Sanders had already committed the unforgivable
sin of criticizing the Democratic establishment candidate from the left. There is simply no way of coming back from that treason.
Despite his stance, Sanders has also been constantly presented as another Russian agent, with the Washington Post (11/12/17) asking
its readers, "When Russia interferes with the 2020 election on behalf of Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders, how will liberals
respond?" The message is clear: The progressive wave rising across America is and will be a consequence of Russia, not of the
failures of the system, nor of the Democrats.
It isn't just progressive politicians that are all traitors. Movements like Black Lives Matter are also traitors for Russia.
It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the Russian oligarchs.
Hey, Bernie. The American people were the ones who should have decided who won the primary, not Hillary, the DNC and the delegates.
That you are blaming Her loss on Russia instead of admitting that the American people rejected her makes you nothing more than
a democratic puppet. How embarrassing for you.
Every Black voter should abandon the DP until they apologize for their disrespect for the BLM and saying that they only started
protesting cops killing Blacks because Russia manipulated them into doing so.
Eichenwald thinks that our intelligence agencies are patriots who have spent their lives working on keeping us safe does he?
I agree with Dmitry Orlov's take on them.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as
possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on
ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially
organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on.
....
the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial,
economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest
single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your
own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself.
While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than
" a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. "
And let's not forget how many
coups
and false flag events they had a hand in creating that have cost so much misery and death.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false
flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story
is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting
this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips.
It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy
theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
The real puppets are the ones who believe in this silly story that Russia is pulling Trump's strings and that the GOP are also
Russian puppets. Good grief!
The others show that there are others out there that have seen through this propaganda crap. I'd like to see the breakdown
of Hillary supporters that believe Russia Gate and the Bernie supporters that don't. Most of the Trump supporters think it's phony
so what made Hillary's believe in something that everyone should be laughing at?
You deserve a lot of credit. Russia interfered in your favor, yet you are man enough to admit that they interfered. Thank
you Bernie!
So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you
didn't seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours.
You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was
"deeply involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated
by DNC! Everybody knows...
Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't
need a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB
Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will
fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate
by the democrats.
The democrats (and media cohorts) have become an apocolyptic death cult. The language that comes from them is infused with
the language of conspiracies, violence, treason, aggression and demonization.
And here is the thing, Bernie to survive electorally will have to become a cult member. Effectively he will have to be pro-war
with Russia. He will be giving from the the Left supposed support for aggressive action andmilitarism toward Russia.
I fear that if a democrat becomes president in 2020 (it won't be Bernie), is elected president that in the year of the midterms
in 2022, the US will start a real war with Russia which has a highly likehood of going nuclear.
"... -- William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), from memory ..."
"... @thanatokephaloides ..."
"... Finally there's the meeting that Assange's lawyer set up with congress for him to testify to congress and tell them where he got the DNC emails that showed how they rigged the primary. Comey and Schaffer shot that down because it would have killed Russia Gate. Dead and buried and the country could move on. ..."
"... In this case, it is NOT a matter of opinion. It is a matter of FACT. The physical proof that we have right now tells us that the Wikileaks documents did not come from a "hack." We also have physical evidence that someone (no doubt Crowdstrike) manipulated copies of the leaked documents and embedded awkward amateurish evidence to make them look like they were taken by a "Russian" hacker. Here's how we know that: ..."
"... Assange's diplomatic trip to the US in mid-2017 to testify before Congress and prove where the documents came from was emergency-blocked by Comey and Rosenstein. As a consequence, Assange immediately released the extensive Vault 7 documents to the American people so we could forensically recognize the signature techniques that the US intelligence agencies would use to alter downloaded DNC documents and embed fake Russian "fingerprints." We have seen the physical evidence that that occurred. ..."
"... The US has no real physical evidence of a Russian hack or they would never have released the fake evidence. Yet they continue their attack to harm Russia's economy and the continue their attempts to provoke a hot war with Russia. The US motive for this has nothing to do with their fake hacking narrative; it is about crippling Russia (and China) to forestall the rapid rise of Eurasia, which is stripping the Neocons and war-profiteering corporations of their dream for the US to achieve total domination over all other nations. The Entitled Elite want their New American Century back! Their Empire was supposed to rule the world.... ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than " a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
"... third run ..."
"... ~~Author Unknown ..."
"... ~~Martin Luther King Jr. ..."
"... @Unabashed Liberal ..."
"... @Unabashed Liberal ..."
"... ~~Martin Luther King Jr. ..."
"... Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate by the democrats. ..."
Russiagate may technically be about Trump, but in fact most of the "traitors" and Putin Puppets are progressives on the left.
Russiagate officially started in 2015 long before
the DNC hack and the Democratic primaries.
Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin
Russiagate never was actually about Russia. It's the Democrats' version of Obama's birth certificate. As
Caitlin Johnstone puts it, Russiagate is 9/11 minus 9/11.
TWIT:
Kurt Eichenwald
@kurteichenwald
Bottom line: You either support the patriots in our intelligence community and law enforcement who work endlessly for our
national security, and all of the intelligence agencies of our allies, or you support Putin.
You're either a patriot, a traitor or an idiot. Choose.
10:51 AM-16 Jul 2018
In reality, Russiagate started with Ralph Nader and the
2000 election .
They said a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush. You have a moral duty to vote for the Democrat and to be pragmatic. Your Naderite
purity came at the expense of the poor. Only affluent selfish white guys could afford this type of virtue signaling. In fact,
maybe some of these people were really Republicans in disguise. There were no Russian bots to blame just yet, but clearly some
liberals are unable to imagine good faith criticism of Democrats coming from the left.
The terms " virtue signaling", " purity pony", and of course "White Berniebro" weren't coined yet, but the the stereotype they
describe was formed in 2000. Gore lost and Nader and all his voters, in swing states or not, were vilified. They were worse than
Republicans. They were traitors. Of all the factors that caused Gore's loss, the only one that Democratic partisans really cared
about was Nader.
People that voted for Nader became responsible for the Iraq War, while Democrats who voted for Bush and the Iraq War got a free
pass. Liberals, besides their obvious double-standards when allocating responsibility, made the dubious claim that morality requires
being pragmatic in your voting. And then, as if to prove the basis of their claims to be false, they approach their target audience
in a non-pragmatic way.
The anger on open display is the opposite of pragmatic politics. They don't try to persuade people to vote for the Democrat. They
demand it. It is a moral litmus test, or rather, a judgement of one's very soul. Good people know they have to vote for the Democrat.
Bad people vote for Republicans and the very worst people of all claim to be left, but vote for Stein or maybe even voted for
Clinton, but criticized her. Democratic partisans have no interest in what you say about an issue if they perceive it as in any
way an attack or a criticism of a Democrat. If you are a third party advocate you can forget about being taken seriously on any
issue because you have already self identified as a Satanist and you need to be exorcised from the body politic. Even if you say
you support the Democrat as the lesser evil, you speak as one of the damned and deserve no mercy. Sanders played the game in 2016
exactly the way people said Nader should have played it and he and his supporters were still dismissed.
Like Nader before her, Stein is the absolute
worst traitor of all . Worse than Trump himself.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent.
Jill Stein is a Russian agent. https://t.co/qkDUe6yADd
Maddow cast suspicion on Stein's silence over alleged Russian attempts to interfere with the election to benefit Donald Trump, who
she claimed during her own campaign would govern no differently than Hillary Clinton.
"So everybody's like, 'Wow, how come this like super, super aggressive opposition that we saw from these third-party candidates
-- how come they haven't said anything since this scandal has broken?'" Maddow said.
"I don't know, Jill -- I can't pronounce it in Russian," Maddow said, with apparent sarcasm.
Bernie Sanders, OTOH, did everything he was told he should do. He supported the Democratic establishment candidate, and believed
the Russiagate story.
It has been clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be
involved in 2018. It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the
Russian oligarchs.
However, Sanders had already committed the unforgivable
sin of criticizing the Democratic establishment candidate from the left. There is simply no way of coming back from that treason.
Despite his stance, Sanders has also been constantly presented as another Russian agent, with the Washington Post (11/12/17) asking
its readers, "When Russia interferes with the 2020 election on behalf of Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders, how will liberals
respond?" The message is clear: The progressive wave rising across America is and will be a consequence of Russia, not of the
failures of the system, nor of the Democrats.
It isn't just progressive politicians that are all traitors. Movements like Black Lives Matter are also traitors for Russia.
That's because you, Russia, funded riots in Ferguson. See 0 hour I have your connections to Trump archived via Schiller and
Scavino https://t.co/aTUDlCGkYi
If you are still confused about what is treason and what isn't, ask yourself the question: Does the issue advance the narrative
that the Democratic Party is a force for absolute good?
Oh my god: this is how deranged official Washington is. The President of the largest Dem Party think tank (funded in part by
dictators) genuinely believes Chelsea Manning's candidacy is a Kremlin plot. Conspiracy theorists thrive more in mainstream DC
than on internet fringes pic.twitter.com/e8g314iQHT
We still have the 2018 election, and then the long lead-up to the 2020 election. There is nothing to indicate that the rhetoric
won't get a lot more insane. The general indifference of the public doesn't seem to discourage the media and pundits. So how will
it likely look in Fall 2020? Probably like it looked in
1952 .
The purpose of advancing the Communist issue was not to fix the Communist problem -- it was to exploit that problem for political
and ideological advantage. That is how the Republican Party could produce its unhinged 1952 platform, which charged that the Democrats
"have shielded traitors to the Nation in high places," "work unceasingly to achieve their goal of national socialism," and "by
a long succession of vicious acts, so undermined the foundations of our Republic as to threaten its existence." (Does that kind
of talk strike you as overheated? Then you, too, are failing to take the Russia issue seriously.)
There is little to no danger for conservatives and Republicans. All of the danger is for progressives and socialists, and the
angry mob is the Democratic establishment trying to silence left-wing ideas. In comparison, the danger of the GOP to the left-wing
is trivial.
Russiagate officially started in 2015 long before the DNC hack and the Democratic primaries.
I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that people keep posting it as common knowledge and factual -- especially on this
site. Old dkos habits are hard to break, I guess. The speed at which the files were STOLEN prove it was done from within the network.
Not from Russia, or from a van parked down the street. I can only guess that the DNC can't reveal whose network account was used
to do so, because it would blow the bullshit lie of a hack out of the water.
The speed at which the files were STOLEN prove it was done from within the network. Not from Russia, or from a van parked
down the street. I can only guess that the DNC can't reveal whose network account was used to do so, because it would blow
the bullshit lie of a hack out of the water.
There was NO hack.
emphasis in original.
The term usually used by the perpetrator classes for this sort of thing is: "inside job" . And, as
with all other inside jobs, the question really is: "Who's the insider?"
"The easiest way to raise a revolutionary army is to use someone else's; especially if it belongs to your enemy." -- William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), from memory
I've seen an article debunking the "hack was a leak" story, but it makes no difference anyway. In my book, the leak/hack just
created a more informed electorate, and that's good for American democracy.
@Deja
The truth is contained in the emails, not in their journey. Remember who else is telling you that the contents of the emails is
less important than how they got there - the Democrats.
@Deja
hypothesis has problems. Don't get me wrong, I think it holds more promise than the 'hack' hypothesis. But right now, really,
we got shit for proof either way? Would honestly look forward to your proof either way, sans the critique of the essayist. Might
I suggest that you criticize the point, not the person, please? Questions remain.
- DNC leak vs hack remains unproven (servers not provided)
- one party consent is complicated. On the tape, there was 3rd party on speaker phone. Were they in one party consent jurisdiction
as well?
- How was CNN able to confirm that this tape was recorded in NY?
in it. This is the point that matters to me. Assange has stated that the emails didn't come from Russia. Craig Murray said
that he was involved with the person who got the information from the DNC computers and that there was no connection to Russia.
The CIAs Vault 7 shows how evidence on computers can be manipulated to make it seem like someone's dawg did the deed. I think
it'd be very sloppy for trained hackers to leave their own footprints on the scene don't you think?
Finally there's the meeting that Assange's lawyer set up with congress for him to testify to congress and tell them where
he got the DNC emails that showed how they rigged the primary. Comey and Schaffer shot that down because it would have killed
Russia Gate. Dead and buried and the country could move on.
It matters profoundly. Knowing the facts surrounding critical political events or social earthquakes can be
epigenetic events. Hard truths can trigger conscious evolution while we are alive and your advanced gene expressions can be
physically inherited, changing the species.
By exercising our own critical thinking and working very hard to see through narratives to the core realities in the universe
and in all things -- we are physically evolving the species into better and more enlightened generations of humans.
In this case, it is NOT a matter of opinion. It is a matter of FACT. The physical proof that we have right now tells us
that the Wikileaks documents did not come from a "hack." We also have physical evidence that someone (no doubt Crowdstrike) manipulated
copies of the leaked documents and embedded awkward amateurish evidence to make them look like they were taken by a "Russian"
hacker. Here's how we know that:
Assange's diplomatic trip to the US in mid-2017 to testify before Congress and prove where the documents came from was
emergency-blocked by Comey and Rosenstein. As a consequence, Assange immediately released the extensive Vault 7 documents to the
American people so we could forensically recognize the signature techniques that the US intelligence agencies would use to alter
downloaded DNC documents and embed fake Russian "fingerprints." We have seen the physical evidence that that occurred.
The US has no real physical evidence of a Russian hack or they would never have released the fake evidence. Yet they continue
their attack to harm Russia's economy and the continue their attempts to provoke a hot war with Russia. The US motive for this
has nothing to do with their fake hacking narrative; it is about crippling Russia (and China) to forestall the rapid rise of Eurasia,
which is stripping the Neocons and war-profiteering corporations of their dream for the US to achieve total domination over all
other nations. The Entitled Elite want their New American Century back! Their Empire was supposed to rule the world....
If that is what your instincts tell you, you should trust them. It's a biological imperative.
It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the Russian oligarchs.
Hey, Bernie. The American people were the ones who should have decided who won the primary, not Hillary, the DNC and the delegates.
That you are blaming Her loss on Russia instead of admitting that the American people rejected her makes you nothing more than
a democratic puppet. How embarrassing for you.
Every Black voter should abandon the DP until they apologize for their disrespect for the BLM and saying that they only started
protesting cops killing Blacks because Russia manipulated them into doing so.
Eichenwald thinks that our intelligence agencies are patriots who have spent their lives working on keeping us safe does he?
I agree with Dmitry Orlov's take on them.
The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as
possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on
ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially
organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on.
....
the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic
and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest single
continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your
own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you
are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than " a skeptical attitude
toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. "
And let's not forget how many
coups
and false flag events they had a hand in creating that have cost so much misery and death.
One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false
flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story
is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting
this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips.
It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy
theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.
The real puppets are the ones who believe in this silly story that Russia is pulling Trump's strings and that the GOP are also
Russian puppets. Good grief!
meaning the 'Russia Ruse'--IMO, has been an exercise in setting up a scenario under which the PtB can put in place a system
geared toward major social media 'censorship,' and, a face-saving exercise for FSC--just in case she decides to make a third
run in 2020. Heaven forbid!
Mollie/Blue Onyx (Reverting to my original handle)
"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will
be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving." ~~Author Unknown
"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments
are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way." ~~Martin Luther King Jr.
"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong." ~~W. R. Purche
"... has been an exercise in setting up a scenario under which the PtB can put in place a system geared toward major social
media 'censorship,'
Yup. Dan Coates directory of national intelligence came out and accused Russsia of engaging in a "messaging campaign". So how
does one stop this messaging campaign. Well, back in the day, the answer was to answer bad speech with more and better speech.
Well, with Russiagate both the media and dem/gop establishment have to come to demand censorship from the major social media
platforms. And they have responded. At first they actually didn't and thought the Russia charges were trivial. Until that is,
they were theatened by House and Senate reps. And then they hopped to it.
And just a number of days ago, Facebook proudly announced they took down some nefarious pages who seemed to be engaging in
a message campaign. And turns out they shut down a real group organizing an anti-fascist rally. There are other examples like
this.
The censorship will continue becoming more and more brazen. (BTW, youtube started ths process earlier demonitizing and hurting
a lot of popular, but alternative voices.)
BTW--the Young Turks showed the Coats clip and claimed "see the Russians are still hacking our elections".
I'm truly getting concerned regarding the direction our government appears to be taking when it comes to 'freedom of expression/speech.'
Strangely, many on the 'left' don't seem very concerned. Indeed, because the MSM is so intent on going after DT, many so-called
progressives--including the supposedly more liberal (cough, cough) lawmakers--have become major cheerleaders of the corporatist
media. Go figure.
Mollie/Blue Onyx (Reverting to my original handle)
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went." ~~Will Rogers
"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments
are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way." ~~Martin Luther King Jr.
"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong." ~~W. R. Purche
as well as every other person in Trump's administration that is working against him. This is insubordination and if Trump continues
to let them run their mouths then I believe that he is in on this scam and is playing along with it. Why? Look at what has been
happening since he became president. From the increasing Russian sanctions to the internet censorship to the increased military
budget with money that goes to fighting cyber warfare and many other things that are being done because of this new and improved
false flag.
As you stated YouTube has been removing lots of videos, Facebook and Twitter have been censoring alternative media sites that
are not playing along with Russia Gate and Google changed its algorithms so that traffic to those sites are down up to 90% according
to WSWS.
I once thought that this would eventually be exposed for the scam it is, but not any more. It's here to stay. And just like
in 1984 where there was that place where history was changed to fit the narrative of the day, we are seeing that here. Things
that happened last decade are being blamed on Russia hacking. I wouldn't be surprised if the KKK and Jim Crow were blamed on Russia.
This is how out of control it's gotten. And I was so looking forward to seeing Rachel trying to explain to her viewers how she
got things so wrong.
@snoopydawg
His erratic actions are the perfect distraction for the capitalist pigs the same as the "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Marxist Communist
Fascist Socialist Radical Leftist Feminazi SJW" crap that went on during the last capitalist puppet presidency. Either way, the
world still burns and the pigs make out like bandits in the process. Keeping the plebs at each other's throats is just a bonus
for them.
@snoopydawg
Remember whom you are discussing. Alas, you must be a Russian wolfhound to think R. Madcow could ever be wrong. Apologize, then
stand in the corner until after the midterms when the GRU hauls off recalcitrant Dims and Repugnants failing to swear fealty to
Vladimir Vladimirovich.
"Russiagate is like a mirage. It looks so real from a distance you'll swear it's there and mock anyone who says otherwise,
but once you get up close and examine its component parts you find it's made of nothing but innuendo, spin, unsubstantiated claims
and dishonest omissions.
2:45 PM · Aug 3, 2018"
"
@caitoz
·
Aug 3
Nothing wrong with wanting a full investigation. There's something very, very wrong with pressuring a US president to continually
escalate dangerous cold war tensions with a nuclear superpower without ever backing down based on an "idea" with no evidence.
"
@snoopydawg
Bernie will not be able to say "Oh evil Russia but let's not go to war with them." Diplomacy itself finally became full criminalized
and made tresonous when Trump meet Putin in Finland. Any level of moderation will be attacked as soft on Putin and treasonous.
And I write "pro-war" and not "anti-Russian". One cannot be anti-Russian in any moderate way. Being anti-Russian means supporting
a harsh and aggressive military stance toward their nation. The Russians are after all destroying Western civilization and this
cannot be meant with diplomacy.
And from what I can, every national democratic candidate for House and Senate will follow suite.
For reference, these are the only 10 senators who voted AGAINST giving Trump a $717 billion war budget:
Bernie Sanders
Elizabeth Warren
Ed Markey
Kirsten Gillibrand
Dick Durban
Kamala Harris
Jeff Merkley
Ron Wyden
Mike Lee (R)
Marco Rubio (R)
So much for #Resistance huh?
The others show that there are others out there that have seen through this propaganda crap. I'd like to see the breakdown
of Hillary supporters that believe Russia Gate and the Bernie supporters that don't. Most of the Trump supporters think it's phony
so what made Hillary's believe in something that everyone should be laughing at?
You deserve a lot of credit. Russia interfered in your favor, yet you are man enough to admit that they interfered. Thank
you Bernie!
So you plan to continue this McCarthy Russian BS? You didn't speak out when you got cheated in the primaries, and you didn't
seem to care that Hillary was using her own paid troll army. Integrity matters Bernie and you are losing yours.
You stopped speaking for me and millions of others when you caved to crooked HRC. No it was NOT clear that Russia was "deeply
involved in the election. What is CLEAR is your betrayal of your followers and cover up of the election fraud perpetrated by
DNC! Everybody knows...
Bernie, that's MIC propaganda. Stop helping it. There are millions of reasons Trump should not be president. We don't need
a hyped up corporate fairytale to make that point https://t.co/7FAwb47LtB
Democratic party jingoism in 2020 will be extra-ordinary with candidates each trying to out do each other how they will
fuck over Putin and the Russian nation. There will be a shit load of public loyalty testing against any third party candidate
by the democrats.
The democrats (and media cohorts) have become an apocolyptic death cult. The language that comes from them is infused with
the language of conspiracies, violence, treason, aggression and demonization.
And here is the thing, Bernie to survive electorally will have to become a cult member. Effectively he will have to be pro-war
with Russia. He will be giving from the the Left supposed support for aggressive action andmilitarism toward Russia.
I fear that if a democrat becomes president in 2020 (it won't be Bernie), is elected president that in the year of the midterms
in 2022, the US will start a real war with Russia which has a highly likehood of going nuclear.
for the John S. McCain 2019 National Defense Authorization Bill ( subtitled 'The Sneeze
Wrong, We're Comin' to Fuck You Up Act' ). Here's the very lengthy summary of provisions
in the House version from govtrack.us , although it may
have changed slightly since the House and Senate conference agreements.
Let's start with the House: 'House Democrats vote for record US military spending', Patrick
Martin, 28 July 2018, wsws.org
"By an overwhelming bipartisan vote Thursday, the US House of Representatives approved the
largest military authorization bill in American history. The National Defense Authorization Act
approves $716 billion to fund US military aggression around the world, and gives President
Trump the power to order cyberwarfare attacks on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea without
further congressional action.
... ... ...
"Particularly ominous are the sections of the NDAA on cyberwarfare. The bill
authorizes the Pentagon to conduct "unattributed" cyber operations without having to comply
with the usual restrictions on covert operations, such as requiring a Presidential Finding
which is submitted to key leaders of Congress. According to the bill "clandestine military
activity or operation in cyberspace shall be considered a traditional military activity.
It pre-authorizes US military cyber operations if the president determines that (1) there is
"an active, systematic, and ongoing campaign of attacks against the Government or people of the
United States in cyberspace, including attempting to influence American elections and
democratic political processes" and (2) that Russia, China, North Korea or Iran are
responsible. In that event, the president may order US cyberwar forces "to take appropriate and
proportional action in foreign cyberspace to disrupt, defeat, and deter such attacks."
This provision effectively gives Trump and any successor, Democrat or Republican, the power
to launch a full-scale cyberwar without further congressional authorization , merely on his own
declaration that the United States is under attack."
Sounds like we continue to waste a ton of borrowed cash on last generation tech.
One new US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
Two new Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines armed with atomic weapons
13 other new warships
77 new joint strike fighters
Basically Trump's bought himself his own shiny new aircraft carrier battle group.
I'm sure it will be a simply fantastic fleet.
The best fleet ever in the history of the oceans.
I hear they want to call the carrier 'Trump class'.
That'll show China who's boss in the
Western Pacific.
Just one thing though:
The Virginia-class was intended in
part as a less expensive alternative to the Seawolf-class submarines ( $1.8 billion vs $2.8
billion), whose production run was stopped after just three boats had been completed. To
reduce costs, the Virginia-class submarines use many "commercial off-the-shelf" (COTS)
components, especially in their computers and data networks.
Sounds totally secure to me!
I'm sure the Russians or Chinese EW is nowhere near powerful enough to
hack/disable/commandeer the 'off-the-shelf-tech' that runs our latest generation nuclear
powered submarine.
To reduce costs, the Virginia-class submarines use many "commercial off-the-shelf"
(COTS) components, especially in their computers and data networks.
Sounds totally secure to me!
The idea that we're dependent on Microsoft Windows to operate our current Naval
vessels, with little or no manual over-ride even available much less trained or used, makes
my skin crawl!
The only way that this can happen is if a whole lot of people get really desperate really
fast. So expect more cuts to education, health care for civilians, and all sorts of new exciting
waivers that will allow us to form our own Legion Etangere.
And everybody knows there will be an "incident" at the Trump military parade. It's
practically guaranteed, and you know the CIA is going to have a full three months to cook
something up. Hell, they've been waiting for this kind of chance for years.
I remember reporting years ago that the imperialism budget had surpassed a trillion per
year. Estimates prior to Obama's sequester budget were around 1.2 trillion per year for total
costs. Wrote many an article about it and yet here we are, still writing and reading articles
about it and not doing shit to stop it.
Boycott the duopoly, boycott this political system, demand democracy, demand power to the
people. It's so far past time for talking it's pathetic.
Gawd knows that the officers are getting too much money and perks without putting their
asses on the line.
The bill "restates our commitment to NATO and our partners," Smith said. "It extends the
prohibition on military cooperation with Russia. It declares that Russia violated the
Chemical Weapons Convention
Okay. No working with Russia on defeating ISIS. Not that we're doing this, just the
opposite. We're funding and protecting ISIS from Syria and Russia. But what chemical weapons
has Russia used in recent times? This country has been the ones using them in our various
wars. Stupid congress.
"... These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S. government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask, would a rational firm sell goods below cost? ..."
"... Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly when they are sold below the cost of production. ..."
"... The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels. ..."
"... In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans. ..."
"... On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending - more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against consumers. ..."
Donald Trump is using his trade wars to support the part of the US capital that has heavily
lost from free trade globalization, which is more powerful than ever in our days. This is also
part of the Trump agenda to persuade Americans for his "patriotic devotion" based on his
"America First" slogan.
The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only
tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels.
In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from
Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans.
On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to
the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that
trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending -
more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration
was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against
consumers.
In his book Globalization and its discontents , Joseph Stiglitz describes how the United
States under Clinton administration set up a cartel in favor of the US aluminum industry:
The United States supports free trade, but all too often, when a poor country does manage to
find a commodity it can export to the United States, domestic American protectionist interests
are galvanized. This mix of labor and business interests uses the many trade laws - officially
referred to as "fair trade laws," but known outside the United States as "unfair fair trade
laws"- to construct barbed-wire barriers to imports.
These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to
request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost
is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S.
government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little
sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask,
would a rational firm sell goods below cost?
During my term in government, perhaps the most grievous instance of U.S. special interests
interfering in trade - and the reform process - occurred in early 1994, just after the price of
aluminum plummeted. In response to the fall in price, U.S. aluminum producers accused Russia of
dumping aluminum.
Any economic analysis of the situation showed clearly that Russia was not dumping. Russia was
simply selling aluminum at the international price, which was lowered both because of a global
slowdown in demand occasioned by slower global growth and because of the cutback in Russian
aluminum use for military planes. Moreover, new soda can designs used substantially less
aluminum than before, and this also led to a decline in the demand.
As I saw the price of aluminum plummet, I knew the industry would soon be appealing to the
government for some form of relief, either new subsidies or new protection from foreign
competition. But even I was surprised at the proposal made by the head of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill:
a global aluminum cartel.
Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise
to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a
cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using
the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to
impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly
when they are sold below the cost of production.
I worked hard to convince those in the National Economic Council that it would be a mistake to
support O'Neill's idea, and I made great progress. But in a heated subcabinet meeting, a
decision was made to support the creation of an international cartel.
While I had managed to convince almost everyone of the dangers of the cartel solution, two
voices dominated. The State Department, with its close connections to the old-line state
ministries, supported the establishment of a cartel. The State Department prized order above
all else, and cartels do provide order. The old-line ministries, of course, were never
convinced that this movement to prices and markets made sense in the first place, and the
experience with aluminum simply served to confirm their views.
Rubin, at that time head of the National Economic Council, played a decisive role, siding with
State. At least for a while, the cartel did work. Prices were raised. The protfits of Alcoa and
other producers were enhanced. The American consumers - and consumers throughout the world -
lost, and indeed, the basic principles of economics, which teach the value of competitive
markets, show that the losses to consumers outweigh the gains to producers. Donald Trump is
using his trade wars to support the part of the US capital that has heavily lost from free
trade globalization, which is more powerful than ever in our days. This is also part of the
Trump agenda to persuade Americans for his "patriotic devotion" based on his "America First"
slogan.
The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only
tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels.
In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from
Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans.
On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to
the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that
trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending -
more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration
was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against
consumers.
In his book Globalization and its discontents , Joseph Stiglitz describes how the United
States under Clinton administration set up a cartel in favor of the US aluminum industry:
The United States supports free trade, but all too often, when a poor country does manage to
find a commodity it can export to the United States, domestic American protectionist interests
are galvanized. This mix of labor and business interests uses the many trade laws - officially
referred to as "fair trade laws," but known outside the United States as "unfair fair trade
laws"- to construct barbed-wire barriers to imports.
These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to
request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost
is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S.
government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little
sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask,
would a rational firm sell goods below cost?
During my term in government, perhaps the most grievous instance of U.S. special interests
interfering in trade - and the reform process - occurred in early 1994, just after the price of
aluminum plummeted. In response to the fall in price, U.S. aluminum producers accused Russia of
dumping aluminum.
Any economic analysis of the situation showed clearly that Russia was not dumping. Russia was
simply selling aluminum at the international price, which was lowered both because of a global
slowdown in demand occasioned by slower global growth and because of the cutback in Russian
aluminum use for military planes. Moreover, new soda can designs used substantially less
aluminum than before, and this also led to a decline in the demand.
As I saw the price of aluminum plummet, I knew the industry would soon be appealing to the
government for some form of relief, either new subsidies or new protection from foreign
competition. But even I was surprised at the proposal made by the head of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill:
a global aluminum cartel.
Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise
to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a
cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using
the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to
impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly
when they are sold below the cost of production.
I worked hard to convince those in the National Economic Council that it would be a mistake to
support O'Neill's idea, and I made great progress. But in a heated subcabinet meeting, a
decision was made to support the creation of an international cartel.
While I had managed to convince almost everyone of the dangers of the cartel solution, two
voices dominated. The State Department, with its close connections to the old-line state
ministries, supported the establishment of a cartel. The State Department prized order above
all else, and cartels do provide order. The old-line ministries, of course, were never
convinced that this movement to prices and markets made sense in the first place, and the
experience with aluminum simply served to confirm their views.
Rubin, at that time head of the National Economic Council, played a decisive role, siding with
State. At least for a while, the cartel did work. Prices were raised. The protfits of Alcoa and
other producers were enhanced. The American consumers - and consumers throughout the world -
lost, and indeed, the basic principles of economics, which teach the value of competitive
markets, show that the losses to consumers outweigh the gains to producers.
Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
explains the decline of the United States as a global power and the rise of the Chinese
empire.
So the US neoliberal establishment tried to sabotage Trump-Putin summit in doer to pursue "business as usual". In other words military-industrial
complex is in control of the USA government...
Notable quotes:
"... It's no coincidence that, at the very moment when the President of the United States was about to meet with the President of Russia, special prosecutor Robert Mueller III charged twelve Russians with having manipulated the US presidential elections by hacking into the data networks of the Democratic party in order to hinder candidate Hillary Clinton. The twelve Russians, accused of being agents of the military secret services (GRU), were officially defined as " conspirators ", and found guilty of " conspiracy to the detriment of the United States ". Simultaneously, Daniel Coats, National Director of Intelligence and principal advisor to the President in these matters, accused Russia of working to " undermine our basic values and our democracy ". He then sounded the alarm about the " threat of cyber-attacks which have arrived at a critical point " similar to that which preceded 9/11, on behalf not only of Russia, " the most aggressive foreign agent ", but also China and Iran. ..."
"... At the same time, in London, British " investigators " declared that the Russian military secret service GRU, which had sabotaged the Presidential elections in the USA, is the same service which poisoned ex-Russian agent, Sergueï Skripal and his daughter, who, inexplicably, survived contact with an extremely lethal gas. ..."
"... The political objective of these " enquiries " is clear – to maintain that at the head of all these " conspirators " is Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom President Donald Trump sat down at the negotiating table, despite vast bi-partisan opposition in the USA. After the " conspirators " had been charged, the Democrats asked Trump to cancel the meeting with Putin. Even though they failed, their pressure on the negotiations remains powerful. ..."
"... In opposition to the easing of tension with Russia are not only the Democrats (who, with a reversal of formal roles, are playing the " hawks "), but also many Republicans, among whom are several highly-important representatives of the Trump administration itself. It is the establishment, not only of the US, but also of Europe, whose powers and profits are directly linked to tension and war. ..."
"... Even if an agreement on these questions were reached between Putin and Trump, would the latter be able to implement it? Or will the real deciders be the powerful circles of the military-industrial complex? ..."
While the International Press distorted the content of the NATO Summit, the US establishment perfectly understood the unique
issue – the end of enmity with Russia. Thus disturbing the bilateral summit in Helsinki between the USA and Russia became its priority.
By all means possible, it had to prevent any rapprochement with Moscow.
We need to talk about everything, from commerce to the military, missiles, nuclear, and China " - this was how President Trump
began at the Helsinki Summit. " The time has come to talk in detail about our bilateral relationship and the international flashpoints
", emphasised Putin.
But it will not only be the two Presidents who will decide the future relationships between the United States and Russia.
It's no coincidence that, at the very moment when the President of the United States was about to meet with the President
of Russia, special prosecutor Robert Mueller III charged twelve Russians with having manipulated the US presidential elections by
hacking into the data networks of the Democratic party in order to hinder candidate Hillary Clinton. The twelve Russians, accused
of being agents of the military secret services (GRU), were officially defined as " conspirators ", and found guilty of " conspiracy
to the detriment of the United States ". Simultaneously, Daniel Coats, National Director of Intelligence and principal advisor to
the President in these matters, accused Russia of working to " undermine our basic values and our democracy ". He then sounded the
alarm about the " threat of cyber-attacks which have arrived at a critical point " similar to that which preceded 9/11, on behalf
not only of Russia, " the most aggressive foreign agent ", but also China and Iran.
At the same time, in London, British " investigators " declared that the Russian military secret service GRU, which had sabotaged
the Presidential elections in the USA, is the same service which poisoned ex-Russian agent, Sergueï Skripal and his daughter, who,
inexplicably, survived contact with an extremely lethal gas.
The political objective of these " enquiries " is clear – to maintain that at the head of all these " conspirators " is Russian
President Vladimir Putin, with whom President Donald Trump sat down at the negotiating table, despite vast bi-partisan opposition
in the USA. After the " conspirators " had been charged, the Democrats asked Trump to cancel the meeting with Putin. Even though
they failed, their pressure on the negotiations remains powerful.
What Putin tried to obtain from Trump is both simple and complex – to ease the tension between the two countries. To that purpose,
he proposed to Trump, who accepted, to implement a joint enquiry into the " conspiracy ". We do not know how the discussions on the
key questions will go – the status of Crimea, the condition of Syria, nuclear weapons and others. And we do not know what Trump will
ask in return. However, it is certain that any concession will be used to accuse him of connivance with the enemy. In opposition
to the easing of tension with Russia are not only the Democrats (who, with a reversal of formal roles, are playing the " hawks "),
but also many Republicans, among whom are several highly-important representatives of the Trump administration itself. It is the
establishment, not only of the US, but also of Europe, whose powers and profits are directly linked to tension and war.
It will not be the words, but the facts, which will reveal whether the climate of détente of the Helsinki Summit will become reality
- first of all with a de-escalation of NATO in Europe, in other words with the withdrawal of forces (including nuclear forces) of
the USA and NATO presently deployed against Russia, and the blockage of NATO's expansion to the East.
Even if an agreement on these questions were reached between Putin and Trump, would the latter be able to implement it? Or
will the real deciders be the powerful circles of the military-industrial complex?
One thing is certain – we in Italy and Europe can not remain the simple spectators of dealings which will define our future.
Manlio Dinucci
The conflict between transnational financial capitalism and productive national capitalism has entered into a paroxystic
phase. On one side, Presidents Trump and Putin are negotiating the joint defence of their national interests. On the other, the major
daily newspaper for the US and the world is accusing the US President of high treason, while the armed forces of the US and NATO
are preparing for war with Russia and China.
You have attacked our democracy. Your well-worn gamblers' denials do not interest us. If you continue with this attitude, we will
consider it an act of war." This is what Trump should have said to Putin at the Helsinki Summit, in the opinion of famous New
York Times editorialist Thomas Friedman, published in La Repubblica . He went on to accuse the Russian President of having
"attacked NATO, a fundamental pillar of international security, destabilised Europe, and bombed thousands of Syrian refugees, causing
them to seek refuge in Europe."
He then accused the President of the United States of having " repudiated his oath on the Constitution " and of being an " asset
of Russian Intelligence " or at least playing at being one.
What Friedman expressed in these provocative terms corresponds to the position of a powerful internal and international front
(of which the New York Times is an important mouthpiece) opposed to USA-Russia negotiations, which should continue with the
invitation of Putin to the White House. But there is a substantial difference.
While the negotiations have not yet borne fruit, opposition to the negotiations has been expressed not only in words, but especially
in facts.
Cancelling out the climate of détente at the Helsinki Summit, the planetary warmongering system of the United States is in the
process of intensifying the preparations for a war reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific:
After the landing of an US armoured brigade in Anvers, totalling a hundred tanks and a thousand military vehicles, a US aerial
brigade landed in Rotterdam with sixty attack helicopters. These forces and others, all of them USA/NATO, are deployed along the
borders of Russian territory, in the framework of operation Atlantic Resolve , launched in 2014 against " Russian aggression.
" In its anti-Russian function, Poland asked for the permanent presence of an armoured US unit on its own territory, offering
to pay between 1.5 - 2 billion dollars per year.
At the same time, NATO is intensifying the training and armament of troops in Georgia and Ukraine, candidates for entry into
membership of the Alliance on the frontiers with Russia.
Meanwhile, the US Congress received with all honours Adriy Parubiy, founder of the National-Social Party (on the model of
Adolf Hitler's National-Socialist Party), head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations employed by NATO in the Maïdan Square putsch.
NATO command in Lago Patria (JFC Naples) – under the orders of US Admiral James Foggo, who also commands the US naval forces
in Europe and those in Africa – is working busily to organise the grand-scale exercise Trident Juncture 18 , in which will
participate 40,000 military personnel, 130 aircraft and 70 ships from more than 30 countries including Sweden and Finland, which
are NATO partners. The exercise, which will take place in October in Norway and the adjacent seas, will simulate a scenario of
" collective defence " - naturally enough, against " Russian aggression. "
In the Pacific, the major naval exercise RIMPAC 2018 (27 June to 2 August) is in full swing - organised and directed
by USINDOPACOM, the US Command which covers the Indian and Pacific oceans – with the participation of 25,000 sailors and marines,
more than 50 ships and 200 war-planes.The exercise – in which France, Germany and the United Kingdom are also participating –
is clearly directed against China, which Admiral Phil Davidson, commander of USINDOPACOM, defines as a "major rival power which
is eroding the international order in order to reduce the access of the USA to the region and thus become hegemonic."
When Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping, Friedman will no doubt accuse him of connivance not only with the Russian enemy,
but also with the Chinese enemy. Manlio Dinucci
"... These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S. government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask, would a rational firm sell goods below cost? ..."
"... Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly when they are sold below the cost of production. ..."
"... The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels. ..."
"... In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans. ..."
"... On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending - more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against consumers. ..."
Donald Trump is using his trade wars to support the part of the US capital that has heavily
lost from free trade globalization, which is more powerful than ever in our days. This is also
part of the Trump agenda to persuade Americans for his "patriotic devotion" based on his
"America First" slogan.
The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only
tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels.
In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from
Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans.
On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to
the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that
trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending -
more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration
was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against
consumers.
In his book Globalization and its discontents , Joseph Stiglitz describes how the United
States under Clinton administration set up a cartel in favor of the US aluminum industry:
The United States supports free trade, but all too often, when a poor country does manage to
find a commodity it can export to the United States, domestic American protectionist interests
are galvanized. This mix of labor and business interests uses the many trade laws - officially
referred to as "fair trade laws," but known outside the United States as "unfair fair trade
laws"- to construct barbed-wire barriers to imports.
These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to
request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost
is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S.
government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little
sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask,
would a rational firm sell goods below cost?
During my term in government, perhaps the most grievous instance of U.S. special interests
interfering in trade - and the reform process - occurred in early 1994, just after the price of
aluminum plummeted. In response to the fall in price, U.S. aluminum producers accused Russia of
dumping aluminum.
Any economic analysis of the situation showed clearly that Russia was not dumping. Russia was
simply selling aluminum at the international price, which was lowered both because of a global
slowdown in demand occasioned by slower global growth and because of the cutback in Russian
aluminum use for military planes. Moreover, new soda can designs used substantially less
aluminum than before, and this also led to a decline in the demand.
As I saw the price of aluminum plummet, I knew the industry would soon be appealing to the
government for some form of relief, either new subsidies or new protection from foreign
competition. But even I was surprised at the proposal made by the head of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill:
a global aluminum cartel.
Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise
to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a
cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using
the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to
impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly
when they are sold below the cost of production.
I worked hard to convince those in the National Economic Council that it would be a mistake to
support O'Neill's idea, and I made great progress. But in a heated subcabinet meeting, a
decision was made to support the creation of an international cartel.
While I had managed to convince almost everyone of the dangers of the cartel solution, two
voices dominated. The State Department, with its close connections to the old-line state
ministries, supported the establishment of a cartel. The State Department prized order above
all else, and cartels do provide order. The old-line ministries, of course, were never
convinced that this movement to prices and markets made sense in the first place, and the
experience with aluminum simply served to confirm their views.
Rubin, at that time head of the National Economic Council, played a decisive role, siding with
State. At least for a while, the cartel did work. Prices were raised. The protfits of Alcoa and
other producers were enhanced. The American consumers - and consumers throughout the world -
lost, and indeed, the basic principles of economics, which teach the value of competitive
markets, show that the losses to consumers outweigh the gains to producers. Donald Trump is
using his trade wars to support the part of the US capital that has heavily lost from free
trade globalization, which is more powerful than ever in our days. This is also part of the
Trump agenda to persuade Americans for his "patriotic devotion" based on his "America First"
slogan.
The reality is that the US empire was always conducting trade wars that included not only
tariffs on specific products, but even deliberately created cartels.
In the early 90s the Clinton administration uncritically adopted the neoliberal doctrine from
Ronald Reagan and continued the big fraud against the majority of the Americans.
On the one hand, the Clinton administration was selling the big fairy tale of neoliberalism to
the American public: free market capitalism would bring prosperity for all through that
trickle-down fiasco. And it was translated, as always, in further cuts in public spending -
more tax-cuts for the super-rich. On the other hand, behind the scenes, the same administration
was implementing the most aggressive protectionism in favor of some US corporations and against
consumers.
In his book Globalization and its discontents , Joseph Stiglitz describes how the United
States under Clinton administration set up a cartel in favor of the US aluminum industry:
The United States supports free trade, but all too often, when a poor country does manage to
find a commodity it can export to the United States, domestic American protectionist interests
are galvanized. This mix of labor and business interests uses the many trade laws - officially
referred to as "fair trade laws," but known outside the United States as "unfair fair trade
laws"- to construct barbed-wire barriers to imports.
These laws allow a company that believes a foreign rival is selling a product below cost to
request that the government impose special tariffs to protect it. Selling products below cost
is called dumping, and the duties are called dumping duties. Often, however, the U.S.
government determines costs on the basis of little evidence, and in ways which make little
sense. To most economists, the dumping duties are simply naked protectionism. Why, they ask,
would a rational firm sell goods below cost?
During my term in government, perhaps the most grievous instance of U.S. special interests
interfering in trade - and the reform process - occurred in early 1994, just after the price of
aluminum plummeted. In response to the fall in price, U.S. aluminum producers accused Russia of
dumping aluminum.
Any economic analysis of the situation showed clearly that Russia was not dumping. Russia was
simply selling aluminum at the international price, which was lowered both because of a global
slowdown in demand occasioned by slower global growth and because of the cutback in Russian
aluminum use for military planes. Moreover, new soda can designs used substantially less
aluminum than before, and this also led to a decline in the demand.
As I saw the price of aluminum plummet, I knew the industry would soon be appealing to the
government for some form of relief, either new subsidies or new protection from foreign
competition. But even I was surprised at the proposal made by the head of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill:
a global aluminum cartel.
Cartels work by restricting output, thereby raising prices. O'Neill's interest was no surprise
to me; what did surprise me was the idea that the U.S. government would not only condone a
cartel but actually play a pivotal role in setting one up. He also raised the specter of using
the antidumping laws if the cartel was not created. These laws allow the United States to
impose special duties on goods that arc sold at below a "fair market value," and particularly
when they are sold below the cost of production.
I worked hard to convince those in the National Economic Council that it would be a mistake to
support O'Neill's idea, and I made great progress. But in a heated subcabinet meeting, a
decision was made to support the creation of an international cartel.
While I had managed to convince almost everyone of the dangers of the cartel solution, two
voices dominated. The State Department, with its close connections to the old-line state
ministries, supported the establishment of a cartel. The State Department prized order above
all else, and cartels do provide order. The old-line ministries, of course, were never
convinced that this movement to prices and markets made sense in the first place, and the
experience with aluminum simply served to confirm their views.
Rubin, at that time head of the National Economic Council, played a decisive role, siding with
State. At least for a while, the cartel did work. Prices were raised. The protfits of Alcoa and
other producers were enhanced. The American consumers - and consumers throughout the world -
lost, and indeed, the basic principles of economics, which teach the value of competitive
markets, show that the losses to consumers outweigh the gains to producers.
Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
explains the decline of the United States as a global power and the rise of the Chinese
empire.
So the US neoliberal establishment tried to sabotage Trump-Putin summit in doer to pursue "business as usual". In other words military-industrial
complex is in control of the USA government...
Notable quotes:
"... It's no coincidence that, at the very moment when the President of the United States was about to meet with the President of Russia, special prosecutor Robert Mueller III charged twelve Russians with having manipulated the US presidential elections by hacking into the data networks of the Democratic party in order to hinder candidate Hillary Clinton. The twelve Russians, accused of being agents of the military secret services (GRU), were officially defined as " conspirators ", and found guilty of " conspiracy to the detriment of the United States ". Simultaneously, Daniel Coats, National Director of Intelligence and principal advisor to the President in these matters, accused Russia of working to " undermine our basic values and our democracy ". He then sounded the alarm about the " threat of cyber-attacks which have arrived at a critical point " similar to that which preceded 9/11, on behalf not only of Russia, " the most aggressive foreign agent ", but also China and Iran. ..."
"... At the same time, in London, British " investigators " declared that the Russian military secret service GRU, which had sabotaged the Presidential elections in the USA, is the same service which poisoned ex-Russian agent, Sergueï Skripal and his daughter, who, inexplicably, survived contact with an extremely lethal gas. ..."
"... The political objective of these " enquiries " is clear – to maintain that at the head of all these " conspirators " is Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom President Donald Trump sat down at the negotiating table, despite vast bi-partisan opposition in the USA. After the " conspirators " had been charged, the Democrats asked Trump to cancel the meeting with Putin. Even though they failed, their pressure on the negotiations remains powerful. ..."
"... In opposition to the easing of tension with Russia are not only the Democrats (who, with a reversal of formal roles, are playing the " hawks "), but also many Republicans, among whom are several highly-important representatives of the Trump administration itself. It is the establishment, not only of the US, but also of Europe, whose powers and profits are directly linked to tension and war. ..."
"... Even if an agreement on these questions were reached between Putin and Trump, would the latter be able to implement it? Or will the real deciders be the powerful circles of the military-industrial complex? ..."
While the International Press distorted the content of the NATO Summit, the US establishment perfectly understood the unique
issue – the end of enmity with Russia. Thus disturbing the bilateral summit in Helsinki between the USA and Russia became its priority.
By all means possible, it had to prevent any rapprochement with Moscow.
We need to talk about everything, from commerce to the military, missiles, nuclear, and China " - this was how President Trump
began at the Helsinki Summit. " The time has come to talk in detail about our bilateral relationship and the international flashpoints
", emphasised Putin.
But it will not only be the two Presidents who will decide the future relationships between the United States and Russia.
It's no coincidence that, at the very moment when the President of the United States was about to meet with the President
of Russia, special prosecutor Robert Mueller III charged twelve Russians with having manipulated the US presidential elections by
hacking into the data networks of the Democratic party in order to hinder candidate Hillary Clinton. The twelve Russians, accused
of being agents of the military secret services (GRU), were officially defined as " conspirators ", and found guilty of " conspiracy
to the detriment of the United States ". Simultaneously, Daniel Coats, National Director of Intelligence and principal advisor to
the President in these matters, accused Russia of working to " undermine our basic values and our democracy ". He then sounded the
alarm about the " threat of cyber-attacks which have arrived at a critical point " similar to that which preceded 9/11, on behalf
not only of Russia, " the most aggressive foreign agent ", but also China and Iran.
At the same time, in London, British " investigators " declared that the Russian military secret service GRU, which had sabotaged
the Presidential elections in the USA, is the same service which poisoned ex-Russian agent, Sergueï Skripal and his daughter, who,
inexplicably, survived contact with an extremely lethal gas.
The political objective of these " enquiries " is clear – to maintain that at the head of all these " conspirators " is Russian
President Vladimir Putin, with whom President Donald Trump sat down at the negotiating table, despite vast bi-partisan opposition
in the USA. After the " conspirators " had been charged, the Democrats asked Trump to cancel the meeting with Putin. Even though
they failed, their pressure on the negotiations remains powerful.
What Putin tried to obtain from Trump is both simple and complex – to ease the tension between the two countries. To that purpose,
he proposed to Trump, who accepted, to implement a joint enquiry into the " conspiracy ". We do not know how the discussions on the
key questions will go – the status of Crimea, the condition of Syria, nuclear weapons and others. And we do not know what Trump will
ask in return. However, it is certain that any concession will be used to accuse him of connivance with the enemy. In opposition
to the easing of tension with Russia are not only the Democrats (who, with a reversal of formal roles, are playing the " hawks "),
but also many Republicans, among whom are several highly-important representatives of the Trump administration itself. It is the
establishment, not only of the US, but also of Europe, whose powers and profits are directly linked to tension and war.
It will not be the words, but the facts, which will reveal whether the climate of détente of the Helsinki Summit will become reality
- first of all with a de-escalation of NATO in Europe, in other words with the withdrawal of forces (including nuclear forces) of
the USA and NATO presently deployed against Russia, and the blockage of NATO's expansion to the East.
Even if an agreement on these questions were reached between Putin and Trump, would the latter be able to implement it? Or
will the real deciders be the powerful circles of the military-industrial complex?
One thing is certain – we in Italy and Europe can not remain the simple spectators of dealings which will define our future.
Manlio Dinucci
The conflict between transnational financial capitalism and productive national capitalism has entered into a paroxystic
phase. On one side, Presidents Trump and Putin are negotiating the joint defence of their national interests. On the other, the major
daily newspaper for the US and the world is accusing the US President of high treason, while the armed forces of the US and NATO
are preparing for war with Russia and China.
You have attacked our democracy. Your well-worn gamblers' denials do not interest us. If you continue with this attitude, we will
consider it an act of war." This is what Trump should have said to Putin at the Helsinki Summit, in the opinion of famous New
York Times editorialist Thomas Friedman, published in La Repubblica . He went on to accuse the Russian President of having
"attacked NATO, a fundamental pillar of international security, destabilised Europe, and bombed thousands of Syrian refugees, causing
them to seek refuge in Europe."
He then accused the President of the United States of having " repudiated his oath on the Constitution " and of being an " asset
of Russian Intelligence " or at least playing at being one.
What Friedman expressed in these provocative terms corresponds to the position of a powerful internal and international front
(of which the New York Times is an important mouthpiece) opposed to USA-Russia negotiations, which should continue with the
invitation of Putin to the White House. But there is a substantial difference.
While the negotiations have not yet borne fruit, opposition to the negotiations has been expressed not only in words, but especially
in facts.
Cancelling out the climate of détente at the Helsinki Summit, the planetary warmongering system of the United States is in the
process of intensifying the preparations for a war reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific:
After the landing of an US armoured brigade in Anvers, totalling a hundred tanks and a thousand military vehicles, a US aerial
brigade landed in Rotterdam with sixty attack helicopters. These forces and others, all of them USA/NATO, are deployed along the
borders of Russian territory, in the framework of operation Atlantic Resolve , launched in 2014 against " Russian aggression.
" In its anti-Russian function, Poland asked for the permanent presence of an armoured US unit on its own territory, offering
to pay between 1.5 - 2 billion dollars per year.
At the same time, NATO is intensifying the training and armament of troops in Georgia and Ukraine, candidates for entry into
membership of the Alliance on the frontiers with Russia.
Meanwhile, the US Congress received with all honours Adriy Parubiy, founder of the National-Social Party (on the model of
Adolf Hitler's National-Socialist Party), head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations employed by NATO in the Maïdan Square putsch.
NATO command in Lago Patria (JFC Naples) – under the orders of US Admiral James Foggo, who also commands the US naval forces
in Europe and those in Africa – is working busily to organise the grand-scale exercise Trident Juncture 18 , in which will
participate 40,000 military personnel, 130 aircraft and 70 ships from more than 30 countries including Sweden and Finland, which
are NATO partners. The exercise, which will take place in October in Norway and the adjacent seas, will simulate a scenario of
" collective defence " - naturally enough, against " Russian aggression. "
In the Pacific, the major naval exercise RIMPAC 2018 (27 June to 2 August) is in full swing - organised and directed
by USINDOPACOM, the US Command which covers the Indian and Pacific oceans – with the participation of 25,000 sailors and marines,
more than 50 ships and 200 war-planes.The exercise – in which France, Germany and the United Kingdom are also participating –
is clearly directed against China, which Admiral Phil Davidson, commander of USINDOPACOM, defines as a "major rival power which
is eroding the international order in order to reduce the access of the USA to the region and thus become hegemonic."
When Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping, Friedman will no doubt accuse him of connivance not only with the Russian enemy,
but also with the Chinese enemy. Manlio Dinucci
EU kowtowing to President Trump's grab for global power, has only aroused his desire to
dominate their markets, dictate their trade relations and defense spending. Trump tells the EU
that his enemies are theirs.
Trump believes in the doctrine of unilateral trade and 'deals' based on the principle that
the US decides what you sell, how much you pay, and what you buy. The giant French oil
multinational Total, which had promised to invest in Iran ,submitted to Trump and withdrew from
its agreement and turned a deaf- ear to the French President
President Macron facing US tariffs on French exports bent his knee to Trump. Paris would
support 'joint efforts to reduce overcapacities, regulate subsidies and protect intellectual
property'. Trump heard the ring of the EU begging cup and imposed tariffs and demanded more
The EU 'vowed' to retaliate to Trump's tariffs by . . . sucking up to Trump's trade war with
China. The European Commission (EC) announced it was launching a case against . . . China!
Echoing Trump's allegations that Beijing was committing the 'crime' of insisting ('forcing' in
EU rhetoric) foreign investors transfer technology as part of the basis for doing business.
Trump turned on Mexico and Canada, his flunky allies in NAFTA by slapping both with
tariffs.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was 'dismayed' after wining and dining Trump in an
embarrassing charm offensive, Trump ate, drank, and slapped a tariff on steel and aluminum and
threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In response Trudeau cited Canada's century and a half military support for US imperial wars.
To no avail!
For Trump, the past is the past. It's time to move ahead and for Canada to 'buy
American'.
And when Trudeau talked of imposing reciprocal tariffs on US exports, Trump countered by
threatening to break all trading agreements. At which point Trudeau proposed 'further'
negotiations.
Trump's tariff on Mexican steel and aluminum exports evoked the robust response of a true
Treaty lackey – the Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto claimed negotiations were
'continuing' and US companies were 'involved'!
The harder Trump pushed, the greater the retreat of his EU and North American 'allies'.
Facing rhetorical retaliation from the EU, Trump tweeted German Prime Minister Merkle's nose
out of shape, by threatening to slap Germany with car tariffs worth $20 billion dollars.
The German Prime Minister and the head of Volkswagen broke ranks with the EU, and forgot all
talk of retaliation and EU 'unity'. They embraced negotiations and proposed 'bilateral
trans-Atlantic agreements based on Trump's terms!
Trump is not improvising', nor is he 'erratic'. He wields power; he knows that his
competitors' spinelessness is accompanied by mutual back-stabbing and he is exploiting their
appeasement, by encouraging their belly crawling.
President Trump exhibits a 'will to power'.
Appeasement in the nineteen thirties allowed Germany to defeat and occupy Europe. President
Trump ,in the 21 st century. is defeating the EU and conquering its markets
Trump is not improvising', nor is he 'erratic'. He wields power; he knows that his
competitors' spinelessness is accompanied by mutual back-stabbing and he is exploiting
their appeasement, by encouraging their belly crawling.
As disappointed as I am with Trump on so many levels, I am still enjoying the hell out of
watching this! The Euro-muppets are so weak, pathetic and contemptible. It's just so much fun
watching them get kicked in the teeth by Trump over and over and over, each time crawling
back begging for more. BOHICA, little bitchez!
I hope their voters are watching this too. Then we might be able to bring down this
damnable 'Atlantic bridge' at the next election.
EU kowtowing to President Trump's grab for global power, has only aroused his desire to
dominate their markets, dictate their trade relations and defense spending. Trump tells the EU
that his enemies are theirs.
Trump believes in the doctrine of unilateral trade and 'deals' based on the principle that
the US decides what you sell, how much you pay, and what you buy. The giant French oil
multinational Total, which had promised to invest in Iran ,submitted to Trump and withdrew from
its agreement and turned a deaf- ear to the French President
President Macron facing US tariffs on French exports bent his knee to Trump. Paris would
support 'joint efforts to reduce overcapacities, regulate subsidies and protect intellectual
property'. Trump heard the ring of the EU begging cup and imposed tariffs and demanded more
The EU 'vowed' to retaliate to Trump's tariffs by . . . sucking up to Trump's trade war with
China. The European Commission (EC) announced it was launching a case against . . . China!
Echoing Trump's allegations that Beijing was committing the 'crime' of insisting ('forcing' in
EU rhetoric) foreign investors transfer technology as part of the basis for doing business.
Trump turned on Mexico and Canada, his flunky allies in NAFTA by slapping both with
tariffs.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was 'dismayed' after wining and dining Trump in an
embarrassing charm offensive, Trump ate, drank, and slapped a tariff on steel and aluminum and
threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In response Trudeau cited Canada's century and a half military support for US imperial wars.
To no avail!
For Trump, the past is the past. It's time to move ahead and for Canada to 'buy
American'.
And when Trudeau talked of imposing reciprocal tariffs on US exports, Trump countered by
threatening to break all trading agreements. At which point Trudeau proposed 'further'
negotiations.
Trump's tariff on Mexican steel and aluminum exports evoked the robust response of a true
Treaty lackey – the Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto claimed negotiations were
'continuing' and US companies were 'involved'!
The harder Trump pushed, the greater the retreat of his EU and North American 'allies'.
Facing rhetorical retaliation from the EU, Trump tweeted German Prime Minister Merkle's nose
out of shape, by threatening to slap Germany with car tariffs worth $20 billion dollars.
The German Prime Minister and the head of Volkswagen broke ranks with the EU, and forgot all
talk of retaliation and EU 'unity'. They embraced negotiations and proposed 'bilateral
trans-Atlantic agreements based on Trump's terms!
Trump is not improvising', nor is he 'erratic'. He wields power; he knows that his
competitors' spinelessness is accompanied by mutual back-stabbing and he is exploiting their
appeasement, by encouraging their belly crawling.
President Trump exhibits a 'will to power'.
Appeasement in the nineteen thirties allowed Germany to defeat and occupy Europe. President
Trump ,in the 21 st century. is defeating the EU and conquering its markets
Trump is not improvising', nor is he 'erratic'. He wields power; he knows that his
competitors' spinelessness is accompanied by mutual back-stabbing and he is exploiting
their appeasement, by encouraging their belly crawling.
As disappointed as I am with Trump on so many levels, I am still enjoying the hell out of
watching this! The Euro-muppets are so weak, pathetic and contemptible. It's just so much fun
watching them get kicked in the teeth by Trump over and over and over, each time crawling
back begging for more. BOHICA, little bitchez!
I hope their voters are watching this too. Then we might be able to bring down this
damnable 'Atlantic bridge' at the next election.
Events in Ukraine after EuroMaidan are notoriously difficult to understand.
The book is fairly recent and as such might be a useful introduction for a Western reader who
is interested in Ukrainian event, but the material should be taken with a grain of salt. The
author is way too simplistic and his views on geopolitical problems are incorrect. The idea that
" Putin's Munich speech as a declaration of war" is nonsense. Also most of the readers probably
know State Department talking points and can recognize them in the text.
. In some areas the author is clearly incompetent as the quote "In 2016, France blocked
24,000 cyber attacks targeting its military. Ukraine experienced 24, 000 cyber attacks in only
the last two months of 2016" suggests.
The author views of Russia are typical of the US-based Ukrainian diaspora. As it is pretty
much radicalized, it can be argued that it brings to Ukraine more harm then good. In short his
views on Russia can be defined as cocktail of a 40% proof Russophobia with pure Neoconservatism.
So while author analysis of "Post-Maydan" Ukrainian elite has its value, his view on Russia
should probably be discarded.
For those who also bough McFaul book it is interesting to see correlation in views as well as
differences (especially McFaul laments from page 429 to the end of the book) . McFaul was the
co-architect of the 2011-2012 color revolution in Russia; and as an Ambassador became ostracized
by Russian and later removed by Obama. For his role in "White color revolution of 2012" McFaul
was put on the travel ban list by Russians and is not allowed to travel to the country. Both
represent neoconservative stance on the events, but there are some subtle and rather interesting
differences ;-)
Some Amazon reviews as one reproduced below are actually as valuable as the book itself and
can serve as a valuable addition.
This is a large book, embracing a vast amount of research. Conclusion is that
accommodation with Putin will be very difficult.
This is a large book, embracing a vast amount of research. Kuzio provides the conclusion
to the book as the conclusion to his introduction. It is somber, but realistic:
"There cannot be a conclusion to the book because the Donbas is an unresolved conflict
that is on-going. There will be no closure of the Ukraine-Russia crisis as long as Putin is
Russian president which will be as long as he remains alive. To fully implement the Minsk-2
Accords would mean jettisoning the DNR-LNR which Putin will not do and therefore, a political
resolution to the Donbas conflict is difficult to envisage."
Having lived in Kyiv for ten years, I was witness to the latter chapters of the drama that
Kuzio describes. His account jibes with what I witnessed, and provides a coherent explanation
of the events as they unfolded. The animus against Yanukovych was universal. His blatant
theft was visible to all. Every merchant I dealt with lived in fear of his tax police. We
saw, or more often read accounts about, the depredations of the titushki on a daily
basis.
One of my key questions in 2014 was whether it might have been better to endure Yanukovych
for another couple of years, until the elections. The Ukrainian people answered for me --
they had had enough. It wasn't exactly a coup, because the opposition was not well organized
and because Yanukovych fled before he could be overthrown. But the will of the people was
clear. He had to go. Kuzio makes a strong case that if it had not happened then, Yanukovych
might have had time to secure his dictatorship in such a way that he could not be dislodged
through democratic means.
Kuzio provides the most thorough and accurate description of the language situation I have
ever read. A fact he often repeats is that a majority of the soldiers fighting against the
Russians are themselves Russian speakers. Putin's claim that he is protecting a persecuted
linguistic minority is absolute nonsense. Kuzio makes the very useful analogy between the use
of English in Ireland and that of Russian in Ukraine. It is a matter of history and
convenience.
Ukrainian is not a dialect of Russian. They are very distinct languages. Speaking Spanish,
I was able to learn Portuguese quite easily. Speaking Russian has not enabled me to master
Ukrainian. They have different alphabets and even different grammars. As a resident of Kyiv
for 10 years I have not been forced to, and almost not been in a position to speak Ukrainian.
Everybody I interact with is exactly as Kuzio describes – ardently Ukrainian, but
nevertheless Russian speaking.
A question Kuzio does not raise is the utility of a language. For better or worse, Russian
is a world language. There is a significant body of scientific literature, fiction and poetry
written in Russian. It is, or was until recently, the lingua franca of the former USSR.
A lot of information about Kuzio himself is packed in the brief lead into his chapter
entitled Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism: "Ukraine is in the hands of homosexuals and Jewish
oligarchs. Aleksandr Dugin"
Russian philosopher Dugin is one of Kuzio's major bête noire's. Kuzio's book makes
it clear that Dugin is as much of an activist as he is a philosopher. Dugin seems to have a
hand in most things anti-Ukrainian. As a philosopher he is nothing – his book
The Fourth Political Theory is the subject of the most savage pan I have ever written.
Nonetheless, he is taken seriously by the resurgent Russian nationalists and Putin
himself.
Dugin's claim that Ukraine is in the hands of homosexuals is absurd. Homosexuals are
tolerated here, but they are discrete. Most Ukrainians, though they have no love whatsoever
for Russia, are largely in sympathy with Russia's stand against the flaunting of
homosexuality. The college-educated twentysomethings whom I know seem unaware that they even
know homosexuals, though it appears to this San Franciscan that some people in our circles
must be gay.
The claim that Ukraine is in the hand of Jewish oligarchs is quite another matter. Kuzio
gives quite rational explanations for anti-Ukrainian, anti-Belarusian and anti-Russian
sentiment, a great deal of which he manifests himself. He somehow looks at anti-Semitism as a
phenomenon that is beyond explanation. I would contend that it should be regarded just as the
other anti- concepts. Especially in the former USSR, where the Jews were regarded as a
separate people in the same way as Ukrainians.
He writes about the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fraud or hoax might be a
better word. Internet sources name the author as a certain Russian Professor S. Nilus writing
in 1901. The attractiveness of the fraud is that it coincides quite neatly with widely held
opinions about the Jews, many of which have some substance.
Going to substance, Kuzio mentions some of the major Jewish oligarchs, Kolomoisky and
Taruta, and some of the Jewish participants and Ukrainian politics: Yatsenyuk and Groisman.
He discounts the notion that President Poroshenko's father, born Valtzman, was Jewish. I had
never heard this account questioned. Other prominent Jews in Ukrainian politics/oligarchy who
come immediately to mind include Feldman and Rabinowitz. It is not that there is anything
wrong with Jews occupying dominant positions, but "simple Ivan" is not so stupid as to fail
to notice them. It is also widely perceived that the Jewish oligarchs are no better or worse
than the others, in that they put their personal interests ahead of that of the people who
elected them. Poroshenko has been a major disappointment. Kuzio writes of Kolomoisky's
support of the volunteer battalions in Donbas. True – but it was totally in line with
his business interests.
The fact that six of the seven billionaires to emerge after the collapse of the USSR were
Jewish belies Kuzio's claims that they were radically disadvantaged in the USSR. More
balanced accounts of Soviet Judaism have been written by Robert
Wistrich ,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Yuri
Slezkine .
Even a paranoid has enemies. American Jewish neocons, especially Victoria Nuland and
husband Robert Kagan, actively involved in Ukrainian politics, were strongly anti-Russian.
Though Kuzio is absolutely correct that the animus of the Ukrainian people for Yanukovych was
more than enough to power the Maidan uprising, it is also probably true that the CIA was
covertly abetting the protesters.
Kuzio's history of the Donbas and Crimea provides a very useful background to the
conflict. After the Welsh engineer John Hughes discovered coal around Donetsk in the 1880s
there was a rush to exploit it. The sparse population of Ukrainian farmers was not interested
in working the mines. The Russians brought in men from all over the Empire. A large number
were criminals who earned early release by promising to work there. Others were simply
soldiers of fortune.
Mining is dirty, dangerous and very masculine work. Kuzio reports that the history of the
Donbas always mirrored the miners themselves. Politically, it sat in the middle between the
Russians and the Ukrainians, respecting neither very much and casting its lot with whoever
appeared at the moment to be most generous to them, more often Moscow than Kyiv.
Kuzio relates that Lenin included the Donbas within the Ukrainian SSR as a built-in fifth
column, as a lever to control all of Ukraine. It remained after independence in 1991. The
Donbas' unique culture and clannishness protected its politicians from probing inquiries into
their dark pasts, such as Yanukovych' two prison terms. They would overlook his depredations
and send him to Kyiv with the idea that "he's a crook, but he's our crook."
Crimea's history is even more convoluted, but the bottom line is that it has always been
Russian speaking and did not identify greatly with Ukraine.
Kuzio reports, seemingly approvingly, that fellow author Alexander Motyl believes that
Ukraine would be better off without these insubordinate, intransigent ingrates.
In the end, Kuzio sums the origins of the crisis up very well, "The roots of the
Ukraine-Russia crisis do not lie in EU and NATO enlargement and democracy promotion, as
left-wing scholars and realists would have us believe, but in two factors. The first is
Russia's and specifically Putin's unwillingness to accept Ukrainians are a separate people
and Ukraine is an independent state with a sovereign right to determine its geopolitical
alliances. The second is Yanukovych and the Donetsk clan's penchant for the monopolization of
power, state capture, corporate raiding of the state and willingness to accommodate
practically every demand made by Moscow that culminated in treason on a grand scale. This was
coupled with a shift to Sovietophile and Ukrainophobic nationality policies and return to
Soviet style treatment of political opponents. Taken together, these policies made popular
protests inevitable in the 2015 elections but they came a year earlier after Yanukovych bowed
to Russian pressure to back away from the EU Association Agreement. These protests, in turn,
became violent and nationalistic in response to the Party of Regions and KPU's destruction of
Ukraine's democracy through the passing of draconian legislation, the president's refusal to
compromise and his use of vigilantes and police spetsnaz for political repression, torture,
and murders of protestors."
The question facing Ukraine at the moment is how to resolve the war in Donbas and how to
prevent Russia from making further incursions. Kuzio shares some very useful insights in this
regard.
Even in 2014, Russia simply did not have the resources to conquer Ukraine even if it had
had the desire. Kuzio repeatedly makes the point that the Russian doctrine of hybrid war
depends on a sympathetic or at least indifferent local populace. Even in the Donbass the
Russians have not been welcomed by a majority.
Time and again, Putin proves himself too smart by half. In his desire to maintain
deniability, he employed Chechens, Don Cossacks and "political tourists," thugs from all over
Russia to infiltrate the Donbass as separatists. Criminals are simply not suited for either
civil administration or organized warfare. After three months it was clear to Putin that he
had to use Russian troops and administrators, pushing the separatists aside. Not mentioned in
the book is the fact that a great many of the separatist leaders died mysteriously. Although
Russia attempted to frame Ukraine for "Motorola's" death, it appears to have been done by
Russian agents. Russia's trecherous duplicity neither won the war for them no fooled anybody
for very long.
Russia has thus had several handicaps in capturing and holding even the small, Russophone
and previously Russophile enclaves in Lugansk and Donetsk. The LPR and DPR would not survive
without ongoing Russian support. They have not won the hearts and minds of the people.
This calls to mind Custine's
Penguin Classics Letters From Russia on the fact that Russian duplicity and deceit made
it impossible for them ever to subvert the West. Alexandr Zinoviev summed it up exquisitely
in his satirical Homo
Sovieticus :
"Even though the West seems chaotic, frivolous and defenseless, all the same Moscow will
never achieve worldwide supremacy. Moscow can defend itself against any opponent. Moscow can
deliver a knockout blow on the west. Moscow has the wherewithal to mess up the whole planet.
But it has no chance of becoming the ruler of the world. To rule the world one must have at
one's disposal a sufficiently great nation. That nation must feel itself to be a nation of
rulers. And when it comes to it, one that can rule in reality. In the Soviet Union the
Russians are the only people who might be suited to that role. They are the foundation and
the bulwark of the Empire. But they don't possess the qualities of a ruling nation. And in
the Soviet empire their situation is more like that of being a colony for all the other
peoples in it."
This is the bottom line, something for the warmongers in Washington to keep in mind.
Ukraine and NATO cannot defeat Russia on its own doorstep, but Russia can certainly defeat
itself. For NATO to arm Ukraine, as the west did Georgia, or continue to crowd it as they are
doing in the Baltics, is counterproductive. It would be quite possible, but also quite stupid
for Russia to roll over its neighbors. The adventure in Ukraine has already been expensive,
and holding Crimea and Donbas will only become more so. Conversely, for the west to arm
countries against the Russians, as the US did in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Nicaragua, proved
quite deadly for these supposed friends. Ukraine and the west should wait Putin out just as
they waited out the USSR.
I have a couple of quibbles with the book. Kuzio uses the word "Fascist" to characterize
various Russian nationalist groups that support Putin and attack Ukrainians. Fascism died
with Hitler, 72 years ago. There should be a better term. This is especially true as Putin
terms Ukrainians as "Fascists." The word is inappropriate, old and clichéd.
Kuzio goes on to paint the rising nationalist movements in Europe as Fascist, or extreme
right wing. He excoriates Marine le Pen for taking Putin's money. There is a strong case to
be made that anti-democrats, supported by mainstream parties, have seized the European
Parliament and strongly suppressed free speech, open debate and the ability of such
nationalists to find funding. Their national banks are prejudicially closed to Farage,
Wilders, Orban, le Pen and the others. Kuzio should be more accommodating to the
nationalists. Ukraine may soon find itself forced to work with them. Moreover, they have many
good points. Generation
Identity provides a succinct summary. It is a book of the millennial generation, the
nationalists' strongest base, outlining their case against their elders, the boomers.
Ukraine is a conservative country. It is not wise to push the west's liberal agendas with
regard to immigration, homosexuality, feminism and civil rights for the Roma and at the same
time steel Ukraine for its fight against Russia. Even joining the battle against corruption
smells of hypocrisy, as evidence of political corruption emerges all over the west. It is
better to recognize the simple facts, as Kuzio does, and have a bit of faith. Ukraine managed
against stiffer odds in 2014. It will survive.
Those polls now became an echo changer. As valid information is by-and-large relegated to alt-channels people who rely on MSM
can't form an independent opinion about foreign policy issues. As the USA moved to the national security state model
after 9/11 people also naturally stopped giving honest answers in the polls.
So the level of conforms simultaneously reflects the level of distrust and fear of the ruling neoliberal elite.
Also many spend too much efforts on earning a living to form a coherent view of foreign
affairs. They just regurgitate MSM. Still while they have lingering distrust and some level of
fear to ward ruling neoliberal elite, they feel that it is saver to give "politically correct
answer.
So polls became an echo chamber of government policies. like with netters to Pravda: "We
enthusiastically support the wise policies of our Politburo" no matter what is the issue.
This year, an average of all respondents – people born between 1928 and 1996 –
showed that 64 percent believe the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs, but
interesting differences could be seen when the numbers are broken down by generation.
The silent generation, born between 1928 and 1945 whose formative years were during World
War II and the early Cold War, showed the strongest support at 78 percent. Support fell from
there through each age group. It bottomed out with millennials, of whom only 51 percent felt
the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs. That's still more internationalist than
not, but less enthusiastically than other age groups.
There is some anti-Trump effect visible here: Millennials in the polling sample do identify
as less Republican – 22 percent – and less conservative than the older age groups.
But they also were the least supportive of the "take an active part" view during the Obama
administration as well.
Four sets of additional polling numbers help us dig deeper.
Military power : Only 44 percent of millennials believe maintaining superior military
power is a very important goal, much less than the other generations. They also are less
supportive of increasing defense spending. And when asked whether they support the use of
force, millennials are generally disinclined, especially so on policies like conducting
airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, using troops if North Korea invades
South Korea, and conducting airstrikes against violent Islamic extremist groups.
American 'exceptionalism' : Millennials also were much less inclined to embrace the
idea that America is "the greatest country in the world." Only half of millennials felt that
way, compared to much higher percentages of the other three generations. In a related response,
only one-quarter of millenials saw the need for the U.S. to be "the dominant world leader." These findings track with the
2014 American National Election Study , which found that while 78 percent of silent, 70
percent of boomer and 60 percent of Gen X respondents consider their American identity as
extremely important, only 45 percent of millennials do.
Alliances and international agreements : Millennials are especially supportive of
NATO, at 72 percent. In this measure, they are close to the other generations' levels of NATO
support. Their 68 percent support for the Paris climate agreement is higher than two of the
other three age groups. And their 63 percent support for the Iran nuclear nonproliferation
agreement is even with boomers and higher than Gen X. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/XN2y2/6/
Globalization and key trade issues : Millennials' 70 percent agreement with the
statement that "globalization is mostly good for the United States" is higher than all the
other age groups. Similarly, 62 percent believe that NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) is good for the U.S. economy – well above the others surveyed. The margin is
also positive although narrower on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
These and other polls show millennials to have a world view that, while well short of
isolationist, is also not as assertively and broadly internationalist as previous
generations.
... ... ...
By Bruce Jentleson , Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Duke University.
Cross-posted
from Alternet .
"active part in world affairs" has, since 1893, usually meant invasions and bombing.
The US military, the costliest in history, hasn't won a war since 1946, unless Panama and
Grenada count. Korea is still a tie. Perhaps many are coming to realize that all the US
population [compared to corporations and corporation owners which show allegiance only to
money] needs is a border patrol and a coast guard. Not 'our' empire.
First, the United States has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for close to half the
lives of the oldest millennials, who were born in 1981
They're not counting the first Iraq War.
Only 70% in favor of "globalization" is pretty good in light of our lifetime of
propaganda. I'd be in favor of disbanding NATO and cutting the military and intelligence
budget by 80%, at least as a starting offer.
I think you have an interesting point re: "globalization" and propaganda. In school
(2000-2010ish) the term globalization was presented as a kind of antonym of isolationist. It
was portrayed as an attitude of openness to other countries, travelling internationally,
sharing in someone else culture, etc. The business/economic side was sort of introduced in
high school, but even then I remember being taught a definition of "globalization" closer to
"multiculturalism" than to one like "Imperialism". Post-high school life (and the GFC) really
drove home the true meaning of the word.
To this day I still reflexively read the word globalization as something akin to
"multiculturalism", despite knowing full well that it is anything but. From discussing
politics with other people in my generation I also get a sense that they are operating with
this weird dual (schizo?) meaning of "globalization".
Any other millennials have a similar experience with this word?
It might be nice to see the survey instruments too, to see what the questions were and how
loaded in favor of Empire or balanced (that deadly word) they were.
I didn't much like being put into the group called the Silent Generation, so I went to
wikipedia to see why it was called that.
" While there were many civil rights leaders, the "Silents" are called that because many
focused on their careers rather than on activism, and people in it were largely encouraged to
conform with social norms. As young adults during the McCarthy Era, many members of the
Silent Generation felt it was dangerous to speak out Time magazine coined the term "Silent
Generation" in a November 5, 1951 article titled "The Younger Generation" The Time article
said that the ambitions of this generation had shrunk, but that it had learned to make the
best of bad situations [?] In the United States, the generation was comparatively small They
are noted as forming the leadership of the civil rights movement as well as comprising the
"silent majority"
Ah, that's why I didn't much like it – and that was Nixon's silent majority, not me,
wikipedia – not me! But I'll forgive you because down below you put me in the group
called "The Lucky Few" and said how many of us were Really Good People. I'll buy that.
;))
Interesting results on Millennials' view of American Exceptionalism. I am not at all
surprised by those results, and I wonder if study abroad programs are having a deep impact on
young people's political views. They are seeing in detailed fashion the utter horror of
government-sponsored or managed healthcare, as well as how "socialism" in northern European
has inflicted a very favorable standard of living on most of the middle class.
Conversely, I still have to laugh at the 2012 campaign ad sponsored by Rickets of TD
Ameritrade fame that described the results of "socialism" and showed post-War Europe pictures
of old ladies on the side of the road. One of my parent's friends (now in her '80s) seemed
surprised that people in Europe didn't live shacks when shown my parent's vacation
pictures.
It's been almost eight years since Chalmers Johnson died. He was the author of, among other
works, Blowback: The Costs and
Consequences of American Empire and Dismantling the
Empire . He was also a TomDispatchstalwart
and a friend . As I watch the strange destructive dance of Donald Trump and his cohorts
, I still regularly find myself wondering: What would Chal think? His acerbic wit and, as a
former consultant to the CIA, his deep sense of how the national security state worked provided
me with a late education. With no access to my Ouija board, however, the best I can do when it
comes to answering such questions is repost his classic
final piece for this site on the necessity of dismantling the American empire before it
dismantles us. He wrote it in July 2009, convinced that we had long passed from a republic to
an empire and were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a " military
Keynesianism " run amok. He saw the Pentagon and our empire of
bases abroad as a kind of Ponzi scheme that would, someday, help bankrupt this country.
How fascinated he would have been by the first candidate to ride an
escalator into a presidential contest on a
singular message of American decline. ("Make American great again !") And how much
more so by the world that candidate is creating as president, intent as he seems to be, in his
own bizarre fashion, on dismantling
the
system of global control the U.S. has built since 1945. At the same time, he seems prepared
to
finance the U.S. military at levels, which, even for Johnson, would have been eye-popping,
while attempting to
sell American arms around an embattled planet in a way that could prove unique. What a
strange combination of urges Donald Trump represents, as he teeters constantly at the
edge of war ("fire and fury like the world has never seen"),
more war ("never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the
likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before"), and
peace in our time. Amid all the strangeness, don't forget the strangeness of a mainstream
media that has gone bonkers
covering this president as no one has ever been covered in the history of the universe
(something that would undoubtedly have amazed Chal).
Think of what President Trump has launched as the potential imperial misadventure of a
lifetime, while checking out Chal's thoughts from so long ago on a subject that should still be
on all our minds.
"... I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true fighters as well as stronger economic planning. ..."
The United States seems ready to give up on Afghanistan.
After the World Trade Center came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda, parts of which were hosted
in Afghanistan. The Taliban government offered the U.S. to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin
Laden to an Islamic country to be judged under Islamic law. The U.S. rejected that and decided
instead to destroy the Afghan government.
Taliban units, supported by Pakistani officers, were at that time still fighting against the
Northern Alliance which held onto a few areas in the north of the country. Under threats from
the U.S. Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its natural depth hinterland, was pressed into
service. In exchange for its cooperation with the U.S. operation it was allowed to extradite
its forces and main figures of the Taliban.
U.S. special forces were dropped into north Afghanistan. They came with huge amounts of cash
and the ability to call in B-52 bombers. Together with the Northern Alliance they move towards
Kabul bombing any place where some feeble resistance came from. The Taliban forces dissolved.
Many resettled in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda also vanished.
A conference with Afghan notables was held in Germany's once capital Bonn. The Afghans
wanted to reestablish the former Kingdom but were pressed into accepting a western style
democracy. Fed with large amounts of western money the norther warlords, all well known
mass-murderers, and various greedy exiles were appointed as a government. To them it was all
about money. There was little capability and interest to govern.
All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country.
For a few years the Taliban went quiet. But continued U.S. operations, which included random
bombing of weddings, torture and abduction of assumed al-Qaeda followers, alienated the people.
Pakistan feared that it would be suffocated between a permanently U.S. occupied Afghanistan and
a hostile India. Four years after being ousted the Taliban were reactivated and found regrown
local support.
Busy with fighting an insurgency in Iraq the U.S. reacted slowly. It then surged troops into
Afghanistan, pulled back, surged again and is now again pulling back. The U.S. military aptly
demonstrated its excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence. The
longer it fought the more Afghan people stood up against it. The immense amount of money spent
to 'rebuild' Afghanistan
went to U.S. contractors and Afghan warlords but had little effect on the ground. Now half
the country is back under Taliban control while the other half is more or less contested.
Before his election campaign Donald Trump spoke out
against the war on Afghanistan. During his campaign he was more cautious pointing to the danger
of a nuclear Pakistan as a reason for staying in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is where the U.S.
supply line is coming through and there are no reasonable alternatives. Staying in Afghanistan
to confront Pakistan while depending on Pakistan for logistics does not make sense.
Early this year the U.S. stopped all aid to Pakistan. Even the old Pakistani government was
already talking
about blocking the logistic line. The incoming prime minister Imran Khan has campaigned for
years against the U.S. war on Afghanistan. He very much prefers an alliance with China over any U.S.
rapprochement. The U.S. hope is that Pakistan will have to ask the IMF for another bailout and
thus come back under Washington's control. But it is
more likely that Imran Khan will ask China for financial help.
Under pressure from the military Trump had agreed to raise the force in Afghanistan to some
15,000 troops. But these were way to few to hold more than some urban areas. Eighty percent of
the Afghan people live in the countryside. Afghan troops and police forces are incapable or
unwilling to fight their Taliban brethren. It was obvious that this mini-surge
would fail :
By most objective measures, President Donald Trump's year-old strategy for ending the war in
Afghanistan has produced few positive results.
Afghanistan's beleaguered soldiers have failed to recapture significant new ground from
the Taliban. Civilian deaths have hit historic highs. The Afghan military is struggling to
build a reliable air force and expand the number of elite fighters. Efforts to cripple
lucrative insurgent drug smuggling operations have fallen short of expectations. And U.S.
intelligence officials say the president's strategy has halted Taliban gains but not reversed
their momentum, according to people familiar with the latest assessments.
To blame Pakistan for its support for some Taliban is convenient, but makes little sense. In
a recent
talk John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
made a crucial point:
"We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the
Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you
really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not
predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords," observed Sopko.
He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable
environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who
took the law into their own hands.
"In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police
forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as
bad as the terrorists before them," said Sopko ...
This was the problem from the very beginning. The U.S. bribed itself into Afghanistan. It
spent tons of money but did not gain real support. It bombed and shot aimlessly at 'Taliban'
that were more often than not just the local population. It incompetently fought 17
one-year-long wars instead of a consistently planned and sustained political, economic and
military campaign.
After a year of another useless surge the Trump administration decided to pull back from
most active operations and to bet
on negotiations with the Taliban:
The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile
"Afghan-led, Afghan-owned" process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American
officials that President Trump's new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental
difference in rolling back Taliban gains.
While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the
willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of
urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.
...
Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would
probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government,
the United States and Pakistan.
Afghans have continued to burn for the last four decades in the fire of imposed wars. They
are longing for peace and a just system but they will never tire from their just cause of
defending their creed, country and nation against the invading forces of your
warmongering government because they have rendered all the previous and present historic
sacrifices to safeguard their religious values and national sovereignty. If they make a deal
on their sovereignty now, it would be unforgettable infidelity with their proud history and
ancestors.
Last weeks talks between the Taliban and U.S. diplomats took place in Doha, Qatar.
Remarkably the Afghan government was excluded. Despite the rousing tone of the Reuters
report below the positions that were exchanged
do not point to a successful conclusion:
According to one Taliban official, who said he was part of a four-member delegation, there
were "very positive signals" from the meeting, which he said was conducted in a "friendly
atmosphere" in a Doha hotel.
"You can't call it peace talks," he said. "These are a series of meetings for initiating
formal and purposeful talks. We agreed to meet again soon and resolve the Afghan conflict
through dialogue."
...
The two sides had discussed proposals to allow the Taliban free movement in two provinces
where they would not be attacked, an idea that President Ashraf Ghani has already rejected .
They also discussed Taliban participation in the Afghan government.
"The only demand they made was to allow their military bases in Afghanistan ," said the
Taliban official.
...
"We have held three meetings with the U.S. and we reached a conclusion to continue talks for
meaningful negotiations," said a second Taliban official.
...
"However, our delegation made it clear to them that peace can only be restored to Afghanistan
when all foreign forces are withdrawn ," he said.
This does not sound promising:
In a first step the Taliban want to officially rule parts of the country and use it as a
safe haven. The Afghan government naturally rejects that.
Participation of the Taliban in the Afghan government is an idea of the Afghan president
Ghani. It is doubtful that this could be successfully arranged. Norther Alliance elements in
the Afghan government, like the 'chief executive' Abdullah Abdullah, are unlikely to ever
agree to it. The Taliban also have no interest to be 'part of the government' and to then get
blamed for its failures. Their February letter makes clear that they want to be the
government.
The U.S. wants bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban, and Pakistan behind them, reject that
and will continue to do so.
It is difficult to see how especially the last mutually exclusive positions can ever be
reconciled.
The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only
offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no
choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying
areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases
will come under fire.
There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate
about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".
The Soviet war in Afghanistan took nine years. The time was used to build up a halfway
competent government and army that managed to hold off the insurgents for three more years
after the Soviet withdrawal. The government only fell when the Soviets cut the money line. The
seventeen year long U.S. occupation did not even succeed in that. The Afghan army is corrupt
and its leaders are incompetent. The U.S. supplied it with expensive and complicate equipment
that
does not fit Afghan needs . As soon as the U.S. withdraws the whole south, the east and
Kabul will immediately fall back into Taliban hands. Only the north may take a bit longer. They
will probably ask China to help them in developing their country.
The erratic
empire failed in another of its crazy endeavors. That will not hinder it to look for a new
ones. The immense increase
of the U.S. military budget, which includes 15,000 more troops, points to a new large war.
Which country will be its next target?
thanks b.. it would be good if the exceptional warmongering nation could go home, but i am
not fully counting on it.. i liked your quote here "The U.S. military aptly demonstrated its
excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence." that is ongoing..
unless the usa leaves, i think the madness continues.. i suspect the madness will continue..
the only other alternative is the usa, with the help of their good buddies - uk, ksa, qatar,
uae and israel - will keep on relocating isis to afgan for future destabilization.. i watched
a video peter au left from al jazzera 2017 with isis embedded in the kush mtns... until the
funding for them ceases - i think the usa will have a hand in the continued madness... if the
usa was serious about ending terrorism they would shut down the same middle east countries
they are in bed with.. until that happens, i suspect not much will change.. i hope i am
wrong..
I dont believe it for a second. Especially with Iran looming as a potential target. US is
staying in Afghanistan also to counter China , keep opium production high and of course there
is the TAPI pipeline to "protect" that is backed by US as an alternative to the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would have tapped Iran's South Pars gas field. A hostile or
unfriendly Pakistan is just one more reason to stay
Just like US will never leave Iraq or Syria, they will stay in Afghanistan. There will be
ebbs and flows, and talk of disengagement from time to time primarily for domestic
consumption, but thats all it is IMO.
This is a fine recap of the situation. It's much too optimistic. The classic method of
American negotiation and warfare like the Roman before them is to divide and conquer. It was
very successful against the American Indians.
If the Taliban get free movement in two provinces, the Americans will demand an end to
attacks on their bases, their soldiers and their agents elsewhere in Afghanistan. Just as the
Iroquois Confederation enjoyed special privileges in what is now Upper New York for their
help against the French, the Taliban will have special privileges in their two provinces
while the Americans consolidate in the rest of Afghanistan. When the Americans feel strong
enough, just as with the Iroquois, they will break the previous treaties.
After the Revolutionary War, the ancient central fireplace of the League was re-established
at Buffalo Creek. The United States and the Iroquois signed the treaty of Fort Stanwix in
1784 under which the Iroquois ceded much of their historical homeland to the Americans,
which was followed by another treaty in 1794 at Canandaigua which they ceded even more land
to the Americans./b
(...continuation of the comment above, somehow got posted when I pressed the return
key)
Even the Soviet Union and Russians were unable to make the American respect their
commitments. The United States reneged on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as soon as it
could in 2001 (Russia was on its knees), reneged on its commitments not to expand NATO east
and has built ballistic missile bases all around Russia which seem to be preparation for a
pre-emptive nuclear strike/war against Russia.
The Afghanis (foolish to call them the Taliban, they are traditional Afghani patriots)
have always been wise enough to annihilate any invader to the last man. This salutary policy
keeps invaders out for decades at a time. The Taliban have a long row to hoe. It took almost
a hundred years and several massacres to finally curb British ambitions on Afghanistan (1838
to 1919). Afghanis' best hopes rely on forging tight alliances with Pakistan and China,
squeezing the Americans out completely right now.
The Americans burnt their bridges with the Russian already and are in the process of
burning their bridges with Pakistan while losing influence with China. The US is very short
of options right now. It's the ideal time for Afghanis to reclaim the whole territory, not
leaving a single American soldier or airbase operational. They'll need a technically
sophisticated ally to help them clear their skies of US drones. This role might appeal to
either the Russians or the Chinese. As a training exercise, extended anti-drone warfare could
be very useful.
What a great success the US achieved in destroying Yugoslavia. Murdering thousands went
almost unnoticed. It was able to break up the country into a number of tiny, impoverished
nations and got to put a US MIC Base in most of them.
You did not mention isis-k in your analysis. Its active mostly in eastern afghanistan in
areas close to or adjacent to Pakistan (it is also controlls a small area in Jawzjan, in
northern afghanistan). Many fighters are formerly pakistani taliban(not to be confused with
afghan taliban who are simply called taliban). Before isis-k appeared in afghanistan, the
areas which it now controls had pakistani taliban presence. TTP, or tehreek e taliban
pakistan was facilitated by afghan ggovernment to settle down in these areas after they fled
pakistan when its military launched a large scale offensive, Operation Zarb e Azb. The afghan
government planned to use them to pressurize Pakistan, basically to use them as a bargaining
chip. They operate openly in eastern afghanistan, but many of them joined isis-k.
Russians estimate isis-k's strength to be between 10k to 12k, although it might be a bit
inflated number. From here they plan attacks against afghanistan and pakistan alike, mostly
suicide bombings as of now. They have had fierce clashes with afghan taliban in eastern
Afghanistan but have held their territory for now. Afghan army simply doesn't have the
capacity in those areas to confront them. It was here that MOAB was dropped but as expected
against a guerrilla force, it was ineffective in every way. But it did make headlines and has
helped US in giving an impression its seriously fighting ISIS. The reports of unmarked
helicopters dropping god-knows-what have also been coming from these areas. Hamid karzai
mentioned that and also maria zakharova asked afghan gov. and US to investigate that which
shows these are not just rumors. Recently intelligence chiefs of Pakistan, russia, iran and
china as well(if i remember correctly) met in islamabad to discuss isis-k in afghanistan, no
details other than this of this meeting are available.
In Northern afghanistan, in Jawzjan, fierce clashes broke out between taliban and isis-k
after taliban commander in thiae areas was beheaded. ISIS-k has been beaten up pretty badly
there but clashes are ongoing. Many areas have been cleared but fighting is still ongoing. An
interesting aspect is taliban sources claiming that whenever they come close to a decisive
victory, they have to stop operations becauae of heavy bombardment by US planes. They made
similar claims when fighting daesh in eastern afghanistan. Anyway in a few days isis presence
will probably be finished in Jawzjan. ISIS fighters who have survived have done so by
surrendering to afghan forces. They will probably end up back in eastern afghanistan.
Africa. US AFRICOM has a huge playground, tactics won't change and logistics is far
easier.
There also will be a long Hybrid wr against Iran, but that will be much like the early
days of Syria. Proxies as "moderates". Insurgents, not US troops. ISIS and AQ crazies will be
on the ground.
The big money will go into Africa. You want to see Trillions "spent"? It will be
Africa.
The decision to invade Afghanistan had been taken before the 9/11 false flag coup. Had
nothing much to do with the CIA's al-Qaeda mercenaries.
As I understood it, there were many agendas at work: testing weapons and making money for
the MIC; controlling the lucrative (how many hundreds of billions of dollars ?) opium/ heroin
production/profiteering; military bases relating to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and other
...stans, etc; control of oil and gas pipelines; access to increasingly valuable and sought
rare earth minerals; proximity to oil and gas actual and potential.
More generally, subjugating Afghanistan was a necessary part of the 'full spectrum
dominance' 'we will rule the earth' doctrine, dear til recently to too many mad hatters, and
still evoking a misty eyed longing in some, no doubt.
Ahhh...the US produces some of the lamest euphemisms approved for all audiences; such as
"Afgahn Security Forces." So sterile, innocuous. And benign. How could anyone question their
plight? (We did pick up the game a little bit in Syria with "Free Syrian Army..." Can I get a
hell yeah?) All the people hearing this in the US could do was shrug their shoulders and
speak, "I guess I should support them." That is, of course, after we took out OBL and the
mission in Afghanistan was a little more opaque. Just a little bit. Anyways...Hell, yeah! Get
some!
Thanks b for the brief history. Really invaluable.
Afghani patriots, resisting invaders since 330 BCE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
The US military, the planet's costliest losingest military since 1946. The US military, like
its munitions manufacturers, doesn't win but it does get paid and is why we can have nice
things like oh, decent health care. Lack of health insurance kills more Americans than the
Russians ever will. The Russians aren't the enemy, Trump is. Lobbyists are too.
I haven't read anything about Blackwater wanting to replace the U.S. Military in Afghanistan.
Of course, the U.S. Treasury would continue to shovel those pallet loads of newly printed
$100.00 bills down the Blackwater hole. Any odds this might go forward from anyone's opinion?
robin cook before he was murdered stated that alqueda was a cia data base.
i believe bresinski knew obl as tim osman who was later killed by cia mi6 man omar blah blah
sheikh bhutto of pakisyan was assasinated after spilling the beans about sheikh.
christopher bolleyn on you tube will give you the sp on what 9 and 11 was shirley we are
past the point of the offecal theory.
the turd burger that is the official theory is clearly the worst and lowest grade of all the
conspiracy theories.
the taliban where in barbera bushes texas talking lithium opium and oil pipelines with the
paedo bush crime syndicate before 9 and 11
marvin bush ran security at the twin towers
christopher bollyn is the go to man in these regardings
The US wants peace talks but wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. US under Trump has built
new bases in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait.
SDF have been talking with Syrian government, and US in Talks with Taliban. Are these just
moves to buy the US a little time until it launches the war Trump has been building the US
military up for.
isis is israeli counter gang with support of usa usa and the city of
london,ukrainian,polish,uk sas,cia,kiwi,aussie,jordanian and donmeh satanic house of
saud.
talking of isis as if it is real entity rather than a frank kitson gang counter gang and
pseudo gang is polluting the well.
who has been providing extraction helicopters from syriana for the last 14 months.
who has been washing these bearded devils operating on them in kosher field hospitals making
them well shiny and new
who?
scchhhhh you know who
We are concerned about reports regarding the use of helicopters without any identification
marks in many parts of Afghanistan that are delivering terrorists and arms to the Afghan
branch of this terrorist organisation. We believe that reports to this effect made by Afghan
officials should be thoroughly investigated."
- Of course. The US wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village
Hajji, the writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit.
The only question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous
it will be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam
War (1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and
the Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village Hajji, the
writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit. The only
question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous it will
be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam War
(1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and the
Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
@uncoy.. i basically see it like you, however another proxy war involving usa-russia-china
sounds like a running theme now...
@13 bilal.. good post.. i agree about the analysis missing much on isis presence in afgan
as @6 jr also points out.. i think it is a critical bit of the puzzle.. it appears the usa is
using isis as a proxy force, as obama previously stated with regard to syria... the usa just
can't seem to help themselves with their divide and conquer strategy using isis as part of
it's methodology... it's exact opposite of what they profess..
@18 eugene.. isn't blackwater or whatever they're called now - headquartered in uae?
perfect place for them, lol... right on top of yemen, afgan, and etc. etc.. if isis can't do
the job for the west thru their good friends ksa, uae - well, then maybe they can pay a bit
more and get blackwater directly involved too..
Trump is serious when he said he would talk to anybody. The CIA is alleged to have been
stirring the pot with Islamic militants prior to the Soviet invasion when the country went
full socialist. I would suspect the Russians had a hand in that in 1978. US intelligence was
said to be helping along the backlash to socialism by Islamic militants back then in 1978.
The CIA station chief was promptly assassinated the next year.
Obviously you could dump 600,000 NATO and US soldiers into the country and not control it
short of executing every Muslim. What a foolish endeavor but what would you expect from these
buffoons and their death cult? These human sacrifices are holy to them. They worship blood,
death, power and money.
With their loss in Syria the NEOCONS can now make peace with the Taliban and use them and
ISIS to push into old Soviet Central Asia in an attempt to deny them what the Anglo American
Zionist alliance cannot have at this time, control of the commodities.
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
Even the Brits knew when it was time to leave India and their Middle Eastern holdings. They
realized the costs of containment would wipe out their country.
No he doesnt, along with Israel and neocons. There was already nuclear deal, and US was
out of "all this crap", so why introduce Gordian Knot if he doesnt want it?
What Trump demands is Iran's surrender. 'b discussed it at length some time ago, the list
of Trump's demands is completely ridiculous and the goal is Iran as a client state.
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to
meet, it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt
worth a toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even
endeavor to negotiate dead from the get go.
Congress went along with the Pentagon's 7 countries in 5 years plan. No investigation of 9/11
or even consideration of Ron Paul's bringing in an old idea of Letters of Marque and
Reprisal.
As to the US leaving the warlords in power to continue opium production, etc, Van Buren (We
Meant Well book) said some of the same happened in Iraq with some sheikhs still holding power
in local areas. General Garner looked forward to going in to rebuild (and was promising quick
elections) but was shocked to see no protection of ministries (except oil) which were looted
and burned. And then Bremer was put in charge. Complete mismanagement of the war, the
aftermath, etc. Like someone once said, if they were doing these things at random you would
expect them to get it right once in a while.
The Kunduz Airlift which allowed Pakistan a corridor to fly out Pak officials, Taliban,
and possibly al Qaeda was yet another snafu like paying Pakistan to supposedly block any
escape from their side of Tora Bora only to have a long convoy leave at night. It made one
wonder about the US supposed air superiority/domination. Again, complete mismanagement.
A comparison to the end situation in VietNam 1975 is apt.
Trump meeting Rouhani. Trump saays he wants a better deal. The nuke agreement took years to
negotiate and Iran accepted far more stringent inspections than any other country signed up
NPT. There is nothing more for Iran to negotiate other than to give away their
sovereignty.
The offer of a meeting by Trump is more along the line of "we tried to avoid war".
The US under Trump have scrapped the nuke agreement and made demands that are impossible for
Iran to meet without giving away its sovereignty.
Erik Prince's plan for fighting in Afghanistan.
He presented it to the WH. Military rejected it.
He is no longer Blackwater-connected.
Frontier Services Group Ltd. is his new military-security services corp.
He has extensive contracts with the Chinese government and their SOEs overseas.
did you see General Souleimani answer's to Trump rabid tweet
it went like this
Our president doesnt lower himself to answer someone like.I, a soldier answer someone like
you, you re someone who speaks in the vocabulary of a cabaret owner and a gambling house
dealer.(paraphrasing saker has the video on his site)
and then he went on to describe how your cowad troops wore adult diapers in Afghanistan
and Iraq
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
dltravers @28
No. China, being development-oriented rather than imperialist, will leave Afghanistan
alone. China and Russia, but especially China, requires an Afghanistan that is not a
U.S.-controlled terrorist base. Because China needs the oil/gas link that it is building
through Pakistan to access Gulf energy resources, and that energy corridor would be the
primary target of U.S.-hired mercenaries ('terrorists').
How Afghanistan manages itself in the post-U.S. era is Afghan business, but it will almost
certainly involve the Pashtun majority (in the form of the 'Taliban') retaking power in Kabul
but with the traditional huge amounts of autonomy for the provinces. That arrangement reduces
pressure by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan against Pakistan's government, and in general
seems to be the long-term stable set up, and stability is what China has to have in
Afghanistan.
Now is the time with perfect China partner Khan and the Pakistan military firmly in power.
Not instant, but over the next two years I think we'll see the Taliban's fighting capacity
hugely improve, with transfers of supplies, weapons and intelligence from Pakistan. It would
be very smart for Trump to get out in 2019. History is going to accelerate in that
region.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I worry a lot about Venezuela. See, it's a perfect
fit for the U.S. economy. U.S. shale oil is way too light to be useful, while Venezuelan oil
is way too heavy to be useful. They are destined for each other, i.e. to be mixed into a
blend that would be a good fit U.S. refineries. Plus, Venezuela is very import-dependent and
thus would make for a good vassal. It also has a rabid capitalist class that will do anything
-- any kind of atrocity or false flag -- to return to the good old days of exploitation. "But
Venezuela has a lot of arms!", I hear you counter. True, but the people are severely
demoralized because of the extreme economic hardship. Think of the USSR in late 80s/early
90s. It had the most powerful military in the world, and yet people were so demoralized and
disillusioned with the old system that they simply chose not to defend it. Same thing may
happen in Venezuela. After Colombia has signed peace accords with FARC, U.S. has been
steadily increasing its military presence in Colombia. I think there is a very real
possibility of a naval blockade combined with supply lines/air raids from Colombia supporting
the "Free Venezuelan Army" assembled from Venezuelan gangs and revanchist capitalists and
foreign mercenaries. It would be logistically impossible for Russia or China to provide
military help to far-away Venezuela. Neighbors will not come to the aid of Venezuela either
as there is a surge of pro-U.S. right-wing governments in the region.
Any moves the U$A makes will have to be approved according to which natural resources their
corporate masters covet at any particular moment. Lithium and other rare earth minerals,
strategic importance, whatever the corporate form needs to stay on top globally, will dictate
what the empire does.
Leave Afghanistan? I very much doubt it.
DJT will do what the "puppet masters" desire. Just like all his predecessors.
'Correction': No reliable census has been done in decades, but I don't think the Pashtun are
the majority in Afghanistan. They
are by far the largest minority however. British 'divide and rule' stategists long ago
deliberately separated them into Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Venezuela and Iran have two things in common. Both have large oil reserves and neither
recognize Israel.
Trump's wars will be about destroying enemies of Israel, and at the same time, achieving
global energy dominance.
I've posted this before. I met a Taliban leader and his two guards in a brutal area during
the Hearts and Minds Schtick, preparatory to Cheney getting all the oil and gas, and copper
and iron and coming coal lease awards.
He was a nice guy, the Taliban leader. His guards looked at me with absolute death in
their eyes. Not wanting them to hear him, as we finished our tea, the Taliban leader leaned
close, then whispered, 'I love your Jesus, but I hate your Crusaders.'
And I take issue with the US 'incompetence' meme. Ever since Cheney hosted the Taliban in
Texas in 1998, trying to get a TAPI pipeline, the US has deliberately and cunningly taken
over the country, assassinated the local-level leadership, and installed their foreign Shah,
first Karzai, then Ghani.
In that time of occupation, 18 years, Pentagon MIC disappeared TRILLIONS in shrink-wrapped
pallets of $100s, and ballooned from $340B a year, to now Trump is saying $840B a year.
That's not incompetence. Just the opposite.
Now, to honor my Afghan friends, who love to joke even after 35+ years of machine warfare,
a joke I wrote in their honor:
Ring ring ring ring
"Office of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan!"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Hold please."
President Reagan, it's the Iranian ambassador!"
"Well hello Mr. Assinabindstani, what can I do for you?"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Well I'll get my staff right on it."
[Intercomm clicks]
"Hey Ollie, the Ayatollah wants more guns! Step on it!"
Actually, the British paid an annual tithe-tribute the the Afghan king to stop raiding
their India holdings, and agreed to a neutral zone between them. Then when the British pulled
out, they declared the neutral zone as Pakistan and shrunk India away from Pashtun territory
to create a bigger divide. The Afghan leaders had no say in the matter. I believe Baluchistan
was also carved away. At one time, Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.
There is no way to defeat a nation of warriors who created a kingdom that vast, while William
the Conqueror was still running around in bear skin diapers.
@41 'Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.'
You are probably referring to the Khalji Dynasty, a brutal bunch, who ruled India from
1290 to 1320 by which time William the Conqueror was long dead. You would be a lot more
credible if you got your history right.
IMHO the military Budget increase, and what an increase it is!
is part of worsening an already outrageous situation to reach a caricatural point. Typical of
trump repeated special "art".
Of course Nobody in USA, no President can go against the MIC and Pentagon.
But money is cheap when you print it.
It is sugaring the intended shrinking of foreign deployments (as in NATO), closure of
"facilities" and replacing them officially with total deterrence capacities (Space Forces
anybody ?).
While keeping classical projection capacities for demonstration against backward
tribes.
...
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to meet,
it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt worth a
toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even endeavor
to negotiate dead from the get go.
Posted by: Harry | Jul 30, 2018 7:53:57 PM | 29
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if you
feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what Iran
wants it to mean.
Trump jumped into the NK and Putin talks first because both were eager to talk. Iran will
be a good test of Trump's seduction skills. All he's got to do is persuade the Iranians that
talking is more useful than swapping long-distance insults. Iranians are rusted onto logical
principles and Trump will find a way to appeal to that trait, imo.
It's too late for the afghanis who have been driven into the urban areas during the regulaar
'Afghanistanisation' campaigns. Most of them will have become hooked on consumerism and the
necessity of dollars.
That leaves only two options for the Taliban when they take over as they undoubtedly will
altho that is likely to mean having to tolerate clutches of obese amerikans lurking in some
Px strewn green zone, the inhabitants of which are likely to have less contact with people
from Afghanistan than any regular user of a Californian shopping mall. The new government can
ignore the consumerists even when these rejects insist on getting lured into some nonsense
green revolution - the danger with this isn't the vapid protests which can easily be dealt
with by fetching a few mobs of staunch citizens from rural Afghanistan who will quickly teach
them that neither cheeseburgers nor close captioned episodes of daytime television provide
sufficient nutrition to handle compatriots raised on traditional food and Islam. Or the new
administration can do as other traditional regimes have done many times over the last 80
years or so, purge the consumerists by disappearing the leadership and strewing empty lots in
the urban areas with mutilated corpses of a few of the shitkicker class consumerists. That
option can cause a bit of a fuss but it (the fuss) generally only lasts as long as the purge.
I suspect the Afghan government will favour the latter approach but they may try to hold
off until the North has been brought back into line. OTH, consumerism is a highly contagious
condition so, unless the North can be pacified speedily which seems unlikely, initially at
least the Taliban adminsitration may have to fight on two fronts, agin the North while they
nip urban consumerists in the bud before those confused fools can cause any highly publicised
in the west but in actuality, low key, attempted insurrection.
My advice to the gaming, TV or cheeseburger addicted inhabitants of Kabul would be to
volunteer your services to the amerikan military as a 'translator' asap and join yer cobbers
in California.
It is unlikely that you will bump into Roman Brady especially not when he is in one
of his avuncular moods, but if you stay outta Texas, Florida or any other part of flyover
amerika chocka with alcohol induced blowhardism, you will discover than amerikan racism isn't
as lethal as it once was.
Apart from having to ignore being jostled in the line at fast food joints and being loudly
and incorrectly termed a motherf**in sand n***er mid-jostle. Certainly a whole lot less
lethal than trying to cover your Fortnite jones by waving a badly copywritten sign in front
of the al-Jazeera cameras for a one month
battle pass .
What was happening in Kabul, Afghanistan less than 8 hours after the WTC Towers turned into
dust in midair? Who here remembers the massive bombing/cruise missile attack?
Here is CNN's transcript:
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "Well, Joie, it's about 2:30 in the morning here in
Kabul. We've been hearing explosions around the perimeter of the city. We're in a position
here which gives us a view over the whole city. We just had an impact, perhaps a few miles
away.
"If I listen, you can hear the ripple of explosions around the city. Perhaps you heard
there. The fifth explosion -- sixth explosion, I think. Gun bursts and star bursts in the
air. Tracer fire is coming up out of the city. I hear aircraft flying above the city of
Kabul. Perhaps we've heard half a dozen to 10 detonations on the perimeter of the city,
some coming from the area close to the airport. I see on the horizon what could be a fire
on the horizon, close, perhaps, to where the airport might be. A flash came up then from
the airport. Some ground fire coming up here in Kabul."
"I've been in Belgrade and I've been in Baghdad and seen cruise missiles arrive in both
those cities. The detonations we're hearing in Kabul right now certainly sound like the
detonations of loud missiles that are coming in. "
"Certainly -- certainly it would appear that the Afghan defense systems have detected a
threat in the air. They are launching what appears to be anti-aircraft defense systems at
the moment. Certainly, I can see that fire that was blazing on the horizon. It was a faint
yellow; it's now a bright orange blazing. Several other detonations going off around the
city, multiple areas. Rockets appear to be taking off from one end of the airport. I can
see that perhaps located about 8 or 9 miles away from where we stand, Joie."
The bombing/explosions continue for 10+ minutes of this broadcast.
Then, they cut to WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: who says the US is only
collecting intelligence. He says what we're seeing must be part of the "Civil War" (despite
the fact that neither side had an air force or cruise missiles). The Pentagon later denies
knowing anything about it.
Then, CNN returns to Nic Robertson, who- within 15 minutes of his first report - begins to
change his tune. Suddenly, the jet sounds are not mentioned. The cruise missiles (jet
engines) have transformed into possible rockets. The airport fire is now an ammunition
dump.
And voila! They lose their connection and Nic will not be heard from again. And this
little bit of history will essentially disappear.
Dear Mr. B,
"All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country."
These mistakes are by design. To cause and keep causing destabilisation.
I like to refer to it as the 3-letter Scrabble method of doing things.
Me living in the Netherlands as I do, let me take the example of Greece.
Greece had its regime changed in 1948 (Wiki says 46-49).
And how is Greece doing these days? ...
@37 yep, gotta agree with the more passimistic outlook here. Personally i'll eat my shoes if
US leaves Afghanistan within any reasonable time frame. In addition to plentiful natural
resources, there are very influential vested interests in Afghanistans booming opium
industry.
Off topic: Andrei Nekrasov's 'Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes' can be viewed in full on You
Tube at this moment (31 July, 08:15 Amsterdam time). Can it also be seen in the USA, I
wonder? How long will it take before Google take it down ? Watch it and learn about one of
the main drivers of the Russia obsession.
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if
you feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what
Iran wants it to mean.
White House just explained what Trump's "no preconditions" means: 1) Iran should at the
core change how it deals with its own people. 2) Change its evil stance in foreign policy. 3)
Agree on nuclear agreement which would REALLY prevent them making a nuke.
In other words, Iran should capitulate and become a client state, thats what Trump means
by "no preconditions."
At this advanced stage of American insanity, I don't see why the devil should have all the
best tunes. I'm sick of the yanks doing this shit in over people's county's ! While they
stuff there fat faces with burgers and donuts! The dirty games they play on over country's,
should now be played in America with all the brutality that they have used on others. Until
that happens things world wide will continue to detriate. Natural justice is all that
remains. They'v curupted all else.
@19 "The US already started to plan an invasion of Afghanistan in januari & february of
2001."
Well, to be fair the USA probably has plans to invade lots of countries.
Indeed, it would be more interesting to consider how many countries there are that the USA
*doesn't* have invasion plans gathering dust on the shelves.
It's just been reported on the bbc news---- the man responsible for the Manchester bombing
had been 'rescued from Lybia when Gadafi was overthrown and tracked ever since. Even in
Britain up to the day of the bombing ! And now on this post we discuss America uk
transporting terrorists from Syria to Afghanistan . Not to mention the white helmet bunch and
where Ther going! The Manchester bombing, Westminster bridge and London Bridge atacks were
done by the Tory party to win a general election ! This is the reality of the world we live
in.full on oppression !!!
Indeed, I agree with the sentiments here. But missing a big part of the picture.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have sky-high fertility rates. Forget the rubbish peddled by
economist-whores like Milton Friedman, under these conditions no country without an open
frontier has ever developed into anything other than a larger mass of poverty. In Pakistan
something like half the children are so malnourished that they grow up stunted, and it is
this misery that is starting slow population growth. Pakistan is yet another example of the
Malthusian holocaust, which is not a global catastrophe: it is slow grinding poverty that
results when people have more children than they can support.
Bottom line: these places will remain poor and unstable no matter what lunacy the United
States does or does not do. The traditional approach to such places is to leave them alone,
and only keep them from escaping. Bottled up, the Afghanis and Pakistanis will kill only each
other. 9/11 is a consequence of allowing people from these places free access to the Untied
States.
The 'war on terror' is a consequence of 'there shall be open borders.' It's a big and
messy world, and even if the government of the United States was not criminally incompetent,
there would be a lot of misery and hatred in it. Open borders means that now the Untied
States has to intervene in every country all over the world to ensure that nowhere can there
develop terrorist cells. An impossible task.
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
The US still has some resources and some use but needs to continue to make friends in the
pattern of Kim and Putin and give up on its self defeating economic and military sabotage
planning which has been exposed as morally bankrupt as well.
Events in Ukraine after EuroMaidan are notoriously difficult to understand.
The book is fairly recent and as such might be a useful introduction for a Western reader who
is interested in Ukrainian event, but the material should be taken with a grain of salt. The
author is way too simplistic and his views on geopolitical problems are incorrect. The idea that
" Putin's Munich speech as a declaration of war" is nonsense. Also most of the readers probably
know State Department talking points and can recognize them in the text.
. In some areas the author is clearly incompetent as the quote "In 2016, France blocked
24,000 cyber attacks targeting its military. Ukraine experienced 24, 000 cyber attacks in only
the last two months of 2016" suggests.
The author views of Russia are typical of the US-based Ukrainian diaspora. As it is pretty
much radicalized, it can be argued that it brings to Ukraine more harm then good. In short his
views on Russia can be defined as cocktail of a 40% proof Russophobia with pure Neoconservatism.
So while author analysis of "Post-Maydan" Ukrainian elite has its value, his view on Russia
should probably be discarded.
For those who also bough McFaul book it is interesting to see correlation in views as well as
differences (especially McFaul laments from page 429 to the end of the book) . McFaul was the
co-architect of the 2011-2012 color revolution in Russia; and as an Ambassador became ostracized
by Russian and later removed by Obama. For his role in "White color revolution of 2012" McFaul
was put on the travel ban list by Russians and is not allowed to travel to the country. Both
represent neoconservative stance on the events, but there are some subtle and rather interesting
differences ;-)
Some Amazon reviews as one reproduced below are actually as valuable as the book itself and
can serve as a valuable addition.
This is a large book, embracing a vast amount of research. Conclusion is that
accommodation with Putin will be very difficult.
This is a large book, embracing a vast amount of research. Kuzio provides the conclusion
to the book as the conclusion to his introduction. It is somber, but realistic:
"There cannot be a conclusion to the book because the Donbas is an unresolved conflict
that is on-going. There will be no closure of the Ukraine-Russia crisis as long as Putin is
Russian president which will be as long as he remains alive. To fully implement the Minsk-2
Accords would mean jettisoning the DNR-LNR which Putin will not do and therefore, a political
resolution to the Donbas conflict is difficult to envisage."
Having lived in Kyiv for ten years, I was witness to the latter chapters of the drama that
Kuzio describes. His account jibes with what I witnessed, and provides a coherent explanation
of the events as they unfolded. The animus against Yanukovych was universal. His blatant
theft was visible to all. Every merchant I dealt with lived in fear of his tax police. We
saw, or more often read accounts about, the depredations of the titushki on a daily
basis.
One of my key questions in 2014 was whether it might have been better to endure Yanukovych
for another couple of years, until the elections. The Ukrainian people answered for me --
they had had enough. It wasn't exactly a coup, because the opposition was not well organized
and because Yanukovych fled before he could be overthrown. But the will of the people was
clear. He had to go. Kuzio makes a strong case that if it had not happened then, Yanukovych
might have had time to secure his dictatorship in such a way that he could not be dislodged
through democratic means.
Kuzio provides the most thorough and accurate description of the language situation I have
ever read. A fact he often repeats is that a majority of the soldiers fighting against the
Russians are themselves Russian speakers. Putin's claim that he is protecting a persecuted
linguistic minority is absolute nonsense. Kuzio makes the very useful analogy between the use
of English in Ireland and that of Russian in Ukraine. It is a matter of history and
convenience.
Ukrainian is not a dialect of Russian. They are very distinct languages. Speaking Spanish,
I was able to learn Portuguese quite easily. Speaking Russian has not enabled me to master
Ukrainian. They have different alphabets and even different grammars. As a resident of Kyiv
for 10 years I have not been forced to, and almost not been in a position to speak Ukrainian.
Everybody I interact with is exactly as Kuzio describes – ardently Ukrainian, but
nevertheless Russian speaking.
A question Kuzio does not raise is the utility of a language. For better or worse, Russian
is a world language. There is a significant body of scientific literature, fiction and poetry
written in Russian. It is, or was until recently, the lingua franca of the former USSR.
A lot of information about Kuzio himself is packed in the brief lead into his chapter
entitled Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism: "Ukraine is in the hands of homosexuals and Jewish
oligarchs. Aleksandr Dugin"
Russian philosopher Dugin is one of Kuzio's major bête noire's. Kuzio's book makes
it clear that Dugin is as much of an activist as he is a philosopher. Dugin seems to have a
hand in most things anti-Ukrainian. As a philosopher he is nothing – his book
The Fourth Political Theory is the subject of the most savage pan I have ever written.
Nonetheless, he is taken seriously by the resurgent Russian nationalists and Putin
himself.
Dugin's claim that Ukraine is in the hands of homosexuals is absurd. Homosexuals are
tolerated here, but they are discrete. Most Ukrainians, though they have no love whatsoever
for Russia, are largely in sympathy with Russia's stand against the flaunting of
homosexuality. The college-educated twentysomethings whom I know seem unaware that they even
know homosexuals, though it appears to this San Franciscan that some people in our circles
must be gay.
The claim that Ukraine is in the hand of Jewish oligarchs is quite another matter. Kuzio
gives quite rational explanations for anti-Ukrainian, anti-Belarusian and anti-Russian
sentiment, a great deal of which he manifests himself. He somehow looks at anti-Semitism as a
phenomenon that is beyond explanation. I would contend that it should be regarded just as the
other anti- concepts. Especially in the former USSR, where the Jews were regarded as a
separate people in the same way as Ukrainians.
He writes about the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fraud or hoax might be a
better word. Internet sources name the author as a certain Russian Professor S. Nilus writing
in 1901. The attractiveness of the fraud is that it coincides quite neatly with widely held
opinions about the Jews, many of which have some substance.
Going to substance, Kuzio mentions some of the major Jewish oligarchs, Kolomoisky and
Taruta, and some of the Jewish participants and Ukrainian politics: Yatsenyuk and Groisman.
He discounts the notion that President Poroshenko's father, born Valtzman, was Jewish. I had
never heard this account questioned. Other prominent Jews in Ukrainian politics/oligarchy who
come immediately to mind include Feldman and Rabinowitz. It is not that there is anything
wrong with Jews occupying dominant positions, but "simple Ivan" is not so stupid as to fail
to notice them. It is also widely perceived that the Jewish oligarchs are no better or worse
than the others, in that they put their personal interests ahead of that of the people who
elected them. Poroshenko has been a major disappointment. Kuzio writes of Kolomoisky's
support of the volunteer battalions in Donbas. True – but it was totally in line with
his business interests.
The fact that six of the seven billionaires to emerge after the collapse of the USSR were
Jewish belies Kuzio's claims that they were radically disadvantaged in the USSR. More
balanced accounts of Soviet Judaism have been written by Robert
Wistrich ,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Yuri
Slezkine .
Even a paranoid has enemies. American Jewish neocons, especially Victoria Nuland and
husband Robert Kagan, actively involved in Ukrainian politics, were strongly anti-Russian.
Though Kuzio is absolutely correct that the animus of the Ukrainian people for Yanukovych was
more than enough to power the Maidan uprising, it is also probably true that the CIA was
covertly abetting the protesters.
Kuzio's history of the Donbas and Crimea provides a very useful background to the
conflict. After the Welsh engineer John Hughes discovered coal around Donetsk in the 1880s
there was a rush to exploit it. The sparse population of Ukrainian farmers was not interested
in working the mines. The Russians brought in men from all over the Empire. A large number
were criminals who earned early release by promising to work there. Others were simply
soldiers of fortune.
Mining is dirty, dangerous and very masculine work. Kuzio reports that the history of the
Donbas always mirrored the miners themselves. Politically, it sat in the middle between the
Russians and the Ukrainians, respecting neither very much and casting its lot with whoever
appeared at the moment to be most generous to them, more often Moscow than Kyiv.
Kuzio relates that Lenin included the Donbas within the Ukrainian SSR as a built-in fifth
column, as a lever to control all of Ukraine. It remained after independence in 1991. The
Donbas' unique culture and clannishness protected its politicians from probing inquiries into
their dark pasts, such as Yanukovych' two prison terms. They would overlook his depredations
and send him to Kyiv with the idea that "he's a crook, but he's our crook."
Crimea's history is even more convoluted, but the bottom line is that it has always been
Russian speaking and did not identify greatly with Ukraine.
Kuzio reports, seemingly approvingly, that fellow author Alexander Motyl believes that
Ukraine would be better off without these insubordinate, intransigent ingrates.
In the end, Kuzio sums the origins of the crisis up very well, "The roots of the
Ukraine-Russia crisis do not lie in EU and NATO enlargement and democracy promotion, as
left-wing scholars and realists would have us believe, but in two factors. The first is
Russia's and specifically Putin's unwillingness to accept Ukrainians are a separate people
and Ukraine is an independent state with a sovereign right to determine its geopolitical
alliances. The second is Yanukovych and the Donetsk clan's penchant for the monopolization of
power, state capture, corporate raiding of the state and willingness to accommodate
practically every demand made by Moscow that culminated in treason on a grand scale. This was
coupled with a shift to Sovietophile and Ukrainophobic nationality policies and return to
Soviet style treatment of political opponents. Taken together, these policies made popular
protests inevitable in the 2015 elections but they came a year earlier after Yanukovych bowed
to Russian pressure to back away from the EU Association Agreement. These protests, in turn,
became violent and nationalistic in response to the Party of Regions and KPU's destruction of
Ukraine's democracy through the passing of draconian legislation, the president's refusal to
compromise and his use of vigilantes and police spetsnaz for political repression, torture,
and murders of protestors."
The question facing Ukraine at the moment is how to resolve the war in Donbas and how to
prevent Russia from making further incursions. Kuzio shares some very useful insights in this
regard.
Even in 2014, Russia simply did not have the resources to conquer Ukraine even if it had
had the desire. Kuzio repeatedly makes the point that the Russian doctrine of hybrid war
depends on a sympathetic or at least indifferent local populace. Even in the Donbass the
Russians have not been welcomed by a majority.
Time and again, Putin proves himself too smart by half. In his desire to maintain
deniability, he employed Chechens, Don Cossacks and "political tourists," thugs from all over
Russia to infiltrate the Donbass as separatists. Criminals are simply not suited for either
civil administration or organized warfare. After three months it was clear to Putin that he
had to use Russian troops and administrators, pushing the separatists aside. Not mentioned in
the book is the fact that a great many of the separatist leaders died mysteriously. Although
Russia attempted to frame Ukraine for "Motorola's" death, it appears to have been done by
Russian agents. Russia's trecherous duplicity neither won the war for them no fooled anybody
for very long.
Russia has thus had several handicaps in capturing and holding even the small, Russophone
and previously Russophile enclaves in Lugansk and Donetsk. The LPR and DPR would not survive
without ongoing Russian support. They have not won the hearts and minds of the people.
This calls to mind Custine's
Penguin Classics Letters From Russia on the fact that Russian duplicity and deceit made
it impossible for them ever to subvert the West. Alexandr Zinoviev summed it up exquisitely
in his satirical Homo
Sovieticus :
"Even though the West seems chaotic, frivolous and defenseless, all the same Moscow will
never achieve worldwide supremacy. Moscow can defend itself against any opponent. Moscow can
deliver a knockout blow on the west. Moscow has the wherewithal to mess up the whole planet.
But it has no chance of becoming the ruler of the world. To rule the world one must have at
one's disposal a sufficiently great nation. That nation must feel itself to be a nation of
rulers. And when it comes to it, one that can rule in reality. In the Soviet Union the
Russians are the only people who might be suited to that role. They are the foundation and
the bulwark of the Empire. But they don't possess the qualities of a ruling nation. And in
the Soviet empire their situation is more like that of being a colony for all the other
peoples in it."
This is the bottom line, something for the warmongers in Washington to keep in mind.
Ukraine and NATO cannot defeat Russia on its own doorstep, but Russia can certainly defeat
itself. For NATO to arm Ukraine, as the west did Georgia, or continue to crowd it as they are
doing in the Baltics, is counterproductive. It would be quite possible, but also quite stupid
for Russia to roll over its neighbors. The adventure in Ukraine has already been expensive,
and holding Crimea and Donbas will only become more so. Conversely, for the west to arm
countries against the Russians, as the US did in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Nicaragua, proved
quite deadly for these supposed friends. Ukraine and the west should wait Putin out just as
they waited out the USSR.
I have a couple of quibbles with the book. Kuzio uses the word "Fascist" to characterize
various Russian nationalist groups that support Putin and attack Ukrainians. Fascism died
with Hitler, 72 years ago. There should be a better term. This is especially true as Putin
terms Ukrainians as "Fascists." The word is inappropriate, old and clichéd.
Kuzio goes on to paint the rising nationalist movements in Europe as Fascist, or extreme
right wing. He excoriates Marine le Pen for taking Putin's money. There is a strong case to
be made that anti-democrats, supported by mainstream parties, have seized the European
Parliament and strongly suppressed free speech, open debate and the ability of such
nationalists to find funding. Their national banks are prejudicially closed to Farage,
Wilders, Orban, le Pen and the others. Kuzio should be more accommodating to the
nationalists. Ukraine may soon find itself forced to work with them. Moreover, they have many
good points. Generation
Identity provides a succinct summary. It is a book of the millennial generation, the
nationalists' strongest base, outlining their case against their elders, the boomers.
Ukraine is a conservative country. It is not wise to push the west's liberal agendas with
regard to immigration, homosexuality, feminism and civil rights for the Roma and at the same
time steel Ukraine for its fight against Russia. Even joining the battle against corruption
smells of hypocrisy, as evidence of political corruption emerges all over the west. It is
better to recognize the simple facts, as Kuzio does, and have a bit of faith. Ukraine managed
against stiffer odds in 2014. It will survive.
Those polls now became an echo changer. As valid information is by-and-large relegated to alt-channels people who rely on MSM
can't form an independent opinion about foreign policy issues. As the USA moved to the national security state model
after 9/11 people also naturally stopped giving honest answers in the polls.
So the level of conforms simultaneously reflects the level of distrust and fear of the ruling neoliberal elite.
Also many spend too much efforts on earning a living to form a coherent view of foreign
affairs. They just regurgitate MSM. Still while they have lingering distrust and some level of
fear to ward ruling neoliberal elite, they feel that it is saver to give "politically correct
answer.
So polls became an echo chamber of government policies. like with netters to Pravda: "We
enthusiastically support the wise policies of our Politburo" no matter what is the issue.
This year, an average of all respondents – people born between 1928 and 1996 –
showed that 64 percent believe the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs, but
interesting differences could be seen when the numbers are broken down by generation.
The silent generation, born between 1928 and 1945 whose formative years were during World
War II and the early Cold War, showed the strongest support at 78 percent. Support fell from
there through each age group. It bottomed out with millennials, of whom only 51 percent felt
the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs. That's still more internationalist than
not, but less enthusiastically than other age groups.
There is some anti-Trump effect visible here: Millennials in the polling sample do identify
as less Republican – 22 percent – and less conservative than the older age groups.
But they also were the least supportive of the "take an active part" view during the Obama
administration as well.
Four sets of additional polling numbers help us dig deeper.
Military power : Only 44 percent of millennials believe maintaining superior military
power is a very important goal, much less than the other generations. They also are less
supportive of increasing defense spending. And when asked whether they support the use of
force, millennials are generally disinclined, especially so on policies like conducting
airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, using troops if North Korea invades
South Korea, and conducting airstrikes against violent Islamic extremist groups.
American 'exceptionalism' : Millennials also were much less inclined to embrace the
idea that America is "the greatest country in the world." Only half of millennials felt that
way, compared to much higher percentages of the other three generations. In a related response,
only one-quarter of millenials saw the need for the U.S. to be "the dominant world leader." These findings track with the
2014 American National Election Study , which found that while 78 percent of silent, 70
percent of boomer and 60 percent of Gen X respondents consider their American identity as
extremely important, only 45 percent of millennials do.
Alliances and international agreements : Millennials are especially supportive of
NATO, at 72 percent. In this measure, they are close to the other generations' levels of NATO
support. Their 68 percent support for the Paris climate agreement is higher than two of the
other three age groups. And their 63 percent support for the Iran nuclear nonproliferation
agreement is even with boomers and higher than Gen X. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/XN2y2/6/
Globalization and key trade issues : Millennials' 70 percent agreement with the
statement that "globalization is mostly good for the United States" is higher than all the
other age groups. Similarly, 62 percent believe that NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) is good for the U.S. economy – well above the others surveyed. The margin is
also positive although narrower on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
These and other polls show millennials to have a world view that, while well short of
isolationist, is also not as assertively and broadly internationalist as previous
generations.
... ... ...
By Bruce Jentleson , Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Duke University.
Cross-posted
from Alternet .
"active part in world affairs" has, since 1893, usually meant invasions and bombing.
The US military, the costliest in history, hasn't won a war since 1946, unless Panama and
Grenada count. Korea is still a tie. Perhaps many are coming to realize that all the US
population [compared to corporations and corporation owners which show allegiance only to
money] needs is a border patrol and a coast guard. Not 'our' empire.
First, the United States has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for close to half the
lives of the oldest millennials, who were born in 1981
They're not counting the first Iraq War.
Only 70% in favor of "globalization" is pretty good in light of our lifetime of
propaganda. I'd be in favor of disbanding NATO and cutting the military and intelligence
budget by 80%, at least as a starting offer.
I think you have an interesting point re: "globalization" and propaganda. In school
(2000-2010ish) the term globalization was presented as a kind of antonym of isolationist. It
was portrayed as an attitude of openness to other countries, travelling internationally,
sharing in someone else culture, etc. The business/economic side was sort of introduced in
high school, but even then I remember being taught a definition of "globalization" closer to
"multiculturalism" than to one like "Imperialism". Post-high school life (and the GFC) really
drove home the true meaning of the word.
To this day I still reflexively read the word globalization as something akin to
"multiculturalism", despite knowing full well that it is anything but. From discussing
politics with other people in my generation I also get a sense that they are operating with
this weird dual (schizo?) meaning of "globalization".
Any other millennials have a similar experience with this word?
It might be nice to see the survey instruments too, to see what the questions were and how
loaded in favor of Empire or balanced (that deadly word) they were.
I didn't much like being put into the group called the Silent Generation, so I went to
wikipedia to see why it was called that.
" While there were many civil rights leaders, the "Silents" are called that because many
focused on their careers rather than on activism, and people in it were largely encouraged to
conform with social norms. As young adults during the McCarthy Era, many members of the
Silent Generation felt it was dangerous to speak out Time magazine coined the term "Silent
Generation" in a November 5, 1951 article titled "The Younger Generation" The Time article
said that the ambitions of this generation had shrunk, but that it had learned to make the
best of bad situations [?] In the United States, the generation was comparatively small They
are noted as forming the leadership of the civil rights movement as well as comprising the
"silent majority"
Ah, that's why I didn't much like it – and that was Nixon's silent majority, not me,
wikipedia – not me! But I'll forgive you because down below you put me in the group
called "The Lucky Few" and said how many of us were Really Good People. I'll buy that.
;))
Interesting results on Millennials' view of American Exceptionalism. I am not at all
surprised by those results, and I wonder if study abroad programs are having a deep impact on
young people's political views. They are seeing in detailed fashion the utter horror of
government-sponsored or managed healthcare, as well as how "socialism" in northern European
has inflicted a very favorable standard of living on most of the middle class.
Conversely, I still have to laugh at the 2012 campaign ad sponsored by Rickets of TD
Ameritrade fame that described the results of "socialism" and showed post-War Europe pictures
of old ladies on the side of the road. One of my parent's friends (now in her '80s) seemed
surprised that people in Europe didn't live shacks when shown my parent's vacation
pictures.
It's been almost eight years since Chalmers Johnson died. He was the author of, among other
works, Blowback: The Costs and
Consequences of American Empire and Dismantling the
Empire . He was also a TomDispatchstalwart
and a friend . As I watch the strange destructive dance of Donald Trump and his cohorts
, I still regularly find myself wondering: What would Chal think? His acerbic wit and, as a
former consultant to the CIA, his deep sense of how the national security state worked provided
me with a late education. With no access to my Ouija board, however, the best I can do when it
comes to answering such questions is repost his classic
final piece for this site on the necessity of dismantling the American empire before it
dismantles us. He wrote it in July 2009, convinced that we had long passed from a republic to
an empire and were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a " military
Keynesianism " run amok. He saw the Pentagon and our empire of
bases abroad as a kind of Ponzi scheme that would, someday, help bankrupt this country.
How fascinated he would have been by the first candidate to ride an
escalator into a presidential contest on a
singular message of American decline. ("Make American great again !") And how much
more so by the world that candidate is creating as president, intent as he seems to be, in his
own bizarre fashion, on dismantling
the
system of global control the U.S. has built since 1945. At the same time, he seems prepared
to
finance the U.S. military at levels, which, even for Johnson, would have been eye-popping,
while attempting to
sell American arms around an embattled planet in a way that could prove unique. What a
strange combination of urges Donald Trump represents, as he teeters constantly at the
edge of war ("fire and fury like the world has never seen"),
more war ("never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the
likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before"), and
peace in our time. Amid all the strangeness, don't forget the strangeness of a mainstream
media that has gone bonkers
covering this president as no one has ever been covered in the history of the universe
(something that would undoubtedly have amazed Chal).
Think of what President Trump has launched as the potential imperial misadventure of a
lifetime, while checking out Chal's thoughts from so long ago on a subject that should still be
on all our minds.
"... I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true fighters as well as stronger economic planning. ..."
The United States seems ready to give up on Afghanistan.
After the World Trade Center came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda, parts of which were hosted
in Afghanistan. The Taliban government offered the U.S. to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin
Laden to an Islamic country to be judged under Islamic law. The U.S. rejected that and decided
instead to destroy the Afghan government.
Taliban units, supported by Pakistani officers, were at that time still fighting against the
Northern Alliance which held onto a few areas in the north of the country. Under threats from
the U.S. Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its natural depth hinterland, was pressed into
service. In exchange for its cooperation with the U.S. operation it was allowed to extradite
its forces and main figures of the Taliban.
U.S. special forces were dropped into north Afghanistan. They came with huge amounts of cash
and the ability to call in B-52 bombers. Together with the Northern Alliance they move towards
Kabul bombing any place where some feeble resistance came from. The Taliban forces dissolved.
Many resettled in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda also vanished.
A conference with Afghan notables was held in Germany's once capital Bonn. The Afghans
wanted to reestablish the former Kingdom but were pressed into accepting a western style
democracy. Fed with large amounts of western money the norther warlords, all well known
mass-murderers, and various greedy exiles were appointed as a government. To them it was all
about money. There was little capability and interest to govern.
All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country.
For a few years the Taliban went quiet. But continued U.S. operations, which included random
bombing of weddings, torture and abduction of assumed al-Qaeda followers, alienated the people.
Pakistan feared that it would be suffocated between a permanently U.S. occupied Afghanistan and
a hostile India. Four years after being ousted the Taliban were reactivated and found regrown
local support.
Busy with fighting an insurgency in Iraq the U.S. reacted slowly. It then surged troops into
Afghanistan, pulled back, surged again and is now again pulling back. The U.S. military aptly
demonstrated its excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence. The
longer it fought the more Afghan people stood up against it. The immense amount of money spent
to 'rebuild' Afghanistan
went to U.S. contractors and Afghan warlords but had little effect on the ground. Now half
the country is back under Taliban control while the other half is more or less contested.
Before his election campaign Donald Trump spoke out
against the war on Afghanistan. During his campaign he was more cautious pointing to the danger
of a nuclear Pakistan as a reason for staying in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is where the U.S.
supply line is coming through and there are no reasonable alternatives. Staying in Afghanistan
to confront Pakistan while depending on Pakistan for logistics does not make sense.
Early this year the U.S. stopped all aid to Pakistan. Even the old Pakistani government was
already talking
about blocking the logistic line. The incoming prime minister Imran Khan has campaigned for
years against the U.S. war on Afghanistan. He very much prefers an alliance with China over any U.S.
rapprochement. The U.S. hope is that Pakistan will have to ask the IMF for another bailout and
thus come back under Washington's control. But it is
more likely that Imran Khan will ask China for financial help.
Under pressure from the military Trump had agreed to raise the force in Afghanistan to some
15,000 troops. But these were way to few to hold more than some urban areas. Eighty percent of
the Afghan people live in the countryside. Afghan troops and police forces are incapable or
unwilling to fight their Taliban brethren. It was obvious that this mini-surge
would fail :
By most objective measures, President Donald Trump's year-old strategy for ending the war in
Afghanistan has produced few positive results.
Afghanistan's beleaguered soldiers have failed to recapture significant new ground from
the Taliban. Civilian deaths have hit historic highs. The Afghan military is struggling to
build a reliable air force and expand the number of elite fighters. Efforts to cripple
lucrative insurgent drug smuggling operations have fallen short of expectations. And U.S.
intelligence officials say the president's strategy has halted Taliban gains but not reversed
their momentum, according to people familiar with the latest assessments.
To blame Pakistan for its support for some Taliban is convenient, but makes little sense. In
a recent
talk John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
made a crucial point:
"We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the
Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you
really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not
predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords," observed Sopko.
He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable
environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who
took the law into their own hands.
"In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police
forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as
bad as the terrorists before them," said Sopko ...
This was the problem from the very beginning. The U.S. bribed itself into Afghanistan. It
spent tons of money but did not gain real support. It bombed and shot aimlessly at 'Taliban'
that were more often than not just the local population. It incompetently fought 17
one-year-long wars instead of a consistently planned and sustained political, economic and
military campaign.
After a year of another useless surge the Trump administration decided to pull back from
most active operations and to bet
on negotiations with the Taliban:
The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile
"Afghan-led, Afghan-owned" process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American
officials that President Trump's new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental
difference in rolling back Taliban gains.
While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the
willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of
urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.
...
Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would
probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government,
the United States and Pakistan.
Afghans have continued to burn for the last four decades in the fire of imposed wars. They
are longing for peace and a just system but they will never tire from their just cause of
defending their creed, country and nation against the invading forces of your
warmongering government because they have rendered all the previous and present historic
sacrifices to safeguard their religious values and national sovereignty. If they make a deal
on their sovereignty now, it would be unforgettable infidelity with their proud history and
ancestors.
Last weeks talks between the Taliban and U.S. diplomats took place in Doha, Qatar.
Remarkably the Afghan government was excluded. Despite the rousing tone of the Reuters
report below the positions that were exchanged
do not point to a successful conclusion:
According to one Taliban official, who said he was part of a four-member delegation, there
were "very positive signals" from the meeting, which he said was conducted in a "friendly
atmosphere" in a Doha hotel.
"You can't call it peace talks," he said. "These are a series of meetings for initiating
formal and purposeful talks. We agreed to meet again soon and resolve the Afghan conflict
through dialogue."
...
The two sides had discussed proposals to allow the Taliban free movement in two provinces
where they would not be attacked, an idea that President Ashraf Ghani has already rejected .
They also discussed Taliban participation in the Afghan government.
"The only demand they made was to allow their military bases in Afghanistan ," said the
Taliban official.
...
"We have held three meetings with the U.S. and we reached a conclusion to continue talks for
meaningful negotiations," said a second Taliban official.
...
"However, our delegation made it clear to them that peace can only be restored to Afghanistan
when all foreign forces are withdrawn ," he said.
This does not sound promising:
In a first step the Taliban want to officially rule parts of the country and use it as a
safe haven. The Afghan government naturally rejects that.
Participation of the Taliban in the Afghan government is an idea of the Afghan president
Ghani. It is doubtful that this could be successfully arranged. Norther Alliance elements in
the Afghan government, like the 'chief executive' Abdullah Abdullah, are unlikely to ever
agree to it. The Taliban also have no interest to be 'part of the government' and to then get
blamed for its failures. Their February letter makes clear that they want to be the
government.
The U.S. wants bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban, and Pakistan behind them, reject that
and will continue to do so.
It is difficult to see how especially the last mutually exclusive positions can ever be
reconciled.
The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only
offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no
choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying
areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases
will come under fire.
There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate
about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".
The Soviet war in Afghanistan took nine years. The time was used to build up a halfway
competent government and army that managed to hold off the insurgents for three more years
after the Soviet withdrawal. The government only fell when the Soviets cut the money line. The
seventeen year long U.S. occupation did not even succeed in that. The Afghan army is corrupt
and its leaders are incompetent. The U.S. supplied it with expensive and complicate equipment
that
does not fit Afghan needs . As soon as the U.S. withdraws the whole south, the east and
Kabul will immediately fall back into Taliban hands. Only the north may take a bit longer. They
will probably ask China to help them in developing their country.
The erratic
empire failed in another of its crazy endeavors. That will not hinder it to look for a new
ones. The immense increase
of the U.S. military budget, which includes 15,000 more troops, points to a new large war.
Which country will be its next target?
thanks b.. it would be good if the exceptional warmongering nation could go home, but i am
not fully counting on it.. i liked your quote here "The U.S. military aptly demonstrated its
excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence." that is ongoing..
unless the usa leaves, i think the madness continues.. i suspect the madness will continue..
the only other alternative is the usa, with the help of their good buddies - uk, ksa, qatar,
uae and israel - will keep on relocating isis to afgan for future destabilization.. i watched
a video peter au left from al jazzera 2017 with isis embedded in the kush mtns... until the
funding for them ceases - i think the usa will have a hand in the continued madness... if the
usa was serious about ending terrorism they would shut down the same middle east countries
they are in bed with.. until that happens, i suspect not much will change.. i hope i am
wrong..
I dont believe it for a second. Especially with Iran looming as a potential target. US is
staying in Afghanistan also to counter China , keep opium production high and of course there
is the TAPI pipeline to "protect" that is backed by US as an alternative to the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would have tapped Iran's South Pars gas field. A hostile or
unfriendly Pakistan is just one more reason to stay
Just like US will never leave Iraq or Syria, they will stay in Afghanistan. There will be
ebbs and flows, and talk of disengagement from time to time primarily for domestic
consumption, but thats all it is IMO.
This is a fine recap of the situation. It's much too optimistic. The classic method of
American negotiation and warfare like the Roman before them is to divide and conquer. It was
very successful against the American Indians.
If the Taliban get free movement in two provinces, the Americans will demand an end to
attacks on their bases, their soldiers and their agents elsewhere in Afghanistan. Just as the
Iroquois Confederation enjoyed special privileges in what is now Upper New York for their
help against the French, the Taliban will have special privileges in their two provinces
while the Americans consolidate in the rest of Afghanistan. When the Americans feel strong
enough, just as with the Iroquois, they will break the previous treaties.
After the Revolutionary War, the ancient central fireplace of the League was re-established
at Buffalo Creek. The United States and the Iroquois signed the treaty of Fort Stanwix in
1784 under which the Iroquois ceded much of their historical homeland to the Americans,
which was followed by another treaty in 1794 at Canandaigua which they ceded even more land
to the Americans./b
(...continuation of the comment above, somehow got posted when I pressed the return
key)
Even the Soviet Union and Russians were unable to make the American respect their
commitments. The United States reneged on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as soon as it
could in 2001 (Russia was on its knees), reneged on its commitments not to expand NATO east
and has built ballistic missile bases all around Russia which seem to be preparation for a
pre-emptive nuclear strike/war against Russia.
The Afghanis (foolish to call them the Taliban, they are traditional Afghani patriots)
have always been wise enough to annihilate any invader to the last man. This salutary policy
keeps invaders out for decades at a time. The Taliban have a long row to hoe. It took almost
a hundred years and several massacres to finally curb British ambitions on Afghanistan (1838
to 1919). Afghanis' best hopes rely on forging tight alliances with Pakistan and China,
squeezing the Americans out completely right now.
The Americans burnt their bridges with the Russian already and are in the process of
burning their bridges with Pakistan while losing influence with China. The US is very short
of options right now. It's the ideal time for Afghanis to reclaim the whole territory, not
leaving a single American soldier or airbase operational. They'll need a technically
sophisticated ally to help them clear their skies of US drones. This role might appeal to
either the Russians or the Chinese. As a training exercise, extended anti-drone warfare could
be very useful.
What a great success the US achieved in destroying Yugoslavia. Murdering thousands went
almost unnoticed. It was able to break up the country into a number of tiny, impoverished
nations and got to put a US MIC Base in most of them.
You did not mention isis-k in your analysis. Its active mostly in eastern afghanistan in
areas close to or adjacent to Pakistan (it is also controlls a small area in Jawzjan, in
northern afghanistan). Many fighters are formerly pakistani taliban(not to be confused with
afghan taliban who are simply called taliban). Before isis-k appeared in afghanistan, the
areas which it now controls had pakistani taliban presence. TTP, or tehreek e taliban
pakistan was facilitated by afghan ggovernment to settle down in these areas after they fled
pakistan when its military launched a large scale offensive, Operation Zarb e Azb. The afghan
government planned to use them to pressurize Pakistan, basically to use them as a bargaining
chip. They operate openly in eastern afghanistan, but many of them joined isis-k.
Russians estimate isis-k's strength to be between 10k to 12k, although it might be a bit
inflated number. From here they plan attacks against afghanistan and pakistan alike, mostly
suicide bombings as of now. They have had fierce clashes with afghan taliban in eastern
Afghanistan but have held their territory for now. Afghan army simply doesn't have the
capacity in those areas to confront them. It was here that MOAB was dropped but as expected
against a guerrilla force, it was ineffective in every way. But it did make headlines and has
helped US in giving an impression its seriously fighting ISIS. The reports of unmarked
helicopters dropping god-knows-what have also been coming from these areas. Hamid karzai
mentioned that and also maria zakharova asked afghan gov. and US to investigate that which
shows these are not just rumors. Recently intelligence chiefs of Pakistan, russia, iran and
china as well(if i remember correctly) met in islamabad to discuss isis-k in afghanistan, no
details other than this of this meeting are available.
In Northern afghanistan, in Jawzjan, fierce clashes broke out between taliban and isis-k
after taliban commander in thiae areas was beheaded. ISIS-k has been beaten up pretty badly
there but clashes are ongoing. Many areas have been cleared but fighting is still ongoing. An
interesting aspect is taliban sources claiming that whenever they come close to a decisive
victory, they have to stop operations becauae of heavy bombardment by US planes. They made
similar claims when fighting daesh in eastern afghanistan. Anyway in a few days isis presence
will probably be finished in Jawzjan. ISIS fighters who have survived have done so by
surrendering to afghan forces. They will probably end up back in eastern afghanistan.
Africa. US AFRICOM has a huge playground, tactics won't change and logistics is far
easier.
There also will be a long Hybrid wr against Iran, but that will be much like the early
days of Syria. Proxies as "moderates". Insurgents, not US troops. ISIS and AQ crazies will be
on the ground.
The big money will go into Africa. You want to see Trillions "spent"? It will be
Africa.
The decision to invade Afghanistan had been taken before the 9/11 false flag coup. Had
nothing much to do with the CIA's al-Qaeda mercenaries.
As I understood it, there were many agendas at work: testing weapons and making money for
the MIC; controlling the lucrative (how many hundreds of billions of dollars ?) opium/ heroin
production/profiteering; military bases relating to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and other
...stans, etc; control of oil and gas pipelines; access to increasingly valuable and sought
rare earth minerals; proximity to oil and gas actual and potential.
More generally, subjugating Afghanistan was a necessary part of the 'full spectrum
dominance' 'we will rule the earth' doctrine, dear til recently to too many mad hatters, and
still evoking a misty eyed longing in some, no doubt.
Ahhh...the US produces some of the lamest euphemisms approved for all audiences; such as
"Afgahn Security Forces." So sterile, innocuous. And benign. How could anyone question their
plight? (We did pick up the game a little bit in Syria with "Free Syrian Army..." Can I get a
hell yeah?) All the people hearing this in the US could do was shrug their shoulders and
speak, "I guess I should support them." That is, of course, after we took out OBL and the
mission in Afghanistan was a little more opaque. Just a little bit. Anyways...Hell, yeah! Get
some!
Thanks b for the brief history. Really invaluable.
Afghani patriots, resisting invaders since 330 BCE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
The US military, the planet's costliest losingest military since 1946. The US military, like
its munitions manufacturers, doesn't win but it does get paid and is why we can have nice
things like oh, decent health care. Lack of health insurance kills more Americans than the
Russians ever will. The Russians aren't the enemy, Trump is. Lobbyists are too.
I haven't read anything about Blackwater wanting to replace the U.S. Military in Afghanistan.
Of course, the U.S. Treasury would continue to shovel those pallet loads of newly printed
$100.00 bills down the Blackwater hole. Any odds this might go forward from anyone's opinion?
robin cook before he was murdered stated that alqueda was a cia data base.
i believe bresinski knew obl as tim osman who was later killed by cia mi6 man omar blah blah
sheikh bhutto of pakisyan was assasinated after spilling the beans about sheikh.
christopher bolleyn on you tube will give you the sp on what 9 and 11 was shirley we are
past the point of the offecal theory.
the turd burger that is the official theory is clearly the worst and lowest grade of all the
conspiracy theories.
the taliban where in barbera bushes texas talking lithium opium and oil pipelines with the
paedo bush crime syndicate before 9 and 11
marvin bush ran security at the twin towers
christopher bollyn is the go to man in these regardings
The US wants peace talks but wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. US under Trump has built
new bases in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait.
SDF have been talking with Syrian government, and US in Talks with Taliban. Are these just
moves to buy the US a little time until it launches the war Trump has been building the US
military up for.
isis is israeli counter gang with support of usa usa and the city of
london,ukrainian,polish,uk sas,cia,kiwi,aussie,jordanian and donmeh satanic house of
saud.
talking of isis as if it is real entity rather than a frank kitson gang counter gang and
pseudo gang is polluting the well.
who has been providing extraction helicopters from syriana for the last 14 months.
who has been washing these bearded devils operating on them in kosher field hospitals making
them well shiny and new
who?
scchhhhh you know who
We are concerned about reports regarding the use of helicopters without any identification
marks in many parts of Afghanistan that are delivering terrorists and arms to the Afghan
branch of this terrorist organisation. We believe that reports to this effect made by Afghan
officials should be thoroughly investigated."
- Of course. The US wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village
Hajji, the writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit.
The only question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous
it will be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam
War (1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and
the Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village Hajji, the
writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit. The only
question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous it will
be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam War
(1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and the
Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
@uncoy.. i basically see it like you, however another proxy war involving usa-russia-china
sounds like a running theme now...
@13 bilal.. good post.. i agree about the analysis missing much on isis presence in afgan
as @6 jr also points out.. i think it is a critical bit of the puzzle.. it appears the usa is
using isis as a proxy force, as obama previously stated with regard to syria... the usa just
can't seem to help themselves with their divide and conquer strategy using isis as part of
it's methodology... it's exact opposite of what they profess..
@18 eugene.. isn't blackwater or whatever they're called now - headquartered in uae?
perfect place for them, lol... right on top of yemen, afgan, and etc. etc.. if isis can't do
the job for the west thru their good friends ksa, uae - well, then maybe they can pay a bit
more and get blackwater directly involved too..
Trump is serious when he said he would talk to anybody. The CIA is alleged to have been
stirring the pot with Islamic militants prior to the Soviet invasion when the country went
full socialist. I would suspect the Russians had a hand in that in 1978. US intelligence was
said to be helping along the backlash to socialism by Islamic militants back then in 1978.
The CIA station chief was promptly assassinated the next year.
Obviously you could dump 600,000 NATO and US soldiers into the country and not control it
short of executing every Muslim. What a foolish endeavor but what would you expect from these
buffoons and their death cult? These human sacrifices are holy to them. They worship blood,
death, power and money.
With their loss in Syria the NEOCONS can now make peace with the Taliban and use them and
ISIS to push into old Soviet Central Asia in an attempt to deny them what the Anglo American
Zionist alliance cannot have at this time, control of the commodities.
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
Even the Brits knew when it was time to leave India and their Middle Eastern holdings. They
realized the costs of containment would wipe out their country.
No he doesnt, along with Israel and neocons. There was already nuclear deal, and US was
out of "all this crap", so why introduce Gordian Knot if he doesnt want it?
What Trump demands is Iran's surrender. 'b discussed it at length some time ago, the list
of Trump's demands is completely ridiculous and the goal is Iran as a client state.
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to
meet, it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt
worth a toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even
endeavor to negotiate dead from the get go.
Congress went along with the Pentagon's 7 countries in 5 years plan. No investigation of 9/11
or even consideration of Ron Paul's bringing in an old idea of Letters of Marque and
Reprisal.
As to the US leaving the warlords in power to continue opium production, etc, Van Buren (We
Meant Well book) said some of the same happened in Iraq with some sheikhs still holding power
in local areas. General Garner looked forward to going in to rebuild (and was promising quick
elections) but was shocked to see no protection of ministries (except oil) which were looted
and burned. And then Bremer was put in charge. Complete mismanagement of the war, the
aftermath, etc. Like someone once said, if they were doing these things at random you would
expect them to get it right once in a while.
The Kunduz Airlift which allowed Pakistan a corridor to fly out Pak officials, Taliban,
and possibly al Qaeda was yet another snafu like paying Pakistan to supposedly block any
escape from their side of Tora Bora only to have a long convoy leave at night. It made one
wonder about the US supposed air superiority/domination. Again, complete mismanagement.
A comparison to the end situation in VietNam 1975 is apt.
Trump meeting Rouhani. Trump saays he wants a better deal. The nuke agreement took years to
negotiate and Iran accepted far more stringent inspections than any other country signed up
NPT. There is nothing more for Iran to negotiate other than to give away their
sovereignty.
The offer of a meeting by Trump is more along the line of "we tried to avoid war".
The US under Trump have scrapped the nuke agreement and made demands that are impossible for
Iran to meet without giving away its sovereignty.
Erik Prince's plan for fighting in Afghanistan.
He presented it to the WH. Military rejected it.
He is no longer Blackwater-connected.
Frontier Services Group Ltd. is his new military-security services corp.
He has extensive contracts with the Chinese government and their SOEs overseas.
did you see General Souleimani answer's to Trump rabid tweet
it went like this
Our president doesnt lower himself to answer someone like.I, a soldier answer someone like
you, you re someone who speaks in the vocabulary of a cabaret owner and a gambling house
dealer.(paraphrasing saker has the video on his site)
and then he went on to describe how your cowad troops wore adult diapers in Afghanistan
and Iraq
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
dltravers @28
No. China, being development-oriented rather than imperialist, will leave Afghanistan
alone. China and Russia, but especially China, requires an Afghanistan that is not a
U.S.-controlled terrorist base. Because China needs the oil/gas link that it is building
through Pakistan to access Gulf energy resources, and that energy corridor would be the
primary target of U.S.-hired mercenaries ('terrorists').
How Afghanistan manages itself in the post-U.S. era is Afghan business, but it will almost
certainly involve the Pashtun majority (in the form of the 'Taliban') retaking power in Kabul
but with the traditional huge amounts of autonomy for the provinces. That arrangement reduces
pressure by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan against Pakistan's government, and in general
seems to be the long-term stable set up, and stability is what China has to have in
Afghanistan.
Now is the time with perfect China partner Khan and the Pakistan military firmly in power.
Not instant, but over the next two years I think we'll see the Taliban's fighting capacity
hugely improve, with transfers of supplies, weapons and intelligence from Pakistan. It would
be very smart for Trump to get out in 2019. History is going to accelerate in that
region.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I worry a lot about Venezuela. See, it's a perfect
fit for the U.S. economy. U.S. shale oil is way too light to be useful, while Venezuelan oil
is way too heavy to be useful. They are destined for each other, i.e. to be mixed into a
blend that would be a good fit U.S. refineries. Plus, Venezuela is very import-dependent and
thus would make for a good vassal. It also has a rabid capitalist class that will do anything
-- any kind of atrocity or false flag -- to return to the good old days of exploitation. "But
Venezuela has a lot of arms!", I hear you counter. True, but the people are severely
demoralized because of the extreme economic hardship. Think of the USSR in late 80s/early
90s. It had the most powerful military in the world, and yet people were so demoralized and
disillusioned with the old system that they simply chose not to defend it. Same thing may
happen in Venezuela. After Colombia has signed peace accords with FARC, U.S. has been
steadily increasing its military presence in Colombia. I think there is a very real
possibility of a naval blockade combined with supply lines/air raids from Colombia supporting
the "Free Venezuelan Army" assembled from Venezuelan gangs and revanchist capitalists and
foreign mercenaries. It would be logistically impossible for Russia or China to provide
military help to far-away Venezuela. Neighbors will not come to the aid of Venezuela either
as there is a surge of pro-U.S. right-wing governments in the region.
Any moves the U$A makes will have to be approved according to which natural resources their
corporate masters covet at any particular moment. Lithium and other rare earth minerals,
strategic importance, whatever the corporate form needs to stay on top globally, will dictate
what the empire does.
Leave Afghanistan? I very much doubt it.
DJT will do what the "puppet masters" desire. Just like all his predecessors.
'Correction': No reliable census has been done in decades, but I don't think the Pashtun are
the majority in Afghanistan. They
are by far the largest minority however. British 'divide and rule' stategists long ago
deliberately separated them into Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Venezuela and Iran have two things in common. Both have large oil reserves and neither
recognize Israel.
Trump's wars will be about destroying enemies of Israel, and at the same time, achieving
global energy dominance.
I've posted this before. I met a Taliban leader and his two guards in a brutal area during
the Hearts and Minds Schtick, preparatory to Cheney getting all the oil and gas, and copper
and iron and coming coal lease awards.
He was a nice guy, the Taliban leader. His guards looked at me with absolute death in
their eyes. Not wanting them to hear him, as we finished our tea, the Taliban leader leaned
close, then whispered, 'I love your Jesus, but I hate your Crusaders.'
And I take issue with the US 'incompetence' meme. Ever since Cheney hosted the Taliban in
Texas in 1998, trying to get a TAPI pipeline, the US has deliberately and cunningly taken
over the country, assassinated the local-level leadership, and installed their foreign Shah,
first Karzai, then Ghani.
In that time of occupation, 18 years, Pentagon MIC disappeared TRILLIONS in shrink-wrapped
pallets of $100s, and ballooned from $340B a year, to now Trump is saying $840B a year.
That's not incompetence. Just the opposite.
Now, to honor my Afghan friends, who love to joke even after 35+ years of machine warfare,
a joke I wrote in their honor:
Ring ring ring ring
"Office of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan!"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Hold please."
President Reagan, it's the Iranian ambassador!"
"Well hello Mr. Assinabindstani, what can I do for you?"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Well I'll get my staff right on it."
[Intercomm clicks]
"Hey Ollie, the Ayatollah wants more guns! Step on it!"
Actually, the British paid an annual tithe-tribute the the Afghan king to stop raiding
their India holdings, and agreed to a neutral zone between them. Then when the British pulled
out, they declared the neutral zone as Pakistan and shrunk India away from Pashtun territory
to create a bigger divide. The Afghan leaders had no say in the matter. I believe Baluchistan
was also carved away. At one time, Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.
There is no way to defeat a nation of warriors who created a kingdom that vast, while William
the Conqueror was still running around in bear skin diapers.
@41 'Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.'
You are probably referring to the Khalji Dynasty, a brutal bunch, who ruled India from
1290 to 1320 by which time William the Conqueror was long dead. You would be a lot more
credible if you got your history right.
IMHO the military Budget increase, and what an increase it is!
is part of worsening an already outrageous situation to reach a caricatural point. Typical of
trump repeated special "art".
Of course Nobody in USA, no President can go against the MIC and Pentagon.
But money is cheap when you print it.
It is sugaring the intended shrinking of foreign deployments (as in NATO), closure of
"facilities" and replacing them officially with total deterrence capacities (Space Forces
anybody ?).
While keeping classical projection capacities for demonstration against backward
tribes.
...
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to meet,
it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt worth a
toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even endeavor
to negotiate dead from the get go.
Posted by: Harry | Jul 30, 2018 7:53:57 PM | 29
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if you
feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what Iran
wants it to mean.
Trump jumped into the NK and Putin talks first because both were eager to talk. Iran will
be a good test of Trump's seduction skills. All he's got to do is persuade the Iranians that
talking is more useful than swapping long-distance insults. Iranians are rusted onto logical
principles and Trump will find a way to appeal to that trait, imo.
It's too late for the afghanis who have been driven into the urban areas during the regulaar
'Afghanistanisation' campaigns. Most of them will have become hooked on consumerism and the
necessity of dollars.
That leaves only two options for the Taliban when they take over as they undoubtedly will
altho that is likely to mean having to tolerate clutches of obese amerikans lurking in some
Px strewn green zone, the inhabitants of which are likely to have less contact with people
from Afghanistan than any regular user of a Californian shopping mall. The new government can
ignore the consumerists even when these rejects insist on getting lured into some nonsense
green revolution - the danger with this isn't the vapid protests which can easily be dealt
with by fetching a few mobs of staunch citizens from rural Afghanistan who will quickly teach
them that neither cheeseburgers nor close captioned episodes of daytime television provide
sufficient nutrition to handle compatriots raised on traditional food and Islam. Or the new
administration can do as other traditional regimes have done many times over the last 80
years or so, purge the consumerists by disappearing the leadership and strewing empty lots in
the urban areas with mutilated corpses of a few of the shitkicker class consumerists. That
option can cause a bit of a fuss but it (the fuss) generally only lasts as long as the purge.
I suspect the Afghan government will favour the latter approach but they may try to hold
off until the North has been brought back into line. OTH, consumerism is a highly contagious
condition so, unless the North can be pacified speedily which seems unlikely, initially at
least the Taliban adminsitration may have to fight on two fronts, agin the North while they
nip urban consumerists in the bud before those confused fools can cause any highly publicised
in the west but in actuality, low key, attempted insurrection.
My advice to the gaming, TV or cheeseburger addicted inhabitants of Kabul would be to
volunteer your services to the amerikan military as a 'translator' asap and join yer cobbers
in California.
It is unlikely that you will bump into Roman Brady especially not when he is in one
of his avuncular moods, but if you stay outta Texas, Florida or any other part of flyover
amerika chocka with alcohol induced blowhardism, you will discover than amerikan racism isn't
as lethal as it once was.
Apart from having to ignore being jostled in the line at fast food joints and being loudly
and incorrectly termed a motherf**in sand n***er mid-jostle. Certainly a whole lot less
lethal than trying to cover your Fortnite jones by waving a badly copywritten sign in front
of the al-Jazeera cameras for a one month
battle pass .
What was happening in Kabul, Afghanistan less than 8 hours after the WTC Towers turned into
dust in midair? Who here remembers the massive bombing/cruise missile attack?
Here is CNN's transcript:
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "Well, Joie, it's about 2:30 in the morning here in
Kabul. We've been hearing explosions around the perimeter of the city. We're in a position
here which gives us a view over the whole city. We just had an impact, perhaps a few miles
away.
"If I listen, you can hear the ripple of explosions around the city. Perhaps you heard
there. The fifth explosion -- sixth explosion, I think. Gun bursts and star bursts in the
air. Tracer fire is coming up out of the city. I hear aircraft flying above the city of
Kabul. Perhaps we've heard half a dozen to 10 detonations on the perimeter of the city,
some coming from the area close to the airport. I see on the horizon what could be a fire
on the horizon, close, perhaps, to where the airport might be. A flash came up then from
the airport. Some ground fire coming up here in Kabul."
"I've been in Belgrade and I've been in Baghdad and seen cruise missiles arrive in both
those cities. The detonations we're hearing in Kabul right now certainly sound like the
detonations of loud missiles that are coming in. "
"Certainly -- certainly it would appear that the Afghan defense systems have detected a
threat in the air. They are launching what appears to be anti-aircraft defense systems at
the moment. Certainly, I can see that fire that was blazing on the horizon. It was a faint
yellow; it's now a bright orange blazing. Several other detonations going off around the
city, multiple areas. Rockets appear to be taking off from one end of the airport. I can
see that perhaps located about 8 or 9 miles away from where we stand, Joie."
The bombing/explosions continue for 10+ minutes of this broadcast.
Then, they cut to WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: who says the US is only
collecting intelligence. He says what we're seeing must be part of the "Civil War" (despite
the fact that neither side had an air force or cruise missiles). The Pentagon later denies
knowing anything about it.
Then, CNN returns to Nic Robertson, who- within 15 minutes of his first report - begins to
change his tune. Suddenly, the jet sounds are not mentioned. The cruise missiles (jet
engines) have transformed into possible rockets. The airport fire is now an ammunition
dump.
And voila! They lose their connection and Nic will not be heard from again. And this
little bit of history will essentially disappear.
Dear Mr. B,
"All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country."
These mistakes are by design. To cause and keep causing destabilisation.
I like to refer to it as the 3-letter Scrabble method of doing things.
Me living in the Netherlands as I do, let me take the example of Greece.
Greece had its regime changed in 1948 (Wiki says 46-49).
And how is Greece doing these days? ...
@37 yep, gotta agree with the more passimistic outlook here. Personally i'll eat my shoes if
US leaves Afghanistan within any reasonable time frame. In addition to plentiful natural
resources, there are very influential vested interests in Afghanistans booming opium
industry.
Off topic: Andrei Nekrasov's 'Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes' can be viewed in full on You
Tube at this moment (31 July, 08:15 Amsterdam time). Can it also be seen in the USA, I
wonder? How long will it take before Google take it down ? Watch it and learn about one of
the main drivers of the Russia obsession.
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if
you feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what
Iran wants it to mean.
White House just explained what Trump's "no preconditions" means: 1) Iran should at the
core change how it deals with its own people. 2) Change its evil stance in foreign policy. 3)
Agree on nuclear agreement which would REALLY prevent them making a nuke.
In other words, Iran should capitulate and become a client state, thats what Trump means
by "no preconditions."
At this advanced stage of American insanity, I don't see why the devil should have all the
best tunes. I'm sick of the yanks doing this shit in over people's county's ! While they
stuff there fat faces with burgers and donuts! The dirty games they play on over country's,
should now be played in America with all the brutality that they have used on others. Until
that happens things world wide will continue to detriate. Natural justice is all that
remains. They'v curupted all else.
@19 "The US already started to plan an invasion of Afghanistan in januari & february of
2001."
Well, to be fair the USA probably has plans to invade lots of countries.
Indeed, it would be more interesting to consider how many countries there are that the USA
*doesn't* have invasion plans gathering dust on the shelves.
It's just been reported on the bbc news---- the man responsible for the Manchester bombing
had been 'rescued from Lybia when Gadafi was overthrown and tracked ever since. Even in
Britain up to the day of the bombing ! And now on this post we discuss America uk
transporting terrorists from Syria to Afghanistan . Not to mention the white helmet bunch and
where Ther going! The Manchester bombing, Westminster bridge and London Bridge atacks were
done by the Tory party to win a general election ! This is the reality of the world we live
in.full on oppression !!!
Indeed, I agree with the sentiments here. But missing a big part of the picture.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have sky-high fertility rates. Forget the rubbish peddled by
economist-whores like Milton Friedman, under these conditions no country without an open
frontier has ever developed into anything other than a larger mass of poverty. In Pakistan
something like half the children are so malnourished that they grow up stunted, and it is
this misery that is starting slow population growth. Pakistan is yet another example of the
Malthusian holocaust, which is not a global catastrophe: it is slow grinding poverty that
results when people have more children than they can support.
Bottom line: these places will remain poor and unstable no matter what lunacy the United
States does or does not do. The traditional approach to such places is to leave them alone,
and only keep them from escaping. Bottled up, the Afghanis and Pakistanis will kill only each
other. 9/11 is a consequence of allowing people from these places free access to the Untied
States.
The 'war on terror' is a consequence of 'there shall be open borders.' It's a big and
messy world, and even if the government of the United States was not criminally incompetent,
there would be a lot of misery and hatred in it. Open borders means that now the Untied
States has to intervene in every country all over the world to ensure that nowhere can there
develop terrorist cells. An impossible task.
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
The US still has some resources and some use but needs to continue to make friends in the
pattern of Kim and Putin and give up on its self defeating economic and military sabotage
planning which has been exposed as morally bankrupt as well.
"... These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible. ..."
However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the
potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla
in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our
relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that
goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the
profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather
than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial
overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the
former Soviet Union.
According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world,
our empire consists
of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over
190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of
March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working
there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178
civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the
largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.
These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are
not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous
conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs,
an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its
global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control
or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.
We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire
that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of
failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet
Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to
liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in
war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and
Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and
following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)
Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate
us.
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several
members of his new cabinet,
stated as fact that "[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet." A few
weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington
D.C., the president again
insisted , "Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will
have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world." And in a commencement address to
the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22nd, Obama stressed that "[w]e will maintain
America's military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever
seen."
What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a
global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.
According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it
is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a
crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of
imperialism. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of the important study Dying to Win:
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005), typically writes :
"America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing
government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic
weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading
knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as
the death knell of American hegemony."
There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a
bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an
insightful analogy:
"Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must
provide a list of expenses, which, if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show
that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person
filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the
astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero
return on the significant investment required to sustain them He could not qualify for
liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the
valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases."
In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is
instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with
insolvency.
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the
Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books, 2008), calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we
would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if
we did the same with Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over 800
overblown military enclaves.
Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure
of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary,
Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at Beijing University, "Chinese assets
[invested in the United States] are very safe." According to
press reports , the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.
In May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010 the United States
will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least $1.75 trillion. This includes neither a
projected $640 billion budget for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably
expensive wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American
citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or
will. It represents about 13% of our current gross domestic product (that is, the value of
everything we produce). It is worth noting that the target demanded of
European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit no greater than 3% of GDP.
Thus far, President Obama has announced measly cuts of only $8.8 billion in wasteful and
worthless weapons spending, including his cancellation of the F-22 fighter aircraft. The actual
Pentagon budget for next year will, in fact, be larger , not smaller, than the bloated final
budget of the Bush era. Far bolder cuts in our military expenditures will obviously be required
in the very near future if we intend to maintain any semblance of fiscal integrity.
2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both
Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military
methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's
modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947, Britain
sent almost annual expeditions against the Pashtun tribes and sub-tribes living in what was
then called the North-West Frontier Territories -- the area along either side of the artificial
border between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand Line. This frontier was created in
1893 by Britain's foreign secretary for India, Sir Mortimer Durand.
Neither Britain nor Pakistan has ever managed to establish effective control over the area.
As the eminent historian Louis Dupree put it in his book Afghanistan (Oxford
University Press, 2002, p. 425): "Pashtun tribes, almost genetically expert at guerrilla
warfare after resisting centuries of all comers and fighting among themselves when no comers
were available, plagued attempts to extend the Pax Britannica into their mountain homeland." An
estimated 41 million Pashtuns live in an undemarcated area along the Durand Line and profess no
loyalties to the central governments of either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
The region known today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is
administered directly by Islamabad, which -- just as British imperial officials did -- has
divided the territory
into seven agencies, each with its own "political agent" who wields much the same powers as his
colonial-era predecessor. Then as now, the part of FATA known as Waziristan and the home of
Pashtun tribesmen offered the fiercest resistance.
"If Washington's bureaucrats don't remember the history of the region, the Afghans do. The
British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned
for it. When the Soviets used MiGs and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it
during the 1980s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in
the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the world's sense of justice and morality
while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United
States."
In 1932, in a series of Guernica-like atrocities, the British used poison gas in Waziristan.
The disarmament convention of the same year sought a ban against the aerial bombardment of
civilians, but Lloyd George, who had been British prime minister during World War I, gloated:
"We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers" (Fitzgerald and Gould, p. 65). His view
prevailed.
The U.S. continues to act similarly, but with the new excuse that our killing of
noncombatants is a result of "collateral damage," or human error. Using pilotless drones guided with only minimal
accuracy from computers at military bases in the Arizona and Nevada deserts, among other
places, we have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed bystanders in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have repeatedly warned that we are alienating
precisely the people we claim to be saving for democracy.
When in May 2009 General Stanley McChrystal was appointed as the commander in Afghanistan,
he ordered new limits on air attacks, including those carried out by the CIA, except when
needed to protect allied troops. Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the incompetence of our
chain of command, only two days after this order, on June 23, 2009, the United States carried
out a drone attack against a funeral procession that
killed at least 80 people , the single deadliest U.S. attack on Pakistani soil so far.
There was virtually no reporting of these developments by the mainstream American press or on
the network television news. (At the time, the media were almost totally preoccupied by the
sexual adventures of the governor of South Carolina and the death of pop star Michael
Jackson.)
Our military operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been plagued by
inadequate and inaccurate intelligence about both countries, ideological preconceptions about
which parties we should support and which ones we should oppose, and myopic understandings of
what we could possibly hope to achieve. Fitzgerald and Gould, for example, charge that,
contrary to our own intelligence service's focus on Afghanistan, "Pakistan has always been the
problem." They add:
"Pakistan's army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch from 1973 on, has played the key
role in funding and directing first the mujahideen [anti-Soviet fighters during the
1980s] and then the Taliban. It is Pakistan's army that controls its nuclear weapons,
constrains the development of democratic institutions, trains Taliban fighters in suicide
attacks and orders them to fight American and NATO soldiers protecting the Afghan government."
(p. 322-324)
The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by devout Muslims who
fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own agenda, though not
necessarily to advance an Islamic jihad . Their purposes have always included: keeping
Afghanistan free of Russian or Indian influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for
mujahideen guerrillas to be used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan
and India), containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of Pakistan),
and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, and the
United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan's
consistent policy has been to support the clandestine policies of the Inter-Services
Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and competitor, India.
Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense
Information in Washington, summarizes our
hopeless project in South Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in
Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are
unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."
Obama's mid-2009 "surge" of troops into southern Afghanistan and particularly into Helmand
Province, a Taliban stronghold, is fast becoming darkly reminiscent of General William
Westmoreland's continuous requests in Vietnam for more troops and his promises that if we would
ratchet up the violence just a little more and tolerate a few more casualties, we would
certainly break the will of the Vietnamese insurgents. This was a total misreading of the
nature of the conflict in Vietnam, just as it is in Afghanistan today.
Twenty years after the forces of the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in disgrace, the
last Russian general to command them, Gen. Boris Gromov, issued his own prediction:
Disaster, he insisted, will come to the thousands of new forces Obama is sending there, just as
it did to the Soviet Union's, which lost some 15,000 soldiers in its own Afghan war. We should
recognize that we are wasting time, lives, and resources in an area where we have never
understood the political dynamics and continue to make the wrong choices.
3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted , "Rape and other forms of
sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no
evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He
continued:
"New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of
sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that
women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat
zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and
lining up in formation right beside them."
The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located
cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors.
For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in
Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers,
Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago.
That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World
War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two
Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every
continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of
the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw
materials we covet.
The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend
the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and
predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's
atrocious," writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high
command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces
Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining
jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for
our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local
authorities.
This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident
of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty
Hawk , then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and
reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and
effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese
police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape
Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today.
In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost
fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret
"understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the
crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil
because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year
being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes.
Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland,
Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001),
the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable
results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008,
83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to
the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors
accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of
course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be
charged.
Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks
of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts
martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely
Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure
in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are
never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are
negligible.
It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its
personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. I
believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring
the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been
taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.
10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key
places to begin:
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide.
We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after
ourselves.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the
"opportunity costs" that go with them -- the things we might otherwise do with our talents and
resources but can't or won't.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the
1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote
regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors
[Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling
the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture
abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian
employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with their expensive medical
facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses ,
and so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our
military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense.
These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic
research. Ending empire would make this happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest
exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of
torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for
immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military
academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson,
The
Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve
Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote
militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling
back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for
the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy
Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the
World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this
possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more
effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on
military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to
remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the
British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is
foreordained.
"2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of
the "opportunity costs" that go with them"
Never forget, such "liquidation" will destroy the economy.
Harry Truman & Company invented the GI Bill of Rights to keep millions of returning
WWII veterans out of the bad labor market following the war. It was a delaying tactic, no
more.
Within a few years, to everyone's shock, the economy began to uptick. New factories were
built, and the interstate highways created a plethora of opportunity. For a while.
Those days are gone. The plethora of opportunities is now in Mexico, China, South Korea by
any rational yardstick the USA is an employment desert for young people. It's been heading
that way since the oil shocks of the 1970s allowed the plutocrats to shed middle class jobs
for four-fifths of the people on the wrong side of the bell curve.
Bringing armies home to debt and penury? By all means, assuming there's a Leon Trotsky or
an Adolf Hitler in the woodpile. At least they know how to play a situation like that.
"... These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible. ..."
Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire And Ten Steps to Take to Do So Chalmers Johnson July 29, 2018 4,000
Words 1 CommentReply
However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the
potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla
in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our
relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that
goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the
profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather
than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial
overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the
former Soviet Union.
According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world,
our empire consists
of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over
190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of
March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working
there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178
civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the
largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.
These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are
not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous
conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs,
an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its
global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control
or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.
We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire
that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of
failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet
Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to
liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in
war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and
Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and
following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)
Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate
us.
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several
members of his new cabinet,
stated as fact that "[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet." A few
weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington
D.C., the president again
insisted , "Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will
have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world." And in a commencement address to
the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22nd, Obama stressed that "[w]e will maintain
America's military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever
seen."
What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a
global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.
According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it
is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a
crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of
imperialism. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of the important study Dying to Win:
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005), typically writes :
"America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing
government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic
weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading
knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as
the death knell of American hegemony."
There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a
bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an
insightful analogy:
"Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must
provide a list of expenses, which, if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show
that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person
filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the
astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero
return on the significant investment required to sustain them He could not qualify for
liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the
valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases."
In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is
instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with
insolvency.
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the
Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books, 2008), calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we
would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if
we did the same with Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over 800
overblown military enclaves.
Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure
of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary,
Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at Beijing University, "Chinese assets
[invested in the United States] are very safe." According to
press reports , the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.
In May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010 the United States
will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least $1.75 trillion. This includes neither a
projected $640 billion budget for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably
expensive wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American
citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or
will. It represents about 13% of our current gross domestic product (that is, the value of
everything we produce). It is worth noting that the target demanded of
European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit no greater than 3% of GDP.
Thus far, President Obama has announced measly cuts of only $8.8 billion in wasteful and
worthless weapons spending, including his cancellation of the F-22 fighter aircraft. The actual
Pentagon budget for next year will, in fact, be larger , not smaller, than the bloated final
budget of the Bush era. Far bolder cuts in our military expenditures will obviously be required
in the very near future if we intend to maintain any semblance of fiscal integrity.
2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both
Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military
methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's
modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947, Britain
sent almost annual expeditions against the Pashtun tribes and sub-tribes living in what was
then called the North-West Frontier Territories -- the area along either side of the artificial
border between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand Line. This frontier was created in
1893 by Britain's foreign secretary for India, Sir Mortimer Durand.
Neither Britain nor Pakistan has ever managed to establish effective control over the area.
As the eminent historian Louis Dupree put it in his book Afghanistan (Oxford
University Press, 2002, p. 425): "Pashtun tribes, almost genetically expert at guerrilla
warfare after resisting centuries of all comers and fighting among themselves when no comers
were available, plagued attempts to extend the Pax Britannica into their mountain homeland." An
estimated 41 million Pashtuns live in an undemarcated area along the Durand Line and profess no
loyalties to the central governments of either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
The region known today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is
administered directly by Islamabad, which -- just as British imperial officials did -- has
divided the territory
into seven agencies, each with its own "political agent" who wields much the same powers as his
colonial-era predecessor. Then as now, the part of FATA known as Waziristan and the home of
Pashtun tribesmen offered the fiercest resistance.
"If Washington's bureaucrats don't remember the history of the region, the Afghans do. The
British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned
for it. When the Soviets used MiGs and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it
during the 1980s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in
the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the world's sense of justice and morality
while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United
States."
In 1932, in a series of Guernica-like atrocities, the British used poison gas in Waziristan.
The disarmament convention of the same year sought a ban against the aerial bombardment of
civilians, but Lloyd George, who had been British prime minister during World War I, gloated:
"We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers" (Fitzgerald and Gould, p. 65). His view
prevailed.
The U.S. continues to act similarly, but with the new excuse that our killing of
noncombatants is a result of "collateral damage," or human error. Using pilotless drones guided with only minimal
accuracy from computers at military bases in the Arizona and Nevada deserts, among other
places, we have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed bystanders in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have repeatedly warned that we are alienating
precisely the people we claim to be saving for democracy.
When in May 2009 General Stanley McChrystal was appointed as the commander in Afghanistan,
he ordered new limits on air attacks, including those carried out by the CIA, except when
needed to protect allied troops. Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the incompetence of our
chain of command, only two days after this order, on June 23, 2009, the United States carried
out a drone attack against a funeral procession that
killed at least 80 people , the single deadliest U.S. attack on Pakistani soil so far.
There was virtually no reporting of these developments by the mainstream American press or on
the network television news. (At the time, the media were almost totally preoccupied by the
sexual adventures of the governor of South Carolina and the death of pop star Michael
Jackson.)
Our military operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been plagued by
inadequate and inaccurate intelligence about both countries, ideological preconceptions about
which parties we should support and which ones we should oppose, and myopic understandings of
what we could possibly hope to achieve. Fitzgerald and Gould, for example, charge that,
contrary to our own intelligence service's focus on Afghanistan, "Pakistan has always been the
problem." They add:
"Pakistan's army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch from 1973 on, has played the key
role in funding and directing first the mujahideen [anti-Soviet fighters during the
1980s] and then the Taliban. It is Pakistan's army that controls its nuclear weapons,
constrains the development of democratic institutions, trains Taliban fighters in suicide
attacks and orders them to fight American and NATO soldiers protecting the Afghan government."
(p. 322-324)
The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by devout Muslims who
fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own agenda, though not
necessarily to advance an Islamic jihad . Their purposes have always included: keeping
Afghanistan free of Russian or Indian influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for
mujahideen guerrillas to be used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan
and India), containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of Pakistan),
and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, and the
United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan's
consistent policy has been to support the clandestine policies of the Inter-Services
Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and competitor, India.
Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense
Information in Washington, summarizes our
hopeless project in South Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in
Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are
unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."
Obama's mid-2009 "surge" of troops into southern Afghanistan and particularly into Helmand
Province, a Taliban stronghold, is fast becoming darkly reminiscent of General William
Westmoreland's continuous requests in Vietnam for more troops and his promises that if we would
ratchet up the violence just a little more and tolerate a few more casualties, we would
certainly break the will of the Vietnamese insurgents. This was a total misreading of the
nature of the conflict in Vietnam, just as it is in Afghanistan today.
Twenty years after the forces of the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in disgrace, the
last Russian general to command them, Gen. Boris Gromov, issued his own prediction:
Disaster, he insisted, will come to the thousands of new forces Obama is sending there, just as
it did to the Soviet Union's, which lost some 15,000 soldiers in its own Afghan war. We should
recognize that we are wasting time, lives, and resources in an area where we have never
understood the political dynamics and continue to make the wrong choices.
3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted , "Rape and other forms of
sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no
evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He
continued:
"New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of
sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that
women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat
zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and
lining up in formation right beside them."
The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located
cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors.
For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in
Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers,
Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago.
That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World
War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two
Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every
continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of
the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw
materials we covet.
The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend
the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and
predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's
atrocious," writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high
command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces
Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining
jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for
our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local
authorities.
This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident
of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty
Hawk , then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and
reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and
effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese
police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape
Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today.
In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost
fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret
"understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the
crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil
because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year
being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes.
Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland,
Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001),
the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable
results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008,
83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to
the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors
accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of
course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be
charged.
Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks
of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts
martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely
Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure
in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are
never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are
negligible.
It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its
personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. I
believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring
the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been
taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.
10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key
places to begin:
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide.
We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after
ourselves.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the
"opportunity costs" that go with them -- the things we might otherwise do with our talents and
resources but can't or won't.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the
1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote
regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors
[Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling
the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture
abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian
employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with their expensive medical
facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses ,
and so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our
military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense.
These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic
research. Ending empire would make this happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest
exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of
torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for
immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military
academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson,
The
Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve
Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote
militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling
back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for
the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy
Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the
World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this
possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more
effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on
military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to
remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the
British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is
foreordained.
"2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of
the "opportunity costs" that go with them"
Never forget, such "liquidation" will destroy the economy.
Harry Truman & Company invented the GI Bill of Rights to keep millions of returning
WWII veterans out of the bad labor market following the war. It was a delaying tactic, no
more.
Within a few years, to everyone's shock, the economy began to uptick. New factories were
built, and the interstate highways created a plethora of opportunity. For a while.
Those days are gone. The plethora of opportunities is now in Mexico, China, South Korea by
any rational yardstick the USA is an employment desert for young people. It's been heading
that way since the oil shocks of the 1970s allowed the plutocrats to shed middle class jobs
for four-fifths of the people on the wrong side of the bell curve.
Bringing armies home to debt and penury? By all means, assuming there's a Leon Trotsky or
an Adolf Hitler in the woodpile. At least they know how to play a situation like that.
It's been almost eight years since Chalmers Johnson died. He was the author of, among other
works, Blowback: The Costs and
Consequences of American Empire and Dismantling the
Empire . He was also a TomDispatchstalwart
and a friend . As I watch the strange destructive dance of Donald Trump and his cohorts
, I still regularly find myself wondering: What would Chal think? His acerbic wit and, as a
former consultant to the CIA, his deep sense of how the national security state worked provided
me with a late education. With no access to my Ouija board, however, the best I can do when it
comes to answering such questions is repost his classic
final piece for this site on the necessity of dismantling the American empire before it
dismantles us. He wrote it in July 2009, convinced that we had long passed from a republic to
an empire and were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a " military
Keynesianism " run amok. He saw the Pentagon and our empire of
bases abroad as a kind of Ponzi scheme that would, someday, help bankrupt this country.
How fascinated he would have been by the first candidate to ride an
escalator into a presidential contest on a
singular message of American decline. ("Make American great again !") And how much
more so by the world that candidate is creating as president, intent as he seems to be, in his
own bizarre fashion, on dismantling
the
system of global control the U.S. has built since 1945. At the same time, he seems prepared
to
finance the U.S. military at levels, which, even for Johnson, would have been eye-popping,
while attempting to
sell American arms around an embattled planet in a way that could prove unique. What a
strange combination of urges Donald Trump represents, as he teeters constantly at the
edge of war ("fire and fury like the world has never seen"),
more war ("never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the
likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before"), and
peace in our time. Amid all the strangeness, don't forget the strangeness of a mainstream
media that has gone bonkers
covering this president as no one has ever been covered in the history of the universe
(something that would undoubtedly have amazed Chal).
Think of what President Trump has launched as the potential imperial misadventure of a
lifetime, while checking out Chal's thoughts from so long ago on a subject that should still be
on all our minds.
The United States seems ready to give up on Afghanistan.
After the World Trade Center came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda, parts of which were hosted
in Afghanistan. The Taliban government offered the U.S. to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin
Laden to an Islamic country to be judged under Islamic law. The U.S. rejected that and decided
instead to destroy the Afghan government.
Taliban units, supported by Pakistani officers, were at that time still fighting against the
Northern Alliance which held onto a few areas in the north of the country. Under threats from
the U.S. Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its natural depth hinterland, was pressed into
service. In exchange for its cooperation with the U.S. operation it was allowed to extradite
its forces and main figures of the Taliban.
U.S. special forces were dropped into north Afghanistan. They came with huge amounts of cash
and the ability to call in B-52 bombers. Together with the Northern Alliance they move towards
Kabul bombing any place where some feeble resistance came from. The Taliban forces dissolved.
Many resettled in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda also vanished.
A conference with Afghan notables was held in Germany's once capital Bonn. The Afghans
wanted to reestablish the former Kingdom but were pressed into accepting a western style
democracy. Fed with large amounts of western money the norther warlords, all well known
mass-murderers, and various greedy exiles were appointed as a government. To them it was all
about money. There was little capability and interest to govern.
All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country.
For a few years the Taliban went quiet. But continued U.S. operations, which included random
bombing of weddings, torture and abduction of assumed al-Qaeda followers, alienated the people.
Pakistan feared that it would be suffocated between a permanently U.S. occupied Afghanistan and
a hostile India. Four years after being ousted the Taliban were reactivated and found regrown
local support.
Busy with fighting an insurgency in Iraq the U.S. reacted slowly. It then surged troops into
Afghanistan, pulled back, surged again and is now again pulling back. The U.S. military aptly
demonstrated its excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence. The
longer it fought the more Afghan people stood up against it. The immense amount of money spent
to 'rebuild' Afghanistan
went to U.S. contractors and Afghan warlords but had little effect on the ground. Now half
the country is back under Taliban control while the other half is more or less contested.
Before his election campaign Donald Trump spoke out
against the war on Afghanistan. During his campaign he was more cautious pointing to the danger
of a nuclear Pakistan as a reason for staying in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is where the U.S.
supply line is coming through and there are no reasonable alternatives. Staying in Afghanistan
to confront Pakistan while depending on Pakistan for logistics does not make sense.
Early this year the U.S. stopped all aid to Pakistan. Even the old Pakistani government was
already talking
about blocking the logistic line. The incoming prime minister Imran Khan has campaigned for
years against the U.S. war on Afghanistan. He very much prefers an alliance with China over any U.S.
rapprochement. The U.S. hope is that Pakistan will have to ask the IMF for another bailout and
thus come back under Washington's control. But it is
more likely that Imran Khan will ask China for financial help.
Under pressure from the military Trump had agreed to raise the force in Afghanistan to some
15,000 troops. But these were way to few to hold more than some urban areas. Eighty percent of
the Afghan people live in the countryside. Afghan troops and police forces are incapable or
unwilling to fight their Taliban brethren. It was obvious that this mini-surge
would fail :
By most objective measures, President Donald Trump's year-old strategy for ending the war in
Afghanistan has produced few positive results.
Afghanistan's beleaguered soldiers have failed to recapture significant new ground from
the Taliban. Civilian deaths have hit historic highs. The Afghan military is struggling to
build a reliable air force and expand the number of elite fighters. Efforts to cripple
lucrative insurgent drug smuggling operations have fallen short of expectations. And U.S.
intelligence officials say the president's strategy has halted Taliban gains but not reversed
their momentum, according to people familiar with the latest assessments.
To blame Pakistan for its support for some Taliban is convenient, but makes little sense. In
a recent
talk John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
made a crucial point:
"We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the
Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you
really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not
predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords," observed Sopko.
He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable
environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who
took the law into their own hands.
"In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police
forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as
bad as the terrorists before them," said Sopko ...
This was the problem from the very beginning. The U.S. bribed itself into Afghanistan. It
spent tons of money but did not gain real support. It bombed and shot aimlessly at 'Taliban'
that were more often than not just the local population. It incompetently fought 17
one-year-long wars instead of a consistently planned and sustained political, economic and
military campaign.
After a year of another useless surge the Trump administration decided to pull back from
most active operations and to bet
on negotiations with the Taliban:
The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile
"Afghan-led, Afghan-owned" process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American
officials that President Trump's new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental
difference in rolling back Taliban gains.
While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the
willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of
urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.
...
Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would
probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government,
the United States and Pakistan.
Afghans have continued to burn for the last four decades in the fire of imposed wars. They
are longing for peace and a just system but they will never tire from their just cause of
defending their creed, country and nation against the invading forces of your
warmongering government because they have rendered all the previous and present historic
sacrifices to safeguard their religious values and national sovereignty. If they make a deal
on their sovereignty now, it would be unforgettable infidelity with their proud history and
ancestors.
Last weeks talks between the Taliban and U.S. diplomats took place in Doha, Qatar.
Remarkably the Afghan government was excluded. Despite the rousing tone of the Reuters
report below the positions that were exchanged
do not point to a successful conclusion:
According to one Taliban official, who said he was part of a four-member delegation, there
were "very positive signals" from the meeting, which he said was conducted in a "friendly
atmosphere" in a Doha hotel.
"You can't call it peace talks," he said. "These are a series of meetings for initiating
formal and purposeful talks. We agreed to meet again soon and resolve the Afghan conflict
through dialogue."
...
The two sides had discussed proposals to allow the Taliban free movement in two provinces
where they would not be attacked, an idea that President Ashraf Ghani has already rejected .
They also discussed Taliban participation in the Afghan government.
"The only demand they made was to allow their military bases in Afghanistan ," said the
Taliban official.
...
"We have held three meetings with the U.S. and we reached a conclusion to continue talks for
meaningful negotiations," said a second Taliban official.
...
"However, our delegation made it clear to them that peace can only be restored to Afghanistan
when all foreign forces are withdrawn ," he said.
This does not sound promising:
In a first step the Taliban want to officially rule parts of the country and use it as a
safe haven. The Afghan government naturally rejects that.
Participation of the Taliban in the Afghan government is an idea of the Afghan president
Ghani. It is doubtful that this could be successfully arranged. Norther Alliance elements in
the Afghan government, like the 'chief executive' Abdullah Abdullah, are unlikely to ever
agree to it. The Taliban also have no interest to be 'part of the government' and to then get
blamed for its failures. Their February letter makes clear that they want to be the
government.
The U.S. wants bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban, and Pakistan behind them, reject that
and will continue to do so.
It is difficult to see how especially the last mutually exclusive positions can ever be
reconciled.
The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only
offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no
choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying
areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases
will come under fire.
There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate
about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".
The Soviet war in Afghanistan took nine years. The time was used to build up a halfway
competent government and army that managed to hold off the insurgents for three more years
after the Soviet withdrawal. The government only fell when the Soviets cut the money line. The
seventeen year long U.S. occupation did not even succeed in that. The Afghan army is corrupt
and its leaders are incompetent. The U.S. supplied it with expensive and complicate equipment
that
does not fit Afghan needs . As soon as the U.S. withdraws the whole south, the east and
Kabul will immediately fall back into Taliban hands. Only the north may take a bit longer. They
will probably ask China to help them in developing their country.
The erratic
empire failed in another of its crazy endeavors. That will not hinder it to look for a new
ones. The immense increase
of the U.S. military budget, which includes 15,000 more troops, points to a new large war.
Which country will be its next target?
thanks b.. it would be good if the exceptional warmongering nation could go home, but i am
not fully counting on it.. i liked your quote here "The U.S. military aptly demonstrated its
excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence." that is ongoing..
unless the usa leaves, i think the madness continues.. i suspect the madness will continue..
the only other alternative is the usa, with the help of their good buddies - uk, ksa, qatar,
uae and israel - will keep on relocating isis to afgan for future destabilization.. i watched
a video peter au left from al jazzera 2017 with isis embedded in the kush mtns... until the
funding for them ceases - i think the usa will have a hand in the continued madness... if the
usa was serious about ending terrorism they would shut down the same middle east countries
they are in bed with.. until that happens, i suspect not much will change.. i hope i am
wrong..
I dont believe it for a second. Especially with Iran looming as a potential target. US is
staying in Afghanistan also to counter China , keep opium production high and of course there
is the TAPI pipeline to "protect" that is backed by US as an alternative to the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would have tapped Iran's South Pars gas field. A hostile or
unfriendly Pakistan is just one more reason to stay
Just like US will never leave Iraq or Syria, they will stay in Afghanistan. There will be
ebbs and flows, and talk of disengagement from time to time primarily for domestic
consumption, but thats all it is IMO.
This is a fine recap of the situation. It's much too optimistic. The classic method of
American negotiation and warfare like the Roman before them is to divide and conquer. It was
very successful against the American Indians.
If the Taliban get free movement in two provinces, the Americans will demand an end to
attacks on their bases, their soldiers and their agents elsewhere in Afghanistan. Just as the
Iroquois Confederation enjoyed special privileges in what is now Upper New York for their
help against the French, the Taliban will have special privileges in their two provinces
while the Americans consolidate in the rest of Afghanistan. When the Americans feel strong
enough, just as with the Iroquois, they will break the previous treaties.
After the Revolutionary War, the ancient central fireplace of the League was re-established
at Buffalo Creek. The United States and the Iroquois signed the treaty of Fort Stanwix in
1784 under which the Iroquois ceded much of their historical homeland to the Americans,
which was followed by another treaty in 1794 at Canandaigua which they ceded even more land
to the Americans./b
(...continuation of the comment above, somehow got posted when I pressed the return
key)
Even the Soviet Union and Russians were unable to make the American respect their
commitments. The United States reneged on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as soon as it
could in 2001 (Russia was on its knees), reneged on its commitments not to expand NATO east
and has built ballistic missile bases all around Russia which seem to be preparation for a
pre-emptive nuclear strike/war against Russia.
The Afghanis (foolish to call them the Taliban, they are traditional Afghani patriots)
have always been wise enough to annihilate any invader to the last man. This salutary policy
keeps invaders out for decades at a time. The Taliban have a long row to hoe. It took almost
a hundred years and several massacres to finally curb British ambitions on Afghanistan (1838
to 1919). Afghanis' best hopes rely on forging tight alliances with Pakistan and China,
squeezing the Americans out completely right now.
The Americans burnt their bridges with the Russian already and are in the process of
burning their bridges with Pakistan while losing influence with China. The US is very short
of options right now. It's the ideal time for Afghanis to reclaim the whole territory, not
leaving a single American soldier or airbase operational. They'll need a technically
sophisticated ally to help them clear their skies of US drones. This role might appeal to
either the Russians or the Chinese. As a training exercise, extended anti-drone warfare could
be very useful.
What a great success the US achieved in destroying Yugoslavia. Murdering thousands went
almost unnoticed. It was able to break up the country into a number of tiny, impoverished
nations and got to put a US MIC Base in most of them.
You did not mention isis-k in your analysis. Its active mostly in eastern afghanistan in
areas close to or adjacent to Pakistan (it is also controlls a small area in Jawzjan, in
northern afghanistan). Many fighters are formerly pakistani taliban(not to be confused with
afghan taliban who are simply called taliban). Before isis-k appeared in afghanistan, the
areas which it now controls had pakistani taliban presence. TTP, or tehreek e taliban
pakistan was facilitated by afghan ggovernment to settle down in these areas after they fled
pakistan when its military launched a large scale offensive, Operation Zarb e Azb. The afghan
government planned to use them to pressurize Pakistan, basically to use them as a bargaining
chip. They operate openly in eastern afghanistan, but many of them joined isis-k.
Russians estimate isis-k's strength to be between 10k to 12k, although it might be a bit
inflated number. From here they plan attacks against afghanistan and pakistan alike, mostly
suicide bombings as of now. They have had fierce clashes with afghan taliban in eastern
Afghanistan but have held their territory for now. Afghan army simply doesn't have the
capacity in those areas to confront them. It was here that MOAB was dropped but as expected
against a guerrilla force, it was ineffective in every way. But it did make headlines and has
helped US in giving an impression its seriously fighting ISIS. The reports of unmarked
helicopters dropping god-knows-what have also been coming from these areas. Hamid karzai
mentioned that and also maria zakharova asked afghan gov. and US to investigate that which
shows these are not just rumors. Recently intelligence chiefs of Pakistan, russia, iran and
china as well(if i remember correctly) met in islamabad to discuss isis-k in afghanistan, no
details other than this of this meeting are available.
In Northern afghanistan, in Jawzjan, fierce clashes broke out between taliban and isis-k
after taliban commander in thiae areas was beheaded. ISIS-k has been beaten up pretty badly
there but clashes are ongoing. Many areas have been cleared but fighting is still ongoing. An
interesting aspect is taliban sources claiming that whenever they come close to a decisive
victory, they have to stop operations becauae of heavy bombardment by US planes. They made
similar claims when fighting daesh in eastern afghanistan. Anyway in a few days isis presence
will probably be finished in Jawzjan. ISIS fighters who have survived have done so by
surrendering to afghan forces. They will probably end up back in eastern afghanistan.
Africa. US AFRICOM has a huge playground, tactics won't change and logistics is far
easier.
There also will be a long Hybrid wr against Iran, but that will be much like the early
days of Syria. Proxies as "moderates". Insurgents, not US troops. ISIS and AQ crazies will be
on the ground.
The big money will go into Africa. You want to see Trillions "spent"? It will be
Africa.
The decision to invade Afghanistan had been taken before the 9/11 false flag coup. Had
nothing much to do with the CIA's al-Qaeda mercenaries.
As I understood it, there were many agendas at work: testing weapons and making money for
the MIC; controlling the lucrative (how many hundreds of billions of dollars ?) opium/ heroin
production/profiteering; military bases relating to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and other
...stans, etc; control of oil and gas pipelines; access to increasingly valuable and sought
rare earth minerals; proximity to oil and gas actual and potential.
More generally, subjugating Afghanistan was a necessary part of the 'full spectrum
dominance' 'we will rule the earth' doctrine, dear til recently to too many mad hatters, and
still evoking a misty eyed longing in some, no doubt.
Ahhh...the US produces some of the lamest euphemisms approved for all audiences; such as
"Afgahn Security Forces." So sterile, innocuous. And benign. How could anyone question their
plight? (We did pick up the game a little bit in Syria with "Free Syrian Army..." Can I get a
hell yeah?) All the people hearing this in the US could do was shrug their shoulders and
speak, "I guess I should support them." That is, of course, after we took out OBL and the
mission in Afghanistan was a little more opaque. Just a little bit. Anyways...Hell, yeah! Get
some!
Thanks b for the brief history. Really invaluable.
Afghani patriots, resisting invaders since 330 BCE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
The US military, the planet's costliest losingest military since 1946. The US military, like
its munitions manufacturers, doesn't win but it does get paid and is why we can have nice
things like oh, decent health care. Lack of health insurance kills more Americans than the
Russians ever will. The Russians aren't the enemy, Trump is. Lobbyists are too.
I haven't read anything about Blackwater wanting to replace the U.S. Military in Afghanistan.
Of course, the U.S. Treasury would continue to shovel those pallet loads of newly printed
$100.00 bills down the Blackwater hole. Any odds this might go forward from anyone's opinion?
robin cook before he was murdered stated that alqueda was a cia data base.
i believe bresinski knew obl as tim osman who was later killed by cia mi6 man omar blah blah
sheikh bhutto of pakisyan was assasinated after spilling the beans about sheikh.
christopher bolleyn on you tube will give you the sp on what 9 and 11 was shirley we are
past the point of the offecal theory.
the turd burger that is the official theory is clearly the worst and lowest grade of all the
conspiracy theories.
the taliban where in barbera bushes texas talking lithium opium and oil pipelines with the
paedo bush crime syndicate before 9 and 11
marvin bush ran security at the twin towers
christopher bollyn is the go to man in these regardings
The US wants peace talks but wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. US under Trump has built
new bases in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait.
SDF have been talking with Syrian government, and US in Talks with Taliban. Are these just
moves to buy the US a little time until it launches the war Trump has been building the US
military up for.
isis is israeli counter gang with support of usa usa and the city of
london,ukrainian,polish,uk sas,cia,kiwi,aussie,jordanian and donmeh satanic house of
saud.
talking of isis as if it is real entity rather than a frank kitson gang counter gang and
pseudo gang is polluting the well.
who has been providing extraction helicopters from syriana for the last 14 months.
who has been washing these bearded devils operating on them in kosher field hospitals making
them well shiny and new
who?
scchhhhh you know who
We are concerned about reports regarding the use of helicopters without any identification
marks in many parts of Afghanistan that are delivering terrorists and arms to the Afghan
branch of this terrorist organisation. We believe that reports to this effect made by Afghan
officials should be thoroughly investigated."
- Of course. The US wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village
Hajji, the writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit.
The only question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous
it will be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam
War (1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and
the Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village Hajji, the
writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit. The only
question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous it will
be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam War
(1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and the
Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
@uncoy.. i basically see it like you, however another proxy war involving usa-russia-china
sounds like a running theme now...
@13 bilal.. good post.. i agree about the analysis missing much on isis presence in afgan
as @6 jr also points out.. i think it is a critical bit of the puzzle.. it appears the usa is
using isis as a proxy force, as obama previously stated with regard to syria... the usa just
can't seem to help themselves with their divide and conquer strategy using isis as part of
it's methodology... it's exact opposite of what they profess..
@18 eugene.. isn't blackwater or whatever they're called now - headquartered in uae?
perfect place for them, lol... right on top of yemen, afgan, and etc. etc.. if isis can't do
the job for the west thru their good friends ksa, uae - well, then maybe they can pay a bit
more and get blackwater directly involved too..
Trump is serious when he said he would talk to anybody. The CIA is alleged to have been
stirring the pot with Islamic militants prior to the Soviet invasion when the country went
full socialist. I would suspect the Russians had a hand in that in 1978. US intelligence was
said to be helping along the backlash to socialism by Islamic militants back then in 1978.
The CIA station chief was promptly assassinated the next year.
Obviously you could dump 600,000 NATO and US soldiers into the country and not control it
short of executing every Muslim. What a foolish endeavor but what would you expect from these
buffoons and their death cult? These human sacrifices are holy to them. They worship blood,
death, power and money.
With their loss in Syria the NEOCONS can now make peace with the Taliban and use them and
ISIS to push into old Soviet Central Asia in an attempt to deny them what the Anglo American
Zionist alliance cannot have at this time, control of the commodities.
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
Even the Brits knew when it was time to leave India and their Middle Eastern holdings. They
realized the costs of containment would wipe out their country.
No he doesnt, along with Israel and neocons. There was already nuclear deal, and US was
out of "all this crap", so why introduce Gordian Knot if he doesnt want it?
What Trump demands is Iran's surrender. 'b discussed it at length some time ago, the list
of Trump's demands is completely ridiculous and the goal is Iran as a client state.
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to
meet, it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt
worth a toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even
endeavor to negotiate dead from the get go.
Congress went along with the Pentagon's 7 countries in 5 years plan. No investigation of 9/11
or even consideration of Ron Paul's bringing in an old idea of Letters of Marque and
Reprisal.
As to the US leaving the warlords in power to continue opium production, etc, Van Buren (We
Meant Well book) said some of the same happened in Iraq with some sheikhs still holding power
in local areas. General Garner looked forward to going in to rebuild (and was promising quick
elections) but was shocked to see no protection of ministries (except oil) which were looted
and burned. And then Bremer was put in charge. Complete mismanagement of the war, the
aftermath, etc. Like someone once said, if they were doing these things at random you would
expect them to get it right once in a while.
The Kunduz Airlift which allowed Pakistan a corridor to fly out Pak officials, Taliban,
and possibly al Qaeda was yet another snafu like paying Pakistan to supposedly block any
escape from their side of Tora Bora only to have a long convoy leave at night. It made one
wonder about the US supposed air superiority/domination. Again, complete mismanagement.
A comparison to the end situation in VietNam 1975 is apt.
Trump meeting Rouhani. Trump saays he wants a better deal. The nuke agreement took years to
negotiate and Iran accepted far more stringent inspections than any other country signed up
NPT. There is nothing more for Iran to negotiate other than to give away their
sovereignty.
The offer of a meeting by Trump is more along the line of "we tried to avoid war".
The US under Trump have scrapped the nuke agreement and made demands that are impossible for
Iran to meet without giving away its sovereignty.
Erik Prince's plan for fighting in Afghanistan.
He presented it to the WH. Military rejected it.
He is no longer Blackwater-connected.
Frontier Services Group Ltd. is his new military-security services corp.
He has extensive contracts with the Chinese government and their SOEs overseas.
did you see General Souleimani answer's to Trump rabid tweet
it went like this
Our president doesnt lower himself to answer someone like.I, a soldier answer someone like
you, you re someone who speaks in the vocabulary of a cabaret owner and a gambling house
dealer.(paraphrasing saker has the video on his site)
and then he went on to describe how your cowad troops wore adult diapers in Afghanistan
and Iraq
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
dltravers @28
No. China, being development-oriented rather than imperialist, will leave Afghanistan
alone. China and Russia, but especially China, requires an Afghanistan that is not a
U.S.-controlled terrorist base. Because China needs the oil/gas link that it is building
through Pakistan to access Gulf energy resources, and that energy corridor would be the
primary target of U.S.-hired mercenaries ('terrorists').
How Afghanistan manages itself in the post-U.S. era is Afghan business, but it will almost
certainly involve the Pashtun majority (in the form of the 'Taliban') retaking power in Kabul
but with the traditional huge amounts of autonomy for the provinces. That arrangement reduces
pressure by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan against Pakistan's government, and in general
seems to be the long-term stable set up, and stability is what China has to have in
Afghanistan.
Now is the time with perfect China partner Khan and the Pakistan military firmly in power.
Not instant, but over the next two years I think we'll see the Taliban's fighting capacity
hugely improve, with transfers of supplies, weapons and intelligence from Pakistan. It would
be very smart for Trump to get out in 2019. History is going to accelerate in that
region.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I worry a lot about Venezuela. See, it's a perfect
fit for the U.S. economy. U.S. shale oil is way too light to be useful, while Venezuelan oil
is way too heavy to be useful. They are destined for each other, i.e. to be mixed into a
blend that would be a good fit U.S. refineries. Plus, Venezuela is very import-dependent and
thus would make for a good vassal. It also has a rabid capitalist class that will do anything
-- any kind of atrocity or false flag -- to return to the good old days of exploitation. "But
Venezuela has a lot of arms!", I hear you counter. True, but the people are severely
demoralized because of the extreme economic hardship. Think of the USSR in late 80s/early
90s. It had the most powerful military in the world, and yet people were so demoralized and
disillusioned with the old system that they simply chose not to defend it. Same thing may
happen in Venezuela. After Colombia has signed peace accords with FARC, U.S. has been
steadily increasing its military presence in Colombia. I think there is a very real
possibility of a naval blockade combined with supply lines/air raids from Colombia supporting
the "Free Venezuelan Army" assembled from Venezuelan gangs and revanchist capitalists and
foreign mercenaries. It would be logistically impossible for Russia or China to provide
military help to far-away Venezuela. Neighbors will not come to the aid of Venezuela either
as there is a surge of pro-U.S. right-wing governments in the region.
Any moves the U$A makes will have to be approved according to which natural resources their
corporate masters covet at any particular moment. Lithium and other rare earth minerals,
strategic importance, whatever the corporate form needs to stay on top globally, will dictate
what the empire does.
Leave Afghanistan? I very much doubt it.
DJT will do what the "puppet masters" desire. Just like all his predecessors.
'Correction': No reliable census has been done in decades, but I don't think the Pashtun are
the majority in Afghanistan. They
are by far the largest minority however. British 'divide and rule' stategists long ago
deliberately separated them into Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Venezuela and Iran have two things in common. Both have large oil reserves and neither
recognize Israel.
Trump's wars will be about destroying enemies of Israel, and at the same time, achieving
global energy dominance.
I've posted this before. I met a Taliban leader and his two guards in a brutal area during
the Hearts and Minds Schtick, preparatory to Cheney getting all the oil and gas, and copper
and iron and coming coal lease awards.
He was a nice guy, the Taliban leader. His guards looked at me with absolute death in
their eyes. Not wanting them to hear him, as we finished our tea, the Taliban leader leaned
close, then whispered, 'I love your Jesus, but I hate your Crusaders.'
And I take issue with the US 'incompetence' meme. Ever since Cheney hosted the Taliban in
Texas in 1998, trying to get a TAPI pipeline, the US has deliberately and cunningly taken
over the country, assassinated the local-level leadership, and installed their foreign Shah,
first Karzai, then Ghani.
In that time of occupation, 18 years, Pentagon MIC disappeared TRILLIONS in shrink-wrapped
pallets of $100s, and ballooned from $340B a year, to now Trump is saying $840B a year.
That's not incompetence. Just the opposite.
Now, to honor my Afghan friends, who love to joke even after 35+ years of machine warfare,
a joke I wrote in their honor:
Ring ring ring ring
"Office of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan!"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Hold please."
President Reagan, it's the Iranian ambassador!"
"Well hello Mr. Assinabindstani, what can I do for you?"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Well I'll get my staff right on it."
[Intercomm clicks]
"Hey Ollie, the Ayatollah wants more guns! Step on it!"
Actually, the British paid an annual tithe-tribute the the Afghan king to stop raiding
their India holdings, and agreed to a neutral zone between them. Then when the British pulled
out, they declared the neutral zone as Pakistan and shrunk India away from Pashtun territory
to create a bigger divide. The Afghan leaders had no say in the matter. I believe Baluchistan
was also carved away. At one time, Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.
There is no way to defeat a nation of warriors who created a kingdom that vast, while William
the Conqueror was still running around in bear skin diapers.
@41 'Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.'
You are probably referring to the Khalji Dynasty, a brutal bunch, who ruled India from
1290 to 1320 by which time William the Conqueror was long dead. You would be a lot more
credible if you got your history right.
IMHO the military Budget increase, and what an increase it is!
is part of worsening an already outrageous situation to reach a caricatural point. Typical of
trump repeated special "art".
Of course Nobody in USA, no President can go against the MIC and Pentagon.
But money is cheap when you print it.
It is sugaring the intended shrinking of foreign deployments (as in NATO), closure of
"facilities" and replacing them officially with total deterrence capacities (Space Forces
anybody ?).
While keeping classical projection capacities for demonstration against backward
tribes.
...
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to meet,
it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt worth a
toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even endeavor
to negotiate dead from the get go.
Posted by: Harry | Jul 30, 2018 7:53:57 PM | 29
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if you
feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what Iran
wants it to mean.
Trump jumped into the NK and Putin talks first because both were eager to talk. Iran will
be a good test of Trump's seduction skills. All he's got to do is persuade the Iranians that
talking is more useful than swapping long-distance insults. Iranians are rusted onto logical
principles and Trump will find a way to appeal to that trait, imo.
It's too late for the afghanis who have been driven into the urban areas during the regulaar
'Afghanistanisation' campaigns. Most of them will have become hooked on consumerism and the
necessity of dollars.
That leaves only two options for the Taliban when they take over as they undoubtedly will
altho that is likely to mean having to tolerate clutches of obese amerikans lurking in some
Px strewn green zone, the inhabitants of which are likely to have less contact with people
from Afghanistan than any regular user of a Californian shopping mall. The new government can
ignore the consumerists even when these rejects insist on getting lured into some nonsense
green revolution - the danger with this isn't the vapid protests which can easily be dealt
with by fetching a few mobs of staunch citizens from rural Afghanistan who will quickly teach
them that neither cheeseburgers nor close captioned episodes of daytime television provide
sufficient nutrition to handle compatriots raised on traditional food and Islam. Or the new
administration can do as other traditional regimes have done many times over the last 80
years or so, purge the consumerists by disappearing the leadership and strewing empty lots in
the urban areas with mutilated corpses of a few of the shitkicker class consumerists. That
option can cause a bit of a fuss but it (the fuss) generally only lasts as long as the purge.
I suspect the Afghan government will favour the latter approach but they may try to hold
off until the North has been brought back into line. OTH, consumerism is a highly contagious
condition so, unless the North can be pacified speedily which seems unlikely, initially at
least the Taliban adminsitration may have to fight on two fronts, agin the North while they
nip urban consumerists in the bud before those confused fools can cause any highly publicised
in the west but in actuality, low key, attempted insurrection.
My advice to the gaming, TV or cheeseburger addicted inhabitants of Kabul would be to
volunteer your services to the amerikan military as a 'translator' asap and join yer cobbers
in California.
It is unlikely that you will bump into Roman Brady especially not when he is in one
of his avuncular moods, but if you stay outta Texas, Florida or any other part of flyover
amerika chocka with alcohol induced blowhardism, you will discover than amerikan racism isn't
as lethal as it once was.
Apart from having to ignore being jostled in the line at fast food joints and being loudly
and incorrectly termed a motherf**in sand n***er mid-jostle. Certainly a whole lot less
lethal than trying to cover your Fortnite jones by waving a badly copywritten sign in front
of the al-Jazeera cameras for a one month
battle pass .
What was happening in Kabul, Afghanistan less than 8 hours after the WTC Towers turned into
dust in midair? Who here remembers the massive bombing/cruise missile attack?
Here is CNN's transcript:
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "Well, Joie, it's about 2:30 in the morning here in
Kabul. We've been hearing explosions around the perimeter of the city. We're in a position
here which gives us a view over the whole city. We just had an impact, perhaps a few miles
away.
"If I listen, you can hear the ripple of explosions around the city. Perhaps you heard
there. The fifth explosion -- sixth explosion, I think. Gun bursts and star bursts in the
air. Tracer fire is coming up out of the city. I hear aircraft flying above the city of
Kabul. Perhaps we've heard half a dozen to 10 detonations on the perimeter of the city,
some coming from the area close to the airport. I see on the horizon what could be a fire
on the horizon, close, perhaps, to where the airport might be. A flash came up then from
the airport. Some ground fire coming up here in Kabul."
"I've been in Belgrade and I've been in Baghdad and seen cruise missiles arrive in both
those cities. The detonations we're hearing in Kabul right now certainly sound like the
detonations of loud missiles that are coming in. "
"Certainly -- certainly it would appear that the Afghan defense systems have detected a
threat in the air. They are launching what appears to be anti-aircraft defense systems at
the moment. Certainly, I can see that fire that was blazing on the horizon. It was a faint
yellow; it's now a bright orange blazing. Several other detonations going off around the
city, multiple areas. Rockets appear to be taking off from one end of the airport. I can
see that perhaps located about 8 or 9 miles away from where we stand, Joie."
The bombing/explosions continue for 10+ minutes of this broadcast.
Then, they cut to WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: who says the US is only
collecting intelligence. He says what we're seeing must be part of the "Civil War" (despite
the fact that neither side had an air force or cruise missiles). The Pentagon later denies
knowing anything about it.
Then, CNN returns to Nic Robertson, who- within 15 minutes of his first report - begins to
change his tune. Suddenly, the jet sounds are not mentioned. The cruise missiles (jet
engines) have transformed into possible rockets. The airport fire is now an ammunition
dump.
And voila! They lose their connection and Nic will not be heard from again. And this
little bit of history will essentially disappear.
Dear Mr. B,
"All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country."
These mistakes are by design. To cause and keep causing destabilisation.
I like to refer to it as the 3-letter Scrabble method of doing things.
Me living in the Netherlands as I do, let me take the example of Greece.
Greece had its regime changed in 1948 (Wiki says 46-49).
And how is Greece doing these days? ...
@37 yep, gotta agree with the more passimistic outlook here. Personally i'll eat my shoes if
US leaves Afghanistan within any reasonable time frame. In addition to plentiful natural
resources, there are very influential vested interests in Afghanistans booming opium
industry.
Off topic: Andrei Nekrasov's 'Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes' can be viewed in full on You
Tube at this moment (31 July, 08:15 Amsterdam time). Can it also be seen in the USA, I
wonder? How long will it take before Google take it down ? Watch it and learn about one of
the main drivers of the Russia obsession.
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if
you feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what
Iran wants it to mean.
White House just explained what Trump's "no preconditions" means: 1) Iran should at the
core change how it deals with its own people. 2) Change its evil stance in foreign policy. 3)
Agree on nuclear agreement which would REALLY prevent them making a nuke.
In other words, Iran should capitulate and become a client state, thats what Trump means
by "no preconditions."
At this advanced stage of American insanity, I don't see why the devil should have all the
best tunes. I'm sick of the yanks doing this shit in over people's county's ! While they
stuff there fat faces with burgers and donuts! The dirty games they play on over country's,
should now be played in America with all the brutality that they have used on others. Until
that happens things world wide will continue to detriate. Natural justice is all that
remains. They'v curupted all else.
@19 "The US already started to plan an invasion of Afghanistan in januari & february of
2001."
Well, to be fair the USA probably has plans to invade lots of countries.
Indeed, it would be more interesting to consider how many countries there are that the USA
*doesn't* have invasion plans gathering dust on the shelves.
It's just been reported on the bbc news---- the man responsible for the Manchester bombing
had been 'rescued from Lybia when Gadafi was overthrown and tracked ever since. Even in
Britain up to the day of the bombing ! And now on this post we discuss America uk
transporting terrorists from Syria to Afganistan . Not to mention the white helmet bunch and
where Ther going! The Manchester bombing, Westminster bridge and London Bridge atacks were
done by the Tory party to win a general election ! This is the reality of the world we live
in.full on oppression !!!
Indeed, I agree with the sentiments here. But missing a big part of the picture.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have sky-high fertility rates. Forget the rubbish peddled by
economist-whores like Milton Friedman, under these conditions no country without an open
frontier has ever developed into anything other than a larger mass of poverty. In Pakistan
something like half the children are so malnourished that they grow up stunted, and it is
this misery that is starting slow population growth. Pakistan is yet another example of the
Malthusian holocaust, which is not a global catastrophe: it is slow grinding poverty that
results when people have more children than they can support.
Bottom line: these places will remain poor and unstable no matter what lunacy the United
States does or does not do. The traditional approach to such places is to leave them alone,
and only keep them from escaping. Bottled up, the Afghanis and Pakistanis will kill only each
other. 9/11 is a consequence of allowing people from these places free access to the Untied
States.
The 'war on terror' is a consequence of 'there shall be open borders.' It's a big and
messy world, and even if the government of the United States was not criminally incompetent,
there would be a lot of misery and hatred in it. Open borders means that now the Untied
States has to intervene in every country all over the world to ensure that nowhere can there
develop terrorist cells. An impossible task.
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
div
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
The US still has some resources and some use but needs to continue to make friends in the
pattern of Kim and Putin and give up on its self defeating economic and military sabotage
planning which has been exposed as morally bankrupt as well.
"... These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible. ..."
However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the
potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla
in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our
relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that
goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the
profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather
than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial
overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the
former Soviet Union.
According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world,
our empire consists
of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over
190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of
March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working
there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178
civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the
largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.
These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are
not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous
conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs,
an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its
global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control
or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.
We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire
that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of
failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet
Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to
liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in
war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and
Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and
following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)
Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate
us.
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several
members of his new cabinet,
stated as fact that "[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet." A few
weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington
D.C., the president again
insisted , "Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will
have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world." And in a commencement address to
the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22nd, Obama stressed that "[w]e will maintain
America's military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever
seen."
What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a
global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.
According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it
is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a
crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of
imperialism. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of the important study Dying to Win:
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005), typically writes :
"America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing
government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic
weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading
knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as
the death knell of American hegemony."
There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a
bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an
insightful analogy:
"Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must
provide a list of expenses, which, if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show
that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person
filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the
astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero
return on the significant investment required to sustain them He could not qualify for
liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the
valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases."
In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is
instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with
insolvency.
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the
Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books, 2008), calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we
would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if
we did the same with Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over 800
overblown military enclaves.
Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure
of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary,
Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at Beijing University, "Chinese assets
[invested in the United States] are very safe." According to
press reports , the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.
In May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010 the United States
will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least $1.75 trillion. This includes neither a
projected $640 billion budget for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably
expensive wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American
citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or
will. It represents about 13% of our current gross domestic product (that is, the value of
everything we produce). It is worth noting that the target demanded of
European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit no greater than 3% of GDP.
Thus far, President Obama has announced measly cuts of only $8.8 billion in wasteful and
worthless weapons spending, including his cancellation of the F-22 fighter aircraft. The actual
Pentagon budget for next year will, in fact, be larger , not smaller, than the bloated final
budget of the Bush era. Far bolder cuts in our military expenditures will obviously be required
in the very near future if we intend to maintain any semblance of fiscal integrity.
2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both
Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military
methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's
modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947, Britain
sent almost annual expeditions against the Pashtun tribes and sub-tribes living in what was
then called the North-West Frontier Territories -- the area along either side of the artificial
border between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand Line. This frontier was created in
1893 by Britain's foreign secretary for India, Sir Mortimer Durand.
Neither Britain nor Pakistan has ever managed to establish effective control over the area.
As the eminent historian Louis Dupree put it in his book Afghanistan (Oxford
University Press, 2002, p. 425): "Pashtun tribes, almost genetically expert at guerrilla
warfare after resisting centuries of all comers and fighting among themselves when no comers
were available, plagued attempts to extend the Pax Britannica into their mountain homeland." An
estimated 41 million Pashtuns live in an undemarcated area along the Durand Line and profess no
loyalties to the central governments of either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
The region known today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is
administered directly by Islamabad, which -- just as British imperial officials did -- has
divided the territory
into seven agencies, each with its own "political agent" who wields much the same powers as his
colonial-era predecessor. Then as now, the part of FATA known as Waziristan and the home of
Pashtun tribesmen offered the fiercest resistance.
"If Washington's bureaucrats don't remember the history of the region, the Afghans do. The
British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned
for it. When the Soviets used MiGs and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it
during the 1980s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in
the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the world's sense of justice and morality
while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United
States."
In 1932, in a series of Guernica-like atrocities, the British used poison gas in Waziristan.
The disarmament convention of the same year sought a ban against the aerial bombardment of
civilians, but Lloyd George, who had been British prime minister during World War I, gloated:
"We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers" (Fitzgerald and Gould, p. 65). His view
prevailed.
The U.S. continues to act similarly, but with the new excuse that our killing of
noncombatants is a result of "collateral damage," or human error. Using pilotless drones guided with only minimal
accuracy from computers at military bases in the Arizona and Nevada deserts, among other
places, we have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed bystanders in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have repeatedly warned that we are alienating
precisely the people we claim to be saving for democracy.
When in May 2009 General Stanley McChrystal was appointed as the commander in Afghanistan,
he ordered new limits on air attacks, including those carried out by the CIA, except when
needed to protect allied troops. Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the incompetence of our
chain of command, only two days after this order, on June 23, 2009, the United States carried
out a drone attack against a funeral procession that
killed at least 80 people , the single deadliest U.S. attack on Pakistani soil so far.
There was virtually no reporting of these developments by the mainstream American press or on
the network television news. (At the time, the media were almost totally preoccupied by the
sexual adventures of the governor of South Carolina and the death of pop star Michael
Jackson.)
Our military operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been plagued by
inadequate and inaccurate intelligence about both countries, ideological preconceptions about
which parties we should support and which ones we should oppose, and myopic understandings of
what we could possibly hope to achieve. Fitzgerald and Gould, for example, charge that,
contrary to our own intelligence service's focus on Afghanistan, "Pakistan has always been the
problem." They add:
"Pakistan's army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch from 1973 on, has played the key
role in funding and directing first the mujahideen [anti-Soviet fighters during the
1980s] and then the Taliban. It is Pakistan's army that controls its nuclear weapons,
constrains the development of democratic institutions, trains Taliban fighters in suicide
attacks and orders them to fight American and NATO soldiers protecting the Afghan government."
(p. 322-324)
The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by devout Muslims who
fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own agenda, though not
necessarily to advance an Islamic jihad . Their purposes have always included: keeping
Afghanistan free of Russian or Indian influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for
mujahideen guerrillas to be used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan
and India), containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of Pakistan),
and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, and the
United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan's
consistent policy has been to support the clandestine policies of the Inter-Services
Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and competitor, India.
Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense
Information in Washington, summarizes our
hopeless project in South Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in
Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are
unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."
Obama's mid-2009 "surge" of troops into southern Afghanistan and particularly into Helmand
Province, a Taliban stronghold, is fast becoming darkly reminiscent of General William
Westmoreland's continuous requests in Vietnam for more troops and his promises that if we would
ratchet up the violence just a little more and tolerate a few more casualties, we would
certainly break the will of the Vietnamese insurgents. This was a total misreading of the
nature of the conflict in Vietnam, just as it is in Afghanistan today.
Twenty years after the forces of the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in disgrace, the
last Russian general to command them, Gen. Boris Gromov, issued his own prediction:
Disaster, he insisted, will come to the thousands of new forces Obama is sending there, just as
it did to the Soviet Union's, which lost some 15,000 soldiers in its own Afghan war. We should
recognize that we are wasting time, lives, and resources in an area where we have never
understood the political dynamics and continue to make the wrong choices.
3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted , "Rape and other forms of
sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no
evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He
continued:
"New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of
sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that
women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat
zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and
lining up in formation right beside them."
The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located
cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors.
For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in
Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers,
Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago.
That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World
War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two
Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every
continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of
the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw
materials we covet.
The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend
the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and
predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's
atrocious," writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high
command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces
Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining
jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for
our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local
authorities.
This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident
of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty
Hawk , then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and
reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and
effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese
police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape
Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today.
In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost
fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret
"understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the
crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil
because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year
being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes.
Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland,
Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001),
the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable
results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008,
83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to
the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors
accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of
course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be
charged.
Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks
of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts
martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely
Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure
in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are
never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are
negligible.
It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its
personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. I
believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring
the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been
taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.
10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key
places to begin:
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide.
We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after
ourselves.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the
"opportunity costs" that go with them -- the things we might otherwise do with our talents and
resources but can't or won't.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the
1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote
regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors
[Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling
the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture
abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian
employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with their expensive medical
facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses ,
and so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our
military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense.
These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic
research. Ending empire would make this happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest
exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of
torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for
immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military
academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson,
The
Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve
Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote
militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling
back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for
the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy
Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the
World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this
possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more
effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on
military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to
remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the
British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is
foreordained.
"2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of
the "opportunity costs" that go with them"
Never forget, such "liquidation" will destroy the economy.
Harry Truman & Company invented the GI Bill of Rights to keep millions of returning
WWII veterans out of the bad labor market following the war. It was a delaying tactic, no
more.
Within a few years, to everyone's shock, the economy began to uptick. New factories were
built, and the interstate highways created a plethora of opportunity. For a while.
Those days are gone. The plethora of opportunities is now in Mexico, China, South Korea by
any rational yardstick the USA is an employment desert for young people. It's been heading
that way since the oil shocks of the 1970s allowed the plutocrats to shed middle class jobs
for four-fifths of the people on the wrong side of the bell curve.
Bringing armies home to debt and penury? By all means, assuming there's a Leon Trotsky or
an Adolf Hitler in the woodpile. At least they know how to play a situation like that.
"... These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible. ..."
Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire And Ten Steps to Take to Do So Chalmers Johnson July 29, 2018 4,000
Words 1 CommentReply
However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the
potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla
in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our
relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that
goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the
profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather
than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial
overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the
former Soviet Union.
According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world,
our empire consists
of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over
190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of
March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working
there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178
civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the
largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.
These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are
not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous
conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs,
an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its
global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control
or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.
We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire
that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of
failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet
Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to
liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in
war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and
Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and
following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)
Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate
us.
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several
members of his new cabinet,
stated as fact that "[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet." A few
weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington
D.C., the president again
insisted , "Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will
have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world." And in a commencement address to
the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22nd, Obama stressed that "[w]e will maintain
America's military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever
seen."
What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a
global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.
According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it
is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a
crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of
imperialism. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of the important study Dying to Win:
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005), typically writes :
"America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing
government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic
weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading
knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as
the death knell of American hegemony."
There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a
bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an
insightful analogy:
"Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must
provide a list of expenses, which, if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show
that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person
filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the
astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero
return on the significant investment required to sustain them He could not qualify for
liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the
valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases."
In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is
instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with
insolvency.
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the
Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books, 2008), calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we
would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if
we did the same with Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over 800
overblown military enclaves.
Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure
of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary,
Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at Beijing University, "Chinese assets
[invested in the United States] are very safe." According to
press reports , the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.
In May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010 the United States
will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least $1.75 trillion. This includes neither a
projected $640 billion budget for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably
expensive wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American
citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or
will. It represents about 13% of our current gross domestic product (that is, the value of
everything we produce). It is worth noting that the target demanded of
European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit no greater than 3% of GDP.
Thus far, President Obama has announced measly cuts of only $8.8 billion in wasteful and
worthless weapons spending, including his cancellation of the F-22 fighter aircraft. The actual
Pentagon budget for next year will, in fact, be larger , not smaller, than the bloated final
budget of the Bush era. Far bolder cuts in our military expenditures will obviously be required
in the very near future if we intend to maintain any semblance of fiscal integrity.
2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both
Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military
methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's
modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947, Britain
sent almost annual expeditions against the Pashtun tribes and sub-tribes living in what was
then called the North-West Frontier Territories -- the area along either side of the artificial
border between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand Line. This frontier was created in
1893 by Britain's foreign secretary for India, Sir Mortimer Durand.
Neither Britain nor Pakistan has ever managed to establish effective control over the area.
As the eminent historian Louis Dupree put it in his book Afghanistan (Oxford
University Press, 2002, p. 425): "Pashtun tribes, almost genetically expert at guerrilla
warfare after resisting centuries of all comers and fighting among themselves when no comers
were available, plagued attempts to extend the Pax Britannica into their mountain homeland." An
estimated 41 million Pashtuns live in an undemarcated area along the Durand Line and profess no
loyalties to the central governments of either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
The region known today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is
administered directly by Islamabad, which -- just as British imperial officials did -- has
divided the territory
into seven agencies, each with its own "political agent" who wields much the same powers as his
colonial-era predecessor. Then as now, the part of FATA known as Waziristan and the home of
Pashtun tribesmen offered the fiercest resistance.
"If Washington's bureaucrats don't remember the history of the region, the Afghans do. The
British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned
for it. When the Soviets used MiGs and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it
during the 1980s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in
the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the world's sense of justice and morality
while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United
States."
In 1932, in a series of Guernica-like atrocities, the British used poison gas in Waziristan.
The disarmament convention of the same year sought a ban against the aerial bombardment of
civilians, but Lloyd George, who had been British prime minister during World War I, gloated:
"We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers" (Fitzgerald and Gould, p. 65). His view
prevailed.
The U.S. continues to act similarly, but with the new excuse that our killing of
noncombatants is a result of "collateral damage," or human error. Using pilotless drones guided with only minimal
accuracy from computers at military bases in the Arizona and Nevada deserts, among other
places, we have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed bystanders in Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have repeatedly warned that we are alienating
precisely the people we claim to be saving for democracy.
When in May 2009 General Stanley McChrystal was appointed as the commander in Afghanistan,
he ordered new limits on air attacks, including those carried out by the CIA, except when
needed to protect allied troops. Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the incompetence of our
chain of command, only two days after this order, on June 23, 2009, the United States carried
out a drone attack against a funeral procession that
killed at least 80 people , the single deadliest U.S. attack on Pakistani soil so far.
There was virtually no reporting of these developments by the mainstream American press or on
the network television news. (At the time, the media were almost totally preoccupied by the
sexual adventures of the governor of South Carolina and the death of pop star Michael
Jackson.)
Our military operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been plagued by
inadequate and inaccurate intelligence about both countries, ideological preconceptions about
which parties we should support and which ones we should oppose, and myopic understandings of
what we could possibly hope to achieve. Fitzgerald and Gould, for example, charge that,
contrary to our own intelligence service's focus on Afghanistan, "Pakistan has always been the
problem." They add:
"Pakistan's army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch from 1973 on, has played the key
role in funding and directing first the mujahideen [anti-Soviet fighters during the
1980s] and then the Taliban. It is Pakistan's army that controls its nuclear weapons,
constrains the development of democratic institutions, trains Taliban fighters in suicide
attacks and orders them to fight American and NATO soldiers protecting the Afghan government."
(p. 322-324)
The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by devout Muslims who
fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own agenda, though not
necessarily to advance an Islamic jihad . Their purposes have always included: keeping
Afghanistan free of Russian or Indian influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for
mujahideen guerrillas to be used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan
and India), containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of Pakistan),
and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, and the
United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan's
consistent policy has been to support the clandestine policies of the Inter-Services
Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and competitor, India.
Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense
Information in Washington, summarizes our
hopeless project in South Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in
Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are
unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."
Obama's mid-2009 "surge" of troops into southern Afghanistan and particularly into Helmand
Province, a Taliban stronghold, is fast becoming darkly reminiscent of General William
Westmoreland's continuous requests in Vietnam for more troops and his promises that if we would
ratchet up the violence just a little more and tolerate a few more casualties, we would
certainly break the will of the Vietnamese insurgents. This was a total misreading of the
nature of the conflict in Vietnam, just as it is in Afghanistan today.
Twenty years after the forces of the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in disgrace, the
last Russian general to command them, Gen. Boris Gromov, issued his own prediction:
Disaster, he insisted, will come to the thousands of new forces Obama is sending there, just as
it did to the Soviet Union's, which lost some 15,000 soldiers in its own Afghan war. We should
recognize that we are wasting time, lives, and resources in an area where we have never
understood the political dynamics and continue to make the wrong choices.
3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted , "Rape and other forms of
sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no
evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He
continued:
"New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of
sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that
women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat
zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and
lining up in formation right beside them."
The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located
cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors.
For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in
Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers,
Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago.
That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World
War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two
Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every
continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of
the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw
materials we covet.
The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend
the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and
predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's
atrocious," writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high
command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces
Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining
jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for
our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local
authorities.
This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident
of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty
Hawk , then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and
reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and
effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese
police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape
Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today.
In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost
fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret
"understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the
crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil
because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year
being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes.
Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland,
Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001),
the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable
results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008,
83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to
the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors
accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of
course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be
charged.
Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks
of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts
martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely
Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure
in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are
never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are
negligible.
It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its
personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. I
believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring
the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been
taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.
10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key
places to begin:
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide.
We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after
ourselves.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the
"opportunity costs" that go with them -- the things we might otherwise do with our talents and
resources but can't or won't.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the
1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote
regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors
[Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling
the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture
abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian
employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with their expensive medical
facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses ,
and so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our
military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense.
These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic
research. Ending empire would make this happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest
exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of
torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for
immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military
academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson,
The
Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve
Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote
militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling
back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for
the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy
Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the
World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this
possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more
effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on
military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to
remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the
British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is
foreordained.
"2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of
the "opportunity costs" that go with them"
Never forget, such "liquidation" will destroy the economy.
Harry Truman & Company invented the GI Bill of Rights to keep millions of returning
WWII veterans out of the bad labor market following the war. It was a delaying tactic, no
more.
Within a few years, to everyone's shock, the economy began to uptick. New factories were
built, and the interstate highways created a plethora of opportunity. For a while.
Those days are gone. The plethora of opportunities is now in Mexico, China, South Korea by
any rational yardstick the USA is an employment desert for young people. It's been heading
that way since the oil shocks of the 1970s allowed the plutocrats to shed middle class jobs
for four-fifths of the people on the wrong side of the bell curve.
Bringing armies home to debt and penury? By all means, assuming there's a Leon Trotsky or
an Adolf Hitler in the woodpile. At least they know how to play a situation like that.
It's been almost eight years since Chalmers Johnson died. He was the author of, among other
works, Blowback: The Costs and
Consequences of American Empire and Dismantling the
Empire . He was also a TomDispatchstalwart
and a friend . As I watch the strange destructive dance of Donald Trump and his cohorts
, I still regularly find myself wondering: What would Chal think? His acerbic wit and, as a
former consultant to the CIA, his deep sense of how the national security state worked provided
me with a late education. With no access to my Ouija board, however, the best I can do when it
comes to answering such questions is repost his classic
final piece for this site on the necessity of dismantling the American empire before it
dismantles us. He wrote it in July 2009, convinced that we had long passed from a republic to
an empire and were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a " military
Keynesianism " run amok. He saw the Pentagon and our empire of
bases abroad as a kind of Ponzi scheme that would, someday, help bankrupt this country.
How fascinated he would have been by the first candidate to ride an
escalator into a presidential contest on a
singular message of American decline. ("Make American great again !") And how much
more so by the world that candidate is creating as president, intent as he seems to be, in his
own bizarre fashion, on dismantling
the
system of global control the U.S. has built since 1945. At the same time, he seems prepared
to
finance the U.S. military at levels, which, even for Johnson, would have been eye-popping,
while attempting to
sell American arms around an embattled planet in a way that could prove unique. What a
strange combination of urges Donald Trump represents, as he teeters constantly at the
edge of war ("fire and fury like the world has never seen"),
more war ("never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the
likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before"), and
peace in our time. Amid all the strangeness, don't forget the strangeness of a mainstream
media that has gone bonkers
covering this president as no one has ever been covered in the history of the universe
(something that would undoubtedly have amazed Chal).
Think of what President Trump has launched as the potential imperial misadventure of a
lifetime, while checking out Chal's thoughts from so long ago on a subject that should still be
on all our minds.
The United States seems ready to give up on Afghanistan.
After the World Trade Center came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda, parts of which were hosted
in Afghanistan. The Taliban government offered the U.S. to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin
Laden to an Islamic country to be judged under Islamic law. The U.S. rejected that and decided
instead to destroy the Afghan government.
Taliban units, supported by Pakistani officers, were at that time still fighting against the
Northern Alliance which held onto a few areas in the north of the country. Under threats from
the U.S. Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its natural depth hinterland, was pressed into
service. In exchange for its cooperation with the U.S. operation it was allowed to extradite
its forces and main figures of the Taliban.
U.S. special forces were dropped into north Afghanistan. They came with huge amounts of cash
and the ability to call in B-52 bombers. Together with the Northern Alliance they move towards
Kabul bombing any place where some feeble resistance came from. The Taliban forces dissolved.
Many resettled in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda also vanished.
A conference with Afghan notables was held in Germany's once capital Bonn. The Afghans
wanted to reestablish the former Kingdom but were pressed into accepting a western style
democracy. Fed with large amounts of western money the norther warlords, all well known
mass-murderers, and various greedy exiles were appointed as a government. To them it was all
about money. There was little capability and interest to govern.
All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country.
For a few years the Taliban went quiet. But continued U.S. operations, which included random
bombing of weddings, torture and abduction of assumed al-Qaeda followers, alienated the people.
Pakistan feared that it would be suffocated between a permanently U.S. occupied Afghanistan and
a hostile India. Four years after being ousted the Taliban were reactivated and found regrown
local support.
Busy with fighting an insurgency in Iraq the U.S. reacted slowly. It then surged troops into
Afghanistan, pulled back, surged again and is now again pulling back. The U.S. military aptly
demonstrated its excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence. The
longer it fought the more Afghan people stood up against it. The immense amount of money spent
to 'rebuild' Afghanistan
went to U.S. contractors and Afghan warlords but had little effect on the ground. Now half
the country is back under Taliban control while the other half is more or less contested.
Before his election campaign Donald Trump spoke out
against the war on Afghanistan. During his campaign he was more cautious pointing to the danger
of a nuclear Pakistan as a reason for staying in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is where the U.S.
supply line is coming through and there are no reasonable alternatives. Staying in Afghanistan
to confront Pakistan while depending on Pakistan for logistics does not make sense.
Early this year the U.S. stopped all aid to Pakistan. Even the old Pakistani government was
already talking
about blocking the logistic line. The incoming prime minister Imran Khan has campaigned for
years against the U.S. war on Afghanistan. He very much prefers an alliance with China over any U.S.
rapprochement. The U.S. hope is that Pakistan will have to ask the IMF for another bailout and
thus come back under Washington's control. But it is
more likely that Imran Khan will ask China for financial help.
Under pressure from the military Trump had agreed to raise the force in Afghanistan to some
15,000 troops. But these were way to few to hold more than some urban areas. Eighty percent of
the Afghan people live in the countryside. Afghan troops and police forces are incapable or
unwilling to fight their Taliban brethren. It was obvious that this mini-surge
would fail :
By most objective measures, President Donald Trump's year-old strategy for ending the war in
Afghanistan has produced few positive results.
Afghanistan's beleaguered soldiers have failed to recapture significant new ground from
the Taliban. Civilian deaths have hit historic highs. The Afghan military is struggling to
build a reliable air force and expand the number of elite fighters. Efforts to cripple
lucrative insurgent drug smuggling operations have fallen short of expectations. And U.S.
intelligence officials say the president's strategy has halted Taliban gains but not reversed
their momentum, according to people familiar with the latest assessments.
To blame Pakistan for its support for some Taliban is convenient, but makes little sense. In
a recent
talk John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
made a crucial point:
"We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the
Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you
really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not
predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords," observed Sopko.
He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable
environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who
took the law into their own hands.
"In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police
forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as
bad as the terrorists before them," said Sopko ...
This was the problem from the very beginning. The U.S. bribed itself into Afghanistan. It
spent tons of money but did not gain real support. It bombed and shot aimlessly at 'Taliban'
that were more often than not just the local population. It incompetently fought 17
one-year-long wars instead of a consistently planned and sustained political, economic and
military campaign.
After a year of another useless surge the Trump administration decided to pull back from
most active operations and to bet
on negotiations with the Taliban:
The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile
"Afghan-led, Afghan-owned" process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American
officials that President Trump's new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental
difference in rolling back Taliban gains.
While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the
willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of
urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.
...
Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would
probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government,
the United States and Pakistan.
Afghans have continued to burn for the last four decades in the fire of imposed wars. They
are longing for peace and a just system but they will never tire from their just cause of
defending their creed, country and nation against the invading forces of your
warmongering government because they have rendered all the previous and present historic
sacrifices to safeguard their religious values and national sovereignty. If they make a deal
on their sovereignty now, it would be unforgettable infidelity with their proud history and
ancestors.
Last weeks talks between the Taliban and U.S. diplomats took place in Doha, Qatar.
Remarkably the Afghan government was excluded. Despite the rousing tone of the Reuters
report below the positions that were exchanged
do not point to a successful conclusion:
According to one Taliban official, who said he was part of a four-member delegation, there
were "very positive signals" from the meeting, which he said was conducted in a "friendly
atmosphere" in a Doha hotel.
"You can't call it peace talks," he said. "These are a series of meetings for initiating
formal and purposeful talks. We agreed to meet again soon and resolve the Afghan conflict
through dialogue."
...
The two sides had discussed proposals to allow the Taliban free movement in two provinces
where they would not be attacked, an idea that President Ashraf Ghani has already rejected .
They also discussed Taliban participation in the Afghan government.
"The only demand they made was to allow their military bases in Afghanistan ," said the
Taliban official.
...
"We have held three meetings with the U.S. and we reached a conclusion to continue talks for
meaningful negotiations," said a second Taliban official.
...
"However, our delegation made it clear to them that peace can only be restored to Afghanistan
when all foreign forces are withdrawn ," he said.
This does not sound promising:
In a first step the Taliban want to officially rule parts of the country and use it as a
safe haven. The Afghan government naturally rejects that.
Participation of the Taliban in the Afghan government is an idea of the Afghan president
Ghani. It is doubtful that this could be successfully arranged. Norther Alliance elements in
the Afghan government, like the 'chief executive' Abdullah Abdullah, are unlikely to ever
agree to it. The Taliban also have no interest to be 'part of the government' and to then get
blamed for its failures. Their February letter makes clear that they want to be the
government.
The U.S. wants bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban, and Pakistan behind them, reject that
and will continue to do so.
It is difficult to see how especially the last mutually exclusive positions can ever be
reconciled.
The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only
offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no
choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying
areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases
will come under fire.
There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate
about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".
The Soviet war in Afghanistan took nine years. The time was used to build up a halfway
competent government and army that managed to hold off the insurgents for three more years
after the Soviet withdrawal. The government only fell when the Soviets cut the money line. The
seventeen year long U.S. occupation did not even succeed in that. The Afghan army is corrupt
and its leaders are incompetent. The U.S. supplied it with expensive and complicate equipment
that
does not fit Afghan needs . As soon as the U.S. withdraws the whole south, the east and
Kabul will immediately fall back into Taliban hands. Only the north may take a bit longer. They
will probably ask China to help them in developing their country.
The erratic
empire failed in another of its crazy endeavors. That will not hinder it to look for a new
ones. The immense increase
of the U.S. military budget, which includes 15,000 more troops, points to a new large war.
Which country will be its next target?
thanks b.. it would be good if the exceptional warmongering nation could go home, but i am
not fully counting on it.. i liked your quote here "The U.S. military aptly demonstrated its
excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence." that is ongoing..
unless the usa leaves, i think the madness continues.. i suspect the madness will continue..
the only other alternative is the usa, with the help of their good buddies - uk, ksa, qatar,
uae and israel - will keep on relocating isis to afgan for future destabilization.. i watched
a video peter au left from al jazzera 2017 with isis embedded in the kush mtns... until the
funding for them ceases - i think the usa will have a hand in the continued madness... if the
usa was serious about ending terrorism they would shut down the same middle east countries
they are in bed with.. until that happens, i suspect not much will change.. i hope i am
wrong..
I dont believe it for a second. Especially with Iran looming as a potential target. US is
staying in Afghanistan also to counter China , keep opium production high and of course there
is the TAPI pipeline to "protect" that is backed by US as an alternative to the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would have tapped Iran's South Pars gas field. A hostile or
unfriendly Pakistan is just one more reason to stay
Just like US will never leave Iraq or Syria, they will stay in Afghanistan. There will be
ebbs and flows, and talk of disengagement from time to time primarily for domestic
consumption, but thats all it is IMO.
This is a fine recap of the situation. It's much too optimistic. The classic method of
American negotiation and warfare like the Roman before them is to divide and conquer. It was
very successful against the American Indians.
If the Taliban get free movement in two provinces, the Americans will demand an end to
attacks on their bases, their soldiers and their agents elsewhere in Afghanistan. Just as the
Iroquois Confederation enjoyed special privileges in what is now Upper New York for their
help against the French, the Taliban will have special privileges in their two provinces
while the Americans consolidate in the rest of Afghanistan. When the Americans feel strong
enough, just as with the Iroquois, they will break the previous treaties.
After the Revolutionary War, the ancient central fireplace of the League was re-established
at Buffalo Creek. The United States and the Iroquois signed the treaty of Fort Stanwix in
1784 under which the Iroquois ceded much of their historical homeland to the Americans,
which was followed by another treaty in 1794 at Canandaigua which they ceded even more land
to the Americans./b
(...continuation of the comment above, somehow got posted when I pressed the return
key)
Even the Soviet Union and Russians were unable to make the American respect their
commitments. The United States reneged on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as soon as it
could in 2001 (Russia was on its knees), reneged on its commitments not to expand NATO east
and has built ballistic missile bases all around Russia which seem to be preparation for a
pre-emptive nuclear strike/war against Russia.
The Afghanis (foolish to call them the Taliban, they are traditional Afghani patriots)
have always been wise enough to annihilate any invader to the last man. This salutary policy
keeps invaders out for decades at a time. The Taliban have a long row to hoe. It took almost
a hundred years and several massacres to finally curb British ambitions on Afghanistan (1838
to 1919). Afghanis' best hopes rely on forging tight alliances with Pakistan and China,
squeezing the Americans out completely right now.
The Americans burnt their bridges with the Russian already and are in the process of
burning their bridges with Pakistan while losing influence with China. The US is very short
of options right now. It's the ideal time for Afghanis to reclaim the whole territory, not
leaving a single American soldier or airbase operational. They'll need a technically
sophisticated ally to help them clear their skies of US drones. This role might appeal to
either the Russians or the Chinese. As a training exercise, extended anti-drone warfare could
be very useful.
What a great success the US achieved in destroying Yugoslavia. Murdering thousands went
almost unnoticed. It was able to break up the country into a number of tiny, impoverished
nations and got to put a US MIC Base in most of them.
You did not mention isis-k in your analysis. Its active mostly in eastern afghanistan in
areas close to or adjacent to Pakistan (it is also controlls a small area in Jawzjan, in
northern afghanistan). Many fighters are formerly pakistani taliban(not to be confused with
afghan taliban who are simply called taliban). Before isis-k appeared in afghanistan, the
areas which it now controls had pakistani taliban presence. TTP, or tehreek e taliban
pakistan was facilitated by afghan ggovernment to settle down in these areas after they fled
pakistan when its military launched a large scale offensive, Operation Zarb e Azb. The afghan
government planned to use them to pressurize Pakistan, basically to use them as a bargaining
chip. They operate openly in eastern afghanistan, but many of them joined isis-k.
Russians estimate isis-k's strength to be between 10k to 12k, although it might be a bit
inflated number. From here they plan attacks against afghanistan and pakistan alike, mostly
suicide bombings as of now. They have had fierce clashes with afghan taliban in eastern
Afghanistan but have held their territory for now. Afghan army simply doesn't have the
capacity in those areas to confront them. It was here that MOAB was dropped but as expected
against a guerrilla force, it was ineffective in every way. But it did make headlines and has
helped US in giving an impression its seriously fighting ISIS. The reports of unmarked
helicopters dropping god-knows-what have also been coming from these areas. Hamid karzai
mentioned that and also maria zakharova asked afghan gov. and US to investigate that which
shows these are not just rumors. Recently intelligence chiefs of Pakistan, russia, iran and
china as well(if i remember correctly) met in islamabad to discuss isis-k in afghanistan, no
details other than this of this meeting are available.
In Northern afghanistan, in Jawzjan, fierce clashes broke out between taliban and isis-k
after taliban commander in thiae areas was beheaded. ISIS-k has been beaten up pretty badly
there but clashes are ongoing. Many areas have been cleared but fighting is still ongoing. An
interesting aspect is taliban sources claiming that whenever they come close to a decisive
victory, they have to stop operations becauae of heavy bombardment by US planes. They made
similar claims when fighting daesh in eastern afghanistan. Anyway in a few days isis presence
will probably be finished in Jawzjan. ISIS fighters who have survived have done so by
surrendering to afghan forces. They will probably end up back in eastern afghanistan.
Africa. US AFRICOM has a huge playground, tactics won't change and logistics is far
easier.
There also will be a long Hybrid wr against Iran, but that will be much like the early
days of Syria. Proxies as "moderates". Insurgents, not US troops. ISIS and AQ crazies will be
on the ground.
The big money will go into Africa. You want to see Trillions "spent"? It will be
Africa.
The decision to invade Afghanistan had been taken before the 9/11 false flag coup. Had
nothing much to do with the CIA's al-Qaeda mercenaries.
As I understood it, there were many agendas at work: testing weapons and making money for
the MIC; controlling the lucrative (how many hundreds of billions of dollars ?) opium/ heroin
production/profiteering; military bases relating to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and other
...stans, etc; control of oil and gas pipelines; access to increasingly valuable and sought
rare earth minerals; proximity to oil and gas actual and potential.
More generally, subjugating Afghanistan was a necessary part of the 'full spectrum
dominance' 'we will rule the earth' doctrine, dear til recently to too many mad hatters, and
still evoking a misty eyed longing in some, no doubt.
Ahhh...the US produces some of the lamest euphemisms approved for all audiences; such as
"Afgahn Security Forces." So sterile, innocuous. And benign. How could anyone question their
plight? (We did pick up the game a little bit in Syria with "Free Syrian Army..." Can I get a
hell yeah?) All the people hearing this in the US could do was shrug their shoulders and
speak, "I guess I should support them." That is, of course, after we took out OBL and the
mission in Afghanistan was a little more opaque. Just a little bit. Anyways...Hell, yeah! Get
some!
Thanks b for the brief history. Really invaluable.
Afghani patriots, resisting invaders since 330 BCE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
The US military, the planet's costliest losingest military since 1946. The US military, like
its munitions manufacturers, doesn't win but it does get paid and is why we can have nice
things like oh, decent health care. Lack of health insurance kills more Americans than the
Russians ever will. The Russians aren't the enemy, Trump is. Lobbyists are too.
I haven't read anything about Blackwater wanting to replace the U.S. Military in Afghanistan.
Of course, the U.S. Treasury would continue to shovel those pallet loads of newly printed
$100.00 bills down the Blackwater hole. Any odds this might go forward from anyone's opinion?
robin cook before he was murdered stated that alqueda was a cia data base.
i believe bresinski knew obl as tim osman who was later killed by cia mi6 man omar blah blah
sheikh bhutto of pakisyan was assasinated after spilling the beans about sheikh.
christopher bolleyn on you tube will give you the sp on what 9 and 11 was shirley we are
past the point of the offecal theory.
the turd burger that is the official theory is clearly the worst and lowest grade of all the
conspiracy theories.
the taliban where in barbera bushes texas talking lithium opium and oil pipelines with the
paedo bush crime syndicate before 9 and 11
marvin bush ran security at the twin towers
christopher bollyn is the go to man in these regardings
The US wants peace talks but wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. US under Trump has built
new bases in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait.
SDF have been talking with Syrian government, and US in Talks with Taliban. Are these just
moves to buy the US a little time until it launches the war Trump has been building the US
military up for.
isis is israeli counter gang with support of usa usa and the city of
london,ukrainian,polish,uk sas,cia,kiwi,aussie,jordanian and donmeh satanic house of
saud.
talking of isis as if it is real entity rather than a frank kitson gang counter gang and
pseudo gang is polluting the well.
who has been providing extraction helicopters from syriana for the last 14 months.
who has been washing these bearded devils operating on them in kosher field hospitals making
them well shiny and new
who?
scchhhhh you know who
We are concerned about reports regarding the use of helicopters without any identification
marks in many parts of Afghanistan that are delivering terrorists and arms to the Afghan
branch of this terrorist organisation. We believe that reports to this effect made by Afghan
officials should be thoroughly investigated."
- Of course. The US wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village
Hajji, the writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit.
The only question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous
it will be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam
War (1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and
the Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village Hajji, the
writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit. The only
question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous it will
be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam War
(1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and the
Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
@uncoy.. i basically see it like you, however another proxy war involving usa-russia-china
sounds like a running theme now...
@13 bilal.. good post.. i agree about the analysis missing much on isis presence in afgan
as @6 jr also points out.. i think it is a critical bit of the puzzle.. it appears the usa is
using isis as a proxy force, as obama previously stated with regard to syria... the usa just
can't seem to help themselves with their divide and conquer strategy using isis as part of
it's methodology... it's exact opposite of what they profess..
@18 eugene.. isn't blackwater or whatever they're called now - headquartered in uae?
perfect place for them, lol... right on top of yemen, afgan, and etc. etc.. if isis can't do
the job for the west thru their good friends ksa, uae - well, then maybe they can pay a bit
more and get blackwater directly involved too..
Trump is serious when he said he would talk to anybody. The CIA is alleged to have been
stirring the pot with Islamic militants prior to the Soviet invasion when the country went
full socialist. I would suspect the Russians had a hand in that in 1978. US intelligence was
said to be helping along the backlash to socialism by Islamic militants back then in 1978.
The CIA station chief was promptly assassinated the next year.
Obviously you could dump 600,000 NATO and US soldiers into the country and not control it
short of executing every Muslim. What a foolish endeavor but what would you expect from these
buffoons and their death cult? These human sacrifices are holy to them. They worship blood,
death, power and money.
With their loss in Syria the NEOCONS can now make peace with the Taliban and use them and
ISIS to push into old Soviet Central Asia in an attempt to deny them what the Anglo American
Zionist alliance cannot have at this time, control of the commodities.
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
Even the Brits knew when it was time to leave India and their Middle Eastern holdings. They
realized the costs of containment would wipe out their country.
No he doesnt, along with Israel and neocons. There was already nuclear deal, and US was
out of "all this crap", so why introduce Gordian Knot if he doesnt want it?
What Trump demands is Iran's surrender. 'b discussed it at length some time ago, the list
of Trump's demands is completely ridiculous and the goal is Iran as a client state.
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to
meet, it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt
worth a toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even
endeavor to negotiate dead from the get go.
Congress went along with the Pentagon's 7 countries in 5 years plan. No investigation of 9/11
or even consideration of Ron Paul's bringing in an old idea of Letters of Marque and
Reprisal.
As to the US leaving the warlords in power to continue opium production, etc, Van Buren (We
Meant Well book) said some of the same happened in Iraq with some sheikhs still holding power
in local areas. General Garner looked forward to going in to rebuild (and was promising quick
elections) but was shocked to see no protection of ministries (except oil) which were looted
and burned. And then Bremer was put in charge. Complete mismanagement of the war, the
aftermath, etc. Like someone once said, if they were doing these things at random you would
expect them to get it right once in a while.
The Kunduz Airlift which allowed Pakistan a corridor to fly out Pak officials, Taliban,
and possibly al Qaeda was yet another snafu like paying Pakistan to supposedly block any
escape from their side of Tora Bora only to have a long convoy leave at night. It made one
wonder about the US supposed air superiority/domination. Again, complete mismanagement.
A comparison to the end situation in VietNam 1975 is apt.
Trump meeting Rouhani. Trump saays he wants a better deal. The nuke agreement took years to
negotiate and Iran accepted far more stringent inspections than any other country signed up
NPT. There is nothing more for Iran to negotiate other than to give away their
sovereignty.
The offer of a meeting by Trump is more along the line of "we tried to avoid war".
The US under Trump have scrapped the nuke agreement and made demands that are impossible for
Iran to meet without giving away its sovereignty.
Erik Prince's plan for fighting in Afghanistan.
He presented it to the WH. Military rejected it.
He is no longer Blackwater-connected.
Frontier Services Group Ltd. is his new military-security services corp.
He has extensive contracts with the Chinese government and their SOEs overseas.
did you see General Souleimani answer's to Trump rabid tweet
it went like this
Our president doesnt lower himself to answer someone like.I, a soldier answer someone like
you, you re someone who speaks in the vocabulary of a cabaret owner and a gambling house
dealer.(paraphrasing saker has the video on his site)
and then he went on to describe how your cowad troops wore adult diapers in Afghanistan
and Iraq
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
dltravers @28
No. China, being development-oriented rather than imperialist, will leave Afghanistan
alone. China and Russia, but especially China, requires an Afghanistan that is not a
U.S.-controlled terrorist base. Because China needs the oil/gas link that it is building
through Pakistan to access Gulf energy resources, and that energy corridor would be the
primary target of U.S.-hired mercenaries ('terrorists').
How Afghanistan manages itself in the post-U.S. era is Afghan business, but it will almost
certainly involve the Pashtun majority (in the form of the 'Taliban') retaking power in Kabul
but with the traditional huge amounts of autonomy for the provinces. That arrangement reduces
pressure by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan against Pakistan's government, and in general
seems to be the long-term stable set up, and stability is what China has to have in
Afghanistan.
Now is the time with perfect China partner Khan and the Pakistan military firmly in power.
Not instant, but over the next two years I think we'll see the Taliban's fighting capacity
hugely improve, with transfers of supplies, weapons and intelligence from Pakistan. It would
be very smart for Trump to get out in 2019. History is going to accelerate in that
region.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I worry a lot about Venezuela. See, it's a perfect
fit for the U.S. economy. U.S. shale oil is way too light to be useful, while Venezuelan oil
is way too heavy to be useful. They are destined for each other, i.e. to be mixed into a
blend that would be a good fit U.S. refineries. Plus, Venezuela is very import-dependent and
thus would make for a good vassal. It also has a rabid capitalist class that will do anything
-- any kind of atrocity or false flag -- to return to the good old days of exploitation. "But
Venezuela has a lot of arms!", I hear you counter. True, but the people are severely
demoralized because of the extreme economic hardship. Think of the USSR in late 80s/early
90s. It had the most powerful military in the world, and yet people were so demoralized and
disillusioned with the old system that they simply chose not to defend it. Same thing may
happen in Venezuela. After Colombia has signed peace accords with FARC, U.S. has been
steadily increasing its military presence in Colombia. I think there is a very real
possibility of a naval blockade combined with supply lines/air raids from Colombia supporting
the "Free Venezuelan Army" assembled from Venezuelan gangs and revanchist capitalists and
foreign mercenaries. It would be logistically impossible for Russia or China to provide
military help to far-away Venezuela. Neighbors will not come to the aid of Venezuela either
as there is a surge of pro-U.S. right-wing governments in the region.
Any moves the U$A makes will have to be approved according to which natural resources their
corporate masters covet at any particular moment. Lithium and other rare earth minerals,
strategic importance, whatever the corporate form needs to stay on top globally, will dictate
what the empire does.
Leave Afghanistan? I very much doubt it.
DJT will do what the "puppet masters" desire. Just like all his predecessors.
'Correction': No reliable census has been done in decades, but I don't think the Pashtun are
the majority in Afghanistan. They
are by far the largest minority however. British 'divide and rule' stategists long ago
deliberately separated them into Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Venezuela and Iran have two things in common. Both have large oil reserves and neither
recognize Israel.
Trump's wars will be about destroying enemies of Israel, and at the same time, achieving
global energy dominance.
I've posted this before. I met a Taliban leader and his two guards in a brutal area during
the Hearts and Minds Schtick, preparatory to Cheney getting all the oil and gas, and copper
and iron and coming coal lease awards.
He was a nice guy, the Taliban leader. His guards looked at me with absolute death in
their eyes. Not wanting them to hear him, as we finished our tea, the Taliban leader leaned
close, then whispered, 'I love your Jesus, but I hate your Crusaders.'
And I take issue with the US 'incompetence' meme. Ever since Cheney hosted the Taliban in
Texas in 1998, trying to get a TAPI pipeline, the US has deliberately and cunningly taken
over the country, assassinated the local-level leadership, and installed their foreign Shah,
first Karzai, then Ghani.
In that time of occupation, 18 years, Pentagon MIC disappeared TRILLIONS in shrink-wrapped
pallets of $100s, and ballooned from $340B a year, to now Trump is saying $840B a year.
That's not incompetence. Just the opposite.
Now, to honor my Afghan friends, who love to joke even after 35+ years of machine warfare,
a joke I wrote in their honor:
Ring ring ring ring
"Office of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan!"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Hold please."
President Reagan, it's the Iranian ambassador!"
"Well hello Mr. Assinabindstani, what can I do for you?"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Well I'll get my staff right on it."
[Intercomm clicks]
"Hey Ollie, the Ayatollah wants more guns! Step on it!"
Actually, the British paid an annual tithe-tribute the the Afghan king to stop raiding
their India holdings, and agreed to a neutral zone between them. Then when the British pulled
out, they declared the neutral zone as Pakistan and shrunk India away from Pashtun territory
to create a bigger divide. The Afghan leaders had no say in the matter. I believe Baluchistan
was also carved away. At one time, Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.
There is no way to defeat a nation of warriors who created a kingdom that vast, while William
the Conqueror was still running around in bear skin diapers.
@41 'Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.'
You are probably referring to the Khalji Dynasty, a brutal bunch, who ruled India from
1290 to 1320 by which time William the Conqueror was long dead. You would be a lot more
credible if you got your history right.
IMHO the military Budget increase, and what an increase it is!
is part of worsening an already outrageous situation to reach a caricatural point. Typical of
trump repeated special "art".
Of course Nobody in USA, no President can go against the MIC and Pentagon.
But money is cheap when you print it.
It is sugaring the intended shrinking of foreign deployments (as in NATO), closure of
"facilities" and replacing them officially with total deterrence capacities (Space Forces
anybody ?).
While keeping classical projection capacities for demonstration against backward
tribes.
...
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to meet,
it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt worth a
toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even endeavor
to negotiate dead from the get go.
Posted by: Harry | Jul 30, 2018 7:53:57 PM | 29
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if you
feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what Iran
wants it to mean.
Trump jumped into the NK and Putin talks first because both were eager to talk. Iran will
be a good test of Trump's seduction skills. All he's got to do is persuade the Iranians that
talking is more useful than swapping long-distance insults. Iranians are rusted onto logical
principles and Trump will find a way to appeal to that trait, imo.
It's too late for the afghanis who have been driven into the urban areas during the regulaar
'Afghanistanisation' campaigns. Most of them will have become hooked on consumerism and the
necessity of dollars.
That leaves only two options for the Taliban when they take over as they undoubtedly will
altho that is likely to mean having to tolerate clutches of obese amerikans lurking in some
Px strewn green zone, the inhabitants of which are likely to have less contact with people
from Afghanistan than any regular user of a Californian shopping mall. The new government can
ignore the consumerists even when these rejects insist on getting lured into some nonsense
green revolution - the danger with this isn't the vapid protests which can easily be dealt
with by fetching a few mobs of staunch citizens from rural Afghanistan who will quickly teach
them that neither cheeseburgers nor close captioned episodes of daytime television provide
sufficient nutrition to handle compatriots raised on traditional food and Islam. Or the new
administration can do as other traditional regimes have done many times over the last 80
years or so, purge the consumerists by disappearing the leadership and strewing empty lots in
the urban areas with mutilated corpses of a few of the shitkicker class consumerists. That
option can cause a bit of a fuss but it (the fuss) generally only lasts as long as the purge.
I suspect the Afghan government will favour the latter approach but they may try to hold
off until the North has been brought back into line. OTH, consumerism is a highly contagious
condition so, unless the North can be pacified speedily which seems unlikely, initially at
least the Taliban adminsitration may have to fight on two fronts, agin the North while they
nip urban consumerists in the bud before those confused fools can cause any highly publicised
in the west but in actuality, low key, attempted insurrection.
My advice to the gaming, TV or cheeseburger addicted inhabitants of Kabul would be to
volunteer your services to the amerikan military as a 'translator' asap and join yer cobbers
in California.
It is unlikely that you will bump into Roman Brady especially not when he is in one
of his avuncular moods, but if you stay outta Texas, Florida or any other part of flyover
amerika chocka with alcohol induced blowhardism, you will discover than amerikan racism isn't
as lethal as it once was.
Apart from having to ignore being jostled in the line at fast food joints and being loudly
and incorrectly termed a motherf**in sand n***er mid-jostle. Certainly a whole lot less
lethal than trying to cover your Fortnite jones by waving a badly copywritten sign in front
of the al-Jazeera cameras for a one month
battle pass .
What was happening in Kabul, Afghanistan less than 8 hours after the WTC Towers turned into
dust in midair? Who here remembers the massive bombing/cruise missile attack?
Here is CNN's transcript:
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "Well, Joie, it's about 2:30 in the morning here in
Kabul. We've been hearing explosions around the perimeter of the city. We're in a position
here which gives us a view over the whole city. We just had an impact, perhaps a few miles
away.
"If I listen, you can hear the ripple of explosions around the city. Perhaps you heard
there. The fifth explosion -- sixth explosion, I think. Gun bursts and star bursts in the
air. Tracer fire is coming up out of the city. I hear aircraft flying above the city of
Kabul. Perhaps we've heard half a dozen to 10 detonations on the perimeter of the city,
some coming from the area close to the airport. I see on the horizon what could be a fire
on the horizon, close, perhaps, to where the airport might be. A flash came up then from
the airport. Some ground fire coming up here in Kabul."
"I've been in Belgrade and I've been in Baghdad and seen cruise missiles arrive in both
those cities. The detonations we're hearing in Kabul right now certainly sound like the
detonations of loud missiles that are coming in. "
"Certainly -- certainly it would appear that the Afghan defense systems have detected a
threat in the air. They are launching what appears to be anti-aircraft defense systems at
the moment. Certainly, I can see that fire that was blazing on the horizon. It was a faint
yellow; it's now a bright orange blazing. Several other detonations going off around the
city, multiple areas. Rockets appear to be taking off from one end of the airport. I can
see that perhaps located about 8 or 9 miles away from where we stand, Joie."
The bombing/explosions continue for 10+ minutes of this broadcast.
Then, they cut to WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: who says the US is only
collecting intelligence. He says what we're seeing must be part of the "Civil War" (despite
the fact that neither side had an air force or cruise missiles). The Pentagon later denies
knowing anything about it.
Then, CNN returns to Nic Robertson, who- within 15 minutes of his first report - begins to
change his tune. Suddenly, the jet sounds are not mentioned. The cruise missiles (jet
engines) have transformed into possible rockets. The airport fire is now an ammunition
dump.
And voila! They lose their connection and Nic will not be heard from again. And this
little bit of history will essentially disappear.
Dear Mr. B,
"All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country."
These mistakes are by design. To cause and keep causing destabilisation.
I like to refer to it as the 3-letter Scrabble method of doing things.
Me living in the Netherlands as I do, let me take the example of Greece.
Greece had its regime changed in 1948 (Wiki says 46-49).
And how is Greece doing these days? ...
@37 yep, gotta agree with the more passimistic outlook here. Personally i'll eat my shoes if
US leaves Afghanistan within any reasonable time frame. In addition to plentiful natural
resources, there are very influential vested interests in Afghanistans booming opium
industry.
Off topic: Andrei Nekrasov's 'Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes' can be viewed in full on You
Tube at this moment (31 July, 08:15 Amsterdam time). Can it also be seen in the USA, I
wonder? How long will it take before Google take it down ? Watch it and learn about one of
the main drivers of the Russia obsession.
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if
you feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what
Iran wants it to mean.
White House just explained what Trump's "no preconditions" means: 1) Iran should at the
core change how it deals with its own people. 2) Change its evil stance in foreign policy. 3)
Agree on nuclear agreement which would REALLY prevent them making a nuke.
In other words, Iran should capitulate and become a client state, thats what Trump means
by "no preconditions."
At this advanced stage of American insanity, I don't see why the devil should have all the
best tunes. I'm sick of the yanks doing this shit in over people's county's ! While they
stuff there fat faces with burgers and donuts! The dirty games they play on over country's,
should now be played in America with all the brutality that they have used on others. Until
that happens things world wide will continue to detriate. Natural justice is all that
remains. They'v curupted all else.
@19 "The US already started to plan an invasion of Afghanistan in januari & february of
2001."
Well, to be fair the USA probably has plans to invade lots of countries.
Indeed, it would be more interesting to consider how many countries there are that the USA
*doesn't* have invasion plans gathering dust on the shelves.
It's just been reported on the bbc news---- the man responsible for the Manchester bombing
had been 'rescued from Lybia when Gadafi was overthrown and tracked ever since. Even in
Britain up to the day of the bombing ! And now on this post we discuss America uk
transporting terrorists from Syria to Afganistan . Not to mention the white helmet bunch and
where Ther going! The Manchester bombing, Westminster bridge and London Bridge atacks were
done by the Tory party to win a general election ! This is the reality of the world we live
in.full on oppression !!!
Indeed, I agree with the sentiments here. But missing a big part of the picture.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have sky-high fertility rates. Forget the rubbish peddled by
economist-whores like Milton Friedman, under these conditions no country without an open
frontier has ever developed into anything other than a larger mass of poverty. In Pakistan
something like half the children are so malnourished that they grow up stunted, and it is
this misery that is starting slow population growth. Pakistan is yet another example of the
Malthusian holocaust, which is not a global catastrophe: it is slow grinding poverty that
results when people have more children than they can support.
Bottom line: these places will remain poor and unstable no matter what lunacy the United
States does or does not do. The traditional approach to such places is to leave them alone,
and only keep them from escaping. Bottled up, the Afghanis and Pakistanis will kill only each
other. 9/11 is a consequence of allowing people from these places free access to the Untied
States.
The 'war on terror' is a consequence of 'there shall be open borders.' It's a big and
messy world, and even if the government of the United States was not criminally incompetent,
there would be a lot of misery and hatred in it. Open borders means that now the Untied
States has to intervene in every country all over the world to ensure that nowhere can there
develop terrorist cells. An impossible task.
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
div
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
The US still has some resources and some use but needs to continue to make friends in the
pattern of Kim and Putin and give up on its self defeating economic and military sabotage
planning which has been exposed as morally bankrupt as well.
The "uncivil war" within the US neoliberal elite is getting a lot hotter... The problem for the American establishment is that it
doesn't like the way democracy worked out.
The bloated US intelligence industry fears that Trump may slash its budgets, power and perks.
Notable quotes:
"... Written by Eric Margolis ..."
"... But after the presidential meeting, Trump replied to reporters' questions by saying he believed Russia had no role in attempts to bug the Democratic Party during the election. Outrage erupted across the US. 'Trump trusts the Russians more than his own intelligence agencies' went up the howl. Trump is a traitor, charged certain of the wilder Democrats and neocon Republicans. Few Americans wanted to hear the truth. ..."
"... In fact, so intense was the outrage at home that Trump had to backtrack and claim he had misspoken. Yes, he admitted, the Russians had meddled in the US election. But then he seemed to back away again from this claim. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton did not lose the election due to Russian conniving. She lost it because so many Americans disliked and mistrusted her. When the truth about her rigging of the Democratic primary emerged, she deftly diverted attention by claiming the Russians had rigged the election. What chutzpah (nerve). ..."
"... Besides, compared to US meddling in foreign politics, whatever the Ruskis did in the US was small potatoes. Prying into US political and military secrets is precisely what Russian intelligence was supposed to do. Particularly when the US Democratic Party was pushing a highly aggressive policy towards Russia that might lead to war. ..."
"... For the US to accuse Russia of meddling is the ultimate pot calling the kettle black. The neocon former US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, admitted her organization had spent $5 billion to overthrow Ukraine's pro-Russian government. US undercover political and financial operations have recently been active in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, to name but a few nations. ..."
"... It's also clear that Trump's most ardent foes are the big US intelligence agencies whose mammoth $78 billion combined budget exceeds total Russian military spending. The bloated US intelligence industry fears that Trump may slash its budgets, power and perks. ..."
"... The uproar over Putin has revealed just how fanatic and far to the right were the heads of the US national security state operating under the sugarcoating of the Obama administration. Straight out of the wonderful film, 'Dr. Strangelove.' We now see them on CNN, snarling away at President Trump. ..."
"... Speaking of far right generals, one is also reminded of the brilliant film, `Seven Days in May,' in which a cabal of generals tries to overthrow the president because of a peace deal he made with Moscow. Could there be a real plot against the president? Watching US TV one might think so. ..."
"... Now, completing the childish 'Reds Under Our Beds' hysteria comes the final touch, the evil Russian temptress-spy who managed to infiltrate the National Prayer Breakfast, of all silly things. This dangerous Jezebel is now in the hands of the FBI. If this is the best KGB or GRU can come up with they need urgent help from Congolese intelligence. ..."
Comedy? Disaster? Mental disorder? Hearing loss? Even days after President Donald Trump's bizarre appearance in Moscow alongside
a cool, composed President Vladimir Putin, it's hard to tell what happened. But it certainly was entertaining. In case anyone in
the universe missed this event, let me recap. Trump met in private with Putin, which drove bureaucrats on both sides crazy. So far,
Trump won't reveal most of what was said between the two leaders.
But after the presidential meeting, Trump replied to reporters' questions by saying he believed Russia had no role in attempts
to bug the Democratic Party during the election. Outrage erupted across the US. 'Trump trusts the Russians more than his own intelligence
agencies' went up the howl. Trump is a traitor, charged certain of the wilder Democrats and neocon Republicans. Few Americans wanted
to hear the truth.
In fact, so intense was the outrage at home that Trump had to backtrack and claim he had misspoken. Yes, he admitted, the
Russians had meddled in the US election. But then he seemed to back away again from this claim.
The whole thing was black comedy. Maybe it was due to Trump's poor hearing or to jet lag and travel fatigue.
Hillary Clinton did not lose the election due to Russian conniving. She lost it because so many Americans disliked and mistrusted
her. When the truth about her rigging of the Democratic primary emerged, she deftly diverted attention by claiming the Russians had
rigged the election. What chutzpah (nerve).
Yet many Americans swallowed this canard. If Russia's GRU military intelligence was really involved in the run-up to the election,
as US intelligence reportedly claimed, it's alleged buying of social media amounted to peanuts and hardly swung the election.
Back in the 1940's, GRU managed to penetrate and influence Roosevelt's White House. Now that's real espionage. Not some junior
officers and 20-somethings on a laptop in Moscow.
Besides, compared to US meddling in foreign politics, whatever the Ruskis did in the US was small potatoes. Prying into US
political and military secrets is precisely what Russian intelligence was supposed to do. Particularly when the US Democratic Party
was pushing a highly aggressive policy towards Russia that might lead to war.
For the US to accuse Russia of meddling is the ultimate pot calling the kettle black. The neocon former US Assistant Secretary
of State, Victoria Nuland, admitted her organization had spent $5 billion to overthrow Ukraine's pro-Russian government. US undercover
political and financial operations have recently been active in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia,
Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, to name but a few nations.
Democrats and Republican neocons are in full-throat hysteria over an alleged Russian threat – Russia, whose total military budget
is smaller than Trump's recent Pentagon budget increase this year.
What we have been seeing is the fascinating spectacle of America's war party and neocons clamoring to oust President Trump. Included
in their ranks are most of the US media, led by the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and TV's war parties, CNN and
NBC.
It's also clear that Trump's most ardent foes are the big US intelligence agencies whose mammoth $78 billion combined budget exceeds
total Russian military spending. The bloated US intelligence industry fears that Trump may slash its budgets, power and perks.
The uproar over Putin has revealed just how fanatic and far to the right were the heads of the US national security state
operating under the sugarcoating of the Obama administration. Straight out of the wonderful film, 'Dr. Strangelove.' We now see them
on CNN, snarling away at President Trump.
Speaking of far right generals, one is also reminded of the brilliant film, `Seven Days in May,' in which a cabal of generals
tries to overthrow the president because of a peace deal he made with Moscow. Could there be a real plot against the president? Watching
US TV one might think so.
Now, completing the childish 'Reds Under Our Beds' hysteria comes the final touch, the evil Russian temptress-spy who managed
to infiltrate the National Prayer Breakfast, of all silly things. This dangerous Jezebel is now in the hands of the FBI. If this
is the best KGB or GRU can come up with they need urgent help from Congolese intelligence.
"... I do think the credit for this goes to the Clinton campaign, the "intelligence" agencies, the neoconlib biparty and individuals like McCain, who have gone to McCarthyism lengths since before the GOP primaries ended to prevent Trump from attempting *any* change of the status quo on foreign policy. Granted, the man might be ineffectual no matter what, but we will never know. The US establishment and the retainers of the war profiteering classes have made any negotiations with Russia impossible long before Trump even announced his campaign. ..."
"... it is the unholy alliance of Democrats looking for an excuse for them losing the election and Cold War hawk neocons who have Russia-hate in their DNA (and their stock portfolios)). ..."
"... The embarrassment was the reaction in the MSM showcasing how they are now CIA state run media. They trot out former high ranking CIA officers now employed by them recycling every meme to reinforce that we are the forces goodness and light and anyone strong enough to oppose us is evil. ..."
"Trump has made it politically impossible to pursue that goal in the near term."
I do think the credit for this goes to the Clinton campaign, the "intelligence" agencies,
the neoconlib biparty and individuals like McCain, who have gone to McCarthyism lengths since
before the GOP primaries ended to prevent Trump from attempting *any* change of the status
quo on foreign policy. Granted, the man might be ineffectual no matter what, but we will
never know. The US establishment and the retainers of the war profiteering classes have made
any negotiations with Russia impossible long before Trump even announced his campaign.
We also should not forget to credit the GOP for test-driving the whole "weak on Russia"
playbook during the Obama years.
I agree with b. While Trump may not be savvy enough to calibrate his engagement with Putin in
a way that would allow a proper dialogue with Russia in spite of the political backdrop in
the US, the primary blame for any failure to allow such dialogue rests for those responsible
for creating that political backdrop that makes it so difficult in the first place (hint:
it's not Trump, unless you blame him for winning the election – rather it is the unholy
alliance of Democrats looking for an excuse for them losing the election and Cold War hawk
neocons who have Russia-hate in their DNA (and their stock portfolios)).
That Putin talked up the Iran deal in the press conference makes me wonder what was said in
the one-on-one. Couldn't have pleased the Adelson/Bolton wing.
Additionally there has yet to be any actual evidence presented re significant election
interference. Indictments are accusations, not evidence.
I saw nothing particularly wrong with the press conference. I'm no Trump fan, but he was just
saying he believed Putin rather than the people who are clearly trying to bring his
administration down. Can't really blame him.
The embarrassment was the reaction in the MSM showcasing how they are now CIA state run
media.
They trot out former high ranking CIA officers now employed by them recycling every meme
to reinforce that we are the forces goodness and light and anyone strong enough to oppose us
is evil.
CNN even used Putin's dearly departed Labrador, Konni making her look like Cujo stating
that Putin use her to terrorize Angela Merkel. A U.S. Congressman fumed that the 50,000
children died in Syria because this fiend supported Assad when Syria was about to be
liberated (a number suspiciously close to the true number of Yemeni children we helped to
kill). These are just two random examples in a very long day. It was
a show worthy of the priests of Baal who confronted Elijah.
As flawed as Trump may be, he is merely holding up a mirror to what we have become. Had we
elected a conventional candidate it would just be business as usual with these seething
hatreds buried just below the surface.
No one better suggest that we should tarnish ourselves talking to the likes of a Russian
leader unless we are discussing terms of surrender. We want Yeltsin or maybe Medvedev.
All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their
minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but those dreamers of the day are dangerous
men for they act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
– T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
How the Neocon Dream for Everlasting Hegemony Turned America Into a Nightmare
Few Americans today understand how the United States came to be owned by a London-backed
neoconservative/right-wing alliance that grew out of the institutional turmoil of the
post-Vietnam era. Even fewer understand how its internal mission to maintain the remnants of
the old British Empire gradually overcame American democracy and replaced it with a "national
security" bureaucracy of its own design. We owe the blueprint of that plan to James Burnham , Trotskyist, OSS
man and architect of the neoconservative movement whose exposition of the
Formal and the Real in his 1943 The Modern
Machiavellians justified the rise of the oligarch and the absolute rule of their
managerial elite. But Americans would be shocked to find that our current political nightmare
came to power with the willing consent and cooperation of President James Earl Carter and his
National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski; aided by intelligence agencies in Europe and the
Middle East.
A straight line can be drawn between today's political hysteria and the 1970s era of
right-wing Soviet hysteria as Russia stands accused of "meddling" in American democracy.
The merits of those charges have been discussed in depth elsewhere. According to the dean
of American intelligence scholars Loch K. Johnson as reported in the
New York Times , the United States has done extensive meddling in other nation's
elections.
And then there is that hidden "meddler" behind the meddling; Britain. The extent of British
meddling in American politics – at least since – the beginning of the 20
th century would shock even the most devout cheerleaders of ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele and his
"dirty dossier". In a case reminiscent of America's current hysteria over Russia, British
intelligence even meddled with its own government back in the mid-1970s when right-wing
elements of the military plotted a coup d' etat of Labor
Prime Minister Harold Wilson based on information generated by their own disinformation
campaign about Soviet influence. The 1917 Zimmerman telegram and the creation of the British
Security Coordination in 1940 directly intervened in American politics on behalf of Britain.
But the 1970 Creation of the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) by British secret agent
Brian Crozier marked a key turning point in the transformation of officially sanctioned
propaganda.
As presented by Edward Herman and Gerry O' Sullivan in their 1989 study, The
Terrorism Industry, "The London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC)
provides an especially well-documented case study of the use of a purportedly 'independent'
institute as a front for propaganda operations of hidden intelligence agency and corporate
sponsors." The purpose of ISC was to give discredited right-wing, anti-Communist and anti-union
clichés in Britain the cover of legitimacy. The "Institute" got off to a quick start in
the U.S. by forging an alliance with the National
Strategy Information Center, NSIC a right-wing neoconservative think tank founded by Frank
Barnett, William Casey and Joseph Coors in 1962. ISC's first major triumph came in
collaboration with the ultra-right-wing Pinay Cercle when Crozier and his
protégé Robert
Moss produced an ISC Special Report attacking the legitimacy of détente with the
Soviet Union called European Security and the Soviet Problem . The study, financed by
the Pinay group made no bones about its "Soviet problem" actually being the old "Russia
problem" that European Imperialists had been hoping to solve since Napoleon's disastrous march
on Moscow in 1812.
As a devoted acolyte of
James Burnham , Crozier brought to his secret world of rightwing businessmen, intelligence,
police and military officials a strategic plan to use the media to move the West'sdemocracies
to the ideological right by fabricating threats of Communist subversion. Determined to
undermine détente, Antoine Pinay was so delighted with Crozier's
double-speak he presented the study in person to President Nixon and Henry Kissinger and by
1975 the group was staged to make their move on Washington. Less than two months before the
fall of Saigon, the US Committee of the ISC (USISC) was launched which would act as the parent
body of the Washington Institute for the Study of Conflict (WISC).
In the vacuum created by Vietnam Crozier and Pinay's extremism was no longer viewed as
extreme. Despite the public scandal over the CIA's use of Crozier's Forum World Features as a London-based
fake news service, Washington elites were rolling out the red carpet to welcome them, including
Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Ball . Under Ball's
Chairmanship WISC appeared a veritable who's who of high-level ex-CIA, neoconservative and
right-wing influencers. From Georgetown University came WISC's first President James
Thebergewhosebooks on Soviet influence in the Caribbean – helped provide the pretexts for
overthrowing Chile's legitimately elected leftist president Salvador Allende. And then there
was Richard Pipes , the
anti-Soviet history professor from Harvard University, who would soon be hand-picked to lead a
neoconservative attack on the CIA known as Team B.
In the
words of Lawrence J. Korb , a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and
assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985, Pipes and the Team B were the real reason for
the intelligence failures represented by 9/11 because of their biases and unbalanced judgement.
But in the end the Team B view gainedinfluence. With the appointment of fellow WISC member
Zbigniew Brzezinski as President Carter's national security advisor, British intelligence agent
Brian Crozier's plan tosubvert the détente process with the Soviet Union was complete.
Crozier'sbelief "[T]hat the entire security apparatus of the United States was in a state of
near collapse," provoked yet another move to interfere in American politics. His solution was a
secret off-the books "Private Sector Intelligence agency, beholden to no government, but at the
disposal of allied or friendly governments for certain tasks which, for one reason or another,
they were no longer able to tackle " including "[S]ecret counter-subversion operations in any
country in which such actions were deemed feasible." Brian Crozier and Zbigniew Brzezinski were of one mind when
it came to disbelieving in "mutual coexistence" or power-sharing with the Soviet Union and
Brzezinski's membership in WISC proved it. Thanks to WISC member Richard Pipes and the Team B,
Brzezinski could now bring Britain's radical right-wing formula for social change right into
the Oval Office.
Brzezinski devised astructure that channeled all executive decisions into two committees,
the Policy Review Committee (PRC) and the Special Coordination Committee (SCC) chairedby him.
Carter thenelevated the national security advisor to cabinet level and the palace coup was
complete. As recalled by the neoconservative author David J.
Rothkopf in Charles Gati's 2013 book ZBIG , "It
was a bureaucratic first strike of the first order. The system essentially gave responsibility
for the most important and sensitive issues to Brzezinski."
Another operation initiated by Brzezinski in 1977 was the Nationalities Working
Group (NWG) , dedicated to inflaming ethnic tensions among the Islamic populations of the
South Asia region. Brzezinski then continued on into nuclear policy where he altered the SALT
structure and then rigged the negotiations against Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. With
Brzezinski expanding nuclear targeting options from 25,000 to 40,000 andcovert action teams
sabotaging behind Soviet lines from early 1977 onward the message was clear; SALT and
Détente were getting ripped up as well as the very assumptions both were based on.
By 1978, Brzezinski's plan to use China as a weapon against the Soviets was playing out in
Afghanistan. The April, 1978 Marxist coup against the King's cousin, Mohammed Daoud played into
Brzezinski's "predictions" of a Sovietplan to incorporate Persia and South Central Asia into
the Soviet sphere and ultimately take-over The Middle East. Vance rejected Brzezinski's
argument. The coup had caught both the Soviets and the State Department by surprise and the
coup leader, Hafizullah Amin raised doubts on both sides of the fence as an unpredictable agent
provocateur. Amin had taken money from the CIA and headed up the Afghan Student Association at
a time when it was being used as a CIA recruitment
tool for future Third World leaders.Amin was now one of those leaders and Vance was sending
a tough and savvy American Ambassador to Kabul named Adolph "Spike" Dubs to deal with him. The
outcome would change the world and end in tragedy for all.
In an interview we conducted in 1993 with
Selig Harrison –former Washington Post foreign correspondent and Carnegie Endowment
Senior Associate–Ambassador Dubs came to Kabul in the summer of 1978 with amission: Bring
Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin over to the American side and keep the Russians out. President
Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski had engineered a grander mission:
Pressure Amin to draw the Soviets in through destabilization and then keep them tied down and
give them their own Vietnam. By the time Ambassador Dubs arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan had
become ground zero for a long anticipated anti-Soviet destabilization campaign organized
byBrzezinski and carried out by an off the books intelligence operation known as the Safari Club . The "club"represented
the true essence of the CIA ethos; an autonomous covert action organization with global reach,
beyond the jurisdiction of American oversight and responsible to no one. A spinoff of the
right-wing Pinay
Cercle , the Safari Club had been active informally in the Middle East and Africa for
years. But the club found its true calling following Watergate and the Church Committee
hearings on 30 years of CIA coups, cover-ups and assassinations. Managed by France's Count
Alexandre de Marenches chief of French external intelligence, the club included the Shah of
Iran, King Hassan II of Morocco, President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt, Kamal Adham, head of
intelligence for Saudi Arabian King Faisal and Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. More to the
point, by 1976 the Safari Club had become the real CIA, covertly funded by Saudi
Arabia's chief of intelligence Kamal Adham through the
Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) and run out of the U.S. embassy in
Tehran.
Brzezinski, Afghanistan and the End of Emperors
"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. "
– Napoleon Bonaparte during his retreat from Russia
According to one-time CNN Special Assignment investigator Joe Trento in his 2005 exposé
Prelude To
Terror , Saudi Arabia's chief of intelligence Kamal Adham worked alongside the
Bank of Commerce and Credit International , BCCI's founder Agha Hasan Abedi to expand the
very concept of covert action by using BCCI to merge the Safari Club with "every major
terrorist, rebel, and underground organization in the world." A 2001 Time magazine report found
that the bank functioned as "a vast, stateless, multinational corporation that deploys its own
intelligence agency, complete with paramilitary wing and enforcement units, known collectively
as the 'black network:'"that wouldbribe or assassinate anyone to turn Afghanistan into the
place to trap the Soviet Union in their own Vietnam.
Uninformed of the Safari Club's activities, America's ambassador proceeded to meet with Amin
throughout the fall of 1978 and into the winter of 1979 often in secretmeetings.But
Brzezinski's ongoing destabilization, his military relationship with the Chinese and Amin's
antagonism toward the Russians was making life for Dubs increasingly dangerous. He grew alarmed
by Amin's provocative behavior and demanded to know from his CIA station chief whether he was
employed by them. He was told no, but by then Afghan rebels were openly training in Pakistan
and China's Xinjiang province. In addition there was what Joe Trento called the CIA's
Saudi-funded stockpile of misfits and malcontents manning the Safari Club's 1,500-strong army
of assassins and enforcers. And last but not least were Chinese-backed Maoist factions
Setam-i Melli, Sholah Jaweed and SAMA
programmed by Beijing to bring down their Afghan oppressor, Hafizullah Amin. Thanks to Saudi
Intelligence chief Kamal Adham and BCCI banker,
Agha Hasan Abedi , there were ample incentives for a holy jihad against Russia.
Afghanistan offered the opportunity for BCCI to migrate the lucrative heroin business from
Southeast Asia to the Pakistani/Afghan border under the protectionof Western intelligence
agencies.President Carter supported Brzezinski's cross-border raids into Soviet territory. He
also sanctioned Brzezinski's plan to use Afghanistan to lure the Soviet Union into its own
Vietnam; which he lied to the public about when they fell into the trap on December 27, 1979.
Joseph Trento
writes , "Carter may in fact have signed his directive in July 1979, but the Safari Club's
Islamic fighters had been taunting Moscow into invading for nearly a year before that."
By January 1979 the newly unstable region wasbecoming the primary financing source for a
terrorist campaign that would spread around the world.But while Dubs was pleading that
destabilization would provoke direct Soviet intervention, Brzezinski was promoting armed
opposition.
That same month, Brzezinski's NSC director of South Asian affairs, Thomas P. Thornton,
arrived in Kabul to shut Dubs down, yet Dubs continued his mission.Between Dubs' arrival in
July of 1978 and the fall of the Shah on January 16, 1979 American policy in Iran, China and
Afghanistan had shifted into the hands ofthe Pinay Cercle's right-wing cabal. Run by a
consortium of intelligence influencers, the decades-long geopolitical plan to move the United
States into alignment with the Pinay Cercle's old European right-wing was
nearing completion.
By mid-February the Shah had fallen and the Afghan countryside was in open revolt. The
Marxist regime of Hafizullah Amin was demanding military assistance from Moscow and the only
man left to hold back Soviet retaliation wasAmbassadorDubs. But on the morning of February 14,
1979 Dubs himself would become the vehicle for the very outcome he had gone to Kabul to prevent
when four men abducted him on his way to work and brought him to the Kabul Hotel.Three hours
later the ambassador would die in a shootout that has been described as a botched rescue
attempt.
The subsequent debate in Washington focused mainly on blaming the Soviets with unnamed "U.S.
congressional sources" claiming "the Russians had wanted Dubs to die." But as described in an
interview conducted for
Washingtonian Magazine in 2017 with Bruce Flatin, the political counselor dispatched
by the U.S. embassy to the hotel that morning, the whole affair just didn't make sense;
unless the kidnapping wasn't intended as a kidnapping and Dubs' unfortunate death
wasn't the result of a botched rescue attempt, but was part of a Safari Club operation to
remove the last obstacle to their plan. At a
1995 Nobel Symposium on the causes of the Afghan war – in the presence of former CIA
director Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former Director of Soviet affairs at the National
Security Council, General William Odom and dozens of former high-level officials – the
leading Russian authority, General Alexander Lyakhovsky
suggested the existence of a cover up. "Dubs was seen in the company of those same people who
kidnapped him later in the same hotel -- in the same room -- the day before they kidnapped
him . And then later Dubs was in his car, with a travel case. He stopped his car when
those same people who he saw the day before ordered him to stop, as if they were known to
him."
No one has ever suggested the existence of anon-governmental agency in the death of Adolph
Dubs. But the Safari Club's anti-Communist agenda had been brought directly into the White
House with Brzezinskiin 1977 and it had been active in Afghanistan long before February 14,
1979. If ever there was an opportunity for their 1,500-strong "black network" of CIA misfits,
malcontents, assassins and enforcers to act on Brzezinski's agenda to lure the Soviets into
their own Vietnam,it was at room 117 of the Kabul Hotel on February 14, 1979.
The
kidnapping and assassination of Ambassador Adolph Dubs ended any meaningful effort by the
U.S. to prevent a Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. The death was employed
however from that day forward by Brzezinski as the opportunity to increase the level of
provocation for luring the Soviets into their own
"Vietnam quagmire" and keeping them pinned down for as long as possible. Because of Dubs'
death, Brzezinski got control of foreign policy; got his hard line neoconservative policy
toward the Soviet Union pushed through, ended support for détente once and for all and
put Strategic Arms Limitation on hold.
Continuing his coup d'état, Brzezinski proceeded with plans for
theradicaltransformation of America's nuclear doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction –
MAD into one of nuclear "war-fighting"
through a series of Presidential Directives. But the real irony of the Carter presidency was
that his greatest success – the U.S- Egypt-Israeli peace treaty – was also arranged
by the Safari Club . The
death of Ambassador Dubs, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
late December 1979 doomed Carter's reelection to failure. Afghanistan was soon to become the
self-fulfilling prophecyof Soviet iniquity that the right-wing had been trying to create for
decades;a permanent, ongoing crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations which it had precipitated and then
claimed to uncover and respond to. Brian Crozier's "ultimate sophistication of subversion" got
its candidate Ronald Reagan elected in 1980 while completing the London-backed
neoconservative/right-wing takeover of the American government. And they would never give it
back.
The pattern and the profile of events parading across our screens today mirrors the pattern
and profile of events engineered in the late 1970s by a London-backed
neoconservative/right-wing alliancewhich paralleled the pattern and the profile of the late
1940s and the genesis of the Cold War. The United States, Britain and their post-World War II
European creation, the EU continue to manufacture issues with which to demonize Russia as they
once demonized the Soviet Union. But in the end, the goal set out by the Pinay Cercle and
implemented during the Carter administration can only
be said to have failed .
In his 1997 book
The Grand Chessboard , Zbigniew Brzezinski saw the United States "as the sole and,
indeed, first truly global power" using France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine as "The Democratic
Bridgehead for projecting into Eurasia the international democratic collective order." Yet even
as the United States began to flex its unchallenged global power the ethnic flaw undergirding
Brzezinski's motives began to show.
When asked the real reason why the United States had taken such a hard line toward the
Soviet Union on Afghanistanat the
1995 Nobel Symposium , President Carter's CIA Director
Stansfield Turner replied the responsibility could only be located in one individual.
"Brzezinski's name comes up here every five minutes; but nobody has as yet mentioned that he is
a Pole," Turner said, implying that it was ethnic hatred of Russia that had propelled his
policy against the Soviet Union; not just geopolitics. Yet anybody who knew Brzezinski at the
time knew that is exactly what he was doing, but they had all looked the other way.
The year before he died Brzezinskidelivered a profound revelation in an article titled
"Toward a
Global Realignment" warning that "the United States is still the world's politically,
economically, and militarily most powerful entity, but given complex geopolitical shifts in
regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power ." Zbigniew Brzezinski
had expected Poland to be at the center of America's conquest of Eurasia. But after years of
American missteps he realized his dream would never be. Though unapologetic at using his
imperial hubris to lure the Soviets into Afghanistan, he did not expect his own beloved
American Empire to fall into the same trap and ultimately lived long enough to see that in the
end, his use of imperial power had won him only a Pyrrhic victory.
"... While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War. Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. ..."
"... Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of "we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!" ..."
"... "Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures." ..."
"... Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs. The American people just have no say in the matter. ..."
"... Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians ..."
"... Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering (Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there. ..."
"... I'll go a step further and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. ..."
"... It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it. ..."
"... What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished." ..."
"... The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its people. ..."
We have no choice. The 17-year war in Afghanistan has failed at every level, while the violence is only
getting worse.
Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is
instructing
its senior diplomats
to begin seeking "direct talks with the Taliban." It's a
measure that would have been unthinkable at the start of the Afghanistan war yet today it's long overdue. Despite the
criticism it's elicited, such talks offer the best chance of ending America's longest and most futile war.
While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military
operations in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how
to end the fighting on military terms.
Possibly the biggest impediment to ending the war has been the definition of the word
"win." General
Stanley McChrystal
said in 2009 that winning in
Afghanistan meant "reversing the perceived momentum" of the Taliban, "seek[ing] rapid growth of Afghan national security
forces," and "tackl[ing] the issue of predatory corruption by some" Afghan officials.
Nine full years and zero successes later, however, Lieutenant General Austin S.
Miller, latest in line to command U.S. troops in Afghanistan, defined as America's "core goal" at his
confirmation hearing
that "terrorists can never again use Afghanistan as a
safe haven to threaten the United States."
The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that
these objectives
can't be militarily accomplished.
Predicating an end to the war on such is to guarantee perpetual failure. A major course correction is therefore in
order.
Keeping 15,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan does not,
in any way
, prevent terror attacks against the
United States from originating there -- and for this lack of success we will pay at least
$45 billion
this year alone. The real solution
is therefore to withdraw our troops as quickly as can be safely accomplished rather than throw more of them into a
fruitless conflict.
I personally observed in 2011 during my second combat deployment in Afghanistan that
even with 140,000 U.S. and NATO boots on the ground, there were still vast swaths of the country that were ungoverned
and off-limits to allied troops.
Meaning, at no point since October 2001 has American military power prevented
Afghanistan from having ungoverned spaces. What
has
kept us safe, however -- and will continue to keep us safe -- has been our robust, globally
focused
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that work in concert with the CIA, FBI, and local law
enforcement to defend our borders from external attack.
Many pundits claim that if the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan then chaos
will reign there -- and that is almost certainly true. But that's how we found Afghanistan, that's how it is today,
and -- wholly irrespective of when or under what conditions the U.S. leaves -- that's how it will be long into the future
until Afghans themselves come to an accommodation.
The question U.S. policymakers need to ask is which is more important to American
interests: the maintenance of a perpetually costly war that fails to prevent any future attacks, or ending America's
participation in that war?
Continuing to fight for a country that can't be won cements a policy that has drained
the U.S. of vital resources, spilled the blood of American service members to no effect, and dissipated the Armed Forces'
ability to defend against potentially existential threats later on -- while in the meantime not diminishing the threat of
international terrorism. To strengthen our national security, we must end the enduring policy of failure by prudently
and effectively ending our military mission.
While the fundamentals of a withdrawal plan are relatively straightforward, they would
still be met by considerable opposition. One of the arguments against leaving was voiced by McChrystal nine years ago
when
he pleaded
with the American public to "show resolve" because "uncertainty
disheartens our allies [and] emboldens our foe." Yet the facts can't be denied any longer: for all eight years of the
Obama administration and the first 500 days of Trump's tenure, we maintained that "resolve" and were rewarded with an
unequivocal deterioration of the war.
Since McChrystal's admonition to maintain the status quo, the Taliban have exploded in
strength to
reportedly 77,000
, more territory is now in the
hands of the insurgents than at
any point since 2001
, the Afghan government
remains one of the
most corrupt regimes
on the planet, and
civilian casualties in the first half of 2018 are the
highest ever recorded
.
The only way this permanent failure ends is if President Trump shows the courage he
has sometimes demonstrated to push back against the Washington establishment. That means ignoring the status quo that
holds our security hostage, ending the war, and redeploying our troops. Without that resolve, we can count on continued
failure in Afghanistan. With it, American security will be strengthened and readiness improved.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments. Follow him on Twitter
@DanielLDavis1
.
While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War.
Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. The only way these wars of choice will ever end is
when Congress has the balls to cut off funding. Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these
wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures. Military madness indeed.
Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of
"we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!"
If Trump were going to leave, he
should have done so soon after taking office. At least then he could blame his predecessors.
The financial security of the National Security State and its suppliers now depends on no war ever ending or
being won. The new definition of defeat is having any war end. As long as it continues, that war is being won.
"Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to
re-build our country infrastructures."
Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the
war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs.
The American people just have no say in the matter.
There is only one reason why the USA is still in Afghanistan that makes sense (all the official reasons are an
insult to ones intelligence), it borders on Iran and thus serves as a means to open a new front against Iran.
The more the US pushes for war against Iran, the more this seems correct.
"Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is instructing its senior diplomats to begin seeking
"direct talks with the Taliban."
I have to give my Jr High response here:
"Well, duh."
__________________
"While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military operations in
Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks . . ."
Yeah . . . no.
1. They manipulated the game to make what was a crime an act of war to justify the an unnecessary,
unethical, and strategically unwise invasion. I remain now where I was 14 years ago -- bad decision in every
way.
2. It was even a poor decision based on reason for war. To utterly bend the will of the opponent to conform
to the will of the US. it is possible to win. But to do so would require such massive force, brutality and
will.
3. 9/11 was a simple criminal act, despite the damage. As a crime we should have sought extradition, and or
small team FBI and special forces operations to a small footprint in either capturing, and or if need be
killing Osama bin Laden and company.
Nothing that has occurred since 9/11 provides evidence that the invasion was either justified or effective.
It will if the end game is to quit be one of three losses suffered by the US.
They are: War of 1812
Iraq
Afghanistan
" . . . it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how to end the fighting on military
terms."
Sure leave. Though talking so as to avert whole slaughter of those that aided the US is the decent thing to
do.
Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation
Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians
Solving USA problems in Afghanistan an at the same time pushing for war with Iran is by definition classic
oxymoron. Afghanistan's problems can only be solved with cooperation and understanding with Iran. Conflict of
the USA with Iran will extend indefinitely the suffering of the Afghanis and the eventual lose of the
Afghanistan and Iran to the Russia. Always reigniting and keeping on the front burner the conflict with Iran by
the USA is exactly what Russia and V. Putin want. I can't see any other politicians except D. Trump, B.
Netanyahu and American 'conservatives' for the advancement of the Russia's goals in the Middle East and in the
globalistan. These are the new XXI century 'useful (adjective)'.
Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering
(Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there.
I'll go a step further
and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not
even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. This
should have been a dirty knife fight in all the back alleys of the world, but we responded to the sucker punch
as our attackers intended; getting into a brawl with somebody else in the same bar; eventually, with more than
one somebody else.
It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it.
Indeed, but as others have commented, the entire point of the Afghanistan war is that it is pointless. It can
suck up enormous amounts of money, and generate incredible profits for politically connected defense
contractors – and because Afghanistan is in fact pointless, it doesn't matter if all of that money is wasted or
stolen, how could you tell? The vested interest in these winless pointless foreign wars means that they will
continue until the American economy finally collapses – and anyone who opposes these wars is a fascist, a
Russian stooge, "literally Hitler." Because money.
Thank you for this. I am very surprised to learn that Trump is pursuing this, given his pugilistic nature. I
hope he does in fact, get us the hell out of there. He may be, like Nixon, the one who is politically able to
make this smart move. Can you imagine the Republican outrage if Obama had tried a diplomatic exit from this
sand trap?
We can still be proud of what we attempted to do there. A few years post-9/11, an Afghan colleague of mine
who had come to the US as a boy said, "9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan." He meant that
rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US would do, we
poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads, etc.
"He meant that rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US
would do, we poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads,
etc."
And we could have done a lot more if we had not invaded. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11.
The achievable operational level Military objectives in the Afghan war were accomplished in the first year; The
Taliban were out of power and hiding in Pakistan and the Afghans had a somewhat benevolent government that
wanted to guarantee security an property and a measure of individual liberty.
What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous
terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and
Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished."
This has been particularly true with the intense guerrilla actions enabled by the Pakistanis who have a
vested interest in an unstable Afghanistan.
I believe the noble goals 'might' have been doable – but it would have required a level of effort, and more
importantly a 'cultural confidence' on par with the Roman Empire of the 2nd Century to pull it off. That is no
longer us.
"9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan"? I bet none of his family members died or suffered.
Probably they are all living in the US. Are we supposed to feel proud that instead of carpet bombing and
killing millions our war killed only a hundred thousand?
Sadly, Kent, I do know people who still claim that our continued presence in Afghanistan is a good thing. Some
of these are otherwise fairly bright people, so I really can't comprehend why they continue to buy into this
idiocy.
Afghanistan must be Afghanistan and the US must be the US; this is such a simple tautology. If the US leaves,
Afghanistan will become what ever it can for its own reasons and options. If the US stays, it will be for the
US' reasons, not for the Afghans.
The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan
actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic
demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its
people.
The "uncivil war" within the US neoliberal elite is getting a lot hotter... The problem for the American establishment is that it
doesn't like the way democracy worked out.
The bloated US intelligence industry fears that Trump may slash its budgets, power and perks.
Notable quotes:
"... Written by Eric Margolis ..."
"... But after the presidential meeting, Trump replied to reporters' questions by saying he believed Russia had no role in attempts to bug the Democratic Party during the election. Outrage erupted across the US. 'Trump trusts the Russians more than his own intelligence agencies' went up the howl. Trump is a traitor, charged certain of the wilder Democrats and neocon Republicans. Few Americans wanted to hear the truth. ..."
"... In fact, so intense was the outrage at home that Trump had to backtrack and claim he had misspoken. Yes, he admitted, the Russians had meddled in the US election. But then he seemed to back away again from this claim. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton did not lose the election due to Russian conniving. She lost it because so many Americans disliked and mistrusted her. When the truth about her rigging of the Democratic primary emerged, she deftly diverted attention by claiming the Russians had rigged the election. What chutzpah (nerve). ..."
"... Besides, compared to US meddling in foreign politics, whatever the Ruskis did in the US was small potatoes. Prying into US political and military secrets is precisely what Russian intelligence was supposed to do. Particularly when the US Democratic Party was pushing a highly aggressive policy towards Russia that might lead to war. ..."
"... For the US to accuse Russia of meddling is the ultimate pot calling the kettle black. The neocon former US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, admitted her organization had spent $5 billion to overthrow Ukraine's pro-Russian government. US undercover political and financial operations have recently been active in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, to name but a few nations. ..."
"... It's also clear that Trump's most ardent foes are the big US intelligence agencies whose mammoth $78 billion combined budget exceeds total Russian military spending. The bloated US intelligence industry fears that Trump may slash its budgets, power and perks. ..."
"... The uproar over Putin has revealed just how fanatic and far to the right were the heads of the US national security state operating under the sugarcoating of the Obama administration. Straight out of the wonderful film, 'Dr. Strangelove.' We now see them on CNN, snarling away at President Trump. ..."
"... Speaking of far right generals, one is also reminded of the brilliant film, `Seven Days in May,' in which a cabal of generals tries to overthrow the president because of a peace deal he made with Moscow. Could there be a real plot against the president? Watching US TV one might think so. ..."
"... Now, completing the childish 'Reds Under Our Beds' hysteria comes the final touch, the evil Russian temptress-spy who managed to infiltrate the National Prayer Breakfast, of all silly things. This dangerous Jezebel is now in the hands of the FBI. If this is the best KGB or GRU can come up with they need urgent help from Congolese intelligence. ..."
Comedy? Disaster? Mental disorder? Hearing loss? Even days after President Donald Trump's bizarre appearance in Moscow alongside
a cool, composed President Vladimir Putin, it's hard to tell what happened. But it certainly was entertaining. In case anyone in
the universe missed this event, let me recap. Trump met in private with Putin, which drove bureaucrats on both sides crazy. So far,
Trump won't reveal most of what was said between the two leaders.
But after the presidential meeting, Trump replied to reporters' questions by saying he believed Russia had no role in attempts
to bug the Democratic Party during the election. Outrage erupted across the US. 'Trump trusts the Russians more than his own intelligence
agencies' went up the howl. Trump is a traitor, charged certain of the wilder Democrats and neocon Republicans. Few Americans wanted
to hear the truth.
In fact, so intense was the outrage at home that Trump had to backtrack and claim he had misspoken. Yes, he admitted, the
Russians had meddled in the US election. But then he seemed to back away again from this claim.
The whole thing was black comedy. Maybe it was due to Trump's poor hearing or to jet lag and travel fatigue.
Hillary Clinton did not lose the election due to Russian conniving. She lost it because so many Americans disliked and mistrusted
her. When the truth about her rigging of the Democratic primary emerged, she deftly diverted attention by claiming the Russians had
rigged the election. What chutzpah (nerve).
Yet many Americans swallowed this canard. If Russia's GRU military intelligence was really involved in the run-up to the election,
as US intelligence reportedly claimed, it's alleged buying of social media amounted to peanuts and hardly swung the election.
Back in the 1940's, GRU managed to penetrate and influence Roosevelt's White House. Now that's real espionage. Not some junior
officers and 20-somethings on a laptop in Moscow.
Besides, compared to US meddling in foreign politics, whatever the Ruskis did in the US was small potatoes. Prying into US
political and military secrets is precisely what Russian intelligence was supposed to do. Particularly when the US Democratic Party
was pushing a highly aggressive policy towards Russia that might lead to war.
For the US to accuse Russia of meddling is the ultimate pot calling the kettle black. The neocon former US Assistant Secretary
of State, Victoria Nuland, admitted her organization had spent $5 billion to overthrow Ukraine's pro-Russian government. US undercover
political and financial operations have recently been active in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia,
Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, to name but a few nations.
Democrats and Republican neocons are in full-throat hysteria over an alleged Russian threat – Russia, whose total military budget
is smaller than Trump's recent Pentagon budget increase this year.
What we have been seeing is the fascinating spectacle of America's war party and neocons clamoring to oust President Trump. Included
in their ranks are most of the US media, led by the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and TV's war parties, CNN and
NBC.
It's also clear that Trump's most ardent foes are the big US intelligence agencies whose mammoth $78 billion combined budget exceeds
total Russian military spending. The bloated US intelligence industry fears that Trump may slash its budgets, power and perks.
The uproar over Putin has revealed just how fanatic and far to the right were the heads of the US national security state
operating under the sugarcoating of the Obama administration. Straight out of the wonderful film, 'Dr. Strangelove.' We now see them
on CNN, snarling away at President Trump.
Speaking of far right generals, one is also reminded of the brilliant film, `Seven Days in May,' in which a cabal of generals
tries to overthrow the president because of a peace deal he made with Moscow. Could there be a real plot against the president? Watching
US TV one might think so.
Now, completing the childish 'Reds Under Our Beds' hysteria comes the final touch, the evil Russian temptress-spy who managed
to infiltrate the National Prayer Breakfast, of all silly things. This dangerous Jezebel is now in the hands of the FBI. If this
is the best KGB or GRU can come up with they need urgent help from Congolese intelligence.
"... I do think the credit for this goes to the Clinton campaign, the "intelligence" agencies, the neoconlib biparty and individuals like McCain, who have gone to McCarthyism lengths since before the GOP primaries ended to prevent Trump from attempting *any* change of the status quo on foreign policy. Granted, the man might be ineffectual no matter what, but we will never know. The US establishment and the retainers of the war profiteering classes have made any negotiations with Russia impossible long before Trump even announced his campaign. ..."
"... it is the unholy alliance of Democrats looking for an excuse for them losing the election and Cold War hawk neocons who have Russia-hate in their DNA (and their stock portfolios)). ..."
"... The embarrassment was the reaction in the MSM showcasing how they are now CIA state run media. They trot out former high ranking CIA officers now employed by them recycling every meme to reinforce that we are the forces goodness and light and anyone strong enough to oppose us is evil. ..."
"Trump has made it politically impossible to pursue that goal in the near term."
I do think the credit for this goes to the Clinton campaign, the "intelligence" agencies,
the neoconlib biparty and individuals like McCain, who have gone to McCarthyism lengths since
before the GOP primaries ended to prevent Trump from attempting *any* change of the status
quo on foreign policy. Granted, the man might be ineffectual no matter what, but we will
never know. The US establishment and the retainers of the war profiteering classes have made
any negotiations with Russia impossible long before Trump even announced his campaign.
We also should not forget to credit the GOP for test-driving the whole "weak on Russia"
playbook during the Obama years.
I agree with b. While Trump may not be savvy enough to calibrate his engagement with Putin in
a way that would allow a proper dialogue with Russia in spite of the political backdrop in
the US, the primary blame for any failure to allow such dialogue rests for those responsible
for creating that political backdrop that makes it so difficult in the first place (hint:
it's not Trump, unless you blame him for winning the election – rather it is the unholy
alliance of Democrats looking for an excuse for them losing the election and Cold War hawk
neocons who have Russia-hate in their DNA (and their stock portfolios)).
That Putin talked up the Iran deal in the press conference makes me wonder what was said in
the one-on-one. Couldn't have pleased the Adelson/Bolton wing.
Additionally there has yet to be any actual evidence presented re significant election
interference. Indictments are accusations, not evidence.
I saw nothing particularly wrong with the press conference. I'm no Trump fan, but he was just
saying he believed Putin rather than the people who are clearly trying to bring his
administration down. Can't really blame him.
The embarrassment was the reaction in the MSM showcasing how they are now CIA state run
media.
They trot out former high ranking CIA officers now employed by them recycling every meme
to reinforce that we are the forces goodness and light and anyone strong enough to oppose us
is evil.
CNN even used Putin's dearly departed Labrador, Konni making her look like Cujo stating
that Putin use her to terrorize Angela Merkel. A U.S. Congressman fumed that the 50,000
children died in Syria because this fiend supported Assad when Syria was about to be
liberated (a number suspiciously close to the true number of Yemeni children we helped to
kill). These are just two random examples in a very long day. It was
a show worthy of the priests of Baal who confronted Elijah.
As flawed as Trump may be, he is merely holding up a mirror to what we have become. Had we
elected a conventional candidate it would just be business as usual with these seething
hatreds buried just below the surface.
No one better suggest that we should tarnish ourselves talking to the likes of a Russian
leader unless we are discussing terms of surrender. We want Yeltsin or maybe Medvedev.
All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their
minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but those dreamers of the day are dangerous
men for they act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
– T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
How the Neocon Dream for Everlasting Hegemony Turned America Into a Nightmare
Few Americans today understand how the United States came to be owned by a London-backed
neoconservative/right-wing alliance that grew out of the institutional turmoil of the
post-Vietnam era. Even fewer understand how its internal mission to maintain the remnants of
the old British Empire gradually overcame American democracy and replaced it with a "national
security" bureaucracy of its own design. We owe the blueprint of that plan to James Burnham , Trotskyist, OSS
man and architect of the neoconservative movement whose exposition of the
Formal and the Real in his 1943 The Modern
Machiavellians justified the rise of the oligarch and the absolute rule of their
managerial elite. But Americans would be shocked to find that our current political nightmare
came to power with the willing consent and cooperation of President James Earl Carter and his
National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski; aided by intelligence agencies in Europe and the
Middle East.
A straight line can be drawn between today's political hysteria and the 1970s era of
right-wing Soviet hysteria as Russia stands accused of "meddling" in American democracy.
The merits of those charges have been discussed in depth elsewhere. According to the dean
of American intelligence scholars Loch K. Johnson as reported in the
New York Times , the United States has done extensive meddling in other nation's
elections.
And then there is that hidden "meddler" behind the meddling; Britain. The extent of British
meddling in American politics – at least since – the beginning of the 20
th century would shock even the most devout cheerleaders of ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele and his
"dirty dossier". In a case reminiscent of America's current hysteria over Russia, British
intelligence even meddled with its own government back in the mid-1970s when right-wing
elements of the military plotted a coup d' etat of Labor
Prime Minister Harold Wilson based on information generated by their own disinformation
campaign about Soviet influence. The 1917 Zimmerman telegram and the creation of the British
Security Coordination in 1940 directly intervened in American politics on behalf of Britain.
But the 1970 Creation of the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) by British secret agent
Brian Crozier marked a key turning point in the transformation of officially sanctioned
propaganda.
As presented by Edward Herman and Gerry O' Sullivan in their 1989 study, The
Terrorism Industry, "The London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC)
provides an especially well-documented case study of the use of a purportedly 'independent'
institute as a front for propaganda operations of hidden intelligence agency and corporate
sponsors." The purpose of ISC was to give discredited right-wing, anti-Communist and anti-union
clichés in Britain the cover of legitimacy. The "Institute" got off to a quick start in
the U.S. by forging an alliance with the National
Strategy Information Center, NSIC a right-wing neoconservative think tank founded by Frank
Barnett, William Casey and Joseph Coors in 1962. ISC's first major triumph came in
collaboration with the ultra-right-wing Pinay Cercle when Crozier and his
protégé Robert
Moss produced an ISC Special Report attacking the legitimacy of détente with the
Soviet Union called European Security and the Soviet Problem . The study, financed by
the Pinay group made no bones about its "Soviet problem" actually being the old "Russia
problem" that European Imperialists had been hoping to solve since Napoleon's disastrous march
on Moscow in 1812.
As a devoted acolyte of
James Burnham , Crozier brought to his secret world of rightwing businessmen, intelligence,
police and military officials a strategic plan to use the media to move the West'sdemocracies
to the ideological right by fabricating threats of Communist subversion. Determined to
undermine détente, Antoine Pinay was so delighted with Crozier's
double-speak he presented the study in person to President Nixon and Henry Kissinger and by
1975 the group was staged to make their move on Washington. Less than two months before the
fall of Saigon, the US Committee of the ISC (USISC) was launched which would act as the parent
body of the Washington Institute for the Study of Conflict (WISC).
In the vacuum created by Vietnam Crozier and Pinay's extremism was no longer viewed as
extreme. Despite the public scandal over the CIA's use of Crozier's Forum World Features as a London-based
fake news service, Washington elites were rolling out the red carpet to welcome them, including
Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Ball . Under Ball's
Chairmanship WISC appeared a veritable who's who of high-level ex-CIA, neoconservative and
right-wing influencers. From Georgetown University came WISC's first President James
Thebergewhosebooks on Soviet influence in the Caribbean – helped provide the pretexts for
overthrowing Chile's legitimately elected leftist president Salvador Allende. And then there
was Richard Pipes , the
anti-Soviet history professor from Harvard University, who would soon be hand-picked to lead a
neoconservative attack on the CIA known as Team B.
In the
words of Lawrence J. Korb , a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and
assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985, Pipes and the Team B were the real reason for
the intelligence failures represented by 9/11 because of their biases and unbalanced judgement.
But in the end the Team B view gainedinfluence. With the appointment of fellow WISC member
Zbigniew Brzezinski as President Carter's national security advisor, British intelligence agent
Brian Crozier's plan tosubvert the détente process with the Soviet Union was complete.
Crozier'sbelief "[T]hat the entire security apparatus of the United States was in a state of
near collapse," provoked yet another move to interfere in American politics. His solution was a
secret off-the books "Private Sector Intelligence agency, beholden to no government, but at the
disposal of allied or friendly governments for certain tasks which, for one reason or another,
they were no longer able to tackle " including "[S]ecret counter-subversion operations in any
country in which such actions were deemed feasible." Brian Crozier and Zbigniew Brzezinski were of one mind when
it came to disbelieving in "mutual coexistence" or power-sharing with the Soviet Union and
Brzezinski's membership in WISC proved it. Thanks to WISC member Richard Pipes and the Team B,
Brzezinski could now bring Britain's radical right-wing formula for social change right into
the Oval Office.
Brzezinski devised astructure that channeled all executive decisions into two committees,
the Policy Review Committee (PRC) and the Special Coordination Committee (SCC) chairedby him.
Carter thenelevated the national security advisor to cabinet level and the palace coup was
complete. As recalled by the neoconservative author David J.
Rothkopf in Charles Gati's 2013 book ZBIG , "It
was a bureaucratic first strike of the first order. The system essentially gave responsibility
for the most important and sensitive issues to Brzezinski."
Another operation initiated by Brzezinski in 1977 was the Nationalities Working
Group (NWG) , dedicated to inflaming ethnic tensions among the Islamic populations of the
South Asia region. Brzezinski then continued on into nuclear policy where he altered the SALT
structure and then rigged the negotiations against Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. With
Brzezinski expanding nuclear targeting options from 25,000 to 40,000 andcovert action teams
sabotaging behind Soviet lines from early 1977 onward the message was clear; SALT and
Détente were getting ripped up as well as the very assumptions both were based on.
By 1978, Brzezinski's plan to use China as a weapon against the Soviets was playing out in
Afghanistan. The April, 1978 Marxist coup against the King's cousin, Mohammed Daoud played into
Brzezinski's "predictions" of a Sovietplan to incorporate Persia and South Central Asia into
the Soviet sphere and ultimately take-over The Middle East. Vance rejected Brzezinski's
argument. The coup had caught both the Soviets and the State Department by surprise and the
coup leader, Hafizullah Amin raised doubts on both sides of the fence as an unpredictable agent
provocateur. Amin had taken money from the CIA and headed up the Afghan Student Association at
a time when it was being used as a CIA recruitment
tool for future Third World leaders.Amin was now one of those leaders and Vance was sending
a tough and savvy American Ambassador to Kabul named Adolph "Spike" Dubs to deal with him. The
outcome would change the world and end in tragedy for all.
In an interview we conducted in 1993 with
Selig Harrison –former Washington Post foreign correspondent and Carnegie Endowment
Senior Associate–Ambassador Dubs came to Kabul in the summer of 1978 with amission: Bring
Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin over to the American side and keep the Russians out. President
Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski had engineered a grander mission:
Pressure Amin to draw the Soviets in through destabilization and then keep them tied down and
give them their own Vietnam. By the time Ambassador Dubs arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan had
become ground zero for a long anticipated anti-Soviet destabilization campaign organized
byBrzezinski and carried out by an off the books intelligence operation known as the Safari Club . The "club"represented
the true essence of the CIA ethos; an autonomous covert action organization with global reach,
beyond the jurisdiction of American oversight and responsible to no one. A spinoff of the
right-wing Pinay
Cercle , the Safari Club had been active informally in the Middle East and Africa for
years. But the club found its true calling following Watergate and the Church Committee
hearings on 30 years of CIA coups, cover-ups and assassinations. Managed by France's Count
Alexandre de Marenches chief of French external intelligence, the club included the Shah of
Iran, King Hassan II of Morocco, President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt, Kamal Adham, head of
intelligence for Saudi Arabian King Faisal and Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. More to the
point, by 1976 the Safari Club had become the real CIA, covertly funded by Saudi
Arabia's chief of intelligence Kamal Adham through the
Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) and run out of the U.S. embassy in
Tehran.
Brzezinski, Afghanistan and the End of Emperors
"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. "
– Napoleon Bonaparte during his retreat from Russia
According to one-time CNN Special Assignment investigator Joe Trento in his 2005 exposé
Prelude To
Terror , Saudi Arabia's chief of intelligence Kamal Adham worked alongside the
Bank of Commerce and Credit International , BCCI's founder Agha Hasan Abedi to expand the
very concept of covert action by using BCCI to merge the Safari Club with "every major
terrorist, rebel, and underground organization in the world." A 2001 Time magazine report found
that the bank functioned as "a vast, stateless, multinational corporation that deploys its own
intelligence agency, complete with paramilitary wing and enforcement units, known collectively
as the 'black network:'"that wouldbribe or assassinate anyone to turn Afghanistan into the
place to trap the Soviet Union in their own Vietnam.
Uninformed of the Safari Club's activities, America's ambassador proceeded to meet with Amin
throughout the fall of 1978 and into the winter of 1979 often in secretmeetings.But
Brzezinski's ongoing destabilization, his military relationship with the Chinese and Amin's
antagonism toward the Russians was making life for Dubs increasingly dangerous. He grew alarmed
by Amin's provocative behavior and demanded to know from his CIA station chief whether he was
employed by them. He was told no, but by then Afghan rebels were openly training in Pakistan
and China's Xinjiang province. In addition there was what Joe Trento called the CIA's
Saudi-funded stockpile of misfits and malcontents manning the Safari Club's 1,500-strong army
of assassins and enforcers. And last but not least were Chinese-backed Maoist factions
Setam-i Melli, Sholah Jaweed and SAMA
programmed by Beijing to bring down their Afghan oppressor, Hafizullah Amin. Thanks to Saudi
Intelligence chief Kamal Adham and BCCI banker,
Agha Hasan Abedi , there were ample incentives for a holy jihad against Russia.
Afghanistan offered the opportunity for BCCI to migrate the lucrative heroin business from
Southeast Asia to the Pakistani/Afghan border under the protectionof Western intelligence
agencies.President Carter supported Brzezinski's cross-border raids into Soviet territory. He
also sanctioned Brzezinski's plan to use Afghanistan to lure the Soviet Union into its own
Vietnam; which he lied to the public about when they fell into the trap on December 27, 1979.
Joseph Trento
writes , "Carter may in fact have signed his directive in July 1979, but the Safari Club's
Islamic fighters had been taunting Moscow into invading for nearly a year before that."
By January 1979 the newly unstable region wasbecoming the primary financing source for a
terrorist campaign that would spread around the world.But while Dubs was pleading that
destabilization would provoke direct Soviet intervention, Brzezinski was promoting armed
opposition.
That same month, Brzezinski's NSC director of South Asian affairs, Thomas P. Thornton,
arrived in Kabul to shut Dubs down, yet Dubs continued his mission.Between Dubs' arrival in
July of 1978 and the fall of the Shah on January 16, 1979 American policy in Iran, China and
Afghanistan had shifted into the hands ofthe Pinay Cercle's right-wing cabal. Run by a
consortium of intelligence influencers, the decades-long geopolitical plan to move the United
States into alignment with the Pinay Cercle's old European right-wing was
nearing completion.
By mid-February the Shah had fallen and the Afghan countryside was in open revolt. The
Marxist regime of Hafizullah Amin was demanding military assistance from Moscow and the only
man left to hold back Soviet retaliation wasAmbassadorDubs. But on the morning of February 14,
1979 Dubs himself would become the vehicle for the very outcome he had gone to Kabul to prevent
when four men abducted him on his way to work and brought him to the Kabul Hotel.Three hours
later the ambassador would die in a shootout that has been described as a botched rescue
attempt.
The subsequent debate in Washington focused mainly on blaming the Soviets with unnamed "U.S.
congressional sources" claiming "the Russians had wanted Dubs to die." But as described in an
interview conducted for
Washingtonian Magazine in 2017 with Bruce Flatin, the political counselor dispatched
by the U.S. embassy to the hotel that morning, the whole affair just didn't make sense;
unless the kidnapping wasn't intended as a kidnapping and Dubs' unfortunate death
wasn't the result of a botched rescue attempt, but was part of a Safari Club operation to
remove the last obstacle to their plan. At a
1995 Nobel Symposium on the causes of the Afghan war – in the presence of former CIA
director Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former Director of Soviet affairs at the National
Security Council, General William Odom and dozens of former high-level officials – the
leading Russian authority, General Alexander Lyakhovsky
suggested the existence of a cover up. "Dubs was seen in the company of those same people who
kidnapped him later in the same hotel -- in the same room -- the day before they kidnapped
him . And then later Dubs was in his car, with a travel case. He stopped his car when
those same people who he saw the day before ordered him to stop, as if they were known to
him."
No one has ever suggested the existence of anon-governmental agency in the death of Adolph
Dubs. But the Safari Club's anti-Communist agenda had been brought directly into the White
House with Brzezinskiin 1977 and it had been active in Afghanistan long before February 14,
1979. If ever there was an opportunity for their 1,500-strong "black network" of CIA misfits,
malcontents, assassins and enforcers to act on Brzezinski's agenda to lure the Soviets into
their own Vietnam,it was at room 117 of the Kabul Hotel on February 14, 1979.
The
kidnapping and assassination of Ambassador Adolph Dubs ended any meaningful effort by the
U.S. to prevent a Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. The death was employed
however from that day forward by Brzezinski as the opportunity to increase the level of
provocation for luring the Soviets into their own
"Vietnam quagmire" and keeping them pinned down for as long as possible. Because of Dubs'
death, Brzezinski got control of foreign policy; got his hard line neoconservative policy
toward the Soviet Union pushed through, ended support for détente once and for all and
put Strategic Arms Limitation on hold.
Continuing his coup d'état, Brzezinski proceeded with plans for
theradicaltransformation of America's nuclear doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction –
MAD into one of nuclear "war-fighting"
through a series of Presidential Directives. But the real irony of the Carter presidency was
that his greatest success – the U.S- Egypt-Israeli peace treaty – was also arranged
by the Safari Club . The
death of Ambassador Dubs, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
late December 1979 doomed Carter's reelection to failure. Afghanistan was soon to become the
self-fulfilling prophecyof Soviet iniquity that the right-wing had been trying to create for
decades;a permanent, ongoing crisis in U.S.-Soviet relations which it had precipitated and then
claimed to uncover and respond to. Brian Crozier's "ultimate sophistication of subversion" got
its candidate Ronald Reagan elected in 1980 while completing the London-backed
neoconservative/right-wing takeover of the American government. And they would never give it
back.
The pattern and the profile of events parading across our screens today mirrors the pattern
and profile of events engineered in the late 1970s by a London-backed
neoconservative/right-wing alliancewhich paralleled the pattern and the profile of the late
1940s and the genesis of the Cold War. The United States, Britain and their post-World War II
European creation, the EU continue to manufacture issues with which to demonize Russia as they
once demonized the Soviet Union. But in the end, the goal set out by the Pinay Cercle and
implemented during the Carter administration can only
be said to have failed .
In his 1997 book
The Grand Chessboard , Zbigniew Brzezinski saw the United States "as the sole and,
indeed, first truly global power" using France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine as "The Democratic
Bridgehead for projecting into Eurasia the international democratic collective order." Yet even
as the United States began to flex its unchallenged global power the ethnic flaw undergirding
Brzezinski's motives began to show.
When asked the real reason why the United States had taken such a hard line toward the
Soviet Union on Afghanistanat the
1995 Nobel Symposium , President Carter's CIA Director
Stansfield Turner replied the responsibility could only be located in one individual.
"Brzezinski's name comes up here every five minutes; but nobody has as yet mentioned that he is
a Pole," Turner said, implying that it was ethnic hatred of Russia that had propelled his
policy against the Soviet Union; not just geopolitics. Yet anybody who knew Brzezinski at the
time knew that is exactly what he was doing, but they had all looked the other way.
The year before he died Brzezinskidelivered a profound revelation in an article titled
"Toward a
Global Realignment" warning that "the United States is still the world's politically,
economically, and militarily most powerful entity, but given complex geopolitical shifts in
regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power ." Zbigniew Brzezinski
had expected Poland to be at the center of America's conquest of Eurasia. But after years of
American missteps he realized his dream would never be. Though unapologetic at using his
imperial hubris to lure the Soviets into Afghanistan, he did not expect his own beloved
American Empire to fall into the same trap and ultimately lived long enough to see that in the
end, his use of imperial power had won him only a Pyrrhic victory.
"... While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War. Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. ..."
"... Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of "we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!" ..."
"... "Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures." ..."
"... Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs. The American people just have no say in the matter. ..."
"... Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians ..."
"... Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering (Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there. ..."
"... I'll go a step further and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. ..."
"... It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it. ..."
"... What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished." ..."
"... The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its people. ..."
We have no choice. The 17-year war in Afghanistan has failed at every level, while the violence is only
getting worse.
Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is
instructing
its senior diplomats
to begin seeking "direct talks with the Taliban." It's a
measure that would have been unthinkable at the start of the Afghanistan war yet today it's long overdue. Despite the
criticism it's elicited, such talks offer the best chance of ending America's longest and most futile war.
While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military
operations in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how
to end the fighting on military terms.
Possibly the biggest impediment to ending the war has been the definition of the word
"win." General
Stanley McChrystal
said in 2009 that winning in
Afghanistan meant "reversing the perceived momentum" of the Taliban, "seek[ing] rapid growth of Afghan national security
forces," and "tackl[ing] the issue of predatory corruption by some" Afghan officials.
Nine full years and zero successes later, however, Lieutenant General Austin S.
Miller, latest in line to command U.S. troops in Afghanistan, defined as America's "core goal" at his
confirmation hearing
that "terrorists can never again use Afghanistan as a
safe haven to threaten the United States."
The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that
these objectives
can't be militarily accomplished.
Predicating an end to the war on such is to guarantee perpetual failure. A major course correction is therefore in
order.
Keeping 15,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan does not,
in any way
, prevent terror attacks against the
United States from originating there -- and for this lack of success we will pay at least
$45 billion
this year alone. The real solution
is therefore to withdraw our troops as quickly as can be safely accomplished rather than throw more of them into a
fruitless conflict.
I personally observed in 2011 during my second combat deployment in Afghanistan that
even with 140,000 U.S. and NATO boots on the ground, there were still vast swaths of the country that were ungoverned
and off-limits to allied troops.
Meaning, at no point since October 2001 has American military power prevented
Afghanistan from having ungoverned spaces. What
has
kept us safe, however -- and will continue to keep us safe -- has been our robust, globally
focused
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that work in concert with the CIA, FBI, and local law
enforcement to defend our borders from external attack.
Many pundits claim that if the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan then chaos
will reign there -- and that is almost certainly true. But that's how we found Afghanistan, that's how it is today,
and -- wholly irrespective of when or under what conditions the U.S. leaves -- that's how it will be long into the future
until Afghans themselves come to an accommodation.
The question U.S. policymakers need to ask is which is more important to American
interests: the maintenance of a perpetually costly war that fails to prevent any future attacks, or ending America's
participation in that war?
Continuing to fight for a country that can't be won cements a policy that has drained
the U.S. of vital resources, spilled the blood of American service members to no effect, and dissipated the Armed Forces'
ability to defend against potentially existential threats later on -- while in the meantime not diminishing the threat of
international terrorism. To strengthen our national security, we must end the enduring policy of failure by prudently
and effectively ending our military mission.
While the fundamentals of a withdrawal plan are relatively straightforward, they would
still be met by considerable opposition. One of the arguments against leaving was voiced by McChrystal nine years ago
when
he pleaded
with the American public to "show resolve" because "uncertainty
disheartens our allies [and] emboldens our foe." Yet the facts can't be denied any longer: for all eight years of the
Obama administration and the first 500 days of Trump's tenure, we maintained that "resolve" and were rewarded with an
unequivocal deterioration of the war.
Since McChrystal's admonition to maintain the status quo, the Taliban have exploded in
strength to
reportedly 77,000
, more territory is now in the
hands of the insurgents than at
any point since 2001
, the Afghan government
remains one of the
most corrupt regimes
on the planet, and
civilian casualties in the first half of 2018 are the
highest ever recorded
.
The only way this permanent failure ends is if President Trump shows the courage he
has sometimes demonstrated to push back against the Washington establishment. That means ignoring the status quo that
holds our security hostage, ending the war, and redeploying our troops. Without that resolve, we can count on continued
failure in Afghanistan. With it, American security will be strengthened and readiness improved.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments. Follow him on Twitter
@DanielLDavis1
.
While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War.
Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. The only way these wars of choice will ever end is
when Congress has the balls to cut off funding. Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these
wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures. Military madness indeed.
Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of
"we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!"
If Trump were going to leave, he
should have done so soon after taking office. At least then he could blame his predecessors.
The financial security of the National Security State and its suppliers now depends on no war ever ending or
being won. The new definition of defeat is having any war end. As long as it continues, that war is being won.
"Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to
re-build our country infrastructures."
Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the
war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs.
The American people just have no say in the matter.
There is only one reason why the USA is still in Afghanistan that makes sense (all the official reasons are an
insult to ones intelligence), it borders on Iran and thus serves as a means to open a new front against Iran.
The more the US pushes for war against Iran, the more this seems correct.
"Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is instructing its senior diplomats to begin seeking
"direct talks with the Taliban."
I have to give my Jr High response here:
"Well, duh."
__________________
"While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military operations in
Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks . . ."
Yeah . . . no.
1. They manipulated the game to make what was a crime an act of war to justify the an unnecessary,
unethical, and strategically unwise invasion. I remain now where I was 14 years ago -- bad decision in every
way.
2. It was even a poor decision based on reason for war. To utterly bend the will of the opponent to conform
to the will of the US. it is possible to win. But to do so would require such massive force, brutality and
will.
3. 9/11 was a simple criminal act, despite the damage. As a crime we should have sought extradition, and or
small team FBI and special forces operations to a small footprint in either capturing, and or if need be
killing Osama bin Laden and company.
Nothing that has occurred since 9/11 provides evidence that the invasion was either justified or effective.
It will if the end game is to quit be one of three losses suffered by the US.
They are: War of 1812
Iraq
Afghanistan
" . . . it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how to end the fighting on military
terms."
Sure leave. Though talking so as to avert whole slaughter of those that aided the US is the decent thing to
do.
Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation
Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians
Solving USA problems in Afghanistan an at the same time pushing for war with Iran is by definition classic
oxymoron. Afghanistan's problems can only be solved with cooperation and understanding with Iran. Conflict of
the USA with Iran will extend indefinitely the suffering of the Afghanis and the eventual lose of the
Afghanistan and Iran to the Russia. Always reigniting and keeping on the front burner the conflict with Iran by
the USA is exactly what Russia and V. Putin want. I can't see any other politicians except D. Trump, B.
Netanyahu and American 'conservatives' for the advancement of the Russia's goals in the Middle East and in the
globalistan. These are the new XXI century 'useful (adjective)'.
Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering
(Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there.
I'll go a step further
and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not
even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. This
should have been a dirty knife fight in all the back alleys of the world, but we responded to the sucker punch
as our attackers intended; getting into a brawl with somebody else in the same bar; eventually, with more than
one somebody else.
It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it.
Indeed, but as others have commented, the entire point of the Afghanistan war is that it is pointless. It can
suck up enormous amounts of money, and generate incredible profits for politically connected defense
contractors – and because Afghanistan is in fact pointless, it doesn't matter if all of that money is wasted or
stolen, how could you tell? The vested interest in these winless pointless foreign wars means that they will
continue until the American economy finally collapses – and anyone who opposes these wars is a fascist, a
Russian stooge, "literally Hitler." Because money.
Thank you for this. I am very surprised to learn that Trump is pursuing this, given his pugilistic nature. I
hope he does in fact, get us the hell out of there. He may be, like Nixon, the one who is politically able to
make this smart move. Can you imagine the Republican outrage if Obama had tried a diplomatic exit from this
sand trap?
We can still be proud of what we attempted to do there. A few years post-9/11, an Afghan colleague of mine
who had come to the US as a boy said, "9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan." He meant that
rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US would do, we
poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads, etc.
"He meant that rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US
would do, we poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads,
etc."
And we could have done a lot more if we had not invaded. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11.
The achievable operational level Military objectives in the Afghan war were accomplished in the first year; The
Taliban were out of power and hiding in Pakistan and the Afghans had a somewhat benevolent government that
wanted to guarantee security an property and a measure of individual liberty.
What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous
terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and
Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished."
This has been particularly true with the intense guerrilla actions enabled by the Pakistanis who have a
vested interest in an unstable Afghanistan.
I believe the noble goals 'might' have been doable – but it would have required a level of effort, and more
importantly a 'cultural confidence' on par with the Roman Empire of the 2nd Century to pull it off. That is no
longer us.
"9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan"? I bet none of his family members died or suffered.
Probably they are all living in the US. Are we supposed to feel proud that instead of carpet bombing and
killing millions our war killed only a hundred thousand?
Sadly, Kent, I do know people who still claim that our continued presence in Afghanistan is a good thing. Some
of these are otherwise fairly bright people, so I really can't comprehend why they continue to buy into this
idiocy.
Afghanistan must be Afghanistan and the US must be the US; this is such a simple tautology. If the US leaves,
Afghanistan will become what ever it can for its own reasons and options. If the US stays, it will be for the
US' reasons, not for the Afghans.
The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan
actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic
demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its
people.
"... Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned. ..."
"... Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing nothing but a trench coat. ..."
"... The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges recently noted , "The most basic constitutional rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security." ..."
"... This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious). ..."
"... According to Deloitte's Shift Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years. ..."
"... Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms. ..."
Our society should've collapsed by now. You know that, right?
No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a "Star
Wars" movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans
can't afford a $500 emergency
. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now
worth a record $141 billion . He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than
he could ever spend on himself.
Worldwide,
one in
10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has?
193 million years . (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our
current world or even just our nation.
So shouldn't there be riots in the streets every day? Shouldn't it all be collapsing? Look outside. The streets aren't on fire.
No one is running naked and screaming (usually). Does it look like everyone's going to work at gunpoint? No. We're all choosing to
continue on like this.
Why?
Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched,
like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned.
I'm going to cover eight of them. There are more than eight. There are probably hundreds. But I'm going to cover eight because
(A) no one reads a column titled "Hundreds of Myths of American Society," (B) these are the most important ones and (C) we all have
other shit to do.
Myth No. 8 -- We have a democracy.
If you think we still have a democracy or a democratic republic, ask yourself this: When was the last time Congress did something
that the people of America supported that did not align with corporate interests? You probably can't do it. It's like trying to think
of something that rhymes with "orange." You feel like an answer exists but then slowly realize it doesn't. Even the Carter Center
and former President Jimmy Carter believe that America has been
transformed into
an oligarchy : A small, corrupt elite control the country with almost no input from the people. The rulers need the myth that
we're a democracy to give us the illusion of control.
Myth No. 7 -- We have an accountable and legitimate voting system.
Gerrymandering, voter purging, data mining, broken exit polling, push polling, superdelegates, electoral votes, black-box machines,
voter ID suppression, provisional ballots, super PACs, dark money, third parties banished from the debates and two corporate parties
that stand for the same goddamn pile of fetid crap!
What part of this sounds like a legitimate election system?
No, we have what a large Harvard study called the
worst election system in the Western world . Have you ever seen where a parent has a toddler in a car seat, and the toddler has
a tiny, brightly colored toy steering wheel so he can feel like he's driving the car? That's what our election system is -- a toy
steering wheel. Not connected to anything. We all sit here like infants, excitedly shouting, "I'm steeeeering !"
And I know it's counterintuitive, but that's why you have to vote. We have to vote in such numbers that we beat out what's stolen
through our ridiculous rigged system.
Myth No. 6 -- We have an independent media that keeps the rulers accountable.
Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard
on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to
rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the
myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing
nothing but a trench coat.
Myth No. 5 -- We have an independent judiciary.
The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions
of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges
recently noted , "The most basic constitutional
rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret
evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security."
If you're not part of the monied class, you're pressured into releasing what few rights you have left. According to
The New
York Times , "97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty
in exchange for a lesser sentence."
That's the name of the game. Pressure people of color and poor people to just take the plea deal because they don't have a million
dollars to spend on a lawyer. (At least not one who doesn't advertise on beer coasters.)
Myth No. 4 -- The police are here to protect you. They're your friends .
That's funny. I don't recall my friend pressuring me into sex to get out of a speeding ticket. (Which is essentially still
legal in 32
states .)
The police in our country are primarily designed to do two things: protect the property of the rich and perpetrate the completely
immoral war on drugs -- which by definition is a war on our own people .
We lock up more people than
any other country on earth
. Meaning the land of the free is the largest prison state in the world. So all these droopy-faced politicians and rabid-talking
heads telling you how awful China is on human rights or Iran or North Korea -- none of them match the numbers of people locked up
right here under Lady Liberty's skirt.
Myth No. 3 -- Buying will make you happy.
This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a
tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because
most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then
flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious).
If we're lucky, we'll make enough money during the week to afford enough beer on the weekend to help it all make sense. (I find
it takes at least four beers for everything to add up.) But that doesn't truly bring us fulfillment. So what now? Well, the ads say
buying will do it. Try to smother the depression and desperation under a blanket of flat-screen TVs, purses and Jet Skis. Now does
your life have meaning? No? Well, maybe you have to drive that Jet Ski a little faster! Crank it up until your bathing suit flies
off and you'll feel alive !
The dark truth is that we have to believe the myth that consuming is the answer or else we won't keep running around the wheel.
And if we aren't running around the wheel, then we start thinking, start asking questions. Those questions are not good for the ruling
elite, who enjoy a society based on the daily exploitation of 99 percent of us.
Myth No. 2 -- If you work hard, things will get better.
According to Deloitte's Shift
Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their
lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years.
Ask yourself what we're working for. To make money? For what? Almost none of us are doing jobs for survival anymore. Once upon
a time, jobs boiled down to:
I plant the food -- >I eat the food -- >If I don't plant food = I die.
But nowadays, if you work at a café -- will someone die if they don't get their super-caf-mocha-frap-almond-piss-latte? I kinda
doubt they'll keel over from a blueberry scone deficiency.
If you work at Macy's, will customers perish if they don't get those boxer briefs with the sweat-absorbent-ass fabric? I doubt
it. And if they do die from that, then their problems were far greater than you could've known. So that means we're all working to
make other people rich because we have a society in which we have to work. Technological advancements can do most everything that
truly must get done.
So if we wanted to, we could get rid of most work and have tens of thousands of more hours to enjoy our lives. But we're not doing
that at all. And no one's allowed to ask these questions -- not on your mainstream airwaves at least. Even a half-step like universal
basic income is barely discussed because it doesn't compute with our cultural programming.
Scientists say it's quite possible artificial intelligence will take away
all human jobs in 120 years . I think they know that will
happen because bots will take the jobs and then realize that 80 percent of them don't need to be done! The bots will take over and
then say, "Stop it. Stop spending a seventh of your life folding shirts at Banana Republic."
One day, we will build monuments to the bot that told us to enjoy our lives and leave the shirts wrinkly.
And this leads me to the largest myth of our American society.
Myth No. 1 -- You are free.
... ... ...
Try sleeping in your car for more than a few hours without being harassed by police.
Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms.
Try signing up for the military because you need college money and then one day just walking off the base, going, "Yeah, I was
bored. Thought I would just not do this anymore."
Try explaining to Kentucky Fried Chicken that while you don't have the green pieces of paper they want in exchange for the mashed
potatoes, you do have some pictures you've drawn on a napkin to give them instead.
Try using the restroom at Starbucks without buying something while black.
We are less free than a dog on a leash. We live in one of the hardest-working, most unequal societies on the planet with more
billionaires than ever .
Meanwhile,
Americans
supply 94 percent of the paid blood used worldwide. And it's almost exclusively coming from very poor people. This abusive vampire
system is literally sucking the blood from the poor. Does that sound like a free decision they made? Or does that sound like something
people do after immense economic force crushes down around them? (One could argue that sperm donation takes a little less convincing.)
Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't need guns and tear
gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for us all to buy into,
hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults.
815M people chronically malnourished according to the UN. Bezos is worth $141B.
$141B / 815M people = $173 per person. That would definitely not feed them for "multiple years". And that's only if Bezos could
fully liquidate the stock without it dropping a penny.
" Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't
need guns and tear gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for
us all to buy into, hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults. "
Seems like there's tear gas in the air and guns are going to be used soon. The myths are dying on the tongues of the liars.
Molon Labe!....and I'm usually a pacifist.
"American Society Would Collapse If It Weren't For Invasions Of Foreign Countries, Murdering Their People, Stealing Their Oil
Then Blaming Them For Making The US Do It."
Well, in a world driven by oil, it is entirely bogus to suggest that citizens have to work their asses off. That was the whole
point of the bill of goods that was sold to us in the late 70's and early 80'. More leisure time, more time for your family and
personal interests.
Except! It never happened. All they fucking did was reduce real wages and force everyone from the upper middle class down,
into a shit hole.
But, they will pay for their folly. Guaran-fucking-teed.
As one who has hoed many rows of cotton in 115F temperatures as well as picking cotton during my childhood and early adolescence
during weekends and school holidays, I concur. It was a very powerful inducement to get a good education back when schools actually
taught things and did not tolerate backtalk or guff from students instead of babysitting them. It worked, and I ended up writing
computer software for spacecraft, which was much fun than working in the fields.
"... Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned. ..."
"... Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing nothing but a trench coat. ..."
"... The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges recently noted , "The most basic constitutional rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security." ..."
"... This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious). ..."
"... According to Deloitte's Shift Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years. ..."
"... Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms. ..."
Our society should've collapsed by now. You know that, right?
No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a "Star
Wars" movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans
can't afford a $500 emergency
. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now
worth a record $141 billion . He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than
he could ever spend on himself.
Worldwide,
one in
10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has?
193 million years . (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our
current world or even just our nation.
So shouldn't there be riots in the streets every day? Shouldn't it all be collapsing? Look outside. The streets aren't on fire.
No one is running naked and screaming (usually). Does it look like everyone's going to work at gunpoint? No. We're all choosing to
continue on like this.
Why?
Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched,
like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned.
I'm going to cover eight of them. There are more than eight. There are probably hundreds. But I'm going to cover eight because
(A) no one reads a column titled "Hundreds of Myths of American Society," (B) these are the most important ones and (C) we all have
other shit to do.
Myth No. 8 -- We have a democracy.
If you think we still have a democracy or a democratic republic, ask yourself this: When was the last time Congress did something
that the people of America supported that did not align with corporate interests? You probably can't do it. It's like trying to think
of something that rhymes with "orange." You feel like an answer exists but then slowly realize it doesn't. Even the Carter Center
and former President Jimmy Carter believe that America has been
transformed into
an oligarchy : A small, corrupt elite control the country with almost no input from the people. The rulers need the myth that
we're a democracy to give us the illusion of control.
Myth No. 7 -- We have an accountable and legitimate voting system.
Gerrymandering, voter purging, data mining, broken exit polling, push polling, superdelegates, electoral votes, black-box machines,
voter ID suppression, provisional ballots, super PACs, dark money, third parties banished from the debates and two corporate parties
that stand for the same goddamn pile of fetid crap!
What part of this sounds like a legitimate election system?
No, we have what a large Harvard study called the
worst election system in the Western world . Have you ever seen where a parent has a toddler in a car seat, and the toddler has
a tiny, brightly colored toy steering wheel so he can feel like he's driving the car? That's what our election system is -- a toy
steering wheel. Not connected to anything. We all sit here like infants, excitedly shouting, "I'm steeeeering !"
And I know it's counterintuitive, but that's why you have to vote. We have to vote in such numbers that we beat out what's stolen
through our ridiculous rigged system.
Myth No. 6 -- We have an independent media that keeps the rulers accountable.
Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard
on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to
rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the
myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing
nothing but a trench coat.
Myth No. 5 -- We have an independent judiciary.
The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions
of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges
recently noted , "The most basic constitutional
rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret
evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security."
If you're not part of the monied class, you're pressured into releasing what few rights you have left. According to
The New
York Times , "97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty
in exchange for a lesser sentence."
That's the name of the game. Pressure people of color and poor people to just take the plea deal because they don't have a million
dollars to spend on a lawyer. (At least not one who doesn't advertise on beer coasters.)
Myth No. 4 -- The police are here to protect you. They're your friends .
That's funny. I don't recall my friend pressuring me into sex to get out of a speeding ticket. (Which is essentially still
legal in 32
states .)
The police in our country are primarily designed to do two things: protect the property of the rich and perpetrate the completely
immoral war on drugs -- which by definition is a war on our own people .
We lock up more people than
any other country on earth
. Meaning the land of the free is the largest prison state in the world. So all these droopy-faced politicians and rabid-talking
heads telling you how awful China is on human rights or Iran or North Korea -- none of them match the numbers of people locked up
right here under Lady Liberty's skirt.
Myth No. 3 -- Buying will make you happy.
This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a
tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because
most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then
flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious).
If we're lucky, we'll make enough money during the week to afford enough beer on the weekend to help it all make sense. (I find
it takes at least four beers for everything to add up.) But that doesn't truly bring us fulfillment. So what now? Well, the ads say
buying will do it. Try to smother the depression and desperation under a blanket of flat-screen TVs, purses and Jet Skis. Now does
your life have meaning? No? Well, maybe you have to drive that Jet Ski a little faster! Crank it up until your bathing suit flies
off and you'll feel alive !
The dark truth is that we have to believe the myth that consuming is the answer or else we won't keep running around the wheel.
And if we aren't running around the wheel, then we start thinking, start asking questions. Those questions are not good for the ruling
elite, who enjoy a society based on the daily exploitation of 99 percent of us.
Myth No. 2 -- If you work hard, things will get better.
According to Deloitte's Shift
Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their
lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years.
Ask yourself what we're working for. To make money? For what? Almost none of us are doing jobs for survival anymore. Once upon
a time, jobs boiled down to:
I plant the food -- >I eat the food -- >If I don't plant food = I die.
But nowadays, if you work at a café -- will someone die if they don't get their super-caf-mocha-frap-almond-piss-latte? I kinda
doubt they'll keel over from a blueberry scone deficiency.
If you work at Macy's, will customers perish if they don't get those boxer briefs with the sweat-absorbent-ass fabric? I doubt
it. And if they do die from that, then their problems were far greater than you could've known. So that means we're all working to
make other people rich because we have a society in which we have to work. Technological advancements can do most everything that
truly must get done.
So if we wanted to, we could get rid of most work and have tens of thousands of more hours to enjoy our lives. But we're not doing
that at all. And no one's allowed to ask these questions -- not on your mainstream airwaves at least. Even a half-step like universal
basic income is barely discussed because it doesn't compute with our cultural programming.
Scientists say it's quite possible artificial intelligence will take away
all human jobs in 120 years . I think they know that will
happen because bots will take the jobs and then realize that 80 percent of them don't need to be done! The bots will take over and
then say, "Stop it. Stop spending a seventh of your life folding shirts at Banana Republic."
One day, we will build monuments to the bot that told us to enjoy our lives and leave the shirts wrinkly.
And this leads me to the largest myth of our American society.
Myth No. 1 -- You are free.
... ... ...
Try sleeping in your car for more than a few hours without being harassed by police.
Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms.
Try signing up for the military because you need college money and then one day just walking off the base, going, "Yeah, I was
bored. Thought I would just not do this anymore."
Try explaining to Kentucky Fried Chicken that while you don't have the green pieces of paper they want in exchange for the mashed
potatoes, you do have some pictures you've drawn on a napkin to give them instead.
Try using the restroom at Starbucks without buying something while black.
We are less free than a dog on a leash. We live in one of the hardest-working, most unequal societies on the planet with more
billionaires than ever .
Meanwhile,
Americans
supply 94 percent of the paid blood used worldwide. And it's almost exclusively coming from very poor people. This abusive vampire
system is literally sucking the blood from the poor. Does that sound like a free decision they made? Or does that sound like something
people do after immense economic force crushes down around them? (One could argue that sperm donation takes a little less convincing.)
Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't need guns and tear
gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for us all to buy into,
hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults.
815M people chronically malnourished according to the UN. Bezos is worth $141B.
$141B / 815M people = $173 per person. That would definitely not feed them for "multiple years". And that's only if Bezos could
fully liquidate the stock without it dropping a penny.
" Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't
need guns and tear gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for
us all to buy into, hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults. "
Seems like there's tear gas in the air and guns are going to be used soon. The myths are dying on the tongues of the liars.
Molon Labe!....and I'm usually a pacifist.
"American Society Would Collapse If It Weren't For Invasions Of Foreign Countries, Murdering Their People, Stealing Their Oil
Then Blaming Them For Making The US Do It."
Well, in a world driven by oil, it is entirely bogus to suggest that citizens have to work their asses off. That was the whole
point of the bill of goods that was sold to us in the late 70's and early 80'. More leisure time, more time for your family and
personal interests.
Except! It never happened. All they fucking did was reduce real wages and force everyone from the upper middle class down,
into a shit hole.
But, they will pay for their folly. Guaran-fucking-teed.
As one who has hoed many rows of cotton in 115F temperatures as well as picking cotton during my childhood and early adolescence
during weekends and school holidays, I concur. It was a very powerful inducement to get a good education back when schools actually
taught things and did not tolerate backtalk or guff from students instead of babysitting them. It worked, and I ended up writing
computer software for spacecraft, which was much fun than working in the fields.
As recounted by the commentator Garret Epps in The
Atlantic in March 2018, "In 1973, the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn coined
the term 'Gulag Archipelago' to denote the Soviet system of political prisons and labor camps.
In the last 25 years, the United States has, without fanfare, brought into being a kind of
Enforcement and Removal Operations '
Archipelago -- secretive, loosely supervised, and, in human and constitutional rights terms,
deeply problematic. And the 'system' will, if the current administration carries forward its
enforcement plans, grow significantly larger year by year." The US gulag archipelago is firmly
in place.
But in the minds of so many of the Western world, that have been ever-so-gently brainwashed
over the years of the New Cold War, 'gulags' are forever Russian, and they are ready for pitch
invaders.
Cold War Two is thriving, having been initiated and fostered by West and especially by the
Pentagon and much of Congress, whose members benefit enormously from cash donations by weapons'
manufacturers whose generosity so far this election cycle has totaled $19,332,442 in
traceable hand-outs. The Pentagon
is reported as having calculated that "overseas weapons sales by US firms rose $8.3 billion
from 2016 to 2017, with American arms makers moving a total of $41.9 billion in advanced
weaponry to foreign militaries last year." There is profit in supporting confrontation.
Development of the new Cold War was
described succinctly in February 2018 by Stephen F Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian
Studies and Politics at NYU and Princeton, in that "[President] Clinton pursued winner-take-all
policies consistent with viewing Russia as a defeated power, presiding over a massive intrusive
crusade to shape that former rival into 'the Russia we want'; beginning the expansion of NATO,
now on Russia's borders; and bombing Moscow's traditional Slav ally Serbia in 1999, despite
Yeltsin's protests. Indeed, the extreme vilification of Putin by former members of the Clinton
administration, including Hillary Clinton, who equated him with Hitler, are not unrelated to
their unwise Russia policies of the 1990s -- loudly applauded, it should be added, by media
journalists now also in the forefront of demonizing the current Kremlin leader."
The Western media and what is now called the ' deep state
' -- the power clique, somewhat akin or even complementary to the military-industrial
complex spotlighted by President Eisenhower almost sixty years ago -- are intent on
portraying Russia as a warmongering expansionist state, but they never mention the fact that,
as recorded in the
2018 World Report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute "In 2017 the USA
spent more on its military [$610 billion] than the next seven highest-spending countries
combined. . . . at $66.3 billion, Russia's military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than
in 2016."
The New York Times summed up the Washington Establishment's attitude to the
Putin-Trump July 16 talks with the headline "Trump
Opens His Arms to Russia. His Administration Closes Its Fist." Entirely coincidentally, three
days before the meeting, Washington's best and brightest announced that twelve Russians had been
indicted for allegedly interfering with the US elections in 2016. The word "allegedly" was
rarely used by the West's mainstream media, and the fact that no evidence of any sort has been
presented to backup up the allegations has been completely ignored. The automatic verdict is
that Russia is guilty of whatever charges might be levelled, just as in Britain the blame for
an
incident of poisoning has been laid firmly at Russia's door without a shred of proof that
Russia was involved.
Make no mistake: the man Trump is the worst president the US has ever had. He is, in the
well-chosen words of the commentator Robert
Reich , a "selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful megalomaniac."
But -- it seems he wants to talk and negotiate with Russia, rather than indulging in
ceaseless confrontation.
Trump has long expressed interest in improving ties with Russia, and the recent summit was
his first real opportunity for doing so. Yet it will be difficult for this progress to have any
permanence with so many in the Military-Industrial Complex uniting to undermine it. The Deep
State's fury and bitterness will not die down, and its propaganda campaigns will continue to
fuel the Second Cold War. Exporting weapons is most lucrative, and many big-ticket items are
scheduled to be sold to European countries, which is why it's important to keep Russia as an
enemy. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Brian Cloughley
Brian Cloughley writes about foreign policy and military affairs. He lives in Voutenay
sur Cure, France.
The article is long but very important and is worth a careful read. It shows that the
military/security complex has woven itself so tightly into the American social, economic, and
political fabric as to be untouchable. President Trump is an extremely brave or foolhardy
person to take on this most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by trying to
normalize US relations with Russia, chosen by the military/security complex as the "enemy" that
justifies its enormous budget and power.
In 1961 President Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned us
about the danger to democracy and accountable government presented by the military/industrial
complex.
You can imagine how much stronger the complex is 57 years later after decades of Cold War
with the Soviet Union.
The Russian government, Russian media, and Russian people desperately need to comprehend how
powerful the US military/security complex is and how it is woven into the fabric of America. No
amount of diplomacy by Lavrov and masterful chess playing by Putin can possibly shake the
control over the United States exercised by the military/security complex.
Professor Roelofs has done a good deed for the American people and for the world in
assembling such extensive information documenting the penetration into every aspect of American
life of the military/security complex. It is a delusion that a mere President of the United
States can bring such a powerful, all-pervasive institution to heel and deprive it of its
necessary enemy.
For many people the "military-industrial-complex (MIC)" brings to mind the top twenty
weapons manufacturers. President Dwight Eisenhower, who warned about it in 1961, wanted to call
it the military- industrial-congressional-complex, but decided it was not prudent to do so.
Today it might well be called the military-industrial-congressional-almost-everything-complex.
Most departments and levels of government, businesses, and also many charities, social service,
environmental, and cultural organizations, are deeply embedded with the military.
The weapons industry may be spearheading the military budget and military operations; it is
aided immensely by the cheering or silence of citizens and their representatives. Here we will
provide some likely reasons for that assent. We will use the common typology of three national
sectors: government, business, and nonprofit, with varying amounts of interaction among them.
This does not preclude, though it masks somewhat, the proposition that government is the
executive of the ruling class.
Every kind of business figures in the Department of Defense (DoD) budget. Lockheed is
currently the largest contractor in the weapons business. It connects with the worldwide MIC by
sourcing parts, for example, for the F-35 fighter plane, from many countries. This helps a lot
to market the weapon, despite its low opinion among military experts as well as anti-military
critics. Lockheed also does civilian work, which enhances its aura while it spreads its
values.
Other types of businesses have enormous multi-year contracts -- in the billions. This
despite the constitutional proviso that Congress not appropriate military funds for more than a
two year term. Notable are the construction companies, such as Fluor, KBR, Bechtel, and Hensel
Phelps. These build huge bases, often with high tech surveillance or operational capacity, in
the US and abroad, where they hire locals or commonly, third country nationals to carry out the
work. There are also billion-funded contractors in communications technology, intelligence
analysis, transportation, logistics, food, and clothing. "Contracting out" is our modern
military way; this also spreads its influence far and wide.
Medium, small, and tiny businesses dangle from the "Christmas tree" of the Pentagon,
promoting popular cheering or silence on the military budget. These include special set-asides
for minority-owned and small businesses. A Black-owned small business, KEPA-TCI (construction),
received contracts for $356 million. [Data comes from several sources, available free on the
internet: websites, tax forms, and annual reports of organizations; usaspending.gov (USA) and
governmentcontractswon.com (GCW).] Major corporations of all types serving our services have
been excellently described in Nick Turse's The Complex. Really small and tiny businesses are
drawn into the system: landscapers, dry cleaners, child care centers, and Come- Bye Goose
Control of Maryland.
Among the businesses with large DoD contracts are book publishers: McGraw-Hill, Greenwood,
Scholastic, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, Elsevier, and others. Rarely have the biases
in this industry, in fiction, nonfiction, and textbook offerings, been examined. Yet the
influences on this small but significant population, the reading public, and the larger
schooled contingent, may help explain the silence of the literate crowd and college
graduates.
Much of what is left of organized industrial labor is in weapons manufacture. Its PACs fund
the few "progressive" candidates in our political system, who tend to be silent about war and
the threat of nuclear annihilation. Unlike other factories, the armaments makers do not
suddenly move overseas, although they do use subcontractors worldwide.
Military spending may be only about 6% of the GDP, yet it has great impact because:
1. it is a growing sector;
2. it is recession-proof;
3. it does not rely on consumer whims;
4. it is the only thing prospering in many areas; and
5. the "multiplier" effect: subcontracting, corporate purchasing, and employee spending
perk up the regional economy.
It is ideally suited to Keynesian remedies, because of its ready destruction and
obsolescence: what isn't consumed in warfare, rusted out, or donated to our friends still needs
to be replaced by the slightly more lethal thing. Many of our science graduates work for the
military directly or its contractee labs concocting these.
The military's unbeatable weapon is jobs, and all members of Congress, and state and local
officials, are aware of this. It is where well-paying jobs are found for mechanics, scientists,
and engineers; even janitorial workers do well in these taxpayer-rich firms. Weaponry is also
important in our manufactured goods exports as our allies are required to have equipment that
meets our specifications. Governments, rebels, terrorists, pirates, and gangsters all fancy our
high tech and low tech lethal devices.
Our military economy also yields a high return on investments. These benefit not only
corporate executives and other rich, but many middle and working class folk, as well as
churches, benevolent, and cultural organizations. The lucrative mutual funds offered by
Vanguard, Fidelity, and others are heavily invested in the weapons manufacturers.
Individual investors may not know what is in their fund's portfolios; the institutions
usually know. A current project of World Beyond War ( https://worldbeyondwar.org/divest ) advocates
divestment of military stocks in the pension funds of state and local government workers:
police, firepersons, teachers, and other civil servants. Researchers are making a
state-by-state analysis of these funds. Among the findings are the extensive military stock
holdings of CALpers, the California Public Employees Retirement System (the sixth largest
pension fund on earth), the California State Teachers Retirement System, the New York State
Teachers Retirement System, the New York City Employees Retirement System, and the New York
State Common Retirement Fund (state and local employees). Amazing! the New York City teachers
were once the proud parents of red diaper babies.
The governmental side of the MIC complex goes far beyond the DoD. In the executive branch,
Departments of State, Homeland Security, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Interior; and CIA, AID, FBI,
NASA, and other agencies; are permeated with military projects and goals. Even the Department
of Agriculture has a joint program with the DoD to "restore" Afghanistan by creating a dairy
cattle industry. No matter that the cattle and their feed must be imported, cattle cannot graze
in the terrain as the native sheep and goats can, there is no adequate transportation or
refrigeration, and the Afghans don't normally drink milk. The native animals provide yogurt,
butter, and wool, and graze on the rugged slopes, but that is all so un-American.
Congress is a firm ally of the military. Campaign contributions from contractor PACs are
generous, and lobbying is extensive. So also are the outlays of financial institutions, which
are heavily invested in the MIC. Congresspeople have significant shares of weapons industry
stocks. To clinch the deal, members of Congress (and also state and local lawmakers) are well
aware of the economic importance of military con- tracts in their states and districts.
Military bases, inside the US as well as worldwide, are an economic hub for communities. The
DoD Base Structure Report for Fy2015 lists more than 4,000 domestic properties. Some are
bombing ranges or re- cruiting stations; perhaps 400 are bases with a major impact on their
localities. The largest of these, Fort Bragg, NC, is a city unto itself, and a cultural
influence as well as economic asset to its region, as so well described by Catherine Lutz in
Homefront. California has about 40 bases ( https://militarybases.com/by - state/), and is home to major
weapons makers as well. Officers generally live off-base, so the real estate, restaurant,
retail, auto repair, hotel and other businesses are prospering. Local civilians find employment
on bases. Closed, unconvertible installations are sometimes tourist attractions, such as the
unlikeliest of all vacation spots, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
DoD has direct contracts and grants with state and local governments. These are for various
projects and services, including large amounts to fund the National Guard. The Army Engineers
maintain swimming holes and parks, and police forces get a deal on Bearcats. JROTC programs
nationwide provide funding for public schools, and even more for those that are public school
military academies; six are in Chicago.
National, state and local governments are well covered by the "insecurity blanket;" the
nonprofit sector is not neglected. Nevertheless, it does harbor the very small group of
anti-war organizations, such as Iraq Veterans Against War, Veterans for Peace, World Beyond
War, Peace Action, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for International Policy, Catholic
Worker, Answer Coalition, and others. Yet unlike the Vietnam War period there is no vocal group
of religious leaders protesting war, and the few students who are politically active are more
concerned with other issues.
Nonprofit organizations and institutions are involved several ways. Some are obviously
partners of the MIC: Boy and Girl Scouts, Red Cross, veterans' charities, military think-tanks
such as RAND and Institute for Defense Analysis, establishment think-tanks like the American
Enterprise Institute, Atlantic Council, and the flagship of US world projection, the Council on
Foreign Relations. There are also many international nongovernmental organizations that assist
the US government in delivering "humanitarian" assistance, sing the praises of the market
economy, or attempt to repair the "collateral" damage inflicted on lands and people, for
example, Mercy Corps, Open Society Institutes, and CARE.
Educational institutions in all sectors are embedded with the military. The military schools
include the service academies, National Defense University, Army War College, Naval War
College, Air Force Institute of Technology, Air University, Defense Acquisition University,
Defense Language Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, Defense Information School, the medical
school, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the notorious School of the
Americas in Fort Benning, GA, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation. "In addition, Senior Military Colleges offer a combination of higher education
with military instruction. SMCs include Texas A&M University, Norwich University, The
Virginia Military Institute, The Citadel, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
(Virginia Tech), University of North Georgia and the Mary Baldwin Women's Institute for
Leadership" ( https://www.usa.gov/military-colleges ).
A university doesn't have to be special to be part of the MIC. Most are awash with
contracts, ROTC programs, and/or military officers and contractors on their boards of trustees.
A study of the 100 most militarized universities includes prestigious institutions, as well as
diploma mills that produce employees for military intelligence agencies and contractors (
https://news.vice.com/article/these-are-the-100
- most-militarized-universities-in-america).
Major liberal foundations have long engaged in covert and overt operations to support
imperial projection, described by David Horowitz as the "Sinews of Empire" in his important
1969 Ramparts article. They have been close associates of the Central Intelligence Agency, and
were active in its instigation. The foundation created and supported Council on Foreign
Relations has long been a link among Wall Street, large corporations, academia, the media, and
our foreign and military policymakers.
Less obvious are the military connections of philanthropic, cultural, social service,
environmental, and professional organizations. They are linked through donations; joint
programs; sponsorship of events, exhibits, and concerts; awards (both ways); investments;
boards of directors; top executives; and contracts. The data here covers approximately the last
twenty years, and rounds out the reasons for the astounding support (according to the polls)
that US citizens have conferred on our military, its budget, and its operations.
Military contractor philanthropy was the subject of my previous CP reports, in 2006 and
2016. Every type of nonprofit (as well as public schools and universities) received support
from the major weapons manufacturers; some findings were outstanding. Minority organizations
were extremely well endowed. For many years there was crucial support for the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from Lockheed; Boeing also funded the
Congressional Black Caucus. The former president and CEO of the NAACP, Bruce Gordon, is now on
the Board of Trustees of Northrop Grumman.
General Electric is the most generous military contractor philanthropist, with direct grants
to organizations and educational institutions, partnerships with both, and matching
contributions made by its thousands of employees. The latter reaches many of the
nongovernmental and educational entities throughout the country.
Major donors to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (listed in its 2016 Annual
Report) include the Defense Intelligence Agency, Cisco Systems, Open Society Foundations, US
Department of Defense, General Electric, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Lockheed
Martin. This is an echo of the CEIP's military connections reported in Horace Coon's book of
the 1930s, Money to Burn.
The DoD itself donates surplus property to organizations; among those eligible are Big
Brothers/Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Little League Baseball,
and United Service Organizations. The Denton Program allows non-governmental organizations to
use extra space on U.S. military cargo aircraft to transport humanitarian assistance
materials.
There is a multitude of joint programs and sponsorships. Here is a small sample...
The American Association of University Women's National Tech Savvy Program encourages
girls to enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers, with sponsorship
from Lockheed, BAE Systems, and Boeing.
Junior Achievement, sponsored by Bechtel, United Technologies, and others, aims to train
children in market-based economics and entrepreneurship.
Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts is partnered with Northrop Grumman for an
"early childhood STEM 'Learning through the Arts' initiative for pre-K and kindergarten
students."
The Bechtel Foundation has two programs for a "sustainable California" -- an education
program to help "young people develop the knowledge, skills, and character to explore and
understand the world," and an environmental program to promote the "management, stewardship
and conservation for the state's natural resources."
The NAACP ACT-SO is a "yearlong enrichment program designed to recruit, stimulate, and
encourage high academic and cultural achievement among African-American high school
students," with sponsorship from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman et al. The national
winners receive financial awards from major corporations, college scholarships, internships,
and apprenticeships -- in the military industries.
In recent years the weapons makers have become enthusiastic environmentalists. Lockheed was
a sponsor of the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation Sustainability Forum in 2013. Northrop
Grumman supports Keep America Beautiful, National Public Lands Day, and a partnership with
Conservation International and the Arbor Day Foundation (for forest restoration). United
Technologies is the founding sponsor of the U.S. Green Building Council Center for Green
Schools, and co-creator of the Sustainable Cities Design Academy. Tree Musketeers is a national
youth environmental organization partnered by Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
Awards go both ways: industries give awards to nonprofits, and nonprofits awards to military
industries and people. United Technologies, for its efforts in response to climate change, was
on Climate A list of the Climate Disclosure Project. The Corporate Responsibility Association
gave Lockheed position 8 in 2016 in its 100 Best Corporate Citizens List. Points of Light
included General Electric and Raytheon in its 2014 list of the 50 Most Community-Minded
Companies in America. Harold Koh, the lawyer who as Obama's advisor defended drone strikes and
intervention in Libya, was recently given distinguished visiting professor status by Phi Beta
Kappa. In 2017, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility recognized 34 Young
Hispanic Corporate Achievers; 3 were executives in the weapons industry. Elizabeth Amato, an
executive at United Technologies, received the YWCA Women Achievers Award.
Despite laborious searching through tax form 990s, it is difficult to discover the specifics
of organizations' investments. Many have substantial ones; in 2006, the American Friends
Service Committee had $3.5 million in revenue from investments. Human Rights Watch reported
$3.5 million investment income on its 2015 tax form 990, and more than $107 million in
endowment funds.
One of the few surveys of nonprofit policies (by Commonfund in 2012) found that only 17% of
foundations used environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria in their investments. ESG
seems to have replaced "socially responsible investing (SRI)" in investment terminology, and it
has a somewhat different slant. The most common restriction is the avoidance of companies doing
business in regions with conflict risk; the next relates to climate change and carbon
emissions; employee diversity is also an important consideration. Commonfund's study of
charities, social service and cultural organizations reported that 70% of their sample did not
consider ESG in their investment policies. Although 61% of religious organizations did employ
ESG criteria, only 16% of social service organizations and 3% of cultural organizations
did.
Weapon industries are hardly ever mentioned in these reports. Religious organizations
sometimes still used the SRI investment screens, but the most common were alcohol, gambling,
pornography, and tobacco. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a resource for
churches, lists almost 30 issues for investment consideration, including executive
compensation, climate change, and opioid crisis, but none concerning weapons or war. The United
Church (UCC) advisory, a pioneer in SRI investment policies, does include a screen: only
companies should be chosen which have less than 10% revenue from alcohol or gambling, 1% from
tobacco, 10% from conventional weapons and 5% from nuclear weapons.
The Art Institute of Chicago states on their website that "[W]ith the fiduciary
responsibility to maximize returns on investment consistent with appropriate levels of risk,
the Art Institute maintains a strong presumption against divesting for social, moral, or
political reasons." Listed as an associate is Honeywell International, and a major benefactor
is the Crown Family (General Dynamics), which recently donated a $2 million endowment for a
Professorship in Painting and Drawing.
Nonprofit institutions (as well as individuals and pension funds of all sectors) have heavy
investments in the funds of financial companies such as State Street, Vanguard, BlackRock,
Fidelity, CREF, and others, which have portfolios rich in military industries ( https://worldbeyondwar.org/wp -
content/uploads/2016/11/indirect.pdf). These include information technology firms, which,
although often regarded as "socially responsible," are among the major DoD contractors.
In recent years foundations and other large nonprofits, such as universities, have favored
investments in hedge funds, real estate, derivatives, and private equity. The Carnegie
Endowment, more "transparent" than most, lists such funds on its 2015 tax form 990 (Schedule D
Part VII). It is unlikely that Lockheed, Boeing, et al, are among the distressed debt bonanzas,
so these institutions may be low on weapons stock. Nevertheless, most of them have firm
connections to the MIC through donations, leadership, and/or contracts.
Close association with the military among nonprofit board members and executives works to
keep the lid on anti-war activities and expression. The Aspen Institute is a think-tank that
has resident experts, and also a policy of convening with activists, such as anti-poverty
community leaders. Its Board of Trustees is chaired by James Crown, who is also a director of
General Dynamics. Among other board members are Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Javier
Solana (former Secretary-General of NATO), and former Congresswoman Jane Harman. Harman
"received the Defense Department Medal for Distinguished Service in 1998, the CIA Seal Medal in
2007, and the CIA Director's Award and the National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service
Medal in 2011. She is currently a member of the Director of National Intelligence's Senior
Advisory Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations." Lifetime Aspen
Trustees include Lester Crown and Henry Kissinger.
In recent years, the Carnegie Corporation board of trustees included Condoleezza Rice and
General Lloyd Austin III (Ret.), Commander of CENTCOM, a leader in the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
and also a board member of United Technologies. A former president of Physicians for Peace (not
the similarly named well-known group) is Rear Admiral Harold Bernsen, formerly Commander of the
US Middle East Force and not a physician.
TIAA, the college teachers' retirement fund, had a CEO from 1993-2002, John H. Biggs, who
was at the same time a director of Boeing. TIAA's current board of directors includes an
associate of a major military research firm, MITRE Corporations, and several members of the
Council on Foreign Relations. Its senior executive Vice President, Rahul Merchant, is currently
also a director at two information technology firms that have large military contracts: Juniper
Networks and AASKI.
The American Association of Retired Persons' chief lobbyist from 2002-2007, Chris Hansen,
had previously served in that capacity at Boeing. The current VP of communications at Northrop
Grumman, Lisa Davis, held that position at AARP from 1996-2005.
Board members and CEOs of the major weapons corporations serve on the boards of many
nonprofits. Just to indicate the scope, these include the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation, Newman's Own Foundation, New York Public Library, Carnegie Hall Society,
Conservation International, Wolf Trap Foundation, WGBH, Boy Scouts, Newport Festival
Foundation, Toys for Tots, STEM organizations, Catalyst, the National Science Center, the US
Institute of Peace, and many foundations and universities.
The DoD promotes the employment of retired military officers as board members or CEOs of
nonprofits, and several organizations and degree programs further this transition. U.S. Air
Force Brigadier General Eden Murrie (Ret.) is now Director of Government Transformation and
Agency Partnerships at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. She maintains that
"[F]ormer military leaders have direct leadership experience and bring talent and integrity
that could be applied in a nonprofit organization. . ."
(seniormilitaryintransition.com/tag/eden-murrie/). Given the early retirement age, former
military personnel (and reservists) are a natural fit for positions of influence in federal,
state, and local governments, school boards, nonprofits, and volunteer work; many are in those
places.
Perhaps the coziest relationships under the insecurity blanket are the multitudes of
contracts and grants the Department of Defense tenders to the nonprofit world. DoD fiscal
reporting is notoriously inaccurate, and there were conflicting accounts between and within the
online databases. Nevertheless, even a fuzzy picture gives a good idea of the depth and scope
of the coverage.
From the TNC 2016 Annual Report: "The Nature Conservancy is an organization that takes care
of people and land, and they look for opportunities to partner. They're nonpolitical. We need
nongovernment organizations like TNC to help mobilize our citizens. They are on the ground.
They understand the people, the politics, the partnerships. We need groups like TNC to
subsidize what government organizations can't do" (Mamie Parker, Former Assistant Director,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Arkansas Trustee, The Nature Conservancy).
Among the subsidies going the other way are 44 DoD contracts with TNC totaling several
million for the years 2008-2018 (USA). These are for such services as Prairie Habitat
Reforestation, $100,000, and Runway and Biosecurity upkeep at Palmyra Atoll, HI, $82,000 (USA).
For the years 2000-2016, GCW lists a total of $5,500,000 in TNC's DoD contracts.
Grants to TNC for specific projects, not clearly different from contracts, were much larger.
Each is listed separately (USA); a rough count of the total was more than $150 million. One $55
million grant was for "Army compatible use buffer (acubs) in vicinity of Fort Benning military
installation." Similar grants, the largest, $14 million, were for this service at other bases.
Another was for the implementation of Fort Benning army installation's ecological monitoring
plan. Included in the description of these grants was the notice: "Assist State and local
governments to mitigate or prevent incompatible civilian land use/activity that is likely to
impair the continued operational utility of a Department of Defense (DoD) military
installation. Grantees and participating governments are expected to adopt and implement the
study recommendations."
TNC's Form 990 for 2017 states its investment income as $21 million. It reported government
grants of $108.5 million, and government contracts of $9 million. These may include funds from
state and local as well as all departments of the federal government. The Department of the
Interior, which manages the vast lands used for bombing ranges and live ammunition war games,
is another TNC grantor.
Other environmental organizations sustained by DoD contracts are the National Audubon
Society ($945,000 for 6 years, GCW), and Point Reyes Bird Observatory ($145,000, 6 years, GCW).
USA reports contracts with Stichting Deltares, a Dutch coastal research institute, for $550,000
in 2016, grants to the San Diego Zoo of $367,000, and to the Institute for Wildlife Studies,
$1.3 million for shrike monitoring.
Goodwill Industries (training and employing the disabled, ex-offenders, veterans, and
homeless people) is an enormous military contractor. Each entity is a separate corporation,
based on state or region, and the total receipt is in the billions. For example, for 2000-2016
(GCW), Goodwill of South Florida had $434 million and Southeastern Wisconsin $906 million in
contracts. Goods and services provided include food and logistics support, records processing,
army combat pants, custodial, security, mowing, and recycling. Similar organizations working
for the DoD include the Jewish Vocational Service and Community Workshop, janitorial services,
$12 million over 5 years; Lighthouse for the Blind, $4.5 million, water purification equipment;
Ability One; National Institute for the Blind; Pride Industries; and Melwood Horticultural
Training Center.
The DoD does not shun the work of Federal Prison Industries, which sells furniture and other
products. A government corporation (and thus not a nonprofit), it had half a billion in sales
to all federal departments in 2016. Prison labor, Goodwill Industries, and other
sheltered-workshop enterprises, along with for- profits employing immigrant workers, teenagers,
retirees, and migrant workers (who grow food for the military and the rest of us), reveal the
evolving nature of the US working class, and some explanation for its lack of revolutionary
fervor, or even mild dissent from the capitalist system.
The well-paid, and truly diverse employees (including executives) of major weapons makers
are also not about to construct wooden barricades. Boards of directors in these industries are
welcoming to minorities and women. The CEOs of Lockheed and General Dynamics are women, as is
the Chief Operating Officer of Northrop Grumman. These success stories reinforce personal
aspirations among the have-nots, rather than questioning the system.
Contracts with universities, hospitals, and medical facilities are too numerous to detail
here; one that illustrates how far the blanket stretches is with Oxford University, $800,000
for medical research. Professional associations with significant contracts include the
Institute of International Education, American Council on Education, American Association of
State Colleges and Universities, National Academy of Sciences, Society of Women Engineers,
American Indian Science and Engineering Society, American Association of Nurse Anesthetists,
Society of Mexican-American Engineers, and U.S. Green Building Council. The Council of State
Governments (a nonprofit policy association of officials) received a $193,000 contract for
"preparedness" work. Let us hope we are well prepared.
The leaders, staff, members, donors, and volunteers of nonprofit organizations are the kind
of people who might have been peace activists, yet so many are smothered into silence under the
vast insecurity blanket. In addition to all the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the
military establishment, many people with no connection still cheer it on. They have been
subject to relentless propaganda forthe military and its wars from the government, the print
and digital press, TV, movies, sports shows, parades, and computer games -- the latter teach
children that killing is fun.
The indoctrination goes down easily. It has had a head start in the educational system that
glorifies the violent history of the nation. Our schools are full of in-house tutoring, STEM
programs, and fun robotics teams personally conducted by employees of the weapons makers. Young
children may not understand all the connections, but they tend to remember the logos. The JROTC
programs, imparting militaristic values, enroll far more children than the ones who will become
future officers. The extremely well-funded recruitment efforts in schools include "fun"
simulations of warfare.
There is a worldwide supporting cast for the complex that includes NATO, other alliances,
defense ministries, foreign military industries, and bases, but that is a story for another
day.
The millions sheltered under our thick and broad blanket, including the enlistees under the
prickly part of it, are not to blame. Some people may be thrilled by the idea of death and
destruction. However, most are just trying to earn a living, keep their organization or rust
belt afloat, or be accepted into polite company. They would prefer constructive work or income
from healthy sources. Yet many have been indoctrinated to believe that militarism is normal and
necessary. For those who consider change to be essential if life on this planet has a chance at
survival, it is important to see all the ways that the military-
industrial-congressional-almost everything-complex is being sustained.
"Free market economy" is a myth. In addition to the huge nonprofit (non-market) sector,
government intervention is substantial, not only in the gigantic military, but in agriculture,
education, health care, infrastructure, economic development (!), et al. For the same trillions
we could have a national economy that repairs the environment, provides a fine standard of
living and cultural opportunities for all, and works for peace on earth.
* * *
Joan Roelofs is Professor Emerita of Political Science, Keene State College, New Hampshire.
She is the author of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (SUNY Press, 2003)
and Greening Cities (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). She is the translator of Victor
Considerant's Principles of Socialism (Maisonneuve Press, 2006), and with Shawn P. Wilbur, of
Charles Fourier's anti-war fantasy, The World War of Small Pastries (Autonomedia, 2015). A
community education short course on the military industrial complex is on her website, and may
be used for similar purposes.
As recounted by the commentator Garret Epps in The
Atlantic in March 2018, "In 1973, the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn coined
the term 'Gulag Archipelago' to denote the Soviet system of political prisons and labor camps.
In the last 25 years, the United States has, without fanfare, brought into being a kind of
Enforcement and Removal Operations '
Archipelago -- secretive, loosely supervised, and, in human and constitutional rights terms,
deeply problematic. And the 'system' will, if the current administration carries forward its
enforcement plans, grow significantly larger year by year." The US gulag archipelago is firmly
in place.
But in the minds of so many of the Western world, that have been ever-so-gently brainwashed
over the years of the New Cold War, 'gulags' are forever Russian, and they are ready for pitch
invaders.
Cold War Two is thriving, having been initiated and fostered by West and especially by the
Pentagon and much of Congress, whose members benefit enormously from cash donations by weapons'
manufacturers whose generosity so far this election cycle has totaled $19,332,442 in
traceable hand-outs. The Pentagon
is reported as having calculated that "overseas weapons sales by US firms rose $8.3 billion
from 2016 to 2017, with American arms makers moving a total of $41.9 billion in advanced
weaponry to foreign militaries last year." There is profit in supporting confrontation.
Development of the new Cold War was
described succinctly in February 2018 by Stephen F Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian
Studies and Politics at NYU and Princeton, in that "[President] Clinton pursued winner-take-all
policies consistent with viewing Russia as a defeated power, presiding over a massive intrusive
crusade to shape that former rival into 'the Russia we want'; beginning the expansion of NATO,
now on Russia's borders; and bombing Moscow's traditional Slav ally Serbia in 1999, despite
Yeltsin's protests. Indeed, the extreme vilification of Putin by former members of the Clinton
administration, including Hillary Clinton, who equated him with Hitler, are not unrelated to
their unwise Russia policies of the 1990s -- loudly applauded, it should be added, by media
journalists now also in the forefront of demonizing the current Kremlin leader."
The Western media and what is now called the ' deep state
' -- the power clique, somewhat akin or even complementary to the military-industrial
complex spotlighted by President Eisenhower almost sixty years ago -- are intent on
portraying Russia as a warmongering expansionist state, but they never mention the fact that,
as recorded in the
2018 World Report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute "In 2017 the USA
spent more on its military [$610 billion] than the next seven highest-spending countries
combined. . . . at $66.3 billion, Russia's military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than
in 2016."
The New York Times summed up the Washington Establishment's attitude to the
Putin-Trump July 16 talks with the headline "Trump
Opens His Arms to Russia. His Administration Closes Its Fist." Entirely coincidentally, three
days before the meeting, Washington's best and brightest announced that twelve Russians had been
indicted for allegedly interfering with the US elections in 2016. The word "allegedly" was
rarely used by the West's mainstream media, and the fact that no evidence of any sort has been
presented to backup up the allegations has been completely ignored. The automatic verdict is
that Russia is guilty of whatever charges might be levelled, just as in Britain the blame for
an
incident of poisoning has been laid firmly at Russia's door without a shred of proof that
Russia was involved.
Make no mistake: the man Trump is the worst president the US has ever had. He is, in the
well-chosen words of the commentator Robert
Reich , a "selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful megalomaniac."
But -- it seems he wants to talk and negotiate with Russia, rather than indulging in
ceaseless confrontation.
Trump has long expressed interest in improving ties with Russia, and the recent summit was
his first real opportunity for doing so. Yet it will be difficult for this progress to have any
permanence with so many in the Military-Industrial Complex uniting to undermine it. The Deep
State's fury and bitterness will not die down, and its propaganda campaigns will continue to
fuel the Second Cold War. Exporting weapons is most lucrative, and many big-ticket items are
scheduled to be sold to European countries, which is why it's important to keep Russia as an
enemy. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Brian Cloughley
Brian Cloughley writes about foreign policy and military affairs. He lives in Voutenay
sur Cure, France.
The article is long but very important and is worth a careful read. It shows that the
military/security complex has woven itself so tightly into the American social, economic, and
political fabric as to be untouchable. President Trump is an extremely brave or foolhardy
person to take on this most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by trying to
normalize US relations with Russia, chosen by the military/security complex as the "enemy" that
justifies its enormous budget and power.
In 1961 President Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned us
about the danger to democracy and accountable government presented by the military/industrial
complex.
You can imagine how much stronger the complex is 57 years later after decades of Cold War
with the Soviet Union.
The Russian government, Russian media, and Russian people desperately need to comprehend how
powerful the US military/security complex is and how it is woven into the fabric of America. No
amount of diplomacy by Lavrov and masterful chess playing by Putin can possibly shake the
control over the United States exercised by the military/security complex.
Professor Roelofs has done a good deed for the American people and for the world in
assembling such extensive information documenting the penetration into every aspect of American
life of the military/security complex. It is a delusion that a mere President of the United
States can bring such a powerful, all-pervasive institution to heel and deprive it of its
necessary enemy.
For many people the "military-industrial-complex (MIC)" brings to mind the top twenty
weapons manufacturers. President Dwight Eisenhower, who warned about it in 1961, wanted to call
it the military- industrial-congressional-complex, but decided it was not prudent to do so.
Today it might well be called the military-industrial-congressional-almost-everything-complex.
Most departments and levels of government, businesses, and also many charities, social service,
environmental, and cultural organizations, are deeply embedded with the military.
The weapons industry may be spearheading the military budget and military operations; it is
aided immensely by the cheering or silence of citizens and their representatives. Here we will
provide some likely reasons for that assent. We will use the common typology of three national
sectors: government, business, and nonprofit, with varying amounts of interaction among them.
This does not preclude, though it masks somewhat, the proposition that government is the
executive of the ruling class.
Every kind of business figures in the Department of Defense (DoD) budget. Lockheed is
currently the largest contractor in the weapons business. It connects with the worldwide MIC by
sourcing parts, for example, for the F-35 fighter plane, from many countries. This helps a lot
to market the weapon, despite its low opinion among military experts as well as anti-military
critics. Lockheed also does civilian work, which enhances its aura while it spreads its
values.
Other types of businesses have enormous multi-year contracts -- in the billions. This
despite the constitutional proviso that Congress not appropriate military funds for more than a
two year term. Notable are the construction companies, such as Fluor, KBR, Bechtel, and Hensel
Phelps. These build huge bases, often with high tech surveillance or operational capacity, in
the US and abroad, where they hire locals or commonly, third country nationals to carry out the
work. There are also billion-funded contractors in communications technology, intelligence
analysis, transportation, logistics, food, and clothing. "Contracting out" is our modern
military way; this also spreads its influence far and wide.
Medium, small, and tiny businesses dangle from the "Christmas tree" of the Pentagon,
promoting popular cheering or silence on the military budget. These include special set-asides
for minority-owned and small businesses. A Black-owned small business, KEPA-TCI (construction),
received contracts for $356 million. [Data comes from several sources, available free on the
internet: websites, tax forms, and annual reports of organizations; usaspending.gov (USA) and
governmentcontractswon.com (GCW).] Major corporations of all types serving our services have
been excellently described in Nick Turse's The Complex. Really small and tiny businesses are
drawn into the system: landscapers, dry cleaners, child care centers, and Come- Bye Goose
Control of Maryland.
Among the businesses with large DoD contracts are book publishers: McGraw-Hill, Greenwood,
Scholastic, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, Elsevier, and others. Rarely have the biases
in this industry, in fiction, nonfiction, and textbook offerings, been examined. Yet the
influences on this small but significant population, the reading public, and the larger
schooled contingent, may help explain the silence of the literate crowd and college
graduates.
Much of what is left of organized industrial labor is in weapons manufacture. Its PACs fund
the few "progressive" candidates in our political system, who tend to be silent about war and
the threat of nuclear annihilation. Unlike other factories, the armaments makers do not
suddenly move overseas, although they do use subcontractors worldwide.
Military spending may be only about 6% of the GDP, yet it has great impact because:
1. it is a growing sector;
2. it is recession-proof;
3. it does not rely on consumer whims;
4. it is the only thing prospering in many areas; and
5. the "multiplier" effect: subcontracting, corporate purchasing, and employee spending
perk up the regional economy.
It is ideally suited to Keynesian remedies, because of its ready destruction and
obsolescence: what isn't consumed in warfare, rusted out, or donated to our friends still needs
to be replaced by the slightly more lethal thing. Many of our science graduates work for the
military directly or its contractee labs concocting these.
The military's unbeatable weapon is jobs, and all members of Congress, and state and local
officials, are aware of this. It is where well-paying jobs are found for mechanics, scientists,
and engineers; even janitorial workers do well in these taxpayer-rich firms. Weaponry is also
important in our manufactured goods exports as our allies are required to have equipment that
meets our specifications. Governments, rebels, terrorists, pirates, and gangsters all fancy our
high tech and low tech lethal devices.
Our military economy also yields a high return on investments. These benefit not only
corporate executives and other rich, but many middle and working class folk, as well as
churches, benevolent, and cultural organizations. The lucrative mutual funds offered by
Vanguard, Fidelity, and others are heavily invested in the weapons manufacturers.
Individual investors may not know what is in their fund's portfolios; the institutions
usually know. A current project of World Beyond War ( https://worldbeyondwar.org/divest ) advocates
divestment of military stocks in the pension funds of state and local government workers:
police, firepersons, teachers, and other civil servants. Researchers are making a
state-by-state analysis of these funds. Among the findings are the extensive military stock
holdings of CALpers, the California Public Employees Retirement System (the sixth largest
pension fund on earth), the California State Teachers Retirement System, the New York State
Teachers Retirement System, the New York City Employees Retirement System, and the New York
State Common Retirement Fund (state and local employees). Amazing! the New York City teachers
were once the proud parents of red diaper babies.
The governmental side of the MIC complex goes far beyond the DoD. In the executive branch,
Departments of State, Homeland Security, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Interior; and CIA, AID, FBI,
NASA, and other agencies; are permeated with military projects and goals. Even the Department
of Agriculture has a joint program with the DoD to "restore" Afghanistan by creating a dairy
cattle industry. No matter that the cattle and their feed must be imported, cattle cannot graze
in the terrain as the native sheep and goats can, there is no adequate transportation or
refrigeration, and the Afghans don't normally drink milk. The native animals provide yogurt,
butter, and wool, and graze on the rugged slopes, but that is all so un-American.
Congress is a firm ally of the military. Campaign contributions from contractor PACs are
generous, and lobbying is extensive. So also are the outlays of financial institutions, which
are heavily invested in the MIC. Congresspeople have significant shares of weapons industry
stocks. To clinch the deal, members of Congress (and also state and local lawmakers) are well
aware of the economic importance of military con- tracts in their states and districts.
Military bases, inside the US as well as worldwide, are an economic hub for communities. The
DoD Base Structure Report for Fy2015 lists more than 4,000 domestic properties. Some are
bombing ranges or re- cruiting stations; perhaps 400 are bases with a major impact on their
localities. The largest of these, Fort Bragg, NC, is a city unto itself, and a cultural
influence as well as economic asset to its region, as so well described by Catherine Lutz in
Homefront. California has about 40 bases ( https://militarybases.com/by - state/), and is home to major
weapons makers as well. Officers generally live off-base, so the real estate, restaurant,
retail, auto repair, hotel and other businesses are prospering. Local civilians find employment
on bases. Closed, unconvertible installations are sometimes tourist attractions, such as the
unlikeliest of all vacation spots, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
DoD has direct contracts and grants with state and local governments. These are for various
projects and services, including large amounts to fund the National Guard. The Army Engineers
maintain swimming holes and parks, and police forces get a deal on Bearcats. JROTC programs
nationwide provide funding for public schools, and even more for those that are public school
military academies; six are in Chicago.
National, state and local governments are well covered by the "insecurity blanket;" the
nonprofit sector is not neglected. Nevertheless, it does harbor the very small group of
anti-war organizations, such as Iraq Veterans Against War, Veterans for Peace, World Beyond
War, Peace Action, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for International Policy, Catholic
Worker, Answer Coalition, and others. Yet unlike the Vietnam War period there is no vocal group
of religious leaders protesting war, and the few students who are politically active are more
concerned with other issues.
Nonprofit organizations and institutions are involved several ways. Some are obviously
partners of the MIC: Boy and Girl Scouts, Red Cross, veterans' charities, military think-tanks
such as RAND and Institute for Defense Analysis, establishment think-tanks like the American
Enterprise Institute, Atlantic Council, and the flagship of US world projection, the Council on
Foreign Relations. There are also many international nongovernmental organizations that assist
the US government in delivering "humanitarian" assistance, sing the praises of the market
economy, or attempt to repair the "collateral" damage inflicted on lands and people, for
example, Mercy Corps, Open Society Institutes, and CARE.
Educational institutions in all sectors are embedded with the military. The military schools
include the service academies, National Defense University, Army War College, Naval War
College, Air Force Institute of Technology, Air University, Defense Acquisition University,
Defense Language Institute, Naval Postgraduate School, Defense Information School, the medical
school, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the notorious School of the
Americas in Fort Benning, GA, now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation. "In addition, Senior Military Colleges offer a combination of higher education
with military instruction. SMCs include Texas A&M University, Norwich University, The
Virginia Military Institute, The Citadel, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
(Virginia Tech), University of North Georgia and the Mary Baldwin Women's Institute for
Leadership" ( https://www.usa.gov/military-colleges ).
A university doesn't have to be special to be part of the MIC. Most are awash with
contracts, ROTC programs, and/or military officers and contractors on their boards of trustees.
A study of the 100 most militarized universities includes prestigious institutions, as well as
diploma mills that produce employees for military intelligence agencies and contractors (
https://news.vice.com/article/these-are-the-100
- most-militarized-universities-in-america).
Major liberal foundations have long engaged in covert and overt operations to support
imperial projection, described by David Horowitz as the "Sinews of Empire" in his important
1969 Ramparts article. They have been close associates of the Central Intelligence Agency, and
were active in its instigation. The foundation created and supported Council on Foreign
Relations has long been a link among Wall Street, large corporations, academia, the media, and
our foreign and military policymakers.
Less obvious are the military connections of philanthropic, cultural, social service,
environmental, and professional organizations. They are linked through donations; joint
programs; sponsorship of events, exhibits, and concerts; awards (both ways); investments;
boards of directors; top executives; and contracts. The data here covers approximately the last
twenty years, and rounds out the reasons for the astounding support (according to the polls)
that US citizens have conferred on our military, its budget, and its operations.
Military contractor philanthropy was the subject of my previous CP reports, in 2006 and
2016. Every type of nonprofit (as well as public schools and universities) received support
from the major weapons manufacturers; some findings were outstanding. Minority organizations
were extremely well endowed. For many years there was crucial support for the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from Lockheed; Boeing also funded the
Congressional Black Caucus. The former president and CEO of the NAACP, Bruce Gordon, is now on
the Board of Trustees of Northrop Grumman.
General Electric is the most generous military contractor philanthropist, with direct grants
to organizations and educational institutions, partnerships with both, and matching
contributions made by its thousands of employees. The latter reaches many of the
nongovernmental and educational entities throughout the country.
Major donors to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (listed in its 2016 Annual
Report) include the Defense Intelligence Agency, Cisco Systems, Open Society Foundations, US
Department of Defense, General Electric, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Lockheed
Martin. This is an echo of the CEIP's military connections reported in Horace Coon's book of
the 1930s, Money to Burn.
The DoD itself donates surplus property to organizations; among those eligible are Big
Brothers/Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Little League Baseball,
and United Service Organizations. The Denton Program allows non-governmental organizations to
use extra space on U.S. military cargo aircraft to transport humanitarian assistance
materials.
There is a multitude of joint programs and sponsorships. Here is a small sample...
The American Association of University Women's National Tech Savvy Program encourages
girls to enter STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers, with sponsorship
from Lockheed, BAE Systems, and Boeing.
Junior Achievement, sponsored by Bechtel, United Technologies, and others, aims to train
children in market-based economics and entrepreneurship.
Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts is partnered with Northrop Grumman for an
"early childhood STEM 'Learning through the Arts' initiative for pre-K and kindergarten
students."
The Bechtel Foundation has two programs for a "sustainable California" -- an education
program to help "young people develop the knowledge, skills, and character to explore and
understand the world," and an environmental program to promote the "management, stewardship
and conservation for the state's natural resources."
The NAACP ACT-SO is a "yearlong enrichment program designed to recruit, stimulate, and
encourage high academic and cultural achievement among African-American high school
students," with sponsorship from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman et al. The national
winners receive financial awards from major corporations, college scholarships, internships,
and apprenticeships -- in the military industries.
In recent years the weapons makers have become enthusiastic environmentalists. Lockheed was
a sponsor of the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation Sustainability Forum in 2013. Northrop
Grumman supports Keep America Beautiful, National Public Lands Day, and a partnership with
Conservation International and the Arbor Day Foundation (for forest restoration). United
Technologies is the founding sponsor of the U.S. Green Building Council Center for Green
Schools, and co-creator of the Sustainable Cities Design Academy. Tree Musketeers is a national
youth environmental organization partnered by Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
Awards go both ways: industries give awards to nonprofits, and nonprofits awards to military
industries and people. United Technologies, for its efforts in response to climate change, was
on Climate A list of the Climate Disclosure Project. The Corporate Responsibility Association
gave Lockheed position 8 in 2016 in its 100 Best Corporate Citizens List. Points of Light
included General Electric and Raytheon in its 2014 list of the 50 Most Community-Minded
Companies in America. Harold Koh, the lawyer who as Obama's advisor defended drone strikes and
intervention in Libya, was recently given distinguished visiting professor status by Phi Beta
Kappa. In 2017, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility recognized 34 Young
Hispanic Corporate Achievers; 3 were executives in the weapons industry. Elizabeth Amato, an
executive at United Technologies, received the YWCA Women Achievers Award.
Despite laborious searching through tax form 990s, it is difficult to discover the specifics
of organizations' investments. Many have substantial ones; in 2006, the American Friends
Service Committee had $3.5 million in revenue from investments. Human Rights Watch reported
$3.5 million investment income on its 2015 tax form 990, and more than $107 million in
endowment funds.
One of the few surveys of nonprofit policies (by Commonfund in 2012) found that only 17% of
foundations used environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria in their investments. ESG
seems to have replaced "socially responsible investing (SRI)" in investment terminology, and it
has a somewhat different slant. The most common restriction is the avoidance of companies doing
business in regions with conflict risk; the next relates to climate change and carbon
emissions; employee diversity is also an important consideration. Commonfund's study of
charities, social service and cultural organizations reported that 70% of their sample did not
consider ESG in their investment policies. Although 61% of religious organizations did employ
ESG criteria, only 16% of social service organizations and 3% of cultural organizations
did.
Weapon industries are hardly ever mentioned in these reports. Religious organizations
sometimes still used the SRI investment screens, but the most common were alcohol, gambling,
pornography, and tobacco. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a resource for
churches, lists almost 30 issues for investment consideration, including executive
compensation, climate change, and opioid crisis, but none concerning weapons or war. The United
Church (UCC) advisory, a pioneer in SRI investment policies, does include a screen: only
companies should be chosen which have less than 10% revenue from alcohol or gambling, 1% from
tobacco, 10% from conventional weapons and 5% from nuclear weapons.
The Art Institute of Chicago states on their website that "[W]ith the fiduciary
responsibility to maximize returns on investment consistent with appropriate levels of risk,
the Art Institute maintains a strong presumption against divesting for social, moral, or
political reasons." Listed as an associate is Honeywell International, and a major benefactor
is the Crown Family (General Dynamics), which recently donated a $2 million endowment for a
Professorship in Painting and Drawing.
Nonprofit institutions (as well as individuals and pension funds of all sectors) have heavy
investments in the funds of financial companies such as State Street, Vanguard, BlackRock,
Fidelity, CREF, and others, which have portfolios rich in military industries ( https://worldbeyondwar.org/wp -
content/uploads/2016/11/indirect.pdf). These include information technology firms, which,
although often regarded as "socially responsible," are among the major DoD contractors.
In recent years foundations and other large nonprofits, such as universities, have favored
investments in hedge funds, real estate, derivatives, and private equity. The Carnegie
Endowment, more "transparent" than most, lists such funds on its 2015 tax form 990 (Schedule D
Part VII). It is unlikely that Lockheed, Boeing, et al, are among the distressed debt bonanzas,
so these institutions may be low on weapons stock. Nevertheless, most of them have firm
connections to the MIC through donations, leadership, and/or contracts.
Close association with the military among nonprofit board members and executives works to
keep the lid on anti-war activities and expression. The Aspen Institute is a think-tank that
has resident experts, and also a policy of convening with activists, such as anti-poverty
community leaders. Its Board of Trustees is chaired by James Crown, who is also a director of
General Dynamics. Among other board members are Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Javier
Solana (former Secretary-General of NATO), and former Congresswoman Jane Harman. Harman
"received the Defense Department Medal for Distinguished Service in 1998, the CIA Seal Medal in
2007, and the CIA Director's Award and the National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service
Medal in 2011. She is currently a member of the Director of National Intelligence's Senior
Advisory Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations." Lifetime Aspen
Trustees include Lester Crown and Henry Kissinger.
In recent years, the Carnegie Corporation board of trustees included Condoleezza Rice and
General Lloyd Austin III (Ret.), Commander of CENTCOM, a leader in the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
and also a board member of United Technologies. A former president of Physicians for Peace (not
the similarly named well-known group) is Rear Admiral Harold Bernsen, formerly Commander of the
US Middle East Force and not a physician.
TIAA, the college teachers' retirement fund, had a CEO from 1993-2002, John H. Biggs, who
was at the same time a director of Boeing. TIAA's current board of directors includes an
associate of a major military research firm, MITRE Corporations, and several members of the
Council on Foreign Relations. Its senior executive Vice President, Rahul Merchant, is currently
also a director at two information technology firms that have large military contracts: Juniper
Networks and AASKI.
The American Association of Retired Persons' chief lobbyist from 2002-2007, Chris Hansen,
had previously served in that capacity at Boeing. The current VP of communications at Northrop
Grumman, Lisa Davis, held that position at AARP from 1996-2005.
Board members and CEOs of the major weapons corporations serve on the boards of many
nonprofits. Just to indicate the scope, these include the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation, Newman's Own Foundation, New York Public Library, Carnegie Hall Society,
Conservation International, Wolf Trap Foundation, WGBH, Boy Scouts, Newport Festival
Foundation, Toys for Tots, STEM organizations, Catalyst, the National Science Center, the US
Institute of Peace, and many foundations and universities.
The DoD promotes the employment of retired military officers as board members or CEOs of
nonprofits, and several organizations and degree programs further this transition. U.S. Air
Force Brigadier General Eden Murrie (Ret.) is now Director of Government Transformation and
Agency Partnerships at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. She maintains that
"[F]ormer military leaders have direct leadership experience and bring talent and integrity
that could be applied in a nonprofit organization. . ."
(seniormilitaryintransition.com/tag/eden-murrie/). Given the early retirement age, former
military personnel (and reservists) are a natural fit for positions of influence in federal,
state, and local governments, school boards, nonprofits, and volunteer work; many are in those
places.
Perhaps the coziest relationships under the insecurity blanket are the multitudes of
contracts and grants the Department of Defense tenders to the nonprofit world. DoD fiscal
reporting is notoriously inaccurate, and there were conflicting accounts between and within the
online databases. Nevertheless, even a fuzzy picture gives a good idea of the depth and scope
of the coverage.
From the TNC 2016 Annual Report: "The Nature Conservancy is an organization that takes care
of people and land, and they look for opportunities to partner. They're nonpolitical. We need
nongovernment organizations like TNC to help mobilize our citizens. They are on the ground.
They understand the people, the politics, the partnerships. We need groups like TNC to
subsidize what government organizations can't do" (Mamie Parker, Former Assistant Director,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Arkansas Trustee, The Nature Conservancy).
Among the subsidies going the other way are 44 DoD contracts with TNC totaling several
million for the years 2008-2018 (USA). These are for such services as Prairie Habitat
Reforestation, $100,000, and Runway and Biosecurity upkeep at Palmyra Atoll, HI, $82,000 (USA).
For the years 2000-2016, GCW lists a total of $5,500,000 in TNC's DoD contracts.
Grants to TNC for specific projects, not clearly different from contracts, were much larger.
Each is listed separately (USA); a rough count of the total was more than $150 million. One $55
million grant was for "Army compatible use buffer (acubs) in vicinity of Fort Benning military
installation." Similar grants, the largest, $14 million, were for this service at other bases.
Another was for the implementation of Fort Benning army installation's ecological monitoring
plan. Included in the description of these grants was the notice: "Assist State and local
governments to mitigate or prevent incompatible civilian land use/activity that is likely to
impair the continued operational utility of a Department of Defense (DoD) military
installation. Grantees and participating governments are expected to adopt and implement the
study recommendations."
TNC's Form 990 for 2017 states its investment income as $21 million. It reported government
grants of $108.5 million, and government contracts of $9 million. These may include funds from
state and local as well as all departments of the federal government. The Department of the
Interior, which manages the vast lands used for bombing ranges and live ammunition war games,
is another TNC grantor.
Other environmental organizations sustained by DoD contracts are the National Audubon
Society ($945,000 for 6 years, GCW), and Point Reyes Bird Observatory ($145,000, 6 years, GCW).
USA reports contracts with Stichting Deltares, a Dutch coastal research institute, for $550,000
in 2016, grants to the San Diego Zoo of $367,000, and to the Institute for Wildlife Studies,
$1.3 million for shrike monitoring.
Goodwill Industries (training and employing the disabled, ex-offenders, veterans, and
homeless people) is an enormous military contractor. Each entity is a separate corporation,
based on state or region, and the total receipt is in the billions. For example, for 2000-2016
(GCW), Goodwill of South Florida had $434 million and Southeastern Wisconsin $906 million in
contracts. Goods and services provided include food and logistics support, records processing,
army combat pants, custodial, security, mowing, and recycling. Similar organizations working
for the DoD include the Jewish Vocational Service and Community Workshop, janitorial services,
$12 million over 5 years; Lighthouse for the Blind, $4.5 million, water purification equipment;
Ability One; National Institute for the Blind; Pride Industries; and Melwood Horticultural
Training Center.
The DoD does not shun the work of Federal Prison Industries, which sells furniture and other
products. A government corporation (and thus not a nonprofit), it had half a billion in sales
to all federal departments in 2016. Prison labor, Goodwill Industries, and other
sheltered-workshop enterprises, along with for- profits employing immigrant workers, teenagers,
retirees, and migrant workers (who grow food for the military and the rest of us), reveal the
evolving nature of the US working class, and some explanation for its lack of revolutionary
fervor, or even mild dissent from the capitalist system.
The well-paid, and truly diverse employees (including executives) of major weapons makers
are also not about to construct wooden barricades. Boards of directors in these industries are
welcoming to minorities and women. The CEOs of Lockheed and General Dynamics are women, as is
the Chief Operating Officer of Northrop Grumman. These success stories reinforce personal
aspirations among the have-nots, rather than questioning the system.
Contracts with universities, hospitals, and medical facilities are too numerous to detail
here; one that illustrates how far the blanket stretches is with Oxford University, $800,000
for medical research. Professional associations with significant contracts include the
Institute of International Education, American Council on Education, American Association of
State Colleges and Universities, National Academy of Sciences, Society of Women Engineers,
American Indian Science and Engineering Society, American Association of Nurse Anesthetists,
Society of Mexican-American Engineers, and U.S. Green Building Council. The Council of State
Governments (a nonprofit policy association of officials) received a $193,000 contract for
"preparedness" work. Let us hope we are well prepared.
The leaders, staff, members, donors, and volunteers of nonprofit organizations are the kind
of people who might have been peace activists, yet so many are smothered into silence under the
vast insecurity blanket. In addition to all the direct and indirect beneficiaries of the
military establishment, many people with no connection still cheer it on. They have been
subject to relentless propaganda forthe military and its wars from the government, the print
and digital press, TV, movies, sports shows, parades, and computer games -- the latter teach
children that killing is fun.
The indoctrination goes down easily. It has had a head start in the educational system that
glorifies the violent history of the nation. Our schools are full of in-house tutoring, STEM
programs, and fun robotics teams personally conducted by employees of the weapons makers. Young
children may not understand all the connections, but they tend to remember the logos. The JROTC
programs, imparting militaristic values, enroll far more children than the ones who will become
future officers. The extremely well-funded recruitment efforts in schools include "fun"
simulations of warfare.
There is a worldwide supporting cast for the complex that includes NATO, other alliances,
defense ministries, foreign military industries, and bases, but that is a story for another
day.
The millions sheltered under our thick and broad blanket, including the enlistees under the
prickly part of it, are not to blame. Some people may be thrilled by the idea of death and
destruction. However, most are just trying to earn a living, keep their organization or rust
belt afloat, or be accepted into polite company. They would prefer constructive work or income
from healthy sources. Yet many have been indoctrinated to believe that militarism is normal and
necessary. For those who consider change to be essential if life on this planet has a chance at
survival, it is important to see all the ways that the military-
industrial-congressional-almost everything-complex is being sustained.
"Free market economy" is a myth. In addition to the huge nonprofit (non-market) sector,
government intervention is substantial, not only in the gigantic military, but in agriculture,
education, health care, infrastructure, economic development (!), et al. For the same trillions
we could have a national economy that repairs the environment, provides a fine standard of
living and cultural opportunities for all, and works for peace on earth.
* * *
Joan Roelofs is Professor Emerita of Political Science, Keene State College, New Hampshire.
She is the author of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (SUNY Press, 2003)
and Greening Cities (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). She is the translator of Victor
Considerant's Principles of Socialism (Maisonneuve Press, 2006), and with Shawn P. Wilbur, of
Charles Fourier's anti-war fantasy, The World War of Small Pastries (Autonomedia, 2015). A
community education short course on the military industrial complex is on her website, and may
be used for similar purposes.
The author provides some interesting observations... He ignores the role of economics
though.
Looks like a replay of events in Baltic republics. Might increase emigration and
"provisialization" of Ukraine because Russian is suppressed but English did not became the second
language (which is probably impossible without switching education into English language).
Dominance of EU might be more harsh regime, then most of the supporters of Eurointergation
assume, especially in economic sphere -- the status of semi-colony and debt slave are given, but
it can be worse.
Economic suffering of population and pauperization of Ukraine are immense...
Notable quotes:
"... Yet, at least half of the population of all eight administrative regions of mainland South-East Ukraine viewed the Euromaidan as a coup, because, according to a survey conducted in early April 2014 by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, only a third of respondents in these regions (the survey was not conducted in Crimea and Sevastopol) considered Yatsenyuk and Turchinov legitimate heads of government and state, while half of respondents considered them illegitimate (Kiev International Institute of Sociology, 2014c). ..."
"... The conformism of the South-East elite, which only recently was at the head of the anti-Maidan movement, surpassed the conformism of society many times over, because this elite had much to lose. ..."
"... The situation with Crimea was another factor that objectively strengthened Kiev's position in the South-East. ..."
"... This predictably could not increase pro-Russian sentiments in the rest of Ukraine. ..."
"... anti-Russian forces took an increasingly tough position, describing all talk of federalization as separatism. ..."
"... the winners of the Euromaidan Crimea was not a reason but a pretext for starting a policy of de-Russification. However, these events influenced the political swamp, that is, citizens without a clear position, and strengthened the base of the current regime, as evidenced by the results of public opinion polls and elections. ..."
"... the Europeans played up to Kiev in criminalizing the notion 'federation,' because for the West the Ukrainian problem is part of the Russian problem ..."
"... The West views them as paramilitary organizations which established power in those regions with external help and imposed themselves on the population. ..."
"... This position of the West strengthened the attitude of the pro-Western liberal public in Ukraine towards people in the South-East as sovok ..."
"... the "discursive violence of the Ukrainian media" in late February-early April 2014 paved the way for the "brutality of the antiterrorist operation" by creating a negative image of people of the South-East. ..."
"... Ukrayinska Pravda, Livyi Bereg, ..."
"... At the same time, Ukrainian radical nationalism objectively was an instrument which Ukrainian [neo]liberals used to achieve victory. ..."
"... However, positive dynamics for either party to the conflict is not only measured by territories they seize -- it is seen in the fact that actions, formerly deemed impossible, turn out to be possible and not having obvious negative consequences. For example, the implementation of the political part of the Minsk Agreement (which both Kiev and the West consider imposed on Ukraine from the outside) now seems to be a much more illusory goal than it seemed in 2014-2015. ..."
"... In particular, Kiev has rescinded a bill on constitutional amendments regarding decentralization; an economic blockade of Donbass has been introduced; and several laws have been passed and measures taken to combat the Russian World, both inside and outside the country. ..."
"... The law on the reintegration of Donbass, passed by the Verkhovna Rada this January, was a logical development and a new stage of this policy. Its purpose is not so much to recognize the territories beyond Kiev's control as occupied by Russia. What is more important is that the law recognizes this state de facto without a formal recognition of the war with Russia de jure. ..."
"... This positive dynamics creates a situation where a critical mass of society thinks that at least Ukraine will not find itself in the same difficult situation as in the spring of 2014 and that, at best, it will restore full control over Donbass on its terms: Russia will not withstand the sanctions and will stop supporting the uncontrolled territories. The policy of the West does not contradict these expectations: the sanctions continue, there is almost no public criticism of Kiev's actions in Donbass at the state level, except for minor issues, and the U.S. has decided to supply Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine, which is largely a symbolic gesture fitting perfectly into the aforementioned pattern of positive dynamics. ..."
"... Of course, very many of the above-mentioned elements of the positive (for Kiev) dynamics also have a great negative effect. For example, the existing format of the conflict in Donbass involves great military expenditures and leads to reduced ties with Russia, which is a significant burden for the Ukrainian economy. ..."
"... The present scale of losses of the Ukrainian army is not a factor that may spark a mass antiwar movement in the country, similar to the antiwar movement in the United States in the late 1960s, because the ratio of casualties to population in Ukraine is much smaller than that in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. ..."
"... Naturally, the economic situation in Ukraine is much less stable than that of the U.S. during the Vietnam War. However, in the public consciousness, the war is only one factor behind the economic problems (along with corruption, incompetence of the authorities, etc.). ..."
"... The war has advantages, too. Of course, they would have disappeared in the event of a full-scale conflict, but Kiev is confident that this will never happen. In a situation like this, it finds it simpler to mobilize society, convince it to put up with difficulties and, most importantly, format the political and information space in an advantageous way. Beneficiaries of this reformatting include not only the government but also a wide range of parties and politicians who supported the Euromaidan. ..."
"... So, the current format of the conflict strengthens the political regime in Ukraine, which is actually the closest to regimes of limited political competition, such as those that existed in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe during the interwar period in the 20th century, or some Latin American countries (Brazil and Guatemala) after the Second World War. There is formal pluralism and a real possibility of succession of power there, yet real power can be contested only by forces from one political spectrum, whereas forces that are beyond this spectrum are restrained and can only aspire to seats in parliament. ..."
"... support is limited -- the West will not fight for Ukraine and will not provide aid on a scale comparable to the Marshall Plan. ..."
"... Already now, due to migration, the population of the territory now controlled by Kiev is less than 30 million people (judging by bread consumption statistics). ..."
"... This means it has decreased by more than 40 percent since 1991. ..."
"... As regards Ukraine's admission to NATO, many Western European countries oppose this option. On the other hand, they have not proposed any detailed plan for Ukraine's non-aligned status. Objectively, such status would be best guaranteed by the specifics of the state's internal structure, when accession to a military alliance would require a consensus of the regions. ..."
"... If this state collapses due to external factors, the identity of a large part of its present population may change very quickly, as evidenced by the experience of the 17th century and recent decades. ..."
In Ukraine, however, the switching of sides takes place on a larger scale. For example,
President Kuchma and Prime Minister Yanukovich had a majority in the Verkhovna Rada elected in
2002, which decreased somewhat in the last few months before the 2004 elections. Yet, newly
elected President Yushchenko did not have any problems with the same parliament. The Ukrainian
parliament elected in 2007 supported Prime Minister Timoshenko, but after Yanukovich won a
presidential election in February 2010 he had a solid majority in it until the next election.
Yanukovich also had a majority in parliament elected in 2012 until the last days of the
Euromaidan. However, after the victory of the Euromaidan, a coalition was formed in parliament
that supported the new authorities. It united factions and groups of 235 deputies in the
450-seat parliament, of whom 69 did not belong to pro-Euromaidan parties. Also, 371 deputies,
including almost all deputies from the Party of Regions, voted to appoint Yatsenyuk as prime
minister.
Can these figures serve as grounds to classify the Euromaidan as a coup d'état and
accuse the new regime of failing to build a government of national accord, provided for by the
agreement between Yanukovich and the opposition? A coup d'état presupposes suspending
and resetting the functioning of government institutions, whereas this agreement did not
specify what a national accord government should look like. On the other hand, the essence of
such governments is to unite people of different political views, rather than make their
members and supporters give up their former beliefs.
Yet, at least half of the population of all eight administrative regions of mainland
South-East Ukraine viewed the Euromaidan as a coup, because, according to a survey conducted in
early April 2014 by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, only a third of respondents
in these regions (the survey was not conducted in Crimea and Sevastopol) considered Yatsenyuk
and Turchinov legitimate heads of government and state, while half of respondents considered
them illegitimate (Kiev International Institute of Sociology, 2014c). However, the elite
of the South-East did not question the legitimacy of the new government. The most it was ready
to do was consider this government undesirable and due to be replaced at the next election.
The conformism of the South-East elite, which only recently was at the head of the
anti-Maidan movement, surpassed the conformism of society many times over, because this elite
had much to lose. But in this situation, the masses of protesters who considered the
Euromaidan a coup found themselves without their usual leaders. New leaders emerged
spontaneously from among protesters and were not viewed as authoritative by those who did not
take part in the protests. The depth of the gap between the masses and the elites can be seen
from the following fact: There is the émigré Ukraine Salvation Committee in
Moscow, headed by former Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov, which positions itself as almost a
government in exile. The Committee considers the hostilities in Donbass a civil war and,
therefore, does not view the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics as
occupation administrations. Yet, it has no contact with the leaders of these republics, which
also consider themselves an alternative Ukraine.
Although there was less conformism among the masses than among the elites, it still made the
protests in the South-East less widespread than they might have been if there had been a sign
of dual power, for example, if Yanukovich and the part of the elite, including parliament
deputies, who did not recognize the new regime had tried to create alternative government
institutions. This conformism made many people accept on faith the assurances of the new
government about broad decentralization, including the humanitarian sphere.
The situation with Crimea was another factor that objectively strengthened Kiev's
position in the South-East. Beginning in March, Crimea and Sevastopol, which could have
been at the vanguard of protests for reformatting Ukraine, withdrew from the political field of
the country by joining Russia. This predictably could not increase pro-Russian sentiments
in the rest of Ukraine. Formerly, public opinion polls had invariably showed a good
attitude of the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians towards Russia. However, during the
conflicts over Tuzla in 2003 and the gas dispute of 2009 their attitude deteriorated
significantly. Now it happened again, only this time the conflict was much more serious.
Attempts by the state which annexed part of Ukrainian territory to act as an arbiter and, at
the same time, pressure Kiev to reformat Ukraine into a federation, in which the voice of the
South-East should be heard, were predictably doomed to failure. Even potential supporters of
Russia doubted the impartiality of such arbitration, and anti-Russian forces took an
increasingly tough position, describing all talk of federalization as separatism.
True, Ukrainians who were firmly pro-Russian did not become more hostile to Russia because
of Crimea, while for the winners of the Euromaidan Crimea was not a reason but a pretext
for starting a policy of de-Russification. However, these events influenced the political
swamp, that is, citizens without a clear position, and strengthened the base of the current
regime, as evidenced by the results of public opinion polls and elections. EUROPEAN
INTEGRATION VS COMPROMISE
On the other hand, it would be legitimate to ask whether the victory of the Euromaidan
necessarily had to lead to a war, and whether a compromise could have been reached with the
masses of the discontented in the South-East at an early stage. My answer is "no."
The short history of independent Ukraine developed, on the one hand, as a history of steady
integration into European and world (but Western-controlled) organizations, and on the other
hand, as a history of crises which became increasingly explosive and which ended in
increasingly imperfect compromises. For some time, the relationship between these processes
could be easily overlooked, but now it is much more difficult not to notice it. The February
2014 agreement on the settlement of the crisis, for the first time achieved with the
participation of European guarantors, was also the first world agreement in the history of
Ukraine that was not fulfilled. It was after the signing of the economic part of the
Association Agreement that an anti-terrorist operation began in the East, and immediately after
the political part of this agreement was signed (June 27, 2014), this operation entered into
its largest-scale and bloodiest phase.
Of course, the West needed to put an end to Kiev's multi-vector policy and achieve
unambiguous certainty for it. Hence its position on the language issue and the territorial
structure of the country, which was most vividly realized in the April 2014 PACE resolution,
which spoke of the inadmissibility of any mention of Ukraine's federalization (Parliamentary
Assembly, 2014).
Obviously, the real problem was not in the word but in an optimal distribution of powers
(for example, Spanish autonomous communities have more powers than Austrian federal lands), but
the Europeans played up to Kiev in criminalizing the notion 'federation,' because for the
West the Ukrainian problem is part of the Russian problem . Its attitude to the protests
in the South-East and then the war in Donbass differed fundamentally from its attitude to an
overwhelming majority of internal conflicts around the globe.
In the cases of Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh, ethnic Serbs in Croatia and Kosovo, Aceh in
Indonesia, FARC in Colombia, etc., the West considered the leaders of separatists or insurgents
legitimate representatives of certain ethnic or social groups who had taken over powers not
provided for by the laws of their country. Their right to be a party to negotiations was not
questioned. But the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics are in no way seen as
self-proclaimed republics that reflect the views of their populations, even though
illegitimately from the point of view of Ukrainian legislation. The West views them as
paramilitary organizations which established power in those regions with external help and
imposed themselves on the population.
This position of the West strengthened the attitude of the pro-Western liberal public in
Ukraine towards people in the South-East as sovok (homo Sovieticus) and
vatnik (bigots), whose opinion could be ignored. A recent study (Baysha, 2017)
convincingly shows how the "discursive violence of the Ukrainian media" in late
February-early April 2014 paved the way for the "brutality of the antiterrorist operation" by
creating a negative image of people of the South-East. Importantly, these were not
state-run, oligarchic or party nationalist media, although they did the same. These were
popular websites, which are thought to be mouthpieces for liberal civil society (
Ukrayinska Pravda, Livyi Bereg, and Gordon ).
In other words, the conflict was a logical consequence of Westernization, rather than the
rise of nationalism. Welcoming the successes of the Ukrainian army in July 2014, the European
Parliament thus made it clear that this Westernization on the civilizational borders of Europe
may not resemble the practices of major European countries. At the same time, Ukrainian
radical nationalism objectively was an instrument which Ukrainian [neo]liberals used to achieve
victory. True, it is not willing to play this role and wants to be something more than
just an instrument. But behind the talk of the Banderization of Ukraine is a confusion of the
notions of customer and contractor.
WAR IN AN ACCEPTABLE FORMAT
Of course, many of those who took part in the Euromaidan did not fight there for renaming
Vatutin Avenue in Kiev as Shukhevich Avenue, or for banning the import of Russian books,
including memoirs of Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, or for banning songs by Russian singers
Vladimir Vysotsky and Victor Tsoi described as "tentacles of the Russian World" which leeched
onto Ukrainians (definition by Vladimir Vyatrovich, the head of the Institute of National
Memory, the most Euro-integrated organization of the Ukrainian government, which consistently
advocates the idea of a nationalist "recoding" of Ukrainians). The voices of people who do not
agree with this (for example, the poet and culturologist Evgenia Bilchenko) are sometimes heard
in the media space, but the problem is whether these voices, together with the voices of those
who were against the Euromaidan from the very beginning, can become a political factor.
I think this is almost ruled out under the most likely, inertial, scenario which provides
for the development of tendencies that emerged after the victory of the Euromaidan and the
preservation by Russia and the West of their behavioral models which have developed over recent
years.
When assessing this scenario, one should bear in mind that the armed conflict in Donbass has
over the last three years entered into a format that is the most advantageous (of all really
possible ones) for Ukraine -- a low-intensity smoldering conflict.
This situation objectively predisposes one to see dynamics, positive for Kiev, in the
conflict that began in 2014. At first, Ukraine surrendered Crimea to Russia and pro-Russian
forces without a fight. At the next stage, however, it localized the offensive of the Russian
World to Donbass, although it failed to take full control over the region. The result of this
phase of the fight can be regarded as a draw, or Ukraine's defeat on points. But Crimea was
lost through a knockout. After that, a defeat on points is still a better outcome.
The next, longest phase of the conflict has been going on without changes on the frontline.
However, positive dynamics for either party to the conflict is not only measured by
territories they seize -- it is seen in the fact that actions, formerly deemed impossible, turn
out to be possible and not having obvious negative consequences. For example, the
implementation of the political part of the Minsk Agreement (which both Kiev and the West
consider imposed on Ukraine from the outside) now seems to be a much more illusory goal than it
seemed in 2014-2015.
In particular, Kiev has rescinded a bill on constitutional amendments regarding
decentralization; an economic blockade of Donbass has been introduced; and several laws have
been passed and measures taken to combat the Russian World, both inside and outside the
country. The latter include the termination of air service, a ban on remittances,
restrictions on the import of Russian books, a ban on performances by some Russian
entertainers, the actual abolition of the law "On the Basic Principles of the Language Policy,"
restrictions on the use of the Russian language on the Ukrainian radio and television and its
abolition in education (with the exception of primary school), de-Russification of geographical
names, and the removal of monuments.
Kiev views all these measures as non-military blows to the enemy, and the scale of such
actions increases with every year.
The law on the reintegration of Donbass, passed by the Verkhovna Rada this January, was
a logical development and a new stage of this policy. Its purpose is not so much to recognize
the territories beyond Kiev's control as occupied by Russia. What is more important is that the
law recognizes this state de facto without a formal recognition of the war with Russia de
jure.
This positive dynamics creates a situation where a critical mass of society thinks that
at least Ukraine will not find itself in the same difficult situation as in the spring of 2014
and that, at best, it will restore full control over Donbass on its terms: Russia will not
withstand the sanctions and will stop supporting the uncontrolled territories. The policy of
the West does not contradict these expectations: the sanctions continue, there is almost no
public criticism of Kiev's actions in Donbass at the state level, except for minor issues, and
the U.S. has decided to supply Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine, which is largely a
symbolic gesture fitting perfectly into the aforementioned pattern of positive
dynamics.
For the reasons mentioned above, the West does not advocate a direct dialogue between Kiev
and Donetsk/Lugansk, but considers the existing level of conflict with more and more victims an
obviously lesser evil than a possible strengthening of the self-proclaimed republics. This
clearly follows from the statement of German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel about the
inadmissibility of Russia's proposal on a UN peacekeeping mission, which provides for the
separation of the warring parties by peacekeepers, to be deployed along the frontline, and the
protection of the OSCE mission, because that would only mean freezing the conflict. (A meeting
between Vladislav Surkov and Kurt Volker, which took place in Dubai during the writing of this
article, showed that the Americans are nevertheless ready to accept the Russian format as the
first phase of a peacekeeping mission; yet its practical implementation is still far off.)
Of course, very many of the above-mentioned elements of the positive (for Kiev) dynamics
also have a great negative effect. For example, the existing format of the conflict in Donbass
involves great military expenditures and leads to reduced ties with Russia, which is a
significant burden for the Ukrainian economy. However, it is important to understand a
balance between positive and negative aspects from Kiev's point of view.
Of course, the mobilization was a straining factor for society, because it could affect
almost every family. But since the end of 2016, when all people mobilized a year before
returned home, only contract soldiers and professional officers have taken part in the conflict
from the Ukrainian side -- that is, only those who have made this choice voluntarily or who
have chosen military service as their lifetime career. This is the main reason why the format
of hostilities can be considered acceptable or, at least, not too burdensome for Ukrainian
society.
The present scale of losses of the Ukrainian army is not a factor that may spark a mass
antiwar movement in the country, similar to the antiwar movement in the United States in the
late 1960s, because the ratio of casualties to population in Ukraine is much smaller than that
in the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
Naturally, the economic situation in Ukraine is much less stable than that of the U.S.
during the Vietnam War. However, in the public consciousness, the war is only one factor behind
the economic problems (along with corruption, incompetence of the authorities, etc.).
The unpopularity of the idea of peace at any cost not only shows the specific character of
the Ukrainian regime but, above all, it shows that society does not view the crisis as a
catastrophe, which means that the conflict has acquired a format convenient for Kiev.
This format means, in particular, that, to paraphrase Trotsky, Ukraine is in a state of both
peace and war with Russia, taking advantage of each of these states. For example, over the
first 11 months of 2017, Ukrainian exports to Russia grew by 12 percent and brought Ukraine
U.S. $360 million more than a year before. Two-thirds of Ukrainian coal imports come from
Russia, including 80 percent of anthracite, which has become scarce due to the blockade of
Donbass.
The war has advantages, too. Of course, they would have disappeared in the event of a
full-scale conflict, but Kiev is confident that this will never happen. In a situation like
this, it finds it simpler to mobilize society, convince it to put up with difficulties and,
most importantly, format the political and information space in an advantageous way.
Beneficiaries of this reformatting include not only the government but also a wide range of
parties and politicians who supported the Euromaidan. For example, there is a segment
among supporters of the Batkivshchina Party, led by Yulia Timoshenko, and the Radical Party,
led by Oleg Lyashko, who, judging by public opinion polls, do not support either a
confrontation with Russia or the current policy of historical memory. Obviously, these are
former supporters of the Party of Regions and communists, who have realized that the successors
to these parties will not be allowed to win anyway and that power can be contested only by
pro-Euromaidan parties. Therefore, they side with forces that are close to their own
ideological position, guided by their social slogans and disregarding their greater
geopolitical and humanitarian radicalism in comparison with the current authorities. But such a
choice can be made only if one is confident that this radicalism will not lead to a great war
and catastrophe.
So, the current format of the conflict strengthens the political regime in Ukraine,
which is actually the closest to regimes of limited political competition, such as those that
existed in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe during the interwar period in the 20th
century, or some Latin American countries (Brazil and Guatemala) after the Second World War.
There is formal pluralism and a real possibility of succession of power there, yet real power
can be contested only by forces from one political spectrum, whereas forces that are beyond
this spectrum are restrained and can only aspire to seats in parliament.
History shows that such regimes can exist for a very long time, especially with external
support, which Kiev certainly has, if we mean support for its geopolitical policy, rather than
concrete persons in power. It is another thing that such support is limited -- the West
will not fight for Ukraine and will not provide aid on a scale comparable to the Marshall
Plan.
The Georgian scenario for changing this regime is theoretically possible but unlikely,
because several factors prevent the success of a would-be Ukrainian Ivanishvili. The conflict
in Ukraine is felt more sharply because in 2014 it lost territories that it had controlled all
the years of independence, while Georgia lost control over Abkhazia in 1993 and over South
Ossetia even earlier. The August 2008 war only showed the impossibility of regaining these
territories. But the most important thing is that, whereas Georgia was an obvious loser in that
war, Ukraine has some positive dynamics, which was discussed above. In addition, differences
between Georgians and Russians have always been obvious, whereas for Kiev the current conflict
is a way to recode a large part of the population and form the nation on the basis of the
thesis that "Ukraine is different from Russia." Finally, the evolution of Georgia should not be
exaggerated. Diplomatic relations between Tbilisi and Moscow have not been restored, while
relations between Kiev and Moscow have never been broken off. Although Georgia has toned down
its anti-Russian rhetoric, it keeps moving towards the Euro-Atlantic structures.
Ukraine is moving in the same direction. Its problems will obviously grow in the near
future. Already now, due to migration, the population of the territory now controlled by
Kiev is less than 30 million people (judging by bread consumption statistics).
This means it has decreased by more than 40 percent since 1991. In addition, the
largest, postwar, generation is now entering the mortality age, while the generation of
newborns is the smallest over the years of independence. Yet, the territory of the country has
retained its geopolitical value and, regardless of whether Ukraine is granted formal NATO
membership or not, American troops can be permanently deployed in its territory during the
current Cold War -- or, more precisely, their presence can be broadened, because several
thousand NATO troops, half of them Americans, have been involved in military exercises
permanently held at the Yavorovo test range since the spring of 2015.
As regards Ukraine's admission to NATO, many Western European countries oppose this
option. On the other hand, they have not proposed any detailed plan for Ukraine's non-aligned
status. Objectively, such status would be best guaranteed by the specifics of the state's
internal structure, when accession to a military alliance would require a consensus of the
regions. In an interview with the Atlantic magazine in November 2016, Henry Kissinger
echoed this idea: "I favor an independent Ukraine that is militarily non-aligned. If you remove
the two Donbass regions from eastern Ukraine, you guarantee that Ukraine is permanently hostile
to Russia, since it becomes dominated by its Western part, which only joined Russia in the
1940s. The solution, then, is to find a way to give these units a degree of autonomy that gives
them a voice in military entanglements, but otherwise keeps them under the governance of
Ukraine." (Goldberg, 2016)
But since this voice remains solitary, the negative attitude of Western European countries
to Ukraine's accession to NATO is only a short-term tactical choice which may change later.
It is also unlikely that the implementation of the Minsk Agreement will help create the
model described by Kissinger, because a "voice in military entanglements" is a trait of a
confederation. Meanwhile, the status of individual Donbass regions, as defined by the above
agreement, is far even from that provided for in a federation. Rather, it is similar to the
limited autonomy of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, which they received under the Erdut agreement.
Therefore, even if the Minsk Agreement is implemented, which is unlikely, the existing
political regime in Ukraine will hardly change.
As regards Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, in a situation where they cannot change
this regime through elections, they will try to adapt to the existing reality, at least
outwardly.
The described inertial scenario is basic and most probable. However, it is not the only
possible one due to the weakness of the Ukrainian state (in particular, due to the growing
influence of right-wing radicals who may obtain parallel power), the unstable situation in the
world, and the unpredictability of Russia's policy in the long term, as Moscow may decide that
Kiev has crossed certain red lines established by it. If this state collapses due to
external factors, the identity of a large part of its present population may change very
quickly, as evidenced by the experience of the 17th century and recent decades.
Alexei V. Popov is an expert with the Kiev Center of Political Studies and
Conflictology
"... an essential warning against a continuation of the frivolous and dangerous policies of regime change adopted by the West after the end of the Cold War ..."
"... The result is both a sophisticated, multilevel analysis of how and why Ukraine emerged as the key hotspot in East-West relations, and an indispensable guide for those wishing to understand the origins of the New Cold War. ..."
"... Gordon M. Hahn challenges simplistic and often misleading narratives by the media and politicians and provides a corroboration that the Maidan massacre was a false flag mass killing ..."
"... They show Maidan's quasi-revolution was driven by international geopolitics, supporting counterposed Western and Russian "civilizationist" beliefs, and deep divisions within Ukrainian society itself, not a wellspring of widespread aspiration to Western-style democracy. ..."
Review "Ukraine's 2013-2014 revolution, its civil war, and Russia's annexation of the
Crimea have been succeeded by newer crises, but political analyst Hahn uses detailed reportage
and geopolitical theory to argue for their long-term significance, presenting Ukraine as a
troubling turning point in Russo-American relations and a case study of how democratization
efforts can go awry...with Russia atop American headlines to an extent not seen since the end
of the Cold War, [this book] will be a strong addition to global studies collections" --
Booklist
"It was not only Ukraine that went over the edge in 2014, but the whole European security
system disintegrated, while a 'new cold war' chills relations between the great powers. In this
masterful study, Gordon Hahn examines how Ukraine's internal divisions combined with external
lines of fragmentation to create an explosive mix, which in turn intensified domestic
conflicts. The result is an internationalized civil conflict, with catastrophic consequences
for Ukraine and the world. Hahn is one of the few scholars with the knowledge and discernment
to make sense of it all. His impressively well-researched and well-written book is essential
reading."--Richard Sakwa, University of Kent
"This impressively researched and strongly argued book is an essential corrective to the
myths that have been generated concerning the crisis in Ukraine, and an essential warning
against a continuation of the frivolous and dangerous policies of regime change adopted by the
West after the end of the Cold War ." --Anatol Lieven, Professor, Georgetown University in
Qatar and author of Ukraine and Russia, A Fraternal Rivalry
Ukraine Over the Edge is a rigorous analysis of the cultural, historical, and
intellectual origins of the Ukrainian crisis. While stressing that blame for the latest phase
of this crisis is shared all around, Hahn traces its domestic origins to the militancy of the
opposition to president Yanukovych, and its international origins to NATO expansion, which he
regards as militarized democracy-promotion. The result is both a sophisticated, multilevel
analysis of how and why Ukraine emerged as the key hotspot in East-West relations, and an
indispensable guide for those wishing to understand the origins of the New Cold War.
"--Nicolai N. Petro, Silvia-Chandley Professor of Peace Studies and Nonviolence, University of
Rhode Island
" Ukraine Over the Edge is a very useful contribution to understanding origins and
key developments of the crisis in this important European and post-Soviet country. Gordon
M. Hahn challenges simplistic and often misleading narratives by the media and politicians and
provides a corroboration that the Maidan massacre was a false flag mass killing ." --Ivan
Katchanovski, University of Ottawa About the AuthorGordon M. Hahn is an advisory
board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, and at the American Institute of
Geostrategy (AIGEO), Los Angeles; a contributing expert for Russia Direct, and a senior
researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), San Jose, California.
He lives in Mountain View, California.
Preface
As I read, listened and watched Western sources on the events surrounding the mass
demonstrations on central square in Kiev during winter 2013-2014, a sense of deja vu
became undeniable. Having studied the nature of terrorism in Russia's North Caucasus, the
causes and course of the August 2008 Georgian-Russian war, and other events involving Russia, I
had seen a pattern of misrepresentation of these events by most Western, especially American,
media, academia and government sources. There was a clear sense that this pattern was being
repeated with regard to the events on the Maidan. Hence, I decided to investigate matters for
myself and have come to a distinctly different conclusion regarding them than that imparted to
the Western public.
Two years after the Maidan "revolution of dignity," it was already clear that the
Western-backed overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was not entirely a revolution
and was ultimately in vain regardless of how one conceptualizes the events surrounding the
fall-winter 2013-2014 demonstrations and violence on Kiev's Maidan. The movement was based
initially on middle class opposition to corruption and soft authoritarianism and support for
European integration. Ultimately, the nascent pro-democratic revolution was hijacked by
neofascist elements that infiltrated the Maidan protests, overthrew the government, and then
were themselves superseded by several key oligarchs, who always have thrived under the
post-Soviet ancient regime. Thus, corruption and criminality have increased rather than
decreased, European integration has stalled, and authoritarianism is not just in the corridors
of power but on the streets under the yoke of roaming bands of neofascist groups seeking to
foment a second, truly "national revolution."
Despite the all-too-numerous adepts of democratization and democratic transition, this is
not the first, nor is it likely to be the last time when the West has misunderstood processes
it has hoped for, encouraged, and often funded and helped to organize. The "Arab Spring" is
only the most recent set of cases in point. Predictably, that spring's various revolutions
became an Islamist winter spread across parts of the Middle East and North Africa, except in
Egypt -- where a counterrevolution returned the status quo ante.
Similarly, in 1991 the adepts of democratic transitions or "transitology" got it wrong. Few
post-Soviet states became democracies because the "democratic revolution" that overthrew the
reformist late Soviet regime of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika was assumed to be a "revolution
from below" led by societal opposition forces bent on living in a democracy. This was true in
the Baltic republics, but in most cases the elements of democratic revolution from below were
subsumed by a mix of less civil state bureaucrat-led revolutions from above and nationalist-led
revolutions from below. In Russia, the revolution was largely one led from above by the Russian
President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian state apparatus against the partially reformed but
crumbling central Soviet state and regime. In Central Asia and elsewhere, there was simply a
change of signboards, rebranding for still very authoritarian regimes. The partial exception is
Kyrgyzstan's tulip revolutions and counterrevolutions, which also had strong elements from
above. Thus, it is no surprise that both Ukraine's 2004 Orange revolution, as 1 noted at the
time, and the 2013-2014 Maidan "revolution of dignity," as I predicted, proved to be something
less than the democratic revolutions "transitologists" hailed.
In addition to elements of revolution from below, the Maidan revolt also has elements of
revolution from above led by some state officials and state-tied oligarchs. Moreover, the
revolution from below was under considerable influence from national chauvinist,
ultranationalist, and neofascist groups. The Maidan ultranationalist-oligarchic regime now has
little popular support and few accomplishments in democratization, and is little different from
the previous, except for a marked increase in western Ukrainian neofascism (both in the
corridors of power and on the streets) and a near catastrophic economy. Revolutions are indeed
unwieldy things, not very manageable once unleashed.
The international geopolitical consequences have been even more deleterious. A deepening
Russian-Western confrontation over Ukraine risks recreating a bipolar "world split apart," with
Russia more inclined than ever to forge alliances with regimes opposed to American and Western
power.
This book is dedicated to clarifying these events and their consequences, something that is
imperative given the misleading government and media characterizations of them. This study is
based on Western, Ukrainian and Russian sources, including media reports, reliable primary and
secondary Internet sources, and official documents of governments and international
organizations.
They show Maidan's quasi-revolution was driven by international geopolitics, supporting
counterposed Western and Russian "civilizationist" beliefs, and deep divisions within Ukrainian
society itself, not a wellspring of widespread aspiration to Western-style democracy.
Allies Against Russia & Iran
Main U.S. allies are Saudi Arabia, UAE, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Israel, & Nazis
Eric Zuesse
July 27, 2018
4,900 Words
58 Comments
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Today's Axis (the fascist powers) are
the heirs of Hitler's failed Operation Barbarossa to conquer the Soviet Union. After World War II, America's
CIA, along with Britain's MI6 and other governmental agencies, plus the Vatican, produced "rat lines" for
key Nazis (including their collaborators in other countries) to resettle in U.S., Argentina, and
Canada
(and in other countries, too, as
the CIA-edited and written account
at Wikipedia
focused upon
), and for these 'former' Nazis (who actually remained ideologically as nazis or racist
fascists, and the CIA knew and welcomed this) to continue working to conquer the Soviet Union. These secret
nazis carried out secret assignments not only for their new country's military and against the Soviet Union,
but also domestically against labor unions of all sorts, and against anything that the owners of the largest
U.S.-and-allied international corporations wanted to be targeted.
This was and is an officially secret
extension of the internationally coordinated farthest far-right, the few people who actually control the
international corporations. It consists of the operations on behalf of the Deep State, but the agents who
carry out these instructions are
only agents
; consequently, everything that they know regarding what
they are instructed to do is told to them only privately on a need-to-know basis, so that only the members
of the Deep State itself are aware of what the broader objectives of any given operation are. For example,
the CIA's operations aren't part of the Deep State but particular ones of these operations
represent
the Deep State -- the instructions they execute on these operations come from the Deep State; the CIA is an
agency for the international Deep State, but not all of what the CIA does represents the Deep State. Not
even the U.S. President himself is necessarily aware of what the agents of the Deep State are doing -- not
even of what the Deep State's agents who are on the federal payroll are doing.
For example, as soon as Franklin Delano
Roosevelt died in 1945, the Deep State (the controlling owners of the largest international corporations)
started to take over, and not everything that it was doing was known at the time by the leaders of the
official (elected) American government. Even U.S. President Harry S. Truman -- though the sign on his desk
said "The BUCK STOPS here!" and he meant it -- was kept in the dark, and was occasionally deceived, about
some things that the OSS (precursor to the CIA) and the CIA were doing. For example, Truman probably didn't
know that
in 1948 the CIA perpetrated its first coup and this coup in Thailand established the off-the-books funding
of the CIA from the international narcotics traffic
(more on that is also
here
), so that the CIA's actual budget wouldn't be restricted simply to the on-the-books funding, from
U.S. taxpayers. This illegal funding-source has been crucial for many of the CIA's operations, and makes
bribes untraceable.
A subversive right-wing coup, centered in
the United States but operating throughout all U.S.-allied countries, thus gradually took over in the
formerly anti-Nazi U.S.-allied countries. This slow coup was internationally coordinated amongst aristocrats
(the controllers of international corporations) from all participating countries. But it was internationally
led by America's aristocrats, starting when FDR died.
Some of the major operations of the
international Deep State were courageously reported in
a rare and classic BBC documentary, in 1992, shown in this video
. As it makes clear, these agents of the
Deep State considered themselves to be revolutionaries. They were heroes, in their own eyes. Here are two
brief excerpts from that video:
8:35-9:00:
"As the
[Nazi]
Germans withdrew, they left secret agents in the countries they had occupied. For the retreating
Germans, they were the staunchest elitists. They were selected from the SS and the fascist Black Legions.
They were to become the footsoldiers in the next war, about to begin.
10:25-10:55:
"Then
[OSS
second-in-command]
Jim Angleton
[James Jesus Angleton]
appeared in August
[1945]
. He
started recruiting fascists, because he said that the best way to control the communists was to hire
fascists. One of the most tough ones was Prince Valerio Borghese, who ran what was known as the tenth
flotilla. These are the guys that would execute partisans
[anti-fascists]
and hang them from lamp
posts all over Italy."
So: within just months of FDR's 12 April
1945 death, The West's Deep State was already in full start-up mode, to achieve ultimately a fascist
victory, not only against the U.S.S.R., but also against Western countries themselves. This is the
historical reality, about The West, after WW II.
As liaison officer between the O.S.S.
and the Fifth Army he assisted the military‐government mission in Italy and captured codes, card files
and documents important to American security.
After the war he returned to Italy and worked for the restoration of Italian business and industry and
for a stable, democratic government.
He was for many years president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy.
Instead of his having been born in 1917,
he had actually been born in 1889, which is believable.
So, one can reasonably infer that in
1945, the 56-year-old Hugh Angleton passed along to the 28-year-old Jesus Angleton, his contact list of
approximately 3,000 secret operatives of Hitler and of Mussolini in Europe, and that this son (Jesus)
proceeded promptly to recruit these secret Nazis and Fascists to work for the OSS. The father could retire
rich, while the son went on to grow and harvest his crops, for America's war against Russia (
not
actually against communism -- which was the cover-story
).
When the Soviet Union broke up and
ended its communism in 1991 and thereafter, their former Warsaw Pact military alliance became gradually
absorbed into America's NATO alliance -- and now
even a former part of the Russian Federation itself within the former Soviet Union (and which thus is no
mere Warsaw Pact ally), Ukraine, is being invited into NATO
, and is preparing for admission into the
anti-Russia military pact -- into the U.S. alliance against Russia -- and
hopes to conquer Russia totally
. The name for the broader U.S. plan here (
of
which the takeover of Ukraine is only a part
) is "Nuclear Primacy" -- the U.S. Government's goal is U.S.
victory in a nuclear war against Russia, and this goal can be achieved only if the U.S. nuclearly
blitz-attacks Russia, and if that blitz-attack eliminates Russia's retaliatory weapons (sufficiently to meet
the U.S. Government's top-secret standard of what would constitute acceptable damage to the U.S. from a
Russian retaliatory attack). This is the ultimate strategic plan (and all details of it are prohibited from
being made public).
"Nuclear Primacy" replaces the prior
meta-strategy, which was called "Mutually Assured Destruction" or "M.A.D." -- the belief that the purpose of
nuclear weapons is to prevent a World War III, not to win a WW III. This new meta-strategy starts from the
assumption that the number of people killed in the U.S. and allied countries by a counter-attack from Russia
responding to a sudden and unannounced blitz nuclear invasion of Russia, by the U.S. and its allies, will be
worth that (currently secret) cost.
Some experts say that since
even the proponents of "Nuclear Primacy"
have ignored instead of discussed nuclear winter, the only
reason for the continuation of the 'Cold War' (the potential for an intentional nuclear war between America
and Russia) after the end of the Soviet Union and of its Warsaw Pact and of its communism, is in order to
advance the stock-values of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, SAIC, and the other international corporations whose
sole main sources of income are the U.S. Government and its allied governments. These government-dependent
corporations have taken over the government,
just like U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower publicly warned the American people against at the very end of
his two terms of office
, at a time when the process was, by then, already almost complete, and he
himself had actually been the person who had done the most that anyone had yet done to advance the
military-industrial complex. His famous
"military-industrial complex"
speech (and
here is its broader context
) urged future Presidents to try to undo what he himself had actually already
set inevitably into motion in America. It was as if he was warning to close the barn door so that the horse
won't get out, but the horse had already been stolen and was no longer even subject to this person's
control. Sales of weapons that American corporations market to the American Government, and to its allied
Governments, thus came to wag the tail of America's future
'democracy'
; nobody any longer could stop this process from being completed.
Now that the 'anti-Islamic-terrorist'
excuses for selling and buying their weapons and services are declining, the focus is, yet again,
increasingly against Russia and its allies, in order that the owners of those corporations (the category of
corporations
that depend the most
upon their Government) will continue to grow in wealth, and not to
lose value of their investments. As the anti-Jewish writer Philip Giraldi said accurately (though I think he
misunderstands how the Deep State, of which he used to be an operative, actually functions),
"Defense contractors need a foe to justify their existence while congressmen need the contractors to fund
their campaigns."
He interprets the corruption in a tribal way, rather than as corruption itself and of
any type, as being the reason why the United States continues to try to achieve 'Nuclear Primacy'. But that
explanation would not explain why nuclear winter is not being discussed by the proponents of 'Nuclear
Primacy'.
None of the publicly available
estimates, behind the 'Nuclear Primacy' meta-strategy, even discusses nuclear winter, which physicists say
would follow such a nuclear war between U.S. and Russia, and would virtually eliminate agriculture and
produce mass-starvation throughout the entire world, including in any 'victor' country. It threatens all
tribes. The published studies regarding the possibility of "nuclear winter"
all concern the likely effect of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan
, or other and even lesser
pairings. Whether or not the U.S. Government has ever commissioned a study of what the likely effects of a
nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would be, is not publicly known. Possibly, this subject has been
examined but the findings are not disclosed; but, also possibly, the U.S. Government does not want such a
study to be done, at all, so that no one will know what the findings might turn out to be. The latter
possibility might, for example, be the case if America's weapons manufacturing and marketing firms control
the U.S. Government. If constant increases in their sales is the objective that drives the U.S. Government,
then there would be sound reason for the U.S. Government to prevent or at least suppress any such analysis
of the global effects, inasmuch as its findings could crash those corporations' stock-values, and the
billionaires who
control those firms and the U.S. Government
, might suffer enormous losses. This assumes that the U.S.
Government represents those owners and not the public. But in any case: marketing weapons that are suitable
only for traditional, non-nuclear, wars, such as against regular jihadists, has apparently run its course
and produced all of the sales-growth that that business-plan is likely to achieve; and, therefore, as has
been the case since at least the time of the Obama Administration, the U.S.
is actively gearing up for an invasion of Russia
. The U.S. Government is behaving as if America's
weapons-producers own it. The weapons-producers (that is, the owners of the weapons-producers) seem to be in
control of the U.S. Government.
Whereas Giraldi and most other writers
against U.S. imperialism -- against development of control over the entire world by U.S. billionaires --
allege that the origin of this imperialism is "Jews" (and specifically the Jews who joined together under
the banner of "neoconservatism" after 1960), insufficient public attention has been devoted to the
possibility that an even more crucial role in the Middle Eastern portion of the U.S. Government's plan is
being played by
the world's wealthiest family
, the royal Saud family of Saudi Arabia, who have the same obsession to
conquer Iran that Israel's Government does. Israel's powerful lobby in the United States is pressing the
same things that the Saud family do; each of the two (Israel and the Sauds) pushes the invade-Iran theme,
and each is at least accepting of all the rest of the other's foreign policies; but, whereas lobbyists for
Jews are viewed somewhat sympathetically by the American public, no lobbyists for Muslims have anything like
the same level of acceptance by the U.S. public. For a U.S. Senator or Representative to be championing
Israel is accepted by the American public far more than is for that same person to be championing the Saud
family, who own Saudi Arabia, or to be championing any of the 7 royal families who own UAE, or etc. (Kuwait,
Qatar, or even non-Arab governments, such as Pakistan). Whereas the Gulf Cooperation Council of
fundamentalist-Sunni Arab kings constitute, by far, the lion's share of foreign buyers of U.S.-made
weaponry, Israel not only doesn't have such enormous financial resources, but it even receives from U.S.
taxpayers $3.8 billion in U.S. donations to Israel's Government, each and every year, in order for Israel to
be able to afford to buy from U.S. makers the weapons that it does buy. In contrast to Israel's relative
pauper-status there, U.S. President Donald Trump personally sold to the Saud family $350 billion of U.S.
weapons shortly after becoming President, and
increased that to $400 billion soon afterwards
. His sale, to the Sauds, of U.S. weaponry, is
overwhelmingly the largest military sale in all of world history. It is Trump's major achievement thus far
in his Presidency. (Trump can meet privately with King Saud, and with Netanyahu, but the Deep State calls
him a 'traitor' for meeting privately with Putin.)
On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day,
commemorating when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was
held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance. This
mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima.
The United States Government was already
preparing for the time when the then-raging U.S. military buildup in order to deal with terrorism would need
to be supplanted with a return to the major-power, strategic nuclear, weaponry, which could carry U.S.
weapons-manufacturers back to the good old days of unlimited 'defense' spending, and unlimited war-profits
to these firms. Dr. Chossudovsky continued:
The Privatization of Nuclear War: US
Military Contractors Set the Stage
The post 9/11 nuclear weapons
doctrine was in the making, with America's major defense contractors directly involved in the
decision-making process.
The Hiroshima Day 2003 meetings had
set the stage for the "privatization of nuclear war". Corporations not only reap multibillion-dollar
profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda
regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons industry, which
includes the production of nuclear devices as well as the missile delivery systems, etc., is controlled
by a handful of defense contractors with Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon
and Boeing in the lead.
These are weapons-systems that cost in
the billions of dollars, rather than in the millions of dollars. America's generals and national-'security'
advisors and other individuals who take part in the U.S. Government's planning and weapons-purchases, rotate
between official government posts and international corporate boards; and, basically, as professionals in
their line of work, they play both sides of that revolving door (between the government and 'the private
sector') so as to maximize their own future likely income streams. They are not peace-planners. That's not
really what they get paid to do -- avoid weapons-buildups and invasions. The people who get paid to do the
peace-job don't have nearly as much to sell, and they've got far fewer and poorer buyers for their services
(maybe the public?). This is the reality of 'the free market'. Another word for it is: "corruption."
Whenever and wherever wealth is extremely concentrated in a few, corruption reigns, the public does not. For
a country to have vast inequality of wealth is to have vast corruption, and to be ruled by it.
The CIA-controlled Wikipedia article on
"Nuclear Winter"
is written to deceive about the subject; and, therefore, for example, it opens one of
its sections with a blatantly propagandistic title and introduction:
Soviet exploitation
[edit]
See also: Soviet influence on the
peace movement § Claims of wider Soviet influence
In an interview in 2000 with Mikhail
Gorbachev (the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985–91), the following statement was posed to him: "In
the 1980s, you warned about the unprecedented dangers of nuclear weapons and took very daring steps to
reverse the arms race", with Gorbachev replying "Models made by Russian and American scientists showed
that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on
Earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act in that
situation."[216]
However, a 1984 US Interagency
Intelligence Assessment expresses a far more skeptical and cautious approach, stating that as the
hypothesis is not scientifically convincing.
Though the Wiki article discusses
several studies that had been done in the 1980s modeling the consequences of an India-Pakistan nuclear war
and comparably small ones, it mentions only dismissively the far-more-recent and inclusive study:
In a 2012 "Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists" feature, Robock and Toon, who had routinely mixed their disarmament advocacy into the
conclusions of their "nuclear winter" papers,[18] argue in the political realm that the hypothetical
effects of nuclear winter necessitates that the doctrine they assume is active in Russia and US,
"mutually assured destruction" (MAD) should instead be replaced with their own "self-assured destruction"
(SAD) concept,[200].
The propaganda is strictly by Wikipedia
there, not at all by Robock and Toon,
whose article
does
not
argue to replace "MAD" with "SAD" nor with anything at all, but instead
documents and affirms M.A.D. -- yes, Wikipedia outright lies, when it must -- and their article summarizes
studies published between 1980 and 2010, none of which modeled a U.S.-Russia war, but all of which were
consistent with the authors' conclusion; namely, that even those, much smaller, wars, would make things
vastly worse for both sides (both sides would enormously lose) and would also produce mass-starvation in
broader areas of the planet. Then, the article -- which, as noted, was current as of 2012 (not just as-of
those
earlier
periods) -- summarily stated, as follows, all work that had been done on the subject, up
till that time (and not since supplanted):
The new models show that a
full-scale nuclear conflict, in which 150 million tons of smoke are lofted into the upper atmosphere [the
minimum that a U.S.-Russia war would do], would drastically reduce precipitation by 45 percent on a
global average, while temperatures would fall for several years by 7 to 8 degrees Celsius [13 degrees
Fahrenheit] on average and would remain depressed by 4 degrees Celsius after a decade (Robock et al.,
2007a). Humans have not experienced temperatures this low since the last ice age (Figure 2). In important
grain-growing regions of the northern mid-latitudes [including both U.S. and Russia, as well as most of
Europe], precipitation would decline by up to 90 percent, and temperatures would fall below freezing and
remain there for one or more years.
The number of weapons needed to
initiate these climate changes falls within the range of arsenals planned for the coming decade (Toon et
al., 2008). For instance, the use of 4,000 weapons (the rough total for US and Russian arsenals in 2017
under New START), each with a yield of 100 kilotons (a typical yield for submarine weapons, but at the
low end for most nuclear weapons), against urban or industrial targets would produce about 180 million
tons of soot [30 million higher than that 150 million estimate]. A single US submarine carrying 144
weapons of 100-kiloton yield could produce 23 million tons of smoke if these weapons were used on densely
populated Chinese cities.
The effects of the nuclear contamination
itself are in addition to that estimation of the smoke-damages.
The U.S. weapons-manufacturers and their
agents might not want the public to know this (and so Wikipedia lies about it), but not only would both
sides lose from a U.S.-Russia nuclear war, but the entire planet would lose -- and drastically. The
cigarette-manufacturers long hid the harms of their business, but today's privatized weapons-manufacturing
firms dwarf the corruption and harm that the tobacco-industry perpetrated. The liars get well-paid, but the
truth is far grimmer, and far deadlier -- especially in this matter.
Unlike the CIA-Wikipedia fictionalized
version, M.A.D. wasn't "Soviet exploitation" -- it was instead the reality recognized by both sides, and is
the reality even today, despite what the U.S. weapons-manufacturers and their enormous sales-forces have
been deceiving their publics to believe since 2006.
Consequently, I infer, from the
evidence, that the leaders, of the operation to conquer Russia, are the controlling owners of America's
large 'defense' contractors, and of those individuals' largest non-U.S. customer, the Saud family. The
Sauds' biggest competitors in the international-energy markets (which are their own main markets) are:
Russia and Iran.
It makes sense for the Sauds to be the
#1 foreign buyers of American-made weapons. Not only do they get the weapons, but they get control over the
U.S. Government, which, in turn, determines which nations will be America's 'enemies' (the
'military-industrial complex's targets), and which nations will be America's 'allies' (the
'military-industrial complex's markets). The Sauds buy their allies wisely. Their business-plan includes, as
the most important ally, America's aristocracy; and (as a crucial ally to add greatly to the impact of
America's aristocracy, supplementing them to win the U.S. policies the Sauds need) Israel's aristocracy. The
combination of those two control-levers over the U.S. Government is powerful. Perhaps in the sudden global
cooling from nuclear winter, the Sauds' region will even become one of the world's greenest and most
fruitful. If anyone still exists then, at all.
Where does the EU, and where does the
anti-Russia NATO alliance, fit into this reality? Some of Europe's aristocrats are benefiting from alliance
with the U.S., but others are not. And, of course, America's aristocrats benefit enormously from having
their support -- i.e., from buying their support, bribing them in the legal ways. However, Europe's
aristocratic nazis weren't supposed to have been the winners of WW II. So: nazi Europeans are Europe's
enemies, not its friends -- just as nazi Americans aren't friends but instead enemies to the American people.
That hasn't changed, and can't change.
Only Europeans can decide what to do
regarding nazi Europeans. And only Americans can decide what to do regarding nazi Americans. (One idea might
be to refuse to vote for nazis, but, under existing circumstances, how would that even be possible?) Without
constant deceit, this situation couldn't exist anywhere. And if people are constantly deceived, they are
powerless. Deceit is the chief weapon of Operation Barbarossa II, the American aristocracy's war, not the
German aristocracy's war (which was more overtly physical -- military -- and was only secondarily based upon
deceiving the public).
When the Sauds became America's allies
in 1945 via the secret "Quincy Pact" between FDR and Saud, FDR probably expected that it would move Saudi
Arabia gradually toward democracy. What instead happened is that the Saud family and the losers of Operation
Barbarossa became carried forward toward ultimate victory over The West, by an alliance between the Saudi
and the American aristocracies. The Sauds and America's aristocrats won; FDR and his democratic legacy and
the American people ourselves, lost. The subterranean fascist forces turned out to be far more potent than
FDR imagined. Perhaps the OSS had been deceiving him.
Incidentally, any secret treaty
(including the Quincy Pact) is unConstitutional. None of this happened democratically. It was
a slow coup
. That's what created today's alliances, and today's targets.
To understand the Deep State, its basic
ideological principles need to be recognized. Under Hitler, hereditary rights and obligations were publicly
recognized; and democracy, the rule over a land by the residents on that land, was publicly condemned. Not
only the hereditary principle, but the imperialistic principle, the right of foreign conquest, was publicly
honored. The two principles go naturally together. The main reason why the Sauds and the other (all of them
fundamentalist Sunnis) Arab kings, want to conquer Iran, is that
Shia Islam denies the right of hereditary rule
. (This is also why in Syria, Bashar al-Assad claims no
hereditary right to rule; if he were to do otherwise, he'd violate Shia Islam and he would be rejected by
Iran.) The main reason why America's aristocracy wants to conquer Russia (other than the latter's
natural-resources wealth, which has always been a reason) is that
Vladimir Putin insists that only the residents in a land should possess sovereignty there, but the U.S. and
British aristocracies insist upon the right to conquer foreign lands
. As an ideology, nazism totally
affirms both the hereditary principle, and the imperialist principle. This is what the U.S.-Saudi alliance
likewise affirms. And that is why, for example, the CIA has always favored monarchies and opposed
democracies (or at least authentic ones, which the U.S. aristocracy cannot control).
I think this article goes much too far with the Nazi stuff but the simple fact that Saudi Arabia is the
third biggest military spender in the world, bigger than Russia, should inform people as to how much
influence Saudi has. Yet it is rarely mentioned.
The Saudis were just puppets installed by the British. It seems to me that the real "nazis", then and now,
are the banksters. Now as before they fund both sides of the conflicts that they initiate and after
digesting their profits they own what remains. As Tacitus wrote, solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. They
make a desert and call it peace
During WWII FDR was informed that in 30 years time USA
oil would be exhausted, so Harold L Ickes at the end of 1944 made Saudi Arabia THE USA's oil supplier.
To make the deal more official, FDR, in the beginning of 1945, received the Saud of the time aboard the
cruiser Quincy on the Bitter Lakes near the Suez canal.
As FDR said in his last speech to congress, seated, 'ten minutes with Saud had learned him more about
zionism than hundreds of letters from rabbi's'.
He also stated that he had promised Saud to limit jewish immigration into Palestine.
Both these statements do not seem to be in the offical record, they also were not in the text prepared for
him:
Robert E. Sherwood, 'Roosevelt und Hopkins', 1950, Hamburg (Roosevelt and Hopkins, New York, 1948)
In 1947, from memory, the then Saud published an interesting article on the folly of 'returning' in a USA
newspaper or periodical.
The Saudi regime just exists because of USA support, is my opinion.
Nothing special, all Muslim rulers in the ME are dependent on USA support, Quatar is the USA military
headquarters of the USA.
Iran is the exception.
Now it is possible that for the moment Israel is willing to cooperate with Saudi Arabia for the purpose
of destabilising the whole ME, present objective Iran.
The Iran regime quite well understands that Big Satan Sam controls a large part of the ME, thus they see the
Saudi regime as enemy.
If, if it succeeds, Iran has been destroyed, Israel is willing to cooperate with Saudi Arabia, I wonder.
Israel sees all neighbouring Muslim countries as threats.
If the Israeli destabilisation plans include the destabilisation of the European nations, more and more
people wonder.
Why does Soros want to force Muslim immigrants on Hungary ?
Brussels fears a new ME war, they fear the new wave of immigrants.
They do want these immigrants, a 2009 Brussels document states that the EU needs 60 million, but the
citizens of the member states more and more realise the burden of these migrants, they cost some € 30.000
per migrant per year in social security, thus it will lead to the collapse of social security, cultural
antagonies are more and more realised, as crime rates.
So a new ME war may be the end of the EU.
Therefore Brussels warned Netanyahu about Iran, also because of huge investments by European companies such
as Total in Iran.
I do hope that Trump will save us in Europe, also of course the people of Iran, from a new ME war.
He stated that immigration is destroying the European cultures.
Just want to add a comment on this Nazi-USA-Israel friendship. When I read the memoirs of Reinhardt Gehlen
(The Service, The Memoirs) there was one interesting place. Gehlen predicted in a meeting the exact time of
the Israel attack in the Six Day War some time before it. He comments in the book that he had sent to Egypt
old Nazi intelligence people and these people knew precisely what weapons Israel had before this 1967 war.
Apparently they knew of the coming attack (since Gehlen did) and that Israel would surely win if there came
a war (as German military, they could count the strengths), but they did not hint anything to the Egyptians
so that they could have had some planes in the air or tried to avoid a war (this failure to do so must have
been intentional).
This essay has an X-files feel to it. I find it hard to believe that Roosevelt and Truman didn't know that
Mega-Corporations were running the show.
Yes, there are a collusion of special interests. But no need for "spooky action at a distance" claims.
It's all very up front. This is why I don't buy the claim of Roosevelt and Truman being innocent puppets.
Roosevelt for sure came from the Oligarch class.
The POTUS effectively acts as a corporate lawyer for the Mega-Corporations whose job is to explain to the
MEGA-CEO just what they are able to get away with without provoking violent Peasant Revolt across the
US ..at any given point in time. The Ludlow massacre was a close one.
This illegal funding-source has been crucial for many of the CIA's operations, and makes bribes
untraceable.
Illegality is the main function of covert operations. If they were legal, there would be no reason for
them to be covert. Laws or legalisms (written behavior restrictions), are put in place by the powers that
be, whoever they are, to restrict the behavior of the masses. Not to restrict themselves.
Again. Ask yourself who you cannot criticize. Then you will know who they are. And have been, all along.
"Israeli arms are being
sent to a heavily armed neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine. IWI markets the Tavor as the "primary weapon" of the
Israeli special forces.
Fort, the Ukrainian state-owned arms company that produces the rifles under license, has a page about the
Tavor on its website. The Israel Weapon Industries logo also appears on its website, including on the "Our
Partners" page."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MywW6mOquSk
"A photo on Azov's website also shows a Tavor in the hands of one of the militia's officers. The rifles
are produced under licence from Israel Weapon Industries, and as such would have been authorized by the
Israeli government:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QopTJkI3_Fs
The author provides some interesting observations... He ignores the role of economics
though.
Looks like a replay of events in Baltic republics. Might increase emigration and
"provisialization" of Ukraine because Russian is suppressed but English did not became the second
language (which is probably impossible without switching education into English language).
Dominance of EU might be more harsh regime, then most of the supporters of Eurointergation
assume, especially in economic sphere -- the status of semi-colony and debt slave are given, but
it can be worse.
Economic suffering of population and pauperization of Ukraine are immense...
Notable quotes:
"... Yet, at least half of the population of all eight administrative regions of mainland South-East Ukraine viewed the Euromaidan as a coup, because, according to a survey conducted in early April 2014 by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, only a third of respondents in these regions (the survey was not conducted in Crimea and Sevastopol) considered Yatsenyuk and Turchinov legitimate heads of government and state, while half of respondents considered them illegitimate (Kiev International Institute of Sociology, 2014c). ..."
"... The conformism of the South-East elite, which only recently was at the head of the anti-Maidan movement, surpassed the conformism of society many times over, because this elite had much to lose. ..."
"... The situation with Crimea was another factor that objectively strengthened Kiev's position in the South-East. ..."
"... This predictably could not increase pro-Russian sentiments in the rest of Ukraine. ..."
"... anti-Russian forces took an increasingly tough position, describing all talk of federalization as separatism. ..."
"... the winners of the Euromaidan Crimea was not a reason but a pretext for starting a policy of de-Russification. However, these events influenced the political swamp, that is, citizens without a clear position, and strengthened the base of the current regime, as evidenced by the results of public opinion polls and elections. ..."
"... the Europeans played up to Kiev in criminalizing the notion 'federation,' because for the West the Ukrainian problem is part of the Russian problem ..."
"... The West views them as paramilitary organizations which established power in those regions with external help and imposed themselves on the population. ..."
"... This position of the West strengthened the attitude of the pro-Western liberal public in Ukraine towards people in the South-East as sovok ..."
"... the "discursive violence of the Ukrainian media" in late February-early April 2014 paved the way for the "brutality of the antiterrorist operation" by creating a negative image of people of the South-East. ..."
"... Ukrayinska Pravda, Livyi Bereg, ..."
"... At the same time, Ukrainian radical nationalism objectively was an instrument which Ukrainian [neo]liberals used to achieve victory. ..."
"... However, positive dynamics for either party to the conflict is not only measured by territories they seize -- it is seen in the fact that actions, formerly deemed impossible, turn out to be possible and not having obvious negative consequences. For example, the implementation of the political part of the Minsk Agreement (which both Kiev and the West consider imposed on Ukraine from the outside) now seems to be a much more illusory goal than it seemed in 2014-2015. ..."
"... In particular, Kiev has rescinded a bill on constitutional amendments regarding decentralization; an economic blockade of Donbass has been introduced; and several laws have been passed and measures taken to combat the Russian World, both inside and outside the country. ..."
"... The law on the reintegration of Donbass, passed by the Verkhovna Rada this January, was a logical development and a new stage of this policy. Its purpose is not so much to recognize the territories beyond Kiev's control as occupied by Russia. What is more important is that the law recognizes this state de facto without a formal recognition of the war with Russia de jure. ..."
"... This positive dynamics creates a situation where a critical mass of society thinks that at least Ukraine will not find itself in the same difficult situation as in the spring of 2014 and that, at best, it will restore full control over Donbass on its terms: Russia will not withstand the sanctions and will stop supporting the uncontrolled territories. The policy of the West does not contradict these expectations: the sanctions continue, there is almost no public criticism of Kiev's actions in Donbass at the state level, except for minor issues, and the U.S. has decided to supply Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine, which is largely a symbolic gesture fitting perfectly into the aforementioned pattern of positive dynamics. ..."
"... Of course, very many of the above-mentioned elements of the positive (for Kiev) dynamics also have a great negative effect. For example, the existing format of the conflict in Donbass involves great military expenditures and leads to reduced ties with Russia, which is a significant burden for the Ukrainian economy. ..."
"... The present scale of losses of the Ukrainian army is not a factor that may spark a mass antiwar movement in the country, similar to the antiwar movement in the United States in the late 1960s, because the ratio of casualties to population in Ukraine is much smaller than that in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. ..."
"... Naturally, the economic situation in Ukraine is much less stable than that of the U.S. during the Vietnam War. However, in the public consciousness, the war is only one factor behind the economic problems (along with corruption, incompetence of the authorities, etc.). ..."
"... The war has advantages, too. Of course, they would have disappeared in the event of a full-scale conflict, but Kiev is confident that this will never happen. In a situation like this, it finds it simpler to mobilize society, convince it to put up with difficulties and, most importantly, format the political and information space in an advantageous way. Beneficiaries of this reformatting include not only the government but also a wide range of parties and politicians who supported the Euromaidan. ..."
"... So, the current format of the conflict strengthens the political regime in Ukraine, which is actually the closest to regimes of limited political competition, such as those that existed in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe during the interwar period in the 20th century, or some Latin American countries (Brazil and Guatemala) after the Second World War. There is formal pluralism and a real possibility of succession of power there, yet real power can be contested only by forces from one political spectrum, whereas forces that are beyond this spectrum are restrained and can only aspire to seats in parliament. ..."
"... support is limited -- the West will not fight for Ukraine and will not provide aid on a scale comparable to the Marshall Plan. ..."
"... Already now, due to migration, the population of the territory now controlled by Kiev is less than 30 million people (judging by bread consumption statistics). ..."
"... This means it has decreased by more than 40 percent since 1991. ..."
"... As regards Ukraine's admission to NATO, many Western European countries oppose this option. On the other hand, they have not proposed any detailed plan for Ukraine's non-aligned status. Objectively, such status would be best guaranteed by the specifics of the state's internal structure, when accession to a military alliance would require a consensus of the regions. ..."
"... If this state collapses due to external factors, the identity of a large part of its present population may change very quickly, as evidenced by the experience of the 17th century and recent decades. ..."
In Ukraine, however, the switching of sides takes place on a larger scale. For example,
President Kuchma and Prime Minister Yanukovich had a majority in the Verkhovna Rada elected in
2002, which decreased somewhat in the last few months before the 2004 elections. Yet, newly
elected President Yushchenko did not have any problems with the same parliament. The Ukrainian
parliament elected in 2007 supported Prime Minister Timoshenko, but after Yanukovich won a
presidential election in February 2010 he had a solid majority in it until the next election.
Yanukovich also had a majority in parliament elected in 2012 until the last days of the
Euromaidan. However, after the victory of the Euromaidan, a coalition was formed in parliament
that supported the new authorities. It united factions and groups of 235 deputies in the
450-seat parliament, of whom 69 did not belong to pro-Euromaidan parties. Also, 371 deputies,
including almost all deputies from the Party of Regions, voted to appoint Yatsenyuk as prime
minister.
Can these figures serve as grounds to classify the Euromaidan as a coup d'état and
accuse the new regime of failing to build a government of national accord, provided for by the
agreement between Yanukovich and the opposition? A coup d'état presupposes suspending
and resetting the functioning of government institutions, whereas this agreement did not
specify what a national accord government should look like. On the other hand, the essence of
such governments is to unite people of different political views, rather than make their
members and supporters give up their former beliefs.
Yet, at least half of the population of all eight administrative regions of mainland
South-East Ukraine viewed the Euromaidan as a coup, because, according to a survey conducted in
early April 2014 by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, only a third of respondents
in these regions (the survey was not conducted in Crimea and Sevastopol) considered Yatsenyuk
and Turchinov legitimate heads of government and state, while half of respondents considered
them illegitimate (Kiev International Institute of Sociology, 2014c). However, the elite
of the South-East did not question the legitimacy of the new government. The most it was ready
to do was consider this government undesirable and due to be replaced at the next election.
The conformism of the South-East elite, which only recently was at the head of the
anti-Maidan movement, surpassed the conformism of society many times over, because this elite
had much to lose. But in this situation, the masses of protesters who considered the
Euromaidan a coup found themselves without their usual leaders. New leaders emerged
spontaneously from among protesters and were not viewed as authoritative by those who did not
take part in the protests. The depth of the gap between the masses and the elites can be seen
from the following fact: There is the émigré Ukraine Salvation Committee in
Moscow, headed by former Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov, which positions itself as almost a
government in exile. The Committee considers the hostilities in Donbass a civil war and,
therefore, does not view the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics as
occupation administrations. Yet, it has no contact with the leaders of these republics, which
also consider themselves an alternative Ukraine.
Although there was less conformism among the masses than among the elites, it still made the
protests in the South-East less widespread than they might have been if there had been a sign
of dual power, for example, if Yanukovich and the part of the elite, including parliament
deputies, who did not recognize the new regime had tried to create alternative government
institutions. This conformism made many people accept on faith the assurances of the new
government about broad decentralization, including the humanitarian sphere.
The situation with Crimea was another factor that objectively strengthened Kiev's
position in the South-East. Beginning in March, Crimea and Sevastopol, which could have
been at the vanguard of protests for reformatting Ukraine, withdrew from the political field of
the country by joining Russia. This predictably could not increase pro-Russian sentiments
in the rest of Ukraine. Formerly, public opinion polls had invariably showed a good
attitude of the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians towards Russia. However, during the
conflicts over Tuzla in 2003 and the gas dispute of 2009 their attitude deteriorated
significantly. Now it happened again, only this time the conflict was much more serious.
Attempts by the state which annexed part of Ukrainian territory to act as an arbiter and, at
the same time, pressure Kiev to reformat Ukraine into a federation, in which the voice of the
South-East should be heard, were predictably doomed to failure. Even potential supporters of
Russia doubted the impartiality of such arbitration, and anti-Russian forces took an
increasingly tough position, describing all talk of federalization as separatism.
True, Ukrainians who were firmly pro-Russian did not become more hostile to Russia because
of Crimea, while for the winners of the Euromaidan Crimea was not a reason but a pretext
for starting a policy of de-Russification. However, these events influenced the political
swamp, that is, citizens without a clear position, and strengthened the base of the current
regime, as evidenced by the results of public opinion polls and elections. EUROPEAN
INTEGRATION VS COMPROMISE
On the other hand, it would be legitimate to ask whether the victory of the Euromaidan
necessarily had to lead to a war, and whether a compromise could have been reached with the
masses of the discontented in the South-East at an early stage. My answer is "no."
The short history of independent Ukraine developed, on the one hand, as a history of steady
integration into European and world (but Western-controlled) organizations, and on the other
hand, as a history of crises which became increasingly explosive and which ended in
increasingly imperfect compromises. For some time, the relationship between these processes
could be easily overlooked, but now it is much more difficult not to notice it. The February
2014 agreement on the settlement of the crisis, for the first time achieved with the
participation of European guarantors, was also the first world agreement in the history of
Ukraine that was not fulfilled. It was after the signing of the economic part of the
Association Agreement that an anti-terrorist operation began in the East, and immediately after
the political part of this agreement was signed (June 27, 2014), this operation entered into
its largest-scale and bloodiest phase.
Of course, the West needed to put an end to Kiev's multi-vector policy and achieve
unambiguous certainty for it. Hence its position on the language issue and the territorial
structure of the country, which was most vividly realized in the April 2014 PACE resolution,
which spoke of the inadmissibility of any mention of Ukraine's federalization (Parliamentary
Assembly, 2014).
Obviously, the real problem was not in the word but in an optimal distribution of powers
(for example, Spanish autonomous communities have more powers than Austrian federal lands), but
the Europeans played up to Kiev in criminalizing the notion 'federation,' because for the
West the Ukrainian problem is part of the Russian problem . Its attitude to the protests
in the South-East and then the war in Donbass differed fundamentally from its attitude to an
overwhelming majority of internal conflicts around the globe.
In the cases of Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh, ethnic Serbs in Croatia and Kosovo, Aceh in
Indonesia, FARC in Colombia, etc., the West considered the leaders of separatists or insurgents
legitimate representatives of certain ethnic or social groups who had taken over powers not
provided for by the laws of their country. Their right to be a party to negotiations was not
questioned. But the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics are in no way seen as
self-proclaimed republics that reflect the views of their populations, even though
illegitimately from the point of view of Ukrainian legislation. The West views them as
paramilitary organizations which established power in those regions with external help and
imposed themselves on the population.
This position of the West strengthened the attitude of the pro-Western liberal public in
Ukraine towards people in the South-East as sovok (homo Sovieticus) and
vatnik (bigots), whose opinion could be ignored. A recent study (Baysha, 2017)
convincingly shows how the "discursive violence of the Ukrainian media" in late
February-early April 2014 paved the way for the "brutality of the antiterrorist operation" by
creating a negative image of people of the South-East. Importantly, these were not
state-run, oligarchic or party nationalist media, although they did the same. These were
popular websites, which are thought to be mouthpieces for liberal civil society (
Ukrayinska Pravda, Livyi Bereg, and Gordon ).
In other words, the conflict was a logical consequence of Westernization, rather than the
rise of nationalism. Welcoming the successes of the Ukrainian army in July 2014, the European
Parliament thus made it clear that this Westernization on the civilizational borders of Europe
may not resemble the practices of major European countries. At the same time, Ukrainian
radical nationalism objectively was an instrument which Ukrainian [neo]liberals used to achieve
victory. True, it is not willing to play this role and wants to be something more than
just an instrument. But behind the talk of the Banderization of Ukraine is a confusion of the
notions of customer and contractor.
WAR IN AN ACCEPTABLE FORMAT
Of course, many of those who took part in the Euromaidan did not fight there for renaming
Vatutin Avenue in Kiev as Shukhevich Avenue, or for banning the import of Russian books,
including memoirs of Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, or for banning songs by Russian singers
Vladimir Vysotsky and Victor Tsoi described as "tentacles of the Russian World" which leeched
onto Ukrainians (definition by Vladimir Vyatrovich, the head of the Institute of National
Memory, the most Euro-integrated organization of the Ukrainian government, which consistently
advocates the idea of a nationalist "recoding" of Ukrainians). The voices of people who do not
agree with this (for example, the poet and culturologist Evgenia Bilchenko) are sometimes heard
in the media space, but the problem is whether these voices, together with the voices of those
who were against the Euromaidan from the very beginning, can become a political factor.
I think this is almost ruled out under the most likely, inertial, scenario which provides
for the development of tendencies that emerged after the victory of the Euromaidan and the
preservation by Russia and the West of their behavioral models which have developed over recent
years.
When assessing this scenario, one should bear in mind that the armed conflict in Donbass has
over the last three years entered into a format that is the most advantageous (of all really
possible ones) for Ukraine -- a low-intensity smoldering conflict.
This situation objectively predisposes one to see dynamics, positive for Kiev, in the
conflict that began in 2014. At first, Ukraine surrendered Crimea to Russia and pro-Russian
forces without a fight. At the next stage, however, it localized the offensive of the Russian
World to Donbass, although it failed to take full control over the region. The result of this
phase of the fight can be regarded as a draw, or Ukraine's defeat on points. But Crimea was
lost through a knockout. After that, a defeat on points is still a better outcome.
The next, longest phase of the conflict has been going on without changes on the frontline.
However, positive dynamics for either party to the conflict is not only measured by
territories they seize -- it is seen in the fact that actions, formerly deemed impossible, turn
out to be possible and not having obvious negative consequences. For example, the
implementation of the political part of the Minsk Agreement (which both Kiev and the West
consider imposed on Ukraine from the outside) now seems to be a much more illusory goal than it
seemed in 2014-2015.
In particular, Kiev has rescinded a bill on constitutional amendments regarding
decentralization; an economic blockade of Donbass has been introduced; and several laws have
been passed and measures taken to combat the Russian World, both inside and outside the
country. The latter include the termination of air service, a ban on remittances,
restrictions on the import of Russian books, a ban on performances by some Russian
entertainers, the actual abolition of the law "On the Basic Principles of the Language Policy,"
restrictions on the use of the Russian language on the Ukrainian radio and television and its
abolition in education (with the exception of primary school), de-Russification of geographical
names, and the removal of monuments.
Kiev views all these measures as non-military blows to the enemy, and the scale of such
actions increases with every year.
The law on the reintegration of Donbass, passed by the Verkhovna Rada this January, was
a logical development and a new stage of this policy. Its purpose is not so much to recognize
the territories beyond Kiev's control as occupied by Russia. What is more important is that the
law recognizes this state de facto without a formal recognition of the war with Russia de
jure.
This positive dynamics creates a situation where a critical mass of society thinks that
at least Ukraine will not find itself in the same difficult situation as in the spring of 2014
and that, at best, it will restore full control over Donbass on its terms: Russia will not
withstand the sanctions and will stop supporting the uncontrolled territories. The policy of
the West does not contradict these expectations: the sanctions continue, there is almost no
public criticism of Kiev's actions in Donbass at the state level, except for minor issues, and
the U.S. has decided to supply Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine, which is largely a
symbolic gesture fitting perfectly into the aforementioned pattern of positive
dynamics.
For the reasons mentioned above, the West does not advocate a direct dialogue between Kiev
and Donetsk/Lugansk, but considers the existing level of conflict with more and more victims an
obviously lesser evil than a possible strengthening of the self-proclaimed republics. This
clearly follows from the statement of German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel about the
inadmissibility of Russia's proposal on a UN peacekeeping mission, which provides for the
separation of the warring parties by peacekeepers, to be deployed along the frontline, and the
protection of the OSCE mission, because that would only mean freezing the conflict. (A meeting
between Vladislav Surkov and Kurt Volker, which took place in Dubai during the writing of this
article, showed that the Americans are nevertheless ready to accept the Russian format as the
first phase of a peacekeeping mission; yet its practical implementation is still far off.)
Of course, very many of the above-mentioned elements of the positive (for Kiev) dynamics
also have a great negative effect. For example, the existing format of the conflict in Donbass
involves great military expenditures and leads to reduced ties with Russia, which is a
significant burden for the Ukrainian economy. However, it is important to understand a
balance between positive and negative aspects from Kiev's point of view.
Of course, the mobilization was a straining factor for society, because it could affect
almost every family. But since the end of 2016, when all people mobilized a year before
returned home, only contract soldiers and professional officers have taken part in the conflict
from the Ukrainian side -- that is, only those who have made this choice voluntarily or who
have chosen military service as their lifetime career. This is the main reason why the format
of hostilities can be considered acceptable or, at least, not too burdensome for Ukrainian
society.
The present scale of losses of the Ukrainian army is not a factor that may spark a mass
antiwar movement in the country, similar to the antiwar movement in the United States in the
late 1960s, because the ratio of casualties to population in Ukraine is much smaller than that
in the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
Naturally, the economic situation in Ukraine is much less stable than that of the U.S.
during the Vietnam War. However, in the public consciousness, the war is only one factor behind
the economic problems (along with corruption, incompetence of the authorities, etc.).
The unpopularity of the idea of peace at any cost not only shows the specific character of
the Ukrainian regime but, above all, it shows that society does not view the crisis as a
catastrophe, which means that the conflict has acquired a format convenient for Kiev.
This format means, in particular, that, to paraphrase Trotsky, Ukraine is in a state of both
peace and war with Russia, taking advantage of each of these states. For example, over the
first 11 months of 2017, Ukrainian exports to Russia grew by 12 percent and brought Ukraine
U.S. $360 million more than a year before. Two-thirds of Ukrainian coal imports come from
Russia, including 80 percent of anthracite, which has become scarce due to the blockade of
Donbass.
The war has advantages, too. Of course, they would have disappeared in the event of a
full-scale conflict, but Kiev is confident that this will never happen. In a situation like
this, it finds it simpler to mobilize society, convince it to put up with difficulties and,
most importantly, format the political and information space in an advantageous way.
Beneficiaries of this reformatting include not only the government but also a wide range of
parties and politicians who supported the Euromaidan. For example, there is a segment
among supporters of the Batkivshchina Party, led by Yulia Timoshenko, and the Radical Party,
led by Oleg Lyashko, who, judging by public opinion polls, do not support either a
confrontation with Russia or the current policy of historical memory. Obviously, these are
former supporters of the Party of Regions and communists, who have realized that the successors
to these parties will not be allowed to win anyway and that power can be contested only by
pro-Euromaidan parties. Therefore, they side with forces that are close to their own
ideological position, guided by their social slogans and disregarding their greater
geopolitical and humanitarian radicalism in comparison with the current authorities. But such a
choice can be made only if one is confident that this radicalism will not lead to a great war
and catastrophe.
So, the current format of the conflict strengthens the political regime in Ukraine,
which is actually the closest to regimes of limited political competition, such as those that
existed in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe during the interwar period in the 20th
century, or some Latin American countries (Brazil and Guatemala) after the Second World War.
There is formal pluralism and a real possibility of succession of power there, yet real power
can be contested only by forces from one political spectrum, whereas forces that are beyond
this spectrum are restrained and can only aspire to seats in parliament.
History shows that such regimes can exist for a very long time, especially with external
support, which Kiev certainly has, if we mean support for its geopolitical policy, rather than
concrete persons in power. It is another thing that such support is limited -- the West
will not fight for Ukraine and will not provide aid on a scale comparable to the Marshall
Plan.
The Georgian scenario for changing this regime is theoretically possible but unlikely,
because several factors prevent the success of a would-be Ukrainian Ivanishvili. The conflict
in Ukraine is felt more sharply because in 2014 it lost territories that it had controlled all
the years of independence, while Georgia lost control over Abkhazia in 1993 and over South
Ossetia even earlier. The August 2008 war only showed the impossibility of regaining these
territories. But the most important thing is that, whereas Georgia was an obvious loser in that
war, Ukraine has some positive dynamics, which was discussed above. In addition, differences
between Georgians and Russians have always been obvious, whereas for Kiev the current conflict
is a way to recode a large part of the population and form the nation on the basis of the
thesis that "Ukraine is different from Russia." Finally, the evolution of Georgia should not be
exaggerated. Diplomatic relations between Tbilisi and Moscow have not been restored, while
relations between Kiev and Moscow have never been broken off. Although Georgia has toned down
its anti-Russian rhetoric, it keeps moving towards the Euro-Atlantic structures.
Ukraine is moving in the same direction. Its problems will obviously grow in the near
future. Already now, due to migration, the population of the territory now controlled by
Kiev is less than 30 million people (judging by bread consumption statistics).
This means it has decreased by more than 40 percent since 1991. In addition, the
largest, postwar, generation is now entering the mortality age, while the generation of
newborns is the smallest over the years of independence. Yet, the territory of the country has
retained its geopolitical value and, regardless of whether Ukraine is granted formal NATO
membership or not, American troops can be permanently deployed in its territory during the
current Cold War -- or, more precisely, their presence can be broadened, because several
thousand NATO troops, half of them Americans, have been involved in military exercises
permanently held at the Yavorovo test range since the spring of 2015.
As regards Ukraine's admission to NATO, many Western European countries oppose this
option. On the other hand, they have not proposed any detailed plan for Ukraine's non-aligned
status. Objectively, such status would be best guaranteed by the specifics of the state's
internal structure, when accession to a military alliance would require a consensus of the
regions. In an interview with the Atlantic magazine in November 2016, Henry Kissinger
echoed this idea: "I favor an independent Ukraine that is militarily non-aligned. If you remove
the two Donbass regions from eastern Ukraine, you guarantee that Ukraine is permanently hostile
to Russia, since it becomes dominated by its Western part, which only joined Russia in the
1940s. The solution, then, is to find a way to give these units a degree of autonomy that gives
them a voice in military entanglements, but otherwise keeps them under the governance of
Ukraine." (Goldberg, 2016)
But since this voice remains solitary, the negative attitude of Western European countries
to Ukraine's accession to NATO is only a short-term tactical choice which may change later.
It is also unlikely that the implementation of the Minsk Agreement will help create the
model described by Kissinger, because a "voice in military entanglements" is a trait of a
confederation. Meanwhile, the status of individual Donbass regions, as defined by the above
agreement, is far even from that provided for in a federation. Rather, it is similar to the
limited autonomy of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, which they received under the Erdut agreement.
Therefore, even if the Minsk Agreement is implemented, which is unlikely, the existing
political regime in Ukraine will hardly change.
As regards Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, in a situation where they cannot change
this regime through elections, they will try to adapt to the existing reality, at least
outwardly.
The described inertial scenario is basic and most probable. However, it is not the only
possible one due to the weakness of the Ukrainian state (in particular, due to the growing
influence of right-wing radicals who may obtain parallel power), the unstable situation in the
world, and the unpredictability of Russia's policy in the long term, as Moscow may decide that
Kiev has crossed certain red lines established by it. If this state collapses due to
external factors, the identity of a large part of its present population may change very
quickly, as evidenced by the experience of the 17th century and recent decades.
Alexei V. Popov is an expert with the Kiev Center of Political Studies and
Conflictology
"... an essential warning against a continuation of the frivolous and dangerous policies of regime change adopted by the West after the end of the Cold War ..."
"... The result is both a sophisticated, multilevel analysis of how and why Ukraine emerged as the key hotspot in East-West relations, and an indispensable guide for those wishing to understand the origins of the New Cold War. ..."
"... Gordon M. Hahn challenges simplistic and often misleading narratives by the media and politicians and provides a corroboration that the Maidan massacre was a false flag mass killing ..."
"... They show Maidan's quasi-revolution was driven by international geopolitics, supporting counterposed Western and Russian "civilizationist" beliefs, and deep divisions within Ukrainian society itself, not a wellspring of widespread aspiration to Western-style democracy. ..."
Review "Ukraine's 2013-2014 revolution, its civil war, and Russia's annexation of the
Crimea have been succeeded by newer crises, but political analyst Hahn uses detailed reportage
and geopolitical theory to argue for their long-term significance, presenting Ukraine as a
troubling turning point in Russo-American relations and a case study of how democratization
efforts can go awry...with Russia atop American headlines to an extent not seen since the end
of the Cold War, [this book] will be a strong addition to global studies collections" --
Booklist
"It was not only Ukraine that went over the edge in 2014, but the whole European security
system disintegrated, while a 'new cold war' chills relations between the great powers. In this
masterful study, Gordon Hahn examines how Ukraine's internal divisions combined with external
lines of fragmentation to create an explosive mix, which in turn intensified domestic
conflicts. The result is an internationalized civil conflict, with catastrophic consequences
for Ukraine and the world. Hahn is one of the few scholars with the knowledge and discernment
to make sense of it all. His impressively well-researched and well-written book is essential
reading."--Richard Sakwa, University of Kent
"This impressively researched and strongly argued book is an essential corrective to the
myths that have been generated concerning the crisis in Ukraine, and an essential warning
against a continuation of the frivolous and dangerous policies of regime change adopted by the
West after the end of the Cold War ." --Anatol Lieven, Professor, Georgetown University in
Qatar and author of Ukraine and Russia, A Fraternal Rivalry
Ukraine Over the Edge is a rigorous analysis of the cultural, historical, and
intellectual origins of the Ukrainian crisis. While stressing that blame for the latest phase
of this crisis is shared all around, Hahn traces its domestic origins to the militancy of the
opposition to president Yanukovych, and its international origins to NATO expansion, which he
regards as militarized democracy-promotion. The result is both a sophisticated, multilevel
analysis of how and why Ukraine emerged as the key hotspot in East-West relations, and an
indispensable guide for those wishing to understand the origins of the New Cold War.
"--Nicolai N. Petro, Silvia-Chandley Professor of Peace Studies and Nonviolence, University of
Rhode Island
" Ukraine Over the Edge is a very useful contribution to understanding origins and
key developments of the crisis in this important European and post-Soviet country. Gordon
M. Hahn challenges simplistic and often misleading narratives by the media and politicians and
provides a corroboration that the Maidan massacre was a false flag mass killing ." --Ivan
Katchanovski, University of Ottawa About the AuthorGordon M. Hahn is an advisory
board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, and at the American Institute of
Geostrategy (AIGEO), Los Angeles; a contributing expert for Russia Direct, and a senior
researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), San Jose, California.
He lives in Mountain View, California.
Preface
As I read, listened and watched Western sources on the events surrounding the mass
demonstrations on central square in Kiev during winter 2013-2014, a sense of deja vu
became undeniable. Having studied the nature of terrorism in Russia's North Caucasus, the
causes and course of the August 2008 Georgian-Russian war, and other events involving Russia, I
had seen a pattern of misrepresentation of these events by most Western, especially American,
media, academia and government sources. There was a clear sense that this pattern was being
repeated with regard to the events on the Maidan. Hence, I decided to investigate matters for
myself and have come to a distinctly different conclusion regarding them than that imparted to
the Western public.
Two years after the Maidan "revolution of dignity," it was already clear that the
Western-backed overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was not entirely a revolution
and was ultimately in vain regardless of how one conceptualizes the events surrounding the
fall-winter 2013-2014 demonstrations and violence on Kiev's Maidan. The movement was based
initially on middle class opposition to corruption and soft authoritarianism and support for
European integration. Ultimately, the nascent pro-democratic revolution was hijacked by
neofascist elements that infiltrated the Maidan protests, overthrew the government, and then
were themselves superseded by several key oligarchs, who always have thrived under the
post-Soviet ancient regime. Thus, corruption and criminality have increased rather than
decreased, European integration has stalled, and authoritarianism is not just in the corridors
of power but on the streets under the yoke of roaming bands of neofascist groups seeking to
foment a second, truly "national revolution."
Despite the all-too-numerous adepts of democratization and democratic transition, this is
not the first, nor is it likely to be the last time when the West has misunderstood processes
it has hoped for, encouraged, and often funded and helped to organize. The "Arab Spring" is
only the most recent set of cases in point. Predictably, that spring's various revolutions
became an Islamist winter spread across parts of the Middle East and North Africa, except in
Egypt -- where a counterrevolution returned the status quo ante.
Similarly, in 1991 the adepts of democratic transitions or "transitology" got it wrong. Few
post-Soviet states became democracies because the "democratic revolution" that overthrew the
reformist late Soviet regime of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika was assumed to be a "revolution
from below" led by societal opposition forces bent on living in a democracy. This was true in
the Baltic republics, but in most cases the elements of democratic revolution from below were
subsumed by a mix of less civil state bureaucrat-led revolutions from above and nationalist-led
revolutions from below. In Russia, the revolution was largely one led from above by the Russian
President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian state apparatus against the partially reformed but
crumbling central Soviet state and regime. In Central Asia and elsewhere, there was simply a
change of signboards, rebranding for still very authoritarian regimes. The partial exception is
Kyrgyzstan's tulip revolutions and counterrevolutions, which also had strong elements from
above. Thus, it is no surprise that both Ukraine's 2004 Orange revolution, as 1 noted at the
time, and the 2013-2014 Maidan "revolution of dignity," as I predicted, proved to be something
less than the democratic revolutions "transitologists" hailed.
In addition to elements of revolution from below, the Maidan revolt also has elements of
revolution from above led by some state officials and state-tied oligarchs. Moreover, the
revolution from below was under considerable influence from national chauvinist,
ultranationalist, and neofascist groups. The Maidan ultranationalist-oligarchic regime now has
little popular support and few accomplishments in democratization, and is little different from
the previous, except for a marked increase in western Ukrainian neofascism (both in the
corridors of power and on the streets) and a near catastrophic economy. Revolutions are indeed
unwieldy things, not very manageable once unleashed.
The international geopolitical consequences have been even more deleterious. A deepening
Russian-Western confrontation over Ukraine risks recreating a bipolar "world split apart," with
Russia more inclined than ever to forge alliances with regimes opposed to American and Western
power.
This book is dedicated to clarifying these events and their consequences, something that is
imperative given the misleading government and media characterizations of them. This study is
based on Western, Ukrainian and Russian sources, including media reports, reliable primary and
secondary Internet sources, and official documents of governments and international
organizations.
They show Maidan's quasi-revolution was driven by international geopolitics, supporting
counterposed Western and Russian "civilizationist" beliefs, and deep divisions within Ukrainian
society itself, not a wellspring of widespread aspiration to Western-style democracy.
Allies Against Russia & Iran
Main U.S. allies are Saudi Arabia, UAE, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Israel, & Nazis
Eric Zuesse
July 27, 2018
4,900 Words
58 Comments
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Today's Axis (the fascist powers) are
the heirs of Hitler's failed Operation Barbarossa to conquer the Soviet Union. After World War II, America's
CIA, along with Britain's MI6 and other governmental agencies, plus the Vatican, produced "rat lines" for
key Nazis (including their collaborators in other countries) to resettle in U.S., Argentina, and
Canada
(and in other countries, too, as
the CIA-edited and written account
at Wikipedia
focused upon
), and for these 'former' Nazis (who actually remained ideologically as nazis or racist
fascists, and the CIA knew and welcomed this) to continue working to conquer the Soviet Union. These secret
nazis carried out secret assignments not only for their new country's military and against the Soviet Union,
but also domestically against labor unions of all sorts, and against anything that the owners of the largest
U.S.-and-allied international corporations wanted to be targeted.
This was and is an officially secret
extension of the internationally coordinated farthest far-right, the few people who actually control the
international corporations. It consists of the operations on behalf of the Deep State, but the agents who
carry out these instructions are
only agents
; consequently, everything that they know regarding what
they are instructed to do is told to them only privately on a need-to-know basis, so that only the members
of the Deep State itself are aware of what the broader objectives of any given operation are. For example,
the CIA's operations aren't part of the Deep State but particular ones of these operations
represent
the Deep State -- the instructions they execute on these operations come from the Deep State; the CIA is an
agency for the international Deep State, but not all of what the CIA does represents the Deep State. Not
even the U.S. President himself is necessarily aware of what the agents of the Deep State are doing -- not
even of what the Deep State's agents who are on the federal payroll are doing.
For example, as soon as Franklin Delano
Roosevelt died in 1945, the Deep State (the controlling owners of the largest international corporations)
started to take over, and not everything that it was doing was known at the time by the leaders of the
official (elected) American government. Even U.S. President Harry S. Truman -- though the sign on his desk
said "The BUCK STOPS here!" and he meant it -- was kept in the dark, and was occasionally deceived, about
some things that the OSS (precursor to the CIA) and the CIA were doing. For example, Truman probably didn't
know that
in 1948 the CIA perpetrated its first coup and this coup in Thailand established the off-the-books funding
of the CIA from the international narcotics traffic
(more on that is also
here
), so that the CIA's actual budget wouldn't be restricted simply to the on-the-books funding, from
U.S. taxpayers. This illegal funding-source has been crucial for many of the CIA's operations, and makes
bribes untraceable.
A subversive right-wing coup, centered in
the United States but operating throughout all U.S.-allied countries, thus gradually took over in the
formerly anti-Nazi U.S.-allied countries. This slow coup was internationally coordinated amongst aristocrats
(the controllers of international corporations) from all participating countries. But it was internationally
led by America's aristocrats, starting when FDR died.
Some of the major operations of the
international Deep State were courageously reported in
a rare and classic BBC documentary, in 1992, shown in this video
. As it makes clear, these agents of the
Deep State considered themselves to be revolutionaries. They were heroes, in their own eyes. Here are two
brief excerpts from that video:
8:35-9:00:
"As the
[Nazi]
Germans withdrew, they left secret agents in the countries they had occupied. For the retreating
Germans, they were the staunchest elitists. They were selected from the SS and the fascist Black Legions.
They were to become the footsoldiers in the next war, about to begin.
10:25-10:55:
"Then
[OSS
second-in-command]
Jim Angleton
[James Jesus Angleton]
appeared in August
[1945]
. He
started recruiting fascists, because he said that the best way to control the communists was to hire
fascists. One of the most tough ones was Prince Valerio Borghese, who ran what was known as the tenth
flotilla. These are the guys that would execute partisans
[anti-fascists]
and hang them from lamp
posts all over Italy."
So: within just months of FDR's 12 April
1945 death, The West's Deep State was already in full start-up mode, to achieve ultimately a fascist
victory, not only against the U.S.S.R., but also against Western countries themselves. This is the
historical reality, about The West, after WW II.
As liaison officer between the O.S.S.
and the Fifth Army he assisted the military‐government mission in Italy and captured codes, card files
and documents important to American security.
After the war he returned to Italy and worked for the restoration of Italian business and industry and
for a stable, democratic government.
He was for many years president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy.
Instead of his having been born in 1917,
he had actually been born in 1889, which is believable.
So, one can reasonably infer that in
1945, the 56-year-old Hugh Angleton passed along to the 28-year-old Jesus Angleton, his contact list of
approximately 3,000 secret operatives of Hitler and of Mussolini in Europe, and that this son (Jesus)
proceeded promptly to recruit these secret Nazis and Fascists to work for the OSS. The father could retire
rich, while the son went on to grow and harvest his crops, for America's war against Russia (
not
actually against communism -- which was the cover-story
).
When the Soviet Union broke up and
ended its communism in 1991 and thereafter, their former Warsaw Pact military alliance became gradually
absorbed into America's NATO alliance -- and now
even a former part of the Russian Federation itself within the former Soviet Union (and which thus is no
mere Warsaw Pact ally), Ukraine, is being invited into NATO
, and is preparing for admission into the
anti-Russia military pact -- into the U.S. alliance against Russia -- and
hopes to conquer Russia totally
. The name for the broader U.S. plan here (
of
which the takeover of Ukraine is only a part
) is "Nuclear Primacy" -- the U.S. Government's goal is U.S.
victory in a nuclear war against Russia, and this goal can be achieved only if the U.S. nuclearly
blitz-attacks Russia, and if that blitz-attack eliminates Russia's retaliatory weapons (sufficiently to meet
the U.S. Government's top-secret standard of what would constitute acceptable damage to the U.S. from a
Russian retaliatory attack). This is the ultimate strategic plan (and all details of it are prohibited from
being made public).
"Nuclear Primacy" replaces the prior
meta-strategy, which was called "Mutually Assured Destruction" or "M.A.D." -- the belief that the purpose of
nuclear weapons is to prevent a World War III, not to win a WW III. This new meta-strategy starts from the
assumption that the number of people killed in the U.S. and allied countries by a counter-attack from Russia
responding to a sudden and unannounced blitz nuclear invasion of Russia, by the U.S. and its allies, will be
worth that (currently secret) cost.
Some experts say that since
even the proponents of "Nuclear Primacy"
have ignored instead of discussed nuclear winter, the only
reason for the continuation of the 'Cold War' (the potential for an intentional nuclear war between America
and Russia) after the end of the Soviet Union and of its Warsaw Pact and of its communism, is in order to
advance the stock-values of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, SAIC, and the other international corporations whose
sole main sources of income are the U.S. Government and its allied governments. These government-dependent
corporations have taken over the government,
just like U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower publicly warned the American people against at the very end of
his two terms of office
, at a time when the process was, by then, already almost complete, and he
himself had actually been the person who had done the most that anyone had yet done to advance the
military-industrial complex. His famous
"military-industrial complex"
speech (and
here is its broader context
) urged future Presidents to try to undo what he himself had actually already
set inevitably into motion in America. It was as if he was warning to close the barn door so that the horse
won't get out, but the horse had already been stolen and was no longer even subject to this person's
control. Sales of weapons that American corporations market to the American Government, and to its allied
Governments, thus came to wag the tail of America's future
'democracy'
; nobody any longer could stop this process from being completed.
Now that the 'anti-Islamic-terrorist'
excuses for selling and buying their weapons and services are declining, the focus is, yet again,
increasingly against Russia and its allies, in order that the owners of those corporations (the category of
corporations
that depend the most
upon their Government) will continue to grow in wealth, and not to
lose value of their investments. As the anti-Jewish writer Philip Giraldi said accurately (though I think he
misunderstands how the Deep State, of which he used to be an operative, actually functions),
"Defense contractors need a foe to justify their existence while congressmen need the contractors to fund
their campaigns."
He interprets the corruption in a tribal way, rather than as corruption itself and of
any type, as being the reason why the United States continues to try to achieve 'Nuclear Primacy'. But that
explanation would not explain why nuclear winter is not being discussed by the proponents of 'Nuclear
Primacy'.
None of the publicly available
estimates, behind the 'Nuclear Primacy' meta-strategy, even discusses nuclear winter, which physicists say
would follow such a nuclear war between U.S. and Russia, and would virtually eliminate agriculture and
produce mass-starvation throughout the entire world, including in any 'victor' country. It threatens all
tribes. The published studies regarding the possibility of "nuclear winter"
all concern the likely effect of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan
, or other and even lesser
pairings. Whether or not the U.S. Government has ever commissioned a study of what the likely effects of a
nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would be, is not publicly known. Possibly, this subject has been
examined but the findings are not disclosed; but, also possibly, the U.S. Government does not want such a
study to be done, at all, so that no one will know what the findings might turn out to be. The latter
possibility might, for example, be the case if America's weapons manufacturing and marketing firms control
the U.S. Government. If constant increases in their sales is the objective that drives the U.S. Government,
then there would be sound reason for the U.S. Government to prevent or at least suppress any such analysis
of the global effects, inasmuch as its findings could crash those corporations' stock-values, and the
billionaires who
control those firms and the U.S. Government
, might suffer enormous losses. This assumes that the U.S.
Government represents those owners and not the public. But in any case: marketing weapons that are suitable
only for traditional, non-nuclear, wars, such as against regular jihadists, has apparently run its course
and produced all of the sales-growth that that business-plan is likely to achieve; and, therefore, as has
been the case since at least the time of the Obama Administration, the U.S.
is actively gearing up for an invasion of Russia
. The U.S. Government is behaving as if America's
weapons-producers own it. The weapons-producers (that is, the owners of the weapons-producers) seem to be in
control of the U.S. Government.
Whereas Giraldi and most other writers
against U.S. imperialism -- against development of control over the entire world by U.S. billionaires --
allege that the origin of this imperialism is "Jews" (and specifically the Jews who joined together under
the banner of "neoconservatism" after 1960), insufficient public attention has been devoted to the
possibility that an even more crucial role in the Middle Eastern portion of the U.S. Government's plan is
being played by
the world's wealthiest family
, the royal Saud family of Saudi Arabia, who have the same obsession to
conquer Iran that Israel's Government does. Israel's powerful lobby in the United States is pressing the
same things that the Saud family do; each of the two (Israel and the Sauds) pushes the invade-Iran theme,
and each is at least accepting of all the rest of the other's foreign policies; but, whereas lobbyists for
Jews are viewed somewhat sympathetically by the American public, no lobbyists for Muslims have anything like
the same level of acceptance by the U.S. public. For a U.S. Senator or Representative to be championing
Israel is accepted by the American public far more than is for that same person to be championing the Saud
family, who own Saudi Arabia, or to be championing any of the 7 royal families who own UAE, or etc. (Kuwait,
Qatar, or even non-Arab governments, such as Pakistan). Whereas the Gulf Cooperation Council of
fundamentalist-Sunni Arab kings constitute, by far, the lion's share of foreign buyers of U.S.-made
weaponry, Israel not only doesn't have such enormous financial resources, but it even receives from U.S.
taxpayers $3.8 billion in U.S. donations to Israel's Government, each and every year, in order for Israel to
be able to afford to buy from U.S. makers the weapons that it does buy. In contrast to Israel's relative
pauper-status there, U.S. President Donald Trump personally sold to the Saud family $350 billion of U.S.
weapons shortly after becoming President, and
increased that to $400 billion soon afterwards
. His sale, to the Sauds, of U.S. weaponry, is
overwhelmingly the largest military sale in all of world history. It is Trump's major achievement thus far
in his Presidency. (Trump can meet privately with King Saud, and with Netanyahu, but the Deep State calls
him a 'traitor' for meeting privately with Putin.)
On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day,
commemorating when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was
held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance. This
mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima.
The United States Government was already
preparing for the time when the then-raging U.S. military buildup in order to deal with terrorism would need
to be supplanted with a return to the major-power, strategic nuclear, weaponry, which could carry U.S.
weapons-manufacturers back to the good old days of unlimited 'defense' spending, and unlimited war-profits
to these firms. Dr. Chossudovsky continued:
The Privatization of Nuclear War: US
Military Contractors Set the Stage
The post 9/11 nuclear weapons
doctrine was in the making, with America's major defense contractors directly involved in the
decision-making process.
The Hiroshima Day 2003 meetings had
set the stage for the "privatization of nuclear war". Corporations not only reap multibillion-dollar
profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda
regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons industry, which
includes the production of nuclear devices as well as the missile delivery systems, etc., is controlled
by a handful of defense contractors with Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon
and Boeing in the lead.
These are weapons-systems that cost in
the billions of dollars, rather than in the millions of dollars. America's generals and national-'security'
advisors and other individuals who take part in the U.S. Government's planning and weapons-purchases, rotate
between official government posts and international corporate boards; and, basically, as professionals in
their line of work, they play both sides of that revolving door (between the government and 'the private
sector') so as to maximize their own future likely income streams. They are not peace-planners. That's not
really what they get paid to do -- avoid weapons-buildups and invasions. The people who get paid to do the
peace-job don't have nearly as much to sell, and they've got far fewer and poorer buyers for their services
(maybe the public?). This is the reality of 'the free market'. Another word for it is: "corruption."
Whenever and wherever wealth is extremely concentrated in a few, corruption reigns, the public does not. For
a country to have vast inequality of wealth is to have vast corruption, and to be ruled by it.
The CIA-controlled Wikipedia article on
"Nuclear Winter"
is written to deceive about the subject; and, therefore, for example, it opens one of
its sections with a blatantly propagandistic title and introduction:
Soviet exploitation
[edit]
See also: Soviet influence on the
peace movement § Claims of wider Soviet influence
In an interview in 2000 with Mikhail
Gorbachev (the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985–91), the following statement was posed to him: "In
the 1980s, you warned about the unprecedented dangers of nuclear weapons and took very daring steps to
reverse the arms race", with Gorbachev replying "Models made by Russian and American scientists showed
that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be extremely destructive to all life on
Earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and morality, to act in that
situation."[216]
However, a 1984 US Interagency
Intelligence Assessment expresses a far more skeptical and cautious approach, stating that as the
hypothesis is not scientifically convincing.
Though the Wiki article discusses
several studies that had been done in the 1980s modeling the consequences of an India-Pakistan nuclear war
and comparably small ones, it mentions only dismissively the far-more-recent and inclusive study:
In a 2012 "Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists" feature, Robock and Toon, who had routinely mixed their disarmament advocacy into the
conclusions of their "nuclear winter" papers,[18] argue in the political realm that the hypothetical
effects of nuclear winter necessitates that the doctrine they assume is active in Russia and US,
"mutually assured destruction" (MAD) should instead be replaced with their own "self-assured destruction"
(SAD) concept,[200].
The propaganda is strictly by Wikipedia
there, not at all by Robock and Toon,
whose article
does
not
argue to replace "MAD" with "SAD" nor with anything at all, but instead
documents and affirms M.A.D. -- yes, Wikipedia outright lies, when it must -- and their article summarizes
studies published between 1980 and 2010, none of which modeled a U.S.-Russia war, but all of which were
consistent with the authors' conclusion; namely, that even those, much smaller, wars, would make things
vastly worse for both sides (both sides would enormously lose) and would also produce mass-starvation in
broader areas of the planet. Then, the article -- which, as noted, was current as of 2012 (not just as-of
those
earlier
periods) -- summarily stated, as follows, all work that had been done on the subject, up
till that time (and not since supplanted):
The new models show that a
full-scale nuclear conflict, in which 150 million tons of smoke are lofted into the upper atmosphere [the
minimum that a U.S.-Russia war would do], would drastically reduce precipitation by 45 percent on a
global average, while temperatures would fall for several years by 7 to 8 degrees Celsius [13 degrees
Fahrenheit] on average and would remain depressed by 4 degrees Celsius after a decade (Robock et al.,
2007a). Humans have not experienced temperatures this low since the last ice age (Figure 2). In important
grain-growing regions of the northern mid-latitudes [including both U.S. and Russia, as well as most of
Europe], precipitation would decline by up to 90 percent, and temperatures would fall below freezing and
remain there for one or more years.
The number of weapons needed to
initiate these climate changes falls within the range of arsenals planned for the coming decade (Toon et
al., 2008). For instance, the use of 4,000 weapons (the rough total for US and Russian arsenals in 2017
under New START), each with a yield of 100 kilotons (a typical yield for submarine weapons, but at the
low end for most nuclear weapons), against urban or industrial targets would produce about 180 million
tons of soot [30 million higher than that 150 million estimate]. A single US submarine carrying 144
weapons of 100-kiloton yield could produce 23 million tons of smoke if these weapons were used on densely
populated Chinese cities.
The effects of the nuclear contamination
itself are in addition to that estimation of the smoke-damages.
The U.S. weapons-manufacturers and their
agents might not want the public to know this (and so Wikipedia lies about it), but not only would both
sides lose from a U.S.-Russia nuclear war, but the entire planet would lose -- and drastically. The
cigarette-manufacturers long hid the harms of their business, but today's privatized weapons-manufacturing
firms dwarf the corruption and harm that the tobacco-industry perpetrated. The liars get well-paid, but the
truth is far grimmer, and far deadlier -- especially in this matter.
Unlike the CIA-Wikipedia fictionalized
version, M.A.D. wasn't "Soviet exploitation" -- it was instead the reality recognized by both sides, and is
the reality even today, despite what the U.S. weapons-manufacturers and their enormous sales-forces have
been deceiving their publics to believe since 2006.
Consequently, I infer, from the
evidence, that the leaders, of the operation to conquer Russia, are the controlling owners of America's
large 'defense' contractors, and of those individuals' largest non-U.S. customer, the Saud family. The
Sauds' biggest competitors in the international-energy markets (which are their own main markets) are:
Russia and Iran.
It makes sense for the Sauds to be the
#1 foreign buyers of American-made weapons. Not only do they get the weapons, but they get control over the
U.S. Government, which, in turn, determines which nations will be America's 'enemies' (the
'military-industrial complex's targets), and which nations will be America's 'allies' (the
'military-industrial complex's markets). The Sauds buy their allies wisely. Their business-plan includes, as
the most important ally, America's aristocracy; and (as a crucial ally to add greatly to the impact of
America's aristocracy, supplementing them to win the U.S. policies the Sauds need) Israel's aristocracy. The
combination of those two control-levers over the U.S. Government is powerful. Perhaps in the sudden global
cooling from nuclear winter, the Sauds' region will even become one of the world's greenest and most
fruitful. If anyone still exists then, at all.
Where does the EU, and where does the
anti-Russia NATO alliance, fit into this reality? Some of Europe's aristocrats are benefiting from alliance
with the U.S., but others are not. And, of course, America's aristocrats benefit enormously from having
their support -- i.e., from buying their support, bribing them in the legal ways. However, Europe's
aristocratic nazis weren't supposed to have been the winners of WW II. So: nazi Europeans are Europe's
enemies, not its friends -- just as nazi Americans aren't friends but instead enemies to the American people.
That hasn't changed, and can't change.
Only Europeans can decide what to do
regarding nazi Europeans. And only Americans can decide what to do regarding nazi Americans. (One idea might
be to refuse to vote for nazis, but, under existing circumstances, how would that even be possible?) Without
constant deceit, this situation couldn't exist anywhere. And if people are constantly deceived, they are
powerless. Deceit is the chief weapon of Operation Barbarossa II, the American aristocracy's war, not the
German aristocracy's war (which was more overtly physical -- military -- and was only secondarily based upon
deceiving the public).
When the Sauds became America's allies
in 1945 via the secret "Quincy Pact" between FDR and Saud, FDR probably expected that it would move Saudi
Arabia gradually toward democracy. What instead happened is that the Saud family and the losers of Operation
Barbarossa became carried forward toward ultimate victory over The West, by an alliance between the Saudi
and the American aristocracies. The Sauds and America's aristocrats won; FDR and his democratic legacy and
the American people ourselves, lost. The subterranean fascist forces turned out to be far more potent than
FDR imagined. Perhaps the OSS had been deceiving him.
Incidentally, any secret treaty
(including the Quincy Pact) is unConstitutional. None of this happened democratically. It was
a slow coup
. That's what created today's alliances, and today's targets.
To understand the Deep State, its basic
ideological principles need to be recognized. Under Hitler, hereditary rights and obligations were publicly
recognized; and democracy, the rule over a land by the residents on that land, was publicly condemned. Not
only the hereditary principle, but the imperialistic principle, the right of foreign conquest, was publicly
honored. The two principles go naturally together. The main reason why the Sauds and the other (all of them
fundamentalist Sunnis) Arab kings, want to conquer Iran, is that
Shia Islam denies the right of hereditary rule
. (This is also why in Syria, Bashar al-Assad claims no
hereditary right to rule; if he were to do otherwise, he'd violate Shia Islam and he would be rejected by
Iran.) The main reason why America's aristocracy wants to conquer Russia (other than the latter's
natural-resources wealth, which has always been a reason) is that
Vladimir Putin insists that only the residents in a land should possess sovereignty there, but the U.S. and
British aristocracies insist upon the right to conquer foreign lands
. As an ideology, nazism totally
affirms both the hereditary principle, and the imperialist principle. This is what the U.S.-Saudi alliance
likewise affirms. And that is why, for example, the CIA has always favored monarchies and opposed
democracies (or at least authentic ones, which the U.S. aristocracy cannot control).
I think this article goes much too far with the Nazi stuff but the simple fact that Saudi Arabia is the
third biggest military spender in the world, bigger than Russia, should inform people as to how much
influence Saudi has. Yet it is rarely mentioned.
The Saudis were just puppets installed by the British. It seems to me that the real "nazis", then and now,
are the banksters. Now as before they fund both sides of the conflicts that they initiate and after
digesting their profits they own what remains. As Tacitus wrote, solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. They
make a desert and call it peace
During WWII FDR was informed that in 30 years time USA
oil would be exhausted, so Harold L Ickes at the end of 1944 made Saudi Arabia THE USA's oil supplier.
To make the deal more official, FDR, in the beginning of 1945, received the Saud of the time aboard the
cruiser Quincy on the Bitter Lakes near the Suez canal.
As FDR said in his last speech to congress, seated, 'ten minutes with Saud had learned him more about
zionism than hundreds of letters from rabbi's'.
He also stated that he had promised Saud to limit jewish immigration into Palestine.
Both these statements do not seem to be in the offical record, they also were not in the text prepared for
him:
Robert E. Sherwood, 'Roosevelt und Hopkins', 1950, Hamburg (Roosevelt and Hopkins, New York, 1948)
In 1947, from memory, the then Saud published an interesting article on the folly of 'returning' in a USA
newspaper or periodical.
The Saudi regime just exists because of USA support, is my opinion.
Nothing special, all Muslim rulers in the ME are dependent on USA support, Quatar is the USA military
headquarters of the USA.
Iran is the exception.
Now it is possible that for the moment Israel is willing to cooperate with Saudi Arabia for the purpose
of destabilising the whole ME, present objective Iran.
The Iran regime quite well understands that Big Satan Sam controls a large part of the ME, thus they see the
Saudi regime as enemy.
If, if it succeeds, Iran has been destroyed, Israel is willing to cooperate with Saudi Arabia, I wonder.
Israel sees all neighbouring Muslim countries as threats.
If the Israeli destabilisation plans include the destabilisation of the European nations, more and more
people wonder.
Why does Soros want to force Muslim immigrants on Hungary ?
Brussels fears a new ME war, they fear the new wave of immigrants.
They do want these immigrants, a 2009 Brussels document states that the EU needs 60 million, but the
citizens of the member states more and more realise the burden of these migrants, they cost some € 30.000
per migrant per year in social security, thus it will lead to the collapse of social security, cultural
antagonies are more and more realised, as crime rates.
So a new ME war may be the end of the EU.
Therefore Brussels warned Netanyahu about Iran, also because of huge investments by European companies such
as Total in Iran.
I do hope that Trump will save us in Europe, also of course the people of Iran, from a new ME war.
He stated that immigration is destroying the European cultures.
Just want to add a comment on this Nazi-USA-Israel friendship. When I read the memoirs of Reinhardt Gehlen
(The Service, The Memoirs) there was one interesting place. Gehlen predicted in a meeting the exact time of
the Israel attack in the Six Day War some time before it. He comments in the book that he had sent to Egypt
old Nazi intelligence people and these people knew precisely what weapons Israel had before this 1967 war.
Apparently they knew of the coming attack (since Gehlen did) and that Israel would surely win if there came
a war (as German military, they could count the strengths), but they did not hint anything to the Egyptians
so that they could have had some planes in the air or tried to avoid a war (this failure to do so must have
been intentional).
This essay has an X-files feel to it. I find it hard to believe that Roosevelt and Truman didn't know that
Mega-Corporations were running the show.
Yes, there are a collusion of special interests. But no need for "spooky action at a distance" claims.
It's all very up front. This is why I don't buy the claim of Roosevelt and Truman being innocent puppets.
Roosevelt for sure came from the Oligarch class.
The POTUS effectively acts as a corporate lawyer for the Mega-Corporations whose job is to explain to the
MEGA-CEO just what they are able to get away with without provoking violent Peasant Revolt across the
US ..at any given point in time. The Ludlow massacre was a close one.
This illegal funding-source has been crucial for many of the CIA's operations, and makes bribes
untraceable.
Illegality is the main function of covert operations. If they were legal, there would be no reason for
them to be covert. Laws or legalisms (written behavior restrictions), are put in place by the powers that
be, whoever they are, to restrict the behavior of the masses. Not to restrict themselves.
Again. Ask yourself who you cannot criticize. Then you will know who they are. And have been, all along.
"Israeli arms are being
sent to a heavily armed neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine. IWI markets the Tavor as the "primary weapon" of the
Israeli special forces.
Fort, the Ukrainian state-owned arms company that produces the rifles under license, has a page about the
Tavor on its website. The Israel Weapon Industries logo also appears on its website, including on the "Our
Partners" page."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MywW6mOquSk
"A photo on Azov's website also shows a Tavor in the hands of one of the militia's officers. The rifles
are produced under licence from Israel Weapon Industries, and as such would have been authorized by the
Israeli government:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QopTJkI3_Fs
"... For many years some have seen the US as a form of corporatism* - as a country run in the interests of the corporations and those who lead them. There is considerable evidence that in many senses they are correct. However to see Trump as the epitome of this 'rule by corporations' I think misses something important. Trump is different from what went before in important respects. ..."
"... The government of Donald Trump is different. It is a selective plutocracy , and with one important exception that plutocracy is selected by Trump. In that way it can also be seen as a democratic dictatorship , where the complexity of government requires some delegation of power to other individuals. Like many dictatorships, some of those individuals are the dictator's family members. ..."
"... The photo above is taken from an extraordinary recent event (watch here ) where Trump walks down a line of senior executives, who in turn stand up and say what they are doing for the US and pledge to do more. Each statement is applauded with a positive statement by Trump, as his daughter trails behind. These are top companies: IBM, Microsoft, General Motors etc. It is all a show, of course, but of a kind the US has never seen before. It seems indicative that this is not just a continuation of past corporatism but something quite different. These are corporate executives doing the President's bidding for fear or favour. ..."
For
many years some have seen the US as a form of corporatism* - as a country run in the interests
of the corporations and those who lead them. There is considerable evidence that in many senses
they are correct. However to see Trump as the epitome of this 'rule
by corporations' I think misses something important. Trump is different from what went before
in important respects.
The way business influenced politicians in the past was straightforward. Campaigns cost a lot
of money (unlike the UK there are no tight limits on how much can be spent), and business can
provide that money, but of course corporate political donations are not pure altruism. The
strings attached helped influence both Republican and Democratic politicians. It was influence
that followed the money, and that meant to an extent it was representative of the corporate
sector as a whole. The same point can be made about political lobbying.
The government of Donald Trump is different. It is a selective
plutocracy , and with one important exception that plutocracy is selected by Trump. In
that way it can also be seen as a democratic
dictatorship , where the complexity of government requires some delegation of power to
other individuals. Like many dictatorships, some of those individuals are the dictator's family
members.
A dictatorship of this form would not be possible if Congress had strongly opposed it. That it
has not is partly because the Republican party chooses not to oppose, but also because Trump
wields a power over Congress that can override the influence of corporate money. That power
comes from an alliance between Trump and the media that has a big influence on how Republican
voters view the world: Fox News in particular but others as well. The irony is that under these
conditions democracy in the form of primaries gives Trump and the media considerable power over
Congress.
The distinction between traditional corporate power 'from below' and the current Trumpian
plutocracy can be seen most clearly in Trump's trade policy. It would be a mistake to see
past US trade
policy as an uninterrupted promotion of liberalisation, but I think it is fair to say that
trade restrictions have never been imposed in such a haphazard way, based on such an obviously
false pretext (US surpluses good, deficits bad). Trump's policy is a threat to the
international trading system that has in the past been lead by the US, and therefore it is a
threat to most of corporate USA. Yet up till now Congress has done very little to stop Trump's ruinous policy.
The photo above is taken from an extraordinary
recent event (watch here ) where Trump
walks down a line of senior executives, who in turn stand up and say what they are doing for
the US and pledge to do more. Each statement is applauded with a positive statement by Trump,
as his daughter trails behind. These are top companies: IBM, Microsoft, General Motors etc. It
is all a show, of course, but of a kind the US has never seen before. It seems indicative that
this is not just a continuation of past corporatism but something quite different. These are
corporate executives doing the President's bidding for fear or favour.
All this matters because it creates a tension that could at some stage drive events. So far the
Republican party has been prepared to allow Trump to do what he wishes as long as didn't
require their explicit approval (i.e their votes in Congress), but it has not as yet bent its
collective agenda to his. (Arguments that it already has tend to look at past
Republican rhetoric rather than actions.) This uneasy peace may no longer become tenable
because of developments on trade, or Russia, or the mid-term election results. If enough
Republicans think their future is safer by opposing Trump rather than indulging him, they still
have the power to bring Trump to heel. But the longer the peace lasts, Trump's influence on the
Republican party will only grow.
* Readers outside the US may be confused by my use of the term corporatism: it is one of those
terms with many meanings. I'm using it in the fourth and final sense described
here .
"... For many years some have seen the US as a form of corporatism* - as a country run in the interests of the corporations and those who lead them. There is considerable evidence that in many senses they are correct. However to see Trump as the epitome of this 'rule by corporations' I think misses something important. Trump is different from what went before in important respects. ..."
"... The government of Donald Trump is different. It is a selective plutocracy , and with one important exception that plutocracy is selected by Trump. In that way it can also be seen as a democratic dictatorship , where the complexity of government requires some delegation of power to other individuals. Like many dictatorships, some of those individuals are the dictator's family members. ..."
"... The photo above is taken from an extraordinary recent event (watch here ) where Trump walks down a line of senior executives, who in turn stand up and say what they are doing for the US and pledge to do more. Each statement is applauded with a positive statement by Trump, as his daughter trails behind. These are top companies: IBM, Microsoft, General Motors etc. It is all a show, of course, but of a kind the US has never seen before. It seems indicative that this is not just a continuation of past corporatism but something quite different. These are corporate executives doing the President's bidding for fear or favour. ..."
For
many years some have seen the US as a form of corporatism* - as a country run in the interests
of the corporations and those who lead them. There is considerable evidence that in many senses
they are correct. However to see Trump as the epitome of this 'rule
by corporations' I think misses something important. Trump is different from what went before
in important respects.
The way business influenced politicians in the past was straightforward. Campaigns cost a lot
of money (unlike the UK there are no tight limits on how much can be spent), and business can
provide that money, but of course corporate political donations are not pure altruism. The
strings attached helped influence both Republican and Democratic politicians. It was influence
that followed the money, and that meant to an extent it was representative of the corporate
sector as a whole. The same point can be made about political lobbying.
The government of Donald Trump is different. It is a selective
plutocracy , and with one important exception that plutocracy is selected by Trump. In
that way it can also be seen as a democratic
dictatorship , where the complexity of government requires some delegation of power to
other individuals. Like many dictatorships, some of those individuals are the dictator's family
members.
A dictatorship of this form would not be possible if Congress had strongly opposed it. That it
has not is partly because the Republican party chooses not to oppose, but also because Trump
wields a power over Congress that can override the influence of corporate money. That power
comes from an alliance between Trump and the media that has a big influence on how Republican
voters view the world: Fox News in particular but others as well. The irony is that under these
conditions democracy in the form of primaries gives Trump and the media considerable power over
Congress.
The distinction between traditional corporate power 'from below' and the current Trumpian
plutocracy can be seen most clearly in Trump's trade policy. It would be a mistake to see
past US trade
policy as an uninterrupted promotion of liberalisation, but I think it is fair to say that
trade restrictions have never been imposed in such a haphazard way, based on such an obviously
false pretext (US surpluses good, deficits bad). Trump's policy is a threat to the
international trading system that has in the past been lead by the US, and therefore it is a
threat to most of corporate USA. Yet up till now Congress has done very little to stop Trump's ruinous policy.
The photo above is taken from an extraordinary
recent event (watch here ) where Trump
walks down a line of senior executives, who in turn stand up and say what they are doing for
the US and pledge to do more. Each statement is applauded with a positive statement by Trump,
as his daughter trails behind. These are top companies: IBM, Microsoft, General Motors etc. It
is all a show, of course, but of a kind the US has never seen before. It seems indicative that
this is not just a continuation of past corporatism but something quite different. These are
corporate executives doing the President's bidding for fear or favour.
All this matters because it creates a tension that could at some stage drive events. So far the
Republican party has been prepared to allow Trump to do what he wishes as long as didn't
require their explicit approval (i.e their votes in Congress), but it has not as yet bent its
collective agenda to his. (Arguments that it already has tend to look at past
Republican rhetoric rather than actions.) This uneasy peace may no longer become tenable
because of developments on trade, or Russia, or the mid-term election results. If enough
Republicans think their future is safer by opposing Trump rather than indulging him, they still
have the power to bring Trump to heel. But the longer the peace lasts, Trump's influence on the
Republican party will only grow.
* Readers outside the US may be confused by my use of the term corporatism: it is one of those
terms with many meanings. I'm using it in the fourth and final sense described
here .
"... The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas, it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors. ..."
"... According to an email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ... ..."
"... So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States. ..."
The United Arab Emirates created a "slush fund" using money meant for domestic economic development
projects and funneled it to a high-profile think tank in the United States, emails obtained by The
Intercept show.
Last week, The Intercept
reported that the UAE gave a $20 million grant to the Middle East Institute, flooding a well-regarded
D.C. think tank with a monetary grant larger than its
annual budget
. According to an email from Richard Clarke, MEI's chairman of the board, the UAE got the money from
offset investments -- development investments by international companies that are made as part of
trade agreements.
The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas,
it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry
or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer
programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest
in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors.
Offsets provide a way to sell weapons at inflated prices, when companies offer juicier offset
packages. Critics say the lack of transparency in how offset investments are carried out leaves a
window open for a form of legalized corruption. The emails lift a veil on what has long been an obscure
element of the arms trade.
According to an
email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial
firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the
Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the
Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of
promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ...
So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant
for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States.
"... The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas, it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors. ..."
"... According to an email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ... ..."
"... So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States. ..."
The United Arab Emirates created a "slush fund" using money meant for domestic economic development
projects and funneled it to a high-profile think tank in the United States, emails obtained by The
Intercept show.
Last week, The Intercept
reported that the UAE gave a $20 million grant to the Middle East Institute, flooding a well-regarded
D.C. think tank with a monetary grant larger than its
annual budget
. According to an email from Richard Clarke, MEI's chairman of the board, the UAE got the money from
offset investments -- development investments by international companies that are made as part of
trade agreements.
The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas,
it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry
or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer
programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest
in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors.
Offsets provide a way to sell weapons at inflated prices, when companies offer juicier offset
packages. Critics say the lack of transparency in how offset investments are carried out leaves a
window open for a form of legalized corruption. The emails lift a veil on what has long been an obscure
element of the arms trade.
According to an
email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial
firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the
Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the
Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of
promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ...
So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant
for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States.
"... There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all-around advantages of minding one's own business in our relations with everybody. ..."
"... Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be 'the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all' but 'the champion and vindicator only of her own.'" ..."
"... U.S. Senator James W. Fulbright (1905-1995) The Arrogance of Power, 1966. ..."
There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act
with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent
example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in
our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of
reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material
helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of
abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the
all-around advantages of minding one's own business in our relations with everybody.
Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by
the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be
'the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all' but 'the champion and vindicator only
of her own.'"
U.S. Senator James W. Fulbright (1905-1995) The Arrogance of Power, 1966.
Despite having met and befriended some fine Americans over the years, my long-held opinion
of the U.S. in particular and the American people in general -- an opinion confirmed after I
read Senator Fulbright's book in the late 60s -- has not only remained doggedly unchanged, but
has in fact become more entrenched and pessimistic. Such entrenched pessimism stems from the
inescapable truth that regardless of an illusory concept of the "American exceptionalism" that
arrogantly presumes to present itself as the "superpower" champion of democracy and human
rights, the U.S. is in reality the world's biggest violator of the very ideals it so
hypocritically claims to champion.
William Hanna is a freelance writer with published books the Hiramic Brotherhood of
the Third Temple, The Tragedy of Palestine and its Children, and Hiramic Brotherhood: Ezekiel's
Temple Prophesy which is also due to be published in Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, German,
Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Book and purchase information, sample chapters, reviews,
other articles, videos, and contact details at: http://www.hiramicbrotherhood.com
"... More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans. ..."
"... What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government. ..."
"... "As regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same." ..."
"... "pseudo-Euroskeptic" ..."
"... " interference " ..."
"... "fifth columnists" ..."
"... "Euro-Atlantic structures" ..."
"... "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down." ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
On the world's Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for
control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors are perceived more as
imperial governors than simple channels of communication. At the height of the Maidan protests
in Kiev in early 2014, a conversation was leaked between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey
Pyatt, and the then-Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Victoria Nuland.
The conversation gained notoriety because Nuland said to Pyatt, "F**k the EU" and the
recording was almost instantly available on Youtube .
More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The
US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of
the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk)
and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early
February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved
that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The
composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.
What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of
foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I
could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the
US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the
officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial
governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government.
This has been going on for decades, although the levels of control exercised by the United
States increased as it rushed to fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of Soviet
influence in Eastern Europe after 1989. In earlier times, such control, especially regime
change operations, had to be conducted either covertly, as with the overthrow of Iranian prime
minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953, or by financing and arming an anti-government militia,
such as in Nicaragua and elsewhere in central and South America, or by encouraging the army
itself, most famously in Chile in 1973. There is a huge body of literature on this vast subject
(for the coup against Mosaddegh, see especially 'All the Shah's Men' by Stephen Kinzer, 2003)
and there is no possibility of denying that such operations took place. Indeed, former CIA
director, James Woolsey, recently admitted that they continue to this day.
Many of the ambassadors who engineered or attempted regime change operations in Eastern
Europe and the former USSR had cut their teeth in Latin America in 1980s and 1990s. One of
them, Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, even boasted in a letter to The Guardian
in 2001 that he was doing the same thing in Minsk as he had done in Managua. He wrote: "As
regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective
and to some degree methodology are the same."
Kozak did not mention that he also played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in
Panama in 1989 but he is far from alone. The experience accumulated by the Americans during the
Cold War, including in major European countries like Italy where US interference was key to
preventing Communist victories in elections, spawned a whole generation of Kermit Roosevelts
(the architect of the coup against Mosaddegh) who have made their careers over decades in the
State Department. Some names, such as that of Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia
who made no secret of his opposition to the president of the state to which he was accredited,
will be familiar to RT readers.
Two years after the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, which he helped coordinate,
Geoffrey Pyatt was appointed US ambassador to Greece. He remains in that post to this day -
which is why some are asking whether his hand might be behind last week's expulsion of Russian
diplomats from Athens. Greece and Russia have customarily had good relations but they differ on
the Macedonian issue. Now, the Greek government headed by the "pseudo-Euroskeptic"
Alexis Tsipras, claims that four Russian diplomats were engaged in covert operations in Greece
to lobby against forcing Macedonia to change its official name.
Like almost every other political issue these days, this relatively arcane one is regarded
through the distorting prism of alleged Russian "
interference " : any decision which does not consolidate the power of
American-dominated supranational structures like the US or the EU is now routinely attributed
to all-pervasive Russian influence, as if all dissidents were foreign agents. Western
discussion of this subject now resembles the paranoia of the old Soviet regime, and of its
satellites in Eastern Europe, which similarly attacked anti-Communists for being "fifth
columnists" - the very phrase used by a prominent European politician last month to
lambast all his enemies as Russian stooges.
Europe has a fifth column in its ranks: Putin's cheerleaders who want to destroy Europe
& liberal democracy from within: Le Pen, Wilders, Farage, Orbàn, Kaczynski,
Salvini use Kremlin money & intel. Like Farage's friend Arron Banks, who colluded w/
Russians to deliver #Brexit
US influence is suspected in this case between Greece and Macedonia because the Americans
are pushing to bring the whole of the Balkan peninsula under Western control. This has been
policy for nearly thirty years - at least since the Yugoslav wars led to a US-brokered peace
deal in Bosnia in 1995. In recent years the tempo has quickened, with the accession of
Montenegro to NATO last year leaving only Macedonia and Serbia as missing pieces of the puzzle.
The Greek victory over the name of Macedonia removes the last obstacle to that country's
accession to NATO and other "Euro-Atlantic structures" like the EU and soon only
Serbia will be left. Will she last long?
One of the most notorious anecdotes of the Second World War was told by Churchill. While in
Moscow in 1944, he and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of
influence, putting percentage figures to show the respective weight of the West and the USSR -
10:90 in Greece, 50:50 Yugoslavia, 25:75 in Bulgaria, and so on. Churchill recalls how this
so-called Percentages Agreement was concluded in a few minutes, and how he scribbled a note of
their verbal agreement on a piece of paper which Stalin glanced at for a second and then ticked
off. Churchill wrote, "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set
down."
Churchill then reflected that it might seem cynical to decide the fate of millions of people
in such an offhand manner. Later generations have generally agreed with his self-criticism.
Today's West would certainly never conclude such an agreement - but not because of any
squeamishness or lack of cynicism on its part. Instead, the West, especially the US, could not
conclude any agreement because in every case the only acceptable outcome would be 100%
influence for itself. That is what Geoffrey Pyatt and his colleagues spend their entire careers
trying to achieve - and, to a large extent, they succeed.
Like this story? Share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
John Laughland, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and
who has taught at universities in Paris and Rome, is a historian and specialist in
international affairs.
"... There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all-around advantages of minding one's own business in our relations with everybody. ..."
"... Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be 'the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all' but 'the champion and vindicator only of her own.'" ..."
"... U.S. Senator James W. Fulbright (1905-1995) The Arrogance of Power, 1966. ..."
There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act
with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent
example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in
our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of
reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material
helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of
abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the
all-around advantages of minding one's own business in our relations with everybody.
Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example of democracy to the world by
the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be
'the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all' but 'the champion and vindicator only
of her own.'"
U.S. Senator James W. Fulbright (1905-1995) The Arrogance of Power, 1966.
Despite having met and befriended some fine Americans over the years, my long-held opinion
of the U.S. in particular and the American people in general -- an opinion confirmed after I
read Senator Fulbright's book in the late 60s -- has not only remained doggedly unchanged, but
has in fact become more entrenched and pessimistic. Such entrenched pessimism stems from the
inescapable truth that regardless of an illusory concept of the "American exceptionalism" that
arrogantly presumes to present itself as the "superpower" champion of democracy and human
rights, the U.S. is in reality the world's biggest violator of the very ideals it so
hypocritically claims to champion.
William Hanna is a freelance writer with published books the Hiramic Brotherhood of
the Third Temple, The Tragedy of Palestine and its Children, and Hiramic Brotherhood: Ezekiel's
Temple Prophesy which is also due to be published in Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, German,
Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Book and purchase information, sample chapters, reviews,
other articles, videos, and contact details at: http://www.hiramicbrotherhood.com
"... More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans. ..."
"... What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government. ..."
"... "As regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same." ..."
"... "pseudo-Euroskeptic" ..."
"... " interference " ..."
"... "fifth columnists" ..."
"... "Euro-Atlantic structures" ..."
"... "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down." ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
On the world's Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for
control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors are perceived more as
imperial governors than simple channels of communication. At the height of the Maidan protests
in Kiev in early 2014, a conversation was leaked between the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey
Pyatt, and the then-Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Victoria Nuland.
The conversation gained notoriety because Nuland said to Pyatt, "F**k the EU" and the
recording was almost instantly available on Youtube .
More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The
US government officials were discussing how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of
the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead (Arseniy Yatsenyuk)
and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early
February 2014, their enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved
that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved in a regime change operation. The
composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.
What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of
foreign governments had become standard practice for US embassies all over the world. As I
could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the
US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the
officially accredited representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial
governor whose pronunciamentos were more important than those of the national government.
This has been going on for decades, although the levels of control exercised by the United
States increased as it rushed to fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of Soviet
influence in Eastern Europe after 1989. In earlier times, such control, especially regime
change operations, had to be conducted either covertly, as with the overthrow of Iranian prime
minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953, or by financing and arming an anti-government militia,
such as in Nicaragua and elsewhere in central and South America, or by encouraging the army
itself, most famously in Chile in 1973. There is a huge body of literature on this vast subject
(for the coup against Mosaddegh, see especially 'All the Shah's Men' by Stephen Kinzer, 2003)
and there is no possibility of denying that such operations took place. Indeed, former CIA
director, James Woolsey, recently admitted that they continue to this day.
Many of the ambassadors who engineered or attempted regime change operations in Eastern
Europe and the former USSR had cut their teeth in Latin America in 1980s and 1990s. One of
them, Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, even boasted in a letter to The Guardian
in 2001 that he was doing the same thing in Minsk as he had done in Managua. He wrote: "As
regards parallels between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective
and to some degree methodology are the same."
Kozak did not mention that he also played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in
Panama in 1989 but he is far from alone. The experience accumulated by the Americans during the
Cold War, including in major European countries like Italy where US interference was key to
preventing Communist victories in elections, spawned a whole generation of Kermit Roosevelts
(the architect of the coup against Mosaddegh) who have made their careers over decades in the
State Department. Some names, such as that of Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia
who made no secret of his opposition to the president of the state to which he was accredited,
will be familiar to RT readers.
Two years after the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, which he helped coordinate,
Geoffrey Pyatt was appointed US ambassador to Greece. He remains in that post to this day -
which is why some are asking whether his hand might be behind last week's expulsion of Russian
diplomats from Athens. Greece and Russia have customarily had good relations but they differ on
the Macedonian issue. Now, the Greek government headed by the "pseudo-Euroskeptic"
Alexis Tsipras, claims that four Russian diplomats were engaged in covert operations in Greece
to lobby against forcing Macedonia to change its official name.
Like almost every other political issue these days, this relatively arcane one is regarded
through the distorting prism of alleged Russian "
interference " : any decision which does not consolidate the power of
American-dominated supranational structures like the US or the EU is now routinely attributed
to all-pervasive Russian influence, as if all dissidents were foreign agents. Western
discussion of this subject now resembles the paranoia of the old Soviet regime, and of its
satellites in Eastern Europe, which similarly attacked anti-Communists for being "fifth
columnists" - the very phrase used by a prominent European politician last month to
lambast all his enemies as Russian stooges.
Europe has a fifth column in its ranks: Putin's cheerleaders who want to destroy Europe
& liberal democracy from within: Le Pen, Wilders, Farage, Orbàn, Kaczynski,
Salvini use Kremlin money & intel. Like Farage's friend Arron Banks, who colluded w/
Russians to deliver #Brexit
US influence is suspected in this case between Greece and Macedonia because the Americans
are pushing to bring the whole of the Balkan peninsula under Western control. This has been
policy for nearly thirty years - at least since the Yugoslav wars led to a US-brokered peace
deal in Bosnia in 1995. In recent years the tempo has quickened, with the accession of
Montenegro to NATO last year leaving only Macedonia and Serbia as missing pieces of the puzzle.
The Greek victory over the name of Macedonia removes the last obstacle to that country's
accession to NATO and other "Euro-Atlantic structures" like the EU and soon only
Serbia will be left. Will she last long?
One of the most notorious anecdotes of the Second World War was told by Churchill. While in
Moscow in 1944, he and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of
influence, putting percentage figures to show the respective weight of the West and the USSR -
10:90 in Greece, 50:50 Yugoslavia, 25:75 in Bulgaria, and so on. Churchill recalls how this
so-called Percentages Agreement was concluded in a few minutes, and how he scribbled a note of
their verbal agreement on a piece of paper which Stalin glanced at for a second and then ticked
off. Churchill wrote, "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set
down."
Churchill then reflected that it might seem cynical to decide the fate of millions of people
in such an offhand manner. Later generations have generally agreed with his self-criticism.
Today's West would certainly never conclude such an agreement - but not because of any
squeamishness or lack of cynicism on its part. Instead, the West, especially the US, could not
conclude any agreement because in every case the only acceptable outcome would be 100%
influence for itself. That is what Geoffrey Pyatt and his colleagues spend their entire careers
trying to achieve - and, to a large extent, they succeed.
Like this story? Share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
John Laughland, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and
who has taught at universities in Paris and Rome, is a historian and specialist in
international affairs.
If we consider the state of the nation from 40,000 feet, several key indicators of profound
political disunity within the elites pop out:
1. The overt politicization of the central state's law enforcement and intelligence
agencies: it is now commonplace to find former top officials of the CIA et al. accusing a
sitting president of treason in the mainstream media. What was supposed to be above politics
is now nothing but politics.
2. The overt politicization of the centralized (corporate) media: evidence that would
stand up in a court of law is essentially non-existent but the interpretations and
exaggerations that fit the chosen narrative are ceaselessly promoted--the classic definition
of desperate propaganda by those who have lost the consent of the governed.
... ... ...
The divided Deep State is a symptom of this larger systemic political disunity. I have
characterized the divide as between the Wall Street-Neocon-Globalist Neoliberal camp--currently
the dominant public face of the Deep State, the one desperately attempting to exploit the
"Russia hacked our elections and is trying to destroy us" narrative--and a much less public,
less organized "rogue Progressive" camp, largely based in the military services and fringes of
the Deep State, that sees the dangers of a runaway expansionist Empire and the resulting decay
of the nation's moral/political center.
If we consider the state of the nation from 40,000 feet, several key indicators of profound
political disunity within the elites pop out:
1. The overt politicization of the central state's law enforcement and intelligence
agencies: it is now commonplace to find former top officials of the CIA et al. accusing a
sitting president of treason in the mainstream media. What was supposed to be above politics
is now nothing but politics.
2. The overt politicization of the centralized (corporate) media: evidence that would
stand up in a court of law is essentially non-existent but the interpretations and
exaggerations that fit the chosen narrative are ceaselessly promoted--the classic definition
of desperate propaganda by those who have lost the consent of the governed.
... ... ...
The divided Deep State is a symptom of this larger systemic political disunity. I have
characterized the divide as between the Wall Street-Neocon-Globalist Neoliberal camp--currently
the dominant public face of the Deep State, the one desperately attempting to exploit the
"Russia hacked our elections and is trying to destroy us" narrative--and a much less public,
less organized "rogue Progressive" camp, largely based in the military services and fringes of
the Deep State, that sees the dangers of a runaway expansionist Empire and the resulting decay
of the nation's moral/political center.
Intelligence community is a new Praetorian guard which since JFK murder can decide the fate of presidents.
Notable quotes:
"... Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, on July 12. ..."
"... Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that makes up the D.C. comitatus ..."
"... Smug, self-satisfied, cheating creature that he is, Strzok can't take responsibility for his own misconduct, and blames Russia for dividing America. In the largely progressive bureau, moreover, Agent Strzok is neither underling nor outlier, for that matter. ..."
"... A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers in the "Intelligence Community"? ..."
"... Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself. ..."
"... The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden. ..."
"... Pray tell, since when does the Deep State -- FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans. ..."
"... Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into quite a few recreational, hobby wars. ..."
Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp
creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees,
on July 12.
In no way had he failed to discharge his professional unbiased obligation to the public, asserted Strzok. He had merely
expressed the hope that "the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating such horrible, disgusting behavior."
But we did not elect YOU, Mr. Strzok. We elected Mr. Trump.
Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that
makes up the D.C. comitatus , now writhing like a fire breathing mythical monster against President Donald Trump.
As Ann Coulter observed, the FBI is not the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover. Neither is the Intelligence Community
Philip Haney's IC
any longer. Haney was a heroic, soft-spoken, demure employee at the Department of Homeland Security. Agents like him are often fired
if they don't get with the program. He didn't. Haney's method and the
authentic intelligence he mined and developed might have stopped the likes of the San Bernardino mass murderers and many others.
Instead, his higher-ups in the "Intelligence Community" made Haney and his data disappear.
Post Haney, the FBI failed to adequately screen and stop Syed Farook and blushing bride Tashfeen Malik.
A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former
FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers
in the "Intelligence Community"?
As Peter Strzok might say to his paramour in a private tweet, "Who ya gonna believe, the Intelligence Community or your
own lying eyes?" The Bureau in particular and the IC cabal, in general, appear to be dominated by the likes of the dull-witted Mr.
Strzok.
Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True
to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan
has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself.
The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National
Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful
performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility
of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism
about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden.
As one wag
noted
, not unreasonably, ours is "a highly-politicized intelligence community, infiltrated over decades by cadres of Deep State operatives
and sleeper agents, whose goal is to bring down this presidency."
Pray tell, since when does the Deep State --
FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The
president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans.
That's a LOT of support. Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's
initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into
quite a few recreational, hobby wars.
And this is the community that regularly intercepts but fails to surveys and stop the likes of mass murderers Syed Farook and
bride Tashfeen Malik. Or, Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen, whose father the Bureau saw fit to
hire as an informant. The same "community" has invited the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Arab-American Institute to help
shape FBI counterterrorism training.
The FBI might not be very intelligent at all. About the quality of that intelligence, consider: On August 3, 2016, as the mad
media were amping up their Russia monomania, a frenzied BuzzFeed -- it calls itself a news org -- reported that "the Russian foreign
ministry had wired nearly $30,000 through a Kremlin-backed bank to its embassy in Washington, DC."
Intercepted by American intelligence, the Russian wire
stipulated
that the funds were meant "to finance the election campaign of 2016." Was this not "meddling in our election" or what? Did
we finally have irrefutable evidence of Kremlin culpability? The FBI certainly thought so. "Worse still, this was only one of 60
transfers that were being scrutinized by the FBI,"
wrote
the Economist, in November of 2017. "Similar transfers were made to other countries." As it transpired, the money was wired from
the Kremlin to embassies the world over. Its purpose? Russia was preparing to hold parliamentary elections in 2016 and had sent funds
to Russian embassies "to organize the polling for expatriates."
While it did update its Fake News factoids, Buzzfeed felt no compunction whatsoever to remove the erroneous item or publicly question
their sources in the unimpeachable "Intelligence Community."
Most news media are just not as inquisitive as President Trump.
Looks like MIC is a cancel of the society for which there is no cure....
While this jeremiad raises several valid point the key to understanding the situation should
be understanding of the split of the Us elite into two camp with Democratic party (representing
interests of Wall Street) and large part of intelligence communality fighting to neoliberal
status quo and Pentagon, some part of old money, part of trade unions (especially rank and file
members) and a pert of Republican Party (representing interests of the military) realizing that
neoliberalism came to the natural end and it is time for change which includes downsizing of the
American empire.
This bitter internal struggle in which neoliberals so far have an upper hand over Trump
administration and forced him into retreat.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump is a traitor because he wants peace with Russia. ..."
"... The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans, as well as the rest of the world, desperately need to notice the extremely hostile reaction to peace on the part of the US Democratic Party, many members of the Republican Party, including the despicable US Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and the Western Presstitute Media, a collection of people on the CIA payroll according to the German newspaper editor, Udo Ulfkotte, and the CIA itself. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the corrupt filth that rules over us are all in the pay of the military/security complex. Just go and investigate the donations to their re-election campaigns. The 1,000 billion dollar budget of the military/security complex, amplified by the CIA's front corporations and narcotics business, provides enormous sums with which to purchase the senators and representatives that the insouciant American voters think that they elect. ..."
"... Therefore, the American public gets not representation, but lies that justify war and conflict. The military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned the American people to no effect, is in desperate need of an enemy. In obedience to the military/security complex, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have made Russia that enemy. If Trump and Putin do not understand this, they will easily be made irrelevant. ..."
"... They both can be assassinated, and that is what the statements from Pelosi, Schumer, McCain, Lindsey Graham, et. al., repeated endlessly in the propaganda ministry that is the Western press, encourages. ..."
"... The Supply-Side Revolution ..."
"... When the combination of tax cuts with defense budget cuts came up for a vote, the legendary senator Strom Thurmond, a 48-year member of the US Senate from South Carolina, tapped me on the shoulder. He said: "son, never set your senator up against the military/security complex. He will not be re-elected, and you will be out of a job." I replied that we were just establishing for the record that under no conditions would the Democrats, who wanted more government, vote for a tax rate reduction even if there was a case that it would cure stagflation. He replied: "son, the military/security complex doesn't care." ..."
"... Later as a member of a secret presidential committee, I saw how the CIA attempted to prevent President Reagan from ending the Cold War. ..."
"... Today, right now, at this moment, we are faced with a massive effort of the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, the Democratic Party, and the presstitute media to discredit the elected President of the United States and to overthrow him in order that the utterly corrupt elite that rule American can continue to hold on to power and to protect the massive budget of the military/security complex that, along with the Israel Lobby, funds the elections of those who rule us. ..."
"... There is no institution in America, government or private, that can be trusted. Any government or person who trusts America or any Western country is stupid beyond belief. ..."
"... The entire Russiagate hoax is an orchestration by the military/security complex, led by John Brennen, Comey, and Rosenstein. The purpose is to discredit President trump for two reasons. One is to prevent any normalization of relations with Russia. The other is to remove Trump's agenda as an alternative to the agenda of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... President Trump is almost powerless. Putin, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans should recognize this before it is too late for them. President Trump cannot fire and arrest for high treason Mueller and Rosenstein. ..."
"... Reckless and irresponsible comments about treason from former CIA director Brennan, and other ranking public figures, echo similar inflammatory rhetoric from far-right-wing rabble rouser Gen. Edwin Walker, and other members of the John Birch Society, in the days before Pres. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. ..."
"... What's going on in the United States of America beats the band what happened under Joe McCarthy. The witch hunt against a sitting President by 95 percent of the media, major government institutions such as the criminal CIA, FBI, DOJ and the rest of the crooked Intel community plus the rascals in the US Congress can only happen in a totalitarian society, which the US is. ..."
"... The Brennan, Clappers, Obamas, Clintons, Comeys, Rosenstein and their many subordinate political Mafiosi should be put behind bars instead of running from one TV station to the next and lay the ground for a possibly Trump assassination. ..."
"... As Mr. Rogers correctly states, President Trump is almost powerless. These US fools even try to breed discord between the so-called nationalists and the globalists in Russia for which Medvedev stays. He once served US interests more than Russian ones when he was Prime Minister and got flattered by the ineffable Bill Clinton. ..."
"... So what do we see now ? Putin aiding Trump in steering the USA away from trying to control the whole world, an effort that is destroying the USA, but Deep State does not mind. In this way Russia indeed meddles in USA politics. Trump now invited Putin to come to Washington, the MH17 statement is withheld, the hysteria at CNN is such that MH17 is not even mentioned. In stead: Trump must be mentally deranged. ..."
"... Gore Vidal said there's only one party in America, it's the Money Party and it has two branches. It is even more true today than when he said it. There is no Left or Right anymore, only the question, is it good for Israel? And the American people be damned. ..."
"... Trump is completely powerless to do anything about these two. And this has gone on for a year and a half. ..."
"... It's clear though that Trump believes he has forced his opponents to play a bad hand in their outlandish craze the past week. It's why he doubled down and invited Putin to Washington near the 2018 election time. He perceives this as a chance to re-enact the 2016 election and coast to victory. The establishment is insane, and if he brings their insanity out it plays to his favor. ..."
The US Democratic Party is determined to take the world to thermo-nuclear war rather than to
admit that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election fair and square. The Democratic Party
was totally corrupted by the Clinton Regime, and now it is totally insane. Leaders of the
Democratic Party, such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, my former co-author in the New York
Times, have responded in a non-Democratic way to the first step President Trump has taken to
reduce the extremely dangerous tensions with Russia that the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama
regimes created between the two superpowers.
Yes, Russia is a superpower. Russian weapons are so superior to the junk produced by the
waste-filled US military/security complex that lives high off the hog on the insouciant
American taxpayer that it is questionable if the US is even a second class military power. If
the insane neoconservatives, such as Max Boot, William Kristol, and the rest of the neocon scum
get their way, the US, the UK, and Europe will be a radioactive ruin for thousands of
years.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (CA), Minority Leader of the US House of
Representatives, declared that out of fear of some undefined retribution from Putin, a dossier
on Trump perhaps, the President of the United States sold out the American people to Russia
because he wants to make peace: "It begs the question, what does Vladimir Putin, what do the
Russians have on Donald Trump -- personally, politically and financially that he should behave
in such a manner?" The "such a manner" Pelosi is speaking about is making peace instead of
war.
To be clear, the Democratic Minority Leader of the US House of Representatives has accused
Donald Trump of high treason against the United States. There is no outcry against this
blatantly false accusation, totally devoid of evidence. The presstitute media instead of
protesting this attempt at a coup against the President of the United States, trumpet the
accusation as self-evident truth. Trump is a traitor because he wants peace with
Russia.
Here is Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) repeating Pelosi's false accusation: "Millions
of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous
behavior is the possibility that President Putin holds damaging information over President
Trump." If you don't believe that this is orchestrated between Pelosi and Schumer, you are
stupid beyond belief.
Here is disgraced Obama CIA director John Brennan, a leader of the fake Russiagate campaign
against President Trump in order to prevent Trump from making peace with Russia and, thus, by
making the world safer, threatening the massive, unjustified budget of the military/security
complex: "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the
threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were
Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are
you???"
NOTICE THAT NOT ONE WESTERN MEDIA SOURCE IS CELEBRATING AND THANKING TRUMP AND PUTIN FOR
EASING THE ARTIFICIALLY CREATED TENSIONS THAT WERE LEADING TO NUCLEAR WAR. HOW CAN THIS BE? HOW
CAN IT BE THAT THE WESTERN MEDIA IS SO OPPOSED TO PEACE? WHAT IS THE EXPLANATION?
The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans, as well as the rest of
the world, desperately need to notice the extremely hostile reaction to peace on the part of
the US Democratic Party, many members of the Republican Party, including the despicable US
Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and the Western Presstitute Media, a
collection of people on the CIA payroll according to the German newspaper editor, Udo Ulfkotte,
and the CIA itself.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the corrupt
filth that rules over us are all in the pay of the military/security complex. Just go and
investigate the donations to their re-election campaigns. The 1,000 billion dollar budget of
the military/security complex, amplified by the CIA's front corporations and narcotics
business, provides enormous sums with which to purchase the senators and representatives that
the insouciant American voters think that they elect.
Do you know how large 1,000 billion is? You would have to live for thousands of years and do
nothing for 24/7 except count to reach that figure. It is a sum that nurtures the recipients,
and the recipients regard it as worth protecting.
Therefore, the American public gets not representation, but lies that justify war and
conflict. The military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned the American
people to no effect, is in desperate need of an enemy. In obedience to the military/security
complex, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have made Russia that enemy. If Trump
and Putin do not understand this, they will easily be made irrelevant.
They both can be assassinated, and that is what the statements from Pelosi, Schumer,
McCain, Lindsey Graham, et. al., repeated endlessly in the propaganda ministry that is the
Western press, encourages. Trump can be assassinated or overthrown in a political coup for
selling out America to Russia, as members of both political parties claim and as the media
trumpets endlessly. Putin can be easily assassinated by the CIA operatives that the Russian
government stupidly permits to operate throughout Russia in NGOs and Western/US owned media and
among the Atlanticist Integrationists, Washington's Firth Column inside Russia serving
Washington's purposes. These Russian traitors serve in Putin's own government!
ORDER IT NOW
Americans are so unaware that they have no idea of the risk that President Trump is taking
by challenging the US military security complex. For example, during the last half of the 1970s
I was a member of the US Senate staff. I was working together with a staffer of the US
Republican Senator from California, S. I. Hayakawa, to advance understanding of a supply-side
economic policy cure to the stagflation that threatened the US budget's ability to meet its
obligations. Republican Senators Hatch, Roth, and Hayakawa were trying to introduce a
supply-side economic policy as a cure for the stagflation that was threatening the US economy
with failure. The Democrats, who later in the Senate led the way to a supply-side policy, were,
at this time, opposed (see Paul Craig Roberts, The Supply-Side Revolution , Harvard
University Press, 1984). The Democrats claimed that the policy would worsen the budget deficit,
the only time in those days Democrats cared about the budget deficit. The Democrats said that
they would support the tax rate reductions if the Republicans would support offsetting cuts in
the budget to support a balanced budget. This was a ploy to put Republicans on the spot for
taking away some groups' handouts in order "to cut tax rates for the rich."
The supply-side policy did not require budget cuts, but in order to demonstrate the
Democrats lack of sincerety, Hayakawa's aid and I had our senators introduce a series of budget
cuts together with tax cuts that, on a static revenue basis (not counting tax revenue feedbacks
from the incentives of the lower tax rates) kept the budget even, and the Democrats voted
against them every time.
When the combination of tax cuts with defense budget cuts came up for a vote, the
legendary senator Strom Thurmond, a 48-year member of the US Senate from South Carolina, tapped
me on the shoulder. He said: "son, never set your senator up against the military/security
complex. He will not be re-elected, and you will be out of a job." I replied that we were just
establishing for the record that under no conditions would the Democrats, who wanted more
government, vote for a tax rate reduction even if there was a case that it would cure
stagflation. He replied: "son, the military/security complex doesn't care."
My emergence from The Matrix began with Thurmond's pat on my shoulder. It grew with my time
at the Wall Street Journal when I learned that some truthful things simply could not be said.
In the Treasury I experienced how those outside interests opposed to a president's policy
marshall their forces and the media that they own to block it. Later as a member of a
secret presidential committee, I saw how the CIA attempted to prevent President Reagan from
ending the Cold War.
Today, right now, at this moment, we are faced with a massive effort of the
military/security complex, the neoconservatives, the Democratic Party, and the presstitute
media to discredit the elected President of the United States and to overthrow him in order
that the utterly corrupt elite that rule American can continue to hold on to power and to
protect the massive budget of the military/security complex that, along with the Israel Lobby,
funds the elections of those who rule us. Trump, like Reagan, was an exception, and it is
the exceptions that accumulate the ire of the corrupt leftwing, bought off with money, and the
ire of the media, concentrated into small tight ownership groups indebted to those who
permitted the illegal concentration of a once independent and diverse American media that once
served, on occasion, as a watchdog over government. The rightwing, wrapped in the flag,
dismisses all truth as "anti-American."
If Putin, Lavrov, the Russian government, the traitorous Russian Fifth Column -- the
Atlanticist Integrationists -- the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans think that any
peace or consideration can come out of America, they are insane. Their delusions are setting
themselves up for destruction. There is no institution in America, government or private,
that can be trusted. Any government or person who trusts America or any Western country is
stupid beyond belief.
The entire Russiagate hoax is an orchestration by the military/security complex, led by
John Brennen, Comey, and Rosenstein. The purpose is to discredit President trump for two
reasons. One is to prevent any normalization of relations with Russia. The other is to remove
Trump's agenda as an alternative to the agenda of the Democratic Party.
President Trump is almost powerless. Putin, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North
Koreans should recognize this before it is too late for them. President Trump cannot fire and
arrest for high treason Mueller and Rosenstein. And Trump cannot indict Hillary for her
numerous unquestionable crimes in plain view of everyone, or Comey or Brennan, who declares
Trump "to be wholly in the pocket of Putin," for trying to overthrow the elected president of
the United States. Trump cannot have the Secret Service question the likes of Pelosi and
Schumer and McCain and Lindsey Graham for false accusations that encourage assassination of the
President of the United States.
Trump cannot even trust the Secret Service, which accumulated evidence suggests was
complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.
If Putin and Lavrov, so anxious to be friends of Washington, let their guards down, they are
history.
As I said above, Russiagate is an orchestratration to prevent peace between the US and
Russia. Leading military/security complex experts, including the person who provided the CIA's
daily briefing of the President of the United States for many years, and the person who devised
the spy program for the National Security Agency, have proven conclusively that Russiagate is a
hoax designed for the purpose of preventing President Trump from normalizing relations between
the US and Russia, which has the power to destroy the entirety of the Western World at
will.
If Putin doesn't listen to him, Russia is in the trash can of history.
Keep in mind that no media informs you better than my website. If my website goes down, you
will be left in darkness. No valid information comes from the US government or the Western
presstitutes. If you sit in front of the TV screen watching the Western media, you are
brainwashed beyond all hope. Not even I can rescue you. Nor God himself.
Americans, and indeed the Russians themselves, are incapable of realizing it, but there is a
chance that Trump will be overthrown and a Western assault will be launched against the handful
of countries that insist on sovereignty.
I doubt that few of the Americans who elected Trump will be taken in by the anti-Trump
propagana, but they are not organized and have no armed power. The police, militarized by
George W. Bush and Obama, will be set against them. The rebellions will be local and suppressed
by every violation of the US Constitution by the private powers that rule Washington, as always
has been the case with rebellions in America.
In the West, which the Russians are so anxious to join, all freedoms are dead -- freedom of
assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of inquiry, freedom of privacy,
freedom from arbitrary search, freedom from arbitrary arrest, along with the Constitutional
protections of due process and habeas corpus. Today there are no countries less free than the
United States of America.
Why do the Russian Atlanticist Integrationists want to join an unfree Western world? Are
they that brainwashed by Western Propaganda?
If Putin listens to these deluded fools, Putin will destroy Russia.
There is something wrong with Russian perception of Washington. Apparently the Russian
elite, with the exception of Shoigu and a few others are incapable of comprehending the
neoconservative drive for US world hegemony and the neoconservative determination to destroy
Russia as a constraint on US unilateralism. The Russian government somehow, despite all
evidence to the contrary, believes that Washington's hegemony is negotiable. (Republished from
PaulCraigRoberts.org by permission of author or representative)
is big question even if Trump wants peace at all. Trump has shown his real face on the very
beginning when he said that they are going to talk about "his friend" Xi, making Putin very
uncomfortable and throwing some worms in Russia~China relationship in front of cameras for
all to see
Trump came to the meeting in hope to impress Putin with his cowboy arrogance, He now says
that he'll be Putin's worst enemy ( if he don't bow to him I guess : ). all Trump cares about
is his ego, nothing else too sweat mouthed sleazy person
Reckless and irresponsible comments about treason from former CIA director Brennan, and
other ranking public figures, echo similar inflammatory rhetoric from far-right-wing rabble
rouser Gen. Edwin Walker, and other members of the John Birch Society, in the days before
Pres. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
What's going on in the United States of America beats the band what happened under Joe
McCarthy. The witch hunt against a sitting President by 95 percent of the media, major
government institutions such as the criminal CIA, FBI, DOJ and the rest of the crooked Intel
community plus the rascals in the US Congress can only happen in a totalitarian society,
which the US is.
The Brennan, Clappers, Obamas, Clintons, Comeys, Rosenstein and their many subordinate
political Mafiosi should be put behind bars instead of running from one TV station to the
next and lay the ground for a possibly Trump assassination. Trump is portrayed by these
crooks as a "traitor." In the US, traitors usefully deserve death. If these political Mafiosi
don't bring down Trump "legally," they will hire a kind of Lee Harvey Oswald who "shot"
JFK.
As Mr. Rogers correctly states, President Trump is almost powerless. These US fools
even try to breed discord between the so-called nationalists and the globalists in Russia for
which Medvedev stays. He once served US interests more than Russian ones when he was Prime
Minister and got flattered by the ineffable Bill Clinton.
Let's wait and see what happens in the upcoming mid-term elections. If the Dems win both
Houses of Congress, Trump is done. The obstructionists will have the upper hand. If they
can't remove him from office "legally," there will be a hitman out there somewhere.
President smugly making peace with the Russian nation that was supposed to be the evil enemy
in a 3rd and final brother war to devastate the white race beyond recovery.
Little upstart in the Democrat party making left wing politics less palatable to the
masses with her heavy handed socialist rhetoric. All while preaching BDS and anti-Israel
sentiment too, representing Frankenstein's CultMarx monster turning on it's creator.
And fewer and fewer people on all sides buying what the American Pravda is selling with
each passing day. The resulting hysteria is both par for the course and downright
delectable.
" Apparently the Russian elite, with the exception of Shoigu and a few others are incapable
of comprehending the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony and the neoconservative
determination to destroy Russia as a constraint on US unilateralism. " My idea is that many
in Russia understand quite well, this is why they demonstrate Russia's military capabilities
frequently. Why does Putin support Assad and Syria ? Not because he likes these countries,
but because he understands that if these countries also get the USA yoke the position of
Russia and China deteriorate.
Putin is careful not to give USA public opinion more 'reason' to fear Russia. Already a
few years ago something fell into the E part of the Mediterranean. It was asserted that
Russia had intercepted a USA missile fired from Spain to Syria. USA and Israel declared that
an excercise had been held. Putin said nothing.
Despite all that NATO does at Russia's borders Putin does not let himself be provoked.
MH17, I suppose Putin knows quite well what happened, Russia has radar and satelites, yet
Putin never gave the Russian view.
So what do we see now ? Putin aiding Trump in steering the USA away from trying to
control the whole world, an effort that is destroying the USA, but Deep State does not mind.
In this way Russia indeed meddles in USA politics. Trump now invited Putin to come to
Washington, the MH17 statement is withheld, the hysteria at CNN is such that MH17 is not even
mentioned. In stead: Trump must be mentally deranged.
Good to see PCR accepting comments again. It's not just the Dumbocruds, it's the Rupuglicunts
too. Follow the money, it's coming from the same sources. Gore Vidal said there's only
one party in America, it's the Money Party and it has two branches. It is even more true
today than when he said it. There is no Left or Right anymore, only the question, is it good
for Israel? And the American people be damned.
Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace with Russia? The Democrats say he is
The Democrats -- and their wholly-owned MSM -- will call Trump any name that'll stick. It
means little. Even if Trump got everything he wanted on immigration, that particular
toothpaste is already out of the tube and unless we send back some of the millions of
illegal third-world squatters we've no hope of recovering the United States of America.
If you want to talk treason, you need look no further than the Hart-Celler Act of 1965,
whereby the plan was laid to replace the population of this nation with third-world refuse,
which guaranteed cheap labor for GOP capitalists and endless political support for Democrat
traitors.
As the saying goes "timing is everything." I have to admit I was incredulous that you were
somehow able to link to a functioning version of the Nekrosov film. I've been trying to get
my hands on that documentary for the last few years, but to no avail. I finally managed to
read a comment on another blog that recommended that people who were interested in viewing
the film could do so by reaching out to the producer to request a personalized link, after
which you had to request a password from another individual affiliated with the film.
I managed to do all of that a few weeks ago and was able to watch the video on Vimeo for
the full 2 hours. It was riveting, to say the least. After viewing it again, I thought about
making it available to others. Due to the pressures by Browder and his lawyers, however,
Nekrosov was prevented from making his film available to a wider audience. He got around this
limitation by making it available for private viewing only. And to prevent a private viewer
from uploading it onto the internet he cleverly placed a watermark on each film, indicating
the owner of each copy of the video by displaying a number on the screen. I was surprised to
see the version you linked to indeed has this watermark shown on the screen. Somehow, this
did not deter the individual tied to that number from uploading it and being the one
identified as doing so. That said, I'm glad the film is more widely available as it should be
viewed by as many people as possible so that they can realize what a despicable liar Browder
really is and how the passage of The Magnitsky Act was a travesty of justice which must be
reversed.
"Do you know how large 1,000 billion is? You would have to live for thousands of years and do
nothing for 24/7 except count to reach that figure. It is a sum that nurtures the recipients,
and the recipients regard it as worth protecting."
Tens of thousands of years. At one count per second, 31,687 years and a few months.
"In the West, which the Russians are so anxious to join, all freedoms are dead --
freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of inquiry, freedom
of privacy, freedom from arbitrary search, freedom from arbitrary arrest, along with the
Constitutional protections of due process and habeas corpus."
True. That is the Anglo-Zionist Empire. That is what the WASP Empire delivers, and
it does so to destroy more conservative national and local cultures so their peoples are
tossed into the melting pot and reduced into a goop easy to rule.
Oliver Cromwell taking Jewish money, allying with Jews so he would have the funds to wage
permanent war against the vast, vast majority of non-WASP whites within his reach: that is
the definition of WASP culture; that picture tells you what it always will do.
make something serious about Obama and Hillary destroying whole African country of Libya
killing Colonel Gaddafi on the street, which is greatest war crime in the 21st century so far
or, Bill Clinton bombing Bosnian Serbs '95 opening the door to jihadis to continue behead
people in the middle of the Europe or, Bill Clinton and Nato bombing Serbia '99 to give
"Kosovo" independence killing many civilian and destroying infrastructure on purpose or
Madeline Albright confessing killing half of million Iraqi kids on the camera or, Bush and or
Bushes or those such Bill Browder are just small dirty fish who in comparison is almost not
worth filming I appreciate the effort but get seriously real if you are about to get truth to
people
"The Brennan, Clappers, Obamas, Clintons, Comeys, Rosenstein and their many
subordinate political Mafiosi "
What is going on in the US is systematic. Assange, an investigative journalist who became
the light of truth worldwide, is under a grave danger from US' and UK' Intelligence
Communities of the non-intelligent opportunists and real traitors: https://www.rt.com/news/433783-wikileaks-assange-ecuador-uk/
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton, who was criminally negligent with regard to the most important
classified information, has been protected by the politicking Brennan, Clapper, and Mueller:
" it was over 30,000 emails , emails that were sent through to Hillary Clinton through
the unauthorized server and unsecured server and every email she sent out.
There were highly classified -- beyond classified -- top secret-type stuff that had
gone through that server. an instruction embedded, compartmentalized data embedded in the
email server telling the server to send a copy of every email that came to Hillary Clinton
through that unauthorized server and every email that she sent out through that server, to
send it to this foreign entity that is not Russia."
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/07/congressional-record-transcript-on-chinagate.html
The Awan Affair, the most serious ever violation of national cybersecurity, has
demonstrated the spectacular incompetence of the CIA and FBI, which had allowed a family of
Pakistani nationals to surf congressional computers of various committees, including
Intelligence Committee, for years. None of the scoundrels had a security clearance! Their
ardent protector, Wasserman-Schultz (who threatened the DC Marschall) belongs to the
untouchables, unlike Assange:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/awan-congressional-scandal-in-spotlight-as-president-suggests-data-could-be-part-of-court-case_2500703.html
Trump and Putin made a mistake. I do not understand how it could have happened. They should
have issued communiqué that they have agreed to work toward peace and relieve tensions
and suppress conflicts around the world. (I do not have a time for now to write more.)
(sorry)
If Rosenstein & Mueller had done what they did with the publication of the indictments a
few days before the summit -- and were North Koreans -- they'd be in front of a firing squad
within 24 hours. Trump is completely powerless to do anything about these two. And this
has gone on for a year and a half. This is not a strength of democracy.
The US today is like Venezuela was shortly after Maduro was elected (by a narrow margin)
-- after Chavez's death -- and before violence eventually broke out. The losing opposition
refused to accept the result and tensions simmered for a long time.
Or after Morsi was elected in Egypt and before the military coup. The victory was narrow,
the opposition refused the to accept the result and tensions simmered for a long time.
Or maybe like Bush vs Gore. Bush was kinda saved by 9/11 which completely changed the
atmosphere.
Who knows what will happen. It's clear though that Trump believes he has forced his
opponents to play a bad hand in their outlandish craze the past week. It's why he doubled
down and invited Putin to Washington near the 2018 election time. He perceives this as a
chance to re-enact the 2016 election and coast to victory. The establishment is insane, and
if he brings their insanity out it plays to his favor.
The reception of the Trump- Putin meeting is breathtaking. I have in my 61 years never
witnessed such a hate and slander in the MSM. I have after this begun to actually dismiss
that Americans are sensible people! They have completely forgotten the cost of the Civil War.
We in Europe have not forgotten the cost of war and are not going there again. Ever.
The US has become a lunatic asylum with nuclear weapons, never mind Kim Jong Un, look a
squirrel! But the US is a threat to humanity, included it's protegé Israel, the new
Apartheid state.
"Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace with Russia?"
Wait; what?
From badmouthing Russia to appointing Russophobes to high office, to imposing sanctions,
to illegally seizing Russian diplomatic property, to committing war crimes in Syria, to a
provocative military buildup in Europe, to arming the illegitimate Ukrainian "government,"
etc., presidential poseur Orange Clown has spent 99% of his "presidency" so far antagonizing
Russia; apparently trying to provoke some kind of Russian military response.
If it was anyone else other than Vladimir Putin calling the shots in Russia, WW3 probably
would've happened already. Yet PCR claims Orange Clown wants peace with Russia?
Note to PCR: It is Vladimir Putin who wants peace, not presidential poseur Orange Clown.
If Orange Clown has had some kind of spiritual epiphany/change of heart, he's going to have
to show good faith by taking some kind of unambiguous action; posturing won't suffice.
There is a lot of truth in what you say, but it does not account for the fight we are
currently witnessing. Two factions in the Money Party are at war with each other. Neither one
is willing to level with the public as to its true aims and motives -- they are fighting
viciously but under the bed sheets, which is why the spectacle looks so unhinged and
silly.
It appears that he is trying to save the US from financial collapse. Hence, he is a traitor
to MIC, particularly to the obscenely greedy Pentagon contractors. The US presidents and
Congress always pandered to MIC first and foremost. He broke (or at least tried to break) the
pattern.
Don't blame all Americans. Forty-eight percent of us voted for Trump; it is very likely
that more than half of the rest voted for Hellary only with great reluctance, owing largely
to the unprecedented campaign of vilification directed at Trump. The point is: a very large
majority of people in this country are nowhere near as insane as the media and elites are --
in fact, we're still nowhere near insane enough for their taste!
Intelligence community is a new Praetorian guard which since JFK murder can decide the fate of presidents.
Notable quotes:
"... Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, on July 12. ..."
"... Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that makes up the D.C. comitatus ..."
"... Smug, self-satisfied, cheating creature that he is, Strzok can't take responsibility for his own misconduct, and blames Russia for dividing America. In the largely progressive bureau, moreover, Agent Strzok is neither underling nor outlier, for that matter. ..."
"... A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers in the "Intelligence Community"? ..."
"... Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself. ..."
"... The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden. ..."
"... Pray tell, since when does the Deep State -- FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans. ..."
"... Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into quite a few recreational, hobby wars. ..."
Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp
creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees,
on July 12.
In no way had he failed to discharge his professional unbiased obligation to the public, asserted Strzok. He had merely
expressed the hope that "the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating such horrible, disgusting behavior."
But we did not elect YOU, Mr. Strzok. We elected Mr. Trump.
Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that
makes up the D.C. comitatus , now writhing like a fire breathing mythical monster against President Donald Trump.
As Ann Coulter observed, the FBI is not the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover. Neither is the Intelligence Community
Philip Haney's IC
any longer. Haney was a heroic, soft-spoken, demure employee at the Department of Homeland Security. Agents like him are often fired
if they don't get with the program. He didn't. Haney's method and the
authentic intelligence he mined and developed might have stopped the likes of the San Bernardino mass murderers and many others.
Instead, his higher-ups in the "Intelligence Community" made Haney and his data disappear.
Post Haney, the FBI failed to adequately screen and stop Syed Farook and blushing bride Tashfeen Malik.
A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former
FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers
in the "Intelligence Community"?
As Peter Strzok might say to his paramour in a private tweet, "Who ya gonna believe, the Intelligence Community or your
own lying eyes?" The Bureau in particular and the IC cabal, in general, appear to be dominated by the likes of the dull-witted Mr.
Strzok.
Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True
to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan
has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself.
The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National
Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful
performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility
of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism
about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden.
As one wag
noted
, not unreasonably, ours is "a highly-politicized intelligence community, infiltrated over decades by cadres of Deep State operatives
and sleeper agents, whose goal is to bring down this presidency."
Pray tell, since when does the Deep State --
FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The
president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans.
That's a LOT of support. Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's
initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into
quite a few recreational, hobby wars.
And this is the community that regularly intercepts but fails to surveys and stop the likes of mass murderers Syed Farook and
bride Tashfeen Malik. Or, Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen, whose father the Bureau saw fit to
hire as an informant. The same "community" has invited the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Arab-American Institute to help
shape FBI counterterrorism training.
The FBI might not be very intelligent at all. About the quality of that intelligence, consider: On August 3, 2016, as the mad
media were amping up their Russia monomania, a frenzied BuzzFeed -- it calls itself a news org -- reported that "the Russian foreign
ministry had wired nearly $30,000 through a Kremlin-backed bank to its embassy in Washington, DC."
Intercepted by American intelligence, the Russian wire
stipulated
that the funds were meant "to finance the election campaign of 2016." Was this not "meddling in our election" or what? Did
we finally have irrefutable evidence of Kremlin culpability? The FBI certainly thought so. "Worse still, this was only one of 60
transfers that were being scrutinized by the FBI,"
wrote
the Economist, in November of 2017. "Similar transfers were made to other countries." As it transpired, the money was wired from
the Kremlin to embassies the world over. Its purpose? Russia was preparing to hold parliamentary elections in 2016 and had sent funds
to Russian embassies "to organize the polling for expatriates."
While it did update its Fake News factoids, Buzzfeed felt no compunction whatsoever to remove the erroneous item or publicly question
their sources in the unimpeachable "Intelligence Community."
Most news media are just not as inquisitive as President Trump.
Looks like MIC is a cancel of the society for which there is no cure....
While this jeremiad raises several valid point the key to understanding the situation should
be understanding of the split of the Us elite into two camp with Democratic party (representing
interests of Wall Street) and large part of intelligence communality fighting to neoliberal
status quo and Pentagon, some part of old money, part of trade unions (especially rank and file
members) and a pert of Republican Party (representing interests of the military) realizing that
neoliberalism came to the natural end and it is time for change which includes downsizing of the
American empire.
This bitter internal struggle in which neoliberals so far have an upper hand over Trump
administration and forced him into retreat.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump is a traitor because he wants peace with Russia. ..."
"... The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans, as well as the rest of the world, desperately need to notice the extremely hostile reaction to peace on the part of the US Democratic Party, many members of the Republican Party, including the despicable US Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and the Western Presstitute Media, a collection of people on the CIA payroll according to the German newspaper editor, Udo Ulfkotte, and the CIA itself. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the corrupt filth that rules over us are all in the pay of the military/security complex. Just go and investigate the donations to their re-election campaigns. The 1,000 billion dollar budget of the military/security complex, amplified by the CIA's front corporations and narcotics business, provides enormous sums with which to purchase the senators and representatives that the insouciant American voters think that they elect. ..."
"... Therefore, the American public gets not representation, but lies that justify war and conflict. The military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned the American people to no effect, is in desperate need of an enemy. In obedience to the military/security complex, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have made Russia that enemy. If Trump and Putin do not understand this, they will easily be made irrelevant. ..."
"... They both can be assassinated, and that is what the statements from Pelosi, Schumer, McCain, Lindsey Graham, et. al., repeated endlessly in the propaganda ministry that is the Western press, encourages. ..."
"... The Supply-Side Revolution ..."
"... When the combination of tax cuts with defense budget cuts came up for a vote, the legendary senator Strom Thurmond, a 48-year member of the US Senate from South Carolina, tapped me on the shoulder. He said: "son, never set your senator up against the military/security complex. He will not be re-elected, and you will be out of a job." I replied that we were just establishing for the record that under no conditions would the Democrats, who wanted more government, vote for a tax rate reduction even if there was a case that it would cure stagflation. He replied: "son, the military/security complex doesn't care." ..."
"... Later as a member of a secret presidential committee, I saw how the CIA attempted to prevent President Reagan from ending the Cold War. ..."
"... Today, right now, at this moment, we are faced with a massive effort of the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, the Democratic Party, and the presstitute media to discredit the elected President of the United States and to overthrow him in order that the utterly corrupt elite that rule American can continue to hold on to power and to protect the massive budget of the military/security complex that, along with the Israel Lobby, funds the elections of those who rule us. ..."
"... There is no institution in America, government or private, that can be trusted. Any government or person who trusts America or any Western country is stupid beyond belief. ..."
"... The entire Russiagate hoax is an orchestration by the military/security complex, led by John Brennen, Comey, and Rosenstein. The purpose is to discredit President trump for two reasons. One is to prevent any normalization of relations with Russia. The other is to remove Trump's agenda as an alternative to the agenda of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... President Trump is almost powerless. Putin, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans should recognize this before it is too late for them. President Trump cannot fire and arrest for high treason Mueller and Rosenstein. ..."
"... Reckless and irresponsible comments about treason from former CIA director Brennan, and other ranking public figures, echo similar inflammatory rhetoric from far-right-wing rabble rouser Gen. Edwin Walker, and other members of the John Birch Society, in the days before Pres. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. ..."
"... What's going on in the United States of America beats the band what happened under Joe McCarthy. The witch hunt against a sitting President by 95 percent of the media, major government institutions such as the criminal CIA, FBI, DOJ and the rest of the crooked Intel community plus the rascals in the US Congress can only happen in a totalitarian society, which the US is. ..."
"... The Brennan, Clappers, Obamas, Clintons, Comeys, Rosenstein and their many subordinate political Mafiosi should be put behind bars instead of running from one TV station to the next and lay the ground for a possibly Trump assassination. ..."
"... As Mr. Rogers correctly states, President Trump is almost powerless. These US fools even try to breed discord between the so-called nationalists and the globalists in Russia for which Medvedev stays. He once served US interests more than Russian ones when he was Prime Minister and got flattered by the ineffable Bill Clinton. ..."
"... So what do we see now ? Putin aiding Trump in steering the USA away from trying to control the whole world, an effort that is destroying the USA, but Deep State does not mind. In this way Russia indeed meddles in USA politics. Trump now invited Putin to come to Washington, the MH17 statement is withheld, the hysteria at CNN is such that MH17 is not even mentioned. In stead: Trump must be mentally deranged. ..."
"... Gore Vidal said there's only one party in America, it's the Money Party and it has two branches. It is even more true today than when he said it. There is no Left or Right anymore, only the question, is it good for Israel? And the American people be damned. ..."
"... Trump is completely powerless to do anything about these two. And this has gone on for a year and a half. ..."
"... It's clear though that Trump believes he has forced his opponents to play a bad hand in their outlandish craze the past week. It's why he doubled down and invited Putin to Washington near the 2018 election time. He perceives this as a chance to re-enact the 2016 election and coast to victory. The establishment is insane, and if he brings their insanity out it plays to his favor. ..."
The US Democratic Party is determined to take the world to thermo-nuclear war rather than to
admit that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election fair and square. The Democratic Party
was totally corrupted by the Clinton Regime, and now it is totally insane. Leaders of the
Democratic Party, such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, my former co-author in the New York
Times, have responded in a non-Democratic way to the first step President Trump has taken to
reduce the extremely dangerous tensions with Russia that the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama
regimes created between the two superpowers.
Yes, Russia is a superpower. Russian weapons are so superior to the junk produced by the
waste-filled US military/security complex that lives high off the hog on the insouciant
American taxpayer that it is questionable if the US is even a second class military power. If
the insane neoconservatives, such as Max Boot, William Kristol, and the rest of the neocon scum
get their way, the US, the UK, and Europe will be a radioactive ruin for thousands of
years.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (CA), Minority Leader of the US House of
Representatives, declared that out of fear of some undefined retribution from Putin, a dossier
on Trump perhaps, the President of the United States sold out the American people to Russia
because he wants to make peace: "It begs the question, what does Vladimir Putin, what do the
Russians have on Donald Trump -- personally, politically and financially that he should behave
in such a manner?" The "such a manner" Pelosi is speaking about is making peace instead of
war.
To be clear, the Democratic Minority Leader of the US House of Representatives has accused
Donald Trump of high treason against the United States. There is no outcry against this
blatantly false accusation, totally devoid of evidence. The presstitute media instead of
protesting this attempt at a coup against the President of the United States, trumpet the
accusation as self-evident truth. Trump is a traitor because he wants peace with
Russia.
Here is Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) repeating Pelosi's false accusation: "Millions
of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous
behavior is the possibility that President Putin holds damaging information over President
Trump." If you don't believe that this is orchestrated between Pelosi and Schumer, you are
stupid beyond belief.
Here is disgraced Obama CIA director John Brennan, a leader of the fake Russiagate campaign
against President Trump in order to prevent Trump from making peace with Russia and, thus, by
making the world safer, threatening the massive, unjustified budget of the military/security
complex: "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the
threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were
Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are
you???"
NOTICE THAT NOT ONE WESTERN MEDIA SOURCE IS CELEBRATING AND THANKING TRUMP AND PUTIN FOR
EASING THE ARTIFICIALLY CREATED TENSIONS THAT WERE LEADING TO NUCLEAR WAR. HOW CAN THIS BE? HOW
CAN IT BE THAT THE WESTERN MEDIA IS SO OPPOSED TO PEACE? WHAT IS THE EXPLANATION?
The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans, as well as the rest of
the world, desperately need to notice the extremely hostile reaction to peace on the part of
the US Democratic Party, many members of the Republican Party, including the despicable US
Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and the Western Presstitute Media, a
collection of people on the CIA payroll according to the German newspaper editor, Udo Ulfkotte,
and the CIA itself.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the corrupt
filth that rules over us are all in the pay of the military/security complex. Just go and
investigate the donations to their re-election campaigns. The 1,000 billion dollar budget of
the military/security complex, amplified by the CIA's front corporations and narcotics
business, provides enormous sums with which to purchase the senators and representatives that
the insouciant American voters think that they elect.
Do you know how large 1,000 billion is? You would have to live for thousands of years and do
nothing for 24/7 except count to reach that figure. It is a sum that nurtures the recipients,
and the recipients regard it as worth protecting.
Therefore, the American public gets not representation, but lies that justify war and
conflict. The military/security complex, about which President Eisenhower warned the American
people to no effect, is in desperate need of an enemy. In obedience to the military/security
complex, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have made Russia that enemy. If Trump
and Putin do not understand this, they will easily be made irrelevant.
They both can be assassinated, and that is what the statements from Pelosi, Schumer,
McCain, Lindsey Graham, et. al., repeated endlessly in the propaganda ministry that is the
Western press, encourages. Trump can be assassinated or overthrown in a political coup for
selling out America to Russia, as members of both political parties claim and as the media
trumpets endlessly. Putin can be easily assassinated by the CIA operatives that the Russian
government stupidly permits to operate throughout Russia in NGOs and Western/US owned media and
among the Atlanticist Integrationists, Washington's Firth Column inside Russia serving
Washington's purposes. These Russian traitors serve in Putin's own government!
ORDER IT NOW
Americans are so unaware that they have no idea of the risk that President Trump is taking
by challenging the US military security complex. For example, during the last half of the 1970s
I was a member of the US Senate staff. I was working together with a staffer of the US
Republican Senator from California, S. I. Hayakawa, to advance understanding of a supply-side
economic policy cure to the stagflation that threatened the US budget's ability to meet its
obligations. Republican Senators Hatch, Roth, and Hayakawa were trying to introduce a
supply-side economic policy as a cure for the stagflation that was threatening the US economy
with failure. The Democrats, who later in the Senate led the way to a supply-side policy, were,
at this time, opposed (see Paul Craig Roberts, The Supply-Side Revolution , Harvard
University Press, 1984). The Democrats claimed that the policy would worsen the budget deficit,
the only time in those days Democrats cared about the budget deficit. The Democrats said that
they would support the tax rate reductions if the Republicans would support offsetting cuts in
the budget to support a balanced budget. This was a ploy to put Republicans on the spot for
taking away some groups' handouts in order "to cut tax rates for the rich."
The supply-side policy did not require budget cuts, but in order to demonstrate the
Democrats lack of sincerety, Hayakawa's aid and I had our senators introduce a series of budget
cuts together with tax cuts that, on a static revenue basis (not counting tax revenue feedbacks
from the incentives of the lower tax rates) kept the budget even, and the Democrats voted
against them every time.
When the combination of tax cuts with defense budget cuts came up for a vote, the
legendary senator Strom Thurmond, a 48-year member of the US Senate from South Carolina, tapped
me on the shoulder. He said: "son, never set your senator up against the military/security
complex. He will not be re-elected, and you will be out of a job." I replied that we were just
establishing for the record that under no conditions would the Democrats, who wanted more
government, vote for a tax rate reduction even if there was a case that it would cure
stagflation. He replied: "son, the military/security complex doesn't care."
My emergence from The Matrix began with Thurmond's pat on my shoulder. It grew with my time
at the Wall Street Journal when I learned that some truthful things simply could not be said.
In the Treasury I experienced how those outside interests opposed to a president's policy
marshall their forces and the media that they own to block it. Later as a member of a
secret presidential committee, I saw how the CIA attempted to prevent President Reagan from
ending the Cold War.
Today, right now, at this moment, we are faced with a massive effort of the
military/security complex, the neoconservatives, the Democratic Party, and the presstitute
media to discredit the elected President of the United States and to overthrow him in order
that the utterly corrupt elite that rule American can continue to hold on to power and to
protect the massive budget of the military/security complex that, along with the Israel Lobby,
funds the elections of those who rule us. Trump, like Reagan, was an exception, and it is
the exceptions that accumulate the ire of the corrupt leftwing, bought off with money, and the
ire of the media, concentrated into small tight ownership groups indebted to those who
permitted the illegal concentration of a once independent and diverse American media that once
served, on occasion, as a watchdog over government. The rightwing, wrapped in the flag,
dismisses all truth as "anti-American."
If Putin, Lavrov, the Russian government, the traitorous Russian Fifth Column -- the
Atlanticist Integrationists -- the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans think that any
peace or consideration can come out of America, they are insane. Their delusions are setting
themselves up for destruction. There is no institution in America, government or private,
that can be trusted. Any government or person who trusts America or any Western country is
stupid beyond belief.
The entire Russiagate hoax is an orchestration by the military/security complex, led by
John Brennen, Comey, and Rosenstein. The purpose is to discredit President trump for two
reasons. One is to prevent any normalization of relations with Russia. The other is to remove
Trump's agenda as an alternative to the agenda of the Democratic Party.
President Trump is almost powerless. Putin, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North
Koreans should recognize this before it is too late for them. President Trump cannot fire and
arrest for high treason Mueller and Rosenstein. And Trump cannot indict Hillary for her
numerous unquestionable crimes in plain view of everyone, or Comey or Brennan, who declares
Trump "to be wholly in the pocket of Putin," for trying to overthrow the elected president of
the United States. Trump cannot have the Secret Service question the likes of Pelosi and
Schumer and McCain and Lindsey Graham for false accusations that encourage assassination of the
President of the United States.
Trump cannot even trust the Secret Service, which accumulated evidence suggests was
complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.
If Putin and Lavrov, so anxious to be friends of Washington, let their guards down, they are
history.
As I said above, Russiagate is an orchestratration to prevent peace between the US and
Russia. Leading military/security complex experts, including the person who provided the CIA's
daily briefing of the President of the United States for many years, and the person who devised
the spy program for the National Security Agency, have proven conclusively that Russiagate is a
hoax designed for the purpose of preventing President Trump from normalizing relations between
the US and Russia, which has the power to destroy the entirety of the Western World at
will.
If Putin doesn't listen to him, Russia is in the trash can of history.
Keep in mind that no media informs you better than my website. If my website goes down, you
will be left in darkness. No valid information comes from the US government or the Western
presstitutes. If you sit in front of the TV screen watching the Western media, you are
brainwashed beyond all hope. Not even I can rescue you. Nor God himself.
Americans, and indeed the Russians themselves, are incapable of realizing it, but there is a
chance that Trump will be overthrown and a Western assault will be launched against the handful
of countries that insist on sovereignty.
I doubt that few of the Americans who elected Trump will be taken in by the anti-Trump
propagana, but they are not organized and have no armed power. The police, militarized by
George W. Bush and Obama, will be set against them. The rebellions will be local and suppressed
by every violation of the US Constitution by the private powers that rule Washington, as always
has been the case with rebellions in America.
In the West, which the Russians are so anxious to join, all freedoms are dead -- freedom of
assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of inquiry, freedom of privacy,
freedom from arbitrary search, freedom from arbitrary arrest, along with the Constitutional
protections of due process and habeas corpus. Today there are no countries less free than the
United States of America.
Why do the Russian Atlanticist Integrationists want to join an unfree Western world? Are
they that brainwashed by Western Propaganda?
If Putin listens to these deluded fools, Putin will destroy Russia.
There is something wrong with Russian perception of Washington. Apparently the Russian
elite, with the exception of Shoigu and a few others are incapable of comprehending the
neoconservative drive for US world hegemony and the neoconservative determination to destroy
Russia as a constraint on US unilateralism. The Russian government somehow, despite all
evidence to the contrary, believes that Washington's hegemony is negotiable. (Republished from
PaulCraigRoberts.org by permission of author or representative)
is big question even if Trump wants peace at all. Trump has shown his real face on the very
beginning when he said that they are going to talk about "his friend" Xi, making Putin very
uncomfortable and throwing some worms in Russia~China relationship in front of cameras for
all to see
Trump came to the meeting in hope to impress Putin with his cowboy arrogance, He now says
that he'll be Putin's worst enemy ( if he don't bow to him I guess : ). all Trump cares about
is his ego, nothing else too sweat mouthed sleazy person
Reckless and irresponsible comments about treason from former CIA director Brennan, and
other ranking public figures, echo similar inflammatory rhetoric from far-right-wing rabble
rouser Gen. Edwin Walker, and other members of the John Birch Society, in the days before
Pres. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
What's going on in the United States of America beats the band what happened under Joe
McCarthy. The witch hunt against a sitting President by 95 percent of the media, major
government institutions such as the criminal CIA, FBI, DOJ and the rest of the crooked Intel
community plus the rascals in the US Congress can only happen in a totalitarian society,
which the US is.
The Brennan, Clappers, Obamas, Clintons, Comeys, Rosenstein and their many subordinate
political Mafiosi should be put behind bars instead of running from one TV station to the
next and lay the ground for a possibly Trump assassination. Trump is portrayed by these
crooks as a "traitor." In the US, traitors usefully deserve death. If these political Mafiosi
don't bring down Trump "legally," they will hire a kind of Lee Harvey Oswald who "shot"
JFK.
As Mr. Rogers correctly states, President Trump is almost powerless. These US fools
even try to breed discord between the so-called nationalists and the globalists in Russia for
which Medvedev stays. He once served US interests more than Russian ones when he was Prime
Minister and got flattered by the ineffable Bill Clinton.
Let's wait and see what happens in the upcoming mid-term elections. If the Dems win both
Houses of Congress, Trump is done. The obstructionists will have the upper hand. If they
can't remove him from office "legally," there will be a hitman out there somewhere.
President smugly making peace with the Russian nation that was supposed to be the evil enemy
in a 3rd and final brother war to devastate the white race beyond recovery.
Little upstart in the Democrat party making left wing politics less palatable to the
masses with her heavy handed socialist rhetoric. All while preaching BDS and anti-Israel
sentiment too, representing Frankenstein's CultMarx monster turning on it's creator.
And fewer and fewer people on all sides buying what the American Pravda is selling with
each passing day. The resulting hysteria is both par for the course and downright
delectable.
" Apparently the Russian elite, with the exception of Shoigu and a few others are incapable
of comprehending the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony and the neoconservative
determination to destroy Russia as a constraint on US unilateralism. " My idea is that many
in Russia understand quite well, this is why they demonstrate Russia's military capabilities
frequently. Why does Putin support Assad and Syria ? Not because he likes these countries,
but because he understands that if these countries also get the USA yoke the position of
Russia and China deteriorate.
Putin is careful not to give USA public opinion more 'reason' to fear Russia. Already a
few years ago something fell into the E part of the Mediterranean. It was asserted that
Russia had intercepted a USA missile fired from Spain to Syria. USA and Israel declared that
an excercise had been held. Putin said nothing.
Despite all that NATO does at Russia's borders Putin does not let himself be provoked.
MH17, I suppose Putin knows quite well what happened, Russia has radar and satelites, yet
Putin never gave the Russian view.
So what do we see now ? Putin aiding Trump in steering the USA away from trying to
control the whole world, an effort that is destroying the USA, but Deep State does not mind.
In this way Russia indeed meddles in USA politics. Trump now invited Putin to come to
Washington, the MH17 statement is withheld, the hysteria at CNN is such that MH17 is not even
mentioned. In stead: Trump must be mentally deranged.
Good to see PCR accepting comments again. It's not just the Dumbocruds, it's the Rupuglicunts
too. Follow the money, it's coming from the same sources. Gore Vidal said there's only
one party in America, it's the Money Party and it has two branches. It is even more true
today than when he said it. There is no Left or Right anymore, only the question, is it good
for Israel? And the American people be damned.
Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace with Russia? The Democrats say he is
The Democrats -- and their wholly-owned MSM -- will call Trump any name that'll stick. It
means little. Even if Trump got everything he wanted on immigration, that particular
toothpaste is already out of the tube and unless we send back some of the millions of
illegal third-world squatters we've no hope of recovering the United States of America.
If you want to talk treason, you need look no further than the Hart-Celler Act of 1965,
whereby the plan was laid to replace the population of this nation with third-world refuse,
which guaranteed cheap labor for GOP capitalists and endless political support for Democrat
traitors.
As the saying goes "timing is everything." I have to admit I was incredulous that you were
somehow able to link to a functioning version of the Nekrosov film. I've been trying to get
my hands on that documentary for the last few years, but to no avail. I finally managed to
read a comment on another blog that recommended that people who were interested in viewing
the film could do so by reaching out to the producer to request a personalized link, after
which you had to request a password from another individual affiliated with the film.
I managed to do all of that a few weeks ago and was able to watch the video on Vimeo for
the full 2 hours. It was riveting, to say the least. After viewing it again, I thought about
making it available to others. Due to the pressures by Browder and his lawyers, however,
Nekrosov was prevented from making his film available to a wider audience. He got around this
limitation by making it available for private viewing only. And to prevent a private viewer
from uploading it onto the internet he cleverly placed a watermark on each film, indicating
the owner of each copy of the video by displaying a number on the screen. I was surprised to
see the version you linked to indeed has this watermark shown on the screen. Somehow, this
did not deter the individual tied to that number from uploading it and being the one
identified as doing so. That said, I'm glad the film is more widely available as it should be
viewed by as many people as possible so that they can realize what a despicable liar Browder
really is and how the passage of The Magnitsky Act was a travesty of justice which must be
reversed.
"Do you know how large 1,000 billion is? You would have to live for thousands of years and do
nothing for 24/7 except count to reach that figure. It is a sum that nurtures the recipients,
and the recipients regard it as worth protecting."
Tens of thousands of years. At one count per second, 31,687 years and a few months.
"In the West, which the Russians are so anxious to join, all freedoms are dead --
freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of inquiry, freedom
of privacy, freedom from arbitrary search, freedom from arbitrary arrest, along with the
Constitutional protections of due process and habeas corpus."
True. That is the Anglo-Zionist Empire. That is what the WASP Empire delivers, and
it does so to destroy more conservative national and local cultures so their peoples are
tossed into the melting pot and reduced into a goop easy to rule.
Oliver Cromwell taking Jewish money, allying with Jews so he would have the funds to wage
permanent war against the vast, vast majority of non-WASP whites within his reach: that is
the definition of WASP culture; that picture tells you what it always will do.
make something serious about Obama and Hillary destroying whole African country of Libya
killing Colonel Gaddafi on the street, which is greatest war crime in the 21st century so far
or, Bill Clinton bombing Bosnian Serbs '95 opening the door to jihadis to continue behead
people in the middle of the Europe or, Bill Clinton and Nato bombing Serbia '99 to give
"Kosovo" independence killing many civilian and destroying infrastructure on purpose or
Madeline Albright confessing killing half of million Iraqi kids on the camera or, Bush and or
Bushes or those such Bill Browder are just small dirty fish who in comparison is almost not
worth filming I appreciate the effort but get seriously real if you are about to get truth to
people
"The Brennan, Clappers, Obamas, Clintons, Comeys, Rosenstein and their many
subordinate political Mafiosi "
What is going on in the US is systematic. Assange, an investigative journalist who became
the light of truth worldwide, is under a grave danger from US' and UK' Intelligence
Communities of the non-intelligent opportunists and real traitors: https://www.rt.com/news/433783-wikileaks-assange-ecuador-uk/
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton, who was criminally negligent with regard to the most important
classified information, has been protected by the politicking Brennan, Clapper, and Mueller:
" it was over 30,000 emails , emails that were sent through to Hillary Clinton through
the unauthorized server and unsecured server and every email she sent out.
There were highly classified -- beyond classified -- top secret-type stuff that had
gone through that server. an instruction embedded, compartmentalized data embedded in the
email server telling the server to send a copy of every email that came to Hillary Clinton
through that unauthorized server and every email that she sent out through that server, to
send it to this foreign entity that is not Russia."
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/07/congressional-record-transcript-on-chinagate.html
The Awan Affair, the most serious ever violation of national cybersecurity, has
demonstrated the spectacular incompetence of the CIA and FBI, which had allowed a family of
Pakistani nationals to surf congressional computers of various committees, including
Intelligence Committee, for years. None of the scoundrels had a security clearance! Their
ardent protector, Wasserman-Schultz (who threatened the DC Marschall) belongs to the
untouchables, unlike Assange:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/awan-congressional-scandal-in-spotlight-as-president-suggests-data-could-be-part-of-court-case_2500703.html
Trump and Putin made a mistake. I do not understand how it could have happened. They should
have issued communiqué that they have agreed to work toward peace and relieve tensions
and suppress conflicts around the world. (I do not have a time for now to write more.)
(sorry)
If Rosenstein & Mueller had done what they did with the publication of the indictments a
few days before the summit -- and were North Koreans -- they'd be in front of a firing squad
within 24 hours. Trump is completely powerless to do anything about these two. And this
has gone on for a year and a half. This is not a strength of democracy.
The US today is like Venezuela was shortly after Maduro was elected (by a narrow margin)
-- after Chavez's death -- and before violence eventually broke out. The losing opposition
refused to accept the result and tensions simmered for a long time.
Or after Morsi was elected in Egypt and before the military coup. The victory was narrow,
the opposition refused the to accept the result and tensions simmered for a long time.
Or maybe like Bush vs Gore. Bush was kinda saved by 9/11 which completely changed the
atmosphere.
Who knows what will happen. It's clear though that Trump believes he has forced his
opponents to play a bad hand in their outlandish craze the past week. It's why he doubled
down and invited Putin to Washington near the 2018 election time. He perceives this as a
chance to re-enact the 2016 election and coast to victory. The establishment is insane, and
if he brings their insanity out it plays to his favor.
The reception of the Trump- Putin meeting is breathtaking. I have in my 61 years never
witnessed such a hate and slander in the MSM. I have after this begun to actually dismiss
that Americans are sensible people! They have completely forgotten the cost of the Civil War.
We in Europe have not forgotten the cost of war and are not going there again. Ever.
The US has become a lunatic asylum with nuclear weapons, never mind Kim Jong Un, look a
squirrel! But the US is a threat to humanity, included it's protegé Israel, the new
Apartheid state.
"Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace with Russia?"
Wait; what?
From badmouthing Russia to appointing Russophobes to high office, to imposing sanctions,
to illegally seizing Russian diplomatic property, to committing war crimes in Syria, to a
provocative military buildup in Europe, to arming the illegitimate Ukrainian "government,"
etc., presidential poseur Orange Clown has spent 99% of his "presidency" so far antagonizing
Russia; apparently trying to provoke some kind of Russian military response.
If it was anyone else other than Vladimir Putin calling the shots in Russia, WW3 probably
would've happened already. Yet PCR claims Orange Clown wants peace with Russia?
Note to PCR: It is Vladimir Putin who wants peace, not presidential poseur Orange Clown.
If Orange Clown has had some kind of spiritual epiphany/change of heart, he's going to have
to show good faith by taking some kind of unambiguous action; posturing won't suffice.
There is a lot of truth in what you say, but it does not account for the fight we are
currently witnessing. Two factions in the Money Party are at war with each other. Neither one
is willing to level with the public as to its true aims and motives -- they are fighting
viciously but under the bed sheets, which is why the spectacle looks so unhinged and
silly.
It appears that he is trying to save the US from financial collapse. Hence, he is a traitor
to MIC, particularly to the obscenely greedy Pentagon contractors. The US presidents and
Congress always pandered to MIC first and foremost. He broke (or at least tried to break) the
pattern.
Don't blame all Americans. Forty-eight percent of us voted for Trump; it is very likely
that more than half of the rest voted for Hellary only with great reluctance, owing largely
to the unprecedented campaign of vilification directed at Trump. The point is: a very large
majority of people in this country are nowhere near as insane as the media and elites are --
in fact, we're still nowhere near insane enough for their taste!
So Iran has no offensive air force or any Nukes but the Israelis with their air superiority and nukes are making Iran - enemy
#1. How very - American - of them.
So Iran has no offensive air force or any Nukes but the Israelis with their air superiority and nukes are making Iran - enemy
#1. How very - American - of them.
On the world's Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors
are perceived more as imperial governors than simple channels of communication.
At the height of the Maidan protests in Kiev in early 2014, a conversation was leaked between the US ambassador to Ukraine,
Geoffrey Pyatt, and the then-Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Victoria Nuland. The conversation gained
notoriety because Nuland said to Pyatt, "F**k the EU" and the recording was almost instantly available on
Youtube .
More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing
how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead
(Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their
enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved
in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.
What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard
practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s
and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited
representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important
than those of the national government.
This has been going on for decades, although the levels of control exercised by the United States increased as it rushed to
fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe after 1989. In earlier times, such control,
especially regime change operations, had to be conducted either covertly, as with the overthrow of Iranian prime minister, Mohammad
Mosaddegh, in 1953, or by financing and arming an anti-government militia, such as in Nicaragua and elsewhere in central and South
America, or by encouraging the army itself, most famously in Chile in 1973. There is a huge body of literature on this vast subject
(for the coup against Mosaddegh, see especially "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer, 2003) and there is no possibility of denying
that such operations took place. Indeed, former CIA director, James Woolsey, recently
admitted that they continue to this day.
Many of the ambassadors who engineered or attempted regime change operations in Eastern Europe and the former USSR had cut
their teeth in Latin America in 1980s and 1990s. One of them, Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, even boasted in
a letter to The Guardian in 2001 that he was doing the same thing in Minsk as he had done in Managua. He wrote: "As regards parallels
between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same."
Kozak did not mention that he also played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in Panama in 1989 but he is far from
alone. The experience accumulated by the Americans during the Cold War, including in major European countries like Italy where
US interference was key to preventing Communist victories in elections, spawned a whole generation of Kermit Roosevelts (the architect
of the coup against Mosaddegh) who have made their careers over decades in the State Department. Some names, such as that of Michael
McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia who made no secret of his opposition to the president of the state to which he was accredited,
will be familiar to RT readers.
Two years after the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, which he helped coordinate, Geoffrey Pyatt was appointed US ambassador
to Greece. He remains in that post to this day - which is why some are asking whether his hand might be behind last week's expulsion
of Russian diplomats from Athens. Greece and Russia have customarily had good relations but they differ on the Macedonian issue.
Now, the Greek government headed by the "pseudo-Euroskeptic" Alexis Tsipras, claims that four Russian diplomats were engaged in
covert operations in Greece to lobby against forcing Macedonia to change its official name.
Like almost every other political issue these days, this relatively arcane one is regarded through the distorting prism of alleged
Russian "
interference ": any decision which does not consolidate the power of American-dominated supranational structures like the
US or the EU is now routinely attributed to all-pervasive Russian influence, as if all dissidents were foreign agents. Western
discussion of this subject now resembles the paranoia of the old Soviet regime, and of its satellites in Eastern Europe, which
similarly attacked anti-Communists for being "fifth columnists" - the very phrase used by a prominent European politician last
month to lambast all his enemies as Russian stooges.
US influence is suspected in this case between Greece and Macedonia because the Americans are pushing to bring the whole of
the Balkan peninsula under Western control. This has been policy for nearly thirty years - at least since the Yugoslav wars led
to a US-brokered peace deal in Bosnia in 1995. In recent years the tempo has quickened, with the accession of Montenegro to NATO
last year leaving only Macedonia and Serbia as missing pieces of the puzzle. The Greek victory over the name of Macedonia removes
the last obstacle to that country's accession to NATO and other "Euro-Atlantic structures" like the EU and soon only Serbia will
be left. Will she last long?
One of the most notorious anecdotes of the Second World War was told by Churchill. While in Moscow in 1944, he and Stalin divided
up Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of influence, putting percentage figures to show the respective weight of the West
and the USSR - 10:90 in Greece, 50:50 Yugoslavia, 25:75 in Bulgaria, and so on. Churchill recalls how this so-called Percentages
Agreement was concluded in a few minutes, and how he scribbled a note of their verbal agreement on a piece of paper which Stalin
glanced at for a second and then ticked off. Churchill wrote, "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down."
Churchill then reflected that it might seem cynical to decide the fate of millions of people in such an offhand manner. Later
generations have generally agreed with his self-criticism. Today's West would certainly never conclude such an agreement - but
not because of any squeamishness or lack of cynicism on its part. Instead, the West, especially the US, could not conclude any
agreement because in every case the only acceptable outcome would be 100% influence for itself. That is what Geoffrey Pyatt and
his colleagues spend their entire careers trying to achieve - and, to a large extent, they succeed.
So Iran has no offensive air force or any Nukes but the Israelis with their air superiority and nukes are making Iran - enemy
#1. How very - American - of them.
On the world's Grand Chessboard, the US is fighting for control and influence. And there are countries where its ambassadors
are perceived more as imperial governors than simple channels of communication.
At the height of the Maidan protests in Kiev in early 2014, a conversation was leaked between the US ambassador to Ukraine,
Geoffrey Pyatt, and the then-Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Victoria Nuland. The conversation gained
notoriety because Nuland said to Pyatt, "F**k the EU" and the recording was almost instantly available on
Youtube .
More shocking than Nuland's bad language, however, was what the conversation was about. The US government officials were discussing
how to put their men into power in Ukraine - which of the three then opposition factions would dominate, who would take the lead
(Arseniy Yatsenyuk) and who would be excluded (Vladimir Klitschko). At the time of this conversation, early February 2014, their
enemy Viktor Yanukovych was still president. The leaked recording proved that the US and its Kiev embassy were actively involved
in a regime change operation. The composition of the post-Maidan government corresponded exactly with US plans.
What few people knew at the time was that such levels of control over the composition of foreign governments had become standard
practice for US embassies all over the world. As I could see on my very numerous travels around the Balkans in the late 1990s
and early 2000s, the US ambassador was treated by the political class and the media in those countries not as the officially accredited
representative of a foreign government but instead as an imperial governor whose pronunciamentos were more important
than those of the national government.
This has been going on for decades, although the levels of control exercised by the United States increased as it rushed to
fill the political vacuum created by the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe after 1989. In earlier times, such control,
especially regime change operations, had to be conducted either covertly, as with the overthrow of Iranian prime minister, Mohammad
Mosaddegh, in 1953, or by financing and arming an anti-government militia, such as in Nicaragua and elsewhere in central and South
America, or by encouraging the army itself, most famously in Chile in 1973. There is a huge body of literature on this vast subject
(for the coup against Mosaddegh, see especially "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer, 2003) and there is no possibility of denying
that such operations took place. Indeed, former CIA director, James Woolsey, recently
admitted that they continue to this day.
Many of the ambassadors who engineered or attempted regime change operations in Eastern Europe and the former USSR had cut
their teeth in Latin America in 1980s and 1990s. One of them, Michael Kozak, former US ambassador to Belarus, even boasted in
a letter to The Guardian in 2001 that he was doing the same thing in Minsk as he had done in Managua. He wrote: "As regards parallels
between Nicaragua in 1989-90 and Belarus today, I plead guilty. Our objective and to some degree methodology are the same."
Kozak did not mention that he also played a key role in the overthrow of General Noriega in Panama in 1989 but he is far from
alone. The experience accumulated by the Americans during the Cold War, including in major European countries like Italy where
US interference was key to preventing Communist victories in elections, spawned a whole generation of Kermit Roosevelts (the architect
of the coup against Mosaddegh) who have made their careers over decades in the State Department. Some names, such as that of Michael
McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia who made no secret of his opposition to the president of the state to which he was accredited,
will be familiar to RT readers.
Two years after the violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, which he helped coordinate, Geoffrey Pyatt was appointed US ambassador
to Greece. He remains in that post to this day - which is why some are asking whether his hand might be behind last week's expulsion
of Russian diplomats from Athens. Greece and Russia have customarily had good relations but they differ on the Macedonian issue.
Now, the Greek government headed by the "pseudo-Euroskeptic" Alexis Tsipras, claims that four Russian diplomats were engaged in
covert operations in Greece to lobby against forcing Macedonia to change its official name.
Like almost every other political issue these days, this relatively arcane one is regarded through the distorting prism of alleged
Russian "
interference ": any decision which does not consolidate the power of American-dominated supranational structures like the
US or the EU is now routinely attributed to all-pervasive Russian influence, as if all dissidents were foreign agents. Western
discussion of this subject now resembles the paranoia of the old Soviet regime, and of its satellites in Eastern Europe, which
similarly attacked anti-Communists for being "fifth columnists" - the very phrase used by a prominent European politician last
month to lambast all his enemies as Russian stooges.
US influence is suspected in this case between Greece and Macedonia because the Americans are pushing to bring the whole of
the Balkan peninsula under Western control. This has been policy for nearly thirty years - at least since the Yugoslav wars led
to a US-brokered peace deal in Bosnia in 1995. In recent years the tempo has quickened, with the accession of Montenegro to NATO
last year leaving only Macedonia and Serbia as missing pieces of the puzzle. The Greek victory over the name of Macedonia removes
the last obstacle to that country's accession to NATO and other "Euro-Atlantic structures" like the EU and soon only Serbia will
be left. Will she last long?
One of the most notorious anecdotes of the Second World War was told by Churchill. While in Moscow in 1944, he and Stalin divided
up Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of influence, putting percentage figures to show the respective weight of the West
and the USSR - 10:90 in Greece, 50:50 Yugoslavia, 25:75 in Bulgaria, and so on. Churchill recalls how this so-called Percentages
Agreement was concluded in a few minutes, and how he scribbled a note of their verbal agreement on a piece of paper which Stalin
glanced at for a second and then ticked off. Churchill wrote, "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down."
Churchill then reflected that it might seem cynical to decide the fate of millions of people in such an offhand manner. Later
generations have generally agreed with his self-criticism. Today's West would certainly never conclude such an agreement - but
not because of any squeamishness or lack of cynicism on its part. Instead, the West, especially the US, could not conclude any
agreement because in every case the only acceptable outcome would be 100% influence for itself. That is what Geoffrey Pyatt and
his colleagues spend their entire careers trying to achieve - and, to a large extent, they succeed.
"... Naturally, these are excuses meant to be peddled in the international arena. There is no justification for bombing a nation, completely destroying its services and infrastructure, and killing tens of thousands of its innocent people. ..."
"... But US imperialism works like a steam-roller. The artful fabrication of a humanitarian cause gives the green light to rain down bombs to save the poor and downtrodden civilians. All this is possible thanks to the nauseating and false media rhetoric that creates the ideal conditions needed to justify the horrible war crime that is aggression against a sovereign nation. ..."
"... In more recent times, this strategy of war based on (spurious) justifications has added a new type of ploy that is much more subtle and suitable for imperialist ends. Since Washington has lost the ability to decide the situation on the ground in different war theaters like in Iraq and Syria, it settles for sowing chaos and destruction. ..."
"... This is done through the employment of plausible deniability, which helps mask covert operations. An example can be seen in Syria, where Washington arms the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an insurgency group labelled "moderate rebels", but these weapons somehow seem to find their way into the hands of Al Nusra and Daesh. This situation has been going on for years, with Washington using Daesh and Al Nusra to fight against Assad, being able to plausible deny doing so by professing to be only arming the moderate rebels and not the extremist terrorists. ..."
"... Clearly we are facing an obvious case of plausible deniabIlity. The United States claims to be arming only the "rebels" in its efforts to remove Assad, but in reality these rebels do not exist and are merely different acronyms for various Islamist extremists. It is therefore natural that the arms given to the rebels will wind up in the hands of ISIS or Al Nusra. On the rare occasions that journalists enquire as to how US weapons have ended up in the hands of Daesh or Al Nusra, US authorities can plausibly deny that they are intentionally arming any extremist groups. ..."
"... Clearly there is no justification, or any plausible denial, that can exonerate the United States from the seventy-year attempt to consolidate its power over other countries or prevent them from pursuing foreign policies independently of Washington. But what is increasingly noticeable is how, thanks to more and more good reporting from alternative news sources, the justifications for war and plausible denials carry less and less credibility with the wider population. ..."
"... The new perspective provided by the alternative media is ripping apart the lies of the past regarding Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Donbass, showing as fabrications the justifications used to drop bombs, kill civilians, subjugate entire populations in order to advance the US geopolitical goals. ..."
"... The three examples of Iraq, Libya and Obama himself represent the greatest expression of American deception, namely, the portrayal of the US as fighting for a noble cause, sacrificing itself for the sake of humanity in order to confront and overcome tyranny . But reality paints a different picture, showing the US as the bringer of chaos and destruction. It is the revelation of these lies more than anything else that can accelerate the global awakening and complete the rejection of imperialism that relies on false justifications and plausible denials to succeed. ..."
Observing the behavior of the United States over recent decades, it becomes clear that the American establishment has always relied
on two fundamental factors to justify choices in foreign policy.
We have been accustomed in recent years to humanitarian interventions being justified on the assumption that the United States
and the West were in some way intervening militarily in the interests of defending innocent civilians from brutal dictators. This
justification for armed intervention has either been the key factor or the direct cause for the expansion of US imperialism.
The use of the media as an instrument of war – with lies, artfully constructed stories, intentional omissions, and targeted disinformation
– has helped US imperialism to justify armed interventions abroad.
There is always some sort of justification, rationale or pretext offered when Washington intervenes to bring about conflict. These
excuses were showcased in Yugoslavia in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2002, in Iraq in 2003, and in Libya in 2011. With Yugoslavia and
Libya, the lie of protecting human rights was the justification offered to the public. The September 11, 2001 attacks were used to
justify attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, pointing the finger of blame at these countries. The war on terror in general
offered a perfect justification for bringing about chaos in every corner of the world.
Naturally, these are excuses meant to be peddled in the international arena. There is no justification for bombing a nation, completely
destroying its services and infrastructure, and killing tens of thousands of its innocent people.
But US imperialism works like a steam-roller. The artful fabrication of a humanitarian cause gives the green light to rain down
bombs to save the poor and downtrodden civilians. All this is possible thanks to the nauseating and false media rhetoric that creates
the ideal conditions needed to justify the horrible war crime that is aggression against a sovereign nation.
Such justifications constitute some of the most deceptive and aggressive imperialist tools employed by the Euro-American power
conglomerate to impose its unipolar vision of international relations and strong-arm those seeking a new path in international relations.
The objective is to disrupt (with bombs and propaganda) the vision these countries have of fixing the corrupt and sickening world
order guided by Washington.
In more recent times, this strategy of war based on (spurious) justifications has added a new type of ploy that is much more subtle
and suitable for imperialist ends. Since Washington has lost the ability to decide the situation on the ground in different war theaters
like in Iraq and Syria, it settles for sowing chaos and destruction.
This is done through the employment of plausible deniability, which helps mask covert operations. An example can be seen in Syria,
where Washington arms the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an insurgency group labelled "moderate rebels", but these weapons somehow seem
to find their way into the hands of Al Nusra and Daesh. This situation has been going on for years, with Washington using Daesh and
Al Nusra to fight against Assad, being able to plausible deny doing so by professing to be only arming the moderate rebels and not
the extremist terrorists.
Clearly we are facing an obvious case of plausible deniabIlity. The United States claims to be arming only the "rebels" in its
efforts to remove Assad, but in reality these rebels do not exist and are merely different acronyms for various Islamist extremists.
It is therefore natural that the arms given to the rebels will wind up in the hands of ISIS or Al Nusra. On the rare occasions that
journalists enquire as to how US weapons have ended up in the hands of Daesh or Al Nusra, US authorities can plausibly deny that
they are intentionally arming any extremist groups.
Plausible deniability and justifications for war are two manifestations of the hallucinatory world in which we live, based on
conjurations rather than reality. No newspaper or journalist questions whether the justification given for war is legitimate. No
newspaper wonders whether Iraq really was linked to Al Qaeda, preferring instead to repeat US propaganda. No one bothers to dig and
ask whether the FSA is just an acronym like the SDF and therefore another way of plausibly denying and covering for America's illegal
involvement in Syria.
Clearly there is no justification, or any plausible denial, that can exonerate the United States from the seventy-year attempt
to consolidate its power over other countries or prevent them from pursuing foreign policies independently of Washington. But what
is increasingly noticeable is how, thanks to more and more good reporting from alternative news sources, the justifications for war
and plausible denials carry less and less credibility with the wider population.
Decades of lies and omissions have convinced the European and American populations that the press is probably more interested
in protecting the interests of its management and owners than it is in revealing the truth. As a result, the alternative press, online
media, and alternative giants like CGTN, RT, TeleSUR and PressTV widen their audience simply by exposing how the Western media's
packaged truth only aims to justify the deployment of Western troops to foreign countries, or provide plausible deniability for their
less palatable covert operations.
The new perspective provided by the alternative media is ripping apart the lies of the past regarding Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Donbass,
showing as fabrications the justifications used to drop bombs, kill civilians, subjugate entire populations in order to advance the
US geopolitical goals.
The world population is increasingly better informed thanks to widespread Internet access and a growing thirst for news. This
phenomenon is beginning to gain steam as the deceptions of the mainstream media are increasingly being called out with every passing
day. CNN, The New York Times , Al Jazeera, the BBC, and many other broadcasters and newspapers have for many years shown European,
American and Middle Eastern populations a partial, falsified and manipulated version of reality for the purposes of justifying criminal
actions and providing plausible-denial cover to enable the sneaky killing of even more innocents.
As the chickens are coming home to roost, more and more old statements made by US officials are revisited and measured against
new facts on the ground. Obama's words about how the US never gave weapons to ISIS are today contradicted by evidence of the perverse
flow of weapons from the US and her allies to Daesh terrorists. In the same way, Clinton's celebration over Gaddafi's death ("We
came, we saw, he died"), or Madeleine Albright's justification of the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of US sanctions,
as well as them bombings from 1991 to 2003, are coming back to haunt them. All these lies are exposed years later, delivering a devastating
blow to the Western establishment's credibility.
The three examples of Iraq, Libya and Obama himself represent the greatest expression of American deception, namely, the portrayal
of the US as fighting for a noble cause, sacrificing itself for the sake of humanity in order to confront and overcome tyranny .
But reality paints a different picture, showing the US as the bringer of chaos and destruction. It is the revelation of these lies
more than anything else that can accelerate the global awakening and complete the rejection of imperialism that relies on false justifications
and plausible denials to succeed.
With the credibility of their previous arguments shot to pieces, the corporate media find themselves with the now practically
impossible task of attempting to deceive a woke population that can no longer be fooled as easily as in the past. People are fed
up with war and the lies that are offered to justify them, and they are starting to understand the techniques and keywords employed
to justify US Imperial policies.
The USSA and its imperial buddies France and the UK basically conduct their foreign affairs like this...
They plunder the 3rd and developing world of resource rich nations to supplement their own standard of living
They also use their financial tools, with bribes, as well as take advantaged of stupidity, to indebt these nations, thus
continuing the cycle of dependency, making our plunder easier.
The excuse for bombing Iraq, after 9/11 made this obvious to many Americans. The only Americans who refused to see at first,
was the flag waving, porch sitting, GOP blind patriot, who was used and abused by a system, who took advantage of their naivety
of the world at large. Remember Freedom Fries? lol
"Get down to Disney World in Florida," "Take your families and enjoy life, the way WE want it to be enjoyed." George W Bush,
shortly after the event known as 911.
"Foreign policy" of course defended his remarks, as have many other's over the years. The rationale being, "You can't let the
terrorists win." And if folks stop shopping and going to disneyland .... or working two, three part time jerbs, or stopped foolishly
going into debt, for shit they neither needed, nor could afford .. ahhh, buy no worries. That crisis was still a few years off
... Yeah, guess what, the terrorists won. But as it turns out, the terrorists to fear most would become the homegrown terrorists,
within the nations own government, it's institutions, and of course the FIRE sector, international banks, bankers and corporations,
their heads, whom now own and rule the the joint completely ...
Yes soccer moms, those whom you blindly put your faith in, due to your inability to think rationally, as it turns out, were
merely fighting for THEIR way of life, not yours, as you had foolishly hoped, you know, for the children, the children who were
and are used like so much chaff, and cannon fodder, things, beasts for future debt extraction, and early dying. Meat for the meat
grinder .. defending lies, liars, thieves, charlatans, grifters, and two bit con men. Untruths, injustice, the new American way
..
One one has to consider, ponder, if these words were ever to be spoken, "Heh, wasn't it great in the good old days, in the
time of our collective insanity!"
We need to try to understand how people in other countries see us, even bad people, not
because we agree with them, but because we can't conduct intelligent foreign policy by
thinking everybody in the world sees things the way Americans ("educated" cosmopolitan
Americans) do.
This isn't going to end well. How is this not the greatest scandal in American history?
We have a Manchurian candidate in the White House!
Who just tried to shame Germany into canceling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And browbeat
NATO members into increasing their defense spending. And armed Ukraine.
"... Hazony responds with the obvious answer that control can be imposed on the unwilling even if the empire builders are not overtly annexing territory. Meanwhile, other neoconservatives have given the game away by pushing their imperialist position a bit further than Krauthammer's. Max Boot, for example , has been quite open in demanding "an American empire" built on ideological and military control even without outright annexation. ..."
"... The belief that the U.S. is a supremely good nation founded on universal principles has consequences that go well beyond electoral politics. Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated talk radio host and co-owner of the website Townhall.com, extols American exceptionalism, which he says springs from American values. ..."
Neoconservatives like Max Boot are fooling themselves if they think imposing 'values' on the rest of the world isn't a matter
of empire.
Recently while reading a book by an Israeli scholar named Yoram Hazony with the provocative title
The Virtue of Nationalism , I encountered
a distinction drawn by the late Charles
Krauthammer between empire building and American global democratic hegemony. Like the editors of the Weekly Standard ,
for which he periodically wrote, Krauthammer believed it was unfair to describe what he wanted to see done, which was having the
U.S. actively spread its own form of government throughout the world, as "imperialism." After all, Krauthammer said, he and those
who think like him "do not hunger for new territory," which makes it wrong to accuse them of "imperialism."
Hazony responds with the obvious answer that control can be imposed on the unwilling even if the empire builders are not overtly
annexing territory. Meanwhile, other neoconservatives have given the game away by pushing their imperialist position a bit further
than Krauthammer's. Max Boot, for
example , has been quite open in demanding "an American empire" built on ideological and military control even without outright
annexation.
The question that occurred to me while reading Krauthammer's proposal and Hazony's response (which I suspect would have been more
devastating had Hazony not been afraid of losing neoconservative friends and sponsors) is this one: how is this not imperialism?
Certainly the use of protectorates to increase the influence of Western powers in the non-Western world goes back a long time.
As far back as the Peloponnesian War, rival Greek city-states tried to impose their constitutional arrangements on weaker Greek societies
as a way of managing them politically. According to Xenophon, when the Athenians then surrendered to the Spartan commander Lysander
in 403 BC, they had two conditions imposed on them: taking down their great wall ( kathairein ta makra teixe ) and
installing a regime that looked like the Spartan one. Thus is arguing that territory has to be annexed outright in order for it to
become part of an American empire so utterly unconvincing.
One reason the views offered by Krauthammer and Boot did not elicit more widespread criticism -- and have enjoyed enthusiastic
favor among Republicans for decades, culminating in the oratorical wonders of George W. Bush -- may have been the embrace of another
neoconservative doctrine: "American exceptionalism." The belief that the U.S. is a supremely good nation founded on universal
principles has consequences that go well beyond electoral politics. Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated talk radio host and co-owner
of the website Townhall.com, extols American exceptionalism, which he says springs from American values.
Those values have "universal applicability,"
according to Prager, and are "eminently exportable." Glenn Beck has taken up
the same theme of "American exceptionalism"
as
an exportable "idea " that is meant for everyone on the planet. The "ideas" or "values" in question are variously defined by
the neoconservative media as "human rights," "universal equality," or just making sure everyone lives like us. Whatever it is, we
are told that to withhold it from the rest of the human race would be uncharitable. Our efforts to bring it to others therefore cannot
be dismissed as "imperialism" any more than the Spanish government of the 16th century thought it was doing wrong by forcing its
religion on indigenous people in the Americas.
Although I'm hardly a fan of his political views, former president Barack Obama once said something that I thought was self-evident
but that offended even members of his own party. According to Obama, "Americans believe they're exceptional. But the Brits and Greeks
believe they're special too." Obama was merely observing that it's okay for others to believe they're special, even if they're not
Americans imbued with "the idea." Yet his statement was received with such uproar that he felt compelled to backtrack. Speaking later
at West Point,
he made it clear that "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being." This from someone whom Fox News assures
us hated America and spent every minute of his presidency denying our greatness! (And, yes, I've heard the rejoinder to this: Obama
was only pretending to believe in the creed he dutifully recited.)
It might be argued (and has been by neoconservatives many times) that the U.S. is both morally superior and less dangerous than
ethnically defined societies because we advocate a "value" or "creed" that's accessible to the entire human race. But this is hardly
a recipe for peace as opposed to what Krauthammer called a "value-driven" relationship with the rest of the world. Australian journalist
Douglas Murray, in his intended encomium Neoconservatism: Why We Need It
, tries to praise his subjects but ends up describing a kind of global democratic jihadism. While Douglas admits that "socially,
economically, and philosophically" neoconservatism differs from traditional conservatism, he insists that it's something better.
He commends neoconservatives for wishing to convert the world to "values." Their primary goal, according to Murray, is the "erasing
[of] tyrannies and [the] spreading [of] democracy," an arduous task that requires "interventionism, nation-building, and many of
the other difficulties that had long concerned traditional conservatives."
Please tell me this is not what it obviously is: an invitation to war and empire building. The quest for hegemony always looks
the same, no matter what moral labels some choose to give it.
Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years. He
is a Guggenheim recipient and a Yale Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents .
"... Naturally, these are excuses meant to be peddled in the international arena. There is no justification for bombing a nation, completely destroying its services and infrastructure, and killing tens of thousands of its innocent people. ..."
"... But US imperialism works like a steam-roller. The artful fabrication of a humanitarian cause gives the green light to rain down bombs to save the poor and downtrodden civilians. All this is possible thanks to the nauseating and false media rhetoric that creates the ideal conditions needed to justify the horrible war crime that is aggression against a sovereign nation. ..."
"... In more recent times, this strategy of war based on (spurious) justifications has added a new type of ploy that is much more subtle and suitable for imperialist ends. Since Washington has lost the ability to decide the situation on the ground in different war theaters like in Iraq and Syria, it settles for sowing chaos and destruction. ..."
"... This is done through the employment of plausible deniability, which helps mask covert operations. An example can be seen in Syria, where Washington arms the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an insurgency group labelled "moderate rebels", but these weapons somehow seem to find their way into the hands of Al Nusra and Daesh. This situation has been going on for years, with Washington using Daesh and Al Nusra to fight against Assad, being able to plausible deny doing so by professing to be only arming the moderate rebels and not the extremist terrorists. ..."
"... Clearly we are facing an obvious case of plausible deniabIlity. The United States claims to be arming only the "rebels" in its efforts to remove Assad, but in reality these rebels do not exist and are merely different acronyms for various Islamist extremists. It is therefore natural that the arms given to the rebels will wind up in the hands of ISIS or Al Nusra. On the rare occasions that journalists enquire as to how US weapons have ended up in the hands of Daesh or Al Nusra, US authorities can plausibly deny that they are intentionally arming any extremist groups. ..."
"... Clearly there is no justification, or any plausible denial, that can exonerate the United States from the seventy-year attempt to consolidate its power over other countries or prevent them from pursuing foreign policies independently of Washington. But what is increasingly noticeable is how, thanks to more and more good reporting from alternative news sources, the justifications for war and plausible denials carry less and less credibility with the wider population. ..."
"... The new perspective provided by the alternative media is ripping apart the lies of the past regarding Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Donbass, showing as fabrications the justifications used to drop bombs, kill civilians, subjugate entire populations in order to advance the US geopolitical goals. ..."
"... The three examples of Iraq, Libya and Obama himself represent the greatest expression of American deception, namely, the portrayal of the US as fighting for a noble cause, sacrificing itself for the sake of humanity in order to confront and overcome tyranny . But reality paints a different picture, showing the US as the bringer of chaos and destruction. It is the revelation of these lies more than anything else that can accelerate the global awakening and complete the rejection of imperialism that relies on false justifications and plausible denials to succeed. ..."
Observing the behavior of the United States over recent decades, it becomes clear that the American establishment has always relied
on two fundamental factors to justify choices in foreign policy.
We have been accustomed in recent years to humanitarian interventions being justified on the assumption that the United States
and the West were in some way intervening militarily in the interests of defending innocent civilians from brutal dictators. This
justification for armed intervention has either been the key factor or the direct cause for the expansion of US imperialism.
The use of the media as an instrument of war – with lies, artfully constructed stories, intentional omissions, and targeted disinformation
– has helped US imperialism to justify armed interventions abroad.
There is always some sort of justification, rationale or pretext offered when Washington intervenes to bring about conflict. These
excuses were showcased in Yugoslavia in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2002, in Iraq in 2003, and in Libya in 2011. With Yugoslavia and
Libya, the lie of protecting human rights was the justification offered to the public. The September 11, 2001 attacks were used to
justify attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, pointing the finger of blame at these countries. The war on terror in general
offered a perfect justification for bringing about chaos in every corner of the world.
Naturally, these are excuses meant to be peddled in the international arena. There is no justification for bombing a nation, completely
destroying its services and infrastructure, and killing tens of thousands of its innocent people.
But US imperialism works like a steam-roller. The artful fabrication of a humanitarian cause gives the green light to rain down
bombs to save the poor and downtrodden civilians. All this is possible thanks to the nauseating and false media rhetoric that creates
the ideal conditions needed to justify the horrible war crime that is aggression against a sovereign nation.
Such justifications constitute some of the most deceptive and aggressive imperialist tools employed by the Euro-American power
conglomerate to impose its unipolar vision of international relations and strong-arm those seeking a new path in international relations.
The objective is to disrupt (with bombs and propaganda) the vision these countries have of fixing the corrupt and sickening world
order guided by Washington.
In more recent times, this strategy of war based on (spurious) justifications has added a new type of ploy that is much more subtle
and suitable for imperialist ends. Since Washington has lost the ability to decide the situation on the ground in different war theaters
like in Iraq and Syria, it settles for sowing chaos and destruction.
This is done through the employment of plausible deniability, which helps mask covert operations. An example can be seen in Syria,
where Washington arms the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an insurgency group labelled "moderate rebels", but these weapons somehow seem
to find their way into the hands of Al Nusra and Daesh. This situation has been going on for years, with Washington using Daesh and
Al Nusra to fight against Assad, being able to plausible deny doing so by professing to be only arming the moderate rebels and not
the extremist terrorists.
Clearly we are facing an obvious case of plausible deniabIlity. The United States claims to be arming only the "rebels" in its
efforts to remove Assad, but in reality these rebels do not exist and are merely different acronyms for various Islamist extremists.
It is therefore natural that the arms given to the rebels will wind up in the hands of ISIS or Al Nusra. On the rare occasions that
journalists enquire as to how US weapons have ended up in the hands of Daesh or Al Nusra, US authorities can plausibly deny that
they are intentionally arming any extremist groups.
Plausible deniability and justifications for war are two manifestations of the hallucinatory world in which we live, based on
conjurations rather than reality. No newspaper or journalist questions whether the justification given for war is legitimate. No
newspaper wonders whether Iraq really was linked to Al Qaeda, preferring instead to repeat US propaganda. No one bothers to dig and
ask whether the FSA is just an acronym like the SDF and therefore another way of plausibly denying and covering for America's illegal
involvement in Syria.
Clearly there is no justification, or any plausible denial, that can exonerate the United States from the seventy-year attempt
to consolidate its power over other countries or prevent them from pursuing foreign policies independently of Washington. But what
is increasingly noticeable is how, thanks to more and more good reporting from alternative news sources, the justifications for war
and plausible denials carry less and less credibility with the wider population.
Decades of lies and omissions have convinced the European and American populations that the press is probably more interested
in protecting the interests of its management and owners than it is in revealing the truth. As a result, the alternative press, online
media, and alternative giants like CGTN, RT, TeleSUR and PressTV widen their audience simply by exposing how the Western media's
packaged truth only aims to justify the deployment of Western troops to foreign countries, or provide plausible deniability for their
less palatable covert operations.
The new perspective provided by the alternative media is ripping apart the lies of the past regarding Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Donbass,
showing as fabrications the justifications used to drop bombs, kill civilians, subjugate entire populations in order to advance the
US geopolitical goals.
The world population is increasingly better informed thanks to widespread Internet access and a growing thirst for news. This
phenomenon is beginning to gain steam as the deceptions of the mainstream media are increasingly being called out with every passing
day. CNN, The New York Times , Al Jazeera, the BBC, and many other broadcasters and newspapers have for many years shown European,
American and Middle Eastern populations a partial, falsified and manipulated version of reality for the purposes of justifying criminal
actions and providing plausible-denial cover to enable the sneaky killing of even more innocents.
As the chickens are coming home to roost, more and more old statements made by US officials are revisited and measured against
new facts on the ground. Obama's words about how the US never gave weapons to ISIS are today contradicted by evidence of the perverse
flow of weapons from the US and her allies to Daesh terrorists. In the same way, Clinton's celebration over Gaddafi's death ("We
came, we saw, he died"), or Madeleine Albright's justification of the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of US sanctions,
as well as them bombings from 1991 to 2003, are coming back to haunt them. All these lies are exposed years later, delivering a devastating
blow to the Western establishment's credibility.
The three examples of Iraq, Libya and Obama himself represent the greatest expression of American deception, namely, the portrayal
of the US as fighting for a noble cause, sacrificing itself for the sake of humanity in order to confront and overcome tyranny .
But reality paints a different picture, showing the US as the bringer of chaos and destruction. It is the revelation of these lies
more than anything else that can accelerate the global awakening and complete the rejection of imperialism that relies on false justifications
and plausible denials to succeed.
With the credibility of their previous arguments shot to pieces, the corporate media find themselves with the now practically
impossible task of attempting to deceive a woke population that can no longer be fooled as easily as in the past. People are fed
up with war and the lies that are offered to justify them, and they are starting to understand the techniques and keywords employed
to justify US Imperial policies.
The USSA and its imperial buddies France and the UK basically conduct their foreign affairs like this...
They plunder the 3rd and developing world of resource rich nations to supplement their own standard of living
They also use their financial tools, with bribes, as well as take advantaged of stupidity, to indebt these nations, thus
continuing the cycle of dependency, making our plunder easier.
The excuse for bombing Iraq, after 9/11 made this obvious to many Americans. The only Americans who refused to see at first,
was the flag waving, porch sitting, GOP blind patriot, who was used and abused by a system, who took advantage of their naivety
of the world at large. Remember Freedom Fries? lol
"Get down to Disney World in Florida," "Take your families and enjoy life, the way WE want it to be enjoyed." George W Bush,
shortly after the event known as 911.
"Foreign policy" of course defended his remarks, as have many other's over the years. The rationale being, "You can't let the
terrorists win." And if folks stop shopping and going to disneyland .... or working two, three part time jerbs, or stopped foolishly
going into debt, for shit they neither needed, nor could afford .. ahhh, buy no worries. That crisis was still a few years off
... Yeah, guess what, the terrorists won. But as it turns out, the terrorists to fear most would become the homegrown terrorists,
within the nations own government, it's institutions, and of course the FIRE sector, international banks, bankers and corporations,
their heads, whom now own and rule the the joint completely ...
Yes soccer moms, those whom you blindly put your faith in, due to your inability to think rationally, as it turns out, were
merely fighting for THEIR way of life, not yours, as you had foolishly hoped, you know, for the children, the children who were
and are used like so much chaff, and cannon fodder, things, beasts for future debt extraction, and early dying. Meat for the meat
grinder .. defending lies, liars, thieves, charlatans, grifters, and two bit con men. Untruths, injustice, the new American way
..
One one has to consider, ponder, if these words were ever to be spoken, "Heh, wasn't it great in the good old days, in the
time of our collective insanity!"
We need to try to understand how people in other countries see us, even bad people, not
because we agree with them, but because we can't conduct intelligent foreign policy by
thinking everybody in the world sees things the way Americans ("educated" cosmopolitan
Americans) do.
This isn't going to end well. How is this not the greatest scandal in American history?
We have a Manchurian candidate in the White House!
Who just tried to shame Germany into canceling the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And browbeat
NATO members into increasing their defense spending. And armed Ukraine.
"... Hazony responds with the obvious answer that control can be imposed on the unwilling even if the empire builders are not overtly annexing territory. Meanwhile, other neoconservatives have given the game away by pushing their imperialist position a bit further than Krauthammer's. Max Boot, for example , has been quite open in demanding "an American empire" built on ideological and military control even without outright annexation. ..."
"... The belief that the U.S. is a supremely good nation founded on universal principles has consequences that go well beyond electoral politics. Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated talk radio host and co-owner of the website Townhall.com, extols American exceptionalism, which he says springs from American values. ..."
Neoconservatives like Max Boot are fooling themselves if they think imposing 'values' on the rest of the world isn't a matter
of empire.
Recently while reading a book by an Israeli scholar named Yoram Hazony with the provocative title
The Virtue of Nationalism , I encountered
a distinction drawn by the late Charles
Krauthammer between empire building and American global democratic hegemony. Like the editors of the Weekly Standard ,
for which he periodically wrote, Krauthammer believed it was unfair to describe what he wanted to see done, which was having the
U.S. actively spread its own form of government throughout the world, as "imperialism." After all, Krauthammer said, he and those
who think like him "do not hunger for new territory," which makes it wrong to accuse them of "imperialism."
Hazony responds with the obvious answer that control can be imposed on the unwilling even if the empire builders are not overtly
annexing territory. Meanwhile, other neoconservatives have given the game away by pushing their imperialist position a bit further
than Krauthammer's. Max Boot, for
example , has been quite open in demanding "an American empire" built on ideological and military control even without outright
annexation.
The question that occurred to me while reading Krauthammer's proposal and Hazony's response (which I suspect would have been more
devastating had Hazony not been afraid of losing neoconservative friends and sponsors) is this one: how is this not imperialism?
Certainly the use of protectorates to increase the influence of Western powers in the non-Western world goes back a long time.
As far back as the Peloponnesian War, rival Greek city-states tried to impose their constitutional arrangements on weaker Greek societies
as a way of managing them politically. According to Xenophon, when the Athenians then surrendered to the Spartan commander Lysander
in 403 BC, they had two conditions imposed on them: taking down their great wall ( kathairein ta makra teixe ) and
installing a regime that looked like the Spartan one. Thus is arguing that territory has to be annexed outright in order for it to
become part of an American empire so utterly unconvincing.
One reason the views offered by Krauthammer and Boot did not elicit more widespread criticism -- and have enjoyed enthusiastic
favor among Republicans for decades, culminating in the oratorical wonders of George W. Bush -- may have been the embrace of another
neoconservative doctrine: "American exceptionalism." The belief that the U.S. is a supremely good nation founded on universal
principles has consequences that go well beyond electoral politics. Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated talk radio host and co-owner
of the website Townhall.com, extols American exceptionalism, which he says springs from American values.
Those values have "universal applicability,"
according to Prager, and are "eminently exportable." Glenn Beck has taken up
the same theme of "American exceptionalism"
as
an exportable "idea " that is meant for everyone on the planet. The "ideas" or "values" in question are variously defined by
the neoconservative media as "human rights," "universal equality," or just making sure everyone lives like us. Whatever it is, we
are told that to withhold it from the rest of the human race would be uncharitable. Our efforts to bring it to others therefore cannot
be dismissed as "imperialism" any more than the Spanish government of the 16th century thought it was doing wrong by forcing its
religion on indigenous people in the Americas.
Although I'm hardly a fan of his political views, former president Barack Obama once said something that I thought was self-evident
but that offended even members of his own party. According to Obama, "Americans believe they're exceptional. But the Brits and Greeks
believe they're special too." Obama was merely observing that it's okay for others to believe they're special, even if they're not
Americans imbued with "the idea." Yet his statement was received with such uproar that he felt compelled to backtrack. Speaking later
at West Point,
he made it clear that "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being." This from someone whom Fox News assures
us hated America and spent every minute of his presidency denying our greatness! (And, yes, I've heard the rejoinder to this: Obama
was only pretending to believe in the creed he dutifully recited.)
It might be argued (and has been by neoconservatives many times) that the U.S. is both morally superior and less dangerous than
ethnically defined societies because we advocate a "value" or "creed" that's accessible to the entire human race. But this is hardly
a recipe for peace as opposed to what Krauthammer called a "value-driven" relationship with the rest of the world. Australian journalist
Douglas Murray, in his intended encomium Neoconservatism: Why We Need It
, tries to praise his subjects but ends up describing a kind of global democratic jihadism. While Douglas admits that "socially,
economically, and philosophically" neoconservatism differs from traditional conservatism, he insists that it's something better.
He commends neoconservatives for wishing to convert the world to "values." Their primary goal, according to Murray, is the "erasing
[of] tyrannies and [the] spreading [of] democracy," an arduous task that requires "interventionism, nation-building, and many of
the other difficulties that had long concerned traditional conservatives."
Please tell me this is not what it obviously is: an invitation to war and empire building. The quest for hegemony always looks
the same, no matter what moral labels some choose to give it.
Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years. He
is a Guggenheim recipient and a Yale Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents .
Those measures and the resulting uncertainty are prompting some European countries to go
their own way on major industry projects, including the development of a next-generation
fighter jet, potentially leaving U.S. firms behind.
"I think it is forcing Europe together in ways that have unanticipated consequences for the
U.S. defense industry," said Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners.
The aerospace and defense industry is a huge driver of U.S. jobs and economic growth. In
2017 alone, it generated $865 billion, supporting 2.4 million high-paying American jobs. The
industry produced a positive trade balance of $86 billion in 2017, the largest of any U.S.
industry, which reduced the country's trade deficit by 10 percent.
It is also an important component of U.S. foreign policy. Arms sales are key to
strengthening security partnerships and improving military cooperation with allies.
"Partners who procure American weaponry are more capable of fighting alongside us and
ultimately more capable of protecting themselves with fewer American boots on the ground,"
Peter Navarro, the White House director of trade policy, said during an April press
conference.
So it came as no surprise when the Trump administration announced the decision to send a
large delegation to help sell U.S. products at Farnborough, including top officials such as
Navarro. The administration also used the opportunity to roll out the Conventional Arms
Transfer (CAT) Policy, also known as the "Buy America" plan, an initiative to improve U.S. arms
transfer processes and increase the competitiveness of U.S.-made products.
But the U.S. government showing at Farnborough was disappointing from the start of the
weeklong exhibition Monday. Navarro pulled out at the last minute, as did Ellen Lord, the
Pentagon's top weapons buyer; Heidi Grant, the U.S. Air Force's head of international affairs;
and other U.S. government officials. At the show itself, only five U.S. military aircraft
appeared on static display in the Defense Department corral that normally showcases products
built for the armed services by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other U.S. defense giants.
It is noticeable that Trump's US attack any Syrian forces coming too close to US occupied
zones of al Tanf and Dier Ezzor. Also Trumps takeover of the Deir Ezzor oilfields where US
forces simply set up bases or forward posts in the ISIS occupied area.
Under Trump, US has set up a number of new bases in Syria. On the other hand, no concern
about Afrin and Manbij. The Deir Ezzor area is Arab tribes and this and al Hasakah
(Kurd/Arab?) is the top end of the Persian Gulf/Mesopotamia oil field.
US now controls al Hasakah and half of Deir Ezzor province. The have been ongoing efforts
by the US under Trump to take Al Bukamal. US has a base just south of Al Bukamal in Iraq. US
bases are now thick throughout Mesopotamia, with more being built.
Also a new base being installed in Kuwait.
The US controls the Arab shore of the Persian gulf, it now has many bases in Iraq and
Syria. The only thing missing is the oil rich strip of Iran running alongside the Persian
gulf and Mesopotamia.
Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the
threshold of "high crimes & misdemeanors." It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only
were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots:
Where are you???
Senator John McCain released a scathing
statement :
... "President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin
seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend
a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested
platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.
...
"No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did
President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the
world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are -- a republic of free
people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. ...
These imbeciles do not understand the realism behind Trump's grand policy. Trump knows the
heartland theory of
Halford John Mackinder. He understands that Russia is the core of the Eurasian landmass. That
landmass, when politically united, can rule the world. A naval power, the U.S. now as the UK
before it, can never defeat it. Trump's opponents do not get what Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
National Security Advisor of President Carter, explained in his book The Grant Chessboard
(pdf). They do not understand why Henry Kissinger
advised Trump to let go of Crimea.
Trump himself professed his view (vid)
of the big picture and of relations with Russia in a 2015 press conference:
"I know Putin. And I tell you that we can get along with Putin. Putin has no respect for
President Obama. Big Problem, big problem. And you know Russia has been driven - you know I
always heard, for years I have heard - one of the worst things that can happen to our
country, is when Russia ever gets driven to China. We have driven them together - with the
big oil deals that are being made. We have driven them together. That's a horrible thing for
this country. We have made them friends because of incompetent leadership. I believe I would
get along very nicely with Putin- okay? And I mean where we have the strength. I don't think
we need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well. I really believe
that. I think we would get along with a lot of countries that we don't get along with today.
And that we would be a lot richer for it than we are today.
It took 45 years, not 20 as Kissinger foresaw, to rebalance the U.S. position.
After the Cold War the U.S. thought it had won the big ideological competition of the
twentieth century. In its exuberance of the 'unilateral moment' it did everything possible to
antagonize Russia.
Against its promises it extended NATO to Russia's border. It wanted to be the peerless
supreme power of the world. At the same time it invited China into the World Trade Organisation
and thereby enabled its explosive economic growth. This unbalanced policy took its toll. The
U.S. lost industrial capacity to China and at the same time drove Russia into China's hands.
Playing the global hegemon
turned out to be very expensive. It led to the 2006 crash of the U.S. economy and its people
have since seen little to no gains. Trump wants to revert this situation by rebalancing towards
Russia while opposing China's growing might.
Not everyone shares that perspective. As security advisor to Jimmy Carter Brzezinski
continued the Nixon/Kissinger policy towards China. The 'one China policy', disregarding Taiwan
for better relations with Beijing, was his work. His
view is still that the U.S. should ally with China against Russia:
"It is not in our interest to antagonize Beijing. It is much better for American interests to
have the Chinese work closely with us, thereby forcing the Russians to follow suit if they
don't want to be left out in the cold. That constellation gives the U.S. the unique ability
to reach out across the world with collective political influence."
But why would China join such a scheme? Brzezinski's view of Russia was always clouded. His
family of minor nobles has its roots in Galicia, now in west-Ukraine. They were driven from
Poland when the Soviets extended their realm into the middle of Europe. To him Russia will
always be the antagonist.
[I]n the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any
new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.
Kissinger is again working to
divide Russia from China . But this time around it is Russia that needs to be elevated,
that needs to become a friend.
Trump is following Kissinger's view. He wants good relations with Russia to separate Russia
from China. He (rightly) sees China as the bigger long term (economic) danger to the United
States. That is the reason why he,
immediately after his election , started to beef up the relations with Taiwan and continues
to do so. ( Listen to
Peter Lee for the details). That is the reason why he tries to snatch North Korea from
China's hands. That is the reason why he makes nice with Putin.
It is not likely that Trump will manage to pull Russia out of its profitable alliance with
China. It is true that China's activities, especially in the Central Asian -stans, are a long
term danger to Russia. China's demographic and economic power is far greater than Russia's. But
the U.S. has never been faithful in its relations with Russia. It would take decades to regain
its trust. China on the other hand stands to its commitments. China is not interested in
conquering the 'heartland'. It has bigger fish to fry in south-east Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
It is not in its interest to antagonize Russia.
The maximum Trump can possibly achieve is to neutralize Russia while he attempts to tackle
China's growing economic might via tariffs, sanctions and by cuddling Taiwan, Japan and other
countries with anti-Chinese agendas.
The U.S. blew its 'unilateral moment'. Instead of making friends with Russia it drove it
into China's hands. Hegemonic globalization and unilateral wars proved to be too expensive. The
U.S. people received no gains from it. That is why they elected Trump.
Trump is doing his best to correct the situation. For the foreseeable future the world will
end up with three power centers. Anglo-America, Russia and China. (An aging and disunited
Europe will flap in the winds.) These power centers will never wage direct war against each
other, but will tussle at the peripheries. Korea, Iran and the Ukraine will be centers of these
conflicts. Interests in Central Asia, South America and Africa will also play a role.
Trump understands the big picture. To 'Make America Great Again' he needs to tackle China
and to prevent a deeper Chinese-Russian alliance. It's the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals
who do not get it. They are still stuck in Brzezinski's Cold War view of Russia. They still
believe that economic globalization, which helped China to regain its historic might, is the
one and true path to follow. They do not perceive at all the damage they have done to the
American electorate.
For now Trump's view is winning. But the lunatic reactions to the press conference show that
the powers against him are still strong. They will sabotage him wherever possible. The big
danger for now is that their view of the world might again raise to power.
Posted by b on July 17, 2018 at 07:41 AM |
PermalinkJen , Jul 17, 2018 8:54:40 AM |
8
BTW it is worthwhile to keep in mind that back in 2001, Russia and China signed a treaty of
friendship in which, among other things, both nations renounced all and any territorial
designs on one another's territory. This meant that China would have renounced any claims on
parts of Primorsky Kray in the Russian Far East along the Amur River, that used to be part of
the old Ming and Qing empires.
There is one significant paragraphy to be noted: Neither party will join any alliance or group that harms the other's sovereignty, security
and territorial integrity. Neither of them will conclude such treaties with any third party,
or allow a third country to use its territory to harm the other's sovereignty, security and
territorial integrity.
Well ... there goes any attempt by Trump to prise apart Russian and Chinese
friendship.
"Playing the global hegemon turned out to be very expensive. It led to the 2006 crash of the
U.S. economy and its people have since seen little to no gains".
To continue the theme: "People? We don't need no stinkin' people". US government has long
been directed towards the enrichment of a tiny clique of the super-rich and powerful. It is
nothing more than a bloodsucking parasite on the USA itself.
The reactions of the U.S. polite to yesterday's press conference of President Trump and
President Putin are highly amusing. The media are
losing their mind . Apparently it was Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin and 9/11 all in one day.
War will commence tomorrow. But against whom?
Behind the panic lie competing views of Grand Strategy .
Rereading the
transcript of the 45 minutes long press conference (vid) I find it rather
boring. Trump did not say anything that he had not said before. There was little mention of
what the two presidents had really talked about and what they agreed upon. Later on Putin said
that the meeting was more
substantive than he expected . As the two spoke alone there will be few if any leaks. To
understand what happened we will have to wait and see how the situations in the various
conflict areas, in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere, will now develop.
The 'liberal' side of the U.S. did its best to prevent the summit. The
recent Mueller indictment was timed to sabotage the talks. Before the meeting in Helsinki
the New York Times retweeted its three weeks old
homophobic comic flick that shows Trump and Putin as lovers. It is truly a disgrace for the
Grey Lady to publish such trash. After the press conference the usual anti-Trump operatives
went ballistic:
Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the
threshold of "high crimes & misdemeanors." It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only
were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots:
Where are you???
Senator John McCain released a scathing
statement :
... "President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin
seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend
a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested
platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.
...
"No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did
President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the
world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are -- a republic of free
people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. ...
These imbeciles do not understand the realism behind Trump's grand policy. Trump knows the
heartland theory of
Halford John Mackinder. He understands that Russia is the core of the Eurasian landmass. That
landmass, when politically united, can rule the world. A naval power, the U.S. now as the UK
before it, can never defeat it. Trump's opponents do not get what Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
National Security Advisor of President Carter, explained in his book The Grant Chessboard
(pdf). They do not understand why Henry Kissinger
advised Trump to let go of Crimea.
Trump himself professed his view (vid)
of the big picture and of relations with Russia in a 2015 press conference:
"I know Putin. And I tell you that we can get along with Putin. Putin has no respect for
President Obama. Big Problem, big problem. And you know Russia has been driven - you know I
always heard, for years I have heard - one of the worst things that can happen to our
country, is when Russia ever gets driven to China. We have driven them together - with the
big oil deals that are being made. We have driven them together. That's a horrible thing for
this country. We have made them friends because of incompetent leadership. I believe I would
get along very nicely with Putin- okay? And I mean where we have the strength. I don't think
we need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well. I really believe
that. I think we would get along with a lot of countries that we don't get along with today.
And that we would be a lot richer for it than we are today.
There are three great geographic power-centers in the world. The Anglo-American
transatlantic one which is often called 'the west'. Mackinder's heartland, which is essentially
Russia as the core of the Eurasian landmass, and China, which historically rules over Asia. Any
alliance of two of those power-centers can determine the fate of the world.
Kissinger's and Nixon's biggest political success was to separate China from the Soviet
Union. That did not make China an ally of the United States, but it broke the Chinese-Soviet
alliance. It put the U.S. into a premier position, a first among equals. But even then
Kissinger already
foresaw the need to balance back to Russia:
On Feb. 14, 1972, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger
met to discuss Nixon's upcoming trip to China. Kissinger, who had already taken his secret
trip to China to begin Nixon's historic opening to Beijing, expressed the view that compared
with the Russians, the Chinese were "just as dangerous. In fact, they're more dangerous over
a historical period."
Kissinger then observed that " in 20 years your successor, if he's as wise as you, will
wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese ." He argued that the United States,
as it sought to profit from the enmity between Moscow and Beijing, needed "to play this
balance-of-power game totally unemotionally. Right now, we need the Chinese to correct the
Russians and to discipline the Russians." But in the future, it would be the other way
around.
It took 45 years, not 20 as Kissinger foresaw, to rebalance the U.S. position.
After the Cold War the U.S. thought it had won the big ideological competition of the
twentieth century. In its exuberance of the 'unilateral moment' it did everything possible to
antagonize Russia.
Against its promises it extended NATO to Russia's border. It wanted to be the peerless
supreme power of the world. At the same time it invited China into the World Trade Organisation
and thereby enabled its explosive economic growth. This unbalanced policy took its toll. The
U.S. lost industrial capacity to China and at the same time drove Russia into China's hands.
Playing the global hegemon
turned out to be very expensive. It led to the 2006 crash of the U.S. economy and its people
have since seen little to no gains. Trump wants to revert this situation by rebalancing towards
Russia while opposing China's growing might.
Not everyone shares that perspective. As security advisor to Jimmy Carter Brzezinski
continued the Nixon/Kissinger policy towards China. The 'one China policy', disregarding Taiwan
for better relations with Beijing, was his work. His
view is still that the U.S. should ally with China against Russia:
"It is not in our interest to antagonize Beijing. It is much better for American interests to
have the Chinese work closely with us, thereby forcing the Russians to follow suit if they
don't want to be left out in the cold. That constellation gives the U.S. the unique ability
to reach out across the world with collective political influence."
But why would China join such a scheme? Brzezinski's view of Russia was always clouded. His
family of minor nobles has its roots in Galicia, now in west-Ukraine. They were driven from
Poland when the Soviets extended their realm into the middle of Europe. To him Russia will
always be the antagonist.
[I]n the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any
new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.
Kissinger is again working to
divide Russia from China . But this time around it is Russia that needs to be elevated,
that needs to become a friend.
Trump is following Kissinger's view. He wants good relations with Russia to separate Russia
from China. He (rightly) sees China as the bigger long term (economic) danger to the United
States. That is the reason why he,
immediately after his election , started to beef up the relations with Taiwan and continues
to do so. ( Listen to
Peter Lee for the details). That is the reason why he tries to snatch North Korea from
China's hands. That is the reason why he makes nice with Putin.
It is not likely that Trump will manage to pull Russia out of its profitable alliance with
China. It is true that China's activities, especially in the Central Asian -stans, are a long
term danger to Russia. China's demographic and economic power is far greater than Russia's. But
the U.S. has never been faithful in its relations with Russia. It would take decades to regain
its trust. China on the other hand stands to its commitments. China is not interested in
conquering the 'heartland'. It has bigger fish to fry in south-east Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
It is not in its interest to antagonize Russia.
The maximum Trump can possibly achieve is to neutralize Russia while he attempts to tackle
China's growing economic might via tariffs, sanctions and by cuddling Taiwan, Japan and other
countries with anti-Chinese agendas.
The U.S. blew its 'unilateral moment'. Instead of making friends with Russia it drove it
into China's hands. Hegemonic globalization and unilateral wars proved to be too expensive. The
U.S. people received no gains from it. That is why they elected Trump.
Trump is doing his best to correct the situation. For the foreseeable future the world will
end up with three power centers. Anglo-America, Russia and China. (An aging and disunited
Europe will flap in the winds.) These power centers will never wage direct war against each
other, but will tussle at the peripheries. Korea, Iran and the Ukraine will be centers of these
conflicts. Interests in Central Asia, South America and Africa will also play a role.
Trump understands the big picture. To 'Make America Great Again' he needs to tackle China
and to prevent a deeper Chinese-Russian alliance. It's the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals
who do not get it. They are still stuck in Brzezinski's Cold War view of Russia. They still
believe that economic globalization, which helped China to regain its historic might, is the
one and true path to follow. They do not perceive at all the damage they have done to the
American electorate.
For now Trump's view is winning. But the lunatic reactions to the press conference show that
the powers against him are still strong. They will sabotage him wherever possible. The big
danger for now is that their view of the world might again raise to power.
Posted by b on July 17, 2018 at 07:41 AM |
Permalink
Russia would be dumb to dump China.
Americas political establishment is not in line with Trump, the establishment need Russia as
the enemy and that's not going to change. There are many who actually believe Russia is the
enemy
Trump will go back to America be beaten up by friends and enemies and conform to thie
establishment view.
Putin who has gone through 4 presidents should know better?
If indeed Trump's strategy is to separate Russia from China, and to surround China on its
eastern and southeastern seaboard with hostile states that could potentially cut off China's
maritime trade links with SE Asia and countries beyond the Indian Ocean, then one wonders
whether Trump would also consider cutting off any and all ties with Ukraine, and leave that
country to drown in its own Nazified stupidity once Russia cuts off all gas transit through
Ukrainian territory in 2019. After all, Ukraine was only useful to the Americans as long as
it could hold onto Crimea and Sevastopol.
At the rate Ukraine is going, it may not be an independent state with secure borders
within the next five years. The most Nazified western parts of the country (the historic
Galicia and Volhynia) will almost certainly go to Poland; one is curious to know how a
resurgent nationalist Poland will deal with the spiritual descendants of Stepan Bandera,
Yaroslav Stetsko and their followers who tortured and butchered hundreds of thousands of
Poles as well as Jews. Zakarpatska Oblast will go to Hungary and Bukovina to Romania. Kherson
and Odessa Oblasts are likely to stampede over to Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts to form an
enlarged Novorussia. What's left of rump Ukraine surrounding Kiev (if that's not taken by
Poland as well) will be an economic backwater swamp fit only to host barracks of NATO
soldiers in the hope they'll spend money patronising brothels and pole-dancing clubs.
Well, if Trump pulls this off, against the deep state, I'll be truly impressed.
But, at this point I'm thinking the deep state is looking at how to end him.
He's a loose cannon on the deck of a sinking ship...
And world peace is not on the agenda.
Great work, b. I will read this again when I have the chance.
An interesting question/theory develops with this newfound Russia-engagement:
Does Russia have more in common with the US than China and does Russia really want to see
the US economy go down in flames?
I would say no to the latter and yes to the former. I wouldn't say that Russia would ever
betray the east and China, but Putin is in a strange position now where he is holding all the
cards...could Russia get rich and grow in power off business with the US? Why would Putin
emotionally harbor illwill towards Americans when it appears a seachange is taking place?
It is noticeable that Trump's US attack any Syrian forces coming too close to US occupied
zones of al Tanf and Dier Ezzor. Also Trumps takeover of the Deir Ezzor oilfields where US
forces simply set up bases or forward posts in the ISIS occupied area.
Under Trump, US has set up a number of new bases in Syria. On the other hand, no concern
about Afrin and Manbij. The Deir Ezzor area is Arab tribes and this and al Hasakah
(Kurd/Arab?) is the top end of the Persian Gulf/Mesopotamia oil field.
US now controls al Hasakah and half of Deir Ezzor province. The have been ongoing efforts
by the US under Trump to take Al Bukamal. US has a base just south of Al Bukamal in Iraq. US
bases are now thick throughout Mesopotamia, with more being built.
Also a new base being installed in Kuwait.
The US controls the Arab shore of the Persian gulf, it now has many bases in Iraq and
Syria. The only thing missing is the oil rich strip of Iran running alongside the Persian
gulf and Mesopotamia.
Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the
threshold of "high crimes & misdemeanors." It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only
were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots:
Where are you???
Senator John McCain released a scathing
statement :
... "President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin
seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend
a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested
platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.
...
"No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did
President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the
world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are -- a republic of free
people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. ...
These imbeciles do not understand the realism behind Trump's grand policy. Trump knows the
heartland theory of
Halford John Mackinder. He understands that Russia is the core of the Eurasian landmass. That
landmass, when politically united, can rule the world. A naval power, the U.S. now as the UK
before it, can never defeat it. Trump's opponents do not get what Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
National Security Advisor of President Carter, explained in his book The Grant Chessboard
(pdf). They do not understand why Henry Kissinger
advised Trump to let go of Crimea.
Trump himself professed his view (vid)
of the big picture and of relations with Russia in a 2015 press conference:
"I know Putin. And I tell you that we can get along with Putin. Putin has no respect for
President Obama. Big Problem, big problem. And you know Russia has been driven - you know I
always heard, for years I have heard - one of the worst things that can happen to our
country, is when Russia ever gets driven to China. We have driven them together - with the
big oil deals that are being made. We have driven them together. That's a horrible thing for
this country. We have made them friends because of incompetent leadership. I believe I would
get along very nicely with Putin- okay? And I mean where we have the strength. I don't think
we need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well. I really believe
that. I think we would get along with a lot of countries that we don't get along with today.
And that we would be a lot richer for it than we are today.
It took 45 years, not 20 as Kissinger foresaw, to rebalance the U.S. position.
After the Cold War the U.S. thought it had won the big ideological competition of the
twentieth century. In its exuberance of the 'unilateral moment' it did everything possible to
antagonize Russia.
Against its promises it extended NATO to Russia's border. It wanted to be the peerless
supreme power of the world. At the same time it invited China into the World Trade Organisation
and thereby enabled its explosive economic growth. This unbalanced policy took its toll. The
U.S. lost industrial capacity to China and at the same time drove Russia into China's hands.
Playing the global hegemon
turned out to be very expensive. It led to the 2006 crash of the U.S. economy and its people
have since seen little to no gains. Trump wants to revert this situation by rebalancing towards
Russia while opposing China's growing might.
Not everyone shares that perspective. As security advisor to Jimmy Carter Brzezinski
continued the Nixon/Kissinger policy towards China. The 'one China policy', disregarding Taiwan
for better relations with Beijing, was his work. His
view is still that the U.S. should ally with China against Russia:
"It is not in our interest to antagonize Beijing. It is much better for American interests to
have the Chinese work closely with us, thereby forcing the Russians to follow suit if they
don't want to be left out in the cold. That constellation gives the U.S. the unique ability
to reach out across the world with collective political influence."
But why would China join such a scheme? Brzezinski's view of Russia was always clouded. His
family of minor nobles has its roots in Galicia, now in west-Ukraine. They were driven from
Poland when the Soviets extended their realm into the middle of Europe. To him Russia will
always be the antagonist.
[I]n the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any
new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.
Kissinger is again working to
divide Russia from China . But this time around it is Russia that needs to be elevated,
that needs to become a friend.
Trump is following Kissinger's view. He wants good relations with Russia to separate Russia
from China. He (rightly) sees China as the bigger long term (economic) danger to the United
States. That is the reason why he,
immediately after his election , started to beef up the relations with Taiwan and continues
to do so. ( Listen to
Peter Lee for the details). That is the reason why he tries to snatch North Korea from
China's hands. That is the reason why he makes nice with Putin.
It is not likely that Trump will manage to pull Russia out of its profitable alliance with
China. It is true that China's activities, especially in the Central Asian -stans, are a long
term danger to Russia. China's demographic and economic power is far greater than Russia's. But
the U.S. has never been faithful in its relations with Russia. It would take decades to regain
its trust. China on the other hand stands to its commitments. China is not interested in
conquering the 'heartland'. It has bigger fish to fry in south-east Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
It is not in its interest to antagonize Russia.
The maximum Trump can possibly achieve is to neutralize Russia while he attempts to tackle
China's growing economic might via tariffs, sanctions and by cuddling Taiwan, Japan and other
countries with anti-Chinese agendas.
The U.S. blew its 'unilateral moment'. Instead of making friends with Russia it drove it
into China's hands. Hegemonic globalization and unilateral wars proved to be too expensive. The
U.S. people received no gains from it. That is why they elected Trump.
Trump is doing his best to correct the situation. For the foreseeable future the world will
end up with three power centers. Anglo-America, Russia and China. (An aging and disunited
Europe will flap in the winds.) These power centers will never wage direct war against each
other, but will tussle at the peripheries. Korea, Iran and the Ukraine will be centers of these
conflicts. Interests in Central Asia, South America and Africa will also play a role.
Trump understands the big picture. To 'Make America Great Again' he needs to tackle China
and to prevent a deeper Chinese-Russian alliance. It's the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals
who do not get it. They are still stuck in Brzezinski's Cold War view of Russia. They still
believe that economic globalization, which helped China to regain its historic might, is the
one and true path to follow. They do not perceive at all the damage they have done to the
American electorate.
For now Trump's view is winning. But the lunatic reactions to the press conference show that
the powers against him are still strong. They will sabotage him wherever possible. The big
danger for now is that their view of the world might again raise to power.
Posted by b on July 17, 2018 at 07:41 AM |
PermalinkJen , Jul 17, 2018 8:54:40 AM |
8
BTW it is worthwhile to keep in mind that back in 2001, Russia and China signed a treaty of
friendship in which, among other things, both nations renounced all and any territorial
designs on one another's territory. This meant that China would have renounced any claims on
parts of Primorsky Kray in the Russian Far East along the Amur River, that used to be part of
the old Ming and Qing empires.
There is one significant paragraphy to be noted: Neither party will join any alliance or group that harms the other's sovereignty, security
and territorial integrity. Neither of them will conclude such treaties with any third party,
or allow a third country to use its territory to harm the other's sovereignty, security and
territorial integrity.
Well ... there goes any attempt by Trump to prise apart Russian and Chinese
friendship.
"Playing the global hegemon turned out to be very expensive. It led to the 2006 crash of the
U.S. economy and its people have since seen little to no gains".
To continue the theme: "People? We don't need no stinkin' people". US government has long
been directed towards the enrichment of a tiny clique of the super-rich and powerful. It is
nothing more than a bloodsucking parasite on the USA itself.
The reactions of the U.S. polite to yesterday's press conference of President Trump and
President Putin are highly amusing. The media are
losing their mind . Apparently it was Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin and 9/11 all in one day.
War will commence tomorrow. But against whom?
Behind the panic lie competing views of Grand Strategy .
Rereading the
transcript of the 45 minutes long press conference (vid) I find it rather
boring. Trump did not say anything that he had not said before. There was little mention of
what the two presidents had really talked about and what they agreed upon. Later on Putin said
that the meeting was more
substantive than he expected . As the two spoke alone there will be few if any leaks. To
understand what happened we will have to wait and see how the situations in the various
conflict areas, in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere, will now develop.
The 'liberal' side of the U.S. did its best to prevent the summit. The
recent Mueller indictment was timed to sabotage the talks. Before the meeting in Helsinki
the New York Times retweeted its three weeks old
homophobic comic flick that shows Trump and Putin as lovers. It is truly a disgrace for the
Grey Lady to publish such trash. After the press conference the usual anti-Trump operatives
went ballistic:
Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the
threshold of "high crimes & misdemeanors." It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only
were Trump's comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots:
Where are you???
Senator John McCain released a scathing
statement :
... "President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin
seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend
a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested
platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.
...
"No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did
President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the
world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are -- a republic of free
people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. ...
These imbeciles do not understand the realism behind Trump's grand policy. Trump knows the
heartland theory of
Halford John Mackinder. He understands that Russia is the core of the Eurasian landmass. That
landmass, when politically united, can rule the world. A naval power, the U.S. now as the UK
before it, can never defeat it. Trump's opponents do not get what Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
National Security Advisor of President Carter, explained in his book The Grant Chessboard
(pdf). They do not understand why Henry Kissinger
advised Trump to let go of Crimea.
Trump himself professed his view (vid)
of the big picture and of relations with Russia in a 2015 press conference:
"I know Putin. And I tell you that we can get along with Putin. Putin has no respect for
President Obama. Big Problem, big problem. And you know Russia has been driven - you know I
always heard, for years I have heard - one of the worst things that can happen to our
country, is when Russia ever gets driven to China. We have driven them together - with the
big oil deals that are being made. We have driven them together. That's a horrible thing for
this country. We have made them friends because of incompetent leadership. I believe I would
get along very nicely with Putin- okay? And I mean where we have the strength. I don't think
we need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well. I really believe
that. I think we would get along with a lot of countries that we don't get along with today.
And that we would be a lot richer for it than we are today.
There are three great geographic power-centers in the world. The Anglo-American
transatlantic one which is often called 'the west'. Mackinder's heartland, which is essentially
Russia as the core of the Eurasian landmass, and China, which historically rules over Asia. Any
alliance of two of those power-centers can determine the fate of the world.
Kissinger's and Nixon's biggest political success was to separate China from the Soviet
Union. That did not make China an ally of the United States, but it broke the Chinese-Soviet
alliance. It put the U.S. into a premier position, a first among equals. But even then
Kissinger already
foresaw the need to balance back to Russia:
On Feb. 14, 1972, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger
met to discuss Nixon's upcoming trip to China. Kissinger, who had already taken his secret
trip to China to begin Nixon's historic opening to Beijing, expressed the view that compared
with the Russians, the Chinese were "just as dangerous. In fact, they're more dangerous over
a historical period."
Kissinger then observed that " in 20 years your successor, if he's as wise as you, will
wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese ." He argued that the United States,
as it sought to profit from the enmity between Moscow and Beijing, needed "to play this
balance-of-power game totally unemotionally. Right now, we need the Chinese to correct the
Russians and to discipline the Russians." But in the future, it would be the other way
around.
It took 45 years, not 20 as Kissinger foresaw, to rebalance the U.S. position.
After the Cold War the U.S. thought it had won the big ideological competition of the
twentieth century. In its exuberance of the 'unilateral moment' it did everything possible to
antagonize Russia.
Against its promises it extended NATO to Russia's border. It wanted to be the peerless
supreme power of the world. At the same time it invited China into the World Trade Organisation
and thereby enabled its explosive economic growth. This unbalanced policy took its toll. The
U.S. lost industrial capacity to China and at the same time drove Russia into China's hands.
Playing the global hegemon
turned out to be very expensive. It led to the 2006 crash of the U.S. economy and its people
have since seen little to no gains. Trump wants to revert this situation by rebalancing towards
Russia while opposing China's growing might.
Not everyone shares that perspective. As security advisor to Jimmy Carter Brzezinski
continued the Nixon/Kissinger policy towards China. The 'one China policy', disregarding Taiwan
for better relations with Beijing, was his work. His
view is still that the U.S. should ally with China against Russia:
"It is not in our interest to antagonize Beijing. It is much better for American interests to
have the Chinese work closely with us, thereby forcing the Russians to follow suit if they
don't want to be left out in the cold. That constellation gives the U.S. the unique ability
to reach out across the world with collective political influence."
But why would China join such a scheme? Brzezinski's view of Russia was always clouded. His
family of minor nobles has its roots in Galicia, now in west-Ukraine. They were driven from
Poland when the Soviets extended their realm into the middle of Europe. To him Russia will
always be the antagonist.
[I]n the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any
new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States.
Kissinger is again working to
divide Russia from China . But this time around it is Russia that needs to be elevated,
that needs to become a friend.
Trump is following Kissinger's view. He wants good relations with Russia to separate Russia
from China. He (rightly) sees China as the bigger long term (economic) danger to the United
States. That is the reason why he,
immediately after his election , started to beef up the relations with Taiwan and continues
to do so. ( Listen to
Peter Lee for the details). That is the reason why he tries to snatch North Korea from
China's hands. That is the reason why he makes nice with Putin.
It is not likely that Trump will manage to pull Russia out of its profitable alliance with
China. It is true that China's activities, especially in the Central Asian -stans, are a long
term danger to Russia. China's demographic and economic power is far greater than Russia's. But
the U.S. has never been faithful in its relations with Russia. It would take decades to regain
its trust. China on the other hand stands to its commitments. China is not interested in
conquering the 'heartland'. It has bigger fish to fry in south-east Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
It is not in its interest to antagonize Russia.
The maximum Trump can possibly achieve is to neutralize Russia while he attempts to tackle
China's growing economic might via tariffs, sanctions and by cuddling Taiwan, Japan and other
countries with anti-Chinese agendas.
The U.S. blew its 'unilateral moment'. Instead of making friends with Russia it drove it
into China's hands. Hegemonic globalization and unilateral wars proved to be too expensive. The
U.S. people received no gains from it. That is why they elected Trump.
Trump is doing his best to correct the situation. For the foreseeable future the world will
end up with three power centers. Anglo-America, Russia and China. (An aging and disunited
Europe will flap in the winds.) These power centers will never wage direct war against each
other, but will tussle at the peripheries. Korea, Iran and the Ukraine will be centers of these
conflicts. Interests in Central Asia, South America and Africa will also play a role.
Trump understands the big picture. To 'Make America Great Again' he needs to tackle China
and to prevent a deeper Chinese-Russian alliance. It's the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals
who do not get it. They are still stuck in Brzezinski's Cold War view of Russia. They still
believe that economic globalization, which helped China to regain its historic might, is the
one and true path to follow. They do not perceive at all the damage they have done to the
American electorate.
For now Trump's view is winning. But the lunatic reactions to the press conference show that
the powers against him are still strong. They will sabotage him wherever possible. The big
danger for now is that their view of the world might again raise to power.
Posted by b on July 17, 2018 at 07:41 AM |
Permalink
Russia would be dumb to dump China.
Americas political establishment is not in line with Trump, the establishment need Russia as
the enemy and that's not going to change. There are many who actually believe Russia is the
enemy
Trump will go back to America be beaten up by friends and enemies and conform to thie
establishment view.
Putin who has gone through 4 presidents should know better?
If indeed Trump's strategy is to separate Russia from China, and to surround China on its
eastern and southeastern seaboard with hostile states that could potentially cut off China's
maritime trade links with SE Asia and countries beyond the Indian Ocean, then one wonders
whether Trump would also consider cutting off any and all ties with Ukraine, and leave that
country to drown in its own Nazified stupidity once Russia cuts off all gas transit through
Ukrainian territory in 2019. After all, Ukraine was only useful to the Americans as long as
it could hold onto Crimea and Sevastopol.
At the rate Ukraine is going, it may not be an independent state with secure borders
within the next five years. The most Nazified western parts of the country (the historic
Galicia and Volhynia) will almost certainly go to Poland; one is curious to know how a
resurgent nationalist Poland will deal with the spiritual descendants of Stepan Bandera,
Yaroslav Stetsko and their followers who tortured and butchered hundreds of thousands of
Poles as well as Jews. Zakarpatska Oblast will go to Hungary and Bukovina to Romania. Kherson
and Odessa Oblasts are likely to stampede over to Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts to form an
enlarged Novorussia. What's left of rump Ukraine surrounding Kiev (if that's not taken by
Poland as well) will be an economic backwater swamp fit only to host barracks of NATO
soldiers in the hope they'll spend money patronising brothels and pole-dancing clubs.
Well, if Trump pulls this off, against the deep state, I'll be truly impressed.
But, at this point I'm thinking the deep state is looking at how to end him.
He's a loose cannon on the deck of a sinking ship...
And world peace is not on the agenda.
Great work, b. I will read this again when I have the chance.
An interesting question/theory develops with this newfound Russia-engagement:
Does Russia have more in common with the US than China and does Russia really want to see
the US economy go down in flames?
I would say no to the latter and yes to the former. I wouldn't say that Russia would ever
betray the east and China, but Putin is in a strange position now where he is holding all the
cards...could Russia get rich and grow in power off business with the US? Why would Putin
emotionally harbor illwill towards Americans when it appears a seachange is taking place?
"... Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*? Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world? ..."
...You can't put lipstick on an American fascist pig only because he pretends detente with Russia. It's tantamount to
selling one's soul for an illusion. It's tantamount to treason if you live anywhere except in the U.S. OR Israel! And even if
you live in the U.S. you are enabling the 1% and Zionist power.
That's it. I'm tired of Trumpgod can do no wrong when everything he stands for is wrong. Get the snow out of your eyes!
Guerrero | Jul 17, 2018 7:21:47 PM | 149
Circe @135
For sure I am in agreement: the "Trumpgod" is a shamanistic construction of a demoralized population.
Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*?
Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world?
If that is how this Universe really works, and one has only force to work with, in the material realm, Donald Trump would
seem well enough suited to the role of either lesser or greater-evil; either-way, hopefully leading-to dimunition of error,
self-deception, and suffering of the children of Eve and Adam.
@149 Guerrero said: "Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is
constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*?"
Not often one sees metaphysics enter the realm of geo-political debate in this or any
political forum. But, heck, why not? The unseen forces guiding the survival instincts of the
universe (of which the Earth is a part) may indeed be at work. Trump - whatever one sees in
him - seems to be the man for the times. Paradigms are bending, cracking, the conversation is
changing.
I'll never forget the shock in the MSM, almost to the point of stupefaction, at Trump
accusing Obama during the election campaign of being the "founder of ISIS."
What was even more amazing was how weak Obama's response was. I don't think anybody
posting here would disagree that ISIS was Obama's baby - whether through adoption or
progeny.
But what serious candidate for President before Trump would ever say such a thing publicly
- even if he knew it to be true? Whether by design or through blundering, boorish idiocy born
of whatever flaws and motives you want to ascribe to him, Trump is very boisterously
upsetting the political apple cart and with it the entire world order.
If it is indeed for show as the world elites close their grip on the people of the planet
- it is quite a show. But I don't think so...
"... Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*? Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world? ..."
...You can't put lipstick on an American fascist pig only because he pretends detente with Russia. It's tantamount to
selling one's soul for an illusion. It's tantamount to treason if you live anywhere except in the U.S. OR Israel! And even if
you live in the U.S. you are enabling the 1% and Zionist power.
That's it. I'm tired of Trumpgod can do no wrong when everything he stands for is wrong. Get the snow out of your eyes!
Guerrero | Jul 17, 2018 7:21:47 PM | 149
Circe @135
For sure I am in agreement: the "Trumpgod" is a shamanistic construction of a demoralized population.
Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*?
Doesn't evil-fighting-evil and destroying a worse-evil leave a little less evil in this world?
If that is how this Universe really works, and one has only force to work with, in the material realm, Donald Trump would
seem well enough suited to the role of either lesser or greater-evil; either-way, hopefully leading-to dimunition of error,
self-deception, and suffering of the children of Eve and Adam.
@149 Guerrero said: "Still, doesn't the Universe work in such a way that *good* is
constitutionally unable to successfully confront *evil*?"
Not often one sees metaphysics enter the realm of geo-political debate in this or any
political forum. But, heck, why not? The unseen forces guiding the survival instincts of the
universe (of which the Earth is a part) may indeed be at work. Trump - whatever one sees in
him - seems to be the man for the times. Paradigms are bending, cracking, the conversation is
changing.
I'll never forget the shock in the MSM, almost to the point of stupefaction, at Trump
accusing Obama during the election campaign of being the "founder of ISIS."
What was even more amazing was how weak Obama's response was. I don't think anybody
posting here would disagree that ISIS was Obama's baby - whether through adoption or
progeny.
But what serious candidate for President before Trump would ever say such a thing publicly
- even if he knew it to be true? Whether by design or through blundering, boorish idiocy born
of whatever flaws and motives you want to ascribe to him, Trump is very boisterously
upsetting the political apple cart and with it the entire world order.
If it is indeed for show as the world elites close their grip on the people of the planet
- it is quite a show. But I don't think so...
"... Evidence and expert testimony confirm without a doubt that the attacks on September 11, 2001 against the Pentagon (as well as the World Trade Center and the Solomon Building in N.Y.) were a well-planned, well-financed, psychological operation – a false flag attack on American soil – designed to trigger and manipulate the American people, the Congress, and the U.S. Military into a full-scale war-mobilization posture with the intent of overthrowing, scattering, and re-making the Middle East and Africa for the direct political, cultural, and economic benefit of the Zionist state of Israel ..."
"Part of my mission was to investigate, discover, and expose all acts of "waste, fraud,
and abuse" by Terrorist Financing Operations Director Dov Zakheim who was my senior
supervisor. It was known that Dov Zakheim had secretly arranged for $2.3 trillion dollars to
be mis-appropriated through Pentagon channels when he had been the Pentagon Comptroller."
Scott Bennett
Gregory Herr , July 15, 2018 at 11:49 pm
Double WOW. Great catch Joe.
"Evidence and expert testimony confirm without a doubt that the attacks on September 11,
2001 against the Pentagon (as well as the World Trade Center and the Solomon Building in
N.Y.) were a well-planned, well-financed, psychological operation – a false flag attack
on American soil – designed to trigger and manipulate the American people, the
Congress, and the U.S. Military into a full-scale war-mobilization posture with the intent of
overthrowing, scattering, and re-making the Middle East and Africa for the direct political,
cultural, and economic benefit of the Zionist state of Israel."
Generally weak article which ignores the possibility of alliance of Russia and China (as well as alienation of EU) which means the
death of the USA superpower status "really soon". But it contains a couple of interesting observations about the value of "the bull
in the China shop" foreign policy.
Paradoxically, while many governments increasingly appear to view the United States as a formidable superpower that they cannot
easily cross or ignore, many of the same governments see the administration as erratic, unable to evaluate situations objectively,
and prone to personalizing relations with foreign leaders and countries -- even in dealing with other major powers. To these governments,
the United States seems capricious and offers few tangible incentives for accommodating American preferences. This is an obstacle
for Trump in accomplishing his international objectives.
As a candidate, Trump did not include Russia on his list of the top challenges to the United States, despite increasingly widespread
establishment perceptions of Russia as an adversary. With Russia's gdp around 10 percent of America's and its conventional forces
far from a match for NATO, Trump had good reasons to wonder why a country that Obama described as an economically-weak regional power
should become an organizing principle of America's security policy.
This raised an inevitable question about NATO: was it a necessary instrument to protect American security or a Cold War–era organization
that had outlived its original purpose to contain Soviet expansionism? If the Europeans were so afraid of Russia, why were they spending
so little on defense compared to the United States, and why were so few European nations prepared to meet NATO's stated defense spending
goal of at least 2 percent of gdp? Since NATO was no longer relevant to the fundamental challenges candidate Trump saw to America,
was it a sacred cow rather than a powerful vehicle to protect American interests? Was America quietly being taken for a ride by European
allies while becoming increasingly enmeshed in European conflicts of little importance to the United States?
George Washington counseled against steps that would "entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship,
interest, humor, or caprice." The fact that America has a commitment to defend NATO allies need not imply a parallel commitment to
support their every venture. Europeans certainly feel no such obligation to America, as demonstrated by their lack of support for
America's commitment to Israel, including at the United Nations. Trump appeared intuitively to see this asymmetry and to turn a skeptical
ear toward virtuous language that obscured limited help for Washington and its priorities. He likewise seemed to dismiss assertions
of superior values from governments building a supranational bureaucracy that constrains businesses and limits freedoms.
The problem with Trump's foreign policy rhetoric as a candidate and, at times, as president is that he poses good questions more
often than he provides adequate answers. Trump has exposed himself to legitimate criticism because he often seems prepared to risk
important relationships without clear gains. Mexico can be a troubling partner, but it is also an essential one. The combination
of geography, extensive trade and millions of Americans of Mexican heritage requires approaching any revision of U.S.-Mexican relations
with great finesse -- something in short supply in rhetoric that ranged from condescending (or worse) references to Mexican immigrants
to unrealistic calls for an impenetrable Mexican-funded border wall. America's relations with its European allies are likewise important
to U.S. security, as are partnerships with key governments in the Middle East. Simplistic rhetoric -- whether about Mexican immigration,
Islamic terrorism or the flaws of our European allies -- can turn off millions of American voters. It is also highly divisive and,
as a result, is an obstacle to Trump's effort to reform American foreign policy and to "Make America Great Again."
Trump's treatment of Russia has become a special problem that has handicapped the first part of his presidency. The president
is not responsible for the habits of the foreign policy establishment and mainstream media in building up Russia as a threat while
treating it like a helpless giant, a trend that began well before the 2016 presidential campaign. Nor is the president responsible
for the numerous and demonstrable flaws in Russian foreign policy and domestic governance or the fact that Moscow tends to deny every
accusation, whether over its military involvement in eastern Ukraine, the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, attacks
on government opponents at home and abroad, and most importantly, interference in U.S. and various European elections.
... ... ...
Fortunately, the administration's ill-defined foreign policy has thus far caused no irreparable damage. As leader of the world's
only multidimensional superpower, Trump has shown that ignoring him carries considerable risks and potentially high costs. Practically
every nation in the world remains interested in a constructive relationship with the United States. Conversely, nobody is eager to
be America's enemy. As a result, with the right mix of hard and soft power coupled with skillful diplomacy, Trump can still achieve
major successes.
... ... ...
Russia appears open to a negotiated end to the conflict in the Donbass region, which it is unprepared to annex and is weary of
supporting financially. What Russia wants is a reliable formula to postpone Ukraine's NATO membership, something few alliance members
support soon anyway, and to win a measure of autonomy for the separatist regions in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Moving forward, the Kremlin's early infatuation with Trump is definitely over. Notwithstanding Moscow's diminished expectations,
Russian officials retain a healthy respect for his unpredictability and determination. And judging from their public complaints over
slow U.S. follow through on Trump's proposal for a summit with Putin, they still appear eager to engage the Trump administration.
... ... ....
In his rhetoric, President Trump has clearly identified China as a top issue. This is less apparent in the administration's strategic
planning. In practice, our relations with a rising China are both a paramount challenge to the United States and the most important
factor in sustaining U.S. global leadership at an acceptable cost.
Dimitri K. Simes, publisher and CEO of the National Interest, is president of the Center for the National Interest.
"... Evidence and expert testimony confirm without a doubt that the attacks on September 11, 2001 against the Pentagon (as well as the World Trade Center and the Solomon Building in N.Y.) were a well-planned, well-financed, psychological operation – a false flag attack on American soil – designed to trigger and manipulate the American people, the Congress, and the U.S. Military into a full-scale war-mobilization posture with the intent of overthrowing, scattering, and re-making the Middle East and Africa for the direct political, cultural, and economic benefit of the Zionist state of Israel ..."
"Part of my mission was to investigate, discover, and expose all acts of "waste, fraud,
and abuse" by Terrorist Financing Operations Director Dov Zakheim who was my senior
supervisor. It was known that Dov Zakheim had secretly arranged for $2.3 trillion dollars to
be mis-appropriated through Pentagon channels when he had been the Pentagon Comptroller."
Scott Bennett
Gregory Herr , July 15, 2018 at 11:49 pm
Double WOW. Great catch Joe.
"Evidence and expert testimony confirm without a doubt that the attacks on September 11,
2001 against the Pentagon (as well as the World Trade Center and the Solomon Building in
N.Y.) were a well-planned, well-financed, psychological operation – a false flag attack
on American soil – designed to trigger and manipulate the American people, the
Congress, and the U.S. Military into a full-scale war-mobilization posture with the intent of
overthrowing, scattering, and re-making the Middle East and Africa for the direct political,
cultural, and economic benefit of the Zionist state of Israel."
Generally weak article which ignores the possibility of alliance of Russia and China (as well as alienation of EU) which means the
death of the USA superpower status "really soon". But it contains a couple of interesting observations about the value of "the bull
in the China shop" foreign policy.
Paradoxically, while many governments increasingly appear to view the United States as a formidable superpower that they cannot
easily cross or ignore, many of the same governments see the administration as erratic, unable to evaluate situations objectively,
and prone to personalizing relations with foreign leaders and countries -- even in dealing with other major powers. To these governments,
the United States seems capricious and offers few tangible incentives for accommodating American preferences. This is an obstacle
for Trump in accomplishing his international objectives.
As a candidate, Trump did not include Russia on his list of the top challenges to the United States, despite increasingly widespread
establishment perceptions of Russia as an adversary. With Russia's gdp around 10 percent of America's and its conventional forces
far from a match for NATO, Trump had good reasons to wonder why a country that Obama described as an economically-weak regional power
should become an organizing principle of America's security policy.
This raised an inevitable question about NATO: was it a necessary instrument to protect American security or a Cold War–era organization
that had outlived its original purpose to contain Soviet expansionism? If the Europeans were so afraid of Russia, why were they spending
so little on defense compared to the United States, and why were so few European nations prepared to meet NATO's stated defense spending
goal of at least 2 percent of gdp? Since NATO was no longer relevant to the fundamental challenges candidate Trump saw to America,
was it a sacred cow rather than a powerful vehicle to protect American interests? Was America quietly being taken for a ride by European
allies while becoming increasingly enmeshed in European conflicts of little importance to the United States?
George Washington counseled against steps that would "entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship,
interest, humor, or caprice." The fact that America has a commitment to defend NATO allies need not imply a parallel commitment to
support their every venture. Europeans certainly feel no such obligation to America, as demonstrated by their lack of support for
America's commitment to Israel, including at the United Nations. Trump appeared intuitively to see this asymmetry and to turn a skeptical
ear toward virtuous language that obscured limited help for Washington and its priorities. He likewise seemed to dismiss assertions
of superior values from governments building a supranational bureaucracy that constrains businesses and limits freedoms.
The problem with Trump's foreign policy rhetoric as a candidate and, at times, as president is that he poses good questions more
often than he provides adequate answers. Trump has exposed himself to legitimate criticism because he often seems prepared to risk
important relationships without clear gains. Mexico can be a troubling partner, but it is also an essential one. The combination
of geography, extensive trade and millions of Americans of Mexican heritage requires approaching any revision of U.S.-Mexican relations
with great finesse -- something in short supply in rhetoric that ranged from condescending (or worse) references to Mexican immigrants
to unrealistic calls for an impenetrable Mexican-funded border wall. America's relations with its European allies are likewise important
to U.S. security, as are partnerships with key governments in the Middle East. Simplistic rhetoric -- whether about Mexican immigration,
Islamic terrorism or the flaws of our European allies -- can turn off millions of American voters. It is also highly divisive and,
as a result, is an obstacle to Trump's effort to reform American foreign policy and to "Make America Great Again."
Trump's treatment of Russia has become a special problem that has handicapped the first part of his presidency. The president
is not responsible for the habits of the foreign policy establishment and mainstream media in building up Russia as a threat while
treating it like a helpless giant, a trend that began well before the 2016 presidential campaign. Nor is the president responsible
for the numerous and demonstrable flaws in Russian foreign policy and domestic governance or the fact that Moscow tends to deny every
accusation, whether over its military involvement in eastern Ukraine, the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, attacks
on government opponents at home and abroad, and most importantly, interference in U.S. and various European elections.
... ... ...
Fortunately, the administration's ill-defined foreign policy has thus far caused no irreparable damage. As leader of the world's
only multidimensional superpower, Trump has shown that ignoring him carries considerable risks and potentially high costs. Practically
every nation in the world remains interested in a constructive relationship with the United States. Conversely, nobody is eager to
be America's enemy. As a result, with the right mix of hard and soft power coupled with skillful diplomacy, Trump can still achieve
major successes.
... ... ...
Russia appears open to a negotiated end to the conflict in the Donbass region, which it is unprepared to annex and is weary of
supporting financially. What Russia wants is a reliable formula to postpone Ukraine's NATO membership, something few alliance members
support soon anyway, and to win a measure of autonomy for the separatist regions in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Moving forward, the Kremlin's early infatuation with Trump is definitely over. Notwithstanding Moscow's diminished expectations,
Russian officials retain a healthy respect for his unpredictability and determination. And judging from their public complaints over
slow U.S. follow through on Trump's proposal for a summit with Putin, they still appear eager to engage the Trump administration.
... ... ....
In his rhetoric, President Trump has clearly identified China as a top issue. This is less apparent in the administration's strategic
planning. In practice, our relations with a rising China are both a paramount challenge to the United States and the most important
factor in sustaining U.S. global leadership at an acceptable cost.
Dimitri K. Simes, publisher and CEO of the National Interest, is president of the Center for the National Interest.
While "marriage of governmental and corporate interests is the very definition of fascism" this marriage also occurs under neoliberalism,
so the author augment is weak, although some of his observations are astute and have a distinct value. Fascism imply far right nationalism
and far right nationalist party in power, often under false pretext of "saving nations from a coming collapse".
Neoliberalism while is also displays high level of merger of corporate and state interests operation of globalist agenda (or at
least used to operate before Trump, who invented "national neoliberalism" regime, aka neoliberalism without neoliberal globalization)
Can Trump "national neoliberalism" be called a flavor of neo-fascism? Hillary probably will tell you yes ;-) But it is impossible
to deny that the US Deep state launched color revolution against Trump (with CIA under Brennan as a coordinating center and FBI as "muscles")
and, essentially emasculated him in just first three month of his Presidency by appointing Mueller as a Special Prosecutor.
So we can talk about gradual sliding into national security state under neoliberalism, but it is not necessary take form of neofascism.
Classic neoliberalism, for example, is cosmopolitan ideology and as such is hostile to nationalism.
Notable quotes:
"... Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government), doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America , and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler's rise to power. We're beginning to know better, aren't we? The Deep State (" a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it ") is ..."
"... Indeed, to anyone who's been paying attention to the goings-on in the world, it is increasingly obvious that we're already under a new world order, and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State, a powerful cabal made up of international government agencies and corporations. ..."
"... It is as yet unclear whether the American Police State answers to the Global-Industrial Deep State, or whether the Global-Industrial Deep State merely empowers the American Police State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked. ..."
"... Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, and the pharmaceutical industry. ..."
"... All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins: Walmart, Alphabet (formerly Google), AT&T, Toyota, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, Lockheed Martin, Berkshire Hathaway, UnitedHealth Group, Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, Nissan, Boeing, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Citigroup these are just a few of the global corporate giants whose profit-driven policies influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care. ..."
"... The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies." ..."
"... Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the " 14 Eyes Program ," also referred to as the "SIGINT Seniors." This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories). ..."
"... War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its best buyers and sellers . In fact, as Reuters reports, "[President] Trump has gone further than any of his predecessors to act as a salesman for the U.S. defense industry ." ..."
"... The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide). ..."
"... A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State ..."
"There are no nations. There are no peoples There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those
are the nations of the world today. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of
business."
There are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government -- a power elite conspiring to rule the world
-- is the stuff of conspiracy theories
.
I am not one of those skeptics.
What's more, I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on
one's liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.
I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I have studied enough of this country's history -- and world history -- to know that governments (the U.S. government being no
exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of
terrorism ,
torture, drug trafficking
,
sex trafficking , murder, violence, theft, pornography,
scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.
Given all that we know about the U.S. government -- that it treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to
be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; that it repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the
laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; and that it wages wars for profit, jails its own people
for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad -- it is not a stretch to suggest that the government has
been overtaken by global industrialists, a new world order, that do not have our best interests at heart.
Indeed, to anyone who's been paying attention to the goings-on in the world, it is increasingly obvious that we're already
under a new world order, and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State, a powerful cabal made up of international
government agencies and corporations.
It is as yet unclear whether the American Police State answers to the Global-Industrial Deep State, or whether the Global-Industrial
Deep State merely empowers the American Police State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically
enmeshed and interlocked.
This marriage of governmental and corporate interests is the very definition of fascism. Where we go wrong is in underestimating
the threat of fascism: it is no longer a national threat but has instead become a global menace.
Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven
interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the technology
sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, and the pharmaceutical industry.
All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels
to increase their profit margins: Walmart, Alphabet (formerly Google), AT&T, Toyota, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, Lockheed Martin,
Berkshire Hathaway, UnitedHealth Group, Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, Nissan, Boeing, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Citigroup these are
just a few of the global corporate giants whose profit-driven policies influence everything from legislative policies to economics
to environmental issues to medical care.
The U.S. government's deep-seated and, in many cases, top secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations are redrawing
the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.
Global Surveillance
Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy,
the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.
Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice. Thus, the increasingly complex security needs
of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the
corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.
Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government
with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept , "The NSA considers
AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company's 'extreme willingness to help. '
It is a collaboration that dates back decades.
Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T's customers. According to the NSA's documents, it values AT&T
not only because it 'has access to information that transits the nation,' but also because it maintains unique relationships with
other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive
infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies."
Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the "
14 Eyes Program ," also
referred to as the "SIGINT Seniors." This global spy agency is made up of
members from around the world (United States, United
Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore,
South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).
Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated
to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the
military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70%
of the countries worldwide).
Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we
do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (
that's $8.3 million per hour ). That doesn't include
wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to
push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053 .
It's not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.
Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons
better suited to a war zone. Trump, no different from his predecessors, has continued to expand America's military empire abroad
and domestically, calling on Congress to approve
billions more to hire cops, build more prisons and wage more profit-driven war-on-drugs/war-on-terrorism/war-on-crime programs
that pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in
its clutches.
Global Policing
Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those
belonging to other nations. There's a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.
There's a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force.
Then you have the
Strong Cities Network program .
Funded by the State Department , the U.S. government has partnered with the United Nations to fight violent extremism "
in all of its forms and manifestations " in cities and communities across the world. Working with the UN, the federal government
rolled out programs to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as
address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the
global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo. What this program
is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale.
It sounds like a good idea on paper, but the problem with the broken windows approach is that it has led to zero tolerance policing
and stop-and-frisk practices among other harsh police tactics.
When applied to the Strong Cities Network program, the objective is ostensibly to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source:
racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police -- acting ostensibly as extensions of the United Nations -- will
identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.
Of course, the concern with the government's anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise
lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist. Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American
"extremists" will carry out their objectives -- to identify and deter potential extremists -- in concert with
fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies,
behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance,
facial recognition,
predictive policing , biometrics, and behavioral
epigenetics
(in which life experiences alter one's genetic makeup).
... ... ...
And then, as I make clear in my book
A Government of Wolves:
The Emerging American Police State , if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march
towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of communities and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics
and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
"... No doubt that the globalized elite want Friedman's "World is Flat" concept – profit maximizing world markets, world production, stateless corporations, free movement of labour and capital (without troublesome national identities) represented by an exclusive and vastly wealthy rootless elite ruling over a global worker hive. The "Empire" is only the military/enforcement side of this, with sanctions/wars against dissidents. ..."
"... Trump is in the strange situation of having been elected to fight the Empire while needing elite Imperial support to stay in his job. ..."
If history is any precedent, empires without economic foundations, sooner or later
crumble, especially when rising regional powers are capable of replacing them.
This is worth repeating. Empire and wars are expensive. For example the British world
trade network was doing fine until the "Imperial" idea came along with wars and economic
failure. The US is doing even worse in trying to fight its Imperial wars on credit.
The result is that Trump faces the real prospects of a decline in exports and popular
electoral support – especially from those adversely affected by declining markets and
deep cuts in health, education and the environment.
He may well be blindsided by a candidate who actually implements Trump's own election
platform 1) no more wars 2) domestic infrastructure spending 3) stopping mass immigration 4)
draining the swamp. Trumps electoral weakness is that didn't follow through on his
promises.
The electoral oligarchy and the mass media will force him to retreat from the trade wars
and surrender to the globalizing elites.
No doubt that the globalized elite want Friedman's "World is Flat" concept –
profit maximizing world markets, world production, stateless corporations, free movement of
labour and capital (without troublesome national identities) represented by an exclusive and
vastly wealthy rootless elite ruling over a global worker hive. The "Empire" is only the
military/enforcement side of this, with sanctions/wars against dissidents.
Trump is in the strange situation of having been elected to fight the Empire while
needing elite Imperial support to stay in his job.
This is one of the reasons Americans of all colors and stripes will not receive the the benefits of the powers of economic equality,
transparency, literal meanings of the health of the economy and economic freedom.
Because they will remain blinded by partisan worship of the presidents. We agree with Obama's criticism of big banks or of Bush's
conducts of the war. We agree with Trump's criticism of the wars raging in the ME . We agree with his take on illegal immigrants.
Instead of holding their feet to the fire, we condone, ignore, and then come out in support of them when they fail miserably and
intentionally on other vital areas or when they go against the election promises.
We believe he shits about economy coming out of FOX CNN MSNBC NYT NY POST because we worship the candidates they support or don't
support , or because the support or don't support our views on other areas .
American economy has been growing without the accompanying growth of the worker's compensation for 45 years . Nothing new . Presidents
have no role for the existing condition of the economy . Presidents may claim some success down the line years after presidency is
over . Our economic knowledge is doled out by the same psychopaths who dole us out the knowledge and the faith about wars and about
other countries from the unclean perches of the media . Yes its a handout Its a dole because we have all along built up our world
view and our view of US as told by these guys dictated to us and shoved down us . The folks whose income have suffered and hours
have increased don't have the time or the brains to explore and verify . They are just happy to know that they heard this "Trust
but verify " and heard this " make America Great Again " . They are happy to go to war because a lesbian was killed in Uganda or
in Syria or a girl was raped in Libya or gas was smelt in Dara and Hara , Sara Bara and Laora - just throw some names any name, and
these folks will lend their names and sign up .
This is the underlying mindset and the intellectual foundation which explain our deepest attachment to liar like Obama and to
Trump. Combined with helplessness ,this experience of reality can be disorienting and can lead to Stockholm Syndrome .
If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures in Africa,
stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries . He should focus on US and stop talking
about EU's immigration.
" If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures
in Africa, stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries. He should focus on US
and stop talking about EU's immigration. "
THE great cause of migrants coming to Europe is the USA, the wars in and destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria Mali,
as far as I know hardly anyone comes from Mali to us. Sudan was split by the USA, oil, the USA is building a drone base in Nigeria,
oil again...
Possibly Brussels now understands that an attack on Iran will cause a new flood of migrants, Netanyahu has been warned. A new
flood is the deadsure end of the EU.
"... The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In other words, Trump's politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump's policies will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives would undermine US imperial rule. ..."
"... Iran's one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities encouraged Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its markets. ..."
"... Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense strategy. ..."
"... Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change, reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the Shah. ..."
"... The second reason for Trump's policy is to strengthen Israel's military power in the Middle East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the US, dubbed 'the Lobby'. ..."
"... Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump believes that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the 'dynamic' US market, will enhance Washington's quest for uncontested world domination. ..."
"... Trump's loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its companies to be frozen out of the Iran market. ..."
"... Trump's trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production sites for US multi-nationals. He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have links with five continents. ..."
"... Are Trump's threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to intimidate, in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger 'madman' tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable' demands or face the worst from the President? I don't think so. ..."
"... Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant bully. To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again. However, behind the facade of all his bravado hides a puppet of the Jewish Power Structure, which is even more dangerous than Trump himself. "Make Zion Great Again" would be a more apposite slogan. ..."
For some time, critics of President Trump's policies have attributed them to a mental
disorder; uncontrolled manic-depression, narcissus bullying and other pathologies.
The question of Trump's mental health raises a deeper question: why do his pathologies take
a specific political direction?
Moreover, Trump's decisions have a political history and background, and follow from a logic
and belief in the reason and logic of imperial power.
We will examine the reason why Trump has embraced three strategic decisions which have
world-historic consequences, namely: Trump's reneging the nuclear accord with Iran ;Trump's
declaration of a trade war with China; and Trump's meeting with North Korea.
In brief we will explore the political reasons for his decisions; what he expects to gain;
and what is his game plan if he fails to secure his expected outcome and his adversaries take
reprisals.
Trump's Strategic Framework
The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more
intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a
corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity
or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and
further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In other
words, Trump's politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump's policies
will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives would
undermine US imperial rule.
Reasons Why Trump Broke the Peace Accord with Iran
Trump broke the accord with Iran because the original agreement was based on retaining US
sanctions against Iran; the total dismantling of its nuclear program and calling into question
Iran's limited role on behalf of possible allies in the Middle East.
Iran's one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities
encouraged Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its
markets.
Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes
that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon
(Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense
strategy.
Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change,
reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the
Shah.
The second reason for Trump's policy is to strengthen Israel's military power in the
Middle East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in
the US, dubbed 'the Lobby'.
Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented
power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC's power
to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the
executive branch.
Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and
adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street. Trump's
submission to Zionist power reinforces and even dictates his decision to break the peace accord
with Iran and his willingness to pressure. France, Germany, the UK and Russia to sacrifice
billion-dollar trade agreements with Iran and to pursue a policy of pressuring Teheran to
accept part of Trump's agenda of unilateral disarmament and isolation. Trump believes he can
force the EU multi-nationals to disobey their governments and abide by sanctions.
Reasons for Trump's Trade War with China
Prior to Trump's presidency, especially under President Obama, the US launched a trade war
and 'military pivot' to China. Obama proposed the Trans-Pacific Pact to exclude China and
directed an air and naval armada to the South China Sea. Obama established a high-powered
surveillance system in South Korea and supported war exercises on North Korea's border. Trump's
policy deepened and radicalized Obama's policies.
Trump extended Obama's bellicose policy toward North Korea, demanding the de-nuclearization
of its defense program. President Kim of North Korea and President Moon of South Korea reached
an agreement to open negotiations toward a peace accord ending nearly 60 years of
hostility.
However, President Trump joined the conversation on the presumption that North Korea's peace
overtures were due to his threats of war and intimidation. He insisted that any peace
settlement and end of economic sanctions would only be achieved by unilateral nuclear
disarmament, the maintenance of US forces on the peninsula and supervision by US approved
inspectors.
Trump's unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that
military threats led to North Korea's "capitulation" – its promise to end its nuclear
program.
Trump slapped a trade tariff on over $100 billion dollars of Chinese exports in order to
reduce its trade imbalance by $200 billion over two years. He demanded China unilaterally end
industrial 'espionage', technological 'theft' (all phony accusations) and China's compliance
monitored quarterly by the US.
Trump demanded that China not retaliate with tariffs or restrictions or face bigger
sanctions. Trump threatened to respond to any reciprocal tariff by Beijing, with greater
tariffs, and restrictions on Chinese goods and services. Trump's goals seek to convert North
Korea into a military satellite encroaching on China's northern border; and a trade war that
drives China into an economic crisis.
Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and
dominate the Asian and world economy.
Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump
believes that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the 'dynamic' US market, will
enhance Washington's quest for uncontested world domination.
Trump's Ten Erroneous Thesis
Trump's political agenda is deeply flawed!
Breaking the nuclear agreement and imposing harsh sanctions has isolated Trump from his
European and Asian allies.
His military intervention will inflame a regional war that would destroy the Saudi oil
fields. He will force Iran to pursue a nuclear shield against US-Israeli aggression and lead
to a prolonged, costly and ultimately losing war.
Trump's policies will unify all Iranians, liberals and nationalist, and undermine US
collaborators.
The entire Muslim world will unify forces and carry the conflict throughout Asia, Africa
and the Middle East.
Tel Aviv's bombing will lead to counter-attacks in Israel.
Oil prices will skyrocket, financial markets will collapse, industries will go
bankrupt.
Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction.
Trump's trade war with China will lead to the disruption of the supply chain which
sustains the US economy and especially the 500 US multi-nationals who depend on the Chinese
economy for exports to the US.
China will increase domestic consumption, diversify its markets and trading partners and
reinforce its military alliance with Russia.
China has greater resilience and capacity to overcome short-term disruption and regain its
dominant role as a global economic power house.
Wall Street will suffer a catastrophic financial collapse and send the US into a world
depression.
Trump's negotiations with North Korea will go nowhere as long as he demands unilateral
nuclear disarmament, US military control over the peninsula and political isolation from
China.
Kim will insist on the end of sanctions, and a mutual defense treaty with China.
Kim will offer to end nuclear testing but not nuclear weapons. After Trump's reneged on
the Iran deal, Kim will recognize that agreements with the US are not trustworthy.
Conclusion
Trump's loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his
assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think
his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war
with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its
companies to be frozen out of the Iran market.
Trump's trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production
sites for US multi-nationals. He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have
links with five continents.
Trump cannot dominate North Korea and force it to sacrifice its sovereignty on the basis of
empty economic promises to lift sanctions.
Trump is heading for defeats on all counts. But he may take the American people into the
nuclear abyss in the process.
Epilogue
Are Trump's threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to
intimidate, in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger
'madman' tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable'
demands or face the worst from the President? I don't think so.
Nixon unlike Trump was not led by the nose by Israel. Nixon unlike Trump was not led by
pro-nuclear war advisers. Nixon in contrast to Trump opened the US to trade with China and
signed nuclear reduction agreements with Russia.
"Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction."
indeed they will, and sadly it well deserved after the last 20yrs off US terrorism.
the US hubris will soon meet karma, and we all know karma is a bitch..
This theory is the opposite of what I suppose is the right explanation, the explanation also
given by prof Laslo Maracs, UVA Amsterdam, that Trump and his rich friends understand that
the USA can to longer control the world, conquering the rest of the world totally out of the
question.
The end of the British empire began before 1914, when the two fleet standard had to
lowered to one fleet.
Obama had to do something similar, the USA capability of fighting two wars at the time was
lowered to one and half. What half a war accomplishes we see in Syria. In the thirties the
British, some of them, knew quite well they could no longer defend their empire, at the time
this meant controlling the Meditarranean and the Far East. Lawrence R. Pratt, 'East of Malta,
West of Suez', London, 1975
The British guarantees to Poland and countries bordering on the Med lighted the fuse to
the powder keg that had been standing for a long time.
Churchill won, the British thought, and some of them think it still, WWII.
But shortly after WWII some British understood 'we won the war, but lost the peace'. I
still have the idea that Trump has no intention of losing the peace, but time will tell.
I suppose Trump just is buying time against Deep State and Netanyahu.
The fool Netanyahu is happy with having got Jerusalem, he does not see the cost in increased
hatred among Muslims, and Israel having won the Eurovision Song Festival.
Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant
bully. To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again.
However, behind the facade of all his bravado hides a puppet of the Jewish Power Structure,
which is even more dangerous than Trump himself. "Make Zion Great Again" would be a more
apposite slogan.
Overall a good analysis, but as far as his support of Israel is concerned, his family
connections with the most ultra-Zionist factions should not be overlooked.
I continue to admire President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi of China. WHY? .because
RESULTS matter more than opinions on internet websites, T.V., or in printed publications.
N. Korea has stopped performing ICBM or nuke tests, a less extremist regime change "coup"
took place in Saudi Arabia, financing/ weapons flows / intelligence to Syrian terrorists has
dried up with resulting collapse of ISIS, Iran is threatening to release the names of
European & American politicians who previously made millions / billions off the Iran nuke
deal if it is dropped, Harvey Weinstein, Allison Mack, and "Weiner" were untouchable before
Trump, the list just goes on and continues to get bigger.
A major reason for admiration of Putin is that the Mainstream Media (MSM) can't stop
demonizing him. So of course I'm logically led to believe that he is mostly a good guy since
the MSM has proven itself repeatedly to distort the Truth. Putin also largely ended the
oligarchs power, doubled Russian citizens income, used an tiny Russian military in Syria to
gradually reverse ISIS expansion there, improved Russia's internal manufacturing,
agricultural, mining, and technological research/ development, intellectually crushed
international debate opponents repeated using only logic and facts (You should watch the
videos!), built / rebuilt over 10 thousand churches, has patriotic Muslims (Crimea) fighting
for Russia in Syria, etc. etc. Xi of China has pretty impressive credentials but this post is
overly long anyway.
RESULTS CANT MORE THAN WORDS!
Of course they do this, they would be stupid if they didn't.
• Agree: CalDre
I like your frankness. Every countries is into this at different degree, with ZUS the
apex. But been leading in most tech area currently & lazy to produce any useful things,
ZUS is very unhappy that their esponage net result is negative, hence the continuous
whining.
When tide reverse with China leading in most tech, ZUS will complaint about complex patent
system as been flawed in exploitating & suppressing of weaker country innovation, juz as
it did for WTO & Globalization now.
Of course any moronic comments about only China is esponaging US IPR & rise purely due
to US FDI & Tech transfer will resonate CalDre into high chime.
While "marriage of governmental and corporate interests is the very definition of fascism" this marriage also occurs under neoliberalism,
so the author augment is weak, although some of his observations are astute and have a distinct value. Fascism imply far right nationalism
and far right nationalist party in power, often under false pretext of "saving nations from a coming collapse".
Neoliberalism while is also displays high level of merger of corporate and state interests operation of globalist agenda (or at
least used to operate before Trump, who invented "national neoliberalism" regime, aka neoliberalism without neoliberal globalization)
Can Trump "national neoliberalism" be called a flavor of neo-fascism? Hillary probably will tell you yes ;-) But it is impossible
to deny that the US Deep state launched color revolution against Trump (with CIA under Brennan as a coordinating center and FBI as "muscles")
and, essentially emasculated him in just first three month of his Presidency by appointing Mueller as a Special Prosecutor.
So we can talk about gradual sliding into national security state under neoliberalism, but it is not necessary take form of neofascism.
Classic neoliberalism, for example, is cosmopolitan ideology and as such is hostile to nationalism.
Notable quotes:
"... Remember, people used to scoff at the notion of a Deep State (a.k.a. Shadow Government), doubt that fascism could ever take hold in America , and sneer at any suggestion that the United States was starting to resemble Nazi Germany in the years leading up to Hitler's rise to power. We're beginning to know better, aren't we? The Deep State (" a national-security apparatus that holds sway even over the elected leaders notionally in charge of it ") is ..."
"... Indeed, to anyone who's been paying attention to the goings-on in the world, it is increasingly obvious that we're already under a new world order, and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State, a powerful cabal made up of international government agencies and corporations. ..."
"... It is as yet unclear whether the American Police State answers to the Global-Industrial Deep State, or whether the Global-Industrial Deep State merely empowers the American Police State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically enmeshed and interlocked. ..."
"... Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the technology sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, and the pharmaceutical industry. ..."
"... All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels to increase their profit margins: Walmart, Alphabet (formerly Google), AT&T, Toyota, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, Lockheed Martin, Berkshire Hathaway, UnitedHealth Group, Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, Nissan, Boeing, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Citigroup these are just a few of the global corporate giants whose profit-driven policies influence everything from legislative policies to economics to environmental issues to medical care. ..."
"... The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies." ..."
"... Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the " 14 Eyes Program ," also referred to as the "SIGINT Seniors." This global spy agency is made up of members from around the world (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories). ..."
"... War has become a huge money-making venture, and America, with its vast military empire and its incestuous relationship with a host of international defense contractors, is one of its best buyers and sellers . In fact, as Reuters reports, "[President] Trump has gone further than any of his predecessors to act as a salesman for the U.S. defense industry ." ..."
"... The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70% of the countries worldwide). ..."
"... A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State ..."
"There are no nations. There are no peoples There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those
are the nations of the world today. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of
business."
There are those who will tell you that any mention of a New World Order government -- a power elite conspiring to rule the world
-- is the stuff of conspiracy theories
.
I am not one of those skeptics.
What's more, I wholeheartedly believe that one should always mistrust those in power, take alarm at the first encroachment on
one's liberties, and establish powerful constitutional checks against government mischief and abuse.
I can also attest to the fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I have studied enough of this country's history -- and world history -- to know that governments (the U.S. government being no
exception) are at times indistinguishable from the evil they claim to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of
terrorism ,
torture, drug trafficking
,
sex trafficking , murder, violence, theft, pornography,
scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.
And I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.
Given all that we know about the U.S. government -- that it treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to
be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; that it repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the
laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; and that it wages wars for profit, jails its own people
for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad -- it is not a stretch to suggest that the government has
been overtaken by global industrialists, a new world order, that do not have our best interests at heart.
Indeed, to anyone who's been paying attention to the goings-on in the world, it is increasingly obvious that we're already
under a new world order, and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State, a powerful cabal made up of international
government agencies and corporations.
It is as yet unclear whether the American Police State answers to the Global-Industrial Deep State, or whether the Global-Industrial
Deep State merely empowers the American Police State. However, there is no denying the extent to which they are intricately and symbiotically
enmeshed and interlocked.
This marriage of governmental and corporate interests is the very definition of fascism. Where we go wrong is in underestimating
the threat of fascism: it is no longer a national threat but has instead become a global menace.
Consider the extent to which our lives and liberties are impacted by this international convergence of governmental and profit-driven
interests in the surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry, the intelligence sector, the technology
sector, the telecommunications sector, the transportation sector, and the pharmaceutical industry.
All of these sectors are dominated by mega-corporations operating on a global scale and working through government channels
to increase their profit margins: Walmart, Alphabet (formerly Google), AT&T, Toyota, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, Lockheed Martin,
Berkshire Hathaway, UnitedHealth Group, Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, Nissan, Boeing, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Citigroup these are
just a few of the global corporate giants whose profit-driven policies influence everything from legislative policies to economics
to environmental issues to medical care.
The U.S. government's deep-seated and, in many cases, top secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations are redrawing
the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up.
Global Surveillance
Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy,
the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives.
Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice. Thus, the increasingly complex security needs
of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the
corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.
Take AT&T, for instance. Through its vast telecommunications network that crisscrosses the globe, AT&T provides the U.S. government
with the complex infrastructure it needs for its mass surveillance programs. According to The Intercept , "The NSA considers
AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company's 'extreme willingness to help. '
It is a collaboration that dates back decades.
Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T's customers. According to the NSA's documents, it values AT&T
not only because it 'has access to information that transits the nation,' but also because it maintains unique relationships with
other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive
infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies."
Now magnify what the U.S. government is doing through AT&T on a global scale, and you have the "
14 Eyes Program ," also
referred to as the "SIGINT Seniors." This global spy agency is made up of
members from around the world (United States, United
Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Singapore,
South Korea, Japan, India and all British Overseas Territories).
Surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these global alliances, however.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated
to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth. For example, while erecting a security surveillance state in the U.S., the
military-industrial complex has perpetuated a worldwide military empire with American troops stationed in 177 countries (over 70%
of the countries worldwide).
Although the federal government obscures so much about its defense spending that accurate figures are difficult to procure, we
do know that since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $1.8 trillion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (
that's $8.3 million per hour ). That doesn't include
wars and military exercises waged around the globe, which are expected to
push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053 .
It's not just the American economy that is being gouged, unfortunately.
Driven by a greedy defense sector, the American homeland has been transformed into a battlefield with militarized police and weapons
better suited to a war zone. Trump, no different from his predecessors, has continued to expand America's military empire abroad
and domestically, calling on Congress to approve
billions more to hire cops, build more prisons and wage more profit-driven war-on-drugs/war-on-terrorism/war-on-crime programs
that pander to the powerful money interests (military, corporate and security) that run the Deep State and hold the government in
its clutches.
Global Policing
Glance at pictures of international police forces and you will have a hard time distinguishing between American police and those
belonging to other nations. There's a reason they all look alike, garbed in the militarized, weaponized uniform of a standing army.
There's a reason why they act alike, too, and speak a common language of force.
Then you have the
Strong Cities Network program .
Funded by the State Department , the U.S. government has partnered with the United Nations to fight violent extremism "
in all of its forms and manifestations " in cities and communities across the world. Working with the UN, the federal government
rolled out programs to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as
address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal. The cities included in the
global network include New York City, Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Paris, London, Montreal, Beirut and Oslo. What this program
is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale.
It sounds like a good idea on paper, but the problem with the broken windows approach is that it has led to zero tolerance policing
and stop-and-frisk practices among other harsh police tactics.
When applied to the Strong Cities Network program, the objective is ostensibly to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source:
racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police -- acting ostensibly as extensions of the United Nations -- will
identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist.
Of course, the concern with the government's anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise
lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist. Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American
"extremists" will carry out their objectives -- to identify and deter potential extremists -- in concert with
fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies,
behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance,
facial recognition,
predictive policing , biometrics, and behavioral
epigenetics
(in which life experiences alter one's genetic makeup).
... ... ...
And then, as I make clear in my book
A Government of Wolves:
The Emerging American Police State , if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march
towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of communities and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics
and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
"... No doubt that the globalized elite want Friedman's "World is Flat" concept – profit maximizing world markets, world production, stateless corporations, free movement of labour and capital (without troublesome national identities) represented by an exclusive and vastly wealthy rootless elite ruling over a global worker hive. The "Empire" is only the military/enforcement side of this, with sanctions/wars against dissidents. ..."
"... Trump is in the strange situation of having been elected to fight the Empire while needing elite Imperial support to stay in his job. ..."
If history is any precedent, empires without economic foundations, sooner or later
crumble, especially when rising regional powers are capable of replacing them.
This is worth repeating. Empire and wars are expensive. For example the British world
trade network was doing fine until the "Imperial" idea came along with wars and economic
failure. The US is doing even worse in trying to fight its Imperial wars on credit.
The result is that Trump faces the real prospects of a decline in exports and popular
electoral support – especially from those adversely affected by declining markets and
deep cuts in health, education and the environment.
He may well be blindsided by a candidate who actually implements Trump's own election
platform 1) no more wars 2) domestic infrastructure spending 3) stopping mass immigration 4)
draining the swamp. Trumps electoral weakness is that didn't follow through on his
promises.
The electoral oligarchy and the mass media will force him to retreat from the trade wars
and surrender to the globalizing elites.
No doubt that the globalized elite want Friedman's "World is Flat" concept –
profit maximizing world markets, world production, stateless corporations, free movement of
labour and capital (without troublesome national identities) represented by an exclusive and
vastly wealthy rootless elite ruling over a global worker hive. The "Empire" is only the
military/enforcement side of this, with sanctions/wars against dissidents.
Trump is in the strange situation of having been elected to fight the Empire while
needing elite Imperial support to stay in his job.
This is one of the reasons Americans of all colors and stripes will not receive the the benefits of the powers of economic equality,
transparency, literal meanings of the health of the economy and economic freedom.
Because they will remain blinded by partisan worship of the presidents. We agree with Obama's criticism of big banks or of Bush's
conducts of the war. We agree with Trump's criticism of the wars raging in the ME . We agree with his take on illegal immigrants.
Instead of holding their feet to the fire, we condone, ignore, and then come out in support of them when they fail miserably and
intentionally on other vital areas or when they go against the election promises.
We believe he shits about economy coming out of FOX CNN MSNBC NYT NY POST because we worship the candidates they support or don't
support , or because the support or don't support our views on other areas .
American economy has been growing without the accompanying growth of the worker's compensation for 45 years . Nothing new . Presidents
have no role for the existing condition of the economy . Presidents may claim some success down the line years after presidency is
over . Our economic knowledge is doled out by the same psychopaths who dole us out the knowledge and the faith about wars and about
other countries from the unclean perches of the media . Yes its a handout Its a dole because we have all along built up our world
view and our view of US as told by these guys dictated to us and shoved down us . The folks whose income have suffered and hours
have increased don't have the time or the brains to explore and verify . They are just happy to know that they heard this "Trust
but verify " and heard this " make America Great Again " . They are happy to go to war because a lesbian was killed in Uganda or
in Syria or a girl was raped in Libya or gas was smelt in Dara and Hara , Sara Bara and Laora - just throw some names any name, and
these folks will lend their names and sign up .
This is the underlying mindset and the intellectual foundation which explain our deepest attachment to liar like Obama and to
Trump. Combined with helplessness ,this experience of reality can be disorienting and can lead to Stockholm Syndrome .
If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures in Africa,
stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries . He should focus on US and stop talking
about EU's immigration.
" If this president wants no immigration to EU, he should stop supporting France's exploitation and military adventures
in Africa, stop adding to war efforts in ME and will pay the restitution for ravaging those countries. He should focus on US
and stop talking about EU's immigration. "
THE great cause of migrants coming to Europe is the USA, the wars in and destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria Mali,
as far as I know hardly anyone comes from Mali to us. Sudan was split by the USA, oil, the USA is building a drone base in Nigeria,
oil again...
Possibly Brussels now understands that an attack on Iran will cause a new flood of migrants, Netanyahu has been warned. A new
flood is the deadsure end of the EU.
"... The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In other words, Trump's politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump's policies will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives would undermine US imperial rule. ..."
"... Iran's one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities encouraged Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its markets. ..."
"... Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense strategy. ..."
"... Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change, reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the Shah. ..."
"... The second reason for Trump's policy is to strengthen Israel's military power in the Middle East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the US, dubbed 'the Lobby'. ..."
"... Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump believes that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the 'dynamic' US market, will enhance Washington's quest for uncontested world domination. ..."
"... Trump's loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its companies to be frozen out of the Iran market. ..."
"... Trump's trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production sites for US multi-nationals. He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have links with five continents. ..."
"... Are Trump's threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to intimidate, in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger 'madman' tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable' demands or face the worst from the President? I don't think so. ..."
"... Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant bully. To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again. However, behind the facade of all his bravado hides a puppet of the Jewish Power Structure, which is even more dangerous than Trump himself. "Make Zion Great Again" would be a more apposite slogan. ..."
For some time, critics of President Trump's policies have attributed them to a mental
disorder; uncontrolled manic-depression, narcissus bullying and other pathologies.
The question of Trump's mental health raises a deeper question: why do his pathologies take
a specific political direction?
Moreover, Trump's decisions have a political history and background, and follow from a logic
and belief in the reason and logic of imperial power.
We will examine the reason why Trump has embraced three strategic decisions which have
world-historic consequences, namely: Trump's reneging the nuclear accord with Iran ;Trump's
declaration of a trade war with China; and Trump's meeting with North Korea.
In brief we will explore the political reasons for his decisions; what he expects to gain;
and what is his game plan if he fails to secure his expected outcome and his adversaries take
reprisals.
Trump's Strategic Framework
The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more
intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a
corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity
or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and
further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In other
words, Trump's politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump's policies
will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives would
undermine US imperial rule.
Reasons Why Trump Broke the Peace Accord with Iran
Trump broke the accord with Iran because the original agreement was based on retaining US
sanctions against Iran; the total dismantling of its nuclear program and calling into question
Iran's limited role on behalf of possible allies in the Middle East.
Iran's one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities
encouraged Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its
markets.
Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes
that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon
(Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense
strategy.
Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change,
reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the
Shah.
The second reason for Trump's policy is to strengthen Israel's military power in the
Middle East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in
the US, dubbed 'the Lobby'.
Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented
power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC's power
to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the
executive branch.
Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and
adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street. Trump's
submission to Zionist power reinforces and even dictates his decision to break the peace accord
with Iran and his willingness to pressure. France, Germany, the UK and Russia to sacrifice
billion-dollar trade agreements with Iran and to pursue a policy of pressuring Teheran to
accept part of Trump's agenda of unilateral disarmament and isolation. Trump believes he can
force the EU multi-nationals to disobey their governments and abide by sanctions.
Reasons for Trump's Trade War with China
Prior to Trump's presidency, especially under President Obama, the US launched a trade war
and 'military pivot' to China. Obama proposed the Trans-Pacific Pact to exclude China and
directed an air and naval armada to the South China Sea. Obama established a high-powered
surveillance system in South Korea and supported war exercises on North Korea's border. Trump's
policy deepened and radicalized Obama's policies.
Trump extended Obama's bellicose policy toward North Korea, demanding the de-nuclearization
of its defense program. President Kim of North Korea and President Moon of South Korea reached
an agreement to open negotiations toward a peace accord ending nearly 60 years of
hostility.
However, President Trump joined the conversation on the presumption that North Korea's peace
overtures were due to his threats of war and intimidation. He insisted that any peace
settlement and end of economic sanctions would only be achieved by unilateral nuclear
disarmament, the maintenance of US forces on the peninsula and supervision by US approved
inspectors.
Trump's unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that
military threats led to North Korea's "capitulation" – its promise to end its nuclear
program.
Trump slapped a trade tariff on over $100 billion dollars of Chinese exports in order to
reduce its trade imbalance by $200 billion over two years. He demanded China unilaterally end
industrial 'espionage', technological 'theft' (all phony accusations) and China's compliance
monitored quarterly by the US.
Trump demanded that China not retaliate with tariffs or restrictions or face bigger
sanctions. Trump threatened to respond to any reciprocal tariff by Beijing, with greater
tariffs, and restrictions on Chinese goods and services. Trump's goals seek to convert North
Korea into a military satellite encroaching on China's northern border; and a trade war that
drives China into an economic crisis.
Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and
dominate the Asian and world economy.
Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump
believes that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the 'dynamic' US market, will
enhance Washington's quest for uncontested world domination.
Trump's Ten Erroneous Thesis
Trump's political agenda is deeply flawed!
Breaking the nuclear agreement and imposing harsh sanctions has isolated Trump from his
European and Asian allies.
His military intervention will inflame a regional war that would destroy the Saudi oil
fields. He will force Iran to pursue a nuclear shield against US-Israeli aggression and lead
to a prolonged, costly and ultimately losing war.
Trump's policies will unify all Iranians, liberals and nationalist, and undermine US
collaborators.
The entire Muslim world will unify forces and carry the conflict throughout Asia, Africa
and the Middle East.
Tel Aviv's bombing will lead to counter-attacks in Israel.
Oil prices will skyrocket, financial markets will collapse, industries will go
bankrupt.
Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction.
Trump's trade war with China will lead to the disruption of the supply chain which
sustains the US economy and especially the 500 US multi-nationals who depend on the Chinese
economy for exports to the US.
China will increase domestic consumption, diversify its markets and trading partners and
reinforce its military alliance with Russia.
China has greater resilience and capacity to overcome short-term disruption and regain its
dominant role as a global economic power house.
Wall Street will suffer a catastrophic financial collapse and send the US into a world
depression.
Trump's negotiations with North Korea will go nowhere as long as he demands unilateral
nuclear disarmament, US military control over the peninsula and political isolation from
China.
Kim will insist on the end of sanctions, and a mutual defense treaty with China.
Kim will offer to end nuclear testing but not nuclear weapons. After Trump's reneged on
the Iran deal, Kim will recognize that agreements with the US are not trustworthy.
Conclusion
Trump's loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his
assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think
his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war
with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its
companies to be frozen out of the Iran market.
Trump's trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production
sites for US multi-nationals. He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have
links with five continents.
Trump cannot dominate North Korea and force it to sacrifice its sovereignty on the basis of
empty economic promises to lift sanctions.
Trump is heading for defeats on all counts. But he may take the American people into the
nuclear abyss in the process.
Epilogue
Are Trump's threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to
intimidate, in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger
'madman' tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable'
demands or face the worst from the President? I don't think so.
Nixon unlike Trump was not led by the nose by Israel. Nixon unlike Trump was not led by
pro-nuclear war advisers. Nixon in contrast to Trump opened the US to trade with China and
signed nuclear reduction agreements with Russia.
"Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction."
indeed they will, and sadly it well deserved after the last 20yrs off US terrorism.
the US hubris will soon meet karma, and we all know karma is a bitch..
This theory is the opposite of what I suppose is the right explanation, the explanation also
given by prof Laslo Maracs, UVA Amsterdam, that Trump and his rich friends understand that
the USA can to longer control the world, conquering the rest of the world totally out of the
question.
The end of the British empire began before 1914, when the two fleet standard had to
lowered to one fleet.
Obama had to do something similar, the USA capability of fighting two wars at the time was
lowered to one and half. What half a war accomplishes we see in Syria. In the thirties the
British, some of them, knew quite well they could no longer defend their empire, at the time
this meant controlling the Meditarranean and the Far East. Lawrence R. Pratt, 'East of Malta,
West of Suez', London, 1975
The British guarantees to Poland and countries bordering on the Med lighted the fuse to
the powder keg that had been standing for a long time.
Churchill won, the British thought, and some of them think it still, WWII.
But shortly after WWII some British understood 'we won the war, but lost the peace'. I
still have the idea that Trump has no intention of losing the peace, but time will tell.
I suppose Trump just is buying time against Deep State and Netanyahu.
The fool Netanyahu is happy with having got Jerusalem, he does not see the cost in increased
hatred among Muslims, and Israel having won the Eurovision Song Festival.
Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant
bully. To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again.
However, behind the facade of all his bravado hides a puppet of the Jewish Power Structure,
which is even more dangerous than Trump himself. "Make Zion Great Again" would be a more
apposite slogan.
Overall a good analysis, but as far as his support of Israel is concerned, his family
connections with the most ultra-Zionist factions should not be overlooked.
I continue to admire President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi of China. WHY? .because
RESULTS matter more than opinions on internet websites, T.V., or in printed publications.
N. Korea has stopped performing ICBM or nuke tests, a less extremist regime change "coup"
took place in Saudi Arabia, financing/ weapons flows / intelligence to Syrian terrorists has
dried up with resulting collapse of ISIS, Iran is threatening to release the names of
European & American politicians who previously made millions / billions off the Iran nuke
deal if it is dropped, Harvey Weinstein, Allison Mack, and "Weiner" were untouchable before
Trump, the list just goes on and continues to get bigger.
A major reason for admiration of Putin is that the Mainstream Media (MSM) can't stop
demonizing him. So of course I'm logically led to believe that he is mostly a good guy since
the MSM has proven itself repeatedly to distort the Truth. Putin also largely ended the
oligarchs power, doubled Russian citizens income, used an tiny Russian military in Syria to
gradually reverse ISIS expansion there, improved Russia's internal manufacturing,
agricultural, mining, and technological research/ development, intellectually crushed
international debate opponents repeated using only logic and facts (You should watch the
videos!), built / rebuilt over 10 thousand churches, has patriotic Muslims (Crimea) fighting
for Russia in Syria, etc. etc. Xi of China has pretty impressive credentials but this post is
overly long anyway.
RESULTS CANT MORE THAN WORDS!
Of course they do this, they would be stupid if they didn't.
• Agree: CalDre
I like your frankness. Every countries is into this at different degree, with ZUS the
apex. But been leading in most tech area currently & lazy to produce any useful things,
ZUS is very unhappy that their esponage net result is negative, hence the continuous
whining.
When tide reverse with China leading in most tech, ZUS will complaint about complex patent
system as been flawed in exploitating & suppressing of weaker country innovation, juz as
it did for WTO & Globalization now.
Of course any moronic comments about only China is esponaging US IPR & rise purely due
to US FDI & Tech transfer will resonate CalDre into high chime.
Journalists, academics, pundits and experts have ignored the complexity of President Trump's
impact on the state of the US Empire.
To properly assess the geopolitical configuration of power, we will consider the military,
economic, political and diplomatic advances and setbacks of the Trump regime in Latin America,
the European Union and Asia (including the Middle East).
Secondly, we will examine the time frame – the shifting direction of the present
configuration of forces.
We will conclude by discussing how the influence and results of foreign policy shape
domestic political power.
Background to President Trump's Empire Building
First and foremost, we must take account of the fact that much of Trump's policies build on
and reflect the policies of his predecessors, namely Presidents Bush and Obama.
The US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were started by Presidents Clinton, Bush
and Obama, The US bombings of Libya and the destruction and uprooting of millions of Africans
was inaugurated by Obama.
The expulsion of millions of Central American and Mexican immigrants from the US was common
practice prior to Trump.
In brief President Trump continued , and in some cases exacerbated, the socio-economic and
military policies, of his predecessors. In a few areas Trump reversed policies, as was the case
with Obama's Nuclear Agreement with Iran.
The successes and failures of Trump's empire building policies cannot be attributed solely
to his regime. Nevertheless, President Trump must be held responsible for the current state of
the empire and its direction.
President Trump Marches Forward in Latin America
President Trump has built upon and extended US imperial victories throughout most of Latin
America. Satellite regimes are in place in Brazil thanks largely to judicial-legislative coup
which overthrew President elect Dilma Rousseff. The puppet regime of Michel Temer has
privatized the economy, embraced Trump's dominance and aligned with efforts to overthrow
Venezuela's government.
Similarly, Trump inherited from Obama the present client regimes in Argentina (President
Mauricio Macri), Peru (President Martin Vizcarra) ,Honduras (President Hernandez) Paraguay
(President Cartes), Chile (President Piñera), Ecuador (President Moreno), and most of
the ruling elites in Central America and the Caribbean. Trump has added to the list current
efforts to overthrow the Daniel Ortega regime in Nicaragua.
Under President Trump, Washington succeeded in reversing relations with Cuba and the
so-called peace accord in Colombia between the guerrillas and the Juan Manuel Santos regime. In
July 2018, Trump succeeded in backing the accession to power of Ivan Duque a
protégé of the far-right party of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia. President Obama's
reversal of center-left regimes via coups have been consolidated and expanded by Trump with the
important exception of Mexico.
Trump partially reversed Obama's opening of relations with Cuba and threatens to militarily
invade Venezuela.
Trump's imperial empire in Latin America is, for the most part, inherited and largely
sustained . . . for now.
But there are several crucial caveats.
Mexico's new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is likely to pursue
independent and progressive foreign and domestic policies, renegotiating NAFTA, oil contracts
and border disputes.
Secondly, Brazil and Argentina's neo-liberal economic policies are in deep crises and the
incumbent puppet regimes are economically unstable, face mass social opposition and likely will
suffer electoral defeats in 2018.
Thirdly, Venezuela and Cuba have successfully resisted economic and diplomatic
sanctions.
Militarily, President Trump retains US military bases in Colombia and has incorporated
Bogata into NATO and he has secured military operations in Argentina and Ecuador.
The biggest challenge to Trump's empire building in Latin America is in the all-important
economic realm .
Trump has failed to gain ground in trade, investment and raw materials in the face of
competition with China.
Despite the political and military subordination of Latin American regimes to Washington,
the bulk of their trade ties are with China. Moreover, Brazil and Argentina will increase their
agro-exports to China in line with Beijing's trade tariffs on US exports. In the so-called
trade war not a single Latin American client state has sided with the US. On the contrary, all
are taking advantage of Washington's loss of the China market to enhance their exports.
Clearly the US does not exercise 'hegemony' over Latin America's trading relations.
Worse still, Trump's dumping of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threats to withdraw from
NAFTA have reduced Washington's leverage over Latin America and Asia.
Trump's boasts and claims of dominance over Latin America is largely a product of his
predecessors' imperial policies.
At most, Trump's policies have hardened the far right, which however, is weakening
politically and economically and has provoked the rise of the left to power in Mexico and
increased opposition in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.
In sum the Trump regime's empire building retain decided influence in Latin America but
faces major challenges – and reversals.
Trump in Asia: One Step Forward, Two Step Backward
Washington has gained prestige for its diplomatic overtures to North Korea but is losing the
trade war with the world's second greatest power, China.
China, faced with Trump's economic war, has diversified its trading partners thus
undermining key US agro-business enterprises.
China has implemented tariffs on: canola, soybeans, corn, cotton, pork and beef.
Moreover, China has replaced the US as the main trading partner throughout Asia.
While Japan, South Korea and Australia provide military bases for the US they are eager to
replace Washington's export to China.
Moreover, China's multi-billion dollar, Belt and Road Initiative has secured sixty-eight
nations as partners, with the prominent absence of the self-excluded USA.
US economic sanctions against Iran have failed to undermine the governments' oil exports ,
while banking transactions and imports of manufacturing and service products are replaced by
China, Russia , India and most of Asia. All of whom will increase their trade with Teheran.
In the Middle East and South Asia, the US can no longer count on clients or allies except
for Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, the Saudi's rejected Trump's demand to increase oil production to lower oil prices
for US consumers.
Israel is a 'loyal ally' to Washington when it suits their own economic advantages and
hegemonic aspirations. For example, Israel has continued to expand ties with Russia even in
violation of US sanctions.
Pakistan, Myanmar and Cambodia have moved closer to China as a result of increasing
financial and infrastructure aid.
ORDER IT NOW
In balance, the US continues to exercise military dominance in Asia via its bases in South
Korea, Japan and Australia. However, it is losing economic influence and presence in the rest
of Asia. If history is any precedent, imperial empires without economic foundations, sooner or
later crumble, especially when rising regional powers are capable of replacing them.
The European Union and Trump's Empire: Partner, Client or Rival?
The European Union (EU) is the largest market in the world and yet remains a political and
military dependency of Washington.
The EU has suffered from its lack of an independent foreign policy – its reliance on
NATO, a US subsidiary is one of the main reasons.
President Trump has exploited the EU's weakness to defy its policies on several strategic
issues, ranging from the Paris Agreement on climate change, to the nuclear agreement with Iran,
to Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Trump's tariff on EU exports is the
latest and most provocative effort to defy and dominate the region.
Moreover, the EU is increasingly divided over immigration, the UK departure (Brexit), as
well as the economic and political and economic split between Germany , Italy and Poland.
In effect the Trump regime can no longer count on a powerful unified alliance at its
behest,in its quest for a global empire.
Rather, under Trump, the US seeks to secure economic supremacy and supreme
political-military dominance.
President Trump demands that the EU countries double their military budgets in order to
increase the Pentagon's arms spending.
As a result of the divisions and hostilities between the US and EU, President' Trump's
imperial policies have adopted a contradictory strategy of enhancing economic protectionism
with overtures to 'enemy' Russia. By adopting the nationalist slogan, "Making America Strong"
by 'Making the EU Weak' it appears Trump pursues nationalist slogans to promote imperial
goals.
Domestic Growth and Imperial Decline
To date, mid 2018, Trump is riding a wave of domestic growth of the economy, trade and
employment.
Critics claim that this is a short-lived conjuncture which faces powerful counter-currents.
They argue that the trade war and decline of the overseas markets of China, the EU, Mexico,
Canada and elsewhere will provoke a decline of the US.
Trump's strategic gamble is that the US trade war will succeed in opening China's market
while reducing China's exports. Trump hopes US MNC will relocate to the US and increase jobs
and exports. So far this is a pipe dream.
Moreover, the corporate tax windfall has not been accompanied with a decrease in
inequalities and increases in wages.
The result is that Trump faces the real prospects of a decline in exports and popular
electoral support – especially from those adversely affected by declining markets and
deep cuts in health, education and the environment.
Political Consequences of 'America First' in a Corporate Setting
Trump's nationalist economic policies are highly unlikely to enhance empire building ; on
the contrary, the trade war will force the major corporate tax beneficiaries to turn against
Trump. Their overseas trade links with the EU, North America and China will cause them to turn
against Trump.
Empire building trumps America First. Without an economic empire the US will lack the means
to secure the markets necessary to stimulate local exports and production.
Conclusion
President Trump has benefited, and to some extent, succeeded in temporarily gaining
dominance in Latin America, expanding the domestic economy and imposing demands on China, the
EU and North America.
Nevertheless, his policies have undermined allies, antagonized competitors and provoked
retaliation. All of which increases the economic cost of running an empire.
Trump has failed to provide viable substitutes for the EU and China markets. Nor has he
secured the markets of his remaining clients in Latin America. The notion that Trump can build
'national capitalism in one country' is a chimera. At most it would require intensive
exploitation of US labor and high rates of investment, sacrificing profits and salaries. The
electoral oligarchy and the mass media will force him to retreat from the trade wars and
surrender to the globalizing elites.
"To date, mid 2018, Trump is riding a wave of fake domestic growth of the economy, trade and
faked employment numbers."
i fixed it for you.
are you trying to tell me you actually believe the numbers coming out of washington dc?
i dont believe you are so daft tbh.
I actually disagree quite a bit with this article. I believe our losses in trade due to the
sanctions is temporary, long term we will have much to gain. Economists have always contended
that there are winners and losers to globalization, same goes for the trade war, there will
be winners and losers, but it's all temporary. Short term maybe the farmers will lose while
the manufacturers will fare better. In the long run however the US will have much more to
gain in all sectors.
This is a game of chickens, ultimately it's all about who needs who more . We are
still at a position where the EU and China need us much more than we need them, thanks to
decades of bad management from these governments that created an export dependency. The tide
is turning however and I think it's fortuitous that Trump sees this and seizes the moment
before it's too late for the US, before we become so weak and other countries become so
strong that we can no longer change the terms of the trade. There is a method to Trump's
madness. I think we will win this tariff war in the not too distant future. China will buckle
long before we will.
The best thing Trump ever said to the EU was this: How about we all have ZERO tariffs? Our
EU "allies" and China all gasped because they know it's unthinkable, they all have their own
constituents to protect through tariffs. Trump was absolutely right. Either we all have ZERO
tariffs or we all have equal tariffs. It's about Effing time a US president finally has the
balls to stand up for America. Go President Trump!!
Petras doesn't get Trump at all.
Trump is trying to DOWNSIZE the US Empire, recognizing that it is financially unsustainable.
He has decided to put America First.
The USA is pretty much autarcic.
The cost of the USA empire is tremendous, more than 800 military bases all over the
world.
Britain already before 1914 was financially unable to sustain its empire, two world wars
completely disintegrated the empire, made the British poor and caused an influx of
migrants.
If Trump knows and understands all these things, I do not know, but what he does suggests
it.
As to the EU, an illusion.
There is no political or cultural Europa, there are some 28 or more different nations and
cultures.
The ideological basis of the EU is that it brings peace, by subjugating the evil Germans, who
caused two world wars and perpetrated the holocaust.
In my opinion the Germans were, and, through continuing propaganda, are still the victims,
the holocaust has been discussed here more than enough.
The weird thing is that the EU is the opposite of what it was meant to be: encapsulating
Germany.
The real capital of the EU is Berlin, with kaiserin Merkel, trying to create better Germans
through large scale immigration.
Merkel now has manoevred herself also into an impossible position with two other projects,
closing nuclear power stations all of a sudden, thus building coal electric plants, and
pretending reducing CO2 emission, at the same time needing more Russian gas.
Trump blackmails Germany with its exports to the USA, export always having been the Achilles
heel of Germany.
As with all megalomane projects, they fail.
The EU is falling apart, migration not the cause, just the fuse in the powder keg that the EU
always was.
These are interesting times, someone deliberately dissolving an empire, and a fake empire
dissolving
The points made by Petras, that he would attribute entirely to Trump's huge incompetence,
are also noted by James Jatras. Jatras at least concedes that Trump might be bringing down
the empire deliberately -- and in that case there could be no one he could share his plans
with.
Trump is on the face of it a poisonous shabbos goy, and we have a duty to keep calling him
on it. Still, we have to keep some small part of our minds ready to acknowledge the opposite,
something almost unimaginably heroic.
Trump is a Freemason, ceremonial President. Every President since JFK has been a fake,
ceremonial President. The Presidents since JFK don't actually hold real power or authority.
They are cheerleaders for the Deep State. Trump even said as much during the campaign saying
he would be a better cheerleader than Obama. Israel and the MIC/Deep State control America,
not the President or Congress. Hopefully Putin is not fooled by the theatrics, but then again
with Putin's groveling before Natanyahoo, I'm not sure there's much hope in the present
crisis.
We're making a hard course correction away from one world governments and back towards
autonomy. That involves the deliberate compartmentalization of nations with
(ethno)nationalism as a bulwark against the spread of globalism. And Europe's coming along
for the ride because we both need each other as allies for what is to come. Needless to say,
the divorce is going to get very ugly.
Honestly though, you make it sound so bad, like we've been derailed from the road to
utopia by Trump or something. All he's really done is given us back the ability to voice our
own self-interests after Cultural Marxism stripped us of it with the better part of a
century's worth of social engineering. And in doing so, ensured that if Western Civilization
is going down anytime soon, it's going to have to be with a bang and not the originally
planned whimper.
Meanwhile in the real world, Trump continues to give millions in foreign aid to Israel and
Saudi Arabia while homeless vets rot on the rotting streets and millions of hard-working
blue-collar Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Sadly, Trump has turned out to be a Neocon puppet. Whether he was their boy all along or
has been compromised by them, same difference at this point.
As a personality and politician Trump is infinitely smaller then Putin. So the only trump card he has is "imperial arrogance".
Also Trump is severely constrained by what he do or offer by the Deep State, especially intelligence agencies which have semi-autonomous
power in the USA and are no longer under direct control of the government, representing a shadow government by itself. Brennan attempt
to unseat Trump is just one recent example.
He also has a full of neocons cabinet now. Just Pompeo is very dangerous neocon indeed.
Notable quotes:
"... However, Washington's dominant position has also led to some foreign policy bad habits. Because U.S. leaders have not had to deal with serious peer competitors in a long time, they appear to have lost the art of skillful, nuanced diplomacy. Even before the arrival of the Trump administration, U.S. policy exhibited a growing arrogance and lack of realism about diplomatic objectives. ..."
"... If the hardliners had prevailed, no summit would have taken place. Their demands were multiple poison pills to any feasible negotiations. ..."
"... even more than he did with North Korea, he needs to make major changes in current U.S. policy toward Russia and reject the advice and demands that Russophobic hardliners are pushing. Once again, the president must distinguish between achievable and unachievable goals. And he must be willing to make meaningful concessions to the Russian leader to secure the former. ..."
"... Some of Washington's existing demands are manifestly unrealistic . Russia is not going to reverse its annexation of Crimea and return that territory to Ukraine. The Kremlin's move was at least partly a response to the clumsy and provocative actions that the United States and key European Union powers took to support demonstrators who unseated Ukraine's elected, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, before the expiration of his term. Moscow was not about to accept that Western power play and watch the region containing Russia's main naval base come under the control of a manifestly hostile Ukrainian regime. ..."
"... With regard to Syria, Trump should inform Putin that the United States is ceasing its efforts to unseat Assad -- a venture that has been a disaster, in any case. To reinforce that pledge, the United States should offer to withdraw all of its forces over the next year. ..."
"... In conducting serious negotiations with Putin, President Trump has an opportunity for a diplomatic (and public relations) success that would exceed his achievement with the Kim summit. To do so, however, he must make a major course correction in how the United States handles delicate and dangerous situations with adversaries. Indeed, he must take an important step in America's willingness to relearn the techniques of achievable diplomacy. ..."
However, Washington's dominant position has also led to some foreign policy bad habits. Because U.S. leaders have not had
to deal with serious peer competitors in a long time, they appear to have lost the art of skillful, nuanced diplomacy. Even before
the arrival of the Trump administration, U.S. policy exhibited a growing arrogance and lack of realism about diplomatic objectives.
The upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin affords an opportunity to relearn the requirements
of effective diplomacy. If handled poorly, though, it will underscore the adverse consequences of Washington's rigid approach to
world affairs.
Too many American politicians, pundits, and foreign policy operatives seem to believe that when dealing with an adversary, diplomacy
should consist of issuing a laundry list of demands, including manifestly unrealistic ones, without offering even a hint of meaningful
concessions. Critics of Trump's summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un epitomized that attitude. Some of them excoriated the president
just for his willingness to accord Kim implicit equal status by approving a bilateral meeting. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
groused
that President Trump "elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime's status quo."
Others grudgingly conceded that the summit theoretically might have been an appropriate move, but argued that Washington should
have demanded major substantive and irreversible North Korean steps toward denuclearization in exchange for such a prestigious meeting.
In other words, they wanted North Korea's capitulation on the central issue before Trump even agreed to a summit. Critics were furious
that such a capitulation was not at least enshrined in the joint statement emerging from the meeting. And if that hardline stance
was not enough, they insisted that Trump should have made North Korea's human rights record a feature of the negotiations. Washington
Post columnist E.J. Dionne
asserted that "our wrongful indifference to human rights in the past should not be used as an excuse to justify apologias for
dictatorships in our time."
The lack of realism such positions exhibit is breathtaking. If the hardliners had prevailed, no summit would have taken place.
Their demands were multiple poison pills to any feasible negotiations. And the consequences flowing from the course they favored
would have been the perpetuation, if not escalation, of alarming tensions on the Korean Peninsula. By spurning their advice, Trump
secured a worthwhile change in the dynamics of the U.S.-North Korean relationship. The rapprochement may yet falter, since there
are still extremely serious disagreements between the two countries, but the summit was a beneficial reset that has reduced the danger
of a catastrophic military confrontation. Because he focused on the achievable, Trump secured a modest, but constructive, gain both
for the United States and the East Asian region.
The president has an opportunity for an even more important success in his upcoming summit with Putin. But even more than he did
with North Korea, he needs to make major changes in current U.S. policy toward Russia and reject the advice and demands that Russophobic
hardliners are pushing. Once again, the president must distinguish between achievable and unachievable goals. And he must be willing
to make meaningful concessions to the Russian leader to secure the former.
Some of Washington's existing demands are
manifestly unrealistic .
Russia is not going to reverse its annexation of Crimea and return that territory to Ukraine. The Kremlin's move was at least partly
a response to the clumsy and provocative
actions that the United States and key European Union powers took to support demonstrators who unseated Ukraine's elected, pro-Russian
president, Viktor Yanukovych, before the expiration of his term. Moscow was not about to accept that Western power play and watch
the region containing Russia's main naval base come under the control of a manifestly hostile Ukrainian regime. Given the stakes
involved, Russia is no more likely to withdraw from Crimea than Israel is likely to return the Golan Heights to Syria or Turkey return
occupied northern Cyprus to the Republic of Cyprus. Persisting in an utterly unattainable demand regarding Crimea before U.S. and
EU sanctions against Russia will be lifted is pointless.
Inducing the Kremlin to reduce and phase out its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine is more achievable. Indeed,
despite the hysterical allegations
that appear periodically in the Western press, Russia's backing of the insurgents has been quite limited and is far less than constituting
an "invasion." Putin shows little stomach for making Ukraine an arena for a full-fledged confrontation with the West.
A similar situation exists with respect to Syria. The Kremlin clearly wishes to see Bashar al-Assad remain in power, and given
the extreme Islamist orientation of many of Assad's opponents, that is not an outrageous position. Nevertheless, Putin has avoided
establishing a large-scale Russian military, especially ground force, presence in that country. He apparently wishes to confine Moscow's
role to protecting its naval base at Tartus and assisting Assad's military efforts
with Russian air power . There appears to be an
opportunity for Washington to gain assurances from the Kremlin that its involvement in Syria will not escalate and might even recede
gradually.
To secure such goals, though, the U.S. would need to offer some appealing concessions to Putin. In exchange for ending Russian
support of Ukrainian secessionists and confirming Moscow's toleration of the anti-Russian regime in Kiev, Trump should be willing
to sign an agreement pledging that the United States will neither propose not endorse NATO membership for
Ukraine or Georgia . NATO's
previous waves of enlargement right up to Russia's border
were
a key factor in the deterioration of the West's relations with Moscow. It is time to end that provocation. In addition to that
concession, Trump should pledge that NATO military exercises (war games) in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea will come to an end.
In exchange, the United States ought to insist that Russian forces end their provocative deployments in Kaliningrad and along Russia's
frontier with NATO members.
With regard to Syria, Trump should inform Putin that the United States is ceasing its efforts to unseat Assad -- a venture that
has been a disaster, in any case. To reinforce that pledge, the United States should offer to withdraw all of its forces over the
next year. Those moves would tacitly accept Russia as the leading foreign power in terms of influence in Syria. Such a concession
is a simple recognition
of reality . Syria is barely 600 miles from Russia's border; it is 6,000 miles from the American homeland. Moscow's interests
are understandably more central than America's, given that geographic factor alone.
In conducting serious negotiations with Putin, President Trump has an opportunity for a diplomatic (and public relations)
success that would exceed his achievement with the Kim summit. To do so, however, he must make a major course correction in how the
United States handles delicate and dangerous situations with adversaries. Indeed, he must take an important step in America's willingness
to relearn the techniques of achievable diplomacy.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor
at The American Conservative, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles
on international affairs.
"... Damascus and Moscow welcomed Iran's critical contribution to defeating the opposition and giving Washington and its allies a diplomatic bloody nose in the bargain. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledges that Iran's presence in Syria -- at the invitation of the regime -- is legitimate and that it would be "unrealistic" to demand its ouster. ..."
"... But instead of viewing the end of the war as an opportunity to lessen Iran's value to the regime and to reduce its footprint in the country, Washington is continuing heedlessly with failed policies created for an environment that no longer exists. As long as the fighting continues and the regime's efforts to reassert sovereignty over the entire country are frustrated by U.S. deployments in the northeast and southeast, Iran's military presence in the country is secure. Likewise, Washington shows no sign of reconsidering international sanctions against the regime, which also forces Syria into the arms of Tehran. ..."
"... A colorblind appraisal of the effects of U.S. policy in Iraq and now Syria would suggest that Washington is either brilliantly in cahoots with Iran to the latter's benefit or is being outplayed by weaker but more clear-eyed players. My vote goes squarely to the latter. ..."
"... Confronted with the disintegration of its diplomatic and military strategy, the Trump administration is reduced to playing spoiler, obstructing the inevitable restoration of the regime's sovereignty over the country and continuing the punishing sanctions that have removed the battered but resilient Syrian private sector from international capital and commercial markets. This policy fails on two fronts -- it creates more gratuitous misery for the Syrian people and it undermines the stated U.S. objective of reducing and removing Iranian and Hezbollah influence in the country. Indeed, continuing to pursue the current policies will leave the U.S. isolated among friends (Jordan and Israel) as well as frenemy Russia, and will postpone rather than speed the day that Iran leaves Syria. ..."
Washington has been on the offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran for close to half
a century. Largely as a result, Iran, a rounding error in the superpower sweepstakes, has gone
from strength to strength, challenging American power throughout the region, most notably in
Iraq and Syria.
U.S.-led regime change in Iraq created Tehran's historic opportunity to return to Baghdad
for the first time since the creation of the Ottoman caliphate in the 15th century. This
unscripted but entirely predictable outcome was no mean feat, all the more so for being the
opposite of what Washington intended.
The Bush administration knew that it no longer wanted Saddam in the chair, but could not
think beyond this one, giant, uncharted leap into the future. Iran has a far greater and more
lasting interest in the affairs of its neighbor and often bitter enemy. As a consequence, the
mullahs are playing a far longer, and more successful, game.
The legacy of unintended consequences continues to define Washington's policy towards Iraq a
generation after the first Gulf War ended. And so too with Syria. In both countries, U.S.
shortcomings have created a historic opportunity for Iran to enhance its influence in Arab
arenas that when not actively hostile to it (Iraq) are at best lukewarm (Syria).
When asked about Syria's relationship with Iran, Farouk Shara'a, longtime foreign minister
and vice president, once explained to a mutual friend, "You don't have to love the woman you
are sleeping with."
Syria has been in bed with Iran for decades. Saddam's war against Iran in the '80s, the rise
of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and most recently the war against the Assad regime in Syria, have
conspired to throw these two unlikely allies into a cold embrace.
Washington has been oblivious to this essentially ambivalent Syrian attitude towards Iran,
and remains equally so to the opportunities it creates to reduce Iran's footprint in postwar
Syria. Now that the war is winding down, the value of Iran's military contribution to Syria is
declining. In parallel, Syria's interest in reducing the power of its erstwhile Iranian and
Russian friends over its destiny increases.
Damascus and Moscow welcomed Iran's critical contribution to defeating the opposition
and giving Washington and its allies a diplomatic bloody nose in the bargain. Russian foreign
minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledges that Iran's presence in Syria -- at the invitation of the
regime -- is legitimate and that it would be "unrealistic" to demand its ouster.
But while Iran's wartime contribution proved critical to victory, neither Assad nor Putin
was displeased to distance Iranian-backed elements from the recent battle front in the south.
Neither has an interest in enabling Tehran to pursue a postwar Syrian agenda towards Lebanon
and Israel. Nor is either enamored with Iran's continuing efforts to reshape the Syrian
military in its image. On these important issues, Iran stands all but alone against an
invisible, de facto coalition that includes Washington and the EU alongside Israel, Moscow, and
the Assad regime itself.
But instead of viewing the end of the war as an opportunity to lessen Iran's value to
the regime and to reduce its footprint in the country, Washington is continuing heedlessly with
failed policies created for an environment that no longer exists. As long as the fighting
continues and the regime's efforts to reassert sovereignty over the entire country are
frustrated by U.S. deployments in the northeast and southeast, Iran's military presence in the
country is secure. Likewise, Washington shows no sign of reconsidering international sanctions
against the regime, which also forces Syria into the arms of Tehran.
A colorblind appraisal of the effects of U.S. policy in Iraq and now Syria would suggest
that Washington is either brilliantly in cahoots with Iran to the latter's benefit or is being
outplayed by weaker but more clear-eyed players. My vote goes squarely to the latter.
Apart from the lingering campaign against ISIS, in every other respect the U.S. effort in
Syria is imploding. Washington under Obama and now Trump has been forced to uneasily
acknowledge the regime's staying power. It has now been reduced to bickering over the details
of Syrian constitutional reform in the postwar era, a waste of time if ever there was one.
Lately, the U.S. secretary of state, from his respected perch, has personally threatened
Iran's key military strategist and architect of its advances in Iraq and Syria, Qassem
Sulemani, a sure sign that the policymaking process at State is frozen.
In the field, Washington has ignominiously abandoned allies in the southern front. And in
the northeast, the Kurds have embarked on the road back to Damascus, imperiling Washington's
deployment there.
Confronted with the disintegration of its diplomatic and military strategy, the Trump
administration is reduced to playing spoiler, obstructing the inevitable restoration of the
regime's sovereignty over the country and continuing the punishing sanctions that have removed
the battered but resilient Syrian private sector from international capital and commercial
markets. This policy fails on two fronts -- it creates more gratuitous misery for the Syrian
people and it undermines the stated U.S. objective of reducing and removing Iranian and
Hezbollah influence in the country. Indeed, continuing to pursue the current policies will
leave the U.S. isolated among friends (Jordan and Israel) as well as frenemy Russia, and will
postpone rather than speed the day that Iran leaves Syria.
Geoffrey Aronson is chairman and co-founder of The Mortons Group and a non-resident
scholar at the Middle East Institute.
A colorblind appraisal of the effects of U.S. policy in Iraq and now Syria would suggest
that Washington is either brilliantly in cahoots with Iran to the latter's benefit or is
being outplayed by weaker but more clear-eyed players. My vote goes squarely to the
latter.
US foreign policy is controlled by the Israeli lobby and to a lesser extent, by the Saudi
lobby. The illegal and unprovoked attacks by the US on Iraq, Libya and Syria were done at the
behest of these lobbies. The only country that has benefited from all this bloodshed is
Israel, which now dominates the Middle East.
Since this obvious truth cannot be said out aloud, we need to pretend we don't know who is
behind all the mayhem in the Middle East, like this pointless article does.
The writer can't see the forest for the trees. Successive U.S. administrations have behaved
irresponsibly to enhance Israel's position in the guise of bring "democracy" to the region.
Washington's failures have created ongoing misery in Iraq, a failed state in Libya and the
destruction of the ancient land of Syria.
The U.S. continues to
pretend it had no role in the creation of the huge refugee problem that followed its
interventions in Libya and Syria.
No lessons learned, the folly is being played out daily in Yemen where the Pentagon is
leading the a campaign of death and destruction alongside its "democratic" allies, the Salman
clan of Arabia and the sheikhs of the Persian Gulf minnow petrostates.
"the stated U.S. objective of reducing and removing Iranian and Hezbollah influence "
I've yet to see a compelling reason for this "stated objective". If you want to argue that
it's an American interest because the Israel Lobby wants it, well, OK, there are politicians
who can be bribed to do Israel's will, but no real American would agree.
One of these days an American president will make an "opening to Iran" as Nixon once made
one to China. Surely we can bury the hatchet with Iran for the sake of a grand bargain that
accomplishes America's one real interest in the Middle East, which is to free ourselves of the
various parasites who entangle us in their messes, and get the hell out of there. Some of us
hoped that Trump might be that president, but it wasn't meant to be.
"The U.S. continues to
pretend it had no role in the creation of the huge refugee problem that followed its
interventions in Libya and Syria."
Which is ridiculous. When you bomb, invade, and arm insurgencies in people's countries, a
lot of people run away. Everybody knows that.
In the case of our bombing, invading, and/or arming insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, and Syria, a lot of people ran away.
Millions ran into Turkey. Millions more ran through Turkey into Greece and then up through
the Balkans into other NATO countries. And still more came up from Africa and sailed away from
the shores of ruined Libya to our NATO allies Italy, Spain, and France.
We did this. Everybody knows we did it. It's absurd to deny it. What's worse is that many of
the allies destabilized by the refugees warned or even begged us not to start those wars. With
no American interest at stake, no real risk assessment, and no exit strategy formulated, we did
it anyway.
Much simpler explanation: For decades, the United States has been the loyal servant of Israel,
and to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia, faithfully carrying out its masters' every dictate.
As an unintended consequence of Israeli/Saudi policy, Iran has grown much stronger.
The only reason that the US foreign policy establishment is rushing headlong into a war with
Iran is because Israel and Saudi Arabia are terrified of the Iran that they have created.
Journalists, academics, pundits and experts have ignored the complexity of President Trump's
impact on the state of the US Empire.
To properly assess the geopolitical configuration of power, we will consider the military,
economic, political and diplomatic advances and setbacks of the Trump regime in Latin America,
the European Union and Asia (including the Middle East).
Secondly, we will examine the time frame – the shifting direction of the present
configuration of forces.
We will conclude by discussing how the influence and results of foreign policy shape
domestic political power.
Background to President Trump's Empire Building
First and foremost, we must take account of the fact that much of Trump's policies build on
and reflect the policies of his predecessors, namely Presidents Bush and Obama.
The US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were started by Presidents Clinton, Bush
and Obama, The US bombings of Libya and the destruction and uprooting of millions of Africans
was inaugurated by Obama.
The expulsion of millions of Central American and Mexican immigrants from the US was common
practice prior to Trump.
In brief President Trump continued , and in some cases exacerbated, the socio-economic and
military policies, of his predecessors. In a few areas Trump reversed policies, as was the case
with Obama's Nuclear Agreement with Iran.
The successes and failures of Trump's empire building policies cannot be attributed solely
to his regime. Nevertheless, President Trump must be held responsible for the current state of
the empire and its direction.
President Trump Marches Forward in Latin America
President Trump has built upon and extended US imperial victories throughout most of Latin
America. Satellite regimes are in place in Brazil thanks largely to judicial-legislative coup
which overthrew President elect Dilma Rousseff. The puppet regime of Michel Temer has
privatized the economy, embraced Trump's dominance and aligned with efforts to overthrow
Venezuela's government.
Similarly, Trump inherited from Obama the present client regimes in Argentina (President
Mauricio Macri), Peru (President Martin Vizcarra) ,Honduras (President Hernandez) Paraguay
(President Cartes), Chile (President Piñera), Ecuador (President Moreno), and most of
the ruling elites in Central America and the Caribbean. Trump has added to the list current
efforts to overthrow the Daniel Ortega regime in Nicaragua.
Under President Trump, Washington succeeded in reversing relations with Cuba and the
so-called peace accord in Colombia between the guerrillas and the Juan Manuel Santos regime. In
July 2018, Trump succeeded in backing the accession to power of Ivan Duque a
protégé of the far-right party of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia. President Obama's
reversal of center-left regimes via coups have been consolidated and expanded by Trump with the
important exception of Mexico.
Trump partially reversed Obama's opening of relations with Cuba and threatens to militarily
invade Venezuela.
Trump's imperial empire in Latin America is, for the most part, inherited and largely
sustained . . . for now.
But there are several crucial caveats.
Mexico's new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is likely to pursue
independent and progressive foreign and domestic policies, renegotiating NAFTA, oil contracts
and border disputes.
Secondly, Brazil and Argentina's neo-liberal economic policies are in deep crises and the
incumbent puppet regimes are economically unstable, face mass social opposition and likely will
suffer electoral defeats in 2018.
Thirdly, Venezuela and Cuba have successfully resisted economic and diplomatic
sanctions.
Militarily, President Trump retains US military bases in Colombia and has incorporated
Bogata into NATO and he has secured military operations in Argentina and Ecuador.
The biggest challenge to Trump's empire building in Latin America is in the all-important
economic realm .
Trump has failed to gain ground in trade, investment and raw materials in the face of
competition with China.
Despite the political and military subordination of Latin American regimes to Washington,
the bulk of their trade ties are with China. Moreover, Brazil and Argentina will increase their
agro-exports to China in line with Beijing's trade tariffs on US exports. In the so-called
trade war not a single Latin American client state has sided with the US. On the contrary, all
are taking advantage of Washington's loss of the China market to enhance their exports.
Clearly the US does not exercise 'hegemony' over Latin America's trading relations.
Worse still, Trump's dumping of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threats to withdraw from
NAFTA have reduced Washington's leverage over Latin America and Asia.
Trump's boasts and claims of dominance over Latin America is largely a product of his
predecessors' imperial policies.
At most, Trump's policies have hardened the far right, which however, is weakening
politically and economically and has provoked the rise of the left to power in Mexico and
increased opposition in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.
In sum the Trump regime's empire building retain decided influence in Latin America but
faces major challenges – and reversals.
Trump in Asia: One Step Forward, Two Step Backward
Washington has gained prestige for its diplomatic overtures to North Korea but is losing the
trade war with the world's second greatest power, China.
China, faced with Trump's economic war, has diversified its trading partners thus
undermining key US agro-business enterprises.
China has implemented tariffs on: canola, soybeans, corn, cotton, pork and beef.
Moreover, China has replaced the US as the main trading partner throughout Asia.
While Japan, South Korea and Australia provide military bases for the US they are eager to
replace Washington's export to China.
Moreover, China's multi-billion dollar, Belt and Road Initiative has secured sixty-eight
nations as partners, with the prominent absence of the self-excluded USA.
US economic sanctions against Iran have failed to undermine the governments' oil exports ,
while banking transactions and imports of manufacturing and service products are replaced by
China, Russia , India and most of Asia. All of whom will increase their trade with Teheran.
In the Middle East and South Asia, the US can no longer count on clients or allies except
for Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, the Saudi's rejected Trump's demand to increase oil production to lower oil prices
for US consumers.
Israel is a 'loyal ally' to Washington when it suits their own economic advantages and
hegemonic aspirations. For example, Israel has continued to expand ties with Russia even in
violation of US sanctions.
Pakistan, Myanmar and Cambodia have moved closer to China as a result of increasing
financial and infrastructure aid.
ORDER IT NOW
In balance, the US continues to exercise military dominance in Asia via its bases in South
Korea, Japan and Australia. However, it is losing economic influence and presence in the rest
of Asia. If history is any precedent, imperial empires without economic foundations, sooner or
later crumble, especially when rising regional powers are capable of replacing them.
The European Union and Trump's Empire: Partner, Client or Rival?
The European Union (EU) is the largest market in the world and yet remains a political and
military dependency of Washington.
The EU has suffered from its lack of an independent foreign policy – its reliance on
NATO, a US subsidiary is one of the main reasons.
President Trump has exploited the EU's weakness to defy its policies on several strategic
issues, ranging from the Paris Agreement on climate change, to the nuclear agreement with Iran,
to Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Trump's tariff on EU exports is the
latest and most provocative effort to defy and dominate the region.
Moreover, the EU is increasingly divided over immigration, the UK departure (Brexit), as
well as the economic and political and economic split between Germany , Italy and Poland.
In effect the Trump regime can no longer count on a powerful unified alliance at its
behest,in its quest for a global empire.
Rather, under Trump, the US seeks to secure economic supremacy and supreme
political-military dominance.
President Trump demands that the EU countries double their military budgets in order to
increase the Pentagon's arms spending.
As a result of the divisions and hostilities between the US and EU, President' Trump's
imperial policies have adopted a contradictory strategy of enhancing economic protectionism
with overtures to 'enemy' Russia. By adopting the nationalist slogan, "Making America Strong"
by 'Making the EU Weak' it appears Trump pursues nationalist slogans to promote imperial
goals.
Domestic Growth and Imperial Decline
To date, mid 2018, Trump is riding a wave of domestic growth of the economy, trade and
employment.
Critics claim that this is a short-lived conjuncture which faces powerful counter-currents.
They argue that the trade war and decline of the overseas markets of China, the EU, Mexico,
Canada and elsewhere will provoke a decline of the US.
Trump's strategic gamble is that the US trade war will succeed in opening China's market
while reducing China's exports. Trump hopes US MNC will relocate to the US and increase jobs
and exports. So far this is a pipe dream.
Moreover, the corporate tax windfall has not been accompanied with a decrease in
inequalities and increases in wages.
The result is that Trump faces the real prospects of a decline in exports and popular
electoral support – especially from those adversely affected by declining markets and
deep cuts in health, education and the environment.
Political Consequences of 'America First' in a Corporate Setting
Trump's nationalist economic policies are highly unlikely to enhance empire building ; on
the contrary, the trade war will force the major corporate tax beneficiaries to turn against
Trump. Their overseas trade links with the EU, North America and China will cause them to turn
against Trump.
Empire building trumps America First. Without an economic empire the US will lack the means
to secure the markets necessary to stimulate local exports and production.
Conclusion
President Trump has benefited, and to some extent, succeeded in temporarily gaining
dominance in Latin America, expanding the domestic economy and imposing demands on China, the
EU and North America.
Nevertheless, his policies have undermined allies, antagonized competitors and provoked
retaliation. All of which increases the economic cost of running an empire.
Trump has failed to provide viable substitutes for the EU and China markets. Nor has he
secured the markets of his remaining clients in Latin America. The notion that Trump can build
'national capitalism in one country' is a chimera. At most it would require intensive
exploitation of US labor and high rates of investment, sacrificing profits and salaries. The
electoral oligarchy and the mass media will force him to retreat from the trade wars and
surrender to the globalizing elites.
"To date, mid 2018, Trump is riding a wave of fake domestic growth of the economy, trade and
faked employment numbers."
i fixed it for you.
are you trying to tell me you actually believe the numbers coming out of washington dc?
i dont believe you are so daft tbh.
I actually disagree quite a bit with this article. I believe our losses in trade due to the
sanctions is temporary, long term we will have much to gain. Economists have always contended
that there are winners and losers to globalization, same goes for the trade war, there will
be winners and losers, but it's all temporary. Short term maybe the farmers will lose while
the manufacturers will fare better. In the long run however the US will have much more to
gain in all sectors.
This is a game of chickens, ultimately it's all about who needs who more . We are
still at a position where the EU and China need us much more than we need them, thanks to
decades of bad management from these governments that created an export dependency. The tide
is turning however and I think it's fortuitous that Trump sees this and seizes the moment
before it's too late for the US, before we become so weak and other countries become so
strong that we can no longer change the terms of the trade. There is a method to Trump's
madness. I think we will win this tariff war in the not too distant future. China will buckle
long before we will.
The best thing Trump ever said to the EU was this: How about we all have ZERO tariffs? Our
EU "allies" and China all gasped because they know it's unthinkable, they all have their own
constituents to protect through tariffs. Trump was absolutely right. Either we all have ZERO
tariffs or we all have equal tariffs. It's about Effing time a US president finally has the
balls to stand up for America. Go President Trump!!
Petras doesn't get Trump at all.
Trump is trying to DOWNSIZE the US Empire, recognizing that it is financially unsustainable.
He has decided to put America First.
The USA is pretty much autarcic.
The cost of the USA empire is tremendous, more than 800 military bases all over the
world.
Britain already before 1914 was financially unable to sustain its empire, two world wars
completely disintegrated the empire, made the British poor and caused an influx of
migrants.
If Trump knows and understands all these things, I do not know, but what he does suggests
it.
As to the EU, an illusion.
There is no political or cultural Europa, there are some 28 or more different nations and
cultures.
The ideological basis of the EU is that it brings peace, by subjugating the evil Germans, who
caused two world wars and perpetrated the holocaust.
In my opinion the Germans were, and, through continuing propaganda, are still the victims,
the holocaust has been discussed here more than enough.
The weird thing is that the EU is the opposite of what it was meant to be: encapsulating
Germany.
The real capital of the EU is Berlin, with kaiserin Merkel, trying to create better Germans
through large scale immigration.
Merkel now has manoevred herself also into an impossible position with two other projects,
closing nuclear power stations all of a sudden, thus building coal electric plants, and
pretending reducing CO2 emission, at the same time needing more Russian gas.
Trump blackmails Germany with its exports to the USA, export always having been the Achilles
heel of Germany.
As with all megalomane projects, they fail.
The EU is falling apart, migration not the cause, just the fuse in the powder keg that the EU
always was.
These are interesting times, someone deliberately dissolving an empire, and a fake empire
dissolving
The points made by Petras, that he would attribute entirely to Trump's huge incompetence,
are also noted by James Jatras. Jatras at least concedes that Trump might be bringing down
the empire deliberately -- and in that case there could be no one he could share his plans
with.
Trump is on the face of it a poisonous shabbos goy, and we have a duty to keep calling him
on it. Still, we have to keep some small part of our minds ready to acknowledge the opposite,
something almost unimaginably heroic.
Trump is a Freemason, ceremonial President. Every President since JFK has been a fake,
ceremonial President. The Presidents since JFK don't actually hold real power or authority.
They are cheerleaders for the Deep State. Trump even said as much during the campaign saying
he would be a better cheerleader than Obama. Israel and the MIC/Deep State control America,
not the President or Congress. Hopefully Putin is not fooled by the theatrics, but then again
with Putin's groveling before Natanyahoo, I'm not sure there's much hope in the present
crisis.
We're making a hard course correction away from one world governments and back towards
autonomy. That involves the deliberate compartmentalization of nations with
(ethno)nationalism as a bulwark against the spread of globalism. And Europe's coming along
for the ride because we both need each other as allies for what is to come. Needless to say,
the divorce is going to get very ugly.
Honestly though, you make it sound so bad, like we've been derailed from the road to
utopia by Trump or something. All he's really done is given us back the ability to voice our
own self-interests after Cultural Marxism stripped us of it with the better part of a
century's worth of social engineering. And in doing so, ensured that if Western Civilization
is going down anytime soon, it's going to have to be with a bang and not the originally
planned whimper.
Meanwhile in the real world, Trump continues to give millions in foreign aid to Israel and
Saudi Arabia while homeless vets rot on the rotting streets and millions of hard-working
blue-collar Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Sadly, Trump has turned out to be a Neocon puppet. Whether he was their boy all along or
has been compromised by them, same difference at this point.
As a personality and politician Trump is infinitely smaller then Putin. So the only trump card he has is "imperial arrogance".
Also Trump is severely constrained by what he do or offer by the Deep State, especially intelligence agencies which have semi-autonomous
power in the USA and are no longer under direct control of the government, representing a shadow government by itself. Brennan attempt
to unseat Trump is just one recent example.
He also has a full of neocons cabinet now. Just Pompeo is very dangerous neocon indeed.
Notable quotes:
"... However, Washington's dominant position has also led to some foreign policy bad habits. Because U.S. leaders have not had to deal with serious peer competitors in a long time, they appear to have lost the art of skillful, nuanced diplomacy. Even before the arrival of the Trump administration, U.S. policy exhibited a growing arrogance and lack of realism about diplomatic objectives. ..."
"... If the hardliners had prevailed, no summit would have taken place. Their demands were multiple poison pills to any feasible negotiations. ..."
"... even more than he did with North Korea, he needs to make major changes in current U.S. policy toward Russia and reject the advice and demands that Russophobic hardliners are pushing. Once again, the president must distinguish between achievable and unachievable goals. And he must be willing to make meaningful concessions to the Russian leader to secure the former. ..."
"... Some of Washington's existing demands are manifestly unrealistic . Russia is not going to reverse its annexation of Crimea and return that territory to Ukraine. The Kremlin's move was at least partly a response to the clumsy and provocative actions that the United States and key European Union powers took to support demonstrators who unseated Ukraine's elected, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, before the expiration of his term. Moscow was not about to accept that Western power play and watch the region containing Russia's main naval base come under the control of a manifestly hostile Ukrainian regime. ..."
"... With regard to Syria, Trump should inform Putin that the United States is ceasing its efforts to unseat Assad -- a venture that has been a disaster, in any case. To reinforce that pledge, the United States should offer to withdraw all of its forces over the next year. ..."
"... In conducting serious negotiations with Putin, President Trump has an opportunity for a diplomatic (and public relations) success that would exceed his achievement with the Kim summit. To do so, however, he must make a major course correction in how the United States handles delicate and dangerous situations with adversaries. Indeed, he must take an important step in America's willingness to relearn the techniques of achievable diplomacy. ..."
However, Washington's dominant position has also led to some foreign policy bad habits. Because U.S. leaders have not had
to deal with serious peer competitors in a long time, they appear to have lost the art of skillful, nuanced diplomacy. Even before
the arrival of the Trump administration, U.S. policy exhibited a growing arrogance and lack of realism about diplomatic objectives.
The upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin affords an opportunity to relearn the requirements
of effective diplomacy. If handled poorly, though, it will underscore the adverse consequences of Washington's rigid approach to
world affairs.
Too many American politicians, pundits, and foreign policy operatives seem to believe that when dealing with an adversary, diplomacy
should consist of issuing a laundry list of demands, including manifestly unrealistic ones, without offering even a hint of meaningful
concessions. Critics of Trump's summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un epitomized that attitude. Some of them excoriated the president
just for his willingness to accord Kim implicit equal status by approving a bilateral meeting. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
groused
that President Trump "elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime's status quo."
Others grudgingly conceded that the summit theoretically might have been an appropriate move, but argued that Washington should
have demanded major substantive and irreversible North Korean steps toward denuclearization in exchange for such a prestigious meeting.
In other words, they wanted North Korea's capitulation on the central issue before Trump even agreed to a summit. Critics were furious
that such a capitulation was not at least enshrined in the joint statement emerging from the meeting. And if that hardline stance
was not enough, they insisted that Trump should have made North Korea's human rights record a feature of the negotiations. Washington
Post columnist E.J. Dionne
asserted that "our wrongful indifference to human rights in the past should not be used as an excuse to justify apologias for
dictatorships in our time."
The lack of realism such positions exhibit is breathtaking. If the hardliners had prevailed, no summit would have taken place.
Their demands were multiple poison pills to any feasible negotiations. And the consequences flowing from the course they favored
would have been the perpetuation, if not escalation, of alarming tensions on the Korean Peninsula. By spurning their advice, Trump
secured a worthwhile change in the dynamics of the U.S.-North Korean relationship. The rapprochement may yet falter, since there
are still extremely serious disagreements between the two countries, but the summit was a beneficial reset that has reduced the danger
of a catastrophic military confrontation. Because he focused on the achievable, Trump secured a modest, but constructive, gain both
for the United States and the East Asian region.
The president has an opportunity for an even more important success in his upcoming summit with Putin. But even more than he did
with North Korea, he needs to make major changes in current U.S. policy toward Russia and reject the advice and demands that Russophobic
hardliners are pushing. Once again, the president must distinguish between achievable and unachievable goals. And he must be willing
to make meaningful concessions to the Russian leader to secure the former.
Some of Washington's existing demands are
manifestly unrealistic .
Russia is not going to reverse its annexation of Crimea and return that territory to Ukraine. The Kremlin's move was at least partly
a response to the clumsy and provocative
actions that the United States and key European Union powers took to support demonstrators who unseated Ukraine's elected, pro-Russian
president, Viktor Yanukovych, before the expiration of his term. Moscow was not about to accept that Western power play and watch
the region containing Russia's main naval base come under the control of a manifestly hostile Ukrainian regime. Given the stakes
involved, Russia is no more likely to withdraw from Crimea than Israel is likely to return the Golan Heights to Syria or Turkey return
occupied northern Cyprus to the Republic of Cyprus. Persisting in an utterly unattainable demand regarding Crimea before U.S. and
EU sanctions against Russia will be lifted is pointless.
Inducing the Kremlin to reduce and phase out its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine is more achievable. Indeed,
despite the hysterical allegations
that appear periodically in the Western press, Russia's backing of the insurgents has been quite limited and is far less than constituting
an "invasion." Putin shows little stomach for making Ukraine an arena for a full-fledged confrontation with the West.
A similar situation exists with respect to Syria. The Kremlin clearly wishes to see Bashar al-Assad remain in power, and given
the extreme Islamist orientation of many of Assad's opponents, that is not an outrageous position. Nevertheless, Putin has avoided
establishing a large-scale Russian military, especially ground force, presence in that country. He apparently wishes to confine Moscow's
role to protecting its naval base at Tartus and assisting Assad's military efforts
with Russian air power . There appears to be an
opportunity for Washington to gain assurances from the Kremlin that its involvement in Syria will not escalate and might even recede
gradually.
To secure such goals, though, the U.S. would need to offer some appealing concessions to Putin. In exchange for ending Russian
support of Ukrainian secessionists and confirming Moscow's toleration of the anti-Russian regime in Kiev, Trump should be willing
to sign an agreement pledging that the United States will neither propose not endorse NATO membership for
Ukraine or Georgia . NATO's
previous waves of enlargement right up to Russia's border
were
a key factor in the deterioration of the West's relations with Moscow. It is time to end that provocation. In addition to that
concession, Trump should pledge that NATO military exercises (war games) in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea will come to an end.
In exchange, the United States ought to insist that Russian forces end their provocative deployments in Kaliningrad and along Russia's
frontier with NATO members.
With regard to Syria, Trump should inform Putin that the United States is ceasing its efforts to unseat Assad -- a venture that
has been a disaster, in any case. To reinforce that pledge, the United States should offer to withdraw all of its forces over the
next year. Those moves would tacitly accept Russia as the leading foreign power in terms of influence in Syria. Such a concession
is a simple recognition
of reality . Syria is barely 600 miles from Russia's border; it is 6,000 miles from the American homeland. Moscow's interests
are understandably more central than America's, given that geographic factor alone.
In conducting serious negotiations with Putin, President Trump has an opportunity for a diplomatic (and public relations)
success that would exceed his achievement with the Kim summit. To do so, however, he must make a major course correction in how the
United States handles delicate and dangerous situations with adversaries. Indeed, he must take an important step in America's willingness
to relearn the techniques of achievable diplomacy.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor
at The American Conservative, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles
on international affairs.
"... Damascus and Moscow welcomed Iran's critical contribution to defeating the opposition and giving Washington and its allies a diplomatic bloody nose in the bargain. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledges that Iran's presence in Syria -- at the invitation of the regime -- is legitimate and that it would be "unrealistic" to demand its ouster. ..."
"... But instead of viewing the end of the war as an opportunity to lessen Iran's value to the regime and to reduce its footprint in the country, Washington is continuing heedlessly with failed policies created for an environment that no longer exists. As long as the fighting continues and the regime's efforts to reassert sovereignty over the entire country are frustrated by U.S. deployments in the northeast and southeast, Iran's military presence in the country is secure. Likewise, Washington shows no sign of reconsidering international sanctions against the regime, which also forces Syria into the arms of Tehran. ..."
"... A colorblind appraisal of the effects of U.S. policy in Iraq and now Syria would suggest that Washington is either brilliantly in cahoots with Iran to the latter's benefit or is being outplayed by weaker but more clear-eyed players. My vote goes squarely to the latter. ..."
"... Confronted with the disintegration of its diplomatic and military strategy, the Trump administration is reduced to playing spoiler, obstructing the inevitable restoration of the regime's sovereignty over the country and continuing the punishing sanctions that have removed the battered but resilient Syrian private sector from international capital and commercial markets. This policy fails on two fronts -- it creates more gratuitous misery for the Syrian people and it undermines the stated U.S. objective of reducing and removing Iranian and Hezbollah influence in the country. Indeed, continuing to pursue the current policies will leave the U.S. isolated among friends (Jordan and Israel) as well as frenemy Russia, and will postpone rather than speed the day that Iran leaves Syria. ..."
Washington has been on the offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran for close to half
a century. Largely as a result, Iran, a rounding error in the superpower sweepstakes, has gone
from strength to strength, challenging American power throughout the region, most notably in
Iraq and Syria.
U.S.-led regime change in Iraq created Tehran's historic opportunity to return to Baghdad
for the first time since the creation of the Ottoman caliphate in the 15th century. This
unscripted but entirely predictable outcome was no mean feat, all the more so for being the
opposite of what Washington intended.
The Bush administration knew that it no longer wanted Saddam in the chair, but could not
think beyond this one, giant, uncharted leap into the future. Iran has a far greater and more
lasting interest in the affairs of its neighbor and often bitter enemy. As a consequence, the
mullahs are playing a far longer, and more successful, game.
The legacy of unintended consequences continues to define Washington's policy towards Iraq a
generation after the first Gulf War ended. And so too with Syria. In both countries, U.S.
shortcomings have created a historic opportunity for Iran to enhance its influence in Arab
arenas that when not actively hostile to it (Iraq) are at best lukewarm (Syria).
When asked about Syria's relationship with Iran, Farouk Shara'a, longtime foreign minister
and vice president, once explained to a mutual friend, "You don't have to love the woman you
are sleeping with."
Syria has been in bed with Iran for decades. Saddam's war against Iran in the '80s, the rise
of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and most recently the war against the Assad regime in Syria, have
conspired to throw these two unlikely allies into a cold embrace.
Washington has been oblivious to this essentially ambivalent Syrian attitude towards Iran,
and remains equally so to the opportunities it creates to reduce Iran's footprint in postwar
Syria. Now that the war is winding down, the value of Iran's military contribution to Syria is
declining. In parallel, Syria's interest in reducing the power of its erstwhile Iranian and
Russian friends over its destiny increases.
Damascus and Moscow welcomed Iran's critical contribution to defeating the opposition
and giving Washington and its allies a diplomatic bloody nose in the bargain. Russian foreign
minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledges that Iran's presence in Syria -- at the invitation of the
regime -- is legitimate and that it would be "unrealistic" to demand its ouster.
But while Iran's wartime contribution proved critical to victory, neither Assad nor Putin
was displeased to distance Iranian-backed elements from the recent battle front in the south.
Neither has an interest in enabling Tehran to pursue a postwar Syrian agenda towards Lebanon
and Israel. Nor is either enamored with Iran's continuing efforts to reshape the Syrian
military in its image. On these important issues, Iran stands all but alone against an
invisible, de facto coalition that includes Washington and the EU alongside Israel, Moscow, and
the Assad regime itself.
But instead of viewing the end of the war as an opportunity to lessen Iran's value to
the regime and to reduce its footprint in the country, Washington is continuing heedlessly with
failed policies created for an environment that no longer exists. As long as the fighting
continues and the regime's efforts to reassert sovereignty over the entire country are
frustrated by U.S. deployments in the northeast and southeast, Iran's military presence in the
country is secure. Likewise, Washington shows no sign of reconsidering international sanctions
against the regime, which also forces Syria into the arms of Tehran.
A colorblind appraisal of the effects of U.S. policy in Iraq and now Syria would suggest
that Washington is either brilliantly in cahoots with Iran to the latter's benefit or is being
outplayed by weaker but more clear-eyed players. My vote goes squarely to the latter.
Apart from the lingering campaign against ISIS, in every other respect the U.S. effort in
Syria is imploding. Washington under Obama and now Trump has been forced to uneasily
acknowledge the regime's staying power. It has now been reduced to bickering over the details
of Syrian constitutional reform in the postwar era, a waste of time if ever there was one.
Lately, the U.S. secretary of state, from his respected perch, has personally threatened
Iran's key military strategist and architect of its advances in Iraq and Syria, Qassem
Sulemani, a sure sign that the policymaking process at State is frozen.
In the field, Washington has ignominiously abandoned allies in the southern front. And in
the northeast, the Kurds have embarked on the road back to Damascus, imperiling Washington's
deployment there.
Confronted with the disintegration of its diplomatic and military strategy, the Trump
administration is reduced to playing spoiler, obstructing the inevitable restoration of the
regime's sovereignty over the country and continuing the punishing sanctions that have removed
the battered but resilient Syrian private sector from international capital and commercial
markets. This policy fails on two fronts -- it creates more gratuitous misery for the Syrian
people and it undermines the stated U.S. objective of reducing and removing Iranian and
Hezbollah influence in the country. Indeed, continuing to pursue the current policies will
leave the U.S. isolated among friends (Jordan and Israel) as well as frenemy Russia, and will
postpone rather than speed the day that Iran leaves Syria.
Geoffrey Aronson is chairman and co-founder of The Mortons Group and a non-resident
scholar at the Middle East Institute.
A colorblind appraisal of the effects of U.S. policy in Iraq and now Syria would suggest
that Washington is either brilliantly in cahoots with Iran to the latter's benefit or is
being outplayed by weaker but more clear-eyed players. My vote goes squarely to the
latter.
US foreign policy is controlled by the Israeli lobby and to a lesser extent, by the Saudi
lobby. The illegal and unprovoked attacks by the US on Iraq, Libya and Syria were done at the
behest of these lobbies. The only country that has benefited from all this bloodshed is
Israel, which now dominates the Middle East.
Since this obvious truth cannot be said out aloud, we need to pretend we don't know who is
behind all the mayhem in the Middle East, like this pointless article does.
The writer can't see the forest for the trees. Successive U.S. administrations have behaved
irresponsibly to enhance Israel's position in the guise of bring "democracy" to the region.
Washington's failures have created ongoing misery in Iraq, a failed state in Libya and the
destruction of the ancient land of Syria.
The U.S. continues to
pretend it had no role in the creation of the huge refugee problem that followed its
interventions in Libya and Syria.
No lessons learned, the folly is being played out daily in Yemen where the Pentagon is
leading the a campaign of death and destruction alongside its "democratic" allies, the Salman
clan of Arabia and the sheikhs of the Persian Gulf minnow petrostates.
"the stated U.S. objective of reducing and removing Iranian and Hezbollah influence "
I've yet to see a compelling reason for this "stated objective". If you want to argue that
it's an American interest because the Israel Lobby wants it, well, OK, there are politicians
who can be bribed to do Israel's will, but no real American would agree.
One of these days an American president will make an "opening to Iran" as Nixon once made
one to China. Surely we can bury the hatchet with Iran for the sake of a grand bargain that
accomplishes America's one real interest in the Middle East, which is to free ourselves of the
various parasites who entangle us in their messes, and get the hell out of there. Some of us
hoped that Trump might be that president, but it wasn't meant to be.
"The U.S. continues to
pretend it had no role in the creation of the huge refugee problem that followed its
interventions in Libya and Syria."
Which is ridiculous. When you bomb, invade, and arm insurgencies in people's countries, a
lot of people run away. Everybody knows that.
In the case of our bombing, invading, and/or arming insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, and Syria, a lot of people ran away.
Millions ran into Turkey. Millions more ran through Turkey into Greece and then up through
the Balkans into other NATO countries. And still more came up from Africa and sailed away from
the shores of ruined Libya to our NATO allies Italy, Spain, and France.
We did this. Everybody knows we did it. It's absurd to deny it. What's worse is that many of
the allies destabilized by the refugees warned or even begged us not to start those wars. With
no American interest at stake, no real risk assessment, and no exit strategy formulated, we did
it anyway.
Much simpler explanation: For decades, the United States has been the loyal servant of Israel,
and to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia, faithfully carrying out its masters' every dictate.
As an unintended consequence of Israeli/Saudi policy, Iran has grown much stronger.
The only reason that the US foreign policy establishment is rushing headlong into a war with
Iran is because Israel and Saudi Arabia are terrified of the Iran that they have created.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the clergyman who defied the German Nazi regime and got executed for his
resistance, once observed that "war is not the opposite of peace, 'security' is the opposite
of peace." I might also add it is the opposite of freedom and civilization as well, because
both require trust.
Bombing for Votes: Public opinion shifts during the Iraq war and implications for future
conflicts
Despite the recent summit in Singapore, which mostly made for good television and little
substance, North Korea appears to be
quickly ignoring any promises -- whether implicit, explicit, or imagined -- made to
President Trump to dismantle its nuclear program. In Iran,
Trump's decision to withdraw from the six-party nuclear deal and the re-imposition of
sanctions has created a possibility that Iran will resume pursuing a nuclear weapon of its own.
The common thread between Iran and North Korea, of course, is the continued march of nuclear
proliferation and, with it, an elevated chance of the US initiating armed conflict as a means
to slow or stop such proliferation.
In this post, I'm not going to speculate how probable armed conflict with either Iran or
North Korea might be (although I might take a shot at it in a future post). Instead, I'm
interested in what the public reaction to such a conflict would be and how it would affect
support for Trump, especially in the run up to an election.
To estimate public reaction, it's useful to consider how the public mood shifted throughout
the course of the Iraq war. Even 15 years after it started, the Iraq war continues to be
divisive. As shown in the chart below
from Pew Research , when the Iraq invasion was first launched in March, 2003 a large
majority of the country supported it as the "right decision." By early 2005, however, that
support eroded and has remained relatively stable since then.
Similar to the start of the Iraq war, other research has shown a public "rally around the
flag" effect at the outset of military action. One study , for example,
looked at 41 US foreign policy crises and found the average effect was a boost of 1.4
percentage points to the president's approval rating. But, when the military action was large
enough to merit front-page coverage by the New York Times, that effect jumped by another 8
percentage points, representing a significant lift for any president.
Considering these examples, a president with a low approval rating might be tempted to
initiate an armed conflict in the run-up to an election as a way to shore up public support, at
least temporarily. Given Trump's lack of scruples about any action that might in some way
benefit him, such a scenario is within the realm of possibility for the 2018 midterm elections
or the 2020 presidential election.
Research on the influence of major events on presidential approval ratings, however, shows
that the public reaction to armed conflict cannot be taken for granted. A research paper
recently
published in Presidential Studies Quarterly looked at how approval ratings fluctuated over
the course of George W. Bush's presidency and analyzed the causes of those fluctuations. The
authors reasoned that Bush's presidency was ideal for studying presidential support because it
was so eventful -- the September 11 th terrorist attacks happened during his first
year in office, then Bush initiated large-scale invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the
Great Recession started toward the end of his presidency.
To examine factors that influenced Bush's public support, they modeled his approval rating
based on environmental variables (unemployment, inflation, consumer confidence, battle deaths),
major event variables (9/11 attacks, Iraq invasion, market crash), and ordinary event variables
(positive and negative news coverage of international and domestic events). The environmental
variables were weighted based on
Gallup's monthly Most Important Problem poll , which allows the model to consider the
importance of these variables' salience in the public mindset. (For those who are interested,
they used a Newey-West estimator to build the model to account for heteroscedasticity and
autocorrelation in the errors.)
After creating the model, they grouped the independent variables into three categories:
economic, war, and terror. These categories allowed the authors to examine the impact of each
on Bush's approval rating over the course of his presidency, shown in the chart below.
The results in the chart provide interesting insights that challenge some conventional
wisdom. Economic status is often considered one of the most important factors in presidential
approval but -- according to this study, at least -- for Bush, the economy was almost a
non-factor until the very end of his presidency when the Great Recession started. The 9/11
terrorist attacks, and Bush's response to them, including bombing Afghanistan, provided an
initially huge boost to his approval. But that jump faded almost entirely within a year. The
beginning of the Iraq war, by contrast, provided only a very small, short-term boost to Bush's
approval ratings, which quickly turned into a large negative that continued to weigh down his
ratings for the remainder of his term. By examining the model variables, it's clear that troop
casualty reports had a particularly significant negative impact within the war category.
Based on these results, the study's authors concluded that it is the salience of events that
matters as much or more than the events themselves. When 9/11 happened, people wanted security
and rewarded Bush for taking decisive action that made them feel safer. When the Iraq war
started, the effects of war weariness kicked in fairly quickly and people wanted fewer
causalities and peace. When the Great Recession began, people forgot about everything else and
looked to their own economic prospects.
With those lessons in mind, initiating an armed conflict with Iran or North Korea would be a
high-risk approach to boosting public support in the run-up to an election. Both countries have
powerful militaries and any conflict could quickly lead to high casualty numbers. While no
military action would be risk free, an engineered conflict with a target that could be attacked
with minimal threat to US troops, such as Syria or Yemen, could induce a short-term rallying
effect. As elections approach later this year and in 2020, keep your eyes on those and other
"soft" targets to see if the president tries to bomb his way to his desired outcome.
Joel , July 9, 2018 6:59 am
I'm expecting some sort of Reichstag fire event.
Daniel Becker , July 9, 2018 4:58 pm
All true, though I speculate a draft would change things. Which is why we have an "all
volunteer" military. Those that like the military and war learned well. Unfortunately, it makes
for a defense force that no longer reflects the population which I do not think is good.
NATO is tool of the US empire. "Fuck EU" is a famous, expressed by Nuland ( who was US rep in NATO) slogan. So raising
spending is the way to improve the US btrade balance with EU.
President Trump is, rightly, stirring the pot in Europe today, reportedly demanding that
NATO leaders increase their defense spending targets from 2 to 4% , according to the Bulgarian
president.
"President Trump, who spoke, raised the question not just to reach 2%, today, but set a
new target – 4%," Bulgarian president Rumen Radev told reporters, according to Reuters,
citing BNR public radio.
"NATO is not a bourse a which one can buy security. But yes, on the other hand, President
Trump is right, as each country should build its effective capabilities, and the
unwillingness with which Bulgaria spends money on defense is obvious."
As a reminder, US only spends 3.57% of GDP (which is the most), and as one French official
noted, "it wasn't a demand, rather just a mention.".
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that:
"During the president's remarks today at the NATO summit, he suggested that countries not
only meet their commitment of 2 per cent of their GDP on defence spending, but that they
increase it to 4 per cent," Sanders said after the closed-door meeting of NATO leaders.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was reluctant to endorse such a move.
"I will focus on what we have agreed and we have agreed that we committed to the pledge
increasing defense spending to 2 percent," he told reporters. "And let's start with that. We
have a way to go."
"We do have disagreements, but most importantly, we have decisions that are pushing this
alliance forward and making us stronger," Stoltenberg said.
"At the end of the day, we all agree that North America and Europe are safer
together."
And then President Trump doubled-down on his earlier shot at Germany:
"Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of
its energy from Russia," Trump told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a fiery
on-camera exchange that was among the harshest in the history of the post-World War II
alliance.
"We have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that's being paid to the
country we're supposed to be protecting you against," Trump said, referring to European
purchases of Russian natural gas.
blasting "What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and
energy?"
Trump then returned to the broader NATO membership, asking "Why are their only 5 out of 29
countries that have met their commitment? The U.S. is paying for Europe's protection, then
loses billions on Trade."
Trump ended with ALL CAPS: " Must pay 2% of GDP IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025. " As a reminder,
NATO members agreed in 2014 to spend at least 2 percent of their respective GDP on defense by
2024. The goals are also for each country's own defense budget, not payments into the
alliance.
One glance at the current spending levels and it is clear that Trump is right.
If Trump wants to sell more military hardware to the European deadbeats, he should stop
nagging them to death and, instead, promptly pull out of NATO.
Their militaries are almost non-existent and when they lose the Article V Umbrella, they
will come crawling, lining up around the block, and begging us to sell our hardware to
them.
Germany, France, and the UK do have a few shitty planes, tanks, and ships, but it would
take 15-20 years to mass-produce them.
We've been resting on our laurels since the fall of the Berlin Wall and our hardware ain't
much better than theirs – we just happen to have a lot of it.
So, Donald, pull the fuck out – show them (and us) that you can actually WALK AWAY.
Pretty please with a dingleberry on top? ;-)
All wars are bankers wars. The Cold War was fake and only created by both sides to control
their population and tax them. Listen to US colonel who delivered all US military patents and
the nuclear bomb to Stalin. Those decisions are made by a few, very powerful.
Seems to be a development of his idea that Mexico should pay for the wall to keep illegal
immigrants out of the US. This version is that the EU should pay for the costs of the US
bullying and interfering in other countries affairs even though it only benefits Israel.
Case in point the middle east where thanks to Israeli US meddling the EU has been saddled
with dealing with the refugees. Now Trump wants the EU to pick up the costs of the US
military meddling as well. Classis symptoms of a screw loose.
What is NATO supposed to be defending against anyway? The USSR fell a generation ago and
the current threat is third world Muslims flooding into the west but they welcome that.
I could see maybe if NATO was sinking ships in the med and gunning down packs of invaders
at the borders to Europe they would have a place but they are doing exactly the opposite of
this.
The problem is that many countries in Eastern Europe are useless economically. Without
being played like pawns by militant imperialists they cannot survive. So they accepts bribes
from the West and from the East, pretending they haven't made up their mind as to which side
they want to be on. And the truth is - they're on the side of money.
They don't care if there are radar stations or missile silos installed on their soil. They
don't care even about becoming a potential target in case a war breaks out. All they want is
to extort maximum buck out of rivaling factions. Some NATO members can afford to disband the
organizations. For smaller players it's a cash cow and a source of employment. Without NATO
they would be non-competitive economically.
You got my curiousity going... US bases in Germany are...
- leased out from Germany to US rent-free
- any improvements/extensions during US tenure paid by US
- PX sales exempt from German VAT
- when a base or other facility is closed, the property is returned to Germany as is.
What's not to know? Ever served in any military? It's all self evident in Europe for sure.
The U.S. has simply been biding time. Our over-priced bases are a waste of time. The land war
preparations of NATO are extinct for now.
Things change over time but technology has changed warfare. This world doesn't need
another war. Sure, it's easy to gang up on the U.S. for ventures into the Middle East but any
nation would do the same.
When is the last time ZH ran an article about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan?
Conveniently forgotten? It wasn't that long ago.
How many of those countries will now consider spending more, but for their indigenous
aircraft. Oh, and cancelling, finally, thej boondoggle of the F-35. Saab Grippen costs less
and is made for European skies.
As NATO is a tool of the American Empire, I'm somewhat bemused to see American opinion
manipulated toward seeing it as 'unfair'. Please, by all means, disband the North Atlantic
Terrorist Organisation, and perhaps that other tool of American Imperialism - the UN-
too.
Which America are you referring to? Seems like NATO is more aligned with the
.01%r's/CIA/CFR/NWO etc. clans. I for one would welcome the NATO divorce, except like the
rest of the 99.9%, I ain't in the Empire club.
Well, whoever runs the Evil Empire. Darth Soros, probably. Crying about having to pay for
Europeans is at odds with the realisation that keeping this shitshow alive past the cold war
was the Empire's fucking idea in the first place. If you don't think it's the Empire's party,
why are STANAG standards lead by the US?
The United States IS NATO. He has it all right. The economics of NATO are self-evident to
anyone possessing the skills of 1st grade mathematics.
Times have changed. The charm of a post WWII world is a distant memory. It is without
argument that the United States has been taken for granted since probably 1960. Life goes on
and we enter the turbulent 70's. The U.S. is still carrying the NATO weight for another 40
years.
NATO is probably somewhat an irrelevant throwback to another time. Some alliances are
natural so they won't necessarily "go away" with reductions of U.S. contributions.
The real problem with NATO is the uniquely "European" problem with filling everything with
over-paid bureaucrats. Therein lies the rub.
NATO is how the US keeps its Empire. Boston Tea Party was because Colonists did not pay
for defence but made money building warships for British Empire.......they wanted a free
ride
"... Iran has better – and legal – cause to be in Syria than Victoria Nuland had to meddle in the Ukraine. Impunitivism – do as we tell you, not as we do. ..."
"... I'm not sure which is more worrisome, if Pompeo knew how absurd that is but said it anyway, or if he really doesn't even know ..."
"... What do you not get about us being the ONE INDISPENSABLE NATION (OIN)? The OIN determines and enforces the New World Order! "Rights" don't apply to us. Does God Almighty worry about whether He has the right to do something? No! We have become as Him. ..."
"... It's sort of an interesting concept, and a very new one. I can't recall American saying that Country X can have no dealings with Country Y. I don't think much will come of it. Even assuming that the statement was serious, which there is really no way of knowing, given the Trump/Pompeo propensity to lie, the Iranians must assume that Trump and Pompeo are too ignorant and incompetent to do anything effective about it. ..."
"... No one has any idea when or why to take these people seriously. They say all this blood-curdling stuff one day and a few days later appear to have forgotten it completely and fixated on some other stupid notion. ..."
Mike Pompeo gave an interview to Sky News Arabia
this week in which he made some remarkable statements:
Well, Iran needs to get out of Syria. They have no business there. There's no reason for
them to be there. There's been Iranian influence there for a long time. Iranian forces,
Iranian militias must leave the country.
If Iran has no business in Syria, the U.S. certainly doesn't have any business keeping
troops there. Leave aside the absurdity of the statement that the ally of a government has no
business supporting that government in a war, and just consider the breathtaking hypocrisy of
this statement coming from a U.S. official.
The U.S. is engaged in hostilities in at least a
half dozen countries around the world and attacks other governments at will. Our government has
been actively supporting the Saudi-led attack on Yemen for more than three years, and we have
had U.S. force operating illegally in Syrian territory and airspace for almost four. It is the
height of arrogance and folly to issue this ultimatum. The U.S. has no right or authority to
make such a demand, and the administration should be focused instead on withdrawing our forces
from wars that we have no business fighting or supporting.
What do you not get about us being the ONE INDISPENSABLE NATION (OIN)? The OIN determines and enforces the New World Order! "Rights" don't apply to us. Does God
Almighty worry about whether He has the right to do something? No! We have become as Him.
It's sort of an interesting concept, and a very new one. I can't recall American saying that
Country X can have no dealings with Country Y. I don't think much will come of it. Even assuming that the statement was serious, which
there is really no way of knowing, given the Trump/Pompeo propensity to lie, the Iranians must
assume that Trump and Pompeo are too ignorant and incompetent to do anything effective about
it.
No one has any idea when or why to take these people seriously. They say all this
blood-curdling stuff one day and a few days later appear to have forgotten it completely and
fixated on some other stupid notion.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the clergyman who defied the German Nazi regime and got executed for his
resistance, once observed that "war is not the opposite of peace, 'security' is the opposite
of peace." I might also add it is the opposite of freedom and civilization as well, because
both require trust.
Bombing for Votes: Public opinion shifts during the Iraq war and implications for future
conflicts
Despite the recent summit in Singapore, which mostly made for good television and little
substance, North Korea appears to be
quickly ignoring any promises -- whether implicit, explicit, or imagined -- made to
President Trump to dismantle its nuclear program. In Iran,
Trump's decision to withdraw from the six-party nuclear deal and the re-imposition of
sanctions has created a possibility that Iran will resume pursuing a nuclear weapon of its own.
The common thread between Iran and North Korea, of course, is the continued march of nuclear
proliferation and, with it, an elevated chance of the US initiating armed conflict as a means
to slow or stop such proliferation.
In this post, I'm not going to speculate how probable armed conflict with either Iran or
North Korea might be (although I might take a shot at it in a future post). Instead, I'm
interested in what the public reaction to such a conflict would be and how it would affect
support for Trump, especially in the run up to an election.
To estimate public reaction, it's useful to consider how the public mood shifted throughout
the course of the Iraq war. Even 15 years after it started, the Iraq war continues to be
divisive. As shown in the chart below
from Pew Research , when the Iraq invasion was first launched in March, 2003 a large
majority of the country supported it as the "right decision." By early 2005, however, that
support eroded and has remained relatively stable since then.
Similar to the start of the Iraq war, other research has shown a public "rally around the
flag" effect at the outset of military action. One study , for example,
looked at 41 US foreign policy crises and found the average effect was a boost of 1.4
percentage points to the president's approval rating. But, when the military action was large
enough to merit front-page coverage by the New York Times, that effect jumped by another 8
percentage points, representing a significant lift for any president.
Considering these examples, a president with a low approval rating might be tempted to
initiate an armed conflict in the run-up to an election as a way to shore up public support, at
least temporarily. Given Trump's lack of scruples about any action that might in some way
benefit him, such a scenario is within the realm of possibility for the 2018 midterm elections
or the 2020 presidential election.
Research on the influence of major events on presidential approval ratings, however, shows
that the public reaction to armed conflict cannot be taken for granted. A research paper
recently
published in Presidential Studies Quarterly looked at how approval ratings fluctuated over
the course of George W. Bush's presidency and analyzed the causes of those fluctuations. The
authors reasoned that Bush's presidency was ideal for studying presidential support because it
was so eventful -- the September 11 th terrorist attacks happened during his first
year in office, then Bush initiated large-scale invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the
Great Recession started toward the end of his presidency.
To examine factors that influenced Bush's public support, they modeled his approval rating
based on environmental variables (unemployment, inflation, consumer confidence, battle deaths),
major event variables (9/11 attacks, Iraq invasion, market crash), and ordinary event variables
(positive and negative news coverage of international and domestic events). The environmental
variables were weighted based on
Gallup's monthly Most Important Problem poll , which allows the model to consider the
importance of these variables' salience in the public mindset. (For those who are interested,
they used a Newey-West estimator to build the model to account for heteroscedasticity and
autocorrelation in the errors.)
After creating the model, they grouped the independent variables into three categories:
economic, war, and terror. These categories allowed the authors to examine the impact of each
on Bush's approval rating over the course of his presidency, shown in the chart below.
The results in the chart provide interesting insights that challenge some conventional
wisdom. Economic status is often considered one of the most important factors in presidential
approval but -- according to this study, at least -- for Bush, the economy was almost a
non-factor until the very end of his presidency when the Great Recession started. The 9/11
terrorist attacks, and Bush's response to them, including bombing Afghanistan, provided an
initially huge boost to his approval. But that jump faded almost entirely within a year. The
beginning of the Iraq war, by contrast, provided only a very small, short-term boost to Bush's
approval ratings, which quickly turned into a large negative that continued to weigh down his
ratings for the remainder of his term. By examining the model variables, it's clear that troop
casualty reports had a particularly significant negative impact within the war category.
Based on these results, the study's authors concluded that it is the salience of events that
matters as much or more than the events themselves. When 9/11 happened, people wanted security
and rewarded Bush for taking decisive action that made them feel safer. When the Iraq war
started, the effects of war weariness kicked in fairly quickly and people wanted fewer
causalities and peace. When the Great Recession began, people forgot about everything else and
looked to their own economic prospects.
With those lessons in mind, initiating an armed conflict with Iran or North Korea would be a
high-risk approach to boosting public support in the run-up to an election. Both countries have
powerful militaries and any conflict could quickly lead to high casualty numbers. While no
military action would be risk free, an engineered conflict with a target that could be attacked
with minimal threat to US troops, such as Syria or Yemen, could induce a short-term rallying
effect. As elections approach later this year and in 2020, keep your eyes on those and other
"soft" targets to see if the president tries to bomb his way to his desired outcome.
Joel , July 9, 2018 6:59 am
I'm expecting some sort of Reichstag fire event.
Daniel Becker , July 9, 2018 4:58 pm
All true, though I speculate a draft would change things. Which is why we have an "all
volunteer" military. Those that like the military and war learned well. Unfortunately, it makes
for a defense force that no longer reflects the population which I do not think is good.
NATO is tool of the US empire. "Fuck EU" is a famous, expressed by Nuland ( who was US rep in NATO) slogan. So raising
spending is the way to improve the US btrade balance with EU.
President Trump is, rightly, stirring the pot in Europe today, reportedly demanding that
NATO leaders increase their defense spending targets from 2 to 4% , according to the Bulgarian
president.
"President Trump, who spoke, raised the question not just to reach 2%, today, but set a
new target – 4%," Bulgarian president Rumen Radev told reporters, according to Reuters,
citing BNR public radio.
"NATO is not a bourse a which one can buy security. But yes, on the other hand, President
Trump is right, as each country should build its effective capabilities, and the
unwillingness with which Bulgaria spends money on defense is obvious."
As a reminder, US only spends 3.57% of GDP (which is the most), and as one French official
noted, "it wasn't a demand, rather just a mention.".
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that:
"During the president's remarks today at the NATO summit, he suggested that countries not
only meet their commitment of 2 per cent of their GDP on defence spending, but that they
increase it to 4 per cent," Sanders said after the closed-door meeting of NATO leaders.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was reluctant to endorse such a move.
"I will focus on what we have agreed and we have agreed that we committed to the pledge
increasing defense spending to 2 percent," he told reporters. "And let's start with that. We
have a way to go."
"We do have disagreements, but most importantly, we have decisions that are pushing this
alliance forward and making us stronger," Stoltenberg said.
"At the end of the day, we all agree that North America and Europe are safer
together."
And then President Trump doubled-down on his earlier shot at Germany:
"Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia because it's getting so much of
its energy from Russia," Trump told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a fiery
on-camera exchange that was among the harshest in the history of the post-World War II
alliance.
"We have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that's being paid to the
country we're supposed to be protecting you against," Trump said, referring to European
purchases of Russian natural gas.
blasting "What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and
energy?"
Trump then returned to the broader NATO membership, asking "Why are their only 5 out of 29
countries that have met their commitment? The U.S. is paying for Europe's protection, then
loses billions on Trade."
Trump ended with ALL CAPS: " Must pay 2% of GDP IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025. " As a reminder,
NATO members agreed in 2014 to spend at least 2 percent of their respective GDP on defense by
2024. The goals are also for each country's own defense budget, not payments into the
alliance.
One glance at the current spending levels and it is clear that Trump is right.
If Trump wants to sell more military hardware to the European deadbeats, he should stop
nagging them to death and, instead, promptly pull out of NATO.
Their militaries are almost non-existent and when they lose the Article V Umbrella, they
will come crawling, lining up around the block, and begging us to sell our hardware to
them.
Germany, France, and the UK do have a few shitty planes, tanks, and ships, but it would
take 15-20 years to mass-produce them.
We've been resting on our laurels since the fall of the Berlin Wall and our hardware ain't
much better than theirs – we just happen to have a lot of it.
So, Donald, pull the fuck out – show them (and us) that you can actually WALK AWAY.
Pretty please with a dingleberry on top? ;-)
All wars are bankers wars. The Cold War was fake and only created by both sides to control
their population and tax them. Listen to US colonel who delivered all US military patents and
the nuclear bomb to Stalin. Those decisions are made by a few, very powerful.
Seems to be a development of his idea that Mexico should pay for the wall to keep illegal
immigrants out of the US. This version is that the EU should pay for the costs of the US
bullying and interfering in other countries affairs even though it only benefits Israel.
Case in point the middle east where thanks to Israeli US meddling the EU has been saddled
with dealing with the refugees. Now Trump wants the EU to pick up the costs of the US
military meddling as well. Classis symptoms of a screw loose.
What is NATO supposed to be defending against anyway? The USSR fell a generation ago and
the current threat is third world Muslims flooding into the west but they welcome that.
I could see maybe if NATO was sinking ships in the med and gunning down packs of invaders
at the borders to Europe they would have a place but they are doing exactly the opposite of
this.
The problem is that many countries in Eastern Europe are useless economically. Without
being played like pawns by militant imperialists they cannot survive. So they accepts bribes
from the West and from the East, pretending they haven't made up their mind as to which side
they want to be on. And the truth is - they're on the side of money.
They don't care if there are radar stations or missile silos installed on their soil. They
don't care even about becoming a potential target in case a war breaks out. All they want is
to extort maximum buck out of rivaling factions. Some NATO members can afford to disband the
organizations. For smaller players it's a cash cow and a source of employment. Without NATO
they would be non-competitive economically.
You got my curiousity going... US bases in Germany are...
- leased out from Germany to US rent-free
- any improvements/extensions during US tenure paid by US
- PX sales exempt from German VAT
- when a base or other facility is closed, the property is returned to Germany as is.
What's not to know? Ever served in any military? It's all self evident in Europe for sure.
The U.S. has simply been biding time. Our over-priced bases are a waste of time. The land war
preparations of NATO are extinct for now.
Things change over time but technology has changed warfare. This world doesn't need
another war. Sure, it's easy to gang up on the U.S. for ventures into the Middle East but any
nation would do the same.
When is the last time ZH ran an article about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan?
Conveniently forgotten? It wasn't that long ago.
How many of those countries will now consider spending more, but for their indigenous
aircraft. Oh, and cancelling, finally, thej boondoggle of the F-35. Saab Grippen costs less
and is made for European skies.
As NATO is a tool of the American Empire, I'm somewhat bemused to see American opinion
manipulated toward seeing it as 'unfair'. Please, by all means, disband the North Atlantic
Terrorist Organisation, and perhaps that other tool of American Imperialism - the UN-
too.
Which America are you referring to? Seems like NATO is more aligned with the
.01%r's/CIA/CFR/NWO etc. clans. I for one would welcome the NATO divorce, except like the
rest of the 99.9%, I ain't in the Empire club.
Well, whoever runs the Evil Empire. Darth Soros, probably. Crying about having to pay for
Europeans is at odds with the realisation that keeping this shitshow alive past the cold war
was the Empire's fucking idea in the first place. If you don't think it's the Empire's party,
why are STANAG standards lead by the US?
The United States IS NATO. He has it all right. The economics of NATO are self-evident to
anyone possessing the skills of 1st grade mathematics.
Times have changed. The charm of a post WWII world is a distant memory. It is without
argument that the United States has been taken for granted since probably 1960. Life goes on
and we enter the turbulent 70's. The U.S. is still carrying the NATO weight for another 40
years.
NATO is probably somewhat an irrelevant throwback to another time. Some alliances are
natural so they won't necessarily "go away" with reductions of U.S. contributions.
The real problem with NATO is the uniquely "European" problem with filling everything with
over-paid bureaucrats. Therein lies the rub.
NATO is how the US keeps its Empire. Boston Tea Party was because Colonists did not pay
for defence but made money building warships for British Empire.......they wanted a free
ride
"... Iran has better – and legal – cause to be in Syria than Victoria Nuland had to meddle in the Ukraine. Impunitivism – do as we tell you, not as we do. ..."
"... I'm not sure which is more worrisome, if Pompeo knew how absurd that is but said it anyway, or if he really doesn't even know ..."
"... What do you not get about us being the ONE INDISPENSABLE NATION (OIN)? The OIN determines and enforces the New World Order! "Rights" don't apply to us. Does God Almighty worry about whether He has the right to do something? No! We have become as Him. ..."
"... It's sort of an interesting concept, and a very new one. I can't recall American saying that Country X can have no dealings with Country Y. I don't think much will come of it. Even assuming that the statement was serious, which there is really no way of knowing, given the Trump/Pompeo propensity to lie, the Iranians must assume that Trump and Pompeo are too ignorant and incompetent to do anything effective about it. ..."
"... No one has any idea when or why to take these people seriously. They say all this blood-curdling stuff one day and a few days later appear to have forgotten it completely and fixated on some other stupid notion. ..."
Mike Pompeo gave an interview to Sky News Arabia
this week in which he made some remarkable statements:
Well, Iran needs to get out of Syria. They have no business there. There's no reason for
them to be there. There's been Iranian influence there for a long time. Iranian forces,
Iranian militias must leave the country.
If Iran has no business in Syria, the U.S. certainly doesn't have any business keeping
troops there. Leave aside the absurdity of the statement that the ally of a government has no
business supporting that government in a war, and just consider the breathtaking hypocrisy of
this statement coming from a U.S. official.
The U.S. is engaged in hostilities in at least a
half dozen countries around the world and attacks other governments at will. Our government has
been actively supporting the Saudi-led attack on Yemen for more than three years, and we have
had U.S. force operating illegally in Syrian territory and airspace for almost four. It is the
height of arrogance and folly to issue this ultimatum. The U.S. has no right or authority to
make such a demand, and the administration should be focused instead on withdrawing our forces
from wars that we have no business fighting or supporting.
What do you not get about us being the ONE INDISPENSABLE NATION (OIN)? The OIN determines and enforces the New World Order! "Rights" don't apply to us. Does God
Almighty worry about whether He has the right to do something? No! We have become as Him.
It's sort of an interesting concept, and a very new one. I can't recall American saying that
Country X can have no dealings with Country Y. I don't think much will come of it. Even assuming that the statement was serious, which
there is really no way of knowing, given the Trump/Pompeo propensity to lie, the Iranians must
assume that Trump and Pompeo are too ignorant and incompetent to do anything effective about
it.
No one has any idea when or why to take these people seriously. They say all this
blood-curdling stuff one day and a few days later appear to have forgotten it completely and
fixated on some other stupid notion.
"... IS THE LEASH NOW OFF THE 'OTHER CIA?' https://southfront.org/is-the-leash-now-off-the-other-cia/ ..."
"... Under Donald Trump, who is on record favoring CIA kidnapping and torture programs, the CIA has been given a green light to carry out "targeted assassinations." ..."
Under Donald Trump, who is on record favoring CIA kidnapping and torture programs, the CIA has been given a green light to
carry out "targeted assassinations."
Although most of these targeted kills have been carried out by drone attacks in Yemen, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Somalia, where civilian deaths from "collateral damage" are estimated to be well over three hundred, recent events
point to the CIA's return to the "bad old days," when it engaged in a global program of assassinating political leaders.
"... Trump and his fellow neocons want NATO to serve as a sort of US foreign legion in Third World wars in Africa and Asia. NATO was formed as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to defend western Europe, not to fight in Afghanistan and who knows where else? ..."
"... In Europe, it's hard to find many people who still consider Russia a serious threat except for some tipsy Danes, right wing Swedes, and assorted Russophobic East Europeans. The main fear of Russia seems concentrated in the minds of American neoconservatives, media, and rural Trump supporters, all victims of the bizarre anti-Russian hysteria that has gripped the US. ..."
"... Equally important, most civilians don't understand that neither US and NATO forces nor Russia's military are in any shape to fight war that lasts more than a few days. Both sides lack munitions, spare parts, lubricants, and battlefield equipment. The overworked US Air Force, busy plastering Muslim nations, has actually run low on bombs. US industry can't seems to keep up supplies. There has even been talk of buying explosives from China! ..."
"... At this point NATO is the muscle for projecting and maintaining Western (read US) hegemony. It's activities are a threat to sovereign nations that refuse to be Washington's vassals. So they react with self-defensive postures and programs that NATO can claim are "aggression" in order to justify its own existence. ..."
`We are the schmucks' thundered President Donald Trump, using a favorite New York City
Yiddish term for penis. The object of Trump's wrath at his Make America Great Again' rally in
Great Falls, Montana was the craven, stingy European members of NATO, only 16 of 22 members are
on budget for their US-commanded military spending. Trump wants them to spend much more.
Trump and his fellow neocons want NATO to serve as a sort of US foreign legion in Third
World wars in Africa and Asia. NATO was formed as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to
defend western Europe, not to fight in Afghanistan and who knows where else?
Equally bad, according to Trump, is that the US runs a whopping trade deficit with the
European Union which is busy shipping high-end cars and fine wines to the US. The wicked
foreigners don't buy enough Amerian bourbon, corn and terribly abused pigs.
Trump is quite right that America's NATO allies, particularly Germany and Canada, don't
spend enough on defense. Germany is reported to have less than twenty operational tanks.
Canada's armed forces appear to be smaller than the New York City police department.
But the Europeans ask, 'defense against whom?' The Soviet Union was a huge threat back in
the Cold War when the mighty Red Army had 55,000 tanks pointed West. Today, Russia's land and
navel power has evaporated. Russia has perhaps 5,500 main battle tanks in active service and a
similar number in storage, a far cry from its armored juggernaut of the Cold War.
More important, Russia's military budget for 2018 was only $61 billion, actually down 17%
from last year. That's 4.3% of GDP. Russia is facing hard economic times. Russia has slipped to
third place in military spending after the US, China and Saudi Arabia. The US and its wealthy
allies account for two thirds of world military spending. In fact, the US total military budget
(including for nuclear weapons and foreign wars) is about $1 trillion, 50% of total US
government discretionary spending.
In addition, Russia must defend a vast territory from the Baltic to the Pacific. The US is
fortunate in having Mexico and Canada as neighbors. Russia has North Korea, China, India, the
Mideast and NATO to watch. As with its naval forces, Russia's armies are too far apart to lend
one another mutual support. Two vulnerable rail lines are Russia's main land link between
European Russia and its Pacific Far East.
Trump's supplemental military budget boost this year of $54 billion is almost as large as
Russia's entire 2018 military budget. As for Trump's claim that Europe is not paying its fair
share of NATO expenses, note that that Britain and France combined together spend more on their
military forces than Russia.
ORDER IT NOW
In Europe, it's hard to find many people who still consider Russia a serious threat except
for some tipsy Danes, right wing Swedes, and assorted Russophobic East Europeans. The main fear
of Russia seems concentrated in the minds of American neoconservatives, media, and rural Trump
supporters, all victims of the bizarre anti-Russian hysteria that has gripped the US.
Equally important, most civilians don't understand that neither US and NATO forces nor
Russia's military are in any shape to fight war that lasts more than a few days. Both sides
lack munitions, spare parts, lubricants, and battlefield equipment. The overworked US Air
Force, busy plastering Muslim nations, has actually run low on bombs. US industry can't seems
to keep up supplies. There has even been talk of buying explosives from China!
These essentials of war have been seriously neglected in favor of buying fancy weapons. But
such weapons need spares, electronics, fuel depots, missiles and thousands of essential parts.
As former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld observed, 'you go to war with what you have.'
Neither side has enough. A war would likely peter out in days after supplies were exhausted.
Besides, no side can afford to replace $100 million jet fighters or $5 million apiece tanks
after a war, however brief.
President Trump has learned about war from Fox TV. Europeans have learned from real
experience and don't want any more.
The last time the US put troops into action in North Korea, China lashed out and drove us
back South. In retaliation we dropped more tonnage of bombs and napalm on the North than was
used in the entire Pacific War.
In fact, the US total military budget (including for nuclear weapons and foreign wars)
is about $1 trillion, 50% of total US government discretionary spending.
Disband NATO already. The USSR is gone and Russia has no revanchist plans. Our military
spending on the defense of Europe only frees their budgets for social programs like medical
care and college education.
And what have we gotten for spending the nation's wealth on blowing up the Greater Middle
East, killing a million plus civilians and displacing millions more? Rusting cities,
crumbling infrastructure, a school system that can't compete with even that of India American
Exceptionalism indeed. Exceptionally deluded.
At this point NATO is the muscle for projecting and maintaining Western (read US)
hegemony.
It's activities are a threat to sovereign nations that refuse to be Washington's vassals. So
they react with self-defensive postures and programs that NATO can claim are "aggression" in
order to justify its own existence.
says: July 3, 2018 at 11:23 pm
GMT 500 Words John McCain was a traitor and collaborator, while being held captive. He was
given preferential treatment, due to the fact that his captors felt he was 'royalty', due to
his family 'connections'.
His "shoot down" was self-induced, as he DISOBEYED ORDERS and flew well below the 'floor',
getting himself shot down. There were several other jets on that particular mission and HE was
the only one shot down, because the others obeyed their orders!
His ENTIRE life has been one of disrespect of orders and authority, believing himself
bullet-proof, due to his 'family name' and his dad and grand dad being HIGH ranking Navy
Admirals!
His 'nickname' in his HS yearbook was "Punk" and he displayed that behavior as he went on to
the USNA, where he robbed someone, more deserving, of a slot in his class, due to the
'influence' of his father.
He SHOULD have been expelled, several times, but the folks at USNA did not want to go up
against dad. He graduated FIFTH FROM THE BOTTOM in his class . . but STILL ended up going to
Pensacola for flight training!! His classmates who actually 'made the grade' were aghast when
he showed up down there.
His flight grades were well below acceptable and he should have been run out of there too . .
he was an ABYSMAL aviator . . crashing on base leg at Corpus for carrier qualification
training. . he had been out drinking the night before and FELL ASLEEP after turning base leg
and 'configuring' for landing . . he crashed 'wings level' and straight ahead into Corpus
Bay.
He destroyed two other A/C after arriving in the Fleet . . before being shot down.
His nickname in Hanoi was "Songbird". . due to the information he willingly gave his captors. .
tactical stuff. .like 'routes, altitudes', etc., that our guys used to fly from the boat to
their targets and he got several aviators shot down and killed. He recorded 32+ propaganda bits
(a la Tokyo Rose) to be played for our enlisted troops . . to undermine their moral.
The bogus 'story' about not coming home early, when he could have, is just common sense. He
KNEW he would have been 'court-martialed' IF he had accepted any kind of early release, based
upon his 'family connections'.
After his release, his Navy 'flying career' SHOULD have been over, based upon his permanent
injuries, but, his dad intimidated a flight surgeon and he wrongly got back his flight medical
status, when ANYONE else would NOT have 'passed' with his 'condition'. He was 'awarded' the
position of XO at the Navy's largest training squadron, VA-174 at NAS Cecil and when the CO
moved on, he was 'selected', over MANY more qualified officers, to become CO. .he used his
position as XO and CO to take young (junior) female pilots on X-Country flights and screwed
their brains out.
THAT is ILLEGAL in the military and he SHOULD have been convicted at Court Martial for
'fraternization' . .INSTEAD . .daddy got him moved out of the squadron and put in charge of the
Navy's "Liaison" in DC . . along with a VERY early promotion to Captain . . the rest, as they
say, is history.
John McCain is a scum bag . . a DISGRACE to the uniform he wore and his spots did not change
when he became a politician!
As an aside, John McCain's admiral "daddy" was instrumental in the cover-up of the deliberate
Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (GTR-5) in 1967. Maybe "the apple didn't fall far from the
tree". Read More Agree: Cloak And Dagger
ChuckOrloski Writing
apparently as a patriotic & principled American military veteran, RVBlake said:
"I do not recall seeing any U.S. followup to the (Vincennes) atrocity."
Hi RVBlake,
Above, neither do I!
Nonetheless, a sincere thanks for your "higher" service to our very sick society & your
having honorably called the U.S. Navy's attack upon the defenseless Iranian passenger airplane
what it really was -- an "atrocity."
Around the year 2006, I do recall a dreaded sense of shame when faux "war hero," Senator
John McCain, modified the popular Beach Boys song lyric to "Barbara Ann," and to the delight of
his Zio indoctrinated political supporters (at a rally), he fiendishly intoned, "Bomb, bomb
Iran!"
Fyi, RVBlake, a few months ago, author & U.S. military veteran, Philip Giraldi, wrote a
great U.R. article about our "Zionized military."
On Independence Day Eve, you will ever more so appreciate P.G.'s higher service to our
country. Thanks again!
"... IS THE LEASH NOW OFF THE 'OTHER CIA?' https://southfront.org/is-the-leash-now-off-the-other-cia/ ..."
"... Under Donald Trump, who is on record favoring CIA kidnapping and torture programs, the CIA has been given a green light to carry out "targeted assassinations." ..."
Under Donald Trump, who is on record favoring CIA kidnapping and torture programs, the CIA has been given a green light to
carry out "targeted assassinations."
Although most of these targeted kills have been carried out by drone attacks in Yemen, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Somalia, where civilian deaths from "collateral damage" are estimated to be well over three hundred, recent events
point to the CIA's return to the "bad old days," when it engaged in a global program of assassinating political leaders.
"... Trump and his fellow neocons want NATO to serve as a sort of US foreign legion in Third World wars in Africa and Asia. NATO was formed as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to defend western Europe, not to fight in Afghanistan and who knows where else? ..."
"... In Europe, it's hard to find many people who still consider Russia a serious threat except for some tipsy Danes, right wing Swedes, and assorted Russophobic East Europeans. The main fear of Russia seems concentrated in the minds of American neoconservatives, media, and rural Trump supporters, all victims of the bizarre anti-Russian hysteria that has gripped the US. ..."
"... Equally important, most civilians don't understand that neither US and NATO forces nor Russia's military are in any shape to fight war that lasts more than a few days. Both sides lack munitions, spare parts, lubricants, and battlefield equipment. The overworked US Air Force, busy plastering Muslim nations, has actually run low on bombs. US industry can't seems to keep up supplies. There has even been talk of buying explosives from China! ..."
"... At this point NATO is the muscle for projecting and maintaining Western (read US) hegemony. It's activities are a threat to sovereign nations that refuse to be Washington's vassals. So they react with self-defensive postures and programs that NATO can claim are "aggression" in order to justify its own existence. ..."
`We are the schmucks' thundered President Donald Trump, using a favorite New York City
Yiddish term for penis. The object of Trump's wrath at his Make America Great Again' rally in
Great Falls, Montana was the craven, stingy European members of NATO, only 16 of 22 members are
on budget for their US-commanded military spending. Trump wants them to spend much more.
Trump and his fellow neocons want NATO to serve as a sort of US foreign legion in Third
World wars in Africa and Asia. NATO was formed as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to
defend western Europe, not to fight in Afghanistan and who knows where else?
Equally bad, according to Trump, is that the US runs a whopping trade deficit with the
European Union which is busy shipping high-end cars and fine wines to the US. The wicked
foreigners don't buy enough Amerian bourbon, corn and terribly abused pigs.
Trump is quite right that America's NATO allies, particularly Germany and Canada, don't
spend enough on defense. Germany is reported to have less than twenty operational tanks.
Canada's armed forces appear to be smaller than the New York City police department.
But the Europeans ask, 'defense against whom?' The Soviet Union was a huge threat back in
the Cold War when the mighty Red Army had 55,000 tanks pointed West. Today, Russia's land and
navel power has evaporated. Russia has perhaps 5,500 main battle tanks in active service and a
similar number in storage, a far cry from its armored juggernaut of the Cold War.
More important, Russia's military budget for 2018 was only $61 billion, actually down 17%
from last year. That's 4.3% of GDP. Russia is facing hard economic times. Russia has slipped to
third place in military spending after the US, China and Saudi Arabia. The US and its wealthy
allies account for two thirds of world military spending. In fact, the US total military budget
(including for nuclear weapons and foreign wars) is about $1 trillion, 50% of total US
government discretionary spending.
In addition, Russia must defend a vast territory from the Baltic to the Pacific. The US is
fortunate in having Mexico and Canada as neighbors. Russia has North Korea, China, India, the
Mideast and NATO to watch. As with its naval forces, Russia's armies are too far apart to lend
one another mutual support. Two vulnerable rail lines are Russia's main land link between
European Russia and its Pacific Far East.
Trump's supplemental military budget boost this year of $54 billion is almost as large as
Russia's entire 2018 military budget. As for Trump's claim that Europe is not paying its fair
share of NATO expenses, note that that Britain and France combined together spend more on their
military forces than Russia.
ORDER IT NOW
In Europe, it's hard to find many people who still consider Russia a serious threat except
for some tipsy Danes, right wing Swedes, and assorted Russophobic East Europeans. The main fear
of Russia seems concentrated in the minds of American neoconservatives, media, and rural Trump
supporters, all victims of the bizarre anti-Russian hysteria that has gripped the US.
Equally important, most civilians don't understand that neither US and NATO forces nor
Russia's military are in any shape to fight war that lasts more than a few days. Both sides
lack munitions, spare parts, lubricants, and battlefield equipment. The overworked US Air
Force, busy plastering Muslim nations, has actually run low on bombs. US industry can't seems
to keep up supplies. There has even been talk of buying explosives from China!
These essentials of war have been seriously neglected in favor of buying fancy weapons. But
such weapons need spares, electronics, fuel depots, missiles and thousands of essential parts.
As former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld observed, 'you go to war with what you have.'
Neither side has enough. A war would likely peter out in days after supplies were exhausted.
Besides, no side can afford to replace $100 million jet fighters or $5 million apiece tanks
after a war, however brief.
President Trump has learned about war from Fox TV. Europeans have learned from real
experience and don't want any more.
The last time the US put troops into action in North Korea, China lashed out and drove us
back South. In retaliation we dropped more tonnage of bombs and napalm on the North than was
used in the entire Pacific War.
In fact, the US total military budget (including for nuclear weapons and foreign wars)
is about $1 trillion, 50% of total US government discretionary spending.
Disband NATO already. The USSR is gone and Russia has no revanchist plans. Our military
spending on the defense of Europe only frees their budgets for social programs like medical
care and college education.
And what have we gotten for spending the nation's wealth on blowing up the Greater Middle
East, killing a million plus civilians and displacing millions more? Rusting cities,
crumbling infrastructure, a school system that can't compete with even that of India American
Exceptionalism indeed. Exceptionally deluded.
At this point NATO is the muscle for projecting and maintaining Western (read US)
hegemony.
It's activities are a threat to sovereign nations that refuse to be Washington's vassals. So
they react with self-defensive postures and programs that NATO can claim are "aggression" in
order to justify its own existence.
says: July 3, 2018 at 11:23 pm
GMT 500 Words John McCain was a traitor and collaborator, while being held captive. He was
given preferential treatment, due to the fact that his captors felt he was 'royalty', due to
his family 'connections'.
His "shoot down" was self-induced, as he DISOBEYED ORDERS and flew well below the 'floor',
getting himself shot down. There were several other jets on that particular mission and HE was
the only one shot down, because the others obeyed their orders!
His ENTIRE life has been one of disrespect of orders and authority, believing himself
bullet-proof, due to his 'family name' and his dad and grand dad being HIGH ranking Navy
Admirals!
His 'nickname' in his HS yearbook was "Punk" and he displayed that behavior as he went on to
the USNA, where he robbed someone, more deserving, of a slot in his class, due to the
'influence' of his father.
He SHOULD have been expelled, several times, but the folks at USNA did not want to go up
against dad. He graduated FIFTH FROM THE BOTTOM in his class . . but STILL ended up going to
Pensacola for flight training!! His classmates who actually 'made the grade' were aghast when
he showed up down there.
His flight grades were well below acceptable and he should have been run out of there too . .
he was an ABYSMAL aviator . . crashing on base leg at Corpus for carrier qualification
training. . he had been out drinking the night before and FELL ASLEEP after turning base leg
and 'configuring' for landing . . he crashed 'wings level' and straight ahead into Corpus
Bay.
He destroyed two other A/C after arriving in the Fleet . . before being shot down.
His nickname in Hanoi was "Songbird". . due to the information he willingly gave his captors. .
tactical stuff. .like 'routes, altitudes', etc., that our guys used to fly from the boat to
their targets and he got several aviators shot down and killed. He recorded 32+ propaganda bits
(a la Tokyo Rose) to be played for our enlisted troops . . to undermine their moral.
The bogus 'story' about not coming home early, when he could have, is just common sense. He
KNEW he would have been 'court-martialed' IF he had accepted any kind of early release, based
upon his 'family connections'.
After his release, his Navy 'flying career' SHOULD have been over, based upon his permanent
injuries, but, his dad intimidated a flight surgeon and he wrongly got back his flight medical
status, when ANYONE else would NOT have 'passed' with his 'condition'. He was 'awarded' the
position of XO at the Navy's largest training squadron, VA-174 at NAS Cecil and when the CO
moved on, he was 'selected', over MANY more qualified officers, to become CO. .he used his
position as XO and CO to take young (junior) female pilots on X-Country flights and screwed
their brains out.
THAT is ILLEGAL in the military and he SHOULD have been convicted at Court Martial for
'fraternization' . .INSTEAD . .daddy got him moved out of the squadron and put in charge of the
Navy's "Liaison" in DC . . along with a VERY early promotion to Captain . . the rest, as they
say, is history.
John McCain is a scum bag . . a DISGRACE to the uniform he wore and his spots did not change
when he became a politician!
As an aside, John McCain's admiral "daddy" was instrumental in the cover-up of the deliberate
Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (GTR-5) in 1967. Maybe "the apple didn't fall far from the
tree". Read More Agree: Cloak And Dagger
ChuckOrloski Writing
apparently as a patriotic & principled American military veteran, RVBlake said:
"I do not recall seeing any U.S. followup to the (Vincennes) atrocity."
Hi RVBlake,
Above, neither do I!
Nonetheless, a sincere thanks for your "higher" service to our very sick society & your
having honorably called the U.S. Navy's attack upon the defenseless Iranian passenger airplane
what it really was -- an "atrocity."
Around the year 2006, I do recall a dreaded sense of shame when faux "war hero," Senator
John McCain, modified the popular Beach Boys song lyric to "Barbara Ann," and to the delight of
his Zio indoctrinated political supporters (at a rally), he fiendishly intoned, "Bomb, bomb
Iran!"
Fyi, RVBlake, a few months ago, author & U.S. military veteran, Philip Giraldi, wrote a
great U.R. article about our "Zionized military."
On Independence Day Eve, you will ever more so appreciate P.G.'s higher service to our
country. Thanks again!
The derangement of the anti-Trumpers, which encompasses many
Democrats and some neo-conservative Republicans, has entered crazy land, especially when Trump
critics try to draw parallels between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler and/or Benito Mussolini.
The ignorance and stupidity displayed by this so-called thought process would be understandable
if those spewing the nonsense were 18 year olds with a public education. But they are not. We
are talking about men and women with college and post graduate education.
One of the earliest examples of this bizarre smear came courtesy of Newsweek:
At the Emmy awards ceremony on Sunday night, Transparent creator Jill Soloway compared
Donald Trump to Adolf
Hitler . Many others have made the same comparison before her: the front page of the
Philadelphia Daily News in December 2015; the Council on America-Islamic Relations;
the Holocaust survivor Zeev Hod. . . .
What makes the comparison between Hitler and Trump so poignant is not just the rhetorical
marginalization of groups, lifestyles or beliefs, but the fact that both men represent their
personal character as the antidote to all social and political problems.
Neither Hitler nor Trump campaign on specific policies, beyond a few slogans. Instead, both
promise a new vision of leadership. They portray the existing political systems as
fundamentally corrupt, incompetent, and, most importantly, unable to generate decisive action
in the face of pressing problems.
Was I asleep in 2008 or did Barack Obama also promise "a new vision of leadership?" I recall
all of the "specific policies" that
President Obama promised to implement :
Exit the bad war in Iraq. Win the good war in Afghanistan. Close Guantánamo. Ban
torture, and pursue a "reckoning" for the torturers, in the words of Obama's soon-to-be
attorney general, Eric Holder. What's more, Obama said he would reform the habit of unnecessary
state secrecy that had given rise to such malignant policies.
After 8 years in office Obama still had not won the "good war," Guantanamo was still open,
his Justice Department gave everyone associated with the CIA torture program a pass and he
pursued more journalists for having the audacity to report on classified material. Oh, and he
helped start a new war in Syria; one that has left tens of thousands dead and more than a
million displaced.
Then there is the additional fact that Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, got a
free pass from the Obama DOJ despite there being clear evidence that she violated Federal law
by putting classified material on her unclassified server. Not only did she use her status as
Secretary of State to enrich herself and her husband, but she led the way in betraying Muamar
Qaddafi and starting a new war in North Africa.
Trying to claim that Trump's campaign rhetoric, which was at times crass and
confrontational, was Hitlerian, displays a fundamental lack of what Hitler was and what he did
to ascend to power.
After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state
governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries-old tradition of local political
independence. Armed SA and SS thugs barged into local government offices using the state of
emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi
Reich commissioners.
Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding
pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners
were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and
sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp
system.
At this time, these early concentration camps were loosely organized under the control of
the SA and the rival SS. Many were little more than barbed-wire stockades know as 'wild'
concentration camps, set up by local Gauleiters and SA leaders.
How many political opponents has Trumped imprisoned in the 18 months that he has been in
office? (I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with HERO). How many concentration camps has he set
up? Yep. Correct. NONE.
Rather than follow in Hitler's footsteps and suspend the Constitution and declare himself
the Führer, Trump has opted for the Twitter Tsunami and working on defeating the Democrats
at the polls come November. After March 1933 Hitler never troubled himself with elections
again.
In Mein Kampf , Hitler used the main thesis of "the Jewish peril", which posits a
Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. [8] The narrative describes
the process by which he became increasingly antisemitic and militaristic , especially during his years in
Vienna. He speaks of not having met a Jew until he arrived in Vienna, and that at first his
attitude was liberal and tolerant. When he first encountered the antisemitic press, he says, he
dismissed it as unworthy of serious consideration. Later he accepted the same antisemitic
views, which became crucial to his program of national reconstruction of Germany.
Mein Kampf has also been studied as a work on political theory . For example, Hitler
announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world's two evils: Communism and Judaism .
In the book Hitler blamed Germany's chief woes on the parliament of the Weimar Republic , the Jews,
and Social Democrats , as
well as Marxists , though
he believed that Marxists, Social Democrats, and the parliament were all working for Jewish
interests. [9] He announced that he
wanted to completely destroy the parliamentary system , believing it to
be corrupt in principle, as those who reach power are inherent opportunists .
Trump? The Art of the Deal (which was written with the help of a journalist) shares nothing
in common with Hitler's Mean Kampf. Hitler was an angry, frustrated man who had never known
success in life. Trump? Big, brash and successful, both in real estate and in marketing Trump.
Unlike Hitler, who made it very clear that he intended to wipe the world of Jews and
Communists, Trump's world view for business success is summarized in 11 pithy points :
Think big
Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself
Maximize your options
Know your market
Use your leverage
Enhance your location
Get the word out
Fight back
Deliver the goods
Contain the costs
Have fun
Hitler made it quite clear that he was going to embark on global conquest:
And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of
our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless
German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long
last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the
soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her
vassal border states. (Joachim C. Fest (1 February 2013). Hitler . Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. p. 216. ISBN0-544-19554-X .)
Trump, by contrast, spent a lot of his campaign talking about withdrawing U.S. forces from
military engagements and focusing U.S. resources, instead, on making America great again. His
dismissive statements about NATO, seeking reapproachment with the Russians and the Chinese, and
getting out of the nation building mission in Syria simply enraged the foreign policy
establishment, especially the neo-conservatives.
It is more accurate to view Trump as the anti-Hitler. He is not consumed with taking over
other countries. He simply wants the United States to stop getting the short end of the stick
when it comes to trade or immigration.
Hitler hated Jews and oversaw the Holocaust. Trump's beloved oldest daughter is a Jew and
Trump is a fav among the Hasidic community. Polar opposites on the Jewish question.
The anti-Trumpers seem to imagine that they are the 21st Century version of Colonel
Claus Schenk Graf von
Stauffenberg – the key figure in the 1944 " 20 July plot " to assassinate Adolf Hitler . Hitler led
Germany into a world war. Trump? Talking peace with North Korea and trying to make nice with
the Russians.
If you dare to equate Trump with Hitler let me make it very clear that you are a cretin. It
shows that you lack any understanding of the history of Germany in the 20th Century and, by
making such an analogy, you are shitting on the memory of those who actually fought against
genuine evil. (If you want a quick but thorough education on the subject I recommend the 2009
Academy award winning documentary, The Restless Conscience .)
If Donald Trump is anything he is an obnoxious version of the Road Runner (the Warner
Brothers' cartoon character). Instead of "beeping" he is tweeting and running rings around the
anti-Trumpers, who increasingly appear to resemble Wylie Coyote. The anti-Trumpers are working
furiously to attack Trump at every opportunity. Yet, their schemes, both the simple and the
complex, keep blowing up in their faces or putting them on the defensive. Think of Maxine
Waters as the anvil that Wylie tried to drop on the Road Runner. Result? It landed on the
Democrats and she is now in the process of becoming the face of the Democrat party for the
November election. And God, what a face (put that mug on a bill boards and it is a sure fire
cure for teen age pregnancy--who can pop wood with Maxine glaring at you).
If Democrats want to be smart and have a chance of beating Trump, they need to stop with the
Nazi and Hitler insults and start respecting Trump. Once they respect him and realize that he
actually is a formidable politician and that he had genuine success as a marketing genius they
might be able to formulate a plan to actually beat him. But, like I said, "if they are smart."
With Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schummer running the show the word smart is merely an oxymoron.
Beep, beep.
The problem is that this is pure propaganda. Intended to agitate one's base. Donald
Trump is a great used car salesman (i.e. NY real estate). He won because he could
sell to European descendants their old myths and legends. After the Vietnam War and
1970's wage inflation, the little people were thrown under the bus by the global elite.
They are in debt, addicted and can't afford to have families. How great the Western
economy is right now is total BS. A rational discussion of the rise of populism in the
West is avoided. My problem with Donald Trump and why I will never vote for him is that
he is anti-science. He has no grasp of reality only magical thinking. A bull in
the china shop has no plan, no goal, just destruction. His opponents, the media moguls,
war profiteers, and global oligarchs, will go nuclear when tariffs and economic
disruption start cutting their bonuses. The fallout when giants go stomping after each
other will destroy middle America.
The only chance for Americans to survive is to restore the rule of law, strong borders
and treat each other equally; especially the wealthy ones who are free, now, to do
whatever in the hell they want.
I can't get behind him because I believe his lying will undo every good thing he does.
That lying enrages his opponents by the precise path those who lie and exaggerate
criticisms of him does. There seems little doubt he is a genius in manipulating people
and the media, but his method may well prove ultimately self-defeating.
Some are applying this bit of Catch-22 to Trump:
"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue
and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into
philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and
sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely
required no character."
They aren't all wrong. Outrageous populism is a high wire act, without a net.
Yup! Trump refers to it as "hyperbole" and is consciously aware he's doing it. Plus he
enjoys fucking with the minds of the people that annoy him. Yes indeed, our president is
an expert at trolling.
True dat ;) And Trump has made enemies as a consequence of his behavior. At his age I'm
sure he's aware of this too. But somehow he keeps on going... like a supersized energizer
bunny. And sometimes enemies shift to being colleagues or at least less hostile over
time.
One of those consequences is the silly baby Trump balloon that will be flying over
London while he's there. Very impressive protest, eh? (/snark)
Roger Waters knows a thing to two about memes. Respected him even more when I read last
year how he refused to be another celebrity supporting the White Helmets (he was
approached). He called them out as propagandists.
Here's the Trump baby balloon. Another great example of collective transference.
London anti-Trump protestors get permission to fly massive crowdfunded blimp of the
president depicted as a big baby in a diaper when he visits UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
Merely? Perhaps, but I will opine all politicians BS, but lying is a different category.
Not speaking epistemology, but how people generally react to those two closely related
but nevertheless distinct beasts.
The dem elite uses the Hitler reference as election sloganeering to goose up the "base",
i.e., the coastal portion of it, not the lifelong dems in the upper Midwest, aka the
deplorables who voted for Trump in 2016, . Hey, if they were really concerned about those
folks, they would have to address policy considerations like deindustrialization and
resulting income inequality. But they don't want to go there.
What does the dem elite really think of this new Hitler? Well, Schumer and Pelosi
recently supported giving the so called Herr Trump a massive defense spending
increase.
Just ask them, if they truly consider Trump is Hitler why would they give him those
tools?
What is "pure propaganda?" And, "anti-science?" What the hell are you talking about? A
very bizarre comment. The only thing that is clear from your comment is that you dislike
Trump.
Your response is an example of why the USA is well on its way towards a second civil
war. Civil Discourse is ending. Calling Donald Trump "Adolf Hitler" is agitprop
propaganda intended to stir up their partisans.
As you point out it is not true. The President is anti-science. He is doing his best to
try to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are banned
from using the terms "evidence-based" and "science-based". The White House is actively
dismantling science-based health and safety protections, sidelining scientific evidence,
and undoing recent progress on scientific integrity. What is slowing him down is that
these protections for human and environmental safety are written into the law and federal
regulations.
I'm trying to engage you in a substantive discussion and you are losing your mind.
Dismantling the EPA (which he has not) and NOAA (also still in place, still funded and
still operating) does not make someone "anti-science." There are some clear thinking folk
who find the these Government agencies as guilty of overreach. Opposing some of their
policies, which Trump has done, is not anti-science. Yet, you cry like a beaten dog when
challenged substantively on this and try to blame it on Trump. You are the one being
unreasonable and closed minded. Look in the mirror.
And agitprop? Seriously? The people calling Trump Hitler are anti-Trumpers who
genuinely believe what they are saying. Do you have contradictory evidence? Please
share.
"And agitprop? Seriously? The people calling Trump Hitler are anti-Trumpers who genuinely
believe what they are saying. Do you have contradictory evidence? Please share."
As stated above, a majority of the dem elite recently voted with the repubs to give
the new Hitler a significant defense spending increase. They know full well that calling
Trump the new Hitler is for the rube base come election time.
I agree though--that sort of cynical partisan sloganeering has consequences. Once the
partisan base hops on that train, it's hard to hop off. Hey, but if the dem elite score
big in November that's all that matters to the establishment, unforseen consequences be
damned.
EPA, NOAA and the CDC are regulatory agencies. There was a political decision to ban the
terms "evidence based" and "science based" in Budget documents. Neither the agencies nor
science have been destroyed. "Undoing recent progress on scientific integrity" do you
actually have any proof of that being done by Trump? The publicly available information
is that the "integrity" was rather dubious as there is increasing evidence that numerous
scientific studies can not be replicated as documentedby the NYT in 2015
VV,
And yet Trump is funding or encouraging all kinds of space exploration. However, rather
than getting into an example slinging match with you, I'll just point out that calling
Trump "anti-science" is just about right up there with calling him "Hitler". The EPA and
NOAA = the culmination of human scientific endeavor? If you don't like those agencies you
seek to destroy "science"? Come one, man. That's some intense hyperbole and confirmation
bias in action right there. Maybe he just doesn't like the EPA's negative impact on
business. Could that be it?
He's not anti-science, that's just another ridiculous bit of propaganda from the
so-called left. He is simply a businessman who is not a fan of environmental regulations,
like so many others. Doesn't have the same cost-benefit mindset that environmentalists do
because he has a different worldview.
America, the best bus builders on Earth. Why 43 years after the Vietnam war the darn
thing is just running over poor people left and left; it's almost like they have no
agency, No ability to say "no". If only our school teachers could teach individual
responsibility and initiative as well as they teach how many genders there are and which
bathroom to use. Sadly the only chance for America is new Americans who can get out of
the way of run away busses and do the jobs American Americans won't do - and vote for
politicians who won't run them over with a bus.
PT, IMO, the hardcore Democrat base has past the point of no return. They are too
invested in Trump = Hitler, etc. Their egos are on the line, their emotions. Many people
are incapable of saying "I was wrong" until they have hit rock bottom. I worry what rock
bottom might look like, but it's going to have to happen. And we can see them doubling
down in acts like Perez (DNC Chair) backing the Democratic Socialist Party candidate (aka
Crazy Eyes) in NYC. The platform - stated on line - is to abolish bail, prisons, profit
and borders. Perez says that this is the future of the party. So anyone to the right of,
say, Fidel Castro or Che Guevera is going to be "Hitler" for the foreseeable future. On
the bright side, there is a new #walkaway movement, that may be an info op, but seem to
be picking up steam. In this movement moderate democrats have found a forum in which they
agree that they have been misled and then abandon the Democrat party, never Trump
activists et al. I guess that is an opportunity to save face. Smart move by whoever set
it up.
Also, when you listen to the videos you realize it's not only moderates leaving. One
woman refers to herself as having been an SJW prior. I don't think this is entirely an
"info op" as Brandon seems very authentic. He had his awakening last year and then
eventually decided to make his video and start this movement.
OTOH, what happened between his awakening last year and the releasing of this video is
not that clear. It could well be that a conservative operative (Log Cabin Republicans) in
the gay community encouraged him. But that does not delegitimize the sentiments of the
WalkAway-ers.
I have been following the #WalkAway movement. I walked away 10 years ago and have been
fascinated by all the personal stories about the reasons they walked away. The Democratic
party is in trouble, having no message except anger and hate based on impotence followed
by socialism.
Here's the best article I found on it in case others here have not come across it yet.
It was founded by a gay man from NYC. His video is in this article.
Viral 'Walk Away' Videos Highlight Growing Movement of Democrats Leaving the Party
https://m.theepochtimes.com...
Brandon has copied some amount of the walkaway videos from their Facebook page to
YouTube. Since I don't have my own FB page (use my husband's to view family & friend
updates) I was glad he did that. There are more minorities and gays represented that you
would expect. It's not a "white movement". These videos are typically 6-10 minutes
long.
She will be the cause of an epidemic of Shrivelization of civilization, American style,
natch. As for NATO, the jury is out on whether that institution will undergo immolation
through the auspices of the Trumpster, or, if you will allow, the Trumpsterization of
that institution.
The #resist crowd just won't care about the actual facts or history in my experience
rather they function as cult. Cults shut down thinking.
As for Trump I don't care for his style at all but hoped he would be disruptive to the
deadlock of long standing narratives and he has. Lately I've been more hopeful that he is
working a plan.
Every empire has to adjust, recognize the natural limit to their power or try for
endless expansion until they collapse and die. The British did a fine job of gracefully
dismantling their empire when the US emerged after WW2. Now China is emerging and the US
can recognize a multi-polar world and carve out it's place within it or keep battling for
world dominance as the military arm of globalization. Trump vs. Clinton was clear about
which approach would be used.
Couldn't agree more, except I can't agree about the fine job. We screwed up a lot of
places when we decamped and the evidence is strewn all around. I don''t see that empire
as being some sort of big deal like say the Roman. It wasn't. Naval supremacy and our
being well ahead of the crowd with an industrial society did a lot but it didn't do as
much as all that. Maybe three quarters of the globe wasn't coloured red and the big
continental empires plus the colonial empires of other European countries weren't of
course under our rule. The Russian imperial expansion had I'd guess far more effect on
local populations; in some areas of the British Empire it could be that the locals
scarcely knew we were there. They still got caught up in the chaos we left behind.
I don't believe we can talk of an American "Empire" but we can talk of quasi-imperial
outreach. That US outreach is far more extensive and goes much deeper than in the days of
the British and other colonial empires. The military outreach is also far more extensive.
If it's true that the Americans are seeking to disengage, and one does hear that a lot,
then one hopes they are better at it. Else, as we did, they'll leave a lot of places
worse than they found them.
"Vladimir Putin has positioned himself as the leader of an
authoritarian, white-supremacist and xenophobic movement that wants to
break up the EU, weaken America's traditional alliances and undermine
democracy," Clinton said in a lecture at Trinity College Dublin, where
she received an honorary doctorate.
But I have yet to check the videos of Trinity College. Appreciating help to find the
relevant passage.
*******
More seriously what percentage of people does take the "Hitler card" still seriously
considering its overuse in the post 9/11 universe? He's 73 years dead by now.
The Putin remark starts at the 12:50 mark. Her effect seems really flat, especially when
she is talking about fond memories of previous visits and trying to muster up a bit of
empathy or passion.
This article will demonstrate how the United Kingdom has steadily become a police state over
the past twenty years, weaponizing its institutions against the people and employing Orwellian
techniques to stop the public from seeing the truth . It will demonstrate, contrary to official
narratives, that both overall levels of crime and violent crime have been increasing, not
decreasing, as the size of the state in the UK has gotten bigger. It will also expose how the
Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, deliberately obscured
real crime data with estimated crime rates based on survey data as opposed to the real numbers.
I will demonstrate that, contrary to popular opinion perpetuated by progressive myths, life was
much safer in Britain during the era of classical laissez-faire from the 1850s to 1911.
In his 10 years in power from 1997 to 2007, Tony Blair passed an astonishing 26,849 laws in
total, an average of 2,663 per year or 7.5 a day. The Labour Party continued this madness under
Gordon Brown who broke the record in 2008 by passing 2,823 new laws, a 6% increase on even his
megalomaniac predecessor. In 2010, Labour's last year in power before handing over the reigns
to the Blairite social radical, David Cameron, there was a 54% surge in privacy cases brought
against public bodies, and the Cabinet were refusing freedom of information requests at a rate
of 51%. The vast number of new laws under Labour does not count the 2,100 new regulations the
EU passed in 2006 alone, which apparently is average for them.
Many of these vast changes under Blair and Brown were in the area of criminal law. By 2008,
Labour had created more than 3,600 new offences. Many of these, naturally, were red-tape
regulations. To give you an idea:
Creating a nuclear explosion
Selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy
duck or Japanese knotweed
To wilfully pretend to be a barrister or a traffic warden
Disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer
Obstructing workers from carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway
Offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
Allowing an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre
A ship's captain may end up in court if he or she carries grain without a copy of the
International Grain Code on board
Scallop fishing without the correct boat
Breaking regulation number 10 of the 1998 Apple and Pear Grubbing Up Regulations
Selling Polish Potatoes
There are many more. However, there were also some more serious breaches of civil
liberty.
One common tactic of the Blair government was to use a moral panic to pass radical new
legislation. For example, in 2006, he passed the Terrorism Act that overturned habeas corpus
and gave the British police the right to detain anyone for any reason for 90 days. At the time,
this got widespread public support because of the recent 7/7 bombings in London. This means
that, in the UK, the police can arrest you without you necessarily having committed a crime if
they can brand your activities as "terrorist" or "extremist." Although these laws were
ostensibly brought about to combat Islamic terrorism, the ever-expanding definitions of "far
right" and "extremist" demonstrate how they can be weaponised against the British people.
Another area in which the Labour government used moral panic cynically to overturn
longstanding common law principles was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which they used to
eliminate the double jeopardy rule and, as per the MacPherson report, to put an end to
colour-blind policing.
Recently there have been an increased number of cases in which the British state has
encroached on civil liberties in a near-openly tyrannical way. The Count Dankula case, for
example, in which a man was arrested for "hate speech," then tried and made to pay a fine for
telling off-colour jokes about the Nazis on Youtube. Then there was the young woman who was
found guilty of being "grossly offensive" for posting Snoop Dogg lyrics on her Instagram
account. And, most recently, the political activist Tommy Robinson was arrested and tried in
mere hours for recording outside a courtroom. In each of these cases, despite some protests
against the legal rulings, the media broadly sided with the courts, citing the technicalities
of the law – in the former two cases section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 (another
Blair special) – and brand anyone who would protest "far right" or "extremist."
"Gaslighting" is a word from the world of psychology; it is a technique of manipulation to
achieve power. Here are eleven warning signs:
They tell blatant lies.
They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.
They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
They wear you down over time.
Their actions do not match their words.
They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
They know confusion weakens people.
They project.
They try to align people against you.
They tell you or others that you are crazy.
They tell you everyone else is a liar.
The British state has become increasingly Orwellian in its gaslighting of the British public
since at least 1997 with near-total complicity from the media. In a recent article for
Quillette , I argued that this has been the case in both Britain and the USA for years.
This has especially been the case in the area of crime. During a period in which both the
Labour Party and the Conservative Party have become increasingly statist and interventionist on
both an economic and civil level, we have been continually told that one of the positive
effects of ever-increasing government control is that society is becoming more peaceful. This
is the narrative, for example, of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence
Has Declined . In 2005, The Guardian told us that since 1995 overall crime had decreased by
44%. Almost a decade later the same publication wondered out loud what could be causing the
continued decline in crime rates in the UK. And just a few years after that, they had changed
their tune completely decrying sudden increases in violent crime and blaming this on cuts in
police numbers. In the first few months of 2018, the shocking increases in instances of violent
crime in Sadiq Khan's London, which in the past year has seen rises of 31.3% in knife crime,
78% in acid attacks, 70% in youth homicides, 33.4% in robberies, 18.7% in burglaries, 33.9% in
theft and 30% in child sex crime. But this story told by The Guardian – of a general
trend down in crime over the past twenty years followed by a sudden and inexplicable spike
– is simply not true, as I will demonstrate in this paper.
In 1997, Tony Blair famously ran on a platform of being 'tough on crime, tough on the causes
of crime'. Unfortunately for him, the reality of empirical crime data had stubbornly refused to
comply with his anointed vision through his first years in power. "New Labour" were famous for
the efficiency of their propaganda machine. American readers will no doubt be aware of Mr.
Blair's complicity in making exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass
destruction" in the run up to the war in Iraq, but few readers – British, American, or
otherwise – will know that the Blair government was also lying about the extent of crime
in Britain. The Labour Party, who were so much about media perceptions and political spin,
needed to find a way to show on paper that their "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"
agenda was making good on its promise. So, in 2003, Tony Blair permanently changed the way
crime is reported in the UK by introducing the National Crime Recording Standard' (NCRS). Up
until that point, crime in the UK was reported using hard data drawn from actual arrests and
convictions from the police. However, from that point onwards, the official statistics were to
be drawn from the British Crime Survey which estimates crime based on a survey of 50,000 people
aged 16 or over. This works much like how television companies produce estimates for their show
ratings. So that means that the statistics you see quoted in newspapers like The Guardian are
not hard figures, but estimates drawn from surveys. Whatever the merits of this method, it
produced a graph for the Blair government that looked like this:
This change ostensibly came about because – as part of the "tough on the causes of
crime" part of their pledge, Labour wanted to count victims as opposed to the total number of
offenders. Of course, this takes a huge number of crimes out of the data. For example, as it
was introduced in 2003, because only over 16-year olds could be interviewed, crimes against
minors were not registered in the official statistics. Also, because interviews had to take
place in private properties, street crime habitually would not show up in these numbers. Of
course, so-called "victimless" crimes – fraud or online crime – do not show up in
this data either. Once you start to account for some of these caveats, it becomes more obvious
why this extraordinary change in methodology would produce a downwards trend in the data. In
fact, it was explicitly designed so that, because of these changes, it could not be compared
with numbers before 2002.
In 2007, Ken Pease and Graham Farrell estimated that the survey data could be
underestimating violent crime by as much as 82%, with the real number of victims closer to 4.4
million than 2.4 million. This massive margin of error means that the real crime rate becomes a
matter for debate as opposed to a question of hard evidence. It seems to me that this was a
deliberate choice by the Blair government. Hence, we now find the BBC wondering about what the
real crime rate might be. And this is where the true extent of the Orwellian nightmare of the
Blair and Gordon Brown years dawns: by making the crime rate an estimate neither political
party can reliably point to the facts, and it always becomes a question of one difficult to
substantiate narrative against another. "Post-truth" did not start with Vladimir Putin or
Donald Trump – Tony Blair was doing it from the minute he stepped into office.
However, real numbers of convicted offenders are still recorded and kept, although they are
somewhat difficult to obtain. In the run-up to the 2010 British election, Conservative MP and
Shadow Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, requested the real numbers from the House of Commons
library which duly produced a series of independent reports. Incidentally, once the leader of
the Tories, David Cameron, became prime minister in 2010, Chris Grayling became the Secretary
for Justice and, to my knowledge, was happy to let this little detail slide and continue with
the survey-based methodology. It is funny how power can change the incentives for action.
In any case, the numbers that Grayling requested are damning for anyone who claims that
either overall crime or violent crime decreased in the UK between 1997 and 2010.
The population of the UK was about 58 million people in 1997. In 2008, that had increased to
62 million, an increase of 6.87%. In that same period male violent crime convictions in England
and Wales increased by around 63.92% from 49,153 in 1997 to 80,574 in 2008. So violent crime
convictions increased by more than ten times the growth of the population.
Increases like this can been seen across virtually every category of crime. Convictions for
persons under 18, for example, increased by 60.18% from 12,806 in 1997 to 20,513 in 2008, in
keeping with the average increase in violent crime, this is ten times the rate of population
growth in the same period. Knife crime practically doubled during the Blair years, from 3,360
offenders in 1997 to 6,368 in 2008. In 1998 there were 5,542 robberies, in 2008 there were
8,475. From the year 2000 to 2008, the total number of arrests for any offence went up from 1.2
million to 1.4 million, an increase of about 17%.
For the claim to be true that violent crime went down 44% during the 00s in the UK, it would
have to be at a time when violent crime convictions went up 64%. For the claim to be true that
overall crime went down in from 1997 to 2008, it would have to be at a time when overall
convictions for crime went up by 17%. Both claims seem extraordinary: how could there be a rise
in convictions without a corresponding increase in crime? The methodology that measures victims
through estimates from survey data clearly is not getting this correct.
If we use recorded convictions in this way, as opposed to estimates, we can make meaningful
comparisons to the past as Peter Hitchens does in The Abolition of Liberty . As we have seen,
the total number of convictions in England and Wales for 2008 was around 1.47 million for a
population of 62 million people, around 2.25% of the population. According to Hitchens the
comparable number in 1861 at the height of laissez-faire was 88,000 for a population of
20,066,224, or around 0.44% of the population. In 1911, before Leviathan and the welfare state
had really had a chance to grow, the number was 97,000 for a population of 36,075,269, or
around 0.27% of the population. The claim that crime has risen because of government cuts to
the numbers of police also cannot stand since in 1911 there were 51,203 officers whereas by
2009 there were 144,353 officers. The increase in police officers from 1911 to 2009 therefore
is 181.92% compared with an increase of 71.86% in total population. So the size of the
repressive apparatuses of the state have increased greatly, and with it the total number of
criminals.
It is clear that with less personal freedom and a bigger and more invasive state comes less
personal responsibility and greater lawlessness. It is also clear that as the British state has
become more top-down in orientation than in its common-law past, it has levied increased
coercive legislative power against the British people it supposedly serves. The state is now
behaving in an openly Orwellian manner with near-explicit contempt for the public.
People seem to mistake monarchy for a police state, unlike in a democracy a monarchy
doesn't need to pretend it's the sole ruler of the land and can therefore allow its
'subjects' more liberty in return and even has a vested interest in the well being of the
subject so that not only can they be productive but can also defend the monarch (hence be
armed) as well.
The more democratic the UK has become the more liberty it has lost.
The Rothschilds bought Reuters and UPI in the late 1800's. Jews, for centuries, have owned
most publishing houses. Freemasons used to have special books printed up for its members.
After Napoleon, Rothschild said "give me control of a nations money supply, and I care no
who sits on the thrown". The point is that (((BBC))) has been under kosher management since
its inception.
Really, perception management is about controlling those who control the others. The
Elites. And the jews have invaded London and interbred with British nobility for centuries.
These people ran British media right down to BBC for over a century, and through Judaism the
owned the British Elites.
The poor working British stiff never had a prayer. Boer War, Opium Wars, WWI, WWII, and
how many others? All to advance Judaism on behalf of Jewish owners.
England has become a police state because that is what its owners want.
It becomes clear why Boorish Johnson and Sea Hag Theresa May were desperately warning UK
football fans away from attending the World Cup. There was a risk that the carefully
constructed Russia-as-evil-empire narrative would collapse before the eyes of each fan that
made the trip. That is exactly what has been happening.
It should then come as no surprise that, as the anti-Russia narrative began to crumble,
there was a need to reanimate the novichok chimera. Note well that the Return of the Son of
Novichok incident comes not only just before the dreaded Trump-Putin summit, but also just
after the release of a certain report by Britain's parliamentary Intelligence and Security
Committee. Although the Committee's inquiry faced substantial obstruction and stonewalling,
the report was able to determine that, despite years of outright lying about it, the UK
government gleefully participated in the torture and rendition program initiated by the Dick
Cheney regime.
The leadership of every nation in Europe are globalist puppets.
The Brexit vote was 2 years ago and the British government is just now starting to work
out the details of what permissions they might negotiate with Brussels.
Sovereign nation you dipshits.
Permissions are not needed.
Our parents generation planned executed and exited WWII in 48 months.
I think The UK "became" an Orwellian state when George Orwell was writing his prescient
novels back in the 1940s. He saw then how his once great country had already fallen under the
thrall of its (((hidden satanic usury rulers))). Even the main traitor in "1984" was Emmanuel
Goldstein. Do ya think old Georgie was trying to tell us something?
Orwell was a member of the secret British spy system in Burma and saw some of the future
plans for the peeps then wrote about it as a "fictional state" of fully controlled automaton
people.
The key to creating a police state is creating the DEMAND for a police state. Allow an
influx of conflicting cultures, especially those overtly hostile, and then allow chaos to
reign. People will vote all day for a police state to restore ORDER.
Expendable...: yours is a very interesting comment.
If these carefully selected young people are the brightest and the best how come hardly
any of them fail to fall into the trap? How come so few of them realize that they are being
used? How come so few of them have any loyalty to their own nations? How come they do not
realize that what they are doing will lead to the enslavement not only of their own people
but also of themselves and their children? One must presume that they are promised wealth and
power and sell out, but Wilson, for example, never became wealthy. OTOH are even the most
intelligent among us so susceptible to indoctrination?
There must be some incredibly effective incentive, or some incredibly effective threat,
which can subvert them.
Young minds are impressionable and easily manipulated by satanic seductive coersion. Yet
both Dr Kitty Little (UK) and G Edward Griffin (US) rejected their indoctrination and EXPOSED
it publicly so no doubt others rejected it too. (But their efforts and others, are censored
by MSM).
Clearly there are many deviant personalities that are FLATTERED by their SPECIALNESS in
being an 'elite group' ABOVE the rest of us 'plebs' and some selected 'idealists' who swallow
the "end of all wars if we have a global government" meme.
Its not so surprising - look how corrupt the whole of US Congress/Senate is. Not one of
them UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION. And all of them SUBMIT TO ISRAEL, and bow and scrape to
satanyahoo, and ensure Americans' good young men DIE for The Greater Israel Project (of
expansionism and supremasism).
Having no 1st Amendment right to free speech, or constitutional separation of church and
state doesn't help. Then, again, we seem to be headed down the same path, at a more leisurely
pace,
Obama has used Espionage Act more than all previous administrations
You're right. It's down to the quality of the people.
Bullshit. Once again it's the MEDIA..... working in conjunction with the
establishment/Globalists to LIE, CHEAT, DECEIVE and generally fuck everyone over.
It can't be long before someone considers taking the media 'out' in a Charlie Hebdo
fashion for they sure as hell don't deserve any support from the people. Fake news, failure
to report on issues that really effect people (child abuse), instigating unrest (Russia,
poison gas etc), unquestioning support for Government policies (pro-EU, pro-immigration etc).
And I haven't even touched on specific US-related issues..... FFS.
Yeah, the politicians have a lot to answer for but the media have NO EXCUSE for kowtowing
to these traitors let alone pushing their twisted agenda. They either get with the
'populists' uprising or they set themself up for a fall. So, all you media outlets out there
- what's it to be?
Since the Great British Empire evaporated in 1931, under the Statute of Westminster, Great
Britain wanted to be more like its bastard child America, a police state. Just ask any Brit
today if America is just "Great". The only thing left to ask the British, when will they
become America's 51st state?(That should humiliate them even more).
Decay implies weakness. The ability of the State to easily erode civil rights makes clear
that is not the case. If you describe 'politics of fear' to mean agitating the public to want
more repressive laws to feel 'safe' then you could be correct.
Allowing the true levels of crime to be known would simply expose that these more
repressive laws are not having the promised effect. Quite the opposite effect because of
other causes. You can probably figure out what they are.
I'm no Leftie, but Britain became a police state because their internal apparatus for
colonial repression had nothing to do, no one to suppress after the end of colonialism, and
more recently the end of 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland and the end of the IRA,
sontheyvturned these tools of repression on their own people which is the way Empires alwaays
die.
This is History, this is reality, this is the explanation.
The only difference from the past, that unlike the Gladiator and other memes, there is no
exile, there is no place to go to retire and wait out the bastards.
And this from the peoples that gave the world Magna Carta, brought civilization to much of
the world, ended the fascism of the National Socialist German Workers' Party of the 1930's
and did the most to end human slavery.
Sadly, you get what you vote for and there were good reasons that voting was initially a
privilege granted only to those with a stake in the outcome.
The derangement of the anti-Trumpers, which encompasses many
Democrats and some neo-conservative Republicans, has entered crazy land, especially when Trump
critics try to draw parallels between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler and/or Benito Mussolini.
The ignorance and stupidity displayed by this so-called thought process would be understandable
if those spewing the nonsense were 18 year olds with a public education. But they are not. We
are talking about men and women with college and post graduate education.
One of the earliest examples of this bizarre smear came courtesy of Newsweek:
At the Emmy awards ceremony on Sunday night, Transparent creator Jill Soloway compared
Donald Trump to Adolf
Hitler . Many others have made the same comparison before her: the front page of the
Philadelphia Daily News in December 2015; the Council on America-Islamic Relations;
the Holocaust survivor Zeev Hod. . . .
What makes the comparison between Hitler and Trump so poignant is not just the rhetorical
marginalization of groups, lifestyles or beliefs, but the fact that both men represent their
personal character as the antidote to all social and political problems.
Neither Hitler nor Trump campaign on specific policies, beyond a few slogans. Instead, both
promise a new vision of leadership. They portray the existing political systems as
fundamentally corrupt, incompetent, and, most importantly, unable to generate decisive action
in the face of pressing problems.
Was I asleep in 2008 or did Barack Obama also promise "a new vision of leadership?" I recall
all of the "specific policies" that
President Obama promised to implement :
Exit the bad war in Iraq. Win the good war in Afghanistan. Close Guantánamo. Ban
torture, and pursue a "reckoning" for the torturers, in the words of Obama's soon-to-be
attorney general, Eric Holder. What's more, Obama said he would reform the habit of unnecessary
state secrecy that had given rise to such malignant policies.
After 8 years in office Obama still had not won the "good war," Guantanamo was still open,
his Justice Department gave everyone associated with the CIA torture program a pass and he
pursued more journalists for having the audacity to report on classified material. Oh, and he
helped start a new war in Syria; one that has left tens of thousands dead and more than a
million displaced.
Then there is the additional fact that Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, got a
free pass from the Obama DOJ despite there being clear evidence that she violated Federal law
by putting classified material on her unclassified server. Not only did she use her status as
Secretary of State to enrich herself and her husband, but she led the way in betraying Muamar
Qaddafi and starting a new war in North Africa.
Trying to claim that Trump's campaign rhetoric, which was at times crass and
confrontational, was Hitlerian, displays a fundamental lack of what Hitler was and what he did
to ascend to power.
After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state
governments throughout Germany, ending a centuries-old tradition of local political
independence. Armed SA and SS thugs barged into local government offices using the state of
emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi
Reich commissioners.
Political enemies were arrested by the thousands and put in hastily constructed holding
pens. Old army barracks and abandoned factories were used as prisons. Once inside, prisoners
were subjected to military style drills and harsh discipline. They were often beaten and
sometimes even tortured to death. This was the very beginning of the Nazi concentration camp
system.
At this time, these early concentration camps were loosely organized under the control of
the SA and the rival SS. Many were little more than barbed-wire stockades know as 'wild'
concentration camps, set up by local Gauleiters and SA leaders.
How many political opponents has Trumped imprisoned in the 18 months that he has been in
office? (I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with HERO). How many concentration camps has he set
up? Yep. Correct. NONE.
Rather than follow in Hitler's footsteps and suspend the Constitution and declare himself
the Führer, Trump has opted for the Twitter Tsunami and working on defeating the Democrats
at the polls come November. After March 1933 Hitler never troubled himself with elections
again.
In Mein Kampf , Hitler used the main thesis of "the Jewish peril", which posits a
Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership. [8] The narrative describes
the process by which he became increasingly antisemitic and militaristic , especially during his years in
Vienna. He speaks of not having met a Jew until he arrived in Vienna, and that at first his
attitude was liberal and tolerant. When he first encountered the antisemitic press, he says, he
dismissed it as unworthy of serious consideration. Later he accepted the same antisemitic
views, which became crucial to his program of national reconstruction of Germany.
Mein Kampf has also been studied as a work on political theory . For example, Hitler
announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world's two evils: Communism and Judaism .
In the book Hitler blamed Germany's chief woes on the parliament of the Weimar Republic , the Jews,
and Social Democrats , as
well as Marxists , though
he believed that Marxists, Social Democrats, and the parliament were all working for Jewish
interests. [9] He announced that he
wanted to completely destroy the parliamentary system , believing it to
be corrupt in principle, as those who reach power are inherent opportunists .
Trump? The Art of the Deal (which was written with the help of a journalist) shares nothing
in common with Hitler's Mean Kampf. Hitler was an angry, frustrated man who had never known
success in life. Trump? Big, brash and successful, both in real estate and in marketing Trump.
Unlike Hitler, who made it very clear that he intended to wipe the world of Jews and
Communists, Trump's world view for business success is summarized in 11 pithy points :
Think big
Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself
Maximize your options
Know your market
Use your leverage
Enhance your location
Get the word out
Fight back
Deliver the goods
Contain the costs
Have fun
Hitler made it quite clear that he was going to embark on global conquest:
And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of
our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless
German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long
last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the
soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her
vassal border states. (Joachim C. Fest (1 February 2013). Hitler . Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. p. 216. ISBN0-544-19554-X .)
Trump, by contrast, spent a lot of his campaign talking about withdrawing U.S. forces from
military engagements and focusing U.S. resources, instead, on making America great again. His
dismissive statements about NATO, seeking reapproachment with the Russians and the Chinese, and
getting out of the nation building mission in Syria simply enraged the foreign policy
establishment, especially the neo-conservatives.
It is more accurate to view Trump as the anti-Hitler. He is not consumed with taking over
other countries. He simply wants the United States to stop getting the short end of the stick
when it comes to trade or immigration.
Hitler hated Jews and oversaw the Holocaust. Trump's beloved oldest daughter is a Jew and
Trump is a fav among the Hasidic community. Polar opposites on the Jewish question.
The anti-Trumpers seem to imagine that they are the 21st Century version of Colonel
Claus Schenk Graf von
Stauffenberg – the key figure in the 1944 " 20 July plot " to assassinate Adolf Hitler . Hitler led
Germany into a world war. Trump? Talking peace with North Korea and trying to make nice with
the Russians.
If you dare to equate Trump with Hitler let me make it very clear that you are a cretin. It
shows that you lack any understanding of the history of Germany in the 20th Century and, by
making such an analogy, you are shitting on the memory of those who actually fought against
genuine evil. (If you want a quick but thorough education on the subject I recommend the 2009
Academy award winning documentary, The Restless Conscience .)
If Donald Trump is anything he is an obnoxious version of the Road Runner (the Warner
Brothers' cartoon character). Instead of "beeping" he is tweeting and running rings around the
anti-Trumpers, who increasingly appear to resemble Wylie Coyote. The anti-Trumpers are working
furiously to attack Trump at every opportunity. Yet, their schemes, both the simple and the
complex, keep blowing up in their faces or putting them on the defensive. Think of Maxine
Waters as the anvil that Wylie tried to drop on the Road Runner. Result? It landed on the
Democrats and she is now in the process of becoming the face of the Democrat party for the
November election. And God, what a face (put that mug on a bill boards and it is a sure fire
cure for teen age pregnancy--who can pop wood with Maxine glaring at you).
If Democrats want to be smart and have a chance of beating Trump, they need to stop with the
Nazi and Hitler insults and start respecting Trump. Once they respect him and realize that he
actually is a formidable politician and that he had genuine success as a marketing genius they
might be able to formulate a plan to actually beat him. But, like I said, "if they are smart."
With Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schummer running the show the word smart is merely an oxymoron.
Beep, beep.
The problem is that this is pure propaganda. Intended to agitate one's base. Donald
Trump is a great used car salesman (i.e. NY real estate). He won because he could
sell to European descendants their old myths and legends. After the Vietnam War and
1970's wage inflation, the little people were thrown under the bus by the global elite.
They are in debt, addicted and can't afford to have families. How great the Western
economy is right now is total BS. A rational discussion of the rise of populism in the
West is avoided. My problem with Donald Trump and why I will never vote for him is that
he is anti-science. He has no grasp of reality only magical thinking. A bull in
the china shop has no plan, no goal, just destruction. His opponents, the media moguls,
war profiteers, and global oligarchs, will go nuclear when tariffs and economic
disruption start cutting their bonuses. The fallout when giants go stomping after each
other will destroy middle America.
The only chance for Americans to survive is to restore the rule of law, strong borders
and treat each other equally; especially the wealthy ones who are free, now, to do
whatever in the hell they want.
I can't get behind him because I believe his lying will undo every good thing he does.
That lying enrages his opponents by the precise path those who lie and exaggerate
criticisms of him does. There seems little doubt he is a genius in manipulating people
and the media, but his method may well prove ultimately self-defeating.
Some are applying this bit of Catch-22 to Trump:
"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue
and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into
philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and
sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely
required no character."
They aren't all wrong. Outrageous populism is a high wire act, without a net.
Yup! Trump refers to it as "hyperbole" and is consciously aware he's doing it. Plus he
enjoys fucking with the minds of the people that annoy him. Yes indeed, our president is
an expert at trolling.
True dat ;) And Trump has made enemies as a consequence of his behavior. At his age I'm
sure he's aware of this too. But somehow he keeps on going... like a supersized energizer
bunny. And sometimes enemies shift to being colleagues or at least less hostile over
time.
One of those consequences is the silly baby Trump balloon that will be flying over
London while he's there. Very impressive protest, eh? (/snark)
Roger Waters knows a thing to two about memes. Respected him even more when I read last
year how he refused to be another celebrity supporting the White Helmets (he was
approached). He called them out as propagandists.
Here's the Trump baby balloon. Another great example of collective transference.
London anti-Trump protestors get permission to fly massive crowdfunded blimp of the
president depicted as a big baby in a diaper when he visits UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
Merely? Perhaps, but I will opine all politicians BS, but lying is a different category.
Not speaking epistemology, but how people generally react to those two closely related
but nevertheless distinct beasts.
The dem elite uses the Hitler reference as election sloganeering to goose up the "base",
i.e., the coastal portion of it, not the lifelong dems in the upper Midwest, aka the
deplorables who voted for Trump in 2016, . Hey, if they were really concerned about those
folks, they would have to address policy considerations like deindustrialization and
resulting income inequality. But they don't want to go there.
What does the dem elite really think of this new Hitler? Well, Schumer and Pelosi
recently supported giving the so called Herr Trump a massive defense spending
increase.
Just ask them, if they truly consider Trump is Hitler why would they give him those
tools?
What is "pure propaganda?" And, "anti-science?" What the hell are you talking about? A
very bizarre comment. The only thing that is clear from your comment is that you dislike
Trump.
Your response is an example of why the USA is well on its way towards a second civil
war. Civil Discourse is ending. Calling Donald Trump "Adolf Hitler" is agitprop
propaganda intended to stir up their partisans.
As you point out it is not true. The President is anti-science. He is doing his best to
try to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are banned
from using the terms "evidence-based" and "science-based". The White House is actively
dismantling science-based health and safety protections, sidelining scientific evidence,
and undoing recent progress on scientific integrity. What is slowing him down is that
these protections for human and environmental safety are written into the law and federal
regulations.
I'm trying to engage you in a substantive discussion and you are losing your mind.
Dismantling the EPA (which he has not) and NOAA (also still in place, still funded and
still operating) does not make someone "anti-science." There are some clear thinking folk
who find the these Government agencies as guilty of overreach. Opposing some of their
policies, which Trump has done, is not anti-science. Yet, you cry like a beaten dog when
challenged substantively on this and try to blame it on Trump. You are the one being
unreasonable and closed minded. Look in the mirror.
And agitprop? Seriously? The people calling Trump Hitler are anti-Trumpers who
genuinely believe what they are saying. Do you have contradictory evidence? Please
share.
"And agitprop? Seriously? The people calling Trump Hitler are anti-Trumpers who genuinely
believe what they are saying. Do you have contradictory evidence? Please share."
As stated above, a majority of the dem elite recently voted with the repubs to give
the new Hitler a significant defense spending increase. They know full well that calling
Trump the new Hitler is for the rube base come election time.
I agree though--that sort of cynical partisan sloganeering has consequences. Once the
partisan base hops on that train, it's hard to hop off. Hey, but if the dem elite score
big in November that's all that matters to the establishment, unforseen consequences be
damned.
EPA, NOAA and the CDC are regulatory agencies. There was a political decision to ban the
terms "evidence based" and "science based" in Budget documents. Neither the agencies nor
science have been destroyed. "Undoing recent progress on scientific integrity" do you
actually have any proof of that being done by Trump? The publicly available information
is that the "integrity" was rather dubious as there is increasing evidence that numerous
scientific studies can not be replicated as documentedby the NYT in 2015
VV,
And yet Trump is funding or encouraging all kinds of space exploration. However, rather
than getting into an example slinging match with you, I'll just point out that calling
Trump "anti-science" is just about right up there with calling him "Hitler". The EPA and
NOAA = the culmination of human scientific endeavor? If you don't like those agencies you
seek to destroy "science"? Come one, man. That's some intense hyperbole and confirmation
bias in action right there. Maybe he just doesn't like the EPA's negative impact on
business. Could that be it?
He's not anti-science, that's just another ridiculous bit of propaganda from the
so-called left. He is simply a businessman who is not a fan of environmental regulations,
like so many others. Doesn't have the same cost-benefit mindset that environmentalists do
because he has a different worldview.
America, the best bus builders on Earth. Why 43 years after the Vietnam war the darn
thing is just running over poor people left and left; it's almost like they have no
agency, No ability to say "no". If only our school teachers could teach individual
responsibility and initiative as well as they teach how many genders there are and which
bathroom to use. Sadly the only chance for America is new Americans who can get out of
the way of run away busses and do the jobs American Americans won't do - and vote for
politicians who won't run them over with a bus.
PT, IMO, the hardcore Democrat base has past the point of no return. They are too
invested in Trump = Hitler, etc. Their egos are on the line, their emotions. Many people
are incapable of saying "I was wrong" until they have hit rock bottom. I worry what rock
bottom might look like, but it's going to have to happen. And we can see them doubling
down in acts like Perez (DNC Chair) backing the Democratic Socialist Party candidate (aka
Crazy Eyes) in NYC. The platform - stated on line - is to abolish bail, prisons, profit
and borders. Perez says that this is the future of the party. So anyone to the right of,
say, Fidel Castro or Che Guevera is going to be "Hitler" for the foreseeable future. On
the bright side, there is a new #walkaway movement, that may be an info op, but seem to
be picking up steam. In this movement moderate democrats have found a forum in which they
agree that they have been misled and then abandon the Democrat party, never Trump
activists et al. I guess that is an opportunity to save face. Smart move by whoever set
it up.
Also, when you listen to the videos you realize it's not only moderates leaving. One
woman refers to herself as having been an SJW prior. I don't think this is entirely an
"info op" as Brandon seems very authentic. He had his awakening last year and then
eventually decided to make his video and start this movement.
OTOH, what happened between his awakening last year and the releasing of this video is
not that clear. It could well be that a conservative operative (Log Cabin Republicans) in
the gay community encouraged him. But that does not delegitimize the sentiments of the
WalkAway-ers.
I have been following the #WalkAway movement. I walked away 10 years ago and have been
fascinated by all the personal stories about the reasons they walked away. The Democratic
party is in trouble, having no message except anger and hate based on impotence followed
by socialism.
Here's the best article I found on it in case others here have not come across it yet.
It was founded by a gay man from NYC. His video is in this article.
Viral 'Walk Away' Videos Highlight Growing Movement of Democrats Leaving the Party
https://m.theepochtimes.com...
Brandon has copied some amount of the walkaway videos from their Facebook page to
YouTube. Since I don't have my own FB page (use my husband's to view family & friend
updates) I was glad he did that. There are more minorities and gays represented that you
would expect. It's not a "white movement". These videos are typically 6-10 minutes
long.
She will be the cause of an epidemic of Shrivelization of civilization, American style,
natch. As for NATO, the jury is out on whether that institution will undergo immolation
through the auspices of the Trumpster, or, if you will allow, the Trumpsterization of
that institution.
The #resist crowd just won't care about the actual facts or history in my experience
rather they function as cult. Cults shut down thinking.
As for Trump I don't care for his style at all but hoped he would be disruptive to the
deadlock of long standing narratives and he has. Lately I've been more hopeful that he is
working a plan.
Every empire has to adjust, recognize the natural limit to their power or try for
endless expansion until they collapse and die. The British did a fine job of gracefully
dismantling their empire when the US emerged after WW2. Now China is emerging and the US
can recognize a multi-polar world and carve out it's place within it or keep battling for
world dominance as the military arm of globalization. Trump vs. Clinton was clear about
which approach would be used.
Couldn't agree more, except I can't agree about the fine job. We screwed up a lot of
places when we decamped and the evidence is strewn all around. I don''t see that empire
as being some sort of big deal like say the Roman. It wasn't. Naval supremacy and our
being well ahead of the crowd with an industrial society did a lot but it didn't do as
much as all that. Maybe three quarters of the globe wasn't coloured red and the big
continental empires plus the colonial empires of other European countries weren't of
course under our rule. The Russian imperial expansion had I'd guess far more effect on
local populations; in some areas of the British Empire it could be that the locals
scarcely knew we were there. They still got caught up in the chaos we left behind.
I don't believe we can talk of an American "Empire" but we can talk of quasi-imperial
outreach. That US outreach is far more extensive and goes much deeper than in the days of
the British and other colonial empires. The military outreach is also far more extensive.
If it's true that the Americans are seeking to disengage, and one does hear that a lot,
then one hopes they are better at it. Else, as we did, they'll leave a lot of places
worse than they found them.
"Vladimir Putin has positioned himself as the leader of an
authoritarian, white-supremacist and xenophobic movement that wants to
break up the EU, weaken America's traditional alliances and undermine
democracy," Clinton said in a lecture at Trinity College Dublin, where
she received an honorary doctorate.
But I have yet to check the videos of Trinity College. Appreciating help to find the
relevant passage.
*******
More seriously what percentage of people does take the "Hitler card" still seriously
considering its overuse in the post 9/11 universe? He's 73 years dead by now.
The Putin remark starts at the 12:50 mark. Her effect seems really flat, especially when
she is talking about fond memories of previous visits and trying to muster up a bit of
empathy or passion.
This article will demonstrate how the United Kingdom has steadily become a police state over
the past twenty years, weaponizing its institutions against the people and employing Orwellian
techniques to stop the public from seeing the truth . It will demonstrate, contrary to official
narratives, that both overall levels of crime and violent crime have been increasing, not
decreasing, as the size of the state in the UK has gotten bigger. It will also expose how the
Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, deliberately obscured
real crime data with estimated crime rates based on survey data as opposed to the real numbers.
I will demonstrate that, contrary to popular opinion perpetuated by progressive myths, life was
much safer in Britain during the era of classical laissez-faire from the 1850s to 1911.
In his 10 years in power from 1997 to 2007, Tony Blair passed an astonishing 26,849 laws in
total, an average of 2,663 per year or 7.5 a day. The Labour Party continued this madness under
Gordon Brown who broke the record in 2008 by passing 2,823 new laws, a 6% increase on even his
megalomaniac predecessor. In 2010, Labour's last year in power before handing over the reigns
to the Blairite social radical, David Cameron, there was a 54% surge in privacy cases brought
against public bodies, and the Cabinet were refusing freedom of information requests at a rate
of 51%. The vast number of new laws under Labour does not count the 2,100 new regulations the
EU passed in 2006 alone, which apparently is average for them.
Many of these vast changes under Blair and Brown were in the area of criminal law. By 2008,
Labour had created more than 3,600 new offences. Many of these, naturally, were red-tape
regulations. To give you an idea:
Creating a nuclear explosion
Selling types of flora and fauna not native to the UK, such as the grey squirrel, ruddy
duck or Japanese knotweed
To wilfully pretend to be a barrister or a traffic warden
Disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer
Obstructing workers from carrying out repairs to the Dockland Light Railway
Offering for sale a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day
Allowing an unlicensed concert in a church hall or community centre
A ship's captain may end up in court if he or she carries grain without a copy of the
International Grain Code on board
Scallop fishing without the correct boat
Breaking regulation number 10 of the 1998 Apple and Pear Grubbing Up Regulations
Selling Polish Potatoes
There are many more. However, there were also some more serious breaches of civil
liberty.
One common tactic of the Blair government was to use a moral panic to pass radical new
legislation. For example, in 2006, he passed the Terrorism Act that overturned habeas corpus
and gave the British police the right to detain anyone for any reason for 90 days. At the time,
this got widespread public support because of the recent 7/7 bombings in London. This means
that, in the UK, the police can arrest you without you necessarily having committed a crime if
they can brand your activities as "terrorist" or "extremist." Although these laws were
ostensibly brought about to combat Islamic terrorism, the ever-expanding definitions of "far
right" and "extremist" demonstrate how they can be weaponised against the British people.
Another area in which the Labour government used moral panic cynically to overturn
longstanding common law principles was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which they used to
eliminate the double jeopardy rule and, as per the MacPherson report, to put an end to
colour-blind policing.
Recently there have been an increased number of cases in which the British state has
encroached on civil liberties in a near-openly tyrannical way. The Count Dankula case, for
example, in which a man was arrested for "hate speech," then tried and made to pay a fine for
telling off-colour jokes about the Nazis on Youtube. Then there was the young woman who was
found guilty of being "grossly offensive" for posting Snoop Dogg lyrics on her Instagram
account. And, most recently, the political activist Tommy Robinson was arrested and tried in
mere hours for recording outside a courtroom. In each of these cases, despite some protests
against the legal rulings, the media broadly sided with the courts, citing the technicalities
of the law – in the former two cases section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 (another
Blair special) – and brand anyone who would protest "far right" or "extremist."
"Gaslighting" is a word from the world of psychology; it is a technique of manipulation to
achieve power. Here are eleven warning signs:
They tell blatant lies.
They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.
They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.
They wear you down over time.
Their actions do not match their words.
They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.
They know confusion weakens people.
They project.
They try to align people against you.
They tell you or others that you are crazy.
They tell you everyone else is a liar.
The British state has become increasingly Orwellian in its gaslighting of the British public
since at least 1997 with near-total complicity from the media. In a recent article for
Quillette , I argued that this has been the case in both Britain and the USA for years.
This has especially been the case in the area of crime. During a period in which both the
Labour Party and the Conservative Party have become increasingly statist and interventionist on
both an economic and civil level, we have been continually told that one of the positive
effects of ever-increasing government control is that society is becoming more peaceful. This
is the narrative, for example, of Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence
Has Declined . In 2005, The Guardian told us that since 1995 overall crime had decreased by
44%. Almost a decade later the same publication wondered out loud what could be causing the
continued decline in crime rates in the UK. And just a few years after that, they had changed
their tune completely decrying sudden increases in violent crime and blaming this on cuts in
police numbers. In the first few months of 2018, the shocking increases in instances of violent
crime in Sadiq Khan's London, which in the past year has seen rises of 31.3% in knife crime,
78% in acid attacks, 70% in youth homicides, 33.4% in robberies, 18.7% in burglaries, 33.9% in
theft and 30% in child sex crime. But this story told by The Guardian – of a general
trend down in crime over the past twenty years followed by a sudden and inexplicable spike
– is simply not true, as I will demonstrate in this paper.
In 1997, Tony Blair famously ran on a platform of being 'tough on crime, tough on the causes
of crime'. Unfortunately for him, the reality of empirical crime data had stubbornly refused to
comply with his anointed vision through his first years in power. "New Labour" were famous for
the efficiency of their propaganda machine. American readers will no doubt be aware of Mr.
Blair's complicity in making exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass
destruction" in the run up to the war in Iraq, but few readers – British, American, or
otherwise – will know that the Blair government was also lying about the extent of crime
in Britain. The Labour Party, who were so much about media perceptions and political spin,
needed to find a way to show on paper that their "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"
agenda was making good on its promise. So, in 2003, Tony Blair permanently changed the way
crime is reported in the UK by introducing the National Crime Recording Standard' (NCRS). Up
until that point, crime in the UK was reported using hard data drawn from actual arrests and
convictions from the police. However, from that point onwards, the official statistics were to
be drawn from the British Crime Survey which estimates crime based on a survey of 50,000 people
aged 16 or over. This works much like how television companies produce estimates for their show
ratings. So that means that the statistics you see quoted in newspapers like The Guardian are
not hard figures, but estimates drawn from surveys. Whatever the merits of this method, it
produced a graph for the Blair government that looked like this:
This change ostensibly came about because – as part of the "tough on the causes of
crime" part of their pledge, Labour wanted to count victims as opposed to the total number of
offenders. Of course, this takes a huge number of crimes out of the data. For example, as it
was introduced in 2003, because only over 16-year olds could be interviewed, crimes against
minors were not registered in the official statistics. Also, because interviews had to take
place in private properties, street crime habitually would not show up in these numbers. Of
course, so-called "victimless" crimes – fraud or online crime – do not show up in
this data either. Once you start to account for some of these caveats, it becomes more obvious
why this extraordinary change in methodology would produce a downwards trend in the data. In
fact, it was explicitly designed so that, because of these changes, it could not be compared
with numbers before 2002.
In 2007, Ken Pease and Graham Farrell estimated that the survey data could be
underestimating violent crime by as much as 82%, with the real number of victims closer to 4.4
million than 2.4 million. This massive margin of error means that the real crime rate becomes a
matter for debate as opposed to a question of hard evidence. It seems to me that this was a
deliberate choice by the Blair government. Hence, we now find the BBC wondering about what the
real crime rate might be. And this is where the true extent of the Orwellian nightmare of the
Blair and Gordon Brown years dawns: by making the crime rate an estimate neither political
party can reliably point to the facts, and it always becomes a question of one difficult to
substantiate narrative against another. "Post-truth" did not start with Vladimir Putin or
Donald Trump – Tony Blair was doing it from the minute he stepped into office.
However, real numbers of convicted offenders are still recorded and kept, although they are
somewhat difficult to obtain. In the run-up to the 2010 British election, Conservative MP and
Shadow Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, requested the real numbers from the House of Commons
library which duly produced a series of independent reports. Incidentally, once the leader of
the Tories, David Cameron, became prime minister in 2010, Chris Grayling became the Secretary
for Justice and, to my knowledge, was happy to let this little detail slide and continue with
the survey-based methodology. It is funny how power can change the incentives for action.
In any case, the numbers that Grayling requested are damning for anyone who claims that
either overall crime or violent crime decreased in the UK between 1997 and 2010.
The population of the UK was about 58 million people in 1997. In 2008, that had increased to
62 million, an increase of 6.87%. In that same period male violent crime convictions in England
and Wales increased by around 63.92% from 49,153 in 1997 to 80,574 in 2008. So violent crime
convictions increased by more than ten times the growth of the population.
Increases like this can been seen across virtually every category of crime. Convictions for
persons under 18, for example, increased by 60.18% from 12,806 in 1997 to 20,513 in 2008, in
keeping with the average increase in violent crime, this is ten times the rate of population
growth in the same period. Knife crime practically doubled during the Blair years, from 3,360
offenders in 1997 to 6,368 in 2008. In 1998 there were 5,542 robberies, in 2008 there were
8,475. From the year 2000 to 2008, the total number of arrests for any offence went up from 1.2
million to 1.4 million, an increase of about 17%.
For the claim to be true that violent crime went down 44% during the 00s in the UK, it would
have to be at a time when violent crime convictions went up 64%. For the claim to be true that
overall crime went down in from 1997 to 2008, it would have to be at a time when overall
convictions for crime went up by 17%. Both claims seem extraordinary: how could there be a rise
in convictions without a corresponding increase in crime? The methodology that measures victims
through estimates from survey data clearly is not getting this correct.
If we use recorded convictions in this way, as opposed to estimates, we can make meaningful
comparisons to the past as Peter Hitchens does in The Abolition of Liberty . As we have seen,
the total number of convictions in England and Wales for 2008 was around 1.47 million for a
population of 62 million people, around 2.25% of the population. According to Hitchens the
comparable number in 1861 at the height of laissez-faire was 88,000 for a population of
20,066,224, or around 0.44% of the population. In 1911, before Leviathan and the welfare state
had really had a chance to grow, the number was 97,000 for a population of 36,075,269, or
around 0.27% of the population. The claim that crime has risen because of government cuts to
the numbers of police also cannot stand since in 1911 there were 51,203 officers whereas by
2009 there were 144,353 officers. The increase in police officers from 1911 to 2009 therefore
is 181.92% compared with an increase of 71.86% in total population. So the size of the
repressive apparatuses of the state have increased greatly, and with it the total number of
criminals.
It is clear that with less personal freedom and a bigger and more invasive state comes less
personal responsibility and greater lawlessness. It is also clear that as the British state has
become more top-down in orientation than in its common-law past, it has levied increased
coercive legislative power against the British people it supposedly serves. The state is now
behaving in an openly Orwellian manner with near-explicit contempt for the public.
People seem to mistake monarchy for a police state, unlike in a democracy a monarchy
doesn't need to pretend it's the sole ruler of the land and can therefore allow its
'subjects' more liberty in return and even has a vested interest in the well being of the
subject so that not only can they be productive but can also defend the monarch (hence be
armed) as well.
The more democratic the UK has become the more liberty it has lost.
The Rothschilds bought Reuters and UPI in the late 1800's. Jews, for centuries, have owned
most publishing houses. Freemasons used to have special books printed up for its members.
After Napoleon, Rothschild said "give me control of a nations money supply, and I care no
who sits on the thrown". The point is that (((BBC))) has been under kosher management since
its inception.
Really, perception management is about controlling those who control the others. The
Elites. And the jews have invaded London and interbred with British nobility for centuries.
These people ran British media right down to BBC for over a century, and through Judaism the
owned the British Elites.
The poor working British stiff never had a prayer. Boer War, Opium Wars, WWI, WWII, and
how many others? All to advance Judaism on behalf of Jewish owners.
England has become a police state because that is what its owners want.
It becomes clear why Boorish Johnson and Sea Hag Theresa May were desperately warning UK
football fans away from attending the World Cup. There was a risk that the carefully
constructed Russia-as-evil-empire narrative would collapse before the eyes of each fan that
made the trip. That is exactly what has been happening.
It should then come as no surprise that, as the anti-Russia narrative began to crumble,
there was a need to reanimate the novichok chimera. Note well that the Return of the Son of
Novichok incident comes not only just before the dreaded Trump-Putin summit, but also just
after the release of a certain report by Britain's parliamentary Intelligence and Security
Committee. Although the Committee's inquiry faced substantial obstruction and stonewalling,
the report was able to determine that, despite years of outright lying about it, the UK
government gleefully participated in the torture and rendition program initiated by the Dick
Cheney regime.
The leadership of every nation in Europe are globalist puppets.
The Brexit vote was 2 years ago and the British government is just now starting to work
out the details of what permissions they might negotiate with Brussels.
Sovereign nation you dipshits.
Permissions are not needed.
Our parents generation planned executed and exited WWII in 48 months.
I think The UK "became" an Orwellian state when George Orwell was writing his prescient
novels back in the 1940s. He saw then how his once great country had already fallen under the
thrall of its (((hidden satanic usury rulers))). Even the main traitor in "1984" was Emmanuel
Goldstein. Do ya think old Georgie was trying to tell us something?
Orwell was a member of the secret British spy system in Burma and saw some of the future
plans for the peeps then wrote about it as a "fictional state" of fully controlled automaton
people.
The key to creating a police state is creating the DEMAND for a police state. Allow an
influx of conflicting cultures, especially those overtly hostile, and then allow chaos to
reign. People will vote all day for a police state to restore ORDER.
Expendable...: yours is a very interesting comment.
If these carefully selected young people are the brightest and the best how come hardly
any of them fail to fall into the trap? How come so few of them realize that they are being
used? How come so few of them have any loyalty to their own nations? How come they do not
realize that what they are doing will lead to the enslavement not only of their own people
but also of themselves and their children? One must presume that they are promised wealth and
power and sell out, but Wilson, for example, never became wealthy. OTOH are even the most
intelligent among us so susceptible to indoctrination?
There must be some incredibly effective incentive, or some incredibly effective threat,
which can subvert them.
Young minds are impressionable and easily manipulated by satanic seductive coersion. Yet
both Dr Kitty Little (UK) and G Edward Griffin (US) rejected their indoctrination and EXPOSED
it publicly so no doubt others rejected it too. (But their efforts and others, are censored
by MSM).
Clearly there are many deviant personalities that are FLATTERED by their SPECIALNESS in
being an 'elite group' ABOVE the rest of us 'plebs' and some selected 'idealists' who swallow
the "end of all wars if we have a global government" meme.
Its not so surprising - look how corrupt the whole of US Congress/Senate is. Not one of
them UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION. And all of them SUBMIT TO ISRAEL, and bow and scrape to
satanyahoo, and ensure Americans' good young men DIE for The Greater Israel Project (of
expansionism and supremasism).
Having no 1st Amendment right to free speech, or constitutional separation of church and
state doesn't help. Then, again, we seem to be headed down the same path, at a more leisurely
pace,
Obama has used Espionage Act more than all previous administrations
You're right. It's down to the quality of the people.
Bullshit. Once again it's the MEDIA..... working in conjunction with the
establishment/Globalists to LIE, CHEAT, DECEIVE and generally fuck everyone over.
It can't be long before someone considers taking the media 'out' in a Charlie Hebdo
fashion for they sure as hell don't deserve any support from the people. Fake news, failure
to report on issues that really effect people (child abuse), instigating unrest (Russia,
poison gas etc), unquestioning support for Government policies (pro-EU, pro-immigration etc).
And I haven't even touched on specific US-related issues..... FFS.
Yeah, the politicians have a lot to answer for but the media have NO EXCUSE for kowtowing
to these traitors let alone pushing their twisted agenda. They either get with the
'populists' uprising or they set themself up for a fall. So, all you media outlets out there
- what's it to be?
Since the Great British Empire evaporated in 1931, under the Statute of Westminster, Great
Britain wanted to be more like its bastard child America, a police state. Just ask any Brit
today if America is just "Great". The only thing left to ask the British, when will they
become America's 51st state?(That should humiliate them even more).
Decay implies weakness. The ability of the State to easily erode civil rights makes clear
that is not the case. If you describe 'politics of fear' to mean agitating the public to want
more repressive laws to feel 'safe' then you could be correct.
Allowing the true levels of crime to be known would simply expose that these more
repressive laws are not having the promised effect. Quite the opposite effect because of
other causes. You can probably figure out what they are.
I'm no Leftie, but Britain became a police state because their internal apparatus for
colonial repression had nothing to do, no one to suppress after the end of colonialism, and
more recently the end of 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland and the end of the IRA,
sontheyvturned these tools of repression on their own people which is the way Empires alwaays
die.
This is History, this is reality, this is the explanation.
The only difference from the past, that unlike the Gladiator and other memes, there is no
exile, there is no place to go to retire and wait out the bastards.
And this from the peoples that gave the world Magna Carta, brought civilization to much of
the world, ended the fascism of the National Socialist German Workers' Party of the 1930's
and did the most to end human slavery.
Sadly, you get what you vote for and there were good reasons that voting was initially a
privilege granted only to those with a stake in the outcome.
Look up Rostislav Ishenko's latest excellent piece yesterday:
I did, and as usual Ishenko takes an oblique approach that shines a light into obscure but
critical corners.
What an eye opener this one is.
Not sure how much was lost in translation, but if I understood correctly the Russians are
massing forces in the Western District, not because they fear an attack from NATO, or plan to
attack Europe but to rescue Europe from a conflagration that will be sparked in Ukraine. That
it was drifting into failed state status is well known, but that a religious war is in the
offing was utterly unknown to me, and I suspect to most others here.
That in turn shines a light on why Poland and the Baltics are begging for US/NATO troops
as well, and at least partially why US/NATO is delivering. As Ukraine drifts into chaos, its
neighbours, being aware of its history of extreme violence and atrocity are preparing
themselves for the spillover. They have no desire to relive the decade+ blood orgy that
erupted in the middle of the 20th C centred on Ukraine (where, IMHO, the real Holocaust
happened).
Overwhelming force applied at an overwhelming pace is the best way of dealing with such an
outbreak, and the Russians are the only party able to deliver. US/NATO forces can be expected
to roar around in their APCs avoiding trouble and then claim credit in accordance with
Western military tradition. Meanwhile, the Russians will go into mopping up the
leftovers.
Makes a lot of sense if Ishchenko's read of the situation is right. It probably has a
bigger impact on Dunford's and Gerasimov's meeting than the USM "going home".
Whew!
PS: Yes, I was aware of the Russian central bank selling off its USTs. With the Petro-Yuan
and Western sanctions now in full swing, it really doesn't need $100B's worth to manage its
U$ denominated imports.
Corporate Media's About-Face on Ukraine's Neo-Nazis July 5, 2018 •
59 Comments
U.S. corporate media spent years dismissing the role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine's 2014 coup but
it is suddenly going through a conversion, as Daniel Lazare reports.
By Daniel Lazare Special to Consortium News
Last month a freelance journalist named Joshua
Cohen published an
article in The Washington Post about the Ukraine's growing neo-Nazi threat.
Despite a gratuitous swipe at Russia for allegedly exaggerating the problem (which it hasn't),
the piece was fairly accurate.
Entitled "Ukraine's ultra-right militias are challenging the government to a showdown," it
said that fascists have gone on a rampage while the ruling clique in Kiev closes its eyes for
the most part and prays that the problem somehow goes away on its own.
Thus, a group calling itself C14 (for the fourteen-word ultra-right motto, "We must secure
the existence of our people and a future for white children") not only beat up a socialist
politician and celebrated Hitler's birthday by stabbing an antiwar activist, but bragged about
it on its website. Other ultra-nationalists, Cohen says, have stormed the Lvov and Kiev city
councils and "assaulted or disrupted" art exhibits, anti-fascist demos, peace and gay-rights
events, and a Victory Day parade commemorating the victory over Hitler in 1945.
Yet nothing has happened to stop this. President Petro Poroshenko could order a crackdown,
but hasn't for reasons that should be obvious. The U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" uprising not only
drove out former president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, who had won an OSCE-certified
election, but tore the country in two, precisely because ultra-rightists like C14 were in the
lead.
When resistance to the U.S.-backed coup
broke out in Crimea and parts of the country's largely Russian-speaking east, the base of
Yanukovych voters, civil war ensued. But because the Ukrainian army had all but collapsed, the
new, coup government had no one to rely on other than the neo-fascists who had helped propel it
to power.
So an alliance was hatched between pro-western oligarchs at the top – Forbesputs
Poroshenko's net worth at a cool $1 billion – and neo-Nazi enforcers at the bottom.
Fascists may not be popular. Indeed, Dmytro Yarosh, the fire-breathing leader of a white-power
coalition known as Right Sector, received less than one percent of the vote when he
ran for president in May 2014.
But the state is so weak and riddled with so many ultra-rightists in key positions –
Andriy Parubiy, founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine, is speaker of the
parliament, while ultra-rightist Arsen Avakov is minister of the interior – that the path
before them is clear and unobstructed. As Cohen points out, the result is government passivity
on one hand and a rising tide of ultra-right violence on the other. In the earlier stages of
the civil war, for instance, the rightwing extremists burned more than 40 people alive in a
labor union building in Odessa, a horrific incident downplayed by Western media.
Cohen's article may have Washington Post readers scratching their heads for the
simple reason that the paper has long said the opposite. Since Euromaidan, the Post
has toed the official Washington line
that Vladimir Putin has exaggerated the role of the radical right in order to discredit the
anti-Yanukovych revolt and legitimize his own alleged interference.
Sure, anti-Yanukovych forces had festooned the Kiev town hall with a white supremacist
banner, a Confederate flag , and a giant image of Stepan Bandera , a Nazi
collaborator whose forces killed thousands of Jews during the German occupation and as many as
100,000 Poles. And yes, they staged a 15,000-strong torchlight parade in Bandera's honor and
scrawled an SS symbol on a toppled
statue of Lenin. They also destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who
had fought on what Bandera supporters regard as the wrong side of World War II, that is, with
the Soviets and against the Axis.
But so-called responsible, mainstream journalists are supposed to avert their eyes to avoid
being tarred as a "
useful idiot " whom Putin supposedly employs to advance his "anti-American agenda." Ten
days after Yanukovych's departure, the Post dutifully
assured its readers that Russian reports of "hooligans and fascists" had "no basis in
reality."
A week or so later, it
said "the new government, though peppered with right-wing politicians, is led primarily by
moderate, pro-European politicians." A few weeks after that, it
described Bandera as no more than "controversial" and quoted a Kiev businessman as saying:
"The Russians want to call him a fascist, but I feel he was a hero for our country. Putin is
using him to try to divide us."
Thus, the Post and other corporate media continued to do its duty by
attacking Putin for plainly saying "the forces backing Ukraine's government in Kiev are
fascists and neo-Nazis." But who was wrong ?
The New York Times was no better. It
assailed Russia for hurling "harsh epithets" like "neo-Nazi," and
blamed the Russian leader for "scaremongering" by attributing Yanukovych's ouster to
"nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites." The Guardian 's Luke Harding
–
a leading Putin basher –
said of the far-right Svoboda Party:
"Over the past decade the party appears to have mellowed, eschewing xenophobia, academic
commentators suggest. On Monday, the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, said he had
been 'positively impressed' by Svoboda's evolution in opposition and by its behavior in the
Rada, Ukraine's parliament. 'They have demonstrated their democratic bona fides,' the
ambassador asserted."
This is the party whose founder, Oleh Tyahnybok,
said in a 2004 speech that "a Moscow-Jewish mafia" was running the Ukraine and that
Bandera's followers "fought against the Muscovites, Germans, Jews and other enemies who wanted
to take away our Ukrainian state." Had the leopard really changed its spots, according to
Pyatt? Or was it simply a matter of America not giving a damn as long as Svoboda joined the
fight to encircle Russia and advance NATO's drive to the east?
As someone named Marx once observed , "Who you gonna believe, me or your
own two eyes?" As far as Ukraine was concerned, the answer for the corporate press came from
the U.S. State Department. If Foggy Bottom said that Ukrainian neo-Nazism was a figment of
Russia's imagination, then that's what it was, regardless of evidence to the contrary.
Someday, historians will look back on Euromaidan Ukraine as one of the looniest periods in
western journalism – except, of course, for all the ones that have followed. But if one
had to choose the looniest story of all, one that best reflects the abject toadyism of the
reporting classes, it would have to be "Why Jews and Ukrainians Have Become Unlikely Allies," a
1,400-word article
that ran on the Post -owned Foreign Policy website in May 2014. Four years
later, it stands as a model of how not to write about an all-important political crisis.
Cohen's Conversion
Tyahnybok: 'Moscow-Jewish mafia' is running Ukraine.
The piece begins with the usual hand-wringing about Svoboda and Right Sector and expresses
remorse that the latter still venerates the "controversial" Bandera, whose followers "fought on
the side of the Nazis from 1944 until the end of World War II." (Actually, they welcomed the
Germans from the start and, despite rocky relations with the Slav-hating Nazis, continued to
work with them throughout the occupation.)
But then it gets down to business by asserting that as bad as Ukrainian nationalists may be,
Russia is doubly worse. "Despite the substantial presence of right wing nationalists on the
Maidan during the revolution," it says, "many in Ukraine's Jewish community resent being used
by Putin in his propaganda war." The proof is an open letter signed by 21 Ukrainian Jewish
leaders asserting that the real danger was Moscow.
"We know that the political opposition consists of various groups, including some that are
nationalistic," the letter declared. "But even the most marginal of them do not demonstrate
anti-Semitism or other forms of xenophobia. And we certainly know that our very few
nationalists are well-controlled by civil society and the new Ukrainian government –
which is more than can be said for the Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security
services."
This was music to Washington's ears. But if neo-Nazis are free of "anti-Semitism or other
forms of xenophobia," how does one explain the white-power symbols in the Kiev town hall? If
nationalists were "very few" in number, why did journalists need to explain them away? If
Russian security forces really encouraged neo-Nazis, where were the torchlight parades and
portraits of Bandera-like collaborators hanging from public buildings in Moscow?
The article might have noted that Josef Zissels, the Jewish community leader who organized
the letter, is a provocative figure who has long maintained close relations with Ukraine's far
right. A self-styled
Zhydobanderivets – a word that roughly translates as "Kike follower of Bandera"
– he has since infuriated other Jewish leaders by criticizing California Congressman Ro
Khanna for sending a letter to the State Department asking that pressure be brought on the
governments of Poland and Ukraine to combat Holocaust revisionism in their countries.
Forty-one Jewish leaders were so angry, in fact, that they sent out
a letter of their own thanking Khannna for his efforts, expressing "deep concern at the
rise of anti-Semitic incidents and expressions of xenophobia and intolerance, including attacks
on Roma communities," and "strongly proclaim[ing] that Mr. Iosif Zissels and the organization
VAAD do not represent the Jews of Ukraine." A Jewish community leader in Russia was so outraged
by the pro-Bandera apologetics of Zissels and a Ukrainian-Jewish oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky
that he
said he wanted to hang both men "in Dnepropetrovsk in front of the Golden Rose Synagogue
until they stop breathing."
So Foreign Policy used a highly dubious source to whitewash Ukraine's growing
neo-Nazi presence and absolve it of anti-Semitism. As crimes against the truth go, this is
surely one of the worst. But now that the problem has gotten too big for even the corporate
media to ignore, overnight muckrakers like Joshua Cohen are seeing to it that getting away with
such offenses will no longer be so easy. Before his abrupt about-face, the author of that
misleading Foreign Policy piece was Joshua Cohen.
Daniel Lazare is the author ofThe Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is
Paralyzing Democracy(Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American
politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications fromThe NationtoLe Monde Diplomatique, and his articles about the Middle East,
terrorism, Eastern Europe, and other topics appear regularly on such websites asJacobinand The American Conservative .
If you enjoyed this original article please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
mike k , July 6, 2018 at 4:49 pm
The leaders of Israel who sell weapons to the Nazis in Ukraine, are no better than those
Nazis.
Susan Sunflower , July 6, 2018 at 1:37 pm
for those having Alice In Wonderland whiplash, yes the USA was funding the Ukranian
neonazis Azov Brigade before Congress banned the funding in March 2018.
same old "syrian playbook" wrt to enemy-of-my-memory bull .
rosemerry , July 6, 2018 at 10:12 am
The two-hour documentary "Putin" shows in an interview Pres. Putin explaining his
government's cooperating with the Western- supported Ukrainian government for four years
(because they were neighbors and had many links) which he considered normal behavior.
However, once the 2014 election brought in a more "Moscow-friendly" team to govern Ukraine,
the USA began its plans to overthrow it and we see all the consequences shown in this
article.
The tacit support given by the centre-left to the installation of the regime in Kiev
should give them cause for concern writes Frank.
Politics in the Ukraine can only be understood by reference to its history and ethnic and
cultural make-up – a make-up criss-crossed by lasting and entrenched ethnic, cultural
and political differences. The country has long been split into the northern and western
Ukraine, where Ukrainian is the official and everyday lingua franca, and the more
industrialised regions of the east and south where a mixture of Russian speaking Ukrainians
and ethnic Russians reside. Additionally, there has long been Hungarian and Romanian
settlement in the west of the country, and a particularly important Polish presence, whose
unofficial capital, Lviv, was once the Polish city of Lwow. The Russian Orthodox Church is
the predominant form of Christianity in the East, whilst in the west the Christian tradition
tends towards Roman Catholicism.
Politically the Eastern and Southern Oblasts (Regions) which includes the cities and
centres of heavy industry, Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhe, Nikolayev, Kherson,
Simferopol and Odessa, have tended to tilt towards Russia whilst the western regions have had
a more western orientation. This has traditionally been reflected in the electoral division
of the country. There is no party which can be considered 'national' in this respect, except
ironically, the old Communist party, which of course is now banned. The major regional
parties have been the Fatherland party of Yulia Tymoshenko (since renamed) and the former
head of government, Arseniy Yatsenyuk as well as the ultra-nationalists predominantly in the
west of the country, and the deposed Victor Yanukovich's Party of the Regions in the East
(now defunct) along with its junior partner in the coalition, the Ukrainian Communist
Party.
However, what is new since the coup in February 2014 there has been the emergence from the
shadows of ultra-nationalist (fascist) parties and movements, with both parliamentary and
extra-parliamentary (i.e.,military) wings. In the main 'Svoboda' or Freedom Party, and the
paramilitaries of 'Right Sector' (Fuhrer: Dimitry Yarosh) who spearheaded the coup in Kiev;
these have been joined or changed their names to inter alia the Radical Party, and Patriots
of the Ukraine; this in addition to the punitive right-wing militias, such as the Azov
Regiment responsible for numerous atrocities in the Don Bas.
Suffice it to say, however, that these political movements and parties did not emerge from
nowhere.
This far-right tradition has been historically very strong in the western Ukraine. The
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was first established in 1929 and brought
together, war veterans, student fraternities, far-right groups and various other disoriented
socially and political flotsam and jetsam under its banner. The OUN took its ideological
position from the writings of one, Dymtro Dontsov, who, like Mussolini had been a socialist,
and who was instrumental in creating an indigenous Ukrainian fascism based upon the usual
mish-mash of writings and theories including Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, and Charles
Maurras. Dontsov also translated the works of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian.
The OUN was committed to ethnic purity, and relied on violence, assassination and
terrorism, not least against other Ukrainians, to achieve its goal of a totalitarian and
homogeneous nation-state. Assorted enemies and impediments to this goal were Communists,
Russians, Poles, and of course – Jews. Strongly oriented toward the Axis powers OUN
founder Evhen Konovalets (1891-1938) stated that his movement was ''waging war against mixed
marriages'', with Poles, Russians and Jews, the latter which he described as ''foes of our
national rebirth''. Indeed, rabid anti-Semitism has been a leitmotif in the history of
Ukrainian fascism, which we will return to below.
Konovelts himself was assassinated by a KGB hit-man in 1938 after which the movement split
into two wings: (OUN-m) under Andrii Melnyk and, more importantly for our purposes (OUN-b)
under Stepan Bandera. Both wings committed to a new fascist Europe. Upon the German invasion
in June 1941, the OUN-b attempted to establish a Ukrainian satellite state loyal to Nazi
Germany. Stepan Lenkavs'kyi the then chief propagandist of the OUN-b 'government' advocated
the physical destruction of Ukrainian Jewry. OUN-b's 'Prime Minister' Yaroslav Stets'ko, and
deputy to Bandera supported, ''the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing
German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the
like.''
During the early days of the rapid German advance into the Soviet Union there were some
140 pogroms in the western Ukraine claiming the lives of between 13000-35000 people
(Untermensch, in fascist terminology). In 1943-1944 OUN-b and its armed wing the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armia – UPA) carried out large scale ethnic
cleansing resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands; this was a particularly gruesome
affair in Volhynia where some 90000 Poles and thousands of Jews were murdered. The campaign
of the UPA continued well into the 1950s until it was virtually wiped out by the Soviet
forces.
It should be said that during this early period Bandera himself had been incarcerated by
the German authorities up until his release in 1944, since unlike Bandera they were not
enamoured of an independent Ukrainian state but wanted total control. Bandera was only
released at this late date since the German high command was endeavouring to build up a
pro-German Ukrainian quisling military force to hold up the remorseless advance of the Red
Army. Also pursuant to this it is also worth noting that during this period the 14th Galizian
Waffen SS Division, a military Ukrainian collaborationist formation established by Heinrich
Himmler, was formed to fight the Soviet forces, and yet another being the Nachtingal brigade;
(1) this unit was integrated into the 14th Galizian in due course. It is also interesting to
note, that every year, and up to 2014 commemoration ceremony including veterans of this unit
takes place with a march through Lviv in an evening torchlight parade – genuine Nazi
pastiche. The flag of this unit is not dissimilar to the Peugeot logo, the standing lion, and
can be seen at ultra-nationalist rallies as well as football matches involving Lviv Karparti
FC. There are also numerous statues of Bandera across Ukraine, and since the 2014 coup even
street names bearing the same name. Significantly the UPA have now received political
rehabilitation from the Kiev Junta, with Bandera declared a hero of the Ukraine and the UPA
rebranded as 'freedom fighters.' One particularly splendid statue of Bandera stands proudly
in Lviv and is usually adorned with flowers.
Other novel attractions the capital of Banderestan include 'Jewish themed restaurants' one
such is Kryivka (Hideout or Lurking Hole) where guests have a choice of dishes and whose
dinning walls are decorated with larger than life portraits of Bandera, the toilet with
Russian and Jewish anecdotes. At another Jewish themed restaurant guests are offered black
hats of the sort worn by Hasidim. The menu lists no prices for the dishes; instead, one is
required to haggle over highly inflated prices ''in the Jewish fashion''. Yes, it's all good
clean fun in Lviv. Anti-Semitism also sells. Out of 19 book vendors on the streets of central
Lviv, 16 were openly selling anti-Semitic literature. About 70% of the anti-Semitic
publications in Ukraine are being published by and educational institution called MUAP (The
Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management). MAUP is a large, well-connected and
increasingly powerful organization funded from outside anti-Semite sources, and also
connected to White Supremacist groups in the USA and to the David Duke, former Grand Wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan.
(It is one of the ironies of history that if the Zionists in AIPAC and the Washington
neo-con think tanks, and the Labour Party Friends of Israel, were so concerned about
anti-Semitism, they might try looking for it in Lviv. They wouldn't have to search very
far.)
Present day neo-Nazi groupings in Ukraine – Svoboda (Freedom) party and Right Sector
– have been the direct descendants from the prior ideological cesspool. Heading Svoboda
is Oleh Tyahnybok. Although these are separate organizations Tyahnybok's deputy Yuriy
Mykhalchyshyn is the main link between Svoboda's official wing and neo-Nazi militias like
Right Sector. The Social-Nationalist party as it was formerly known chose as its logo an
amended version of the Wolfsangel, a symbol used by many SS divisions on the Eastern front
during the war who in 2004 a celebration of the OUN-UPA, stated in 2004, that ''they fought
against the Muscovite, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian
state.'' And further that ''Ukraine was ruled by a Muscovite-Jewish mafia.'' Tyahnybok came
under pressure from the then President, Yuschenko, to retract his inflammatory statements,
which he did, but he then retracted the retraction!
Given the fact that Svoboda was, apart from its stamping grounds in the west, making
little national electoral headway, it was essential to clean up its image and deny its Nazi
past. But this was always going to be difficult since the members of such groups cannot help
the unscripted outbursts and faux pas which they tend to make and which reveals their true
colours. For example, following the conviction and sentencing of John Demjanjuk to five years
in jail for his role as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death
camp, Tyahnybok travelled to Germany and met up with Demjanjuk's lawyer, presenting the death
camp guard as a hero, a victim of persecution ''who is fighting for truth''.
And so it goes on. We can therefore infer that this organization is inveterate fascist. More
disturbing Svoboda has links with the so-called Alliance of National European Movements,
which includes: Nationaldemokraterna of Sweden, Front Nationale of France, Fiamma Tricolore
in Italy, the Hungarian Jobbik and the Belgian National Front. More importantly Svoboda held
several ministerial portfolios in the Kiev administration, and Right Sector swaggers around
Kiev streets with impunity, and/or are being drafted into a National Guard to deal with the
separatist movements in the east, or to beat down anyone who doesn't conform to their Ayran
racial and political ideals.
One would have thought that this mutating revolution in the Ukraine would have drawn
attention of the centre-left to the fact that fascism had gained a vital beachhead in Europe,
and that the danger signals should be flashing. But not a bit of it; a perusal of the
Guardian newspaper quickly reveals that their chief concern has been with a non-existent
'Russian threat'. One of their reporters – or old friend, Luke Harding -described Right
Sector as an ''eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.'' Priceless! This
must rank as the political understatement of the century. In fact, the Guardian was simply
reiterating the US-imposed neo-conservative foreign policy. But naturally, this is par for
the course.
(1) The Nachtingal brigade, which was later incorporated into the SS Galizien, took part
in a three-day massacre of the Jewish population of Lvov (now Lviv) from 30 June 1941. Roman
Shukhevych was the commander of the Nachtingal and later, in 1943, became commander of the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the "Banderivtsy", or UPA/UIA[5] ), armed henchmen of the fascist
Stepan Bandera, who after the war pretended that they had fought both Nazis and Communists.
Members of the division are also accused of having murdered some 800 residents of the Polish
village of Huta Pieniacka and 44 civilians in the village of Ch?aniów.
Paolo , July 6, 2018 at 7:11 am
Just for the record: the Ukrainians hailed the Nazis as liberators after the Soviets had
let millions of Ukrainians die of hunger in the thirties, a sort of "genocide" that goes
under the name of Holodomor and has officially been recognized by western Parlaments only a
few decades ago. In eastern Ukraine there were no more inhabitants after the Holodomor, and
the Russians imported hundreds of thousand peasants from Russia to get agriculture working
again.
The problems of Ukraine are so deep that fomenting regime change there was a most idiotic
thing to do. Sooner or later the problems will explode, and it will be tough shit. Whoever
helped this regime change should be locked up in some high security jail as far as
possible.
Garrett Connelly , July 6, 2018 at 9:52 am
The big lie is 180° opposite of reality repeated over and over using free corporate
propaganda.
vinnieoh , July 5, 2018 at 3:15 pm
Still scratching my head at the electric last line of Mr. Lazare's piece. I'm mean, I'm
used to "official" organs like WaPo and NYT publishing whatever narrative is most helpful to
whatever pieces are being moved on the chessboard, but for the same "freelance journalist" to
have written both the earlier Foreign Policy piece and the recent WaPo piece is a puzzle to
me.
Does Joshua Cohen just write stuff that goes with the flow (at any particular moment) and
has a good chance of being published (and consequently of himself being paid)?
Or did this
person really have an epiphany, and the scales fell from his eyes? I suspect a third
explanation though what that may be eludes me. One thing is for sure, as a Trump/Putin
meeting gets closer, expect more false "official" narratives concerning both Ukraine and
Syria.
'The U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" uprising not only drove out former president Viktor
Yanukovych in February 2014, who had won an OSCE-certified election, but tore the country in
two, precisely because ultra-rightists like C14 were in the lead But if one had to choose the
looniest story of all, one that best reflects the abject toadyism of the reporting classes,
it would have to be "Why Jews and Ukrainians Have Become Unlikely Allies," a 1,400-word
article that ran on the Post-owned Foreign Policy website in May 2014.'
Here's the thing though: however weird it may sound, there actually DOES seem to exist
some sort of tacit alliance between (some, not all) Jews and Ukrainian Nazis. Even if their
ultimate goals are completely at odds–the Nazis hate the EU, but the Jews mostly want
to join it–they nearly always seem to work together against Russia. It has even been
maintained that the Azov Battalion (one of the all-volunteer Neo-Nazi militias fighting
against the Donbass rebels) was entirely financed for a time by Jewish oligarch Ihor
Kholomoisky, at least until he did something to piss Poroshenko off and got sacked from his
post as governor of Dniepropetrovsk. And in the beginning, Jews who tried to point out that
Neo-Nazi groups were involved in overthrowing Yanukovych, like Dr. Stephen Cohen, were
roundly denounced a 'Russia apologists' just for stating facts.
But now that Washington's whole Ukraine project has gone south, I guess the Nazis, having
outlived their usefulness, are, as usual, to be the fall-guys and take all the blame.
Anna , July 5, 2018 at 2:39 pm
yeh, the Kaganat of Nuland has many veils.
The most stunning aspect of the banderite putsch in Kiev was the dead silence of nazi-hunters
from Wiesenthal Center, the always oh-so-sensitive ADL, the main 52 (fifty-two!) American
Jewish organizations, and the overall docility and compliance of the "righteous" Israel with
the banderite-neo-Nazi ideology by Kagans-selected power structures in Ukraine.
Mr. Kolomojsky, a financier of neo-nazi battalion Azov, is still an Israeli citizen.
Mrs. Nuland-Kagan, the main machinator of the regime change in Kiev, has not been ostracized
by the Jewish Community at large.
The deeply amoral and bloodthirsty Carl Gerschman from NED, who has been the main cheerleader
for the putsch and for the installing the banderite-friendly government in Kiev, has not been
ostracized by the Jewish Community at large either. What a stench!
https://medium.com/@gmochannel/us-staged-a-coup-in-ukraine-brief-history-and-facts-898c6d0007d6
Pft , July 5, 2018 at 9:07 pm
Yeah. The prime minister and many of the top oligarchs are Jewish. Relations between
Ukraine and Israel seem quite good despite the UNSC vote that the US abstained on regarding
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, perhaps reminded by Stalin doing the same to them in
the 1920's.
As for relations with the neo nazis I remember before WWII that Zionists in Palestine
cooperated with Nazis who sent German Jews to Palestine in return for the purchase of German
goods which were being boycotted by Jews in the west
I suspect most Americans don't know Ukrainian history. The early years of Bolshevik rule
were quite brutal and over 10 million rural Christians lost their lives in Ukraine over their
policies .Solzhenitsyn 200 years can shed some light on the roots of the anti-Semitism among
the peasants that developed in the 20's-30's and no doubt has been passed on.
Robert , July 6, 2018 at 4:24 pm
I've thought about this myself and have concluded that a fair number of Jewish
organizations and institutions in the Ukraine were receiving a small portion of the US State
Department funding allocated to the Ukraine each year of $200-250 million, totaling $5
billion since 1992. In return for this rather small (by US standards) outlay to a broad
spectrum of NGOs, private educational and religious institutions, and political groups, the
US purchased an enormous amount of influence. Most of the members of these groups were
unaware of this US support, as the funds were funneled through individual leaders who were
tasked to influence opinion, organize demonstrations and petitions, and write letters to the
press and government members. Scholarships to the US and Canada were offered to promising
youth to ensure continuity of support. For this reason, most Jewish and other groups
operating in Ukraine have, until recently and only with reluctance, been willing to deviate
from the official US "story". Thus, they knowingly (at least as far as their leadership was
concerned) supported an overtly US-led neo-Nazi coup.
mike , July 5, 2018 at 1:24 pm
Makes sense that Josh Cohen is a former U.S. Agency for International Development project
officer involved in managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union. Isn't that
really what this is all about? Putin gets elected and takes charge of the economy, jailing
corrupt oligarchs and putting the kibosh on said reform projects sponsored by us in care of
Jeffrey Sachs et al. As Russia tries to reassert its sovereignty the US gets miffed and
retaliates.
The Electronic Intifada has just posted an article by Asa Winstanley detailing how Israel,
among others, has been supplying the Ukrainian Azov Battalion with military arms. It's well
worth reading.
The next time you hear a pro-Israel mouthpiece sounding off about purported antisemitism
in the British Labour Party, or in pro-Palestinine activist circles in the U.S., invite them
to consider Israel's policy -- and that of the U.S. as well as friendly European states -- of
direct military sponsorship of textbook Nazism in Ukraine. Jews are being menaced and beaten
in the streets of Kiev by armed bands who celebrate their historical persecution, while thugs
like Avigdor Lieberman sit cordially with officials representing that regime. But then, such
warm relations between Zionists and anti-Semites is an old story.
Jeff Harrison , July 5, 2018 at 1:03 pm
Interesting. Anyone with two brains to rub together knows that the US, to the best of it's
ability, has been surrounding Russia with compliant right wing governments, usually
dictators, but we've gotten better at manipulating elections to get reliable puppet
government. The bad news is that it is a full time job to stay on top of that.
It used to be that the only things one could depend on were "death & taxes." Now of
course we must add to that list the very dependable presence of CIA / State Dept lies
parroted by MSM all over the West. Lies which are endlessly repeated in defiance of all
physical reality and often in direct opposition to actual events in the actual world we live
in. From the Ukraine coup, to Russia-gate, to the "Assad's gassing his own people" regime
change propaganda, to the totally surreal Alice in Wonderland Skripnal poisoning nonsense in
the U.K, the Western MSM have been as dependable as the rising sun. They can and do provide
fact-free, evidence-free reporting directly from the bowels of the deep state in support of
the neocolonial West, including unending support for the never ending resort to mass violence
the West relies upon to keep the rest of the planet subjugated – just as it has for the
last 500+ years.
irina , July 5, 2018 at 2:06 pm
It's not just the media. The late night talk show hosts are doing their bit too, as I
heard
last night on a Jimmy Kimmel rerun (of a recent show). Can't remember the context as
I was doing the dishes, but did hear him say the usual "Russian illegally annexed Crimea"
standard phrase, immediately followed by "and then invaded Ukraine". The latter just
casually tossed off as a given. People hear these memes constantly repeated and,
regardless of their veracity (suspect to say the least) it becomes part of their
worldview.
Who is behind the political preaching of hosts like Jimmy Kimmel ?
Inquiring minds want to know !
Joe Tedesky , July 5, 2018 at 2:43 pm
You know what irina, seeing these late night talk shows go all crazy over Putin makes me
think of the Zio-Media executives, and where their allegiance to power resides. Joe
Devil's Advocate , July 5, 2018 at 2:48 pm
I would assume you'd have to look at who owns the media source in question. Kimmel's show
is on ABC, which is partly owned by Disney. Follow the money chain of those 2 parent
companies, and you have your answer.
irina – I quite agree. The same is true of the former Daily Show crew members who
now have their own shows. Several have shown themselves to be quite the little imperialist
war mongers when it comes to gleefully repeating the CIA sponsored Syrian regime change and
Russiagate propaganda. Samantha Bee & John Oliver kept triggering my gag reflex with
their propaganda lines until I found a simple but effective solution and stopped watching
them altogether. We have an amazingly seamless propaganda system here in the U.S. One can
chose to either get one's "pro-war regime change propaganda" delivered with barely concealed
racism and misogyny from Fox News, or instead opt for hearing the same nonsense delivered
with pretentious blather and catchy jazz interludes at PBS. American democracy is all about
having "choices."
Jeff Harrison , July 5, 2018 at 7:57 pm
I quite agree. I knew the minute that they started calling RT a propaganda outlet that, in
fact, the USG was running a full scale propaganda operation. I don't know if I simply wasn't
paying enough attention or if they have, in fact ramped the operation up, but I can hardly
read any MSM outlet's output without calling bullshit on it.
irina , July 6, 2018 at 2:55 am
Jimmy Kimmel actually used to be funny and there is a really good clip
(somewhere on youtube no doubt) of him reading a 'doctored' Dr. Seuss
book to The Donald (a live guest) during his primary candidacy.
But since The Donald's election Kimmel has opened almost every show
with 'ten minutes hate' segment on The Donald. I still watch (or at least
listen) occasionally because I want to know what is being fed to The Public.
You are absolutely right though, "we have an amazingly seamless propaganda
system here in the US". The average person maybe has 30 minutes to
devote to the news, between getting home and having dinner; they watch
some sort of news show and think they are 'informed'. But it actually takes
MANY hours and a knowledge of alternative websites to even begin to piece
together an approximation of what might, in reality, be going on.
The Russians used to say that, at least they knew they were being propagandized.
Unfortunately, probably due to 'American Exceptionalism', most Americans think
the MSM is bringing them 'the truth'. But nothing could be further from The Truth.
Peter H , July 6, 2018 at 10:41 am
I can't count the number of times I've had to turn off Colbert's Late Show for his
Russian/Putin bashing BS. So disappointing. That's a rule in my house now. The first mention
of Russia and off it goes.
Drew Hunkins , July 5, 2018 at 12:52 pm
Likewise, the corporate militarist-Zio media should eventually have to concede someday
that the current Syrian "rebels" are little more than ruthless sociopathic
Saudi-Zio-Washington intel agency supported mercenary terrorists.
Folks in the know knew very early on that much of the Kiev putschists and violent invaders
of Eastern Ukraine were neo-Nazi types bent on eradicating the last vestiges of Russian
social and ethnic solidarity.
It's really truly remarkable when one steps back to think about it all. These are the
depraved groups the crypto-fascists, the Wall Street militarist imperialists, and Zionists
have embedded themselves with: bloodthirsty Takfiri mercenary terrorists and neo-Nazis.
Bob Van Noy , July 5, 2018 at 2:25 pm
Each time I see an article like this I'm reminded of the videos of Zbigniew Brzezinski's
early meetings with the Mujahideen and his manipulation of cultures on The Grand Chessboard
or "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" a totally absurd assumption and the natural outcome
of that absurdity, is blowback which this article again addresses. Our "boots on the ground"
end up paying the price of this kind of supposed intellectualism. Shameful. Thank you Drew
Hunkins.
Joe Tedesky , July 5, 2018 at 2:39 pm
Bob the old saying if I got right is the company you keep is what you become. We have
truly loss our way, and Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of the biggest reasons we have become the
predators of this dying green earth. All this for the profit, as all mankind must yield to
the power of the dollar. Sad. Joe
MBeaver , July 6, 2018 at 5:03 am
One would think we had learned from Vietnam. Instead the "peace loving" liberals do
everything to destabilize whole region for nothing and then send soldiers in who die for
their messed up agenda.
JWalters , July 5, 2018 at 7:16 pm
It is truly remarkable. A lot of the behind-the-scenes magic is explained in "War
Profiteers and Israel's Bank" http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
.
Look up Rostislav Ishenko's latest excellent piece yesterday:
I did, and as usual Ishenko takes an oblique approach that shines a light into obscure but
critical corners.
What an eye opener this one is.
Not sure how much was lost in translation, but if I understood correctly the Russians are
massing forces in the Western District, not because they fear an attack from NATO, or plan to
attack Europe but to rescue Europe from a conflagration that will be sparked in Ukraine. That
it was drifting into failed state status is well known, but that a religious war is in the
offing was utterly unknown to me, and I suspect to most others here.
That in turn shines a light on why Poland and the Baltics are begging for US/NATO troops
as well, and at least partially why US/NATO is delivering. As Ukraine drifts into chaos, its
neighbours, being aware of its history of extreme violence and atrocity are preparing
themselves for the spillover. They have no desire to relive the decade+ blood orgy that
erupted in the middle of the 20th C centred on Ukraine (where, IMHO, the real Holocaust
happened).
Overwhelming force applied at an overwhelming pace is the best way of dealing with such an
outbreak, and the Russians are the only party able to deliver. US/NATO forces can be expected
to roar around in their APCs avoiding trouble and then claim credit in accordance with
Western military tradition. Meanwhile, the Russians will go into mopping up the
leftovers.
Makes a lot of sense if Ishchenko's read of the situation is right. It probably has a
bigger impact on Dunford's and Gerasimov's meeting than the USM "going home".
Whew!
PS: Yes, I was aware of the Russian central bank selling off its USTs. With the Petro-Yuan
and Western sanctions now in full swing, it really doesn't need $100B's worth to manage its
U$ denominated imports.
Corporate Media's About-Face on Ukraine's Neo-Nazis July 5, 2018 •
59 Comments
U.S. corporate media spent years dismissing the role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine's 2014 coup but
it is suddenly going through a conversion, as Daniel Lazare reports.
By Daniel Lazare Special to Consortium News
Last month a freelance journalist named Joshua
Cohen published an
article in The Washington Post about the Ukraine's growing neo-Nazi threat.
Despite a gratuitous swipe at Russia for allegedly exaggerating the problem (which it hasn't),
the piece was fairly accurate.
Entitled "Ukraine's ultra-right militias are challenging the government to a showdown," it
said that fascists have gone on a rampage while the ruling clique in Kiev closes its eyes for
the most part and prays that the problem somehow goes away on its own.
Thus, a group calling itself C14 (for the fourteen-word ultra-right motto, "We must secure
the existence of our people and a future for white children") not only beat up a socialist
politician and celebrated Hitler's birthday by stabbing an antiwar activist, but bragged about
it on its website. Other ultra-nationalists, Cohen says, have stormed the Lvov and Kiev city
councils and "assaulted or disrupted" art exhibits, anti-fascist demos, peace and gay-rights
events, and a Victory Day parade commemorating the victory over Hitler in 1945.
Yet nothing has happened to stop this. President Petro Poroshenko could order a crackdown,
but hasn't for reasons that should be obvious. The U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" uprising not only
drove out former president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, who had won an OSCE-certified
election, but tore the country in two, precisely because ultra-rightists like C14 were in the
lead.
When resistance to the U.S.-backed coup
broke out in Crimea and parts of the country's largely Russian-speaking east, the base of
Yanukovych voters, civil war ensued. But because the Ukrainian army had all but collapsed, the
new, coup government had no one to rely on other than the neo-fascists who had helped propel it
to power.
So an alliance was hatched between pro-western oligarchs at the top – Forbesputs
Poroshenko's net worth at a cool $1 billion – and neo-Nazi enforcers at the bottom.
Fascists may not be popular. Indeed, Dmytro Yarosh, the fire-breathing leader of a white-power
coalition known as Right Sector, received less than one percent of the vote when he
ran for president in May 2014.
But the state is so weak and riddled with so many ultra-rightists in key positions –
Andriy Parubiy, founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine, is speaker of the
parliament, while ultra-rightist Arsen Avakov is minister of the interior – that the path
before them is clear and unobstructed. As Cohen points out, the result is government passivity
on one hand and a rising tide of ultra-right violence on the other. In the earlier stages of
the civil war, for instance, the rightwing extremists burned more than 40 people alive in a
labor union building in Odessa, a horrific incident downplayed by Western media.
Cohen's article may have Washington Post readers scratching their heads for the
simple reason that the paper has long said the opposite. Since Euromaidan, the Post
has toed the official Washington line
that Vladimir Putin has exaggerated the role of the radical right in order to discredit the
anti-Yanukovych revolt and legitimize his own alleged interference.
Sure, anti-Yanukovych forces had festooned the Kiev town hall with a white supremacist
banner, a Confederate flag , and a giant image of Stepan Bandera , a Nazi
collaborator whose forces killed thousands of Jews during the German occupation and as many as
100,000 Poles. And yes, they staged a 15,000-strong torchlight parade in Bandera's honor and
scrawled an SS symbol on a toppled
statue of Lenin. They also destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who
had fought on what Bandera supporters regard as the wrong side of World War II, that is, with
the Soviets and against the Axis.
But so-called responsible, mainstream journalists are supposed to avert their eyes to avoid
being tarred as a "
useful idiot " whom Putin supposedly employs to advance his "anti-American agenda." Ten
days after Yanukovych's departure, the Post dutifully
assured its readers that Russian reports of "hooligans and fascists" had "no basis in
reality."
A week or so later, it
said "the new government, though peppered with right-wing politicians, is led primarily by
moderate, pro-European politicians." A few weeks after that, it
described Bandera as no more than "controversial" and quoted a Kiev businessman as saying:
"The Russians want to call him a fascist, but I feel he was a hero for our country. Putin is
using him to try to divide us."
Thus, the Post and other corporate media continued to do its duty by
attacking Putin for plainly saying "the forces backing Ukraine's government in Kiev are
fascists and neo-Nazis." But who was wrong ?
The New York Times was no better. It
assailed Russia for hurling "harsh epithets" like "neo-Nazi," and
blamed the Russian leader for "scaremongering" by attributing Yanukovych's ouster to
"nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites." The Guardian 's Luke Harding
–
a leading Putin basher –
said of the far-right Svoboda Party:
"Over the past decade the party appears to have mellowed, eschewing xenophobia, academic
commentators suggest. On Monday, the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, said he had
been 'positively impressed' by Svoboda's evolution in opposition and by its behavior in the
Rada, Ukraine's parliament. 'They have demonstrated their democratic bona fides,' the
ambassador asserted."
This is the party whose founder, Oleh Tyahnybok,
said in a 2004 speech that "a Moscow-Jewish mafia" was running the Ukraine and that
Bandera's followers "fought against the Muscovites, Germans, Jews and other enemies who wanted
to take away our Ukrainian state." Had the leopard really changed its spots, according to
Pyatt? Or was it simply a matter of America not giving a damn as long as Svoboda joined the
fight to encircle Russia and advance NATO's drive to the east?
As someone named Marx once observed , "Who you gonna believe, me or your
own two eyes?" As far as Ukraine was concerned, the answer for the corporate press came from
the U.S. State Department. If Foggy Bottom said that Ukrainian neo-Nazism was a figment of
Russia's imagination, then that's what it was, regardless of evidence to the contrary.
Someday, historians will look back on Euromaidan Ukraine as one of the looniest periods in
western journalism – except, of course, for all the ones that have followed. But if one
had to choose the looniest story of all, one that best reflects the abject toadyism of the
reporting classes, it would have to be "Why Jews and Ukrainians Have Become Unlikely Allies," a
1,400-word article
that ran on the Post -owned Foreign Policy website in May 2014. Four years
later, it stands as a model of how not to write about an all-important political crisis.
Cohen's Conversion
Tyahnybok: 'Moscow-Jewish mafia' is running Ukraine.
The piece begins with the usual hand-wringing about Svoboda and Right Sector and expresses
remorse that the latter still venerates the "controversial" Bandera, whose followers "fought on
the side of the Nazis from 1944 until the end of World War II." (Actually, they welcomed the
Germans from the start and, despite rocky relations with the Slav-hating Nazis, continued to
work with them throughout the occupation.)
But then it gets down to business by asserting that as bad as Ukrainian nationalists may be,
Russia is doubly worse. "Despite the substantial presence of right wing nationalists on the
Maidan during the revolution," it says, "many in Ukraine's Jewish community resent being used
by Putin in his propaganda war." The proof is an open letter signed by 21 Ukrainian Jewish
leaders asserting that the real danger was Moscow.
"We know that the political opposition consists of various groups, including some that are
nationalistic," the letter declared. "But even the most marginal of them do not demonstrate
anti-Semitism or other forms of xenophobia. And we certainly know that our very few
nationalists are well-controlled by civil society and the new Ukrainian government –
which is more than can be said for the Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security
services."
This was music to Washington's ears. But if neo-Nazis are free of "anti-Semitism or other
forms of xenophobia," how does one explain the white-power symbols in the Kiev town hall? If
nationalists were "very few" in number, why did journalists need to explain them away? If
Russian security forces really encouraged neo-Nazis, where were the torchlight parades and
portraits of Bandera-like collaborators hanging from public buildings in Moscow?
The article might have noted that Josef Zissels, the Jewish community leader who organized
the letter, is a provocative figure who has long maintained close relations with Ukraine's far
right. A self-styled
Zhydobanderivets – a word that roughly translates as "Kike follower of Bandera"
– he has since infuriated other Jewish leaders by criticizing California Congressman Ro
Khanna for sending a letter to the State Department asking that pressure be brought on the
governments of Poland and Ukraine to combat Holocaust revisionism in their countries.
Forty-one Jewish leaders were so angry, in fact, that they sent out
a letter of their own thanking Khannna for his efforts, expressing "deep concern at the
rise of anti-Semitic incidents and expressions of xenophobia and intolerance, including attacks
on Roma communities," and "strongly proclaim[ing] that Mr. Iosif Zissels and the organization
VAAD do not represent the Jews of Ukraine." A Jewish community leader in Russia was so outraged
by the pro-Bandera apologetics of Zissels and a Ukrainian-Jewish oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky
that he
said he wanted to hang both men "in Dnepropetrovsk in front of the Golden Rose Synagogue
until they stop breathing."
So Foreign Policy used a highly dubious source to whitewash Ukraine's growing
neo-Nazi presence and absolve it of anti-Semitism. As crimes against the truth go, this is
surely one of the worst. But now that the problem has gotten too big for even the corporate
media to ignore, overnight muckrakers like Joshua Cohen are seeing to it that getting away with
such offenses will no longer be so easy. Before his abrupt about-face, the author of that
misleading Foreign Policy piece was Joshua Cohen.
Daniel Lazare is the author ofThe Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is
Paralyzing Democracy(Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American
politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications fromThe NationtoLe Monde Diplomatique, and his articles about the Middle East,
terrorism, Eastern Europe, and other topics appear regularly on such websites asJacobinand The American Conservative .
If you enjoyed this original article please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
mike k , July 6, 2018 at 4:49 pm
The leaders of Israel who sell weapons to the Nazis in Ukraine, are no better than those
Nazis.
Susan Sunflower , July 6, 2018 at 1:37 pm
for those having Alice In Wonderland whiplash, yes the USA was funding the Ukranian
neonazis Azov Brigade before Congress banned the funding in March 2018.
same old "syrian playbook" wrt to enemy-of-my-memory bull .
rosemerry , July 6, 2018 at 10:12 am
The two-hour documentary "Putin" shows in an interview Pres. Putin explaining his
government's cooperating with the Western- supported Ukrainian government for four years
(because they were neighbors and had many links) which he considered normal behavior.
However, once the 2014 election brought in a more "Moscow-friendly" team to govern Ukraine,
the USA began its plans to overthrow it and we see all the consequences shown in this
article.
The tacit support given by the centre-left to the installation of the regime in Kiev
should give them cause for concern writes Frank.
Politics in the Ukraine can only be understood by reference to its history and ethnic and
cultural make-up – a make-up criss-crossed by lasting and entrenched ethnic, cultural
and political differences. The country has long been split into the northern and western
Ukraine, where Ukrainian is the official and everyday lingua franca, and the more
industrialised regions of the east and south where a mixture of Russian speaking Ukrainians
and ethnic Russians reside. Additionally, there has long been Hungarian and Romanian
settlement in the west of the country, and a particularly important Polish presence, whose
unofficial capital, Lviv, was once the Polish city of Lwow. The Russian Orthodox Church is
the predominant form of Christianity in the East, whilst in the west the Christian tradition
tends towards Roman Catholicism.
Politically the Eastern and Southern Oblasts (Regions) which includes the cities and
centres of heavy industry, Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhe, Nikolayev, Kherson,
Simferopol and Odessa, have tended to tilt towards Russia whilst the western regions have had
a more western orientation. This has traditionally been reflected in the electoral division
of the country. There is no party which can be considered 'national' in this respect, except
ironically, the old Communist party, which of course is now banned. The major regional
parties have been the Fatherland party of Yulia Tymoshenko (since renamed) and the former
head of government, Arseniy Yatsenyuk as well as the ultra-nationalists predominantly in the
west of the country, and the deposed Victor Yanukovich's Party of the Regions in the East
(now defunct) along with its junior partner in the coalition, the Ukrainian Communist
Party.
However, what is new since the coup in February 2014 there has been the emergence from the
shadows of ultra-nationalist (fascist) parties and movements, with both parliamentary and
extra-parliamentary (i.e.,military) wings. In the main 'Svoboda' or Freedom Party, and the
paramilitaries of 'Right Sector' (Fuhrer: Dimitry Yarosh) who spearheaded the coup in Kiev;
these have been joined or changed their names to inter alia the Radical Party, and Patriots
of the Ukraine; this in addition to the punitive right-wing militias, such as the Azov
Regiment responsible for numerous atrocities in the Don Bas.
Suffice it to say, however, that these political movements and parties did not emerge from
nowhere.
This far-right tradition has been historically very strong in the western Ukraine. The
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was first established in 1929 and brought
together, war veterans, student fraternities, far-right groups and various other disoriented
socially and political flotsam and jetsam under its banner. The OUN took its ideological
position from the writings of one, Dymtro Dontsov, who, like Mussolini had been a socialist,
and who was instrumental in creating an indigenous Ukrainian fascism based upon the usual
mish-mash of writings and theories including Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, and Charles
Maurras. Dontsov also translated the works of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian.
The OUN was committed to ethnic purity, and relied on violence, assassination and
terrorism, not least against other Ukrainians, to achieve its goal of a totalitarian and
homogeneous nation-state. Assorted enemies and impediments to this goal were Communists,
Russians, Poles, and of course – Jews. Strongly oriented toward the Axis powers OUN
founder Evhen Konovalets (1891-1938) stated that his movement was ''waging war against mixed
marriages'', with Poles, Russians and Jews, the latter which he described as ''foes of our
national rebirth''. Indeed, rabid anti-Semitism has been a leitmotif in the history of
Ukrainian fascism, which we will return to below.
Konovelts himself was assassinated by a KGB hit-man in 1938 after which the movement split
into two wings: (OUN-m) under Andrii Melnyk and, more importantly for our purposes (OUN-b)
under Stepan Bandera. Both wings committed to a new fascist Europe. Upon the German invasion
in June 1941, the OUN-b attempted to establish a Ukrainian satellite state loyal to Nazi
Germany. Stepan Lenkavs'kyi the then chief propagandist of the OUN-b 'government' advocated
the physical destruction of Ukrainian Jewry. OUN-b's 'Prime Minister' Yaroslav Stets'ko, and
deputy to Bandera supported, ''the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing
German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the
like.''
During the early days of the rapid German advance into the Soviet Union there were some
140 pogroms in the western Ukraine claiming the lives of between 13000-35000 people
(Untermensch, in fascist terminology). In 1943-1944 OUN-b and its armed wing the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armia – UPA) carried out large scale ethnic
cleansing resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands; this was a particularly gruesome
affair in Volhynia where some 90000 Poles and thousands of Jews were murdered. The campaign
of the UPA continued well into the 1950s until it was virtually wiped out by the Soviet
forces.
It should be said that during this early period Bandera himself had been incarcerated by
the German authorities up until his release in 1944, since unlike Bandera they were not
enamoured of an independent Ukrainian state but wanted total control. Bandera was only
released at this late date since the German high command was endeavouring to build up a
pro-German Ukrainian quisling military force to hold up the remorseless advance of the Red
Army. Also pursuant to this it is also worth noting that during this period the 14th Galizian
Waffen SS Division, a military Ukrainian collaborationist formation established by Heinrich
Himmler, was formed to fight the Soviet forces, and yet another being the Nachtingal brigade;
(1) this unit was integrated into the 14th Galizian in due course. It is also interesting to
note, that every year, and up to 2014 commemoration ceremony including veterans of this unit
takes place with a march through Lviv in an evening torchlight parade – genuine Nazi
pastiche. The flag of this unit is not dissimilar to the Peugeot logo, the standing lion, and
can be seen at ultra-nationalist rallies as well as football matches involving Lviv Karparti
FC. There are also numerous statues of Bandera across Ukraine, and since the 2014 coup even
street names bearing the same name. Significantly the UPA have now received political
rehabilitation from the Kiev Junta, with Bandera declared a hero of the Ukraine and the UPA
rebranded as 'freedom fighters.' One particularly splendid statue of Bandera stands proudly
in Lviv and is usually adorned with flowers.
Other novel attractions the capital of Banderestan include 'Jewish themed restaurants' one
such is Kryivka (Hideout or Lurking Hole) where guests have a choice of dishes and whose
dinning walls are decorated with larger than life portraits of Bandera, the toilet with
Russian and Jewish anecdotes. At another Jewish themed restaurant guests are offered black
hats of the sort worn by Hasidim. The menu lists no prices for the dishes; instead, one is
required to haggle over highly inflated prices ''in the Jewish fashion''. Yes, it's all good
clean fun in Lviv. Anti-Semitism also sells. Out of 19 book vendors on the streets of central
Lviv, 16 were openly selling anti-Semitic literature. About 70% of the anti-Semitic
publications in Ukraine are being published by and educational institution called MUAP (The
Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management). MAUP is a large, well-connected and
increasingly powerful organization funded from outside anti-Semite sources, and also
connected to White Supremacist groups in the USA and to the David Duke, former Grand Wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan.
(It is one of the ironies of history that if the Zionists in AIPAC and the Washington
neo-con think tanks, and the Labour Party Friends of Israel, were so concerned about
anti-Semitism, they might try looking for it in Lviv. They wouldn't have to search very
far.)
Present day neo-Nazi groupings in Ukraine – Svoboda (Freedom) party and Right Sector
– have been the direct descendants from the prior ideological cesspool. Heading Svoboda
is Oleh Tyahnybok. Although these are separate organizations Tyahnybok's deputy Yuriy
Mykhalchyshyn is the main link between Svoboda's official wing and neo-Nazi militias like
Right Sector. The Social-Nationalist party as it was formerly known chose as its logo an
amended version of the Wolfsangel, a symbol used by many SS divisions on the Eastern front
during the war who in 2004 a celebration of the OUN-UPA, stated in 2004, that ''they fought
against the Muscovite, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian
state.'' And further that ''Ukraine was ruled by a Muscovite-Jewish mafia.'' Tyahnybok came
under pressure from the then President, Yuschenko, to retract his inflammatory statements,
which he did, but he then retracted the retraction!
Given the fact that Svoboda was, apart from its stamping grounds in the west, making
little national electoral headway, it was essential to clean up its image and deny its Nazi
past. But this was always going to be difficult since the members of such groups cannot help
the unscripted outbursts and faux pas which they tend to make and which reveals their true
colours. For example, following the conviction and sentencing of John Demjanjuk to five years
in jail for his role as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death
camp, Tyahnybok travelled to Germany and met up with Demjanjuk's lawyer, presenting the death
camp guard as a hero, a victim of persecution ''who is fighting for truth''.
And so it goes on. We can therefore infer that this organization is inveterate fascist. More
disturbing Svoboda has links with the so-called Alliance of National European Movements,
which includes: Nationaldemokraterna of Sweden, Front Nationale of France, Fiamma Tricolore
in Italy, the Hungarian Jobbik and the Belgian National Front. More importantly Svoboda held
several ministerial portfolios in the Kiev administration, and Right Sector swaggers around
Kiev streets with impunity, and/or are being drafted into a National Guard to deal with the
separatist movements in the east, or to beat down anyone who doesn't conform to their Ayran
racial and political ideals.
One would have thought that this mutating revolution in the Ukraine would have drawn
attention of the centre-left to the fact that fascism had gained a vital beachhead in Europe,
and that the danger signals should be flashing. But not a bit of it; a perusal of the
Guardian newspaper quickly reveals that their chief concern has been with a non-existent
'Russian threat'. One of their reporters – or old friend, Luke Harding -described Right
Sector as an ''eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.'' Priceless! This
must rank as the political understatement of the century. In fact, the Guardian was simply
reiterating the US-imposed neo-conservative foreign policy. But naturally, this is par for
the course.
(1) The Nachtingal brigade, which was later incorporated into the SS Galizien, took part
in a three-day massacre of the Jewish population of Lvov (now Lviv) from 30 June 1941. Roman
Shukhevych was the commander of the Nachtingal and later, in 1943, became commander of the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the "Banderivtsy", or UPA/UIA[5] ), armed henchmen of the fascist
Stepan Bandera, who after the war pretended that they had fought both Nazis and Communists.
Members of the division are also accused of having murdered some 800 residents of the Polish
village of Huta Pieniacka and 44 civilians in the village of Ch?aniów.
Paolo , July 6, 2018 at 7:11 am
Just for the record: the Ukrainians hailed the Nazis as liberators after the Soviets had
let millions of Ukrainians die of hunger in the thirties, a sort of "genocide" that goes
under the name of Holodomor and has officially been recognized by western Parlaments only a
few decades ago. In eastern Ukraine there were no more inhabitants after the Holodomor, and
the Russians imported hundreds of thousand peasants from Russia to get agriculture working
again.
The problems of Ukraine are so deep that fomenting regime change there was a most idiotic
thing to do. Sooner or later the problems will explode, and it will be tough shit. Whoever
helped this regime change should be locked up in some high security jail as far as
possible.
Garrett Connelly , July 6, 2018 at 9:52 am
The big lie is 180° opposite of reality repeated over and over using free corporate
propaganda.
vinnieoh , July 5, 2018 at 3:15 pm
Still scratching my head at the electric last line of Mr. Lazare's piece. I'm mean, I'm
used to "official" organs like WaPo and NYT publishing whatever narrative is most helpful to
whatever pieces are being moved on the chessboard, but for the same "freelance journalist" to
have written both the earlier Foreign Policy piece and the recent WaPo piece is a puzzle to
me.
Does Joshua Cohen just write stuff that goes with the flow (at any particular moment) and
has a good chance of being published (and consequently of himself being paid)?
Or did this
person really have an epiphany, and the scales fell from his eyes? I suspect a third
explanation though what that may be eludes me. One thing is for sure, as a Trump/Putin
meeting gets closer, expect more false "official" narratives concerning both Ukraine and
Syria.
'The U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" uprising not only drove out former president Viktor
Yanukovych in February 2014, who had won an OSCE-certified election, but tore the country in
two, precisely because ultra-rightists like C14 were in the lead But if one had to choose the
looniest story of all, one that best reflects the abject toadyism of the reporting classes,
it would have to be "Why Jews and Ukrainians Have Become Unlikely Allies," a 1,400-word
article that ran on the Post-owned Foreign Policy website in May 2014.'
Here's the thing though: however weird it may sound, there actually DOES seem to exist
some sort of tacit alliance between (some, not all) Jews and Ukrainian Nazis. Even if their
ultimate goals are completely at odds–the Nazis hate the EU, but the Jews mostly want
to join it–they nearly always seem to work together against Russia. It has even been
maintained that the Azov Battalion (one of the all-volunteer Neo-Nazi militias fighting
against the Donbass rebels) was entirely financed for a time by Jewish oligarch Ihor
Kholomoisky, at least until he did something to piss Poroshenko off and got sacked from his
post as governor of Dniepropetrovsk. And in the beginning, Jews who tried to point out that
Neo-Nazi groups were involved in overthrowing Yanukovych, like Dr. Stephen Cohen, were
roundly denounced a 'Russia apologists' just for stating facts.
But now that Washington's whole Ukraine project has gone south, I guess the Nazis, having
outlived their usefulness, are, as usual, to be the fall-guys and take all the blame.
Anna , July 5, 2018 at 2:39 pm
yeh, the Kaganat of Nuland has many veils.
The most stunning aspect of the banderite putsch in Kiev was the dead silence of nazi-hunters
from Wiesenthal Center, the always oh-so-sensitive ADL, the main 52 (fifty-two!) American
Jewish organizations, and the overall docility and compliance of the "righteous" Israel with
the banderite-neo-Nazi ideology by Kagans-selected power structures in Ukraine.
Mr. Kolomojsky, a financier of neo-nazi battalion Azov, is still an Israeli citizen.
Mrs. Nuland-Kagan, the main machinator of the regime change in Kiev, has not been ostracized
by the Jewish Community at large.
The deeply amoral and bloodthirsty Carl Gerschman from NED, who has been the main cheerleader
for the putsch and for the installing the banderite-friendly government in Kiev, has not been
ostracized by the Jewish Community at large either. What a stench!
https://medium.com/@gmochannel/us-staged-a-coup-in-ukraine-brief-history-and-facts-898c6d0007d6
Pft , July 5, 2018 at 9:07 pm
Yeah. The prime minister and many of the top oligarchs are Jewish. Relations between
Ukraine and Israel seem quite good despite the UNSC vote that the US abstained on regarding
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, perhaps reminded by Stalin doing the same to them in
the 1920's.
As for relations with the neo nazis I remember before WWII that Zionists in Palestine
cooperated with Nazis who sent German Jews to Palestine in return for the purchase of German
goods which were being boycotted by Jews in the west
I suspect most Americans don't know Ukrainian history. The early years of Bolshevik rule
were quite brutal and over 10 million rural Christians lost their lives in Ukraine over their
policies .Solzhenitsyn 200 years can shed some light on the roots of the anti-Semitism among
the peasants that developed in the 20's-30's and no doubt has been passed on.
Robert , July 6, 2018 at 4:24 pm
I've thought about this myself and have concluded that a fair number of Jewish
organizations and institutions in the Ukraine were receiving a small portion of the US State
Department funding allocated to the Ukraine each year of $200-250 million, totaling $5
billion since 1992. In return for this rather small (by US standards) outlay to a broad
spectrum of NGOs, private educational and religious institutions, and political groups, the
US purchased an enormous amount of influence. Most of the members of these groups were
unaware of this US support, as the funds were funneled through individual leaders who were
tasked to influence opinion, organize demonstrations and petitions, and write letters to the
press and government members. Scholarships to the US and Canada were offered to promising
youth to ensure continuity of support. For this reason, most Jewish and other groups
operating in Ukraine have, until recently and only with reluctance, been willing to deviate
from the official US "story". Thus, they knowingly (at least as far as their leadership was
concerned) supported an overtly US-led neo-Nazi coup.
mike , July 5, 2018 at 1:24 pm
Makes sense that Josh Cohen is a former U.S. Agency for International Development project
officer involved in managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union. Isn't that
really what this is all about? Putin gets elected and takes charge of the economy, jailing
corrupt oligarchs and putting the kibosh on said reform projects sponsored by us in care of
Jeffrey Sachs et al. As Russia tries to reassert its sovereignty the US gets miffed and
retaliates.
The Electronic Intifada has just posted an article by Asa Winstanley detailing how Israel,
among others, has been supplying the Ukrainian Azov Battalion with military arms. It's well
worth reading.
The next time you hear a pro-Israel mouthpiece sounding off about purported antisemitism
in the British Labour Party, or in pro-Palestinine activist circles in the U.S., invite them
to consider Israel's policy -- and that of the U.S. as well as friendly European states -- of
direct military sponsorship of textbook Nazism in Ukraine. Jews are being menaced and beaten
in the streets of Kiev by armed bands who celebrate their historical persecution, while thugs
like Avigdor Lieberman sit cordially with officials representing that regime. But then, such
warm relations between Zionists and anti-Semites is an old story.
Jeff Harrison , July 5, 2018 at 1:03 pm
Interesting. Anyone with two brains to rub together knows that the US, to the best of it's
ability, has been surrounding Russia with compliant right wing governments, usually
dictators, but we've gotten better at manipulating elections to get reliable puppet
government. The bad news is that it is a full time job to stay on top of that.
It used to be that the only things one could depend on were "death & taxes." Now of
course we must add to that list the very dependable presence of CIA / State Dept lies
parroted by MSM all over the West. Lies which are endlessly repeated in defiance of all
physical reality and often in direct opposition to actual events in the actual world we live
in. From the Ukraine coup, to Russia-gate, to the "Assad's gassing his own people" regime
change propaganda, to the totally surreal Alice in Wonderland Skripnal poisoning nonsense in
the U.K, the Western MSM have been as dependable as the rising sun. They can and do provide
fact-free, evidence-free reporting directly from the bowels of the deep state in support of
the neocolonial West, including unending support for the never ending resort to mass violence
the West relies upon to keep the rest of the planet subjugated – just as it has for the
last 500+ years.
irina , July 5, 2018 at 2:06 pm
It's not just the media. The late night talk show hosts are doing their bit too, as I
heard
last night on a Jimmy Kimmel rerun (of a recent show). Can't remember the context as
I was doing the dishes, but did hear him say the usual "Russian illegally annexed Crimea"
standard phrase, immediately followed by "and then invaded Ukraine". The latter just
casually tossed off as a given. People hear these memes constantly repeated and,
regardless of their veracity (suspect to say the least) it becomes part of their
worldview.
Who is behind the political preaching of hosts like Jimmy Kimmel ?
Inquiring minds want to know !
Joe Tedesky , July 5, 2018 at 2:43 pm
You know what irina, seeing these late night talk shows go all crazy over Putin makes me
think of the Zio-Media executives, and where their allegiance to power resides. Joe
Devil's Advocate , July 5, 2018 at 2:48 pm
I would assume you'd have to look at who owns the media source in question. Kimmel's show
is on ABC, which is partly owned by Disney. Follow the money chain of those 2 parent
companies, and you have your answer.
irina – I quite agree. The same is true of the former Daily Show crew members who
now have their own shows. Several have shown themselves to be quite the little imperialist
war mongers when it comes to gleefully repeating the CIA sponsored Syrian regime change and
Russiagate propaganda. Samantha Bee & John Oliver kept triggering my gag reflex with
their propaganda lines until I found a simple but effective solution and stopped watching
them altogether. We have an amazingly seamless propaganda system here in the U.S. One can
chose to either get one's "pro-war regime change propaganda" delivered with barely concealed
racism and misogyny from Fox News, or instead opt for hearing the same nonsense delivered
with pretentious blather and catchy jazz interludes at PBS. American democracy is all about
having "choices."
Jeff Harrison , July 5, 2018 at 7:57 pm
I quite agree. I knew the minute that they started calling RT a propaganda outlet that, in
fact, the USG was running a full scale propaganda operation. I don't know if I simply wasn't
paying enough attention or if they have, in fact ramped the operation up, but I can hardly
read any MSM outlet's output without calling bullshit on it.
irina , July 6, 2018 at 2:55 am
Jimmy Kimmel actually used to be funny and there is a really good clip
(somewhere on youtube no doubt) of him reading a 'doctored' Dr. Seuss
book to The Donald (a live guest) during his primary candidacy.
But since The Donald's election Kimmel has opened almost every show
with 'ten minutes hate' segment on The Donald. I still watch (or at least
listen) occasionally because I want to know what is being fed to The Public.
You are absolutely right though, "we have an amazingly seamless propaganda
system here in the US". The average person maybe has 30 minutes to
devote to the news, between getting home and having dinner; they watch
some sort of news show and think they are 'informed'. But it actually takes
MANY hours and a knowledge of alternative websites to even begin to piece
together an approximation of what might, in reality, be going on.
The Russians used to say that, at least they knew they were being propagandized.
Unfortunately, probably due to 'American Exceptionalism', most Americans think
the MSM is bringing them 'the truth'. But nothing could be further from The Truth.
Peter H , July 6, 2018 at 10:41 am
I can't count the number of times I've had to turn off Colbert's Late Show for his
Russian/Putin bashing BS. So disappointing. That's a rule in my house now. The first mention
of Russia and off it goes.
Drew Hunkins , July 5, 2018 at 12:52 pm
Likewise, the corporate militarist-Zio media should eventually have to concede someday
that the current Syrian "rebels" are little more than ruthless sociopathic
Saudi-Zio-Washington intel agency supported mercenary terrorists.
Folks in the know knew very early on that much of the Kiev putschists and violent invaders
of Eastern Ukraine were neo-Nazi types bent on eradicating the last vestiges of Russian
social and ethnic solidarity.
It's really truly remarkable when one steps back to think about it all. These are the
depraved groups the crypto-fascists, the Wall Street militarist imperialists, and Zionists
have embedded themselves with: bloodthirsty Takfiri mercenary terrorists and neo-Nazis.
Bob Van Noy , July 5, 2018 at 2:25 pm
Each time I see an article like this I'm reminded of the videos of Zbigniew Brzezinski's
early meetings with the Mujahideen and his manipulation of cultures on The Grand Chessboard
or "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" a totally absurd assumption and the natural outcome
of that absurdity, is blowback which this article again addresses. Our "boots on the ground"
end up paying the price of this kind of supposed intellectualism. Shameful. Thank you Drew
Hunkins.
Joe Tedesky , July 5, 2018 at 2:39 pm
Bob the old saying if I got right is the company you keep is what you become. We have
truly loss our way, and Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of the biggest reasons we have become the
predators of this dying green earth. All this for the profit, as all mankind must yield to
the power of the dollar. Sad. Joe
MBeaver , July 6, 2018 at 5:03 am
One would think we had learned from Vietnam. Instead the "peace loving" liberals do
everything to destabilize whole region for nothing and then send soldiers in who die for
their messed up agenda.
JWalters , July 5, 2018 at 7:16 pm
It is truly remarkable. A lot of the behind-the-scenes magic is explained in "War
Profiteers and Israel's Bank" http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
.
If we assume that this is true: "Beyond that, the Ukrainians had no realistic option to defend Crimea. Their military was in extremely
poor shape by the time 2014 rolled around thanks to more than two decades of neglect, monumental corruption and even more monumental
incompetence by Ukrainian politicians and military leaders, while the Russians had well prepared contingency plans and had already begun
far reaching military reforms as a result of their experiences in Chechnya and Georgia."
Then Ukrainian armed forces should drastically improve after several years of fighting.
Notable quotes:
"... The fact that the US leadership didn't even stop to consider how the Russians might react shows just how arrogant, hubristic and incompetent Obama and his national security team really were. ..."
"... Caveat emptor. Karber is a flamboyant blowhard. This is not to dismiss Russia's invasion or or act of war in Ukraine but merely to state that this guy is essentially a Tom Clancy cut out. I like a lot of his slides (I wonder who made them?) and his valuable tactical observations (even if it does sound, at times, like a shopping list for Ukrainian military aid) but he is no SME. https://foreignpolicy.com/2... ..."
If the Obama administration ordered Ukraine not to fight for Crimea on the assumption they could force Russia to give
it back via sanctions, they miscalculated badly.
The Russians believe Crimea rightfully belongs to them and they saw control of it as vital to their national security. There
were some serious shenanigans going on in Kiev, which the Russians interpreted as an American engineered coup. The Russians reacted
to what they believed was a major threat to their national security. The fact that the US leadership didn't even stop to consider
how the Russians might react shows just how arrogant, hubristic and incompetent Obama and his national security team really were.
There is no way the Russians will ever give up Crimea, especially under pressure from the US, NATO and the EU. No Russian politician
could do that and hope to survive. Besides, the Russians have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to endure suffering and hardships
much greater than the capacity of Western nations to endure and the sanctions showed that Russia was far less vulnerable to pressure
than Western politicians assumed.
Beyond that, the Ukrainians had no realistic option to defend Crimea. Their military was in extremely poor shape by the time
2014 rolled around thanks to more than two decades of neglect, monumental corruption and even more monumental incompetence by
Ukrainian politicians and military leaders, while the Russians had well prepared contingency plans and had already begun far reaching
military reforms as a result of their experiences in Chechnya and Georgia.
SurfaceBook •
4 hours ago I disagree with mr kerber's assesment on Crimean ops being the largest air assault in history. Operation Market
Garden in WW2 was the largest Air assault involving divisions of paratroopers from US/UK/Poland into german occupied drop zones
(in conjuction with a land assault forcing it's way to Arnhem).
One other curiousity , Washington 'ordered' Ukraine ? a sovereign nation under orders ? just who is in charge of ukraine at
that time ? see more
To answer your question: Victoria Nuland, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Eurasian Affairs during the Obama administration.
In other words, she was the American proconsul for Eastern Europe.
Bottom line? "The Fog of War".........All these scenarios mean nothing after the first "shot" is fired. If any US "enemy" cannot
crush US air power they are finished from the gitgo. Not a fan of our foreign policies but we can "crush" the enemy; we just can't
"rule" them.
Would really like to hear the other side. Where does he get his information from? The Ukrainians? All this Russia-is-evil-and-scheming-to-do-more-evil
is ... slightly over the top. I don't say it's impossible that Russian regular troops have been involved in Donbas but he makes
it sound like Unternehmen Zitadelle
IMHO, beware taking too many lessons away from this conflict. The Ukranian's don't have anything close to the SEAD/DEAD/EW/airpower
capability of the US. What worked against their aviation won't necessarily work against ours. Once mid-high altitude air defenses
are down, enemy jammers will have a short lifespan.
His comments that even light infantry should have the means to get away when under attack, and sufficient armor to counter
attack point to the inadequacies of Army IBCTs (Infantry, not "Interim").
IMHO, IBCTs should have 100% vehicular mobility, and have the option of attaching an independent tank battalion. Cobbling together
random HMMWVs from div/corps just seems silly. Make vehicles part of the core TOE.
see more
You are assuming that we are working within our own timeline. Yes with enough time and blood, we can peal back their defense
network with airpower. The question is, who buys us that time?
Russians (and the Chinese) ground forces trained to fight in contested airspace. The US Army assumes we have it.
Sol, Thanks for posting the link and asking for discussion. One thing that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up
is how much of this is being shared with the PLA and worse the DPRK? They are pretty smart and probility can figure lots of this
out on their own. Is there any PLA observers up front with the RuFA or exchanging TTPs in an AAR? Or professional papers and presentations
at staff school level or higher? I am just a grunt and red leg, but how does the EW and fires part impact the navy? A step is
being taken:
http://soldiersystems.net/2... I wonder when this is part of OPFOR at NTC or 29 Palms?
see more
NO! thank you for sharing !!!!! this is like getting a seat at the Army War College and getting to hear what is never shared
with the troops or the public.
to be honest what i heard in that video was downright shocking. i won't say scary cause i won't be facing that shit but if
i was i'd be beyond concerned.
to answer your question you can bet your last dollar that the Chinese are getting briefings on this. you can bet that they're
not only studying the above vid but getting info from the subject matter experts in Russia.
this guy is senior but i would so love to hear an assessment of Marine Corps chances if war were to break out in Norway or
surrounding countries (we still have the flank). how would a Marine Expeditionary Brigade standup to those type tactics. we're
talking about a lighter formation than the US Army equivalent but with integrated air.
oh and a side note. as much as i think the US Army and Marine Corps would be in a hurtlocker can you imagine what would happen
to any of our European allies if they were somehow isolated and attacked?
my only regret about this whole thing is that i wanted to sit back and drink in serious conversation about this video. instead
i'm getting the usual trolling. i can tolerate that on the majority of subjects i cover here but this one is different. i wanted
to hear from serious individuals doing serious thinking about what the Dr presented.
such is life. if you run across anything else PLEASE send it. i find this fascinating!
he slide at 12.44 is also interesting it shows Russia's "desire" for "friendly relations" with the west and its neighbours.
But i guess like in the cold war there is no shortage of naives that think that Russia understands anything else but sanctions
or force. see more
Caveat emptor. Karber is a flamboyant blowhard. This is not to dismiss Russia's invasion or or act of war in Ukraine but merely
to state that this guy is essentially a Tom Clancy cut out. I like a lot of his slides (I wonder who made them?) and his valuable
tactical observations (even if it does sound, at times, like a shopping list for Ukrainian military aid) but he is no SME.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2...
My conclusions -- Western/ US allies/Nato armies will need to have:
- integrated air defence at every level from platoon to regimental.(manpads, spaag,
- mass fire/steel rain capabilities cheap and heavy MLRS also MLRS launched antiradiation missiles)
the israelis launched AGM Shrikes with boosters from trucks to target Syrian Radars
- Field Army EW sigint/elint/jamming/defense capabilities
- EW munitions (currently russia has tube artillery launched jammers don't know about the US or NATO)
- Small and light SPGs like the Gvozdika
Whilst I agree Russia does tend to export it's kit extensively. Also some of the potential uses such as GPS jamming drones, could
be more than merely inconvenient on very small budgets.
The problem is that the logic of neoliberalism dictates the necessary of converting the USA into empire and maintaining
this empire at the expense of well-being and standard of living of US citizens. It is necessary to enforce globalization and
Washington consensus.
Crash in the empire façade are now painted off with Russophobia...
An excellent analysis of the sordid mess we euphemistically refer to as our vaunted --
"democracy." Given the total control of information through MSM, combined with oligarchic
attempts to censor and essentially "disappear" dissenting voices in alternative media, the
vast majority of Americans are tethered to domestic and global "realities" by a very thin
thread indeed. Americans and Westerners in general are lost in a matrix -like propaganda
system of the like the world has never before seen. We've essentially replaced the mythic
"divine right of kings" and the "infallibility of the pope" with the equally mythic divine
"rights of corporations" and the infallibility of the "invisible hand of the market." Strange
how that "invisible hand" can always be found wrapped tightly around the throats of the
world's poor everywhere and anywhere.
Challenging these myth systems with truthful counter-narratives is as heretical today as
it was a thousand years ago in the West, while those oligarchic controlled institutions
enforcing our current myth systems are just as greedy, violent, amoral and blood thirsty as
they were during the height of the Holy Inquisition. The myths have changed, but the dynamics
of absolute power through the control of societal myth systems remains unchanged. As Derrick
Jensen has pointed out most Americans can more easily imagine the end of the world than they
can imagine the end of capitalism. This is "brain-washing" of the highest order indeed.
Lois Gagnon , July 4, 2018 at 5:19 pm
Well put. Changing the narrative has to be our highest priority.
zhenry , July 4, 2018 at 10:50 pm
Should add 'Divine right and infallibility over a world nobody can live in.
Reminds me of The Who song : "Won't Get Fooled Again !"
"Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss".
"And parking on the left is now parking on the right".
Rob , July 4, 2018 at 11:31 am
It's good to see Caitlin and her no holds barred writing back on Consortium News. Her hard
hitting analyses are usually spot-on.
rosemerry , July 4, 2018 at 11:18 am
Many important rights were fought for and won by earlier generations, and I think it was
Ralph Nader who said that none have been won since 1970. Earnings for all but the rich have
stagnated, long-established rights have been cast aside by the "courts of law", national and
State.
As well as Jeffrey Clements' "Corporations are not People" and his fight for the repeal of
"Citizens' United" (what happened to this surge of people power?) there is an excellent book
by historian Nancy MacLean "Democracy in Chains" which traces the movement to deny rights to
the people, except a select few, right up to the election of Donald J Trump. It is clear,
fast-paced, well- referenced and very chilling. The last chapter, 'Get Ready' needs to be
taken seriously by us all.
hetro , July 4, 2018 at 10:10 am
Now reading Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party, 2002, an account of his run for the
presidency in 2000. Very enjoyable read. Things were very much as described by Caitlin back
then, and have only gotten worse. I do fear that glib comments on "democracy as failed" have
the wrong term in the phrase. It's plutocracy that has failed, not democracy. Then again
democracy requires a lot of work, including thinking and assessing, and continually working
to improve the concept. The forefathers got the project started. A capitalist system that
encourages hedonism is not going to help much. From Nader's book I have been receiving,
oddly, encouragement, in all the people he mentions who wanted change back then, and still
do. I am grateful for Nader and Caitlin for expressing the reality of capitalism run amok so
very effectively. I hope these efforts will influence further thinking.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 7:02 am
Caitlin refreshingly overlooks the distractions of US history between monarchy and
oligarchy, the (1) early-federal-period unity around defense concerns, (2) pre-civil-war
period of failed congressional debate, and (3) early-industrial emergence of the middle
class. These should be ignored, because US history consists of failure of institutions and
failure to fix them, and only distracted from the rise of oligarchy to prevent reform.
If democracy is ever restored in the US, it must be stabilized by amendments to protect
elections and mass media debate from economic power, better checks and balances within the
government branches, purging the corrupt judiciary and Congress, monitoring of government
officials for corruption, and regulation of business so that oligarchic bullies and scammers
do not rise to control economic power.
Only then can literature, media, education, and public interaction encourage moral
community, and only then can public debate find the moral policies that honor the rights of
all persons and seek justice for all.
Babyl-on , July 4, 2018 at 8:07 am
"Democracy" is an utter failure. You point this out clearly. Yet, it seems no progressive
can accept that -- democracy is an utter failure.
The idea that the system of "democracy" is some sort of holy system, immutable and sacred
is completely false. This is not the "end times" of history social and cultural evolution is
taking place other systems are proving in the real world they can do a far better job of
supporting their citizens than "democracy" ever has, not to mention that imperialism itself
is under threat from these other systems -- while every powerful "democracy" has been
imperialist.
We live in a multi-polar world now, the US no longer is the "global power" . The US is not
#1 in anything but slaughter. This is what "democracy" has done sense August 6,1945
SLAUGHTERED INNOCENT PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 2.600+ DAYS with plans to
continue indefinitely. I would not wish "democracy" on my worst enemy.
Deep and fundamental changes are taking place the ideas of the Enlightenment were deeply
flawed and have broken down, new ideas from other cultures are gaining in strength and
showing their value to people everywhere.
I'd just like to point out that over the 73+ years of US slaughter of tens of millions of
innocent people were accompanied by "elections" every two years -- so the democratic people
of the US fully supported this continuous slaughter as being in their best interests (we kill
"over there" in war -- but we kill at home too stimulated by deeply and systemically held
racism.)
This slaughter machine we call government must be fully and completely dismantled, the
great fortunes must be broken up -- no ashes -- no Phoenix.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 9:08 am
The problem is not democracy (the recognition that all humans have equal rights) but how
democracy is structured; I noted some corrections needed.
The governments of China and Russia are variants of democracy with advantages and
problems. The democracies of Scandinavia work better in part for cultural reasons. But it is
not difficult to do far better than ours and be democratic: the problem is getting there.
Bob Van Noy , July 4, 2018 at 9:05 am
"If democracy is ever restored in the US,". Sam F.
Thank you, so true.
Our contemporary problem as Citizens, as Sam F. duly notes, is a totally failed democracy.
The graphic accompanying this excellent piece is also appropriate, as it too describes our
total lack of input as supposed Citizens.
It will be necessary to publicly demonstrate how America Failed, make specific
accusations, and design an alternative, something not possible with our current failed state.
In other words, a Truth and Reconciliation environment where the failures can adequately and
freely be presented and responsibility assigned.
Bob Van Noy , July 4, 2018 at 9:16 am
Readers might enjoy this terrific reading list by Ralph Nader
Yes, demonstration of the failures of US democracy is the essential first step to public
understanding, along with public study of potential solutions, so that steps can be taken
when the public is sufficiently aroused, to restore democracy.
alley cat , July 4, 2018 at 6:51 am
We separated church and state, abolished slavery, and granted suffrage to women. Each of
those advances in human rights was fought tooth, nail, and claw by tyrants and oligarchs.
Today's a good day to recall the famous words of one of the most courageous and eloquent
of American patriots, Frederick Douglass, in a speech he gave on West India emancipation in
1857: "If there is no struggle there is no progress . . . . Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with
both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
And those wrongs include the wrongs we allow our government to impose on other peoples as
well as on ourselves, as Martin Luther King declared in his Riverside Church speech in 1967:
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the
ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world
today -- my own government."
Silly Me , July 4, 2018 at 9:47 am
Actually, the problem is that the unity of those in power and the peasants broke when the
underlying ideology stopped functioning. These days, peasant are offered nothing, not the
American Dream, not even a place in Heaven, for their sacrifice.
All those "advances" you mention were a one-way street to this end.
There is no ideal form of government. Democracy is a scam, and possibly the most expensive
form of government, but Aristotle's "good king" functions only if the ideology
works.(Aristotle despised democracy as the rule of the mob and the Constitution was
theoretically meant to prevent that, but with hardly any of the Constitution left, one has to
choose between corporate masters and mob rule. Oh, well, that is not even a choice, because
the mob has been divided and compartmentalized.)
No revolution has ever succeeded that started from the bottom. For a successful
revolution, you need to convince your rulers that giving you handouts is good for them. The
more they give, the more they can take back. Unfortunately, they have already destroyed
America and are abandoning it in droves, but they are not yet done with the planet.
MarB , July 4, 2018 at 11:36 pm
"not even a place in Heaven, for their sacrifice"
just the heartless illusory promise of endless vacuous consumption accompanied by the
requisite endless diversion from reality.
You know how conservatives like to pass legislation that does something that is against
the interests of the people but they at the same time like to name that legislation with a
name that is the exact opposite of what they are doing? So for instance legislation that
would make it less likely to have clean air by letting corporations regulate themselves on
air pollution is called "The Clean Air Act."
Well, this usage of Double-Speak is much older that George Orwell. You can find it in the
writing of Thomas Jefferson that was signed by a bunch of plutocrats on July 4, 1776.
I'm talking about, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It would be laughable ironic if it wasn't so tragic that a main reason so many of these
plutocrats signed this document was because the British had proclaimed that all slaves of
those in rebellion were free. Slaves were running away and joining the British cause.
Another tragic reality is that another reason these plutocrats signed is because they had
bought vast tracts of land west of the Alleghenies cheaply and expected to make a fortune
selling it at high prices to lower class farmers desperate for land. They'd done this with no
consideration for the people actually living on this land as they had for millennia and
without any compensation to them. Instead states far away declared they owned this land and
then sold it to the plutocrats. But the British had put a stop to it, saying that land was
reserved for the tribes who lived there. These plutocrats were furious that the British were
keeping them from becoming even richer as if the native people who'd never signed away their
land mattered like they did.
These 'founding fathers' were all hypocrites signing that document. They didn't believe
all men were really equal. They didn't believe that Black Americans had a God given
unalienable right to liberty. They didn't believe that Native Americans had a God given
unalienable to the pursuit of happiness or even to life.
Plus they said that this was declaration to become independent of Britain was something
the people were doing. They didn't bother to consult the people. The reality is one third of
the people were loyal and one third were neutral and only one third wanted to be independent.
A lot of these loyal people fled north to Canada as soon as they could when it became the
clear the 'patriots' were winning. That was a flood of immigrants in the 1780s.
The final irony is that they claimed they were taking this action because of George's
unfair taxation. Guess what. The Tea Act that sparked revolt with the Boston Tea Party a few
years earlier actually lowered taxes. Yes. It lowered taxes. But the plutocrats were upset
because it also created a monopoly in the tea trade giving it to Londoners, leaving them out.
They lied that it was about regular people being upset that they had to pay high taxes when
what they were really upset about was that they didn't get the contract that would have made
them richer.
But the bamboozled those regular poor folk to join their Continental Army and paid them in
IOUs. How did they plan on paying those IOUs? Well, by the various states raising taxes.
Unfortunately for those poor vets they didn't get paid at first and they couldn't pay their
taxes unless they sold their IOUs for pennies on the dollar to rich speculators- the very
same plutocrats who declared Independence because of taxes. Then they'd get paid the full
amount of the IOUs.
This scenario sounds exactly like the one in the document I quoted above from the
Declaration, which purports that in that situation the people have a god given duty to rebel
and change the government. What did these patriotic founding fathers do? They raised funds to
buy a mercenary army to go and squash these rebels. They they broke the law to create a new
constitution, filled with more Double-Speak about "We the People" and "general Welfare" and
"Blessings of Liberty," that created a stronger central government with the power to tax and
a standing army so such rebellion could never happen again.
Who am I talking about? I'm talking about Jefferson who was a slave owner. I'm talking
about Adams who despised the idea of the 'rabble' and the 'mob' and as President passed laws
to put in jail anyone who printed anything that was against his presidency. I'm talking about
Washington who was "mortified beyond expression" about the rebels and declared that "mankind
when left to themselves are unfit for their own Government." I'm talking about Franklin whose
view of natives was ""If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order
to make room for cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the
appointed means." If you don't know, 'extirpate' means 'to root out and destroy.'
Think on this. If the British had won, there would have been no native genocide in the
Ohio Country. Instead it might have been like Manitoba, where natives and settlers became one
people and got their own province. If the British had won then slavery would have been
outlawed in America when it was in the British Empire in 1833.
Maybe there's a reason Canada is a kinder nation with universal single payer healthcare
and legal marijuana and it gave sanctuary to USA draft dodgers? Maybe because it wasn't
created like George Carlin tells us the USA was.
"This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of
slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to
continue owning their black African people so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian
people and move West and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people giving them
a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know
what the motto of this country ought to be? 'You give us a color- we'll wipe it out.'"
Joe Tedesky , July 4, 2018 at 6:46 pm
Wow Miranda you hit it out of the ball yard with your comment, well done. It is hard for
America to reconcile all of its myths, as I've often quoted my beloved departed mother who
always said, one lie only leads to another lie until the truth jumps up and bites you in the
ass your spot on commentary is a fantastic beginning to a readers journey towards them
learning the truth. Thanks Miranda, you taught me something new today. Joe
Most of the stuff I summarized is explained in better depth in a series of articles by
Danny Sjursen over on Truthdig called "American History for Truthdiggers."
Also having read Zinn's history is helpful. Plus I'm a big fan of Carlin. Do miss him. Not
just his insight, but his cadence, which seemed to be flowing through me on that post.
Joe Tedesky , July 4, 2018 at 9:27 pm
Miranda your inspirational heroes are certainly appropriate for analyzing today's current
events. I like Major Daniel Sjursen for he is a soldier who has learned from his experiences,
and he doesn't sell the same old fluff we are used too. All in all you Miranda crafted this
piece of fine commentary, and you should be congratulated for how you interpret what you have
learned . and look at you now, your teaching all of us to be critical thinkers when
appraising our nation's policies. Good post. Joe
Kalen , July 4, 2018 at 4:55 am
Few historical facts:
The counterrevolutionary US constitution of 1789 was nothing but a ploy for rich and
powerful British aristocracy and oligarchy to wrestle their absolute control back and return
to past regime of 1776 but this time sans King and with collective despotism instead, calling
the whole revolutionary experiment they instigated themselves dead as too democratic
threatening their profits from slavery.
It was British aristocracy and oligarchy with interest in American colonies who concocted
"American Revolution" in order to steal land given them as a privilege by English King and
hence avoid paying taxes considered by British government at that time. And shocked and
dismayed by unexpected rise of social conscientiousness of poor/landless colonists who
supposed to exhibit animal like qualities and not maturity of citizen, they pulled the plug
and killed the American experiment in 1789 via illegal constitutional convection once for
all.
It took them so long [13 years] since they had to think hard how to camouflage the "old"
system of "collective" monarchy based on medieval fiefdoms [dropped names like colonies
replaced by a term states that delegate some limited prerogatives to a states' GSE, a
corporation domiciled on a strip of land called D.C., the only area that this GSE called
Federal Government really directly controls] under propaganda of supposedly Greek and Roman
democratic tradition that bombastic neo- classical monstrosities of Federal buildings suppose
to convey.
Americans, It is time to remember Declaration of Independence, 1776 that states:
..But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Corporate despotism reigns supreme, it is time to sharpen pitchforks as is duty of free
citizenry as demanded by Declaration of Independence.
OlyaPola , July 4, 2018 at 4:18 am
"America Celebrates Lateral Move From Monarchy To Corporate Rule"
The move was linear within the linear paradigm of class societies using a similar mix of
coercion including ideological tools for sustainabilty, obfuscated by the transition from
"divine right of kings" modified by the "Glorious Revolution of 1688" to "We the people hold
these truths to be self-evident", the assay of the amalgam of coercive tools remaining within
the linear.
A lateral (qualitative) change is required to transcend "capitalism" and the misnamed "The
United States of America" and why reform is self-defeating since it is also linear and hence
facilitates the continued immersion in iterations of modulated status-quo ante and hence
precludes lateral change.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 7:24 am
I interpret your "reform is self-defeating" to mean evolutionary or incremental reform,
which as you note relies on existing powers, and therefore maintains oligarchy.
Even revolutions seldom do much better, because they are opposed by economic or external
powers. A revolution would have worked in the US, having no major external powers, if it
reformed economic power, but is not feasible against our totalitarian state.
Only the extreme conditions of poverty by external embargo, military defeats discrediting
the warmongers, and rising gangsterism and corruption will bring enough anger among the
middle class, probably 40-60 years hence. See Mexico, and we are not there yet. Meanwhile we
pretend that fashion reforms lead somewhere.
OlyaPola , July 5, 2018 at 2:21 am
"Only the extreme conditions of poverty by external embargo, military defeats discrediting
the warmongers, and rising gangsterism and corruption will bring enough anger among the
middle class, probably 40-60 years hence."
One of the aspects of "exceptionalism" is to seek to assign significance to self that
others do not assign to you.
Such hubris affords strategic opportunities for others.
Agency is a type of interaction and can be minimised through non-emulated interaction the
process being accelerated through lateral modes of interaction perceived by opponents as
linear (emulated) interaction -- which in some measure describes the trajectory of
transcending the Soviet Union by the Russian Federation with the complicity of "The United
States of America" facilitated by hubris such as the end of history and full spectrum
dominance.
In such a scenario what the inhabitants of "The United States of America" do is of lesser
import, a process accelerated by their self-absorption.
If the
Sam F , July 5, 2018 at 8:10 am
You appear to be saying that a fifth column effects more serious reforms, moving toward a
parallel branch of history while seeming to effect lesser reforms. (Your usage of "lateral"
suggests move toward greater reform, while in the article it refers to movement to something
no better.)
OlyaPola , July 5, 2018 at 9:28 am
"a fifth column effects more serious reforms"
No, that is an integration within the opponents' linear paradigm.
If you need an example take a sample from a useful fool's blog http://www.thesaker.is who frames in 5th, 6th and nth columns,
not necessarily newspaper columns, and generally bad people, evil doers and assorted rascals
-- a passion play facilitating deflection, deflection and/or "children's crusades", although
children generally have a lesser propensity to be rendered useful fools and why they require
"socialisation" to get with the team.
"Your usage of "lateral" suggests move toward greater reform".
That is also an integration within the opponents' paradigm.
Lateral is qualitative change facilitated by fission -- a qualitative transcendence.
Ideology is akin to a swimming pool; when you start to emerge you still carry
drop-lets.
Among the ideological notions with more resilient half-lives are "intuition", "beliefs",
"framing" and "methods".
Some wish to remain in the present linear paradigm through "spheres of influence" which is
presented as and constitutes "reform" thereby facilitating a mutation of the bacilli, not a
transcendence.
"while in the article it refers to movement to something no better.)"
Spectators tend to ponder what is, some spectators bridging doubt by belief to attain
pre-judgements.
Spectators also often conflate comment with agency to maintain the comfort zone of not
expanding their definition of agency.
Practitioners test what is to formulate how to's which throughout the process are
subjected to rigorous evaluation/modulation.
Spectating is a process described by Mr. Rove's observation which I paraphrase.
"We are an Empire now.
We create our own reality.
You react to our reality
And whilst you do so
We create another reality
To which you react"
Ergo immersion in iterations of the opponents linear paradigm.
Mr. Rove also observed the reducing scope and half-life of this process namely
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the one's you should
concentrate on"
Blogs illustrate both observations of Mr. Rove.
Consequently practitioners normally do not "agree" with spectators' framing, including
definition assigned to words, hopes and wishes but use the the spectators' hopes and wishes
to transcend them, afforded the opportunities to do so by the spectators frames of "plausible
belief", thereby adding the complicity of the spectators to the fissile material, since blogs
are akin to petri-dishes wherein commentators add to "the culture" minimising unnecessary
action by practitioners whilst "hiding" in open sight, although some commentators share
hypotheses that others can test if so minded and others can iterate the process of bridging
doubt by belief to attain pre-judgements and self-affirmation.
Chumpsky , July 4, 2018 at 2:09 am
Another brilliant analysis by Caitlin. "America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag
doing a bad impression of a bipartisan democracy."
It would be useful to show how the "elite class" has manipulated our monetary system to
advance their nefarious agenda. Robbery or transfer of wealth via inflation to control the
political economy has been di rigeur since the creation of the Federal Reserve, which is not
federal but a private chartered monopoly. All political distortions can be traced to this
seditious injustice to American labor as well as the Hamiltonian monetary principles of our
founders.
Yes neoliberalism is deeply predatory. Still is survives as a social system for let's say 40 years (1987-2017) and probably will
survive another 20-30 years. And what is coming might be worse. If Trump signify turn to "national neoliberalism" the next
step from it might some kind of neofascism.
Notable quotes:
"... But financialization didn't just have a direct cost -- no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who'd blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked out of the sails of the "real economy", as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does create value -- teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these people -- those in the "real economy" -- began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren't built -- all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was growing at the heart of the economy -- but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were indeed about to all go south at once -- only no one knew understood how or why yet. ..."
"... The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were "offshored." That's a polite way to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact -- and send jobs there. That way, you wouldn't have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies, even -- you could make everything in that one sweatshop. ..."
"... We're used to thinking that offshoring "took" jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler -- and more ruinous. They blew apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang effect happened. ..."
"... Managers began stripping away benefits of every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the "at-will job" and the "zero-hours contract" were created -- social contracts that were only "jobs" in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility, or opportunity. People who didn't have benefits could now be fired on a whim -- and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk of what, precisely? ..."
"... Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south, who'd take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety ..."
"... So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks -- but didn't "restructure" them, which is to say, fire their managers, wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them ..."
"... What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism: austerity. ..."
"... The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government -- after all, the speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat, by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investing dollars back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did just the opposite. ..."
"... It's the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability -- who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy, the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless. ..."
"... Predatory capitalism imploding into strange, new forms of old diseases of the body politic ..."
How did we get here? To a world where the forces of intolerance and indecency are on the rise, and those of decency, wisdom, and
civilization are waning? Is something like a new Dark Age falling?
I think it has everything to do with predatory capitalism, and so I want to tell you a story. Of how it came to be born, in four
steps, which span three decades.
During the 2000s, the economy of the rich world underwent something like a phase transition. It became "financialized", as the
jargon goes -- which simply means that finance came to make up a greater and greater share of the economy. Hedge funds and investment
banks and shady financial vehicles of all kinds went from a modest portion of the economy, to making up a huge chunk of it -- around
half, in some countries.
Now, what was "financialization" for? What were all these bankers, hedge fund managers, investors, and so on, doing? The answer
is: nothing. Nothing of value, anyways. They were simply placing bets with each other. Bets on bets on bets, meta-bets. Economists,
who have something like an inferiority complex, envious of swashbuckling bankers, bought their marketing pitch hog, line, and sinker:
"we're going to reduce risk! Everyone will benefit!" But no such thing was happening -- and anyone could see it. Risk was being
massively amplified, in fact, because every time a speculator made a billion dollar bet with another, they were both betting with
the same pool of money, essentially. Whose money? It wasn't theirs -- it was everyone's. Pensions, savings, bank accounts, earnings,
retirement funds. All that being bet on bets on bets on bets which amounted to nothing. But what if all the bets went south at once?
First, I want you to really understand that what was happening was a zero-sum game, where one had to lose for another to win.
Imagine there are three of us, in a little stone age tribe, with a hundred pebbles each. We spend all day every day finding new ways
to lend pebbles to each other, to bet them on who'll blink first, or even bets on those bets, and so on. In our little economy, does
anyone ever end up better off? Does anyone, for example, discover antibiotics, or even invent the wheel? Nope. We're just fools,
who'll never accomplish, learn, or create anything, sitting around playing a zero-sum game, in which no real value is ever created.
The pebbles never become anything more valuable, like, for example, books, symphonies, knowledge, or medicine. All that is exactly
what was happening during the phase of financialization.
But financialization didn't just have a direct cost -- no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who'd
blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked
out of the sails of the "real economy", as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does
create value -- teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more
money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these
people -- those in the "real economy" -- began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren't built
-- all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was
growing at the heart of the economy -- but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were
indeed about to all go south at once -- only no one knew understood how or why yet.
How was the real economy to survive, then? Another hidden effect of financialization was super-concentration -- the second force
in the rise of predatory capitalism. Mom-and-pop capitalism is a healthy and beautiful thing, an economy of a million little shops,
bakeries, artisans -- but it takes only a modest attachment to a profit motive. But thanks to the rise of massive, global speculation,
only aggressive quarterly profit-maximization was allowed. CEO earnings were hitched to share prices, and your share price only went
up if your earnings did, relentlessly, illogicaly, crazily, every single quarter, instead of stabilizing at a happy, gentle amount
-- and so the only way left, in the end, to achieve it, was to build titanic monopolies, which could squeeze people for every dime.
Once the economy had Macy's, JC Penney, K-Mart, Toys-R-Us and Sears. Now it has Walmart. The story was repeated across every single
industry. Amazon, Google, Apple. A new age of monopoly arose.
But monopolies had an effect, too. The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly
known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were "offshored." That's a polite way
to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as
possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact -- and send jobs there.
That way, you wouldn't have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies,
even -- you could make everything in that one sweatshop.
We're used to thinking that offshoring "took" jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler -- and more ruinous. They blew
apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang
effect happened. The machine discovered that it could do in rich countries what it had done in poor ones -- and so it began stripping
away everything that made a job "a job." Because the economy was increasingly composed of monopolies, giant companies, banks, and
investors had the power to do so with impunity. Speculators began raiding pension funds. Managers began stripping away benefits of
every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the "at-will job" and the "zero-hours
contract" were created -- social contracts that were only "jobs" in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility,
or opportunity. People who didn't have benefits could now be fired on a whim -- and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk
of what, precisely?
Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come
full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south,
who'd take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety, all those people for whom "a job" now meant something
more like "a temporary soul-crushing way to avoid destitution." They're the ones who'd be fired, instantly, lose what little savings
they had, have their already dwindling incomes slashed, be ruined.
And then the bets went bad. As bets tend to do, when you make too many of them, on foolish things. What had the speculators been
betting with each other on? As it turns out, largely on property prices. But people without the stable jobs that had kept such a
huge property bubble going didn't have growing incomes anymore. Property prices couldn't keep rising. Bang! The financial system
fell like a row of dominoes. It turned out that everyone had bet property prices would go on rising -- and on the other side of
that bet was everyone else. All of them had been betting on the same thing -- "we all bet prices will keep rising forever!" The
losses were so vast, and so widespread, that the whole global financial system buckled. The banks didn't have the money to pay each
other for these foolish bets -- how could they have? Each one had bet the whole house on the same thing, and they all would have
gone bankrupt to each other. LOL -- do you see the fatal stupidity of it all yet?
So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks -- but didn't "restructure" them, which is to say, fire their managers,
wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them -- and took those bad bets onto
the nation's books, instead. It was the most foolish decision since the Great Depression. Why?
Well, now governments had trillions in -- pow! -- sudden debt. What were they to do? How would they pay it off? Now, you might
think that Presidents are very intelligent people, but unfortunately, they are just politicians. And so instead of doing what they
should have done -- printing money, simply cancelling each others' debts to each other, which were for fictional speculation anyways
-- they decided that they were "broke". Bankrupt, even -- even though a country can't go bankrupt, anymore than you could if you
could print your own currency at home, and spend it everywhere.
What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare
systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism:
austerity.
But people's incomes were already dwindling, thanks to the first three steps -- as jobs not just disappeared in quantity, but
also imploded in quality, as monopolies grew in power, and as pointless, destructive, zero-sum speculation sucked the life out of
the real economy. The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government -- after all, the
speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat,
by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investing dollars
back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did
just the opposite.
Snap! Economies broke like twigs. The people formerly known as the middle class had been caught in between the pincers of these
four forces -- financialization, monopoly, the implosion of the job, and austerity. Together, they shattered what was left of rich
economies -- to the point that today, incomes are stagnant across the rich world, even in much vaunted Scandinavia, while living
standards are falling in many rich countries, like the US and UK.
What do people do as hardship begins to bite -- especially those who expected comfortable, easy lives? They become reactionary,
lashing out violently. They seek safety in the arms of demagogues. That doesn't mean, as American pundits naively think, that "poor
people become authoritarians!" Quite the opposite.
It's the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected
and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability -- who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy,
the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless.
That gap between expectation and reality is what ruinous. They retain a desperate need to be atop a hierarchy, to be above someone,
the entitled imploded middles -- and what has happened in history, time and again, is that they turn to those who promise them
just that superiority, by turning on those below them. Even if, especially if, it is in the extreme, irrational, yet perfectly logical
form of supremacy and dominion over the weak, the despised, and the impure.
And that is what all today's reactionary, extremist movements --
which I call the Faction --
really are. Predatory capitalism imploding into strange, new forms of old diseases of the body politic -- ultrauthoritarianism,
theosupremacism, kleptofascism, neofeudalism, biodominionism, hatriarchy, technotalitarianism, novel and lethal forms of ruin for
a new dark age.
And so here we are, you and I. On the cusp of that age. A time where the shadows in human hearts shine as black and blinding as
midnight. And once again, it is the folly and hubris of wise men that led us here.
"Five signers were captured by the
British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary
army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships resulting from the Revolutionary
War.
These men signed, and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor!
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants. Nine were farmers and large plantation
owners. All were men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty
could be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British navy. He sold his home
and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags." "What really happened?"
------------
I had a lot of ancestors in that war, some Continentals, some militia. One man in Boston raised his own regiment of militia at
his own expense. He commanded it throughout the war. A lot of these soldiers were old broke down grunts by the end, They made new
lives for themselves. I revere their memory. pl
"All were men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty could
be death if they were captured."
They were men of character. They were willing to lose everything for their convictions and beliefs. These are men to be revered.
Thank you Col. Lang for remembering them.
IMO, as a people we no longer have this character. We have allowed big & bigger government over the decades who have usurped
our sovereignty and essential liberty through mass surveillance, civil forfeiture, state secrets doctrine as the cornerstone of
deceit, and now the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence for domestic political purposes.
These were indeed hard and principled men. I offer the example of one of the founding fathers of my hometown. Gideon Hotchkiss
was a new light Puritan receiving a commission as an ensign in a Waterbury militia company in November 1756. He was at Saratoga
in August 1757 when he wrote home about "the melancholy news of our upper fort" referring to the loss of Fort William Henry and
the ensuing massacre. In July 1758 he took part in the battle of Fort Carillon as a lieutenant. He served another year as a captain
in 1760 along with two of his sons.
Leading up to the War of Independence, he served on the local committee of inspection. He sent two sons and a grandson to serve
in the war and organized a troop of light horse cavalry to respond to British incursions such as the raids on Woodbridge and Danbury.
After the fall harvests were completed, his company of veterans served through the winter months when they were most needed.
Once while working in his fields, he heard the sound of battle to the south. He mounted his horse and, along with a servant
boy, rode to meet the British at Westville, north of New Haven. His servant was struck by a cannon ball. Gideon placed the boy's
body in a concealed place, sent his horse back to his farm and joined the battle. This was the British raid on New Haven in July
1779. He was sixty-three years old at the time.
After the War, he was appointed deacon of the church of Columbia Parish, now Prospect. One of his many sons became a Methodist
minister. This Puritan deacon first disowned his son, but he soon forgave and embraced him. One of Gideon's descendants moved
to the Shenandoah Valley. He was Jedediah Hotchkiss, cartographer and staff officer to General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.
Speaking of the signers, only three lived to see America's 50th Anniversary. Thomas Jefferson was unable to attend a reunion organized
by the mayor of Washington, and this article provides the full text of his letter of RSVP.
"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal
of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and
to assume the blessings & security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded
exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. these are grounds of hope for others."
End Quote
It also cites this list of Jefferson quotes on the right to bear arms:
The Americans are treating this like some kind of random event, as if the Fascist monster
somehow happened to get awakaned from its cave by a seismic rumble, to then by accident
stumble into the US Republic for another round of fighting. The unfortunate reality of your
economic system, which refuses to give people their freedom of land, refuses to have laws
against limitless concentration of wealth, is that power will slowly but surely centralize,
until you either are a tirannical class society, or until you have another war that
overthrows the ownership structure to restart the problem from an earlier position, or until
you finally learn what freedom means.
It's not an accident, the Fascist monster didn't get awakened by chance: the problem is
within you, within your own heads, within your laws, in your beliefs, as the consequence of
your system. You are the enemy you fight, even if you don't seem to realize it, and therefore
it is your destiny to experience what the Roman Republic always ultimately becomes.
The Roman Republic falls into dictatorship, into Fascism and war, Empire, mass looting of
external and internal peoples. Your weakness and your ignorance is the strength of the
Fascist system. If you mended with weakness, Fascism would melt as if it never existed. If
you don't, it will overtake and destroy you.
I'm a conservative and a Constitutionalists. I support capitalism and free markets. That
being said, I'm impressed at least one leftist talking head got a good definition for
fascism. The problem is, modern day socialism is also the merging of government and
corporations, with violence used against political opposition.
So, who are the "fascists"? The people that want to be left free in a Constitutional
Republic, or the redshirt ANTIFA that cause violence against conservatives and want the
government to merge with corporations under the guise of "redistribution"?
It sounds to me, through cultural Marxism, the left has bamboozled an entire generation of
ignorant kids that will regurgitate whatever they are told.
Henry Wallace was right he said that fascist called them selfs patriots but hate everything
the us ever stood for they say they love the west yet they hate democracy.
Trump has already deceived his middle class voter. I see Trump as a fascist. Organizations
like Freedom Works, American's for Prosperity, State Policy Network, American's for Tax
Reform, ALEC, if you look at their literature you see that there objective is to turn the
average person against their own government and their own best interests. The 5 Republican
Supreme Court Justices put forth Citizens United in convoluted rhetoric to say that
CORPORATIONS are PERSONS. These justices cemented corporate rule in America unbeknownst the
American Public this hideous act put forth by Citizens United. Supreme Court Justices are not
above the law and on this act should be disbarred, and removed from office. The charge under
the U.S. Conspiracy Fraud Statute, through corporate outside influence manifest the
alteration of the functioning of our government against its own citizens. (Example, the Koch
Brothers, orchestrating the shutdown of the peoples government, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the
House their gofer in Congress.)
If we assume that this is true: "Beyond that, the Ukrainians had no realistic option to defend Crimea. Their military was in extremely
poor shape by the time 2014 rolled around thanks to more than two decades of neglect, monumental corruption and even more monumental
incompetence by Ukrainian politicians and military leaders, while the Russians had well prepared contingency plans and had already begun
far reaching military reforms as a result of their experiences in Chechnya and Georgia."
Then Ukrainian armed forces should drastically improve after several years of fighting.
Notable quotes:
"... The fact that the US leadership didn't even stop to consider how the Russians might react shows just how arrogant, hubristic and incompetent Obama and his national security team really were. ..."
"... Caveat emptor. Karber is a flamboyant blowhard. This is not to dismiss Russia's invasion or or act of war in Ukraine but merely to state that this guy is essentially a Tom Clancy cut out. I like a lot of his slides (I wonder who made them?) and his valuable tactical observations (even if it does sound, at times, like a shopping list for Ukrainian military aid) but he is no SME. https://foreignpolicy.com/2... ..."
If the Obama administration ordered Ukraine not to fight for Crimea on the assumption they could force Russia to give
it back via sanctions, they miscalculated badly.
The Russians believe Crimea rightfully belongs to them and they saw control of it as vital to their national security. There
were some serious shenanigans going on in Kiev, which the Russians interpreted as an American engineered coup. The Russians reacted
to what they believed was a major threat to their national security. The fact that the US leadership didn't even stop to consider
how the Russians might react shows just how arrogant, hubristic and incompetent Obama and his national security team really were.
There is no way the Russians will ever give up Crimea, especially under pressure from the US, NATO and the EU. No Russian politician
could do that and hope to survive. Besides, the Russians have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to endure suffering and hardships
much greater than the capacity of Western nations to endure and the sanctions showed that Russia was far less vulnerable to pressure
than Western politicians assumed.
Beyond that, the Ukrainians had no realistic option to defend Crimea. Their military was in extremely poor shape by the time
2014 rolled around thanks to more than two decades of neglect, monumental corruption and even more monumental incompetence by
Ukrainian politicians and military leaders, while the Russians had well prepared contingency plans and had already begun far reaching
military reforms as a result of their experiences in Chechnya and Georgia.
SurfaceBook •
4 hours ago I disagree with mr kerber's assesment on Crimean ops being the largest air assault in history. Operation Market
Garden in WW2 was the largest Air assault involving divisions of paratroopers from US/UK/Poland into german occupied drop zones
(in conjuction with a land assault forcing it's way to Arnhem).
One other curiousity , Washington 'ordered' Ukraine ? a sovereign nation under orders ? just who is in charge of ukraine at
that time ? see more
To answer your question: Victoria Nuland, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Eurasian Affairs during the Obama administration.
In other words, she was the American proconsul for Eastern Europe.
Bottom line? "The Fog of War".........All these scenarios mean nothing after the first "shot" is fired. If any US "enemy" cannot
crush US air power they are finished from the gitgo. Not a fan of our foreign policies but we can "crush" the enemy; we just can't
"rule" them.
Would really like to hear the other side. Where does he get his information from? The Ukrainians? All this Russia-is-evil-and-scheming-to-do-more-evil
is ... slightly over the top. I don't say it's impossible that Russian regular troops have been involved in Donbas but he makes
it sound like Unternehmen Zitadelle
IMHO, beware taking too many lessons away from this conflict. The Ukranian's don't have anything close to the SEAD/DEAD/EW/airpower
capability of the US. What worked against their aviation won't necessarily work against ours. Once mid-high altitude air defenses
are down, enemy jammers will have a short lifespan.
His comments that even light infantry should have the means to get away when under attack, and sufficient armor to counter
attack point to the inadequacies of Army IBCTs (Infantry, not "Interim").
IMHO, IBCTs should have 100% vehicular mobility, and have the option of attaching an independent tank battalion. Cobbling together
random HMMWVs from div/corps just seems silly. Make vehicles part of the core TOE.
see more
You are assuming that we are working within our own timeline. Yes with enough time and blood, we can peal back their defense
network with airpower. The question is, who buys us that time?
Russians (and the Chinese) ground forces trained to fight in contested airspace. The US Army assumes we have it.
Sol, Thanks for posting the link and asking for discussion. One thing that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up
is how much of this is being shared with the PLA and worse the DPRK? They are pretty smart and probility can figure lots of this
out on their own. Is there any PLA observers up front with the RuFA or exchanging TTPs in an AAR? Or professional papers and presentations
at staff school level or higher? I am just a grunt and red leg, but how does the EW and fires part impact the navy? A step is
being taken:
http://soldiersystems.net/2... I wonder when this is part of OPFOR at NTC or 29 Palms?
see more
NO! thank you for sharing !!!!! this is like getting a seat at the Army War College and getting to hear what is never shared
with the troops or the public.
to be honest what i heard in that video was downright shocking. i won't say scary cause i won't be facing that shit but if
i was i'd be beyond concerned.
to answer your question you can bet your last dollar that the Chinese are getting briefings on this. you can bet that they're
not only studying the above vid but getting info from the subject matter experts in Russia.
this guy is senior but i would so love to hear an assessment of Marine Corps chances if war were to break out in Norway or
surrounding countries (we still have the flank). how would a Marine Expeditionary Brigade standup to those type tactics. we're
talking about a lighter formation than the US Army equivalent but with integrated air.
oh and a side note. as much as i think the US Army and Marine Corps would be in a hurtlocker can you imagine what would happen
to any of our European allies if they were somehow isolated and attacked?
my only regret about this whole thing is that i wanted to sit back and drink in serious conversation about this video. instead
i'm getting the usual trolling. i can tolerate that on the majority of subjects i cover here but this one is different. i wanted
to hear from serious individuals doing serious thinking about what the Dr presented.
such is life. if you run across anything else PLEASE send it. i find this fascinating!
he slide at 12.44 is also interesting it shows Russia's "desire" for "friendly relations" with the west and its neighbours.
But i guess like in the cold war there is no shortage of naives that think that Russia understands anything else but sanctions
or force. see more
Caveat emptor. Karber is a flamboyant blowhard. This is not to dismiss Russia's invasion or or act of war in Ukraine but merely
to state that this guy is essentially a Tom Clancy cut out. I like a lot of his slides (I wonder who made them?) and his valuable
tactical observations (even if it does sound, at times, like a shopping list for Ukrainian military aid) but he is no SME.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2...
My conclusions -- Western/ US allies/Nato armies will need to have:
- integrated air defence at every level from platoon to regimental.(manpads, spaag,
- mass fire/steel rain capabilities cheap and heavy MLRS also MLRS launched antiradiation missiles)
the israelis launched AGM Shrikes with boosters from trucks to target Syrian Radars
- Field Army EW sigint/elint/jamming/defense capabilities
- EW munitions (currently russia has tube artillery launched jammers don't know about the US or NATO)
- Small and light SPGs like the Gvozdika
Whilst I agree Russia does tend to export it's kit extensively. Also some of the potential uses such as GPS jamming drones, could
be more than merely inconvenient on very small budgets.
The problem is that the logic of neoliberalism dictates the necessary of converting the USA into empire and maintaining
this empire at the expense of well-being and standard of living of US citizens. It is necessary to enforce globalization and
Washington consensus.
Crash in the empire façade are now painted off with Russophobia...
An excellent analysis of the sordid mess we euphemistically refer to as our vaunted --
"democracy." Given the total control of information through MSM, combined with oligarchic
attempts to censor and essentially "disappear" dissenting voices in alternative media, the
vast majority of Americans are tethered to domestic and global "realities" by a very thin
thread indeed. Americans and Westerners in general are lost in a matrix -like propaganda
system of the like the world has never before seen. We've essentially replaced the mythic
"divine right of kings" and the "infallibility of the pope" with the equally mythic divine
"rights of corporations" and the infallibility of the "invisible hand of the market." Strange
how that "invisible hand" can always be found wrapped tightly around the throats of the
world's poor everywhere and anywhere.
Challenging these myth systems with truthful counter-narratives is as heretical today as
it was a thousand years ago in the West, while those oligarchic controlled institutions
enforcing our current myth systems are just as greedy, violent, amoral and blood thirsty as
they were during the height of the Holy Inquisition. The myths have changed, but the dynamics
of absolute power through the control of societal myth systems remains unchanged. As Derrick
Jensen has pointed out most Americans can more easily imagine the end of the world than they
can imagine the end of capitalism. This is "brain-washing" of the highest order indeed.
Lois Gagnon , July 4, 2018 at 5:19 pm
Well put. Changing the narrative has to be our highest priority.
zhenry , July 4, 2018 at 10:50 pm
Should add 'Divine right and infallibility over a world nobody can live in.
Reminds me of The Who song : "Won't Get Fooled Again !"
"Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss".
"And parking on the left is now parking on the right".
Rob , July 4, 2018 at 11:31 am
It's good to see Caitlin and her no holds barred writing back on Consortium News. Her hard
hitting analyses are usually spot-on.
rosemerry , July 4, 2018 at 11:18 am
Many important rights were fought for and won by earlier generations, and I think it was
Ralph Nader who said that none have been won since 1970. Earnings for all but the rich have
stagnated, long-established rights have been cast aside by the "courts of law", national and
State.
As well as Jeffrey Clements' "Corporations are not People" and his fight for the repeal of
"Citizens' United" (what happened to this surge of people power?) there is an excellent book
by historian Nancy MacLean "Democracy in Chains" which traces the movement to deny rights to
the people, except a select few, right up to the election of Donald J Trump. It is clear,
fast-paced, well- referenced and very chilling. The last chapter, 'Get Ready' needs to be
taken seriously by us all.
hetro , July 4, 2018 at 10:10 am
Now reading Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party, 2002, an account of his run for the
presidency in 2000. Very enjoyable read. Things were very much as described by Caitlin back
then, and have only gotten worse. I do fear that glib comments on "democracy as failed" have
the wrong term in the phrase. It's plutocracy that has failed, not democracy. Then again
democracy requires a lot of work, including thinking and assessing, and continually working
to improve the concept. The forefathers got the project started. A capitalist system that
encourages hedonism is not going to help much. From Nader's book I have been receiving,
oddly, encouragement, in all the people he mentions who wanted change back then, and still
do. I am grateful for Nader and Caitlin for expressing the reality of capitalism run amok so
very effectively. I hope these efforts will influence further thinking.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 7:02 am
Caitlin refreshingly overlooks the distractions of US history between monarchy and
oligarchy, the (1) early-federal-period unity around defense concerns, (2) pre-civil-war
period of failed congressional debate, and (3) early-industrial emergence of the middle
class. These should be ignored, because US history consists of failure of institutions and
failure to fix them, and only distracted from the rise of oligarchy to prevent reform.
If democracy is ever restored in the US, it must be stabilized by amendments to protect
elections and mass media debate from economic power, better checks and balances within the
government branches, purging the corrupt judiciary and Congress, monitoring of government
officials for corruption, and regulation of business so that oligarchic bullies and scammers
do not rise to control economic power.
Only then can literature, media, education, and public interaction encourage moral
community, and only then can public debate find the moral policies that honor the rights of
all persons and seek justice for all.
Babyl-on , July 4, 2018 at 8:07 am
"Democracy" is an utter failure. You point this out clearly. Yet, it seems no progressive
can accept that -- democracy is an utter failure.
The idea that the system of "democracy" is some sort of holy system, immutable and sacred
is completely false. This is not the "end times" of history social and cultural evolution is
taking place other systems are proving in the real world they can do a far better job of
supporting their citizens than "democracy" ever has, not to mention that imperialism itself
is under threat from these other systems -- while every powerful "democracy" has been
imperialist.
We live in a multi-polar world now, the US no longer is the "global power" . The US is not
#1 in anything but slaughter. This is what "democracy" has done sense August 6,1945
SLAUGHTERED INNOCENT PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 2.600+ DAYS with plans to
continue indefinitely. I would not wish "democracy" on my worst enemy.
Deep and fundamental changes are taking place the ideas of the Enlightenment were deeply
flawed and have broken down, new ideas from other cultures are gaining in strength and
showing their value to people everywhere.
I'd just like to point out that over the 73+ years of US slaughter of tens of millions of
innocent people were accompanied by "elections" every two years -- so the democratic people
of the US fully supported this continuous slaughter as being in their best interests (we kill
"over there" in war -- but we kill at home too stimulated by deeply and systemically held
racism.)
This slaughter machine we call government must be fully and completely dismantled, the
great fortunes must be broken up -- no ashes -- no Phoenix.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 9:08 am
The problem is not democracy (the recognition that all humans have equal rights) but how
democracy is structured; I noted some corrections needed.
The governments of China and Russia are variants of democracy with advantages and
problems. The democracies of Scandinavia work better in part for cultural reasons. But it is
not difficult to do far better than ours and be democratic: the problem is getting there.
Bob Van Noy , July 4, 2018 at 9:05 am
"If democracy is ever restored in the US,". Sam F.
Thank you, so true.
Our contemporary problem as Citizens, as Sam F. duly notes, is a totally failed democracy.
The graphic accompanying this excellent piece is also appropriate, as it too describes our
total lack of input as supposed Citizens.
It will be necessary to publicly demonstrate how America Failed, make specific
accusations, and design an alternative, something not possible with our current failed state.
In other words, a Truth and Reconciliation environment where the failures can adequately and
freely be presented and responsibility assigned.
Bob Van Noy , July 4, 2018 at 9:16 am
Readers might enjoy this terrific reading list by Ralph Nader
Yes, demonstration of the failures of US democracy is the essential first step to public
understanding, along with public study of potential solutions, so that steps can be taken
when the public is sufficiently aroused, to restore democracy.
alley cat , July 4, 2018 at 6:51 am
We separated church and state, abolished slavery, and granted suffrage to women. Each of
those advances in human rights was fought tooth, nail, and claw by tyrants and oligarchs.
Today's a good day to recall the famous words of one of the most courageous and eloquent
of American patriots, Frederick Douglass, in a speech he gave on West India emancipation in
1857: "If there is no struggle there is no progress . . . . Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with
both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
And those wrongs include the wrongs we allow our government to impose on other peoples as
well as on ourselves, as Martin Luther King declared in his Riverside Church speech in 1967:
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the
ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world
today -- my own government."
Silly Me , July 4, 2018 at 9:47 am
Actually, the problem is that the unity of those in power and the peasants broke when the
underlying ideology stopped functioning. These days, peasant are offered nothing, not the
American Dream, not even a place in Heaven, for their sacrifice.
All those "advances" you mention were a one-way street to this end.
There is no ideal form of government. Democracy is a scam, and possibly the most expensive
form of government, but Aristotle's "good king" functions only if the ideology
works.(Aristotle despised democracy as the rule of the mob and the Constitution was
theoretically meant to prevent that, but with hardly any of the Constitution left, one has to
choose between corporate masters and mob rule. Oh, well, that is not even a choice, because
the mob has been divided and compartmentalized.)
No revolution has ever succeeded that started from the bottom. For a successful
revolution, you need to convince your rulers that giving you handouts is good for them. The
more they give, the more they can take back. Unfortunately, they have already destroyed
America and are abandoning it in droves, but they are not yet done with the planet.
MarB , July 4, 2018 at 11:36 pm
"not even a place in Heaven, for their sacrifice"
just the heartless illusory promise of endless vacuous consumption accompanied by the
requisite endless diversion from reality.
You know how conservatives like to pass legislation that does something that is against
the interests of the people but they at the same time like to name that legislation with a
name that is the exact opposite of what they are doing? So for instance legislation that
would make it less likely to have clean air by letting corporations regulate themselves on
air pollution is called "The Clean Air Act."
Well, this usage of Double-Speak is much older that George Orwell. You can find it in the
writing of Thomas Jefferson that was signed by a bunch of plutocrats on July 4, 1776.
I'm talking about, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It would be laughable ironic if it wasn't so tragic that a main reason so many of these
plutocrats signed this document was because the British had proclaimed that all slaves of
those in rebellion were free. Slaves were running away and joining the British cause.
Another tragic reality is that another reason these plutocrats signed is because they had
bought vast tracts of land west of the Alleghenies cheaply and expected to make a fortune
selling it at high prices to lower class farmers desperate for land. They'd done this with no
consideration for the people actually living on this land as they had for millennia and
without any compensation to them. Instead states far away declared they owned this land and
then sold it to the plutocrats. But the British had put a stop to it, saying that land was
reserved for the tribes who lived there. These plutocrats were furious that the British were
keeping them from becoming even richer as if the native people who'd never signed away their
land mattered like they did.
These 'founding fathers' were all hypocrites signing that document. They didn't believe
all men were really equal. They didn't believe that Black Americans had a God given
unalienable right to liberty. They didn't believe that Native Americans had a God given
unalienable to the pursuit of happiness or even to life.
Plus they said that this was declaration to become independent of Britain was something
the people were doing. They didn't bother to consult the people. The reality is one third of
the people were loyal and one third were neutral and only one third wanted to be independent.
A lot of these loyal people fled north to Canada as soon as they could when it became the
clear the 'patriots' were winning. That was a flood of immigrants in the 1780s.
The final irony is that they claimed they were taking this action because of George's
unfair taxation. Guess what. The Tea Act that sparked revolt with the Boston Tea Party a few
years earlier actually lowered taxes. Yes. It lowered taxes. But the plutocrats were upset
because it also created a monopoly in the tea trade giving it to Londoners, leaving them out.
They lied that it was about regular people being upset that they had to pay high taxes when
what they were really upset about was that they didn't get the contract that would have made
them richer.
But the bamboozled those regular poor folk to join their Continental Army and paid them in
IOUs. How did they plan on paying those IOUs? Well, by the various states raising taxes.
Unfortunately for those poor vets they didn't get paid at first and they couldn't pay their
taxes unless they sold their IOUs for pennies on the dollar to rich speculators- the very
same plutocrats who declared Independence because of taxes. Then they'd get paid the full
amount of the IOUs.
This scenario sounds exactly like the one in the document I quoted above from the
Declaration, which purports that in that situation the people have a god given duty to rebel
and change the government. What did these patriotic founding fathers do? They raised funds to
buy a mercenary army to go and squash these rebels. They they broke the law to create a new
constitution, filled with more Double-Speak about "We the People" and "general Welfare" and
"Blessings of Liberty," that created a stronger central government with the power to tax and
a standing army so such rebellion could never happen again.
Who am I talking about? I'm talking about Jefferson who was a slave owner. I'm talking
about Adams who despised the idea of the 'rabble' and the 'mob' and as President passed laws
to put in jail anyone who printed anything that was against his presidency. I'm talking about
Washington who was "mortified beyond expression" about the rebels and declared that "mankind
when left to themselves are unfit for their own Government." I'm talking about Franklin whose
view of natives was ""If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order
to make room for cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the
appointed means." If you don't know, 'extirpate' means 'to root out and destroy.'
Think on this. If the British had won, there would have been no native genocide in the
Ohio Country. Instead it might have been like Manitoba, where natives and settlers became one
people and got their own province. If the British had won then slavery would have been
outlawed in America when it was in the British Empire in 1833.
Maybe there's a reason Canada is a kinder nation with universal single payer healthcare
and legal marijuana and it gave sanctuary to USA draft dodgers? Maybe because it wasn't
created like George Carlin tells us the USA was.
"This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of
slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to
continue owning their black African people so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian
people and move West and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people giving them
a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know
what the motto of this country ought to be? 'You give us a color- we'll wipe it out.'"
Joe Tedesky , July 4, 2018 at 6:46 pm
Wow Miranda you hit it out of the ball yard with your comment, well done. It is hard for
America to reconcile all of its myths, as I've often quoted my beloved departed mother who
always said, one lie only leads to another lie until the truth jumps up and bites you in the
ass your spot on commentary is a fantastic beginning to a readers journey towards them
learning the truth. Thanks Miranda, you taught me something new today. Joe
Most of the stuff I summarized is explained in better depth in a series of articles by
Danny Sjursen over on Truthdig called "American History for Truthdiggers."
Also having read Zinn's history is helpful. Plus I'm a big fan of Carlin. Do miss him. Not
just his insight, but his cadence, which seemed to be flowing through me on that post.
Joe Tedesky , July 4, 2018 at 9:27 pm
Miranda your inspirational heroes are certainly appropriate for analyzing today's current
events. I like Major Daniel Sjursen for he is a soldier who has learned from his experiences,
and he doesn't sell the same old fluff we are used too. All in all you Miranda crafted this
piece of fine commentary, and you should be congratulated for how you interpret what you have
learned . and look at you now, your teaching all of us to be critical thinkers when
appraising our nation's policies. Good post. Joe
Kalen , July 4, 2018 at 4:55 am
Few historical facts:
The counterrevolutionary US constitution of 1789 was nothing but a ploy for rich and
powerful British aristocracy and oligarchy to wrestle their absolute control back and return
to past regime of 1776 but this time sans King and with collective despotism instead, calling
the whole revolutionary experiment they instigated themselves dead as too democratic
threatening their profits from slavery.
It was British aristocracy and oligarchy with interest in American colonies who concocted
"American Revolution" in order to steal land given them as a privilege by English King and
hence avoid paying taxes considered by British government at that time. And shocked and
dismayed by unexpected rise of social conscientiousness of poor/landless colonists who
supposed to exhibit animal like qualities and not maturity of citizen, they pulled the plug
and killed the American experiment in 1789 via illegal constitutional convection once for
all.
It took them so long [13 years] since they had to think hard how to camouflage the "old"
system of "collective" monarchy based on medieval fiefdoms [dropped names like colonies
replaced by a term states that delegate some limited prerogatives to a states' GSE, a
corporation domiciled on a strip of land called D.C., the only area that this GSE called
Federal Government really directly controls] under propaganda of supposedly Greek and Roman
democratic tradition that bombastic neo- classical monstrosities of Federal buildings suppose
to convey.
Americans, It is time to remember Declaration of Independence, 1776 that states:
..But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Corporate despotism reigns supreme, it is time to sharpen pitchforks as is duty of free
citizenry as demanded by Declaration of Independence.
OlyaPola , July 4, 2018 at 4:18 am
"America Celebrates Lateral Move From Monarchy To Corporate Rule"
The move was linear within the linear paradigm of class societies using a similar mix of
coercion including ideological tools for sustainabilty, obfuscated by the transition from
"divine right of kings" modified by the "Glorious Revolution of 1688" to "We the people hold
these truths to be self-evident", the assay of the amalgam of coercive tools remaining within
the linear.
A lateral (qualitative) change is required to transcend "capitalism" and the misnamed "The
United States of America" and why reform is self-defeating since it is also linear and hence
facilitates the continued immersion in iterations of modulated status-quo ante and hence
precludes lateral change.
Sam F , July 4, 2018 at 7:24 am
I interpret your "reform is self-defeating" to mean evolutionary or incremental reform,
which as you note relies on existing powers, and therefore maintains oligarchy.
Even revolutions seldom do much better, because they are opposed by economic or external
powers. A revolution would have worked in the US, having no major external powers, if it
reformed economic power, but is not feasible against our totalitarian state.
Only the extreme conditions of poverty by external embargo, military defeats discrediting
the warmongers, and rising gangsterism and corruption will bring enough anger among the
middle class, probably 40-60 years hence. See Mexico, and we are not there yet. Meanwhile we
pretend that fashion reforms lead somewhere.
OlyaPola , July 5, 2018 at 2:21 am
"Only the extreme conditions of poverty by external embargo, military defeats discrediting
the warmongers, and rising gangsterism and corruption will bring enough anger among the
middle class, probably 40-60 years hence."
One of the aspects of "exceptionalism" is to seek to assign significance to self that
others do not assign to you.
Such hubris affords strategic opportunities for others.
Agency is a type of interaction and can be minimised through non-emulated interaction the
process being accelerated through lateral modes of interaction perceived by opponents as
linear (emulated) interaction -- which in some measure describes the trajectory of
transcending the Soviet Union by the Russian Federation with the complicity of "The United
States of America" facilitated by hubris such as the end of history and full spectrum
dominance.
In such a scenario what the inhabitants of "The United States of America" do is of lesser
import, a process accelerated by their self-absorption.
If the
Sam F , July 5, 2018 at 8:10 am
You appear to be saying that a fifth column effects more serious reforms, moving toward a
parallel branch of history while seeming to effect lesser reforms. (Your usage of "lateral"
suggests move toward greater reform, while in the article it refers to movement to something
no better.)
OlyaPola , July 5, 2018 at 9:28 am
"a fifth column effects more serious reforms"
No, that is an integration within the opponents' linear paradigm.
If you need an example take a sample from a useful fool's blog http://www.thesaker.is who frames in 5th, 6th and nth columns,
not necessarily newspaper columns, and generally bad people, evil doers and assorted rascals
-- a passion play facilitating deflection, deflection and/or "children's crusades", although
children generally have a lesser propensity to be rendered useful fools and why they require
"socialisation" to get with the team.
"Your usage of "lateral" suggests move toward greater reform".
That is also an integration within the opponents' paradigm.
Lateral is qualitative change facilitated by fission -- a qualitative transcendence.
Ideology is akin to a swimming pool; when you start to emerge you still carry
drop-lets.
Among the ideological notions with more resilient half-lives are "intuition", "beliefs",
"framing" and "methods".
Some wish to remain in the present linear paradigm through "spheres of influence" which is
presented as and constitutes "reform" thereby facilitating a mutation of the bacilli, not a
transcendence.
"while in the article it refers to movement to something no better.)"
Spectators tend to ponder what is, some spectators bridging doubt by belief to attain
pre-judgements.
Spectators also often conflate comment with agency to maintain the comfort zone of not
expanding their definition of agency.
Practitioners test what is to formulate how to's which throughout the process are
subjected to rigorous evaluation/modulation.
Spectating is a process described by Mr. Rove's observation which I paraphrase.
"We are an Empire now.
We create our own reality.
You react to our reality
And whilst you do so
We create another reality
To which you react"
Ergo immersion in iterations of the opponents linear paradigm.
Mr. Rove also observed the reducing scope and half-life of this process namely
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the one's you should
concentrate on"
Blogs illustrate both observations of Mr. Rove.
Consequently practitioners normally do not "agree" with spectators' framing, including
definition assigned to words, hopes and wishes but use the the spectators' hopes and wishes
to transcend them, afforded the opportunities to do so by the spectators frames of "plausible
belief", thereby adding the complicity of the spectators to the fissile material, since blogs
are akin to petri-dishes wherein commentators add to "the culture" minimising unnecessary
action by practitioners whilst "hiding" in open sight, although some commentators share
hypotheses that others can test if so minded and others can iterate the process of bridging
doubt by belief to attain pre-judgements and self-affirmation.
Chumpsky , July 4, 2018 at 2:09 am
Another brilliant analysis by Caitlin. "America is a corporatist oligarchy dressed in drag
doing a bad impression of a bipartisan democracy."
It would be useful to show how the "elite class" has manipulated our monetary system to
advance their nefarious agenda. Robbery or transfer of wealth via inflation to control the
political economy has been di rigeur since the creation of the Federal Reserve, which is not
federal but a private chartered monopoly. All political distortions can be traced to this
seditious injustice to American labor as well as the Hamiltonian monetary principles of our
founders.
Yes neoliberalism is deeply predatory. Still is survives as a social system for let's say 40 years (1987-2017) and probably will
survive another 20-30 years. And what is coming might be worse. If Trump signify turn to "national neoliberalism" the next
step from it might some kind of neofascism.
Notable quotes:
"... But financialization didn't just have a direct cost -- no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who'd blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked out of the sails of the "real economy", as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does create value -- teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these people -- those in the "real economy" -- began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren't built -- all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was growing at the heart of the economy -- but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were indeed about to all go south at once -- only no one knew understood how or why yet. ..."
"... The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were "offshored." That's a polite way to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact -- and send jobs there. That way, you wouldn't have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies, even -- you could make everything in that one sweatshop. ..."
"... We're used to thinking that offshoring "took" jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler -- and more ruinous. They blew apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang effect happened. ..."
"... Managers began stripping away benefits of every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the "at-will job" and the "zero-hours contract" were created -- social contracts that were only "jobs" in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility, or opportunity. People who didn't have benefits could now be fired on a whim -- and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk of what, precisely? ..."
"... Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south, who'd take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety ..."
"... So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks -- but didn't "restructure" them, which is to say, fire their managers, wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them ..."
"... What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism: austerity. ..."
"... The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government -- after all, the speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat, by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investing dollars back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did just the opposite. ..."
"... It's the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability -- who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy, the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless. ..."
"... Predatory capitalism imploding into strange, new forms of old diseases of the body politic ..."
How did we get here? To a world where the forces of intolerance and indecency are on the rise, and those of decency, wisdom, and
civilization are waning? Is something like a new Dark Age falling?
I think it has everything to do with predatory capitalism, and so I want to tell you a story. Of how it came to be born, in four
steps, which span three decades.
During the 2000s, the economy of the rich world underwent something like a phase transition. It became "financialized", as the
jargon goes -- which simply means that finance came to make up a greater and greater share of the economy. Hedge funds and investment
banks and shady financial vehicles of all kinds went from a modest portion of the economy, to making up a huge chunk of it -- around
half, in some countries.
Now, what was "financialization" for? What were all these bankers, hedge fund managers, investors, and so on, doing? The answer
is: nothing. Nothing of value, anyways. They were simply placing bets with each other. Bets on bets on bets, meta-bets. Economists,
who have something like an inferiority complex, envious of swashbuckling bankers, bought their marketing pitch hog, line, and sinker:
"we're going to reduce risk! Everyone will benefit!" But no such thing was happening -- and anyone could see it. Risk was being
massively amplified, in fact, because every time a speculator made a billion dollar bet with another, they were both betting with
the same pool of money, essentially. Whose money? It wasn't theirs -- it was everyone's. Pensions, savings, bank accounts, earnings,
retirement funds. All that being bet on bets on bets on bets which amounted to nothing. But what if all the bets went south at once?
First, I want you to really understand that what was happening was a zero-sum game, where one had to lose for another to win.
Imagine there are three of us, in a little stone age tribe, with a hundred pebbles each. We spend all day every day finding new ways
to lend pebbles to each other, to bet them on who'll blink first, or even bets on those bets, and so on. In our little economy, does
anyone ever end up better off? Does anyone, for example, discover antibiotics, or even invent the wheel? Nope. We're just fools,
who'll never accomplish, learn, or create anything, sitting around playing a zero-sum game, in which no real value is ever created.
The pebbles never become anything more valuable, like, for example, books, symphonies, knowledge, or medicine. All that is exactly
what was happening during the phase of financialization.
But financialization didn't just have a direct cost -- no value being created, just men in shiny suits betting pebbles on who'd
blink first. It also had an opportunity cost. As finance grew to be a larger and larger share of the economy, so the wind got sucked
out of the sails of the "real economy", as American economists put it, which simply means people doing the work that actually does
create value -- teachers, nurses, engineers, artisans, bakers, small-town factories, and so on. Think about it simply: the more
money that was burned up in speculating, the less that was available for making things of genuine value. So the incomes of all these
people -- those in the "real economy" -- began to stagnate. New schools and hospitals and energy grids and so on weren't built
-- all the money was going towards speculating on the backs the old ones, sometimes, often, on their failures. A black hole was
growing at the heart of the economy -- but according to pundits, it was the sun itself. Everything was upside down. The bets were
indeed about to all go south at once -- only no one knew understood how or why yet.
How was the real economy to survive, then? Another hidden effect of financialization was super-concentration -- the second force
in the rise of predatory capitalism. Mom-and-pop capitalism is a healthy and beautiful thing, an economy of a million little shops,
bakeries, artisans -- but it takes only a modest attachment to a profit motive. But thanks to the rise of massive, global speculation,
only aggressive quarterly profit-maximization was allowed. CEO earnings were hitched to share prices, and your share price only went
up if your earnings did, relentlessly, illogicaly, crazily, every single quarter, instead of stabilizing at a happy, gentle amount
-- and so the only way left, in the end, to achieve it, was to build titanic monopolies, which could squeeze people for every dime.
Once the economy had Macy's, JC Penney, K-Mart, Toys-R-Us and Sears. Now it has Walmart. The story was repeated across every single
industry. Amazon, Google, Apple. A new age of monopoly arose.
But monopolies had an effect, too. The third force in the rise of predatory capitalism was the implosion of the institution formerly
known as the job. Now, just before peak financialization, beginning in the 1990s, many jobs were "offshored." That's a polite way
to say that the speculators above discovered that companies were more profitable when they evaded as much of human civilization as
possible. Find a country with no labour laws, no protections, no standards, no rule of law at all, in fact -- and send jobs there.
That way, you wouldn't have to pay for pensions, healthcare, childcare, insurance, and so on. Cost savings! Efficiency! Synergies,
even -- you could make everything in that one sweatshop.
We're used to thinking that offshoring "took" jobs in rich countries. But the truth is subtler -- and more ruinous. They blew
apart the idea of a job as we used to know it. As jobs went to countries without good governance, decent labour laws, a boomerang
effect happened. The machine discovered that it could do in rich countries what it had done in poor ones -- and so it began stripping
away everything that made a job "a job." Because the economy was increasingly composed of monopolies, giant companies, banks, and
investors had the power to do so with impunity. Speculators began raiding pension funds. Managers began stripping away benefits of
every kind, from childcare, to vacations, to healthcare. Until, at last, in a final triumph, the "at-will job" and the "zero-hours
contract" were created -- social contracts that were only "jobs" in name, but offered less than no stability, security, mobility,
or opportunity. People who didn't have benefits could now be fired on a whim -- and so now they bore all the risk. But the risk
of what, precisely?
Remember those speculators? Taking huge risks, betting billions with each other, on exactly nothing of real value? Risk had come
full circle. Now it was the average person in the real economy who bore all the risks of these bets going bad. If the bets with south,
who'd take the hit? All those people with zero benefits, no protection, no safety, all those people for whom "a job" now meant something
more like "a temporary soul-crushing way to avoid destitution." They're the ones who'd be fired, instantly, lose what little savings
they had, have their already dwindling incomes slashed, be ruined.
And then the bets went bad. As bets tend to do, when you make too many of them, on foolish things. What had the speculators been
betting with each other on? As it turns out, largely on property prices. But people without the stable jobs that had kept such a
huge property bubble going didn't have growing incomes anymore. Property prices couldn't keep rising. Bang! The financial system
fell like a row of dominoes. It turned out that everyone had bet property prices would go on rising -- and on the other side of
that bet was everyone else. All of them had been betting on the same thing -- "we all bet prices will keep rising forever!" The
losses were so vast, and so widespread, that the whole global financial system buckled. The banks didn't have the money to pay each
other for these foolish bets -- how could they have? Each one had bet the whole house on the same thing, and they all would have
gone bankrupt to each other. LOL -- do you see the fatal stupidity of it all yet?
So in had to step governments. They bailed out the banks -- but didn't "restructure" them, which is to say, fire their managers,
wash out their shareholders, and sell off the bad loans and bets. They just threw money at them -- and took those bad bets onto
the nation's books, instead. It was the most foolish decision since the Great Depression. Why?
Well, now governments had trillions in -- pow! -- sudden debt. What were they to do? How would they pay it off? Now, you might
think that Presidents are very intelligent people, but unfortunately, they are just politicians. And so instead of doing what they
should have done -- printing money, simply cancelling each others' debts to each other, which were for fictional speculation anyways
-- they decided that they were "broke". Bankrupt, even -- even though a country can't go bankrupt, anymore than you could if you
could print your own currency at home, and spend it everywhere.
What does a bankrupt have to do? Liquidate. So governments began to slash investment in social systems of all kinds. Healthcare
systems, pension systems, insurance systems, media and energy systems. This was the fourth step in the birth of predatory capitalism:
austerity.
But people's incomes were already dwindling, thanks to the first three steps -- as jobs not just disappeared in quantity, but
also imploded in quality, as monopolies grew in power, and as pointless, destructive, zero-sum speculation sucked the life out of
the real economy. The only thing keeping the real economy going at this point was investment by the government -- after all, the
speculators were speculating, not investing for the long run. It was governments that were effectively keeping economies afloat,
by providing a floor for income, by anchoring economies with a vast pool of stable, safe, real, secure jobs, and investing dollars
back in societies short of them. And yet, at the precise moment that governments needed to create more of precisely that, they did
just the opposite.
Snap! Economies broke like twigs. The people formerly known as the middle class had been caught in between the pincers of these
four forces -- financialization, monopoly, the implosion of the job, and austerity. Together, they shattered what was left of rich
economies -- to the point that today, incomes are stagnant across the rich world, even in much vaunted Scandinavia, while living
standards are falling in many rich countries, like the US and UK.
What do people do as hardship begins to bite -- especially those who expected comfortable, easy lives? They become reactionary,
lashing out violently. They seek safety in the arms of demagogues. That doesn't mean, as American pundits naively think, that "poor
people become authoritarians!" Quite the opposite.
It's the once prosperous but now imploded middle which turns on the classes, ethnicities, groups, below it. The people who expected
and felt entitled to lives of safety and security and stability -- who anticipated being at the top of a tidy little hierarchy,
the boss of this or that, the chieftain of that or this, but now find themselves adrift and unmoored in a collapsing society, powerless.
That gap between expectation and reality is what ruinous. They retain a desperate need to be atop a hierarchy, to be above someone,
the entitled imploded middles -- and what has happened in history, time and again, is that they turn to those who promise them
just that superiority, by turning on those below them. Even if, especially if, it is in the extreme, irrational, yet perfectly logical
form of supremacy and dominion over the weak, the despised, and the impure.
And that is what all today's reactionary, extremist movements --
which I call the Faction --
really are. Predatory capitalism imploding into strange, new forms of old diseases of the body politic -- ultrauthoritarianism,
theosupremacism, kleptofascism, neofeudalism, biodominionism, hatriarchy, technotalitarianism, novel and lethal forms of ruin for
a new dark age.
And so here we are, you and I. On the cusp of that age. A time where the shadows in human hearts shine as black and blinding as
midnight. And once again, it is the folly and hubris of wise men that led us here.
"Five signers were captured by the
British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary
army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships resulting from the Revolutionary
War.
These men signed, and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor!
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants. Nine were farmers and large plantation
owners. All were men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty
could be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British navy. He sold his home
and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags." "What really happened?"
------------
I had a lot of ancestors in that war, some Continentals, some militia. One man in Boston raised his own regiment of militia at
his own expense. He commanded it throughout the war. A lot of these soldiers were old broke down grunts by the end, They made new
lives for themselves. I revere their memory. pl
"All were men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty could
be death if they were captured."
They were men of character. They were willing to lose everything for their convictions and beliefs. These are men to be revered.
Thank you Col. Lang for remembering them.
IMO, as a people we no longer have this character. We have allowed big & bigger government over the decades who have usurped
our sovereignty and essential liberty through mass surveillance, civil forfeiture, state secrets doctrine as the cornerstone of
deceit, and now the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence for domestic political purposes.
These were indeed hard and principled men. I offer the example of one of the founding fathers of my hometown. Gideon Hotchkiss
was a new light Puritan receiving a commission as an ensign in a Waterbury militia company in November 1756. He was at Saratoga
in August 1757 when he wrote home about "the melancholy news of our upper fort" referring to the loss of Fort William Henry and
the ensuing massacre. In July 1758 he took part in the battle of Fort Carillon as a lieutenant. He served another year as a captain
in 1760 along with two of his sons.
Leading up to the War of Independence, he served on the local committee of inspection. He sent two sons and a grandson to serve
in the war and organized a troop of light horse cavalry to respond to British incursions such as the raids on Woodbridge and Danbury.
After the fall harvests were completed, his company of veterans served through the winter months when they were most needed.
Once while working in his fields, he heard the sound of battle to the south. He mounted his horse and, along with a servant
boy, rode to meet the British at Westville, north of New Haven. His servant was struck by a cannon ball. Gideon placed the boy's
body in a concealed place, sent his horse back to his farm and joined the battle. This was the British raid on New Haven in July
1779. He was sixty-three years old at the time.
After the War, he was appointed deacon of the church of Columbia Parish, now Prospect. One of his many sons became a Methodist
minister. This Puritan deacon first disowned his son, but he soon forgave and embraced him. One of Gideon's descendants moved
to the Shenandoah Valley. He was Jedediah Hotchkiss, cartographer and staff officer to General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.
Speaking of the signers, only three lived to see America's 50th Anniversary. Thomas Jefferson was unable to attend a reunion organized
by the mayor of Washington, and this article provides the full text of his letter of RSVP.
"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal
of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and
to assume the blessings & security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded
exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. these are grounds of hope for others."
End Quote
It also cites this list of Jefferson quotes on the right to bear arms:
The Americans are treating this like some kind of random event, as if the Fascist monster
somehow happened to get awakaned from its cave by a seismic rumble, to then by accident
stumble into the US Republic for another round of fighting. The unfortunate reality of your
economic system, which refuses to give people their freedom of land, refuses to have laws
against limitless concentration of wealth, is that power will slowly but surely centralize,
until you either are a tirannical class society, or until you have another war that
overthrows the ownership structure to restart the problem from an earlier position, or until
you finally learn what freedom means.
It's not an accident, the Fascist monster didn't get awakened by chance: the problem is
within you, within your own heads, within your laws, in your beliefs, as the consequence of
your system. You are the enemy you fight, even if you don't seem to realize it, and therefore
it is your destiny to experience what the Roman Republic always ultimately becomes.
The Roman Republic falls into dictatorship, into Fascism and war, Empire, mass looting of
external and internal peoples. Your weakness and your ignorance is the strength of the
Fascist system. If you mended with weakness, Fascism would melt as if it never existed. If
you don't, it will overtake and destroy you.
I'm a conservative and a Constitutionalists. I support capitalism and free markets. That
being said, I'm impressed at least one leftist talking head got a good definition for
fascism. The problem is, modern day socialism is also the merging of government and
corporations, with violence used against political opposition.
So, who are the "fascists"? The people that want to be left free in a Constitutional
Republic, or the redshirt ANTIFA that cause violence against conservatives and want the
government to merge with corporations under the guise of "redistribution"?
It sounds to me, through cultural Marxism, the left has bamboozled an entire generation of
ignorant kids that will regurgitate whatever they are told.
Henry Wallace was right he said that fascist called them selfs patriots but hate everything
the us ever stood for they say they love the west yet they hate democracy.
Trump has already deceived his middle class voter. I see Trump as a fascist. Organizations
like Freedom Works, American's for Prosperity, State Policy Network, American's for Tax
Reform, ALEC, if you look at their literature you see that there objective is to turn the
average person against their own government and their own best interests. The 5 Republican
Supreme Court Justices put forth Citizens United in convoluted rhetoric to say that
CORPORATIONS are PERSONS. These justices cemented corporate rule in America unbeknownst the
American Public this hideous act put forth by Citizens United. Supreme Court Justices are not
above the law and on this act should be disbarred, and removed from office. The charge under
the U.S. Conspiracy Fraud Statute, through corporate outside influence manifest the
alteration of the functioning of our government against its own citizens. (Example, the Koch
Brothers, orchestrating the shutdown of the peoples government, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the
House their gofer in Congress.)
Under the pretense of waging their 'war of terror' U.S. Special Forces use lots of money and
murky legal authorities to worm themselves into the intestines of Africa. Their secret action
is likely to lead to more instability and is endangering the peoples of Africa and their
governments.
In a recent interview Seymour Hersh spoke (@2:50m) about U.S. military operations
in Africa:
"We have a big special forces community that are active particular in Africa, in lot of
places. I think the public knows very little about it. I don't think my president has been
briefed on it. I think he isn't interested in it or just doesn't know about it. I know there
is concern among some people in the military, high up in the military, in the government, in
Washington: 'What are these guys doing? Who is in control?' There is a lack of control among
the special forces. Many of them are driven with the idea that they are in a crusade. That
they are the Knights of Malta fighting the infidels in the 14th century or 13th century. I
mean that's really crazy stuff. So when I hear in the military, what the special operations
command says about Mali: 'Here is what happened when four guys died and how.' I am sorry but
I think there is much more to the story, there is much more to our presence there, but it is
very hard to get that stuff."
The U.S. has only few of its regular military stationed in Africa. But there are plenty of
U.S. special forces there, mostly working in secret. They are supposed to be under control of
AFRICOM, the imperial U.S. command for that continent.
In early February 2007 the White House finally announced a presidential directive to
establish by September 2008 a new unified combatant command with an area of responsibility
(AOR) solely dedicated to the African continent.
...
The U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) will replace the AOR for each of three other geographic
combatant commands (there are now a total of six) currently tasked with portions of the
second-largest continent, with the small exception of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
retaining AOR for Egypt. Further details on operations have not been made public apart from
the usual basic press briefings and the formation of a transition team, though it is not a
mystery to identify what role AFRICOM will play in both the U.S. and Africa's future.
Africa is huge
with a relatively small population of 1.2 billion, less than India or China. Its 54 countries
have various kinds of natural wealth. Next to oil, gas and uranium there are all types of
strategic minerals and metals, from cobalt needed for rechargeable batteries to rare earth
elements used in electronics.
What's being done in Africa was already done in Latin America, although the "process" down
South isn't done yet. Again, as is noted, this is all about attaining access to critical
resources, which is stated Outlaw US Empire policy since 1947. The overall Latin American
experience is well documented in Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America: Five
Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent . I see the 19th century's Scramble for Africa
being replayed, although that actually began in the late 1970s via the IMF's neocolonial
Structural Adjustment Policies which most of Africa still struggles to overcome. Much
growling's been done in English over China's economic projection into Africa as it overturns
the IMF/World Bank monopoly on neocolonial activities--although it should be noted that China
is very outspoken about its efforts are not aimed at achieving classical colonial dependency
over its partners. Fortunately, the Outlaw US Empire provided a glimpse of what's in store
with its destruction of Libya, which even the most corrupt African leaders cannot ignore.
Perhaps 20 years ago or more, China built a great bridge in Costa Rica which linked a remote
peninsula with the mainland. In exchange, China got fishing rights. China then proceeded to
slaughter as many sharks as possible. They cut off the fins and tossed the carcasses into the
sea. This created an environmental and ecological situation.
There is always a trade-off of some kind. No matter which parties are involved. The Art of
The Deal.
Of course, at least they got a bridge instead of mercenaries run amok or a coup.
"The Taiwanese mafia dominate the shark finning industry in Costa Rica, although
Indonesian gangs also have a foothold in the market.[3] The Taiwanese and Indonesian mafia
operate private docks in the Puntarenas area, notably Inversiones Cruz Dock and Harezan Dock
and several others where some 95% of all catches are brought in, transported by truck to San
José and flown mostly to Hong Kong.[3] According to the Costa Rican customs adviser
Omar Jiminez, at least three boats full of shark fins enter the ports in Puntarenas every
week.[7]
Kaohsiung in Taiwan is one of the biggest ports in the world for importing shark fins.
They are brought in from overseas and are placed out to dry in the sun on residential
rooftops near the port."
Given the fact that the Kuomintang and its leader Chiang Kai-shek were described as
"gangsters" by several high ranking US officials--Generals Marshall and Stillwell--during and
after WW2, it's no surprise that it's Taiwan's Mafia in cahoots with other regional mafias
that's involved in the blatant violation of law within Costa Rica and the corrupting of its
police forces.
As the linked article shows, "sharkfinning" long predates the construction of the bridge
mentioned and is likely unrelated to that illegal practice.
thanks b for keeping this story in the public eye - coincidence or not i just so happen to be
on the continent for july and starting to see what i can gather from my limited sources -
haven't been able to follow the situation with the attention available at the time i'll have
to revisit my earlier article and follow up on what i was learning then as i get settled in
on the way here via dubai i did read a congressional research rpt that brought up DOD's
use of dubai forces stationed in africa for training others. no doubt there are other new
"allies" pulled into that nowadays in addition to the usual powers and wannabes. and zim
after mugabe is probably a good case study to further understand africom
china's big push into the continent has been in effect for nearly two decades now so i'm
hoping to get a better feel for how that's played out thus far - always been a contentious
presence where i am now but quite established based on the land acquisitions, amount of
one-stop shops, and grocery offerings even at the one chain store i've already popped in.
To Karlof1 @ 13 and everyone who posted replies to Pretzel Attack in the previous comments
forum:
I just found that Taiwan has been in cahoots with more than just various regional mafias
in the years after WW2.
Summary by Aaron Zaidel of "Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of how
Terrorists, Nazis and Latin American Death Squads have Infiltrated the World Anti-communist
League" by Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, New York: Dood, Mead & Co., 1986. http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/357L/357Lsum_s2_AndersonAnderson.html
This paper is a summary of the first three chapters of the book, Inside the League, by
Scott Anderson and Jon Anderson. The purpose of this book is to expose how leaders of the
Nazis and other fascist organizations around the world have changed their allegiances from
organizations of terrorism and genocide in their home countries to the more the politically
popular World Anti- Communist League. This league was founded in 1966 as a public relations
organization for the government of Taiwan and South Korea. They soon adopted methods of
unconventional warfare including "assassinations, death squads, and sabotage through out the
world." (Anderson, 11). All of these are methods adopted from the Nazis. Anderson makes the
claim that many Eastern Europeans who participated in the holocaust were recruited into high
intelligence positions in the United States and England. They changed their rhetoric from
complaints of a Communist, Jewish, Freemason conspiracy to buzz words like anti- Bolshevism
and anti- Communism to appear respectable.
One example is the story of Chirila Ciuntu, one of the leaders of the Iron Guard. When
the Chairman of the Iron Guard was murdered, most of the members fled for the safety of Nazi
Germany. Chirila however, went underground with some of his closest followers in Romania.
When the Nazis drove the King of Romania out of the country Chirila was free to go on a
killing spree in an attempt to rid Romania of the Jews. Members of the Iron Guard took to the
streets to torture and then murder every Jew they could find. When the Romanians rebelled and
killed many members of the Iron Guard, the Nazis came and helped many of the leaders escape,
including Chirila. They were placed under protective custody and given the privileges of a
German officer.
Another example is Yaroslav Stetsko, the founder of the Orgnization of the Ukranian
Nationalists. The Nazis saw Ukraine as important allies because of their strong racism
against ethnic Poles, Russians, and Jews. In 1941 Germany and Ukraine invaded Russia to the
delight of the peasants who were under the control of Stalin's regime. It took little time
however, for them to figure out that they were no better off under Hitler and Stetsko.
Shortly thereafter, Stetsko declared the creation of the Ukranian State and named himself the
ruler. The Nazis were alarmed by this and put him under quarantine. Anderson makes the claim
that while under quarantine Stetsko continued to run concentration camps resulting in the
execution of 100,000 Jews. However, in his official biography he details escapes form German
concentration camps and is now generally perceived as a victim of the Nazis. Today Stetsko is
a major player in the World Anti- Communist League and has brought his ruthless tactic form
the WWII day with him.
Both Chirila and Stetsko are now leaders in the World Anti- Communist League. They are
only two of the many cases of fascists that did not disappear from the political arena after
the war. They continue to belong to an anti- Semitic organization, only now they have the
front of anti- communist. These are not the only two cases of former leaders of mass
genocide, covering their tracks and joining the World Anti- Communist League, only two of the
more interesting cases the book mentions. This phenomenon has taken place with numerous
people in the World Anti- Communist League.
In more recent history, Stetsko met with Ronald Regan at the White House to urge the
U.S. to take a stronger stand against the Kremlin. Chirila now lives in Canada and is still
politically active with the World Anti- Communist League. Because of their ability to hide
their political past and their current agenda, and their ability to keep a clean reputation
for the World Anti- communist League, " people like Chirila Ciuntu, who helped the slaughter
of "Communist Jews' 45 years ago, can sit down in the same room with an Italian fascist who
killed 'Reds' 10 years ago and with a Salvadorian who is killing subversives now." (Anderson,
54)
The world anti communist league was a CIA established group. CIA works with mafia all over
the world. Every country has some mafia elements. To imply this group is affiliated with the
government of Taiwan today is Chinese propaganda.
When CKS allowed the creation of the group 50 years ago the US had a significant military
and intelligence presence on the Island, same as South Korea where the group was set up soon
after. Both countries were basically dependants of the US at the time and supporting the US
in the war in Vietnam against the Communists. While the group still maintains an office in
Taipei its daily affairs are run out of Seoul and the group is pretty much global and
includes many non Asians
Jen's post @15 reminded me of this (CP was the first article that came up in the search)
"The occasion was a speech given by a representative of Abbott, Craig Kelly MP. Being in
Japan, Abbott had delegated the task of congratulating members of the Australian Croatian
community in Sydney on Croatian independence attained in April 10. This was more than a bit
awkward, given that April 10 was the date of the establishment of the Independent State of
Croatia (NDH) after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ceased to exist under Axis rule in 1941. If
ever you wanted to back some unsavoury company, you couldn't do much better than officials
and sympathisers of the NDH.
Speaking at the Croatian Club in Sydney on April 13, Kelly's words were noted in the
Australian Croatian weekly Boca KroPress: "On behalf of the Prime Minister, who is in Japan,
I'm conveying his greetings and good wishes on the occasion of the celebration of the 10th of
April to you and all Croats in Australia, and those in Croatia." The report also notes the
presence of 200 Croats, various Australian politicians and a Ukrainian diplomat." https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/21/tony-abbott-the-ndh-and-australias-fascist-affair/
I have been reading Marcy Wheeler for over a decade, and b for at least two-three years. I
think both are valuable bookmarks for anyone.
b hasn't seen the 'proof' of her views and fair enough. We will see when the investigations
are done. That does not mean they aren't true. And it certainly does not mean the she isn't
telling the truth about her personal knowledge and the threats to her, and for anyone to
bemoan that without being in possession of the facts may want to examine their own
assumptions.
Now, my own opinions and assumptions. My feelings about any accusations about any
Russian meddling in American politics (for the record, I am an American, living in America)
without acknowledging the USA's relentless meddling in the politics of almost every nation on
earth for the last 70+ years is just blind, bleating by the ignorant. Which Marcy, and b, are
most certainly not in my opinion. That doesn't mean they can't disagree on the facts as they
see them, and I venture to say that both would change their view on something as the facts
dictate.
My own feelings about this entire 'Russian meddling' in our elections would be moot if we
spent any time at all trying to make the system more secure. Not black box, no paper trail
machines. Not automatic purging of voter rolls because people throw political mailings in the
trash. Not elimination polling stations in areas where a particular party knows they won't
win. And counting paper ballots in public, and no disposing of the ballots before they can be
challenged for a recount. Shut up about 'voter fraud' and start prosecuting election
fraud.Then, come and talk to me about meddling in America's elections. It may start with an R
in these cases, but it is certainly not Russia. Also, if you want to win an election for
president, then campaign in every state. Every time.
Where in my comment @ 15 am I referring to Chinese propaganda?
Geni.com is based in California. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine is based in Edmonton
(Alberta) and Toronto (Ontario), both in Canada. The link to the summary of the Andersons'
book is based in Texas. Both Scott and Jon Lee Anderson are also American. All the
information on Stetsko and his association with the World Anti-Communist League I found can
be Googled. The League's Wikipedia entry states that Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek) as
President of the Republic of China aka Taiwan was a co-founder of the Asian Pacific League
for Freedom and Democracy in 1954. THe APLFD later became the World Anti-Communist League in
1966.
I read, and I don't know whether it's true or not, but one of Obama's first acts was to
create AfriCom, and that same week, the government of Nigeria nationalized all the lands and
resources out from under the people, exactly like Cheney and then Clinton did in Afghanistan,
writing the Afghan National Minerals and Petroleum Acts IN ENGLISH, IN NOVEMBER 2001, in the
US, before putting Karzai in as EXECUTOR (President) instead of Prime Minister, because the
Executive can wield that nationalization power.
Karzai took Cheney's bribes, took Clinton's $B bribes, then leased the resources to India
and China instead, lol. All of which to say, US mercs have been trooping around Africa since
Rhodesia, and they're just hired guns for some cartel.
24
I have been looking to see if the US move into Africa was connected to the pivot to Asia
Pacific.
Rand corp put together a strategy for a naval blockade/siege on China, but the real move may
be a blockade of the resources China needs.
Under the pretense of waging their 'war of terror' U.S. Special Forces use lots of money and
murky legal authorities to worm themselves into the intestines of Africa. Their secret action
is likely to lead to more instability and is endangering the peoples of Africa and their
governments.
In a recent interview Seymour Hersh spoke (@2:50m) about U.S. military operations
in Africa:
"We have a big special forces community that are active particular in Africa, in lot of
places. I think the public knows very little about it. I don't think my president has been
briefed on it. I think he isn't interested in it or just doesn't know about it. I know there
is concern among some people in the military, high up in the military, in the government, in
Washington: 'What are these guys doing? Who is in control?' There is a lack of control among
the special forces. Many of them are driven with the idea that they are in a crusade. That
they are the Knights of Malta fighting the infidels in the 14th century or 13th century. I
mean that's really crazy stuff. So when I hear in the military, what the special operations
command says about Mali: 'Here is what happened when four guys died and how.' I am sorry but
I think there is much more to the story, there is much more to our presence there, but it is
very hard to get that stuff."
The U.S. has only few of its regular military stationed in Africa. But there are plenty of
U.S. special forces there, mostly working in secret. They are supposed to be under control of
AFRICOM, the imperial U.S. command for that continent.
In early February 2007 the White House finally announced a presidential directive to
establish by September 2008 a new unified combatant command with an area of responsibility
(AOR) solely dedicated to the African continent.
...
The U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) will replace the AOR for each of three other geographic
combatant commands (there are now a total of six) currently tasked with portions of the
second-largest continent, with the small exception of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
retaining AOR for Egypt. Further details on operations have not been made public apart from
the usual basic press briefings and the formation of a transition team, though it is not a
mystery to identify what role AFRICOM will play in both the U.S. and Africa's future.
Africa is huge
with a relatively small population of 1.2 billion, less than India or China. Its 54 countries
have various kinds of natural wealth. Next to oil, gas and uranium there are all types of
strategic minerals and metals, from cobalt needed for rechargeable batteries to rare earth
elements used in electronics.
What's being done in Africa was already done in Latin America, although the "process" down
South isn't done yet. Again, as is noted, this is all about attaining access to critical
resources, which is stated Outlaw US Empire policy since 1947. The overall Latin American
experience is well documented in Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America: Five
Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent . I see the 19th century's Scramble for Africa
being replayed, although that actually began in the late 1970s via the IMF's neocolonial
Structural Adjustment Policies which most of Africa still struggles to overcome. Much
growling's been done in English over China's economic projection into Africa as it overturns
the IMF/World Bank monopoly on neocolonial activities--although it should be noted that China
is very outspoken about its efforts are not aimed at achieving classical colonial dependency
over its partners. Fortunately, the Outlaw US Empire provided a glimpse of what's in store
with its destruction of Libya, which even the most corrupt African leaders cannot ignore.
Perhaps 20 years ago or more, China built a great bridge in Costa Rica which linked a remote
peninsula with the mainland. In exchange, China got fishing rights. China then proceeded to
slaughter as many sharks as possible. They cut off the fins and tossed the carcasses into the
sea. This created an environmental and ecological situation.
There is always a trade-off of some kind. No matter which parties are involved. The Art of
The Deal.
Of course, at least they got a bridge instead of mercenaries run amok or a coup.
"The Taiwanese mafia dominate the shark finning industry in Costa Rica, although
Indonesian gangs also have a foothold in the market.[3] The Taiwanese and Indonesian mafia
operate private docks in the Puntarenas area, notably Inversiones Cruz Dock and Harezan Dock
and several others where some 95% of all catches are brought in, transported by truck to San
José and flown mostly to Hong Kong.[3] According to the Costa Rican customs adviser
Omar Jiminez, at least three boats full of shark fins enter the ports in Puntarenas every
week.[7]
Kaohsiung in Taiwan is one of the biggest ports in the world for importing shark fins.
They are brought in from overseas and are placed out to dry in the sun on residential
rooftops near the port."
Given the fact that the Kuomintang and its leader Chiang Kai-shek were described as
"gangsters" by several high ranking US officials--Generals Marshall and Stillwell--during and
after WW2, it's no surprise that it's Taiwan's Mafia in cahoots with other regional mafias
that's involved in the blatant violation of law within Costa Rica and the corrupting of its
police forces.
As the linked article shows, "sharkfinning" long predates the construction of the bridge
mentioned and is likely unrelated to that illegal practice.
thanks b for keeping this story in the public eye - coincidence or not i just so happen to be
on the continent for july and starting to see what i can gather from my limited sources -
haven't been able to follow the situation with the attention available at the time i'll have
to revisit my earlier article and follow up on what i was learning then as i get settled in
on the way here via dubai i did read a congressional research rpt that brought up DOD's
use of dubai forces stationed in africa for training others. no doubt there are other new
"allies" pulled into that nowadays in addition to the usual powers and wannabes. and zim
after mugabe is probably a good case study to further understand africom
china's big push into the continent has been in effect for nearly two decades now so i'm
hoping to get a better feel for how that's played out thus far - always been a contentious
presence where i am now but quite established based on the land acquisitions, amount of
one-stop shops, and grocery offerings even at the one chain store i've already popped in.
To Karlof1 @ 13 and everyone who posted replies to Pretzel Attack in the previous comments
forum:
I just found that Taiwan has been in cahoots with more than just various regional mafias
in the years after WW2.
Summary by Aaron Zaidel of "Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of how
Terrorists, Nazis and Latin American Death Squads have Infiltrated the World Anti-communist
League" by Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, New York: Dood, Mead & Co., 1986. http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/357L/357Lsum_s2_AndersonAnderson.html
This paper is a summary of the first three chapters of the book, Inside the League, by
Scott Anderson and Jon Anderson. The purpose of this book is to expose how leaders of the
Nazis and other fascist organizations around the world have changed their allegiances from
organizations of terrorism and genocide in their home countries to the more the politically
popular World Anti- Communist League. This league was founded in 1966 as a public relations
organization for the government of Taiwan and South Korea. They soon adopted methods of
unconventional warfare including "assassinations, death squads, and sabotage through out the
world." (Anderson, 11). All of these are methods adopted from the Nazis. Anderson makes the
claim that many Eastern Europeans who participated in the holocaust were recruited into high
intelligence positions in the United States and England. They changed their rhetoric from
complaints of a Communist, Jewish, Freemason conspiracy to buzz words like anti- Bolshevism
and anti- Communism to appear respectable.
One example is the story of Chirila Ciuntu, one of the leaders of the Iron Guard. When
the Chairman of the Iron Guard was murdered, most of the members fled for the safety of Nazi
Germany. Chirila however, went underground with some of his closest followers in Romania.
When the Nazis drove the King of Romania out of the country Chirila was free to go on a
killing spree in an attempt to rid Romania of the Jews. Members of the Iron Guard took to the
streets to torture and then murder every Jew they could find. When the Romanians rebelled and
killed many members of the Iron Guard, the Nazis came and helped many of the leaders escape,
including Chirila. They were placed under protective custody and given the privileges of a
German officer.
Another example is Yaroslav Stetsko, the founder of the Orgnization of the Ukranian
Nationalists. The Nazis saw Ukraine as important allies because of their strong racism
against ethnic Poles, Russians, and Jews. In 1941 Germany and Ukraine invaded Russia to the
delight of the peasants who were under the control of Stalin's regime. It took little time
however, for them to figure out that they were no better off under Hitler and Stetsko.
Shortly thereafter, Stetsko declared the creation of the Ukranian State and named himself the
ruler. The Nazis were alarmed by this and put him under quarantine. Anderson makes the claim
that while under quarantine Stetsko continued to run concentration camps resulting in the
execution of 100,000 Jews. However, in his official biography he details escapes form German
concentration camps and is now generally perceived as a victim of the Nazis. Today Stetsko is
a major player in the World Anti- Communist League and has brought his ruthless tactic form
the WWII day with him.
Both Chirila and Stetsko are now leaders in the World Anti- Communist League. They are
only two of the many cases of fascists that did not disappear from the political arena after
the war. They continue to belong to an anti- Semitic organization, only now they have the
front of anti- communist. These are not the only two cases of former leaders of mass
genocide, covering their tracks and joining the World Anti- Communist League, only two of the
more interesting cases the book mentions. This phenomenon has taken place with numerous
people in the World Anti- Communist League.
In more recent history, Stetsko met with Ronald Regan at the White House to urge the
U.S. to take a stronger stand against the Kremlin. Chirila now lives in Canada and is still
politically active with the World Anti- Communist League. Because of their ability to hide
their political past and their current agenda, and their ability to keep a clean reputation
for the World Anti- communist League, " people like Chirila Ciuntu, who helped the slaughter
of "Communist Jews' 45 years ago, can sit down in the same room with an Italian fascist who
killed 'Reds' 10 years ago and with a Salvadorian who is killing subversives now." (Anderson,
54)
The world anti communist league was a CIA established group. CIA works with mafia all over
the world. Every country has some mafia elements. To imply this group is affiliated with the
government of Taiwan today is Chinese propaganda.
When CKS allowed the creation of the group 50 years ago the US had a significant military
and intelligence presence on the Island, same as South Korea where the group was set up soon
after. Both countries were basically dependants of the US at the time and supporting the US
in the war in Vietnam against the Communists. While the group still maintains an office in
Taipei its daily affairs are run out of Seoul and the group is pretty much global and
includes many non Asians
Jen's post @15 reminded me of this (CP was the first article that came up in the search)
"The occasion was a speech given by a representative of Abbott, Craig Kelly MP. Being in
Japan, Abbott had delegated the task of congratulating members of the Australian Croatian
community in Sydney on Croatian independence attained in April 10. This was more than a bit
awkward, given that April 10 was the date of the establishment of the Independent State of
Croatia (NDH) after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ceased to exist under Axis rule in 1941. If
ever you wanted to back some unsavoury company, you couldn't do much better than officials
and sympathisers of the NDH.
Speaking at the Croatian Club in Sydney on April 13, Kelly's words were noted in the
Australian Croatian weekly Boca KroPress: "On behalf of the Prime Minister, who is in Japan,
I'm conveying his greetings and good wishes on the occasion of the celebration of the 10th of
April to you and all Croats in Australia, and those in Croatia." The report also notes the
presence of 200 Croats, various Australian politicians and a Ukrainian diplomat." https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/21/tony-abbott-the-ndh-and-australias-fascist-affair/
I have been reading Marcy Wheeler for over a decade, and b for at least two-three years. I
think both are valuable bookmarks for anyone.
b hasn't seen the 'proof' of her views and fair enough. We will see when the investigations
are done. That does not mean they aren't true. And it certainly does not mean the she isn't
telling the truth about her personal knowledge and the threats to her, and for anyone to
bemoan that without being in possession of the facts may want to examine their own
assumptions.
Now, my own opinions and assumptions. My feelings about any accusations about any
Russian meddling in American politics (for the record, I am an American, living in America)
without acknowledging the USA's relentless meddling in the politics of almost every nation on
earth for the last 70+ years is just blind, bleating by the ignorant. Which Marcy, and b, are
most certainly not in my opinion. That doesn't mean they can't disagree on the facts as they
see them, and I venture to say that both would change their view on something as the facts
dictate.
My own feelings about this entire 'Russian meddling' in our elections would be moot if we
spent any time at all trying to make the system more secure. Not black box, no paper trail
machines. Not automatic purging of voter rolls because people throw political mailings in the
trash. Not elimination polling stations in areas where a particular party knows they won't
win. And counting paper ballots in public, and no disposing of the ballots before they can be
challenged for a recount. Shut up about 'voter fraud' and start prosecuting election
fraud.Then, come and talk to me about meddling in America's elections. It may start with an R
in these cases, but it is certainly not Russia. Also, if you want to win an election for
president, then campaign in every state. Every time.
Where in my comment @ 15 am I referring to Chinese propaganda?
Geni.com is based in California. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine is based in Edmonton
(Alberta) and Toronto (Ontario), both in Canada. The link to the summary of the Andersons'
book is based in Texas. Both Scott and Jon Lee Anderson are also American. All the
information on Stetsko and his association with the World Anti-Communist League I found can
be Googled. The League's Wikipedia entry states that Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek) as
President of the Republic of China aka Taiwan was a co-founder of the Asian Pacific League
for Freedom and Democracy in 1954. THe APLFD later became the World Anti-Communist League in
1966.
I read, and I don't know whether it's true or not, but one of Obama's first acts was to
create AfriCom, and that same week, the government of Nigeria nationalized all the lands and
resources out from under the people, exactly like Cheney and then Clinton did in Afghanistan,
writing the Afghan National Minerals and Petroleum Acts IN ENGLISH, IN NOVEMBER 2001, in the
US, before putting Karzai in as EXECUTOR (President) instead of Prime Minister, because the
Executive can wield that nationalization power.
Karzai took Cheney's bribes, took Clinton's $B bribes, then leased the resources to India
and China instead, lol. All of which to say, US mercs have been trooping around Africa since
Rhodesia, and they're just hired guns for some cartel.
24
I have been looking to see if the US move into Africa was connected to the pivot to Asia
Pacific.
Rand corp put together a strategy for a naval blockade/siege on China, but the real move may
be a blockade of the resources China needs.
"... The reason they endlessly get it wrong, of course, is that they listen to the exiles in the US and elsewhere. Those exiles still mainly come from the old upper classes, with their eternal sense of entitlement to power, and their air-tickets ready in their pockets to fly back to Tehran and take back their positions under the Shah. Because of course, the Iranian revolution was one of the first populist movements, where the religious regime appealed directly to "the people", and the upper classes were cut out. The system has worked well - "the people" have continued to vote for the regime, naturally being a majority. ..."
There was a distinct change earlier this year, after the second US fusillade of cruise
missiles, and the Israeli bombing of "Iranian" bases in Syria.
We were all expecting further military action, but nothing happened, in particular no more
Israeli action, although Iranian forces in Syria were hardly damaged.
Instead they started muttering about subversion of the Iranian state from the inside,
which is what b is writing about here. That was a big sign that the all-out assault on Iran
has been called off.
Why? Evidently because the military say no. The scenario was the same as the one back in
2012, the last time we thought to see Israeli aircraft getting permission from Saudi to do
their bombing runs on Iran, but it didn't happen then, because the Israeli military were
saying no. Evidently the position hasn't changed, I was relieved to discover, although the
propagandists claimed the plan is all worked out now, and Iran has little defence.
Well, internal subversion of the regime, then. Hasn't the US been attempting to do
precisely that for 40 years now, ever since the revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979? What
are the conditions which mean that they are going to succeed now, when they've failed for 40
years?
The reason they endlessly get it wrong, of course, is that they listen to the exiles
in the US and elsewhere. Those exiles still mainly come from the old upper classes, with
their eternal sense of entitlement to power, and their air-tickets ready in their pockets to
fly back to Tehran and take back their positions under the Shah. Because of course, the
Iranian revolution was one of the first populist movements, where the religious regime
appealed directly to "the people", and the upper classes were cut out. The system has worked
well - "the people" have continued to vote for the regime, naturally being a
majority.
I don't want to get into a historical disquisition (which in any case I've said before),
but the reason this works is that there's history behind it - I'm pretty sure that the
original Islamisation of Iran (I don't mean the Arab conquest, but the conversion of the
country) was a popular revolt against the pre-Islamic nationalist aristocracy, who didn't pay
any taxes. The present-day Iranian exiles attach themselves strongly to that old nationalist
aristocracy, including most academics of Iranian origin in western universities. They don't
seem to notice that the class they admire grindingly oppressed the poor, such that it led to
a revolution.
currently having an online debate about conditions in the crimea, specifically alleged
russian oppression of crimeans in 2018, but also conditions leading up to the initial
referendum (my opponents claim annexation or conquest, and cite a freedom house survey to back
it up--from what i can see freedom house is fully funded by the us govt). my understanding is
the us fomented the coup in ukraine, along with nato, as opposed to the ukrainian people
rebelling against a russian puppet, which is the us line i believe. any articles or sources
detailing the us role in all this, or rebutting claims that crimeans are being terrified into
silence in 2018 about russian oppression, would be appreciated.
About half of the respondents admit to having been taken by surprise by Russia's actions in
2014. Interestingly, there is agreement among the Crimean population, including the Crimean
Tatars, that successive Ukrainian governments had neglected the region. Roughly one third
of respondents pointed to this neglect as the main cause of the developments in 2014. ...
The majority of survey respondents agree with the statement that the different ethnic
groups in Crimea currently live peacefully side by side. Twenty percent disagree "fully" or
"rather" with this statement, thereby indicating both an uncertainty and unease with the
situation at the moment that reaches beyond the Crimean Tatar share of the population
(about 12 percent). This result is mirrored in the reaction to the ban on the main
political Crimean Tatar organization, the Mejlis, by the Russian authorities: 20 percent
"fully" or "rather" disagreed with this step, compared to 80 percent endorsing this policy.
... The survey clearly spells out the severe disruption of links to the rest of Ukraine,
limited travel to other parts of Russia, the absence of personal international reference
points, and a near-complete integration into the Russian media sphere.
This combination makes any change in the opinions of the majority of the Crimean
population on the annexation unlikely in the foreseeable future. However, it is also clear
that the Crimean population's high expectations in the Russian economy and trust in Russian
(but not Crimean) institutions needs to be carefully managed by Moscow in view of the
already strained financial situation of the majority of the Crimean population.
The authors are also cautious about drawing overly-optimistic conclusions about the present
time: "The risk of conflict emerging within Ukrainian society and growing serious remains,
based on noticeable differences among residents of different regions about the further
geopolitical direction the country should move in. There are also serious problems
connected to restoring Ukraine's territorial integrity and the model of coexistence with
those living in the regions that are currently occupied, how to reach reconciliation and
mutual understanding." ...
Joining the EU remains a strong desire among a majority of Ukrainians. In September
2016, 51% of those surveyed by the Rating Group put integration with the EU ahead of
joining Russia's Customs Union or some other association. Still, in Rating's September 2015
survey, 57% of Ukrainians did so, and in September 2014, 59% did. This noticeable decline
could be the result of a number of factors. For one thing, the Association Agreement did
not have a noticeable impact on the standard of living of most Ukrainians. Many Ukrainians
are also upset at what they see as the European Union's limp response to Russia's
aggression against their country. And the way the granting of a visa-free regime to the EU
has been dragged out for years and the obvious internal squabbles among the Union's members
have also left their imprint on Ukrainians.
Ukraine is a very diverse country. Trump coming to an agreement with Putin that eases
tensions instead of agreeing/dividing on spheres of influence would be their best hope.
pretzelattack@3 re: "...rebutting claims that crimeans are being terrified into silence in
2018 about russian oppression."
I honestly have not heard anything about actual oppression - just that some
Ukrainians and Tartars are still - today - not terribly happy with the
secession/annexation/transfer. Acts of civil disobedience were generally individual, "I don't
want to be part of Russia and I'm not signing these papers or paying taxes," kind of thing. I
know any polls of Crimeans are noted to be terribly flawed - neither the pro-Russian nor the
pro-Ukraine people trust anyone taking polls. They'll not answer or give an answer that seems
to agree with whatever 'side' the pollster might be from.
I can't see how this issue could be fairly considered without at least an acknowledgement
that in 1954, 1.1 million people in Crimea woke up one day to find they were now citizens of
the Ukraine SSR. No polls, no vote, no discussion and no terribly good reasons.
If you need sources to back up your argument that the US helped to foment the Maidan
uprising that overthrew the Yanukovych government, here are a couple that feature a video and
a transcript of a phone conversation.
Information CLearing House: Victoria Nuland [former US Assistant Secretary of State for
Europe during Obama administration] Admits: US Has Invested $5 Billion In The Development of
Ukrainian "Democratic Institutions" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm
The article includes the video of the speech Nuland gave to the Washington press corp in
December 2013 in which she talks about "investing" the $5 billion.
This is the famous phone call in which Nuland utters her most memorable lines: "Yats
[Yatsenyuk] is the guy [for deputy prime minister]" and "Fuck the EU".
-----
I have also found details of the Korsun massacre incident that occurred on 20 February
2014. I had known about this massacre but in a hazy way and had thought only a few people had
been killed. However this incident is much more grave and this was the stimulus for the
Crimeans to organise their independence referendum and break away from Ukraine.
Eight buses of Crimean supporters of the Yanukovych government were returning to Crimea
when the convoy was ambushed by Nazi thugs (who had known of the convoy's movements in
advance). The thugs ordered everyone off the buses, beat them up and tortured them. Several
people were killed.
"Americans prepared very seriously and thoroughly for their entrance into Crimea, –
said a member of the Federation Council Committee on defense and security, Dmitry Sablin.
– A year before the events on Maidan in Kiev, they made repair estimates of a number of
buildings in Sevastopol and in Simferopol, where they planned to house the headquarters and
intelligence units. Military airfields and garrisons, which then belonged to Ukraine, they
considered as their own military installations and even sent instructions for their
conversion to NATO standards. In the plans of the U.S. military April 2014 was the start time
of upgrades in Crimea. It seemed to them that the issue has been settled. But the referendum
had thrown off their plans, and on March 18, Crimea became Russian again, where the overseas
guests were no longer welcome. Americans later themselves acknowledged that the Russians
outplayed them on all counts. Well, and from helplessness imposed sanctions -- as a revenge
for Crimea".
This is the tender put out by the US Navy to invite private companies to propose
renovation plans for a school for naval officers' children in the military base in
Sevastopol.
Sabine @6: On political/national/ethnic determinations.
It is a messy situation. I had thought one of the reasons we hate the Nazis is because
ethno-nationalism is evil. And yet, most of the West's leaders fully support Israel, and the
AZ Empire is promoting Kurdish ethno-states in Iraq and Syria (though not in Turkey, where
50% of all Kurds live).
We were all ready to accept a referendum that would have seen Scotland secede from Great
Britain, and yet when people in regions of 1991 Ukraine resisted the Western-fomented coup in
2014, and voted to secede, we are told they are terrorists to be crushed.
Most of the national borders in the Middle East and Africa were created by an elite in
Great Britain and Europe, which divided families and crammed together enemies, creating the
inevitable century of turmoil. And yet, here most of us support the sovereignty of some of
those artificially-created neocolonial states.
Messy.
Personally, I believe in the right to self-determination. If a group of people in a region
choose to form, or dissolve, or maintain, or expand a political entity, then they should be
allowed to. Such decisions should be made by the will of those people only.
What I see as illegitimate is people from outside that region interfering to force their
will on others.
MFS also travelled to the Donbass and made a documentary about his journey there. I saw
the documentary a couple of years ago and from memory I believe he met Givi, one of the
Donbass military commanders. Givi died in early 2017 when a missile hit his office. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukQgVoTnAuE
Jen. Thanks for the great links on the Ukraine situation. Oliver Stone created a stunning
documentary, that is the best on the subject I've seen: "Ukraine on Fire"
Unfortunately, it appears to be banned or at lest heavily censored within the US. I saw it
on RT.
I've seen several uploads of this documentary, which was made in 2015. But the resolution
of this version is superb. I recommend it for everyone actually, and I'm happy to say that
it's being hosted on the Vesti News channel - which is worth exploring in its own right.
This is the definitive story told from the inside of the people of Crimea forming a
resistance force to take their land back from Ukraine. It was already happening but the
Korsun massacre detailed above by commenters was the galvanizing point that showed the
Crimeans that Kiev was coming to massacre it also, unless it resisted. And as everyone knew,
Crimea was hated most of all, and its suffering would be far worse than that of Donbass.
Kondrashev is a popular Russian news commentator, and he interviews Putin extensively in
the film. This was made one year after the Crimea restoration to Russia, after the events of
that time, coordinated by Putin, were de-classified.
The documentary is a dramatic and stirring work. You will be totally in love with with
Crimea and the Russian people by the end of it. And you will understand how the Maidan was a
US color revolution in classical style. Your heart will jump when you see the snipers kill
the hard-pressed Berkut. And it's a true story, made from real footage, and with parts
reenacted by the actual people.
When the polite green men show up, in the very nick of time, you may find yourself weeping
with gladness.
"... Although Trump touted the study as a way to "rebuild" the U.S. military when he ordered it in May 2017, economic motives were clearly a crucial factor. Navarro typically cited the importance of a "healthy, growing economy and a resilient industrial base," identifying weapons spending as a key element in achieving such goals. ..."
Other than shouting about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Donald Trump's
most frequently proclaimed promises on the 2016 campaign trail was the launching of a
half-trillion-dollar plan to repair America's crumbling infrastructure (employing large
numbers of workers in the process). Eighteen months into his administration, no credible
proposal for anything near that scale has been made. To the extent that the Trump
administration has a plan at all for public investment, it involves pumping up Pentagon
spending, not investing in roads, bridges, transportation, better Internet access, or other
pressing needs of the civilian economy.
Not that President Trump hasn't talked about investing in infrastructure. Last February,
he even proposed a scheme that, he claimed, would boost the country's infrastructure with
$1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade. With a typical dose of hyperbole, he
described it as "the biggest and boldest infrastructure investment in American
history."
Analysts from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania -- Trump's alma mater
-- beg to differ. They
note that the plan actually involves only $200 billion in direct federal investment, less
than one-seventh of the total promised. According to Wharton's experts, much of the extra
spending, supposedly leveraged from the private sector as well as state and local
governments, will never materialize. In addition, were such a plan launched, it would, they
suggest, fall short of its goal by a cool trillion dollars. In the end, the spending levels
Trump is proposing would have "little to no impact" on the nation's gross domestic product.
To add insult to injury, the president has
exerted next to no effort to get even this anemic proposal through Congress, where it's
now dead
in the water .
There is, however, one area of federal investment on which Trump and the Congress have
worked overtime with remarkable unanimity to increase spending: the Pentagon, which is slated
to receive more than
$6 trillion over the next decade. This year alone increases will bring total spending on
the Pentagon and related agencies (like the Department of Energy where work on nuclear
warheads takes place) to $716
billion . That $6-trillion, 10-year figure represents more than 30 times as much direct
spending as the president's $200 billion infrastructure plan.
In reality, Pentagon spending is the Trump administration's substitute for a true
infrastructure program and it's guaranteed to deliver public investments, but neglect just about every area
of greatest civilian need from roads to water treatment facilities.
The Pentagon's Covert Industrial Policy
One reason the Trump administration has chosen to pump money into the Pentagon is that
it's the path of least political resistance in Washington. A combination of fear, ideology,
and influence peddling radically skews "debate" there in favor of military outlays above all
else. Fear -- whether of terrorism, Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea -- provides one
pillar of support for the habitual overfunding of the Pentagon and the rest of the national
security state (which in these years has had a combined
trillion-dollar annual budget). In addition, it's generally accepted in Washington that
being tagged "soft on defense" is the equivalent of political suicide, particularly for
Democrats. Add to that the millions of dollars spent by the
weapons industry on lobbying and campaign contributions, its routine practice of hiring
former Pentagon and military officials, and the way it strategically places defense-related
jobs in key states and districts, and it's easy to see how the president and Congress might
turn to arms spending as the basis for a covert industrial policy.
The Trump plan builds on the Pentagon's already prominent role in the economy. By now,
it's the largest
landowner in the country, the
biggest institutional consumer of fossil fuels, the most
significant source of funds for advanced government research and development, and a
major investor in the manufacturing sector. As it happens, though, expanding the
Pentagon's economic role is the least
efficient way to boost jobs, innovation, and economic growth.
Unfortunately, there is no organized lobby or accepted bipartisan rationale for domestic
funding that can come close to matching the levers of influence that the Pentagon and the
arms industry have at their command. This only increases the difficulty Congress has when it
comes to investing in infrastructure, clean energy, education, or other direct paths toward
increasing employment and economic growth.
Former congressman Barney Frank once labeled the
penchant for using the Pentagon as the government's main economic tool "weaponized
Keynesianism" after economist John Maynard Keynes's theory that government spending
should pick up the slack in investment when private-sector spending is insufficient to
support full employment. Currently, of course, the official unemployment rate is low by
historical standards. However,
key localities and constituencies , including the industrial Midwest, rural areas, and
urban ones with significant numbers of black and Hispanic workers, have largely been left
behind. In addition, millions of "discouraged workers" who want a job
but have given up actively looking for one aren't even counted in the official unemployment
figures, wage growth has
been stagnant for years, and the inequality gap between the 1% and
the rest of America is already in Gilded Age
territory.
Such economic distress was crucial to Donald Trump's rise to power. In campaign 2016, of
course, he endlessly denounced unfair trade agreements, immigrants, and corporate flight as
key factors in the plight of what became a significant part of his political base: downwardly
mobile and displaced industrial workers (or those who feared that this might be their future
fate).
The Trump Difference
Although insufficient, increases in defense manufacturing and construction can help areas
where employment in civilian manufacturing has been lagging. Even as it's expanded, however,
defense spending has come to play an ever-smaller role in the U.S. economy, falling
from 8%-10% of the gross domestic product in the 1950s and 1960s to under 4% today. Still, it
remains crucial to the economic base in defense-dependent
locales like southern California, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington state. Such places, in turn,
play an outsized political role in Washington because their congressional representatives
tend to cluster on the armed services, defense appropriations, and other key committees, and
because of their significance on the electoral map.
A long-awaited Trump administration "defense industrial base" study should be considered a
tip-off that the president and his key officials see Pentagon spending as the way to
economincally prime the pump. Note, as a start, that the study was overseen not by a defense
official but by the president's economics and trade czar, Peter Navarro, whose formal title
is White House director of trade and industrial policy. A main aim of the study is to find a
way to bolster smaller defense firms that subcontract to giants like Boeing, Raytheon, and
Lockheed Martin.
Although Trump touted the study as a way to "rebuild" the U.S. military when he ordered it
in May 2017, economic motives were clearly a crucial factor. Navarro typically
cited the importance of a "healthy, growing economy and a resilient industrial base,"
identifying weapons spending as a key element in achieving such goals. The CEO of the
Aerospace Industries Association, one of the defense lobby's most powerful trade groups,
underscored Navarro's point when, in July 2017, he insisted that "our industry's
contributions to U.S. national security and economic well-being can't be taken for granted."
(He failed to explain how an industry that absorbs more than
$300 billion per year in Pentagon contracts could ever be "taken for granted.")
Trump's defense-industrial-base policy tracks closely with proposals put forward by Daniel
Goure of the military-contractor-funded Lexington Institute in a December 2016
article titled "How Trump Can Invest in Infrastructure and Make America Great Again."
Goure's main point: that Trump should make military investments -- like building naval
shipyards and ammunition plants -- part and parcel of his infrastructure plan. In doing so,
he caught the essence of the arms industry's case regarding the salutary effects of defense
spending on the economy:
"Every major military activity, whether production of a new weapons system, sustainment of
an existing one or support for the troops, is imbedded in a web of economic activities and
supports an array of businesses. These include not only major defense contractors such as
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, but a host of middle-tier and even
mom-and-pop businesses. Money spent at the top ripples through the economy. Most of it is
spent not on unique defense items, but on products and services that have commercial markets
too."
What Goure's analysis neglects, however, is not just that every government investment
stimulates multiple sectors of the economy, but that virtually any other kind would have a
greater ripple
effect on employment and economic growth than military spending does. Underwritten by the
defense industry, his analysis is yet another example of how the arms lobby has distorted
economic policy and debate in this country.
These days, it seems as if there's nothing the military won't get involved in. Take
another recent set of "security" expenditures in what has already
become a billion-dollar-plus business: building and maintaining detention centers for
children, mainly unaccompanied minors from Central America, caught up in the Trump
administration's brutal security crackdown on the U.S.-Mexico border. One company, Southwest
Key, has already
received a $955 million government contract to work on such facilities. Among the other
beneficiaries is the major defense contractor General
Dynamics , normally known for making tanks, ballistic-missile-firing submarines, and the
like, not ordinarily ideal qualifications for taking care of children.
Last but not least, President Trump has worked overtime to tout his promotion of U.S. arms
sales as a jobs program. In a May 2018 meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at
the White House (with reporters in attendance), he typically
brandished a map that laid out just where U.S. jobs from Saudi arms sales would be
located. Not coincidentally, many of them would be in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Ohio, and Florida that had provided him with his margin of victory in the 2016 elections.
Trump had already crowed
about such Saudi deals as a source of "jobs, jobs, jobs" during his May 2017 visit to Riyadh,
that country's capital. And he claimed
on one occasion -- against all evidence -- that his deals with the Saudi regime for arms and
other equipment could create "millions of jobs."
The Trump administration's decision to blatantly put jobs and economic benefits for U.S.
corporations above human rights considerations and strategic concerns is likely to have
disastrous consequences. Its continued
sales of bombs and other weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for
example, allows them to go on prosecuting a
brutal war in Yemen that has already killed thousands of civilians and put millions more
at risk of death from famine and disease. In addition to being morally reprehensible, such an
approach could turn untold numbers of Yemenis and others across the Middle East into U.S.
enemies -- a high price to pay for a few thousand jobs in the arms sector.
Pentagon Spending Versus a Real Infrastructure Plan
While the Trump administration's Pentagon spending will infuse new money into the economy,
it's certainly a misguided way to spur economic growth. As University of Massachusetts
economist Heidi Garrett-Peltier has demonstrated ,
when it comes to creating jobs, military spending lags far behind investment in civilian
infrastructure, clean energy, health care, or education. Nonetheless, the administration is
moving full speed ahead with its military-driven planning.
In addition, Trump's approach will prove hopeless when it comes to addressing the
fast-multiplying problems of the country's ailing infrastructure. The
$683 billion extra that the administration proposes putting into Pentagon spending over
the next 10 years pales in comparison to the trillions of dollars the American Society of
Civil Engineers claims are needed to modernize U.S. infrastructure. Nor will all of that
Pentagon increase even be directed toward construction or manufacturing activities (not to
speak of basic infrastructural needs like roads and bridges). A significant chunk of it will,
for instance, be dedicated to paying the salaries of the military's massive cadre of civilian and
military personnel or health care and other benefits.
In their study, the civil engineers suggest that failing to engage in a major
infrastructure program could cost the economy $4 trillion and 2.5 million jobs by 2025,
something no Pentagon pump-priming could begin to offset. In other words, using the Pentagon
as America's main conduit for public investment will prove a woeful approach when it comes to
the health of the larger society.
One era in which government spending did directly stimulate increased growth,
infrastructural development, and the creation of well-paying jobs was the 1950s, a period for
which Donald Trump is visibly
nostalgic . For him, those years were evidently the last in which America was truly
"great." Many things were deeply wrong with the country in the fifties -- from rampant
racism, sexism, and the denial of basic human rights to McCarthyite witch hunts -- but on the
economic front the government did indeed play a positive role.
In those years, public investment went far beyond Pentagon spending, which President
Dwight Eisenhower (of " military-industrial
complex " fame) actually tried to rein in. It was civilian investments -- from the
G.I. Bill to increased
incentives for housing construction to the building of an interstate highway system --
that contributed in crucial ways to the economic boom of that era. Whatever its failures and
drawbacks, including the ways in which African-Americans and other minorities were grossly
under-represented when it came to
sharing the benefits, the Eisenhower investment strategy did boost the overall economy in a
fashion the Trump plan never will.
The notion that the Pentagon can play a primary role in boosting employment to any
significant degree is largely a myth that serves the needs of the military-industrial
complex, not American workers or Donald Trump's base. Until the political gridlock in
Washington that prevents large-scale new civilian investments of just about any sort is
broken, however, the Pentagon will continue to seem like the only game in town. And we will
all pay a price for those skewed priorities, in both blood and treasure.
"... The reason they endlessly get it wrong, of course, is that they listen to the exiles in the US and elsewhere. Those exiles still mainly come from the old upper classes, with their eternal sense of entitlement to power, and their air-tickets ready in their pockets to fly back to Tehran and take back their positions under the Shah. Because of course, the Iranian revolution was one of the first populist movements, where the religious regime appealed directly to "the people", and the upper classes were cut out. The system has worked well - "the people" have continued to vote for the regime, naturally being a majority. ..."
There was a distinct change earlier this year, after the second US fusillade of cruise
missiles, and the Israeli bombing of "Iranian" bases in Syria.
We were all expecting further military action, but nothing happened, in particular no more
Israeli action, although Iranian forces in Syria were hardly damaged.
Instead they started muttering about subversion of the Iranian state from the inside,
which is what b is writing about here. That was a big sign that the all-out assault on Iran
has been called off.
Why? Evidently because the military say no. The scenario was the same as the one back in
2012, the last time we thought to see Israeli aircraft getting permission from Saudi to do
their bombing runs on Iran, but it didn't happen then, because the Israeli military were
saying no. Evidently the position hasn't changed, I was relieved to discover, although the
propagandists claimed the plan is all worked out now, and Iran has little defence.
Well, internal subversion of the regime, then. Hasn't the US been attempting to do
precisely that for 40 years now, ever since the revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979? What
are the conditions which mean that they are going to succeed now, when they've failed for 40
years?
The reason they endlessly get it wrong, of course, is that they listen to the exiles
in the US and elsewhere. Those exiles still mainly come from the old upper classes, with
their eternal sense of entitlement to power, and their air-tickets ready in their pockets to
fly back to Tehran and take back their positions under the Shah. Because of course, the
Iranian revolution was one of the first populist movements, where the religious regime
appealed directly to "the people", and the upper classes were cut out. The system has worked
well - "the people" have continued to vote for the regime, naturally being a
majority.
I don't want to get into a historical disquisition (which in any case I've said before),
but the reason this works is that there's history behind it - I'm pretty sure that the
original Islamisation of Iran (I don't mean the Arab conquest, but the conversion of the
country) was a popular revolt against the pre-Islamic nationalist aristocracy, who didn't pay
any taxes. The present-day Iranian exiles attach themselves strongly to that old nationalist
aristocracy, including most academics of Iranian origin in western universities. They don't
seem to notice that the class they admire grindingly oppressed the poor, such that it led to
a revolution.
currently having an online debate about conditions in the crimea, specifically alleged
russian oppression of crimeans in 2018, but also conditions leading up to the initial
referendum (my opponents claim annexation or conquest, and cite a freedom house survey to back
it up--from what i can see freedom house is fully funded by the us govt). my understanding is
the us fomented the coup in ukraine, along with nato, as opposed to the ukrainian people
rebelling against a russian puppet, which is the us line i believe. any articles or sources
detailing the us role in all this, or rebutting claims that crimeans are being terrified into
silence in 2018 about russian oppression, would be appreciated.
About half of the respondents admit to having been taken by surprise by Russia's actions in
2014. Interestingly, there is agreement among the Crimean population, including the Crimean
Tatars, that successive Ukrainian governments had neglected the region. Roughly one third
of respondents pointed to this neglect as the main cause of the developments in 2014. ...
The majority of survey respondents agree with the statement that the different ethnic
groups in Crimea currently live peacefully side by side. Twenty percent disagree "fully" or
"rather" with this statement, thereby indicating both an uncertainty and unease with the
situation at the moment that reaches beyond the Crimean Tatar share of the population
(about 12 percent). This result is mirrored in the reaction to the ban on the main
political Crimean Tatar organization, the Mejlis, by the Russian authorities: 20 percent
"fully" or "rather" disagreed with this step, compared to 80 percent endorsing this policy.
... The survey clearly spells out the severe disruption of links to the rest of Ukraine,
limited travel to other parts of Russia, the absence of personal international reference
points, and a near-complete integration into the Russian media sphere.
This combination makes any change in the opinions of the majority of the Crimean
population on the annexation unlikely in the foreseeable future. However, it is also clear
that the Crimean population's high expectations in the Russian economy and trust in Russian
(but not Crimean) institutions needs to be carefully managed by Moscow in view of the
already strained financial situation of the majority of the Crimean population.
The authors are also cautious about drawing overly-optimistic conclusions about the present
time: "The risk of conflict emerging within Ukrainian society and growing serious remains,
based on noticeable differences among residents of different regions about the further
geopolitical direction the country should move in. There are also serious problems
connected to restoring Ukraine's territorial integrity and the model of coexistence with
those living in the regions that are currently occupied, how to reach reconciliation and
mutual understanding." ...
Joining the EU remains a strong desire among a majority of Ukrainians. In September
2016, 51% of those surveyed by the Rating Group put integration with the EU ahead of
joining Russia's Customs Union or some other association. Still, in Rating's September 2015
survey, 57% of Ukrainians did so, and in September 2014, 59% did. This noticeable decline
could be the result of a number of factors. For one thing, the Association Agreement did
not have a noticeable impact on the standard of living of most Ukrainians. Many Ukrainians
are also upset at what they see as the European Union's limp response to Russia's
aggression against their country. And the way the granting of a visa-free regime to the EU
has been dragged out for years and the obvious internal squabbles among the Union's members
have also left their imprint on Ukrainians.
Ukraine is a very diverse country. Trump coming to an agreement with Putin that eases
tensions instead of agreeing/dividing on spheres of influence would be their best hope.
pretzelattack@3 re: "...rebutting claims that crimeans are being terrified into silence in
2018 about russian oppression."
I honestly have not heard anything about actual oppression - just that some
Ukrainians and Tartars are still - today - not terribly happy with the
secession/annexation/transfer. Acts of civil disobedience were generally individual, "I don't
want to be part of Russia and I'm not signing these papers or paying taxes," kind of thing. I
know any polls of Crimeans are noted to be terribly flawed - neither the pro-Russian nor the
pro-Ukraine people trust anyone taking polls. They'll not answer or give an answer that seems
to agree with whatever 'side' the pollster might be from.
I can't see how this issue could be fairly considered without at least an acknowledgement
that in 1954, 1.1 million people in Crimea woke up one day to find they were now citizens of
the Ukraine SSR. No polls, no vote, no discussion and no terribly good reasons.
If you need sources to back up your argument that the US helped to foment the Maidan
uprising that overthrew the Yanukovych government, here are a couple that feature a video and
a transcript of a phone conversation.
Information CLearing House: Victoria Nuland [former US Assistant Secretary of State for
Europe during Obama administration] Admits: US Has Invested $5 Billion In The Development of
Ukrainian "Democratic Institutions" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm
The article includes the video of the speech Nuland gave to the Washington press corp in
December 2013 in which she talks about "investing" the $5 billion.
This is the famous phone call in which Nuland utters her most memorable lines: "Yats
[Yatsenyuk] is the guy [for deputy prime minister]" and "Fuck the EU".
-----
I have also found details of the Korsun massacre incident that occurred on 20 February
2014. I had known about this massacre but in a hazy way and had thought only a few people had
been killed. However this incident is much more grave and this was the stimulus for the
Crimeans to organise their independence referendum and break away from Ukraine.
Eight buses of Crimean supporters of the Yanukovych government were returning to Crimea
when the convoy was ambushed by Nazi thugs (who had known of the convoy's movements in
advance). The thugs ordered everyone off the buses, beat them up and tortured them. Several
people were killed.
"Americans prepared very seriously and thoroughly for their entrance into Crimea, –
said a member of the Federation Council Committee on defense and security, Dmitry Sablin.
– A year before the events on Maidan in Kiev, they made repair estimates of a number of
buildings in Sevastopol and in Simferopol, where they planned to house the headquarters and
intelligence units. Military airfields and garrisons, which then belonged to Ukraine, they
considered as their own military installations and even sent instructions for their
conversion to NATO standards. In the plans of the U.S. military April 2014 was the start time
of upgrades in Crimea. It seemed to them that the issue has been settled. But the referendum
had thrown off their plans, and on March 18, Crimea became Russian again, where the overseas
guests were no longer welcome. Americans later themselves acknowledged that the Russians
outplayed them on all counts. Well, and from helplessness imposed sanctions -- as a revenge
for Crimea".
This is the tender put out by the US Navy to invite private companies to propose
renovation plans for a school for naval officers' children in the military base in
Sevastopol.
Sabine @6: On political/national/ethnic determinations.
It is a messy situation. I had thought one of the reasons we hate the Nazis is because
ethno-nationalism is evil. And yet, most of the West's leaders fully support Israel, and the
AZ Empire is promoting Kurdish ethno-states in Iraq and Syria (though not in Turkey, where
50% of all Kurds live).
We were all ready to accept a referendum that would have seen Scotland secede from Great
Britain, and yet when people in regions of 1991 Ukraine resisted the Western-fomented coup in
2014, and voted to secede, we are told they are terrorists to be crushed.
Most of the national borders in the Middle East and Africa were created by an elite in
Great Britain and Europe, which divided families and crammed together enemies, creating the
inevitable century of turmoil. And yet, here most of us support the sovereignty of some of
those artificially-created neocolonial states.
Messy.
Personally, I believe in the right to self-determination. If a group of people in a region
choose to form, or dissolve, or maintain, or expand a political entity, then they should be
allowed to. Such decisions should be made by the will of those people only.
What I see as illegitimate is people from outside that region interfering to force their
will on others.
MFS also travelled to the Donbass and made a documentary about his journey there. I saw
the documentary a couple of years ago and from memory I believe he met Givi, one of the
Donbass military commanders. Givi died in early 2017 when a missile hit his office. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukQgVoTnAuE
Jen. Thanks for the great links on the Ukraine situation. Oliver Stone created a stunning
documentary, that is the best on the subject I've seen: "Ukraine on Fire"
Unfortunately, it appears to be banned or at lest heavily censored within the US. I saw it
on RT.
I've seen several uploads of this documentary, which was made in 2015. But the resolution
of this version is superb. I recommend it for everyone actually, and I'm happy to say that
it's being hosted on the Vesti News channel - which is worth exploring in its own right.
This is the definitive story told from the inside of the people of Crimea forming a
resistance force to take their land back from Ukraine. It was already happening but the
Korsun massacre detailed above by commenters was the galvanizing point that showed the
Crimeans that Kiev was coming to massacre it also, unless it resisted. And as everyone knew,
Crimea was hated most of all, and its suffering would be far worse than that of Donbass.
Kondrashev is a popular Russian news commentator, and he interviews Putin extensively in
the film. This was made one year after the Crimea restoration to Russia, after the events of
that time, coordinated by Putin, were de-classified.
The documentary is a dramatic and stirring work. You will be totally in love with with
Crimea and the Russian people by the end of it. And you will understand how the Maidan was a
US color revolution in classical style. Your heart will jump when you see the snipers kill
the hard-pressed Berkut. And it's a true story, made from real footage, and with parts
reenacted by the actual people.
When the polite green men show up, in the very nick of time, you may find yourself weeping
with gladness.
"... Although Trump touted the study as a way to "rebuild" the U.S. military when he ordered it in May 2017, economic motives were clearly a crucial factor. Navarro typically cited the importance of a "healthy, growing economy and a resilient industrial base," identifying weapons spending as a key element in achieving such goals. ..."
Other than shouting about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Donald Trump's
most frequently proclaimed promises on the 2016 campaign trail was the launching of a
half-trillion-dollar plan to repair America's crumbling infrastructure (employing large
numbers of workers in the process). Eighteen months into his administration, no credible
proposal for anything near that scale has been made. To the extent that the Trump
administration has a plan at all for public investment, it involves pumping up Pentagon
spending, not investing in roads, bridges, transportation, better Internet access, or other
pressing needs of the civilian economy.
Not that President Trump hasn't talked about investing in infrastructure. Last February,
he even proposed a scheme that, he claimed, would boost the country's infrastructure with
$1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade. With a typical dose of hyperbole, he
described it as "the biggest and boldest infrastructure investment in American
history."
Analysts from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania -- Trump's alma mater
-- beg to differ. They
note that the plan actually involves only $200 billion in direct federal investment, less
than one-seventh of the total promised. According to Wharton's experts, much of the extra
spending, supposedly leveraged from the private sector as well as state and local
governments, will never materialize. In addition, were such a plan launched, it would, they
suggest, fall short of its goal by a cool trillion dollars. In the end, the spending levels
Trump is proposing would have "little to no impact" on the nation's gross domestic product.
To add insult to injury, the president has
exerted next to no effort to get even this anemic proposal through Congress, where it's
now dead
in the water .
There is, however, one area of federal investment on which Trump and the Congress have
worked overtime with remarkable unanimity to increase spending: the Pentagon, which is slated
to receive more than
$6 trillion over the next decade. This year alone increases will bring total spending on
the Pentagon and related agencies (like the Department of Energy where work on nuclear
warheads takes place) to $716
billion . That $6-trillion, 10-year figure represents more than 30 times as much direct
spending as the president's $200 billion infrastructure plan.
In reality, Pentagon spending is the Trump administration's substitute for a true
infrastructure program and it's guaranteed to deliver public investments, but neglect just about every area
of greatest civilian need from roads to water treatment facilities.
The Pentagon's Covert Industrial Policy
One reason the Trump administration has chosen to pump money into the Pentagon is that
it's the path of least political resistance in Washington. A combination of fear, ideology,
and influence peddling radically skews "debate" there in favor of military outlays above all
else. Fear -- whether of terrorism, Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea -- provides one
pillar of support for the habitual overfunding of the Pentagon and the rest of the national
security state (which in these years has had a combined
trillion-dollar annual budget). In addition, it's generally accepted in Washington that
being tagged "soft on defense" is the equivalent of political suicide, particularly for
Democrats. Add to that the millions of dollars spent by the
weapons industry on lobbying and campaign contributions, its routine practice of hiring
former Pentagon and military officials, and the way it strategically places defense-related
jobs in key states and districts, and it's easy to see how the president and Congress might
turn to arms spending as the basis for a covert industrial policy.
The Trump plan builds on the Pentagon's already prominent role in the economy. By now,
it's the largest
landowner in the country, the
biggest institutional consumer of fossil fuels, the most
significant source of funds for advanced government research and development, and a
major investor in the manufacturing sector. As it happens, though, expanding the
Pentagon's economic role is the least
efficient way to boost jobs, innovation, and economic growth.
Unfortunately, there is no organized lobby or accepted bipartisan rationale for domestic
funding that can come close to matching the levers of influence that the Pentagon and the
arms industry have at their command. This only increases the difficulty Congress has when it
comes to investing in infrastructure, clean energy, education, or other direct paths toward
increasing employment and economic growth.
Former congressman Barney Frank once labeled the
penchant for using the Pentagon as the government's main economic tool "weaponized
Keynesianism" after economist John Maynard Keynes's theory that government spending
should pick up the slack in investment when private-sector spending is insufficient to
support full employment. Currently, of course, the official unemployment rate is low by
historical standards. However,
key localities and constituencies , including the industrial Midwest, rural areas, and
urban ones with significant numbers of black and Hispanic workers, have largely been left
behind. In addition, millions of "discouraged workers" who want a job
but have given up actively looking for one aren't even counted in the official unemployment
figures, wage growth has
been stagnant for years, and the inequality gap between the 1% and
the rest of America is already in Gilded Age
territory.
Such economic distress was crucial to Donald Trump's rise to power. In campaign 2016, of
course, he endlessly denounced unfair trade agreements, immigrants, and corporate flight as
key factors in the plight of what became a significant part of his political base: downwardly
mobile and displaced industrial workers (or those who feared that this might be their future
fate).
The Trump Difference
Although insufficient, increases in defense manufacturing and construction can help areas
where employment in civilian manufacturing has been lagging. Even as it's expanded, however,
defense spending has come to play an ever-smaller role in the U.S. economy, falling
from 8%-10% of the gross domestic product in the 1950s and 1960s to under 4% today. Still, it
remains crucial to the economic base in defense-dependent
locales like southern California, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington state. Such places, in turn,
play an outsized political role in Washington because their congressional representatives
tend to cluster on the armed services, defense appropriations, and other key committees, and
because of their significance on the electoral map.
A long-awaited Trump administration "defense industrial base" study should be considered a
tip-off that the president and his key officials see Pentagon spending as the way to
economincally prime the pump. Note, as a start, that the study was overseen not by a defense
official but by the president's economics and trade czar, Peter Navarro, whose formal title
is White House director of trade and industrial policy. A main aim of the study is to find a
way to bolster smaller defense firms that subcontract to giants like Boeing, Raytheon, and
Lockheed Martin.
Although Trump touted the study as a way to "rebuild" the U.S. military when he ordered it
in May 2017, economic motives were clearly a crucial factor. Navarro typically
cited the importance of a "healthy, growing economy and a resilient industrial base,"
identifying weapons spending as a key element in achieving such goals. The CEO of the
Aerospace Industries Association, one of the defense lobby's most powerful trade groups,
underscored Navarro's point when, in July 2017, he insisted that "our industry's
contributions to U.S. national security and economic well-being can't be taken for granted."
(He failed to explain how an industry that absorbs more than
$300 billion per year in Pentagon contracts could ever be "taken for granted.")
Trump's defense-industrial-base policy tracks closely with proposals put forward by Daniel
Goure of the military-contractor-funded Lexington Institute in a December 2016
article titled "How Trump Can Invest in Infrastructure and Make America Great Again."
Goure's main point: that Trump should make military investments -- like building naval
shipyards and ammunition plants -- part and parcel of his infrastructure plan. In doing so,
he caught the essence of the arms industry's case regarding the salutary effects of defense
spending on the economy:
"Every major military activity, whether production of a new weapons system, sustainment of
an existing one or support for the troops, is imbedded in a web of economic activities and
supports an array of businesses. These include not only major defense contractors such as
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, but a host of middle-tier and even
mom-and-pop businesses. Money spent at the top ripples through the economy. Most of it is
spent not on unique defense items, but on products and services that have commercial markets
too."
What Goure's analysis neglects, however, is not just that every government investment
stimulates multiple sectors of the economy, but that virtually any other kind would have a
greater ripple
effect on employment and economic growth than military spending does. Underwritten by the
defense industry, his analysis is yet another example of how the arms lobby has distorted
economic policy and debate in this country.
These days, it seems as if there's nothing the military won't get involved in. Take
another recent set of "security" expenditures in what has already
become a billion-dollar-plus business: building and maintaining detention centers for
children, mainly unaccompanied minors from Central America, caught up in the Trump
administration's brutal security crackdown on the U.S.-Mexico border. One company, Southwest
Key, has already
received a $955 million government contract to work on such facilities. Among the other
beneficiaries is the major defense contractor General
Dynamics , normally known for making tanks, ballistic-missile-firing submarines, and the
like, not ordinarily ideal qualifications for taking care of children.
Last but not least, President Trump has worked overtime to tout his promotion of U.S. arms
sales as a jobs program. In a May 2018 meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at
the White House (with reporters in attendance), he typically
brandished a map that laid out just where U.S. jobs from Saudi arms sales would be
located. Not coincidentally, many of them would be in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Ohio, and Florida that had provided him with his margin of victory in the 2016 elections.
Trump had already crowed
about such Saudi deals as a source of "jobs, jobs, jobs" during his May 2017 visit to Riyadh,
that country's capital. And he claimed
on one occasion -- against all evidence -- that his deals with the Saudi regime for arms and
other equipment could create "millions of jobs."
The Trump administration's decision to blatantly put jobs and economic benefits for U.S.
corporations above human rights considerations and strategic concerns is likely to have
disastrous consequences. Its continued
sales of bombs and other weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for
example, allows them to go on prosecuting a
brutal war in Yemen that has already killed thousands of civilians and put millions more
at risk of death from famine and disease. In addition to being morally reprehensible, such an
approach could turn untold numbers of Yemenis and others across the Middle East into U.S.
enemies -- a high price to pay for a few thousand jobs in the arms sector.
Pentagon Spending Versus a Real Infrastructure Plan
While the Trump administration's Pentagon spending will infuse new money into the economy,
it's certainly a misguided way to spur economic growth. As University of Massachusetts
economist Heidi Garrett-Peltier has demonstrated ,
when it comes to creating jobs, military spending lags far behind investment in civilian
infrastructure, clean energy, health care, or education. Nonetheless, the administration is
moving full speed ahead with its military-driven planning.
In addition, Trump's approach will prove hopeless when it comes to addressing the
fast-multiplying problems of the country's ailing infrastructure. The
$683 billion extra that the administration proposes putting into Pentagon spending over
the next 10 years pales in comparison to the trillions of dollars the American Society of
Civil Engineers claims are needed to modernize U.S. infrastructure. Nor will all of that
Pentagon increase even be directed toward construction or manufacturing activities (not to
speak of basic infrastructural needs like roads and bridges). A significant chunk of it will,
for instance, be dedicated to paying the salaries of the military's massive cadre of civilian and
military personnel or health care and other benefits.
In their study, the civil engineers suggest that failing to engage in a major
infrastructure program could cost the economy $4 trillion and 2.5 million jobs by 2025,
something no Pentagon pump-priming could begin to offset. In other words, using the Pentagon
as America's main conduit for public investment will prove a woeful approach when it comes to
the health of the larger society.
One era in which government spending did directly stimulate increased growth,
infrastructural development, and the creation of well-paying jobs was the 1950s, a period for
which Donald Trump is visibly
nostalgic . For him, those years were evidently the last in which America was truly
"great." Many things were deeply wrong with the country in the fifties -- from rampant
racism, sexism, and the denial of basic human rights to McCarthyite witch hunts -- but on the
economic front the government did indeed play a positive role.
In those years, public investment went far beyond Pentagon spending, which President
Dwight Eisenhower (of " military-industrial
complex " fame) actually tried to rein in. It was civilian investments -- from the
G.I. Bill to increased
incentives for housing construction to the building of an interstate highway system --
that contributed in crucial ways to the economic boom of that era. Whatever its failures and
drawbacks, including the ways in which African-Americans and other minorities were grossly
under-represented when it came to
sharing the benefits, the Eisenhower investment strategy did boost the overall economy in a
fashion the Trump plan never will.
The notion that the Pentagon can play a primary role in boosting employment to any
significant degree is largely a myth that serves the needs of the military-industrial
complex, not American workers or Donald Trump's base. Until the political gridlock in
Washington that prevents large-scale new civilian investments of just about any sort is
broken, however, the Pentagon will continue to seem like the only game in town. And we will
all pay a price for those skewed priorities, in both blood and treasure.
"... The implications for today are almost painfully straightforward: the current combination of deficit spending and tax cuts spells disaster for any hopes of shrinking America's striking inequality gap . Instead, credit-card war spending is already fueling the dramatic levels of wealth inequality that have led some observers to suggest that we are living in a new Gilded Age , reminiscent of the enormous divide between the opulent lifestyles of the elite and the grinding poverty of the majority of Americans in the late nineteenth century. ..."
"... Today's wars are paid for almost entirely through loans -- 60% from wealthy individuals and governmental agencies like the Federal Reserve, 40% from foreign lenders. Meanwhile, in October 2001, when Washington launched the war on terror, the government also initiated a set of tax cuts, a trend that has only continued. The war-financing strategies that President George W. Bush began have flowed on without significant alteration under Presidents Obama and Trump. (Obama did raise a few taxes, but didn't fundamentally alter the swing towards tax cuts.) President Trump's extreme tax "reform" package, which passed Congress in December 2017 -- a gift-wrapped dream for the 1% -- only enlarged those cuts. ..."
"... However little the public may realize it, Americans are already feeling the costs of their post-9/11 wars. Those have, after all, massively increased the Pentagon's base budget and the moneys that go into the expanding national security budget , while reducing the amount of money left over for so much else from infrastructure investment to science. In the decade following September 11, 2001, military spending increased by 50% , while spending on every other government program increased only 13.5%. ..."
Credit-Card Wars
Today's War-Financing Strategies Will Only Increase Inequality
By Stephanie
Savell
In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging "
credit-card wars " in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this
country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are
expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the
economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts. One
potentially devastating effect, a
new study finds, will be more societal inequality.
In other words, the staggering costs of the longest war in American history -- almost 17
years running, since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 -- are being deferred to the
future. In the process, the government is contributing to this country's skyrocketing income
inequality.
Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent
$5.6 trillion on its war on terror, according to the Costs of War Project, which I co-direct, at Brown
University's Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs . This is a far higher number than the Pentagon's
$1.5 trillion estimate,
which only counts expenses for what are known as "overseas contingency operations," or OCO --
that is, a pot of supplemental money, outside the regular annual budget, dedicated to funding
wartime operations. The $5.6 trillion figure, on the other hand, includes not just what the
U.S. has spent on overseas military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, but
also portions of Homeland Security spending related to counterterrorism on American soil, and
future obligations to care for wounded or traumatized post-9/11 military veterans. The
financial burden of the post-9/11 wars across the Greater Middle East -- and still
spreading , through Africa and other regions -- is far larger than most Americans
recognize.
During prior wars, the U.S. adjusted its budget accordingly by, among other options, raising
taxes to pay for its conflicts. Not so since 2001, when President George W. Bush launched the
"Global War on Terror." Instead, the country has accumulated a staggering amount of debt. Even
if Washington stopped spending on its wars tomorrow, it will still, thanks to those conflicts,
owe more than
$8 trillion in interest alone by the 2050s.
Putting the Gilded Age to Shame
It's hard to fathom what that enormous level of debt will do to our economy and society. A
new Costs of War study by political scientist and historian Rosella Capella Zielinski
offers initial clues about its impact here. She takes a look at how the U.S. has paid for its
conflicts from the War of 1812 through the two World Wars and Vietnam to the present war on
terror. While a range of taxes, bond sales, and other mechanisms were used to raise funds to
fight such conflicts, no financial strategy has relied so exclusively on borrowing -- until
this century. Her study also explores how each type of war financing has affected inequality
levels in this country in the aftermath of those conflicts.
The implications for today are almost painfully straightforward: the current combination
of deficit spending and tax cuts spells disaster for any hopes of shrinking America's striking
inequality gap . Instead, credit-card war spending is already fueling the dramatic levels
of wealth inequality that have led some observers to suggest that we are living in a new
Gilded Age , reminiscent
of the enormous divide between the opulent lifestyles of the elite and the grinding poverty of
the majority of Americans in the late nineteenth century.
Capella Zielinski carefully breaks down what effects the methods used to pay for various
wars have had on subsequent levels of social inequality. During the Civil War, for example, the
government relied primarily on loans from private donors. After that war was over, the American
people had to pay those loans back with interest, which proved a bonanza for financial elites,
primarily in the North. Those wealthy lenders became wealthier still and everyone else, whose
taxes reimbursed them, poorer.
In contrast, during World War I, the government launched a war-bond campaign that targeted
low-income people. War savings stamps were offered for as little as 25 cents and war savings
certificates in denominations starting at $25. Anyone who could make a small down payment could
buy a war bond for $50 and cover the rest of what was owed in installments. In this way, the
war effort promoted savings and, in its wake, a striking number of low-income Americans were
repaid with interest, decreasing the inequality levels of that era.
Taxation strategies have varied quite significantly in various war periods as well. During
World War II, for instance, the government raised tax rates five times between 1940 and 1944,
levying progressively steeper ones on higher income brackets (up to 65% on incomes over $1
million). As a result, though government debt was substantial in the aftermath of a global
struggle fought on many fronts, the impact on low-income Americans could have been far worse.
In contrast, the Vietnam War era began with a tax cut and, in the aftermath of that disastrous
conflict, the U.S. had to deal with unprecedented levels of inflation. Low-income households
bore the brunt of those higher costs, leading to greater inequality.
Today's wars are paid for almost entirely through loans -- 60% from wealthy individuals
and governmental agencies like the Federal Reserve, 40% from foreign lenders. Meanwhile, in
October 2001, when Washington launched the war on terror, the government also initiated a set
of tax cuts, a trend that has only continued. The war-financing strategies that President
George W. Bush began have flowed on without significant alteration under Presidents Obama and
Trump. (Obama did raise a few taxes, but didn't fundamentally
alter the swing towards tax cuts.) President Trump's extreme tax "reform" package, which
passed Congress in December 2017 -- a gift-wrapped dream
for the 1% -- only enlarged those cuts.
In other words, in this century, Washington has combined the domestic borrowing patterns of
the Civil War with the tax cuts of the Vietnam era. That means one predictable thing: a rise in
inequality in a country in which the income inequality gap is already heading
for record territory.
Just to add to the future burden of it all, this is the first time government wartime
borrowing has relied so heavily on foreign debt. Though there is no way of knowing how this
will affect inequality here in the long run, one thing is already obvious: it will transfer
wealth outside the country.
Economist
Linda Bilmes has
argued that there's another new factor involved in Washington's budgeting of today's wars.
In every other major American conflict, after an initial period, war expenditures were
incorporated into the regular defense budget. Since 2001, however, the war on terror has been
funded mainly by supplemental appropriations (those Overseas
Contingency Operations funds), subject to very little oversight. Think of the OCO as a
slush fund
that insures one thing: the true impact of this era's war funding won't hit until far later
since such appropriations are exempt from spending caps and don't have to be
offset elsewhere in the budget.
According to Bilmes, "This process is less transparent, less accountable, and has rendered
the cost of the wars far less visible." As a measure of the invisible impact of war funding in
Washington and elsewhere, she
calculates that, while the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense discussed war
financing in 79% of its hearings during the Vietnam era, since 9/11, there have been similar
mentions at only 17% of such hearings. For its part, the Senate Finance Committee has discussed
war-funding strategy in a thoroughgoing way only once in almost 17 years.
Hidden Tradeoffs and Deferred Costs
The effect of this century's unprecedented budgetary measures is that, for the most part,
the American people don't feel the financial weight of the wars their government is waging --
or rather, they feel it, but don't recognize it for what it is. This corresponds remarkably
well with the wars themselves, fought by a non-draft
military in distant lands and largely
ignored in this country (at least since the vast public demonstrations against the coming
invasion of Iraq ended in the spring of 2003). The
blowback from those wars, the way they are coming home, has also been ignored, financially
and otherwise.
However little the public may realize it, Americans are already feeling the costs of
their post-9/11 wars. Those have, after all, massively increased the Pentagon's base budget and
the moneys that go into the expanding
national security budget , while reducing the amount of money left over for so much else
from infrastructure
investment to science. In the decade following September 11, 2001, military spending
increased by
50% , while spending on every other government program increased only 13.5%.
How exactly does this trade-off work? The National
Priorities Project explains it well. Every year the federal government negotiates levels of
discretionary spending (as distinct from mandatory spending, which largely consists of Social
Security and Medicare). In 2001, there were fewer
discretionary funds allocated to defense than to non-defense programs, but the ensuing war on
terror dramatically inflated military spending relative to other parts of the budget. In 2017,
military and national security spending accounted for 53% of discretionary spending. The 2018
congressionally approved omnibus spending package allocates $700 billion for the military and
$591 billion for non-military purposes, leaving that proportion about the same. (Keep in mind,
that those totals don't even include all the money flowing into that Overseas Contingency
Operations fund). President Trump's proposals for future spending, if accepted by Congress,
would ensure that, by 2023, the proportion of military spending would soar to
65% .
In other words, the rise in war-related military expenditures entails losses for other areas
of federal funding. Pick your issue: crumbling bridges, racial justice, housing, healthcare,
education, climate change -- and it's all being affected by how much this country spends on
war.
Nonetheless, thanks to its credit-card version of war financing, the government has
effectively deferred most of the financial costs of its unending conflicts to the future. This,
in turn, contributes to how
detached most Americans tend to feel from the very fact that their country is now eternally
at war. Political scientist and policy analyst Sarah Kreps argues that Americans become
invested in how a war is being conducted only when they're asked to pay for it. In her
examination of the history of the financing of American wars, she
writes , "The visibility and intrusiveness of taxes are exactly what make individuals
scrutinize the service for which the resources are being used." If there were war taxes today,
their unpopularity would undoubtedly lead Americans to question the costs and consequences of
their country's wars in ways now missing from today's public conversation.
Pressing for a real war budget, though, is not only a mechanism to alert Americans to the
effects (on them) of the wars their government is fighting. It is also a potential lever
through which citizens could affect the country's foreign policy and pressure elected
officials to bring those wars to an end. Some civic groups and activists from across the
political spectrum have indeed been pushing to reduce the Pentagon budget, bloated by war,
corruption , and
fear-mongering . They are, however, up against both the power of an ascendant
military-industrial complex and wars that have been organized, in their funding and in so many
other ways, not to be noticed.
Those who care about this country's economic future would be remiss not to include today's
war financing strategy among the country's most urgent fiscal challenges. Anyone interested in
improving American democracy and the well-being of its people should begin by connecting the
budgetary dots. The more money this country spends on military activities, the more public
coffers will be depleted by war-related interest payments and the less public funding there
will be for anything else. In short, it's time for Americans worried about living in a country
whose inequality gap could soon surpass that of the Gilded Age to begin paying real attention
to our " credit-card
wars ."
"... In 2015, suicides accounted for over 60 percent of gun deaths in the U.S., while homicides made up around 36 percent of that year's total. Guns are consistently the most common method by which people take their own lives. ..."
"... When veterans return home from chaotic war zones, resuming normal civilian life can present major difficulties. The stresses of wartime create a long-term, sustained "fight-or-flight" response, not only producing physical symptoms such as sweating, shaking or a racing heart rate, but inflicting a mental and moral toll as well. ..."
"... "Over the course of the year I was there, the units I was embedded with lost three men, and all of them were lost to suicide, not to enemy action," Van Buren said. "This left an extraordinary impression on me, and triggered in me some of the things that I write about." ..."
"... If you enjoyed this original article please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
At War With Ourselves: The Domestic Consequences of Foreign Policies June 25, 2018 •
72 Comments
There is a direct connection between gun violence and suicide rates in the United States and America's aggressive foreign policy,
argues Will Porter.
How America's Gun Violence Epidemic May Have Roots in Overseas War Zones
By Will Porter Special to Consortium News
In recent months a string of school shootings in the United States has rekindled the debate
over gun violence, its causes and what can be done to stop it. But amid endless talk of school shootings and AR-15s, a large piece
of the puzzle has been left conspicuously absent from the debate.
Contrary to the notion that mass murderers are at the heart of America's gun violence problem, data from recent years reveals
that the majority of gun deaths are self-inflicted.
In 2015, suicides accounted for
over 60 percent of gun deaths
in the U.S., while homicides made up around 36 percent of that year's total. Guns are consistently the
most common method by which people take their own
lives.
While the causes of America's suicide-driven gun epidemic are complex and myriad, it's clear that one group contributes to the
statistics above all others: military veterans.
Beyond the Physical
According to a
2016 study conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs, on average some 20 veterans commit suicide every single day, making
them among the most prone to take their own lives compared to people working in other professions. Though they comprise under 9 percent
of the American population, veterans
accounted for 18 percent of suicides in the U.S. in 2014.
When veterans return home from chaotic war zones, resuming normal civilian life can present major difficulties. The stresses of
wartime create a long-term, sustained "fight-or-flight" response, not only producing physical symptoms such as sweating, shaking
or a racing heart rate, but inflicting a mental and moral toll as well.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) accounts for some of the physiological effects of trauma, the "fight-or-flight" response,
but the distinct mental, moral and spiritual anguish experienced by many veterans and other victims of trauma has been termed "
moral injury ."
A better understanding of that concept and the self-harm it motivates could go a long way toward explaining, and ultimately solving,
America's suicide epidemic.
"Moral injury looks beyond the physical and asks who we are as people," Peter Van Buren, a former State Department Foreign Service
officer, said in an interview. "It says that we know right from wrong, and that when we violate right and wrong, we injure ourselves.
We leave a scar on ourselves, the same as if we poked ourselves with a knife."
While not a veteran himself, during his tenure with the Foreign Service Van Buren served for one year alongside American soldiers
at a forward operating base in Iraq. His experiences there would stick with him for life.
"Over the course of the year I was there, the units I was embedded with lost three men, and all of them were lost to suicide,
not to enemy action," Van Buren said. "This left an extraordinary impression on me, and triggered in me some of the things that I
write about."
Van Buren: A profound sense of guilt.
After retiring from the Foreign Service, Van Buren began research for his novel "
Hooper's War ," a fictional account set in WWII Japan. The book centers on American
veteran, Nate Hooper, and explores the psychological costs paid by those who survive a war. Van Buren said if he set the book in
the past, he thought he could better explore the subject matter without the baggage of current-day politics.
In his research, Van Buren interviewed Japanese civilians who were children at the time of the conflict and found surprising parallels
with the soldiers he served with in Iraq. Post-war guilt, he found, does not only afflict the combatants who fight and carry out
grisly acts of violence, but civilians caught in the crossfire as well.
For many, merely living through a conflict when others did not is cause for significant distress, a condition known as "survivor's
guilt."
"In talking with them I heard so many echoes of what I'd heard from the soldiers in Iraq, and so many echoes of what I felt myself,
this profound sense of guilt," Van Buren said.
'We Killed Them'
Whether it was something a soldier did, saw or failed to prevent, feelings of guilt can leave a permanent mark on veterans after
they come home.
Brian Ellison, a combat veteran who served under the National Guard in Iraq in 2004, said he's still troubled by his wartime experiences.
Stationed at a small, under protected maintenance garage in the town of ad-Diwaniyah in a southeastern province of Iraq, Ellison
said his unit was attacked on a daily basis.
"From the day we got there, we would get attacked every night like clockwork -- mortars, RPGs," Ellison said. "We had no protection;
we had no weapons systems on the base."
On one night in April of 2004, after a successful mission to obtain ammunition for the base's few heavy weapons, Ellison's unit
was ready to hit back.
"So we got some rounds for the Mark 19 [a belt-fed automatic grenade launcher] and we basically used it as field artillery, shot
it up in the air and lobbed it in," Ellison said. "Finally on the last night we were able to get them to stop shooting, but that
was because we killed 5 of them. At the time this was something I was proud of. We were like 'We got them, we got our revenge.'"
U.S. military poster. (Health.mil)
"In retrospect, it's like here's this foreign army, and we're in their neighborhood," Ellison said. "They're defending their neighborhood,
but they're the bad guys and we're the good guys, and we killed them. I think about stuff like that a lot."
Despite his guilt, Ellison said he was able to sort through the negative feelings by speaking openly and honestly about his experiences
and actions. Some veterans have a harder time, however, including one of Ellison's closest friends.
"He ended up going overseas like five times," Ellison said. "Now he's retired and he can't even deal with people. He can't
deal with people, it's sad. He was this funny guy, everybody's friend, easy to get along with, now he's a recluse. It's really weird
to see somebody like that. He had three young kids and a happy personality, now he's broken."
In addition to the problems created in their personal relationships, the morally injured also often turn to self-destructive habits
to cope with their despair.
"In the process of trying to shut this sound off in your head -- this voice of conscience -- many people turn to drugs and alcohol
as a way of shutting that voice up, at least temporarily," Van Buren said. "You hope at some point it shuts up permanently . . .
Unfortunately, I think that many people do look for the permanent silence of suicide as a way of escaping these feelings."
A Hero's Welcome?
By now most are familiar with the practice of celebrating veterans as heroes upon their return from war, but few realize what
psychological consequences such apparently benevolent gestures can have.
"I think the healthiest thing a vet can do is to come to terms with reality," Ellison said. "It's so easy to get swept up -- when
we came home off the plane, there was a crowd of people cheering for us. I just remember feeling dirty. I felt like 'I don't want
you to cheer for us,' but at the same time it's comforting. It's a weird dynamic. Like, I could just put this horror out of my mind
and pretend we were heroes."
"But the terrible part is that, behind that there's reality," Ellison said. "Behind that, we know what we were doing; we know
that we weren't fighting for freedom. So when somebody clings onto this 'we were heroes' thing, I think that's bad for them. They
have to be struggling with it internally. I really believe that's one of the biggest things that contributes to people committing
suicide. They're not able to talk about it, not able to bring it to the forefront and come to terms with it."
Unclear Solution
According to the 2016 VA study, 70 percent of veterans who commit suicide are not regular users of VA services.
The Department of Veteran Affairs was set up in 1930 to handle medical care, benefits and burials for veterans, but some 87 years
later, the department is plagued by scandal and mismanagement. Long wait times,
common to
many government-managed
healthcare systems, discourage veterans from seeking the department's assistance, especially those with urgent psychiatric needs.
An independent review was carried out in 2014 by the VA's Inspector General, Richard Griffin, which
found that at one Arizona VA facility, 1,700 veterans were on wait lists, waiting an average of 115 days before getting an initial
appointment.
"People don't generally seek medical help because the [VA] system is so inefficient and ineffective; everyone feels like it's
a waste of time," said a retired senior non-commissioned officer in the Special Operations Forces (SOF) who wished to remain anonymous.
"The system is so bad, even within the SOF world where I work, that I avoid going at all costs," the retired officer said. "I
try to get my guys to civilian hospitals so that they can get quality healthcare instead of military healthcare."
Beyond institutions, however, both Ellison and Van Buren agreed that speaking openly about their experiences has been a major
step on their road back to normalcy. Open dialogue, then, is not only one way for veterans and other victims of trauma to heal, it
may ultimately be the key to solving America's epidemic of gun violence.
The factors contributing to mass murders, school shootings and private crime are, no doubt, important to study, but so long as
suicide is left out of the public discourse on guns, genuine solutions may always be just out of reach.
Will Porter is a journalist who specializes in U.S. foreign policy and Middle East affairs. He writes for the Libertarian
Institute and tweets at @WKPancap.
If you enjoyed this original article please consider
making
a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
"... The implications for today are almost painfully straightforward: the current combination of deficit spending and tax cuts spells disaster for any hopes of shrinking America's striking inequality gap . Instead, credit-card war spending is already fueling the dramatic levels of wealth inequality that have led some observers to suggest that we are living in a new Gilded Age , reminiscent of the enormous divide between the opulent lifestyles of the elite and the grinding poverty of the majority of Americans in the late nineteenth century. ..."
"... Today's wars are paid for almost entirely through loans -- 60% from wealthy individuals and governmental agencies like the Federal Reserve, 40% from foreign lenders. Meanwhile, in October 2001, when Washington launched the war on terror, the government also initiated a set of tax cuts, a trend that has only continued. The war-financing strategies that President George W. Bush began have flowed on without significant alteration under Presidents Obama and Trump. (Obama did raise a few taxes, but didn't fundamentally alter the swing towards tax cuts.) President Trump's extreme tax "reform" package, which passed Congress in December 2017 -- a gift-wrapped dream for the 1% -- only enlarged those cuts. ..."
"... However little the public may realize it, Americans are already feeling the costs of their post-9/11 wars. Those have, after all, massively increased the Pentagon's base budget and the moneys that go into the expanding national security budget , while reducing the amount of money left over for so much else from infrastructure investment to science. In the decade following September 11, 2001, military spending increased by 50% , while spending on every other government program increased only 13.5%. ..."
Credit-Card Wars
Today's War-Financing Strategies Will Only Increase Inequality
By Stephanie
Savell
In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging "
credit-card wars " in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this
country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are
expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the
economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts. One
potentially devastating effect, a
new study finds, will be more societal inequality.
In other words, the staggering costs of the longest war in American history -- almost 17
years running, since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 -- are being deferred to the
future. In the process, the government is contributing to this country's skyrocketing income
inequality.
Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent
$5.6 trillion on its war on terror, according to the Costs of War Project, which I co-direct, at Brown
University's Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs . This is a far higher number than the Pentagon's
$1.5 trillion estimate,
which only counts expenses for what are known as "overseas contingency operations," or OCO --
that is, a pot of supplemental money, outside the regular annual budget, dedicated to funding
wartime operations. The $5.6 trillion figure, on the other hand, includes not just what the
U.S. has spent on overseas military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, but
also portions of Homeland Security spending related to counterterrorism on American soil, and
future obligations to care for wounded or traumatized post-9/11 military veterans. The
financial burden of the post-9/11 wars across the Greater Middle East -- and still
spreading , through Africa and other regions -- is far larger than most Americans
recognize.
During prior wars, the U.S. adjusted its budget accordingly by, among other options, raising
taxes to pay for its conflicts. Not so since 2001, when President George W. Bush launched the
"Global War on Terror." Instead, the country has accumulated a staggering amount of debt. Even
if Washington stopped spending on its wars tomorrow, it will still, thanks to those conflicts,
owe more than
$8 trillion in interest alone by the 2050s.
Putting the Gilded Age to Shame
It's hard to fathom what that enormous level of debt will do to our economy and society. A
new Costs of War study by political scientist and historian Rosella Capella Zielinski
offers initial clues about its impact here. She takes a look at how the U.S. has paid for its
conflicts from the War of 1812 through the two World Wars and Vietnam to the present war on
terror. While a range of taxes, bond sales, and other mechanisms were used to raise funds to
fight such conflicts, no financial strategy has relied so exclusively on borrowing -- until
this century. Her study also explores how each type of war financing has affected inequality
levels in this country in the aftermath of those conflicts.
The implications for today are almost painfully straightforward: the current combination
of deficit spending and tax cuts spells disaster for any hopes of shrinking America's striking
inequality gap . Instead, credit-card war spending is already fueling the dramatic levels
of wealth inequality that have led some observers to suggest that we are living in a new
Gilded Age , reminiscent
of the enormous divide between the opulent lifestyles of the elite and the grinding poverty of
the majority of Americans in the late nineteenth century.
Capella Zielinski carefully breaks down what effects the methods used to pay for various
wars have had on subsequent levels of social inequality. During the Civil War, for example, the
government relied primarily on loans from private donors. After that war was over, the American
people had to pay those loans back with interest, which proved a bonanza for financial elites,
primarily in the North. Those wealthy lenders became wealthier still and everyone else, whose
taxes reimbursed them, poorer.
In contrast, during World War I, the government launched a war-bond campaign that targeted
low-income people. War savings stamps were offered for as little as 25 cents and war savings
certificates in denominations starting at $25. Anyone who could make a small down payment could
buy a war bond for $50 and cover the rest of what was owed in installments. In this way, the
war effort promoted savings and, in its wake, a striking number of low-income Americans were
repaid with interest, decreasing the inequality levels of that era.
Taxation strategies have varied quite significantly in various war periods as well. During
World War II, for instance, the government raised tax rates five times between 1940 and 1944,
levying progressively steeper ones on higher income brackets (up to 65% on incomes over $1
million). As a result, though government debt was substantial in the aftermath of a global
struggle fought on many fronts, the impact on low-income Americans could have been far worse.
In contrast, the Vietnam War era began with a tax cut and, in the aftermath of that disastrous
conflict, the U.S. had to deal with unprecedented levels of inflation. Low-income households
bore the brunt of those higher costs, leading to greater inequality.
Today's wars are paid for almost entirely through loans -- 60% from wealthy individuals
and governmental agencies like the Federal Reserve, 40% from foreign lenders. Meanwhile, in
October 2001, when Washington launched the war on terror, the government also initiated a set
of tax cuts, a trend that has only continued. The war-financing strategies that President
George W. Bush began have flowed on without significant alteration under Presidents Obama and
Trump. (Obama did raise a few taxes, but didn't fundamentally
alter the swing towards tax cuts.) President Trump's extreme tax "reform" package, which
passed Congress in December 2017 -- a gift-wrapped dream
for the 1% -- only enlarged those cuts.
In other words, in this century, Washington has combined the domestic borrowing patterns of
the Civil War with the tax cuts of the Vietnam era. That means one predictable thing: a rise in
inequality in a country in which the income inequality gap is already heading
for record territory.
Just to add to the future burden of it all, this is the first time government wartime
borrowing has relied so heavily on foreign debt. Though there is no way of knowing how this
will affect inequality here in the long run, one thing is already obvious: it will transfer
wealth outside the country.
Economist
Linda Bilmes has
argued that there's another new factor involved in Washington's budgeting of today's wars.
In every other major American conflict, after an initial period, war expenditures were
incorporated into the regular defense budget. Since 2001, however, the war on terror has been
funded mainly by supplemental appropriations (those Overseas
Contingency Operations funds), subject to very little oversight. Think of the OCO as a
slush fund
that insures one thing: the true impact of this era's war funding won't hit until far later
since such appropriations are exempt from spending caps and don't have to be
offset elsewhere in the budget.
According to Bilmes, "This process is less transparent, less accountable, and has rendered
the cost of the wars far less visible." As a measure of the invisible impact of war funding in
Washington and elsewhere, she
calculates that, while the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense discussed war
financing in 79% of its hearings during the Vietnam era, since 9/11, there have been similar
mentions at only 17% of such hearings. For its part, the Senate Finance Committee has discussed
war-funding strategy in a thoroughgoing way only once in almost 17 years.
Hidden Tradeoffs and Deferred Costs
The effect of this century's unprecedented budgetary measures is that, for the most part,
the American people don't feel the financial weight of the wars their government is waging --
or rather, they feel it, but don't recognize it for what it is. This corresponds remarkably
well with the wars themselves, fought by a non-draft
military in distant lands and largely
ignored in this country (at least since the vast public demonstrations against the coming
invasion of Iraq ended in the spring of 2003). The
blowback from those wars, the way they are coming home, has also been ignored, financially
and otherwise.
However little the public may realize it, Americans are already feeling the costs of
their post-9/11 wars. Those have, after all, massively increased the Pentagon's base budget and
the moneys that go into the expanding
national security budget , while reducing the amount of money left over for so much else
from infrastructure
investment to science. In the decade following September 11, 2001, military spending
increased by
50% , while spending on every other government program increased only 13.5%.
How exactly does this trade-off work? The National
Priorities Project explains it well. Every year the federal government negotiates levels of
discretionary spending (as distinct from mandatory spending, which largely consists of Social
Security and Medicare). In 2001, there were fewer
discretionary funds allocated to defense than to non-defense programs, but the ensuing war on
terror dramatically inflated military spending relative to other parts of the budget. In 2017,
military and national security spending accounted for 53% of discretionary spending. The 2018
congressionally approved omnibus spending package allocates $700 billion for the military and
$591 billion for non-military purposes, leaving that proportion about the same. (Keep in mind,
that those totals don't even include all the money flowing into that Overseas Contingency
Operations fund). President Trump's proposals for future spending, if accepted by Congress,
would ensure that, by 2023, the proportion of military spending would soar to
65% .
In other words, the rise in war-related military expenditures entails losses for other areas
of federal funding. Pick your issue: crumbling bridges, racial justice, housing, healthcare,
education, climate change -- and it's all being affected by how much this country spends on
war.
Nonetheless, thanks to its credit-card version of war financing, the government has
effectively deferred most of the financial costs of its unending conflicts to the future. This,
in turn, contributes to how
detached most Americans tend to feel from the very fact that their country is now eternally
at war. Political scientist and policy analyst Sarah Kreps argues that Americans become
invested in how a war is being conducted only when they're asked to pay for it. In her
examination of the history of the financing of American wars, she
writes , "The visibility and intrusiveness of taxes are exactly what make individuals
scrutinize the service for which the resources are being used." If there were war taxes today,
their unpopularity would undoubtedly lead Americans to question the costs and consequences of
their country's wars in ways now missing from today's public conversation.
Pressing for a real war budget, though, is not only a mechanism to alert Americans to the
effects (on them) of the wars their government is fighting. It is also a potential lever
through which citizens could affect the country's foreign policy and pressure elected
officials to bring those wars to an end. Some civic groups and activists from across the
political spectrum have indeed been pushing to reduce the Pentagon budget, bloated by war,
corruption , and
fear-mongering . They are, however, up against both the power of an ascendant
military-industrial complex and wars that have been organized, in their funding and in so many
other ways, not to be noticed.
Those who care about this country's economic future would be remiss not to include today's
war financing strategy among the country's most urgent fiscal challenges. Anyone interested in
improving American democracy and the well-being of its people should begin by connecting the
budgetary dots. The more money this country spends on military activities, the more public
coffers will be depleted by war-related interest payments and the less public funding there
will be for anything else. In short, it's time for Americans worried about living in a country
whose inequality gap could soon surpass that of the Gilded Age to begin paying real attention
to our " credit-card
wars ."
"... In 2015, suicides accounted for over 60 percent of gun deaths in the U.S., while homicides made up around 36 percent of that year's total. Guns are consistently the most common method by which people take their own lives. ..."
"... When veterans return home from chaotic war zones, resuming normal civilian life can present major difficulties. The stresses of wartime create a long-term, sustained "fight-or-flight" response, not only producing physical symptoms such as sweating, shaking or a racing heart rate, but inflicting a mental and moral toll as well. ..."
"... "Over the course of the year I was there, the units I was embedded with lost three men, and all of them were lost to suicide, not to enemy action," Van Buren said. "This left an extraordinary impression on me, and triggered in me some of the things that I write about." ..."
"... If you enjoyed this original article please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
At War With Ourselves: The Domestic Consequences of Foreign Policies June 25, 2018 •
72 Comments
There is a direct connection between gun violence and suicide rates in the United States and America's aggressive foreign policy,
argues Will Porter.
How America's Gun Violence Epidemic May Have Roots in Overseas War Zones
By Will Porter Special to Consortium News
In recent months a string of school shootings in the United States has rekindled the debate
over gun violence, its causes and what can be done to stop it. But amid endless talk of school shootings and AR-15s, a large piece
of the puzzle has been left conspicuously absent from the debate.
Contrary to the notion that mass murderers are at the heart of America's gun violence problem, data from recent years reveals
that the majority of gun deaths are self-inflicted.
In 2015, suicides accounted for
over 60 percent of gun deaths
in the U.S., while homicides made up around 36 percent of that year's total. Guns are consistently the
most common method by which people take their own
lives.
While the causes of America's suicide-driven gun epidemic are complex and myriad, it's clear that one group contributes to the
statistics above all others: military veterans.
Beyond the Physical
According to a
2016 study conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs, on average some 20 veterans commit suicide every single day, making
them among the most prone to take their own lives compared to people working in other professions. Though they comprise under 9 percent
of the American population, veterans
accounted for 18 percent of suicides in the U.S. in 2014.
When veterans return home from chaotic war zones, resuming normal civilian life can present major difficulties. The stresses of
wartime create a long-term, sustained "fight-or-flight" response, not only producing physical symptoms such as sweating, shaking
or a racing heart rate, but inflicting a mental and moral toll as well.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) accounts for some of the physiological effects of trauma, the "fight-or-flight" response,
but the distinct mental, moral and spiritual anguish experienced by many veterans and other victims of trauma has been termed "
moral injury ."
A better understanding of that concept and the self-harm it motivates could go a long way toward explaining, and ultimately solving,
America's suicide epidemic.
"Moral injury looks beyond the physical and asks who we are as people," Peter Van Buren, a former State Department Foreign Service
officer, said in an interview. "It says that we know right from wrong, and that when we violate right and wrong, we injure ourselves.
We leave a scar on ourselves, the same as if we poked ourselves with a knife."
While not a veteran himself, during his tenure with the Foreign Service Van Buren served for one year alongside American soldiers
at a forward operating base in Iraq. His experiences there would stick with him for life.
"Over the course of the year I was there, the units I was embedded with lost three men, and all of them were lost to suicide,
not to enemy action," Van Buren said. "This left an extraordinary impression on me, and triggered in me some of the things that I
write about."
Van Buren: A profound sense of guilt.
After retiring from the Foreign Service, Van Buren began research for his novel "
Hooper's War ," a fictional account set in WWII Japan. The book centers on American
veteran, Nate Hooper, and explores the psychological costs paid by those who survive a war. Van Buren said if he set the book in
the past, he thought he could better explore the subject matter without the baggage of current-day politics.
In his research, Van Buren interviewed Japanese civilians who were children at the time of the conflict and found surprising parallels
with the soldiers he served with in Iraq. Post-war guilt, he found, does not only afflict the combatants who fight and carry out
grisly acts of violence, but civilians caught in the crossfire as well.
For many, merely living through a conflict when others did not is cause for significant distress, a condition known as "survivor's
guilt."
"In talking with them I heard so many echoes of what I'd heard from the soldiers in Iraq, and so many echoes of what I felt myself,
this profound sense of guilt," Van Buren said.
'We Killed Them'
Whether it was something a soldier did, saw or failed to prevent, feelings of guilt can leave a permanent mark on veterans after
they come home.
Brian Ellison, a combat veteran who served under the National Guard in Iraq in 2004, said he's still troubled by his wartime experiences.
Stationed at a small, under protected maintenance garage in the town of ad-Diwaniyah in a southeastern province of Iraq, Ellison
said his unit was attacked on a daily basis.
"From the day we got there, we would get attacked every night like clockwork -- mortars, RPGs," Ellison said. "We had no protection;
we had no weapons systems on the base."
On one night in April of 2004, after a successful mission to obtain ammunition for the base's few heavy weapons, Ellison's unit
was ready to hit back.
"So we got some rounds for the Mark 19 [a belt-fed automatic grenade launcher] and we basically used it as field artillery, shot
it up in the air and lobbed it in," Ellison said. "Finally on the last night we were able to get them to stop shooting, but that
was because we killed 5 of them. At the time this was something I was proud of. We were like 'We got them, we got our revenge.'"
U.S. military poster. (Health.mil)
"In retrospect, it's like here's this foreign army, and we're in their neighborhood," Ellison said. "They're defending their neighborhood,
but they're the bad guys and we're the good guys, and we killed them. I think about stuff like that a lot."
Despite his guilt, Ellison said he was able to sort through the negative feelings by speaking openly and honestly about his experiences
and actions. Some veterans have a harder time, however, including one of Ellison's closest friends.
"He ended up going overseas like five times," Ellison said. "Now he's retired and he can't even deal with people. He can't
deal with people, it's sad. He was this funny guy, everybody's friend, easy to get along with, now he's a recluse. It's really weird
to see somebody like that. He had three young kids and a happy personality, now he's broken."
In addition to the problems created in their personal relationships, the morally injured also often turn to self-destructive habits
to cope with their despair.
"In the process of trying to shut this sound off in your head -- this voice of conscience -- many people turn to drugs and alcohol
as a way of shutting that voice up, at least temporarily," Van Buren said. "You hope at some point it shuts up permanently . . .
Unfortunately, I think that many people do look for the permanent silence of suicide as a way of escaping these feelings."
A Hero's Welcome?
By now most are familiar with the practice of celebrating veterans as heroes upon their return from war, but few realize what
psychological consequences such apparently benevolent gestures can have.
"I think the healthiest thing a vet can do is to come to terms with reality," Ellison said. "It's so easy to get swept up -- when
we came home off the plane, there was a crowd of people cheering for us. I just remember feeling dirty. I felt like 'I don't want
you to cheer for us,' but at the same time it's comforting. It's a weird dynamic. Like, I could just put this horror out of my mind
and pretend we were heroes."
"But the terrible part is that, behind that there's reality," Ellison said. "Behind that, we know what we were doing; we know
that we weren't fighting for freedom. So when somebody clings onto this 'we were heroes' thing, I think that's bad for them. They
have to be struggling with it internally. I really believe that's one of the biggest things that contributes to people committing
suicide. They're not able to talk about it, not able to bring it to the forefront and come to terms with it."
Unclear Solution
According to the 2016 VA study, 70 percent of veterans who commit suicide are not regular users of VA services.
The Department of Veteran Affairs was set up in 1930 to handle medical care, benefits and burials for veterans, but some 87 years
later, the department is plagued by scandal and mismanagement. Long wait times,
common to
many government-managed
healthcare systems, discourage veterans from seeking the department's assistance, especially those with urgent psychiatric needs.
An independent review was carried out in 2014 by the VA's Inspector General, Richard Griffin, which
found that at one Arizona VA facility, 1,700 veterans were on wait lists, waiting an average of 115 days before getting an initial
appointment.
"People don't generally seek medical help because the [VA] system is so inefficient and ineffective; everyone feels like it's
a waste of time," said a retired senior non-commissioned officer in the Special Operations Forces (SOF) who wished to remain anonymous.
"The system is so bad, even within the SOF world where I work, that I avoid going at all costs," the retired officer said. "I
try to get my guys to civilian hospitals so that they can get quality healthcare instead of military healthcare."
Beyond institutions, however, both Ellison and Van Buren agreed that speaking openly about their experiences has been a major
step on their road back to normalcy. Open dialogue, then, is not only one way for veterans and other victims of trauma to heal, it
may ultimately be the key to solving America's epidemic of gun violence.
The factors contributing to mass murders, school shootings and private crime are, no doubt, important to study, but so long as
suicide is left out of the public discourse on guns, genuine solutions may always be just out of reach.
Will Porter is a journalist who specializes in U.S. foreign policy and Middle East affairs. He writes for the Libertarian
Institute and tweets at @WKPancap.
If you enjoyed this original article please consider
making
a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.
"... Keep the fracturing United States together by focusing on an external aggressor. ..."
"... Keep the Europeans in line by making them afraid of the Russians ..."
"... Greed. Russia has natural resources and wishes to export them to competing markets, undercutting our Ruling Class's cut. ..."
"... Russia is traditionally white and nominally Christian, socially conservative. Leftists beat up on Russia as a proxy for beating up on traditional white Americans. ..."
"... With all due respect, current Russia-bashing in the US is not an issue of Jews vs non-Jews. It's more about the direct contradictions of the interests of the US as a country with those of the US as an Empire. ..."
"... as an Empire, the US does not tolerate anyone refusing to toe the line, be it Russia, China, Iran, Syria, or even Venezuela ..."
"... The fact that the US Empire is in decline makes its policy less and less rational, more and more hysterical. That's how all dominant Empires ended: not so much by being destroyed by opponents, but because of suicidal overreach. ..."
1. Keep the fracturing United States together by focusing on an external
aggressor.
2. Keep the Europeans in line by making them afraid of the Russians .
3. This: "There are a huge number of cuckservatives who still think it is 1980. It isn't
just neocons, but just about any cold-war cuckservative" -- geezer boomers who are having an
end-of-life crisis.
4. Greed. Russia has natural resources and wishes to export them to competing markets,
undercutting our Ruling Class's cut.
5. Russia is traditionally white and nominally Christian, socially conservative.
Leftists beat up on Russia as a proxy for beating up on traditional white Americans. Back
when Russia started their anti-gay thing, American leftists went nuts on them. Of course, Saudi
Arabia is much worse but we didn't hear anything about them because they aren't white and being
critical in such a case would be waycist.
With all due respect, current Russia-bashing in the US is not an issue of Jews vs
non-Jews. It's more about the direct contradictions of the interests of the US as a country
with those of the US as an Empire.
It is in the best interests of the US as a country to maintain good working relationship
with Russia, China, and others, both to achieve economic prosperity and to solve complex
international problems.
However, as an Empire, the US does not tolerate anyone refusing to toe the line, be it
Russia, China, Iran, Syria, or even Venezuela .
The fact that the US Empire is in decline makes its policy less and less rational,
more and more hysterical. That's how all dominant Empires ended: not so much by being
destroyed by opponents, but because of suicidal overreach.
"Immigration" has become the dominant issue dividing Europe and the US, yet the most important matter which is driving millions
to emigrate is overlooked is wars.
In this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely (1) imperial
wars (2) multi-national corporate expansion (3) the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe (4) the weakness
of the trade union and solidarity movements.
We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to
the western powers forcing refugees to 'follow' the flows of profits.
Imperial Wars and Mass Immigration
The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood,
housing and communities and undermining there security.
As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight. Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries
would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.
Others who fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East or Latin America were persecuted, or resided in countries too poor
to offer them employment or opportunities for a livelihood.
Some Afghans fled to Pakistan or the Middle East but discovered that these regions were also subject to armed attacks from the
West.
Iraqis were devastated by the western sanctions, invasion and occupation and fled to Europe and to a lesser degree the US , the
Gulf states and Iran.
Libya prior to the US-EU invasion was a 'receiver' country accepting and employing millions of Africans, providing them with citizenship
and a decent livelihood. After the US-EU air and sea attack and arming and financing of terrorist gangs, hundreds of thousands of
Sub-Sahara immigrants were forced to flee to Europe. Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea to the west via Italy, Spain, and headed
toward the affluent European countries which had savaged their lives in Libya.
The US-EU financed and armed client terrorist armies which assault the Syrian government and forced millions of Syrians to flee
across the border to Lebanon,Turkey and beyond to Europe, causing the so-called 'immigration crises' and the rise of rightwing anti-immigrant
parties. This led to divisions within the established social democratic and conservative parties,as sectors of the working class
turned anti-immigrant.
Europe is reaping the consequences of its alliance with US militarized imperialism whereby the US uproots millions of people and
the EU spends billions of euros to cover the cost of immigrants fleeing the western wars.
Most of the immigrants' welfare payments fall far short of the losses incurred in their homeland. Their jobs homes, schools, and
civic associations in the EU and US are far less valuable and accommodating then what they possessed in their original communities.
Economic Imperialism and Immigration: Latin America
US wars, military intervention and economic exploitation has forced millions of Latin Americans to immigrate to the US.. Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras engaged in popular struggle for socio-economic justice and political democracy between 1960 –
2000. On the verge of victory over the landed oligarchs and multinational corporations, Washington blocked popular insurgents by
spending billions of dollars, arming, training, advising the military and paramilitary forces. Land reform was aborted; trade unionists
were forced into exile and thousands of peasants fled the marauding terror campaigns.
The US-backed oligarchic regimes forced millions of displaced and uprooted pr unemployed and landless workers to flee to the US.
US supported coups and dictators resulted in 50,000 in Nicaragua, 80,000 in El Salvador and 200,000 in Guatemala. President Obama
and Hillary Clinton supported a military coup in Honduras which overthrew Liberal President Zelaya -- which led to the killing and
wounding of thousands of peasant activists and human rights workers, and the return of death squads, resulting in a new wave of immigrants
to the US.
The US promoted free trade agreement (NAFTA) drove hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and into low wage
maquiladoras; others were recruited by drug cartels; but the largest group was forced to immigrate across the Rio Grande. The US
'Plan Colombia' launched by President Clinton established seven US military bases in Colombia and provided 1 billion dollars in military
aid between 2001 – 2010. Plan Colombia doubled the size of the military.
The US backed President Alvaro Uribe, resulting in the assassination of over 200,000 peasants, trade union activists and human
rights workers by Uribe directed narco-death squad.Over two million farmers fled the countryside and immigrated to the cities or
across the border.
US business secured hundreds of thousands of Latin American low wages, agricultural and factory workers almost all without health
insurance or benefits – though they paid taxes.
Immigration doubled profits, undermined collective bargains and lowered US wages. Unscrupulous US 'entrepreneurs' recruited immigrants
into drugs, prostitution, the arms trade and money laundering.
Politicians exploited the immigration issue for political gain – blaming the immigrants for the decline of working class living
standards distracting attention from the real source : wars, invasions, death squads and economic pillage.
Conclusion
Having destroyed the lives of working people overseas and overthrown progressive leaders like Libyan President Gadhafi and Honduran
President Zelaya, millions were forced to become immigrants.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, Mexico witnessed the flight of millions of immigrants -- all victims of US and EU wars. Washington
and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct.
The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and violations of international
law.
To restrain immigration the first step is to end imperial wars, withdraw troops,and to cease financing paramilitary and client
terrorists.
ORDER IT NOW
Secondly, the West should establish a long term multi-billion-dollar fund for reconstruction and recovery of the economies, markets
and infrastructure they bombed The demise of the peace movement allowed the US and EU to launch and prolong serial wars which led
to massive immigration – the so-called refugee crises and the flight to Europe. There is a direct connection between the conversion
of the liberal and social democrats to war -parties and the forced flight of immigrants to the EU.
The decline of the trade unions and worse, their loss of militancy has led to the loss of solidarity with people living in the
midst of imperial wars. Many workers in the imperialist countries have directed their ire to those 'below' – the immigrants – rather
than to the imperialists who directed the wars which created the immigration problem. Immigration, war , the demise of the peace
and workers movements, and left parties has led to the rise of the militarists, and neo-liberals who have taken power throughout
the West. Their anti-immigrant politics, however, has provoked new contradictions within regimes,between business elites and among
popular movements in the EU and the US. The elite and popular struggles can go in at least two directions – toward fascism or radical
social democracy.
I thought that perhaps I had tuned into John Oliver or to Saturday Night Live in error, but
no doubt about it, there was an unmistakable President Donald Trump speaking before an audience
at the National Space Council. He was saying that on his own presidential authority "I'm hereby
directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to
establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. We are going to have the Air
Force, and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal."
Before signing Space Policy Directive 3 mandating the change and abruptly departing, Trump
went on to explain that "My administration is reclaiming America's heritage as the world's
greatest space-faring nation. The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons
and to tame new frontiers. But our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national
identity, but a matter of national security. It is not enough to merely have an American
presence in space. We must have American dominance in space."
The Air Force, which already has a Space Command, will no doubt object to the new
arrangement, preferring instead to roll the expanded responsibilities and money into its
already existing framework. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is also reported to be against
the expansion, explaining in a speech last year that "The creation of an independent Space
Corps, with the corresponding institutional growth and budget implications, does not address
our nation's fiscal problems in a responsive manner."
And Donald Trump will have to get over a couple of bureaucratic hurdles to get his nifty new
interstellar command up and running. First of all, it will require an Act of Congress to create
a new branch of the military. That might not be difficult to do as the expansion is being
packaged as "national security," which Republicans will support reflexively and Democrats will
also get behind not wanting to appear weak before the elections in November. And both parties
will also be willing to line up to benefit from the political contributions coming from defense
contractors as well as the creation of new military support facilities providing jobs in
congressional districts.
And then there is the money, alluded to by Mattis. Start-up funding a new, coequal military
branch would mean a huge increase in the defense budget. As long as the dollar remains the
world's reserve currency and the treasury can print money without any real backing it is
possible to ride the wave, but there are currently significant challenges to the dollars
survival in that role. If its supremacy ends, there goes the economy taking the unrestrained
government spending with it and sinking the Space Command together with much, much more.
Major defense contractors, all of whom were present to hear Trump's speech, were immediately
seen to be drooling over the prospect of a new cash cow. And at the Pentagon champagne corks
were popping at the thought of a couple of hundred new flag officer positions that will have to
be invented and filled as well as the full complement of civilians to staff the bureaucracy.
And think of the uniforms that will have to be distinct from those used by the other branches
of the service, maybe copying those formerly in vogue on the Starship Enterprise or as seen in
the movie Starship Troopers.
The reality is that the United States does indeed have a major national security interest in
protecting its network of satellites in orbit as well as related infrastructure, but there is
still quite a lot in the Trump remarks that is disturbing. Trump is basically saying two
things. The first is that he will be weaponizing outer space and the second is that he is doing
so because he intends for the United States to become dominant in that domain. It is a complete
ass-backwards approach to the problem of potential development of threats coming from beyond
the atmosphere. Instead of arming outer space, Washington should be working with other
countries that have capabilities in that region to demilitarize exploration and both commercial
and government exploitation. Everyone has an interest in not allowing outer space to become the
next site for an arms race, though admittedly working with other countries does not appear to
be something that the Trump Administration enters into lightly. Or at all.
And Trump should also abandon his insistence that the United States develop "dominance" in
space. The use of such language is a red flag that will make any agreement with countries like
Russia and China impossible to achieve. It virtually guarantees that there will be a
competition among a number of nations to develop and deploy killer satellites employing lasers
and other advanced electronic jamming technologies to protect their own outer space
infrastructure.
Trump appears to have internalized a viewpoint that sees the United States as surrounded by
threats but able to emerge victorious by being hyper-aggressive on all fronts. It is a posture
that might unnerve opponents and bring some success in the short term but which ultimately will
create a genuine threat as the rest of the world lines up against Washington. That day might be
coming if one goes by the reaction to recent U.S. votes in the United Nations and Trump's
behavior at G-7 are anything to go by.
No one in his right mind would allow Trump to dominate outer space based on Washington's
track record of irresponsible leadership since 9/11. It has wrecked the Middle East, South Asia
and North Africa, killing possibly as many as 4 million Muslims in so doing. It has bullied
allies into joining its projects in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria while also
disparaging foreign governments and entering into trade wars. It has bankrupted itself in all
but name, systematically dismantled the rights of its own citizens, and has become a rogue
nation by virtually every measure.
And when you have firmly established the principle that might makes right and all the
universe is at the disposal of Washington, what comes next? Antarctica and the arctic region
are by some accounts rich in natural resources. Will we Americans be seeing an Antarctic
Command with a mandate to dominate the polar regions to enhance national security? Stay
tuned.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is
[email protected].
"... The adage from the past that everyone could relate to -- "A nuclear war cannot be unleashed, because there will be no winners" -- is now absent from the political statements that are being heard. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon. Such a path, even if this scenario proves unlikely, will inevitably lead to a potential undermining of the already fragile non-proliferation regime and a breakdown in the negotiations on establishing control over nuclear facilities, which -- and this is not news -- very few countries are taking part in at the present time. ..."
"... For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by Washington, in the interests of preserving global stability. In order to achieve this goal, the strategic guidelines for inflicting a first "preemptive and preventive" nuclear strike, as well as the continuing premise of "unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence," which have remained unchanged since 1945, must be completely eliminated from American nuclear strategies. ..."
It seems odd that the US still does not understand the basic tenets
of Russia's nuclear posture. And it must be said that this is not the first time that Western
analysts have taken such an unprofessional approach. This has become especially glaring in the
run-up to the next NATO summit, which will take place July 11-12 in Brussels.
On the other hand, the
newest US nuclear doctrine , which was approved last February, specifies 14 justifications
for the use of nuclear weapons, including "low-yield" warheads, which is how US arms experts
classify nuclear warheads of 5.0-6.5 kilotons and below. These are precisely the sea- and
air-launched warheads the Pentagon intends to utilize in accordance with its new concept of
"escalating to de-escalate." Under that theory, low-yield nuclear warheads can be employed by
US nuclear forces on an increasing scale in a variety of regional conflicts, with the aim of
"de-escalating" them, which might be accomplished with the help of a nuclear first strike.
This practice could cause a chain reaction in the use of nuclear weapons, involving not only
"low-yield" warheads, but also more powerful nuclear explosives.
The practice being described -- the potential use of low-yield nuclear weapons, which is a
real fixation for the current US administration and is being discussed with increasing
frequency in the US -- suggests that America's military and political leaders are committed to
dramatically lowering the minimum threshold for their use and expanding the list of acceptable
reasons to utilize them under real-world conditions.
The adage from the past that everyone could relate to -- "A nuclear war cannot be unleashed,
because there will be no winners" -- is now absent from the political statements that are being
heard. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still
incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon. Such a path, even if this
scenario proves unlikely, will inevitably lead to a potential undermining of the already
fragile non-proliferation regime and a breakdown in the negotiations on establishing control
over nuclear facilities, which -- and this is not news -- very few countries are taking part in
at the present time.
For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by
Washington, in the interests of preserving global stability. In order to achieve this goal, the
strategic guidelines for inflicting a first "preemptive and preventive" nuclear strike, as well
as the continuing premise of "unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence," which have remained
unchanged since 1945, must be completely eliminated from American nuclear strategies.
These are not ultimatums, as someone defending US nuclear policy has already tried to
portray them. This is a completely natural, logical, and sensible step, which would no doubt be
positively received all over the world.
That is what it's all about. MIC Oligarchs getting rich. Vietnam was a business not a war.
The MIC insiders made a fortune off that fake war.
For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by
Washington, in the interests of preserving global instability. That instability keeps murican
arms dealers in business.
Empire doesn't like sovereign countries. Brits still have that empire mentality, the upper
crust's shit don't stink.
It's neocon hubris. They are desperate to nuke someone. Of course the counter strategy is
very simple; escalate to the brink and leave Washington with 2 choices: BTFO or die. These
people are stupid and will eventually get us all killed for nothing.
"... Keep the fracturing United States together by focusing on an external aggressor. ..."
"... Keep the Europeans in line by making them afraid of the Russians ..."
"... Greed. Russia has natural resources and wishes to export them to competing markets, undercutting our Ruling Class's cut. ..."
"... Russia is traditionally white and nominally Christian, socially conservative. Leftists beat up on Russia as a proxy for beating up on traditional white Americans. ..."
"... With all due respect, current Russia-bashing in the US is not an issue of Jews vs non-Jews. It's more about the direct contradictions of the interests of the US as a country with those of the US as an Empire. ..."
"... as an Empire, the US does not tolerate anyone refusing to toe the line, be it Russia, China, Iran, Syria, or even Venezuela ..."
"... The fact that the US Empire is in decline makes its policy less and less rational, more and more hysterical. That's how all dominant Empires ended: not so much by being destroyed by opponents, but because of suicidal overreach. ..."
1. Keep the fracturing United States together by focusing on an external
aggressor.
2. Keep the Europeans in line by making them afraid of the Russians .
3. This: "There are a huge number of cuckservatives who still think it is 1980. It isn't
just neocons, but just about any cold-war cuckservative" -- geezer boomers who are having an
end-of-life crisis.
4. Greed. Russia has natural resources and wishes to export them to competing markets,
undercutting our Ruling Class's cut.
5. Russia is traditionally white and nominally Christian, socially conservative.
Leftists beat up on Russia as a proxy for beating up on traditional white Americans. Back
when Russia started their anti-gay thing, American leftists went nuts on them. Of course, Saudi
Arabia is much worse but we didn't hear anything about them because they aren't white and being
critical in such a case would be waycist.
With all due respect, current Russia-bashing in the US is not an issue of Jews vs
non-Jews. It's more about the direct contradictions of the interests of the US as a country
with those of the US as an Empire.
It is in the best interests of the US as a country to maintain good working relationship
with Russia, China, and others, both to achieve economic prosperity and to solve complex
international problems.
However, as an Empire, the US does not tolerate anyone refusing to toe the line, be it
Russia, China, Iran, Syria, or even Venezuela .
The fact that the US Empire is in decline makes its policy less and less rational,
more and more hysterical. That's how all dominant Empires ended: not so much by being
destroyed by opponents, but because of suicidal overreach.
"Immigration" has become the dominant issue dividing Europe and the US, yet the most important matter which is driving millions
to emigrate is overlooked is wars.
In this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely (1) imperial
wars (2) multi-national corporate expansion (3) the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe (4) the weakness
of the trade union and solidarity movements.
We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to
the western powers forcing refugees to 'follow' the flows of profits.
Imperial Wars and Mass Immigration
The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood,
housing and communities and undermining there security.
As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight. Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries
would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.
Others who fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East or Latin America were persecuted, or resided in countries too poor
to offer them employment or opportunities for a livelihood.
Some Afghans fled to Pakistan or the Middle East but discovered that these regions were also subject to armed attacks from the
West.
Iraqis were devastated by the western sanctions, invasion and occupation and fled to Europe and to a lesser degree the US , the
Gulf states and Iran.
Libya prior to the US-EU invasion was a 'receiver' country accepting and employing millions of Africans, providing them with citizenship
and a decent livelihood. After the US-EU air and sea attack and arming and financing of terrorist gangs, hundreds of thousands of
Sub-Sahara immigrants were forced to flee to Europe. Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea to the west via Italy, Spain, and headed
toward the affluent European countries which had savaged their lives in Libya.
The US-EU financed and armed client terrorist armies which assault the Syrian government and forced millions of Syrians to flee
across the border to Lebanon,Turkey and beyond to Europe, causing the so-called 'immigration crises' and the rise of rightwing anti-immigrant
parties. This led to divisions within the established social democratic and conservative parties,as sectors of the working class
turned anti-immigrant.
Europe is reaping the consequences of its alliance with US militarized imperialism whereby the US uproots millions of people and
the EU spends billions of euros to cover the cost of immigrants fleeing the western wars.
Most of the immigrants' welfare payments fall far short of the losses incurred in their homeland. Their jobs homes, schools, and
civic associations in the EU and US are far less valuable and accommodating then what they possessed in their original communities.
Economic Imperialism and Immigration: Latin America
US wars, military intervention and economic exploitation has forced millions of Latin Americans to immigrate to the US.. Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras engaged in popular struggle for socio-economic justice and political democracy between 1960 –
2000. On the verge of victory over the landed oligarchs and multinational corporations, Washington blocked popular insurgents by
spending billions of dollars, arming, training, advising the military and paramilitary forces. Land reform was aborted; trade unionists
were forced into exile and thousands of peasants fled the marauding terror campaigns.
The US-backed oligarchic regimes forced millions of displaced and uprooted pr unemployed and landless workers to flee to the US.
US supported coups and dictators resulted in 50,000 in Nicaragua, 80,000 in El Salvador and 200,000 in Guatemala. President Obama
and Hillary Clinton supported a military coup in Honduras which overthrew Liberal President Zelaya -- which led to the killing and
wounding of thousands of peasant activists and human rights workers, and the return of death squads, resulting in a new wave of immigrants
to the US.
The US promoted free trade agreement (NAFTA) drove hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and into low wage
maquiladoras; others were recruited by drug cartels; but the largest group was forced to immigrate across the Rio Grande. The US
'Plan Colombia' launched by President Clinton established seven US military bases in Colombia and provided 1 billion dollars in military
aid between 2001 – 2010. Plan Colombia doubled the size of the military.
The US backed President Alvaro Uribe, resulting in the assassination of over 200,000 peasants, trade union activists and human
rights workers by Uribe directed narco-death squad.Over two million farmers fled the countryside and immigrated to the cities or
across the border.
US business secured hundreds of thousands of Latin American low wages, agricultural and factory workers almost all without health
insurance or benefits – though they paid taxes.
Immigration doubled profits, undermined collective bargains and lowered US wages. Unscrupulous US 'entrepreneurs' recruited immigrants
into drugs, prostitution, the arms trade and money laundering.
Politicians exploited the immigration issue for political gain – blaming the immigrants for the decline of working class living
standards distracting attention from the real source : wars, invasions, death squads and economic pillage.
Conclusion
Having destroyed the lives of working people overseas and overthrown progressive leaders like Libyan President Gadhafi and Honduran
President Zelaya, millions were forced to become immigrants.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, Mexico witnessed the flight of millions of immigrants -- all victims of US and EU wars. Washington
and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct.
The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and violations of international
law.
To restrain immigration the first step is to end imperial wars, withdraw troops,and to cease financing paramilitary and client
terrorists.
ORDER IT NOW
Secondly, the West should establish a long term multi-billion-dollar fund for reconstruction and recovery of the economies, markets
and infrastructure they bombed The demise of the peace movement allowed the US and EU to launch and prolong serial wars which led
to massive immigration – the so-called refugee crises and the flight to Europe. There is a direct connection between the conversion
of the liberal and social democrats to war -parties and the forced flight of immigrants to the EU.
The decline of the trade unions and worse, their loss of militancy has led to the loss of solidarity with people living in the
midst of imperial wars. Many workers in the imperialist countries have directed their ire to those 'below' – the immigrants – rather
than to the imperialists who directed the wars which created the immigration problem. Immigration, war , the demise of the peace
and workers movements, and left parties has led to the rise of the militarists, and neo-liberals who have taken power throughout
the West. Their anti-immigrant politics, however, has provoked new contradictions within regimes,between business elites and among
popular movements in the EU and the US. The elite and popular struggles can go in at least two directions – toward fascism or radical
social democracy.
I thought that perhaps I had tuned into John Oliver or to Saturday Night Live in error, but
no doubt about it, there was an unmistakable President Donald Trump speaking before an audience
at the National Space Council. He was saying that on his own presidential authority "I'm hereby
directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to
establish a space force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. We are going to have the Air
Force, and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal."
Before signing Space Policy Directive 3 mandating the change and abruptly departing, Trump
went on to explain that "My administration is reclaiming America's heritage as the world's
greatest space-faring nation. The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons
and to tame new frontiers. But our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national
identity, but a matter of national security. It is not enough to merely have an American
presence in space. We must have American dominance in space."
The Air Force, which already has a Space Command, will no doubt object to the new
arrangement, preferring instead to roll the expanded responsibilities and money into its
already existing framework. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is also reported to be against
the expansion, explaining in a speech last year that "The creation of an independent Space
Corps, with the corresponding institutional growth and budget implications, does not address
our nation's fiscal problems in a responsive manner."
And Donald Trump will have to get over a couple of bureaucratic hurdles to get his nifty new
interstellar command up and running. First of all, it will require an Act of Congress to create
a new branch of the military. That might not be difficult to do as the expansion is being
packaged as "national security," which Republicans will support reflexively and Democrats will
also get behind not wanting to appear weak before the elections in November. And both parties
will also be willing to line up to benefit from the political contributions coming from defense
contractors as well as the creation of new military support facilities providing jobs in
congressional districts.
And then there is the money, alluded to by Mattis. Start-up funding a new, coequal military
branch would mean a huge increase in the defense budget. As long as the dollar remains the
world's reserve currency and the treasury can print money without any real backing it is
possible to ride the wave, but there are currently significant challenges to the dollars
survival in that role. If its supremacy ends, there goes the economy taking the unrestrained
government spending with it and sinking the Space Command together with much, much more.
Major defense contractors, all of whom were present to hear Trump's speech, were immediately
seen to be drooling over the prospect of a new cash cow. And at the Pentagon champagne corks
were popping at the thought of a couple of hundred new flag officer positions that will have to
be invented and filled as well as the full complement of civilians to staff the bureaucracy.
And think of the uniforms that will have to be distinct from those used by the other branches
of the service, maybe copying those formerly in vogue on the Starship Enterprise or as seen in
the movie Starship Troopers.
The reality is that the United States does indeed have a major national security interest in
protecting its network of satellites in orbit as well as related infrastructure, but there is
still quite a lot in the Trump remarks that is disturbing. Trump is basically saying two
things. The first is that he will be weaponizing outer space and the second is that he is doing
so because he intends for the United States to become dominant in that domain. It is a complete
ass-backwards approach to the problem of potential development of threats coming from beyond
the atmosphere. Instead of arming outer space, Washington should be working with other
countries that have capabilities in that region to demilitarize exploration and both commercial
and government exploitation. Everyone has an interest in not allowing outer space to become the
next site for an arms race, though admittedly working with other countries does not appear to
be something that the Trump Administration enters into lightly. Or at all.
And Trump should also abandon his insistence that the United States develop "dominance" in
space. The use of such language is a red flag that will make any agreement with countries like
Russia and China impossible to achieve. It virtually guarantees that there will be a
competition among a number of nations to develop and deploy killer satellites employing lasers
and other advanced electronic jamming technologies to protect their own outer space
infrastructure.
Trump appears to have internalized a viewpoint that sees the United States as surrounded by
threats but able to emerge victorious by being hyper-aggressive on all fronts. It is a posture
that might unnerve opponents and bring some success in the short term but which ultimately will
create a genuine threat as the rest of the world lines up against Washington. That day might be
coming if one goes by the reaction to recent U.S. votes in the United Nations and Trump's
behavior at G-7 are anything to go by.
No one in his right mind would allow Trump to dominate outer space based on Washington's
track record of irresponsible leadership since 9/11. It has wrecked the Middle East, South Asia
and North Africa, killing possibly as many as 4 million Muslims in so doing. It has bullied
allies into joining its projects in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria while also
disparaging foreign governments and entering into trade wars. It has bankrupted itself in all
but name, systematically dismantled the rights of its own citizens, and has become a rogue
nation by virtually every measure.
And when you have firmly established the principle that might makes right and all the
universe is at the disposal of Washington, what comes next? Antarctica and the arctic region
are by some accounts rich in natural resources. Will we Americans be seeing an Antarctic
Command with a mandate to dominate the polar regions to enhance national security? Stay
tuned.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is
[email protected].
"... The adage from the past that everyone could relate to -- "A nuclear war cannot be unleashed, because there will be no winners" -- is now absent from the political statements that are being heard. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon. Such a path, even if this scenario proves unlikely, will inevitably lead to a potential undermining of the already fragile non-proliferation regime and a breakdown in the negotiations on establishing control over nuclear facilities, which -- and this is not news -- very few countries are taking part in at the present time. ..."
"... For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by Washington, in the interests of preserving global stability. In order to achieve this goal, the strategic guidelines for inflicting a first "preemptive and preventive" nuclear strike, as well as the continuing premise of "unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence," which have remained unchanged since 1945, must be completely eliminated from American nuclear strategies. ..."
It seems odd that the US still does not understand the basic tenets
of Russia's nuclear posture. And it must be said that this is not the first time that Western
analysts have taken such an unprofessional approach. This has become especially glaring in the
run-up to the next NATO summit, which will take place July 11-12 in Brussels.
On the other hand, the
newest US nuclear doctrine , which was approved last February, specifies 14 justifications
for the use of nuclear weapons, including "low-yield" warheads, which is how US arms experts
classify nuclear warheads of 5.0-6.5 kilotons and below. These are precisely the sea- and
air-launched warheads the Pentagon intends to utilize in accordance with its new concept of
"escalating to de-escalate." Under that theory, low-yield nuclear warheads can be employed by
US nuclear forces on an increasing scale in a variety of regional conflicts, with the aim of
"de-escalating" them, which might be accomplished with the help of a nuclear first strike.
This practice could cause a chain reaction in the use of nuclear weapons, involving not only
"low-yield" warheads, but also more powerful nuclear explosives.
The practice being described -- the potential use of low-yield nuclear weapons, which is a
real fixation for the current US administration and is being discussed with increasing
frequency in the US -- suggests that America's military and political leaders are committed to
dramatically lowering the minimum threshold for their use and expanding the list of acceptable
reasons to utilize them under real-world conditions.
The adage from the past that everyone could relate to -- "A nuclear war cannot be unleashed,
because there will be no winners" -- is now absent from the political statements that are being
heard. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still
incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon. Such a path, even if this
scenario proves unlikely, will inevitably lead to a potential undermining of the already
fragile non-proliferation regime and a breakdown in the negotiations on establishing control
over nuclear facilities, which -- and this is not news -- very few countries are taking part in
at the present time.
For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by
Washington, in the interests of preserving global stability. In order to achieve this goal, the
strategic guidelines for inflicting a first "preemptive and preventive" nuclear strike, as well
as the continuing premise of "unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence," which have remained
unchanged since 1945, must be completely eliminated from American nuclear strategies.
These are not ultimatums, as someone defending US nuclear policy has already tried to
portray them. This is a completely natural, logical, and sensible step, which would no doubt be
positively received all over the world.
That is what it's all about. MIC Oligarchs getting rich. Vietnam was a business not a war.
The MIC insiders made a fortune off that fake war.
For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by
Washington, in the interests of preserving global instability. That instability keeps murican
arms dealers in business.
Empire doesn't like sovereign countries. Brits still have that empire mentality, the upper
crust's shit don't stink.
It's neocon hubris. They are desperate to nuke someone. Of course the counter strategy is
very simple; escalate to the brink and leave Washington with 2 choices: BTFO or die. These
people are stupid and will eventually get us all killed for nothing.
I am halfway through watching a film of US actor Peter von Berg travelling through the
Donetsk People's Republic and meeting Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko and various others
to find out how the Donetsk rebels are creating a socialist state under a situation of war. The
film is as much an implicit criticism of US society (and by extension, Western capitalist
society generally) as it is an investigation of the reality on the ground on Donetsk, ignored
by the Western MSM.
Von Berg visits a greenhouse farm growing tomatoes, a hospital and a factory among other
places he travels to (including the capital, of course) in the DPR.
There is even a short history of the city of Donetsk and how it was founded by 19th-century
Welsh engineer industrialist John Hughes, after whom it was originally named Yuzovka.
One theory is the American Empire is simply an extension of the British Empire. The City of
London saw they would eventually need to move its powerbase to the larger and richer New Israel
at the time. They saw that the development and expansion of America was a massive project best
left in the hand of colonists without being micromanaged from across the Atlantic. They held
back financing and convinced the King to let it go and that by controlling trade they would
suffer no great loss in doing so.
It took some time to consolidate power in the US using agents of the City in America and the
war of 1812, Civil War , Lincoln and McKinley assassinations were all part of keeping the US on
track and later recovering it. By 1901 when they got their man Teddy Roosevelt in after
snuffing McKinley , they were well on their way to fulfilling the late Cecil Rhodes dream to
recover America.
From 1913-1922 we saw the establishment of the Fed, Bernays Propaganda, Tavistock Institute
and its US branches and the creation of the CFR which was a Round Table entity to harmonize
policy with the British group. , Thus they seized control of the US money, foreign policy ,
culture and politics. The Balfour Declaration united Wall Street and the City of London with a
common goal of political Zionism and establishment of a new operating base in the Oil Rich
region that surrounds Israel. Oil was the New Gold and unlike the metallic Gold ran the engines
of War, and the Empire wanted more control of it.
At this time a little known company named the AIC (acronym backward is CIA) called the
American International Corporation came into being. Little is known about them but they were
basically a private CIA engaged globally and made up of many of the leading bankers and
industialists to finance and complete infrastructure projects in Russia, China, Latin American
and elsewhere. I suspect they had a hand in spreading the empires tentacles globally before
handing over operations to government and CIA under their supervision
The Bolshevik Revolution in this period was funded by those in the City and Wall Street. It
was known at the time that another Great War was needed to achieve their goals. Communism-
Fascism, Zionism-anti semitism would provide the kindle and fuel for this. The City and Wall
Street plunged the world into a Great Depression and created the BIS which would divert the
resources from UK, Europe and US to build up Hitlers Germany which had been converted into a
Mad Dog thanks to the Versailles Treaty, just as Keynes predicted and exactly as planned.
After the war, the British Empire became the Anglo American Empire and the City of London
and Wall Street became more or less equal partners. Israel, UN, IMF and World Bank were a done
deal and would provide useful new tools for the NWO. While they lost their resource rich
colonies the City replaced them with Tax Havens which these countries would flood with
Petrodollars, also known as Eurodollars , completely outside the control of the Fed allowing
the City to maintain its power over US currency should the Fed stray. The tax havens would fund
covert operations that the CIA and other intelligence agencies depend on, and allow pretend
enemies who are needed to get large military budgets to circumvent sanctions, as well as allow
the super rich to avoid taxes. Much more profitable than the old colonies which were expensive
to run and maintain control
In the post WWII era, American Generals, Fed Chairmen and Presidents get knighted by the
crown (actually the City of London and not the symbolic Queen).
So maybe the US is simply a crypto Commonwealth nation that provides the financial and
military muscle for the Crown in the City and its sister Israel.
The Outlaw US Empire has always been an Empire since its inception--an Empire doesn't need
to extend overseas, like Spain, Portugal, UK, France. The USA began as a limited Continental
Empire, then expanded to Continental in size like Russia and China, although the latter two
didn't result from implantation.
I'd like to know your source for this statement of yours: "Interestingly, the reform
movements coming about in the balance of the 19th Century were also corrupt in their essence."
There was only one nationwide reform movement from 1875-1900, which is known as The Populist
Movement and was squeaky clean versus the Ds and Rs. There was quite a lot of corruption during
Lincoln's administration, too, mostly thanks to the Civil War.
Have you read The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, Empire as a Way of Life by William Appleman
Williams, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles
Beard, or The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916
and The Politics of War by Gabriel Kolko? They provide a primer so you can find an
answer to your question.
No, the Outlaw US Empire was certainly the result of Globalization and participated in
several imperialist wars well before its Civil War--Globalism being the imperialistic aspects
of Globalization which actually began prior to 1492 with Portugal's many voyages of discovery.
1494's Treaty of Tordesillas is the first document establishing Globalism; its affects still
effect us today.
None of my response is meant to be construed as hostile. Rather, it's clear you want to
learn more about the Outlaw US Empire beast and what motivated its elite to try and conquer the
planet, which is my own lifelong study. Knowing how we got to this point provides us with a
guide as to how to retreat from Overseas Empire. As always, the problem with learning anything
worthwhile is having the time and resources. I hope we'll enter into a productive discourse on
this topic given its central importance to most of what b likes to focus upon with his
postings.
At least we know who comprised most of the original Deep State as they were all present in
Philadelphia designing the coup known as the US Constitution. Later we can follow the
membership of the Federalist Party, then the Whigs. When the Whigs dissolved is when most of
the Deep State went underground. IMO, Polk was the first neocon president; but to my
knowledge, no author's written about him in that manner. Bertram Gross's Friendly Fascism:
The New Face of Power in America has several ToEs delineating the structure of power
within the Federal government parts of which constitute the Deep State. IMO, the two tools we
were given that are now kaput require another tool to put them back into working
order--Solidarity. The ferment of mass protest will help as well--anything they cannot
control or buy.
karlof1 @70. I agree that the US was an Empire from its founding. Tommy Jefferson bought from
the French colonialists the land of people not French, doubling the size of the US (in an act
which he himself wrote was probably unconstitutional, but too good a deal to pass up). Tommy
sent Lewis and Clarke to document the rest of the continent that the Founders clearly always
planned to possess. They were not shy in telling the locals that the "Great White Chief" in
Washington was "the new boss."
A few years later, the Monroe Doctrine made clear to "the Old World" that the US
considered the entire Western Hemisphere its "sphere of influence," and has jealously and
viciously defended that claim ever since.
Yes, some US historians see the "Spanish/American War" as the first truly imperialist
venture. But the tens of millions of Indians (the term preferred by most Native Americans
I've known) would beg to differ. As would the competing empires of Great Britain, Spain and
even the Dutch - each of which fled before the sword of USAmerican Empire long before
1896.
Karlofi@70 Another of my favorite commentators in this space:
"Interestingly, the reform movements coming about in the balance of the 19th Century were
also corrupt in their essence."
I wasn't thinking of the Populist movement, rather to congressional political-positioning
around the boondoggle government-jobs industry run by the republican party bosses in the US
Grant administration onward.
...it is a truism that the conquest of power and office generally changes, vitiates, a
political movement. Leaders and officers of the party, were they ever so sincerely
committed to a "popular" or "leveler's" or "agrarian" program, are now affected deeply by
the dazzling advantages and priveliges of official position, by the need for retaining
these at all costs, and the haunting fear of losing them.
Politicos Matthew Josephson
Karlofi asks: "Have you read The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, Empire as a Way of Life by William Appleman Williams,
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles Beard, or The
Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 and The Politics
of War by Gabriel Kolko?"
I have read quite a few history books but none of those you have mentioned -yet!
Thanks.
karlof1 @73
"IMO, Polk was the first neocon president; but to my knowledge, no author's written about him
in that manner."
Interesting framing. He was certainly a President of expanding Empire. Like Tommy
Jefferson before him, he doubled the size of the US. I'm especially taken by his failed
attempt to buy what is now the US Southwest from Mexico, and so we had a false flag/hoax
attack at the contested border of TX/Mexico, and voila! We'll just have it all, thank you
very much.
And then, in the absurd Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the US agreed to pay to Mexico
restitutions that were LESS than the original offer. But, crucially, because of that token
payment for what would become New Mexico, Arizona, California and much of Nevada and
Colorado, US writers and historians were able to claim "we are not an empire . thank
God!"
For your Monday Musical Memory-enhancement, I present David Rovics' magnificent Saint Patrick's Battalion
about that Mexican/American War.
I am halfway through watching a film of US actor Peter von Berg travelling through the
Donetsk People's Republic and meeting Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko and various others
to find out how the Donetsk rebels are creating a socialist state under a situation of war. The
film is as much an implicit criticism of US society (and by extension, Western capitalist
society generally) as it is an investigation of the reality on the ground on Donetsk, ignored
by the Western MSM.
Von Berg visits a greenhouse farm growing tomatoes, a hospital and a factory among other
places he travels to (including the capital, of course) in the DPR.
There is even a short history of the city of Donetsk and how it was founded by 19th-century
Welsh engineer industrialist John Hughes, after whom it was originally named Yuzovka.
One theory is the American Empire is simply an extension of the British Empire. The City of
London saw they would eventually need to move its powerbase to the larger and richer New Israel
at the time. They saw that the development and expansion of America was a massive project best
left in the hand of colonists without being micromanaged from across the Atlantic. They held
back financing and convinced the King to let it go and that by controlling trade they would
suffer no great loss in doing so.
It took some time to consolidate power in the US using agents of the City in America and the
war of 1812, Civil War , Lincoln and McKinley assassinations were all part of keeping the US on
track and later recovering it. By 1901 when they got their man Teddy Roosevelt in after
snuffing McKinley , they were well on their way to fulfilling the late Cecil Rhodes dream to
recover America.
From 1913-1922 we saw the establishment of the Fed, Bernays Propaganda, Tavistock Institute
and its US branches and the creation of the CFR which was a Round Table entity to harmonize
policy with the British group. , Thus they seized control of the US money, foreign policy ,
culture and politics. The Balfour Declaration united Wall Street and the City of London with a
common goal of political Zionism and establishment of a new operating base in the Oil Rich
region that surrounds Israel. Oil was the New Gold and unlike the metallic Gold ran the engines
of War, and the Empire wanted more control of it.
At this time a little known company named the AIC (acronym backward is CIA) called the
American International Corporation came into being. Little is known about them but they were
basically a private CIA engaged globally and made up of many of the leading bankers and
industialists to finance and complete infrastructure projects in Russia, China, Latin American
and elsewhere. I suspect they had a hand in spreading the empires tentacles globally before
handing over operations to government and CIA under their supervision
The Bolshevik Revolution in this period was funded by those in the City and Wall Street. It
was known at the time that another Great War was needed to achieve their goals. Communism-
Fascism, Zionism-anti semitism would provide the kindle and fuel for this. The City and Wall
Street plunged the world into a Great Depression and created the BIS which would divert the
resources from UK, Europe and US to build up Hitlers Germany which had been converted into a
Mad Dog thanks to the Versailles Treaty, just as Keynes predicted and exactly as planned.
After the war, the British Empire became the Anglo American Empire and the City of London
and Wall Street became more or less equal partners. Israel, UN, IMF and World Bank were a done
deal and would provide useful new tools for the NWO. While they lost their resource rich
colonies the City replaced them with Tax Havens which these countries would flood with
Petrodollars, also known as Eurodollars , completely outside the control of the Fed allowing
the City to maintain its power over US currency should the Fed stray. The tax havens would fund
covert operations that the CIA and other intelligence agencies depend on, and allow pretend
enemies who are needed to get large military budgets to circumvent sanctions, as well as allow
the super rich to avoid taxes. Much more profitable than the old colonies which were expensive
to run and maintain control
In the post WWII era, American Generals, Fed Chairmen and Presidents get knighted by the
crown (actually the City of London and not the symbolic Queen).
So maybe the US is simply a crypto Commonwealth nation that provides the financial and
military muscle for the Crown in the City and its sister Israel.
The Outlaw US Empire has always been an Empire since its inception--an Empire doesn't need
to extend overseas, like Spain, Portugal, UK, France. The USA began as a limited Continental
Empire, then expanded to Continental in size like Russia and China, although the latter two
didn't result from implantation.
I'd like to know your source for this statement of yours: "Interestingly, the reform
movements coming about in the balance of the 19th Century were also corrupt in their essence."
There was only one nationwide reform movement from 1875-1900, which is known as The Populist
Movement and was squeaky clean versus the Ds and Rs. There was quite a lot of corruption during
Lincoln's administration, too, mostly thanks to the Civil War.
Have you read The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, Empire as a Way of Life by William Appleman
Williams, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles
Beard, or The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916
and The Politics of War by Gabriel Kolko? They provide a primer so you can find an
answer to your question.
No, the Outlaw US Empire was certainly the result of Globalization and participated in
several imperialist wars well before its Civil War--Globalism being the imperialistic aspects
of Globalization which actually began prior to 1492 with Portugal's many voyages of discovery.
1494's Treaty of Tordesillas is the first document establishing Globalism; its affects still
effect us today.
None of my response is meant to be construed as hostile. Rather, it's clear you want to
learn more about the Outlaw US Empire beast and what motivated its elite to try and conquer the
planet, which is my own lifelong study. Knowing how we got to this point provides us with a
guide as to how to retreat from Overseas Empire. As always, the problem with learning anything
worthwhile is having the time and resources. I hope we'll enter into a productive discourse on
this topic given its central importance to most of what b likes to focus upon with his
postings.
At least we know who comprised most of the original Deep State as they were all present in
Philadelphia designing the coup known as the US Constitution. Later we can follow the
membership of the Federalist Party, then the Whigs. When the Whigs dissolved is when most of
the Deep State went underground. IMO, Polk was the first neocon president; but to my
knowledge, no author's written about him in that manner. Bertram Gross's Friendly Fascism:
The New Face of Power in America has several ToEs delineating the structure of power
within the Federal government parts of which constitute the Deep State. IMO, the two tools we
were given that are now kaput require another tool to put them back into working
order--Solidarity. The ferment of mass protest will help as well--anything they cannot
control or buy.
karlof1 @70. I agree that the US was an Empire from its founding. Tommy Jefferson bought from
the French colonialists the land of people not French, doubling the size of the US (in an act
which he himself wrote was probably unconstitutional, but too good a deal to pass up). Tommy
sent Lewis and Clarke to document the rest of the continent that the Founders clearly always
planned to possess. They were not shy in telling the locals that the "Great White Chief" in
Washington was "the new boss."
A few years later, the Monroe Doctrine made clear to "the Old World" that the US
considered the entire Western Hemisphere its "sphere of influence," and has jealously and
viciously defended that claim ever since.
Yes, some US historians see the "Spanish/American War" as the first truly imperialist
venture. But the tens of millions of Indians (the term preferred by most Native Americans
I've known) would beg to differ. As would the competing empires of Great Britain, Spain and
even the Dutch - each of which fled before the sword of USAmerican Empire long before
1896.
Karlofi@70 Another of my favorite commentators in this space:
"Interestingly, the reform movements coming about in the balance of the 19th Century were
also corrupt in their essence."
I wasn't thinking of the Populist movement, rather to congressional political-positioning
around the boondoggle government-jobs industry run by the republican party bosses in the US
Grant administration onward.
...it is a truism that the conquest of power and office generally changes, vitiates, a
political movement. Leaders and officers of the party, were they ever so sincerely
committed to a "popular" or "leveler's" or "agrarian" program, are now affected deeply by
the dazzling advantages and priveliges of official position, by the need for retaining
these at all costs, and the haunting fear of losing them.
Politicos Matthew Josephson
Karlofi asks: "Have you read The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, Empire as a Way of Life by William Appleman Williams,
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles Beard, or The
Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 and The Politics
of War by Gabriel Kolko?"
I have read quite a few history books but none of those you have mentioned -yet!
Thanks.
karlof1 @73
"IMO, Polk was the first neocon president; but to my knowledge, no author's written about him
in that manner."
Interesting framing. He was certainly a President of expanding Empire. Like Tommy
Jefferson before him, he doubled the size of the US. I'm especially taken by his failed
attempt to buy what is now the US Southwest from Mexico, and so we had a false flag/hoax
attack at the contested border of TX/Mexico, and voila! We'll just have it all, thank you
very much.
And then, in the absurd Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the US agreed to pay to Mexico
restitutions that were LESS than the original offer. But, crucially, because of that token
payment for what would become New Mexico, Arizona, California and much of Nevada and
Colorado, US writers and historians were able to claim "we are not an empire . thank
God!"
For your Monday Musical Memory-enhancement, I present David Rovics' magnificent Saint Patrick's Battalion
about that Mexican/American War.
Credit:
Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock
The United States has adorned its president with extravagance that makes Roman emperors
appear frugal by comparison. And such visible signs of the deification of our president are complemented by legal
doctrines that echo Richard Nixon's once discredited claim to David Frost: "When the president does it, that means it is
not illegal."
These extra-constitutional developments reflect the transformation
of the United States from a republic, whose glory was liberty and whose rule of law was king, to an empire, whose glory
is global dominion and whose president is law. The Constitution's architects would be shocked to learn that contemporary
presidents play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to any person on the planet deemed a threat to national
security on the basis of secret, untested evidence known only to the White House.
An empire demands a Caesar and blind obedience from its citizens. World leadership
through the global projection of military force cannot be exercised with checks and balances and a separation of powers
that arrests speed and invites debate. Napoleon lectured: "Nothing in war is more important than unity of command .
Better one bad general than two good ones." And Lord Tennyson, saluting the British Empire, versified in
The Charge of the Light Brigade
:
As justice requires the appearance of justice, a Caesar requires the appearance of a
Caesar. Thus is the president protected by platoons of Secret Service agents. The White House, by closing previously
open avenues through the heart of the capital and shielding the president from citizen detractors, has become a castle.
The White House staff has expanded and aggrandized power at the expense of Cabinet officials confirmed with the advice
and consent of the Senate.
Debate, encouraged by the separation of powers, is superfluous where support for
empire is underwritten by the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex, as it is in the United
States. The Republican and Democratic parties are unified behind at least seven ongoing unconstitutional presidential
wars and climbing trillion-dollar national security budgets.
Our warfare state has given birth to subsidiary surveillance, crony capitalism, and a
welfare state. Congress and the judicial branch have become largely sound and fury, signifying nothing. The
Constitution's separation of powers is atrophying.
The life of the law is not justice but genuflections to power. It manufactures
doctrines that honor the power principle that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. When the
configuration of power changes, the law adapts accordingly. The adaptations may not be instantaneous, but they are
inexorable. This is not surprising. Judges are not born like Athena from the head of Zeus. They are selected through a
political process that vets them for compatibility with the views of their political benefactors. Benjamin Cardozo
observed in
The Nature of the Judicial
Process
:
"The great tides and
currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by."
The United States has become the largest and most actively garrisoned empire in
history, built up by World War II and the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union. Our empire has, among other things,
approximately 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, over 240,000 active duty and reserve troops in at least 172
countries and territories
, de facto
or
de jure
commitments to defend 70
countries, and presidential wars as belligerents or co-belligerents in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The president has by necessity become
a Caesar irrespective of whether the occupant of the White House possesses recessive or dominant genes. The law has
adapted accordingly, destroying the Constitution like a wrecking ball.
At present, the president with impunity initiates war in violation of the Declare War
Clause; kills American citizens in violation of the Due Process Clause; engages in indiscriminate surveillance his own
citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment; substitutes executive agreements for treaties to circumvent the
requirements of Senate ratifications by two-thirds majorities in violation of the Treaty Clause; substitutes executive
orders for legislation in violation of Article I, section 1; issues presidential signing statements indistinguishable
from line-item vetoes in violation of the Presentment Clause; wields vast standard-less delegations of legislative
authority in violation of the Constitution's separation of powers; brandishes a state secrets privilege to block
judicial redress for unconstitutional executive action in violation of due process; refuses submission to congressional
oversight in violation of the congressional power of inquiry; and declines to defend defensible duly enacted laws in
violation of the Take Care Clause.
The Constitution will be reborn only if the American people reject their Empire in
favor of a republic where individual liberty is the summum bonum. The odds of that happening are not good.
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission
under President Reagan and counsel to the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. He is a partner in
the law firm of Fein & DelValle PLLC.
"... A Stigler Center panel examines the influence of Big Five tech firms over political discourse and the marketplace of ideas. ..."
"... "Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon -- vastly more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company." ..."
"... "We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear [that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that? It's the people in the antitrust community." ..."
"... "Google not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to protect the process of competition." ..."
"... "Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative. What they wanted was a no-government world." ..."
At one point during Mark Zuckerberg's
Senate hearing in April , the Facebook CEO had the following peculiar exchange with Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC):
Graham: But you, as a company, welcome regulation?
Zuckerberg: I think, if it's the right regulation, then yes.
Graham: You think the Europeans had it right?
Zuckerberg: I think that they get things right.
Graham: . So would you work with us in terms of what regulations you think are necessary in your industry?
Zuckerberg: Absolutely.
Graham: Okay. Would you submit to us some proposed regulations?
Zuckerberg: Yes. And I'll have my team follow up with you so, that way, we can have this discussion across the different
categories where I think that this discussion needs to happen.
Graham: Look forward to it.
This telling bit of dialogue was part of an overall pattern: the hearing was meant to hold Facebook (and Zuckerberg himself, as
the company's founder, CEO, and de facto
single ruler ) accountable for the
mishandling of
millions of people's private data. Yet
one after
another , the senators were asking an evasive Zuckerberg if he would be willing to endorse their bills and proposals to regulate
Facebook. This mode of questioning repeated itself (to a somewhat lesser extent) during the House's
tougher questioning of Zuckerberg the following day.
Needless to say, most company CEOs grilled by Congress following a major scandal that impacts millions of people and possibly
the very nature of
American democracy are not usually treated in this way -- as private regulators almost on equal footing with Congress.
Facebook, however, is not a typical company. As
a recent Vox piece noted, with its vast reach of more than two billion users worldwide, Facebook is more akin to
a government or a "powerful sovereign," with Zuckerberg -- due to his unusual level of control over it -- being the "key lawgiver."
Zuckerberg acknowledged as much himself when he said, in a
much-quoted moment of candor
, that "in a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company." More than other technology companies,
he added, Facebook is "really setting policies."
The notion that corporations can become so powerful that they are able to act as a "form of private government" (to quote
Zephyr Teachout )
has long been part of the antitrust literature. Indeed, as the Open Market Institute's Barry Lynn and Matt Stoller recently noted
during a panel at the Stigler Center's Digital Platforms and Concentration antitrust conference, it is deeply rooted in the
rich tradition of antimonopoly
in America.
That digital platforms are major political
players has also been
well documented
.
Once disdainful of politics, in the past two years Google, Facebook, and Amazon have dramatically ramped up their lobbying efforts,
as the public and media backlash against their social, economic, and political power intensified. Google, which enjoyed
unprecedented access to the Obama White House, is now the
biggest lobbyist in Washington, with other tech platforms not far behind.
Market power begetting political power is
not new in itself. As the participants
of the Stigler panel noted, it is the immense power
that concentrated digital intermediaries like Google and Facebook wield over digital markets, human interaction and the marketplace
of ideas, particularly when it comes to the distribution of political information, that presents a unique challenge. As Lina Khan
(also of Open Markets)
recently
noted , the current landscape of Internet media is one in which a handful of companies "are basically acting as private regulators,
as private governments, over the dissemination and organization of information in a way that is totally unchecked by the public."
The latter part, at least, seems to be changing rapidly, as Americans (and millions more worldwide) grapple with
ongoing revelations showing the profound
impact that digital monopolies have on political opinions and outcomes, in the US and across the world. As Congressman John Sarbanes
(D-MD) said during Zuckerberg's House hearing
in April: "Facebook is becoming a self-regulated superstructure for political discourse."
Left to right: Scott Cleland, Ellen Goodman, Matt Stoller, Barry Lynn, Guy Rolnik
The exact nature of tech platforms' political power, its roots, and how to best deal with it -- all questions debated during the
Stigler Center panel -- are complex and varied. But the key question seems rather simple. As Sarbanes put it during the same Congressional
hearing: "Are we, the people, going to regulate our political dialogue, or are you, Mark Zuckerberg, going to end up regulating the
political discourse? ״
A Private Regulator of Speech
Facebook, said Rutgers Law School professor Ellen Goodman, operates as a private speech regulator. As such, much like public governments,
it "privileges some [forms of] speech over others." Unlike governments, however, which as regulators of speech purport to support
public good, Facebook has adopted a "First Amendment-like radical libertarianism" through which it has so far refused to differentiate
between "high- and low-quality information, truth or falsity, responsible and irresponsible press."
Facebook, famously, argues that it is not a media company, but a technology company. "It's not a player, it's not a [referee],
it's just the engineer who made the field," said Goodman, the co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law.
The purpose of Facebook's "First Amendment rhetoric," she noted, is "to maximize data flow on its platform," but by doing so, "it
implies, or even says explicitly, that it's standing in the shoes of the government."
Facebook and other platforms, said Goodman, have benefited from the process of deregulation and budget cuts to public media --
a process that has predated the Internet, and led to Washington essentially "giving up" on media policy. The government effectively
"exempted these platforms from the kind of ordinary regulation that other information intermediaries were subjected to." With "platforms
in the shoes of government, [and] government out of media policy," the concentration of platform power over information flows was
allowed to continue undisturbed.
The problem, however, is that much like fellow FAANGs Amazon and Google, Facebook is not just an impartial governor, but a market
participant interested in "monopolizing the time of its users," with a strong incentive to privilege its own products and business
model that "eviscerates journalism."
"It also tunes its algorithm to favor certain kinds of speech and certain speakers," added Goodman. "There's almost no transparency,
save for what it selectively, elliptically, and sometimes misleadingly posts on its blog."
"People Live in Fear"
In a seminal
1979 essay on what he termed the "political content" of antitrust, former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky argued that "political
values," such as "the fear that excessive concentration of economic power will foster anti-democratic political pressures," should
be incorporated into antitrust enforcement. In recent years, this view has been
echoed by a
growing number of
antitrust scholars
, who argue that the way antitrust enforcement has been conducted in the US for the past 40 years -- solely through the prism of
"consumer welfare" -- is ill equipped to deal with the new
threats posed by digital platforms.
The Unites States, remarked Lynn during the panel, was born "out of rebellion against concentrated power, the British East India
Company." The original purpose of antimonopoly in America, said Lynn, was the protection of personal liberty from concentrated economic
and political power: "to give everybody the ability to manage their own property in the ways that they see fit, manage their own
lives in the way that they see fit. To be truly independent of everybody else. To not be anybody else's puppet." Liberty and democracy,
he added, "are functions of antimonopoly."
A state in which Facebook and Google wield enormous influence over the flow of information -- where, to quote
a recent piece by Wired
's Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, "every publisher knows that, at best, they are sharecroppers on Facebook's massive
industrial farm" -- is antithetical to this ethos, said Lynn, and is firmly rooted in the "absolute, complete failure" of antitrust
in the United States. "Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon
-- vastly more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company." These digital
intermediaries, he added, are "using their power in ways that are directly threatening our most fundamental liberties and our democracy."
"Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon -- vastly
more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company."
The blame for the outsize influence that Facebook and other digital platforms have over the political discourse, said Lynn, rests
squarely on the shoulders of the antitrust community: "For 200 years in this country, antimonopoly was designed to create freedom
from masters. In 1981, when we got rid of our traditional antimonopoly and replaced it with consumer welfare, we created a system
that has given freedom to master."
In today's concentrated media landscape, he contended, "people live in fear. We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our
newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear
[that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that? It's the people in the antitrust community."
"We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people
who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear [that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that?
It's the people in the antitrust community."
Lynn went on to quote from Thompson and Vogelstein's Wired piece: "The social network is roughly 200 times more valuable
than the Times . And journalists know that the man who owns the farm has the leverage. If Facebook wanted to, it could quietly
turn any number of dials that would harm a publisher -- by manipulating its traffic, its ad network, or its readers."
"This was hidden in the middle of the article," said Lynn. "[Thompson], as a journalist, felt obliged to put this out there He
was crying out to the people in this community, in the antitrust community. He's saying 'protect me, the publisher, the editor of
this magazine. Protect me, the reporter. Please make sure that I have the independence to do my work.'"
The "Code of Silence" Has Been Broken
Recent
changes
to Facebook's newsfeed have caused referral traffic from Facebook to media companies' websites to
sharply decline , once again raising concerns about the significant impact that the company has on the media industry. The satirical
news site The Onion , for instance, has launched a public war against Facebook, calling it "an unwanted interloper between
The Onion and our audience." "We have 6,572,949 followers on Facebook who receive an ever-decreasing amount of the content
we publish on the network," the site's editor-in-chief, Chad Nackers, told
Business Insider .
The
backlash by major news outlets and
politicians across
the
political spectrum against the power of Facebook and other tech platforms as de facto regulators of speech on the Internet is
a new phenomenon, said Guy Rolnik, a Clinical Associate Professor for Strategic Management at the University of Chicago Booth school
of Business, during the panel. Until not too long ago, he said, Internet monopolies were the "darlings of the news media." Less than
a year ago , he noted, Zuckerberg was even
touted
by several media outlets as a viable presidential candidate. "The idea that a person who has unprecedented private control over personal
data and the public discourse at large would also be the president of the United States was totally in the realm and perimeter of
what is legitimate," he said.
What has changed? "In many ways, what has changed is that many people associate Facebook today with the election of Donald Trump.
This is why we see so much focus on those issues that were very salient and important for years," Rolnik maintained. Trump's election,
and Facebook's role in the lead-up to it, broke the "code of silence."
Nevertheless, newsrooms today, he said, still do everything in their power "to make sure that everything is shareable on Facebook."
In the words of Thompson and Vogelstein, they are still "sharecroppers on Facebook's massive industrial farm."
Google has "Politically Hijacked the US Antitrust Enforcement Process"
Scott Cleland, president of the consultancy firm Precursor LLC and former deputy US coordinator for international communications
and information policy in the George HW Bush administration, has long warned that concentration among digital platforms will negatively
impact the US economy and society at large.
In 2007, Cleland testified
before the Senate on the then-proposed Google-DoubleClick merger, calling upon antitrust enforcers to block the merger and warning
that lax antitrust enforcement (of the kind that ultimately led the Google-DoubleClick merger to be approved) would allow Google
to become the "ultimate Internet gatekeeper" and the "online-advertising bottleneck provider picking content winners and losers"
-- both of which came true. In 2011, he published the book Search & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google Inc . , in which he warned readers of Google's surveillance-based business
model and its "unprecedented centralization of power over the world's information."
US antitrust enforcers, he said, were initially "very tough" on Google during the first years of the George W. Bush administration.
Between 2008 and 2012, both the Bush II and Obama administrations brought "strong and consistent antitrust scrutiny and enforcement
to Google." Then, in 2013, the Federal Trade Commission decided to drop its case against the company, despite the
conclusion of its
staff that Google had used anticompetitive tactics. Following Obama's reelection, which Google at the time was credited with delivering,
antitrust enforcement against Big Tech firms essentially ceased. "They shut down all those investigations and they did nothing for
the last five years. DOJ went from very active -- four or five major antitrust actions -- to nothing. Crickets."
Back then, Google and Facebook were still "fiercely competing," he said. Google was going after Facebook's territory with Google
Plus, and Facebook countered by going after Google search with Yahoo and Bing. But then, in 2014, something happened: the large tech
firms "mysteriously stopped competing."
"Yahoo returned to working with Google. Apple dropped Bing for Siri and moved to Google search. Apple and Microsoft dropped their
patent suits, and then Microsoft and Google made peace after scratching each other's eyes out. Google went from 70 percent share
of search and search advertising in the PC market to 95 percent of that in both of those markets today," said Cleland.
What happened? Cleland points to the what he calls the "Google School of No-Antitrust," a narrative with which according to him
Google had been trying to "influence public opinion, the media, elected and government officials, and US and state antitrust enforcers,
to make the public believe Google (and other Internet platforms) have no antitrust risk or liability, because they offer free innovative
products and services, and to make conservatives believe that the Google School of No-Antitrust and the Chicago School's consumer
welfare standard and application are the same, when they are not."
Google, he asserted, "not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to
protect the process of competition." It did so, he argued, by "politically hijacking the most important market, which is information."
"Google not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to protect
the process of competition."
Cleland, who identifies as a free market conservative, argued that the current Internet is far from a free market. "Who thinks
it's a good idea that all of the world's information goes through one bottleneck?" he asked, adding that "all the bad things that
you're seeing right now are the result of policy."
One such policy is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provided Internet companies with legal immunity
for the content their users generated or shared and is
often
credited with enabling the creation of the Internet as we know it today. Cleland sees Section 230 as "market structuring" and
has compared it to the libertarian concept of creating artificial islands outside any governmental territory, known as "
seasteading ."
"Section 230 says -- I'm paraphrasing, but that's what it says -- that US policy recognizes that the Internet is a free market
that should be unfettered by federal and state regulations," said Cleland. "Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They
got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative. What they wanted was a no-government world."
"Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative.
What they wanted was a no-government world."
Much of today's problems regarding the conduct of digital platforms, he said, results from this policy. "Twenty-two years ago,
we as a nation immunized all interactive computer services from any civil liability. We said, 'It is OK. There is no accountability,
no responsibility for you looking the other way, when your platform or things that are going on on your platform harm others.'"
Section 230, he maintained, "basically created 21 st -century robber barons. Those guys know they have the full weight
of the government. If they go to court, they're going to win, and they have almost all the time."
Antitrust Is "One Part of the Answer"
When it comes to addressing these threats to free speech and democratic discourse, said Goodman, antitrust is only "one part of
the answer." The other part, she asserted, is regulation.
"The First Amendment that we have, that we know and love today," she said, "was not born in 1789 in Philadelphia. It developed
in the latter part of the 20th century against a particular set of industrial and social practices that mitigated some of the costs
of free speech and spread the benefits."
Lawmakers and policymakers, she argued, should "retrieve and resuscitate the vocabulary of media policy," focusing on three core
values: "freedom of mind and autonomy; non-market values of diversity and localism/community; and a concept of the public interest
and fiduciary responsibility."
Whenever someone makes an argument for using antitrust or regulation as a way to structure markets of information, Stoller cautioned,
there are those who will argue that this amounts to censorship. When asked how to avoid censorship when discussing the use government
power over speech, Goodman was conflicted: "There is no way around that. There's a real tension here between absolute liberty of
speech and controls on speech," she said. We cannot have this whole conference with us fantasizing about various regulatory possibilities
that involve use restrictions -- limits on the flow of data, limits on the collection of data -- without acknowledging that under
our First Amendment doctrine right now, probably none of that passes muster."
However, Goodman pointed to the Northwest Ordinance as a possible roadmap. "Nobody would say, or maybe they did, that [the Northwest
Ordinance ] was an anti-private property rule. It was structuring the market so that more people could own property. That's what
the history of media regulation in this country has been: structuring speech markets so that more people can speak."
Disclaimer: The ProMarket blog is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts
represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its
faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket
Blog Policy .
Credit:
Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock
The United States has adorned its president with extravagance that makes Roman emperors
appear frugal by comparison. And such visible signs of the deification of our president are complemented by legal
doctrines that echo Richard Nixon's once discredited claim to David Frost: "When the president does it, that means it is
not illegal."
These extra-constitutional developments reflect the transformation
of the United States from a republic, whose glory was liberty and whose rule of law was king, to an empire, whose glory
is global dominion and whose president is law. The Constitution's architects would be shocked to learn that contemporary
presidents play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to any person on the planet deemed a threat to national
security on the basis of secret, untested evidence known only to the White House.
An empire demands a Caesar and blind obedience from its citizens. World leadership
through the global projection of military force cannot be exercised with checks and balances and a separation of powers
that arrests speed and invites debate. Napoleon lectured: "Nothing in war is more important than unity of command .
Better one bad general than two good ones." And Lord Tennyson, saluting the British Empire, versified in
The Charge of the Light Brigade
:
As justice requires the appearance of justice, a Caesar requires the appearance of a
Caesar. Thus is the president protected by platoons of Secret Service agents. The White House, by closing previously
open avenues through the heart of the capital and shielding the president from citizen detractors, has become a castle.
The White House staff has expanded and aggrandized power at the expense of Cabinet officials confirmed with the advice
and consent of the Senate.
Debate, encouraged by the separation of powers, is superfluous where support for
empire is underwritten by the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex, as it is in the United
States. The Republican and Democratic parties are unified behind at least seven ongoing unconstitutional presidential
wars and climbing trillion-dollar national security budgets.
Our warfare state has given birth to subsidiary surveillance, crony capitalism, and a
welfare state. Congress and the judicial branch have become largely sound and fury, signifying nothing. The
Constitution's separation of powers is atrophying.
The life of the law is not justice but genuflections to power. It manufactures
doctrines that honor the power principle that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. When the
configuration of power changes, the law adapts accordingly. The adaptations may not be instantaneous, but they are
inexorable. This is not surprising. Judges are not born like Athena from the head of Zeus. They are selected through a
political process that vets them for compatibility with the views of their political benefactors. Benjamin Cardozo
observed in
The Nature of the Judicial
Process
:
"The great tides and
currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by."
The United States has become the largest and most actively garrisoned empire in
history, built up by World War II and the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union. Our empire has, among other things,
approximately 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, over 240,000 active duty and reserve troops in at least 172
countries and territories
, de facto
or
de jure
commitments to defend 70
countries, and presidential wars as belligerents or co-belligerents in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The president has by necessity become
a Caesar irrespective of whether the occupant of the White House possesses recessive or dominant genes. The law has
adapted accordingly, destroying the Constitution like a wrecking ball.
At present, the president with impunity initiates war in violation of the Declare War
Clause; kills American citizens in violation of the Due Process Clause; engages in indiscriminate surveillance his own
citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment; substitutes executive agreements for treaties to circumvent the
requirements of Senate ratifications by two-thirds majorities in violation of the Treaty Clause; substitutes executive
orders for legislation in violation of Article I, section 1; issues presidential signing statements indistinguishable
from line-item vetoes in violation of the Presentment Clause; wields vast standard-less delegations of legislative
authority in violation of the Constitution's separation of powers; brandishes a state secrets privilege to block
judicial redress for unconstitutional executive action in violation of due process; refuses submission to congressional
oversight in violation of the congressional power of inquiry; and declines to defend defensible duly enacted laws in
violation of the Take Care Clause.
The Constitution will be reborn only if the American people reject their Empire in
favor of a republic where individual liberty is the summum bonum. The odds of that happening are not good.
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission
under President Reagan and counsel to the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. He is a partner in
the law firm of Fein & DelValle PLLC.
"... A Stigler Center panel examines the influence of Big Five tech firms over political discourse and the marketplace of ideas. ..."
"... "Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon -- vastly more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company." ..."
"... "We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear [that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that? It's the people in the antitrust community." ..."
"... "Google not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to protect the process of competition." ..."
"... "Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative. What they wanted was a no-government world." ..."
At one point during Mark Zuckerberg's
Senate hearing in April , the Facebook CEO had the following peculiar exchange with Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC):
Graham: But you, as a company, welcome regulation?
Zuckerberg: I think, if it's the right regulation, then yes.
Graham: You think the Europeans had it right?
Zuckerberg: I think that they get things right.
Graham: . So would you work with us in terms of what regulations you think are necessary in your industry?
Zuckerberg: Absolutely.
Graham: Okay. Would you submit to us some proposed regulations?
Zuckerberg: Yes. And I'll have my team follow up with you so, that way, we can have this discussion across the different
categories where I think that this discussion needs to happen.
Graham: Look forward to it.
This telling bit of dialogue was part of an overall pattern: the hearing was meant to hold Facebook (and Zuckerberg himself, as
the company's founder, CEO, and de facto
single ruler ) accountable for the
mishandling of
millions of people's private data. Yet
one after
another , the senators were asking an evasive Zuckerberg if he would be willing to endorse their bills and proposals to regulate
Facebook. This mode of questioning repeated itself (to a somewhat lesser extent) during the House's
tougher questioning of Zuckerberg the following day.
Needless to say, most company CEOs grilled by Congress following a major scandal that impacts millions of people and possibly
the very nature of
American democracy are not usually treated in this way -- as private regulators almost on equal footing with Congress.
Facebook, however, is not a typical company. As
a recent Vox piece noted, with its vast reach of more than two billion users worldwide, Facebook is more akin to
a government or a "powerful sovereign," with Zuckerberg -- due to his unusual level of control over it -- being the "key lawgiver."
Zuckerberg acknowledged as much himself when he said, in a
much-quoted moment of candor
, that "in a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company." More than other technology companies,
he added, Facebook is "really setting policies."
The notion that corporations can become so powerful that they are able to act as a "form of private government" (to quote
Zephyr Teachout )
has long been part of the antitrust literature. Indeed, as the Open Market Institute's Barry Lynn and Matt Stoller recently noted
during a panel at the Stigler Center's Digital Platforms and Concentration antitrust conference, it is deeply rooted in the
rich tradition of antimonopoly
in America.
That digital platforms are major political
players has also been
well documented
.
Once disdainful of politics, in the past two years Google, Facebook, and Amazon have dramatically ramped up their lobbying efforts,
as the public and media backlash against their social, economic, and political power intensified. Google, which enjoyed
unprecedented access to the Obama White House, is now the
biggest lobbyist in Washington, with other tech platforms not far behind.
Market power begetting political power is
not new in itself. As the participants
of the Stigler panel noted, it is the immense power
that concentrated digital intermediaries like Google and Facebook wield over digital markets, human interaction and the marketplace
of ideas, particularly when it comes to the distribution of political information, that presents a unique challenge. As Lina Khan
(also of Open Markets)
recently
noted , the current landscape of Internet media is one in which a handful of companies "are basically acting as private regulators,
as private governments, over the dissemination and organization of information in a way that is totally unchecked by the public."
The latter part, at least, seems to be changing rapidly, as Americans (and millions more worldwide) grapple with
ongoing revelations showing the profound
impact that digital monopolies have on political opinions and outcomes, in the US and across the world. As Congressman John Sarbanes
(D-MD) said during Zuckerberg's House hearing
in April: "Facebook is becoming a self-regulated superstructure for political discourse."
Left to right: Scott Cleland, Ellen Goodman, Matt Stoller, Barry Lynn, Guy Rolnik
The exact nature of tech platforms' political power, its roots, and how to best deal with it -- all questions debated during the
Stigler Center panel -- are complex and varied. But the key question seems rather simple. As Sarbanes put it during the same Congressional
hearing: "Are we, the people, going to regulate our political dialogue, or are you, Mark Zuckerberg, going to end up regulating the
political discourse? ״
A Private Regulator of Speech
Facebook, said Rutgers Law School professor Ellen Goodman, operates as a private speech regulator. As such, much like public governments,
it "privileges some [forms of] speech over others." Unlike governments, however, which as regulators of speech purport to support
public good, Facebook has adopted a "First Amendment-like radical libertarianism" through which it has so far refused to differentiate
between "high- and low-quality information, truth or falsity, responsible and irresponsible press."
Facebook, famously, argues that it is not a media company, but a technology company. "It's not a player, it's not a [referee],
it's just the engineer who made the field," said Goodman, the co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law.
The purpose of Facebook's "First Amendment rhetoric," she noted, is "to maximize data flow on its platform," but by doing so, "it
implies, or even says explicitly, that it's standing in the shoes of the government."
Facebook and other platforms, said Goodman, have benefited from the process of deregulation and budget cuts to public media --
a process that has predated the Internet, and led to Washington essentially "giving up" on media policy. The government effectively
"exempted these platforms from the kind of ordinary regulation that other information intermediaries were subjected to." With "platforms
in the shoes of government, [and] government out of media policy," the concentration of platform power over information flows was
allowed to continue undisturbed.
The problem, however, is that much like fellow FAANGs Amazon and Google, Facebook is not just an impartial governor, but a market
participant interested in "monopolizing the time of its users," with a strong incentive to privilege its own products and business
model that "eviscerates journalism."
"It also tunes its algorithm to favor certain kinds of speech and certain speakers," added Goodman. "There's almost no transparency,
save for what it selectively, elliptically, and sometimes misleadingly posts on its blog."
"People Live in Fear"
In a seminal
1979 essay on what he termed the "political content" of antitrust, former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky argued that "political
values," such as "the fear that excessive concentration of economic power will foster anti-democratic political pressures," should
be incorporated into antitrust enforcement. In recent years, this view has been
echoed by a
growing number of
antitrust scholars
, who argue that the way antitrust enforcement has been conducted in the US for the past 40 years -- solely through the prism of
"consumer welfare" -- is ill equipped to deal with the new
threats posed by digital platforms.
The Unites States, remarked Lynn during the panel, was born "out of rebellion against concentrated power, the British East India
Company." The original purpose of antimonopoly in America, said Lynn, was the protection of personal liberty from concentrated economic
and political power: "to give everybody the ability to manage their own property in the ways that they see fit, manage their own
lives in the way that they see fit. To be truly independent of everybody else. To not be anybody else's puppet." Liberty and democracy,
he added, "are functions of antimonopoly."
A state in which Facebook and Google wield enormous influence over the flow of information -- where, to quote
a recent piece by Wired
's Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, "every publisher knows that, at best, they are sharecroppers on Facebook's massive
industrial farm" -- is antithetical to this ethos, said Lynn, and is firmly rooted in the "absolute, complete failure" of antitrust
in the United States. "Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon
-- vastly more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company." These digital
intermediaries, he added, are "using their power in ways that are directly threatening our most fundamental liberties and our democracy."
"Our country has allowed the concentration of power in giant intermediaries -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon -- vastly
more powerful than the original intermediary which we fought, which was the British East India Company."
The blame for the outsize influence that Facebook and other digital platforms have over the political discourse, said Lynn, rests
squarely on the shoulders of the antitrust community: "For 200 years in this country, antimonopoly was designed to create freedom
from masters. In 1981, when we got rid of our traditional antimonopoly and replaced it with consumer welfare, we created a system
that has given freedom to master."
In today's concentrated media landscape, he contended, "people live in fear. We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our
newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear
[that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that? It's the people in the antitrust community."
"We have reporters, editors, and publishers of our newspapers who live in fear every day. This is true of the people
who publish our books and who write our books. They live in fear [that] Amazon is going to shut them down. Whose fault is that?
It's the people in the antitrust community."
Lynn went on to quote from Thompson and Vogelstein's Wired piece: "The social network is roughly 200 times more valuable
than the Times . And journalists know that the man who owns the farm has the leverage. If Facebook wanted to, it could quietly
turn any number of dials that would harm a publisher -- by manipulating its traffic, its ad network, or its readers."
"This was hidden in the middle of the article," said Lynn. "[Thompson], as a journalist, felt obliged to put this out there He
was crying out to the people in this community, in the antitrust community. He's saying 'protect me, the publisher, the editor of
this magazine. Protect me, the reporter. Please make sure that I have the independence to do my work.'"
The "Code of Silence" Has Been Broken
Recent
changes
to Facebook's newsfeed have caused referral traffic from Facebook to media companies' websites to
sharply decline , once again raising concerns about the significant impact that the company has on the media industry. The satirical
news site The Onion , for instance, has launched a public war against Facebook, calling it "an unwanted interloper between
The Onion and our audience." "We have 6,572,949 followers on Facebook who receive an ever-decreasing amount of the content
we publish on the network," the site's editor-in-chief, Chad Nackers, told
Business Insider .
The
backlash by major news outlets and
politicians across
the
political spectrum against the power of Facebook and other tech platforms as de facto regulators of speech on the Internet is
a new phenomenon, said Guy Rolnik, a Clinical Associate Professor for Strategic Management at the University of Chicago Booth school
of Business, during the panel. Until not too long ago, he said, Internet monopolies were the "darlings of the news media." Less than
a year ago , he noted, Zuckerberg was even
touted
by several media outlets as a viable presidential candidate. "The idea that a person who has unprecedented private control over personal
data and the public discourse at large would also be the president of the United States was totally in the realm and perimeter of
what is legitimate," he said.
What has changed? "In many ways, what has changed is that many people associate Facebook today with the election of Donald Trump.
This is why we see so much focus on those issues that were very salient and important for years," Rolnik maintained. Trump's election,
and Facebook's role in the lead-up to it, broke the "code of silence."
Nevertheless, newsrooms today, he said, still do everything in their power "to make sure that everything is shareable on Facebook."
In the words of Thompson and Vogelstein, they are still "sharecroppers on Facebook's massive industrial farm."
Google has "Politically Hijacked the US Antitrust Enforcement Process"
Scott Cleland, president of the consultancy firm Precursor LLC and former deputy US coordinator for international communications
and information policy in the George HW Bush administration, has long warned that concentration among digital platforms will negatively
impact the US economy and society at large.
In 2007, Cleland testified
before the Senate on the then-proposed Google-DoubleClick merger, calling upon antitrust enforcers to block the merger and warning
that lax antitrust enforcement (of the kind that ultimately led the Google-DoubleClick merger to be approved) would allow Google
to become the "ultimate Internet gatekeeper" and the "online-advertising bottleneck provider picking content winners and losers"
-- both of which came true. In 2011, he published the book Search & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google Inc . , in which he warned readers of Google's surveillance-based business
model and its "unprecedented centralization of power over the world's information."
US antitrust enforcers, he said, were initially "very tough" on Google during the first years of the George W. Bush administration.
Between 2008 and 2012, both the Bush II and Obama administrations brought "strong and consistent antitrust scrutiny and enforcement
to Google." Then, in 2013, the Federal Trade Commission decided to drop its case against the company, despite the
conclusion of its
staff that Google had used anticompetitive tactics. Following Obama's reelection, which Google at the time was credited with delivering,
antitrust enforcement against Big Tech firms essentially ceased. "They shut down all those investigations and they did nothing for
the last five years. DOJ went from very active -- four or five major antitrust actions -- to nothing. Crickets."
Back then, Google and Facebook were still "fiercely competing," he said. Google was going after Facebook's territory with Google
Plus, and Facebook countered by going after Google search with Yahoo and Bing. But then, in 2014, something happened: the large tech
firms "mysteriously stopped competing."
"Yahoo returned to working with Google. Apple dropped Bing for Siri and moved to Google search. Apple and Microsoft dropped their
patent suits, and then Microsoft and Google made peace after scratching each other's eyes out. Google went from 70 percent share
of search and search advertising in the PC market to 95 percent of that in both of those markets today," said Cleland.
What happened? Cleland points to the what he calls the "Google School of No-Antitrust," a narrative with which according to him
Google had been trying to "influence public opinion, the media, elected and government officials, and US and state antitrust enforcers,
to make the public believe Google (and other Internet platforms) have no antitrust risk or liability, because they offer free innovative
products and services, and to make conservatives believe that the Google School of No-Antitrust and the Chicago School's consumer
welfare standard and application are the same, when they are not."
Google, he asserted, "not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to
protect the process of competition." It did so, he argued, by "politically hijacking the most important market, which is information."
"Google not only vanquished competition. What it did is it vanquished the antitrust enforcers who are supposed to protect
the process of competition."
Cleland, who identifies as a free market conservative, argued that the current Internet is far from a free market. "Who thinks
it's a good idea that all of the world's information goes through one bottleneck?" he asked, adding that "all the bad things that
you're seeing right now are the result of policy."
One such policy is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provided Internet companies with legal immunity
for the content their users generated or shared and is
often
credited with enabling the creation of the Internet as we know it today. Cleland sees Section 230 as "market structuring" and
has compared it to the libertarian concept of creating artificial islands outside any governmental territory, known as "
seasteading ."
"Section 230 says -- I'm paraphrasing, but that's what it says -- that US policy recognizes that the Internet is a free market
that should be unfettered by federal and state regulations," said Cleland. "Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They
got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative. What they wanted was a no-government world."
"Basically, Section 230 was a libertarian's dream. They got what they wanted. I am a limited government conservative.
What they wanted was a no-government world."
Much of today's problems regarding the conduct of digital platforms, he said, results from this policy. "Twenty-two years ago,
we as a nation immunized all interactive computer services from any civil liability. We said, 'It is OK. There is no accountability,
no responsibility for you looking the other way, when your platform or things that are going on on your platform harm others.'"
Section 230, he maintained, "basically created 21 st -century robber barons. Those guys know they have the full weight
of the government. If they go to court, they're going to win, and they have almost all the time."
Antitrust Is "One Part of the Answer"
When it comes to addressing these threats to free speech and democratic discourse, said Goodman, antitrust is only "one part of
the answer." The other part, she asserted, is regulation.
"The First Amendment that we have, that we know and love today," she said, "was not born in 1789 in Philadelphia. It developed
in the latter part of the 20th century against a particular set of industrial and social practices that mitigated some of the costs
of free speech and spread the benefits."
Lawmakers and policymakers, she argued, should "retrieve and resuscitate the vocabulary of media policy," focusing on three core
values: "freedom of mind and autonomy; non-market values of diversity and localism/community; and a concept of the public interest
and fiduciary responsibility."
Whenever someone makes an argument for using antitrust or regulation as a way to structure markets of information, Stoller cautioned,
there are those who will argue that this amounts to censorship. When asked how to avoid censorship when discussing the use government
power over speech, Goodman was conflicted: "There is no way around that. There's a real tension here between absolute liberty of
speech and controls on speech," she said. We cannot have this whole conference with us fantasizing about various regulatory possibilities
that involve use restrictions -- limits on the flow of data, limits on the collection of data -- without acknowledging that under
our First Amendment doctrine right now, probably none of that passes muster."
However, Goodman pointed to the Northwest Ordinance as a possible roadmap. "Nobody would say, or maybe they did, that [the Northwest
Ordinance ] was an anti-private property rule. It was structuring the market so that more people could own property. That's what
the history of media regulation in this country has been: structuring speech markets so that more people can speak."
Disclaimer: The ProMarket blog is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts
represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its
faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket
Blog Policy .
Anthropologist David Vine spent several years visiting and investigating U.S military bases
abroad. To put it mildly, he disapproves of what he found. In his sweeping critique, Base
Nation , Vine concludes that Washington's extensive network of foreign bases -- he claims
there are about 800 of them -- causes friction with erstwhile American allies, costs way too
much money, underwrites dictatorships, pollutes the environment, and morally compromises the
country. Far from providing an important strategic deterrent, the bases actually undermine our
security. To remedy this immense travesty, Vine calls for Washington to bring the troops back
home.
If nothing else, Base Nation is a timely book. The issue of our expensive foreign
commitments has taken center stage in this presidential election. Vine probably finds it ironic
that most of the criticism is coming from Donald Trump.
Our extensive foreign-base network is probably an issue that we can't ignore for long.
Today, there seems more urgency to look at these long-term base commitments and examine what we
are really getting out of them. So, for raising the issue, I say, "Thank you for your service,
Mr. Vine."
But it is a shame that Base Nation , which could have made a strong contribution to
this debate, ends up making a heavy-handed and somewhat unreliable case against and the U.S.
military and U.S. foreign policy in general. His sweeping indictments detract from the
importance of his initial focus, our overextended base network.
There are some positives. Vine stands on firm ground when he details how inefficient the
base system often is. In fact, this is an issue that the federal government has been
addressing, albeit slowly and haltingly. Budget realities are solving the problem; many bases
are being shuttered and their functions consolidated into others. Vine thinks that overseas
bases cost us at least $71 billion a year; maybe closer to $100-200 billion. In one of the more
persuasive sections of the book, he explains how he made these calculations, which follow to
some extent an important 2013 study from the RAND Corporation. That it is difficult coming up
with any precise figures on overseas base spending suggests that we probably need to take a
harder look at how taxpayer money is being used.
Likewise, Vine raises valid criticisms about how many bases were constructed by either
displacing native populations, as the British did for our benefit at the Indian Ocean atoll
Diego Garcia, or by marginalizing the locals, as we allegedly have done at Okinawa in Japan. He
highlights the environmental damage done by U.S. military ordnance, although I think it unfair
that he ignores the more scrupulous attendance to the environment that we find in today's armed
forces. And Vine is right that having many young and bored men based far from home probably
doesn't elevate the morals of the local, host population.
But Vine simply fails to persuade in other parts of his critique. His fundamental distrust
of the military leads him to accept unquestioningly every dubious charge against it. He also
tends to be less than discriminating in some of his sourcing and characterization of events.
These problems undermine the overall credibility of his reporting.
Part of the problem with Base Nation is definitional. Vine's definition of a base --
"any place, facility or installation used regularly for military purposes, of any kind" -- is
far too broad. Even temporary assignments with host governments get defined as "bases." This
leads him to estimate that there are at minimum 686 bases, with 800 being "a good estimate."
Why the need to inflate the numbers?
Vine's foreign-base maps, though compelling to look at, appear a bit suspect in light of his
expanded definition. What's that big star in Greenland? That's Thule Air Station, a Danish
base, where we have about 100 personnel. And the other one in Ascension Island? That's a small
satellite-monitoring station, run by the British. What's that dot in Cairo? Oh, it's a
medical-research facility. These are hardly the footprints of overweening imperialism.
Likewise, he identifies many bases in Africa. To debunk the official position that we have
one permanent base there -- in Djibouti, rented from the French -- plus a few drone sites, Vine
relies on dodgy research from Nick Turse, a noted anti-military critic who thinks that the
Pentagon runs a hidden African empire.
Along similar lines, Vine believes the U.S. maintains an extensive, secret base system in
Latin America. We have one permanent base in the region, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay (GTMO). Once all
the al-Qaeda prisoners are gone, GTMO's main function will return to fleet training and
disaster response for the Caribbean. In addition, we have one arrangement in Soto Cano Air
Field in Honduras, which hosts a squadron of helicopters engaged in counternarcotic operations.
How does this base destabilize Central America, as Vine suggests? You got me.
Soto Cano is featured in one of the more tendentious chapters, which reveals Vine's method.
In discussing the base, he strongly suggests the U.S. military there conspired with the
Honduran Army during the "coup" against President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. He quotes a local
activist insisting the U.S. was behind the coup, and then leaves it at that. In fact, the U.S.
government firmly opposed removing the anti-American Zelaya, slapped sanctions on Honduras, and
negotiated for months to have Zelaya brought back into Honduras. Suggesting the U.S. military
backed the coup is, well, baseless.
Many of Vine's scattershot charges are of a similar nature. He accuses the U.S. Navy of
being in bed with the mob in Naples because, allegedly, it rents housing from landlords who may
have mob connections. He blames the military for the red-light districts around foreign bases,
like in South Korea, as if it directly created them. In another context, he claims, based on
one professor's opinion, that the U.S. Naval Academy fosters a rampant rape culture, and so
on.
Toward the end of the book, Vine challenges those who believe the bases are providing
valuable deterrence to "prove it." I'm not sure I can prove it to his satisfaction, but
regarding Korean-peninsula security, some experts point to our strong presence there as
deterring both sides from overreacting. And regarding Iraq, it seems evident that leaving
without any U.S. military presence destabilized the country. Many of our operations with
foreign militaries in Africa, Latin America, and southeast Asia have a strong humanitarian
focus. It is disconcerting that he dedicates no space to these important, stabilizing missions
that are often enabled by our forward base deployment.
But Vine never demonstrates his main point: that the bases themselves are destabilizing. The
countries with our largest base presence -- Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Japan -- are all
prosperous, peaceful democracies. As for the local protests at our foreign military bases that
occasionally happen, these seem no more problematic than what occurs, certainly more often, at
our many embassies abroad. Should we withdraw our diplomatic missions too?
As for bases destabilizing the developing world, Vine overplays the U.S.-imperialism angle
and fails to appreciate how much control even a weaker government has over its own sovereignty.
Little Honduras could kick us out of Soto Cano tomorrow; we have an agreement that could end at
any time. Ecuador refused to renew our lease at Manta Air Base in 2008; we left without much
fuss. The Philippines in 1992 changed its constitution to prohibit foreign bases, forcing us to
leave Subic Bay. Now Manila, feeling threatened by China over the South China Sea island
disputes, is inviting us back. The Filipinos mustn't feel our presence too destabilizing.
Given Vine's criticism of our large base footprint, you would think he'd approve of the
Pentagon's recent plans on lowering its profile with its "lily pad" strategy -- bilaterally
negotiated, pre-staged locations that might enable a future deployment. Surely this approach
would alleviate the problems of the large, permanent bases Vine so painstakingly sights? But,
somewhat illogically, he objects to this "light footprint" approach as a new sign of
encroaching imperialism, not of gradual U.S. realignment and withdrawal.
Even if he doesn't make a strong case in Base Nation , in the long run, Vine probably
will get his wish. It is hard to imagine that an extensive military base network in Europe and
East Asia, the outcome of our victory in World War II and justified by Cold War strategy, will
still make sense a few decades down the road. Changes are already in the wind. A new strategy
for U.S. foreign policy and military power projection will doubtless be shaped largely by
budget exigencies and shifts in our allies' regional security priorities.
Michael J. Ard, a former naval officer and U.S. government analyst, works in the
security field and lectures on international security at Rice University.
Our critic seems to have some serious cognitive dissonance going on in his avoidance of
recognizing the imperial project that undergirds circling the world with U.S. military power
projection.
Fran Macadam is right. The bases and the problems they create are incidental to the policy
that engendered. Our nation went from a policy of intermittent imperialism after 1898 to one
of permanent imperialism after 1941.
Unless we ditch the empire and return to our correct status as an independent republic, we
will suffer the fate of all previous empires.
If we grant that our global commitments are burdensome, why not take the argument in a
reasonable direction. As we remember from the days of BRAC, closing bases is like pulling eye
teeth, so let's focus on narrowing this argument down to what may be feasible: End NATO,
remove our unwelcome forces from the Middle East, and shutter the bases where we're not
wanted (e.g. AFRICOM, Okinawa) and where leases are due to expire. We need to walk our
projection back from the borders of China & Russia. Even a minimal plan of this sort
would require a decade to accomplish. Ultimately we need a master, strategic foreign policy
vision that walks back our global projection this debate goes nowhere without that.
Unfortunately neither GOP or Democrat parties offer this vision. No need to wring our hands
over a "Close All the Bases" debate until we're back to Constitutional governance and foreign
policy, and are rid of the military-industrial complex. And the odds of that are ?
Our Founding Fathers never wanted or would have allowed foreign military bases. Thomas
Jefferson was adamantly opposed to building a navy but John Adams built a navy and Jefferson
used it to stop muslim barbarians from enslaving the crews of US merchant ships.
I cannot fathom why the US needs basis throughout the world. Id much rather have a strong
Philipines, Japan and Taiwan for us to partner with than vassal states that spend nothing for
their own defense and put the entire burden the their alliance on the US. How many shades is
that from colonialism or parasitism? Not that far in my book.
Europe is a fine example of parasitism. Today Europe expects its protector to be the US,
it has shifted all its resources to social programs and as a result it cannot even defend its
borders from unarmed migrants much less from a hostile aggressor.
So what is the strategy to contain Russia and China by being in Central Asia, to contain
Europe by constraining it with NATO, to constrain Asia via China, Japan, Philipines, Vietnam,
etc.
Im not a fan. The US is spending so much money maintaining these military alliances and
using US money and jobs to bribe compliance that our nation is going bankrupt and our
infrastructure is 3rd world. If these truly are competitor nations the wiser approach would
be to have a strong 1st world infrastructure, a strong economy, strong education and
employment and expansion into Mexico, Central America and South America. Nowhere else in the
world is a nation capable of dominating an entire continent from aggressor competing nations.
Nowhere else in the world is a nation capable of dominating an entire portion of the globe.
Instead of growing North, Central and South America we are constraining the rest of the
globe. Not only is this fiscally irresponsible but one can only shake a bottle of champagne
for so long and expect the bottle to constrain the carbonation. Eventually the cork will pop
and the declining debtor power will be brought down to size with years of animous for holding
others back.
" causes friction with erstwhile American allies, costs way too much money, underwrites
dictatorships, pollutes the environment, and morally compromises the country."
Nowhere in this article is there mention of what I would hope to be the primary purpose of
a forward base.
Does it truly help the US military defend the US (and I would include projections of power
that deter bad actors)?
If yes, then sod off to the wanker David Vine
Our elites run roughshod over other peoples, and the American people can't constrain them
either. At least we know who the "real" Americans are. L'etat, it is them.
It shouldn't be a surprise that others piggyback on our defense spending. Why would they not?
From our point of view, who pays, says, and since we insist on saying wherever we can, we've
got to pay.
I have frequently wondered how costs of this sort of thing are calculated. Do the taxes
military families pay get deducted from the cost? Given at least some of them would be
unemployed in today's economy, do benefits they would have get deducted? Does the money they
spend in local economies in the US when not deployed get factored in some way? What about the
taxes the corporations which provide goods and services to the military pay, and that their
employees pay? It would seem almost impossible to arrive at an accurate cost figure.
"Does it truly help the US military defend the US (and I would include projections of power
that deter bad actors)?
If yes, then sod off to the wanker David Vine"
Using that logic, you wouldn't mind Russia or China setting up a military base in Mexico
or Cuba to deter the US (a proven 'bad actor') right??
Anthropologist David Vine spent several years visiting and investigating U.S military bases
abroad. To put it mildly, he disapproves of what he found. In his sweeping critique, Base
Nation , Vine concludes that Washington's extensive network of foreign bases -- he claims
there are about 800 of them -- causes friction with erstwhile American allies, costs way too
much money, underwrites dictatorships, pollutes the environment, and morally compromises the
country. Far from providing an important strategic deterrent, the bases actually undermine our
security. To remedy this immense travesty, Vine calls for Washington to bring the troops back
home.
If nothing else, Base Nation is a timely book. The issue of our expensive foreign
commitments has taken center stage in this presidential election. Vine probably finds it ironic
that most of the criticism is coming from Donald Trump.
Our extensive foreign-base network is probably an issue that we can't ignore for long.
Today, there seems more urgency to look at these long-term base commitments and examine what we
are really getting out of them. So, for raising the issue, I say, "Thank you for your service,
Mr. Vine."
But it is a shame that Base Nation , which could have made a strong contribution to
this debate, ends up making a heavy-handed and somewhat unreliable case against and the U.S.
military and U.S. foreign policy in general. His sweeping indictments detract from the
importance of his initial focus, our overextended base network.
There are some positives. Vine stands on firm ground when he details how inefficient the
base system often is. In fact, this is an issue that the federal government has been
addressing, albeit slowly and haltingly. Budget realities are solving the problem; many bases
are being shuttered and their functions consolidated into others. Vine thinks that overseas
bases cost us at least $71 billion a year; maybe closer to $100-200 billion. In one of the more
persuasive sections of the book, he explains how he made these calculations, which follow to
some extent an important 2013 study from the RAND Corporation. That it is difficult coming up
with any precise figures on overseas base spending suggests that we probably need to take a
harder look at how taxpayer money is being used.
Likewise, Vine raises valid criticisms about how many bases were constructed by either
displacing native populations, as the British did for our benefit at the Indian Ocean atoll
Diego Garcia, or by marginalizing the locals, as we allegedly have done at Okinawa in Japan. He
highlights the environmental damage done by U.S. military ordnance, although I think it unfair
that he ignores the more scrupulous attendance to the environment that we find in today's armed
forces. And Vine is right that having many young and bored men based far from home probably
doesn't elevate the morals of the local, host population.
But Vine simply fails to persuade in other parts of his critique. His fundamental distrust
of the military leads him to accept unquestioningly every dubious charge against it. He also
tends to be less than discriminating in some of his sourcing and characterization of events.
These problems undermine the overall credibility of his reporting.
Part of the problem with Base Nation is definitional. Vine's definition of a base --
"any place, facility or installation used regularly for military purposes, of any kind" -- is
far too broad. Even temporary assignments with host governments get defined as "bases." This
leads him to estimate that there are at minimum 686 bases, with 800 being "a good estimate."
Why the need to inflate the numbers?
Vine's foreign-base maps, though compelling to look at, appear a bit suspect in light of his
expanded definition. What's that big star in Greenland? That's Thule Air Station, a Danish
base, where we have about 100 personnel. And the other one in Ascension Island? That's a small
satellite-monitoring station, run by the British. What's that dot in Cairo? Oh, it's a
medical-research facility. These are hardly the footprints of overweening imperialism.
Likewise, he identifies many bases in Africa. To debunk the official position that we have
one permanent base there -- in Djibouti, rented from the French -- plus a few drone sites, Vine
relies on dodgy research from Nick Turse, a noted anti-military critic who thinks that the
Pentagon runs a hidden African empire.
Along similar lines, Vine believes the U.S. maintains an extensive, secret base system in
Latin America. We have one permanent base in the region, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay (GTMO). Once all
the al-Qaeda prisoners are gone, GTMO's main function will return to fleet training and
disaster response for the Caribbean. In addition, we have one arrangement in Soto Cano Air
Field in Honduras, which hosts a squadron of helicopters engaged in counternarcotic operations.
How does this base destabilize Central America, as Vine suggests? You got me.
Soto Cano is featured in one of the more tendentious chapters, which reveals Vine's method.
In discussing the base, he strongly suggests the U.S. military there conspired with the
Honduran Army during the "coup" against President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. He quotes a local
activist insisting the U.S. was behind the coup, and then leaves it at that. In fact, the U.S.
government firmly opposed removing the anti-American Zelaya, slapped sanctions on Honduras, and
negotiated for months to have Zelaya brought back into Honduras. Suggesting the U.S. military
backed the coup is, well, baseless.
Many of Vine's scattershot charges are of a similar nature. He accuses the U.S. Navy of
being in bed with the mob in Naples because, allegedly, it rents housing from landlords who may
have mob connections. He blames the military for the red-light districts around foreign bases,
like in South Korea, as if it directly created them. In another context, he claims, based on
one professor's opinion, that the U.S. Naval Academy fosters a rampant rape culture, and so
on.
Toward the end of the book, Vine challenges those who believe the bases are providing
valuable deterrence to "prove it." I'm not sure I can prove it to his satisfaction, but
regarding Korean-peninsula security, some experts point to our strong presence there as
deterring both sides from overreacting. And regarding Iraq, it seems evident that leaving
without any U.S. military presence destabilized the country. Many of our operations with
foreign militaries in Africa, Latin America, and southeast Asia have a strong humanitarian
focus. It is disconcerting that he dedicates no space to these important, stabilizing missions
that are often enabled by our forward base deployment.
But Vine never demonstrates his main point: that the bases themselves are destabilizing. The
countries with our largest base presence -- Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Japan -- are all
prosperous, peaceful democracies. As for the local protests at our foreign military bases that
occasionally happen, these seem no more problematic than what occurs, certainly more often, at
our many embassies abroad. Should we withdraw our diplomatic missions too?
As for bases destabilizing the developing world, Vine overplays the U.S.-imperialism angle
and fails to appreciate how much control even a weaker government has over its own sovereignty.
Little Honduras could kick us out of Soto Cano tomorrow; we have an agreement that could end at
any time. Ecuador refused to renew our lease at Manta Air Base in 2008; we left without much
fuss. The Philippines in 1992 changed its constitution to prohibit foreign bases, forcing us to
leave Subic Bay. Now Manila, feeling threatened by China over the South China Sea island
disputes, is inviting us back. The Filipinos mustn't feel our presence too destabilizing.
Given Vine's criticism of our large base footprint, you would think he'd approve of the
Pentagon's recent plans on lowering its profile with its "lily pad" strategy -- bilaterally
negotiated, pre-staged locations that might enable a future deployment. Surely this approach
would alleviate the problems of the large, permanent bases Vine so painstakingly sights? But,
somewhat illogically, he objects to this "light footprint" approach as a new sign of
encroaching imperialism, not of gradual U.S. realignment and withdrawal.
Even if he doesn't make a strong case in Base Nation , in the long run, Vine probably
will get his wish. It is hard to imagine that an extensive military base network in Europe and
East Asia, the outcome of our victory in World War II and justified by Cold War strategy, will
still make sense a few decades down the road. Changes are already in the wind. A new strategy
for U.S. foreign policy and military power projection will doubtless be shaped largely by
budget exigencies and shifts in our allies' regional security priorities.
Michael J. Ard, a former naval officer and U.S. government analyst, works in the
security field and lectures on international security at Rice University.
Our critic seems to have some serious cognitive dissonance going on in his avoidance of
recognizing the imperial project that undergirds circling the world with U.S. military power
projection.
Fran Macadam is right. The bases and the problems they create are incidental to the policy
that engendered. Our nation went from a policy of intermittent imperialism after 1898 to one
of permanent imperialism after 1941.
Unless we ditch the empire and return to our correct status as an independent republic, we
will suffer the fate of all previous empires.
If we grant that our global commitments are burdensome, why not take the argument in a
reasonable direction. As we remember from the days of BRAC, closing bases is like pulling eye
teeth, so let's focus on narrowing this argument down to what may be feasible: End NATO,
remove our unwelcome forces from the Middle East, and shutter the bases where we're not
wanted (e.g. AFRICOM, Okinawa) and where leases are due to expire. We need to walk our
projection back from the borders of China & Russia. Even a minimal plan of this sort
would require a decade to accomplish. Ultimately we need a master, strategic foreign policy
vision that walks back our global projection this debate goes nowhere without that.
Unfortunately neither GOP or Democrat parties offer this vision. No need to wring our hands
over a "Close All the Bases" debate until we're back to Constitutional governance and foreign
policy, and are rid of the military-industrial complex. And the odds of that are ?
Our Founding Fathers never wanted or would have allowed foreign military bases. Thomas
Jefferson was adamantly opposed to building a navy but John Adams built a navy and Jefferson
used it to stop muslim barbarians from enslaving the crews of US merchant ships.
I cannot fathom why the US needs basis throughout the world. Id much rather have a strong
Philipines, Japan and Taiwan for us to partner with than vassal states that spend nothing for
their own defense and put the entire burden the their alliance on the US. How many shades is
that from colonialism or parasitism? Not that far in my book.
Europe is a fine example of parasitism. Today Europe expects its protector to be the US,
it has shifted all its resources to social programs and as a result it cannot even defend its
borders from unarmed migrants much less from a hostile aggressor.
So what is the strategy to contain Russia and China by being in Central Asia, to contain
Europe by constraining it with NATO, to constrain Asia via China, Japan, Philipines, Vietnam,
etc.
Im not a fan. The US is spending so much money maintaining these military alliances and
using US money and jobs to bribe compliance that our nation is going bankrupt and our
infrastructure is 3rd world. If these truly are competitor nations the wiser approach would
be to have a strong 1st world infrastructure, a strong economy, strong education and
employment and expansion into Mexico, Central America and South America. Nowhere else in the
world is a nation capable of dominating an entire continent from aggressor competing nations.
Nowhere else in the world is a nation capable of dominating an entire portion of the globe.
Instead of growing North, Central and South America we are constraining the rest of the
globe. Not only is this fiscally irresponsible but one can only shake a bottle of champagne
for so long and expect the bottle to constrain the carbonation. Eventually the cork will pop
and the declining debtor power will be brought down to size with years of animous for holding
others back.
" causes friction with erstwhile American allies, costs way too much money, underwrites
dictatorships, pollutes the environment, and morally compromises the country."
Nowhere in this article is there mention of what I would hope to be the primary purpose of
a forward base.
Does it truly help the US military defend the US (and I would include projections of power
that deter bad actors)?
If yes, then sod off to the wanker David Vine
Our elites run roughshod over other peoples, and the American people can't constrain them
either. At least we know who the "real" Americans are. L'etat, it is them.
It shouldn't be a surprise that others piggyback on our defense spending. Why would they not?
From our point of view, who pays, says, and since we insist on saying wherever we can, we've
got to pay.
I have frequently wondered how costs of this sort of thing are calculated. Do the taxes
military families pay get deducted from the cost? Given at least some of them would be
unemployed in today's economy, do benefits they would have get deducted? Does the money they
spend in local economies in the US when not deployed get factored in some way? What about the
taxes the corporations which provide goods and services to the military pay, and that their
employees pay? It would seem almost impossible to arrive at an accurate cost figure.
"Does it truly help the US military defend the US (and I would include projections of power
that deter bad actors)?
If yes, then sod off to the wanker David Vine"
Using that logic, you wouldn't mind Russia or China setting up a military base in Mexico
or Cuba to deter the US (a proven 'bad actor') right??
Pertaining to your question about evidence of CIA and other deep state forces using cash
from illicit drug sales, b, if you have time check out a wiked documentary series called
"Cocaine Cowboys".
The first is a glimpse into how things got started in Miami, and is more of entertainment
value than anything else. The second, however, describes exactly how the CIA introduced and
established a massive crack cocaine market in California. It has a lot to do with the Ollie
North "Iran Contra affair", and how the CIA was allowed to circumvent the traditional begathon
for money from congress.
In fact back in the day it was public knowledge. Only congress remained blind.
Our joint favorite reporter, who passed away recently, wrote about it extensively. God bless
Parry. W. Bush pardoned Ollie North, by the way. I am always blown away by the fact these
assholes keep straight faces.
"... The attributions of attacks to countries are very shaky. Throw in a couple of Cyrillic letters and voilà, you have associated a certain IP address or a certain piece of code with Russia. Somehow these simpleton arguments are uncritically accepted as proofs by computer security professionals the world over, who, of all people, really should know better. It's as if all the supposedly smart cryptographers and programmers are completely oblivious to the concept of manipulation. ..."
Could someone remind me the amount of country's America have invaded since the last world war
30 - 40 , I here'd. Compared to Russia 5-8 ? Russia is in Syria by invitation to deal with
rebels/terrorist's .America is now threatening both. Despite being there to attempt a regime
change. Just who do they think they are ? The sooner they are stopped the better and the
easier.
Russia intervened nowhere; the USSR intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In 1993,
Yeltsin's cabal intervened in Russia to preserve Bush's and Clinton's New World Order. USSR
was invited into Afghanistan; Outlaw US Empire wasn't. An incomplete list from William Blum's
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II . A graphic map based on Blum's
book.
Yesterday, Putin met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Unfortunately, the Kremlin's recap of
the meeting's currently incomplete, but what is recorded is instructive:
"Of course, we look at the Russian Federation as a founder of the United Nations and as a
permanent member of the Security Council, but I would say that at the present moment we look
at the Russian Federation as an indispensable element of the creation of a new multipolar
world.
"To be entirely frank, these are not easy times for multilateralism and not easy times for
the UN. And I think that after the Cold War and after a short period of unipolar world we are
still struggling to find a way to have a structured, multipolar world with multilateral
governmental institutions that can work. And this is something that worries me a lot and is
something in which, I believe, the Russian Federation has a unique role to play."
Considering many think Guterres just an agent for the Outlaw US Empire, maybe his cited
words will cause a reassessment. I'd like to know what followed. Apparently there was some
discussion about Korea and the
economic initiatives being openly discussed since RoK President Moon will arrive in
Russia tomorrow.
Lavrov met with Guterres today, and his
opening remarks shine a bit more light on what was discussed:
"As emphasised by President Putin, we have invariably supported, support, and will
continue to support the UN, this unique universal organisation. We think highly of your
intention, Mr Secretary-General, to raise the profile of the United Nations in world affairs,
particularly in settling regional conflicts. As you noted yourself at the meeting in the
Kremlin yesterday, this is largely dependent on the general state of the international system
as a whole and the UN member states' readiness to act collectively, jointly, rather than
unilaterally, and to pursue the goals enshrined in the UN Charter rather than
self-centred,[sic] immediate aims.
"We note that you have consistently advocated the pooling of efforts by major players to
deal with world problems. This is the logic of the UN Charter, specifically its clauses on
the creation and powers of the UN Security Council. I hope that based on the values we share
we will be able to successfully continue cooperation in the interests of solving
international problems."
Lots of emphasis on the absolute necessity of making the UN Charter whole again and not
allowing any one nation to make a mockery of it by pursuing its "self-centered, immediate
aims."
Ben @ 14
Thanks Ben. Yep that's what l thought reality would look like, that's my sanity safe for a
while longer. Remember we are not alone!
Zanon @ 12
That is a perfect example of 'fake news' we can spot it here ! Or are we here now msm!
Pantaraxia @ 20
Wow that doubles what I was already shocked about ! And then of course there's the comercal
operations destablising country's using greed as a weapon. Plus the banks, I'm sure South
Africa would have been a real success if they'd kept the banking curuption out. Time for
immoral capitalism to fall.
Also don't you just hate victim blaming.There that's me done. Grrr
@b: I know you're just one man and can't do everything, but it would be wonderful if you
could cover the history of hacking accusations against Russia. No one lays out a sequence of
events better than you.
Just yesterday, another accusation has been leveled against Russia by the head of
Germany's BfV intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen:
German intelligence sees Russia behind hack of energy firms - media report (Reuters).
It's a serious accusation, and one would expect a serious proof. However, no proof has been
given except that "it fits the Russian modus operandi". Also, the fact that the alleged
attack has been named "Berserk Bear" by some unknown Western analyst. Apparently, that's
enough proof by today's standards.
There is a critical lack of independent thinking and skepticism in the international
computer security circles nowadays. The attributions of attacks to countries are very
shaky. Throw in a couple of Cyrillic letters and voilà, you have associated a certain
IP address or a certain piece of code with Russia. Somehow these simpleton arguments are
uncritically accepted as proofs by computer security professionals the world over, who, of
all people, really should know better. It's as if all the supposedly smart cryptographers and
programmers are completely oblivious to the concept of manipulation.
"... For Mattis to lament during a speech at a naval college last week that America's moral authority is being eroded by Putin is a symptom of the delusional official thinking infesting Washington. ..."
"... Mattis told his audience: "Putin aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine America's moral authority." He added that the Russian leader's "actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals." ..."
"... It is classic "in denial" ..."
"... "What a powerful delusion Mattis and Western leaders like him are encumbered with," ..."
"... "The US undercuts and compromises its own avowed beliefs and ideals because it has lost any moral integrity that it might have feasibly pretended to have due to decades of its own criminal foreign conduct." ..."
"... "America's so-called moral authority is the free pass it gives itself to topple democracy in Ukraine, replacing it with neo-Nazis; it has turned economically prosperous Libya into a wasteland, after murdering its leader Muammar Gaddafi; it funds and openly sponsors the MKO terror group in Iran for regime change in Tehran; and it is neck deep in fueling the Saudi coalition's genocidal war in Yemen." ..."
"... Despite this litany of criminality committed by the US with the acquiescence of European allies, Washington, says Martin, "preaches a bizarre doctrine of 'exceptionalism' and somehow arrogates a moral right to dominate the world. This is the fruit of the diseased minds of sociopaths." ..."
Jun 20, 2018, RT Op-ed The statements, views and opinions expressed
in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
It's parallel
universe time when US Pentagon chief James 'Mad Dog' Mattis complains that America's "moral
authority" is being undermined by others – specifically Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
This is the ex-Marine general who gained his ruthless reputation from when illegally occupying
US troops razed the
Iraqi city of Fallujah in the 2004-2005 using "shake and bake" bombardment of
inhabitants with banned white phosphorus incendiaries.
A repeat of those war crimes happened again last year under Mattis' watch as Pentagon chief
when US warplanes obliterated the Syrian city of Raqqa, killing thousands of civilians. Even
the pro-US Human Rights Watch
abhorred the repeated use of white phosphorus during that campaign to "liberate"
Raqqa, supposedly from jihadists.
These are but two examples from dense archives of US war crimes committed over several
decades, from its illegal intervention in Syria to Libya, from Iraq to Vietnam, back to the
Korean War in the early 1950s when American carpet bombing killed millions of innocent
civilians.
For Mattis to
lament during a speech at a naval college last week that America's moral authority is being
eroded by Putin is a symptom of the delusional official thinking infesting
Washington.
According to Mattis, the problem of America's diminishing global reputation has
nothing to do with US misconduct – even though the evidence is replete to prove that
systematic misconduct. No, the problem, according to him, is that Russia's Putin is somehow
sneakily undermining Washington's moral authority.
Mattis told his audience: "Putin aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic
model and attempts to undermine America's moral authority." He added that the Russian leader's
"actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise
our belief in our ideals."
The US Secretary of Defense doesn't elaborate on how he thinks Russia is achieving this
dastardly plot to demean America. It is simply asserted as fact. This has been a theme recycled
over and over by officials in Washington and Brussels, other Western government leaders and of
course NATO and its affiliated think-tanks. All of which has been dutifully peddled by Western
news media.
It is classic "in denial" thinking. The general loss of legitimacy and
authority by Western governments is supposedly nothing to do with their own inherent failures
and transgressions, from bankrupt austerity economics, to deteriorating social conditions, to
illegal US-led wars and the repercussions of blowback terrorism and mass migration of refugees.
Oh no. What the ruling elites are trying to do is shift the blame from their own culpability
on to others, principally Russia. American political analyst Randy Martin says that Mattis'
latest remarks show a form of collective delusion among Western political establishments and
their aligned mainstream news media.
"What a powerful delusion Mattis and Western leaders like him are encumbered with,"
says Martin. "The US undercuts and compromises its own avowed beliefs and ideals because it
has lost any moral integrity that it might have feasibly pretended to have due to decades of
its own criminal foreign conduct."
The analyst added: "America's so-called moral authority is the free pass it gives itself
to topple democracy in Ukraine, replacing it with neo-Nazis; it has turned economically
prosperous Libya into a wasteland, after murdering its leader Muammar Gaddafi; it funds and
openly sponsors the MKO terror group in Iran for regime change in Tehran; and it is neck deep
in fueling the Saudi coalition's genocidal war in Yemen."
Despite this litany of criminality committed by the US with the acquiescence of European
allies, Washington, says Martin, "preaches a bizarre doctrine of 'exceptionalism' and somehow
arrogates a moral right to dominate the world. This is the fruit of the diseased minds of
sociopaths."
This week, three headline-making issues speak volumes about America's declining moral
authority.
... ... ...
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a
Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal
Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For
over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including
The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his
columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.
Pertaining to your question about evidence of CIA and other deep state forces using cash
from illicit drug sales, b, if you have time check out a wiked documentary series called
"Cocaine Cowboys".
The first is a glimpse into how things got started in Miami, and is more of entertainment
value than anything else. The second, however, describes exactly how the CIA introduced and
established a massive crack cocaine market in California. It has a lot to do with the Ollie
North "Iran Contra affair", and how the CIA was allowed to circumvent the traditional begathon
for money from congress.
In fact back in the day it was public knowledge. Only congress remained blind.
Our joint favorite reporter, who passed away recently, wrote about it extensively. God bless
Parry. W. Bush pardoned Ollie North, by the way. I am always blown away by the fact these
assholes keep straight faces.
"... The attributions of attacks to countries are very shaky. Throw in a couple of Cyrillic letters and voilà, you have associated a certain IP address or a certain piece of code with Russia. Somehow these simpleton arguments are uncritically accepted as proofs by computer security professionals the world over, who, of all people, really should know better. It's as if all the supposedly smart cryptographers and programmers are completely oblivious to the concept of manipulation. ..."
Could someone remind me the amount of country's America have invaded since the last world war
30 - 40 , I here'd. Compared to Russia 5-8 ? Russia is in Syria by invitation to deal with
rebels/terrorist's .America is now threatening both. Despite being there to attempt a regime
change. Just who do they think they are ? The sooner they are stopped the better and the
easier.
Russia intervened nowhere; the USSR intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In 1993,
Yeltsin's cabal intervened in Russia to preserve Bush's and Clinton's New World Order. USSR
was invited into Afghanistan; Outlaw US Empire wasn't. An incomplete list from William Blum's
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II . A graphic map based on Blum's
book.
Yesterday, Putin met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Unfortunately, the Kremlin's recap of
the meeting's currently incomplete, but what is recorded is instructive:
"Of course, we look at the Russian Federation as a founder of the United Nations and as a
permanent member of the Security Council, but I would say that at the present moment we look
at the Russian Federation as an indispensable element of the creation of a new multipolar
world.
"To be entirely frank, these are not easy times for multilateralism and not easy times for
the UN. And I think that after the Cold War and after a short period of unipolar world we are
still struggling to find a way to have a structured, multipolar world with multilateral
governmental institutions that can work. And this is something that worries me a lot and is
something in which, I believe, the Russian Federation has a unique role to play."
Considering many think Guterres just an agent for the Outlaw US Empire, maybe his cited
words will cause a reassessment. I'd like to know what followed. Apparently there was some
discussion about Korea and the
economic initiatives being openly discussed since RoK President Moon will arrive in
Russia tomorrow.
Lavrov met with Guterres today, and his
opening remarks shine a bit more light on what was discussed:
"As emphasised by President Putin, we have invariably supported, support, and will
continue to support the UN, this unique universal organisation. We think highly of your
intention, Mr Secretary-General, to raise the profile of the United Nations in world affairs,
particularly in settling regional conflicts. As you noted yourself at the meeting in the
Kremlin yesterday, this is largely dependent on the general state of the international system
as a whole and the UN member states' readiness to act collectively, jointly, rather than
unilaterally, and to pursue the goals enshrined in the UN Charter rather than
self-centred,[sic] immediate aims.
"We note that you have consistently advocated the pooling of efforts by major players to
deal with world problems. This is the logic of the UN Charter, specifically its clauses on
the creation and powers of the UN Security Council. I hope that based on the values we share
we will be able to successfully continue cooperation in the interests of solving
international problems."
Lots of emphasis on the absolute necessity of making the UN Charter whole again and not
allowing any one nation to make a mockery of it by pursuing its "self-centered, immediate
aims."
Ben @ 14
Thanks Ben. Yep that's what l thought reality would look like, that's my sanity safe for a
while longer. Remember we are not alone!
Zanon @ 12
That is a perfect example of 'fake news' we can spot it here ! Or are we here now msm!
Pantaraxia @ 20
Wow that doubles what I was already shocked about ! And then of course there's the comercal
operations destablising country's using greed as a weapon. Plus the banks, I'm sure South
Africa would have been a real success if they'd kept the banking curuption out. Time for
immoral capitalism to fall.
Also don't you just hate victim blaming.There that's me done. Grrr
@b: I know you're just one man and can't do everything, but it would be wonderful if you
could cover the history of hacking accusations against Russia. No one lays out a sequence of
events better than you.
Just yesterday, another accusation has been leveled against Russia by the head of
Germany's BfV intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen:
German intelligence sees Russia behind hack of energy firms - media report (Reuters).
It's a serious accusation, and one would expect a serious proof. However, no proof has been
given except that "it fits the Russian modus operandi". Also, the fact that the alleged
attack has been named "Berserk Bear" by some unknown Western analyst. Apparently, that's
enough proof by today's standards.
There is a critical lack of independent thinking and skepticism in the international
computer security circles nowadays. The attributions of attacks to countries are very
shaky. Throw in a couple of Cyrillic letters and voilà, you have associated a certain
IP address or a certain piece of code with Russia. Somehow these simpleton arguments are
uncritically accepted as proofs by computer security professionals the world over, who, of
all people, really should know better. It's as if all the supposedly smart cryptographers and
programmers are completely oblivious to the concept of manipulation.
"... For Mattis to lament during a speech at a naval college last week that America's moral authority is being eroded by Putin is a symptom of the delusional official thinking infesting Washington. ..."
"... Mattis told his audience: "Putin aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine America's moral authority." He added that the Russian leader's "actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals." ..."
"... It is classic "in denial" ..."
"... "What a powerful delusion Mattis and Western leaders like him are encumbered with," ..."
"... "The US undercuts and compromises its own avowed beliefs and ideals because it has lost any moral integrity that it might have feasibly pretended to have due to decades of its own criminal foreign conduct." ..."
"... "America's so-called moral authority is the free pass it gives itself to topple democracy in Ukraine, replacing it with neo-Nazis; it has turned economically prosperous Libya into a wasteland, after murdering its leader Muammar Gaddafi; it funds and openly sponsors the MKO terror group in Iran for regime change in Tehran; and it is neck deep in fueling the Saudi coalition's genocidal war in Yemen." ..."
"... Despite this litany of criminality committed by the US with the acquiescence of European allies, Washington, says Martin, "preaches a bizarre doctrine of 'exceptionalism' and somehow arrogates a moral right to dominate the world. This is the fruit of the diseased minds of sociopaths." ..."
Jun 20, 2018, RT Op-ed The statements, views and opinions expressed
in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
It's parallel
universe time when US Pentagon chief James 'Mad Dog' Mattis complains that America's "moral
authority" is being undermined by others – specifically Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
This is the ex-Marine general who gained his ruthless reputation from when illegally occupying
US troops razed the
Iraqi city of Fallujah in the 2004-2005 using "shake and bake" bombardment of
inhabitants with banned white phosphorus incendiaries.
A repeat of those war crimes happened again last year under Mattis' watch as Pentagon chief
when US warplanes obliterated the Syrian city of Raqqa, killing thousands of civilians. Even
the pro-US Human Rights Watch
abhorred the repeated use of white phosphorus during that campaign to "liberate"
Raqqa, supposedly from jihadists.
These are but two examples from dense archives of US war crimes committed over several
decades, from its illegal intervention in Syria to Libya, from Iraq to Vietnam, back to the
Korean War in the early 1950s when American carpet bombing killed millions of innocent
civilians.
For Mattis to
lament during a speech at a naval college last week that America's moral authority is being
eroded by Putin is a symptom of the delusional official thinking infesting
Washington.
According to Mattis, the problem of America's diminishing global reputation has
nothing to do with US misconduct – even though the evidence is replete to prove that
systematic misconduct. No, the problem, according to him, is that Russia's Putin is somehow
sneakily undermining Washington's moral authority.
Mattis told his audience: "Putin aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic
model and attempts to undermine America's moral authority." He added that the Russian leader's
"actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise
our belief in our ideals."
The US Secretary of Defense doesn't elaborate on how he thinks Russia is achieving this
dastardly plot to demean America. It is simply asserted as fact. This has been a theme recycled
over and over by officials in Washington and Brussels, other Western government leaders and of
course NATO and its affiliated think-tanks. All of which has been dutifully peddled by Western
news media.
It is classic "in denial" thinking. The general loss of legitimacy and
authority by Western governments is supposedly nothing to do with their own inherent failures
and transgressions, from bankrupt austerity economics, to deteriorating social conditions, to
illegal US-led wars and the repercussions of blowback terrorism and mass migration of refugees.
Oh no. What the ruling elites are trying to do is shift the blame from their own culpability
on to others, principally Russia. American political analyst Randy Martin says that Mattis'
latest remarks show a form of collective delusion among Western political establishments and
their aligned mainstream news media.
"What a powerful delusion Mattis and Western leaders like him are encumbered with,"
says Martin. "The US undercuts and compromises its own avowed beliefs and ideals because it
has lost any moral integrity that it might have feasibly pretended to have due to decades of
its own criminal foreign conduct."
The analyst added: "America's so-called moral authority is the free pass it gives itself
to topple democracy in Ukraine, replacing it with neo-Nazis; it has turned economically
prosperous Libya into a wasteland, after murdering its leader Muammar Gaddafi; it funds and
openly sponsors the MKO terror group in Iran for regime change in Tehran; and it is neck deep
in fueling the Saudi coalition's genocidal war in Yemen."
Despite this litany of criminality committed by the US with the acquiescence of European
allies, Washington, says Martin, "preaches a bizarre doctrine of 'exceptionalism' and somehow
arrogates a moral right to dominate the world. This is the fruit of the diseased minds of
sociopaths."
This week, three headline-making issues speak volumes about America's declining moral
authority.
... ... ...
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a
Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal
Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For
over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including
The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his
columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.
"... Here's a thought: If the USG was truly interested in controlling opium production in Afghanistan it would simply use the counternarcotics money to buy up the crop directly from the farmers. The price at that level would be incredibly cheap compared to the "street value" of the drug. The farmers would happily sell to such a reliable buyer and not need to fear the risk of military interference. The current Afghan government would likely earn the goodwill of the farmers and it would cut off funding to the Taliban. It will never happen, however; because our military project in Afghanistan is mostly about enriching private military contractors while keeping the the "threat" of terrorism alive and well. War is a racket. ..."
"... b, have you read "Whiteout" by Alexander Cockburn (RIP) and Jeffrey St. Clair? It was written decades ago but is still relevant. I'm sure the CIA DOES make money from drugs although the CIA black books budget is so large they hardly need the cash. But one imagines it's nice to have a few millions completely out of government accountability--for lining their own pockets if nothing else. ..."
"... I highly recommend Doug Valentine's book, "CIA as Organized Crime." CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been involved in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. Since all those CIA officers/agents had Colby's blessing, they assumed Valentine was on their side. Oops! Bottom line: There is ZERO difference between CIA and the Mafia. They are essentially one and the same, though they generally have different spheres of action. One upon which they overlap is drug production, smuggling and distribution. ..."
"... I would add that there is ZERO difference between supra-national finance and the Mafia. For instance, the bank, HSBC was founded to launder opium money after Great Britain fought the Opium Wars forcing China to permit them to import opium into China. Former FBI Director and on again/off again hero of the partisans, James Comey left his career with the US Government to work for HSBC after they were finally fined for laundering cash from both drug smuggling and terrorist groups. His job was to help them "negotiate" the new "oversight" placed on the bank. ..."
"... John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief admitted back in 1994 that the "War on Drugs" was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." ..."
"... Mike Ruppert was an associate of Gary Webb's, was a Los Angeles detective and knew a lot about the CIA's involvement in the Crips/Bloods Drug Wars and its massive importation of drugs into the nation. His investigation was used as his website URL , copvcia, although its name was From The Wilderness. Until 911, his investigation was his passion, then he discovered he had another and it was connected to the former. Here's a page many will want to view . It's hard not to reread the entire website. Unfortunately, Mike saved and only released much of the juicier evidence to his subscribers--he had to eke out a living in some manner. ..."
"... Back in 2002, when the poppy production too off, the idea of flooding Russia was in vogue, it may still be in the game. Transit through Iran to Turkey was also in play. Money laundering started out in "Polish Zlotys", through the banks there. ..."
"... I presume much of that counternarcotics money ends up being cash in hand to thousands of foot-soldiers working for local warlords in Afghanistan as farmers, security personnel, soldiers, prostitutes and what-not, in a way similar to how part of Victoria Nuland's $5 billion investment in Ukraine ended up as cash incentives to entice people from as far as Lvov to travel to Kiev to participate in the Maidan demonstrations over the winter of 2013 / 2014. ..."
"... This in addition to the billions being used to buy weapons, train and send jihadists to fight in other parts of western and central Asia, and line people's pockets at every stage of the drug money trail whether in Afghanistan, Wall Street or various tax havens around the planet. ..."
"... And to the east, I remember reading that one of the first things the US did was to build a bridge and highway towards the east; shortly thereafter, heroin flooded into Russia. ..."
"... Alfred W. McCoy is the authority on drugs and CIA. He's still doing great work, publishing books.His first, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a classic.His latest, In the Shadows of the American Century, is brilliant analysis. Some videos on youtube, also. He has traveled, researched every ratline trail and outpost all over the globe. Read him if you want the real facts. ..."
thanks b... the speculation has always been in my mind anyway - that the money is controlled
by the cia... covert money for covert projects and on and on it goes...
The Taliban curtailed the poppy growing without any problem. Shortly after the US invasion
under the guise of capturing OBL. Almost 18 years later, long after the death of OBL (in
reality and in US military BS) the poppy production has increased exponentially. There are
Pics of US military personnel walking through poppy fields.
Other than drug production there is no need for the US to be in Afghanistan except maybe to
use it as a launching platform to attack Iran. Drugs are an excellent source for funding
black ops.
Not only is the US allowing the production, considering how easy it would be for them to kill
the crops, and IMHO it as also assisting in the transportation of drugs to the West.
If you understand the Afghan government as a narco state, then the fact that opium
production has actually increased –while the U.S. spent billions on counternarcotics
efforts and troop numbers surged – starts to make sense. A completely failed state
– Afghanistan in 2001 – can't really thrive in the drug trade. Traffickers have
no reason to pay off a toothless government or a nonexistent police force. In such a
libertarian paradise, freelance actors – like Saleem, the heroin cook –
flourish.
But as the government builds capacity, officials can start to demand a cut. It's not
that there's a grand conspiracy at the center of government, but rather that, in the
absence of accountability and the rule of law, officials start to orient themselves around
a powerful political economy. Big drug barons with links to the government take over the
trade. People who don't pay, or who fall out with government officials, might find
themselves killed or arrested.
In this light, U.S. counternarcotics programs, which have cost nearly $8 billion to
date, and the Afghan state-building project in general, are perversely part of the
explanation for the growing government involvement in the drug trade. Even the newly
rebuilt Afghan Air Force has been investigated by the U.S. military for alleged
trafficking. In many places, the surge had the effect of wresting opium revenue from the
Taliban and handing it to government officials. For example, in Helmand's Garmsir District,
which sits on key trafficking routes between the rest of the province and Baramcha, a big
Marine offensive in 2011 finally pushed out the Taliban and handed the district back to the
Afghan government. The result? The police began taking a cut from those drug routes. "There
are families, as in Mafia-style, that have the trade carved up between them, and when some
outsider tries to get in on it, they serve him up as a success for drug interdiction," one
Western official who worked in Garmsir told me.
I just luv-ed this next paragraph. Glad I wasn't sipping Coca Cola
while I read it. Would have chortled cola out my nose!
Here is government BS-speak at it's vacuous best (enjoy):
The U.S. government, for its part, acknowledged that there are no quick solutions at hand.
"The U.S. interagency is developing an updated counternarcotics strategy for Afghanistan,"
says Jen Psaki, the State Department's spokeswoman. "These are long-term efforts that build
the foundation for eventual reductions in opium harvests."
Here's a thought: If the USG was truly interested in controlling opium production in
Afghanistan it would simply use the counternarcotics money to buy up the crop directly from
the farmers. The price at that level would be incredibly cheap compared to the "street value"
of the drug. The farmers would happily sell to such a reliable buyer and not need to fear the
risk of military interference. The current Afghan government would likely earn the goodwill
of the farmers and it would cut off funding to the Taliban. It will never happen, however;
because our military project in Afghanistan is mostly about enriching private military
contractors while keeping the the "threat" of terrorism alive and well. War is a racket.
b, have you read "Whiteout" by Alexander Cockburn (RIP) and Jeffrey St. Clair? It was written
decades ago but is still relevant. I'm sure the CIA DOES make money from drugs although the
CIA black books budget is so large they hardly need the cash. But one imagines it's nice to
have a few millions completely out of government accountability--for lining their own pockets
if nothing else.
I highly recommend Doug Valentine's book, "CIA as Organized Crime." CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been
involved in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. Since all those CIA officers/agents had
Colby's blessing, they assumed Valentine was on their side. Oops! Bottom line: There is ZERO difference between CIA and the Mafia. They are essentially one
and the same, though they generally have different spheres of action. One upon which they
overlap is drug production, smuggling and distribution.
I would add that there is ZERO difference between supra-national finance and the Mafia.
For instance, the bank, HSBC was founded to launder opium money after Great Britain fought
the Opium Wars forcing China to permit them to import opium into China. Former FBI Director
and on again/off again hero of the partisans, James Comey left his career with the US
Government to work for HSBC after they were finally fined for laundering cash from both drug
smuggling and terrorist groups. His job was to help them "negotiate" the new "oversight"
placed on the bank.
John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief admitted back
in 1994 that the "War on Drugs" was actually
a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people.
"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting
the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then
criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their
leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the
evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Mike Ruppert was an associate of Gary Webb's, was a Los Angeles detective and knew a lot
about the CIA's involvement in the Crips/Bloods Drug Wars and its massive importation of
drugs into the nation. His investigation
was used as his website URL , copvcia, although its name was From The Wilderness. Until
911, his investigation was his passion, then he discovered he had another and it was
connected to the former. Here's a page many will want to
view . It's hard not to reread the entire website. Unfortunately, Mike saved and only
released much of the juicier evidence to his subscribers--he had to eke out a living in some
manner.
The CIA is the planet's #1 Terrorist Organization, and it has all 3 types of Weapons of
Mass Destruction. It's often hard to determine which poses a greater threat to humanity: The
CIA or its parent the Outlaw US Empire. If humanity's to have any chance at a viable future,
both the CIA and its Imperial parent must be destroyed for their many crimes.
That CIA was experimenting with narcotics as a tool seemed to have metasticised into
something else during the Air America years, which in turn seems to have morphed via Barry
Seal (& Gary Webb's investigation)and the Cocaine Coyboys onward into Silk Airways (famed
by weapons to Syria scandal) - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/cockburn-white.html
Back in 2002, when the poppy production too off, the idea of flooding Russia was in vogue, it
may still be in the game. Transit through Iran to Turkey was also in play. Money laundering
started out in "Polish Zlotys", through the banks there.
Addicts were given small sums to
deposit in the banks, by the thousands, which didn't draw attention. A lot of the money was
sent to the U.S. to buy "American Muscle Cars", which were then shipped back to the E.U. and
resold again.
Pakistan was also a transit country where the "Labs" were first set up to
process the opium to heroin. How time fly's when having fun. Addiction to "drugs" isn't the
only addiction nor the addicts involved either. Only one leaf in the book of the minds of
those who believe they are doing the right thing.
I presume much of that counternarcotics money ends up being cash in hand to thousands of
foot-soldiers working for local warlords in Afghanistan as farmers, security personnel,
soldiers, prostitutes and what-not, in a way similar to how part of Victoria Nuland's $5
billion investment in Ukraine ended up as cash incentives to entice people from as far as
Lvov to travel to Kiev to participate in the Maidan demonstrations over the winter of 2013 /
2014.
Also a big portion of the counternarcotics dosh must be going to teams of people digging
up and burning opium and also to teams of people planting new opium seeds in the areas where
the first lot of opium was eradicated later on. Similar to stories people used to hear about
what supposedly happened during the 1930s Great Depression, when teams of people were
employed to dig ditches and then other teams of people were employed to fill up the ditches
which would be dug up again at a later time.
This in addition to the billions being used to buy weapons, train and send jihadists to
fight in other parts of western and central Asia, and line people's pockets at every stage of
the drug money trail whether in Afghanistan, Wall Street or various tax havens around the
planet.
reply to:
".. and IMHO it as also assisting in the transportation of drugs to the West."
Posted by: ken | Jun 18, 2018 2:16:06 PM | 5
And to the east, I remember reading that one of the first things the US did was to build a
bridge and highway towards the east; shortly thereafter, heroin flooded into Russia.
The level of US "counter-narcotic" investment seems to be about right to support the GROWTH
of the narcotics industry...not the otherway around...its black and its dirty
Every comment on this post is like a fine champagne of reality. how do people get by with out
wanting to know the truth. keep the comments coming I need more! Brilliant links. The doors
of perception just opened for me. Who the hell runs our TVs stations that they can turn a
blind I to this lot.
-------
I to find great strength in music, to find the truth. For me it is reggae any group in
society that has sufferd what we discuss on this site for 300 years, but have survived got
stronger and put it to music, I feel needs listening to!!!
The "War on Drugs" was conceived to put black people in jail en masse as Jim Crow came to an
end. Nixon's aides admitted this. Read "The New Jim Crow" for the full story. Marijuana laws
were first introduced in the early 20th century as a tool to arrest and deport Mexicans from
the American southwest. Google it.
The bullshit "War on Drugs" is as phony as the bullshit "War on Terror" in the wake of 3
skyscrapers that were demolished and collapsed at freefall speed.
The real money is to be made in the bullshit wars spawned by these 2 hoaxes that boggle
the mind in their scope.
Basically, these two cornerstones of American domestic and foreign policy are frauds of
biblical proportions.
An empire built on these foundations will come crashing down as fast as WTC 7 on the
afternoon of September 11, 2001.
Various Contra-cocaine type operations of un/controlled shipments of drugs existed in the
early 1990s, some of which existed in order to arm Bosnia (local fighters and foreign
mujahideen), thereby undermining the UN's arms embargo of former Yugoslav states.
Between 1988 and 1992, 22 tons of cocaine was brought into the US via Venezuela by a team
consisting of Mark McFarlin (head of the CIA's counter-narcotics center), Jim Campbell (the
CIA's chief of station in Venezuela) and General Guillén (head of the Venezuelan
National Guard in the pre-Chavez era).
Anti-Drug Unit of C.I.A. Sent Ton of Cocaine to U.S. in 1990
At roughly the same time Albanian mobsters had built a heroin smuggling network for the
purpose of illegally supplying arms to the Bosnian mujahideen. Drugs Paying for Conflict
in Europe
In the summer of 1991, Dutch drug lord Klaas Bruinsma, who had connections with members of
the Dutch elite (corporate and royal), the Colombian Cali cartel and the Yugoslav mafia, was
assassinated by either former cop Martin Hoogland (possibly working for intelligence), or the
Yugoslav mobster Branco Marianovic. In that same summer, the UN Security Council passed
Resolution 713 (the Yugoslav arms embargo), and soon after elements within Dutch customs and
police, in cooperation with Bruinsma's business heirs/infiltrators, started the controlled
shipment of large amounts of cocaine (estimated 25,000 kilo) and hashish (estimated 500,000
kilo) under the name "Operation Delta". The customs officials involved in Operation Delta
were most likely protected by their boss Fred Teeven, later rewarded by given the job of
State Secretary for Security and Justice. Mabel Wisse-Smit, daughter of a top banker
(possibly drug money launderer) and future sister-in-law of the current Dutch king, was first
the lover of drug lord Bruinsma (until his assassination, possibly she was sent to spy on
him) and then the lover of Wall St. banker Mohamed Sacirbey (Bosnia's ambassador to UN in
1992, Bosnia's foreign minister in 1995). Wisse-Smit (later a George Soros
protégé) co-founded the Dutch charity foundation War Child, which was used as a
cover for arms lobbying during the Bosnia war, and she is reported by Bosnian media to have
been involved in a specific arms deal with Egypt.
Alfred W. McCoy is the authority on drugs and CIA.
He's still doing great work, publishing books.His first, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a classic.His latest, In the Shadows of the American Century, is brilliant analysis. Some videos on youtube, also. He has traveled, researched every ratline trail and outpost all over the globe.
Read him if you want the real facts.
It's good to know so many are well informed on this. I've read Rupert/Webb's stuff and have
Dark Alliance. There's a good movie/documentary out there about Webb but I can't recall the
name right now. Levine wrote about his undercover work in South American being thwarted by
the CIA. And Bo Gritz was trying to set up a deal where the US would buy up Khun Sa's opium
before it could be distributed but the USG wasn't interested. The amazing thing about the
Afghan ramp up in supply was seeing pictures of US soldiers patrolling in the middle of poppy
fields. Meanwhile at home, congress takes bribes (lobbying efforts) to help protect the legal
drug pushers from prosecution by the DEA shoving millions of pills across the country. A
friend's term for this kind of thing is "racket science."
Yeah, his updated edition is a must read. They do not handle the money directly, they let
the guerillas/rebels/revolutionaries handle that as a reward and provide protection from
legal authorities and access to markets using various agencies and mafia at both ends of the
supply-distribution chain. The dollars from the drugs pay for the weapons and support. The
profits go into nameless offshore Eurodollar accounts which then flow into London and Wall
Street as eurodollar loans in many multiples of the deposits (not to be confused with the
euro) to speculate in various markets and drive up asset prices. When the Taliban shut down
opium production we had the Dot.com crash (coincidence?). 100 billion a year can generate 1
trillion in dollars for speculators, and that was sorely missed (along with Clinton running a
surplus instead of a deficit)
There is so much evidence that in many places where they were or are engaged that drug flows
in the region increased and production increased in those areas known for growing the stuff.
Like any organization only those with a need to know have an idea and the majority are clean
and without information
While we are discussing history of the War on Drugs another example of a major consumer
organization (at the time of print) being turned into a vacuous shell....
The WIkipedia summary
"
The book describes the effects and risks of psychoactive drugs which were common in
contemporary use for recreational and nonmedical purposes.[2] The New York Times paraphrased
some major arguments from the book, saying "'Drug-free' treatment of heroin addiction almost
never works", "Nicotine can be as tough to beat as heroin", and "Good or bad, marijuana is
here to stay. The billions spent to fight it are wasted dollars."[3] The book identifies
marijuana as the most popular drug after tobacco, alcohol, and nicotine.[4] A reviewer for
the Journal of the American Medical Association summarized it by saying that "Brecher holds
that the division of drugs into licit and illicit categories is medically irrational and
rooted mainly in historical and sociological factors."[5]
"
karlof1. Amazing that you knew Mike. And yes, the willful ignorance is horribly frustrating.
The way I see it, almost all "Westerners" are willfully ignorant. We all must know that
the only way we live to the "standards" we do is because of the plunder of both our colonial
past and neoliberal present. But most choose to look aside.
For those who haven't seen it, please spend 17 minutes to see Mallence Bart-Williams give an incredible
talk.
"... Here's a thought: If the USG was truly interested in controlling opium production in Afghanistan it would simply use the counternarcotics money to buy up the crop directly from the farmers. The price at that level would be incredibly cheap compared to the "street value" of the drug. The farmers would happily sell to such a reliable buyer and not need to fear the risk of military interference. The current Afghan government would likely earn the goodwill of the farmers and it would cut off funding to the Taliban. It will never happen, however; because our military project in Afghanistan is mostly about enriching private military contractors while keeping the the "threat" of terrorism alive and well. War is a racket. ..."
"... b, have you read "Whiteout" by Alexander Cockburn (RIP) and Jeffrey St. Clair? It was written decades ago but is still relevant. I'm sure the CIA DOES make money from drugs although the CIA black books budget is so large they hardly need the cash. But one imagines it's nice to have a few millions completely out of government accountability--for lining their own pockets if nothing else. ..."
"... I highly recommend Doug Valentine's book, "CIA as Organized Crime." CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been involved in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. Since all those CIA officers/agents had Colby's blessing, they assumed Valentine was on their side. Oops! Bottom line: There is ZERO difference between CIA and the Mafia. They are essentially one and the same, though they generally have different spheres of action. One upon which they overlap is drug production, smuggling and distribution. ..."
"... I would add that there is ZERO difference between supra-national finance and the Mafia. For instance, the bank, HSBC was founded to launder opium money after Great Britain fought the Opium Wars forcing China to permit them to import opium into China. Former FBI Director and on again/off again hero of the partisans, James Comey left his career with the US Government to work for HSBC after they were finally fined for laundering cash from both drug smuggling and terrorist groups. His job was to help them "negotiate" the new "oversight" placed on the bank. ..."
"... John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief admitted back in 1994 that the "War on Drugs" was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." ..."
"... Mike Ruppert was an associate of Gary Webb's, was a Los Angeles detective and knew a lot about the CIA's involvement in the Crips/Bloods Drug Wars and its massive importation of drugs into the nation. His investigation was used as his website URL , copvcia, although its name was From The Wilderness. Until 911, his investigation was his passion, then he discovered he had another and it was connected to the former. Here's a page many will want to view . It's hard not to reread the entire website. Unfortunately, Mike saved and only released much of the juicier evidence to his subscribers--he had to eke out a living in some manner. ..."
"... Back in 2002, when the poppy production too off, the idea of flooding Russia was in vogue, it may still be in the game. Transit through Iran to Turkey was also in play. Money laundering started out in "Polish Zlotys", through the banks there. ..."
"... I presume much of that counternarcotics money ends up being cash in hand to thousands of foot-soldiers working for local warlords in Afghanistan as farmers, security personnel, soldiers, prostitutes and what-not, in a way similar to how part of Victoria Nuland's $5 billion investment in Ukraine ended up as cash incentives to entice people from as far as Lvov to travel to Kiev to participate in the Maidan demonstrations over the winter of 2013 / 2014. ..."
"... This in addition to the billions being used to buy weapons, train and send jihadists to fight in other parts of western and central Asia, and line people's pockets at every stage of the drug money trail whether in Afghanistan, Wall Street or various tax havens around the planet. ..."
"... And to the east, I remember reading that one of the first things the US did was to build a bridge and highway towards the east; shortly thereafter, heroin flooded into Russia. ..."
"... Alfred W. McCoy is the authority on drugs and CIA. He's still doing great work, publishing books.His first, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a classic.His latest, In the Shadows of the American Century, is brilliant analysis. Some videos on youtube, also. He has traveled, researched every ratline trail and outpost all over the globe. Read him if you want the real facts. ..."
thanks b... the speculation has always been in my mind anyway - that the money is controlled
by the cia... covert money for covert projects and on and on it goes...
The Taliban curtailed the poppy growing without any problem. Shortly after the US invasion
under the guise of capturing OBL. Almost 18 years later, long after the death of OBL (in
reality and in US military BS) the poppy production has increased exponentially. There are
Pics of US military personnel walking through poppy fields.
Other than drug production there is no need for the US to be in Afghanistan except maybe to
use it as a launching platform to attack Iran. Drugs are an excellent source for funding
black ops.
Not only is the US allowing the production, considering how easy it would be for them to kill
the crops, and IMHO it as also assisting in the transportation of drugs to the West.
If you understand the Afghan government as a narco state, then the fact that opium
production has actually increased –while the U.S. spent billions on counternarcotics
efforts and troop numbers surged – starts to make sense. A completely failed state
– Afghanistan in 2001 – can't really thrive in the drug trade. Traffickers have
no reason to pay off a toothless government or a nonexistent police force. In such a
libertarian paradise, freelance actors – like Saleem, the heroin cook –
flourish.
But as the government builds capacity, officials can start to demand a cut. It's not
that there's a grand conspiracy at the center of government, but rather that, in the
absence of accountability and the rule of law, officials start to orient themselves around
a powerful political economy. Big drug barons with links to the government take over the
trade. People who don't pay, or who fall out with government officials, might find
themselves killed or arrested.
In this light, U.S. counternarcotics programs, which have cost nearly $8 billion to
date, and the Afghan state-building project in general, are perversely part of the
explanation for the growing government involvement in the drug trade. Even the newly
rebuilt Afghan Air Force has been investigated by the U.S. military for alleged
trafficking. In many places, the surge had the effect of wresting opium revenue from the
Taliban and handing it to government officials. For example, in Helmand's Garmsir District,
which sits on key trafficking routes between the rest of the province and Baramcha, a big
Marine offensive in 2011 finally pushed out the Taliban and handed the district back to the
Afghan government. The result? The police began taking a cut from those drug routes. "There
are families, as in Mafia-style, that have the trade carved up between them, and when some
outsider tries to get in on it, they serve him up as a success for drug interdiction," one
Western official who worked in Garmsir told me.
I just luv-ed this next paragraph. Glad I wasn't sipping Coca Cola
while I read it. Would have chortled cola out my nose!
Here is government BS-speak at it's vacuous best (enjoy):
The U.S. government, for its part, acknowledged that there are no quick solutions at hand.
"The U.S. interagency is developing an updated counternarcotics strategy for Afghanistan,"
says Jen Psaki, the State Department's spokeswoman. "These are long-term efforts that build
the foundation for eventual reductions in opium harvests."
Here's a thought: If the USG was truly interested in controlling opium production in
Afghanistan it would simply use the counternarcotics money to buy up the crop directly from
the farmers. The price at that level would be incredibly cheap compared to the "street value"
of the drug. The farmers would happily sell to such a reliable buyer and not need to fear the
risk of military interference. The current Afghan government would likely earn the goodwill
of the farmers and it would cut off funding to the Taliban. It will never happen, however;
because our military project in Afghanistan is mostly about enriching private military
contractors while keeping the the "threat" of terrorism alive and well. War is a racket.
b, have you read "Whiteout" by Alexander Cockburn (RIP) and Jeffrey St. Clair? It was written
decades ago but is still relevant. I'm sure the CIA DOES make money from drugs although the
CIA black books budget is so large they hardly need the cash. But one imagines it's nice to
have a few millions completely out of government accountability--for lining their own pockets
if nothing else.
I highly recommend Doug Valentine's book, "CIA as Organized Crime." CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been
involved in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. Since all those CIA officers/agents had
Colby's blessing, they assumed Valentine was on their side. Oops! Bottom line: There is ZERO difference between CIA and the Mafia. They are essentially one
and the same, though they generally have different spheres of action. One upon which they
overlap is drug production, smuggling and distribution.
I would add that there is ZERO difference between supra-national finance and the Mafia.
For instance, the bank, HSBC was founded to launder opium money after Great Britain fought
the Opium Wars forcing China to permit them to import opium into China. Former FBI Director
and on again/off again hero of the partisans, James Comey left his career with the US
Government to work for HSBC after they were finally fined for laundering cash from both drug
smuggling and terrorist groups. His job was to help them "negotiate" the new "oversight"
placed on the bank.
John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief admitted back
in 1994 that the "War on Drugs" was actually
a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people.
"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting
the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then
criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their
leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the
evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Mike Ruppert was an associate of Gary Webb's, was a Los Angeles detective and knew a lot
about the CIA's involvement in the Crips/Bloods Drug Wars and its massive importation of
drugs into the nation. His investigation
was used as his website URL , copvcia, although its name was From The Wilderness. Until
911, his investigation was his passion, then he discovered he had another and it was
connected to the former. Here's a page many will want to
view . It's hard not to reread the entire website. Unfortunately, Mike saved and only
released much of the juicier evidence to his subscribers--he had to eke out a living in some
manner.
The CIA is the planet's #1 Terrorist Organization, and it has all 3 types of Weapons of
Mass Destruction. It's often hard to determine which poses a greater threat to humanity: The
CIA or its parent the Outlaw US Empire. If humanity's to have any chance at a viable future,
both the CIA and its Imperial parent must be destroyed for their many crimes.
That CIA was experimenting with narcotics as a tool seemed to have metasticised into
something else during the Air America years, which in turn seems to have morphed via Barry
Seal (& Gary Webb's investigation)and the Cocaine Coyboys onward into Silk Airways (famed
by weapons to Syria scandal) - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/cockburn-white.html
Back in 2002, when the poppy production too off, the idea of flooding Russia was in vogue, it
may still be in the game. Transit through Iran to Turkey was also in play. Money laundering
started out in "Polish Zlotys", through the banks there.
Addicts were given small sums to
deposit in the banks, by the thousands, which didn't draw attention. A lot of the money was
sent to the U.S. to buy "American Muscle Cars", which were then shipped back to the E.U. and
resold again.
Pakistan was also a transit country where the "Labs" were first set up to
process the opium to heroin. How time fly's when having fun. Addiction to "drugs" isn't the
only addiction nor the addicts involved either. Only one leaf in the book of the minds of
those who believe they are doing the right thing.
I presume much of that counternarcotics money ends up being cash in hand to thousands of
foot-soldiers working for local warlords in Afghanistan as farmers, security personnel,
soldiers, prostitutes and what-not, in a way similar to how part of Victoria Nuland's $5
billion investment in Ukraine ended up as cash incentives to entice people from as far as
Lvov to travel to Kiev to participate in the Maidan demonstrations over the winter of 2013 /
2014.
Also a big portion of the counternarcotics dosh must be going to teams of people digging
up and burning opium and also to teams of people planting new opium seeds in the areas where
the first lot of opium was eradicated later on. Similar to stories people used to hear about
what supposedly happened during the 1930s Great Depression, when teams of people were
employed to dig ditches and then other teams of people were employed to fill up the ditches
which would be dug up again at a later time.
This in addition to the billions being used to buy weapons, train and send jihadists to
fight in other parts of western and central Asia, and line people's pockets at every stage of
the drug money trail whether in Afghanistan, Wall Street or various tax havens around the
planet.
reply to:
".. and IMHO it as also assisting in the transportation of drugs to the West."
Posted by: ken | Jun 18, 2018 2:16:06 PM | 5
And to the east, I remember reading that one of the first things the US did was to build a
bridge and highway towards the east; shortly thereafter, heroin flooded into Russia.
The level of US "counter-narcotic" investment seems to be about right to support the GROWTH
of the narcotics industry...not the otherway around...its black and its dirty
Every comment on this post is like a fine champagne of reality. how do people get by with out
wanting to know the truth. keep the comments coming I need more! Brilliant links. The doors
of perception just opened for me. Who the hell runs our TVs stations that they can turn a
blind I to this lot.
-------
I to find great strength in music, to find the truth. For me it is reggae any group in
society that has sufferd what we discuss on this site for 300 years, but have survived got
stronger and put it to music, I feel needs listening to!!!
The "War on Drugs" was conceived to put black people in jail en masse as Jim Crow came to an
end. Nixon's aides admitted this. Read "The New Jim Crow" for the full story. Marijuana laws
were first introduced in the early 20th century as a tool to arrest and deport Mexicans from
the American southwest. Google it.
The bullshit "War on Drugs" is as phony as the bullshit "War on Terror" in the wake of 3
skyscrapers that were demolished and collapsed at freefall speed.
The real money is to be made in the bullshit wars spawned by these 2 hoaxes that boggle
the mind in their scope.
Basically, these two cornerstones of American domestic and foreign policy are frauds of
biblical proportions.
An empire built on these foundations will come crashing down as fast as WTC 7 on the
afternoon of September 11, 2001.
Various Contra-cocaine type operations of un/controlled shipments of drugs existed in the
early 1990s, some of which existed in order to arm Bosnia (local fighters and foreign
mujahideen), thereby undermining the UN's arms embargo of former Yugoslav states.
Between 1988 and 1992, 22 tons of cocaine was brought into the US via Venezuela by a team
consisting of Mark McFarlin (head of the CIA's counter-narcotics center), Jim Campbell (the
CIA's chief of station in Venezuela) and General Guillén (head of the Venezuelan
National Guard in the pre-Chavez era).
Anti-Drug Unit of C.I.A. Sent Ton of Cocaine to U.S. in 1990
At roughly the same time Albanian mobsters had built a heroin smuggling network for the
purpose of illegally supplying arms to the Bosnian mujahideen. Drugs Paying for Conflict
in Europe
In the summer of 1991, Dutch drug lord Klaas Bruinsma, who had connections with members of
the Dutch elite (corporate and royal), the Colombian Cali cartel and the Yugoslav mafia, was
assassinated by either former cop Martin Hoogland (possibly working for intelligence), or the
Yugoslav mobster Branco Marianovic. In that same summer, the UN Security Council passed
Resolution 713 (the Yugoslav arms embargo), and soon after elements within Dutch customs and
police, in cooperation with Bruinsma's business heirs/infiltrators, started the controlled
shipment of large amounts of cocaine (estimated 25,000 kilo) and hashish (estimated 500,000
kilo) under the name "Operation Delta". The customs officials involved in Operation Delta
were most likely protected by their boss Fred Teeven, later rewarded by given the job of
State Secretary for Security and Justice. Mabel Wisse-Smit, daughter of a top banker
(possibly drug money launderer) and future sister-in-law of the current Dutch king, was first
the lover of drug lord Bruinsma (until his assassination, possibly she was sent to spy on
him) and then the lover of Wall St. banker Mohamed Sacirbey (Bosnia's ambassador to UN in
1992, Bosnia's foreign minister in 1995). Wisse-Smit (later a George Soros
protégé) co-founded the Dutch charity foundation War Child, which was used as a
cover for arms lobbying during the Bosnia war, and she is reported by Bosnian media to have
been involved in a specific arms deal with Egypt.
Alfred W. McCoy is the authority on drugs and CIA.
He's still doing great work, publishing books.His first, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a classic.His latest, In the Shadows of the American Century, is brilliant analysis. Some videos on youtube, also. He has traveled, researched every ratline trail and outpost all over the globe.
Read him if you want the real facts.
It's good to know so many are well informed on this. I've read Rupert/Webb's stuff and have
Dark Alliance. There's a good movie/documentary out there about Webb but I can't recall the
name right now. Levine wrote about his undercover work in South American being thwarted by
the CIA. And Bo Gritz was trying to set up a deal where the US would buy up Khun Sa's opium
before it could be distributed but the USG wasn't interested. The amazing thing about the
Afghan ramp up in supply was seeing pictures of US soldiers patrolling in the middle of poppy
fields. Meanwhile at home, congress takes bribes (lobbying efforts) to help protect the legal
drug pushers from prosecution by the DEA shoving millions of pills across the country. A
friend's term for this kind of thing is "racket science."
Yeah, his updated edition is a must read. They do not handle the money directly, they let
the guerillas/rebels/revolutionaries handle that as a reward and provide protection from
legal authorities and access to markets using various agencies and mafia at both ends of the
supply-distribution chain. The dollars from the drugs pay for the weapons and support. The
profits go into nameless offshore Eurodollar accounts which then flow into London and Wall
Street as eurodollar loans in many multiples of the deposits (not to be confused with the
euro) to speculate in various markets and drive up asset prices. When the Taliban shut down
opium production we had the Dot.com crash (coincidence?). 100 billion a year can generate 1
trillion in dollars for speculators, and that was sorely missed (along with Clinton running a
surplus instead of a deficit)
There is so much evidence that in many places where they were or are engaged that drug flows
in the region increased and production increased in those areas known for growing the stuff.
Like any organization only those with a need to know have an idea and the majority are clean
and without information
While we are discussing history of the War on Drugs another example of a major consumer
organization (at the time of print) being turned into a vacuous shell....
The WIkipedia summary
"
The book describes the effects and risks of psychoactive drugs which were common in
contemporary use for recreational and nonmedical purposes.[2] The New York Times paraphrased
some major arguments from the book, saying "'Drug-free' treatment of heroin addiction almost
never works", "Nicotine can be as tough to beat as heroin", and "Good or bad, marijuana is
here to stay. The billions spent to fight it are wasted dollars."[3] The book identifies
marijuana as the most popular drug after tobacco, alcohol, and nicotine.[4] A reviewer for
the Journal of the American Medical Association summarized it by saying that "Brecher holds
that the division of drugs into licit and illicit categories is medically irrational and
rooted mainly in historical and sociological factors."[5]
"
karlof1. Amazing that you knew Mike. And yes, the willful ignorance is horribly frustrating.
The way I see it, almost all "Westerners" are willfully ignorant. We all must know that
the only way we live to the "standards" we do is because of the plunder of both our colonial
past and neoliberal present. But most choose to look aside.
For those who haven't seen it, please spend 17 minutes to see Mallence Bart-Williams give an incredible
talk.
If Kiev wants to attack Donbas they better hurry. After World Cup, and definitely next year
when the pipelines bypassing Ukraine will be ready, Ukraine's strategic situation will get
worse. We are in a transition phase: sh..t happened in 2013-15 that is impossible to undo,
but there were fortunately constraints on all sides that prevented a meltdown. In a year or
two most of those constraints will be gone.
Saker is correct that EU countries will not work with Russia. Blaming it all on Washington
was always stupid – there are forces in Europe, in all countries, who want a
confrontation with Russia. Any event, real or fake, will be used to escalate. West cannot
lose this one without another fight. And if they sit on their hands, they will eventually
lose with a disillusioned Ukraine and slowly disintegrating EU. Populist energy needs to be
re-directed eastward, and for that a more aggressive policy is required. This is not
pessimism, there simply is no way for EU elite to climb down. How could UK make up with
Russia without looking like complete idiots? Or Macron and Merkel? The hostility is at this
point inherent in the situation – what started out as a badly thought-out attempt to
get some quick goodies (bases in Crimea, Nato expansion, sell weapons) has evolved into a
real death spiral.
We are one Franz Ferdinand moment away from a catastrophe. Let's enjoy the games while we
still can. Trump knows this, so he is trying desperately to organize a summit or send some
messages of conciliation. But he is powerless and it might be too late for that. Hubris never
dissipates, it requires a disaster and an elite turnover to cure hubris.
Saker is once again completely wrong. His theories fall short to explain lots of real events.
He got hooked on his "Anglo-Zionist" theory and "one Hegemon", which is far from explaining
the reality on the ground. There is no one single hegemon, but two powerful interest groups
in the west. One of the power centers is dominated by the Rothschilds from the City of London
and the other ruled by the Rockerfellers which is based in the US.
The powers described above are sometimes working in collusion but sometimes work against each
other (They were in collusion during the Soviet Afghan war for instance). Currently, we don't
see a collusion but a war being waged in between these two groups. I think it is highly self
evident, so much so that it is happening almost all in the open. In the modern history we
haven't witnessed such a openly fought war ever before (between these two powers). All is at
stake and the war in between these two is vicious. Thus you can explain Trump's attitude
towards EU, everlasting character assasination of Trump by certain opposing circles in the
US, high level resignations, the state of confusion of Nato and much more. If this theory is
right (and I think it is much more viable than any other theory that I came across in the
Alt-Med), this makes Russia firmly embedded into one of the camps. Unfortunately, the
position that Russia took makes him not a sovereign power but on contrary puts him into a
subservient role. The late actions of Russia, especially in Syria, is quite telling. I know
people who admire Russia get quite frustrated when they hear such a scenario and outcome, but
this is possibly the only way Putin believes that Russia can survive. Thus it explains his
latest house clean-up of Euroasian integrists. Even worse, if you believe in this scenario,
it brings Russia and China against each other especially in the long run. This scenario also
put a full stop to the idealist Euroasian multi-polar world order.
Here is the link to an older video in Russian with English subtitles. The guy's name is
Andrei Fursov and he has some interesting things to say regarding this subject. This
interview was just before Obama was elected but is still quite relevent. His newer videos
seems to have lost steam, possibly because he is working for some state connected Russian
institutions and think-thanks and thus I think he is somewhat restricted. After all it is
again the famous "Game Theory", isn't it?
I don't think you realize that armies need supplies. To break into Donbas cities would be
hard enough, but to re-supply them would be impossible. Civilians would mostly evacuate, so
there would be little to 'hide in'. Kiev cannot win militarily as long as Russia opposes it.
Russia can always blast their bases from air, or with missiles. Don't kid yourself, if Russia
has the will, they will prevail.
Since you mentioned 2014, there was a perfect opportunity for Maidanistas to avoid this.
All they had to do was to be friendly and accommodating to its Russian minority. Offer them
autonomy, re-assure them, promise that trade and ties with Russia would continue. Kiev did
the exact opposite, an extremely bad tactic. US kept on telling them to cool it, that one
doesn't win by attacking before ready. But in Kiev emotions prevailed, and so we are where we
are.
Sooner or later a more accommodating government in Kiev will try the 'let bygones be
bygones' tactic on Russia. If we are lucky enough to make it that far.
"... Assad is adamant that the price demanded by the Americans, that of absolute US hegemony, is one that Syria will never pay ..."
"... For the Americans, there is a general principle they follow in dealing with any problem in the world. The only price they ask for is absolute hegemony, regardless of the issue and the place. Of course, we shall never provide that price; otherwise we wouldn't have fought this war for years . We have been fighting for the independence of Syrian decision-making, for the Syrian homeland, and for the unity of Syrian territory. As for Iran in particular, let me be very clear: the Syrian-Iranian relationship is a strategic one not subject to a deal in the south or in the north. This relationship, in terms of its implications and results on the ground, is linked to the present and future of the region ..."
Assad is adamant that the price demanded by the Americans, that of absolute US hegemony, is one that Syria will never pay
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad revealed in a recent interview with Iranian media al-Alam TV that attempts at achieving non military
resolutions to conflicts inside Syria via reconciliation is being actively prevented by intervention from Israel and the US. He is
adamant that the price demanded by the Americans, that of absolute US hegemony, is one that Syria will never pay. Video of the interview
is furnished below in English,
courtesy of Press TV ,
followed by
a transcript
obtained from Syria 360 Internationalist News Agency . Added emphasis on certain statements is mine.
President Bashar al-Assad affirmed that the Syrian south is in front of two options; reconciliation or liberation by force, indicating
that at this point, there are no concrete results for a simple reason which is Israeli and American interference, for they put pressure
on the terrorists in that area in order to prevent reaching any compromise or peaceful resolution.
The President added in an interview given to Iran's Al-ALAM TV that the Syrian-Iranian relation is strategic not subject to a
deal and it is linked to the present and future of the region , affirming that neither Syria nor Iran has floated this relationship
on the international political bazaar for it to be subject to haggling.
President al-Assad affirmed that since the beginning of the war, particularly when it started to have a clear military nature
on the southern front in particular, the Israelis used to shell Syrian forces continuously, and consequently provide direct support
to the terrorists. Israeli artillery and aircraft are the terrorists' artillery and aircraft Despite Israeli support to the terrorists,
we have been doing our job, and the Syrian Army is fighting its way towards the southern front, and has liberated a number of areas
within the limits of its capabilities. So, with or without its approval, the decision is a Syrian one, and this is a national duty
we shall carry out.
Following the full text of the interview;
Question 1: Mr. President, there are many issues which we will talk about, but in the light of the victories you have achieved,
the main focus remains the south of Syria. What's happening exactly, or what is the nature of what is happening in the south of Syria?
President Assad: To put it simply, after the liberation of al-Ghouta, it was suggested that we should move south. We were faced
with two options, as is the case in all other areas in Syria: reconciliation or liberation by force. At this point, the Russians
suggested the possibility of giving reconciliation an opportunity, similar to what happened in other areas, in order to restore the
situation that prevailed before 2011. In other words, for the Syrian Army to be deployed in that area, which is an area of confrontation
with the Zionist enemy. And of course the terrorists should leave the area. This proposition suits us. Up till now, there are no
concrete results for a simple reason which is Israeli and American interference; for they put pressure on the terrorists in that
area in order to prevent reaching any compromise or peaceful resolution . That is how the situation stands now.
Question 2: So, it hasn't been decided whether to move towards a military operation or towards reconciliation?
President Assad: No, contacts are still ongoing between the Russians, the Americans, and the Israelis, while nobody is communicating
with the terrorists, because they are mere tools, and they implement what their masters decide ultimately. This is what happened,
i.e. there was an opportunity to reach reconciliation, but the American and Israeli interference prevented that possibility .
Question 3: Of course, this is the reality there. But on the other hand, there are those who talk about many things taking
place in the south. Mr. President, is there a certain deal, what is the price? Is there really a price for concluding this deal in
the south? Let me talk frankly about the issue of getting the Iranians to leave the southern region in return for al-Tanf, for example.
What did the Americans demand, or let's say, what was the price the Americans asked to approve the reconciliation process in the
south?
President Assad: For the Americans, there is a general principle they follow in dealing with any problem in the world. The
only price they ask for is absolute hegemony, regardless of the issue and the place. Of course, we shall never provide that price;
otherwise we wouldn't have fought this war for years . We have been fighting for the independence of Syrian decision-making, for
the Syrian homeland, and for the unity of Syrian territory. As for Iran in particular, let me be very clear: the Syrian-Iranian relationship
is a strategic one not subject to a deal in the south or in the north. This relationship, in terms of its implications and results
on the ground, is linked to the present and future of the region. Consequently, it is not subject to the price tags of the international
bazaar. Neither Syria nor Iran has floated this relationship on the international political bazaar for it to be subject to haggling.
The proposition was made by the Israelis with the objective of provoking and embarrassing Iran. At the same time, this comes in line
with the international propaganda campaign launched against Iran regarding the nuclear file. It is not a separate issue; for everything
happening now is linked to Iran in order to create an international position against it. As for us in Syria, the decision concerning
our land is an exclusively Syrian decision. We are fighting the same battle, and when we have a decision concerning Iran, we will
talk about it with the Iranians and not with any other party .
Question 4: Of course, we will talk more about Iran and in more detail, but since we are talking about the southern front, let's
explore it further. Practically, in the same context, there is the MOC which hasn't stopped its operations since the beginning of
the war on Syria about eight years ago. It is working and is still active, and is directly linked to the Israelis. But we have noticed
recently that it has been reactivated, and there are more communications. Mr. President, does this mean that the Syrian state is
practically moving towards a military decisive action in the south regardless of the consequences, whether things reach a stalemate
or not? Is a decisive action in the cards for the Syrian leadership?
President Assad: No, MOC has nothing to do with this decision. MOC has been linked to the presence and the role of the terrorists
since the beginning of the war on Syria. That's why it existed: in order to lead them militarily. Consequently, the continued existence
of this operations room means the continuation of the role given to these terrorists, i.e. they are equipped and prepared to carry
out more terrorist acts. MOC is linked to the terrorists and not to the role of the Syrian state. Our role has nothing to do with
it. Our decision has been clear from the beginning: we will liberate all Syrian lands. As to when to move south, north, east, or
west, this is a purely military issue. But regardless of MOC, we have moved towards the south and we are giving the political process
a chance. If that doesn't succeed, we have no other option but to liberate it by force.
Question 5: But there is a confrontation in the south, and the issue is not limited geographically to Syria in the larger political
sense. There are the Americans, the Russians, the Iranians, the Israelis, and Hezbollah. All these parties are there in the area.
What does that mean? How are you going to deal with this?
President Assad: You are talking about two axes: one supporting terrorism, and represented by the US, Israel, and some flunkies
in the region including some Arab and non-Arab states, and an anti-terrorist axis. The first axis supports terrorism and seeks hegemony,
while the second axis seeks independence. So, there can be only one result for this confrontation, i.e. the victory of one of these
axes. At least, as far as the anti-terrorist axis is concerned, it will not give up the process of cleaning Syria and the region
of terrorism and will not give up on the unity of Syrian territory .
As to the other axis, will it change as a result of the reality on the ground? Let's wait and see. But in terms of substance and
convictions, it will not change, while in terms of the political practices dictated by reality and the facts on the ground, it might.
Question 6: Will the Americans leave al-Tanf?
President Assad: The Americans say they are ready, but everyone knows that the Americans are historically professional liars in
politics. So why should we believe them? Also, we have to wait and see.
Question 7: Mr. President, what's happening now in Jordan? Is it linked to what's happening on the southern front in particular,
i.e. is it linked to what is being plotted in that region, in your view?
President Assad: In fact, the only information we have is what we hear in the media. In any case, we wish Jordan stability, not
chaos, because the latter will have a negative impact on us.
Question 8: Since we are talking about the south, let's close this file. Mr. President, what would make the Israeli occupation
agree to the return of the Syrian Army to the borders, i.e. a return to the situation which existed at the beginning of 2011, after
seven years of repeated Zionist attempts, directly and indirectly, to undermine the Syrian state, the regime in Syria, and stability
in Syria. Why would it agree now to the return of the Syrian Army to the borders and to the occupied Golan?
President Assad: Certainly, neither conviction, morality, nor international law means anything to the Israelis. Since the beginning
of the war, particularly when it started to have a clear military nature on the southern front in particular, the Israelis used to
shell Syrian forces continuously, and consequently provide direct support to the terrorists. Israeli artillery and aircraft are the
terrorists' artillery and aircraft. That applies to Jabhat al-Nusra of course . Nothing is going to change this Israeli approach.
As far as we are concerned, Israel's approval had no role at all. Despite Israeli support to the terrorists, we have been doing our
job, and the Syrian Army is fighting its way towards the southern front, and has liberated a number of areas within the limits of
its capabilities. So, with or without its approval, the decision is a Syrian one, and this is a national duty we shall carry out.
Question 9: So, a return of the Syrian Army is better than having resistance in the Golan, for instance?
President Assad: For the Israelis?
Journalist: Yes.
President Assad: I think the two options are bad for the Israelis. Both of them are bad. Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has repeatedly
talked about Syria's relationship with the resistance and a Syrian role in the resistance. So, how would the Israelis choose between
two bad things for them?
Question 10: As you said, Mr. President, Israel has financed, supported, and more dangerously was capable of enlisting a large
number of Syrians, some of whom were treated inside occupied Palestine. They talked about it. In the future, how would you deal with
this large number of Israeli agents? Maybe some of them were misled and Israel might have exploited the financial and living conditions
of some; and some have chosen to side with the Israelis. How would you deal with them in the future?
President Assad: This is true; we cannot put everyone in the same basket. There are different reasons for moving in this wrong
direction; and these people have wronged the homeland and every Syrian citizen. Ultimately, they are the children of this homeland,
and we all bear responsibility for this problem, not only those who have done wrong. When crime, for instance, becomes widespread
in a certain country, the whole society bears responsibility for this crime, not only the security agencies or the criminals themselves.
The first thing that should be done is to accommodate these people. Second, we need to address the root causes which led to this
case of weak patriotism. The causes here are many and complicated, and the scope of this interview doesn't allow for all of them
to be mentioned.
Question 11: In the same context, while you are talking about restoring the Syrian air defense systems and confronting the Zionist
occupation, statements have been made by leaders of the Israeli entity that they will strike at the depth of Syrian territory. How
would you deal with that situation, particularly that balance has been achieved recently, i.e. balance between Israeli aggressions
and Syrian responses?
President Assad: Basically, we haven't stopped responding. First of all, we haven't stopped fighting terrorists, and at the same
time we haven't stopped responding to Israeli aggression within the capabilities available to us, militarily and technically. Moreover,
the more these capabilities improve; the response will be better and higher. But in fact the strongest response to Israel now is
to strike the Israeli army existing in Syria which consists practically of the terrorists .
Journalist: You consider them an Israeli army?
President Assad: Of course, for they are acting clearly and starkly in Israel's interest. The first acts they carried out were
attacks against the air defense systems. What is the link between air defense systems and the terrorists acting as infantry on the
ground? This was an Israeli order. It was an Israeli-American order because it is the same thing. So, they are Israel's army inside
Syria; and the first strike against Israel, politically, militarily, and in every other area, is to strike Israel's terrorists inside
Syria, whether they belong to ISIS, al-Nusra, or the other groups linked to the Israeli plan and strategy.
Journalist: If Israel escalates, are you prepared to respond more forcefully?
President Assad: This is what's happening. It is escalating, and we are responding. Ultimately, we are fighting the war within
the capabilities available to us, and we are doing our best within these capabilities. A response does not need a political decision.
I stress that responding or not responding is not a political decision. It is a national decision, and it was taken from day one.
But implementing this decision depends on what we can do militarily and not politically.
Question 12: In terms of capabilities, there is one issue in the media which we are always following, i.e. the S300 Russian missiles.
Russia says, "We will deliver these missiles", and then says, "We will not deliver them", which means that the issue is not clear.
What is happening exactly? Why this Russian hesitation, in your view, in delivering the S300 missiles to Syria, while some other
countries have been seeking S400, i.e. they are ahead of us in this regard.
President Assad: You know that military action and military considerations are part of political considerations. Consequently,
a statement, even if it is of a military nature, carries at the same time political messages. So, why did the Russians say that they
want to send or not send? This is a statement that the Russians should be asked about because it might be part of their political
tactics. As to the military aspect of the statement, which concerns Syria, it's not our custom to talk about the weapon which will
be delivered or not delivered. The evidence was that the weapons used in response to the last two aggressions, the tripartite aggression
and after that the Israeli aggression, were not announced by Syria. We traditionally do not announce cases of a technical military
nature.
Journalist: So, even the nature of the response is not linked to the issue of the S300 missiles?
President Assad: No. The same applies. Even if the S300 missiles will be provided or not provided, we will not say that they were
delivered to Syria. A weapon is used when it must be used.
Journalist: Is there a possibility that you have developed certain weapons?
President Assad: This remains a possibility. In any case, the result is the same: weapons shouldn't be talked about until they
are used. Weapons announce themselves only when they are used.
Question 13: Mr. President, let's return to the political aspect, since we are talking about the southern front. Regarding the
general situation, in light of all that has been achieved on the Syrian arena today, the most prominent actor is the tripartite alliance,
or what is being called the tripartite alliance. I mean Syria, Iran, and Russia. What is the nature of this alliance? Is it a temporary
alliance, in the sense that it is linked to fighting terrorism or to certain developments on the Syrian arena? Recently, we have
started to see – or let's say some have focused on certain points in order to show – a certain fracture in this alliance. What is
your take on that and what is the actual reality of this alliance?
President Assad: If we talk first about the Syrian-Iranian part, for 40 years, and in the different conditions that the Middle
East region has gone through, this alliance remained solid. So, there is no reason to say that it is temporary or otherwise. The
new element in the war on Syria is the Russian element, and that's why this tripartite alliance came into existence. Our relationship
with Russia is now about seven decades old. Despite the fluctuations and the fall of the Soviet Union, the rule of President Yeltsin,
and the deterioration of these relations to a large degree for us, it has never reached the stage of reversing this relationship
with Syria. Russia continued to deal with Syria as a friendly state, and we have imported everything from Russia, including weapons,
during the different stages of the sanctions imposed on Syria. It is not in the nature of the Russians to build temporary or self-serving
alliances or to sell out on relations in order to get deals done. The relationship is definitely a strategic one, but the political
statements allowed for these speculations.
These statements also aim at sending messages in different directions. Maybe, sometimes the language or the choice of particular
terminology might not be helpful and might take the statement in a different direction at odds with the content of the statement.
This happens from time to time. However, these statements shouldn't be taken out of context: the Russian view of the relationship
with Iran is a strategic one. As for Syria, the Russians do not interfere in Syrian affairs. If they have a certain opinion, they
raise it with us and say that in the end, the decision is that of the Syrian leadership and the Syrian people. This is a constant
principle for Russia. Therefore, the alliance is a strategic one, and if there are differences, such differences happen within the
Syrian state, and you see differences within the Iranian state and within the Russian state. It is natural for us to differ on daily
tactical details, for why conduct a dialogue if we agree on everything? We meet extensively in order to reach agreement.
Journalist: So, this tripartite alliance is being consolidated.
President Assad: Of course. This is dictated by reality, interest, and international changes that make it necessary for this alliance
to be consolidated. As long as the other axis supports terrorism, and as long as we, together with Iran and Russia, feel the danger
of terrorism, not only in Syria, but also on all these countries and on the whole world, and as long as Syria, Iran, and Russia realize
the importance of abiding by international law, these facts make the existence of this alliance necessary.
Question 14: But there are those who say that Syria will get a price if the Iranians leave Syrian territories. Is there a certain
political, moral, or military price in this regard?
President Assad: As I said in the beginning, as long as this relationship is not floated in the bazaar, they cannot offer a price,
and the answer will be clear. That's why they don't dare suggest this price. This issue was raised by different countries, including
Saudi Arabia for instance, at the beginning of the war, and not only at the beginning, but at different stages. The proposition was
that if Syria cut its relationship with Iran, the situation in Syria will be normal. This principle is basically rejected by us.
Journalist: So, there were initiatives, so to speak, made in this regard by Saudi Arabia.
President Assad: During the war?
Journalist: Yes.
President Assad: Of course, more than once, and in a clear manner.
Journalist: Directly?
President Assad: Directly. The relationship with Iran was the basis for every proposition; and Saudi Arabia's position on this
subject is public. I'm not revealing a secret.
Question 15: An issue is raised, whether in Syria, Iran, or Lebanon, about the nature of Iranian presence in Syria. Some call
them Iranian advisors. Even the Syrian Foreign Minister used the same term. At the same time, we notice that there are Iranian martyrs.
Frankly, Mr. President, what is the nature of Iranian presence in Syria now?
President Assad: The term adviser is sometimes used in a broad manner, i.e. these advisers have been with us, through the longstanding
relationship with Iran, even before the war, because the military relationship is close. When a military formation moves to a fighting
position, the adviser becomes a fighter. So, the word can be used in different senses. There are certainly Iranian advisers in Syria,
and there are groups of Iranian volunteers who came to Syria, and they are led by Iranian officers. Iran has fought with and defended
the Syrian people. It offered blood. That's why when we say "advisers" this is a generic term, but this doesn't mean that we are
ashamed of any Iranian presence, even if it is official. But we use the word "advisers" because there are no regular Iranian fighting
units in Syria.
Journalist: Full formations.
President Assad: Exactly. There are no battalions, or brigades, or divisions. First, we can't hide them, and then why should we
be ashamed of that? When we invited the Russians legally to come to Syria, we were not ashamed of that. And if there were an Iranian
formation, we would announce it, because such relations need agreements between the two states endorsed by parliaments. Such relations
cannot be concealed.
Journalist: And you invited Iranian advisers to come?
President Assad: Of course, from the beginning we invited the Iranians, and then we invited the Russians. We needed the support
of these countries, and they answered the call.
Journalist: Mr. President, you said more than once that there are no Iranian bases in Syria.
President Assad: That's correct.
Journalist: Why there are no Iranian bases, while we notice that there are a number of Russian bases?
President Assad: There's nothing that prevents the existence of such bases as long as Iran is an ally as is Russia.
Journalist: This means that if Iran requested the existence of such bases, you would agree?
President Assad: If we ask. We will ask them to agree. I mean that we could ask for the existence of such forces to support us.
Iran has never asked and does not have an interest except in fighting terrorism. But the evolution of the war made it necessary to
develop the nature of this presence.
This happened as far as the Russians are concerned. In the beginning, Russian support, like Iranian support, was different from
what it is today. The support for terrorism has developed internationally and globally when the Syrian Army confronted those terrorists,
and with that Russian and Iranian military presence developed. At a certain stage, we found – with the Russians of course – that
the existence of air bases was necessary to provide air support to the Syrian Army. And now, if we find, in cooperation, coordination,
or dialogue with the Iranians, that there is a need for Iranian military bases, we will not hesitate. But now, Iranian support in
its present form is good and effective.
Question 16: Why haven't you visited Iran so far, although you visited Russia more than once?
President Assad: That's correct. In fact, there was a scheduled visit to Iran a few months ago, and it was postponed and not cancelled.
It was postponed because of an emergency in Syria related to the development of battles. There is certainly no reason which prevents
such a visit, and I'll visit Iran hopefully soon on the earliest opportunity. This is natural, but the issue is logistic, no more,
no less.
Question 17: Mr. President, I move to another file. Last week, it was the Jerusalem International Day, and the Palestinian cause
is going through its most difficult stages. We are talking about the "deal of the century", and moving the American Embassy to occupied
Jerusalem. What do you have to say about Palestine? Is Syria still capable of supporting the Palestine cause? Basically, wasn't one
of the most important objectives of the war on Syria to get Syria out of the axis of resistance and to prevent it from supporting
resistance, whether in Lebanon or Palestine?
President Assad: The Palestine context, since 1948 up till now, has been a complicated one, because the regional context is complicated.
Of course, it is complicated because the colonial West, which is particularly supportive of Israel, has always created elements which
aim at one single thing. First, to drive to desperation the Arab citizen who is historically attached to the cause of Palestine and
who has always considered it a pan-Arab cause that touched him even on the national level.
The other objective has been to distract the Arab peoples together with states or societies in general to marginal causes so that
they do not have time to think about Israel. And they have succeeded to a great extent, most recently through the so-called Arab
spring which has aimed at destroying the political, military, and psychological infrastructure of Arab societies.
Nevertheless, recent development have proven that the Arab people is still conscientiously attached to the cause of Palestine.
As for Syria – since it has been part of these plots to undermine the Arab condition in general – first, for Syria to support the
cause of Palestine, it should first of all destroy the Israeli army in Syria. Restoring stability in Syria, striking terrorism, and
foiling the Israeli plot in Syria is certainly part of supporting the cause of Palestine. The support might be indirect with direct
consequences, but these direct consequences are linked to the internal Palestinian condition. We shouldn't forget that the Palestinians
are divided between groups which resist Israel and are genuinely linked to the cause of Palestine, and other groups which are against
the resistance and support surrenderist and defeatist peace, while there are other groups which use resistance as a title in order
to achieve their political objectives under the slogan of religion. This is of course the Muslim Brotherhood's approach.
Question 18: Are you prepared to offer whatever the resistance asks of you, whether in the form of political, military, or any
other form of support?
President Assad: Politically, we haven't changed. The Palestinian question for us is still as it was ten years ago and decades
ago. It hasn't changed. As to what we can offer, this has to do with two things: first, Syria's current capabilities; and there's
no doubt that the priority is given now to cleaning Syria of terrorism. Second, it has to do with the Palestinian condition and the
parties with which we can deal within the Palestinian arena.
Question 19: Since we are talking about resistance, there is the other side. In addition to some countries which stood beside
Syria in fighting terrorism, there was also a role played by the resistance in Lebanon, particularly Hezbollah, which provided a
great deal and contributed to fighting terrorism. What do you say, Mr. President, to resistance fighters and families of martyrs
and the wounded?
President Assad: When all these groups of resistance get together to defend Syrian soil and Syrian citizens, including the Lebanese
resistance and the brothers who came from Iraq some of whom reproached me for not mentioning them by name, I take this opportunity
to stress that there are brothers from Iraq to whom we give the same weight of any resistance fighter who came from any other country.
There are also the families of resistance fighters who came from Iran and sacrificed their blood in Syria. We should put all these
in the same basket next to the Syrian martyrs, fighters, and their families. To those I say that all the letters, the words, the
sentences, and the whole of literature are much less than a single drop of blood. Therefore, words are of a much lesser value than
what they have offered. What's more important is what history will write about them.
In fact, when we talk about writing history, we need to highlight that history needs a strategy and needs tactics, but the fact
remains that strategy without implementation on the ground has no value. It remains mere thought which we might include in books
and essays. But the reality is that these individuals in these countries, this group of resistance fighters, not politics, write
history. I would like to use the answer to this question to express to them all my love, respect, and appreciation, and my reverence
to the fighters, the wounded, and martyrs, and to all their families who are courage incarnated and who sent these individuals to
Syria to defend it and fight terrorism, so that these families become models of morality and principles for present and future generations.
Question 20: Have you asked Hezbollah to leave Syria? A few days ago His Eminence Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah talked about this issue
and said that nobody can get us out of Syria unless the Syrian leadership asked us to do so.
President Assad: The battle is long and ongoing. When we talk about this tripartite alliance – and if we consider it a quadruple
alliance when we add Hezbollah, we talk about the tripartite alliance in terms of the states included, but in the end Hezbollah is
a basic element in this war – the battle is long, and the need for these military forces will continue for a long time. When there
is a need, and when Hezbollah, Iran, or others believe that terrorism has been eliminated, they will tell us that they want to go
home. As Sayyed Hasan said, they have families and daily interests, which is normal, but it is still early to talk about this subject.
Question 21: Up till now, there are still areas under the control of terrorism and areas under occupation. At the same time, regretfully,
some Arab countries, and here I am talking particularly about Saudi Arabia, announced that it is ready to send forcers to Syria.
On the other hand, a few days ago popular tribal units were formed to resist occupation. Are these really popular resistance units?
Do they receive support from the Syrian government? Does this mean that the army cannot liberate those areas, and that's why it is
asking for the help of the tribes? What is the nature of this issue?
President Assad: There are different forms of this resistance which appeared a few years ago. In the beginning they were fighting
ISIS before they started to fight the occupiers. They were against ISIS in the central and eastern regions, and there were cases
where they appeared in other regions which were not given media coverage and about which we hear sometimes through information and
indications.
Now, this situation has started to expand. So, it's not one single case. There are a number of cases which might be individual
sometimes, or in the form of small groups not affiliated to an organization. In any case, our position as a state has been from the
beginning to support any act of resistance, whether against terrorists or against occupying forces, regardless of their nationality,
i.e. American, French, Turkish, or Israeli. We support these resistance forces based on our national role as a government.
Question 22: What about Saudi Arabia and sending Saudi forces to Syria?
President Assad: First, when we talk about a state, we should assume that such a state can take decisions independently. That's
why we will not talk about the role of Saudi Arabia. You better ask me about the American decision on this issue.
Question 23: On the other hand, there are a number of Arab countries which we talk about and which had a role or contributed to
the role or to the destruction of Syria. These countries are now trying to get to Syria through the reconstruction process. What
do you say in this regard, particularly that these countries are the ones which have capital and huge financial power? How are you
going to deal with that?
President Assad: Reconstruction in Syria is not a cause for concern for us. It needs two factors: first, the human factor which
is more important than the financial factor. When a country like Syria possesses the human factor, the financial cost will be less
when it comes to reconstruction. This is self-evident, and we possess all these factors despite the fact that many competent and
qualified Syrians have immigrated because of the war.
But we still have the capability to start reconstruction. And the evidence is clear now, for the state is moving forward and reconstruction
has begun. As to money, the Syrian people have financial capabilities, capital, most of which is not in Syria, but outside Syria.
But there is capital waiting for reconstruction to begin, so it will begin investing. On the other hand, there are the friendly countries
which have capabilities and have the desire; and we have the desire to have them participate in reconstruction, so that they benefit
and we Syrians benefit from this process. In the end, we do not need those countries and we will never allow them to be part of reconstruction.
Journalist: Never?
President Assad: Absolutely.
Journalist: Not even if there was a need in this regard, I mean in terms of financial resources?
President Assad: Financial resources are not everything. As I said, this is available. There are different sources in the world
and in Syria for capital.
Question 24: With these tough years, we are talking about the legendary steadfastness of the Syrian Army, the Syrian people, the
Armed Forces. If you wanted to talk about two cases, the most difficult case or incident that you have encountered during these years,
and on the other hand the best and most beautiful case.
President Assad: It is natural, at the heart of the military battle, for the best and worst cases to be linked to the development
of the military battle. If I say that the worst cases were when terrorists used to control a certain area, this is self-evident,
but it is related more to specific battles, particularly when the area is strategic or the city is big with a large population. Consequently,
the impact will be much greater psychologically and in terms of morale.
But there was an ongoing situation which we are still living and we must think about: when a martyr or a group of martyrs fall,
and this is ongoing on a weekly basis for us, we must think that a family lost a dear one who cannot be compensated. He might be
compensated by achieving victory at a certain stage, but on the family, psychological and human level, you cannot compensate a dear
one lost to a certain family, or maybe a friend. This is a very painful situation which we have lived and continue to live. This
will not stop until the war itself stops. But there were painful cases at the beginning of the war, when you see this huge lack of
patriotism. They were perhaps a minority, but a large minority, of individuals who were prepared to sell the homeland and trade it
together with their principles, if they had ones, in return for money or a certain interest, in addition to a certain percentage
of extremism.
On the other hand, there were victories, particularly when victories started in the city of al-Qsair in 2013, and culminated in
the city of Aleppo in 2016, that was the beginning of the major victories. That was followed by Deir Ezzor, and today we are living
the joy of liberating Damascus and its countryside. This is a situation we have all lived through, and you were with us, and I am
sure you feel the same joy.
Question 25: Have you felt tired at a certain moment? Have you felt hesitant at a certain moment, in light of all the decisions
you have taken, have you ever, even for a moment, thought of leaving? Haven't you said to yourself: let me save my family and resign,
as some people did at a certain point in time?
President Assad: This question might be raised in a personal manner. When I am faced with a personal situation as an individual,
I might feel despair after a few months. I might feel tired or bored or I might want to move to a different situation, or give up.
That is possible.
Journalist: As an individual?
President Assad: Of course, as an individual, but the case you are proposing is not personal, it is national. Imagine yourself
in a different condition, perhaps building something on your own. You feel tired, but when you see a large number of people helping
you build it and share the same determination, you forget the tiredness.
Now we are in a national situation. We are talking about millions of Syrians. When you see a shell striking and victims falling
anywhere in Syria, you feel frustrated. But when you see life being restored to the same area after one hour, your psychological
condition changes. When you see that the electricity worker, the oil worker, the teacher, the employee, are moving side by side with
fighters, moving without despair and without tiredness, how can you feel tired? This is a collective condition not related to me
as a person. It has to do with our human condition when we are together as a society. How do we live? This defines whether you are
tired or not. Would the Syrian society have arrived at this stage of despair and surrender, I would certainly have been with it.
I would have surrendered because I do not have the necessary elements for steadfastness. This is self-evident.
Journalist: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for giving us this opportunity, and for your candidness in answering these questions.
Thank you very much.
If Kiev wants to attack Donbas they better hurry. After World Cup, and definitely next year
when the pipelines bypassing Ukraine will be ready, Ukraine's strategic situation will get
worse. We are in a transition phase: sh..t happened in 2013-15 that is impossible to undo,
but there were fortunately constraints on all sides that prevented a meltdown. In a year or
two most of those constraints will be gone.
Saker is correct that EU countries will not work with Russia. Blaming it all on Washington
was always stupid – there are forces in Europe, in all countries, who want a
confrontation with Russia. Any event, real or fake, will be used to escalate. West cannot
lose this one without another fight. And if they sit on their hands, they will eventually
lose with a disillusioned Ukraine and slowly disintegrating EU. Populist energy needs to be
re-directed eastward, and for that a more aggressive policy is required. This is not
pessimism, there simply is no way for EU elite to climb down. How could UK make up with
Russia without looking like complete idiots? Or Macron and Merkel? The hostility is at this
point inherent in the situation – what started out as a badly thought-out attempt to
get some quick goodies (bases in Crimea, Nato expansion, sell weapons) has evolved into a
real death spiral.
We are one Franz Ferdinand moment away from a catastrophe. Let's enjoy the games while we
still can. Trump knows this, so he is trying desperately to organize a summit or send some
messages of conciliation. But he is powerless and it might be too late for that. Hubris never
dissipates, it requires a disaster and an elite turnover to cure hubris.
Saker is once again completely wrong. His theories fall short to explain lots of real events.
He got hooked on his "Anglo-Zionist" theory and "one Hegemon", which is far from explaining
the reality on the ground. There is no one single hegemon, but two powerful interest groups
in the west. One of the power centers is dominated by the Rothschilds from the City of London
and the other ruled by the Rockerfellers which is based in the US.
The powers described above are sometimes working in collusion but sometimes work against each
other (They were in collusion during the Soviet Afghan war for instance). Currently, we don't
see a collusion but a war being waged in between these two groups. I think it is highly self
evident, so much so that it is happening almost all in the open. In the modern history we
haven't witnessed such a openly fought war ever before (between these two powers). All is at
stake and the war in between these two is vicious. Thus you can explain Trump's attitude
towards EU, everlasting character assasination of Trump by certain opposing circles in the
US, high level resignations, the state of confusion of Nato and much more. If this theory is
right (and I think it is much more viable than any other theory that I came across in the
Alt-Med), this makes Russia firmly embedded into one of the camps. Unfortunately, the
position that Russia took makes him not a sovereign power but on contrary puts him into a
subservient role. The late actions of Russia, especially in Syria, is quite telling. I know
people who admire Russia get quite frustrated when they hear such a scenario and outcome, but
this is possibly the only way Putin believes that Russia can survive. Thus it explains his
latest house clean-up of Euroasian integrists. Even worse, if you believe in this scenario,
it brings Russia and China against each other especially in the long run. This scenario also
put a full stop to the idealist Euroasian multi-polar world order.
Here is the link to an older video in Russian with English subtitles. The guy's name is
Andrei Fursov and he has some interesting things to say regarding this subject. This
interview was just before Obama was elected but is still quite relevent. His newer videos
seems to have lost steam, possibly because he is working for some state connected Russian
institutions and think-thanks and thus I think he is somewhat restricted. After all it is
again the famous "Game Theory", isn't it?
I don't think you realize that armies need supplies. To break into Donbas cities would be
hard enough, but to re-supply them would be impossible. Civilians would mostly evacuate, so
there would be little to 'hide in'. Kiev cannot win militarily as long as Russia opposes it.
Russia can always blast their bases from air, or with missiles. Don't kid yourself, if Russia
has the will, they will prevail.
Since you mentioned 2014, there was a perfect opportunity for Maidanistas to avoid this.
All they had to do was to be friendly and accommodating to its Russian minority. Offer them
autonomy, re-assure them, promise that trade and ties with Russia would continue. Kiev did
the exact opposite, an extremely bad tactic. US kept on telling them to cool it, that one
doesn't win by attacking before ready. But in Kiev emotions prevailed, and so we are where we
are.
Sooner or later a more accommodating government in Kiev will try the 'let bygones be
bygones' tactic on Russia. If we are lucky enough to make it that far.
"... Assad is adamant that the price demanded by the Americans, that of absolute US hegemony, is one that Syria will never pay ..."
"... For the Americans, there is a general principle they follow in dealing with any problem in the world. The only price they ask for is absolute hegemony, regardless of the issue and the place. Of course, we shall never provide that price; otherwise we wouldn't have fought this war for years . We have been fighting for the independence of Syrian decision-making, for the Syrian homeland, and for the unity of Syrian territory. As for Iran in particular, let me be very clear: the Syrian-Iranian relationship is a strategic one not subject to a deal in the south or in the north. This relationship, in terms of its implications and results on the ground, is linked to the present and future of the region ..."
Assad is adamant that the price demanded by the Americans, that of absolute US hegemony, is one that Syria will never pay
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad revealed in a recent interview with Iranian media al-Alam TV that attempts at achieving non military
resolutions to conflicts inside Syria via reconciliation is being actively prevented by intervention from Israel and the US. He is
adamant that the price demanded by the Americans, that of absolute US hegemony, is one that Syria will never pay. Video of the interview
is furnished below in English,
courtesy of Press TV ,
followed by
a transcript
obtained from Syria 360 Internationalist News Agency . Added emphasis on certain statements is mine.
President Bashar al-Assad affirmed that the Syrian south is in front of two options; reconciliation or liberation by force, indicating
that at this point, there are no concrete results for a simple reason which is Israeli and American interference, for they put pressure
on the terrorists in that area in order to prevent reaching any compromise or peaceful resolution.
The President added in an interview given to Iran's Al-ALAM TV that the Syrian-Iranian relation is strategic not subject to a
deal and it is linked to the present and future of the region , affirming that neither Syria nor Iran has floated this relationship
on the international political bazaar for it to be subject to haggling.
President al-Assad affirmed that since the beginning of the war, particularly when it started to have a clear military nature
on the southern front in particular, the Israelis used to shell Syrian forces continuously, and consequently provide direct support
to the terrorists. Israeli artillery and aircraft are the terrorists' artillery and aircraft Despite Israeli support to the terrorists,
we have been doing our job, and the Syrian Army is fighting its way towards the southern front, and has liberated a number of areas
within the limits of its capabilities. So, with or without its approval, the decision is a Syrian one, and this is a national duty
we shall carry out.
Following the full text of the interview;
Question 1: Mr. President, there are many issues which we will talk about, but in the light of the victories you have achieved,
the main focus remains the south of Syria. What's happening exactly, or what is the nature of what is happening in the south of Syria?
President Assad: To put it simply, after the liberation of al-Ghouta, it was suggested that we should move south. We were faced
with two options, as is the case in all other areas in Syria: reconciliation or liberation by force. At this point, the Russians
suggested the possibility of giving reconciliation an opportunity, similar to what happened in other areas, in order to restore the
situation that prevailed before 2011. In other words, for the Syrian Army to be deployed in that area, which is an area of confrontation
with the Zionist enemy. And of course the terrorists should leave the area. This proposition suits us. Up till now, there are no
concrete results for a simple reason which is Israeli and American interference; for they put pressure on the terrorists in that
area in order to prevent reaching any compromise or peaceful resolution . That is how the situation stands now.
Question 2: So, it hasn't been decided whether to move towards a military operation or towards reconciliation?
President Assad: No, contacts are still ongoing between the Russians, the Americans, and the Israelis, while nobody is communicating
with the terrorists, because they are mere tools, and they implement what their masters decide ultimately. This is what happened,
i.e. there was an opportunity to reach reconciliation, but the American and Israeli interference prevented that possibility .
Question 3: Of course, this is the reality there. But on the other hand, there are those who talk about many things taking
place in the south. Mr. President, is there a certain deal, what is the price? Is there really a price for concluding this deal in
the south? Let me talk frankly about the issue of getting the Iranians to leave the southern region in return for al-Tanf, for example.
What did the Americans demand, or let's say, what was the price the Americans asked to approve the reconciliation process in the
south?
President Assad: For the Americans, there is a general principle they follow in dealing with any problem in the world. The
only price they ask for is absolute hegemony, regardless of the issue and the place. Of course, we shall never provide that price;
otherwise we wouldn't have fought this war for years . We have been fighting for the independence of Syrian decision-making, for
the Syrian homeland, and for the unity of Syrian territory. As for Iran in particular, let me be very clear: the Syrian-Iranian relationship
is a strategic one not subject to a deal in the south or in the north. This relationship, in terms of its implications and results
on the ground, is linked to the present and future of the region. Consequently, it is not subject to the price tags of the international
bazaar. Neither Syria nor Iran has floated this relationship on the international political bazaar for it to be subject to haggling.
The proposition was made by the Israelis with the objective of provoking and embarrassing Iran. At the same time, this comes in line
with the international propaganda campaign launched against Iran regarding the nuclear file. It is not a separate issue; for everything
happening now is linked to Iran in order to create an international position against it. As for us in Syria, the decision concerning
our land is an exclusively Syrian decision. We are fighting the same battle, and when we have a decision concerning Iran, we will
talk about it with the Iranians and not with any other party .
Question 4: Of course, we will talk more about Iran and in more detail, but since we are talking about the southern front, let's
explore it further. Practically, in the same context, there is the MOC which hasn't stopped its operations since the beginning of
the war on Syria about eight years ago. It is working and is still active, and is directly linked to the Israelis. But we have noticed
recently that it has been reactivated, and there are more communications. Mr. President, does this mean that the Syrian state is
practically moving towards a military decisive action in the south regardless of the consequences, whether things reach a stalemate
or not? Is a decisive action in the cards for the Syrian leadership?
President Assad: No, MOC has nothing to do with this decision. MOC has been linked to the presence and the role of the terrorists
since the beginning of the war on Syria. That's why it existed: in order to lead them militarily. Consequently, the continued existence
of this operations room means the continuation of the role given to these terrorists, i.e. they are equipped and prepared to carry
out more terrorist acts. MOC is linked to the terrorists and not to the role of the Syrian state. Our role has nothing to do with
it. Our decision has been clear from the beginning: we will liberate all Syrian lands. As to when to move south, north, east, or
west, this is a purely military issue. But regardless of MOC, we have moved towards the south and we are giving the political process
a chance. If that doesn't succeed, we have no other option but to liberate it by force.
Question 5: But there is a confrontation in the south, and the issue is not limited geographically to Syria in the larger political
sense. There are the Americans, the Russians, the Iranians, the Israelis, and Hezbollah. All these parties are there in the area.
What does that mean? How are you going to deal with this?
President Assad: You are talking about two axes: one supporting terrorism, and represented by the US, Israel, and some flunkies
in the region including some Arab and non-Arab states, and an anti-terrorist axis. The first axis supports terrorism and seeks hegemony,
while the second axis seeks independence. So, there can be only one result for this confrontation, i.e. the victory of one of these
axes. At least, as far as the anti-terrorist axis is concerned, it will not give up the process of cleaning Syria and the region
of terrorism and will not give up on the unity of Syrian territory .
As to the other axis, will it change as a result of the reality on the ground? Let's wait and see. But in terms of substance and
convictions, it will not change, while in terms of the political practices dictated by reality and the facts on the ground, it might.
Question 6: Will the Americans leave al-Tanf?
President Assad: The Americans say they are ready, but everyone knows that the Americans are historically professional liars in
politics. So why should we believe them? Also, we have to wait and see.
Question 7: Mr. President, what's happening now in Jordan? Is it linked to what's happening on the southern front in particular,
i.e. is it linked to what is being plotted in that region, in your view?
President Assad: In fact, the only information we have is what we hear in the media. In any case, we wish Jordan stability, not
chaos, because the latter will have a negative impact on us.
Question 8: Since we are talking about the south, let's close this file. Mr. President, what would make the Israeli occupation
agree to the return of the Syrian Army to the borders, i.e. a return to the situation which existed at the beginning of 2011, after
seven years of repeated Zionist attempts, directly and indirectly, to undermine the Syrian state, the regime in Syria, and stability
in Syria. Why would it agree now to the return of the Syrian Army to the borders and to the occupied Golan?
President Assad: Certainly, neither conviction, morality, nor international law means anything to the Israelis. Since the beginning
of the war, particularly when it started to have a clear military nature on the southern front in particular, the Israelis used to
shell Syrian forces continuously, and consequently provide direct support to the terrorists. Israeli artillery and aircraft are the
terrorists' artillery and aircraft. That applies to Jabhat al-Nusra of course . Nothing is going to change this Israeli approach.
As far as we are concerned, Israel's approval had no role at all. Despite Israeli support to the terrorists, we have been doing our
job, and the Syrian Army is fighting its way towards the southern front, and has liberated a number of areas within the limits of
its capabilities. So, with or without its approval, the decision is a Syrian one, and this is a national duty we shall carry out.
Question 9: So, a return of the Syrian Army is better than having resistance in the Golan, for instance?
President Assad: For the Israelis?
Journalist: Yes.
President Assad: I think the two options are bad for the Israelis. Both of them are bad. Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has repeatedly
talked about Syria's relationship with the resistance and a Syrian role in the resistance. So, how would the Israelis choose between
two bad things for them?
Question 10: As you said, Mr. President, Israel has financed, supported, and more dangerously was capable of enlisting a large
number of Syrians, some of whom were treated inside occupied Palestine. They talked about it. In the future, how would you deal with
this large number of Israeli agents? Maybe some of them were misled and Israel might have exploited the financial and living conditions
of some; and some have chosen to side with the Israelis. How would you deal with them in the future?
President Assad: This is true; we cannot put everyone in the same basket. There are different reasons for moving in this wrong
direction; and these people have wronged the homeland and every Syrian citizen. Ultimately, they are the children of this homeland,
and we all bear responsibility for this problem, not only those who have done wrong. When crime, for instance, becomes widespread
in a certain country, the whole society bears responsibility for this crime, not only the security agencies or the criminals themselves.
The first thing that should be done is to accommodate these people. Second, we need to address the root causes which led to this
case of weak patriotism. The causes here are many and complicated, and the scope of this interview doesn't allow for all of them
to be mentioned.
Question 11: In the same context, while you are talking about restoring the Syrian air defense systems and confronting the Zionist
occupation, statements have been made by leaders of the Israeli entity that they will strike at the depth of Syrian territory. How
would you deal with that situation, particularly that balance has been achieved recently, i.e. balance between Israeli aggressions
and Syrian responses?
President Assad: Basically, we haven't stopped responding. First of all, we haven't stopped fighting terrorists, and at the same
time we haven't stopped responding to Israeli aggression within the capabilities available to us, militarily and technically. Moreover,
the more these capabilities improve; the response will be better and higher. But in fact the strongest response to Israel now is
to strike the Israeli army existing in Syria which consists practically of the terrorists .
Journalist: You consider them an Israeli army?
President Assad: Of course, for they are acting clearly and starkly in Israel's interest. The first acts they carried out were
attacks against the air defense systems. What is the link between air defense systems and the terrorists acting as infantry on the
ground? This was an Israeli order. It was an Israeli-American order because it is the same thing. So, they are Israel's army inside
Syria; and the first strike against Israel, politically, militarily, and in every other area, is to strike Israel's terrorists inside
Syria, whether they belong to ISIS, al-Nusra, or the other groups linked to the Israeli plan and strategy.
Journalist: If Israel escalates, are you prepared to respond more forcefully?
President Assad: This is what's happening. It is escalating, and we are responding. Ultimately, we are fighting the war within
the capabilities available to us, and we are doing our best within these capabilities. A response does not need a political decision.
I stress that responding or not responding is not a political decision. It is a national decision, and it was taken from day one.
But implementing this decision depends on what we can do militarily and not politically.
Question 12: In terms of capabilities, there is one issue in the media which we are always following, i.e. the S300 Russian missiles.
Russia says, "We will deliver these missiles", and then says, "We will not deliver them", which means that the issue is not clear.
What is happening exactly? Why this Russian hesitation, in your view, in delivering the S300 missiles to Syria, while some other
countries have been seeking S400, i.e. they are ahead of us in this regard.
President Assad: You know that military action and military considerations are part of political considerations. Consequently,
a statement, even if it is of a military nature, carries at the same time political messages. So, why did the Russians say that they
want to send or not send? This is a statement that the Russians should be asked about because it might be part of their political
tactics. As to the military aspect of the statement, which concerns Syria, it's not our custom to talk about the weapon which will
be delivered or not delivered. The evidence was that the weapons used in response to the last two aggressions, the tripartite aggression
and after that the Israeli aggression, were not announced by Syria. We traditionally do not announce cases of a technical military
nature.
Journalist: So, even the nature of the response is not linked to the issue of the S300 missiles?
President Assad: No. The same applies. Even if the S300 missiles will be provided or not provided, we will not say that they were
delivered to Syria. A weapon is used when it must be used.
Journalist: Is there a possibility that you have developed certain weapons?
President Assad: This remains a possibility. In any case, the result is the same: weapons shouldn't be talked about until they
are used. Weapons announce themselves only when they are used.
Question 13: Mr. President, let's return to the political aspect, since we are talking about the southern front. Regarding the
general situation, in light of all that has been achieved on the Syrian arena today, the most prominent actor is the tripartite alliance,
or what is being called the tripartite alliance. I mean Syria, Iran, and Russia. What is the nature of this alliance? Is it a temporary
alliance, in the sense that it is linked to fighting terrorism or to certain developments on the Syrian arena? Recently, we have
started to see – or let's say some have focused on certain points in order to show – a certain fracture in this alliance. What is
your take on that and what is the actual reality of this alliance?
President Assad: If we talk first about the Syrian-Iranian part, for 40 years, and in the different conditions that the Middle
East region has gone through, this alliance remained solid. So, there is no reason to say that it is temporary or otherwise. The
new element in the war on Syria is the Russian element, and that's why this tripartite alliance came into existence. Our relationship
with Russia is now about seven decades old. Despite the fluctuations and the fall of the Soviet Union, the rule of President Yeltsin,
and the deterioration of these relations to a large degree for us, it has never reached the stage of reversing this relationship
with Syria. Russia continued to deal with Syria as a friendly state, and we have imported everything from Russia, including weapons,
during the different stages of the sanctions imposed on Syria. It is not in the nature of the Russians to build temporary or self-serving
alliances or to sell out on relations in order to get deals done. The relationship is definitely a strategic one, but the political
statements allowed for these speculations.
These statements also aim at sending messages in different directions. Maybe, sometimes the language or the choice of particular
terminology might not be helpful and might take the statement in a different direction at odds with the content of the statement.
This happens from time to time. However, these statements shouldn't be taken out of context: the Russian view of the relationship
with Iran is a strategic one. As for Syria, the Russians do not interfere in Syrian affairs. If they have a certain opinion, they
raise it with us and say that in the end, the decision is that of the Syrian leadership and the Syrian people. This is a constant
principle for Russia. Therefore, the alliance is a strategic one, and if there are differences, such differences happen within the
Syrian state, and you see differences within the Iranian state and within the Russian state. It is natural for us to differ on daily
tactical details, for why conduct a dialogue if we agree on everything? We meet extensively in order to reach agreement.
Journalist: So, this tripartite alliance is being consolidated.
President Assad: Of course. This is dictated by reality, interest, and international changes that make it necessary for this alliance
to be consolidated. As long as the other axis supports terrorism, and as long as we, together with Iran and Russia, feel the danger
of terrorism, not only in Syria, but also on all these countries and on the whole world, and as long as Syria, Iran, and Russia realize
the importance of abiding by international law, these facts make the existence of this alliance necessary.
Question 14: But there are those who say that Syria will get a price if the Iranians leave Syrian territories. Is there a certain
political, moral, or military price in this regard?
President Assad: As I said in the beginning, as long as this relationship is not floated in the bazaar, they cannot offer a price,
and the answer will be clear. That's why they don't dare suggest this price. This issue was raised by different countries, including
Saudi Arabia for instance, at the beginning of the war, and not only at the beginning, but at different stages. The proposition was
that if Syria cut its relationship with Iran, the situation in Syria will be normal. This principle is basically rejected by us.
Journalist: So, there were initiatives, so to speak, made in this regard by Saudi Arabia.
President Assad: During the war?
Journalist: Yes.
President Assad: Of course, more than once, and in a clear manner.
Journalist: Directly?
President Assad: Directly. The relationship with Iran was the basis for every proposition; and Saudi Arabia's position on this
subject is public. I'm not revealing a secret.
Question 15: An issue is raised, whether in Syria, Iran, or Lebanon, about the nature of Iranian presence in Syria. Some call
them Iranian advisors. Even the Syrian Foreign Minister used the same term. At the same time, we notice that there are Iranian martyrs.
Frankly, Mr. President, what is the nature of Iranian presence in Syria now?
President Assad: The term adviser is sometimes used in a broad manner, i.e. these advisers have been with us, through the longstanding
relationship with Iran, even before the war, because the military relationship is close. When a military formation moves to a fighting
position, the adviser becomes a fighter. So, the word can be used in different senses. There are certainly Iranian advisers in Syria,
and there are groups of Iranian volunteers who came to Syria, and they are led by Iranian officers. Iran has fought with and defended
the Syrian people. It offered blood. That's why when we say "advisers" this is a generic term, but this doesn't mean that we are
ashamed of any Iranian presence, even if it is official. But we use the word "advisers" because there are no regular Iranian fighting
units in Syria.
Journalist: Full formations.
President Assad: Exactly. There are no battalions, or brigades, or divisions. First, we can't hide them, and then why should we
be ashamed of that? When we invited the Russians legally to come to Syria, we were not ashamed of that. And if there were an Iranian
formation, we would announce it, because such relations need agreements between the two states endorsed by parliaments. Such relations
cannot be concealed.
Journalist: And you invited Iranian advisers to come?
President Assad: Of course, from the beginning we invited the Iranians, and then we invited the Russians. We needed the support
of these countries, and they answered the call.
Journalist: Mr. President, you said more than once that there are no Iranian bases in Syria.
President Assad: That's correct.
Journalist: Why there are no Iranian bases, while we notice that there are a number of Russian bases?
President Assad: There's nothing that prevents the existence of such bases as long as Iran is an ally as is Russia.
Journalist: This means that if Iran requested the existence of such bases, you would agree?
President Assad: If we ask. We will ask them to agree. I mean that we could ask for the existence of such forces to support us.
Iran has never asked and does not have an interest except in fighting terrorism. But the evolution of the war made it necessary to
develop the nature of this presence.
This happened as far as the Russians are concerned. In the beginning, Russian support, like Iranian support, was different from
what it is today. The support for terrorism has developed internationally and globally when the Syrian Army confronted those terrorists,
and with that Russian and Iranian military presence developed. At a certain stage, we found – with the Russians of course – that
the existence of air bases was necessary to provide air support to the Syrian Army. And now, if we find, in cooperation, coordination,
or dialogue with the Iranians, that there is a need for Iranian military bases, we will not hesitate. But now, Iranian support in
its present form is good and effective.
Question 16: Why haven't you visited Iran so far, although you visited Russia more than once?
President Assad: That's correct. In fact, there was a scheduled visit to Iran a few months ago, and it was postponed and not cancelled.
It was postponed because of an emergency in Syria related to the development of battles. There is certainly no reason which prevents
such a visit, and I'll visit Iran hopefully soon on the earliest opportunity. This is natural, but the issue is logistic, no more,
no less.
Question 17: Mr. President, I move to another file. Last week, it was the Jerusalem International Day, and the Palestinian cause
is going through its most difficult stages. We are talking about the "deal of the century", and moving the American Embassy to occupied
Jerusalem. What do you have to say about Palestine? Is Syria still capable of supporting the Palestine cause? Basically, wasn't one
of the most important objectives of the war on Syria to get Syria out of the axis of resistance and to prevent it from supporting
resistance, whether in Lebanon or Palestine?
President Assad: The Palestine context, since 1948 up till now, has been a complicated one, because the regional context is complicated.
Of course, it is complicated because the colonial West, which is particularly supportive of Israel, has always created elements which
aim at one single thing. First, to drive to desperation the Arab citizen who is historically attached to the cause of Palestine and
who has always considered it a pan-Arab cause that touched him even on the national level.
The other objective has been to distract the Arab peoples together with states or societies in general to marginal causes so that
they do not have time to think about Israel. And they have succeeded to a great extent, most recently through the so-called Arab
spring which has aimed at destroying the political, military, and psychological infrastructure of Arab societies.
Nevertheless, recent development have proven that the Arab people is still conscientiously attached to the cause of Palestine.
As for Syria – since it has been part of these plots to undermine the Arab condition in general – first, for Syria to support the
cause of Palestine, it should first of all destroy the Israeli army in Syria. Restoring stability in Syria, striking terrorism, and
foiling the Israeli plot in Syria is certainly part of supporting the cause of Palestine. The support might be indirect with direct
consequences, but these direct consequences are linked to the internal Palestinian condition. We shouldn't forget that the Palestinians
are divided between groups which resist Israel and are genuinely linked to the cause of Palestine, and other groups which are against
the resistance and support surrenderist and defeatist peace, while there are other groups which use resistance as a title in order
to achieve their political objectives under the slogan of religion. This is of course the Muslim Brotherhood's approach.
Question 18: Are you prepared to offer whatever the resistance asks of you, whether in the form of political, military, or any
other form of support?
President Assad: Politically, we haven't changed. The Palestinian question for us is still as it was ten years ago and decades
ago. It hasn't changed. As to what we can offer, this has to do with two things: first, Syria's current capabilities; and there's
no doubt that the priority is given now to cleaning Syria of terrorism. Second, it has to do with the Palestinian condition and the
parties with which we can deal within the Palestinian arena.
Question 19: Since we are talking about resistance, there is the other side. In addition to some countries which stood beside
Syria in fighting terrorism, there was also a role played by the resistance in Lebanon, particularly Hezbollah, which provided a
great deal and contributed to fighting terrorism. What do you say, Mr. President, to resistance fighters and families of martyrs
and the wounded?
President Assad: When all these groups of resistance get together to defend Syrian soil and Syrian citizens, including the Lebanese
resistance and the brothers who came from Iraq some of whom reproached me for not mentioning them by name, I take this opportunity
to stress that there are brothers from Iraq to whom we give the same weight of any resistance fighter who came from any other country.
There are also the families of resistance fighters who came from Iran and sacrificed their blood in Syria. We should put all these
in the same basket next to the Syrian martyrs, fighters, and their families. To those I say that all the letters, the words, the
sentences, and the whole of literature are much less than a single drop of blood. Therefore, words are of a much lesser value than
what they have offered. What's more important is what history will write about them.
In fact, when we talk about writing history, we need to highlight that history needs a strategy and needs tactics, but the fact
remains that strategy without implementation on the ground has no value. It remains mere thought which we might include in books
and essays. But the reality is that these individuals in these countries, this group of resistance fighters, not politics, write
history. I would like to use the answer to this question to express to them all my love, respect, and appreciation, and my reverence
to the fighters, the wounded, and martyrs, and to all their families who are courage incarnated and who sent these individuals to
Syria to defend it and fight terrorism, so that these families become models of morality and principles for present and future generations.
Question 20: Have you asked Hezbollah to leave Syria? A few days ago His Eminence Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah talked about this issue
and said that nobody can get us out of Syria unless the Syrian leadership asked us to do so.
President Assad: The battle is long and ongoing. When we talk about this tripartite alliance – and if we consider it a quadruple
alliance when we add Hezbollah, we talk about the tripartite alliance in terms of the states included, but in the end Hezbollah is
a basic element in this war – the battle is long, and the need for these military forces will continue for a long time. When there
is a need, and when Hezbollah, Iran, or others believe that terrorism has been eliminated, they will tell us that they want to go
home. As Sayyed Hasan said, they have families and daily interests, which is normal, but it is still early to talk about this subject.
Question 21: Up till now, there are still areas under the control of terrorism and areas under occupation. At the same time, regretfully,
some Arab countries, and here I am talking particularly about Saudi Arabia, announced that it is ready to send forcers to Syria.
On the other hand, a few days ago popular tribal units were formed to resist occupation. Are these really popular resistance units?
Do they receive support from the Syrian government? Does this mean that the army cannot liberate those areas, and that's why it is
asking for the help of the tribes? What is the nature of this issue?
President Assad: There are different forms of this resistance which appeared a few years ago. In the beginning they were fighting
ISIS before they started to fight the occupiers. They were against ISIS in the central and eastern regions, and there were cases
where they appeared in other regions which were not given media coverage and about which we hear sometimes through information and
indications.
Now, this situation has started to expand. So, it's not one single case. There are a number of cases which might be individual
sometimes, or in the form of small groups not affiliated to an organization. In any case, our position as a state has been from the
beginning to support any act of resistance, whether against terrorists or against occupying forces, regardless of their nationality,
i.e. American, French, Turkish, or Israeli. We support these resistance forces based on our national role as a government.
Question 22: What about Saudi Arabia and sending Saudi forces to Syria?
President Assad: First, when we talk about a state, we should assume that such a state can take decisions independently. That's
why we will not talk about the role of Saudi Arabia. You better ask me about the American decision on this issue.
Question 23: On the other hand, there are a number of Arab countries which we talk about and which had a role or contributed to
the role or to the destruction of Syria. These countries are now trying to get to Syria through the reconstruction process. What
do you say in this regard, particularly that these countries are the ones which have capital and huge financial power? How are you
going to deal with that?
President Assad: Reconstruction in Syria is not a cause for concern for us. It needs two factors: first, the human factor which
is more important than the financial factor. When a country like Syria possesses the human factor, the financial cost will be less
when it comes to reconstruction. This is self-evident, and we possess all these factors despite the fact that many competent and
qualified Syrians have immigrated because of the war.
But we still have the capability to start reconstruction. And the evidence is clear now, for the state is moving forward and reconstruction
has begun. As to money, the Syrian people have financial capabilities, capital, most of which is not in Syria, but outside Syria.
But there is capital waiting for reconstruction to begin, so it will begin investing. On the other hand, there are the friendly countries
which have capabilities and have the desire; and we have the desire to have them participate in reconstruction, so that they benefit
and we Syrians benefit from this process. In the end, we do not need those countries and we will never allow them to be part of reconstruction.
Journalist: Never?
President Assad: Absolutely.
Journalist: Not even if there was a need in this regard, I mean in terms of financial resources?
President Assad: Financial resources are not everything. As I said, this is available. There are different sources in the world
and in Syria for capital.
Question 24: With these tough years, we are talking about the legendary steadfastness of the Syrian Army, the Syrian people, the
Armed Forces. If you wanted to talk about two cases, the most difficult case or incident that you have encountered during these years,
and on the other hand the best and most beautiful case.
President Assad: It is natural, at the heart of the military battle, for the best and worst cases to be linked to the development
of the military battle. If I say that the worst cases were when terrorists used to control a certain area, this is self-evident,
but it is related more to specific battles, particularly when the area is strategic or the city is big with a large population. Consequently,
the impact will be much greater psychologically and in terms of morale.
But there was an ongoing situation which we are still living and we must think about: when a martyr or a group of martyrs fall,
and this is ongoing on a weekly basis for us, we must think that a family lost a dear one who cannot be compensated. He might be
compensated by achieving victory at a certain stage, but on the family, psychological and human level, you cannot compensate a dear
one lost to a certain family, or maybe a friend. This is a very painful situation which we have lived and continue to live. This
will not stop until the war itself stops. But there were painful cases at the beginning of the war, when you see this huge lack of
patriotism. They were perhaps a minority, but a large minority, of individuals who were prepared to sell the homeland and trade it
together with their principles, if they had ones, in return for money or a certain interest, in addition to a certain percentage
of extremism.
On the other hand, there were victories, particularly when victories started in the city of al-Qsair in 2013, and culminated in
the city of Aleppo in 2016, that was the beginning of the major victories. That was followed by Deir Ezzor, and today we are living
the joy of liberating Damascus and its countryside. This is a situation we have all lived through, and you were with us, and I am
sure you feel the same joy.
Question 25: Have you felt tired at a certain moment? Have you felt hesitant at a certain moment, in light of all the decisions
you have taken, have you ever, even for a moment, thought of leaving? Haven't you said to yourself: let me save my family and resign,
as some people did at a certain point in time?
President Assad: This question might be raised in a personal manner. When I am faced with a personal situation as an individual,
I might feel despair after a few months. I might feel tired or bored or I might want to move to a different situation, or give up.
That is possible.
Journalist: As an individual?
President Assad: Of course, as an individual, but the case you are proposing is not personal, it is national. Imagine yourself
in a different condition, perhaps building something on your own. You feel tired, but when you see a large number of people helping
you build it and share the same determination, you forget the tiredness.
Now we are in a national situation. We are talking about millions of Syrians. When you see a shell striking and victims falling
anywhere in Syria, you feel frustrated. But when you see life being restored to the same area after one hour, your psychological
condition changes. When you see that the electricity worker, the oil worker, the teacher, the employee, are moving side by side with
fighters, moving without despair and without tiredness, how can you feel tired? This is a collective condition not related to me
as a person. It has to do with our human condition when we are together as a society. How do we live? This defines whether you are
tired or not. Would the Syrian society have arrived at this stage of despair and surrender, I would certainly have been with it.
I would have surrendered because I do not have the necessary elements for steadfastness. This is self-evident.
Journalist: Thank you very much, Mr. President, for giving us this opportunity, and for your candidness in answering these questions.
Thank you very much.
So-called Ukrainian 'maidans' have bored the world community to death. And the public has
been taking the protests currently under way in Kiev for no more than traditional autumn and
winter open-air parties, similar to the Parisian 'fire shows'. Meanwhile, much more significant
confrontation has been taking place in Kiev, alongside with the circus of ex-president of
Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili. An inner conflict between two anticorruption and power-wielding
departments of the country is long overdue. In their relations with the media, both
representatives of those organizations and members of various Verkhovna Rada fractions have
been describing specific processes that are taking place in Ukraine as 'Makhnovshchina' or a
war of all against all, literally speaking.
After returning from the international anti-corruption forum organized by the U.S. State
Department, Nazar Holodnitsky, head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office
(SAP) of Ukraine, stated in an interview
to TSN , the Ukrainian TV channel, that a standoff of law enforcement agencies may escalate
into a war harmful to entire Ukraine. Thus, a conflict between the National Anti-Corruption
Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) has evolved into a hybrid
war with interrogations involving physical and mental pressure and mutual accusations of all
sorts of evils. Delegates of both sides have simultaneously visited their U.S. sponsors and
come back comforted with just another assurance of '1000% support'.
Such confrontation of the government institutions raises eyebrows, I must say. State
Department has publicly been sympathized with both the corruption fighters and the General
Prosecutor's Office upon condition of the settlement of conflict by legal means and punishment
of officials guilty of criminal charges. Meanwhile, the FBI has also been drawn in this
undeclared war. In June 2016, the FBI and NABU adopted the Memorandum of Understanding, which
allows the FBI to assist NABU and SAP in the matter of investigations and implementation of
anti-corruption actions. The Bureau's special agents and analysts have been working in NABU on
a temporary rotational basis.
The mere presence of the FBI suggests an idea about another U.S. security service which has
been standing invisibly by in Ukraine, since it gained independence. This is the CIA, a classic
rival of the FBI. The very secret visit in 2014 of the former Central Intelligence Agency chief
John
O. Brennan preceded the beginning of active hostilities in Ukraine. The CIA stood behind
the appointment of the recent Kiev government. It had also protected the acting president of
the country from rivals, up to a certain time. For instance, they conduced to the resignation
of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a former rather ambitious Prime Minister of Ukraine who was in conflict
with Petro Poroshenko and running for his post.
That helps explain the real cause of furious intransigence of NABU and the General
Prosecutor's Office throwing wild accusations at each other. They have virtually been used by
power-wielding structures and political forces of another state for a showdown. A never-ending
internal fighting in the American national security environment has become the talk of the town
being eventually accreted with new dirty wash. It seems that it has become more acute, with the
passing of time.
For example, the FBI dealt a hard blow to the CIA bringing 12-count charges including
conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, false statements, and other
against Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman and his business associate,
Richard Gates. His other partner, Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager was involved as well.
Manafort was renowned for his associations with the CIA and for consulting the Party of Regions
which was led by Victor Yanukovych. It became clear who was he FBI's source of such detailed
and valuable data after the statements by
Artem Sytnyk , Director of NABU and Serhiy Leshchenko , a Ukrainian
MP.
Nevertheless, the CIA won at this stage of confrontation, because Trump came to power. Even
support to the current President of the USA prior to the elections wasn't of much assistance to
the FBI Director Comey.
History has witnessed a number of episodes when Ukraine was a stage for showdown by
political forces from other countries. It never ended peacefully. As far back as in the XVII
century Ukrainian territory had become a theatre of operations owing to the bloody strife
between Polish hetmans (high military commanders in the Army of the Kingdom of Poland) of
Ukrainian and Cossack origin. As a result, lands of the Zaporizhian Host voluntarily pledged
allegiance to Russia.
During World War II the Ukrainian people suffered much harder. At that time the Third Reich
was intensely seeking for ways to weaken the USSR, even before it invaded Poland in 1939. It
was decided to use the ancient divide-and rule tactics proven by Julius Caesar, involving
gradual tearing away of territories with malcontent population. Ukraine was considered the most
prospective area for fomenting disaffection.
However, there also was both ideological and political discord among the highest ranks of
the Third Reich. Thus, Alfred Rosenberg, the main ideologue of Nazism, along with admiral
Wilhelm Canaris (who was accused of 'spiritual instigation' of a plot against Hitler) were
planning the establishment of Ukrainian buffer state controlled by the Third Reich. Using such
promises they managed to recruit Andriy Melnyk, a central figure in the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and notorious Stepan Bandera who, just like Mr. Yatsenyuk, was
striving to lead the government in independent Ukrainian state. If the second one kept clinging
to his aims all the time, Melnyk was good at matching to desires of his sponsors from Hitler's
surrounding. When Himmler and Koch didn't recognize Rosenberg's ideas and wanted to weaken his
power in the National Socialist Worker's Party, Melnyk was quick to assure them of his
willingness to cooperate on any terms, especially when they let him know that Fuhrer didn't
like the idea of a Ukrainian buffer state.
It is a paradox that those relations that had developed both within various branches of
OUN-UPA and the Third Reich senior ranks coordinating them were similar to the recent situation
in Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalist leaders were used not only for German purposes, but also for
elimination of competitors in power. For instance, Rosenberg, after all, had to abandon his
point of view. Many of his influential followers resigned just like chief Comey did to the
delight of chief Pompeo, this May. Although NABU, the organization most thoroughly maintaining
a steady U.S. course prepared for Ukraine, has been successfully continuing investigations,
digging into Poroshenko who fell into disfavor for his poor record. And here you are, Marie
Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a close acquaintance of the U.S. president's
national security advisor McMaster and Secretary of Defense Mattis has
indirectly supported Saakashvili's demonstration. In September, Saakashvili hanged out
happily with contenders of the recent president in future election Valentyn Nalyvaichenko and
Andriy Sadoviy, in Lviv. Now a big friend of Senator McCain Yulia Timoshenko and a number of
Verkhovna Rada MPs endorse him.
This mess of warring parties seems to be disordered and extremely headachy. The situation
has been much worse for the number of competing forces and foreign organizations standing
behind them in Ukraine was much greater during the Third Reich and it continues to be so at
present. The recent Ukrainian bellum omnium contra omnes has been a reflection of competitive
battle between various security and governmental agencies in the USA.
A single distinct and unequivocal fact is that being a neighbour of such a huge state as
Russia, Ukraine was always suffering from those who wish to weaken that influential country.
Over and over again throughout Ukrainian history the country was exploited, with nationalist
sentiments artificially ignited and false promises made. Even 'humane' Rosenberg's scheme
ascribed Ukraine the role of a mere supplier of raw materials and a buffer state between
Germany and Eastern Slavic countries without any right to independence.
As such, the USA regards Ukraine as an administered territory which is useful for strategic
and economic aims. They skillfully manipulate Kiev government with carrot and stick.
Undesirable Ukrainian political puppet might be branded as corrupt and replaced by more
manageable nominee, at any time. There is always a possibility to initiate another blood
shedding Maidan with oppressions and civil war, in case of urgency. Today's Ukraine is no freer
than it was in 1941, during the invasion of Nazi Germany. Melnyks, banderas, hetmans
skoropadskies have been replaced by new 'heroes', who never changed their essence. For
evanescent promises and artificially inflated ambitions they've been tearing the country apart
without mercy either to each other, or their countrymen. Meanwhile, the world community has
been watching with approval the beacon of democracy vigorously setting things to order in 'dark
and ignorant' Ukraine. Each of them thinking, 'Better them than me.'
So-called Ukrainian 'maidans' have bored the world community to death. And the public has
been taking the protests currently under way in Kiev for no more than traditional autumn and
winter open-air parties, similar to the Parisian 'fire shows'. Meanwhile, much more significant
confrontation has been taking place in Kiev, alongside with the circus of ex-president of
Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili. An inner conflict between two anticorruption and power-wielding
departments of the country is long overdue. In their relations with the media, both
representatives of those organizations and members of various Verkhovna Rada fractions have
been describing specific processes that are taking place in Ukraine as 'Makhnovshchina' or a
war of all against all, literally speaking.
After returning from the international anti-corruption forum organized by the U.S. State
Department, Nazar Holodnitsky, head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office
(SAP) of Ukraine, stated in an interview
to TSN , the Ukrainian TV channel, that a standoff of law enforcement agencies may escalate
into a war harmful to entire Ukraine. Thus, a conflict between the National Anti-Corruption
Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) has evolved into a hybrid
war with interrogations involving physical and mental pressure and mutual accusations of all
sorts of evils. Delegates of both sides have simultaneously visited their U.S. sponsors and
come back comforted with just another assurance of '1000% support'.
Such confrontation of the government institutions raises eyebrows, I must say. State
Department has publicly been sympathized with both the corruption fighters and the General
Prosecutor's Office upon condition of the settlement of conflict by legal means and punishment
of officials guilty of criminal charges. Meanwhile, the FBI has also been drawn in this
undeclared war. In June 2016, the FBI and NABU adopted the Memorandum of Understanding, which
allows the FBI to assist NABU and SAP in the matter of investigations and implementation of
anti-corruption actions. The Bureau's special agents and analysts have been working in NABU on
a temporary rotational basis.
The mere presence of the FBI suggests an idea about another U.S. security service which has
been standing invisibly by in Ukraine, since it gained independence. This is the CIA, a classic
rival of the FBI. The very secret visit in 2014 of the former Central Intelligence Agency chief
John
O. Brennan preceded the beginning of active hostilities in Ukraine. The CIA stood behind
the appointment of the recent Kiev government. It had also protected the acting president of
the country from rivals, up to a certain time. For instance, they conduced to the resignation
of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a former rather ambitious Prime Minister of Ukraine who was in conflict
with Petro Poroshenko and running for his post.
That helps explain the real cause of furious intransigence of NABU and the General
Prosecutor's Office throwing wild accusations at each other. They have virtually been used by
power-wielding structures and political forces of another state for a showdown. A never-ending
internal fighting in the American national security environment has become the talk of the town
being eventually accreted with new dirty wash. It seems that it has become more acute, with the
passing of time.
For example, the FBI dealt a hard blow to the CIA bringing 12-count charges including
conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, false statements, and other
against Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman and his business associate,
Richard Gates. His other partner, Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager was involved as well.
Manafort was renowned for his associations with the CIA and for consulting the Party of Regions
which was led by Victor Yanukovych. It became clear who was he FBI's source of such detailed
and valuable data after the statements by
Artem Sytnyk , Director of NABU and Serhiy Leshchenko , a Ukrainian
MP.
Nevertheless, the CIA won at this stage of confrontation, because Trump came to power. Even
support to the current President of the USA prior to the elections wasn't of much assistance to
the FBI Director Comey.
History has witnessed a number of episodes when Ukraine was a stage for showdown by
political forces from other countries. It never ended peacefully. As far back as in the XVII
century Ukrainian territory had become a theatre of operations owing to the bloody strife
between Polish hetmans (high military commanders in the Army of the Kingdom of Poland) of
Ukrainian and Cossack origin. As a result, lands of the Zaporizhian Host voluntarily pledged
allegiance to Russia.
During World War II the Ukrainian people suffered much harder. At that time the Third Reich
was intensely seeking for ways to weaken the USSR, even before it invaded Poland in 1939. It
was decided to use the ancient divide-and rule tactics proven by Julius Caesar, involving
gradual tearing away of territories with malcontent population. Ukraine was considered the most
prospective area for fomenting disaffection.
However, there also was both ideological and political discord among the highest ranks of
the Third Reich. Thus, Alfred Rosenberg, the main ideologue of Nazism, along with admiral
Wilhelm Canaris (who was accused of 'spiritual instigation' of a plot against Hitler) were
planning the establishment of Ukrainian buffer state controlled by the Third Reich. Using such
promises they managed to recruit Andriy Melnyk, a central figure in the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and notorious Stepan Bandera who, just like Mr. Yatsenyuk, was
striving to lead the government in independent Ukrainian state. If the second one kept clinging
to his aims all the time, Melnyk was good at matching to desires of his sponsors from Hitler's
surrounding. When Himmler and Koch didn't recognize Rosenberg's ideas and wanted to weaken his
power in the National Socialist Worker's Party, Melnyk was quick to assure them of his
willingness to cooperate on any terms, especially when they let him know that Fuhrer didn't
like the idea of a Ukrainian buffer state.
It is a paradox that those relations that had developed both within various branches of
OUN-UPA and the Third Reich senior ranks coordinating them were similar to the recent situation
in Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalist leaders were used not only for German purposes, but also for
elimination of competitors in power. For instance, Rosenberg, after all, had to abandon his
point of view. Many of his influential followers resigned just like chief Comey did to the
delight of chief Pompeo, this May. Although NABU, the organization most thoroughly maintaining
a steady U.S. course prepared for Ukraine, has been successfully continuing investigations,
digging into Poroshenko who fell into disfavor for his poor record. And here you are, Marie
Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a close acquaintance of the U.S. president's
national security advisor McMaster and Secretary of Defense Mattis has
indirectly supported Saakashvili's demonstration. In September, Saakashvili hanged out
happily with contenders of the recent president in future election Valentyn Nalyvaichenko and
Andriy Sadoviy, in Lviv. Now a big friend of Senator McCain Yulia Timoshenko and a number of
Verkhovna Rada MPs endorse him.
This mess of warring parties seems to be disordered and extremely headachy. The situation
has been much worse for the number of competing forces and foreign organizations standing
behind them in Ukraine was much greater during the Third Reich and it continues to be so at
present. The recent Ukrainian bellum omnium contra omnes has been a reflection of competitive
battle between various security and governmental agencies in the USA.
A single distinct and unequivocal fact is that being a neighbour of such a huge state as
Russia, Ukraine was always suffering from those who wish to weaken that influential country.
Over and over again throughout Ukrainian history the country was exploited, with nationalist
sentiments artificially ignited and false promises made. Even 'humane' Rosenberg's scheme
ascribed Ukraine the role of a mere supplier of raw materials and a buffer state between
Germany and Eastern Slavic countries without any right to independence.
As such, the USA regards Ukraine as an administered territory which is useful for strategic
and economic aims. They skillfully manipulate Kiev government with carrot and stick.
Undesirable Ukrainian political puppet might be branded as corrupt and replaced by more
manageable nominee, at any time. There is always a possibility to initiate another blood
shedding Maidan with oppressions and civil war, in case of urgency. Today's Ukraine is no freer
than it was in 1941, during the invasion of Nazi Germany. Melnyks, banderas, hetmans
skoropadskies have been replaced by new 'heroes', who never changed their essence. For
evanescent promises and artificially inflated ambitions they've been tearing the country apart
without mercy either to each other, or their countrymen. Meanwhile, the world community has
been watching with approval the beacon of democracy vigorously setting things to order in 'dark
and ignorant' Ukraine. Each of them thinking, 'Better them than me.'
Rumors about the death of the US global neoliberal empire are probably slightly exaggerated.
Trump did damaged it, but the neoliberal system proved to be really resilient in 2008 and might
prove this again.
Notable quotes:
"... The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of persecution of those "black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM. Did we see any protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our Constitution? Sheep don't protest, they just follow the leader. ..."
"... However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family. ..."
"... As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. ..."
"... Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair global competition. ..."
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition.
The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world in
the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and spreading
lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of persecution of those
"black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM. Did we see any
protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our Constitution? Sheep
don't protest, they just follow the leader.
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he
become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy
becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The
only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in
the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
See comment 51:
The problem here and abroad are elites. Elites of any kind.
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition.
some perhaps, but the middle class is dying (literally in the case of middle aged white
men), and the working class is languishing. It's true the 1% are gorging on a frenzy of corruption and graft, and a no doubt there are
a few who prosper by serving that class, but the Main Streets of America are not, in any way,
profiting off the exploitation of Africa or S. America or anywhere else. Indeed, it is them
that are being exploited.
The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world
in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and
spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey
no argument there!
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India.
India and China (and Ethiopia and Somalia and Mexico and Brazil and so many other places)
are not poor due to the oppression of Americans. Sure, Goldman Sachs and a thousand other
vultures and thieves have done a lot of damage, but no more that the leadership of those
respective lands. Has India ever heard of birth control, (for God's sake!) Or Indonesia or a hundred other
places, like Haiti, that overbreed their finite resources and limited space until their
countries are reduced to shitholes.
If a coal miner in West Virginia is doing a little better than an Untouchable in India,
then trust me when I tell you I'm not going to blame the miner (or janitor or mechanic) in
America for the poverty in the corrupt and stupid third world.
As far as the suffering that the ZUSA has actually caused, and is causing in places like
Syria and Yemen, none of that is being done on behalf of the American people, but rather the
typical American is taxed to support these wars and atrocities on behalf of Israel or Saudi
Arabia, respectively.
The only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
recently I was ranting on the terrible folly of this very thing.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews
in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
Yes, they're just as selfish and greedy, but they aren't as filled with genocidal
hatred.
It's because of Zionist Jews that Americans were dragged into both world wars.
It's because of Zionist Jews (and assorted corrupt Gentiles) that Israel (with help from
the CIA and ((media)), did 9/11, in order to plunge this century into horrors writ large like
the last Zio-century.
That there are legions of corrupt and soulless Gentiles willing and eager to jump on that
gravy train, is a shame and a sin, but it doesn't excuse the people who are the motivation
behind the wars.
The Kochs (and Chamber of Commerce and other Gentile scum) want massive immigration out of
pure, raw, insatiable greed.
Whereas the Jewish supremacist Zionists want it out of genocidal tribal hatreds.
The typical American middle and working class are ground into the dirt between these two
pillars of Satanic iniquity.
I agree with much of what you're saying, and it's true about the elites in general. But
the ZUSA is completely controlled by Zionist Jews, and I think that's pretty obvious.
This man knew that 9/11 was going to happen, if he wasn't part of the planning. And yet
look at how they abase themselves
Rumors about the death of the US global neoliberal empire are probably slightly exaggerated.
Trump did damaged it, but the neoliberal system proved to be really resilient in 2008 and might
prove this again.
Notable quotes:
"... The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of persecution of those "black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM. Did we see any protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our Constitution? Sheep don't protest, they just follow the leader. ..."
"... However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family. ..."
"... As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. ..."
"... Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair global competition. ..."
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition.
The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world in
the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and spreading
lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of persecution of those
"black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM. Did we see any
protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our Constitution? Sheep
don't protest, they just follow the leader.
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he
become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy
becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The
only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in
the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
See comment 51:
The problem here and abroad are elites. Elites of any kind.
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition.
some perhaps, but the middle class is dying (literally in the case of middle aged white
men), and the working class is languishing. It's true the 1% are gorging on a frenzy of corruption and graft, and a no doubt there are
a few who prosper by serving that class, but the Main Streets of America are not, in any way,
profiting off the exploitation of Africa or S. America or anywhere else. Indeed, it is them
that are being exploited.
The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going on in the world
in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education system and
spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey
no argument there!
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India.
India and China (and Ethiopia and Somalia and Mexico and Brazil and so many other places)
are not poor due to the oppression of Americans. Sure, Goldman Sachs and a thousand other
vultures and thieves have done a lot of damage, but no more that the leadership of those
respective lands. Has India ever heard of birth control, (for God's sake!) Or Indonesia or a hundred other
places, like Haiti, that overbreed their finite resources and limited space until their
countries are reduced to shitholes.
If a coal miner in West Virginia is doing a little better than an Untouchable in India,
then trust me when I tell you I'm not going to blame the miner (or janitor or mechanic) in
America for the poverty in the corrupt and stupid third world.
As far as the suffering that the ZUSA has actually caused, and is causing in places like
Syria and Yemen, none of that is being done on behalf of the American people, but rather the
typical American is taxed to support these wars and atrocities on behalf of Israel or Saudi
Arabia, respectively.
The only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
recently I was ranting on the terrible folly of this very thing.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews
in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
Yes, they're just as selfish and greedy, but they aren't as filled with genocidal
hatred.
It's because of Zionist Jews that Americans were dragged into both world wars.
It's because of Zionist Jews (and assorted corrupt Gentiles) that Israel (with help from
the CIA and ((media)), did 9/11, in order to plunge this century into horrors writ large like
the last Zio-century.
That there are legions of corrupt and soulless Gentiles willing and eager to jump on that
gravy train, is a shame and a sin, but it doesn't excuse the people who are the motivation
behind the wars.
The Kochs (and Chamber of Commerce and other Gentile scum) want massive immigration out of
pure, raw, insatiable greed.
Whereas the Jewish supremacist Zionists want it out of genocidal tribal hatreds.
The typical American middle and working class are ground into the dirt between these two
pillars of Satanic iniquity.
I agree with much of what you're saying, and it's true about the elites in general. But
the ZUSA is completely controlled by Zionist Jews, and I think that's pretty obvious.
This man knew that 9/11 was going to happen, if he wasn't part of the planning. And yet
look at how they abase themselves
An interesting point about refugees and emigration of Ukrainians to Russia.
Notable quotes:
"... Donbass is a civil conflict involving some Russian support for the rebels, who're overwhelmingly from the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR. These individuals have a realistic basis to oppose the Kiev based regimes that came after the overthrow of a democratically elected Ukrainian president. ..."
"... During the American Revolution, most of the pro-British fighters were said to be colonists already based in America. Furthermore, the American revolutionaries received significant support from France. With these factors in mind, the Donbass rebels don't seem less legit than the American revolutionaries. ..."
"... Some Kiev regime elements positively reference the 1995 Croat ethnic cleansing of Krajina Serbs (known as Operation Storm) as a solution for ending the rebel position in Donbass. Russia doesn't seek a massive refugee problem in Donbass and some other parts of the former Ukrainian SSR. As is, a sizeable number of Ukrainian residents have fled to Russia. ..."
"... Putin isn't anti-US in the manner claimed by Peters. Moreover, Peters is clearly more anti-Russian (in a narrow minded way at that) than what can be reasonably said of how Putin views the US. Putin's obvious differences with neocons, neolibs and flat out Russia haters isn't by default anti-US. He was the first foreign leader to console the US following 9/11. The Russian president has been consistently on record for favoring better US-Russian ties (even inquiring about Russia joining NATO at one point), thereby explaining why he has appeared to have preferred Trump over Clinton. ..."
"... the Russians (by and large) prefer predictability. As a general rule this is otherwise true. However, Clinton's neocon/neolib stated views on Russia have been to the point where many Russians felt willing to take a chance with Trump, whose campaign included a comparatively more sympathetic take of their country. At the same time, a good number of Russians questioned whether Trump would maintain that stance. ..."
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, received well deserved praise for taking to
task the permeating anti-Russian biases. The highlight of Carlson's exchanges was his
encounter with Ralph Peters, who for years has spouted grossly inaccurate propaganda
against Russia. Antiwar.com and Russia Insider, are among the counter-establishment English
language venues commenting on the Carlson-Peters discussion. The US foreign policy
establishment realist leaning National Interest carried a lengthy piece on Carlson's
challenge to the neocon/neolib foreign policy perceptions. For the record, more can and
should be said in reply to Peter's comments.
Peters falsely claims that Russia hasn't made a concerted effort in confronting ISIS. In
one of his more accurate moments, CNN's Wolf Blitzer said that the ISIS claimed shoot down
of a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt, was in response to Russia's war against ISIS.
You've to be either a liar or clueless to not recognize why Russia has actively opposed
ISIS. The latter sees Russia as an enemy, while having a good number of individuals with
roots in Russia and some other parts of the former USSR.
Peters' characterization of Russia targeting civilian areas is disingenuous. Over the
years, the matter of collateral damage is something periodically brought up in response to
those killed by US and Israeli military actions.
Peters offers no proof to his suspect claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin kills
journalists. There're numerous anti-Putin advocates alive and well in Russia. That country
does have a violence problem. Recall what the US was like in the 1960s thru early
1970′s. For that matter, Bernie Sanders isn't blamed for the pro-Sanders person who
attempted to kill Republican lawmakers.
Given the situations concerning Kosovo and northern Cyprus, Peters is being a flat out
hypocrite regarding Crimea. Donbass is a civil conflict involving some Russian support for
the rebels, who're overwhelmingly from the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR. These
individuals have a realistic basis to oppose the Kiev based regimes that came after the
overthrow of a democratically elected Ukrainian president.
During the American Revolution, most of the pro-British fighters were said to be
colonists already based in America. Furthermore, the American revolutionaries received
significant support from France. With these factors in mind, the Donbass rebels don't seem
less legit than the American revolutionaries.
Some Kiev regime elements positively reference the 1995 Croat ethnic cleansing of
Krajina Serbs (known as Operation Storm) as a solution for ending the rebel position in
Donbass. Russia doesn't seek a massive refugee problem in Donbass and some other parts of
the former Ukrainian SSR. As is, a sizeable number of Ukrainian residents have fled to
Russia.
Putin isn't anti-US in the manner claimed by Peters. Moreover, Peters is clearly more
anti-Russian (in a narrow minded way at that) than what can be reasonably said of how Putin
views the US. Putin's obvious differences with neocons, neolibs and flat out Russia haters
isn't by default anti-US. He was the first foreign leader to console the US following 9/11.
The Russian president has been consistently on record for favoring better US-Russian ties
(even inquiring about Russia joining NATO at one point), thereby explaining why he has
appeared to have preferred Trump over Clinton.
Some (including Trump) disagree with that view, which includes the notion that the
Russians (by and large) prefer predictability. As a general rule this is otherwise true.
However, Clinton's neocon/neolib stated views on Russia have been to the point where many
Russians felt willing to take a chance with Trump, whose campaign included a comparatively
more sympathetic take of their country. At the same time, a good number of Russians
questioned whether Trump would maintain that stance.
I suppose many of us saw the Tucker with Max Boot. Boot seemed unhinged, really
emotionally overwrought by Tucker raising commonsensical challenges to his neocon orthodoxy.
Sad, angry man.
"... As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. ..."
"... JRL promoted a recent Kirchick piece: http://russialist.org/newswatch-the-soviet-roots-of-invoking-fears-about-world-war-iii-brookings-james-kirchick/ The rant of a coddled establishment chickenhawk, who is quite overrated, relative to the positions accorded to him (Nasty people don't deserve kindness.) ..."
"... A suggestive dose of McCarthyism that simplistic references the Cold War period with present day realities, which include a subjectively inaccurate overview of what has transpired in Syria and Crimea. Put mildly, James Kirchick is quite ironic in his use of "lazy". ..."
"... As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. ..."
"... Agree entirely--a wholesale dumbing down of masses and even "elites" (both intentional and not) is a direct result of neoliberalism as a whole. ..."
"... However mad Bolton might be, most card-carrying Russophobs and neocons are not crazy: they are cynical people without scruples working for money. ..."
"... Say, Hillary Clinton or Mike Pompeo are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but they are not too mad or too stupid to understand the reality. They are simply greedy scum paid to do the hatched job. ..."
"... The same applies to most current politicians involved in the smear campaign against Russia. ..."
The US elites (neocons are just one type of servants they hired)
ah, so it was Dubya all along! What a clever little schemer he was! Pretending
all that time to be dumb as a rock, and a tool of organized Zionism, while he was using the
neocons to his own advantage! So while ((Wolfowitz and Feith and Pearl and Kristol)) were
being schooled at the feet of ((Leo Strauss)), it was Dubya the college cheerleader all along
who was the mastermind behind the Project for a New American Century and 9/11 !
sure, Goldman Sachs and Hollywood get federal subsidies, but it's the (dying) American
middle class that has been exploiting the world's poor!
The hysterical US foreign policy in the last 10-15 years, with its mindless suicidal
aggressiveness, is in fact death throes of an Empire that resents going down the drain,
what's been going down the drain has been the blood and tears and future of
working class Americans, forced to suit up their children to go slaughter innocent Arabs and
others in a transparent and treasonous policy intended to bolster Israel - at the direct and
catastrophic expense of America and the American people.
I wonder, as the American people are taxed to the tune of billions every year, to send to
Israel as tribute, is that also a case of US elites using Israel to their own devices? As
Americas roads and bridges crumble, and veterans are denied care?
Or, is it just possible, that the ((owners)) of the Federal Reserve Bank, have used that
printing press as a weapon to consolidate absolute power over the institutions of the
ZUSA?
Do you suppose that when France bombs Libya or menaces Syria, that they're doing it to
benefit the French elite? And that Israel is their dupe, who give them a pretext for doing
so? Or that the French (and British and Polish and Ukrainian, etc..) elite are getting their
marching orders from Jewish supremacist Zionists who're hell bent on using Gentile Christians
to slaughter Gentile Muslims while they laugh and count the shekels? Eh?
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition. The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going
on in the world in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education
system and spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of
persecution of those "black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM.
Did we see any protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our
Constitution? Sheep don't protest, they just follow the leader.
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he
become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy
becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The
only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in
the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
See comment 51:
The problem here and abroad are elites. Elites of any kind.
Ralph Peters is one of the nuttiest neocons around, and Fox was smart to dump him. I
recall an article long ago where he suggested that the US Govt. should address the drug
addition problem in the USA by assassinating drug dealers on the streets in the USA.
He lives off scraps from neocons by selling his soul for BS talking points and collects a
monthly check from Uncle Sam after 20 years of sitting at a desk doing BS intel work, as I
once did for a year. It seems he missed his chance at killing commies in Nam by touring
Europe, as Fred Reed explained:
Nothing new in the above article. That such people are elevated to the stature of cushy
mainstream propping and ridicule by some non-mainstream others is a tell all sign on what's
wrong with the coverage.
Regarding this excerpt:
A prime example of this comes in a recent volume authored by prominent Neocon journalist
and homosexual activist (yes, the two traits often seem to go together), James Kirchick:
The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, 2017). In his jumble of
Neocon ideology and prejudice, Kirchick evaluates what for him seems to be happening
ominously in Europe. He is deeply fearful of the efforts to "close borders" against Muslim
immigrants from the Middle East. He blasts Marine Le Pen as a racist -- and most likely a
subtle "holocaust denier!" -- and attacks the attempts in places like Hungary and Poland to
reassert national traditions and Christian identity; for him these are nothing less than
attempts to bring back "fascism."
Russia comes in for perhaps his harshest criticism, and the reason is unmistakable:
Russia seems to be returning to its older national and pre-Communist heritage, to its
age-old Orthodox Christian faith. Russians are returning by the millions to the church and
the "old-time" religion. For Kirchick this can only mean one thing: the triumph of bigotry,
anti-semitism, and "extreme right wing" ideology, and the failure of what he terms "liberal
democracy and equality" (including, he would no doubt include, feminism, same sex marriage,
across-the-board equality, and all those other "conservative values"!).
Kirchick's critique, shared by many of the leaders of the national Republican Party and
dominating the pages of most establishment "conservative" publications and talk radio these
days, joins him arm-in-arm with globalist George Soros in efforts to undermine the Russian
state and its president all in the name of "democracy" and "equality." [See, "George Soros
Aghast as Collapsing EU, while Russia Resurgent," January 19, 2018]
But, just what kind of "democracy" and what kind of "equality" do Kirchick and Soros
defend?
A suggestive dose of McCarthyism that simplistic references the Cold War period with
present day realities, which include a subjectively inaccurate overview of what has
transpired in Syria and Crimea. Put mildly, James Kirchick is quite ironic in his use of
"lazy".
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews
in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
As I always say -- as repulsive and debilitating Jewish influence on US body
politic is, this influence, now transformed in almost complete "intellectual" dominance, it
wouldn't have been possible without willing accomplices from radical Christian Zionists and a
massive corruption in the highest echelons of power.
Agree entirely--a wholesale dumbing down of masses and even "elites" (both intentional
and not) is a direct result of neoliberalism as a whole. The crisis is systemic and Jews
are only one, however important, part of that. In the end, Bolton is a practicing Lutheran
but look at him -- the guy is completely mad. And I mean this in purely psychiatric terms --
he has some real serious demons haunting him and I even have suspicion about what some of
those are. Just an example.
Yes, sick ideology often attracts nutcases. I know a guy in Ukraine with a history of
mental illness who is a staunch supporter of current "president" Poroshenko.
However mad Bolton might be, most card-carrying Russophobs and neocons are not crazy:
they are cynical people without scruples working for money.
Say, Hillary Clinton or Mike Pompeo are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but
they are not too mad or too stupid to understand the reality. They are simply greedy scum
paid to do the hatched job.
The same applies to most current politicians involved in the smear campaign against
Russia. The greatest sin of Russia and Putin is that they got in the way of thieves who
wanted to loot the whole world but encountered resistance. Assad in Syria, Iran, North Korea,
China, and Venezuela committed the same sin: got between the thieves and their intended
loot.
An interesting point about refugees and emigration of Ukrainians to Russia.
Notable quotes:
"... Donbass is a civil conflict involving some Russian support for the rebels, who're overwhelmingly from the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR. These individuals have a realistic basis to oppose the Kiev based regimes that came after the overthrow of a democratically elected Ukrainian president. ..."
"... During the American Revolution, most of the pro-British fighters were said to be colonists already based in America. Furthermore, the American revolutionaries received significant support from France. With these factors in mind, the Donbass rebels don't seem less legit than the American revolutionaries. ..."
"... Some Kiev regime elements positively reference the 1995 Croat ethnic cleansing of Krajina Serbs (known as Operation Storm) as a solution for ending the rebel position in Donbass. Russia doesn't seek a massive refugee problem in Donbass and some other parts of the former Ukrainian SSR. As is, a sizeable number of Ukrainian residents have fled to Russia. ..."
"... Putin isn't anti-US in the manner claimed by Peters. Moreover, Peters is clearly more anti-Russian (in a narrow minded way at that) than what can be reasonably said of how Putin views the US. Putin's obvious differences with neocons, neolibs and flat out Russia haters isn't by default anti-US. He was the first foreign leader to console the US following 9/11. The Russian president has been consistently on record for favoring better US-Russian ties (even inquiring about Russia joining NATO at one point), thereby explaining why he has appeared to have preferred Trump over Clinton. ..."
"... the Russians (by and large) prefer predictability. As a general rule this is otherwise true. However, Clinton's neocon/neolib stated views on Russia have been to the point where many Russians felt willing to take a chance with Trump, whose campaign included a comparatively more sympathetic take of their country. At the same time, a good number of Russians questioned whether Trump would maintain that stance. ..."
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, received well deserved praise for taking to
task the permeating anti-Russian biases. The highlight of Carlson's exchanges was his
encounter with Ralph Peters, who for years has spouted grossly inaccurate propaganda
against Russia. Antiwar.com and Russia Insider, are among the counter-establishment English
language venues commenting on the Carlson-Peters discussion. The US foreign policy
establishment realist leaning National Interest carried a lengthy piece on Carlson's
challenge to the neocon/neolib foreign policy perceptions. For the record, more can and
should be said in reply to Peter's comments.
Peters falsely claims that Russia hasn't made a concerted effort in confronting ISIS. In
one of his more accurate moments, CNN's Wolf Blitzer said that the ISIS claimed shoot down
of a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt, was in response to Russia's war against ISIS.
You've to be either a liar or clueless to not recognize why Russia has actively opposed
ISIS. The latter sees Russia as an enemy, while having a good number of individuals with
roots in Russia and some other parts of the former USSR.
Peters' characterization of Russia targeting civilian areas is disingenuous. Over the
years, the matter of collateral damage is something periodically brought up in response to
those killed by US and Israeli military actions.
Peters offers no proof to his suspect claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin kills
journalists. There're numerous anti-Putin advocates alive and well in Russia. That country
does have a violence problem. Recall what the US was like in the 1960s thru early
1970′s. For that matter, Bernie Sanders isn't blamed for the pro-Sanders person who
attempted to kill Republican lawmakers.
Given the situations concerning Kosovo and northern Cyprus, Peters is being a flat out
hypocrite regarding Crimea. Donbass is a civil conflict involving some Russian support for
the rebels, who're overwhelmingly from the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR. These
individuals have a realistic basis to oppose the Kiev based regimes that came after the
overthrow of a democratically elected Ukrainian president.
During the American Revolution, most of the pro-British fighters were said to be
colonists already based in America. Furthermore, the American revolutionaries received
significant support from France. With these factors in mind, the Donbass rebels don't seem
less legit than the American revolutionaries.
Some Kiev regime elements positively reference the 1995 Croat ethnic cleansing of
Krajina Serbs (known as Operation Storm) as a solution for ending the rebel position in
Donbass. Russia doesn't seek a massive refugee problem in Donbass and some other parts of
the former Ukrainian SSR. As is, a sizeable number of Ukrainian residents have fled to
Russia.
Putin isn't anti-US in the manner claimed by Peters. Moreover, Peters is clearly more
anti-Russian (in a narrow minded way at that) than what can be reasonably said of how Putin
views the US. Putin's obvious differences with neocons, neolibs and flat out Russia haters
isn't by default anti-US. He was the first foreign leader to console the US following 9/11.
The Russian president has been consistently on record for favoring better US-Russian ties
(even inquiring about Russia joining NATO at one point), thereby explaining why he has
appeared to have preferred Trump over Clinton.
Some (including Trump) disagree with that view, which includes the notion that the
Russians (by and large) prefer predictability. As a general rule this is otherwise true.
However, Clinton's neocon/neolib stated views on Russia have been to the point where many
Russians felt willing to take a chance with Trump, whose campaign included a comparatively
more sympathetic take of their country. At the same time, a good number of Russians
questioned whether Trump would maintain that stance.
I suppose many of us saw the Tucker with Max Boot. Boot seemed unhinged, really
emotionally overwrought by Tucker raising commonsensical challenges to his neocon orthodoxy.
Sad, angry man.
"... As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. ..."
"... JRL promoted a recent Kirchick piece: http://russialist.org/newswatch-the-soviet-roots-of-invoking-fears-about-world-war-iii-brookings-james-kirchick/ The rant of a coddled establishment chickenhawk, who is quite overrated, relative to the positions accorded to him (Nasty people don't deserve kindness.) ..."
"... A suggestive dose of McCarthyism that simplistic references the Cold War period with present day realities, which include a subjectively inaccurate overview of what has transpired in Syria and Crimea. Put mildly, James Kirchick is quite ironic in his use of "lazy". ..."
"... As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson. ..."
"... Agree entirely--a wholesale dumbing down of masses and even "elites" (both intentional and not) is a direct result of neoliberalism as a whole. ..."
"... However mad Bolton might be, most card-carrying Russophobs and neocons are not crazy: they are cynical people without scruples working for money. ..."
"... Say, Hillary Clinton or Mike Pompeo are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but they are not too mad or too stupid to understand the reality. They are simply greedy scum paid to do the hatched job. ..."
"... The same applies to most current politicians involved in the smear campaign against Russia. ..."
The US elites (neocons are just one type of servants they hired)
ah, so it was Dubya all along! What a clever little schemer he was! Pretending
all that time to be dumb as a rock, and a tool of organized Zionism, while he was using the
neocons to his own advantage! So while ((Wolfowitz and Feith and Pearl and Kristol)) were
being schooled at the feet of ((Leo Strauss)), it was Dubya the college cheerleader all along
who was the mastermind behind the Project for a New American Century and 9/11 !
sure, Goldman Sachs and Hollywood get federal subsidies, but it's the (dying) American
middle class that has been exploiting the world's poor!
The hysterical US foreign policy in the last 10-15 years, with its mindless suicidal
aggressiveness, is in fact death throes of an Empire that resents going down the drain,
what's been going down the drain has been the blood and tears and future of
working class Americans, forced to suit up their children to go slaughter innocent Arabs and
others in a transparent and treasonous policy intended to bolster Israel - at the direct and
catastrophic expense of America and the American people.
I wonder, as the American people are taxed to the tune of billions every year, to send to
Israel as tribute, is that also a case of US elites using Israel to their own devices? As
Americas roads and bridges crumble, and veterans are denied care?
Or, is it just possible, that the ((owners)) of the Federal Reserve Bank, have used that
printing press as a weapon to consolidate absolute power over the institutions of the
ZUSA?
Do you suppose that when France bombs Libya or menaces Syria, that they're doing it to
benefit the French elite? And that Israel is their dupe, who give them a pretext for doing
so? Or that the French (and British and Polish and Ukrainian, etc..) elite are getting their
marching orders from Jewish supremacist Zionists who're hell bent on using Gentile Christians
to slaughter Gentile Muslims while they laugh and count the shekels? Eh?
Elites are robbing Americans and foreigners alike. In fact, the US population gets some
crumbs off elites' table, and enjoys higher living standards than it would have in fair
global competition. The overall educational level and the level of awareness of what's going
on in the world in the US is dismal. Elites arranged that by maintaining pathetic education
system and spreading lies via MSM; ignorant sheep are more likely to obey, and to approve of
persecution of those "black sheep" who are less ignorant and don't buy the lies of the MSM.
Did we see any protests against "Patriot Act" that trampled the very foundations of our
Constitution? Sheep don't protest, they just follow the leader.
However, we have to remember that clueless ignoramus in the US gets 5-10 times more than
similarly clueless ignoramus in China or India. Bush junior was genuinely dumb, but would he
become US President without his family's ill-gotten riches, or without his ex-CIA chief daddy
becoming the President first? Of course not, most morons in the US never fly that high. The
only reason for his "success" is the fact that he was born into an elite family.
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews in
the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
See comment 51:
The problem here and abroad are elites. Elites of any kind.
Ralph Peters is one of the nuttiest neocons around, and Fox was smart to dump him. I
recall an article long ago where he suggested that the US Govt. should address the drug
addition problem in the USA by assassinating drug dealers on the streets in the USA.
He lives off scraps from neocons by selling his soul for BS talking points and collects a
monthly check from Uncle Sam after 20 years of sitting at a desk doing BS intel work, as I
once did for a year. It seems he missed his chance at killing commies in Nam by touring
Europe, as Fred Reed explained:
Nothing new in the above article. That such people are elevated to the stature of cushy
mainstream propping and ridicule by some non-mainstream others is a tell all sign on what's
wrong with the coverage.
Regarding this excerpt:
A prime example of this comes in a recent volume authored by prominent Neocon journalist
and homosexual activist (yes, the two traits often seem to go together), James Kirchick:
The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, 2017). In his jumble of
Neocon ideology and prejudice, Kirchick evaluates what for him seems to be happening
ominously in Europe. He is deeply fearful of the efforts to "close borders" against Muslim
immigrants from the Middle East. He blasts Marine Le Pen as a racist -- and most likely a
subtle "holocaust denier!" -- and attacks the attempts in places like Hungary and Poland to
reassert national traditions and Christian identity; for him these are nothing less than
attempts to bring back "fascism."
Russia comes in for perhaps his harshest criticism, and the reason is unmistakable:
Russia seems to be returning to its older national and pre-Communist heritage, to its
age-old Orthodox Christian faith. Russians are returning by the millions to the church and
the "old-time" religion. For Kirchick this can only mean one thing: the triumph of bigotry,
anti-semitism, and "extreme right wing" ideology, and the failure of what he terms "liberal
democracy and equality" (including, he would no doubt include, feminism, same sex marriage,
across-the-board equality, and all those other "conservative values"!).
Kirchick's critique, shared by many of the leaders of the national Republican Party and
dominating the pages of most establishment "conservative" publications and talk radio these
days, joins him arm-in-arm with globalist George Soros in efforts to undermine the Russian
state and its president all in the name of "democracy" and "equality." [See, "George Soros
Aghast as Collapsing EU, while Russia Resurgent," January 19, 2018]
But, just what kind of "democracy" and what kind of "equality" do Kirchick and Soros
defend?
A suggestive dose of McCarthyism that simplistic references the Cold War period with
present day realities, which include a subjectively inaccurate overview of what has
transpired in Syria and Crimea. Put mildly, James Kirchick is quite ironic in his use of
"lazy".
As far as Jews are concerned, this appears to be yet another red herring, like
Russia-bashing. Are gentile Koch brothers or Walton family any better than the worst Jews
in the US? They are just as selfish, greedy, and repulsive as George Soros or Sheldon
Adelson.
As I always say -- as repulsive and debilitating Jewish influence on US body
politic is, this influence, now transformed in almost complete "intellectual" dominance, it
wouldn't have been possible without willing accomplices from radical Christian Zionists and a
massive corruption in the highest echelons of power.
Agree entirely--a wholesale dumbing down of masses and even "elites" (both intentional
and not) is a direct result of neoliberalism as a whole. The crisis is systemic and Jews
are only one, however important, part of that. In the end, Bolton is a practicing Lutheran
but look at him -- the guy is completely mad. And I mean this in purely psychiatric terms --
he has some real serious demons haunting him and I even have suspicion about what some of
those are. Just an example.
Yes, sick ideology often attracts nutcases. I know a guy in Ukraine with a history of
mental illness who is a staunch supporter of current "president" Poroshenko.
However mad Bolton might be, most card-carrying Russophobs and neocons are not crazy:
they are cynical people without scruples working for money.
Say, Hillary Clinton or Mike Pompeo are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but
they are not too mad or too stupid to understand the reality. They are simply greedy scum
paid to do the hatched job.
The same applies to most current politicians involved in the smear campaign against
Russia. The greatest sin of Russia and Putin is that they got in the way of thieves who
wanted to loot the whole world but encountered resistance. Assad in Syria, Iran, North Korea,
China, and Venezuela committed the same sin: got between the thieves and their intended
loot.
As I pointed out in my last comment on the previous Korea thread, only the UNSC sanctions
are legal--Outlaw US Empire sanctions have no legal force outside its borders and can be freely
ignored. It's entirely possible Russia will use its position as UNSC President this month to
introduce a resolution canceling or greatly scaling back UNSC sanctions.
That almost the entire Imperial Establishment has given the Finger to the entire affair
isn't being ignored by the rest of the world, the EU in particular.
Although short, the Global Times link I provided has useful information as does the
Black Agenda Report item I linked to in my comment previous to my last on that
thread.
I very much approve of b's linking what was just accomplished with the NPT and hope other
writers pick it up and help further broadcast his very important point.
As for 100% denuclearization of Korea, lots of nuclear power plants will need to be replaced
and decommissioned, and that will likely take several decades to attain.
One can hope that an historical movement's begun to finally decolonize those nations
occupied by the Outlaw US Empire upon WW2's end. Admittedly, the Asian nations will find such a
process much easier than those in Europe. I doubt I'll live to see it, but somehow I can't find
any reason for Germany to continue being occupied in 2045, a full century after the end of WW2.
But if Germany is to become free, it cannot afford any more Merkels.
As I pointed out in my last comment on the previous Korea thread, only the UNSC sanctions
are legal--Outlaw US Empire sanctions have no legal force outside its borders and can be freely
ignored. It's entirely possible Russia will use its position as UNSC President this month to
introduce a resolution canceling or greatly scaling back UNSC sanctions.
That almost the entire Imperial Establishment has given the Finger to the entire affair
isn't being ignored by the rest of the world, the EU in particular.
Although short, the Global Times link I provided has useful information as does the
Black Agenda Report item I linked to in my comment previous to my last on that
thread.
I very much approve of b's linking what was just accomplished with the NPT and hope other
writers pick it up and help further broadcast his very important point.
As for 100% denuclearization of Korea, lots of nuclear power plants will need to be replaced
and decommissioned, and that will likely take several decades to attain.
One can hope that an historical movement's begun to finally decolonize those nations
occupied by the Outlaw US Empire upon WW2's end. Admittedly, the Asian nations will find such a
process much easier than those in Europe. I doubt I'll live to see it, but somehow I can't find
any reason for Germany to continue being occupied in 2045, a full century after the end of WW2.
But if Germany is to become free, it cannot afford any more Merkels.
The root is neoliberal government that came to power in 2015
Notable quotes:
"... Why is any of this still "surprising" ..."
"... Economist Ha Joon Chang popularized the term "ladder kicking" to describe the way in which most developed countries used tariffs and trade restrictions to ascent to the top but are all for "free trade" now. ..."
"... Once again, so long as "Original Sin" is a reality, there is little hope. Keynes' BANCOR was the idea to begin to fix this, but short of some other global currency initiative, we're left to the International Finance Vultures as the primary arbiters of what's possible. ..."
Thanks for the link. I will be spending some time thinking of what Argentina would best
employ as best practices from where it is.
Would they be best off if they stopped issuing such high paying bonds? Should they pay them
all off and stop with it. It does appear to me that issuing bond after bond is one of the
single most dangerous things you can do.
It would appear to me to be a superior practice to sell what you produce for the best price
you can get on the open markets and dictate the value of your currency.
I'll have to do some more study here.
Again, thanks for the link.
You're uttering the discourse of the most recalcitrant neo-liberal cum
austerity-fundamentalists around.
The US doesn't tax soybean exports. Argentina needs to maximize its exports to earn
foreign exchange.'
it's misleading to say the least to draw a comparison between how the US handles soybean
exports and Argentina does it. They're around a quarter of the latter's exports, barely a
hundredth of the latter's.
The US will never have forex issues, Argentina does have them, and they are very serious.
You make it as if simply exporting commodities will fill the country's economy with USD,
while in truth those dollars will be neatly parked in tax heavens. Eliminating tax and
controls over Argentina's biggest exports -agricultural commodities- is in practice as if
these commodities were produced not in this country but in some foreign territory over which
only the very few who hold most of the land are sovereign. Which is what the current
administration has been doing for the past two years.
You also make it as if the current situation where the value of the peso is given over
completely to whatever short-term speculators feel like doing with it whenever LEBACs are due
is more desirable than the capital controls imposed by the previous government. These
prevented the hurtful rapid rise we're seeing in the exchange rate and reduced the negative
consequences of the fiscal deficit thus allowing significant investment in and expansion of
the real economy.
Addressing the fiscal deficit through increased value added and income tax is something
that clearly benefits the owner over the working class and depresses private consumption. I
can only sarcastically wonder who would want such a thing.
I don't feel the need or the duty to defend the previous government, but victimization of
the Sociedad Rural is something I just lack the words to condemn strongly enough
Argentina is probably the most self sufficient country on earth. It has everything,
fertile land that produces an abundance of wheat, barley, oats, rye, wine grapes. As well as
oil, gas. uranium, silver, gold, lead, copper, zinc. Foreigners are well aware of the wealth
in Argentina and are more than willing to lend to Argentinian governments and companies. This
is why Cristina Kirchner refused to give in to the US vulture funds as it dissuaded
foreigners from believing that reckless lending would always be rewarded. Macri ponied up,
restarting the old familiar economic doom cycle. As always its the old dog for the long road
and the pup for the puddle. Macri is now in a place that he chose, the puddle. As long as
foreig lenders remain reckless Argentina will remain mired in the mud, well short of its
potential. I was last there in 2008 when the country was booming. When I heard of Macri's
plan to pay the vulture funds I knew they were headed for disaster. This is just the
beginning.
Those "foreign lenders" can't be called "reckless." Some, maybe most among them always
seem to profit from the looting, whether by "bailouts" or "backstops" from governments like
the US that for "geopolitical reasons" facilitate that lending, or by extortion after the
first-round lenders (who know the risks, of course -- they are big boys and girls after all)
have been forestalled.
Call them "wreckers," maybe. Like early denizens of the Florida Keys, and other places,
who set fires or put up lamps that resembled lighthouses to lure passing ships onto the sands
and rocks where their cargoes and the valuables of their drowned passengers and crews could
be stripped.
Why is any of this still "surprising" to anyone?! Most countries in the world
(non G7/G8) are forced to go into foreign debt in order to pursue their "development"
initiatives. They are told they can export themselves out of trouble but the "free
trade" (more like unfair trade!) mantra puts them at a distinct disadvantage –
"unequal
exchange" was the term Marx used for it.
Economist Ha Joon Chang popularized the term
"ladder kicking" to describe the way in which most developed countries used tariffs and
trade restrictions to ascent to the top but are all for "free trade" now.
Once again, so long as "Original Sin" is a reality, there is little
hope. Keynes' BANCOR was
the idea to begin to fix this, but short of some other global currency initiative, we're left
to the International Finance Vultures as the primary arbiters of what's possible.
Many Trump supporters, and even some on the left, like to talk about the "Deep State"
secretly having complete control of our government, thus rendering our elected leaders to be
nothing more than meaningless figureheads. Let's investigate.
Long before the term 'Deep State' became popular, the term "Military Industrial Complex" was
coined by President Dwight Eisenhower.
He gave his now famous Military Industrial Complex (MIC) speech on Jan 17, 1961.
During his ominous farewell, Ike mentioned that the US was only just past the halfway point
of the century and we had already seen 4 major wars. He then went on to talk about how the MIC
was now a major sector of the economy. Eisenhower then went on to warn Americans about the
"undue influence" the MIC has on our government. He warned that the MIC has massive lobbying
power and the ability to press for unnecessary wars and armaments we would not really need, all
just to funnel money to their coffers.
Jump to Ike's warning about the "unwarranted influence... by the Military-Industrial
Complex" at 8:41
His warning though proven correct, was sadly not heeded. Within a few years JFK was
assassinated shortly after giving his "Secret government speech" warning the American people
about "secret governments and secret organizations that sought to have undue control of the
government.
JFK was in his grave for less than 9-months before Gulf of Tonkin incident which was a
series of outlandish lies about a fictitious attack on a US naval ship that never happened,
which caused the US to enter the Vietnam war.
President Johnson lied his way into a war with North Vietnam and within less than a year
would joke that "maybe the attack never happened". By the time the war ended in 1973, Johnson's
bundle of lies had killed 2.45 million people.
The MIC however, saw the Vietnam war as a great victory and a template for the future
success to their objectives. Ever since the Vietnam War, the MIC has urged the government to
enter into as many ambiguous and unwinnable wars as possible, since unwinnable wars are also
never-ending. Never-ending wars equate to never-ending revenue streams for the war
industry.
Eisenhower warned us about the concept of one particular industry taking control of our
government, but sadly his predictions fell of deaf ears.
Since Eisenhower's time several other over "Industrial Complexes" have followed the MIC
example and taken control of our government to suit their needs as well. Their objective is to
buy out politicians in order to control the purse strings of Congress and they have been highly
successful.
The list of these ÏC industries includes, but is not limited to the companies
below:
1. The Drug Industrial Complex. (DIC)
The prescription drug industry has massive control of our government and our health care
system. A recent Mayo Clinic study concluded that 70% of Americans are on at least one
prescription drug.
The most tragic example is opioids, though similar arguments can also be made in reference
to the anti-depressant epidemic, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
The sicker America is, the better it is for the DIC.
The drug lobby is 8x larger than the gun lobby and is indirectly responsible for the deaths
of between 59.000 and 65,000 people in 2016 alone, but if we dig deeper, that number could
easily be 2 or 3 times higher, Since deaths related to opioids from infection related to opioid
related infections are extremely common Anti-depressants are being prescribed 400% more than
they were in the 1990's. They are commonly prescribed to adolescent women and we live up to the
name "Prozac Nation" when we realize that 1 in 5 women between the ages of 40 and 59 are taking
antidepressants. The list of other prescription medicines to enhance the DIC revenue streams is
extensive.
There are two primary industrial complex rules when it comes to prescription drug centric
treatment:
Firstly, no curing is allowed, ever. Treatment of conditions with temporary benefits is
allowed, but healing is not permissible, since it interrupts revenue streams.
And second, any and all "natural" or homeopathic treatment whether it be related to diet,
supplements vitamins, anti-oxidants or physical exercise/meditation should all be relegated
to "quackery." Doctors who do not adhere to the prescription drug method of treating patients
should also be referred to as adherents to "quackery" and should be reprimanded, fined and in
extreme cases have their medical licenses revoked.
2. Real Estate Industrial Complex. (RIC)
Goal: Keep housing prices rising as much as possible, year after year after year.
How this is implemented: Endorse the borrowing of money to entice people into buying
excessively large homes in order to promote the "dream" of home ownership. Once people buy into
this scheme, they are then saddled with massive home taxes to their city and the burden of the
taxes utilities that go along with owning an excessively large home. Stigmatize anyone who is
over the age of 25 and lives in the same domicile as a parent or grandparent.
Make sure all media channels repeat over and over incessantly that high real estate prices
are "signs of a great economy," while ignoring the crippling effect high home prices have on
working class families who can barely pay their mortgage.
3. College Industrial Complex
(CIC)
The average tuition in 1971-1972 was $1832.00 and now it is officially over $31,000.00.
There are over 60 colleges and universities where the tuition has already exceeded
$60,000.00 per/year.
A college education used to be something that people saved and paid cash for, but now there
has been a cultural shift where students are expected to take out loans that are often in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain a college degree.
Why is this all so expensive? When we look at our universities and colleges, we see an
obsession with elaborate new buildings and sports stadiums, more than actual learning.
There are several emerging/innovative ideas to make a college education better, faster and
far more affordable. Such concepts probably won't take hold until the inevitable collapse of
the entire educational system takes place.
4. Health Insurance Industrial Complex
(HIC)
Much of the US healthcare system is now governed by the "Healthcare Affordability Act"
passed by the Obama administration in 2010.
The HIC proved how powerful they were when Congress was not allowed to read the legislation
before voting for it, publicly displaying that the HIC who wrote the bill behind closed doors
is more powerful than Congress itself.
What transparent public committees were behind this important legislation?
In reality, there was no transparency at all, this is stated clear as day by Healthcare
Affordability Act primary architect Jonathan Gruber stated: "Lack of transparency is a huge
political advantage, Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically,
that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."
The Speaker of the House at the time was Nancy Pelosi, who famously said from the leadership
podium as House Speaker: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.'
Our elected officials were not allowed to read the most important legislation of the past 30
years before voting for or against it. There is no greater testimony to the level of
dysfunction in Congress than the Healthcare Affordability Act, formed by secret committees and
then not allowing Congress to read it before voting.
* * *
Let's think back to 1961 when Eisenhower warned us about what would become the Vietnam War.
The American people's ignoring his warning caused arms manufacturers and big business to assume
nearly complete control of US government.
If we had listened to Ike, millions of people would not have died in the wars of the last 57
years and we would have trillions of dollars less in debt. Perhaps we still have time to heed
his warning before our entire country collapses under the weight of corruption, crippling debt
and never-ending wars, let's hope so.
* * *
Kevin Paul is the founder of Alternativemediahub.com, which refers to itself as "The
megaphone of independent journalism." Born in MA, he came within 2% of winning the R party
nomination to oppose Ted Kennedy in 2006 and holds degrees in business and political
science.
The root is neoliberal government that came to power in 2015
Notable quotes:
"... Why is any of this still "surprising" ..."
"... Economist Ha Joon Chang popularized the term "ladder kicking" to describe the way in which most developed countries used tariffs and trade restrictions to ascent to the top but are all for "free trade" now. ..."
"... Once again, so long as "Original Sin" is a reality, there is little hope. Keynes' BANCOR was the idea to begin to fix this, but short of some other global currency initiative, we're left to the International Finance Vultures as the primary arbiters of what's possible. ..."
Thanks for the link. I will be spending some time thinking of what Argentina would best
employ as best practices from where it is.
Would they be best off if they stopped issuing such high paying bonds? Should they pay them
all off and stop with it. It does appear to me that issuing bond after bond is one of the
single most dangerous things you can do.
It would appear to me to be a superior practice to sell what you produce for the best price
you can get on the open markets and dictate the value of your currency.
I'll have to do some more study here.
Again, thanks for the link.
You're uttering the discourse of the most recalcitrant neo-liberal cum
austerity-fundamentalists around.
The US doesn't tax soybean exports. Argentina needs to maximize its exports to earn
foreign exchange.'
it's misleading to say the least to draw a comparison between how the US handles soybean
exports and Argentina does it. They're around a quarter of the latter's exports, barely a
hundredth of the latter's.
The US will never have forex issues, Argentina does have them, and they are very serious.
You make it as if simply exporting commodities will fill the country's economy with USD,
while in truth those dollars will be neatly parked in tax heavens. Eliminating tax and
controls over Argentina's biggest exports -agricultural commodities- is in practice as if
these commodities were produced not in this country but in some foreign territory over which
only the very few who hold most of the land are sovereign. Which is what the current
administration has been doing for the past two years.
You also make it as if the current situation where the value of the peso is given over
completely to whatever short-term speculators feel like doing with it whenever LEBACs are due
is more desirable than the capital controls imposed by the previous government. These
prevented the hurtful rapid rise we're seeing in the exchange rate and reduced the negative
consequences of the fiscal deficit thus allowing significant investment in and expansion of
the real economy.
Addressing the fiscal deficit through increased value added and income tax is something
that clearly benefits the owner over the working class and depresses private consumption. I
can only sarcastically wonder who would want such a thing.
I don't feel the need or the duty to defend the previous government, but victimization of
the Sociedad Rural is something I just lack the words to condemn strongly enough
Argentina is probably the most self sufficient country on earth. It has everything,
fertile land that produces an abundance of wheat, barley, oats, rye, wine grapes. As well as
oil, gas. uranium, silver, gold, lead, copper, zinc. Foreigners are well aware of the wealth
in Argentina and are more than willing to lend to Argentinian governments and companies. This
is why Cristina Kirchner refused to give in to the US vulture funds as it dissuaded
foreigners from believing that reckless lending would always be rewarded. Macri ponied up,
restarting the old familiar economic doom cycle. As always its the old dog for the long road
and the pup for the puddle. Macri is now in a place that he chose, the puddle. As long as
foreig lenders remain reckless Argentina will remain mired in the mud, well short of its
potential. I was last there in 2008 when the country was booming. When I heard of Macri's
plan to pay the vulture funds I knew they were headed for disaster. This is just the
beginning.
Those "foreign lenders" can't be called "reckless." Some, maybe most among them always
seem to profit from the looting, whether by "bailouts" or "backstops" from governments like
the US that for "geopolitical reasons" facilitate that lending, or by extortion after the
first-round lenders (who know the risks, of course -- they are big boys and girls after all)
have been forestalled.
Call them "wreckers," maybe. Like early denizens of the Florida Keys, and other places,
who set fires or put up lamps that resembled lighthouses to lure passing ships onto the sands
and rocks where their cargoes and the valuables of their drowned passengers and crews could
be stripped.
Why is any of this still "surprising" to anyone?! Most countries in the world
(non G7/G8) are forced to go into foreign debt in order to pursue their "development"
initiatives. They are told they can export themselves out of trouble but the "free
trade" (more like unfair trade!) mantra puts them at a distinct disadvantage –
"unequal
exchange" was the term Marx used for it.
Economist Ha Joon Chang popularized the term
"ladder kicking" to describe the way in which most developed countries used tariffs and
trade restrictions to ascent to the top but are all for "free trade" now.
Once again, so long as "Original Sin" is a reality, there is little
hope. Keynes' BANCOR was
the idea to begin to fix this, but short of some other global currency initiative, we're left
to the International Finance Vultures as the primary arbiters of what's possible.
Many Trump supporters, and even some on the left, like to talk about the "Deep State"
secretly having complete control of our government, thus rendering our elected leaders to be
nothing more than meaningless figureheads. Let's investigate.
Long before the term 'Deep State' became popular, the term "Military Industrial Complex" was
coined by President Dwight Eisenhower.
He gave his now famous Military Industrial Complex (MIC) speech on Jan 17, 1961.
During his ominous farewell, Ike mentioned that the US was only just past the halfway point
of the century and we had already seen 4 major wars. He then went on to talk about how the MIC
was now a major sector of the economy. Eisenhower then went on to warn Americans about the
"undue influence" the MIC has on our government. He warned that the MIC has massive lobbying
power and the ability to press for unnecessary wars and armaments we would not really need, all
just to funnel money to their coffers.
Jump to Ike's warning about the "unwarranted influence... by the Military-Industrial
Complex" at 8:41
His warning though proven correct, was sadly not heeded. Within a few years JFK was
assassinated shortly after giving his "Secret government speech" warning the American people
about "secret governments and secret organizations that sought to have undue control of the
government.
JFK was in his grave for less than 9-months before Gulf of Tonkin incident which was a
series of outlandish lies about a fictitious attack on a US naval ship that never happened,
which caused the US to enter the Vietnam war.
President Johnson lied his way into a war with North Vietnam and within less than a year
would joke that "maybe the attack never happened". By the time the war ended in 1973, Johnson's
bundle of lies had killed 2.45 million people.
The MIC however, saw the Vietnam war as a great victory and a template for the future
success to their objectives. Ever since the Vietnam War, the MIC has urged the government to
enter into as many ambiguous and unwinnable wars as possible, since unwinnable wars are also
never-ending. Never-ending wars equate to never-ending revenue streams for the war
industry.
Eisenhower warned us about the concept of one particular industry taking control of our
government, but sadly his predictions fell of deaf ears.
Since Eisenhower's time several other over "Industrial Complexes" have followed the MIC
example and taken control of our government to suit their needs as well. Their objective is to
buy out politicians in order to control the purse strings of Congress and they have been highly
successful.
The list of these ÏC industries includes, but is not limited to the companies
below:
1. The Drug Industrial Complex. (DIC)
The prescription drug industry has massive control of our government and our health care
system. A recent Mayo Clinic study concluded that 70% of Americans are on at least one
prescription drug.
The most tragic example is opioids, though similar arguments can also be made in reference
to the anti-depressant epidemic, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
The sicker America is, the better it is for the DIC.
The drug lobby is 8x larger than the gun lobby and is indirectly responsible for the deaths
of between 59.000 and 65,000 people in 2016 alone, but if we dig deeper, that number could
easily be 2 or 3 times higher, Since deaths related to opioids from infection related to opioid
related infections are extremely common Anti-depressants are being prescribed 400% more than
they were in the 1990's. They are commonly prescribed to adolescent women and we live up to the
name "Prozac Nation" when we realize that 1 in 5 women between the ages of 40 and 59 are taking
antidepressants. The list of other prescription medicines to enhance the DIC revenue streams is
extensive.
There are two primary industrial complex rules when it comes to prescription drug centric
treatment:
Firstly, no curing is allowed, ever. Treatment of conditions with temporary benefits is
allowed, but healing is not permissible, since it interrupts revenue streams.
And second, any and all "natural" or homeopathic treatment whether it be related to diet,
supplements vitamins, anti-oxidants or physical exercise/meditation should all be relegated
to "quackery." Doctors who do not adhere to the prescription drug method of treating patients
should also be referred to as adherents to "quackery" and should be reprimanded, fined and in
extreme cases have their medical licenses revoked.
2. Real Estate Industrial Complex. (RIC)
Goal: Keep housing prices rising as much as possible, year after year after year.
How this is implemented: Endorse the borrowing of money to entice people into buying
excessively large homes in order to promote the "dream" of home ownership. Once people buy into
this scheme, they are then saddled with massive home taxes to their city and the burden of the
taxes utilities that go along with owning an excessively large home. Stigmatize anyone who is
over the age of 25 and lives in the same domicile as a parent or grandparent.
Make sure all media channels repeat over and over incessantly that high real estate prices
are "signs of a great economy," while ignoring the crippling effect high home prices have on
working class families who can barely pay their mortgage.
3. College Industrial Complex
(CIC)
The average tuition in 1971-1972 was $1832.00 and now it is officially over $31,000.00.
There are over 60 colleges and universities where the tuition has already exceeded
$60,000.00 per/year.
A college education used to be something that people saved and paid cash for, but now there
has been a cultural shift where students are expected to take out loans that are often in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain a college degree.
Why is this all so expensive? When we look at our universities and colleges, we see an
obsession with elaborate new buildings and sports stadiums, more than actual learning.
There are several emerging/innovative ideas to make a college education better, faster and
far more affordable. Such concepts probably won't take hold until the inevitable collapse of
the entire educational system takes place.
4. Health Insurance Industrial Complex
(HIC)
Much of the US healthcare system is now governed by the "Healthcare Affordability Act"
passed by the Obama administration in 2010.
The HIC proved how powerful they were when Congress was not allowed to read the legislation
before voting for it, publicly displaying that the HIC who wrote the bill behind closed doors
is more powerful than Congress itself.
What transparent public committees were behind this important legislation?
In reality, there was no transparency at all, this is stated clear as day by Healthcare
Affordability Act primary architect Jonathan Gruber stated: "Lack of transparency is a huge
political advantage, Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically,
that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."
The Speaker of the House at the time was Nancy Pelosi, who famously said from the leadership
podium as House Speaker: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.'
Our elected officials were not allowed to read the most important legislation of the past 30
years before voting for or against it. There is no greater testimony to the level of
dysfunction in Congress than the Healthcare Affordability Act, formed by secret committees and
then not allowing Congress to read it before voting.
* * *
Let's think back to 1961 when Eisenhower warned us about what would become the Vietnam War.
The American people's ignoring his warning caused arms manufacturers and big business to assume
nearly complete control of US government.
If we had listened to Ike, millions of people would not have died in the wars of the last 57
years and we would have trillions of dollars less in debt. Perhaps we still have time to heed
his warning before our entire country collapses under the weight of corruption, crippling debt
and never-ending wars, let's hope so.
* * *
Kevin Paul is the founder of Alternativemediahub.com, which refers to itself as "The
megaphone of independent journalism." Born in MA, he came within 2% of winning the R party
nomination to oppose Ted Kennedy in 2006 and holds degrees in business and political
science.
To my surprise, it seems that the majority of veteran MoA commenters are died in the wool anarchists. A main thrust of comments
on this article ostensibly about the infighting and decadence of the G7 was to cast stones at the Silk Road.
Russia under Vladimir Putin and China under Xi Jinping may be fine but will their successors know not to abuse the power they
may gain from the New Silk Road projects encompassing Eurasia and Africa? (Jen, 32)
or
If the West is dead and the East is the future, then why are so many Chinese buying houses and living part time in Canada,
Australia, and the USA? Why is there so much emphasis put on Western education facilities by Asians? (rexl, 39)
or
I still don't get why so many humans believe anything good comes from chucking aside one greedy oppressive arsehole then replacing
it with another. Sure the SCO has a founding document laden with flowery words and seemingly wonderful concepts but I say "So
what" check out the UN charter or the amerikan constitution and you'll find the same .Swapping SCO for G7 will do SFA for them
or anyone else unlucky enough to be living on top of whatever the current 'must have' is deemed to be. Anyone who imagines that
it could is delusional. (Debsisdead, 52)
The Silk Road fundamentally threatens British American power, which has depended on using the oceans to divide and rule the world,
to the point of giving free mandate to pirates (kind of Daesh, v1, if I'm not mistaken - though similar atrocities were committed
in licenses to kill either Buffalo or Indians in the American West), by rebranding them as privateers (
1540 to 1812 ).
Unlike anything which the G7, the US or the EU are proposing, the Silk Road really has potential to improve the lives of billions.
Relatively free trade among neighboring and distant countries yet with relatively efficient transportation distances (distances
are substantial but for the most part are not South China to NYC).
Low cost of transportation ( rail is the least polluting
of all major means of transportation). Sea freight seems to compete but there are many hidden factors in ocean pollution (waste
and toxic dumping, tanker accidents, etc). Rail is at least four times more efficient and less polluting than road (see table
19 on p. 30 of the PDF linked above).
Bringing previously landlocked countries development and trade opportunities.
No easy way to bring military to bear on the weakest. US/British ocean based imperialism means that there are no countries
to cross between San Diego and the Philippines or Portmouth and Argentina. In land wars, each country across across which a belligerent
powers seeks transport troops or material has to accede to the movement. Hence the value of the EU and NATO to the US - we can
no longer refuse military transports (I believe Austria tries, Czech Republic tried and failed).
Sets up an alternative structure. The average age of poster/reader at MofA seems relatively high (we seem to be in our forties-fifties)
so most of us will remember the so-called Cold War. It was a fantastic period for most of the world (South America was not spared
the American lash, some countries in Eastern Europe still justifiably lament Soviet oppression. The tale of the tape leads to
a different story though: Soviet casualties in satellites vs Imperialist (American) casualties in Satellites (1).
What mattered was that in a world with multiple hegemons, the West had to treat its workers well, maintain a free press and generally
make living conditions appealing enough that no country would be attempted to follow the Yugoslavian route. It's no accident that
Yugoslavia was the first victim of Pax Americana after the end of the Cold War.
No matter how you cut it, unless you are a British or US Imperialist (please take the Opium Wars, the North American Indian Genocide,
the destruction of the Philippines, annihilation of the Maoris, the suppression of continental India and the rape of Africa on your
conscience first), the Silk Road is a great benefit to Asia and Europe, facilitating trade and creating a two polar system. That
two polar system will take us back to where we were before 1989: our would-be masters have to mind their manners and tread very carefully
lest we switch sides. The Canadians and the Mexicans will remain more or less trapped. With a bit of luck they might enjoy the same
benefits as the native US population as internal revolution will become a danger again.
Balance of power is the key to equal relations and a healthy middle class. Alas, the poor always suffer.
-----------
(1) Approximate casualties in repression of satrapies:
I'm omitting Viet Nam 1955-1975 (3 million+), Korea 1950-1953 (2.5million+), Philippines 1899-1902 (1 million+), Afghanistan (30000+,
only violent deaths ) as wars rather
than straight repression of satraps or outside of the period of interest (Cold War).
Post-Cold War, the US Imperialism has conducted the following punitive operations:
Libya: 2000
to 30000 (no reliable, neutral numbers available, huge underestimate of indirect civilian deaths based on photographic evidence
of the cities)
Syria: 500,000+ killed, 8 million displaced or refugee
Yemen: 13,000 killed (ludicrous underestimate, without starvation, destroyed medical and water infrastructure or the 3 million+
displaced)
I note that the estimates of casualties for Imperialist (US) actions tend to ignore deaths among the displaced. Their invasions
usually lead to many millions displaced (ethnic conflict fanned, whole parts of a country made unliveable via depleted uranium) so
casualty estimates (Yugoslavia, Libya, Yemen are ridiculously low). The Iraq War received more attention so the statistics are more
comprehensive if controversial with (
guess who )
consistently lobbying down the numbers.
It's worth noting that the US underestimates its own combat losses, really counting only killed and battlefield injuries. That's
not nearly enough:
However, as of the year 2000, 183,000 U.S. veterans of the Gulf War, more than a quarter of the U.S. troops who participated
in War, have been declared permanently disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 30% of the 700,000 men and women
who served in U.S. forces during the Gulf War still suffer an array of serious symptoms whose causes are not fully understood.
Is it the depleted uranium or perhaps the psychological stress of murdering defenceless people (surrendered soldiers or simple
civilians)? I don't know but would like to know why so many deployed US military end up as invalids.
Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires - in my opinion.
Up to 1999, the West looked unassailable. Then the attack on Serbia happened. It showed the limits of war on the 'cheap', i.e.
bombing from the air but nothing to hold ground or willingness to risk soldiers lives. The Yugoslav army was expected to cower
and run from 'shock and awe', the politicians to surrender 'after a few days of bombing'.
78 days later NATO had failed, the Yugoslav army unbeaten, but the axe fell from Moscow.
This snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat was not taken as a warning of the shifting sands that the 1999 attack showed.
Rather, there was a brief mopping of brows before the self-congratulation and memory management kicked in and like a football
match, a victory is still a victory, however they got their. If there were any lessons were learned, they were kept out of sight
and thus quickly forgotten for all but a few.
1999 showed that effective resistance was possible. Others took note. The attack on Afghanistan was the tipping point of the
cascade. Not that I would deny the obvious importance of other actors since on building blocks of resistance since, the trend
has clearly been there, such as the developing world's refusal to accept the west's demands of fully opening up their markets
in return for some beans at the Doha round of world trade talks, let alone the financial crisis.
That we are here now, is not a great surprise. How 'we' got here has been a real rock and roll ride over the bodies of many
innocents. Their blood stains the souls of those involved and their cheerleaders and there is still a price to be paid.
The west is still working though the Kubler-Ross 'Five Stages of Grief' and it will take a long time to come to terms with
reality as many of the greenhorns in the early 1990s are now in senior positions, not to mention that the multi-polar world is
a fact and negotiation on a more equal level is all that remains. It might all still go wrong...
P.S. For those who ascribe to the 'Putin weak, Israel stooge etc.' rubbish, the Saker recently did a decent piece entitled
'Is Putin really ready to "ditch" Iran?'
hopehely @4: Japan is most likely to follow the big EU countries, who for now will stay loyal to the US-centered financial/military
duopoly of power.
I don't think (over the next 10-20 years) the vast expansion of the China export market will overcome the power of the financial
borg and the military-industrial complex, both within Japan and throughout the 'West'. The 'people' need to do that, but they
are weak.
Before attending the summit Trump trolled his colleagues by inviting Russia to rejoin the G-7/G-8 format without conditions.
Russia had been kicked out after Crimea voted to join its motherland . Merkel, who had negotiated the Minsk agreement
with Russia, was furious. She wants to use such an invitation as an element of future negotiations. (It is stupid attempt.
Russia is not interested in rejoining the G-7/G-8 format.
First of all, in 1991, a majority of Crimeans opted to join Ukraine (independence). So much for the motherland! Secondly, Russia
recognized Crimea as a part of Ukraine when they signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. Thirdly, Russia illegally invaded Crimea
to secure the peninsula. Putin lied when he said there was no invasion. Murdered journalist and Russian politician, Boris Nemtsov,
describes in his well sourced work on the Russian war in Ukraine exactly how the referendum in Crimea came about ("Putin. War"):
As for how "voluntary" the return [of Crimea] was, Igor Girkin, the former Defense Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk
People's Republic, recounted on January 22, 2015, on the program "Polit-Ring," broadcast by the online channel Neyromir-TV.
By his own account, Girkin arrived in Crimea on February 21, 2014. "I did not see any support from organizers of state power
in Simferopol, where I was located. The militia gathered the deputies [of the Supreme Soviet of the Autonomous Republic of
Crimea], I don't know how else to say it. It was to force them into the building, so they would adopt it (a decision on
conducting the referendum on the entrance of Crimea to the Russian Federation) ." We 23 note that the events described
by Girkin (Strelkov) took place on February 27, 2014, immediately after a number of strategic objectives had been taken over
by Russian Special Forces on the night of February 26- 27, including the parliament building, where, at gunpoint , with
no media present and without the video broadcast of sessions as specified by law, the deputies supposedly voted to hold a referendum.
It's always interesting how international law means so very little when there is a political agenda.
Politicking aside, this is just 3/3 factually incorrect
(1) In 1991, Crimea was part of Ukrainian SSR. Referendum result was a vote for the Crimea to become an autonomous republic
as part of USSR (in present terms that means independence from Ukraine, not from Russia). (Another all-USSR referendum of 1991
vote was for the preserving the USSR, 70 % yes) (2) There is not a single word in Budapest memorandum specifically on Crimea.
It uses vague non-enforceable language (' reaffirm commitment' etc). It does talk about respect for 'existing territory of Ukraine',
however this territory is nowhere defined. (+In any case, at present time international affairs are not conducted strictly to
the letter of international laws in general) (3) large number of troops were there already on the Russian Navy bases, by prior
arrangements. There was no 'invasion'. Subsequent referendum of 2014 on the whole was an adequate reflection of how people on
the ground felt.
To my surprise, it seems that the majority of veteran MoA commenters are died in the wool anarchists. A main thrust of comments
on this article ostensibly about the infighting and decadence of the G7 was to cast stones at the Silk Road.
Russia under Vladimir Putin and China under Xi Jinping may be fine but will their successors know not to abuse the power they
may gain from the New Silk Road projects encompassing Eurasia and Africa? (Jen, 32)
or
If the West is dead and the East is the future, then why are so many Chinese buying houses and living part time in Canada,
Australia, and the USA? Why is there so much emphasis put on Western education facilities by Asians? (rexl, 39)
or
I still don't get why so many humans believe anything good comes from chucking aside one greedy oppressive arsehole then replacing
it with another. Sure the SCO has a founding document laden with flowery words and seemingly wonderful concepts but I say "So
what" check out the UN charter or the amerikan constitution and you'll find the same .Swapping SCO for G7 will do SFA for them
or anyone else unlucky enough to be living on top of whatever the current 'must have' is deemed to be. Anyone who imagines that
it could is delusional. (Debsisdead, 52)
The Silk Road fundamentally threatens British American power, which has depended on using the oceans to divide and rule the world,
to the point of giving free mandate to pirates (kind of Daesh, v1, if I'm not mistaken - though similar atrocities were committed
in licenses to kill either Buffalo or Indians in the American West), by rebranding them as privateers (
1540 to 1812 ).
Unlike anything which the G7, the US or the EU are proposing, the Silk Road really has potential to improve the lives of billions.
Relatively free trade among neighboring and distant countries yet with relatively efficient transportation distances (distances
are substantial but for the most part are not South China to NYC).
Low cost of transportation ( rail is the least polluting
of all major means of transportation). Sea freight seems to compete but there are many hidden factors in ocean pollution (waste
and toxic dumping, tanker accidents, etc). Rail is at least four times more efficient and less polluting than road (see table
19 on p. 30 of the PDF linked above).
Bringing previously landlocked countries development and trade opportunities.
No easy way to bring military to bear on the weakest. US/British ocean based imperialism means that there are no countries
to cross between San Diego and the Philippines or Portmouth and Argentina. In land wars, each country across across which a belligerent
powers seeks transport troops or material has to accede to the movement. Hence the value of the EU and NATO to the US - we can
no longer refuse military transports (I believe Austria tries, Czech Republic tried and failed).
Sets up an alternative structure. The average age of poster/reader at MofA seems relatively high (we seem to be in our forties-fifties)
so most of us will remember the so-called Cold War. It was a fantastic period for most of the world (South America was not spared
the American lash, some countries in Eastern Europe still justifiably lament Soviet oppression. The tale of the tape leads to
a different story though: Soviet casualties in satellites vs Imperialist (American) casualties in Satellites (1).
What mattered was that in a world with multiple hegemons, the West had to treat its workers well, maintain a free press and generally
make living conditions appealing enough that no country would be attempted to follow the Yugoslavian route. It's no accident that
Yugoslavia was the first victim of Pax Americana after the end of the Cold War.
No matter how you cut it, unless you are a British or US Imperialist (please take the Opium Wars, the North American Indian Genocide,
the destruction of the Philippines, annihilation of the Maoris, the suppression of continental India and the rape of Africa on your
conscience first), the Silk Road is a great benefit to Asia and Europe, facilitating trade and creating a two polar system. That
two polar system will take us back to where we were before 1989: our would-be masters have to mind their manners and tread very carefully
lest we switch sides. The Canadians and the Mexicans will remain more or less trapped. With a bit of luck they might enjoy the same
benefits as the native US population as internal revolution will become a danger again.
Balance of power is the key to equal relations and a healthy middle class. Alas, the poor always suffer.
-----------
(1) Approximate casualties in repression of satrapies:
I'm omitting Viet Nam 1955-1975 (3 million+), Korea 1950-1953 (2.5million+), Philippines 1899-1902 (1 million+), Afghanistan (30000+,
only violent deaths ) as wars rather
than straight repression of satraps or outside of the period of interest (Cold War).
Post-Cold War, the US Imperialism has conducted the following punitive operations:
Libya: 2000
to 30000 (no reliable, neutral numbers available, huge underestimate of indirect civilian deaths based on photographic evidence
of the cities)
Syria: 500,000+ killed, 8 million displaced or refugee
Yemen: 13,000 killed (ludicrous underestimate, without starvation, destroyed medical and water infrastructure or the 3 million+
displaced)
I note that the estimates of casualties for Imperialist (US) actions tend to ignore deaths among the displaced. Their invasions
usually lead to many millions displaced (ethnic conflict fanned, whole parts of a country made unliveable via depleted uranium) so
casualty estimates (Yugoslavia, Libya, Yemen are ridiculously low). The Iraq War received more attention so the statistics are more
comprehensive if controversial with (
guess who )
consistently lobbying down the numbers.
It's worth noting that the US underestimates its own combat losses, really counting only killed and battlefield injuries. That's
not nearly enough:
However, as of the year 2000, 183,000 U.S. veterans of the Gulf War, more than a quarter of the U.S. troops who participated
in War, have been declared permanently disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 30% of the 700,000 men and women
who served in U.S. forces during the Gulf War still suffer an array of serious symptoms whose causes are not fully understood.
Is it the depleted uranium or perhaps the psychological stress of murdering defenceless people (surrendered soldiers or simple
civilians)? I don't know but would like to know why so many deployed US military end up as invalids.
Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires - in my opinion.
Up to 1999, the West looked unassailable. Then the attack on Serbia happened. It showed the limits of war on the 'cheap', i.e.
bombing from the air but nothing to hold ground or willingness to risk soldiers lives. The Yugoslav army was expected to cower
and run from 'shock and awe', the politicians to surrender 'after a few days of bombing'.
78 days later NATO had failed, the Yugoslav army unbeaten, but the axe fell from Moscow.
This snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat was not taken as a warning of the shifting sands that the 1999 attack showed.
Rather, there was a brief mopping of brows before the self-congratulation and memory management kicked in and like a football
match, a victory is still a victory, however they got their. If there were any lessons were learned, they were kept out of sight
and thus quickly forgotten for all but a few.
1999 showed that effective resistance was possible. Others took note. The attack on Afghanistan was the tipping point of the
cascade. Not that I would deny the obvious importance of other actors since on building blocks of resistance since, the trend
has clearly been there, such as the developing world's refusal to accept the west's demands of fully opening up their markets
in return for some beans at the Doha round of world trade talks, let alone the financial crisis.
That we are here now, is not a great surprise. How 'we' got here has been a real rock and roll ride over the bodies of many
innocents. Their blood stains the souls of those involved and their cheerleaders and there is still a price to be paid.
The west is still working though the Kubler-Ross 'Five Stages of Grief' and it will take a long time to come to terms with
reality as many of the greenhorns in the early 1990s are now in senior positions, not to mention that the multi-polar world is
a fact and negotiation on a more equal level is all that remains. It might all still go wrong...
P.S. For those who ascribe to the 'Putin weak, Israel stooge etc.' rubbish, the Saker recently did a decent piece entitled
'Is Putin really ready to "ditch" Iran?'
hopehely @4: Japan is most likely to follow the big EU countries, who for now will stay loyal to the US-centered financial/military
duopoly of power.
I don't think (over the next 10-20 years) the vast expansion of the China export market will overcome the power of the financial
borg and the military-industrial complex, both within Japan and throughout the 'West'. The 'people' need to do that, but they
are weak.
Before attending the summit Trump trolled his colleagues by inviting Russia to rejoin the G-7/G-8 format without conditions.
Russia had been kicked out after Crimea voted to join its motherland . Merkel, who had negotiated the Minsk agreement
with Russia, was furious. She wants to use such an invitation as an element of future negotiations. (It is stupid attempt.
Russia is not interested in rejoining the G-7/G-8 format.
First of all, in 1991, a majority of Crimeans opted to join Ukraine (independence). So much for the motherland! Secondly, Russia
recognized Crimea as a part of Ukraine when they signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. Thirdly, Russia illegally invaded Crimea
to secure the peninsula. Putin lied when he said there was no invasion. Murdered journalist and Russian politician, Boris Nemtsov,
describes in his well sourced work on the Russian war in Ukraine exactly how the referendum in Crimea came about ("Putin. War"):
As for how "voluntary" the return [of Crimea] was, Igor Girkin, the former Defense Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk
People's Republic, recounted on January 22, 2015, on the program "Polit-Ring," broadcast by the online channel Neyromir-TV.
By his own account, Girkin arrived in Crimea on February 21, 2014. "I did not see any support from organizers of state power
in Simferopol, where I was located. The militia gathered the deputies [of the Supreme Soviet of the Autonomous Republic of
Crimea], I don't know how else to say it. It was to force them into the building, so they would adopt it (a decision on
conducting the referendum on the entrance of Crimea to the Russian Federation) ." We 23 note that the events described
by Girkin (Strelkov) took place on February 27, 2014, immediately after a number of strategic objectives had been taken over
by Russian Special Forces on the night of February 26- 27, including the parliament building, where, at gunpoint , with
no media present and without the video broadcast of sessions as specified by law, the deputies supposedly voted to hold a referendum.
It's always interesting how international law means so very little when there is a political agenda.
Politicking aside, this is just 3/3 factually incorrect
(1) In 1991, Crimea was part of Ukrainian SSR. Referendum result was a vote for the Crimea to become an autonomous republic
as part of USSR (in present terms that means independence from Ukraine, not from Russia). (Another all-USSR referendum of 1991
vote was for the preserving the USSR, 70 % yes) (2) There is not a single word in Budapest memorandum specifically on Crimea.
It uses vague non-enforceable language (' reaffirm commitment' etc). It does talk about respect for 'existing territory of Ukraine',
however this territory is nowhere defined. (+In any case, at present time international affairs are not conducted strictly to
the letter of international laws in general) (3) large number of troops were there already on the Russian Navy bases, by prior
arrangements. There was no 'invasion'. Subsequent referendum of 2014 on the whole was an adequate reflection of how people on
the ground felt.
This is prophetic article, no question about it. "National neoliberalism" and interesting term.
Notable quotes:
"... Political theorist Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy, Inc. ..."
"... By contrast, in Trump's America -- where an emergent "national neoliberalism" may be gradually guiding us to a more overt and obvious totalitarian politics -- we can expect a similar fusion of state and market interests, but one in which the marketplace and big business have almost total power and freedom of movement (I think that labor will do poorly in this configuration). State and market in the U.S. will fuse further together in the coming years, leading some to make close parallels with European fascism. But it will do so not because of heavy handed government dictates and interventions, but rather because domestic privatization initiatives, appointments of businessmen to government posts, fiscal stimulus and the business community's need for protection abroad will bring them closer. Corporate interests will merge with state interests not because corporations are commanded to, but rather because the landscape of risk and reward will shift and redirect investment patterns to a similar effect. This may be where a budding U.S. totalitarianism differs most starkly from its European cousins. ..."
And why the world is about to get much more dangerous The election of Donald Trump "represents a triumph of neoliberal
thinking and values." (Photo: Carlo Allegri/ Reuters) Many writers and pundits are currently framing Trump's election in terms of
a dispossessed and disenfranchised white, male working class, unsatisfied with neoliberal globalization and the insecurity and hardship
it has unleashed -- particularly across regions of the United States that were formerly manufacturing powerhouses (like the Rust
Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, four states believed to have cost Hillary Clinton the election). While
there is much truth to this perspective and substantial empirical evidence to support it, it would be a mistake to see Trump's election
wholly in these terms.
"What Trump's election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state."
Trump's election is in some ways a neoliberal apex, an event that portends the completion of the U.S. government's capture by
wealthy corporate interests. While in my opinion Trump's election does not signal the beginning of a rapid descent into European-style
fascism, it appears to be a key stage in the ongoing process of American democratic disintegration. American democracy has been under
attack from large and wealthy corporate interests for a long time, with this process accelerating and gaining strength over the period
of neoliberal globalization (roughly the early 1970s to the present). This time period is associated with the rise of powerful multinational
corporations with economic and political might that rivals that of many national governments.
In terms of the political consequences of these trends in the U.S., certain thinkers have argued that the U.S. political system
is not democratic at all, but rather an "inverted totalitarian" system. Political commentator Chris Hedges notes: "Inverted totalitarianism
is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in
the faceless anonymity of the corporate state." Citing the American political theorist Sheldon Wolin, Hedges continues, "Unlike the
Nazis, who made life uncertain for the wealthy and privileged while providing social programs for the working class and poor, inverted
totalitarianism exploits the poor, reducing or weakening health programs and social services, regimenting mass education for an insecure
workforce threatened by the importation of low-wage workers." Our inverted totalitarian system is one that retains the trappings
of a democratic system -- e.g. it retains the appearance of loyalty to "the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press,
[and] the independence of the judiciary" -- all the while undermining the capacity of citizens to substantively participate and exert
power over the system.
In my view, what Trump's election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state. Trump gives inverted totalitarianism
a persona and a face, and perhaps marks the beginning of a transformation from inverted totalitarianism to totalitarianism proper.
In spite of this, it makes no sense to me to call the system toward which we are heading (that is, if we do not stand up and resist
with all our might right this second) "fascism" or to make too close comparisons to the Nazis. Whatever totalitarian nightmare is
on our horizon, it will be uniquely American. And it will bear a striking resemblance to the corporate oriented system we've been
living in for decades. Indeed, if the pre-Trump system of inverted totalitarianism solidified in the context of global neoliberalism,
the period we are entering now seems likely to be one characterized by what I call "national neoliberalism."
Trump's Election Doesn't Mean the End of Neoliberalism
Trump's election represents a triumph of neoliberal thinking and values. Perhaps most importantly, we should all keep in mind
the fact that Americans just elected a businessman to the presidency. In spite of his Wall Street background and billionaire status,
Trump successfully cast himself as the "anti-establishment" candidate. This configuration -- in which a top-one-percenter real estate
tycoon is accepted as a political "outsider" -- is a hallmark of neoliberal thinking. The fundamental opposition between market and
government is a central dichotomy in the neoliberal narrative. In electing Trump, American voters are reproducing this narrative,
creating an ideological cover for the closer connections between business and the state that are in store moving forward (indeed,
Trump is already using the apparatus of the U.S. federal government to promote his own business interests). As states and markets
further fuse in coming years, this representation of Trump and his administration -- as being anti-government -- will help immunize
his administration from accusations of too-cozy relationships with big business. Trump's attempts to "drain the swamp" by imposing
Congressional term limits and constraints on lobbying activities by former political officials will also help to hide this relationship.
(Has anyone else noticed that Trump only addresses half of the "revolving door," i.e., he plans to limit the lobbying of former politicians,
but not the political roles of businessmen?)
"Whatever totalitarian nightmare is on our horizon, it will be uniquely American."
Trump's Contract with the American Voter, his plan for the first 100 days in office, discusses policies and programs many of which
are consistent with neoliberal thinking. (I understand the term "neoliberalism" to emphasize at its core the importance of private
property rights, market-based social organization, and the dangers of government intervention in the economy.) Trump's plan redirects
the activities of the U.S. government along the lines touted by neoliberal "market fundamentalists" like Milton Friedman, who advocate
limiting government's role to market-supportive functions like national defense (defense stocks are doing very well since the election)
and domestic law and order (Trump's proposals have a lot to do with altering immigration policy to "restore security"). Trump also
plans to use government monies to revitalize physical infrastructure and create jobs. Other government functions, for example, health
care provision and education as well as protecting the environment and public lands, are open for privatization and defunding in
Trump's agenda. Under Trump, the scope of federal government activities will narrow, likely to infrastructure, national defense,
and domestic policing and surveillance, even if overall government spending increases (as bond markets are predicting).
Trump also seems content to take neoliberal advice in regard to business regulation (less is best) and the role of the private
sector in regulating itself (industry insiders understand regulatory needs better than public officials). Trump's plan for the first
100 days specifies "a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated." As of the
time of this writing, his selection of cabinet appointees illustrate a broad willingness to appoint businesspeople to government
posts. As of mid-December 2016, a Goldman Sachs veteran, Steven Mnuchin, has been appointed Secretary of the Treasury; billionaire
investor Wilbur Ross has been appointed Secretary of Commerce; fossil fuel industry supporter and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott
Pruitt has been appointed as EPA administrator; and fast-food mogul Andrew Puzder has been appointed as Secretary of Labor. Trump's
business council is staffed by the CEOs of major U.S. corporations including JP Morgan Chase, IBM and General Motors. To be fair,
the "revolving door" between government and industry has been perpetuated by many of Trump's predecessors, with Trump poised to continue
the tradition. But this is not to say that neoliberalism will continue going in a "business as usual" fashion. The world is about
to get much more dangerous, and this has serious implications for patterns of global trade and investment.
Trump's Election Does Mean the End of Globalism
The nationalism, xenophobia, isolationism, and paranoia of Donald Trump are about to replace the significantly more cosmopolitan
outlook of his post-WWII predecessors. While Trump is decidedly pro-business and pro-market, he most certainly does not see himself
as a global citizen. Nor does he intend to maintain the United States' extensive global footprint or its relatively open trading
network. In other words, while neoliberalism is not dead, it is being transformed into a geographically more fragmented and localized
system (this is not only about the US election, but also about rising levels of global protectionism and Brexit, among other anti-globalization
trends around the world). I expect that the geographic extent of the US economy in the coming years will coincide with the new landscape
of U.S. allies and enemies, as defined by Donald Trump and his administration.
Trump's Contract with the American Voter outlines several policies that will make it more expensive and riskier to do business
abroad. All of these need not occur; I think that even one or two of these changes will be sufficient to alter expectations in business
communities about the benefits of certain cross-border economic relationships. Pulling the United States out of the TPP, along with
threats to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and attempts to renegotiate NAFTA, is already signaling to other countries that
we are not interested in international cooperation and collaboration. A crackdown on foreign trading abuses will prompt retaliation.
Labelling China a currency manipulator will sour relations between the two countries and prompt retaliation by China. As Trump goes
forward with his anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, he will alienate the United States' traditional allies in
Europe (at least until Europe elects its own nationalist and xenophobic leaders) and communities across the Global South. The U.S.
election has already undermined performance in emerging markets, and bigoted rhetoric and policy will only increase anti-American
sentiment in struggling economies populated largely by people of color. Add to this the risk of conflict posed by any number of the
following: his antagonizing China, allying with Russia, deploying ground troops to stop ISIS, and pulling out of the Korean DMZ,
among other initiatives that seem likely to contribute to a more confrontational and violent international arena. All of this is
to say that Trump will not have to intervene directly in the affairs of business in order to nationalize it. The new global landscape
of conflict and risk, combined with elevated domestic spending on infrastructure and security, will bring U.S. business and investment
back home nonetheless.
National Neoliberalism and State-Market Relations
Fascist states are corporatist in nature, a state of affairs marked by a fusion of state and business functions and interests,
with an often significant role for labor interests as well. In the fascist states on the European continent in the 1930s and 1940s
-- systems that fall under the umbrella of "national socialism" -- the overwhelming power of the state characterized this tripartite
relationship. Political theorist Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy, Inc. in regard to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy
(as well as Stalinist Russia), "The state was conceived as the main center of power, providing the leverage necessary for the mobilization
and reconstruction of society".
By contrast, in Trump's America -- where an emergent "national neoliberalism" may be gradually guiding us to a more overt
and obvious totalitarian politics -- we can expect a similar fusion of state and market interests, but one in which the marketplace
and big business have almost total power and freedom of movement (I think that labor will do poorly in this configuration). State
and market in the U.S. will fuse further together in the coming years, leading some to make close parallels with European fascism.
But it will do so not because of heavy handed government dictates and interventions, but rather because domestic privatization initiatives,
appointments of businessmen to government posts, fiscal stimulus and the business community's need for protection abroad will bring
them closer. Corporate interests will merge with state interests not because corporations are commanded to, but rather because the
landscape of risk and reward will shift and redirect investment patterns to a similar effect. This may be where a budding U.S. totalitarianism
differs most starkly from its European cousins.
Sasha Breger Bush is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado–Denver and author of Derivatives
and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming, and Poverty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
This is prophetic article, no question about it. "National neoliberalism" and interesting term.
Notable quotes:
"... Political theorist Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy, Inc. ..."
"... By contrast, in Trump's America -- where an emergent "national neoliberalism" may be gradually guiding us to a more overt and obvious totalitarian politics -- we can expect a similar fusion of state and market interests, but one in which the marketplace and big business have almost total power and freedom of movement (I think that labor will do poorly in this configuration). State and market in the U.S. will fuse further together in the coming years, leading some to make close parallels with European fascism. But it will do so not because of heavy handed government dictates and interventions, but rather because domestic privatization initiatives, appointments of businessmen to government posts, fiscal stimulus and the business community's need for protection abroad will bring them closer. Corporate interests will merge with state interests not because corporations are commanded to, but rather because the landscape of risk and reward will shift and redirect investment patterns to a similar effect. This may be where a budding U.S. totalitarianism differs most starkly from its European cousins. ..."
And why the world is about to get much more dangerous The election of Donald Trump "represents a triumph of neoliberal
thinking and values." (Photo: Carlo Allegri/ Reuters) Many writers and pundits are currently framing Trump's election in terms of
a dispossessed and disenfranchised white, male working class, unsatisfied with neoliberal globalization and the insecurity and hardship
it has unleashed -- particularly across regions of the United States that were formerly manufacturing powerhouses (like the Rust
Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, four states believed to have cost Hillary Clinton the election). While
there is much truth to this perspective and substantial empirical evidence to support it, it would be a mistake to see Trump's election
wholly in these terms.
"What Trump's election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state."
Trump's election is in some ways a neoliberal apex, an event that portends the completion of the U.S. government's capture by
wealthy corporate interests. While in my opinion Trump's election does not signal the beginning of a rapid descent into European-style
fascism, it appears to be a key stage in the ongoing process of American democratic disintegration. American democracy has been under
attack from large and wealthy corporate interests for a long time, with this process accelerating and gaining strength over the period
of neoliberal globalization (roughly the early 1970s to the present). This time period is associated with the rise of powerful multinational
corporations with economic and political might that rivals that of many national governments.
In terms of the political consequences of these trends in the U.S., certain thinkers have argued that the U.S. political system
is not democratic at all, but rather an "inverted totalitarian" system. Political commentator Chris Hedges notes: "Inverted totalitarianism
is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in
the faceless anonymity of the corporate state." Citing the American political theorist Sheldon Wolin, Hedges continues, "Unlike the
Nazis, who made life uncertain for the wealthy and privileged while providing social programs for the working class and poor, inverted
totalitarianism exploits the poor, reducing or weakening health programs and social services, regimenting mass education for an insecure
workforce threatened by the importation of low-wage workers." Our inverted totalitarian system is one that retains the trappings
of a democratic system -- e.g. it retains the appearance of loyalty to "the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press,
[and] the independence of the judiciary" -- all the while undermining the capacity of citizens to substantively participate and exert
power over the system.
In my view, what Trump's election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state. Trump gives inverted totalitarianism
a persona and a face, and perhaps marks the beginning of a transformation from inverted totalitarianism to totalitarianism proper.
In spite of this, it makes no sense to me to call the system toward which we are heading (that is, if we do not stand up and resist
with all our might right this second) "fascism" or to make too close comparisons to the Nazis. Whatever totalitarian nightmare is
on our horizon, it will be uniquely American. And it will bear a striking resemblance to the corporate oriented system we've been
living in for decades. Indeed, if the pre-Trump system of inverted totalitarianism solidified in the context of global neoliberalism,
the period we are entering now seems likely to be one characterized by what I call "national neoliberalism."
Trump's Election Doesn't Mean the End of Neoliberalism
Trump's election represents a triumph of neoliberal thinking and values. Perhaps most importantly, we should all keep in mind
the fact that Americans just elected a businessman to the presidency. In spite of his Wall Street background and billionaire status,
Trump successfully cast himself as the "anti-establishment" candidate. This configuration -- in which a top-one-percenter real estate
tycoon is accepted as a political "outsider" -- is a hallmark of neoliberal thinking. The fundamental opposition between market and
government is a central dichotomy in the neoliberal narrative. In electing Trump, American voters are reproducing this narrative,
creating an ideological cover for the closer connections between business and the state that are in store moving forward (indeed,
Trump is already using the apparatus of the U.S. federal government to promote his own business interests). As states and markets
further fuse in coming years, this representation of Trump and his administration -- as being anti-government -- will help immunize
his administration from accusations of too-cozy relationships with big business. Trump's attempts to "drain the swamp" by imposing
Congressional term limits and constraints on lobbying activities by former political officials will also help to hide this relationship.
(Has anyone else noticed that Trump only addresses half of the "revolving door," i.e., he plans to limit the lobbying of former politicians,
but not the political roles of businessmen?)
"Whatever totalitarian nightmare is on our horizon, it will be uniquely American."
Trump's Contract with the American Voter, his plan for the first 100 days in office, discusses policies and programs many of which
are consistent with neoliberal thinking. (I understand the term "neoliberalism" to emphasize at its core the importance of private
property rights, market-based social organization, and the dangers of government intervention in the economy.) Trump's plan redirects
the activities of the U.S. government along the lines touted by neoliberal "market fundamentalists" like Milton Friedman, who advocate
limiting government's role to market-supportive functions like national defense (defense stocks are doing very well since the election)
and domestic law and order (Trump's proposals have a lot to do with altering immigration policy to "restore security"). Trump also
plans to use government monies to revitalize physical infrastructure and create jobs. Other government functions, for example, health
care provision and education as well as protecting the environment and public lands, are open for privatization and defunding in
Trump's agenda. Under Trump, the scope of federal government activities will narrow, likely to infrastructure, national defense,
and domestic policing and surveillance, even if overall government spending increases (as bond markets are predicting).
Trump also seems content to take neoliberal advice in regard to business regulation (less is best) and the role of the private
sector in regulating itself (industry insiders understand regulatory needs better than public officials). Trump's plan for the first
100 days specifies "a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated." As of the
time of this writing, his selection of cabinet appointees illustrate a broad willingness to appoint businesspeople to government
posts. As of mid-December 2016, a Goldman Sachs veteran, Steven Mnuchin, has been appointed Secretary of the Treasury; billionaire
investor Wilbur Ross has been appointed Secretary of Commerce; fossil fuel industry supporter and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott
Pruitt has been appointed as EPA administrator; and fast-food mogul Andrew Puzder has been appointed as Secretary of Labor. Trump's
business council is staffed by the CEOs of major U.S. corporations including JP Morgan Chase, IBM and General Motors. To be fair,
the "revolving door" between government and industry has been perpetuated by many of Trump's predecessors, with Trump poised to continue
the tradition. But this is not to say that neoliberalism will continue going in a "business as usual" fashion. The world is about
to get much more dangerous, and this has serious implications for patterns of global trade and investment.
Trump's Election Does Mean the End of Globalism
The nationalism, xenophobia, isolationism, and paranoia of Donald Trump are about to replace the significantly more cosmopolitan
outlook of his post-WWII predecessors. While Trump is decidedly pro-business and pro-market, he most certainly does not see himself
as a global citizen. Nor does he intend to maintain the United States' extensive global footprint or its relatively open trading
network. In other words, while neoliberalism is not dead, it is being transformed into a geographically more fragmented and localized
system (this is not only about the US election, but also about rising levels of global protectionism and Brexit, among other anti-globalization
trends around the world). I expect that the geographic extent of the US economy in the coming years will coincide with the new landscape
of U.S. allies and enemies, as defined by Donald Trump and his administration.
Trump's Contract with the American Voter outlines several policies that will make it more expensive and riskier to do business
abroad. All of these need not occur; I think that even one or two of these changes will be sufficient to alter expectations in business
communities about the benefits of certain cross-border economic relationships. Pulling the United States out of the TPP, along with
threats to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and attempts to renegotiate NAFTA, is already signaling to other countries that
we are not interested in international cooperation and collaboration. A crackdown on foreign trading abuses will prompt retaliation.
Labelling China a currency manipulator will sour relations between the two countries and prompt retaliation by China. As Trump goes
forward with his anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, he will alienate the United States' traditional allies in
Europe (at least until Europe elects its own nationalist and xenophobic leaders) and communities across the Global South. The U.S.
election has already undermined performance in emerging markets, and bigoted rhetoric and policy will only increase anti-American
sentiment in struggling economies populated largely by people of color. Add to this the risk of conflict posed by any number of the
following: his antagonizing China, allying with Russia, deploying ground troops to stop ISIS, and pulling out of the Korean DMZ,
among other initiatives that seem likely to contribute to a more confrontational and violent international arena. All of this is
to say that Trump will not have to intervene directly in the affairs of business in order to nationalize it. The new global landscape
of conflict and risk, combined with elevated domestic spending on infrastructure and security, will bring U.S. business and investment
back home nonetheless.
National Neoliberalism and State-Market Relations
Fascist states are corporatist in nature, a state of affairs marked by a fusion of state and business functions and interests,
with an often significant role for labor interests as well. In the fascist states on the European continent in the 1930s and 1940s
-- systems that fall under the umbrella of "national socialism" -- the overwhelming power of the state characterized this tripartite
relationship. Political theorist Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy, Inc. in regard to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy
(as well as Stalinist Russia), "The state was conceived as the main center of power, providing the leverage necessary for the mobilization
and reconstruction of society".
By contrast, in Trump's America -- where an emergent "national neoliberalism" may be gradually guiding us to a more overt
and obvious totalitarian politics -- we can expect a similar fusion of state and market interests, but one in which the marketplace
and big business have almost total power and freedom of movement (I think that labor will do poorly in this configuration). State
and market in the U.S. will fuse further together in the coming years, leading some to make close parallels with European fascism.
But it will do so not because of heavy handed government dictates and interventions, but rather because domestic privatization initiatives,
appointments of businessmen to government posts, fiscal stimulus and the business community's need for protection abroad will bring
them closer. Corporate interests will merge with state interests not because corporations are commanded to, but rather because the
landscape of risk and reward will shift and redirect investment patterns to a similar effect. This may be where a budding U.S. totalitarianism
differs most starkly from its European cousins.
Sasha Breger Bush is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado–Denver and author of Derivatives
and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming, and Poverty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
"... the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block " Siberian candidate " Trump. ..."
"... The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The Washington Post , Dearlove told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers" opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin." ..."
"... Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down. When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA Director (and now NBC News analyst). ..."
"... Dearlove and Halper are now partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another MI6 vet. Alexander Downer served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an unpaid advisor . ..."
"... Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom every Russian is a Boris Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that Lokhova convincingly argues are absurd. ..."
"... As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known, Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, argued that the Iraqi military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too. ..."
"... Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult" hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... describes Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr. Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort. ..."
"... But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK. ..."
"... Stefan Halper then infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign. Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other. ..."
"... The rightwing Federalist website speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that "Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating it." Clovis believes that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue after inauguration. ..."
"... Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a "nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency with violating US election laws. ..."
"... As The Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2 article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election Day. ..."
"... Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not his government. ..."
"... Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker ..."
"... But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press." ..."
"... It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice. ..."
"... "Russiagate" continues to attract mounting blowback at Clinton, Obama and the Dems. Might well be they who end up charged with lawbreaking, though I'd be surprised if anyone in authority is ever really punished. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-02/fbi-spying-trump-started-london-earlier-thought-new-texts-implicate-obama-white ..."
"... I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb, Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged "puppet." ..."
"... The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what really happened. ..."
"... I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump did. ..."
"... Long-time CIA asset named as FBI's spy on Trump campaign By Bill Van Auken https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/21/poli-m21.html ..."
"... What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was "in the lead". ..."
"... Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House. Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal ideology for the most part. ..."
"... The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White House. ..."
"... It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its existence based on foreign enemies. ..."
"... So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab. ..."
As the role of a well-connected group of British and U.S. intelligence agents begins to
emerge, new suspicions are growing about what hand they may have had in weaving the Russia-gate
story, as Daniel Lazare explains.
Special to Consortium News
With the news that a Cambridge academic-cum-spy
named Stefan Halper infiltrated the Trump campaign, the role of the intelligence agencies in
shaping the great Russiagate saga is at last coming into focus.
It's looking more and more massive. The intelligence agencies initiated reports that Donald
Trump was colluding with Russia, they nurtured them and helped them grow, and then they spread
the word to the press and key government officials. Reportedly, they even tried to use these
reports to force Trump to step down prior to his inauguration. Although the corporate press
accuses Trump of conspiring with Russia to stop Hillary Clinton, the reverse now seems to be
the case: the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block "
Siberian
candidate " Trump.
The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business
partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The
Washington Post , Dearlove
told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers"
opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years
earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US
authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in
communication with the Kremlin."
Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down.
When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make
him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable
scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for
his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director
Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top
Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese
academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA
Director (and now NBC News analyst).
In-Bred
A few things stand out about this august group. One is its in-bred quality. After helping to
run an annual confab known as the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Dearlove and Halper are now
partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are
connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also
connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke
and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another
MI6 vet. Alexander Downer
served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is
linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped
found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an
unpaid
advisor .
Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about
this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom
every Russian is a Boris
Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike
Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian
scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that
Lokhova convincingly
argues are absurd.
Halper: Infiltrated Trump campaign
In December 2016, Halper and Dearlove both resigned from the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar
because they suspected that a company footing some of the costs was tied up with Russian
intelligence – suspicions that Christopher Andrew, former chairman of the Cambridge
history department and the seminar's founder, regards as " absurd " as well.
As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known,
Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of
Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass
destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency,
argued that the Iraqi
military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in
fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too.
Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence
against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend
the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses
fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult"
hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly
misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and
spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine.
The result is a diplo-espionage gang that is very bad at the facts but very good at public
manipulation – and which therefore decided to use its skill set out to create a public
furor over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
It Started Late 2015
The effort began in late 2015 when GCHQ, along with intelligence agencies in Poland,
Estonia, and Germany, began monitoring
what they said were " suspicious 'interactions' between figures connected to Trump and
known or suspected Russian agents."
Since Trump was surging ahead in the polls and scaring the pants off the foreign-policy
establishment by calling for a rapprochement with Moscow, the agencies figured that Russia was
somehow behind it. The pace accelerated in March 2016 when a 30-year-old policy consultant
named George Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign as a foreign-policy adviser. Traveling in
Italy a week later, he ran into Mifsud, the London-based Maltese academic, who reportedly set
about cultivating him after learning of his position with Trump. Mifsud claimed
to have "substantial connections with Russian government officials," according to prosecutors.
Over breakfast at a London hotel, he told Papadopoulos that he had just returned from Moscow
where he had learned that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands
of emails."
This was the remark that supposedly triggered an FBI investigation. The New York
Timesdescribes
Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at
meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr.
Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort.
But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later
tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking
British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security
agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in
such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK.
After Papadopoulos caused a minor political ruckus by
telling a reporter that Prime Minister David Cameron should apologize for criticizing
Trump's anti-Muslim pronouncements, a friend in the Israeli embassy put him in touch with a
friend in the Australian embassy, who introduced him to Downer, her boss. Over drinks, Downer
advised him to be more diplomatic. After Papadopoulos then passed along Misfud's tip about
Clinton's emails, Downer informed his government, which, in late July, informed the FBI.
Was Papadopoulos Set Up?
Suspicions are unavoidable but evidence is lacking. Other pieces were meanwhile clicking
into place. In late May or early June 2016, Fusion GPS, a private Washington intelligence firm
employed by the Democratic National Committee, hired Steele to look into the Russian angle.
On June 20, he turned in the first of eighteen memos that would eventually comprise
the
Steele dossier , in this instance a three-page document asserting that Putin "has been
cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years" and that Russian intelligence
possessed "kompromat" in the form of a video of prostitutes performing a "golden showers" show
for his benefit at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. A week or two later, Steele
briefed the FBI on his findings. Around the same time, Robert Hannigan flew to Washington
to brief CIA Director John Brennan about additional material that had come GCHQ's way, material
so sensitive that it could only be handled at "director level."
One player was filling Papadopoulos's head with tales of Russian dirty tricks, another was
telling the FBI, while a third was collecting more information and passing it on to the bureau
as well.
Page: Took Russia's side.
On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on
U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in which he complained that " Washington and other western
capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such
as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed "
unease " that someone representing the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's
side in a growing neo-Cold War.
Stefan Halper then
infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks
before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter
re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign.
Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other.
On July 11, Page showed up at a Cambridge symposium at which Halper and Dearlove both spoke.
In early September, Halper sent Papadopoulos an email offering $3,000 and a paid trip to London
to write a research paper on a disputed gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, his specialty.
"George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?" Halper asked when he got there,
but Papadopoulos said he knew nothing. Halper also sought out Sam Clovis, Trump's national
campaign co-chairman, with whom he chatted about China for an hour or so over coffee in
Washington.
The rightwing Federalist website
speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that
"Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating
it." Clovis believes
that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in
the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue
warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought
a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue
after inauguration.
Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty
rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does
his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite
countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the
sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a
"nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said
it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others
on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for
corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency
with violating US election laws.
But the corruption charges have nothing to do with Russian collusion and nothing in the
indictment against IRA indicates that either the Kremlin or the Trump campaign were involved.
Indeed, the activities that got IRA in trouble in the first place are so unimpressive –
just $46,000 worth of Facebook
ads that it purchased prior to election day, some pro-Trump, some anti, and some with
no particular slant
at all – that Mueller probably wouldn't even have bothered if he hadn't been under
intense pressure to come up with anything at all.
The same goes for the army of bots that Russia supposedly deployed on Twitter. As The
Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2
article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a
six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one
billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election
Day.
The Steele dossier is also underwhelming. It declares on one page that the Kremlin sought to
cultivate Trump by throwing "various lucrative real estate development business deals" his way
but says on another that Trump's efforts to drum up business were unavailing and that he thus
"had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather
than business success."
Why would Trump turn down business offers when he couldn't generate any on his own? The idea
that Putin would spot a U.S. reality-TV star somewhere around 2011 and conclude that he was
destined for the Oval Office five years later is ludicrous. The fact that the Democratic
National Committee funded the dossier via its law firm Perkins Coie renders it less credible
still, as does the fact that the world has heard nothing more about the alleged video despite
the ongoing deterioration in US-Russian relations. What's the point of making a blackmail tape
if you don't use it?
Steele: Paid for political research, not intelligence.
Even Steele is backing off. In a legal paper filed in response to a libel suit last May, he
said the document "did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but
were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation
given their potential national security implications." The fact is that the "dossier" was
opposition research, not an intelligence report. It was neither vetted by Steele nor anyone in
an intelligence agency. Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig
up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at
taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not
his government.
Using it Anyway
Nonetheless, the spooks have made the most of such pseudo-evidence. Dearlove and Wood both
advised Steele to take his "findings" to the FBI, while, after the election, Wood pulled
Sen. John McCain aside at a security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to let him know that
the Russians might be blackmailing the president-elect. McCain dispatched long-time aide David
J. Kramer to the UK to discuss the dossier with Steele directly.
Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker found a former national-security
official who
says he spoke with him at the time and that Kramer's goal was to have McCain confront Trump
with the dossier in the hope that he would resign on the spot. When that didn't happen, Clapper
and Brennan arranged for FBI Director James Comey to confront Trump instead. Comey later
testified that he didn't want Trump to think he was creating "a J. Edgar Hoover-type
situation – I didn't want him thinking I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over
him in some way."
But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry
observed a few
days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on
government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure
hate to see end up in the press."
Since then, the Democrats have touted the dossier at every opportunity, TheNew
Yorker
continues to defend it , while Times columnist Michelle Goldberg cites it as well,
saying it's a
"rather obvious possibility that Trump is being blackmailed." CNN, for its part, suggested not
long ago that the dossier may actually be Russian
disinformation designed to throw everyone off base, Republicans and Democrats alike.
It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the
intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the
public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that
they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this
out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice.
Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing
Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a
wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique , and his articles about
the Middle East, terrorism, Eastern Europe, and other topics appear regularly on such websites
as Jacobin and The American Conservative.
Mueller is trying to omit the normal burden of legal liability, "wilful intent" in his
charges against the St Petersburg, social media operation. In a horrifically complex area
such as tax, campaign contributions or lobbying, a foreign entity can be found guilty of
breaking a law that they cannot reasonably have been expected to have knowledge of.
But the omission or inclusion of "wilful intent" is applied on a selective basis depending on
the advantage to the deep state.
From a practical standpoint, omission of "wilful intent" makes it easier for Mueller to get a
guilty verdict (in adsentia assuming this is legally valid in America). Once the "guilt" of
the St Petersburg staff is established, any communication between an American and them
becomes "collusion".
I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's
persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the
White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been
motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten
into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never
recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb,
Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would
have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged
"puppet."
The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his
candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were
always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of
jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to
beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat
themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and
other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what
really happened.
backwardsevolution , June 3, 2018 at 2:50 pm
Realist – good post. I think what you say is true. Trump got too caught up in the
birther crap, and Obama retaliated. But I think that Trump had been thinking about the
presidency long before Obama came along. He sees the country differently than Obama and
Clinton do. Trump would never have built up China to the point where all American technology
has been given away for free, with millions of jobs lost and a huge trade deficit, and he
would have probably left Russia alone, not ransacked it.
I saw Obama as a somewhat reluctant globalist and Hillary as an eager globalist. They are
both insiders. Trump is not. He's interested in what is best for the U.S., whereas the
Clinton's and the Bush's were interested in what their corporate masters wanted. The
multinationals have been selling the U.S. out, Trump is trying to put a stop to this, and it
is going to be a fight to the death. Trump is playing hardball with China (who ARE U.S.
multinationals), and it is working. Beginning July 1, 2018, China has agreed to reduce its
tariffs:
"Import tariffs for apparel, footwear and headgear, kitchen supplies and fitness products
will be more than halved to an average of 7.1 percent from 15.9 percent, with those on
washing machines and refrigerators slashed to just 8 percent, from 20.5 percent.
Tariffs will also be cut on processed foods such as aquaculture and fishing products and
mineral water, from 15.2 percent to 6.9 percent.
Cosmetics, such as skin and hair products, and some medical and health products, will also
benefit from a tariff cut to 2.9 percent from 8.4 percent.
In particular, tariffs on drugs ranging from penicillin, cephalosporin to insulin will be
slashed to zero from 6 percent before.
In the meantime, temporary tariff rates on 210 imported products from most favored nations
will be scrapped as they are no longer favorable compared with new rates."
Trade with China has been all one way. At least Trump is leveling the playing field. He at
least is trying to bring back jobs, something the "insiders" could care less about.
I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've
underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always
the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the
chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons
and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their
favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump
did.
Abe , June 2, 2018 at 2:20 am
"Pentagon documents indicate that the Department of Defense's shadowy intelligence arm,
the Office of Net Assessment, paid Halper $282,000 in 2016 and $129,000 in 2017. According to
reports, Halper sought to secure Papadopoulos's collaboration by offering him $3,000 and an
all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to produce a research paper on energy issues in
the eastern Mediterranean.
"The choice of Halper for this spying operation has ominous implications. His deep ties to
the US intelligence apparatus date back decades. His father-in-law was Ray Cline, who headed
the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. Halper served as an aide
to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Alexander Haig in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
"In 1980, as the director of policy coordination for Ronald Reagan's presidential
campaign, Halper oversaw an operation in which CIA officials gave the campaign confidential
information on the Carter administration and its foreign policy. This intelligence was in
turn utilized to further back-channel negotiations between Reagan's campaign manager and
subsequent CIA director William Casey and representatives of Iran to delay the release of the
American embassy hostages until after the election, in order to prevent Carter from scoring a
foreign policy victory on the eve of the November vote.
"Halper subsequently held posts as deputy assistant secretary of state for
political-military affairs and senior adviser to the Pentagon and Justice Department. More
recently, Halper has collaborated with Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, the British
intelligence service, in directing the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSi), a security think
tank that lists the US and UK governments as its principal clients.
"Before the 2016 election, Halper had expressed his view – shared by predominant
layers within the intelligence agencies – that Clinton's election would prove 'less
disruptive' than Trump's.
"The revelations of the role played by Halper point to an intervention in the 2016
elections by the US intelligence agencies that far eclipsed anything one could even imagine
the Kremlin attempting."
Sorry for not commenting on other posts as of yet. But I think I have a different
perspective. Russia Gate is not about Hillary Clinton or Putin but it is about Donald Trump.
Specifically an effort to get rid of him by the intelligence agencies and the MSM. The fact
is the MSM created Trump and were chiefly responsible for his election. Trump is their
brainchild starlet used to fleece all the republican campaigns like a huckster fleeces an
audience. It all ties to key Supreme Court rulings eliminating campaign finance regulations
which ushered in the age of dark money.
When billionaires can donate unlimited amounts of money anonymously to the candidate of
their choosing what ends up is a field of fourteen wannabes in a primary race each backed by
their own investor(s). The only way these candidates can win is to convince us to vote. The
only way they can do that is to spend on advertising.
What the MSM dreamed of in a purely capitalistic way was a way to drain the wallets of
every single one of the republican Super PACs. The mission was fraught with potential
checkmates. Foe example, there could be an early leader who snatched up the needed delegates
for the nomination early on which would have stopped the flow of advertising cash flowing to
the MSM. Such possibilities worried the MSM and caused great angst since this might just be
the biggest haul they ever took in during a primary season. How would they prevent a
premature end of the money river. Like financial vampire bats, ticks and leeches they needed
a way to keep the money flowing from the veins of the republican Super PACs until they were
sucked dry.
What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like
a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the
term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause
all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was
"in the lead".
It was a pure stroke of genius and it worked so well that Carl Rove is looking for a job
and Donald Trump is sitting in the White House.
Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one
little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House.
Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a
democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal
ideology for the most part.
What to do? Trump was now the Commander in Chief and was spouting nonsense that the
establishment recoiled at such as Trumps plans to form economic ties with Russia rather than
continue to wage a cold war spanning 65 years which the MIC used year after year to spook us
all and guarantee their billions annual increase in funding. Trump directly attacked defense
projects and called for de-funding major initiatives like F35 etc.
The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin
horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every
year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the
hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and
entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of
governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White
House.
What to do? There was clearly a need to eliminate this bad guy since his avowed policies
were in direct opposition to the game plan that had successfully compromised the former
administration. They felt powerless to dissuade the Administration to continue the course and
form strategies to eliminate Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Ukraine and other vulnerable
targets swaying toward China and Russia. They faced a new threat with the Trump
Administration which seemed hell bent to discontinue the wars in these regions robbing them
of many dollars.
It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very
threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the
hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its
existence based on foreign enemies.
So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and
the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It
had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in
the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they
committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the
White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab.
In the interim, they also forgot on purpose to tell anyone about the election campaign
finance fraud that they were the chief beneficiaries of. They also of course forgot to tell
anyone what the fight was about for the Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Twenty seven
million dollars in dark money was donated by dark money donors enabled by the Supreme Court's
decisions to eliminate campaign finance regulations which enabled these donors to buy out
Congress and elect and confirm a Supreme Court Justice who would uphold the laws which
eliminate all the election rules and campaign finance regulations dating back to the Tillman
Act of 1907 which was an attempt to eliminate corporate contributions in political campaigns
with associated meager fines as penalties. The law was weak then and has now been
eliminated.
In an era of dark money in politics protected by revisionist judges laying at the top of
our federal judicial branch posing as strict constructionists while being funded by the
corporatocracy that viciously fights over control of the highest court by a panicked
republican party that seeks to tie up their domination in our Congress by any means including
the abdication of the Constitutional authority granted to the citizens of the nation we now
face a new internal enemy.
That enemy is not some foreign nation but our own government which conspires to represent
the wealthy and the powerful and which exalts them and which enacts laws to defend their
control of our nation. Here is a quote:
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they
create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral
code that glorifies it.
Frederic Bastiat – (1801-1850) in Economic Sophisms
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:32 am
Different journalist covering much the same ground:
"Russiagate" is strictly a contrivance of the Deep State, American & British Spookery,
and the corporate media propagandists. It clearly needs to be genuinely investigated (unlike
the mockery being orchestrated by Herr Mueller from the Ministry of Truth), re-christened
"Intellgate" (after the real perpetrators of crime), pursued until all the guilty traitors
(including Mueller) who really tried to steal our democratic election are tried, convicted
and incarcerated (including probably hundreds complicit from the media) and given its own
lengthy chapter in all the history books about "The Election They Tried to Steal and Blame on
Russia: How America Nearly Lost its Constitution." If not done, America will lose its
constitution, or rather the incipient process will become totally irreversible.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 6:25 am
Your timing of events is confused.
The deep state didn't try and steal the election because they were overly complacent that
their woman would win. Remember, they didn't try to use the dodgy, Steele dossier before the
election.
What the deep state has done is reactively try to overcome the election outcome by launching
an investigation into Trump. The egregious element of the investigation is giving it the
title "investigation into collusion" when they in all probability knew that collusion was
unlikely to have taken place. To achieve their aim (removing Trump) they included the line
"and matters arising" in the brief to give them an open ended remit which allowed them to
investigate Trump's business dealings of a Russian / Ukrainian nature (which may venture
uncomfortably close to Semion Mogilevich).
If as you state (and I concur) there was no Russian collusion, then barring fabrication of
evidence by Mueller (and there is little evidence of that to date) you have nothing to worry
about on the collusion front. Remember, to date, Mueller has stuck (almost exclusively) to
meat and potatoes charges like tax evasion and money laundering. If however the investigation
leads to credible evidence that Trump broke substantive laws in the past for financial gain,
then it is not reasonable to cry foul.
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:02 am
The Deep State assisted the DNC in knocking out Sanders. THAT was ground zero. Everything
since then has been to cover this up and to discredit Trump (using him as the distraction).
Consider that the Deep State never bothered to investigate the DNC servers/data; reason being
is that they'd (Deep State) be implicated.
Skip Scott , June 1, 2018 at 7:29 am
Very true Seer. That is the real genesis of RussiaGate. It was a diversion tactic to keep
people from looking at the DNC's behavior during the primaries. They are the reason Trump is
president, not the evil Ruskies.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:13 am
We all seem agreed that the Russia collusion is an exercise in distraction. I can't say I
know enough to comment with authority on whether the DNC would require assistance from the
deep state to trash Bernie. From an outsider perspective it looked more like an application
of massively disproportionate spending and standard, back room dirty tricks.
There is a saying; don't attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence.
In this case, try replacing incompetence with MONEY.
dikcheney , June 2, 2018 at 5:09 pm
Totally agree with you Skip and the Mueller performance is there to keep up the
intimidation and distraction by regularly finding turds to throw at Trump. Mueller doesnt
need to find anything, he just needs to create vague intimations of 'guilty Trump' and
suspicious associates so that no one will look at the DNC or the Clinton corruption or the
smashing of the Sanders campaign.
Their actual agenda is to smother analysis and clear thinking. Thankfully there is the
forensicator piecing the jigsaw as well as consortium news.
robjira , June 1, 2018 at 11:55 am
Spot on, Seer.
michael , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm
Those servers probably had a lot more pay-to-play secrets from the Clinton Foundation and
ring-kissing from foreign big donors than what was released by Wikileaks, which mostly was
just screwing over Bernie, which the judge ruled was Hillary's prerogative. Some email chains
were probably construed as National Security and were discreetly not leaked.
The 30,000 emails Hillary had bit bleached from her private servers are likely in the hands
of Russians and every other major country, all biding their time for leverage. This was the
carrot the British (who undoubtedly have copies as well) dangled over idiot Popodopolous.
Uncle Bob , June 1, 2018 at 10:33 pm
Seth Rich
anon , June 1, 2018 at 7:42 am
Realist is likely referring to events before the election which involved people with
secret agency connections, such as the opposition research (Steele dossier and Skripal
affair).
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:32 am
Realist responded but is being "moderated" as per usual.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:31 am
Hillary herself was a prime force in cooking up the smear against Trump for being "Putin's
puppet." This even before the Democratic convention. Then she used it big time during the
debates. It wasn't something merely reactive after she lost. Certainly she and her
collaborators inside the deep state and the intelligence agencies never imagined that she
would lose and have to distract from what she and her people did by projecting the blame onto
Trump. That part was reactive. The rest of the conspiracy was totally proactive on her part
and that of the DNC, even during the primaries.
Don't forget, the intel agencies led by Clapper, Brennan and Comey were all working for
Obama at the time and were totally acquiescent in spying on the Trump campaign and
"unmasking" the identities and actions of his would-be administration, including individuals
like General Flynn. The cooked up Steele dossier was paid for by money from the Clinton
campaign and used as a pretext for the intel agencies to spy on the Trump campaign. There is
no issue on timing. The establishment was fully behind Clinton by hook or crook from the
moment Trump had the delegates to win the GOP nomination. (OBTW, I am not a Trump supporter
or even a Republican, so I KNOW that I "have nothing to worry about on the collusion front."
I'm a registered Dem, though not a Hillary supporter.)
Moreover, if you think that Mueller (and the other intel chiefs) have been on the
impartial up-and-up, why did the FBI never seize and examine the DNC servers? Why simply
accept the interpretation of events given by the private cybersecurity firm (Crowdstrike)
that the Clinton campaign hired to very likely mastermind a cover-up? That is exceptional
(nay, unheard of!) "professional courtesy." Why has Mueller to this day not deposed Julian
Assange or former British Ambassador Craig Murray, both of whom admit to knowing precisely
who provided the leaked (not hacked) Podesta and DNC emails to Wikileaks? Why has Mueller not
pursued the potential role of the late Seth Rich in the leaking of said emails? Why has
Mueller not pursued the robust theory, based on actual evidence, proposed by VIPS, and
supported by computer experts like Bill Binney and John McAfee, that the emails were not, as
the Dems and the intel agencies would have you believe on NO EVIDENCE, hacked (by the
"Russians" or anyone else) but were downloaded to a flash drive directly from the DNC
servers? Why has Mueller not deposed Binney or Ray McGovern who claim to have evidence to
bear on this and have discussed it freely in the media (to the miniscule extent that the
corporate media will give them an audience)? Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a
kangaroo court he is running? Is the media really independent and impartial or are they part
of a cover-up, perpetrating numerous sins of both commission and omission in their highly
flawed reportage?
I don't see clarity in what has been thus far been propounded by Mueller or any of Trump's
other accusers, but I don't think I am the one who is confused here, Vivian. If you want to
meet a thoroughly confused individual on what transpired leading up to this moment in
American political history, just go read Hillary's book. Absolutely everyone under the sun
shares in the blame but her for the fact that she does not presently reside in the White
House.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 1:48 pm
You have presented your case with a great deal more detail and clarity than the original
post that prompted my reply. You are also a great deal more knowledgeable than I on the
details. I think we are 98% in agreement and I wouldn't like to say who's correct on the
remaining 2%.
For clarity, I didn't follow the debates and wouldn't do so now if they were repeated. Much
heat very little light.
The "pretext" that the intel agencies claim launched their actions against Trump was not the
Steele dossier, at least that is what the intel agencies say. Either way your assertion that
it was the dossier that set things off is just that, an assertion. I think this is a minor
point.
On the DNC servers and the FBI we are 100% singing from the same hymn book and it all sticks.
Mueller's apparent disinterest in the question of hack or USB drive does rather taint his
investigation and thanks for pointing this out, I hadn't thought of that angle. I still think
Mueller will stick to tax and money laundering and stay well clear of "collusion", so yes he
may be running a kangaroo court investigation but the charges will be real world.
The MSM as a whole are a sick joke which is why we collectively find ourselves at CN, Craig
Murray's blog, etc. I wouldn't like to attribute "collaboration" to any individual in the
media. It was the reference to hundreds of journalists being sent to jail in your original
post that set me off in the first place. When considering the "culpability" of any individual
journalist you can have any position on a spectrum from; fully cognisant collaborator with a
deep state conspiracy, to; a bit dim and running with the "sexy" story 'cause it's the
biggest thing ever, the bosses can't get enough of it and the overtime is great. If American
journalists are anything like their UK counterparts, 99% will fall into the latter
category.
Don't have any issue with your final point. Hillary on stage and on camera was phoney as
rocking horse s**te and everyone outside her extremely highly remunerated team could see
it.
Sorry for any inconvenience, but your second post makes your points a hell of a lot clearer
than the original.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:26 pm
My purpose for the first post in this thread was to direct readers to the article in Unz
by Mike Whitney, not to compress a full-blown amateur expose' by myself into a three-sentence
paragraph. You would have found much more in the way of facts, analysis and opinion in his
article to which my terse comments did not even serve as an abstract.
Quoting his last paragraph may give you the flavor of this piece, which is definitely not
a one-off by him or other actual journalists who have delved into the issues:
"Let's see if I got this right: Brennan gets his buddies in the UK to feed fake
information on Russia to members of the Trump campaign, after which the FBI uses the
suspicious communications about Russia as a pretext to unmask, wiretap, issue FISA warrants,
and infiltrate the campaign, after which the incriminating evidence that was collected in the
process of entrapping Trump campaign assistants is compiled in a legal case that is used to
remove Trump from office. Is that how it's supposed to work?
It certainly looks like it. But don't expect to read about it in the Times."
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm
Vivian – 90% of all major media is owned by six corporations. There most definitely
was and IS collusion between some of them to bring down the outsider, Trump.
As far as individual journalists go, yeah, they're trying to pay their mortgage, I get it,
and they're going to spin what their boss bloody well tells them to spin. But there is
evidence coming out that "some" journalists did accept money from either Fusion GPS, Perkins
Coie (sp) or Christopher Steele to leak information, which they did.
Bill Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that enabled these six media
conglomerates to dominate the news. Of course they're political. They need to be split up,
like yesterday, into a thousand pieces (ditto for the banks). They have purposely and with
intent been feeding lies to the American people. Yes, some SHOULD go to jail.
As Peter Strzok of the FBI said re Trump colluding with Russia, "There was never any
there, there." The collusion has come from the intelligence agencies, in cahoots with Hillary
Clinton, perhaps even as high as Obama, to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed,
they set out to get him impeached on whatever they could find. Of course Mueller is going to
stick with tax and money laundering because he already KNOWS there was never any collusion
with Russia.
This is the Swamp versus the People.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 1:52 pm
Realist – another excellent post. "Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a kangaroo
court he is running?" As you rightly point out, Mueller IS being very selective in what he
examines and doesn't examine. He's not after the whole truth, just a particular kind of
truth, one that gets him a very specific result – to take down or severely cripple the
President.
Evidence continues to trickle out. Former and active members of the FBI are now even
begging to testify as they are disgusted with what is being purposely omitted from this
so-called "impartial" investigation. This whole affair is "kangaroo" all the way.
I'm not so much a fan of Trump as I am a fan of the truth. I don't like to see him –
anyone – being railroaded. That bothers me more than anything. But he's right about
what he calls "the Swamp". If these people are not uncovered and brought to justice, then the
country is truly lost.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:38 pm
Precisely. Destroy the man on false pretenses and you destroy our entire system, whether
you like him and his questionable policies or not.
Some people would say it's already gone, but we do what we can to get it back or hold onto
to what's left of it. Besides, all the transparent lies and skullduggery in the service of
politics rather than principles are just making our entire system look as corrupt as
hell.
michael , June 1, 2018 at 5:00 pm
When Mueller arrested slimy Manafort for crimes committed in the Ukraine and gave a pass
to the Podesta Brothers who worked closely with Manafort, it was clear that Russiagate was a
partisan operation.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 6:17 pm
Michael – good point!
KiwiAntz , June 1, 2018 at 1:00 am
Its becoming abundantly clear now, that the whole Russiagate charade was had nothibg to do
with Russia & is about a elaborate smokescreen & shellgame coverup designed to divert
attention away from, firstly the Democratic Party's woeful defeat & its lousy Candidate
choice in the corrupt Hillary Clinton? & also the DNC's sabotaging of Bernie Saunders
campaign run! But the most henious & treacherous parts was Obama's, weaponising the
intelligence agencies to spy (Halper) on the imaginary Mancharian Candidate Trump & to
set him up as a Russia stooge? Obama & Hillary Clinton are complicent in this disgraceful
& illegal activity to get dirt on Trump withe goal of ensuring Clinton's election win?
This is bigger than Watergate & more scandalous? But despite the cheating & stacking
of the card deck, she still lost out to the Donald? And this isn't just illegal its
treasonous & willful actions deserving of a lengthy jail incarceration? HRC & her
crooked Clinton foundation's funding of the fraudulent & discredited "Steele Dosier" was
also used to implement Trump & Russia in a made up, pile of fictitious gargage that was
pure offal? Obama & HRC along with their FBI & CIA spys need to be rounded up,
convicted & thrown in jail? Perhaps if Trump could just shut his damn mouuth for once
& get off twitter long enough to be able too get some Justice Dept officials looking into
this, without being distracted by this Russiagate shellgame fakery, then perhaps the real
criminal's like Halpert, Obama,HRC & these corrupt spooks & spies can be rounded up
& held to account for this treasonous behaviour?
Sean Ahern , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 pm
Attention should be paid also to the role of so called progressive media outlets such as
Mother Jones which served as an outlets for the disinformation campaign described in Lazare's
article.
Here from David Corn's Mother Jones 2016 article:
"And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian
counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with
memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian
government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump -- and that the FBI requested more
information from him."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/
Not only was Corn and Mother Jones selected by the spooks as an outlet, but these so
called progressives lauded their 'expose' as a great investigative coup on their part and it
paved the way for Corn's elevation on MSNBC for a while as a 'pundit.'
Paul G. , May 31, 2018 at 8:46 pm
In that vein did the spooks influence Rachel Maddow or is her $30,000. a day salary
adequate to totally compromise her microscopic journalistic integrity.
dikcheney , June 3, 2018 at 6:57 am
Passing around references to Mother Jones is like passing round used toilet paper for
another try. MJ is BS it is entirely controlled fake press.
Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Stefan Halper was being paid by the Clinton's foundation during the time he was spying on
the Trump campaign. This is further evidence that Hillary Clinton's hands are all over
getting Russia Gate started. Then there's the role that Obama's justice department played in
setting up the spying on people who were working with the Trump campaign. This is worse than
Watergate, IMO.
Rumors are that a few ex FBI agents are going to testify to congress in Comey's role in
covering up Hillary's crimes when she used her private email server to send classified
information to people who did not have clearance to read it. Sydney Bluementhol was working
for Hillary's foundation and sending her classified information that he stole from the
NSA.
Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills were concerned about Obama knowing that Hillary wasn't using
her government email account after he told the press that he only found out about it at the
same time they did. He had been sending and receiving emails from her Clintonone email
address during her whole tenure as SOS.
Obama was also aware of her using her foundation for pay to play which she was told by
both congress and Obama to keep far away from her duties. Why did she use her private email
server? So that Chelsea could know where Hillary was doing business so she could send Bill
there to give his speeches to the same organizations, foreign governments and people who had
just donated to their foundation.
Has any previous Secretary of State in history used their position to enrich their spouses
or their foundations? I think not.
The secrets of how the FBI covered for Hillary are coming out. Whether she is charged for
her crimes is a different matter.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 7:48 pm
If Hillary paid a political operative using Clinton Foundation funds – those are tax
exempt charitable contributions – she would be guilty of tax fraud, charity fraud and
campaign finance violations. Hillary may be evil, but she's not stupid. The U.S.Government
paid Halper, which might be "waste, fraud and abuse", but it doesn't implicate Hillary at
all. Not that she's innocent, mind you
Rob , June 1, 2018 at 2:14 am
I need some references to take any of your multitude of claims seriously. With all due
respect, this sound like something taken from info wars and stylized in smartened up a little
bit.
the idea that Stefan Halper was some sort a of mastermind spy behind the so called
"Russiagate" fiasco
seems very implausible considering what he seems to have spent doing for the past 40
years
going back to the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 and his efforts then.
i think he must have had a fairly peripheral role as to whatever or not was going on
behind the scenes from 2016 election campaign, and the campaign to first stop Trump getting
elected, and secondly, when that failed, to bring down his Presidency.
of course, the moment his name was revealed in recent days, would have shocked or
surprised those of in the general
public, but not certainly amongst those in Government aka FBI/CIA/Military-industrial
circles.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 4:36 pm
chris m – Halper is probably one of those people who hide behind their professor (or
other legitimate) jobs, but are there at the ready to serve the Deep State. "I understand.
You want me to set up some dupes in order to make it look like there was or could be actual
Russian meddling. Gotcha." All you've got to do is make it "look like" something nefarious
was going on. This facilitates a "reason" to have a phony investigation, and of course they
make it as open-ended an investigation as possible, hoping to get the target on something,
anything.
Well, they've no doubt looked long and hard for almost two years now, but zip. However, in
their zeal to get rid of their opponent, who they did not think would win the election, they
left themselves open, left a trail of crimes. Whoops!
This is the Swamp that Trump talked about during the election. He's probably not squeaky
clean either, but he pales in comparison to what these guys have done. They have tried to
take down a duly-elected President.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 5:09 pm
His role may have been peripheral, but I seem to recall that the Office of Net Assessments
paid him roughly a million bucks to play it. That office, run from the Pentagon, is about as
deep into the world of "black ops" spookdom as you can get. Hardly "peripheral", I'd say.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:13 pm
F. G. Sanford – yes, a million bucks implies something more than just a peripheral
involvement, more like something essential to the plot, like the actual setting up of the
plot. Risk of exposure costs money.
ranney , May 31, 2018 at 6:17 pm
Chris, I think the Halper inclusion in this complex tale is simply an example of how these
things work in the ultra paranoid style of spy agencies. As Lazare explains, every one knew
every one else – at least at the start of this, and it just kind of built from there,
and Halper may have been the spark – but the spark landed on a highly combustible pile
of paranoia that caught on fire right away. This is how our and the UK agencies function.
There is an interesting companion piece to this story today at Common Dreams by Robert Kohler
titled The American Way of War. It describes basically the same sort of mind set and action
as this story. I'd link it for you if I knew how, but I'm not very adept at the computer.
(Maybe another reader knows how?)
We (that is the American people who are paying the salaries of these brain blocked, stiff
necked idiots) need to start getting vocal and visible about the destructive path our
politicians, banks and generals have rigidly put us on. Does any average working stiff still
believe that all this hate, death and destruction is to "protect" us?
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:07 pm
ranney – when you are on the page that you want to link to, take your cursor (the
little arrow on your screen) to the top of the page to the address bar (for instance, the
address for this article is:
"https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/31/spooks-spooking ")
Once your cursor is over the address bar, right click on your mouse. A little menu will
come up. Then position your cursor down to the word "copy" and then left click on your mouse.
This will copy the link.
Then proceed back to the blog (like Consortium) where you want to provide the link in your
post. You might say, "Here is the link for the article I just described above." Then at this
point you would right click on your mouse again, position your cursor over the word "paste",
and then left click on your mouse. Voila, your link magically appears.
If you don't have a mouse and are using a laptop pad, then someone else will have to help
you. That's above my pay grade. Good luck, ranney.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:13 pm
If you are using a Mac, either laptop w/touch screen or with a mouse, the copy/paste
function
works similarly. Use either the mouse (no need to 'right click, left click') or the touch
screen
to highlight the address bar once you have the cursor flashing away on the left side of
it.
You may need to scroll right to highlight the whole address. Then go up to Edit (there's
also
a keyboard command you can use, but I don't) in your tool bar at the top of your screen.
Click on 'copy'. Now your address is in memory. Then do the same as described above to
get back to where you want to paste it. Put your cursor where you want it to be 'pasted'.
Go back to 'edit' and click 'paste'. Voila !
This is a very handy function and can be used to copy text, web addresses, whatever you
want.
Explore it a little bit. (Students definitely overuse the 'paste and match style' option,
which allows
a person to 'paste' text into for example an essay and 'match the style' so it looks
seamless, although
unless carefully edited it usually doesn't read seamlessly !)
Remember that whatever is in 'copy' will remain there until you 'copy' something else. (Or
your
computer crashes . . . )
ranney , June 1, 2018 at 3:39 pm
Irina and Backwards Evolution – Thanks guys for the computer advice! I'll try it,
but I think I need someone at my shoulder the first time I try it.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 8:53 pm
ranney – you're welcome! Snag one of your kids or a friend, and then do it together.
Sometimes I see people posting things like: "Testing. I'm trying to provide a link, bear with
me." Throw caution to the wind, ranney. I don't worry about embarrassing myself anymore. I do
it every day and the world still goes on.
I heard a good bit of advice once, something I remind my kids: when you're young, you
think everybody is watching you and so you're afraid to step out of line. When you're
middle-aged, you think everybody is watching you, but you don't care. When you're older, you
realize nobody is really watching you because they're more concerned about themselves.
Good luck, ranney.
irina , June 2, 2018 at 10:00 pm
I find it helpful to write down the steps (on an old fashioned piece of paper, with old
fashioned ink)
when learning to use a new computer tool, because while I think I'll remember, it doesn't
usually
'stick' until after using it for quite a while. And yes, definitely recruit a member of the
younger set
or someone familiar with computers. My daughter showed me many years ago how to 'cut &
paste'
and to her credit she was very gracious about it. Remember that you need a place to 'paste'
what-
ever you copied -- either a comment board like this, or a document you are working on, or
(this is
handy) an email where you want to send someone a link to something. Lots of other
possibilities too!
mike , June 1, 2018 at 7:43 pm
No one is presenting Halper as a mastermind spy. He was a tool of the deep state nothing
more.
It seems a mistake to frame the "Russiagate" nonsense as a "Democrat vs Republican"
affair, except at the most surface level of understanding in terms of our political
realities. If one considers that the Bush family has been effectively the Republican Party's
face of the CIA/deep state nexus for decades, as the Clinton/Obama's have been the Democratic
Party's face for decades now, what comes into focus is Trump as a sort of unknown, unexpected
wild card not appropriately tethered to the control structure. Simply noting that the U.S.
and Russia need not be enemies is alone enough to require an operation to get Trump into
line.
This hardly means this is some sort of "partisan" issue as the involvement of McCain and
others demonstrates.
One of the true "you can't make this stuff up" ironies of the Bush/Clinton CIA/deep state
nexus history is worth remembering if one still maintains any illusions about how the CIA
vets potential presidents since they killed JFK. During Iran/Contra we had Bush, the former
CIA director now vice president, running a drugs for arms operation out the White House
through Ollie North, WHILE then unknown Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was busy squashing
Arkansas State Police investigations into said narcotics trafficking. Clinton obviously
proved his bona fides to the CIA/deep state with such service and was appropriately rewarded
as an asset who could function as a reliable president. Here in one operation we had two
future presidents in Bush and Clinton both engaged in THE SAME CIA drug running operation.
You truly can't make this stuff up.
Russiagate seems to be in the end all about keeping deep state policy moving in the "right
direction" and "hating Russia" is the only entree on the menu at this time for the whole
cadre of CIA/deep state, MIC, neocons, Zionists, and all their minions in the MSM. The Obama
White House would have gladly supported Vlad the Impaler as the Republican candidate that
beat Hillary if Vlad were to have the appropriate foaming at the mouth "hate-Russia" vibe
going on.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:18 pm
Gary – great post.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm
Roger that. I would really like to see an inquiry re-opened into the
teenage boys who died 'on the train tracks' in Arkansas during the
early years of the Clinton-Bush trafficking. Many questions are still
unanswered. Speculation is that they saw something they weren't
supposed to see.
Mark Thomason , May 31, 2018 at 1:12 pm
This all grows out of the failure to clean up the mess revealed by the Iraq fiasco.
Instead, those who did that remained, got away with it, and are doing more of the same.
Babyl-on , May 31, 2018 at 12:46 pm
So, here is my question – Who, ultimately does the
permanent/bureaucratic/deep/Imperial* state finally answer to? Who's interests are they
serving? How do they know what those interests are?
It could be, and increasingly it looks as if, the answer is – no one in particular
– but the Saud family, the Zionist cabal of billionaires, the German industrialist
dynasties, the Japanese oligarchy and never forget the arms dealers, all of them once part of
the Empire now fighting for themselves so we end up with the high level apparatchiks not
knowing what to do or who to follow so they lie outright to Congress and go on TV and babble
more lies for money.
It's a great contradiction that the greatest armed force ever assembled with cutting edge
robotics and AI yet at the same time so weak and pathetic it can not exercise hegemony over
the Middle East as it seems to desire more than anything. Being defeated by forces with less
than 20% of the US spend.
Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:36 pm
You're right. They answer to no one because they are not just working in this country, but
they think that the whole world is theirs.
To these people there are no borders. They meet at places like the G20, Davos and wherever
the Bilderberg group decides to meet every year. No leader of any country gets to be one
unless they are acceptable to the Deep State. The council of foreign relations is one of the
groups that run the world. How we take them down is a good question.
Abe , May 31, 2018 at 12:43 pm
Following the pattern of mainstream media, Daniel Lazare assiduously avoids mentioning
Israel and pro-Israel Lobby interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the
Israel-gate reality underlying all the Russia-gate fictions.
For example, George Papadopoulos is directly connected to the pro-Israel Lobby, right wing
Israeli political interests, and Israeli government efforts to control regional energy
resources.
Lazare mentions that Papadapoulos had "a friend in the Israeli embassy".
But Lazare conspicuously neglects to mention numerous Israeli and pro-Israel Lobby players
interested in "filling Papadopoulos's head" with "tales of Russian dirty tricks".
Papadopoulos' LinkedIn page lists his association with the right wing Hudson Institute.
The Washington, D.C.-based think tank part of pro-Israel Lobby web of militaristic security
policy institutes that promote Israel-centric U.S. foreign policy.
The Hudson Institute confirmed that Papadopoulos was an intern who left the pro-Israel
neoconservative think tank in 2014.
In 2014, Papadopoulos authored op-ed pieces in Israeli publications.
In an op-ed published in Arutz Sheva, media organ of the right wing Religionist Zionist
movement embraced by the Israeli "settler" movement, Papadopoulos argued that the U.S. should
focus on its "stalwart allies" Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to "contain the newly emergent
Russian fleet".
In another op-ed published in Ha'aretz, Papadopoulos contended that Israel should exploit
its natural gas resources in partnership with Cyprus and Greece rather than Turkey.
In November 2015, Papadapalous participated in a conference in Tel Aviv, discussing the
export of natural gas from Israel with a panel of current and past Israeli government
officials including Ron Adam, a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and Eran Lerman, a former Israeli Deputy National Security Adviser.
Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of
the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon
and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and
on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region.
Israeli plans to develop energy resources and expand territorial holdings in the Syrian
Golan are threatened by the Russian military presence in Syria. Russian diplomatic efforts,
and the Russian military intervention that began in September 2015 after an official request
by the Syrian government, have interfered with the Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis "dirty war" in
Syria.
Israeli activities and Israel-gate realities are predictably ignored by the mainstream
media, which continues to salivate at every moldy scrap of Russia-gate fiction.
Lazare need no be so circumspect, unless he has somehow been spooked.
"Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of
the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon
and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and
on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region."
And water. Rating energy and water, what's at the top for Israel. Israel would probably
say both but Israel shielded by the US will take what it wants. That is already true with the
Palestinians.. The last figure I heard is that the Palestinians are allocated one fifth per
capita what is allocated to Israel's
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:59 am
A large swamp is actually an ancient and highly organized ecosystem. Only humans could
create a lawless madness like Washington DC.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:24 pm
Yes that is a good description of a swamp. BUT, if it loses what sustains it --
water, in the case of a 'real' swamp and money in the case of this swamp --
it changes character very quickly and becomes first a bog, then a meadow.
I am definitely ready for more meadowland ! But the only way to create it
is to voluntarily redirect federal taxes into escrow accounts which stipulate
that the funds are to be used for (fill in the blank) Public Services at the
Local and Regional levels. Much more efficient than filtering them through
the federal bureaucracy !
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:21 pm
But how would one avoid prosecution for nonpayment of taxes?
That seems a very quiet way to be rendered ineffective as a resister.
irina , June 1, 2018 at 2:30 am
The thing is, you don't 'nonpay' them. The way it used to work, through the
Con$cience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account, was that you filed
your taxes as usual. (This does require having less withholding than you owe).
BUT instead of paying what is due to the IRS, you send it to the Escrow Account.
You attach a letter to your tax return, explaining where the money is and why it
is there. That is, you want it to be spent on _________________(fill in the blank)
worthy public social service. Then you send your return to the IRS.
When I used to do this, I stated that I wanted my tax dollars to be spent to develop
public health clinics at neighborhood schools. Said clinics would be staffed by nurse
practitioners, would be open 24-7 and nurses would be equipped with vans to make
House Calls. Security would be provided.
So you're not 'nonpaying' your taxes, you are (attempting) to redirect them.
Eventually,
after several rounds of letters back and forth, the IRS would seize the monies from the
escrow account, which would only release them to the IRS upon being told to by the
tax re-director. Unfortunately, not enough people participated to make it a going
concern.
But the potential is still there, and the template has been made and used. It's very
scale-
able, from local to international. And it would not take that many 're-directors' to shift
the
focus of tax liability from the collector to the payor. Because ultimately we are liable
for
how our funds are used !
Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:19 pm
this was done a lot during the Vietnam conflict, especially by Quakers. the first thing,
if you are a wage earner, is to re-file a W2 with maximum withholdings-that has two effects:
1) it means you owe all your taxes in April. 2) it means the feds are deprived of the hidden
tax in which they use or invest your withholding throughout the year before it's actually
due(and un-owed taxes if you over over-withhold). Pretty sure that if a large number of
people deprive the government of that hidden tax by under-withholding, they will begin to
take notice.
Abe , May 31, 2018 at 11:54 am
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence agency of the government
and armed forces of the United Kingdom.
In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when the former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was in the process of collecting
all online and telephone data in the UK. Snowden's revelations began a spate of ongoing
disclosures of global surveillance and manipulation.
For example, NSA files from the Snowden archive published by Glenn Greenwald reveal
details about GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) unit, which uses "dirty
trick" tactics to covertly manipulate and control online communities.
In 2017, officials from the UK and Israel made an unprecedented confirmation of the close
relationship between the GCHQ and Israeli intelligence services.
Robert Hannigan, outgoing Director-General of the GCHQ, revealed for the first time that
his organization has a "strong partnership with our Israeli counterparts in signals
intelligence." He claimed the relationship "is protecting people from terrorism not only in
the UK and Israel but in many other countries."
Mark Regev, Israeli ambassador to the UK, commented on the close relationship between
British and Israeli intelligence agencies. During remarks at a Conservative Friends of Israel
reception, Regev opined: "I have no doubt the cooperation between our two democracies is
saving British lives."
Hannigan added that GCHQ was "building on an excellent cyber relationship with a range of
Israeli bodies and the remarkable cyber industry in Be'er Sheva."
The IDF's most important signal intelligence–gathering installation is the Urim
SIGINT Base, a part of Unit 8200, located in the Negev desert approximately 30 km from Be'er
Sheva.
Snowden revealed how Unit 8200 receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens, as part of
a secret agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency.
After his departure from GCHQ, Hannigan joined BlueteamGlobal, a cybersecurity services
firm, later re-named BlueVoyant.
BlueVoyant's board of directors includes Nadav Zafrir, former Commander of the Israel
Defense Forces' Unit 8200. The senior leadership team at BlueVoyant includes Ron Feler,
formerly Deputy Commander of the IDF's Unit 8200, and Gad Goldstein, who served as a division
head in the Israel Security Agency, Shin Bet, in the rank equivalent to Major General.
In addition to their purported cybersecurity activities, Israeli. American, and British
private companies have enormous access and potential to promote government and military
deception operations.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 12:23 pm
Thanks Abe. Sounds like a manual for slave owners and con men. What a tangled wed the rich
bastards weave. The simple truth is their sworn enemy.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:19 pm
Interesting that a foreign power would be given all US communications data, which implies
that the US has seized it all without a warrant and revealed it all in violation of the
Constitution. If extensive, this use of information power amounts to information warfare
against the US by its own secret agencies in collusion with a foreign power, an act of
treason.
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:18 am
This has been going on for a LONG time, it's nothing new. I seem to recall 60 Minutes
covering it way back in the 70s(?). UK was allowed to do the snooping in the US (and, likely,
vice versa) and then providing info to the US. This way the US govt could claim that it
didn't spy/snoop on its citizens. Without a doubt Israel has been extensively intercepting
communications in the US..
Secrecy kills.
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:23 am
Yes, but the act of allowing unregulated foreign agencies unwarranted access to US
telecoms is federal crime, and it is treason when it goes so far as to allow them full
access, and even direct US bulk traffic to their spy agencies. If this is so, these people
should be prosecuted for treason.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 11:36 am
To listen to the media coverage of these events, it is tempting to believe that two
entirely different planets are being discussed. Fox comes out and says Mueller was "owned" by
Trump. Then, CNN comes out and says Trump was "owned" by Clapper. Clapper claims the evidence
is "staggering", while video clips of his testimony reveal irrefutable perjury. Some of
President Trump's policies are understandably abhorrent to Democrats, while Clinton's email
server and charity frauds are indisputably violations of Federal statutes. Democrats are
attempting to claim that a "spy" in the Trump campaign was perfectly reasonable to protect
"national security", but evidence seems to indicate that the spy was placed BEFORE there was
a legitimate national security concern. Some analysts note that, while Mueller's team appears
to be Democratic partisan hacks, their native "skill set" is actually expertise in money
laundering investigations. They claim that although Mr. Trump may not be compromised by the
Russian government, he is involved with nefarious Russian organized crime figures. It
follows, according to them, that given time, Mueller will reveal these illicit connections,
and prosecution will become inevitable.
Let's assume, for argument, that both sides are right. That means that our entire
government is irretrievably corrupt. Republicans claim that it could " go all the way to
Obama". Democrats, of course, play the "moral high ground" card, insinuating that the current
administration is so base and immoral that somehow, the "ends justify the means". No matter
how you slice it, the Clinton campaign has a lot more liability on its hands. The problem is,
if prosecutions begin, people will "talk" to save their own skins. The puppet masters can't
really afford that.
"All the way to Obama", you say? I think it could go higher than that. Personally, I think
it could go all the way to Dick Cheney, and the 'powers that be' are in no mood to let that
happen.
Vivian O'Blivion , May 31, 2018 at 12:19 pm
The issue as I see it is that from the start everyone was calling the Mueller probe an
investigation into collusion and not really grasping the catch all nature of his brief.
It's the "any matters arising " that is the real kicker. So any dodgy dealing / possible
criminal activity in the past is fair game. And this is exactly what in happening with
Manafort.
Morally you can apply the Nucky Johnson defence and state that everyone knew Trump was a
crook when they voted for him, but legally this has no value.
There is an unpleasant whiff of deep state interference with the will of the people
(electoral college). Perhaps if most bodies hadn't written Trump's chances off in such an off
hand manner, proper due diligence of his background would have uncovered any liabilities
before the election.
If there is actionable dirt, can't say I am overly sympathetic to Trump. Big prizes sometimes
come with big risks.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 5:14 pm
My own feeling from the start has been that Mueller was never going to track down any
"collusion" or "meddling" (at least not to any significant degree) because the whole,
sprawling Russia-gate narrative – to the extent one can be discerned – is
obviously phony.
But at the same time, there's no way the completely lawless, unethical Trump, along with
his scummy associates, would be able to escape that kind of scrutiny without criminal conduct
being exposed.
So far, on both scores, that still seems to me to be a likely outcome, and for my part I'm
fine with it.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 5:29 am
My thoughts exactly. Collusion was never a viable proposition because the Russians aren't
that stupid. Regardless of any personal opinion regarding the intelligence and mental
stability of Donald Snr., the people he surrounds himself with are weapons grade stupid. I
don't see the Russians touching the Trump campaign with a proverbial barge pole.
Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:26 pm
it just happens that Trump appears to have been involved (wittingly or not), with the
laundering a whole lot of Russian money and so many of his friends seem to be connected with
wealthy Russian oligarchs as well plus they are so stupid, they keep appearing to (and
probably are) obstructing justice. The Cohen thing doesn't get much attention here, but it's
significant that they have all this stuff on a guy who is clearly Trump's bagman.
Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:15 pm
There is also quite an indication that the entire Mueller investigation is a complete
smoke screen to be used as cannon fodder in the mainstream media.
On the one hand, Mueller and his hacks have found nothing of import to link Trump to
anything close to collusion with members of the Russian government. And I am by no means a
Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination, except as a foil to Clinton. However, even
my minimalist expectations for Trump have not worked out either.
In addition. the Mueller investigation has been spending what appears to be a majority of
its time on ancillary matters that were not within the supposed scope and mandate of this
investigation. Further, a number of indictments have come down against people involved with
such ancillary matters.
The result is that if Mueller is going beyond the scope of his investigatory mandate, this
may come in as a technicality that will allow indicted persons to escape prosecution on
appeal.
Such a mandate, I would think, is the same thing as a police warrant, which can find only
admissible evidence covered by the warrant. Anything else found to be criminally liable must
be found to be as a result of a completely different investigation that has nothing to do
with the original warrant.
In other words, it appears that the Mueller investigation was allowed to commence under a
Republican controlled Congress for the very reason that its intent is simply to go in circles
long enough for Republicans to get their agendas through, which does not appear to be working
all too well as a result of their high levels of internecine party conflicts.
This entire affair is coming to show just how dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent the
entirety of the US federal government has become. And to the chagrin of all sincere
activists, no amount of organized protesting and political action will ever rid the country
of this grotesque political quagmire that now engulfs the entirety of our political
infrastructure.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:48 pm
Very true that the US federal government is now "dysfunctional, corrupt, and
incompetent."
What are your thoughts on forms of action to rid us this political quagmire?
(other than ineffective "organized protesting and political action")
Have you considered new forms of public debate and public information?
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:34 am
All of this is blackmail to hold Trump's feet to the fire of the Israel firsters (such
actions pull in all the dark swampy things). By creating the Russia blackmail story they've
effectively redirected away from themselves. The moment Trump balks the Deep State will reel
in some more, airing innuendos to overwhelm Trump. Better believe that Trump has been fully
"briefed" on all of this. John Bolton was able to push out a former OPCW head with threats
(knew where his, the OPCW head's children were). And now John Bolton is sitting right next to
Trump (whispering in his ear that he knows ways in which to oust Trump).
What actual "ideas" were in Trump's head going in to all of this (POTUS run) is hard to
say. But, anything that can be considered a threat to the Deep State has been effectively
nullified now.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:22 am
Possible, but Manafort already tried to get his charges thrown out as being the outcome of
investigations beyond the remit He failed.
Brendan , May 31, 2018 at 10:26 am
There's no doubt at all that Joseph Mifsud was closely connected with western
intelligence, and with MI6 in particular. His contacts with Russia are insignificant compared
with his long career working amongst the elite of western officials.
Lee Smith of RealClearInvestigations lists some of the places where Mifsud worked, including
two universities:
"he taught at Link Campus University in Rome, ( ) whose lecturers and professors include
senior Western diplomats and intelligence officials from a number of NATO countries,
especially Italy and the United Kingdom.
Mifsud also taught at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and the London Academy of
Diplomacy, which trained diplomats and government officials, some of them sponsored by the
UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Council, or by their own governments."
Two former colleagues of Mifsud's, Roh and Pastor, recently interviewed him for a book
they have written. Those authors could very well be biased, but one of them makes a valid
point, similar to one that Daniel Lazare makes above:
"Given the affiliations of Link's faculty and staff, as well as Mifsud's pedigree, Roh thinks
it's impossible that the man he hired as a business development consultant is a Russian
agent."
Politically, Mifsud identifies with the Clintons more than anyone else, and claims to
belong to the Clinton Foundation, which has often been accused of being just a way of
funneling money into Hillary Clinton's campaign.
As Lee Smith says, if Mifsud really is a Russian spy, "Western intelligence services are
looking at one of the largest and most embarrassing breaches in a generation. But none of the
governments or intelligence agencies potentially compromised is acting like there's anything
wrong."
From all that we know about Joseph Mifsud, it's safe to say that he was never a Russian
spy. If not, then what was he doing when he was allegedly feeding stories to George
Papadopoulos about Russians having 'dirt' on Clinton?
I read somewhere that Mifsud had disappeared. Was that true? If so, is he back, or still
missing?
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 6:21 pm
Here are some excerpts that will answer your question from an article by Lee Smith at
Realclearinvestigations, "The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate".
A new book by former colleagues of Mifsud's – Stephan Roh, a 50-year-old
Swiss-German lawyer, and Thierry Pastor, a 35-year-old French political analyst –
reports that he is alive and well. Their account includes a recent interview with him.
Their self-published book, "The Faking of Russia-gate: The Papadopoulos Case, an
Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with Mifsud in which he denies saying
anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they write, stated "vehemently that he
never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos." Mifsud asked rhetorically: "From where
should I have this [information]?"
Mifsud's account seems to be supported by Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat who
alerted authorities about Papadopoulos. As reported in the Daily Caller, Downer said
Papadopoulos never mentioned emails; he spoke, instead, about the Russians possessing
material that could be damaging to Clinton. This new detail raises the possibility that
Mifsud, Papadopoulos' alleged source for the information, never said anything about
Clinton-related emails either.
In interviews with RealClearInvestigations, Roh and Pastor said Mifsud is anything but a
Russian spy. Rather, he is more likely a Western intelligence asset.
According to the two authors, it was a former Italian intelligence official, Vincenzo
Scotti, a colleague of Mifsud's and onetime interior minister, who told the professor to go
into hiding. "I don't know who was hiding him," said Roh, "but I'm sure it was organized by
someone. And I am sure it will be difficult to get to the bottom of it."
Toby McCrossin , June 1, 2018 at 1:54 am
" The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with
Mifsud in which he denies saying anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they
write, stated "vehemently that he never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos.""
Thank you for providing that explosive piece of information. If true, and I suspect it is,
that's one more nail in the Russiagate narrative. Who, then, is making the claim that Misfud
mentioned emails? The only source for the statement I can find is "court documents".
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:20 am
The election scams serve only to distract from the Israel-gate scandal and the oligarchy
destruction of our former democracy. Mr. Lazare neglects to tell us about that. All of
Hillary's top ten campaign bribers were zionists, and Trump let Goldman-Sachs take over the
economy. KSA and big business also bribed heavily.
We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for
democracy is lost.
We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and
foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious preference.
Otherwise the United States is lost, and our lives have no historical meaning beyond
slavery to oligarchy.
Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 9:51 am
You are right Sam. Israel does work the fence under the guise of the Breaking News.
Joe
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm
My response was that Israel massacres at the fence, ignored by the zionist US mass
media.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:48 am
The extreme wealth and privileges of oligarchy depend on the poverty and slavery of
others. Inequality of income is the root cause of most of our ills. Try to imagine what a
world of economic equals would be like. No striving for more and more wealth at the expense
of others. No wars. What would there be to fight over – everyone would be content with
what they already had.
If you automatically think such a world would be impossible, try to state why. You might
discover that the only obstacle to such a world is the greedy bastards who are sitting on top
of everybody, and will do anything to maintain their advantages.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:52 am
How do the oligarchs ensure your slavery? With the little green tickets they have hoarded
that the rest of us need just to eat and have a roof over our heads. The people sleeping in
the streets tell us the penalty for not being good slaves.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 12:50 pm
Very true, Mike. Those who say that equality or fairness of income implies breaking the
productivity incentive system are wrong. No matter how much or how little wage incentive we
offer for making an effort in work, we need not have great disparities of income. Those who
can work should have work, and we should all make an effort to do well in our work, but none
of us need the fanciest cars or grand monuments to live in, just to do our best.
Getting rid of oligarchy, and getting money out of mass media and elections, would be the
greatest achievement of our times.
Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 5:30 pm
An old socialist friend of my dad's generation who claimed to have read the biography of
Andrew Carnegie had told me over a few beers that Carnegie said, "that at a time when he was
paying his workers $5 a week he 'could' have been paying them $50 a day, but then he could
not figure out what kind of life they would lead with all that money". Think about it mike,
if his workers would have had that kind of money it would not be long before Carnegie's
workers became his competition and opened up next door to him the worst case scenario would
be his former workers would sell their steel at a cheaper price, kind of, well no exactly
like what Rockefeller did with oil, or as Carnegie did with steel innovation. How's that
saying go, keep them down on the farm . well. Remember Carnegie was a low level stooge for
the railroads at one time, and rose to the top .mike. Great point to make mike, because there
could be more to go around. Joe
Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:16 pm
"We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for
democracy is lost.
We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and
foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious
preference."
Good luck with that!!!
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:19 pm
Well, you are welcome to make suggestions on how to save the republic.
john wilson , May 31, 2018 at 9:10 am
The depths of the deep state has no limits, but as a UK citizen, I fail to see why the
American "spooks" need any help from we Brits when it comes state criminal activity. Sure, we
are masters at underhand dirty tricks, but the US has a basket full of tricks that 'Trump'
(lol) anything we've got. It was the Russians wot done mantra has been going on for many
decades and is ever good for another turn around the political mulberry tree of corruption
and underhand dealings. Whether the Democrats or the Republicans win its all the same to the
deep state as they are in control whoever is in the White House. Trump was an outsider and
there for election colour and the "ho ho ho" look what a great democracy we are, anyone can
be president. He is in fact the very essence of the 'wild card' and when he actually won
there was total confusion, panic, disbelief and probably terror in the caves and dungeons of
the deep state.
Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:33 am
I'm sure the result was so unexpected that the shadowy fixers, the IT mavens who could
have "adjusted" the numbers, were totally caught off guard and unable to do "cleanly." Not
that they didn't try to re-jigger the results in the four state recounts that were ordered,
but it was simply too late to effectively cheat at that point, as there were already massive
overvotes detected in key urban precincts. Such a thing will never happen again, I am
sure.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:36 am
It appears that UK has long had a supply of anti-Russia fearmongers, presumably backed by
its anti-socialist oligarchy as in the US. Perhaps the US oligarchy is the dumbest salesman,
who believes that all customers are even dumber, so that UK can sell Russophobia here thirty
years after the USSR.
Bob Van Noy , May 31, 2018 at 8:49 am
"But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry
observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information
about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press."
Perfect.
Recently, while trying to justify my arguement that a new investigation into the RFK Killing
was necessary, I was asked why I thought that, and my response was "Modus operandi," exactly
what Robert Parry learned by experience, and that is the fundamental similarity to all of the
institutionalized crime that takes place by the IC. Once one realizes the literary approach
to disinformation that was fundamental to Alan Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, even Ian
Fleming, one can easily see the Themes being applied. I suppose that the very feature of
believability offered by propaganda, once recognized, becomes its undoing. That could be our
current reality; the old Lines simply are beginning to appear to be ridiculous
Thank you Daniel Lazar.
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:39 am
The recognition of themes of propaganda as literary themes and modus operandi is helping
to discredit propaganda. The similarities of the CW false-flag operations (Iraq, Syria, and
UK), and the fake assassinations (Skripal and Babchenko) by the anti-Russia crowd help reveal
and persuade on the falsehood of the Iraq WMD, Syria CW, and MH-17 propaganda ops. Just as
the similarities of the JFK/MLK/RFK assassinations persuade us that commonalities exist long
before we see evidence.
Bob Van Noy , June 1, 2018 at 1:11 pm
Many thanks Sam F for recognizing that. As we begin to achieve a resolution of the 60's
Kllings, we can begin to see the general and specific themes utilized to direct the programs
of Assassination. The other aspect is that real investigation Never followed; and that took
Real Power.
In a truly insightful book by author Sally Denton entitled "The Profiteers" she puts
together a very cogent theory that it isn't the Mafia, it's the Syndicate, which means (for
me at least) real, criminal power with somewhat divergent interests ok with one another, to
the extent that they can maintain their Own Turf. I think that's a profound insight
Too, in a similar vain, the Grand Deceptions of American Foreign Policy, "scenarios" are
simply and only that, not a Real possible solution. Always resulting in failure
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 9:23 pm
Yes, it is difficult to determine the structure of a subculture of gangsterism in power,
which can have many specialized factions in loose cooperation, agreeing on some general
policy points, like benefits for the rich, hatred of socialism, institutionalized bribery of
politicians and judges, militarized policing, destruction of welfare and social security,
deregulation of everything, essentially the neocon/neolib line of the DemReps. The party line
of oligarchy in any form.
Indeed the foreign policy of such gangsters is designed to "fail" because destruction of
cultures, waste, and fragmentation most efficiently exploits the bribery structure available,
and serves the anti-socialist oligarchy. Failure of the declared foreign policy is success,
because that is only propaganda to cover the corruption.
You know, not only Gay Trowdy but even Dracula Napolitano think people like Lazare ,
McGovern, etc. are overblown on this issue.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 1:47 pm
SocraticGadfly – Trey Gowdy hasn't even seen the documents yet, so he's hardly in a
position to say anything. The House Intelligence Committee, under Chairman Nunes, are being
stymied by the FBI and the Department of Justice who are refusing to hand over documents.
Refusing! Refusing to disclose documents to the very people who, by law, have oversight.
Nunes is threatening to hit them with Contempt of Congress.
Let's see the documents. Then Trey Gowdy can open his mouth.
What I take from this head spinning article is the paragraph about Carter Page.
"On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in
which he complained that "Washington and other western capitals have impeded potential
progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality,
corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed "unease" that someone representing
the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's side in a growing neo-Cold War
Mr. Page hit the nail on the head. There is no greater sin to entrenched power than to
spell out what is going on with Russia. It helps us understand why terms like dupe and
naïve were stuck on Carter Page's back.. Truth to power is not always good for your
health.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:07 am
The tyrant accuses of disloyalty, all who question the reality of his foreign
monsters.
And so do his monster-fighting agencies, whose budgets depend upon the fiction.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 am
Daniel Lazare – good report. "It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth
degree." This wasn't a case of paranoia. This was a blatant attempt to bring down a rival
opponent and, failing that, the President of the United States. This was intentional and
required collusion between top officials of the government. They fabricated the phony Steele
dossier (paid for by the Clinton campaign), exonerated Hillary Clinton, and then went to town
on bringing down Trump.
"Was George Popodopolous set up?" Of course he was. Set up a patsy in order to give you
reason to carry out a phony investigation.
"If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged
themselves to notice." They're not befogged; they're following orders (the major television
and newspaper outfits). Without their 24/7 spin and lies, Russiagate would never have been
kept alive.
These guys got the biggest surprise of their life when Hillary Clinton lost the election.
None of this would have come out had she won. During the campaign, as Trump gained in the
polls, she was heard to say, "If they ever find out what we've done, we'll all hang."
I hope they see jail time for what they've done.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:38 am
Apparently what has come out so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Some are saying this
could lead all the way up to Obama. I hope not, but they have certainly done all they can to
ruin the Trump Presidency.
JohnM , May 31, 2018 at 9:58 am
I'm adjusting my tinfoil hat right now. I'm wondering if Skripal had something to do with
the Steel dossier. The iceberg may be even bigger than thought.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:18 am
It is known that Skripal's close friend living nearby was an employee of Steele's firm
Orbis.
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 2:58 pm
Exactly, his name is Pablo Miller and he is the MI6 agent who initially recruited Sergei
Skripal. Miller worked for Orbis, Steele's company and listed that in his resume on LinkedIn
but later deleted it. But once it's on the internet it can always be found and it was and it
was published.
robjira , May 31, 2018 at 2:13 pm
John, both Moon Of Alabama and OffGuardian have had excellent coverage of the Skripal
affair. Informed opinions wonder if Sergei Skripal was one of Steele's "Russian sources," and
that he may have been poisoned for the purpose of either a) bolstering the whole "Russia =
evil" narrative, or b) a warning not to ask for more than what he may have conceivably
received for any contribution he may or may not have made to the "dossiere."
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:20 am
Interesting details in this article, but we have known this whole Russiagate affair was a
scam from the get go. It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over
Hillary. The chagrined dems came together and concocted their sore loser alibi – the
Russians did it. They scooped up a lot of pre-election dirt, rolled it into a ball and
directed it at Trump. It is a testament to the media's determination to stick with their
story, that in spite of not a single scrap of real evidence after over a year of digging by a
huge team of democratic hit men and women, this ridiculous story still has supporters.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 10:31 am
"It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over Hillary."
Not so.
Daniel Lazare's first link in the above piece is to Paul Krugman's July 22, 2016 NY Times
op-ed, "Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate". (Note how that headline doesn't even bother to
employ a question mark.)
I appreciate that that Krugman column gets pride of place here since I distinctly remember
reading it in my copy of the Times that day, months before the election, and my immediate
reaction to it: nonplussed that such a risible thesis was being aired so prominently, along
with a deep realization that this was only the first shot in what would be a co-ordinated
media disinformation campaign, à la Saddam's WMDs.
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 3:37 pm
Actually, I think the intelligence agencies' (CIA/FBI/DNI) plan started shortly after
Trump gave the names of Page and Papadopoulos to the Washington Post (CIA annex) in a meeting
on March 21, 2016 outlining his foreign policy team.
Carter Page (Naval Academy distinguished graduate and Naval intelligence officer) in 2013
worked as an "under-cover employee" of the FBI in a case that convicted Evgeny Buryakov and
it was reported that he was still an UCE in March of 2016. The FBI never charged or even
hinted that Page was anything but innocent and patriotic. However, in October 2016 the FBI
told the FISA Court that he was a spy to support spying on him. Remember the FISA Court
allows spying on him AND the persons he is in contact, which means almost everyone on the
Trump transition team/administration.
Here is an excerpt from an article by WSJ's Kimberley Strassel:
In "late spring" of 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed White House "National
Security Council Principals" that the FBI had counterintelligence concerns about the Trump
campaign. Carter Page was announced as a campaign adviser on March 21, and Paul Manafort
joined the campaign March 29. The briefing likely referenced both men, since both had
previously been on the radar of law enforcement. But here's what matters: With this briefing,
Mr. Comey officially notified senior political operators on Team Obama that the bureau had
eyes on Donald Trump and Russia. Imagine what might be done in these partisan times with such
explosive information.
And what do you know? Sometime in April, the law firm Perkins Coie (on behalf the Clinton
campaign) hired Fusion GPS, and Fusion turned its attention to Trump-Russia connections.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 4:56 pm
Most interesting, Chet Roman. Thanks.
My understanding is that Trump more or less pulled Page's name out of a hat to show the
WashPost that he had a "foreign policy team", and thus that his campaign wasn't just a hollow
sham, but that at that point he really had had no significant contact at all with Page
– maybe hadn't even met him. It was just a name from his new political world that
sprang to "mind" (or the Trumpian equivalent).
Of course, the Trump campaign *was* just a sham, by conventional Beltway standards: a
ramshackle road show with no actual "foreign policy team", or any other policy team.
So maybe that random piece of B.S. from Trump has caused him a heap of trouble. This is
part of why – no matter how bogus "Russia-gate" is – I just can't bring myself to
feel sorry for old Cheeto Dust.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 6:56 am
Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal had some good advice:
"Mr. Trump has an even quicker way to bring the hostility to an end.
He can – and should – declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the
public see the truth.
That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture
Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for
itself, to "undermine" an investigation.
And it would end the Justice Department's campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to
its reputation with the public and with Congress."
What do you bet he does?
RickD , May 31, 2018 at 6:44 am
I have serious doubts about the article's veracity. There seems to be a thread running
through it indicating an attempt to whitewash any Russian efforts to get Trump elected. To
dismiss all the evidence of such efforts, and , despite this author's words, there is enough
such evidence, seems more than a bit partisan.
What evidence? I've seen none so far. A lot of claims that there is such evidence but no
one seems to ever say what it is.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:06 am
RickD – thanks for the good laugh before bedtime. I'm with Mr. Merrell and I
actually want to see some evidence. Maybe it was Professor Halper in the kitchen with the
paring knife.
Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:21 am
Unfortunately, what this guy says is what most Americans still seem to believe. When I ask
people what is the actual hard evidence for "Russiagate" (because I don't know of any that
has been corroborated), I get a response that there have been massive examples of Russian
hacks, Russian posts, tweets and internet adverts–all meant to sabotage Hillary's
candidacy, and very effective, mind you. Putin has been an evil genius worthy of a comic book
villain (to date myself, a regular Lex Luthor). Sez who, ask I? Sez the trustworthy American
media that would never lie to the public, sez they. You know, professional paragons of virtue
like Rachel Maddow and her merry band.
Nobody seems aware of the recent findings about Halpern, none seem to have a realistic
handle on the miniscule scope of the Russian "offenses" against American democracy. Rachel,
the NY Times and WaPo have seen to that with their sins of both commission and omission. Even
the Republican party is doing a half-hearted job of defending its own power base with
rigorous and openly disseminated fact checking. It's like even many of the committee chairs
with long seniority are reluctant to buck the conventional narrative peddled by the media.
Many have chosen to retire rather than fight the media and the Deep State. What's a better
interpretation of events? Or is one to believe that the silent voices, curious retirements
and political heat generated by the Dems, the prosecutors and the media are all independent
variables with no connections? These old pols recognise a good demonizing when they see it,
especially when directed at them.
Personally, I think that not only the GOPers should be fighting like the devil to expose
the truth (which should benefit them in this circumstance) but so should the media and all
the watchdog agencies (ngo's) out there because our democracy WAS hijacked, but it was NOT by
the Russians. Worse than that, it was done by internal domestic enemies of the people who
must be outed and punished to save the constitution and the republic, if it is not too late.
All the misinformation by influential insiders and the purported purveyors of truth
accompanied by the deliberate silence by those who should be chirping like birds suggests it
may well be far too late.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:53 pm
Realist – a most excellent post! Some poll result I read about the other day
mentioned that well over half of the American public do NOT believe what they are being told
by the media. That was good to hear. But you are right, there are still way too many who
never question anything. If I ever get in trouble, I wouldn't want those types on my jury.
They'd be wide awake during the prosecution's case and fast asleep during my defense.
This is the Swamp at work on both sides of the aisle. Most of the Republicans are hanging
Trump out to dry. They've probably got too much dirt they want to keep hidden themselves, so
retirement looks like a good idea. Get out of Dodge while the going is good, before the real
fighting begins! The Democrats are battling for all they're worth, and I've got to hand it to
them – they're dirty little fighters.
Yes, democracy has been hijacked. Hard to say how long this has been going on –
maybe forever. If there is anything good about Trump's presidency, it's that the Deep State
is being laid out and delivered up on a silver platter for all to see.
There has never been a better chance to take back the country than this. If this
opportunity passes, it will never come again. They will make sure of it.
The greatest thing that Trump could do for the country would be to declassify all
documents. Jeff Sessions is either part of the Deep State or he's been scared off. He's not
going to act. Rosenstein is up to his eyeballs in this mess and he's not going to act. In
fact, he's preventing Nunes from getting documents. It is up to Trump to act. I just hope
he's not being surrounded by a bunch of bad apple lawyers who are giving him bad advice. He
needs to go above the Department of Justice and declassify ALL documents. If he did that, a
lot of these people would probably die of a heart attack within a minute.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:11 am
You sure came out of the woodwork quickly to express your "serious doubts" RickD.
Skip Scott , May 31, 2018 at 8:07 am
Please provide "such evidence". I've yet to see any. The entire prosecution of RussiaGate
has been one big Gish Gallop.
strgr-tgther , May 31, 2018 at 9:39 pm
RickD – Thank you for pointing that out! You were the only one!!! It is a very
strange article leaving Putin and the Russians evidence out and also not a single word about
Stromy Daniels witch is also very strange. I know Hillary would never have approved of any of
this and they don't say that either.
John , June 1, 2018 at 2:26 am
What does Stormy Daniels have to do with RussiaGate?
You know that someone who committed the ultimate war crime by lying us into war to destroy
Libya and re-institute slavery there, and who laughed after watching video of a man that
Nelson Mandela called "The Greatest Living Champion of Human Rights on the Planet" be
sodomized to death with a knife, is somehow too "moral" to do such a thing? Really?
It amazes me how utterly cultish those who support the Red Queen have shown themselves to
be – without apparently realizing that they are obviously on par with the followers of
Jim Jones!
strgr-tgther , June 1, 2018 at 12:17 pm
That is like saying what does income tax have to do with Al Capone. Who went to Alctraz
because he did not pay income tax not for being a gangster. So we know Trump has sexual
relations with Stormy Daniels, then afterward PAID her not to talk about it. So he paid Story
Daniels for sex! That is Prostitution! Same thing. And that is inpeachable, using womens
bodies as objects. If we don't prosecute Trump here then from now on all a John needs to say
to the police is that he was not paying for sex but paying to keep quiet about it. And
Cogress can get Trump for prostitution and disgracing the office of President. Without Russia
investigations we would never have found out about this important fact, so that is what it
has to do with Russia Gate.
"... That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say. ..."
"... The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack. ..."
"... "No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.] ..."
"... "Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has never been mentioned since . ..."
"... "More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi." ..."
"... The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [ President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017 VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary straightforwardness. ] ..."
"... Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies. MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers. ..."
"... The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. ..."
"... I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed out" propaganda. One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not. No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply." ..."
"... There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths. ..."
"... Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked" to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another ..."
"... (FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and printed. ..."
"... Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden. ..."
"... Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their "investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again. ..."
"... Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's activities are a complete sham. ..."
"... Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely cause of the Russiagate scams. ..."
"... Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." ..."
"... For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic conspiracy. ..."
"... Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB drive, it is not a known. ..."
"... There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings. ..."
"... Don't forget this Twitter post by Wikileaks on October 30, 2016: Podesta: "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it." https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36082#efmAGSAH- ..."
"... Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face? ..."
"... If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars. ..."
"... My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody? ..."
If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked
into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand
close scrutiny . It
could also be because special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have never bothered to
investigate what was once the central alleged crime in Russia-gate as no one associated with
WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity -- including two "alumni" who were former
National Security Agency technical directors -- have long since concluded that Julian Assange
did not acquire what he called the "emails related to Hillary Clinton" via a "hack" by the
Russians or anyone else. They found, rather, that he got them from someone with physical access
to Democratic National Committee computers who copied the material onto an external storage
device -- probably a thumb drive. In December 2016 VIPS explained
this in some detail in an open Memorandum to President Barack Obama.
On January 18, 2017 President Obama admitted
that the "conclusions" of U.S. intelligence regarding how the alleged Russian hacking got to
WikiLeaks were "inconclusive." Even the vapid FBI/CIA/NSA "Intelligence Community Assessment of
Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections" of January 6, 2017, which tried to
blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for election interference, contained
no direct evidence of Russian involvement. That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of
that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian
intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to
WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say.
Never mind. The FBI/CIA/NSA "assessment" became bible truth for partisans like Rep. Adam Schiff
(D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who was among the first off the
blocks to blame Russia for interfering to help Trump. It simply could not have been that
Hillary Clinton was quite capable of snatching defeat out of victory all by herself. No, it had
to have been the Russians.
Five days into the Trump presidency, I had a chance to
challenge Schiff personally on the gaping disconnect between the Russians and WikiLeaks.
Schiff still "can't share the evidence" with me or with anyone else, because it does not
exist.
WikiLeaks
It was on June 12, 2016, just six weeks before the Democratic National Convention, that
Assange announced the pending publication of "emails related to Hillary Clinton," throwing the
Clinton campaign into panic mode, since the emails would document strong bias in favor of
Clinton and successful attempts to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders. When the emails
were published on July 22, just three days before the convention began, the campaign decided to
create what I call a Magnificent Diversion, drawing attention away from the substance of the
emails by blaming Russia for their release.
Clinton's PR chief Jennifer Palmieri later admitted that she golf-carted around to various
media outlets at the convention with instructions "to get the press to focus on something even
we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails
from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton." The
diversion worked like a charm. Mainstream media kept shouting "The Russians did it," and gave
little, if any, play to the DNC skullduggery revealed in the emails themselves. And like Brer'
Fox, Bernie didn't say nothin'.
Meanwhile, highly sophisticated technical experts, were hard at work fabricating "forensic
facts" to "prove" the Russians did it. Here's how it played out:
June 12, 2016: Assange announces that WikiLeaks is about to publish "emails related to
Hillary Clinton."
June 14, 2016: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there
is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the
"hack;" claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was
synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."
The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a
pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish
and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.
Enter Independent Investigators
A year ago independent cyber-investigators completed the kind of forensic work that, for
reasons best known to then-FBI Director James Comey, neither he nor the "handpicked analysts"
who wrote the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment bothered to do. The independent investigators found
verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of an alleged Russian hack of July 5,
2016 showing that the "hack" that day of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or
anyone else.
Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example) by an insider -- the same process used by the DNC insider/leaker before June 12, 2016
for an altogether different purpose. (Once the metadata was found and the "fluid dynamics"
principle of physics applied, this was not difficult to
disprove the validity of the claim that Russia was responsible.)
One of these independent investigators publishing under the name of The Forensicator on May
31
published new evidence that
the Guccifer 2.0 persona uploaded a document from the West Coast of the United States, and not
from Russia.
In our July 24, 2017 Memorandum to President Donald Trump we stated ,
"We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI."
Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be
related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this
general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA
documents that WikiLeaks labeled 'Vault 7.' WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or
former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the
information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.
"No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which
disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's
Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital
Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned
President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.]
Marbled
"Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it
race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described
and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part
3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too
delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has
never been mentioned since .
"The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, it seems, 'did not get the memo' in time. Her March
31
article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: 'WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA
cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.'
"The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use
'obfuscation,' and that Marble source code includes a "de-obfuscator" to reverse CIA text
obfuscation.
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution
double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian,
Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
A few weeks later William Binney, a former NSA technical, and I commented on
Vault 7 Marble, and were able to get a shortened op-ed version
published in The Baltimore Sun
The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was
neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his
associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a
non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24
Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like
it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we
know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and
with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [
President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017
VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together
at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary
straightforwardness. ]
We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin.
In his interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager
– to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7
disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today's
technology enables hacking to be 'masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can
understand the origin' [of the hack] And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or
any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.
"'Hackers may be anywhere,' he said. 'There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States
who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a
scenario? I can.'
New attention has been drawn to these issues after I discussed them in a widely published
16-minute
interview last Friday.
In view of the highly politicized environment surrounding these issues, I believe I must
append here the same notice that VIPS felt compelled to add to our key Memorandum of July 24,
2017:
"Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in
the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we
add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political
agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our
former intelligence colleagues.
"We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say
and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." The fact we find it
is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Savior in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer before serving as
a CIA analyst for 27 years. His duties included preparing, and briefing one-on-one, the
President's Daily Brief.
ThomasGilroy , June 9, 2018 at 9:44 am
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic
attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in
Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of
choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies.
MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to
blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the
supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US
allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not
capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of
the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during
the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis
could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth
Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted
by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers.
The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the
CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. It must be the Gulf of Tonkin all
over again. While Crowdstrike might have a "dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest", their results were also confirmed by several other cyber-security
firms (Wikipedia):
cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant,
SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica, have rejected the claims of
"Guccifer 2.0" and have determined, on the basis of substantial evidence, that the
cyberattacks were committed by two Russian state-sponsored groups (Cozy Bear and Fancy
Bear).
Then there was Papadopoulas who coincidentally was given the information that Russia had
"dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Obviously, they were illegally
obtained (unless this was another CIA false flag operation). This was before the release of
the emails by WikiLeaks. This was followed by the Trump Tower meeting with Russians with
connections to the Russian government and the release of the emails by WikiLeaks shortly
thereafter. Additionally, Russia had the motive to defeat HRC and elect Trump. Yesterday,
Trump pushed for the reinstatement of Russia at the G-7 summit. What a shock! All known
evidence and motive points the finger directly at Russia.
Calling everything a false flag operation is really the easy way out, but ultimately, it
lets the responsible culprits off of the hook.
anon , June 9, 2018 at 11:28 am
I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed
out" propaganda.
One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not.
No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin
supply."
CitizenOne , June 8, 2018 at 11:40 pm
There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence
agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false
flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false
flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible
to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths.
In pre computer technology days there were also many false flags which were set up to
create real world scenarios which suited the geopolitical agenda. Even today, there are many
examples of tactical false flag operations either organized and orchestrated or utilized by
the intelligence agencies to create the narrative which supports geopolitical objectives.
Examples:
The US loaded munitions in broad daylight visible to German spies onto the passenger ship
Lusitania despite German warnings that they would torpedo any vessels suspected of carrying
munitions. The Lusitania then proceeded to loiter unaccompanied by escorts in an area off the
Ireland coast treading over the same waters until it was spotted by a German U-Boat and was
torpedoed. This was not exactly a false flag since the German U-Boat pulled the trigger but
it was required to gain public support for the entrance of the US into WWI. It worked.
There is evidence that the US was deliberately caught "off guard" in the Pearl Harbor
Attack. Numerous coded communication intercepts were made but somehow the advanced warning
radar on the island of Hawaii was mysteriously turned off in the hours before and during the
Japanese attack which guaranteed that the attack would be successful and also guaranteed that
our population would instantly sign on to the war against Japan. It worked.
There is evidence that the US deliberately ignored the intelligence reports that UBL was
planning to conduct an attack on the US using planes as bombs. The terrorists who carried out
the attacks on the twin towers were "allowed" to conduct them. The result was the war in Iraq
which was sold based on a pack of lies about WMDs and which we used to go to war with
Iraq.
The Tonkin Gulf incident which historians doubt actually happened or believe if it did was
greatly exaggerated by intelligence and military sources was used to justify the war in
Vietnam.
The Spanish American War was ginned up by William Randolph Hearst and his yellow
journalism empire to justify attacking Cuba, Panama and the Philippines. The facts revealed
by forensic analysis of the exploded USS Maine have shown that the cataclysm was caused by a
boiler explosion not an enemy mine. At the time this was also widely believed to not be
caused by a Spanish mine in the harbor but the news sold the story of Spanish treachery and
war was waged.
In each case of physical false flags created on purpose, or allowed to happen or just made
up by fictions based on useful information that could be manipulated and distorted the US was
led to war. Some of these wars were just wars and others were wars of choice but in every
case a false flag was needed to bring the nation into a state where we believed we were under
attack and under the circumstances flocked to war. I will not be the judge of history or
justice here since each of these events had both negative and positive consequences for our
nation. What I will state is that it is obvious that the willingness to allow or create or
just capitalize on the events which have led to war are an essential ingredient. Without a
publicly perceived and publicly supported cause for war there can be no widespread support
for war. I can also say our leaders have always known this.
Enter the age of technology and the computer age with the electronic contraptions which
enable global communication and commerce.
Is it such a stretch to imagine that the governments desire to shape world events based on
military actions would result in a plan to use these modern technologies to once again create
in our minds a cyber scenario in which we are once again as a result of the "cyber" false
flag prepared for us to go to war? Would it be too much of a stretch to imagine that the
government would use the new electronic frontier just as it used the old physical world
events to justify military action?
Again, I will not go on to condemn any action by our military but will focus on how did we
get there and how did we arrive at a place where a majority favored war.
Whether created by physical or cyberspace methods we can conclude that such false flags
will happen for better or worse in any medium available.
susan sunflower , June 8, 2018 at 7:52 pm
I'd like "evidence" and I'd also like "context" since apparently international electoral
"highjinks" and monkey-wrenching and rat-f*cking have a long tradition and history (before
anyone draws a weapon, kills a candidate or sicc's death squads on the citizenry.
The DNC e-mail publication "theft" I suspect represents very small small potatoes for so
many reasons As Dixon at Black Agenda Report put it . Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism
writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked"
to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another
(FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund
marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy
targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is
able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and
printed.
Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as
source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal
State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden.
Skip Scott , June 8, 2018 at 1:07 pm
I can't think of any single piece of evidence that our MSM is under the very strict
control of our so-called intelligence agencies than how fast and completely the Vault 7
releases got flushed down the memory hole. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."
I don't think anyone can predict whether or not Sanders would have won as a 3rd party
candidate. He ran a remarkable campaign, but when he caved to the Clinton machine he lost a
lot of supporters, including me. If he had stood up at the convention and talked of the DNC
skullduggery exposed by Wikileaks, and said "either I run as a democrat, or I run as a Green,
but I'm running", he would have at least gotten 15 pct to make the TV debates, and who knows
what could have happened after that. 40 pct of registered voters didn't vote. That alone
tells you it is possible he might have won.
Instead he expected us to follow him like he was the f'ing Pied Piper to elect another
Wall St. loving warmonger. That's why he gets no "pass" from me. He (and the Queen of Chaos)
gave us Trump. BTW, Obama doesn't get a "pass" either.
willow , June 8, 2018 at 9:24 pm
It's all about the money. A big motive for the DNC to conjure up Russia-gate was to keep
donors from abandoning any future
Good Ship Hillary or other Blue Dog Democrat campaigns: "Our brand/platform wasn't flawed. It
was the Rooskies."
Vivian O'Blivion , June 8, 2018 at 8:22 am
An earlier time line.
March 14th. Popadopoulos has first encounter with Mifsud.
April 26th. Mifsud tells Popadopoulos that Russians have "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of e-mails".
May 4th. Trump last man standing in Republican primary.
May 10th. Popadopoulos gets drunk with London based Australian diplomat and talks about "dirt" but not specifically
e-mails.
June 9th. Don. Jr meets in Trump tower with Russians promising "dirt" but not specifically in form of e-mails.
It all comes down to who Mifsud is, who he is working for and why he has been "off grid" to journalists (but not presumably
Intelligence services) for > 6 months.
Specific points.
On March 14th Popadopoulos knew he was transferring from team Carson to team Trump but this was not announced to the
(presumably underwhelmed) world 'till March 21st. Whoever put Mifsud onto Popadopoulos was very quick on their feet.
The Australian diplomat broke chain of command by reporting the drunken conversation to the State Department as opposed to his
domestic Intelligence service. If Mifsud was a western asset, Australian Intelligence would likely be aware of his status.
If Mifsud was a Russian asset why would demonstrably genuine Russians be trying to dish up the dirt on Clinton in June?
There are missing pieces to this jigsaw puzzle but it's starting to look like a deep state operation to dirty Trump in the
unlikely event that he went on to win.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:28 pm
Ms. Clinton was personally trying to tar Trump with allusions to "Russia" and being
"Putin's puppet" long before he won the presidency, in fact, quite conspicuously during the
two conventions and most pointedly during the debates. She was willing to use that ruse long
before her defeat at the ballot box. It was the straw that she clung to and was willing to
use as a pretext for overturning the election after the unthinkable happened. But, you are
right, smearing Trump through association with Russia was part of her long game going back to
the early primaries, especially since her forces (both in politics and in the media) were
trying mightily to get him the nomination under the assumption that he would be the easiest
(more like the only) Republican candidate that she could defeat come November.
Wcb , June 8, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Steven Halper?
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:33 am
I might add to this informative article that the reason why Julian Assange has been
ostracized and isolated from any public appearance, denied a cell phone, internet and
visitors is that he tells the truth, and TPTB don't want him to say yet again that the emails
were leaked from the DNC. I've heard him say it several times. H. Clinton was so shocked and
angry that she didn't become president as she so confidently expected that her, almost
knee-jerk, reaction was to find a reason that was outside of herself on which to blame her
defeat. It's always surprised me that no one talks about what was in those emails which
covered her plans for Iran and Russia (disgusting).
Trump is a sociopath, but the Russians had nothing to do with him becoming elected. I was
please to read here that he or perhaps just Pompeo? met with Binney. That's a good thing,
though Pompeo, too, is unstable and war hungry to follow Israel into bombing yet another
innocent sovereign country. Thank, Mr. McGovern for another excellent coverage of this
story.
MLS , June 7, 2018 at 9:59 pm
"no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team"
Do tell, Ray: How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's investigation –
with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks – has and has not
done?
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:14 am
MLS: Thank you! No one stands up for what is right any more. We have 17 Intelligency
agencies that say are election was stolen. And just last week the Republicans Paul Ryan,
Mitch McConnel and Trey Gowdy (who I detest) said the FBI and CIA and NSA were just doing
there jobs the way ALL AMERICANS woudl want them to. And even Adam Schiff, do you think he
will tell any reporter what evidence he does have? #1 It is probably classified and #2 he is
probably saving it for the inpeachment. We did not find out about the Nixon missing 18
minutes until the end anyways. All of these articles sound like the writer just copied Sean
Hannity and wrote everything down he said, and yesterday he told all suspects in the Mueller
investigation to Smash and Bleach there mobile devices, witch is OBSTRUCTION of justice and
witness TAMPERING. A great American there!
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:48 am
strgr-tgther:
Sean Hannity??? Ha, ha, ha.
As Mr. McGoven wrote .."any resemblance between what we say and what presidents,
politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental."
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:48 am
Sorry I had to come back and point out the ultimate irony of ANYONE who supports the
Butcher of Libya complaining about having an election stolen from them (after the blatant
rigging of the primary that caused her to take the nomination away from the ONE PERSON who
was polling ahead of Trump beyond the margin of error of the polls.)
It is people like you who gave us Trump. The Pied Piper Candidate promoted by the DNC
machine (as the emails that were LEAKED, not "hacked", as the metadata proves conclusively,
show.)
incontinent reader , June 8, 2018 at 7:14 am
What is this baloney? Seventeen Intelligence agencies DID NOT conclude what you are
alleging, And in fact, Brennan and his cabal avoided using a National intelligence Estimate,
which would have shot down his cherry-picked 'assessment' before it got off the ground
– and it would have been published for all to read.
The NSA has everything on everybody, yet has never released anything remotely indicating
Russian collusion. Do you think the NSA Director, who, as you may recall, did not give a
strong endorsement to the Brennan-Comey assessment, would have held back from the Congress
such information, if it had existed, when he was questioned? Furthermore, former technical
directors of the NSA, Binney, Wiebe and Loomis- the very best of the best- have proven
through forensics that the Wikileaks disclosures were not obtained by hacking the DNC
computers, but by a leak, most likely to a thumb drive on the East Coast of the U.S. How many
times does it have to be laid out for you before you are willing and able to absorb the
facts?
As for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, (and Trey Gowdy, who was quite skilled on the
Benghazi and the Clinton private email server investigations- investigations during which
Schiff ran interference for Clinton- but has seemed unwilling to digest the Strozk, Page,
McCabe, et al emails and demand a Bureau housecleaning), who cares what they think or say,
what matters is the evidence.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with the facts- and start by rereading Ray's articles,
and the piece by Joe diGenova posted on Ray's website.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:12 pm
The guy's got Schiff for brains. Everyone who cares about the truth has known since before
Mueller started his charade that the "17 intelligence agency" claim was entirely a ruse,
bald-faced confected propaganda to anger the public to support the coup attempted by Ms.
Clinton and her zombie followers. People are NOT going to support the Democratic party now or
in the future when its tactics include subverting our public institutions, including the
electoral process under the constitution–whether you like the results or not! If the
Democratic party is to be saved, those honest people still in it should endeavor to drain the
septic tank that has become their party before we can all drain the swamp that is the federal
government and its ex-officio manipulators (otherwise known as the "deep state") in
Washington.
Farmer Pete , June 8, 2018 at 7:30 am
"We have 17 Intelligency agencies that say are election was stolen."
You opened up with a talking point that is factually incorrect. The team of hand-picked
spooks that slapped the "high confidence" report together came from 3 agencies. I know, 17
sounds like a lot and very convincing to us peasants. Regardless, it's important to practice
a few ounces of skepticism when it comes to institutions with a long rap sheet of crime and
deception. Taking their word for it as a substitute for actual observable evidence is naive
to say the least. The rest of your hollow argument is filled with "probably(s)". If I were
you, I'd turn off my TV and stop looking for scapegoats for an epically horrible presidential
campaign and candidate.
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:50 pm
/horrible presidential campaign and candidate/ Say you. But we all went to sleep
comfortable the night before the election where 97% of all poles said Clinton was going to be
are next President. And that did not happen! So Robert Mueller is going to find out EXACTLY
why. Stay tuned!!!
irina , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Not 'all'. I knew she was toast after reading that she had cancelled her election night
fireworks
celebration, early on the morning of Election Day. She must have known it also, too.
And she was toast in my mind after seeing the ridiculous scene of her virtual image
'breaking the glass ceiling' during the Democratic Convention. So expensively stupid.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:50 pm
Mueller is simply orchestrating a dramatic charade to distract you from the obvious reason
why she lost: Trump garnered more electoral votes, even after the popular votes were counted
and recounted. Any evidence of ballot box stuffing in the key states pointed to the
Democrats, so they gave that up. She and her supporters like you have never stopped trying to
hoodwink the public either before or after the election. Too many voters were on to you,
that's why she lost.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Indeed, stop the nonsense which can't be changed short of a coup d'etat, and start
focusing on opposing the bad policy which this administration has been pursuing. I don't see
the Dems doing that even in their incipient campaigns leading up to the November elections.
Fact is, they are not inclined to change the policies, which are the same ones that got them
"shellacked" at the ballot box in 2016. (I think Obama must own lots of stock in the shellack
trade.)
Curious , June 8, 2018 at 6:27 pm
Ignorance of th facts keep showing up in your posts for some unknown reason. Sentence two:
"we have 17 intelligency (sic) agencies that say ". this statement was debunked a long time
ago.
Have you learned nothing yet regarding the hand-picked people out of three agencies after all
this time? Given that set of lies it makes your post impossible to read.
I would suggest a review of what really happened before you perpetuate more myths and this
will benefit all.
Also, a good reading of the Snowden Docs and vault 7 should scare you out of your shell since
our "intelligeny" community can pretend to be Chinese, Russian, Iranian just for starters,
and the blame game can start after hours instead of the needed weeks and/or months to
determine the veracity of a hack and/or leak.
It's past trying to win you over with the actual 'time lines' and truths. Mr McGovern has
re-emphasized in this article the very things you should be reading.
Start with Mr Binney and his technical evaluation of the forensics in the DNC docs and build
out from there This is just a suggestion.
What never ceases to amaze me in your posts is the 'issue' that many of the docs were
bought and paid for by the Clinton team, and yet amnesia has taken over those aspects as
well. Shouldn't you start with the Clintons paying for this dirt before it was ever
attributed to Trump?
Daniel , June 8, 2018 at 6:38 pm
Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on
their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their
"investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry
picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again.
More than 1/2 of their report was about RT, and even though that was all easily viewable
public record, they got huge claims wrong. Basically, the best they had was that RT covered
Occupy Wall Street and the NO DAPL and BLM protests, and horror of horrors, aired third party
debates! In a democracy! How dare they?
Why didn't FBI subpoena DNC's servers so they could run their own forensics on them? Why
did they just accept the claims of a private company founded by an Atlantic Council board
member? Did you know that CrowdStrike had to backpedal on the exact same claim they made
about the DNC server when Ukraine showed they were completely wrong regarding Ukie
artillery?
Joe Lauria , June 8, 2018 at 2:12 am
Until he went incommunicado Assange stated on several occasions that he was never
questioned by Muellers team. Craig Murray has said the same. And Kim Dotcom has written to
Mueller offering evidence about the source and he says they have never replied to him.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to
divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the
truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's
activities are a complete sham.
MLS wrote, "How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's
investigation – with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks
– has and has not done?"
Robert Mueller is NOT a Special Prosecutor appointed by the Congress. He is a special
counsel appointed by the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and is part of the
Department of Justice.
I know no one who dislikes Trumps wants to hear it. But all Mueller's authority and power
to act is derived from Donald J. Trump's executive authority because he won the 2016
presidential election. Mueller is down the chain of command in the Executive Department.
That's why this is all nonsense. What we basically have is Trump investigating himself.
The framers of the Constitution never intended this. They intended Congress to investigate
the Executive and that's why they gave Congress the power to remove him or her via
impeachment.
As long as we continue with this folly of expecting the Justice Department to somehow
investigate and prosecute a president we end up with two terrible possibilities. Either a
corrupt president will exercise his legitimate authority to end the investigation like Nixon
did -or- we have a Deep State beyond the reach of the elected president that can effectively
investigate and prosecute a corrupt president, but also then has other powers with no
democratic control.
The solution to this dilemma? An empowered Congress elected by the People operating as the
Constitution intended.
As to the rest of your post? It is an example of the "will to believe." Me? I'll not act
as if there is evidence of Russian interference until I'm shown evidence, not act as if it
must be true, because I want to believe that, until it's fully proven that it didn't
happen.
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 8:22 pm
There must be some Trump-Russia ties.
Or so claim those CIA spies-
McCabe wants a deal, or else he won't squeal,
He'll dissemble when he testifies!
No one knows what's on Huma's computer.
There's no jury and no prosecutor.
Poor Adam Schiff hopes McCabe takes the fifth,
Special council might someday recruit her!
Assange is still embassy bound.
Mueller's case hasn't quite come unwound.
Wayne Madsen implies that there might be some ties,
To Israelis they haven't yet found!
Halper and Mifsud are players.
John Brennan used cutouts in layers.
If the scheme falls apart and the bureau is smart,
They'll go after them all as betrayers!
They needed historical fiction.
A dossier with salacious depiction!
Some urinous whores could get down on all fours,
They'd accomplish some bed sheet emiction!
Pablo Miller and Skripal were cited.
Sidney Blumenthal might have been slighted.
Christopher Steele offered Sidney a deal,
But the dossier's not copyrighted!
That story about Novichok,
Smells a lot like a very large crock.
But they can't be deposed or the story disclosed,
The Skripals have toxic brain block!
Papadopolis shot off his yap.
He told Downer, that affable chap-
There was dirt to report on the Clinton cohort,
Mifsud hooked him with that honey trap!
She was blond and a bombshell to boot.
Papadopolis thought she was cute.
She worked for Mifsud, a mysterious dude,
Now poor Paps is in grave disrepute!
But the trick was to tie it to Russians.
The Clinton team had some discussions.
Their big email scandal was easy to handle,
They'd blame Vlad for the bad repercussions!
There must have been Russian collusion.
That explained all the vote count confusion.
Guccifer Two made the Trump team come through,
If he won, it was just an illusion!
Lisa Page and Pete Strzok were disgusted
They schemed and they plotted and lusted.
If bald-headed Clapper appealed to Jake Tapper,
Brennan's Tweets might get Donald Trump busted!
There had to be cyber subversion.
It would serve as the perfect perversion.
They would claim it was missed if it didn't exist,
It's a logically perfect diversion!
F.G., you've done it again, and I might add, topped even yourself! Thanks.
KiwiAntz , June 7, 2018 at 7:30 pm
What a joke, America, the most dishonest Country on Earth, has meddled, murdered &
committed coups to overturn other Govts & interfered & continues to do so in just
about every Country on Earth by using Trade sanctions, arming Terrorists & illegal
invasions, has the barefaced cheek to puff out its chest & hypocritcally blame Russia for
something that it does on a daily basis?? And the point with Mueller's investigation is not
to find any Russian collusion evidence, who needs evidence when you can just make it up? The
point is provide the US with a list of unfounded lies & excuses, FIRSTLY to slander &
demonise RUSSIA for something they clearly didn't do! SECONDLY, was to provide a excuse for
the Democrats dismal election loss result to the DONALD & his Trump Party which just
happens to contain some Republicans? THIRDLY, to conduct a soft Coup by trying to get Trump
impeached on "TRUMPED UP CHARGES OF RUSSIAN COLLUSION"? And FOURTLY to divert attention away
from scrutiny & cover up Obama & Hillary Clinton's illegal, money grubbing activities
& her treasonous behaviour with her private email server?? After two years of Russiagate
nonsense with NOTHING to show for it, I think it's about time America owes Russia a public
apology & compensation for its blatant lying & slander of a innocent Country for a
crime they never committed?
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 7:11 pm
Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely
cause of the Russiagate scams.
I am sure that they manipulate the digital voting machines directly and indirectly. True
elections are now impossible.
Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any
resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely
coincidental."
Antiwar7 , June 7, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Expecting the evil people running the show to respond to reason is futile, of course. All
of these reports are really addressed to the peanut gallery, where true power lies, if only
they could realize it.
Thanks, Ray and VIPS, for keeping up the good fight.
mike k , June 7, 2018 at 5:55 pm
For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which
pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering
a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic
conspiracy.
And BTW people have become shy about using the word conspiracy, for fear it will
automatically brand one as a hoaxer. On the contrary, conspiracies are extremely common, the
higher one climbs in the power hierarchy. Like monopolies, conspiracies are central to the
way the oligarchs do business.
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:42 am
Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in
knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is
involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB
drive, it is not a known.
There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that
the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth
Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being
done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated
reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings.
" whether or not"?!! Wow. That's an imperialistic statement.
Drew Hunkins , June 7, 2018 at 5:50 pm
Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic
charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and
Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the
mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by
Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was
the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable
DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his
crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they
even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?
So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to
their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was arguably in bed with the Winter Hill
Gang!
jose , June 7, 2018 at 5:13 pm
If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They
know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The
Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars.
Jeff , June 7, 2018 at 4:35 pm
Thanx, Ray. The sad news is that everybody now believes that Russia tried to "meddle" in
our election and, since it's a belief, neither facts nor reality will dislodge it. Your
disclaimer should also probably carry the warning – never believe a word a government
official says especially if they are in the CIA, NSA, or FBI unless they provide proof. If
they tell you that it's classified, that they can't divulge it, or anything of that sort, you
know they are lying.
john wilson , June 7, 2018 at 4:09 pm
I suspect the real reason no evidence has been produced is because there isn't any. I know
this is stating the obvious, but if you think about it, as long as the non extent evidence is
supposedly being "investigated" the story remains alive. They know they aren't going to find
anything even remotely plausible that would stand up to any kind of scrutiny, but as long as
they are looking, it has the appearance that there might be something.
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 4:08 pm
I first want to thank Ray and the VIPS for their continuing to follow through on this
Russia-Gate story. And it is a story.
My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After
all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart
Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not
be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for
justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved
in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody?
Now we have Sean Hannity making a strong case against the Clinton's and the FBI's careful
handling of their crimes. What seems out of place, since this should be big news, is that CNN
nor MSNBC seems to be covering this story in the same way Hannity is. I mean isn't this news,
meant to be reported as news? Why avoid reporting on Hillary in such a manner? This must be
that 'fake news' they all talk about boy am I smart.
In the end I have decided to be merely an observer, because there are no good guys or gals
in our nation's capital worth believing. In the end even Hannity's version of what took place
leads back to a guilty Russia. So, the way I see it, the swamp is being drained only to make
more room for more, and new swamp creatures to emerge. Talk about spinning our wheels. When
will good people arrive to finally once and for all drain this freaking swamp, once and for
all?
Realist , June 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Ha, ha! Don't you enjoy the magic show being put on by the insiders desperately trying to
hang onto their power even after being voted out of office? Their attempt to distract your
attention from reality whilst feeding you their false illusions is worthy of Penn &
Teller, or David Copperfield (the magician). Who ya gonna believe? Them or your lying
eyes?
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 10:00 pm
Realist, You can bet they will investigate everything but what needs investigated, as our
Politico class devolves into survivalist in fighting, the mechanism of war goes
uninterrupted. Joe
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 5:34 pm
Joe, speaking of draining the swamp, check out my comment under Ray's June 1 article about
Freddy Fleitz!
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 6:59 pm
That is just what I was reminded of; here is an antiseptic but less emphatic last
line:
"Swamp draining progresses apace.
It's being accomplished with grace:
They're taking great pains to clean out the drains,"
New swamp creatures will need all that space!
Unfettered Fire , June 8, 2018 at 11:00 am
We must realize that to them, "the Swamp" refers to those in office who still abide by New
Deal policy. Despite the thoroughly discredited neoliberal economic policy, the radical right
are driving the world in the libertarian direction of privatization, austerity, private bank
control of money creation, dismantling the nation-state, contempt for the Constitution,
etc.
"... That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say. ..."
"... The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack. ..."
"... "No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.] ..."
"... "Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has never been mentioned since . ..."
"... "More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi." ..."
"... The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [ President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017 VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary straightforwardness. ] ..."
"... Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies. MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers. ..."
"... The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. ..."
"... I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed out" propaganda. One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not. No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply." ..."
"... There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths. ..."
"... Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked" to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another ..."
"... (FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and printed. ..."
"... Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden. ..."
"... Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their "investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again. ..."
"... Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's activities are a complete sham. ..."
"... Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely cause of the Russiagate scams. ..."
"... Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." ..."
"... For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic conspiracy. ..."
"... Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB drive, it is not a known. ..."
"... There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings. ..."
"... Don't forget this Twitter post by Wikileaks on October 30, 2016: Podesta: "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it." https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36082#efmAGSAH- ..."
"... Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face? ..."
"... If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars. ..."
"... My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody? ..."
If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked
into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand
close scrutiny . It
could also be because special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have never bothered to
investigate what was once the central alleged crime in Russia-gate as no one associated with
WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity -- including two "alumni" who were former
National Security Agency technical directors -- have long since concluded that Julian Assange
did not acquire what he called the "emails related to Hillary Clinton" via a "hack" by the
Russians or anyone else. They found, rather, that he got them from someone with physical access
to Democratic National Committee computers who copied the material onto an external storage
device -- probably a thumb drive. In December 2016 VIPS explained
this in some detail in an open Memorandum to President Barack Obama.
On January 18, 2017 President Obama admitted
that the "conclusions" of U.S. intelligence regarding how the alleged Russian hacking got to
WikiLeaks were "inconclusive." Even the vapid FBI/CIA/NSA "Intelligence Community Assessment of
Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections" of January 6, 2017, which tried to
blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for election interference, contained
no direct evidence of Russian involvement. That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of
that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian
intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to
WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say.
Never mind. The FBI/CIA/NSA "assessment" became bible truth for partisans like Rep. Adam Schiff
(D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who was among the first off the
blocks to blame Russia for interfering to help Trump. It simply could not have been that
Hillary Clinton was quite capable of snatching defeat out of victory all by herself. No, it had
to have been the Russians.
Five days into the Trump presidency, I had a chance to
challenge Schiff personally on the gaping disconnect between the Russians and WikiLeaks.
Schiff still "can't share the evidence" with me or with anyone else, because it does not
exist.
WikiLeaks
It was on June 12, 2016, just six weeks before the Democratic National Convention, that
Assange announced the pending publication of "emails related to Hillary Clinton," throwing the
Clinton campaign into panic mode, since the emails would document strong bias in favor of
Clinton and successful attempts to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders. When the emails
were published on July 22, just three days before the convention began, the campaign decided to
create what I call a Magnificent Diversion, drawing attention away from the substance of the
emails by blaming Russia for their release.
Clinton's PR chief Jennifer Palmieri later admitted that she golf-carted around to various
media outlets at the convention with instructions "to get the press to focus on something even
we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails
from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton." The
diversion worked like a charm. Mainstream media kept shouting "The Russians did it," and gave
little, if any, play to the DNC skullduggery revealed in the emails themselves. And like Brer'
Fox, Bernie didn't say nothin'.
Meanwhile, highly sophisticated technical experts, were hard at work fabricating "forensic
facts" to "prove" the Russians did it. Here's how it played out:
June 12, 2016: Assange announces that WikiLeaks is about to publish "emails related to
Hillary Clinton."
June 14, 2016: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there
is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the
"hack;" claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was
synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."
The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a
pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish
and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.
Enter Independent Investigators
A year ago independent cyber-investigators completed the kind of forensic work that, for
reasons best known to then-FBI Director James Comey, neither he nor the "handpicked analysts"
who wrote the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment bothered to do. The independent investigators found
verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of an alleged Russian hack of July 5,
2016 showing that the "hack" that day of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or
anyone else.
Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example) by an insider -- the same process used by the DNC insider/leaker before June 12, 2016
for an altogether different purpose. (Once the metadata was found and the "fluid dynamics"
principle of physics applied, this was not difficult to
disprove the validity of the claim that Russia was responsible.)
One of these independent investigators publishing under the name of The Forensicator on May
31
published new evidence that
the Guccifer 2.0 persona uploaded a document from the West Coast of the United States, and not
from Russia.
In our July 24, 2017 Memorandum to President Donald Trump we stated ,
"We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI."
Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be
related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this
general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA
documents that WikiLeaks labeled 'Vault 7.' WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or
former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the
information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.
"No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which
disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's
Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital
Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned
President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.]
Marbled
"Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it
race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described
and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part
3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too
delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has
never been mentioned since .
"The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, it seems, 'did not get the memo' in time. Her March
31
article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: 'WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA
cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.'
"The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use
'obfuscation,' and that Marble source code includes a "de-obfuscator" to reverse CIA text
obfuscation.
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution
double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian,
Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
A few weeks later William Binney, a former NSA technical, and I commented on
Vault 7 Marble, and were able to get a shortened op-ed version
published in The Baltimore Sun
The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was
neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his
associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a
non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24
Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like
it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we
know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and
with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [
President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017
VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together
at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary
straightforwardness. ]
We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin.
In his interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager
– to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7
disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today's
technology enables hacking to be 'masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can
understand the origin' [of the hack] And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or
any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.
"'Hackers may be anywhere,' he said. 'There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States
who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a
scenario? I can.'
New attention has been drawn to these issues after I discussed them in a widely published
16-minute
interview last Friday.
In view of the highly politicized environment surrounding these issues, I believe I must
append here the same notice that VIPS felt compelled to add to our key Memorandum of July 24,
2017:
"Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in
the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we
add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political
agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our
former intelligence colleagues.
"We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say
and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." The fact we find it
is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Savior in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer before serving as
a CIA analyst for 27 years. His duties included preparing, and briefing one-on-one, the
President's Daily Brief.
ThomasGilroy , June 9, 2018 at 9:44 am
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic
attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in
Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of
choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies.
MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to
blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the
supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US
allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not
capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of
the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during
the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis
could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth
Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted
by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers.
The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the
CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. It must be the Gulf of Tonkin all
over again. While Crowdstrike might have a "dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest", their results were also confirmed by several other cyber-security
firms (Wikipedia):
cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant,
SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica, have rejected the claims of
"Guccifer 2.0" and have determined, on the basis of substantial evidence, that the
cyberattacks were committed by two Russian state-sponsored groups (Cozy Bear and Fancy
Bear).
Then there was Papadopoulas who coincidentally was given the information that Russia had
"dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Obviously, they were illegally
obtained (unless this was another CIA false flag operation). This was before the release of
the emails by WikiLeaks. This was followed by the Trump Tower meeting with Russians with
connections to the Russian government and the release of the emails by WikiLeaks shortly
thereafter. Additionally, Russia had the motive to defeat HRC and elect Trump. Yesterday,
Trump pushed for the reinstatement of Russia at the G-7 summit. What a shock! All known
evidence and motive points the finger directly at Russia.
Calling everything a false flag operation is really the easy way out, but ultimately, it
lets the responsible culprits off of the hook.
anon , June 9, 2018 at 11:28 am
I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed
out" propaganda.
One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not.
No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin
supply."
CitizenOne , June 8, 2018 at 11:40 pm
There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence
agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false
flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false
flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible
to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths.
In pre computer technology days there were also many false flags which were set up to
create real world scenarios which suited the geopolitical agenda. Even today, there are many
examples of tactical false flag operations either organized and orchestrated or utilized by
the intelligence agencies to create the narrative which supports geopolitical objectives.
Examples:
The US loaded munitions in broad daylight visible to German spies onto the passenger ship
Lusitania despite German warnings that they would torpedo any vessels suspected of carrying
munitions. The Lusitania then proceeded to loiter unaccompanied by escorts in an area off the
Ireland coast treading over the same waters until it was spotted by a German U-Boat and was
torpedoed. This was not exactly a false flag since the German U-Boat pulled the trigger but
it was required to gain public support for the entrance of the US into WWI. It worked.
There is evidence that the US was deliberately caught "off guard" in the Pearl Harbor
Attack. Numerous coded communication intercepts were made but somehow the advanced warning
radar on the island of Hawaii was mysteriously turned off in the hours before and during the
Japanese attack which guaranteed that the attack would be successful and also guaranteed that
our population would instantly sign on to the war against Japan. It worked.
There is evidence that the US deliberately ignored the intelligence reports that UBL was
planning to conduct an attack on the US using planes as bombs. The terrorists who carried out
the attacks on the twin towers were "allowed" to conduct them. The result was the war in Iraq
which was sold based on a pack of lies about WMDs and which we used to go to war with
Iraq.
The Tonkin Gulf incident which historians doubt actually happened or believe if it did was
greatly exaggerated by intelligence and military sources was used to justify the war in
Vietnam.
The Spanish American War was ginned up by William Randolph Hearst and his yellow
journalism empire to justify attacking Cuba, Panama and the Philippines. The facts revealed
by forensic analysis of the exploded USS Maine have shown that the cataclysm was caused by a
boiler explosion not an enemy mine. At the time this was also widely believed to not be
caused by a Spanish mine in the harbor but the news sold the story of Spanish treachery and
war was waged.
In each case of physical false flags created on purpose, or allowed to happen or just made
up by fictions based on useful information that could be manipulated and distorted the US was
led to war. Some of these wars were just wars and others were wars of choice but in every
case a false flag was needed to bring the nation into a state where we believed we were under
attack and under the circumstances flocked to war. I will not be the judge of history or
justice here since each of these events had both negative and positive consequences for our
nation. What I will state is that it is obvious that the willingness to allow or create or
just capitalize on the events which have led to war are an essential ingredient. Without a
publicly perceived and publicly supported cause for war there can be no widespread support
for war. I can also say our leaders have always known this.
Enter the age of technology and the computer age with the electronic contraptions which
enable global communication and commerce.
Is it such a stretch to imagine that the governments desire to shape world events based on
military actions would result in a plan to use these modern technologies to once again create
in our minds a cyber scenario in which we are once again as a result of the "cyber" false
flag prepared for us to go to war? Would it be too much of a stretch to imagine that the
government would use the new electronic frontier just as it used the old physical world
events to justify military action?
Again, I will not go on to condemn any action by our military but will focus on how did we
get there and how did we arrive at a place where a majority favored war.
Whether created by physical or cyberspace methods we can conclude that such false flags
will happen for better or worse in any medium available.
susan sunflower , June 8, 2018 at 7:52 pm
I'd like "evidence" and I'd also like "context" since apparently international electoral
"highjinks" and monkey-wrenching and rat-f*cking have a long tradition and history (before
anyone draws a weapon, kills a candidate or sicc's death squads on the citizenry.
The DNC e-mail publication "theft" I suspect represents very small small potatoes for so
many reasons As Dixon at Black Agenda Report put it . Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism
writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked"
to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another
(FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund
marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy
targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is
able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and
printed.
Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as
source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal
State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden.
Skip Scott , June 8, 2018 at 1:07 pm
I can't think of any single piece of evidence that our MSM is under the very strict
control of our so-called intelligence agencies than how fast and completely the Vault 7
releases got flushed down the memory hole. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."
I don't think anyone can predict whether or not Sanders would have won as a 3rd party
candidate. He ran a remarkable campaign, but when he caved to the Clinton machine he lost a
lot of supporters, including me. If he had stood up at the convention and talked of the DNC
skullduggery exposed by Wikileaks, and said "either I run as a democrat, or I run as a Green,
but I'm running", he would have at least gotten 15 pct to make the TV debates, and who knows
what could have happened after that. 40 pct of registered voters didn't vote. That alone
tells you it is possible he might have won.
Instead he expected us to follow him like he was the f'ing Pied Piper to elect another
Wall St. loving warmonger. That's why he gets no "pass" from me. He (and the Queen of Chaos)
gave us Trump. BTW, Obama doesn't get a "pass" either.
willow , June 8, 2018 at 9:24 pm
It's all about the money. A big motive for the DNC to conjure up Russia-gate was to keep
donors from abandoning any future
Good Ship Hillary or other Blue Dog Democrat campaigns: "Our brand/platform wasn't flawed. It
was the Rooskies."
Vivian O'Blivion , June 8, 2018 at 8:22 am
An earlier time line.
March 14th. Popadopoulos has first encounter with Mifsud.
April 26th. Mifsud tells Popadopoulos that Russians have "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of e-mails".
May 4th. Trump last man standing in Republican primary.
May 10th. Popadopoulos gets drunk with London based Australian diplomat and talks about "dirt" but not specifically
e-mails.
June 9th. Don. Jr meets in Trump tower with Russians promising "dirt" but not specifically in form of e-mails.
It all comes down to who Mifsud is, who he is working for and why he has been "off grid" to journalists (but not presumably
Intelligence services) for > 6 months.
Specific points.
On March 14th Popadopoulos knew he was transferring from team Carson to team Trump but this was not announced to the
(presumably underwhelmed) world 'till March 21st. Whoever put Mifsud onto Popadopoulos was very quick on their feet.
The Australian diplomat broke chain of command by reporting the drunken conversation to the State Department as opposed to his
domestic Intelligence service. If Mifsud was a western asset, Australian Intelligence would likely be aware of his status.
If Mifsud was a Russian asset why would demonstrably genuine Russians be trying to dish up the dirt on Clinton in June?
There are missing pieces to this jigsaw puzzle but it's starting to look like a deep state operation to dirty Trump in the
unlikely event that he went on to win.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:28 pm
Ms. Clinton was personally trying to tar Trump with allusions to "Russia" and being
"Putin's puppet" long before he won the presidency, in fact, quite conspicuously during the
two conventions and most pointedly during the debates. She was willing to use that ruse long
before her defeat at the ballot box. It was the straw that she clung to and was willing to
use as a pretext for overturning the election after the unthinkable happened. But, you are
right, smearing Trump through association with Russia was part of her long game going back to
the early primaries, especially since her forces (both in politics and in the media) were
trying mightily to get him the nomination under the assumption that he would be the easiest
(more like the only) Republican candidate that she could defeat come November.
Wcb , June 8, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Steven Halper?
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:33 am
I might add to this informative article that the reason why Julian Assange has been
ostracized and isolated from any public appearance, denied a cell phone, internet and
visitors is that he tells the truth, and TPTB don't want him to say yet again that the emails
were leaked from the DNC. I've heard him say it several times. H. Clinton was so shocked and
angry that she didn't become president as she so confidently expected that her, almost
knee-jerk, reaction was to find a reason that was outside of herself on which to blame her
defeat. It's always surprised me that no one talks about what was in those emails which
covered her plans for Iran and Russia (disgusting).
Trump is a sociopath, but the Russians had nothing to do with him becoming elected. I was
please to read here that he or perhaps just Pompeo? met with Binney. That's a good thing,
though Pompeo, too, is unstable and war hungry to follow Israel into bombing yet another
innocent sovereign country. Thank, Mr. McGovern for another excellent coverage of this
story.
MLS , June 7, 2018 at 9:59 pm
"no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team"
Do tell, Ray: How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's investigation –
with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks – has and has not
done?
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:14 am
MLS: Thank you! No one stands up for what is right any more. We have 17 Intelligency
agencies that say are election was stolen. And just last week the Republicans Paul Ryan,
Mitch McConnel and Trey Gowdy (who I detest) said the FBI and CIA and NSA were just doing
there jobs the way ALL AMERICANS woudl want them to. And even Adam Schiff, do you think he
will tell any reporter what evidence he does have? #1 It is probably classified and #2 he is
probably saving it for the inpeachment. We did not find out about the Nixon missing 18
minutes until the end anyways. All of these articles sound like the writer just copied Sean
Hannity and wrote everything down he said, and yesterday he told all suspects in the Mueller
investigation to Smash and Bleach there mobile devices, witch is OBSTRUCTION of justice and
witness TAMPERING. A great American there!
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:48 am
strgr-tgther:
Sean Hannity??? Ha, ha, ha.
As Mr. McGoven wrote .."any resemblance between what we say and what presidents,
politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental."
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:48 am
Sorry I had to come back and point out the ultimate irony of ANYONE who supports the
Butcher of Libya complaining about having an election stolen from them (after the blatant
rigging of the primary that caused her to take the nomination away from the ONE PERSON who
was polling ahead of Trump beyond the margin of error of the polls.)
It is people like you who gave us Trump. The Pied Piper Candidate promoted by the DNC
machine (as the emails that were LEAKED, not "hacked", as the metadata proves conclusively,
show.)
incontinent reader , June 8, 2018 at 7:14 am
What is this baloney? Seventeen Intelligence agencies DID NOT conclude what you are
alleging, And in fact, Brennan and his cabal avoided using a National intelligence Estimate,
which would have shot down his cherry-picked 'assessment' before it got off the ground
– and it would have been published for all to read.
The NSA has everything on everybody, yet has never released anything remotely indicating
Russian collusion. Do you think the NSA Director, who, as you may recall, did not give a
strong endorsement to the Brennan-Comey assessment, would have held back from the Congress
such information, if it had existed, when he was questioned? Furthermore, former technical
directors of the NSA, Binney, Wiebe and Loomis- the very best of the best- have proven
through forensics that the Wikileaks disclosures were not obtained by hacking the DNC
computers, but by a leak, most likely to a thumb drive on the East Coast of the U.S. How many
times does it have to be laid out for you before you are willing and able to absorb the
facts?
As for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, (and Trey Gowdy, who was quite skilled on the
Benghazi and the Clinton private email server investigations- investigations during which
Schiff ran interference for Clinton- but has seemed unwilling to digest the Strozk, Page,
McCabe, et al emails and demand a Bureau housecleaning), who cares what they think or say,
what matters is the evidence.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with the facts- and start by rereading Ray's articles,
and the piece by Joe diGenova posted on Ray's website.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:12 pm
The guy's got Schiff for brains. Everyone who cares about the truth has known since before
Mueller started his charade that the "17 intelligence agency" claim was entirely a ruse,
bald-faced confected propaganda to anger the public to support the coup attempted by Ms.
Clinton and her zombie followers. People are NOT going to support the Democratic party now or
in the future when its tactics include subverting our public institutions, including the
electoral process under the constitution–whether you like the results or not! If the
Democratic party is to be saved, those honest people still in it should endeavor to drain the
septic tank that has become their party before we can all drain the swamp that is the federal
government and its ex-officio manipulators (otherwise known as the "deep state") in
Washington.
Farmer Pete , June 8, 2018 at 7:30 am
"We have 17 Intelligency agencies that say are election was stolen."
You opened up with a talking point that is factually incorrect. The team of hand-picked
spooks that slapped the "high confidence" report together came from 3 agencies. I know, 17
sounds like a lot and very convincing to us peasants. Regardless, it's important to practice
a few ounces of skepticism when it comes to institutions with a long rap sheet of crime and
deception. Taking their word for it as a substitute for actual observable evidence is naive
to say the least. The rest of your hollow argument is filled with "probably(s)". If I were
you, I'd turn off my TV and stop looking for scapegoats for an epically horrible presidential
campaign and candidate.
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:50 pm
/horrible presidential campaign and candidate/ Say you. But we all went to sleep
comfortable the night before the election where 97% of all poles said Clinton was going to be
are next President. And that did not happen! So Robert Mueller is going to find out EXACTLY
why. Stay tuned!!!
irina , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Not 'all'. I knew she was toast after reading that she had cancelled her election night
fireworks
celebration, early on the morning of Election Day. She must have known it also, too.
And she was toast in my mind after seeing the ridiculous scene of her virtual image
'breaking the glass ceiling' during the Democratic Convention. So expensively stupid.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:50 pm
Mueller is simply orchestrating a dramatic charade to distract you from the obvious reason
why she lost: Trump garnered more electoral votes, even after the popular votes were counted
and recounted. Any evidence of ballot box stuffing in the key states pointed to the
Democrats, so they gave that up. She and her supporters like you have never stopped trying to
hoodwink the public either before or after the election. Too many voters were on to you,
that's why she lost.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Indeed, stop the nonsense which can't be changed short of a coup d'etat, and start
focusing on opposing the bad policy which this administration has been pursuing. I don't see
the Dems doing that even in their incipient campaigns leading up to the November elections.
Fact is, they are not inclined to change the policies, which are the same ones that got them
"shellacked" at the ballot box in 2016. (I think Obama must own lots of stock in the shellack
trade.)
Curious , June 8, 2018 at 6:27 pm
Ignorance of th facts keep showing up in your posts for some unknown reason. Sentence two:
"we have 17 intelligency (sic) agencies that say ". this statement was debunked a long time
ago.
Have you learned nothing yet regarding the hand-picked people out of three agencies after all
this time? Given that set of lies it makes your post impossible to read.
I would suggest a review of what really happened before you perpetuate more myths and this
will benefit all.
Also, a good reading of the Snowden Docs and vault 7 should scare you out of your shell since
our "intelligeny" community can pretend to be Chinese, Russian, Iranian just for starters,
and the blame game can start after hours instead of the needed weeks and/or months to
determine the veracity of a hack and/or leak.
It's past trying to win you over with the actual 'time lines' and truths. Mr McGovern has
re-emphasized in this article the very things you should be reading.
Start with Mr Binney and his technical evaluation of the forensics in the DNC docs and build
out from there This is just a suggestion.
What never ceases to amaze me in your posts is the 'issue' that many of the docs were
bought and paid for by the Clinton team, and yet amnesia has taken over those aspects as
well. Shouldn't you start with the Clintons paying for this dirt before it was ever
attributed to Trump?
Daniel , June 8, 2018 at 6:38 pm
Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on
their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their
"investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry
picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again.
More than 1/2 of their report was about RT, and even though that was all easily viewable
public record, they got huge claims wrong. Basically, the best they had was that RT covered
Occupy Wall Street and the NO DAPL and BLM protests, and horror of horrors, aired third party
debates! In a democracy! How dare they?
Why didn't FBI subpoena DNC's servers so they could run their own forensics on them? Why
did they just accept the claims of a private company founded by an Atlantic Council board
member? Did you know that CrowdStrike had to backpedal on the exact same claim they made
about the DNC server when Ukraine showed they were completely wrong regarding Ukie
artillery?
Joe Lauria , June 8, 2018 at 2:12 am
Until he went incommunicado Assange stated on several occasions that he was never
questioned by Muellers team. Craig Murray has said the same. And Kim Dotcom has written to
Mueller offering evidence about the source and he says they have never replied to him.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to
divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the
truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's
activities are a complete sham.
MLS wrote, "How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's
investigation – with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks
– has and has not done?"
Robert Mueller is NOT a Special Prosecutor appointed by the Congress. He is a special
counsel appointed by the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and is part of the
Department of Justice.
I know no one who dislikes Trumps wants to hear it. But all Mueller's authority and power
to act is derived from Donald J. Trump's executive authority because he won the 2016
presidential election. Mueller is down the chain of command in the Executive Department.
That's why this is all nonsense. What we basically have is Trump investigating himself.
The framers of the Constitution never intended this. They intended Congress to investigate
the Executive and that's why they gave Congress the power to remove him or her via
impeachment.
As long as we continue with this folly of expecting the Justice Department to somehow
investigate and prosecute a president we end up with two terrible possibilities. Either a
corrupt president will exercise his legitimate authority to end the investigation like Nixon
did -or- we have a Deep State beyond the reach of the elected president that can effectively
investigate and prosecute a corrupt president, but also then has other powers with no
democratic control.
The solution to this dilemma? An empowered Congress elected by the People operating as the
Constitution intended.
As to the rest of your post? It is an example of the "will to believe." Me? I'll not act
as if there is evidence of Russian interference until I'm shown evidence, not act as if it
must be true, because I want to believe that, until it's fully proven that it didn't
happen.
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 8:22 pm
There must be some Trump-Russia ties.
Or so claim those CIA spies-
McCabe wants a deal, or else he won't squeal,
He'll dissemble when he testifies!
No one knows what's on Huma's computer.
There's no jury and no prosecutor.
Poor Adam Schiff hopes McCabe takes the fifth,
Special council might someday recruit her!
Assange is still embassy bound.
Mueller's case hasn't quite come unwound.
Wayne Madsen implies that there might be some ties,
To Israelis they haven't yet found!
Halper and Mifsud are players.
John Brennan used cutouts in layers.
If the scheme falls apart and the bureau is smart,
They'll go after them all as betrayers!
They needed historical fiction.
A dossier with salacious depiction!
Some urinous whores could get down on all fours,
They'd accomplish some bed sheet emiction!
Pablo Miller and Skripal were cited.
Sidney Blumenthal might have been slighted.
Christopher Steele offered Sidney a deal,
But the dossier's not copyrighted!
That story about Novichok,
Smells a lot like a very large crock.
But they can't be deposed or the story disclosed,
The Skripals have toxic brain block!
Papadopolis shot off his yap.
He told Downer, that affable chap-
There was dirt to report on the Clinton cohort,
Mifsud hooked him with that honey trap!
She was blond and a bombshell to boot.
Papadopolis thought she was cute.
She worked for Mifsud, a mysterious dude,
Now poor Paps is in grave disrepute!
But the trick was to tie it to Russians.
The Clinton team had some discussions.
Their big email scandal was easy to handle,
They'd blame Vlad for the bad repercussions!
There must have been Russian collusion.
That explained all the vote count confusion.
Guccifer Two made the Trump team come through,
If he won, it was just an illusion!
Lisa Page and Pete Strzok were disgusted
They schemed and they plotted and lusted.
If bald-headed Clapper appealed to Jake Tapper,
Brennan's Tweets might get Donald Trump busted!
There had to be cyber subversion.
It would serve as the perfect perversion.
They would claim it was missed if it didn't exist,
It's a logically perfect diversion!
F.G., you've done it again, and I might add, topped even yourself! Thanks.
KiwiAntz , June 7, 2018 at 7:30 pm
What a joke, America, the most dishonest Country on Earth, has meddled, murdered &
committed coups to overturn other Govts & interfered & continues to do so in just
about every Country on Earth by using Trade sanctions, arming Terrorists & illegal
invasions, has the barefaced cheek to puff out its chest & hypocritcally blame Russia for
something that it does on a daily basis?? And the point with Mueller's investigation is not
to find any Russian collusion evidence, who needs evidence when you can just make it up? The
point is provide the US with a list of unfounded lies & excuses, FIRSTLY to slander &
demonise RUSSIA for something they clearly didn't do! SECONDLY, was to provide a excuse for
the Democrats dismal election loss result to the DONALD & his Trump Party which just
happens to contain some Republicans? THIRDLY, to conduct a soft Coup by trying to get Trump
impeached on "TRUMPED UP CHARGES OF RUSSIAN COLLUSION"? And FOURTLY to divert attention away
from scrutiny & cover up Obama & Hillary Clinton's illegal, money grubbing activities
& her treasonous behaviour with her private email server?? After two years of Russiagate
nonsense with NOTHING to show for it, I think it's about time America owes Russia a public
apology & compensation for its blatant lying & slander of a innocent Country for a
crime they never committed?
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 7:11 pm
Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely
cause of the Russiagate scams.
I am sure that they manipulate the digital voting machines directly and indirectly. True
elections are now impossible.
Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any
resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely
coincidental."
Antiwar7 , June 7, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Expecting the evil people running the show to respond to reason is futile, of course. All
of these reports are really addressed to the peanut gallery, where true power lies, if only
they could realize it.
Thanks, Ray and VIPS, for keeping up the good fight.
mike k , June 7, 2018 at 5:55 pm
For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which
pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering
a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic
conspiracy.
And BTW people have become shy about using the word conspiracy, for fear it will
automatically brand one as a hoaxer. On the contrary, conspiracies are extremely common, the
higher one climbs in the power hierarchy. Like monopolies, conspiracies are central to the
way the oligarchs do business.
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:42 am
Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in
knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is
involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB
drive, it is not a known.
There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that
the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth
Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being
done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated
reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings.
" whether or not"?!! Wow. That's an imperialistic statement.
Drew Hunkins , June 7, 2018 at 5:50 pm
Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic
charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and
Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the
mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by
Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was
the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable
DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his
crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they
even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?
So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to
their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was arguably in bed with the Winter Hill
Gang!
jose , June 7, 2018 at 5:13 pm
If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They
know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The
Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars.
Jeff , June 7, 2018 at 4:35 pm
Thanx, Ray. The sad news is that everybody now believes that Russia tried to "meddle" in
our election and, since it's a belief, neither facts nor reality will dislodge it. Your
disclaimer should also probably carry the warning – never believe a word a government
official says especially if they are in the CIA, NSA, or FBI unless they provide proof. If
they tell you that it's classified, that they can't divulge it, or anything of that sort, you
know they are lying.
john wilson , June 7, 2018 at 4:09 pm
I suspect the real reason no evidence has been produced is because there isn't any. I know
this is stating the obvious, but if you think about it, as long as the non extent evidence is
supposedly being "investigated" the story remains alive. They know they aren't going to find
anything even remotely plausible that would stand up to any kind of scrutiny, but as long as
they are looking, it has the appearance that there might be something.
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 4:08 pm
I first want to thank Ray and the VIPS for their continuing to follow through on this
Russia-Gate story. And it is a story.
My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After
all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart
Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not
be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for
justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved
in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody?
Now we have Sean Hannity making a strong case against the Clinton's and the FBI's careful
handling of their crimes. What seems out of place, since this should be big news, is that CNN
nor MSNBC seems to be covering this story in the same way Hannity is. I mean isn't this news,
meant to be reported as news? Why avoid reporting on Hillary in such a manner? This must be
that 'fake news' they all talk about boy am I smart.
In the end I have decided to be merely an observer, because there are no good guys or gals
in our nation's capital worth believing. In the end even Hannity's version of what took place
leads back to a guilty Russia. So, the way I see it, the swamp is being drained only to make
more room for more, and new swamp creatures to emerge. Talk about spinning our wheels. When
will good people arrive to finally once and for all drain this freaking swamp, once and for
all?
Realist , June 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Ha, ha! Don't you enjoy the magic show being put on by the insiders desperately trying to
hang onto their power even after being voted out of office? Their attempt to distract your
attention from reality whilst feeding you their false illusions is worthy of Penn &
Teller, or David Copperfield (the magician). Who ya gonna believe? Them or your lying
eyes?
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 10:00 pm
Realist, You can bet they will investigate everything but what needs investigated, as our
Politico class devolves into survivalist in fighting, the mechanism of war goes
uninterrupted. Joe
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 5:34 pm
Joe, speaking of draining the swamp, check out my comment under Ray's June 1 article about
Freddy Fleitz!
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 6:59 pm
That is just what I was reminded of; here is an antiseptic but less emphatic last
line:
"Swamp draining progresses apace.
It's being accomplished with grace:
They're taking great pains to clean out the drains,"
New swamp creatures will need all that space!
Unfettered Fire , June 8, 2018 at 11:00 am
We must realize that to them, "the Swamp" refers to those in office who still abide by New
Deal policy. Despite the thoroughly discredited neoliberal economic policy, the radical right
are driving the world in the libertarian direction of privatization, austerity, private bank
control of money creation, dismantling the nation-state, contempt for the Constitution,
etc.
Much of what liberals say about Donald Trump and the chilling political moment the Trump
presidency represents is true enough.
Trump really is the arch-authoritarian malignant narcissist that liberals say he is. Trump
thinks he deserves to rule the nation like an absolute monarch or some ridiculous Banana
Republic dictator. He believes he's above all the law, consistent with Louis XIV's dictum
L'etat, C'est Moi ("the state is me"). The notion that Trump can pardon himself from any crime
really is the height of imperial arrogance.
Trump really does value nothing but the advancement of his own wealth and image. There is no
person, no principle, no higher loyalty he is not willing to sacrifice on the altar of
self.
Trump really is the almost perfect embodiment of venal malevolence that liberals say he is.
The idiotic military parade Trump has scheduled for the next Veterans Day is an exercise in
proto-fascistic, Mussolini-like imperial-presidential self-adulation.
This racist and sexist beast befouls the nation and world with his ghastly, eco-cidal
presence. The sooner he draws his last undeserved breath, the better for all living things (or
maybe not: Mike Pence could be worse).
The Authoritarian and Inauthentic Opposition
Fine, but why does this despicable, orange-tinted insult to common human decency
occupy the White House? He holds the most powerful office in the world because the Democratic
Party has long been and remains what the late liberal-left Princeton political scientist
Sheldon Wolin called the Inauthentic Opposition. "Should Democrats somehow be elected,"
Wolin prophesied in
early 2008, they would do nothing to "alter significantly the direction of society" or
"substantially revers[e] the drift rightwards. The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by
centrist precepts," Wolin wrote, "points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities, the
working class and anti-corporatists there is no opposition party working on their behalf." The
corporatist Democrats would work to "marginalize any possible threat to the corporate allies of
the Republicans."
Wolin called it. A nominal Democrat was elected president along with Democratic majorities
in both houses of Congress in 2008. What followed under
Barack Obama (as under his Democratic presidential predecessor Bill
Clinton ) – a
different and possibly more dangerous kind of malignant narcissist – was the
standard "elite" neoliberal manipulation of campaign populism and identity politics in
service to the reigning big-money bankrollers and their global empire. Wall Street's control of
Washington and the related imperial agenda of the "Pentagon System" were advanced more
effectively by the nation's first Black president than they could have been by stiff and
wealthy white Republicans like John McCain or Mitt Romney. The reigning U.S. system of
corporate and imperial "inverted totalitarianism" (Wolin) was given a deadly, fake-democratic
re-branding. The underlying "rightward drift" sharpened, fed by a widespread and easily
Republican-exploited sense of popular abandonment and betrayal, as the Democrats depressed and
demobilized their own purported popular base.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did nothing to correct that problem. Quite the
opposite. With a colossal campaign finance war-chest fed not just by the usual Wall Street and
Silicon Valley suspects but
also by many traditionally Republican big money donors who were repelled by Trump's faux
"populism," the transparently corporate establishmentarian candidate Clinton could barely deign
to pretend to be a progressive. She ran almost completely on the argument that Trump was too
terrible and unqualified to be president. Making candidate character and qualities her sole
selling point was a critical and historic mistake given the angry and anti-establishment mood
of the electorate and her own epic unpopularity. So was calling Trump's flyover county supporters a "basket
of" racist and sexist " deplorables "
in a sneering comment (one that
accurately reflected her aristocratic
"progressive"-neoliberal world view) to rich Manhattan campaign donors.
Authoritarianism? Single-Payer national health insurance had long been supported by most
U.S.-Americans when Obama ascended to the White House. Who cared? Not the
"radical socialist" Barack Obama. Like the Clintons before him, Obama coldly froze Single
Payer advocates out of the health insurance policy debate. He worked with the leading drug and
insurance corporations and their Wall Street backers to craft a richly corporatist "reform"
that preserved those companies' power to write their super-profits into the obscenely
exaggerated cost of American medical care.
As our greatest intellectual Noam Chomsky noted two
years ago, Obama "punished more whistle-blowers than all previous presidents combined." The
Obama administration repeatedly defended George W. Bush's position on behalf of indefinite
detention, maintaining that prisoners (US-Americans included) in the US global "war on [of]
terror" were not entitled to habeas corpus or protection from torture or execution.
Obama carried overseas assassination (by drone and Special Forces) – execution (even of
U.S. citizens) without trial or even formal charge – to new levels. Regarding Obama's
drone assassination program, Chomsky wrote acidly about how "the [Obama] Justice Department
explained that the constitutional guarantee of due process, tracing to Magna Carta, is now
satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch alone. The constitutional lawyer in
the White House agreed. King John (1199-1216) might have nodded with satisfaction."
Hillary Clinton's 2016 Vice Presidential ticket partner, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), is
currently a leading sponsor of the " Forever
AUMF 2018" (SJRes 59) (Authority for the Use of Military Force). As the ACLU's
Renee Parsons explains , the measure would " eliminate Congress' sole, inviolate
Constitutional authority 'to declare war.'" It "would remove Congress from its statutory
authority as it transfers 'uninterrupted' authority on 'the use of all necessary and
appropriate force' to one individual." That would garner another thumbs-up from King John.
The Democrats could well have won the 2016 election by running Bernie Sanders. Bernie would
have tapped popular anger from the center-left, advancing a policy agenda and anti-plutocratic
sentiments consistent with longstanding majority-progressive public opinion in the U.S. But so
what? The Democratic nomination process was rigged against Sanders for some very good
ruling-class reasons. As William Kaufman told Barbara Ehrenreich on Facebook last year, "The
Democrats aren't feckless, inept, or stupid, unable to 'learn' what it takes to win. They are
corrupt. They do not want to win with an authentically progressive program because it would
threaten the economic interests of their main corporate donor base The Democrats know exactly
what they're doing. They have a business model: sub-serving the interests of the corporate
elite."
The reigning corporate Democrats would rather lose to the right, even to a proto-fascistic
white nationalist and eco-exterminist right, than lose to the left, even to a mildly
progressive social democratic left within their own party.
Among other things, Russiagate is the Inauthentic Opposition, following its business model,
doing its job, working to cover its tracks by throwing the debacle of its corporatist politics
down Orwell's memory hole and attributing its self-made defeat to Russia's allegedly powerful
interference in our supposed democracy. Russiagate is meant to provide corporate Democrats
cover not only for 2016 but also for 2018 and 2020. It advances a narrative that lets the
Democrats continue nominating business-friendly neoliberal shills and imperialists who pretend
to be progressive while they are owned by the nation's homegrown oligarchs. This year's crop of
Democratic Congressional candidates is loaded with military and intelligence veterans, a
reflection of the Democrats' determination to run as the true party of empire.
"Some Discipline and Pragmatism to the Oval Office"
Under the cover of Russiagate, the pinstripe politicos atop the nation's not-so leftmost
major party seem to have the Sanders wing under control. Clintonite Democratic National
Committee (DNC) chair Tom Perez purged
progressive, Sanders Democrats from leading positions in the DNC last fall. Bernie-endorsed
candidates have flailed in
the Democrats' 2018 Congressional primaries . The not-so "socialist" Sanders' not-so
revolutionary "political [though not social] revolution" seems largely spent, skewered on the
fork of a major party electoral-industrial-complex it falsely promised to transform from
within. In the Iowa Democratic gubernatorial primary last Tuesday, the progressive Democrat
union member and "Our Revolution" candidate Cathy Glasson was trounced by the vapid and
centrist but super-wealthy businessman Fred Hubbell, who self-financed his campaign with
millions of dollars.
I recently watched a "liberal" morning CNN talking head salivate over the prospect of the
Democrats running a billionaire business mogul who "shares the party's world view" –
someone like the just-retired Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. The latte and cappuccino mogul
recently and absurdly ripped the Democratic Party for " going so far to the left ."
Sounding like a once-traditional Republican, Schultz
elaborated :
"I say to myself, 'How are we going to pay for these things,' in terms of things like
single payer [and] people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a
job. I don't think that's realistic. I think we got to get away from these falsehoods and
start talking about the truth and not false promises I think the greatest threat domestically
to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future
generations. The only way we're going to get out of that is we've got to grow the economy, in
my view, 4 percent or greater. And then we have to go after entitlements."
How to pay for progressive policies long but irrelevantly
supported by most U.S.-Americans ? With (to mention some other measures that have long been
quaintly and trivially preferred by most U.S. citizens) seriously progressive taxation
including a financial transaction tax and with a long-overdue transfer of taxpayer dollars from
the bloated and monumentally
mass-murderous Pentagon budget. There's nothing remotely mysterious about how we could fund
Single Payer and green jobs programs that would
help save the nation and (oh, by the way) the human race from the actual "greatest threat to
the country" (and to the world): environmental catastrophe , fed by
toxic capitalist "growth" (let's hit "4 percent of higher"!) and with the climate
crisi s ("climate change" does not begin to capture to the gravity of the problem) in the
lead.
Here's the accurate translation for "go after entitlements": (1) slash Social Security and
Medicare further; (2) use the fiscal crisis created by arch-plutocratic tax cuts for the
already absurdly rich and by the persistently gargantuan "defense" (empire) budget as an excuse
to decimate further the already weak U.S. social safety net and to (in what promises to be an
epic windfall for Wall Street) privatize the nation's old age insurance system. The real
entitlement that matters most – the inherited oligarchic class rule and despotism of
capital over workers, citizens, and ever more poisoned commons – remains untouched and is
indeed expanded in coffee baron Schultz's glorious "liberal" agenda,
All of which is fairly consistent with the Wall Street- and corporate-friendly
records and agenda of the Democratic Party during and between the ugly "neoliberal" years
when a Georgia peanut farmer (deregulation leader Jimmy Carter) and two silver-tongued Ivy
League law school graduates (NAFTA champion and public assistance-wrecker Bill Clinton and big
bank bailout champion and Trans Pacific Partnership advocate Barack Obama) occupied the White
House. I expect the dismal Democrats to nominate the longtime centrist politician Joe "Regular
Guy" Biden (who claims he would have kicked Trump's ass
in high school ) or the newly hatched faux-progressive Senator and former longtime
prosecutor Kamala "Obama 2.0" Harris (D-CA), but, hey,
why not go full corporate monty and try to put an actual full-on corporate CEO in the White
House in the name of the Democratic Party's "liberal world view"? As the "liberal"
New
York Timesapprovingly explains :
"The election of Mr. Trump, a real estate developer and reality television personality,
certainly opened that door of opportunity, making it clear that American voters were willing
to elect a president with no prior government experience .American companies -- including
Starbucks -- have become more political in recent years, wading into issues like immigration,
gun rights and climate policy And at a moment when many voters say they are frustrated with
partisan gridlock and ineffective government programs, some believe that an efficiency-minded
business executive might bring some discipline and pragmatism to the Oval Office."
Besides Schultz, other corporate CEOs I've heard and read self-described liberals discuss as
potentially desirable presidential candidates include Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Disney CEO Bob
Iger, Facebook's spooky cult-leader Mark Zuckerberg, and even the JP Morgan Chase chairman and
CEO Jamie Dimon. What the Hell: why not drop the pretense of independence from the nation's
corporate and financial dictatorship and run an actual corporate or financial chieftain for
president?
That would be an act of oligarchic honesty on the part of the dismal dollar Dems. "I like
the idea of Dimon," one left correspondent writes me: "maybe with him as a candidate people
would finally wake up to the fact that the Democrats are the real problem." Don't hold your
breath. "Because," another comrade tells me, "being a ruthless plutocrat is their world
view."
"Trump is Terrible, So Let's Give Him More Spying and Killing Powers!"
What is the Democrats' leading cry? That the terrible Trump is truly terrible – and a
tool of Russia. And, of course, the "terrible" part is all too terribly true – the Russia
part not so much. But after you've bemoaned the terribleness of Trump for the ten thousandth
time, are you ready to get serious about the systemic and richly bipartisan, oligarchic context
within which Trump has emerged? "The Trump administration ," Chris Hedges reminded us on
Truthdig two weeks ago, "did not rise like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald
Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product
of our failed democracy . The problem is not Trump," writes Hedges. "It is a political system,
dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which
we don't count " (emphasis added).
And if Trump is as much of a dangerous and authoritarian monster as liberal Democrats say he
is (and he is), then why, pray tell, have most Democrats in Congress been willing to grant
him record levels of military funding along with re-authorized and
expanded warrantless surveillance and spying powers ? Why are Tim Kaine and other top
Democrats ready to grant him (and his successors) a freaking "Forever AUMF"? Hello? What does
that say about the not-so leftmost of the two reigning corporate parties? The glaring
schizophrenia ("Trump is a monster, let's give him more war and spying powers!") is yet more
proof that the Democrats are indeed an inauthentic opposition , committed to the same
imperial and police state Trump heads today. They are merely waiting to put one of their
ruling-class own atop the same exact and in fact richly bipartisan structures.
What Goes Around: "Trampling on the Helpless Abroad" Comes Home
A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals
don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that
their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed
crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed
authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and
occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous
governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed,
sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.
Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49
nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as
"dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba,
and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about
Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent
of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most
politically aware people," Whitney wrote:
"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for
foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military
assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi
Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our
nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our
government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They
are the rule ."
The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated
from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with
misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious
right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .
The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is
that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home
while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked
invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the
twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic.
She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at
home."
"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian
Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template
for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red
Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on
the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows
in his latest book, In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process
– internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices
abroad and justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" – has recurred ever
since. Today, the rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National
Security Agency has cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and
Obama44, not just under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as
beyond the U.S.
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever
been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary
dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless
Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the
rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on
our side.
"... our government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They are the rule ..."
"... The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. ..."
"... "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home." ..."
"... "Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows in his latest book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , ..."
"... "The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on our side. ..."
A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals
don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that
their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed
crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed
authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and
occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous
governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed,
sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.
Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49
nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as
"dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba,
and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about
Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent
of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most
politically aware people," Whitney wrote:
"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for
foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military
assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi
Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our
nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our
government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They
are the rule ."
The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated
from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with
misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious
right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .
The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is
that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home
while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked
invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the
twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic.
She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at
home."
"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian
Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template
for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red
Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on
the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows
in his latest book, In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process --
internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices abroad and
justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" -- has recurred ever since. Today, the
rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National Security Agency has
cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and Obama44, not just
under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as beyond the
U.S.
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever
been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary
dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless
Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the
rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on
our side.
The Democratic Party has made a strategic decision to bypass candidates from its progressive
wing and recruit former members of the military and intelligence agencies to compete with
Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. The shift away from liberal politicians to
center-right government agents and military personnel is part of a broader plan to rebuild the
party so it better serves the interests of its core constituents, Wall Street, big business,
and the foreign policy establishment. Democrat leaders want to eliminate left-leaning
candidates who think the party should promote issues that are important to working people and
replace them with career bureaucrats who will be more responsive to the needs of business. The
ultimate objective of this organization-remake is to create a center-right superparty comprised
almost entirely of trusted allies from the national security state who can be depended on to
implement the regressive policies required by their wealthy contributors. Here's more
background from Patrick Martin at the World Socialist Web Site:
"An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA,
Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic
candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political
history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as
widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as
many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power
in the lower chamber of Congress .
it should be noted that there would be no comparable influx of Bernie Sanders supporters
or other "left"-talking candidates in the event of a Democratic landslide. Only five of the
221 candidates reviewed in this study had links to Sanders or billed themselves as
"progressive." None is likely to win the primary, let alone the general election." ("The CIA
Democrats, Patrick Martin, The World Socialist Web Site)
Progressive candidates are being ignored to make room for center-right
functionaries who will focus on reducing government spending, rolling back Trump's trade
policy, and supporting the foreign wars. This new wave of fiscally-conservative Democrats will
execute their tasks in a party that serves as the political wing of the federal bureaucracy.
Democrat leaders have long-abandoned the idea that a party should be a vehicle for political
change. Their aim is to create a top-down pro-business collective that marginalizes activists
and liberals in order to avoid disruptive political convulsions that impact corporate
profitability. Here's more on the Dems' attack on its liberal base from an article by Patrick
Martin:
"The New Jersey Democratic Party establishment successfully imposed its choice in
contested congressional nominations, brushing aside several candidates backed by Bernie
Sanders and his Our Revolution group. Nearly every Sanders-backed candidate in other states
-- for governor of Iowa and congressional seats in Iowa, Montana New Mexico and California --
suffered a similar fate." ("US primary elections in eight states confirm rightward shift by
Democratic Party", Patrick Martin, The World Socialist Web Site)
As a result "Only a handful of candidates running under the Bernie Sanders banner survived
primaries held in six states on Tuesday. As of Wednesday afternoon, only seven of 31 candidates
endorsed by Our Revolution -- - had been declared winners." (USA Today)
Simply put, Democrat leaders have successfully derailed the progressive bandwagon. Even so,
Sanders role vis a vis the Democratic Party has always been a bit of a ruse. Here's how author
Tom Hall sums it up:
"The major political function of Sanders' campaign is to divert the growing social
discontent and hostility toward the existing system behind the Democratic Party, in order to
contain and dissipate it. His supposedly 'socialist' campaign is an attempt to preempt and
block the emergence of an independent movement of the working class." ("Is Bernie Sanders a
socialist?", July 16, 2015), Tom Hall, World Socialist Web Site)
Sanders task will become increasingly more difficult as progressives realize that
the Dems are building a party apparatus that sees activism as a fundamental threat to their
strategic objective, which is to create a secure environment where business can flourish.
Sanders has helped the party by seducing leftists with his fake liberalism, but he has
undermined the aims of working people who need an independent organization to advance their own
political agenda. As long as Sanders continues to sell his populist snake oil from a Democratic
soapbox, liberals are going to continue to hope that the party can be transformed into an
instrument for progressive change. The evidence, however, suggests the party is moving in the
opposite direction. Here's more from Patrick Martin's:
"The Democratic Party's promotion of a large number of military-intelligence candidates
for competitive districts represents an insurance policy for the US ruling elite. In the
event of a major swing to the Democrats, the House of Representatives will receive an influx
of new members drawn primarily from the national security apparatus, trusted servants of
American imperialism The preponderance of national security operatives in the Democratic
primaries sheds additional light on the nature of the Obama administration (which) marked the
further ascendancy of the military-intelligence apparatus within the Democratic Party .
The Democratic Party is running in the congressional elections not only as the party that
takes a tougher line on Russia, but as the party that enlists as its candidates and
representatives those who have been directly responsible for waging war, both overt and
covert, on behalf of American imperialism. .
The upper-middle-class layer that provides the "mass" base of the Democratic Party has
moved drastically to the right over the past four decades, enriched by the stock market boom,
consciously hostile to the working class, and enthusiastically supportive of the
military-intelligence apparatus which, in the final analysis, guarantees its own social
position against potential threats, both foreign and domestic. It is this social evolution
that now finds expression on the surface of capitalist politics, in the rise of the
military-intelligence "faction" to the leadership of the Democratic Party." ("The CIA
Democrats", Patrick Martin, The World Socialist Web Site)
The dramatic metamorphosis of the Democratic party hasn't taken place in a vacuum but in a
fractious and politically-charged environment where elements within the intelligence community
and law enforcement (FBI) are attempting to roll back the results of the 2016 presidential
elections because their preferred candidate (Hillary Clinton) did not win. And while these
agencies have not yet produced any hard evidence that their claims (of collusion with Russia)
are true, there is mounting circumstantial evidence that senior-level officials at these
agencies were actively trying to entrap members of the Trump campaign to justify more intrusive
surveillance in the hopes of uncovering incriminating evidence that could be used in
impeachment proceedings.
As more information surfaces, and we learn more about the "unmasking", wiretapping, National
Security Letters, FISA warrants, paid informants and other surveillance abuses that were
directed at the Trump campaign, we should think back to 2005 when the New York Times first
reported that the National Security Agency had been eavesdropping on Americans inside the
United States "without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying."
("Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts", New York Times) That incident was reported
just 13 years ago and already we can see that the infrastructure for a permanent Orwellian
police-state –that uses its extraordinary powers of surveillance to sabotage the
democratic process and maintain its stranglehold on power– has already arisen in our
midst. And while Russiagate is proof-positive that these malign spying techniques are already
being used against us, the Democratic party is now creating a home for deep-state alums and
their military allies so they continue to prosecute their war against personal liberty and the
American people.
"The ultimate objective of this organization-remake is to create a center-right superparty
comprised almost entirely of trusted allies from the national security state who can be
depended on to implement the regressive policies required by their wealthy contributors."
If by "regressive" you mean a move away from a mixed economy to a more fundamentalist
market-based approach, then yeah, I would agree.
"Their aim is to create a top-down pro-business collective that marginalizes activists and
liberals in order to avoid disruptive political convulsions "
The only activism I've seen from progressives in the past two years has nothing to do with
economic concerns; their energy is entirely focused on race, gender, and sexuality. The
cultural-Marxist troika.
" Russiagate is proof-positive that these malign spying techniques are already being used
against us, the Democratic party is now creating a home for deep-state alums and their
military allies "
You forgot to mention neoconservatives who are now finding safe spaces for their
warmongering in the liberal media. Currently the Democrats are inflamed with identity
politics; more than likely this infection will continue to fester for another two election
cycles. Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict,
civil war.
The Democrat party is a high-low coalition of the fringes. The ultra rich use the poor to
attack the middle so they can distract everyone else from uniting and doing something like
raising taxes on the rich or deporting minorities to democrat neighborhoods. So, it's not
surprising that the high part of the coalition would strike back.
This only further strengthens my desire to see a secession movement. When statist
democrats are in power, they will surely abuse this growing national security state to keep
us down. It's time to break up the USSA ASAP before it's too late.
"Democrat leaders want to eliminate left-leaning candidates who think the party should
promote issues that are important to working people."
Note to M. Whitney: the New Deal coalition is dead. Left/Progressives today despise
working people. Didn't you get the memo? Working people are deplorable! Antifa, BLM, the
Women's Studies Dept, the sex lobby, Amy Goodman, Michael Moore – they all hate working
people.
"Progressive candidates are being ignored to make room for center-right functionaries who
will focus on reducing government spending, rolling back Trump's trade policy, and supporting
the foreign wars."
Note to M. Whitney: Progressives today love free trade and advocate war against Russia.
Didn't you notice when pro-war progressives kicked you off the Counterpunch website? Today's
Progressives love War! Punch the Nazi!
"Simply put, Democrat leaders have successfully derailed the progressive bandwagon"
Note to M. Whitney: The progressive bandwagon exists solely for identity politics
hysteria, and it is not derailed. Haven't you noticed the race and gender, baiting and
slander bandwagon barreling down the highway? It's getting louder all the time.
Stop holding out hope that someday there will be a groundswell of progressives on the left
who are on the side of the little guy. Progressives are an elite crowd of identity politics
ideologues. Radical reformers are misanthropes – they don't like social norms because
they don't like basic human nature. They will never like working stiffs. They will never care
about 3rd world villagers getting bombed.
The fault line here is race and gender politics. You are on the right side on war and
economic issues and you are on the wrong side on race/sex/gender issues. Don't blindly accept
the dogma that differing group outcomes are caused by Bad White Males. Trust in facts and
reason. Don't feel you have to grovel because you're white or male. Change your mind on these
issues – it's called learning.
It brings power to its practitioners. Which is the whole point.
You forgot to mention neoconservatives who are now finding safe spaces for their
warmongering in the liberal media
Why wouldn't they? Warmongering has been a "liberal" preoccupation for a century, since
the income-taxing suffragist Wilson. Remember Bob Dole's "Kinsley gaffe" in the 1976 debate
with Walter Mondale.
Much of what liberals say about Donald Trump and the chilling political moment the Trump
presidency represents is true enough.
Trump really is the arch-authoritarian malignant narcissist that liberals say he is. Trump
thinks he deserves to rule the nation like an absolute monarch or some ridiculous Banana
Republic dictator. He believes he's above all the law, consistent with Louis XIV's dictum
L'etat, C'est Moi ("the state is me"). The notion that Trump can pardon himself from any crime
really is the height of imperial arrogance.
Trump really does value nothing but the advancement of his own wealth and image. There is no
person, no principle, no higher loyalty he is not willing to sacrifice on the altar of
self.
Trump really is the almost perfect embodiment of venal malevolence that liberals say he is.
The idiotic military parade Trump has scheduled for the next Veterans Day is an exercise in
proto-fascistic, Mussolini-like imperial-presidential self-adulation.
This racist and sexist beast befouls the nation and world with his ghastly, eco-cidal
presence. The sooner he draws his last undeserved breath, the better for all living things (or
maybe not: Mike Pence could be worse).
The Authoritarian and Inauthentic Opposition
Fine, but why does this despicable, orange-tinted insult to common human decency
occupy the White House? He holds the most powerful office in the world because the Democratic
Party has long been and remains what the late liberal-left Princeton political scientist
Sheldon Wolin called the Inauthentic Opposition. "Should Democrats somehow be elected,"
Wolin prophesied in
early 2008, they would do nothing to "alter significantly the direction of society" or
"substantially revers[e] the drift rightwards. The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by
centrist precepts," Wolin wrote, "points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities, the
working class and anti-corporatists there is no opposition party working on their behalf." The
corporatist Democrats would work to "marginalize any possible threat to the corporate allies of
the Republicans."
Wolin called it. A nominal Democrat was elected president along with Democratic majorities
in both houses of Congress in 2008. What followed under
Barack Obama (as under his Democratic presidential predecessor Bill
Clinton ) – a
different and possibly more dangerous kind of malignant narcissist – was the
standard "elite" neoliberal manipulation of campaign populism and identity politics in
service to the reigning big-money bankrollers and their global empire. Wall Street's control of
Washington and the related imperial agenda of the "Pentagon System" were advanced more
effectively by the nation's first Black president than they could have been by stiff and
wealthy white Republicans like John McCain or Mitt Romney. The reigning U.S. system of
corporate and imperial "inverted totalitarianism" (Wolin) was given a deadly, fake-democratic
re-branding. The underlying "rightward drift" sharpened, fed by a widespread and easily
Republican-exploited sense of popular abandonment and betrayal, as the Democrats depressed and
demobilized their own purported popular base.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did nothing to correct that problem. Quite the
opposite. With a colossal campaign finance war-chest fed not just by the usual Wall Street and
Silicon Valley suspects but
also by many traditionally Republican big money donors who were repelled by Trump's faux
"populism," the transparently corporate establishmentarian candidate Clinton could barely deign
to pretend to be a progressive. She ran almost completely on the argument that Trump was too
terrible and unqualified to be president. Making candidate character and qualities her sole
selling point was a critical and historic mistake given the angry and anti-establishment mood
of the electorate and her own epic unpopularity. So was calling Trump's flyover county supporters a "basket
of" racist and sexist " deplorables "
in a sneering comment (one that
accurately reflected her aristocratic
"progressive"-neoliberal world view) to rich Manhattan campaign donors.
Authoritarianism? Single-Payer national health insurance had long been supported by most
U.S.-Americans when Obama ascended to the White House. Who cared? Not the
"radical socialist" Barack Obama. Like the Clintons before him, Obama coldly froze Single
Payer advocates out of the health insurance policy debate. He worked with the leading drug and
insurance corporations and their Wall Street backers to craft a richly corporatist "reform"
that preserved those companies' power to write their super-profits into the obscenely
exaggerated cost of American medical care.
As our greatest intellectual Noam Chomsky noted two
years ago, Obama "punished more whistle-blowers than all previous presidents combined." The
Obama administration repeatedly defended George W. Bush's position on behalf of indefinite
detention, maintaining that prisoners (US-Americans included) in the US global "war on [of]
terror" were not entitled to habeas corpus or protection from torture or execution.
Obama carried overseas assassination (by drone and Special Forces) – execution (even of
U.S. citizens) without trial or even formal charge – to new levels. Regarding Obama's
drone assassination program, Chomsky wrote acidly about how "the [Obama] Justice Department
explained that the constitutional guarantee of due process, tracing to Magna Carta, is now
satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch alone. The constitutional lawyer in
the White House agreed. King John (1199-1216) might have nodded with satisfaction."
Hillary Clinton's 2016 Vice Presidential ticket partner, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), is
currently a leading sponsor of the " Forever
AUMF 2018" (SJRes 59) (Authority for the Use of Military Force). As the ACLU's
Renee Parsons explains , the measure would " eliminate Congress' sole, inviolate
Constitutional authority 'to declare war.'" It "would remove Congress from its statutory
authority as it transfers 'uninterrupted' authority on 'the use of all necessary and
appropriate force' to one individual." That would garner another thumbs-up from King John.
The Democrats could well have won the 2016 election by running Bernie Sanders. Bernie would
have tapped popular anger from the center-left, advancing a policy agenda and anti-plutocratic
sentiments consistent with longstanding majority-progressive public opinion in the U.S. But so
what? The Democratic nomination process was rigged against Sanders for some very good
ruling-class reasons. As William Kaufman told Barbara Ehrenreich on Facebook last year, "The
Democrats aren't feckless, inept, or stupid, unable to 'learn' what it takes to win. They are
corrupt. They do not want to win with an authentically progressive program because it would
threaten the economic interests of their main corporate donor base The Democrats know exactly
what they're doing. They have a business model: sub-serving the interests of the corporate
elite."
The reigning corporate Democrats would rather lose to the right, even to a proto-fascistic
white nationalist and eco-exterminist right, than lose to the left, even to a mildly
progressive social democratic left within their own party.
Among other things, Russiagate is the Inauthentic Opposition, following its business model,
doing its job, working to cover its tracks by throwing the debacle of its corporatist politics
down Orwell's memory hole and attributing its self-made defeat to Russia's allegedly powerful
interference in our supposed democracy. Russiagate is meant to provide corporate Democrats
cover not only for 2016 but also for 2018 and 2020. It advances a narrative that lets the
Democrats continue nominating business-friendly neoliberal shills and imperialists who pretend
to be progressive while they are owned by the nation's homegrown oligarchs. This year's crop of
Democratic Congressional candidates is loaded with military and intelligence veterans, a
reflection of the Democrats' determination to run as the true party of empire.
"Some Discipline and Pragmatism to the Oval Office"
Under the cover of Russiagate, the pinstripe politicos atop the nation's not-so leftmost
major party seem to have the Sanders wing under control. Clintonite Democratic National
Committee (DNC) chair Tom Perez purged
progressive, Sanders Democrats from leading positions in the DNC last fall. Bernie-endorsed
candidates have flailed in
the Democrats' 2018 Congressional primaries . The not-so "socialist" Sanders' not-so
revolutionary "political [though not social] revolution" seems largely spent, skewered on the
fork of a major party electoral-industrial-complex it falsely promised to transform from
within. In the Iowa Democratic gubernatorial primary last Tuesday, the progressive Democrat
union member and "Our Revolution" candidate Cathy Glasson was trounced by the vapid and
centrist but super-wealthy businessman Fred Hubbell, who self-financed his campaign with
millions of dollars.
I recently watched a "liberal" morning CNN talking head salivate over the prospect of the
Democrats running a billionaire business mogul who "shares the party's world view" –
someone like the just-retired Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. The latte and cappuccino mogul
recently and absurdly ripped the Democratic Party for " going so far to the left ."
Sounding like a once-traditional Republican, Schultz
elaborated :
"I say to myself, 'How are we going to pay for these things,' in terms of things like
single payer [and] people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a
job. I don't think that's realistic. I think we got to get away from these falsehoods and
start talking about the truth and not false promises I think the greatest threat domestically
to the country is this $21 trillion debt hanging over the cloud of America and future
generations. The only way we're going to get out of that is we've got to grow the economy, in
my view, 4 percent or greater. And then we have to go after entitlements."
How to pay for progressive policies long but irrelevantly
supported by most U.S.-Americans ? With (to mention some other measures that have long been
quaintly and trivially preferred by most U.S. citizens) seriously progressive taxation
including a financial transaction tax and with a long-overdue transfer of taxpayer dollars from
the bloated and monumentally
mass-murderous Pentagon budget. There's nothing remotely mysterious about how we could fund
Single Payer and green jobs programs that would
help save the nation and (oh, by the way) the human race from the actual "greatest threat to
the country" (and to the world): environmental catastrophe , fed by
toxic capitalist "growth" (let's hit "4 percent of higher"!) and with the climate
crisi s ("climate change" does not begin to capture to the gravity of the problem) in the
lead.
Here's the accurate translation for "go after entitlements": (1) slash Social Security and
Medicare further; (2) use the fiscal crisis created by arch-plutocratic tax cuts for the
already absurdly rich and by the persistently gargantuan "defense" (empire) budget as an excuse
to decimate further the already weak U.S. social safety net and to (in what promises to be an
epic windfall for Wall Street) privatize the nation's old age insurance system. The real
entitlement that matters most – the inherited oligarchic class rule and despotism of
capital over workers, citizens, and ever more poisoned commons – remains untouched and is
indeed expanded in coffee baron Schultz's glorious "liberal" agenda,
All of which is fairly consistent with the Wall Street- and corporate-friendly
records and agenda of the Democratic Party during and between the ugly "neoliberal" years
when a Georgia peanut farmer (deregulation leader Jimmy Carter) and two silver-tongued Ivy
League law school graduates (NAFTA champion and public assistance-wrecker Bill Clinton and big
bank bailout champion and Trans Pacific Partnership advocate Barack Obama) occupied the White
House. I expect the dismal Democrats to nominate the longtime centrist politician Joe "Regular
Guy" Biden (who claims he would have kicked Trump's ass
in high school ) or the newly hatched faux-progressive Senator and former longtime
prosecutor Kamala "Obama 2.0" Harris (D-CA), but, hey,
why not go full corporate monty and try to put an actual full-on corporate CEO in the White
House in the name of the Democratic Party's "liberal world view"? As the "liberal"
New
York Timesapprovingly explains :
"The election of Mr. Trump, a real estate developer and reality television personality,
certainly opened that door of opportunity, making it clear that American voters were willing
to elect a president with no prior government experience .American companies -- including
Starbucks -- have become more political in recent years, wading into issues like immigration,
gun rights and climate policy And at a moment when many voters say they are frustrated with
partisan gridlock and ineffective government programs, some believe that an efficiency-minded
business executive might bring some discipline and pragmatism to the Oval Office."
Besides Schultz, other corporate CEOs I've heard and read self-described liberals discuss as
potentially desirable presidential candidates include Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Disney CEO Bob
Iger, Facebook's spooky cult-leader Mark Zuckerberg, and even the JP Morgan Chase chairman and
CEO Jamie Dimon. What the Hell: why not drop the pretense of independence from the nation's
corporate and financial dictatorship and run an actual corporate or financial chieftain for
president?
That would be an act of oligarchic honesty on the part of the dismal dollar Dems. "I like
the idea of Dimon," one left correspondent writes me: "maybe with him as a candidate people
would finally wake up to the fact that the Democrats are the real problem." Don't hold your
breath. "Because," another comrade tells me, "being a ruthless plutocrat is their world
view."
"Trump is Terrible, So Let's Give Him More Spying and Killing Powers!"
What is the Democrats' leading cry? That the terrible Trump is truly terrible – and a
tool of Russia. And, of course, the "terrible" part is all too terribly true – the Russia
part not so much. But after you've bemoaned the terribleness of Trump for the ten thousandth
time, are you ready to get serious about the systemic and richly bipartisan, oligarchic context
within which Trump has emerged? "The Trump administration ," Chris Hedges reminded us on
Truthdig two weeks ago, "did not rise like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald
Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product
of our failed democracy . The problem is not Trump," writes Hedges. "It is a political system,
dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which
we don't count " (emphasis added).
And if Trump is as much of a dangerous and authoritarian monster as liberal Democrats say he
is (and he is), then why, pray tell, have most Democrats in Congress been willing to grant
him record levels of military funding along with re-authorized and
expanded warrantless surveillance and spying powers ? Why are Tim Kaine and other top
Democrats ready to grant him (and his successors) a freaking "Forever AUMF"? Hello? What does
that say about the not-so leftmost of the two reigning corporate parties? The glaring
schizophrenia ("Trump is a monster, let's give him more war and spying powers!") is yet more
proof that the Democrats are indeed an inauthentic opposition , committed to the same
imperial and police state Trump heads today. They are merely waiting to put one of their
ruling-class own atop the same exact and in fact richly bipartisan structures.
What Goes Around: "Trampling on the Helpless Abroad" Comes Home
A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals
don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that
their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed
crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed
authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and
occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous
governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed,
sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.
Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49
nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as
"dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba,
and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about
Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent
of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most
politically aware people," Whitney wrote:
"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for
foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military
assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi
Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our
nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our
government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They
are the rule ."
The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated
from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with
misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious
right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .
The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is
that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home
while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked
invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the
twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic.
She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at
home."
"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian
Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template
for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red
Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on
the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows
in his latest book, In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process
– internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices
abroad and justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" – has recurred ever
since. Today, the rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National
Security Agency has cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and
Obama44, not just under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as
beyond the U.S.
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever
been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary
dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless
Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the
rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on
our side.
"... our government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They are the rule ..."
"... The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. ..."
"... "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home." ..."
"... "Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows in his latest book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , ..."
"... "The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on our side. ..."
A final matter concerns the problem of imperial chickens coming home to roost. Liberals
don't like to hear it, but the ugly, richly documented historical fact of the matter is that
their party of binary and tribal choice has long joined Republicans in backing and indeed
crafting a U.S. foreign policy that has imposed
authoritarian regimes (and profoundly undemocratic interventions including invasions and
occupations) the world over . The roster of authoritarian and often-mass murderous
governments the U.S. military and CIA and allied transnational business interests have backed,
sometimes even helped create, with richly bipartisan support, is long indeed.
Last fall, Illinois Green Party leader Mike Whitney ran some fascinating numbers on the 49
nation-states that the right-wing "human rights" organization Freedom House identified as
"dictatorships" in 2016. Leaving aside Freedom House's problematic inclusion of Russia, Cuba,
and Iran on its list, the most remarkable thing about
Whitney's research was his finding that the U.S. offered military assistance to 76 percent
of these governments. (The only exceptions were Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Cuba,
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.). "Most
politically aware people," Whitney wrote:
"know of some of the more highly publicized instances examples of [U.S. support for
foreign dictatorships], such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military
assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi
Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt apologists for our
nation's imperialistic foreign policy try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. But my survey demonstrates that our
government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They
are the rule ."
The Pentagon and State Department data Whitney used came from Fiscal Year 2015. It dated
from the next-to-last year of the Obama administration, for which so many liberals recall with
misplaced nostalgia. Freedom House's list should have included Honduras, ruled by a vicious
right-wing government that Obama and his Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton helped install in a June 2009 military coup .
The problem here isn't just liberal hypocrisy and double standards. The deeper issue is
that, as the great American iconoclast Mark Twain knew, you cannot maintain democracy at home
while conducting an authoritarian empire abroad. During the United States' blood-soaked
invasion and occupation of the Philippines, Twain penned an imaginary history of the
twentieth-century United States. "It was impossible," Twain wrote, "to save the Great Republic.
She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at
home."
"Just a decade after Twain wrote those prophetic words," the historian
Alfred W. McCoy has observed , "colonial police methods came home to serve as a template
for the creation of an American internal security apparatus in wartime." The nation's first Red
Scare, which crushed left and labor movements during and after World War One, drew heavily on
the lessons and practices of colonial suppression in the Philippines and Cuba. As McCoy shows
in his latest book, In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power , the same basic process --
internal U.S. repression informed and shaped by authoritarian and imperial practices abroad and
justified by alleged external threats to the "homeland" -- has recurred ever since. Today, the
rise of an unprecedented global surveillance state overseen by the National Security Agency has
cost the US the trust of many of its top global allies (under Bush43 and Obama44, not just
under Trump45) while undermining civil liberties and democracy within as beyond the
U.S.
"The fetters imposed on liberty at home," James Madison wrote in 1799 , "have ever
been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary
dangers abroad." Those are wise words well worth revisiting amidst the current endless
Russiagate madness, calculated among other things to tell us that the FBI, the CIA, and the
rest of the nation's vast and ever more ubiquitous intelligence and surveillance state are on
our side.
The Democratic Party has made a strategic decision to bypass candidates from its progressive
wing and recruit former members of the military and intelligence agencies to compete with
Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. The shift away from liberal politicians to
center-right government agents and military personnel is part of a broader plan to rebuild the
party so it better serves the interests of its core constituents, Wall Street, big business,
and the foreign policy establishment. Democrat leaders want to eliminate left-leaning
candidates who think the party should promote issues that are important to working people and
replace them with career bureaucrats who will be more responsive to the needs of business. The
ultimate objective of this organization-remake is to create a center-right superparty comprised
almost entirely of trusted allies from the national security state who can be depended on to
implement the regressive policies required by their wealthy contributors. Here's more
background from Patrick Martin at the World Socialist Web Site:
"An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA,
Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic
candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political
history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as
widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as
many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power
in the lower chamber of Congress .
it should be noted that there would be no comparable influx of Bernie Sanders supporters
or other "left"-talking candidates in the event of a Democratic landslide. Only five of the
221 candidates reviewed in this study had links to Sanders or billed themselves as
"progressive." None is likely to win the primary, let alone the general election." ("The CIA
Democrats, Patrick Martin, The World Socialist Web Site)
Progressive candidates are being ignored to make room for center-right
functionaries who will focus on reducing government spending, rolling back Trump's trade
policy, and supporting the foreign wars. This new wave of fiscally-conservative Democrats will
execute their tasks in a party that serves as the political wing of the federal bureaucracy.
Democrat leaders have long-abandoned the idea that a party should be a vehicle for political
change. Their aim is to create a top-down pro-business collective that marginalizes activists
and liberals in order to avoid disruptive political convulsions that impact corporate
profitability. Here's more on the Dems' attack on its liberal base from an article by Patrick
Martin:
"The New Jersey Democratic Party establishment successfully imposed its choice in
contested congressional nominations, brushing aside several candidates backed by Bernie
Sanders and his Our Revolution group. Nearly every Sanders-backed candidate in other states
-- for governor of Iowa and congressional seats in Iowa, Montana New Mexico and California --
suffered a similar fate." ("US primary elections in eight states confirm rightward shift by
Democratic Party", Patrick Martin, The World Socialist Web Site)
As a result "Only a handful of candidates running under the Bernie Sanders banner survived
primaries held in six states on Tuesday. As of Wednesday afternoon, only seven of 31 candidates
endorsed by Our Revolution -- - had been declared winners." (USA Today)
Simply put, Democrat leaders have successfully derailed the progressive bandwagon. Even so,
Sanders role vis a vis the Democratic Party has always been a bit of a ruse. Here's how author
Tom Hall sums it up:
"The major political function of Sanders' campaign is to divert the growing social
discontent and hostility toward the existing system behind the Democratic Party, in order to
contain and dissipate it. His supposedly 'socialist' campaign is an attempt to preempt and
block the emergence of an independent movement of the working class." ("Is Bernie Sanders a
socialist?", July 16, 2015), Tom Hall, World Socialist Web Site)
Sanders task will become increasingly more difficult as progressives realize that
the Dems are building a party apparatus that sees activism as a fundamental threat to their
strategic objective, which is to create a secure environment where business can flourish.
Sanders has helped the party by seducing leftists with his fake liberalism, but he has
undermined the aims of working people who need an independent organization to advance their own
political agenda. As long as Sanders continues to sell his populist snake oil from a Democratic
soapbox, liberals are going to continue to hope that the party can be transformed into an
instrument for progressive change. The evidence, however, suggests the party is moving in the
opposite direction. Here's more from Patrick Martin's:
"The Democratic Party's promotion of a large number of military-intelligence candidates
for competitive districts represents an insurance policy for the US ruling elite. In the
event of a major swing to the Democrats, the House of Representatives will receive an influx
of new members drawn primarily from the national security apparatus, trusted servants of
American imperialism The preponderance of national security operatives in the Democratic
primaries sheds additional light on the nature of the Obama administration (which) marked the
further ascendancy of the military-intelligence apparatus within the Democratic Party .
The Democratic Party is running in the congressional elections not only as the party that
takes a tougher line on Russia, but as the party that enlists as its candidates and
representatives those who have been directly responsible for waging war, both overt and
covert, on behalf of American imperialism. .
The upper-middle-class layer that provides the "mass" base of the Democratic Party has
moved drastically to the right over the past four decades, enriched by the stock market boom,
consciously hostile to the working class, and enthusiastically supportive of the
military-intelligence apparatus which, in the final analysis, guarantees its own social
position against potential threats, both foreign and domestic. It is this social evolution
that now finds expression on the surface of capitalist politics, in the rise of the
military-intelligence "faction" to the leadership of the Democratic Party." ("The CIA
Democrats", Patrick Martin, The World Socialist Web Site)
The dramatic metamorphosis of the Democratic party hasn't taken place in a vacuum but in a
fractious and politically-charged environment where elements within the intelligence community
and law enforcement (FBI) are attempting to roll back the results of the 2016 presidential
elections because their preferred candidate (Hillary Clinton) did not win. And while these
agencies have not yet produced any hard evidence that their claims (of collusion with Russia)
are true, there is mounting circumstantial evidence that senior-level officials at these
agencies were actively trying to entrap members of the Trump campaign to justify more intrusive
surveillance in the hopes of uncovering incriminating evidence that could be used in
impeachment proceedings.
As more information surfaces, and we learn more about the "unmasking", wiretapping, National
Security Letters, FISA warrants, paid informants and other surveillance abuses that were
directed at the Trump campaign, we should think back to 2005 when the New York Times first
reported that the National Security Agency had been eavesdropping on Americans inside the
United States "without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying."
("Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts", New York Times) That incident was reported
just 13 years ago and already we can see that the infrastructure for a permanent Orwellian
police-state –that uses its extraordinary powers of surveillance to sabotage the
democratic process and maintain its stranglehold on power– has already arisen in our
midst. And while Russiagate is proof-positive that these malign spying techniques are already
being used against us, the Democratic party is now creating a home for deep-state alums and
their military allies so they continue to prosecute their war against personal liberty and the
American people.
"The ultimate objective of this organization-remake is to create a center-right superparty
comprised almost entirely of trusted allies from the national security state who can be
depended on to implement the regressive policies required by their wealthy contributors."
If by "regressive" you mean a move away from a mixed economy to a more fundamentalist
market-based approach, then yeah, I would agree.
"Their aim is to create a top-down pro-business collective that marginalizes activists and
liberals in order to avoid disruptive political convulsions "
The only activism I've seen from progressives in the past two years has nothing to do with
economic concerns; their energy is entirely focused on race, gender, and sexuality. The
cultural-Marxist troika.
" Russiagate is proof-positive that these malign spying techniques are already being used
against us, the Democratic party is now creating a home for deep-state alums and their
military allies "
You forgot to mention neoconservatives who are now finding safe spaces for their
warmongering in the liberal media. Currently the Democrats are inflamed with identity
politics; more than likely this infection will continue to fester for another two election
cycles. Democrats are proceeding down a dark path: identity politics brings only conflict,
civil war.
The Democrat party is a high-low coalition of the fringes. The ultra rich use the poor to
attack the middle so they can distract everyone else from uniting and doing something like
raising taxes on the rich or deporting minorities to democrat neighborhoods. So, it's not
surprising that the high part of the coalition would strike back.
This only further strengthens my desire to see a secession movement. When statist
democrats are in power, they will surely abuse this growing national security state to keep
us down. It's time to break up the USSA ASAP before it's too late.
"Democrat leaders want to eliminate left-leaning candidates who think the party should
promote issues that are important to working people."
Note to M. Whitney: the New Deal coalition is dead. Left/Progressives today despise
working people. Didn't you get the memo? Working people are deplorable! Antifa, BLM, the
Women's Studies Dept, the sex lobby, Amy Goodman, Michael Moore – they all hate working
people.
"Progressive candidates are being ignored to make room for center-right functionaries who
will focus on reducing government spending, rolling back Trump's trade policy, and supporting
the foreign wars."
Note to M. Whitney: Progressives today love free trade and advocate war against Russia.
Didn't you notice when pro-war progressives kicked you off the Counterpunch website? Today's
Progressives love War! Punch the Nazi!
"Simply put, Democrat leaders have successfully derailed the progressive bandwagon"
Note to M. Whitney: The progressive bandwagon exists solely for identity politics
hysteria, and it is not derailed. Haven't you noticed the race and gender, baiting and
slander bandwagon barreling down the highway? It's getting louder all the time.
Stop holding out hope that someday there will be a groundswell of progressives on the left
who are on the side of the little guy. Progressives are an elite crowd of identity politics
ideologues. Radical reformers are misanthropes – they don't like social norms because
they don't like basic human nature. They will never like working stiffs. They will never care
about 3rd world villagers getting bombed.
The fault line here is race and gender politics. You are on the right side on war and
economic issues and you are on the wrong side on race/sex/gender issues. Don't blindly accept
the dogma that differing group outcomes are caused by Bad White Males. Trust in facts and
reason. Don't feel you have to grovel because you're white or male. Change your mind on these
issues – it's called learning.
It brings power to its practitioners. Which is the whole point.
You forgot to mention neoconservatives who are now finding safe spaces for their
warmongering in the liberal media
Why wouldn't they? Warmongering has been a "liberal" preoccupation for a century, since
the income-taxing suffragist Wilson. Remember Bob Dole's "Kinsley gaffe" in the 1976 debate
with Walter Mondale.
"... There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters ..."
"... What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he added. ..."
"... "That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration. ..."
Speaking at CPAC in 2017, John Bolton boasted that his Super
PAC's implementation of "advanced psychographic data" would help elect "filibuster majorities"
in 2018. According to a New York Times
report published on Friday, Bolton's Super PAC paid $1.2 million to Cambridge Analytica,
the British firm that has come under scrutiny for its misuse of Facebook data to influence
voters. Bolton's Super PAC, moreover, was heavily funded by the Mercer family, who gave
millions to Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 presidential campaign.
There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the
personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was
using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters. "The data and modeling Bolton's PAC
received was derived from the Facebook data," Christopher Wylie, the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower, told the Times . "We definitely told them about how we
were doing it. We talked about it in conference calls, in meetings."
What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of
the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed
and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told
the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he
added.
"That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering
advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The
relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up
talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration.
This article on almost a year old but thinks are developing as predicted. Which increases its
value.
"... Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who
does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize that
a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?! Furthermore,
while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist ideas have often
been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an entirely different beast
and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when considering the social,
political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual disaster Capitalism is now
proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a country as dysfunctional as the
US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant pontifications about Socialism and
maybe even open a book and read about it. ..."
"... My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites
running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if
they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff seriously.
Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what everybody else
really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official propaganda.
..."
"... Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as
their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
"... Because, and make no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any
more, they retain a huge capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like. ..."
"... However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a
vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get
their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC. ..."
Notable quotes:
"... Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize that a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?! Furthermore, while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist ideas have often been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an entirely different beast and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when considering the social, political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual disaster Capitalism is now proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a country as dysfunctional as the US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant pontifications about Socialism and maybe even open a book and read about it. ..."
"... we all know who Trump's puppet-masters are nowadays so we know what to expect ..."
"... Trump is now clearly fully endorsing that fairytale that "The West" (in which Trump now hilariously includes Poland!) has defeated Hitler and saved the world. The truth is that the Nazis were defeated by the Soviets and that all the efforts of the Poles, French, Brits and even Americans were but a minor (20% max) sideshow to the "real event" (Those who still might believe in this nonsense can simply read this ). Yet again, that the Americans would feel the need to appropriate for themselves somebody else's victory is, yet again, a clear sign of weakness. Do they expect the rest of the planet to buy into this nonsense? Probably not. ..."
"... My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff seriously. Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what everybody else really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official propaganda. ..."
"... Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
"... Because, and make no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any more, they retain a huge capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like. ..."
"... However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC. ..."
"... It appears that for the foreseeable future Trump will continue to focus his energy on beating Obama for the status of "worst President in US history" while the Neocons will continue to focus their energy on trying to impeach Trump ..."
"... I still maintain that the worst President in history (excluding possibly Woodrow Wilson) was Bill Clinton (strongly influenced, no doubt, by Hillary.) Sure, the 90′s were a great time in America, but Clinton's evil actions (signing NAFTA, the Crime Bill, ignoring Bin Laden, and repealing Glass-Steagall to name just a few) had not yet come to fruition. ..."
"... Consider that the scene he bought into is the product of 70 years of constant propaganda aimed at the American psyche and how successful that has been. ..."
"... Hillary would not have done anything different than Trump. Trump is a dumb shit sycophant of the Deep State just like Hillary. ..."
"... "Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war" That pretty much says it all. All it will take is for US troops to get an unexpected butt kicking somewhere, sometime. ..."
Late this morning, outraged emails started pouring in. My correspondents reported "getting
sick" and having their "heart ache". The cause of all that? They had just watched Trump's
speech at the UN...
You can read the full (rush, not official) text
here or watch the video here .
Most of it is so vapid that I won't even bother posting the full thing. But there are a few
interesting moments including those:
"We will be spending almost $700 billion on our military and defense. Our military will
soon be the strongest it has ever been"
This short sentence contains the key to unlock the reason behind the fact that while the US
military is extremely good at killing people in large numbers, it is also extremely bad at
winning wars. Like most Americans, Trump is under the illusion that spending a lot of money
"buys" you a better military. This is completely false, of course. If spending money was the
key to a competent military force, the US armed forces would have already conquered the entire
planet many times over. In reality, they have not won anything meaningful since the war in the
Pacific.
...then he suddenly decided to share this outright bizarre insight of his:
The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that
socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela,
wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and
devastation and failure.
Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who
does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize
that a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?!
Furthermore, while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist
ideas have often been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an
entirely different beast and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when
considering the social, political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual
disaster Capitalism is now proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a
country as dysfunctional as the US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant
pontifications about Socialism and maybe even open a book and read about it.
I won't even bother discussing the comprehensively counter-factual nonsense Trump has spewed
about Iran and Hezbollah, we all know who Trump's puppet-masters are nowadays so we know
what to expect . Instead, I will conclude with this pearl from The Donald:
In remembering the great victory that led to this body's founding, we must never forget
that those heroes who fought against evil, also fought for the nations that they love.
Patriotism led the Poles to die to save Poland, the French to fight for a free France, and
the Brits to stand strong for Britain.
Echoing the nonsense he spoke while in Poland, Trump is now clearly fully endorsing that
fairytale that "The West" (in which Trump now hilariously includes Poland!) has defeated Hitler
and saved the world. The truth is that the Nazis were defeated by the Soviets and that all the
efforts of the Poles, French, Brits and even Americans were but a minor (20% max) sideshow to
the "real event" (Those who still might believe in this nonsense can simply read this ). Yet
again, that the Americans would feel the need to appropriate for themselves somebody else's
victory is, yet again, a clear sign of weakness. Do they expect the rest of the planet to buy
into this nonsense? Probably not.
My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites
running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if
they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff
seriously. Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what
everybody else really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official
propaganda.
[Sidebar: When my wife and I watched this pathetic speech we starting laughing about the
fact that Trump was so obscenely bad that we (almost) begin to miss Obama. This is a standing
joke in our family because when Obama came to power we (almost) began to miss Dubya. The
reason why this is a joke is that when Dubya came to power we decided that there is no way
anybody could possibly be worse than him. Oh boy where we wrong! Right now I am still not at
the point were I would be missing Obama (that is asking for a lot from me!), but I will
unapologetically admit that I am missing Dubya. I do. I really do. Maybe not the people
around Dubya, he is the one who truly let the Neocon "crazies in the basement" creep out and
occupy the Situation Room, but at least Dubya seemed to realize how utterly incompetent he
was. Furthermore, Dubya was a heck of a lot dumber than Obama (in this context being stupid
is a mitigating factor) and he sure did not have the truly galactic arrogance of Trump
(intelligence-wise they are probably on par)].
In conclusion, what I take away from this speech is a sense of relief for the rest of the
planet and a sense of real worry for the US. Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and
made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a
virtual standstill. Sure, the Americans talk a lot, but at least they are doing nothing.
That paralysis, which is a direct consequence of the internal infighting, is a blessing for the
rest of the planet because it allows everybody else to get things done. Because, and make
no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any more, they retain a huge
capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like.
But for as long as the US remains paralyzed this destructive potential remains mostly unused
(and no matter how bad things look now, Hillary President would have been infinitely worse!).
However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a
vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get
their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC.
Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war and there is no hope in sight, at least
for the time being. It appears that for the foreseeable future Trump will continue to focus
his energy on beating Obama for the status of "worst President in US history" while the Neocons
will continue to focus their energy on trying to impeach Trump , and maybe even trigger a
civil war. The rest of us living here are in for some very tough times ahead. As they say in
Florida when a hurricane comes barreling down on you "hunker down!".
Netanyahu has spoken, stating that Trump has given the boldest, most courageous UN speech
that he has ever heard. Well that settles that with the prescient oracle rendering his
definitive and omnipotent judgment!
A lot of old friends didn't like President Trump's UN speech today because it didn't
break cleanly with UniParty foreign policy! E.g. Paul Craig Roberts' comments here. But
it did contain these revolutionary comments on immigration and refugee policy ! The
latter especially significant because Trump has to set the quota for U.S. quota for
refugees (actually expedited, subsidized, politically favored immigrants) in the next few
days. Who knows what Trump will do! But Hillary would never even have said it
[...] For the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10
in their home region.
[...] For decades, the United States has dealt with migration challenges here in the Western
Hemisphere. We have learned that, over the long term, uncontrolled migration is deeply
unfair to both the sending and the receiving countries.
For the sending countries, it reduces domestic pressure to pursue needed political
and economic reform, and drains them of the human capital necessary to motivate and
implement those reforms.
For the receiving countries, the substantial costs of uncontrolled migration are
borne overwhelmingly by low-income citizens whose concerns are often ignored by both media
and government.
I still maintain that the worst President in history (excluding possibly Woodrow
Wilson) was Bill Clinton (strongly influenced, no doubt, by Hillary.) Sure, the 90′s
were a great time in America, but Clinton's evil actions (signing NAFTA, the Crime Bill,
ignoring Bin Laden, and repealing Glass-Steagall to name just a few) had not yet come to
fruition.
Assuming the keen political insight Trump exhibited to get himself the job he sought still
exists, perhaps all this insane blather is proof it continues. Consider that the scene he
bought into is the product of 70 years of constant propaganda aimed at the American psyche
and how successful that has been.
Then imagine Trump feeding the ravenous American mindset for the status quo while actually
working around it. Brilliant! Then again, if he truly means what he says, all is lost.
Thank you Stephen Miller! He must be reading Peter Singer:
International support for countries bearing the greatest refugee burden also makes economic
sense: it costs Jordan about €3,000 ($3,350) to support one refugee for a year; in
Germany, the cost is at least €12,000.
Another threat to the Church is the illegal immigration control movement. If this movement
succeeds, and what is perceived by Latin Americans and other governments as an escape valve
is shut off, these governments would logically say, "Our demographic course cannot
continue." These governments would have little choice but to confront the Church and say,
"If we are to survive as governments, then we must get serious about population growth
control. Otherwise, we in Latin America are destined to become a sea of chaos. We, as Latin
Americans, must make family planning and abortion services fully available and encourage
their use." Turning off the valve to illegal immigration is therefore a serious threat to
the power of the Church.
President Trump's Message: Make The United Nations Great
In fact, he's strengthened our alliances in meetings in Washington with key allies, by
going to foreign capitals - the trip to France and the Bastille Day with America's
oldest ally, with which the United States has in recent years had something of a rocky
relationship – was strengthened enormously by that visit to Paris this year. And
the president has, you know, both on a personal level and on an alliance level, really
strengthened the alliance with France and with President Macron. In fact, he met with
him yesterday and had a very, extremely positive and friendly meeting where they talked
substantive business, but they also talked about the history of the alliance and reminisced
a bit about the grandeur of that trip to Paris in July.
The French president's suggestion that African women are breeding like animals and must
be restrained by an enlightened elite awakens primordial terrors in the hearts of the
mainstream Left and Right.
[...]
If Europeans are replaced with Africans, Western Civilization will disappear. The choices
are simple: The West, yes or no? The white race, yes or no? Our rulers have exhausted all
other options.
Peter Singer on How Political Correctness Let African Population Growth Run Amok for a
Generation
The outrage evoked by Macron's remark, however, appears to have little to do with its
inaccuracy. Macron violated a taboo that has been in place since the International
Conference on Population and Development, held under the auspices of the UN in Cairo in
1994. The conference adopted a Programme of Action that rejected a demographically driven
approach to population policies, and instead focused on meeting the reproductive-health
needs of individuals, especially women. Population targets were out; rights were in.
Don't lose hope
[...]
I shared this video here at the Unz Review before, but I would like to share it again,
because it best encapsulates and captures what I personally associate with term "Alt
Right"
"Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war" That pretty much says it all.
All it will take is for US troops to get an unexpected butt kicking somewhere,
sometime.
Churchill himself, one of a long list of Anglo-genocidal killers (according to The Saker's
last post) admitted that, "The Red Army tore the guts out of The Wehrmacht." Is this even in
dispute?
In Russian thinking therefore, with only 20% contribution by American/UK Commonwealth
forces, we subtract that, and this is the diplomatic question. Why would Stalin's T34s not
have rolled up to The English Channel and installed compliant Communist regimes in
France/Belgium/Holland as they did in Eastern Europe?
They did the same in North Korea by installing the grandfather (Kim Il-Sung) of this young
'Rocket Man' in 1945 at the conclusion of the fighting against Japan in the far-east.
"... There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters ..."
"... What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he added. ..."
"... "That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration. ..."
Speaking at CPAC in 2017, John Bolton boasted that his Super
PAC's implementation of "advanced psychographic data" would help elect "filibuster majorities"
in 2018. According to a New York Times
report published on Friday, Bolton's Super PAC paid $1.2 million to Cambridge Analytica,
the British firm that has come under scrutiny for its misuse of Facebook data to influence
voters. Bolton's Super PAC, moreover, was heavily funded by the Mercer family, who gave
millions to Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 presidential campaign.
There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the
personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was
using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters. "The data and modeling Bolton's PAC
received was derived from the Facebook data," Christopher Wylie, the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower, told the Times . "We definitely told them about how we
were doing it. We talked about it in conference calls, in meetings."
What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of
the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed
and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told
the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he
added.
"That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering
advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The
relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up
talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration.
This article on almost a year old but thinks are developing as predicted. Which increases its
value.
"... Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who
does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize that
a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?! Furthermore,
while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist ideas have often
been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an entirely different beast
and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when considering the social,
political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual disaster Capitalism is now
proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a country as dysfunctional as the
US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant pontifications about Socialism and
maybe even open a book and read about it. ..."
"... My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites
running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if
they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff seriously.
Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what everybody else
really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official propaganda.
..."
"... Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as
their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
"... Because, and make no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any
more, they retain a huge capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like. ..."
"... However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a
vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get
their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC. ..."
Notable quotes:
"... Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize that a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?! Furthermore, while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist ideas have often been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an entirely different beast and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when considering the social, political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual disaster Capitalism is now proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a country as dysfunctional as the US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant pontifications about Socialism and maybe even open a book and read about it. ..."
"... we all know who Trump's puppet-masters are nowadays so we know what to expect ..."
"... Trump is now clearly fully endorsing that fairytale that "The West" (in which Trump now hilariously includes Poland!) has defeated Hitler and saved the world. The truth is that the Nazis were defeated by the Soviets and that all the efforts of the Poles, French, Brits and even Americans were but a minor (20% max) sideshow to the "real event" (Those who still might believe in this nonsense can simply read this ). Yet again, that the Americans would feel the need to appropriate for themselves somebody else's victory is, yet again, a clear sign of weakness. Do they expect the rest of the planet to buy into this nonsense? Probably not. ..."
"... My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff seriously. Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what everybody else really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official propaganda. ..."
"... Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a virtual standstill. ..."
"... Because, and make no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any more, they retain a huge capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like. ..."
"... However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC. ..."
"... It appears that for the foreseeable future Trump will continue to focus his energy on beating Obama for the status of "worst President in US history" while the Neocons will continue to focus their energy on trying to impeach Trump ..."
"... I still maintain that the worst President in history (excluding possibly Woodrow Wilson) was Bill Clinton (strongly influenced, no doubt, by Hillary.) Sure, the 90′s were a great time in America, but Clinton's evil actions (signing NAFTA, the Crime Bill, ignoring Bin Laden, and repealing Glass-Steagall to name just a few) had not yet come to fruition. ..."
"... Consider that the scene he bought into is the product of 70 years of constant propaganda aimed at the American psyche and how successful that has been. ..."
"... Hillary would not have done anything different than Trump. Trump is a dumb shit sycophant of the Deep State just like Hillary. ..."
"... "Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war" That pretty much says it all. All it will take is for US troops to get an unexpected butt kicking somewhere, sometime. ..."
Late this morning, outraged emails started pouring in. My correspondents reported "getting
sick" and having their "heart ache". The cause of all that? They had just watched Trump's
speech at the UN...
You can read the full (rush, not official) text
here or watch the video here .
Most of it is so vapid that I won't even bother posting the full thing. But there are a few
interesting moments including those:
"We will be spending almost $700 billion on our military and defense. Our military will
soon be the strongest it has ever been"
This short sentence contains the key to unlock the reason behind the fact that while the US
military is extremely good at killing people in large numbers, it is also extremely bad at
winning wars. Like most Americans, Trump is under the illusion that spending a lot of money
"buys" you a better military. This is completely false, of course. If spending money was the
key to a competent military force, the US armed forces would have already conquered the entire
planet many times over. In reality, they have not won anything meaningful since the war in the
Pacific.
...then he suddenly decided to share this outright bizarre insight of his:
The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that
socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela,
wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and
devastation and failure.
Since when did Trump become an expert on political science and world history anyway? Who
does he think he is lecturing? Yet another US middle school classroom?! Does he not realize
that a good number of the countries represented at the UN consider themselves Socialist?!
Furthermore, while I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Socialist and Communist
ideas have often been a disaster in the 20th century, Socialism in the 21st century is an
entirely different beast and the jury is still very much out on this issue, especially when
considering the social, political, economic, ecological, psychological and even spiritual
disaster Capitalism is now proving to be for much of the planet. Being the President of a
country as dysfunctional as the US, Trump would be well-advised to tone down his arrogant
pontifications about Socialism and maybe even open a book and read about it.
I won't even bother discussing the comprehensively counter-factual nonsense Trump has spewed
about Iran and Hezbollah, we all know who Trump's puppet-masters are nowadays so we know
what to expect . Instead, I will conclude with this pearl from The Donald:
In remembering the great victory that led to this body's founding, we must never forget
that those heroes who fought against evil, also fought for the nations that they love.
Patriotism led the Poles to die to save Poland, the French to fight for a free France, and
the Brits to stand strong for Britain.
Echoing the nonsense he spoke while in Poland, Trump is now clearly fully endorsing that
fairytale that "The West" (in which Trump now hilariously includes Poland!) has defeated Hitler
and saved the world. The truth is that the Nazis were defeated by the Soviets and that all the
efforts of the Poles, French, Brits and even Americans were but a minor (20% max) sideshow to
the "real event" (Those who still might believe in this nonsense can simply read this ). Yet
again, that the Americans would feel the need to appropriate for themselves somebody else's
victory is, yet again, a clear sign of weakness. Do they expect the rest of the planet to buy
into this nonsense? Probably not.
My guess is that all they want is to send a clear messages to the Comprador elites
running most countries that this is the "official ideology of the AngloZionist Empire" and if
they want to remain in power they better toe the line even if nobody takes this stuff
seriously. Yup, back to a 1980s Soviet kind of attitude towards propaganda: nobody cares what
everybody else really thinks as long as everybody continues to pretend to believe the official
propaganda.
[Sidebar: When my wife and I watched this pathetic speech we starting laughing about the
fact that Trump was so obscenely bad that we (almost) begin to miss Obama. This is a standing
joke in our family because when Obama came to power we (almost) began to miss Dubya. The
reason why this is a joke is that when Dubya came to power we decided that there is no way
anybody could possibly be worse than him. Oh boy where we wrong! Right now I am still not at
the point were I would be missing Obama (that is asking for a lot from me!), but I will
unapologetically admit that I am missing Dubya. I do. I really do. Maybe not the people
around Dubya, he is the one who truly let the Neocon "crazies in the basement" creep out and
occupy the Situation Room, but at least Dubya seemed to realize how utterly incompetent he
was. Furthermore, Dubya was a heck of a lot dumber than Obama (in this context being stupid
is a mitigating factor) and he sure did not have the truly galactic arrogance of Trump
(intelligence-wise they are probably on par)].
In conclusion, what I take away from this speech is a sense of relief for the rest of the
planet and a sense of real worry for the US. Ever since the Neocons overthrew Trump and
made him what is colloquially referred to as their "bitch" the US foreign policy has come to a
virtual standstill. Sure, the Americans talk a lot, but at least they are doing nothing.
That paralysis, which is a direct consequence of the internal infighting, is a blessing for the
rest of the planet because it allows everybody else to get things done. Because, and make
no mistake here, if the US cannot get anything constructive done any more, they retain a huge
capability to disrupt, subvert, create chaos and the like.
But for as long as the US remains paralyzed this destructive potential remains mostly unused
(and no matter how bad things look now, Hillary President would have been infinitely worse!).
However, the US themselves are now the prime victim of a decapitated Presidency and a
vindictive and generally out of control Neocon effort to prevent true American patriots to "get
their country back" (as they say) and finally overthrow the regime in Washington DC.
Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war and there is no hope in sight, at least
for the time being. It appears that for the foreseeable future Trump will continue to focus
his energy on beating Obama for the status of "worst President in US history" while the Neocons
will continue to focus their energy on trying to impeach Trump , and maybe even trigger a
civil war. The rest of us living here are in for some very tough times ahead. As they say in
Florida when a hurricane comes barreling down on you "hunker down!".
Netanyahu has spoken, stating that Trump has given the boldest, most courageous UN speech
that he has ever heard. Well that settles that with the prescient oracle rendering his
definitive and omnipotent judgment!
A lot of old friends didn't like President Trump's UN speech today because it didn't
break cleanly with UniParty foreign policy! E.g. Paul Craig Roberts' comments here. But
it did contain these revolutionary comments on immigration and refugee policy ! The
latter especially significant because Trump has to set the quota for U.S. quota for
refugees (actually expedited, subsidized, politically favored immigrants) in the next few
days. Who knows what Trump will do! But Hillary would never even have said it
[...] For the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10
in their home region.
[...] For decades, the United States has dealt with migration challenges here in the Western
Hemisphere. We have learned that, over the long term, uncontrolled migration is deeply
unfair to both the sending and the receiving countries.
For the sending countries, it reduces domestic pressure to pursue needed political
and economic reform, and drains them of the human capital necessary to motivate and
implement those reforms.
For the receiving countries, the substantial costs of uncontrolled migration are
borne overwhelmingly by low-income citizens whose concerns are often ignored by both media
and government.
I still maintain that the worst President in history (excluding possibly Woodrow
Wilson) was Bill Clinton (strongly influenced, no doubt, by Hillary.) Sure, the 90′s
were a great time in America, but Clinton's evil actions (signing NAFTA, the Crime Bill,
ignoring Bin Laden, and repealing Glass-Steagall to name just a few) had not yet come to
fruition.
Assuming the keen political insight Trump exhibited to get himself the job he sought still
exists, perhaps all this insane blather is proof it continues. Consider that the scene he
bought into is the product of 70 years of constant propaganda aimed at the American psyche
and how successful that has been.
Then imagine Trump feeding the ravenous American mindset for the status quo while actually
working around it. Brilliant! Then again, if he truly means what he says, all is lost.
Thank you Stephen Miller! He must be reading Peter Singer:
International support for countries bearing the greatest refugee burden also makes economic
sense: it costs Jordan about €3,000 ($3,350) to support one refugee for a year; in
Germany, the cost is at least €12,000.
Another threat to the Church is the illegal immigration control movement. If this movement
succeeds, and what is perceived by Latin Americans and other governments as an escape valve
is shut off, these governments would logically say, "Our demographic course cannot
continue." These governments would have little choice but to confront the Church and say,
"If we are to survive as governments, then we must get serious about population growth
control. Otherwise, we in Latin America are destined to become a sea of chaos. We, as Latin
Americans, must make family planning and abortion services fully available and encourage
their use." Turning off the valve to illegal immigration is therefore a serious threat to
the power of the Church.
President Trump's Message: Make The United Nations Great
In fact, he's strengthened our alliances in meetings in Washington with key allies, by
going to foreign capitals - the trip to France and the Bastille Day with America's
oldest ally, with which the United States has in recent years had something of a rocky
relationship – was strengthened enormously by that visit to Paris this year. And
the president has, you know, both on a personal level and on an alliance level, really
strengthened the alliance with France and with President Macron. In fact, he met with
him yesterday and had a very, extremely positive and friendly meeting where they talked
substantive business, but they also talked about the history of the alliance and reminisced
a bit about the grandeur of that trip to Paris in July.
The French president's suggestion that African women are breeding like animals and must
be restrained by an enlightened elite awakens primordial terrors in the hearts of the
mainstream Left and Right.
[...]
If Europeans are replaced with Africans, Western Civilization will disappear. The choices
are simple: The West, yes or no? The white race, yes or no? Our rulers have exhausted all
other options.
Peter Singer on How Political Correctness Let African Population Growth Run Amok for a
Generation
The outrage evoked by Macron's remark, however, appears to have little to do with its
inaccuracy. Macron violated a taboo that has been in place since the International
Conference on Population and Development, held under the auspices of the UN in Cairo in
1994. The conference adopted a Programme of Action that rejected a demographically driven
approach to population policies, and instead focused on meeting the reproductive-health
needs of individuals, especially women. Population targets were out; rights were in.
Don't lose hope
[...]
I shared this video here at the Unz Review before, but I would like to share it again,
because it best encapsulates and captures what I personally associate with term "Alt
Right"
"Step by step the US is getting closer to a civil war" That pretty much says it all.
All it will take is for US troops to get an unexpected butt kicking somewhere,
sometime.
Churchill himself, one of a long list of Anglo-genocidal killers (according to The Saker's
last post) admitted that, "The Red Army tore the guts out of The Wehrmacht." Is this even in
dispute?
In Russian thinking therefore, with only 20% contribution by American/UK Commonwealth
forces, we subtract that, and this is the diplomatic question. Why would Stalin's T34s not
have rolled up to The English Channel and installed compliant Communist regimes in
France/Belgium/Holland as they did in Eastern Europe?
They did the same in North Korea by installing the grandfather (Kim Il-Sung) of this young
'Rocket Man' in 1945 at the conclusion of the fighting against Japan in the far-east.
"... There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters ..."
"... What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he added. ..."
"... "That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration. ..."
Speaking at CPAC in 2017, John Bolton boasted that his Super
PAC's implementation of "advanced psychographic data" would help elect "filibuster majorities"
in 2018. According to a New York Times
report published on Friday, Bolton's Super PAC paid $1.2 million to Cambridge Analytica,
the British firm that has come under scrutiny for its misuse of Facebook data to influence
voters. Bolton's Super PAC, moreover, was heavily funded by the Mercer family, who gave
millions to Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 presidential campaign.
There is no indication that Bolton was aware that Cambridge Analytica was exploiting the
personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users -- but he was certainly aware that it was
using an extensive trove of personal data to target voters. "The data and modeling Bolton's PAC
received was derived from the Facebook data," Christopher Wylie, the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower, told the Times . "We definitely told them about how we
were doing it. We talked about it in conference calls, in meetings."
What Bolton was paying Cambridge Analytica to do is, perhaps, more damning than his use of
the shady data firm. "The Bolton PAC was obsessed with how America was becoming limp wristed
and spineless and it wanted research and messaging for national security issues," Wylie told
the Times . "That really meant making people more militaristic in their worldview," he
added.
"That's what they said they wanted, anyway." Cambridge Analytica produced fear-mongering
advertisements aimed at drumming up support for Bolton and other hawkish Republicans. The
relationship between the firm and the Super PAC grew "so close that the firm was writing up
talking points" for Bolton after only a few months of collaboration.
Let us review: Every effort by the British to bring down the government of the United States
under President Donald Trump has failed. MI6 agent Christopher Steele's dodgy dossier now
stands exposed as the only basis for the launching of Trumpgate by the corrupt Obama
intelligence team, and the perpetrators are themselves now facing criminal prosecution; the
Skripal case has disappeared from the media, as the connections to the same Christopher Steele
were coming to the fore; the Syrian chemical weapons fraud concocted by the British-run White
Helmets has now been exposed internationally as a Nazi-like staged affair to justify a military
assault. That assault, in which Trump was tricked into going along with the British and the
French, effectively declared that the international law established after World War II, through
the United Nations, to prevent another world war, was dead.
The Empire will not go quietly into the night. Bibi Netanyahu's antics -- claiming "proof"
that Iran is still developing nuclear weapons -- is being ridiculed even by former Israeli
intelligence officials as re-packaged news, already known by the IAEA, and proving nothing. But
the British have always used the Israeli right-wing, and the Saudi Royal family, to provoke
divisions and, when necessary, to start wars. With Trump having cooperated with Putin in
defeating ISIS in Syria, and swearing that he wants to get the U.S. out of Syria altogether and
"stop being the world's policeman," the British are desperately pulling every possible string
to drag the U.S. into more wars.
The same situation exists in Ukraine. Poroshenko today launched his "Joint Forces"
operation, consolidating the National Guard, the National Police, and the disparate neo-Nazi
militias under central army control, committed to a military solution to the Donbas.
A new war in Syria or Ukraine could quickly explode into war with Russia, and a new world
war, this time with nuclear weapons.
Let us review: Every effort by the British to bring down the government of the United States
under President Donald Trump has failed. MI6 agent Christopher Steele's dodgy dossier now
stands exposed as the only basis for the launching of Trumpgate by the corrupt Obama
intelligence team, and the perpetrators are themselves now facing criminal prosecution; the
Skripal case has disappeared from the media, as the connections to the same Christopher Steele
were coming to the fore; the Syrian chemical weapons fraud concocted by the British-run White
Helmets has now been exposed internationally as a Nazi-like staged affair to justify a military
assault. That assault, in which Trump was tricked into going along with the British and the
French, effectively declared that the international law established after World War II, through
the United Nations, to prevent another world war, was dead.
The Empire will not go quietly into the night. Bibi Netanyahu's antics -- claiming "proof"
that Iran is still developing nuclear weapons -- is being ridiculed even by former Israeli
intelligence officials as re-packaged news, already known by the IAEA, and proving nothing. But
the British have always used the Israeli right-wing, and the Saudi Royal family, to provoke
divisions and, when necessary, to start wars. With Trump having cooperated with Putin in
defeating ISIS in Syria, and swearing that he wants to get the U.S. out of Syria altogether and
"stop being the world's policeman," the British are desperately pulling every possible string
to drag the U.S. into more wars.
The same situation exists in Ukraine. Poroshenko today launched his "Joint Forces"
operation, consolidating the National Guard, the National Police, and the disparate neo-Nazi
militias under central army control, committed to a military solution to the Donbas.
A new war in Syria or Ukraine could quickly explode into war with Russia, and a new world
war, this time with nuclear weapons.
One practical issue is what is going to happen to European investments in Iran. The most
high profile example is French energy company Total's investment in a giant Iran gasfield.
Total said this month it would pull out of Iran and its development of the giant South Pars
gasfield unless it is specifically protected from US penalties and related sanctions (see
Financial Times article " Total threat to pull out of
Iran dents EU hopes of saving accord ", May 17, 2018).
Obviously, some form of compromise may be negotiated. But if Washington takes a hard line,
such as claiming US jurisdiction as regards dollar transfers between two sovereign countries as
was the case in 2014 with the US$9 billion fine levied on French bank BNP, then a confrontation
is seemingly inevitable and, as a result, a growing questioning of the US hegemony implied by
the US dollar paper standard, a concern which has long been shared by both China and
Russia.
QUESTIONING THE US' ROLE AS THE "ECONOMIC POLICEMAN OF THE PLANET"
In this respect, the most interesting reaction to the Iran issue since Donald Trump made his
announcement on May 8 was that of the French finance minister Bruno Le Maire when he said on
May 9 that it was not acceptable for the US to be the "economic policeman of the planet".
In this respect, France is the European country to watch since it has a history of being
willing to stand up to Washington in the post-1945 world. That cannot really be said of Germany
and certainly not of Britain.
POMPEO WARNS IRAN OF ESCALATING SANCTIONS
Staying on the subject of Iran, US Secretary of State and former CIA boss Mike Pompeo made
an ultra-aggressive speech on Monday threatening Iran with escalating sanctions. In his first
major foreign policy address as Secretary of State, Pompeo stated:
Sanctions are going back in full effect and new ones are coming This sting of sanctions
will be painful if the regime does not change its course These will indeed end up being the
strongest sanctions in history when we are complete.
The above rhetoric hardly suggests a willingness to compromise with the European position.
The significance of all of the above is that Europe and the US remain on a collision
course.
IRAN'S EXPORTS BOOMING SINCE SANCTIONS ENDED
The importance of Europe for Iran can be seen in the fact that Iran's exports to Europe have
surged almost ninefold since the end of sanctions in January 2016.
Thus, Iran's exports to the EU have risen from US$1.3 billion in 2015 to US$11.4 billion in
the 12 months to January, according to the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics (see following
chart).
There is also of course the growing trade between Iran and China. Iran's total trade with
China rose by 18%YoY to US$27.5 billion in the 12 months to January (see following chart). All
this makes Iran a good example of the increasingly multipolar world where American influence or
interests appear to be fading.
IRAN ANNUALIZED EXPORTS TO EU
Source: IMF – Direction of Trade Statistics
IRAN ANNUALIZED TOTAL TRADE WITH CHINA
Source: IMF – Direction of Trade Statistics
IRAN'S CURRENCY TAKES A HIT
Meanwhile, Iran's currency has been hit hard in recent months as a result of the uncertainty
created by Trump's previous repeated earlier threats to pull out of the nuclear deal and now
subsequent follow-through decision.
The rial has depreciated in the black market by 33% against the US dollar year-to-date (see
following chart). This followed a period of comparative stability where the currency traded in
a 13% range for two years, helped by the optimism created by the nuclear deal as well as by
very high real interest
rates . Iranian treasury bill yields peaked at 27% in early 2017 and bottomed at 16% late
last year. They are now back at 19% as a result of the market pressure created by the threat of
renewed American sanctions.
IRANIAN RIAL/US$ (INVERTED SCALE)
Note: Based on black market rate after Iran unified its dual exchange rates on 9 April.
Source: Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, Bonbast.com
SUBSTANTIAL FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN IRAN
With a classic bullish emerging market demographic profile, in terms of a
population of 80 million, 60% of whom are under the age of 35, Iran has, naturally, attracted a
lot of foreign direct investment in recent years, most particularly following the 2015 nuclear
deal.
The biggest of late was the previously mentioned Total's US$4.8 billion investment signed in
July 2017. But Total says it has only invested under €40 million so far, according to the
above mentioned FT article, which is precisely why the French company wants to know if it can
get a specific waiver from the sanctions.
In terms of the aggregate data, Iran's actual FDI inflows surged by 64%YoY to US$3.37
biilion in 2016, according to United Nations data. While an Iranian government report published
last year disclosed that Iran has approved US$11.8 billion in FDI during the 12 months to
December 2016, with Spain and Germany accounting for US$3.2 billion and US$2.9 billion of that
total respectively.
IRAN FDI INFLOWS
Source: UNCTAD World Investment Report 2017
WILL WE SEE A RETREAT FROM PAX
AMERICANA?
The point, therefore, remains that a confrontation between the US and the Eurozone on this
issue is potentially a landmark development in the retreat from Pax Americana.
But for now it is probably the case that most of Europe, in the spirit of appeasement, will
be content to fudge the issue in the hope that Donald Trump may not be re-elected to the US
presidency for a second term and life will return to "normal".
IRAN'S ECONOMY
Turning away from geopolitical issues, Iran's economy and financial markets spring some
positive surprises. The country has an open capital account, while there is no tax on capital
gains or dividends. The Tehran Stock Exchange celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.
But if FDI has been coming into the country in recent years, foreign portfolio investment
activity has been much more limited, with estimates of only US$100 million invested in
aggregate. This is the consequence in terms of equities of both a lack of inclusion in
benchmark MSCI indices and, of course, of sanctions.
NO FOREIGN BANKS IN IRAN
There is still no foreign bank in Iran and therefore a lack of familiar custodians
acceptable to international portfolio investors. Indeed, despite the 2015 nuclear deal, it is
still not possible to use foreign credit cards to pay for hotel bills or any other
transaction.
Foreign credit rating agencies are also absent which may not surprise given the three
biggest are owned by the Americans. This is a pity for the Iranian Government given that, with
minimal foreign currency debt and total government debt to GDP of only 35% of GDP, it would
make a lot of sense to do a landmark sovereign bond issue. Total external debt is now only
US$10.8 billion or just 2.5% of GDP, according to the Central Bank of Iran (see following
chart).
So this geopolitical planning is unique To America? So... I would be shocked, shocked if China, Russia, or the Sunni/Shia diasporas
had similar plans.
Trump is non-establishment, both party establishments want him gone. He was against the Iraq War. I haven't seen evidence he
buys into expanding a US empire or joining a global one. Just another reason neocons want to get rid of him.
One practical issue is what is going to happen to European investments in Iran. The most
high profile example is French energy company Total's investment in a giant Iran gasfield.
Total said this month it would pull out of Iran and its development of the giant South Pars
gasfield unless it is specifically protected from US penalties and related sanctions (see
Financial Times article " Total threat to pull out of
Iran dents EU hopes of saving accord ", May 17, 2018).
Obviously, some form of compromise may be negotiated. But if Washington takes a hard line,
such as claiming US jurisdiction as regards dollar transfers between two sovereign countries as
was the case in 2014 with the US$9 billion fine levied on French bank BNP, then a confrontation
is seemingly inevitable and, as a result, a growing questioning of the US hegemony implied by
the US dollar paper standard, a concern which has long been shared by both China and
Russia.
QUESTIONING THE US' ROLE AS THE "ECONOMIC POLICEMAN OF THE PLANET"
In this respect, the most interesting reaction to the Iran issue since Donald Trump made his
announcement on May 8 was that of the French finance minister Bruno Le Maire when he said on
May 9 that it was not acceptable for the US to be the "economic policeman of the planet".
In this respect, France is the European country to watch since it has a history of being
willing to stand up to Washington in the post-1945 world. That cannot really be said of Germany
and certainly not of Britain.
POMPEO WARNS IRAN OF ESCALATING SANCTIONS
Staying on the subject of Iran, US Secretary of State and former CIA boss Mike Pompeo made
an ultra-aggressive speech on Monday threatening Iran with escalating sanctions. In his first
major foreign policy address as Secretary of State, Pompeo stated:
Sanctions are going back in full effect and new ones are coming This sting of sanctions
will be painful if the regime does not change its course These will indeed end up being the
strongest sanctions in history when we are complete.
The above rhetoric hardly suggests a willingness to compromise with the European position.
The significance of all of the above is that Europe and the US remain on a collision
course.
IRAN'S EXPORTS BOOMING SINCE SANCTIONS ENDED
The importance of Europe for Iran can be seen in the fact that Iran's exports to Europe have
surged almost ninefold since the end of sanctions in January 2016.
Thus, Iran's exports to the EU have risen from US$1.3 billion in 2015 to US$11.4 billion in
the 12 months to January, according to the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics (see following
chart).
There is also of course the growing trade between Iran and China. Iran's total trade with
China rose by 18%YoY to US$27.5 billion in the 12 months to January (see following chart). All
this makes Iran a good example of the increasingly multipolar world where American influence or
interests appear to be fading.
IRAN ANNUALIZED EXPORTS TO EU
Source: IMF – Direction of Trade Statistics
IRAN ANNUALIZED TOTAL TRADE WITH CHINA
Source: IMF – Direction of Trade Statistics
IRAN'S CURRENCY TAKES A HIT
Meanwhile, Iran's currency has been hit hard in recent months as a result of the uncertainty
created by Trump's previous repeated earlier threats to pull out of the nuclear deal and now
subsequent follow-through decision.
The rial has depreciated in the black market by 33% against the US dollar year-to-date (see
following chart). This followed a period of comparative stability where the currency traded in
a 13% range for two years, helped by the optimism created by the nuclear deal as well as by
very high real interest
rates . Iranian treasury bill yields peaked at 27% in early 2017 and bottomed at 16% late
last year. They are now back at 19% as a result of the market pressure created by the threat of
renewed American sanctions.
IRANIAN RIAL/US$ (INVERTED SCALE)
Note: Based on black market rate after Iran unified its dual exchange rates on 9 April.
Source: Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, Bonbast.com
SUBSTANTIAL FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN IRAN
With a classic bullish emerging market demographic profile, in terms of a
population of 80 million, 60% of whom are under the age of 35, Iran has, naturally, attracted a
lot of foreign direct investment in recent years, most particularly following the 2015 nuclear
deal.
The biggest of late was the previously mentioned Total's US$4.8 billion investment signed in
July 2017. But Total says it has only invested under €40 million so far, according to the
above mentioned FT article, which is precisely why the French company wants to know if it can
get a specific waiver from the sanctions.
In terms of the aggregate data, Iran's actual FDI inflows surged by 64%YoY to US$3.37
biilion in 2016, according to United Nations data. While an Iranian government report published
last year disclosed that Iran has approved US$11.8 billion in FDI during the 12 months to
December 2016, with Spain and Germany accounting for US$3.2 billion and US$2.9 billion of that
total respectively.
IRAN FDI INFLOWS
Source: UNCTAD World Investment Report 2017
WILL WE SEE A RETREAT FROM PAX
AMERICANA?
The point, therefore, remains that a confrontation between the US and the Eurozone on this
issue is potentially a landmark development in the retreat from Pax Americana.
But for now it is probably the case that most of Europe, in the spirit of appeasement, will
be content to fudge the issue in the hope that Donald Trump may not be re-elected to the US
presidency for a second term and life will return to "normal".
IRAN'S ECONOMY
Turning away from geopolitical issues, Iran's economy and financial markets spring some
positive surprises. The country has an open capital account, while there is no tax on capital
gains or dividends. The Tehran Stock Exchange celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.
But if FDI has been coming into the country in recent years, foreign portfolio investment
activity has been much more limited, with estimates of only US$100 million invested in
aggregate. This is the consequence in terms of equities of both a lack of inclusion in
benchmark MSCI indices and, of course, of sanctions.
NO FOREIGN BANKS IN IRAN
There is still no foreign bank in Iran and therefore a lack of familiar custodians
acceptable to international portfolio investors. Indeed, despite the 2015 nuclear deal, it is
still not possible to use foreign credit cards to pay for hotel bills or any other
transaction.
Foreign credit rating agencies are also absent which may not surprise given the three
biggest are owned by the Americans. This is a pity for the Iranian Government given that, with
minimal foreign currency debt and total government debt to GDP of only 35% of GDP, it would
make a lot of sense to do a landmark sovereign bond issue. Total external debt is now only
US$10.8 billion or just 2.5% of GDP, according to the Central Bank of Iran (see following
chart).
So this geopolitical planning is unique To America? So... I would be shocked, shocked if China, Russia, or the Sunni/Shia diasporas
had similar plans.
Trump is non-establishment, both party establishments want him gone. He was against the Iraq War. I haven't seen evidence he
buys into expanding a US empire or joining a global one. Just another reason neocons want to get rid of him.
Memoria day is an anti-war holiday designed to remeber horrible number of Civil war dead. But now it is converted into
something like glorification of militarism day.
Neocons are renegade Trotskyites 'aligned' with US imperialism and how fighting for "world neoliberal revolution".
Pay for their revolutionary fervor is much better though.
Notable quotes:
"... Trotsky helped create the Red Army as well as the intellectual underpinnings of the (worldwide) communist revolution. This movement destroyed/ended/ruined the lives of many millions of innocent people. Shouldn't a movement that caused this much damage ruin the reputation of its architects? ..."
"... Frunze was the real architect of the Red Army, while Trotsky's main contribution to the Red Army was getting Czarist commanders to join. Trotsky likely had Frunze assassinated, rather than Stalin. ..."
"... Considering America (and Japan's) Siberian adventure, and the mass killings involved, e.g. by Japanese and Americans, well, pots and kettles and all that. ..."
"... that today's Trotskyites come down on the side of Isramerican-backed Sunni terrorists in Syria should surprise no one. Because yesterday's Trotskyites are now called (((neo-cons))) originally via the "anti-Stalinist" Partisan Review, then Commentary, then Nat Review. ..."
"... It was quite striking how, when Gaddafi was brutally murdered, you got similar reactions from Hillary Clinton and British Socialist Workers Party honcho Alex Callinicos – malicious gloating. ..."
"... It was a bit like a flash of lightning on a dark night – a brief illumination of surroundings and what these people really stand for, as opposed to the ideological posturing. ..."
"... Whenever I read anything purporting to identify international bad guys and good guys, I always like to ask: "Who has this purported bad guy invaded recently? How many bombs has this bad guy dropped on other people's countries?" I feel it clarifies matters. ..."
"... Maybe Bronstein himself was a delusional revolutionary true believer, we'll probably never know for sure, but I doubt very much his neocon disciples are motivated by some internationalist idealism. ..."
"... A well known saying in left wing activist circles in the UK was "Never trust a Trot." ..."
"... Trotskyites, much more than Stalinists, love war, worship war, live to make war for everybody and everything they see as not theirs. Trotskyites have as large an appetite for carnage leading to their greater empire than any people that ever lived with the exception of Mongols. ..."
Trotsky helped create the Red Army as well as the intellectual underpinnings of the (worldwide) communist revolution. This
movement destroyed/ended/ruined the lives of many millions of innocent people. Shouldn't a movement that caused this much damage
ruin the reputation of its architects?
Not in the case of Trotsky. He was such a brilliant Jew!
Trotsky was not that competent militarily, and even tried to arrange a transfer of e.g. Czech troops to Vladivostok to allow
them to fight on the western front, and allowed American inspections of German prisoners of war in a hope of forestalling the
coming Allied invasion (through Siberia and the North). Frunze was the real architect of the Red Army, while Trotsky's main
contribution to the Red Army was getting Czarist commanders to join. Trotsky likely had Frunze assassinated, rather than Stalin.
Considering America (and Japan's) Siberian adventure, and the mass killings involved, e.g. by Japanese and Americans, well,
pots and kettles and all that.
If we are to compare death tolls, we could look at the US and UK armies' intervention (and Canada's!), directly (1994, from
Burundi, mainly to prevent Hutu civilians from fleeing), and, more importantly, via proxy (1990 to the present, using the Ugandan
army, armed by the former armies, with constant supply flights until at least 1994) in Rwanda and later Congo-Kinshasa. Two million
Hutu (Rwanda, 1994, from former Kagame Henchman, Eric Hakizimana) and five to ten million eastern Congolese (mainly in the Kivus),
from that intervention alone. The intervention also included the assassination of Rwandan president Habyarimana, and of former
Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira (Burundi's first democratically elected president, deposed in a baTutsi (feudal aristocrat)
coup likely sponsored by same western armies), mere days after the
death threat by former US secretary of state for
African affairs, Herman Cohen.
that today's Trotskyites come down on the side of Isramerican-backed Sunni terrorists in Syria should surprise no one. Because
yesterday's Trotskyites are now called (((neo-cons))) originally via the "anti-Stalinist" Partisan Review, then Commentary,
then Nat Review.
It was quite striking how, when Gaddafi was brutally murdered, you got similar reactions from Hillary Clinton and British
Socialist Workers Party honcho Alex Callinicos – malicious gloating.
It was a bit like a flash of lightning on a dark
night – a brief illumination of surroundings and what these people really stand for, as opposed to the ideological posturing.
Whenever I read anything purporting to identify international bad guys and good guys, I always like to ask: "Who has this
purported bad guy invaded recently? How many bombs has this bad guy dropped on other people's countries?" I feel it clarifies
matters.
@The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.
Wasn't 'Trotskyism' 'aligned' with US imperialism from the very moment when he transported the Warburg-Schiff money to Russia
to carry on the 'permanent revolution'?
And when Stalin cut Trotsky's crap who jumped to his defense? The Dewey "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon
Trotsky in the Moscow Trials". And who are the imperialist 'neo-cons' other than 'old Trotskyists'?
I did not read about the suspicion that Bron(f)stein in reality was a German agent. What one reads in these two books does not
make the suspicion go away
John W Wheeler-Bennett, 'Brest-Litovsk, The forgotten peace, March 1918', 1938, 1963, London
Erich Ludendorff, 'Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914 = 1918′, Berlin, 1918
If they weren't so nefarious, the trotsies wouldn't be worth reading, let alone mentioning. Maybe Bronstein himself was a
delusional revolutionary true believer, we'll probably never know for sure, but I doubt very much his neocon disciples are motivated
by some internationalist idealism.
Neocons are jewish supremacists aided by corrupt to the core goyim, plain and simple. They do have in common with their guru
one conviction, that the end justifies the means. That is the recipe of evil.
It's a pity that so many youth are misled still today in believing in the hoax that Trotskyism is somehow something moral.
Trotsky was himself a murderer. Killing is immoral. It sometimes is necessary and cannot be avoided as with regards to the psychotic
butchers who came from abroad to Syria and are known as ISIS but it is still immoral.
Normal people sense killing as immoral therefore psychopaths have to come up with stories such as Germans slaughtering Belgian
babies with bayonets, Iraqis throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators, Serbs genociding Bosniaks or Albanians, Qadhafi readying
for genocide in Benghazi, Assad pulling children's fingernails or gassing them, Iran being responsible for 9/11 etc, all in order
to dehumanise the enemy of the moment and compel people to accept that killing "sub-humans" half way around the world is a moral
act. It isn't. Period.
Unlike all those fake atrocities, Western and Saudi trained, armed and financed foreign terrorists in Syria did film themselves
doing horrors. They videotaped themselves burning people alive, throwing people off building tops. They videotaped themselves
beheading children. Assad didn't make those videos, ISIS did, to brag. Only mentally ill people can support those "rebels" against
Assad. Yet, as a Christian, I don't consider killing them as moral, I consider it as necessary and unavoidable, but it is an act
that mandates penitence.
Trotsies ignore those qualms and, whether real or alleged followers, are sick people. End of story.
From Trotsky's doctrine of Permanent Revolution onward, the hallmark of Trotskyism has been a quest for intellectual purity in
revolution – no contradictions allowed. No mixed economies under socialism. No pragmatic alliances. No consideration of national
security. Stake everything on a worldwide wave of revolution. Every real-world tactical issue since 1939 has led to fracturing
of the Trotskyist movement, generally into a "pure" faction and a "get something done" faction. International Socialists represented
the "pure" faction after the 1939 split (after it spun off the forebears of the neoconservative movement). Its sole contribution
of significance was as an intellectual incubator for Christopher Hitchens. More "pure" factions spun off in the early 1960s, which
sooner or later degenerated into cults. Lyndon LaRouche made his mark leading one of the "pure" factions. The "get something done"
faction made its mark as highly effective organizers of protests against the war in Vietnam but started chasing silly fads of
the student New Left, trying unsuccessfully to connect them to a revolutionary strategy. Their "revolutionary" rationale for those
movements blew up when they went in a decidedly bourgeois-aligned bureaucratic direction and became adjuncts to the Democratic
Party. WSWS represents the revival of purist Trotskyism, which offers cogent critiques of the glorified left-liberal postmodernist
"Trotskyism" of Louis Proyect and Socialist Alternative, but seems to choke on the question of what they themselves actually intend
to accomplish.
The Russian revolution served German interests more than it did American ones. Germany sponsored Lenin's return from Zurich
to lead the revolution that would get Russia out of the war. It makes no sense to contend that the Russian revolution served American
interests or that Warburg-Schiff were acting on their behalf. They were acting against the US interest in keeping Russia in the
war against Germany. They had been financing anti-Tsarist activity in Russia for years.
If one wants to make the case that Trotsky was a German agent, they would have to explain his agitation for spreading the revolution
into Germany. You could make a stronger case that George Washington was a French agent against Britain. Revolutions have tended
to occur in the cracks and contradictions opened in the struggles between the great powers, including the revolutions in China
and Vietnam.
The problem is not that an ignorant, Tony McKenna, will still in 2018 be a Trotskyst , that is a defender of a mass murderer.
The problem is that the writer of this piece seems to believe that it is worth spending time writing an article about such
an ignorant and irrelevant man. Maybe because he "writes well", which, she admires.
That one can "write well" and "speak well, as intellectuals do, but be a jerk, doesn't occur to Ms Johnson.
The problem is also because the writer herself, ignores how profoundly ignorant is Tony McKenna.
"Revolution is very rare. It is more a myth than a reality "
No, Revolutions are criminal enterprises. They always were and they always will be.
Robespierre, Lenine, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, Mao were criminals.
The first European revolution – The French Revolution – was the first big lie and the first to put into practice the industrial
killing of a people – People of Vendée – . The first EUropean Genocide was committed by the French revolutionaries.
It is not by chance that all major criminals (Lenine etc ) studied the French Revolution and would apply later in their countries
the model that the French terrorists (Revolutionaries) applied to France.
Those who are interested in knowing the truth about the Franch Revolution (and all revolutions and why so called Trotskysts
are a bunch of fools) should read Reynald Secher – A French Genocide: The Vendee.
"In our era, the most successful revolutions have been in Third World countries"
Well, if one can write such nonsense, then when can admire Tony McKenna and waste time writing a silly article.
Great article! Thanks to Diana Johnstone for writing such a fine article which blows right out of the water so much of the BS
being bandied about in relation to the Syrian War, Stalin, etc. Ms. Johnstone is a REAL intellectual. Wish there were more like
her in the Anglosphere nowadays.
President Asad is a doctor by profession. He is a family man and has raised a beautiful family. Prior to this Saudi Terrorist
Revolution he rode his own car, at times taking his family shopping .hardly signs of a baby killer or a 'chemical animal'.
Trotskyites, much more than Stalinists, love war, worship war, live to make war for everybody and everything they see as not
theirs. Trotskyites have as large an appetite for carnage leading to their greater empire than any people that ever lived with
the exception of Mongols.
Trotskyites and WASPs – who created the largest empire in world history – in bed together, with the evil House of Saud, could
destroy civilization.
I just finished Kotkin's Stalin book chapter on the purges, which made no sense (the book is good but has no narrative). The
purges would have made more sense as a full on battle with the Trotskyite elements. My other theory is that they were a paychological
projection of guilt from the collectivization murders, realized as more murders.
Fools and idiots come in various shapes and sizes, as do socialists and wildlife. The zebra stands out from afar, its stripes
give it away. Likewise, the Trotskyites stand out markedly in the fairly jumbled-up socialist landscape, given away by their towering
stupidity and luminous obstinacy. Whenever some wretched poor, weak country is being bombed by the West, these useful idiots of
empire jump up and down in merriment. Whenever a union anywhere is trying to extort more money for less work, these fools give
their support. The burning down of churches and the spreading of atheism at gunpoint is another trait of theirs. Christian Socialists
they hate with a special vengeance, taking their cue from Marx the great "visionary", whose vision was fairly deficient in many
ways.
Stalin had Trot's head badgered-in, if I recall. Well, with a head as stupid as Trotsky's, half the world would be itching
to bash it in. One of those good things that Stalin did, IMHO.
The purges would have made more sense as a full on battle with the Trotskyite elements.
That's exactly how I interpret Stalin's purges, too. I think he was trying to wrest control of the Communist Party generally–and
the NKVD specifically–from the (((Trotskyite))) mafia which then dominated them.
I just finished Kotkin's Stalin book chapter on the purges, which made no sense (the book is good but has no narrative).
Is Kotkin Jewish? Maybe the reason his recounting of the purges doesn't make sense is because he doesn't really want to talk
about what prompted them. Like anything else in life, if you want to understand Stalin's purges, you first have to understand
the context in which they took place.
Syrians have told me that Bashar al-Assad was a decent chap. But taking his family shopping could not be different from John McCain
walking through Baghdad with one hundred soldiers around him and helicopters overhead to show how safe it was. If Bashar al-Assad
"went shopping" in Damascus (instead of London or Paris) then two thousand plain clothes were also shopping with him. And for
what would he "go shopping" in Damascus? Shopping for an illusion, that's what.
"In the context of a global neoliberalism, where governments across the board were enacting the most pronounced forms of
deregulation and overseeing the carving up of state industries by private capital, the Assad government responded to the heightening
contradictions in the Syrian economy by following suit -- by showing the ability to march to the tempo of foreign investment
while evincing a willingness to cut subsidies for workers and farmers." [ -Tony McKenna ]
This is like cursing the pizza store owner who gives 'protection' money to the mafia, without cursing the mafia which extorts
him! As Johnstone later points out, back then Assad had little choice but to try and make his peace with Uncle Scam as best he
could, since the USSR was no longer around to protect Syria.
McKenna concludes by quoting Louis Proyect: "If we line up on the wrong side of the barricades in a struggle between the
rural poor and oligarchs in Syria, how can we possibly begin to provide a class-struggle leadership in the USA, Britain, or
any other advanced capitalist country?"
Ah yes: Louis Proyect. The one and only! It was he who recently defended the 'rebels' as proletarian Bolsheviks struggling
for a new, socialist Syria:
"The Syrian rebels are generally drawn from the poor, rural and unrepresented majority of the population, the Arab version
of John Steinbeck's Joad family. Despite the tendency of some on the left to see them as sectarians who rose up against a generous
Baathist welfare state because it supported a different interpretation of who was the true successor to Muhammad, the revolutionary
struggle in Syria was fueled by class hatred."
The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They
are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this
brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.
Which is why, once they reach a certain age and a certain level of burn-out, rather than simply give up on politics entirely,
they usually tend to become neoconservatives , as did Chris Hitchens. For them, the Rockefeller/Rothschild 'new world order'
is the next best thing to Trotsky's 'world revolution'.
The thing that escaped the author is that Trotskyism is a dead horse. The number of Trotskyists in any country is as close to
zero as makes no difference. These deluded weirdos are outnumbered even by flat-Earthers.
I don't know if Kotkin is a member of the tribe, but he definitely is on the Putin/Russia bashing wagon and is deeply steeped
in all the classic WASP institutions.
Most of the Hoover people seem to have the anti-Russian disease.
The give away in his chapter on the purges was that he blamed it on the defective personality of Stalin, i.e. Stalin was just
crazy.
Certainly Stalin was a brutal murderer, but any time the sole reason for a historical event is someone's personality you can bet
you're reading propaganda.
If you have an sources that make for a better reading on the purges, please do post.
Absolutely. Ghadafi was sodomized by bayonet and Clinton cackled over it with malicious glee.
The posing of Assad as some kind of monster is just lynch-mob rationalization. McKenna doesn't believe what he is saying any
more than Stalin believed show trial confessions obtained under torture.
It's all the more pleasurable to these psychopaths that they cloak their crimes with phony virtue. Hence, putting Assad out
there as this cartoon villian.
As if ISIS, who we fostered and nurtured, was any better? Or communist Kurds? My God how we forget each disaster from Afghanistan
to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria now the scorched-earth war and subsequent disease, etc.? These people thrive on death and mayhem.
Excellent point. The global revolution socialists are hard core ideologies who put ideological purity over practical considerations.
Hence their failure to achieve any kind of real world success. Wherever socialists have had some sustainable success it has been
achieved by combining socialism with elements of nationalism and capitalism. The communist military successes in Russia, China
and Vietnam were achieved by appealing to nationalism. The Chinese economic miracle has been achieved through state capitalism.
The Scandinavian welfare state has depended on government support for big companies like Volvo and Nokia.
There are lessons here for English-speaking countries with their dogmatic attachment to liberal values like free trade, open
borders and anti-nationalism.
Eh No. The first *modern* European revolution was the American revolution, and it's not a joke. Fully European, of European
people and European powers. All European powers indeed, UK, France, Spain, many German states, and so on. And French revolution
was broadly more than Robespierre, it was UK, Spain, the German states, the Pope, the Austrian Empire, the many factions of the
French people (if such concept had any sense then, in a territory only less than 25% spoke French), all of them were criminals,
or only was Robespierre? Was criminal the previous kingdom, in a permanent basis of bloody wars and social injustice?
Maybe revolutions are simply a security valve, steaming a bit and that's all. By the way, the word itself goes back to Coppernicus,
a revolution is a full orbit of a planet around the Sun. It ends where started.
The entire Human History is criminal, against Humankind itself and our own planet. We must understand, not look for criminals.
You are right. I was surprised to see the article as I thought they were all in old age homes.
They really really are gone in America, even in the universities. May be because in America because our "struggle" is multi
millionaire Jews and upper middle class blacks Asians Hispanics and Indians against poor Whites.
In America a $200,000 a year black women school administrator is an opressed victim. The poorest disabled White man is a privileged
aristocrat who must be sent to the guillotine.
I'm very interested in the Vendeens. I have the memoirs of Renee Bourderau.
It's not a book. I got it from the library of Congress copying service and put the pages in a binder.
Loyola uni Los Angeles has a copy in their rare books section. UCLA and USC libraries have lots of books about it, many in
English. The Lucius Green library at Stanford has many Vendean resistance books too
Quite a different story from the conventional Masonic enlightenment narrative. Our American Whiskey rebels were lucky they
surrendered so quickly or they might have met the fate of the Vendeans. There used to be a website devoted to Renee Bourdereau
maintained by some college history department.
The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They
are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this
brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism. The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological alibi for
permanent war.
For the sake of world peace and progress, both the United States and its inadvertent Trotskyist apologists should go home
and mind their own business.
Trotsky was a danger to the survival USSR, because he was an internationalist as is the Israeli-allied globalist cabal that
runs the USA. His differences with Stalin and the nationalists inside the Kremlin was not a small disagreement, as you assert.
You must not have ever even picked up a book on the subject.
Would you be surprised to learn that Lenin too was conspiring with the Japanese in 1904-5?
'Revolutionary defeatism' was a central tenet of his worldview and of Trotsky's too.
As brutal as Stalin was, his rule was providential, in the sense that he saved Russian nationalism, culture, and spirituality
from absolute destruction at the hands of the usual suspects' willing instrument, Lev Davidovich Bronstein.
Bronstein was an agent of the Jewish banking cabal headquartered in New York. He was financed primarily by Jacob Schiff of
Kuehn and Loeb.
Trotsky and his acolytes desired the total destruction of Russian culture and Russian Orthodoxy in particular.
Stalin was sagacious enough to realize that the Russians would never fight against the Germans and their allies for the cause
of world revolution, but knew they would fight for their Russian motherland and its spiritual traditions and folkways. Stalin
restored the patriarchate, opened up many churches, and commissioned the composition of the "Hymn of the Soviet Union" (now the
Russian National Anthem with different lyrics) in the Orthodox chorale tradition; it would ultimately replace "The Internationale."
In the meantime, the almost entirely kosher Trotskyites became viciously anti-Soviet (actually anti-Russian) and pledged their
temporary allegiance to their great American golem.
The origins of the Cold War (and today's Russia xenophobia) was- in my humble opinion- the great schism and struggle between
the international rootless tool of Wall St. and his acolytes and the ruthless- but providential -Georgian autocrat.
This Permanent revolutions is very good. But what you going to do with the Old revolutioners..
It does not bode well. If they are in the way of more and other revolutions
This Permanent revolutions is very good. But what you going to do with the Old revolutioners..
It does not bode well. If they are in the way of more and other revolutions
Louis Proyect – this is a vile scribe, who blackens the pages of the Counterpunch. A part of the Trotskyite gang that took over
this once venerable magazine!
I remember with emotion the old days, where in Minnesota, the Communist Party with me among others, and the Trotskyist of the
WS with you, among others, if my memories are good, we were fighting inside the movement against the war from VietNam.
The Trotskyists said then that once peace is won, it would be necessary to work for the overthrow of the regime of "pro-Soviet
revisionist HoChiMinh".
Even today, most of the troskysts (and CPF Eurocommunists for that matter) still deny the socialist character of China, Viet
Nam, Cuba, North Korea, and so on.
And this is even more true since these countries are inscribing their economy in the continuity of Lenin's NEP!
We come to this fable of the end of History with "globalized capitalism", as we enter a multipolar world where the socialist
countries (China, VietNam, North Korea, Cuba, Kerala ) in alliance with the BRICS non-imperialist, take over.
Have you evolved from Minnesota, or are you still a fellow traveler on the WS Trotskyite?
Maybe you're right. The first European Revolution was the American Revolution Except that it wasn't really a Revolution. If
we want to be precise, we should call it war for "Independence"/For Power.
What is sure is that future criminals (Europeans/Asians/Africans) will have the French revolution has their model and not the
American Revolution.
Revolution or not, the fact of matter is that Americans have nothing to learn from Europeans in terms of barbarism. Indian Genocide
is an example how "revolutionary" (criminal), the American Elite were/are.
"The entire Human History is criminal" – It's false.
"We must understand, not look for criminals." Obvious. But if you understand the nature of revolution you know that revolutions
are made by criminals Not just Robespierre, of course.
Renée Bourdereau is what Howard Zinn calls "Unsung Heroine".
In France, today they prefer to celebrate criminals like Robespierre, Turreau, Westermann etc..(executioners of Vendéen Genocide)
Normal, Revolution won and French politicians and Elites are very proud of their "République".
If you're interested in Vendée, you have to read Reynald Secher. He's one of the greatest French Historian. Of course he's
almost unknown because he doesn't write the official history, which is most about propaganda and not trying to find the truth.
Yes, it was. All Revolutions are about power. Obviously the Americans could not overthrown the British Crown, an Ocean in the
Middle. But they would have do if they could. Dettaching part of the Empire was (is) a way to make easier the way for others.
And, actually, American Revolution was and is a model. It was a successful model for most of Latin American independences, many
bloodbaths and not at all exempts of tyrants and psycopaths. Nor the American Revolution was an angelical promenade.
Of course, choose a model depends on the user. In fact the point here is your meeting point, actual or pretended. The ayatollahs
cannot choose the French Revolution at all as a model, not to say the Soviet one (the American neither, obviously).
What I am trying to say it's maybe Revolutions are more an accident than a deliberate political move. Maybe if the French Revolution
had not existed, France neither nowadays. And without her, the French bourgeoise. A forgotten Revolution is the Polish one, earlier
than French too. If none speaks about it's because it was a complete failure (by the way, no violence at all), and Poland was
dismembered and ceased to exist for 125 years.
If you have such "accidents" you seriously cannot expect normal people at command. The more brutal the affair, the more brutal
the "criminals". Makes no difference being an arson or an accident. You have a fire and minimizing the disaster is over any other
considerations. Call them criminals if you want, but I guess they did not many chances to behave other way. It is a common place
to say Lenin was the saint, Trotsky the martyr, and Stalin the beast. Trostky was a toff, and Stalin was a redneck who did the
dirty job. The Central Committee under Stalin was killed more than 500 out of 600 members in 30 years, all commies and most of
them personally selected by Stalin himself, I mean, it's hard to believe any real treason beyond a paranoia of pure power. But,
Russia do exist today if things had ran other way? Can anyone say the number of dead people would be lesser? Hitler came to power
with no Revolution at all, on the contrary, the 1919 German Revolution was another failure, ending with Hitler.
Kotkin's writing is readable and the details are interesting. But he appears to be a full on propagandist on the important
details, like the Tsar, the Czech and Austrian conflicts, as well as the Stalin purges.
You tell me, a man who purges millions for no apparent reason (Kotkin gives none other than paranoia) isn't an implied psychopath?
Frankfurt School ideology replaced Marxism as the driving ideology of the American Left during the 1960s. Nominal Marxists
tried to fudge that ideology into Marxism because they thought it would help to sell Marxism, but boy were they wrong! Marxist
theory instead became a talisman for selling the various identitarian ideologies used to divide and weaken the working class –
the exact opposite of what the opportunist-identitarian Marxists had anticipated. Their claims that identitarian movements were
somehow akin to the anti-colonial nationalist movements of the postwar era were diametrically wrong. They became tools of the
ruling class in their 40+ year neoliberal campaign to impose hyper-exploitive colonial conditions on the former imperial homelands.
We are all Third World now.
The idea that Stalin was fighting a Jew-mafia takeover of the USSR has been put forth by several prominent Third Positionists,
such as Francis Parker Yockey:
There are, in my judgment, three great novels that explore American military life in the
twentieth century. They are, in order of publication, Guard of Honor (1948) by James
Gould Cozzens, From Here To Eternity (1951) by James Jones, and The Sand Pebbles
(1962) by Richard McKenna.
The first is a book about airmen, set at a stateside air base during World War II. The
second is a soldier's story, its setting Schofield Barracks in the territory of Hawaii on the
eve of Pearl Harbor. In The Sand Pebbles, the focus is on sailors. It takes place in
China during the 1920s when U.S. Navy gunboats patrolled the Yangtze River and its
tributaries.
As far as I can tell, none of the three enjoys much of a following today. Despite winning
the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Guard of Honor has all but vanished. To the extent that
the other two retain any cultural salience, they do so as movies, superb in the case of From
Here to Eternity , colorful but mediocre in the case of The Sand Pebbles.
Yet for any American seeking an intimate account of military service, all three novels
remain worth reading. Times change, as do uniforms, weapons, and tactics, but certain
fundamentals of military life endure. Leaders and led see matters differently, nurse different
expectations, and respond to different motivations. The perspective back at higher headquarters
(or up on the bridge) differs from the way things look to those dealing with the challenges of
a typical duty day. The biggest difference of all is between inside and outside -- between
those in uniform and the civilians who necessarily inhabit another world. Each in his own way,
Cozzens, Jones, and McKenna unpack those differences with sensitivity and insight.
Of the three, McKenna's novel in particular deserves revival, not only because of its
impressive literary qualities, but because the story it tells has renewed relevance to the
present day. It's a story about the role that foreign powers, including the United States,
played in the emergence of modern China.
Prompted in part by the ostensible North Korean threat, but more broadly by the ongoing rise
of China and uncertainty about China's ultimate ambitions, the American military establishment
will almost inevitably be directing more of its attention toward East Asia in the coming years.
To be sure, the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terrorism continues and appears
unlikely to conclude anytime soon. Yet the character of that conflict is changing. Having come
up short in its efforts to pacify the Islamic world, the United States is increasingly inclined
to rely on proxies, generously supported by air power, to carry on the jihadist fight in
preference to committing large numbers of U.S. troops. Almost imperceptibly, East Asia is
encroaching upon and will eventually eclipse the Greater Middle East in the Pentagon's
hierarchy of strategic priorities.
It's this reshuffling of Pentagon priorities that endows The Sand Pebbles with
renewed significance. If past is prologue, McKenna's fictionalized account of actual events
that occurred 90 years ago involving U.S. forces in China should provide context for anyone
intent on employing American military power to check China today.
Of course, the armed forces of the United States have a long history of involvement in East
Asia. Ever since 1898, when it liberated, occupied, and subsequently annexed the Philippines,
the United States has maintained an enduring military presence in that part of the world.
To the extent that Americans are even dimly aware of what that presence has entailed, they
probably think in terms of three 20th-century Asian wars: the first in the 1940s against Japan;
the second during the 1950s in Korea; the third from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s in
Vietnam. In each, whether as ally or adversary, China figured prominently.
Yet even before the attack on Pearl Harbor initiated the first of those wars, U.S. air,
land, and naval forces had been active in and around China. Dreams of gaining access to a
lucrative "China Market" numbered among the factors that persuaded the United States to annex
the Philippines in the first place. In 1900, U.S. troops participated in the China Relief
Expedition, a multilateral intervention mounted to suppress the so-called Boxer Rebellion,
which sought to expel foreigners and end outside interference in Chinese affairs. The mission
succeeded and the U.S. military stayed on. Army and Marine Corps units established garrisons in
"treaty ports" such as Shanghai and Tientsin.
Decades earlier, the U.S. Navy had begun making periodic forays into China's inland
waterways. In the early 20th century, employing small shallow-draft vessels captured from Spain
in 1898, this presence became increasingly formalized. As American commercial and missionary
interests in China grew, the Navy inaugurated what it called the Yangtze Patrol, with Congress
appropriating funds to construct a flotilla of purpose-built gunboats for patrolling the river
and its tributaries. Under the direction of COMYANGPAT back in Shanghai, small warships flying
the Stars-and-Stripes sailed up and down the Yangtze's immense length to "protect American
lives and property."
This is the story that McKenna, himself a YANGPAT veteran, recounts, focusing on a single
fictional ship the U.S.S. San Pablo. Known as "Sand Pebbles," the few dozen sailors
comprising the San Pablo's crew are all lifers. A rough bunch, their interests rarely
extend beyond drinking and whoring. In 1920s China, an American sailor's modest paycheck
provides ample funds for both pursuits.
Even afloat, life for the Sand Pebbles is more than agreeable. Onboard the San Pablo,
an unofficial second crew consisting of local Chinese -- "contractors," we would call them
today -- does the dirty work and the heavy lifting. The Americans stay topside, performing
routines and rituals meant to convey an image of power and dominance.
San Pablo is a puny and lightly armed ship. Yet it exists to convey a big impression,
thereby sustaining the privileged position that the United States and the other imperial powers
enjoyed in China.
The revolutionary turmoil engulfing China in the 1920s necessarily challenged this
proposition. Nationalist fervor gripped large parts of the population. Imperial privilege
stoked popular resentment, which made San Pablo 's position increasingly untenable, even
if the Sand Pebbles themselves were blind to what was coming. That their own eminently
comfortable circumstances might be at risk was literally unimaginable.
McKenna's narrative describes how the world of the Sand Pebbles fell apart. His nominal
protagonist is Jake Holman, a machinist mate with a mystical relationship to machinery. Jake
loathes the spit-and-polish routine topside and wants nothing more than to remain below decks
in the engine compartment, performing duties that on San Pablo white American sailors
have long since ceased to do. In the eyes of his shipmates, therefore, Jake represents a threat
to the division of labor that underwrites their comforts.
The ship's captain, one of only two commissioned officers assigned to San Pablo,
likewise sees Jake as a threat to the status quo. To my mind, Lieutenant Collins is McKenna's
most intriguing creation and the novel's true focal point. Although the Sand Pebbles are
oblivious to how they may figure in some larger picture, for Collins the larger picture is a
continuing preoccupation. He sees his little ship, the entire U.S. Navy, America's providential
purpose, and the fate of Western civilization as all of a piece. Serious, sober, and dutiful,
he is also something of a fanatic.
Collins dimly perceives that powerful forces within China pose a direct threat not only to
the existing U.S. position there, but to his own worldview. Yet he considers the prospect of
accommodating those forces as not only intolerable, but inconceivable. So in the book's
culminating episode he leads Jake and several other Sand Pebbles on a symbolic but utterly
futile gesture of resistance. Fancying that he is thereby salvaging his ship's honor (and his
own as well), he succeeds merely in killing his own men.
I interpret McKenna as suggesting that there is no honor in denying reality. Only waste and
needless sacrifice result. Today a national security establishment as blind to reality as
Lieutenant Collins presides over futile gestures far more costly than those inflicted upon the
Sand Pebbles. It's not fiction and it's happening right before our eyes.
So skip the movie. But read McKenna's book. And then reflect on its relevance to the present
day.
Memoria day is an anti-war holiday designed to remeber horrible number of Civil war dead. But now it is converted into
something like glorification of militarism day.
Neocons are renegade Trotskyites 'aligned' with US imperialism and how fighting for "world neoliberal revolution".
Pay for their revolutionary fervor is much better though.
Notable quotes:
"... Trotsky helped create the Red Army as well as the intellectual underpinnings of the (worldwide) communist revolution. This movement destroyed/ended/ruined the lives of many millions of innocent people. Shouldn't a movement that caused this much damage ruin the reputation of its architects? ..."
"... Frunze was the real architect of the Red Army, while Trotsky's main contribution to the Red Army was getting Czarist commanders to join. Trotsky likely had Frunze assassinated, rather than Stalin. ..."
"... Considering America (and Japan's) Siberian adventure, and the mass killings involved, e.g. by Japanese and Americans, well, pots and kettles and all that. ..."
"... that today's Trotskyites come down on the side of Isramerican-backed Sunni terrorists in Syria should surprise no one. Because yesterday's Trotskyites are now called (((neo-cons))) originally via the "anti-Stalinist" Partisan Review, then Commentary, then Nat Review. ..."
"... It was quite striking how, when Gaddafi was brutally murdered, you got similar reactions from Hillary Clinton and British Socialist Workers Party honcho Alex Callinicos – malicious gloating. ..."
"... It was a bit like a flash of lightning on a dark night – a brief illumination of surroundings and what these people really stand for, as opposed to the ideological posturing. ..."
"... Whenever I read anything purporting to identify international bad guys and good guys, I always like to ask: "Who has this purported bad guy invaded recently? How many bombs has this bad guy dropped on other people's countries?" I feel it clarifies matters. ..."
"... Maybe Bronstein himself was a delusional revolutionary true believer, we'll probably never know for sure, but I doubt very much his neocon disciples are motivated by some internationalist idealism. ..."
"... A well known saying in left wing activist circles in the UK was "Never trust a Trot." ..."
"... Trotskyites, much more than Stalinists, love war, worship war, live to make war for everybody and everything they see as not theirs. Trotskyites have as large an appetite for carnage leading to their greater empire than any people that ever lived with the exception of Mongols. ..."
Trotsky helped create the Red Army as well as the intellectual underpinnings of the (worldwide) communist revolution. This
movement destroyed/ended/ruined the lives of many millions of innocent people. Shouldn't a movement that caused this much damage
ruin the reputation of its architects?
Not in the case of Trotsky. He was such a brilliant Jew!
Trotsky was not that competent militarily, and even tried to arrange a transfer of e.g. Czech troops to Vladivostok to allow
them to fight on the western front, and allowed American inspections of German prisoners of war in a hope of forestalling the
coming Allied invasion (through Siberia and the North). Frunze was the real architect of the Red Army, while Trotsky's main
contribution to the Red Army was getting Czarist commanders to join. Trotsky likely had Frunze assassinated, rather than Stalin.
Considering America (and Japan's) Siberian adventure, and the mass killings involved, e.g. by Japanese and Americans, well,
pots and kettles and all that.
If we are to compare death tolls, we could look at the US and UK armies' intervention (and Canada's!), directly (1994, from
Burundi, mainly to prevent Hutu civilians from fleeing), and, more importantly, via proxy (1990 to the present, using the Ugandan
army, armed by the former armies, with constant supply flights until at least 1994) in Rwanda and later Congo-Kinshasa. Two million
Hutu (Rwanda, 1994, from former Kagame Henchman, Eric Hakizimana) and five to ten million eastern Congolese (mainly in the Kivus),
from that intervention alone. The intervention also included the assassination of Rwandan president Habyarimana, and of former
Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira (Burundi's first democratically elected president, deposed in a baTutsi (feudal aristocrat)
coup likely sponsored by same western armies), mere days after the
death threat by former US secretary of state for
African affairs, Herman Cohen.
that today's Trotskyites come down on the side of Isramerican-backed Sunni terrorists in Syria should surprise no one. Because
yesterday's Trotskyites are now called (((neo-cons))) originally via the "anti-Stalinist" Partisan Review, then Commentary,
then Nat Review.
It was quite striking how, when Gaddafi was brutally murdered, you got similar reactions from Hillary Clinton and British
Socialist Workers Party honcho Alex Callinicos – malicious gloating.
It was a bit like a flash of lightning on a dark
night – a brief illumination of surroundings and what these people really stand for, as opposed to the ideological posturing.
Whenever I read anything purporting to identify international bad guys and good guys, I always like to ask: "Who has this
purported bad guy invaded recently? How many bombs has this bad guy dropped on other people's countries?" I feel it clarifies
matters.
@The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.
Wasn't 'Trotskyism' 'aligned' with US imperialism from the very moment when he transported the Warburg-Schiff money to Russia
to carry on the 'permanent revolution'?
And when Stalin cut Trotsky's crap who jumped to his defense? The Dewey "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon
Trotsky in the Moscow Trials". And who are the imperialist 'neo-cons' other than 'old Trotskyists'?
I did not read about the suspicion that Bron(f)stein in reality was a German agent. What one reads in these two books does not
make the suspicion go away
John W Wheeler-Bennett, 'Brest-Litovsk, The forgotten peace, March 1918', 1938, 1963, London
Erich Ludendorff, 'Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914 = 1918′, Berlin, 1918
If they weren't so nefarious, the trotsies wouldn't be worth reading, let alone mentioning. Maybe Bronstein himself was a
delusional revolutionary true believer, we'll probably never know for sure, but I doubt very much his neocon disciples are motivated
by some internationalist idealism.
Neocons are jewish supremacists aided by corrupt to the core goyim, plain and simple. They do have in common with their guru
one conviction, that the end justifies the means. That is the recipe of evil.
It's a pity that so many youth are misled still today in believing in the hoax that Trotskyism is somehow something moral.
Trotsky was himself a murderer. Killing is immoral. It sometimes is necessary and cannot be avoided as with regards to the psychotic
butchers who came from abroad to Syria and are known as ISIS but it is still immoral.
Normal people sense killing as immoral therefore psychopaths have to come up with stories such as Germans slaughtering Belgian
babies with bayonets, Iraqis throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators, Serbs genociding Bosniaks or Albanians, Qadhafi readying
for genocide in Benghazi, Assad pulling children's fingernails or gassing them, Iran being responsible for 9/11 etc, all in order
to dehumanise the enemy of the moment and compel people to accept that killing "sub-humans" half way around the world is a moral
act. It isn't. Period.
Unlike all those fake atrocities, Western and Saudi trained, armed and financed foreign terrorists in Syria did film themselves
doing horrors. They videotaped themselves burning people alive, throwing people off building tops. They videotaped themselves
beheading children. Assad didn't make those videos, ISIS did, to brag. Only mentally ill people can support those "rebels" against
Assad. Yet, as a Christian, I don't consider killing them as moral, I consider it as necessary and unavoidable, but it is an act
that mandates penitence.
Trotsies ignore those qualms and, whether real or alleged followers, are sick people. End of story.
From Trotsky's doctrine of Permanent Revolution onward, the hallmark of Trotskyism has been a quest for intellectual purity in
revolution – no contradictions allowed. No mixed economies under socialism. No pragmatic alliances. No consideration of national
security. Stake everything on a worldwide wave of revolution. Every real-world tactical issue since 1939 has led to fracturing
of the Trotskyist movement, generally into a "pure" faction and a "get something done" faction. International Socialists represented
the "pure" faction after the 1939 split (after it spun off the forebears of the neoconservative movement). Its sole contribution
of significance was as an intellectual incubator for Christopher Hitchens. More "pure" factions spun off in the early 1960s, which
sooner or later degenerated into cults. Lyndon LaRouche made his mark leading one of the "pure" factions. The "get something done"
faction made its mark as highly effective organizers of protests against the war in Vietnam but started chasing silly fads of
the student New Left, trying unsuccessfully to connect them to a revolutionary strategy. Their "revolutionary" rationale for those
movements blew up when they went in a decidedly bourgeois-aligned bureaucratic direction and became adjuncts to the Democratic
Party. WSWS represents the revival of purist Trotskyism, which offers cogent critiques of the glorified left-liberal postmodernist
"Trotskyism" of Louis Proyect and Socialist Alternative, but seems to choke on the question of what they themselves actually intend
to accomplish.
The Russian revolution served German interests more than it did American ones. Germany sponsored Lenin's return from Zurich
to lead the revolution that would get Russia out of the war. It makes no sense to contend that the Russian revolution served American
interests or that Warburg-Schiff were acting on their behalf. They were acting against the US interest in keeping Russia in the
war against Germany. They had been financing anti-Tsarist activity in Russia for years.
If one wants to make the case that Trotsky was a German agent, they would have to explain his agitation for spreading the revolution
into Germany. You could make a stronger case that George Washington was a French agent against Britain. Revolutions have tended
to occur in the cracks and contradictions opened in the struggles between the great powers, including the revolutions in China
and Vietnam.
The problem is not that an ignorant, Tony McKenna, will still in 2018 be a Trotskyst , that is a defender of a mass murderer.
The problem is that the writer of this piece seems to believe that it is worth spending time writing an article about such
an ignorant and irrelevant man. Maybe because he "writes well", which, she admires.
That one can "write well" and "speak well, as intellectuals do, but be a jerk, doesn't occur to Ms Johnson.
The problem is also because the writer herself, ignores how profoundly ignorant is Tony McKenna.
"Revolution is very rare. It is more a myth than a reality "
No, Revolutions are criminal enterprises. They always were and they always will be.
Robespierre, Lenine, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, Mao were criminals.
The first European revolution – The French Revolution – was the first big lie and the first to put into practice the industrial
killing of a people – People of Vendée – . The first EUropean Genocide was committed by the French revolutionaries.
It is not by chance that all major criminals (Lenine etc ) studied the French Revolution and would apply later in their countries
the model that the French terrorists (Revolutionaries) applied to France.
Those who are interested in knowing the truth about the Franch Revolution (and all revolutions and why so called Trotskysts
are a bunch of fools) should read Reynald Secher – A French Genocide: The Vendee.
"In our era, the most successful revolutions have been in Third World countries"
Well, if one can write such nonsense, then when can admire Tony McKenna and waste time writing a silly article.
Great article! Thanks to Diana Johnstone for writing such a fine article which blows right out of the water so much of the BS
being bandied about in relation to the Syrian War, Stalin, etc. Ms. Johnstone is a REAL intellectual. Wish there were more like
her in the Anglosphere nowadays.
President Asad is a doctor by profession. He is a family man and has raised a beautiful family. Prior to this Saudi Terrorist
Revolution he rode his own car, at times taking his family shopping .hardly signs of a baby killer or a 'chemical animal'.
Trotskyites, much more than Stalinists, love war, worship war, live to make war for everybody and everything they see as not
theirs. Trotskyites have as large an appetite for carnage leading to their greater empire than any people that ever lived with
the exception of Mongols.
Trotskyites and WASPs – who created the largest empire in world history – in bed together, with the evil House of Saud, could
destroy civilization.
I just finished Kotkin's Stalin book chapter on the purges, which made no sense (the book is good but has no narrative). The
purges would have made more sense as a full on battle with the Trotskyite elements. My other theory is that they were a paychological
projection of guilt from the collectivization murders, realized as more murders.
Fools and idiots come in various shapes and sizes, as do socialists and wildlife. The zebra stands out from afar, its stripes
give it away. Likewise, the Trotskyites stand out markedly in the fairly jumbled-up socialist landscape, given away by their towering
stupidity and luminous obstinacy. Whenever some wretched poor, weak country is being bombed by the West, these useful idiots of
empire jump up and down in merriment. Whenever a union anywhere is trying to extort more money for less work, these fools give
their support. The burning down of churches and the spreading of atheism at gunpoint is another trait of theirs. Christian Socialists
they hate with a special vengeance, taking their cue from Marx the great "visionary", whose vision was fairly deficient in many
ways.
Stalin had Trot's head badgered-in, if I recall. Well, with a head as stupid as Trotsky's, half the world would be itching
to bash it in. One of those good things that Stalin did, IMHO.
The purges would have made more sense as a full on battle with the Trotskyite elements.
That's exactly how I interpret Stalin's purges, too. I think he was trying to wrest control of the Communist Party generally–and
the NKVD specifically–from the (((Trotskyite))) mafia which then dominated them.
I just finished Kotkin's Stalin book chapter on the purges, which made no sense (the book is good but has no narrative).
Is Kotkin Jewish? Maybe the reason his recounting of the purges doesn't make sense is because he doesn't really want to talk
about what prompted them. Like anything else in life, if you want to understand Stalin's purges, you first have to understand
the context in which they took place.
Syrians have told me that Bashar al-Assad was a decent chap. But taking his family shopping could not be different from John McCain
walking through Baghdad with one hundred soldiers around him and helicopters overhead to show how safe it was. If Bashar al-Assad
"went shopping" in Damascus (instead of London or Paris) then two thousand plain clothes were also shopping with him. And for
what would he "go shopping" in Damascus? Shopping for an illusion, that's what.
"In the context of a global neoliberalism, where governments across the board were enacting the most pronounced forms of
deregulation and overseeing the carving up of state industries by private capital, the Assad government responded to the heightening
contradictions in the Syrian economy by following suit -- by showing the ability to march to the tempo of foreign investment
while evincing a willingness to cut subsidies for workers and farmers." [ -Tony McKenna ]
This is like cursing the pizza store owner who gives 'protection' money to the mafia, without cursing the mafia which extorts
him! As Johnstone later points out, back then Assad had little choice but to try and make his peace with Uncle Scam as best he
could, since the USSR was no longer around to protect Syria.
McKenna concludes by quoting Louis Proyect: "If we line up on the wrong side of the barricades in a struggle between the
rural poor and oligarchs in Syria, how can we possibly begin to provide a class-struggle leadership in the USA, Britain, or
any other advanced capitalist country?"
Ah yes: Louis Proyect. The one and only! It was he who recently defended the 'rebels' as proletarian Bolsheviks struggling
for a new, socialist Syria:
"The Syrian rebels are generally drawn from the poor, rural and unrepresented majority of the population, the Arab version
of John Steinbeck's Joad family. Despite the tendency of some on the left to see them as sectarians who rose up against a generous
Baathist welfare state because it supported a different interpretation of who was the true successor to Muhammad, the revolutionary
struggle in Syria was fueled by class hatred."
The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They
are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this
brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.
Which is why, once they reach a certain age and a certain level of burn-out, rather than simply give up on politics entirely,
they usually tend to become neoconservatives , as did Chris Hitchens. For them, the Rockefeller/Rothschild 'new world order'
is the next best thing to Trotsky's 'world revolution'.
The thing that escaped the author is that Trotskyism is a dead horse. The number of Trotskyists in any country is as close to
zero as makes no difference. These deluded weirdos are outnumbered even by flat-Earthers.
I don't know if Kotkin is a member of the tribe, but he definitely is on the Putin/Russia bashing wagon and is deeply steeped
in all the classic WASP institutions.
Most of the Hoover people seem to have the anti-Russian disease.
The give away in his chapter on the purges was that he blamed it on the defective personality of Stalin, i.e. Stalin was just
crazy.
Certainly Stalin was a brutal murderer, but any time the sole reason for a historical event is someone's personality you can bet
you're reading propaganda.
If you have an sources that make for a better reading on the purges, please do post.
Absolutely. Ghadafi was sodomized by bayonet and Clinton cackled over it with malicious glee.
The posing of Assad as some kind of monster is just lynch-mob rationalization. McKenna doesn't believe what he is saying any
more than Stalin believed show trial confessions obtained under torture.
It's all the more pleasurable to these psychopaths that they cloak their crimes with phony virtue. Hence, putting Assad out
there as this cartoon villian.
As if ISIS, who we fostered and nurtured, was any better? Or communist Kurds? My God how we forget each disaster from Afghanistan
to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria now the scorched-earth war and subsequent disease, etc.? These people thrive on death and mayhem.
Excellent point. The global revolution socialists are hard core ideologies who put ideological purity over practical considerations.
Hence their failure to achieve any kind of real world success. Wherever socialists have had some sustainable success it has been
achieved by combining socialism with elements of nationalism and capitalism. The communist military successes in Russia, China
and Vietnam were achieved by appealing to nationalism. The Chinese economic miracle has been achieved through state capitalism.
The Scandinavian welfare state has depended on government support for big companies like Volvo and Nokia.
There are lessons here for English-speaking countries with their dogmatic attachment to liberal values like free trade, open
borders and anti-nationalism.
Eh No. The first *modern* European revolution was the American revolution, and it's not a joke. Fully European, of European
people and European powers. All European powers indeed, UK, France, Spain, many German states, and so on. And French revolution
was broadly more than Robespierre, it was UK, Spain, the German states, the Pope, the Austrian Empire, the many factions of the
French people (if such concept had any sense then, in a territory only less than 25% spoke French), all of them were criminals,
or only was Robespierre? Was criminal the previous kingdom, in a permanent basis of bloody wars and social injustice?
Maybe revolutions are simply a security valve, steaming a bit and that's all. By the way, the word itself goes back to Coppernicus,
a revolution is a full orbit of a planet around the Sun. It ends where started.
The entire Human History is criminal, against Humankind itself and our own planet. We must understand, not look for criminals.
You are right. I was surprised to see the article as I thought they were all in old age homes.
They really really are gone in America, even in the universities. May be because in America because our "struggle" is multi
millionaire Jews and upper middle class blacks Asians Hispanics and Indians against poor Whites.
In America a $200,000 a year black women school administrator is an opressed victim. The poorest disabled White man is a privileged
aristocrat who must be sent to the guillotine.
I'm very interested in the Vendeens. I have the memoirs of Renee Bourderau.
It's not a book. I got it from the library of Congress copying service and put the pages in a binder.
Loyola uni Los Angeles has a copy in their rare books section. UCLA and USC libraries have lots of books about it, many in
English. The Lucius Green library at Stanford has many Vendean resistance books too
Quite a different story from the conventional Masonic enlightenment narrative. Our American Whiskey rebels were lucky they
surrendered so quickly or they might have met the fate of the Vendeans. There used to be a website devoted to Renee Bourdereau
maintained by some college history department.
The trouble with Trotskyists is that they are always "supporting" other people's more or less imaginary revolutions. They
are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this
brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism. The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological alibi for
permanent war.
For the sake of world peace and progress, both the United States and its inadvertent Trotskyist apologists should go home
and mind their own business.
Trotsky was a danger to the survival USSR, because he was an internationalist as is the Israeli-allied globalist cabal that
runs the USA. His differences with Stalin and the nationalists inside the Kremlin was not a small disagreement, as you assert.
You must not have ever even picked up a book on the subject.
Would you be surprised to learn that Lenin too was conspiring with the Japanese in 1904-5?
'Revolutionary defeatism' was a central tenet of his worldview and of Trotsky's too.
As brutal as Stalin was, his rule was providential, in the sense that he saved Russian nationalism, culture, and spirituality
from absolute destruction at the hands of the usual suspects' willing instrument, Lev Davidovich Bronstein.
Bronstein was an agent of the Jewish banking cabal headquartered in New York. He was financed primarily by Jacob Schiff of
Kuehn and Loeb.
Trotsky and his acolytes desired the total destruction of Russian culture and Russian Orthodoxy in particular.
Stalin was sagacious enough to realize that the Russians would never fight against the Germans and their allies for the cause
of world revolution, but knew they would fight for their Russian motherland and its spiritual traditions and folkways. Stalin
restored the patriarchate, opened up many churches, and commissioned the composition of the "Hymn of the Soviet Union" (now the
Russian National Anthem with different lyrics) in the Orthodox chorale tradition; it would ultimately replace "The Internationale."
In the meantime, the almost entirely kosher Trotskyites became viciously anti-Soviet (actually anti-Russian) and pledged their
temporary allegiance to their great American golem.
The origins of the Cold War (and today's Russia xenophobia) was- in my humble opinion- the great schism and struggle between
the international rootless tool of Wall St. and his acolytes and the ruthless- but providential -Georgian autocrat.
This Permanent revolutions is very good. But what you going to do with the Old revolutioners..
It does not bode well. If they are in the way of more and other revolutions
This Permanent revolutions is very good. But what you going to do with the Old revolutioners..
It does not bode well. If they are in the way of more and other revolutions
Louis Proyect – this is a vile scribe, who blackens the pages of the Counterpunch. A part of the Trotskyite gang that took over
this once venerable magazine!
I remember with emotion the old days, where in Minnesota, the Communist Party with me among others, and the Trotskyist of the
WS with you, among others, if my memories are good, we were fighting inside the movement against the war from VietNam.
The Trotskyists said then that once peace is won, it would be necessary to work for the overthrow of the regime of "pro-Soviet
revisionist HoChiMinh".
Even today, most of the troskysts (and CPF Eurocommunists for that matter) still deny the socialist character of China, Viet
Nam, Cuba, North Korea, and so on.
And this is even more true since these countries are inscribing their economy in the continuity of Lenin's NEP!
We come to this fable of the end of History with "globalized capitalism", as we enter a multipolar world where the socialist
countries (China, VietNam, North Korea, Cuba, Kerala ) in alliance with the BRICS non-imperialist, take over.
Have you evolved from Minnesota, or are you still a fellow traveler on the WS Trotskyite?
Maybe you're right. The first European Revolution was the American Revolution Except that it wasn't really a Revolution. If
we want to be precise, we should call it war for "Independence"/For Power.
What is sure is that future criminals (Europeans/Asians/Africans) will have the French revolution has their model and not the
American Revolution.
Revolution or not, the fact of matter is that Americans have nothing to learn from Europeans in terms of barbarism. Indian Genocide
is an example how "revolutionary" (criminal), the American Elite were/are.
"The entire Human History is criminal" – It's false.
"We must understand, not look for criminals." Obvious. But if you understand the nature of revolution you know that revolutions
are made by criminals Not just Robespierre, of course.
Renée Bourdereau is what Howard Zinn calls "Unsung Heroine".
In France, today they prefer to celebrate criminals like Robespierre, Turreau, Westermann etc..(executioners of Vendéen Genocide)
Normal, Revolution won and French politicians and Elites are very proud of their "République".
If you're interested in Vendée, you have to read Reynald Secher. He's one of the greatest French Historian. Of course he's
almost unknown because he doesn't write the official history, which is most about propaganda and not trying to find the truth.
Yes, it was. All Revolutions are about power. Obviously the Americans could not overthrown the British Crown, an Ocean in the
Middle. But they would have do if they could. Dettaching part of the Empire was (is) a way to make easier the way for others.
And, actually, American Revolution was and is a model. It was a successful model for most of Latin American independences, many
bloodbaths and not at all exempts of tyrants and psycopaths. Nor the American Revolution was an angelical promenade.
Of course, choose a model depends on the user. In fact the point here is your meeting point, actual or pretended. The ayatollahs
cannot choose the French Revolution at all as a model, not to say the Soviet one (the American neither, obviously).
What I am trying to say it's maybe Revolutions are more an accident than a deliberate political move. Maybe if the French Revolution
had not existed, France neither nowadays. And without her, the French bourgeoise. A forgotten Revolution is the Polish one, earlier
than French too. If none speaks about it's because it was a complete failure (by the way, no violence at all), and Poland was
dismembered and ceased to exist for 125 years.
If you have such "accidents" you seriously cannot expect normal people at command. The more brutal the affair, the more brutal
the "criminals". Makes no difference being an arson or an accident. You have a fire and minimizing the disaster is over any other
considerations. Call them criminals if you want, but I guess they did not many chances to behave other way. It is a common place
to say Lenin was the saint, Trotsky the martyr, and Stalin the beast. Trostky was a toff, and Stalin was a redneck who did the
dirty job. The Central Committee under Stalin was killed more than 500 out of 600 members in 30 years, all commies and most of
them personally selected by Stalin himself, I mean, it's hard to believe any real treason beyond a paranoia of pure power. But,
Russia do exist today if things had ran other way? Can anyone say the number of dead people would be lesser? Hitler came to power
with no Revolution at all, on the contrary, the 1919 German Revolution was another failure, ending with Hitler.
Kotkin's writing is readable and the details are interesting. But he appears to be a full on propagandist on the important
details, like the Tsar, the Czech and Austrian conflicts, as well as the Stalin purges.
You tell me, a man who purges millions for no apparent reason (Kotkin gives none other than paranoia) isn't an implied psychopath?
Frankfurt School ideology replaced Marxism as the driving ideology of the American Left during the 1960s. Nominal Marxists
tried to fudge that ideology into Marxism because they thought it would help to sell Marxism, but boy were they wrong! Marxist
theory instead became a talisman for selling the various identitarian ideologies used to divide and weaken the working class –
the exact opposite of what the opportunist-identitarian Marxists had anticipated. Their claims that identitarian movements were
somehow akin to the anti-colonial nationalist movements of the postwar era were diametrically wrong. They became tools of the
ruling class in their 40+ year neoliberal campaign to impose hyper-exploitive colonial conditions on the former imperial homelands.
We are all Third World now.
The idea that Stalin was fighting a Jew-mafia takeover of the USSR has been put forth by several prominent Third Positionists,
such as Francis Parker Yockey:
There are, in my judgment, three great novels that explore American military life in the
twentieth century. They are, in order of publication, Guard of Honor (1948) by James
Gould Cozzens, From Here To Eternity (1951) by James Jones, and The Sand Pebbles
(1962) by Richard McKenna.
The first is a book about airmen, set at a stateside air base during World War II. The
second is a soldier's story, its setting Schofield Barracks in the territory of Hawaii on the
eve of Pearl Harbor. In The Sand Pebbles, the focus is on sailors. It takes place in
China during the 1920s when U.S. Navy gunboats patrolled the Yangtze River and its
tributaries.
As far as I can tell, none of the three enjoys much of a following today. Despite winning
the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Guard of Honor has all but vanished. To the extent that
the other two retain any cultural salience, they do so as movies, superb in the case of From
Here to Eternity , colorful but mediocre in the case of The Sand Pebbles.
Yet for any American seeking an intimate account of military service, all three novels
remain worth reading. Times change, as do uniforms, weapons, and tactics, but certain
fundamentals of military life endure. Leaders and led see matters differently, nurse different
expectations, and respond to different motivations. The perspective back at higher headquarters
(or up on the bridge) differs from the way things look to those dealing with the challenges of
a typical duty day. The biggest difference of all is between inside and outside -- between
those in uniform and the civilians who necessarily inhabit another world. Each in his own way,
Cozzens, Jones, and McKenna unpack those differences with sensitivity and insight.
Of the three, McKenna's novel in particular deserves revival, not only because of its
impressive literary qualities, but because the story it tells has renewed relevance to the
present day. It's a story about the role that foreign powers, including the United States,
played in the emergence of modern China.
Prompted in part by the ostensible North Korean threat, but more broadly by the ongoing rise
of China and uncertainty about China's ultimate ambitions, the American military establishment
will almost inevitably be directing more of its attention toward East Asia in the coming years.
To be sure, the conflict formerly known as the Global War on Terrorism continues and appears
unlikely to conclude anytime soon. Yet the character of that conflict is changing. Having come
up short in its efforts to pacify the Islamic world, the United States is increasingly inclined
to rely on proxies, generously supported by air power, to carry on the jihadist fight in
preference to committing large numbers of U.S. troops. Almost imperceptibly, East Asia is
encroaching upon and will eventually eclipse the Greater Middle East in the Pentagon's
hierarchy of strategic priorities.
It's this reshuffling of Pentagon priorities that endows The Sand Pebbles with
renewed significance. If past is prologue, McKenna's fictionalized account of actual events
that occurred 90 years ago involving U.S. forces in China should provide context for anyone
intent on employing American military power to check China today.
Of course, the armed forces of the United States have a long history of involvement in East
Asia. Ever since 1898, when it liberated, occupied, and subsequently annexed the Philippines,
the United States has maintained an enduring military presence in that part of the world.
To the extent that Americans are even dimly aware of what that presence has entailed, they
probably think in terms of three 20th-century Asian wars: the first in the 1940s against Japan;
the second during the 1950s in Korea; the third from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s in
Vietnam. In each, whether as ally or adversary, China figured prominently.
Yet even before the attack on Pearl Harbor initiated the first of those wars, U.S. air,
land, and naval forces had been active in and around China. Dreams of gaining access to a
lucrative "China Market" numbered among the factors that persuaded the United States to annex
the Philippines in the first place. In 1900, U.S. troops participated in the China Relief
Expedition, a multilateral intervention mounted to suppress the so-called Boxer Rebellion,
which sought to expel foreigners and end outside interference in Chinese affairs. The mission
succeeded and the U.S. military stayed on. Army and Marine Corps units established garrisons in
"treaty ports" such as Shanghai and Tientsin.
Decades earlier, the U.S. Navy had begun making periodic forays into China's inland
waterways. In the early 20th century, employing small shallow-draft vessels captured from Spain
in 1898, this presence became increasingly formalized. As American commercial and missionary
interests in China grew, the Navy inaugurated what it called the Yangtze Patrol, with Congress
appropriating funds to construct a flotilla of purpose-built gunboats for patrolling the river
and its tributaries. Under the direction of COMYANGPAT back in Shanghai, small warships flying
the Stars-and-Stripes sailed up and down the Yangtze's immense length to "protect American
lives and property."
This is the story that McKenna, himself a YANGPAT veteran, recounts, focusing on a single
fictional ship the U.S.S. San Pablo. Known as "Sand Pebbles," the few dozen sailors
comprising the San Pablo's crew are all lifers. A rough bunch, their interests rarely
extend beyond drinking and whoring. In 1920s China, an American sailor's modest paycheck
provides ample funds for both pursuits.
Even afloat, life for the Sand Pebbles is more than agreeable. Onboard the San Pablo,
an unofficial second crew consisting of local Chinese -- "contractors," we would call them
today -- does the dirty work and the heavy lifting. The Americans stay topside, performing
routines and rituals meant to convey an image of power and dominance.
San Pablo is a puny and lightly armed ship. Yet it exists to convey a big impression,
thereby sustaining the privileged position that the United States and the other imperial powers
enjoyed in China.
The revolutionary turmoil engulfing China in the 1920s necessarily challenged this
proposition. Nationalist fervor gripped large parts of the population. Imperial privilege
stoked popular resentment, which made San Pablo 's position increasingly untenable, even
if the Sand Pebbles themselves were blind to what was coming. That their own eminently
comfortable circumstances might be at risk was literally unimaginable.
McKenna's narrative describes how the world of the Sand Pebbles fell apart. His nominal
protagonist is Jake Holman, a machinist mate with a mystical relationship to machinery. Jake
loathes the spit-and-polish routine topside and wants nothing more than to remain below decks
in the engine compartment, performing duties that on San Pablo white American sailors
have long since ceased to do. In the eyes of his shipmates, therefore, Jake represents a threat
to the division of labor that underwrites their comforts.
The ship's captain, one of only two commissioned officers assigned to San Pablo,
likewise sees Jake as a threat to the status quo. To my mind, Lieutenant Collins is McKenna's
most intriguing creation and the novel's true focal point. Although the Sand Pebbles are
oblivious to how they may figure in some larger picture, for Collins the larger picture is a
continuing preoccupation. He sees his little ship, the entire U.S. Navy, America's providential
purpose, and the fate of Western civilization as all of a piece. Serious, sober, and dutiful,
he is also something of a fanatic.
Collins dimly perceives that powerful forces within China pose a direct threat not only to
the existing U.S. position there, but to his own worldview. Yet he considers the prospect of
accommodating those forces as not only intolerable, but inconceivable. So in the book's
culminating episode he leads Jake and several other Sand Pebbles on a symbolic but utterly
futile gesture of resistance. Fancying that he is thereby salvaging his ship's honor (and his
own as well), he succeeds merely in killing his own men.
I interpret McKenna as suggesting that there is no honor in denying reality. Only waste and
needless sacrifice result. Today a national security establishment as blind to reality as
Lieutenant Collins presides over futile gestures far more costly than those inflicted upon the
Sand Pebbles. It's not fiction and it's happening right before our eyes.
So skip the movie. But read McKenna's book. And then reflect on its relevance to the present
day.
"... * Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. His latest book is A Whistleblower at the CIA . (City Lights Publishers, 2017). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org . ..."
by Melvin Goodman
25 May, 2018 President Donald Trump's abrupt decision to run away from a summit meeting
with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should not be a surprise to anyone. The White House is
encouraging the notion that China's Xi Jinping is to blame for souring the notion of a
U.S.-North Korean summit and for toughening Kim Jong Un's negotiating position, and the
mainstream media is doing its predictable best to validate such a self-serving explanation. In
actual fact, the Trump administration was never prepared to discuss any issue that resembled
arms control and disarmament, and national security adviser John Bolton, the formidable
chairman of the new "war cabinet," was never agreeable to the idea of U.S.-North Korean
diplomacy.
Any exercise in arms control and disarmament involves two sets of negotiations: first is the
internal set within the administration itself; second is the external set with foreign
counterparts. Typically, the internal negotiations within any administration is the tougher
road. One of President John F. Kennedy's greatest successes was disciplining the Pentagon in
1963 in order to negotiate the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Over the past fifty years, there has
never been an arms control and disarmament treaty that the Pentagon has welcomed.
President Richard Nixon and national security advisor Henry Kissinger were particularly
skillful at disciplining the national security bureaucracy that found the civilian and
uniformed military leaders of the Pentagon opposed to any arms control negotiations with the
Soviet Union. Nixon and Kissinger had to win the bureaucratic battles before garnering the
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in 1972. Nixon and
Kissinger also knew how to prepare for summitry, which finds the Trump administration
particularly clueless.
President Ronald Reagan learned important lessons in the 1980s when Secretary of Defense
Casper Weinberger and his senior advisor, Richard Perle, had to be defeated bureaucratically on
the way to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. Weinberger and Perle were routed and
ultimately resigned. It is not an exaggeration to say that the internal negotiations on the
home front were just as difficult as the external negotiations with the Soviet Union. And in
some ways, negotiating with Soviet leaders Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev was less
problematic because they had a genuine interest in disarmament and they had more control over
their military establishments than their U.S. rivals.
In the case of the U.S.-North Korean summit, which probably would not have led to North
Korean denuclearization, there was a reasonable opportunity of arranging a serious deescalation
of U.S. and North Korean military activities on the Korean peninsula. National security adviser
Bolton has never shown any interest in deescalating military rivalries with any U.S.
adversaries, and the general officers around President Trump are not prepared to reduce the
U.S. military presence in South Korea or to temper U.S.-South Korean exercises that are so
threatening to the North Koreans. Communist military doctrine views such exercises as a
possible prelude to an actual attack.
Bolton is new to Trump's national security team, but he is clearly the major winner in this
diplomatic setback. Other members of the team, including the Secretaries of State and Defense
were not consulted prior to the sudden announcement on May 24, 2018, and there is no record of
any deliberations at the National Security Council for preparations for an historic meeting
with Kim Jong Un, let alone the possible trade offs in any disarmament discussion. In record
time, Bolton has taken charge of the national security and foreign policies of the Trump
administration, and has quietly built a neoconservative team of staffers at the NSC that will
take hardline positions on all items on the international agenda.
Inside and outside government, Bolton has typically surrounded himself with a like-minded
group of advisers and staffers who share his bellicose views and his bellicose manner that
deprived him of any chance to gain congressional confirmation for a senior position in previous
administrations. Bolton is already consulting with former members of the Pentagon's short-lived
Office of Special Plans (OSP) that was responsible for falsifying intelligence in 2002-2003 to
make the case for war against Iraq. In previous assignments at the United Nations and the
Department of State for the Reagan and Bush administrations, Bolton had a well-earned
reputation for falsifying intelligence on a variety of issues in order to justify hardline
positions and to argue against arms control negotiations.
Any connection to OSP is particularly revealing because of the results of a study by the
Pentagon's Inspector General that determined the office's major mission was to provide the
White House with "intelligence" to make the case for war. According to the IG, David Wurmser
was the creator of a provocative and specious Power Point presentation that linked Iraq and al
Qaeda for which there was no credible evidence. The phony intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction and possible Iraqi-al Qaeda links were the keys to making the case for war. Wurmser
is now advising Bolton on staffing decisions at the NSC.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may not have been involved in the decision making to scuttle
the summit, but it is noteworthy that his first selection of an important ambassadorial post
was a senior uniformed officer and not a foreign service professional. One of Pompeo's first
decisions as secretary of state was to select Admiral Harry Harris Jr. as ambassador to South
Korea. It was predicted at the time that Harris would join Bolton and Pompeo in arguing against
the pursuit of a diplomatic bargain with North Korea. Admiral Harris was well known for his
hard line briefings over the years before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Obama
administration actually issued a "gag order" on Harris prior to President Barack Obama's
meetings with Xi Jinping.
The emergence of Bolton and the neoconservative staffing at the NSC points to more hardline
decision making that will be influenced by cherry-picked data, unexamined assumptions, and an
unwillingness to hold open debates on foreign policy options. President Trump survived his
first foreign policy crisis in Syria last month because of the effective and moderating role
played by Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Bolton's "success" in halting the diplomatic
minuet between Washington and Pyongyang points to greater instability in the near term with
U.S. allies as well as adversaries. And if Bolton's neoconservative allies dominate the debates
at the NSC, there will be little room for Secretary of Defense Mattis to operate and more room
for Bolton's pursuit of hardline foreign policies.
Who knew? Not me. The FBI does not discuss its operations with other agencies
of the US Government. Period. I made liaison with the FBI on many occasions when I was with DIA and they were always careful to make
it clear that whatever you might give them in the way of information they would give you exactly nothing in return. In retirement
from government I have often observed the FBI working in support of DoJ in court cases.
It has always been my understanding that when the FBI investigated you they searched through records, listened to your telephone,
read your E-mail and in the end interviewed you.
Now I learn that they also recruit "confidential sources" to speak to you about the subject of FBI interest WITHOUT bothering
to inform you that they are going to tell the FBI what you said about things. Some of these "confidential sources" are employed by
the FBI for long periods of time. The American professor now teaching at a UK university who was sent by the FBI to talk to several
Trump campaign people was one such. Other "confidential sources" are recruited for a particular case Sometimes they are recruited
from among the existing acquaintances or "friends" of the person targeted by the FBI. In other words if DoJ, the WH, or the Bureau
(FBI) want to know what I, or anyone else, really says about a given topic, they can recruit someone I know using pressure, persuasion
or money to "rat" me out.
Felix Dzerzhinsky would have been proud of their skills if they had been his men. pl
Of course the FBI uses confidential informants. So does the DEA, ICE and every state and local LEA. It's a staple of every TV
crime show and novel dealing with police. Every gangster, crook, drug dealer, pedophile, terrorist and spy is obsessed with the
idea that some snitch is going to rat him out. The rest of us are rightfully incensed that this could possibly happen to us. There
best be a solid paper trail behind every confidential informant used by all the various cops. And these paper trails need to be
examined by IGs or others outside these users of confidential informants.
To those of us in the intelligence field rather than the LE field, the use of US Persons to inform on other US Persons is anathema.
We are specifically prohibited from targeting US Persons without informing them of our USI affiliation except possibly under rare
and specific circumstances. In those circumstances we have to call in the FBI. The NSA once found the targeting of US Persons
to be beyond anathema. It was a mortal sin condemning one's soul to eternal damnation. That certainly changed after 9/11.
As far as the sharing of information with the FBI, CIA and even NSA goes, I had a very different experience than Colonel Lang
when I was in DIA. In digital operations, we shared information on a daily basis. Our operations were often intertwined and interdependent.
However, I doubt this extended beyond digital operations.
https://trevoraaronson.com/... the war on terror, for the FBI has been one giant entrapment free for all, fueled
entirely on informants of dubious trustworthiness at best.
Who knew? Not me. The FBI does not discuss its operations with other agencies
of the US Government. Period. I made liaison with the FBI on many occasions when I was with DIA and they were always careful to make
it clear that whatever you might give them in the way of information they would give you exactly nothing in return. In retirement
from government I have often observed the FBI working in support of DoJ in court cases.
It has always been my understanding that when the FBI investigated you they searched through records, listened to your telephone,
read your E-mail and in the end interviewed you.
Now I learn that they also recruit "confidential sources" to speak to you about the subject of FBI interest WITHOUT bothering
to inform you that they are going to tell the FBI what you said about things. Some of these "confidential sources" are employed by
the FBI for long periods of time. The American professor now teaching at a UK university who was sent by the FBI to talk to several
Trump campaign people was one such. Other "confidential sources" are recruited for a particular case Sometimes they are recruited
from among the existing acquaintances or "friends" of the person targeted by the FBI. In other words if DoJ, the WH, or the Bureau
(FBI) want to know what I, or anyone else, really says about a given topic, they can recruit someone I know using pressure, persuasion
or money to "rat" me out.
Felix Dzerzhinsky would have been proud of their skills if they had been his men. pl
Of course the FBI uses confidential informants. So does the DEA, ICE and every state and local LEA. It's a staple of every TV
crime show and novel dealing with police. Every gangster, crook, drug dealer, pedophile, terrorist and spy is obsessed with the
idea that some snitch is going to rat him out. The rest of us are rightfully incensed that this could possibly happen to us. There
best be a solid paper trail behind every confidential informant used by all the various cops. And these paper trails need to be
examined by IGs or others outside these users of confidential informants.
To those of us in the intelligence field rather than the LE field, the use of US Persons to inform on other US Persons is anathema.
We are specifically prohibited from targeting US Persons without informing them of our USI affiliation except possibly under rare
and specific circumstances. In those circumstances we have to call in the FBI. The NSA once found the targeting of US Persons
to be beyond anathema. It was a mortal sin condemning one's soul to eternal damnation. That certainly changed after 9/11.
As far as the sharing of information with the FBI, CIA and even NSA goes, I had a very different experience than Colonel Lang
when I was in DIA. In digital operations, we shared information on a daily basis. Our operations were often intertwined and interdependent.
However, I doubt this extended beyond digital operations.
https://trevoraaronson.com/... the war on terror, for the FBI has been one giant entrapment free for all, fueled
entirely on informants of dubious trustworthiness at best.
Woodrow Wilson's Folly gave rise to more than the 1,000 year flood of Nazi and Soviet
totalitarianism and their state orchestrated campaigns of mass murder.
It also opened the door to massive, cheap war finance. And that baleful innovation has
sustained the Empire long after Hitler and Stalin met their maker and the case for the
Indispensable Nation had become ragged and threadbare.
In the context of American democracy – special interest dominated as it is – the
greatest deterrents to imperial adventurism and war are the draft and taxes. Both bring home to
the middle class voting public the cost of war in blood and treasure (theirs), and force
politicians to justify the same in terms of tangible and compelling benefits to homeland
security.
We leave the draft for another day, but do note that when the draft expired in 1970 what
ended was not imperial wars – only middle class protests against them.
In fact, the Empire has learned to make do, happily, with essentially mercenary forces
recruited from the left behind precincts of the rust belt and southeast and the opportunity
deprived neighborhoods of urban America.
But even mercenaries, and the upkeep, infrastructure and weaponry of the expeditionary
forces which they comprise, cost lots of money. And that would ordinarily be a giant problem
for the Imperial City because the folks in the hinterlands have a deep and abiding allergy to
high taxes.
As we explain below, however, Woodrow Wilson solved that problem, too, by drafting the
printing press of the newly minted Federal Reserve for war finance duty.
So doing, he opened the Pandora's box of Federal debt monetization by permitting the Fed to
own government debt – a step strictly forbidden by the stringent 1913 enabling statute
drafted by the legendary maestro of sound money, Congressman Carter Glass.
Needless to say, as a political matter printing money is a lot easier than taxing the
people. And that's especially true when the spending in question involves the machinations of
Empire in distant lands spread about the planet at a time when citizens on the home front feel
abused and over-taxed already.
To be sure, we happen to believe that the spending and tax burden on GDP could be far
smaller than it is in the US today under a regime of true federalism, honest free markets and
minimalist government intervention in social and economic life.
Still, compared to the rest of the developed world, the total US tax burden (Federal, state
and local) is just 26% of GDP. That compares to an OECD average of
34% and upwards of 50% in many of the more "advanced" venues of
European socialism (e.g. Belgium, France and Denmark).
Nevertheless, the voters abhor taxes – and the modern anti-tax GOP does not miss a
beat in prosecuting the case for even lower extractions.
The upcoming FY 2019 is a quintessential expression of that sentiment. Federal taxes will
clock in at just 16.5% of GDP – virtually the lowest rate in the last 40
years outside of deep recessions.
At the same time, the full cost of Empire will nearly tag a record $1 trillion including
$700 billion for defense, $200 billion for Veterans – as well
as security assistance and international ( $64 billion ) and debt service on past
wars ( $36 billion ).
Needless to say, the square peg of Empire abroad and the Welfare State at home could never
be pounded through the round hole of low taxes – that is, not without the lubricant of
massive monetization of the public debt.
Had Wilson not opened the door to printing press finance of the War Machine, the
"draft-effect" would have throttled the Empire long ago.
That's is to say, the crowding out by Uncle Sam and the resulting soaring bond yields would
have mobilized the natural antiwar constituencies. We are referring especially to the nation's
15 million small businesses and 75 million homeowners, who would have felt the painful sting of
high interest rates in their pocketbooks.
For that reason we now turn to Wilson's second abomination after Versailles and all its
progeny. We refer to the transformation of the Federal Reserve from a passive "banker's
bank" to an interventionist central bank knee-deep in Wall Street, government finance
and macroeconomic management.
This, too, was a crucial historical hinge point because Carter Glass' 1913 act forbid the
new Reserve banks from owning even a single dollar's worth of government debt.
To the contrary, they were empowered only to passively discount for cash good commercial
credits and receivables (called "real bills") brought to the Fed's rediscount windows by member
banks.
Accordingly, the legislative authors contemplated no open market interventions in government
bond markets; no interactions with Wall Street dealers and bond market speculators; and
provided no remit at all with respect to GDP growth, jobs, inflation, housing or all the rest
of modern day monetary central planning targets.
In fact, Carter Glass' "banker's bank" didn't care whether the growth rate was
positive 4%, negative 4% or anything in-between.
Its modest job was to channel liquidity into the banking system in response to the ebb and
flow of commerce and production based on the very collateral ("real bills") generated by that
economic activity on the free market.
Accordingly, jobs, growth and prosperity were to remain the unplanned outcome
of millions of producers, consumers, investors, savers, entrepreneurs and speculators operating
on the free market, not the business of the state.
But Wilson's war increased the national debt by 27X .
That's right. As of 1914 the public debt was just $1 billion or $11 per
capita and amounted to less than 2% of GDP – a level which had been maintained
since the Battle of Gettysburg.
But by the end of 1919, the public debt had mushroomed to $27 billion ,
including upwards of $10 billion re-loaned to the allies to enable them to continue the
war.
There is not a snowball's chance in the hot place, of course, that this massive and
virtually overnight eruption of Federal borrowing could have been financed out of domestic
savings in the private market.
So the Fed's charter was fatefully changed owing to the exigencies of war to permit it to
own government debt and to discount private loans collateralized by Treasury
paper.
In due course, Wilson's famous and massive Liberty Bond drives became a glorified Ponzi
scheme.
Patriotic Americans borrowed money from their local banks to buy war bonds and then pledged
them as security. These hometown banks, in turn, then re-pledged their customer's collateral in
order to borrow a like amount of funds from their regional Federal Reserve Bank.
Finally, the Reserve banks created the billions they loaned to their member hometown banks
out of thin air, thereby pegging interest rates ultra-low for the duration of the war.
Thus, when Wilson was done preparing the world for the 1,000 year flood of totalitarianism,
America also had an interventionist central bank.
And it was one now schooled in the art of interest rate pegging and rampant expansion of
fiat credit anchored in government debt, not the self-regulating "real bills" (pledges of
receivables and fished goods inventory) of commerce and trade.
Thus was borne in 1917-1919 both the rationale for Empire and the state instrumentalities
needed finance it easily and on the cheap. That is, massive Warfare State spending without the
inconvenience of high taxes on the people or the crowding out of business investment by high
interest rates on the private market for savings.
By prolonging the war and massively increasing the level of debt and money printing on all
sides, Wilson's folly also prevented a proper postwar resumption of the classical gold standard
at the prewar parities.
And that was of epic consequence, too.
That's because this failure of "resumption" and the restoration of prewar currency parities
against their historic weight in gold, in turn, paved the way for the breakdown of monetary
order and world trade during the late 1920s, culminating in the British default on the gold
standard in 1931.
As we chronicled in The
Great Deformation , this monetary breakdown turned a standard postwar economic
cleansing into the Great Depression, and a decade of protectionism, beggar-thy-neighbor
currency manipulation and ultimately rearmament and statist dirigisme throughout much of the
world.
In essence, the English and French governments had raised billions from their citizens on
the solemn promise that it would be repaid at the prewar parities; that the war bonds were
money good in gold.
But the combatant governments had printed too much fiat currency and generated roaring
inflation during the war, including a 200% increase in the price level in England, 300% in
France and far more in Germany.
Moreover, through domestic regimentation, heavy taxation and unfathomable combat destruction
of economic assets, the belligerent governments had drastically impaired their own private
economies.
As a result, the restoration of sound money and healthy capitalist economies would have
required years of austerity and reinvestment.
But under foolish leadership of Winston Churchill in 1925, England attempted to re-peg the
pound sterling to gold at the old prewar parity (which had been in place since 1719).
Yet the British government had no political will or capacity to reduce bloated wartime
wages, costs and prices in a commensurate manner, or to live with the austerity and shrunken
living standards that honest liquidation of its war debts required.
At the same time, France did the opposite. It ended up betraying its war time lenders, and
re-pegged the Franc two years later at a drastically depreciated level.
This resulted in a spurt of beggar-thy-neighbor prosperity and the accumulation of pound
sterling claims that would eventually blow-up the London money market and the sterling based
"gold exchange standard" that the Bank of England and British Treasury had peddled as a poor
man's way back on gold.
Yet under this "gold lite" contraption, France, Holland, Sweden and other surplus countries
had accumulated huge amounts of sterling liabilities in lieu of settling their accounts in gold
bullion – that is, they loaned billions to the British.
They did this on the promise and the confidence that the pound sterling would remain at
$4.87 per dollar come hell or high water – just as it had for 200 years of peacetime
before.
But British politicians betrayed their promises and their central bank creditors in
September 1931 by suspending redemption and floating the pound. That shattered the parities,
generated massive losses among Bank of England creditors and caused the decade-long struggle
for resumption of an honest gold standard to fail.
Depressionary contraction of world trade, capital flows and capitalist enterprise inherently
followed.
And on the American side of the Atlantic, in turn, another part of Wilson's due bill was
called in.
By turning America overnight into the granary, arsenal and banker of the Entente, the US
economy had been distorted, bloated and deformed into a giant, but unstable and unsustainable
global exporter and creditor.
During the war years, for example, US exports increased by 4X and GDP soared from $40
billion to $90 billion. Incomes and land prices soared in the farm belt, and steel, chemical,
machinery, munitions and ship construction boomed like never before – in substantial part
because Uncle Sam essentially provided vendor finance to the bankrupt allies in desperate need
of both military and civilian goods.
Under classic rules, there should have been a nasty correction after the war – as the
world got back to honest money and sound finance. But it didn't happen because the newly
unleashed Fed fueled an incredible boom on Wall Street and a massive junk bond market in
foreign loans.
In today economic scale, the latter amounted to upwards of $2 trillion and, in
effect, kept the war boom in exports and capital spending going right up until 1929.
Accordingly, the great collapse of 1929-1932 was not a mysterious failure of capitalism; it was
the delayed liquidation of Wilson's war boom.
After the crash, exports and capital spending plunged by 80% when the foreign
junk bond binge ended in the face of massive defaults abroad; and that, in turn, led to a
traumatic liquidation of industrial inventories and a collapse of credit fueled purchases of
consumer durables like refrigerators and autos.
The latter, for example, dropped from 5 million to 1.5 million units per year after
1929.
In short, the Great Depression was a unique historical event owing to the vast financial
deformations of the Great War – deformations which were drastically exaggerated by its
prolongation from Wilson's intervention and the massive credit expansion unleashed by the Fed
and Bank of England during and after the war.
Stated differently, the trauma of the 1930s was not the result of the inherent flaws or
purported cyclical instabilities of free market capitalism; it was, instead, the delayed legacy
of the financial carnage of the Great War and the failed 1920s efforts to restore the liberal
order of sound money, open trade and unimpeded money and capital flows.
But this trauma was thoroughly misunderstood, and therefore gave rise to the curse of
Keynesian economics in most parts of the world.
That took the form of war mobilization and rearmament in Nazi Germany, labor welfarism in
England and France and New Deal public works boongoogles in the US. And everywhere it did
unleash the politicians to meddle in virtually all aspects of economic life, culminating in the
statist and crony capitalist leviathans that have emerged in this century.
Indeed, Thomas Woodrow Wilson is the father of most of the last century's ills. His grand
crusade gave the world the curse of Stalin and Hitler, which, in turn, fostered the fallacy of
the Indispensable Nation and gave rise to Imperial Washington and its destructive projects of
global Empire.
Worst of all, his perversion of Carter Glass' "bankers' bank" made it possible to finance
the Empire on the cheap and to nullify the natural antiwar constituency of middle class
taxpayers.
That was Woodrow Wilson's worst sin of all.
And at length and after all these decades it has led straight to the crisis of Bubble
Finance and Empire that loom dead ahead, as we will amplify in Part 4.
Woodrow Wilson's Folly gave rise to more than the 1,000 year flood of Nazi and Soviet
totalitarianism and their state orchestrated campaigns of mass murder.
It also opened the door to massive, cheap war finance. And that baleful innovation has
sustained the Empire long after Hitler and Stalin met their maker and the case for the
Indispensable Nation had become ragged and threadbare.
In the context of American democracy – special interest dominated as it is – the
greatest deterrents to imperial adventurism and war are the draft and taxes. Both bring home to
the middle class voting public the cost of war in blood and treasure (theirs), and force
politicians to justify the same in terms of tangible and compelling benefits to homeland
security.
We leave the draft for another day, but do note that when the draft expired in 1970 what
ended was not imperial wars – only middle class protests against them.
In fact, the Empire has learned to make do, happily, with essentially mercenary forces
recruited from the left behind precincts of the rust belt and southeast and the opportunity
deprived neighborhoods of urban America.
But even mercenaries, and the upkeep, infrastructure and weaponry of the expeditionary
forces which they comprise, cost lots of money. And that would ordinarily be a giant problem
for the Imperial City because the folks in the hinterlands have a deep and abiding allergy to
high taxes.
As we explain below, however, Woodrow Wilson solved that problem, too, by drafting the
printing press of the newly minted Federal Reserve for war finance duty.
So doing, he opened the Pandora's box of Federal debt monetization by permitting the Fed to
own government debt – a step strictly forbidden by the stringent 1913 enabling statute
drafted by the legendary maestro of sound money, Congressman Carter Glass.
Needless to say, as a political matter printing money is a lot easier than taxing the
people. And that's especially true when the spending in question involves the machinations of
Empire in distant lands spread about the planet at a time when citizens on the home front feel
abused and over-taxed already.
To be sure, we happen to believe that the spending and tax burden on GDP could be far
smaller than it is in the US today under a regime of true federalism, honest free markets and
minimalist government intervention in social and economic life.
Still, compared to the rest of the developed world, the total US tax burden (Federal, state
and local) is just 26% of GDP. That compares to an OECD average of
34% and upwards of 50% in many of the more "advanced" venues of
European socialism (e.g. Belgium, France and Denmark).
Nevertheless, the voters abhor taxes – and the modern anti-tax GOP does not miss a
beat in prosecuting the case for even lower extractions.
The upcoming FY 2019 is a quintessential expression of that sentiment. Federal taxes will
clock in at just 16.5% of GDP – virtually the lowest rate in the last 40
years outside of deep recessions.
At the same time, the full cost of Empire will nearly tag a record $1 trillion including
$700 billion for defense, $200 billion for Veterans – as well
as security assistance and international ( $64 billion ) and debt service on past
wars ( $36 billion ).
Needless to say, the square peg of Empire abroad and the Welfare State at home could never
be pounded through the round hole of low taxes – that is, not without the lubricant of
massive monetization of the public debt.
Had Wilson not opened the door to printing press finance of the War Machine, the
"draft-effect" would have throttled the Empire long ago.
That's is to say, the crowding out by Uncle Sam and the resulting soaring bond yields would
have mobilized the natural antiwar constituencies. We are referring especially to the nation's
15 million small businesses and 75 million homeowners, who would have felt the painful sting of
high interest rates in their pocketbooks.
For that reason we now turn to Wilson's second abomination after Versailles and all its
progeny. We refer to the transformation of the Federal Reserve from a passive "banker's
bank" to an interventionist central bank knee-deep in Wall Street, government finance
and macroeconomic management.
This, too, was a crucial historical hinge point because Carter Glass' 1913 act forbid the
new Reserve banks from owning even a single dollar's worth of government debt.
To the contrary, they were empowered only to passively discount for cash good commercial
credits and receivables (called "real bills") brought to the Fed's rediscount windows by member
banks.
Accordingly, the legislative authors contemplated no open market interventions in government
bond markets; no interactions with Wall Street dealers and bond market speculators; and
provided no remit at all with respect to GDP growth, jobs, inflation, housing or all the rest
of modern day monetary central planning targets.
In fact, Carter Glass' "banker's bank" didn't care whether the growth rate was
positive 4%, negative 4% or anything in-between.
Its modest job was to channel liquidity into the banking system in response to the ebb and
flow of commerce and production based on the very collateral ("real bills") generated by that
economic activity on the free market.
Accordingly, jobs, growth and prosperity were to remain the unplanned outcome
of millions of producers, consumers, investors, savers, entrepreneurs and speculators operating
on the free market, not the business of the state.
But Wilson's war increased the national debt by 27X .
That's right. As of 1914 the public debt was just $1 billion or $11 per
capita and amounted to less than 2% of GDP – a level which had been maintained
since the Battle of Gettysburg.
But by the end of 1919, the public debt had mushroomed to $27 billion ,
including upwards of $10 billion re-loaned to the allies to enable them to continue the
war.
There is not a snowball's chance in the hot place, of course, that this massive and
virtually overnight eruption of Federal borrowing could have been financed out of domestic
savings in the private market.
So the Fed's charter was fatefully changed owing to the exigencies of war to permit it to
own government debt and to discount private loans collateralized by Treasury
paper.
In due course, Wilson's famous and massive Liberty Bond drives became a glorified Ponzi
scheme.
Patriotic Americans borrowed money from their local banks to buy war bonds and then pledged
them as security. These hometown banks, in turn, then re-pledged their customer's collateral in
order to borrow a like amount of funds from their regional Federal Reserve Bank.
Finally, the Reserve banks created the billions they loaned to their member hometown banks
out of thin air, thereby pegging interest rates ultra-low for the duration of the war.
Thus, when Wilson was done preparing the world for the 1,000 year flood of totalitarianism,
America also had an interventionist central bank.
And it was one now schooled in the art of interest rate pegging and rampant expansion of
fiat credit anchored in government debt, not the self-regulating "real bills" (pledges of
receivables and fished goods inventory) of commerce and trade.
Thus was borne in 1917-1919 both the rationale for Empire and the state instrumentalities
needed finance it easily and on the cheap. That is, massive Warfare State spending without the
inconvenience of high taxes on the people or the crowding out of business investment by high
interest rates on the private market for savings.
By prolonging the war and massively increasing the level of debt and money printing on all
sides, Wilson's folly also prevented a proper postwar resumption of the classical gold standard
at the prewar parities.
And that was of epic consequence, too.
That's because this failure of "resumption" and the restoration of prewar currency parities
against their historic weight in gold, in turn, paved the way for the breakdown of monetary
order and world trade during the late 1920s, culminating in the British default on the gold
standard in 1931.
As we chronicled in The
Great Deformation , this monetary breakdown turned a standard postwar economic
cleansing into the Great Depression, and a decade of protectionism, beggar-thy-neighbor
currency manipulation and ultimately rearmament and statist dirigisme throughout much of the
world.
In essence, the English and French governments had raised billions from their citizens on
the solemn promise that it would be repaid at the prewar parities; that the war bonds were
money good in gold.
But the combatant governments had printed too much fiat currency and generated roaring
inflation during the war, including a 200% increase in the price level in England, 300% in
France and far more in Germany.
Moreover, through domestic regimentation, heavy taxation and unfathomable combat destruction
of economic assets, the belligerent governments had drastically impaired their own private
economies.
As a result, the restoration of sound money and healthy capitalist economies would have
required years of austerity and reinvestment.
But under foolish leadership of Winston Churchill in 1925, England attempted to re-peg the
pound sterling to gold at the old prewar parity (which had been in place since 1719).
Yet the British government had no political will or capacity to reduce bloated wartime
wages, costs and prices in a commensurate manner, or to live with the austerity and shrunken
living standards that honest liquidation of its war debts required.
At the same time, France did the opposite. It ended up betraying its war time lenders, and
re-pegged the Franc two years later at a drastically depreciated level.
This resulted in a spurt of beggar-thy-neighbor prosperity and the accumulation of pound
sterling claims that would eventually blow-up the London money market and the sterling based
"gold exchange standard" that the Bank of England and British Treasury had peddled as a poor
man's way back on gold.
Yet under this "gold lite" contraption, France, Holland, Sweden and other surplus countries
had accumulated huge amounts of sterling liabilities in lieu of settling their accounts in gold
bullion – that is, they loaned billions to the British.
They did this on the promise and the confidence that the pound sterling would remain at
$4.87 per dollar come hell or high water – just as it had for 200 years of peacetime
before.
But British politicians betrayed their promises and their central bank creditors in
September 1931 by suspending redemption and floating the pound. That shattered the parities,
generated massive losses among Bank of England creditors and caused the decade-long struggle
for resumption of an honest gold standard to fail.
Depressionary contraction of world trade, capital flows and capitalist enterprise inherently
followed.
And on the American side of the Atlantic, in turn, another part of Wilson's due bill was
called in.
By turning America overnight into the granary, arsenal and banker of the Entente, the US
economy had been distorted, bloated and deformed into a giant, but unstable and unsustainable
global exporter and creditor.
During the war years, for example, US exports increased by 4X and GDP soared from $40
billion to $90 billion. Incomes and land prices soared in the farm belt, and steel, chemical,
machinery, munitions and ship construction boomed like never before – in substantial part
because Uncle Sam essentially provided vendor finance to the bankrupt allies in desperate need
of both military and civilian goods.
Under classic rules, there should have been a nasty correction after the war – as the
world got back to honest money and sound finance. But it didn't happen because the newly
unleashed Fed fueled an incredible boom on Wall Street and a massive junk bond market in
foreign loans.
In today economic scale, the latter amounted to upwards of $2 trillion and, in
effect, kept the war boom in exports and capital spending going right up until 1929.
Accordingly, the great collapse of 1929-1932 was not a mysterious failure of capitalism; it was
the delayed liquidation of Wilson's war boom.
After the crash, exports and capital spending plunged by 80% when the foreign
junk bond binge ended in the face of massive defaults abroad; and that, in turn, led to a
traumatic liquidation of industrial inventories and a collapse of credit fueled purchases of
consumer durables like refrigerators and autos.
The latter, for example, dropped from 5 million to 1.5 million units per year after
1929.
In short, the Great Depression was a unique historical event owing to the vast financial
deformations of the Great War – deformations which were drastically exaggerated by its
prolongation from Wilson's intervention and the massive credit expansion unleashed by the Fed
and Bank of England during and after the war.
Stated differently, the trauma of the 1930s was not the result of the inherent flaws or
purported cyclical instabilities of free market capitalism; it was, instead, the delayed legacy
of the financial carnage of the Great War and the failed 1920s efforts to restore the liberal
order of sound money, open trade and unimpeded money and capital flows.
But this trauma was thoroughly misunderstood, and therefore gave rise to the curse of
Keynesian economics in most parts of the world.
That took the form of war mobilization and rearmament in Nazi Germany, labor welfarism in
England and France and New Deal public works boongoogles in the US. And everywhere it did
unleash the politicians to meddle in virtually all aspects of economic life, culminating in the
statist and crony capitalist leviathans that have emerged in this century.
Indeed, Thomas Woodrow Wilson is the father of most of the last century's ills. His grand
crusade gave the world the curse of Stalin and Hitler, which, in turn, fostered the fallacy of
the Indispensable Nation and gave rise to Imperial Washington and its destructive projects of
global Empire.
Worst of all, his perversion of Carter Glass' "bankers' bank" made it possible to finance
the Empire on the cheap and to nullify the natural antiwar constituency of middle class
taxpayers.
That was Woodrow Wilson's worst sin of all.
And at length and after all these decades it has led straight to the crisis of Bubble
Finance and Empire that loom dead ahead, as we will amplify in Part 4.
From reader comments: If I had my way, I would bring back the draft with NO college
deferments. In fact, the sons and daughters of politicians would get called up first. Service in
the IDF doesn't count. ... ... "Yes, but expand that. Mandate that we first enlist, train, and promptly deploy any children and
grandchildren of all members of Congress, members of the President's Cabinet, federal judges, Federal Reserve Board of Governors,
and the CEOs/CFOs/CIOs etc. of military companies (including Northrup Grumman, Boeing, and their ilk). "
This is a very large "sinecure"
At a deeper level, military forces are agents/enforcers for the elite. Its primary role is the providing expansion and the
defense of the interests of the ruling elite against external and internal enemies. Without addressing the dominant social
interests in the state, a focus on shringking the military budget is quite inadequate.
I don't have a problem with 4% of GDP, but I have a big problem with what we're getting for
our money.
A quarter million for a four-star general is fine, if the general is any good (almost none
of them are by design). In theory a general is equivalent to a division manager in a Fortune
500 company, but COs in the US military have amazingly little power. They're not even free to
hire and fire their own subordinates in most cases. So our senior officers are really paid
generously to pretend they are great military commanders.
The average SAT score at West Point is only 1340 these days. Prior to the Vietnam War I
believe West Point was academically competitive with Ivy League schools, or at least that's
what Class of '68 veteran John T. Reed states.
The Naval Academy is 1322 and the Air Force Academy is 1370.
These aren't bad scores, but clearly these officers aren't elite academically.
The enlisted personnel seem adequate in quality thanks to the AFQT, other than women of
course. They're overpaid compared to what is available for them in the private sector.
The pension system, in addition to being overly generous, has perverse incentives. As any
service-member approaches that magical 20 year mark, any kind of independent thinking must
disappear (which the military already does so much to eliminate). Want your fat pension?
Better shut up and emulate your COs in every way possible. It should just be replaced with a
Thrift Savings Plan (gov't equivalent of a 401k).
One sixth of the force consists of women. Every last one of them subtracts from the
efficacy of the military.
One sixth of personnel are officers, which is far too many officers.
Then you have all the unnecessary EO officers, JAGs, and other political commissars.
I don't have an issue with the various recreational perks in the armed forces as they
contribute to espirit de corps. The private sector could use more of this, honestly.
The GI Bill is also politically objectionable as we should not be giving money to The
Enemy (colleges in this case).
This is the price a mercantile republic pays for an all volunteer fighting force.
When you have less than 5% of the population serving in the military and commitments all
over the globe, then you need to be prepared to pay for those professional services (yes, the
military is a profession like any other). If you're prepared to go back to a draft force, then we can start talking about changes to
the pay and benefit system.
Personally, I think service of some kind, be it military or community, ought to be a
requirement to vote. Service guarantees citizenship.
Maybe you can help me on the following ancillary matter? F.y.i., Mighty John Bolton passed on an opportunity to fight LBJ's atrocious war against
communism, in Vietnam. As PreZident Trump's present Iranophobe-warmongering N.S.A. Adviser, I tried (but failed)
to determine how much pay & "bennies" Bolton now gets from the bottomless Executive
Branch feeding trough.
Same scam, different tactics. 40 years ago we lived in Annapolis, MD in the lowest tier of a then – New housing
development concept. Our cramped townhouses were on the scrabble outer ring.
The most lavish houses were in the inner-ring, on a divided boulevard, extensively
landscaped and maintained. At least 3/4 of those homes were owned by "Double-Dippers"–
military retirees collecting military retirement pay while employed as civil servants in
Federal gov, with defense contractor consulting on the side.
"Thank you for your service,"– in cash, if you please.
I do not mind community service, but I object to military service and I do not want to
vote. Voting gives legitimacy to a system that I oppose. I was born in the geographical area
now ruled by the government of the United States of America. Perhaps, LT Dan, you would be in
favor of a status such as non-citizen resident. I was born in this area by a quirk of fate,
not any choice on my part. I do not usually agree with US government policy, nor do I want
the US government to represent me or "protect" me. It would be just for me to pay less taxes
since I do not desire and would gladly refuse most of the "services" the government provides,
especially those noted in the above article.
Neither me, my father, my grandfather, nor my great grandmother served in the US Military,
but one of the large defense contractors put bread on the table for four generations of my
family. My 90-year old grandmother is still collecting my grandfather's pension from that
firm and he's been dead for 30 years!
US is rich and the debt is high. Both can be true at the same time. But taxes are relatively low so if there is a
government debt crisis paying down the debt would just involve raising taxes. Just look at GDP per capita US which is very
high up there so I don't see how anyone can argue the US is not a very rich country.
Despite many problems, the US has many advantages like half the world's Ashkenazim who are very good at creating
unbeatable new companies .etc., etc., etc .
Thanks for the laughs. You must be of the Maven-Krugman school of debt. You're all wrong, and it's obviously beyond your
understanding that though you can fool almost all of the goyim almost all of the time, you can't fool all of us all the time.
AEN, thank you for your fine input, but I suspect you're throwing pearls to swine who
don't even want to understand.
Even worse, when they claim that debt is good, they conveniently leave out the part about
who it's good for.
We dumb goyim have repeatedly proven ourselves to be pretty easy marks, but some of us
have a clue as to who's paying for it all, and its good to know that a few know who that
would be, so thanks again.
That was a jolting eye-catcher. So this general still receives a six-figure pension
check!? I've often marveled at the moral fiber exhibited by these gilded peacocks, who, when
faced with supporting criminal actions by their government, such as invading countries who've
done us no harm, click their heels and proceed. Instead of taking an instant retirement,
knowing their pensions are secure.
You would still be required to pay some kind of lease or tax for the land which you
occupy, but would otherwise be left alone. You would also be subject to the criminal laws of
the jurisdiction you occupied. You would also pay taxes for any consumption that requires use
of infrastructure or interstate commerce.
The United States is large enough that such an arrangement is still possible.
" US spends 4% of GDP on the military versus 2% in China, France, UK. That's high but
considering how rich the US is, not unbearable. Weak article "
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Every productive dollar that's ever existed has been flushed down the MIC rathole. The
whole "budget "is an elaborate ruse to conceal the chains that bind you.
10's of trillions disappear with gleeful approval on a regular basis.
Mr. Girard, buon giorno. You must be my elder. In '68 I was paid $96 plus $26 combat pay
while in Nam.
Yea, things are out of control. Unfortunately, the store clerk you ran into the other day is
representative of how the majority of "we the people" think. Hence, don't expect change
anytime soon.
I have been a fan of yours for sometime now. Mostly at NEO, sometimes art Rense. I recently
began accessing UNZ and was pleased to see your name in the list of contributors. Sadly I
don't predict improvement in the majorities attitude. But, you do fine work, dom't quit just
yet. As long as we can keep the internet affordable reality may trickle down. I believe the
net is the reason the "fake news" moniker had to be. Sort if like "conspiracy theory". Same
party owns both copyrights.
Keep your head up.
Joseph
Foreign entanglements, searching for monsters to destroy, acting as the world police
– this is the main problem.
Yooge problems for sure, but playing Sugar Daddy to Izzie-land is the biggest one of all
in terms of dollars as well as moral capital, and it probably dwarfs welfare subsidies to
"defense" corporations.
When I joined the U.S. Army in 1965 my starting pay was slightly less than 100 dollars per
month. Soldiers then were said to be "in the service". Today they are "in the military".
Later in life I realized that I had been "in the service" of evil. Still later I learned that
the love of money is the root of evil.
The American Dollar Dies in New York – a Satire from Uganda:
JS, Since Rumsfeld admitted, the day before 911 when he helped murder 30 forensic
accountants plus a handful of Naval Investigators, you are 1 of the few I ever heard mention
the stolen money. Since the Clinton administration up to 2016 the number is now $21
$Trillions, from just 2 departments.
BB, I personally know a couple who are around seventy, very healthy and active, who have
parlayed multiple pension-qualifying careers between them in the armed forces, postal
service, teaching, and county government, into astounding lifestyles. Harley motorcycle,
Winnebago, big house, weekend cottage, cruises, the whole shebang.
They're very nice people, part of the local Puerto Rican ascendancy, first generation
descendants of the Puerto Ricans recruited by the now defunct local steel mills back in the
1950s.
I'm sure it can be said they worked for what they got, but, still . . . you gotta wonder
what's going on.
Military spending has one virtue, it is constitutional as it fulfills one duty of the
FedGov, one it has often shirked, defend the country.
Giraldi can whine all he likes, but the DOD is not an entitlement program, nor does the
Pentagon get all it wants. It never has gotten all it wants, no matter how much Giraldi
whines to the contrary.
I've never seen such a warped and delusional understanding of the voracious, insatiable,
wasteful and corrupt National Security State presented so succinctly
P.S. I have a feeling that War Machine accounts have written Quatermaster a lot of checks
over the years. I.e., he knows what side his bread is buttered on.
anon, tell it like it is. Everyone should also know the debt servce cost to our budget is
the interest Americans pay. What's 2% of 20 trillions? 40 billions? IDK l, but it's alot.
Well that's the federal reserve *a private corp.) income estimate for the yeat, which the
share holders, all 6 of them, pay no income tax.
Since the Clinton administration up to 2016 the number is now $21 $Trillions, from just
2 departments.
Can you explain to me how that even works, technically? E.g. the DoD is supposed to have
"stolen" a lot more money than its entire regular budget – how could they even lay
their hands on such sums? What accounts did that money sit in before it was siphoned off,
without anyone noticing?
The US military are the equivalent of the Roman Empire's honestiores, or upper classes. As
well as the benefits accruing from service, they had special legal treatment, like being
exempt from judicial torture. So Arthur Lichte merely gets part of his pension docked for
raping a woman. Nothing to see here , mate, move along. Even someone like Chelsea ( " They
call her Natasha, but she looks like Elsie" ) Manning spends a mere 7 years in prison and
gets the Defence Department to pay for "gender reassignment".
The point about judicial torture is important as America has recently revived the practice.
Would Assange be waterboarded if they got hold of him ? Would he have met a fatal "accident"
in custody?
Who knows ? But don't you even think about doing that to an American serviceman, even one as
degenerate as Manning.
That wasn't a response. It was just name calling. So if you aren't convinced by my
rebuttal it's certainly not because you had more intelligent analysis.
You use a lot of figures but not the appropriate statistics. What do big aggregate numbers
like 200k in debt per family really mean?
I look at the percentage of tax revenue v. GDP compared to other first world countries. US
is actually on the low side by this measure. That means it's possible to raise taxes and only
moderately harm the economic growth engine. And no one has addressed the advantages the US
economy has in particular having half of the world's Ashkenazim.
Rumsfeld admitted, the day before 911 when he helped murder 30 forensic accountants plus
a handful of Naval Investigators,
Thanks, it's nice to know that there are others who are wide awake. Trouble is, even those
who have a clue can't even imagine the .0001% of it, I'm sure.
What accounts did that money sit in before it was siphoned off, without anyone
noticing?
We'll probably never know. The system is not exactly designed for transparency, and
besides, guess where the missile, errr, "plane" hit the Penta-graft?
Wouldn't it be fun to ask Rummy the Smirking Dummy that question?
I bet this swinish character could provide a bit of insight with a little Nuremberg or Abu
Ghraib style info gathering as well, and here's a partial rap sheet
Dov S. Zakheim was sworn in as the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief
Financial Officer for the Department of Defense on May 4, 2001. Dr. Zakheim has previously
served in a number of key positions in government and private business.
Most recently, he
was corporate vice president of System Planning Corp., a technology, research and analysis
firm based in Arlington, Va. He also served as chief executive officer of SPC International
Corp., a subsidiary specializing in political, military and economic consulting. During the
2000 presidential campaign, he served as a senior foreign policy advisor to then-Governor
Bush.
From 1985 until March 1987, Dr. Zakheim was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for
Planning and Resources in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy). In that
capacity, he played an active role in the Department's system acquisition and strategic
planning processes. Dr. Zakheim held a variety of other DoD posts from 1981 to 1985.
Earlier, he was employed by the National Security and International Affairs Division of the
Congressional Budget Office.
Dr. Zakheim has been a participant on a number of government, corporate, non-profit and
charitable boards.
The United States military is a giant jobs program, Giraldi!
So what of it! Who cares. Conjure up those dollars out of thin air and let the troops have
some loot. Did the Founding Fathers warn us about large standing armies in their writings and
actions? Yes.
Did the Founding Fathers know that a large standing army would require a concentrated form
of governmental power to collect the loot to pay for that army? Yes.
Did we just pass the 800 year anniversary of the Magna Carta? Yes. Was the Magna Carta
about standing armies and concentrated government power, among other things?
Were the Founding Fathers somewhat ungrateful to the British Empire for its efforts in the
French and Indian War? Yes.
Would the Founding Fathers be surprised to find a Jew billionaire named Shelly Adelson
controlling the use of the US military in the Middle East and West Asia? The cynical and
smart ones wouldn't be surprised at all.
The GOP has the War budget and the US military and the Democrats have the public schools
and many other government workers. The GOP always promises to spend more loot on the War
budget and the US military and the Democrats always promise to spend more money on the public
schools and other government programs.
Giraldi has written a CLUNKER of a blog post, folks!
Giraldi should write about mass immigration, monetary extremism and the impossibility of
paying for the retirement of the baby boomers.
Mass Immigration: DEMOGRAPHY
Monetary Policy: DEBT
Baby Boomers: NATION WRECKERS
The American Empire is soon to go belly up in a manner similar to the upcoming demise of
treasonous rat John McCain.
The WASP /JEW ruling class of the American Empire knows this. A pleasant consolation is
that China, Japan and Europe are just as badly bankrupt as the American Empire is.
Raise the federal funds rate to 10 percent and implode the American Empire. Young people
must no longer be saddled with massive unpayable debt and the unpayable retirement of the
baby boomers. Pull the plug on the baby boomers now, and let the young people have a
future.
The Chinese, Japanese and Europeans will implode also. Use the nuclear deterrent and
offshore balancing to keep global peace.
Giraldi can whine all he likes, but the DOD is not an entitlement program, nor does the
Pentagon get all it wants.
If it isn't an entitlement program, then what would one look like? Do you know the meaning
of "sinecure?"
You can whine about Giraldi all you want but he's right and yer wrong, and thank G-d that
the Pantygon doesn't get all it wants. Can you explain whether it should and why?
PS: Read the comments regarding disabilities and retirement bennies and then get back to
us.
You really don't want affirmative action nurses looking after anymore than those Bombay
specials that the VA hires as doctors. It's not a perk, it's just free.
The VA is a train wreck because of these people. No one wants to say squat because you
have to point a finger at all the AA hires and that would get you labeled as a racist.
And oh they are paid, very, very well. The average RN makes over a $100k at the VA. I know
private sector nurses who went to work for the VA because of the pay and bennies. Plus you
can't get fired.
You do realize that "waterboarding" is part and parcel of SERE school in the military and
has been for a very long time. It's where the Pentagon/CIA got idea of applying to a bunch of
sand monkeys.
Anyone who is special ops gets waterboarded so are fighter pilots and the like. The MSM
always neglects this fact.
Dov Zakheim is a nasty Neo-Conservative Jew rat, that is widely known. Zakheim was one of the
Neo-Conservative rats who helped to drag the US military into the Iraq War debacle. Seems
Neo-Conservative rat boy Dov Zakheim also made himself a wealthy rat through his connections
to the WASP / JEW ruling class of the American Empire.
But,
Let's not forget nasty Neo-Conservative Jew rat Michael Chertoff and his pal General
Michael Hayden. Baby boomers Chertoff and Hayden have made out like bandits from their involvement in the
Deep State of the American Empire. I say the baby boomers are an evil generation of nation wreckers. Tweets from 2015:
At least half of our military bills should be sent to Israel. Practically all of our wars
these days are on their behalf. The other half should be paid by a war tax. All those who
support going to "necessary" wars overseas for "humanitarian" reasons or other will pay into
this tax, starting with the neocons and the media (not just mainstream liberal media but many
right wing neocon mouthpieces like National Review, Breitbart, DailyCaller).
Last but not least, any elected official who votes for or calls for war with any nation,
from Trump to Pence, Nikki Haley, John McCain, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo et al. should fork
out 100% of their salaries to pay for the war until it ends.
What evidence is there that the trade discussion is based on China reducing treasury
holdings rather than counter-tariffs on US agricultural goods and potentially in a number of
other areas like education services (blocking Chinese families from sending kids to lower
ranked US colleges)?
America's Republican politicians complain that "entitlements," by which they mean
pensions and medical care, are leading the country to bankruptcy even as they fatten the
spending on the Pentagon, which now takes 12 percent of the overall budget.
The US military budget should be $100 billion .do what you can.
"Despite many problems, the US has many advantages like half the world's Ashkenazim who
are very good at creating unbeatable new companies. Just look at how the half the 40 riches
entrepreneurs under 40 in the US according to Forbes are Jewish. Jews are producing so much
innovation in the US that it offsets a lot of the problems like military spending at 4% of
GDP and less productive sub-populations."
Average daily volume in the Treasury market is $500 billion, and the Federal Reserve
System is authorized to create unlimited quantities of currency to purchase Treasuries (and
other gov't securities) in any case.
This isn't the financial weapon of mass destruction people think it is.
The Chinese themselves know this, which is why they stopped adding to their position and
have gradually reduced it.
A more effective strategy would be to focus financial firepower where the Federal Reserve
isn't authorized to operate, such as the commercial paper market. Probably Congress itself
would then act, but if you can buy enough seats for hard money dweebs you might be able to
cause serious trouble.
I'm sure the Roman Empire had some version of waterboarding.
The Roman Army's form of punishment was known as decimation , a word now
commonly used by semi-literates to torture knowledgeable historians, philologists, and
wordsmiths, including not a few Baby Boomers , who apparently know a lot more than
you, and who also are smart enough to blame the guilty -- and not an entire generation -- for
the misdeeds or evil gains of a relatively few assholes.
But I know subtle nuance like that must be difficult to understand for those who can paint
-- or splatter -- only with a very broad brush.
As if remotely possible to do so, Realist recommended:
"The US military budget should be $100 billion .do what you can."
Hi (Sur)Realist,
A question. Above, who would meaningfully tell that to the ZUS Defense Department, Joint Chiefs of
Staff, & the military contractors? Sheldon Adelson? Netanyahu? Take heart! I trust Peter Aus will appear & bring your do-gooder passion into
practical reality. Thanks, nevertheless!
You make my point for me.
As I said, Judicial Torture was used on humiliores, and, indeed, in European Inquisitorial
Systems until the late C18th and early C19th.
A person or entity whose liabilities outweigh its assets, is not rich.
This is more true when the entity, like the US Fed Gov, has vastly more liabilities than
physical assets, let alone readily marketable assets.
The fed gov has promised to pay more each year than it has recently taken in as revenue,
and more than it has any realistic hope of generating anytime soon.
The fed gov is in hock more than 20 trillion in the books right now, and over 100 trillion
projected forward.
Yeah the fed gov is rich.
Looking at average and median private-household net worth will not make the picture much
rosier.
Commissaries, gyms, and hair salons on bases in the USA must end.
Pay the soldiers well, but have them live and try to get by in the same economy and world
as their employers -- WE THE TAXPAYERS.
Also, require soldiers to live off base and pay their own housing (boosting their cash pay
accordingly) OR start counting their housing as taxable income as it would be for the rest of
us mere TAXPAYERS.
Evil baby boomers in Europe, England and the United States have been protected by the
monetary extremism of the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve
Bank.
It is now time to financially liquidate the evil baby boomer generation. If the Federal
Reserve Bank raised the federal funds rate to 10 percent, and the ECB and BoE raised interest
rates similarly, the baby boomers in the USA, England and most of Europe would be financially
busted. The baby boomers have been the generation that benefited the most from the monetary
extremism of the last few decades, and especially since 2008.
The federal funds rate went over 20 percent in 1981, 10 percent now would wipe out the
asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate. Do it.
The baby boomers are an evil generation of nation-wreckers. Bill Clinton and George W Bush
are prime examples of evil globalizer baby boomers.
Tough shit that you don't like his tone. We don't like being systematically ripped off and
told it's patriotic.
We should start either taxing the military employees' housing allowance OR require them to
buy their own housing off-base. I'd be fine with increasing cash salary to make up for it.
Let's get an honest number on what their salaries really are and then debate whether they get
paid enough.
And by all means let's reform and reduce officer pensions. End this last-three-years
calculation and require more than 20 years "service" to get half or more of one's salary as
pension. They are desk jobs and they can and should work at least, say, THIRTY years before
being able to retire st that level of pension and work elsewhere.
Military is a wasteful fraudulent untrustworthy bureaucracy like any other in the fed gov
-- or worse because they get a free pass from a lot of people.
The oil and gas resources alone owned by the federal government are worth some $200
trillion. Then there's the fact that the taxing authority of the federal government makes any fiscal
deficit a matter of choice to begin with.
Am fairly sure you know about Donald Rumsfeld early political career, including his
special assignment as an ambitious congressman, & on behalf of the A.Z.C.
If not, below I link ZUS Defense Secretary "Shit Happens" treasonous letter to Robert F.
Kennedy.
And we need Russian equipment to get into space these days, apparently. That would be troublesome even if Russia were an ally, as perhaps they should be.
It's worse when our gov chooses to slander, threaten, sanction, and encircle the country
on whom we are relying.
Imagine China refusing to sell us what we need AND Russia refusing to let us use or buy
its space equipment.
For that matter, there's so much demand for oil and natural gas in India and China --
likely to keep increasing, too -- Russia eventually may be able to say "we will sell to
anyone EXCEPT companies and facilities in the USA, and anyone caught reselling to the USA
will join them on the blacklist." If Iran and, say, Venezuela or Nigeria did the same, watch
out.
Deliberate dishonest distraction. Whether the DOD got as much as it wanted, it gets much
more than our actual defense requires, and the people on the gravy train know it.
The fact that defense is a specifically enumerated duty and power of the fed government,
has nothing to do with the proper amount to spend on that function.
Money spent attacking countries that are not attacking us here in the USA, are not
preparing for imminent attack on us here in the USA, and are not aiding those who are
attacking or preparing to imminently attack us here in the USA is NOT part of that legitimate
constitutional function.
Same with money spent defending Israel or Saudi Arabia, helping the saudis kill Yemenis in
Yemen, helping islamists or anyone else overthrow the gov of Syria, etc.
Same with money spent defending (or controlling) Germany, France, South Korea, Japan,
etc.
Calling that "whining" is not an argument. It suggests that you lack an honest, logical
argument on this issue.
The threat is the Mexicans we have allowed in, not any credible military threat from
Mexico's armed forces.
Our military should be posted on the entire southern border with orders to kill all
invaders who do not heed warnings to turn back. Add a minefield, barbed wire fencing where
absent, and armed drones.
The clothing allowance is for purchase, upkeep, and repair of uniforms. There is a
bureaucratic mindset of having things clearly laid out which guarantees a lot of this
spending, especially when the time preferences of new enlistees bears out the wisdom of
having a specially set aside and clearly labeled clothing allowance. Many good critics with
detailed grievamces skip over the governmental addiction to trying to solve reality with
longer and longer rulebooks.
Radical Center proposed: "Russia eventually may be able to say "we will sell to anyone
EXCEPT companies and facilities in the USA, and anyone caught reselling to the USA will join
them on the blacklist."
Hi Radical Center,
Speaking with utmost respect for your typical sound-thought, have you ever approached the
issue from the Globalist's (ideal) "Radical Center" perspective where the planet's economic
& military Superpowers decide how crude oil & natural gas sale & distribution is
done?
Radical Center opined: "Our military should be posted on the entire southern border with
orders to kill all invaders who do not heed warnings to turn back."
Hi Radical Center,
The biggest problem I have with the solution (above) is your having used, in error, the
words, "Our military."
Were that the actual case, Jewish Lobbies, billionaire ZUS Jews, Congress, & PreZident
Trump would be very pissed at Mr. Giraldi's for provocatively having the gall to use the
description, "American military" in his article title.
Thanks again, Radical Center. By increment, you are getting there! So please simply
consider dropping the word "Our"?
Like one of the Maven Shama's "old grey mares, "That ain't what it used to be."
There are two standards one for enlisted personnel and the other for officers. During the
Grenada situation some enlisted personnel and officers were caught attempting to ship
captured AK-47 rifles back to the states. The enlisted personnel got "hard time" in
Leavenworth while the officers got "letters of reprimand". Double standard, indeed.
I might have made the military a career, but the disparities in both facilities and treatment
of officers vs. enlisted was a real turn-off. I completed my enlistment honorably and
returned to civilian life.
It is my humble opinion (and personal observation) that the commissioned officer rank
structure where there is concern for the enlisted troops ends with the rank of colonel. The
general staff is more akin to political office than it is to serving in the military and
taking care of their military subordinates.
As to "pay and allowances", when I was active duty (1969-1971) it was not much. In fact, at
the time, those of us in uniform were looked down upon and blamed for the prosecution of the
Vietnam conflict. Not only that, legislated job programs that were supposed to go to us
Vietnam veterans never materialized.
Yes, the all-volunteer forced made it necessary to increase "pay and allowances" to
relatively attractive levels.
If I had my way, I would bring back the draft with NO college deferments. In fact, the sons
and daughters of politicians would get called up first. Service in the IDF doesn't count.
You are correct. The rest of the world that falls under the USA "defense umbrella" can
afford extravagant social programs as they do not pay for their defense. In fact, WE are
required to pay rent on foreign bases in which to place our troops.
If I had my way, all foreign troop deployments would stop. Those countries requesting our
"protection" would have to pay for it.
Seems to me, that was one of President Trump's campaign promises–making foreign
countries pay for their defense.
You sir are an American hating leftist. The military, until the left decided it was the
government's job to provide cradel to grave care for everyone accounted for more than 75
percent of the federal budget. To complain that the military consumes 12 of the budget while
Medicaid consumes 50 percent is a straw man. Having been an infantry man I can tell you that
anyone who can do 20 or 30 years deserves a life long pension. Being a man is hard on the
body.
He's currently a court bailiff, a patronage job here, earning maybe in the low $30s. Plus,
his 20-year Army pension, plus his 20+-year postal service pension. He's a high school grad.
His wife is fully retired with a 20-year Army pension, and a teacher's pension with about 20
years in.
I'll take a wild guess their retirement income is no less than $100,000 a year in my very
low-cost area.
A go-figure sort of deal. Not just double-dipping. More than that, as you and other folks
here have said. It's a mentality, a mind-set. For some of the worst of those high-salary
government folks, there are only three types of Americans: Bill Gates and other billionaires,
government workers, and Americans who are too stupid to find a corporate or government milch
cow.
You're right, of course. These days I try to always write and say "the US government"
rather than "OUR government." I should have done the same with "US military."
Mandate that we first enlist, train, and promptly deploy any children and grandchildren of
all members of Congress, members of the President's Cabinet, federal judges, Federal Reserve
Board of Governors, and the CEOs/CFOs/CIOs etc. of military companies (including Northrup
Grumman, Boeing, and their ilk).
Looks like US military belong to the privileged class like it was in late Roman empire
Notable quotes:
"... This why career servicemen love the military, they are making 2-3 times more than comparable civilians, and they know it! Read my article if you are confused. Then many of these "retirees" leave at age 40 with nice retirement, then get a regular federal job, and put in for every minor ache and pain and get a thousand or more dollars each month in VA tax free "disability" pay. Sleep Apnea (aka snoring) is a popular disability to claim worth up to 50%. Some get 100% disability but you wouldn't know it if you met them, and still work for Uncle Sam full time! The LA Times reported that after Senator John McCain announced he was fit to run for President, he was getting military retirement, 100% tax free VA disability, his Senator pay and social security retirement! ..."
"... For me the pay and benefits aren't the core problem. We are paying to destabilize the world, kill US citizens, kill civilians, increase terror all for wars that don't benefit the American citizenry as a whole in any way. ..."
Today's United States has 2,083,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen on active duty
plus reserves. Now that the military is an all-volunteer rather than a conscript force, it is
understandable that pay and benefits should be close to or equivalent to civilian pay scales.
Currently, a sergeant first class with 10 years in service gets paid $3968 a month. A captain
with ten years gets $6271. That amounts to $47,616 and $75,252 a year respectively plus
healthcare, food, housing, cost of living increases and bonuses to include combat pay.
Though there are several options for retirement, generally speaking a soldier, sailor Marine
or airman can retire after 20 years with half of his or her final "high three" pay as a
pension, which means an 18-year-old who enlists right out of high school will be 38 and if he
or she makes sergeant first class (E-7) he or she will be collecting $2338 a month or more for
a rest of his or her life adjusted for cost of living,
Many Americans would be astonished at the pensions that general officers and admirals
receive, particularly since 80% of them also land in "retirement" generously remunerated
positions with defense contractors either in active positions soliciting new contracts from
their former peers or sitting on boards. General David Petraeus, whom
The Nation describes as the "general who lost two wars," pulls in a pension of $220,000
even though he was forced to resign as CIA Director due to passing classified information to
his mistress. He is also chairman of a New York City based company KKR Global, which is part of
a private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts. He reportedly is paid in six figures plus
bonuses for "oversee[ing] the institute's thought leadership platform focused on geopolitical
and macro-economic trends, as well as environmental, social, and governance issues."
It apparently is difficult to take money away from general and flag officers. An Air Force
four-star general named Arthur Lichte was reduced in
rank to a two-star in 2017 after he was found guilty of having raped a lower ranking woman
officer. His pension went down from $216,000 to $156,000 due to the reduction. Normally,
however, America's 1,000 general and flag officers can look forward to comfortable
retirements.
But on top of that rather generous bit of cash there are the considerable other benefits, as
the old recruiting sergeants would put it, the "bennies." Military retirees can receive full
tuition and expenses at a college or technical school if they choose to go back to school. This
is why one sees so many ads for online universities on television – they are trolling for
soldier dollars knowing that it's free money. The retiree will also have access to heavily
subsidized medical care for him or herself plus family. The medical care is a significant bonus
under the Tricare system, which describes itself on its website as "the gold standard for
medical coverage, [that] is government managed health insurance." A friend who is retired
recently had a hip replacement operation that would have cost $39,000 for only a few hundred
dollars through Tricare.
What is significant is that even enlisted military personnel can start a second career on
top of their pension, given that many of them are still in their thirties. Some that have
security clearances can jump into highly paid jobs with defense contractors immediately while
others also find places in the bureaucracy with the Department of Homeland Security. Working
for the government twice is called "double dipping."
Some would argue that military personnel deserve what they get because the jobs are by their
very nature dangerous, sometimes fatal. Indeed, the number of maimed and PTSD-afflicted
soldiers returning from the endless wars is a national tragedy and caring for them should be a
top priority. But the truth is that only a very small fraction, by some estimates far less than
20% of Army and Marine personnel in so-called "combat arms," ever are in danger. Air Force and
Navy personnel rarely experience combat at all apart from bombing targets far below or
launching cruise missiles against Syrians. It is true that given the volatile nature of war
against insurgents in places like Afghanistan many soldiers in support roles can come under
fire, but it is far from normal and most men and women in service never experience a gun fired
in anger.
Some numbers-crunchers in the Pentagon have already raised the alarm that the current pay,
benefits and retirement levels for military personnel is unsustainable if the United States
continues its worldwide mission against terrorists and allegedly rogue regimes. And it is also
unsustainable if the U.S. seeks to return to a constitutional arrangement whereby the nation is
actually defended by its military, not subordinated to it and being bankrupted by its
costs.
Wait, so this is a lefty Democrat blog now, where The Nation is cited favorably?
Our men in uniform, particularly the grunts, make sacrifices that the others don't make.
Sure, some officers are corrupt and the military manages to manufacture demand for its
expensive products, but this article goes way too far.
Captains with just eight years in service rake in over $100,000 a year with nothing more than
a four-year degree in history! Senior enlisted can also make over $100,000 a year with a high
school diploma, plus free family health care and zero contributions to retirement. After just
four years of service, a married GI is making more than the average American college graduate
with 20 years of work experience! I wrote about this several years ago for those who still
fall for the draft era "poor GI myth".
Note our military spends billions of dollars on recruiting ads, but never mentions high
pay. If they did, Congress may end the annual pay boost and lines would form at recruiting
stations. Even most "experts" and reporters are confused because military lobbyists use the
inflated ECI index (which includes increased health care and workers comp costs) rather than
just wages, and pretend housing and food allowances are not income. Even the average military
pilot earns twice a much as the average airline pilot, based on facts not Pentagon spin
stories.
This why career servicemen love the military, they are making 2-3 times more than
comparable civilians, and they know it! Read my article if you are confused. Then many of
these "retirees" leave at age 40 with nice retirement, then get a regular federal job, and
put in for every minor ache and pain and get a thousand or more dollars each month in VA tax
free "disability" pay. Sleep Apnea (aka snoring) is a popular disability to claim worth up to
50%. Some get 100% disability but you wouldn't know it if you met them, and still work for
Uncle Sam full time! The LA Times reported that after Senator John McCain announced he was
fit to run for President, he was getting military retirement, 100% tax free VA disability,
his Senator pay and social security retirement!
Now before some ignorant servicemen whine about those serving in combat zones or deployed
on ships, note that fewer than 10% of GIs ever serve in a real combat zone, not the fake ones
like Bahrain. They rate their pay, but not those working soft office jobs in Hawaii or San
Diego or Florida. Keep in mind that we have a volunteer force, and our military must constant
prune the career force since far too many want to stay in as long as possible. No one leaves
because of poor pay, but because of political BS.
I usually share your disdain for The Nation magazine. But in the vein of stopped
clock correctness twice a day even it can sometimes be correct, witness its editor Steve
Cohen's completely admirable efforts to lend sanity and substance to America's Russian
foreign policy!
I've seen articles decrying that first-year married privates are eligible for food stamps.
Because their housing, medical, and the cost of living differential are not "income". They're
living on more than twice the reported income. So yeah, they have arranged the pay precisely
so that they are not subject to any income tax, and are in some cases eligible for food
stamps.
They have rec vehicles they can check out, boats and four-wheelers, snowmobiles and etc.,
special parks and land reservations, scenic cabins they can stay at with trifling fees or are
free. Ours has a golf course that must be staggering for upkeep. Gyms, facilities for parties
and events – stuff you'd pay a lot for in the private sector. The subsidized shopping
is still there, but is not the huge discount it was at one time, at the bases in this
state.
The state gives them all kinds of benefits like instant residency for hunting and fishing.
The stores give them discounts. Military appreciation days.
And frankly it isn't your STEM people, business and tech fields going into the military.
Their next best alternatives are a pittance by comparison. For who you are getting, the
quality of recruit, this is well paid.
I don't mind that so much as having three times the size we need to defend our borders,
which is what we should be doing and no more. Foreign entanglements, searching for monsters
to destroy, acting as the world police – this is the main problem.
4% of GDP, is it? Not sure about that but I do know it's 30% of federal tax revenue.
Military spending is about $1 trillion, if you include
all the various categories , per annum; whereas Federal receipts are about $3.3 trillion
per annum.
So about 30% of all Federal tax receipts – 30% of the money stolen from me at
gunpoint, which forces me to labor for months every year without pay – goes to corrupt
contractors, murderers and war criminals to oppress and murder people and destroy property
throughout the world in service to the Evil Empire, including, of course, Jew supremacist
Israel.
So since you think it's so "bearable", you Evil Empire supporter, why don't you kindly
give me back my 1 month of stolen labor every year to pay for your beloved Evil Empire's
perpetual Campaign of Death, Oppression and Destruction?
Clearly is if you look at your debt to GDP and deficit.
Interesting because the US has its history as part of the English tradition of no standing
armies, militias, all possible due to the favourable geography of having a strip of water, or
moat as Shakespeare put it, to deter potential invaders. The US military really is a WWII and
Cold War creation. That the US seems to be the only nation not have benefited from the end of
the cold war dividend in reduced military spending is an impressive feat by lobbyists and
neocon ideologues.
For me the pay and benefits aren't the core problem. We are paying to destabilize the
world, kill US citizens, kill civilians, increase terror all for wars that don't benefit the
American citizenry as a whole in any way. At one time they might have been for
corporations now they are for Israel.
You're spot on. By the Late Roman Empire, society was divided into 2 groups – the
humiliores ( lower classes ) and the honestiores ( upper classes ). Soldiers belonged to the
latter group, and most historians consider that the common soldier never had a higher status
in any society.
History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but modern day America has largely followed the Roman
route. Certainly, the sheer cost of the Roman Military was a factor in the decline and fall
of the Roman Empire.
The Roman soldier had a much more dangerous period of military service than the risk averse
modern American military. Roman veterans certainly earned their benefits.
What is the real "defense burden" (the percentage of our GDP spent on the military) sans
bullshit accounting tricks and "reclassification" of expenses.
For example, if we used accounting methods as used in some of the more efficient, less
bloated military establishments of our allies, what would be the actual cost to our economy
of our defense spending?
For all we know, military expenditures may actually be back to Reagan Cold War percentage
levels, or slightly more.
Article didn't mention the dependency allowance. I looked on military websites to find the
amount but you have to be registered military to find the amount
There is a clothing allowance, why? And the military is heavily affirmative action
Hispanic black and female I live near a big VA. Twice a day hundreds of VA employees drive
right past my house. Almost all are black. I drive through the VA often. Most everyone I see
is black except for the Indian immigrant Drs.
California vets get some kind of no down payment low interest mortgage. When they retire
they can get a loan for $50,000 to use for setting up a business or buying rental
property.
Our men in uniform, particularly the grunts, make sacrifices that the others don't
make.
Based on my experience as a young kid, and observations as an old fart, I call BS on that
unless "sacrifice" has acquired a new meaning on the street that I'm unaware of.
US spends 4% of GDP on the military versus 2% in China, France, UK. That's high but
considering how rich the US is, not unbearable. Weak article.
The US is rich? Living on borrowed, stolen and extorted money and we're rich? The US has
become a huge third world strip mall republic, complete with an overstuffed and parasitic
military, and you think we're rich?The whole murderous,mendacious, thieving, and morally and
financially bankrupt enterprise is poor by any significant measure, so your "reasoning" is
what's weak.
Rank 'Ol Rummie spoke the truth once and it happened one day before the towers were
pulled.
Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon
"The adversary is closer to home; it's the Pentagon bureaucracy "
- Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 10, 2001
PS: For those who don't know where the missile, err, "plane" hit the Pentagon on 9/11, do
a tad of research and tell me, with a straight face, that it was some coincidence.
Federal Debt $20 trillion, Accumulated Balance of Trade Deficit since 1990 $12 trillion (
unadjusted for inflation ). That's not even including State and Local Debt, never mind
Private Debt.
The only thing preventing complete bankruptcy is that the Dollar is the World's Reserve
Currency- for now. Once China and others start dumping US Treasury Bonds, that will be
over.
Two of my friends own motorcycle dealerships in San Antonio. Gee. I wonder how they can
sell so many, compared to dealers in towns without major military bases
We spend more than the next ten nations, COMBINED. To "defend ourselves" from goat herders
that can't afford passports or air tickets. 800 bases scattered across the planet. But,
thinking about it, folks like somalians have been invading the US OH. WAIT! Federal refugee
programs have been importing somalis. NEVER MIND.
We fight them there so we can bring them here and put them on welfare/food stamps? Makes
perfect sense.
I was in the field and in a number of firefights during my year in Vietnam, 69 – 70,
and I find the idea of some store or VA clerk thanking me for my service offensive as all get
out because I know these well meaning strangers, who owe me nothing at all, are being played
for fools to serve the interests of America's worst enemy, Israel and its American fifth
column. I'm also disgusted by this new breed of soldier who's less any sort of manly patriot
than a skin-headed, "muh brothers, muh mission" wind-up martinet who mistakes the vain
daintiness of pumping iron as well as technical superiority's easy targets for manliness. As
for the Pentagon, it's the mother of all bureaucracies whose leaders but for the costumes are
no more warriors than the time-serving hacks in any other bloated bureaucracy, who couldn't
care less, as the facts make clear, about sending young Americans to die and be maimed so the
sons of their Israeli masters need not.
I used to feel smug after jumping from the US military to banking in the knowledge that my
starting pay was several multiples of my military pay and even outstripped that of the JCS
heads who I served under.
Somewhere along the way, probably in the 2000s during the so-called War for Talent,
Federal civilian and military pay got a significant uptick well in excess of what the KSAs
(Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities) of these folks as measured by OPM and DoD, and there has
been no looking back.
Giraldi might be right that the troops are overpaid, but that is just the tip of the
iceberg that is the Military Industrial Security Academic Complex.
Defense spending is allegedly 3.6% of GDP ($700B / $19,000B) but is actually over 5% if you
factor in the hidden Defense spending. VA benefits, over $100B, nuclear arsenal covered under
Dept of Energy (my favorite) over $30B, Defense portion of debt service over $100B, and other
places that I'd have to dig up.
Defense spending is over 30% of the budget, the low ball 15% is only if you include social
security and medicare which you should not because that is covered by dedicated payroll
taxes. If payroll taxes were eliminated, those programs would go away but the budget deficit
would not be impacted. This is a trick that defense consultants play to make Defense spending
look smaller.
Defense spending is over 50% if you also discount our annual debt service, this is why the
$1.3T featured $600B for domestic vs $700B for Defense.
I thought that singling out military pay was a tad mean spirited. Capping pensions that
disproportionately benefit Generals who then go onto consulting jobs for Defense contractors
and get paid positions on FOX might be a good idea but I didn't like the tone of this
column.
No serious person who says they care about budget deficits can approach them without
looking at Defense Spending.
- Chris Chuba
One of the disturbing actions of the soldier worshipping conservatives is the Wounded Warrior
scam which uses crippled and deformed GIs in ads aimed at the heartstrings of the American
public. The fact that so many soldiers are returning from useless wars in dire condition
should be the responsibility of the Department of Defense (War) and its Government which is
responsible for the mayhem and violence in so many parts of the world not a subject for
organized begging which often preys on the suffering of the young.
Re; Mr. Giraldi's brave & unspoken words: "(ZUS military) Pay and benefits are way out of
control"
With a long history of planning & implementation, below, presstv explains how radical
"citizens" were headhunted & placed in control as to when & how our hallowed ZUS
troop commanders do their Jewish job assignments.
US is rich and the debt is high. Both can be true at the same time. But taxes are
relatively low so if there is a government debt crisis paying down the debt would just
involve raising taxes. Just look at GDP per capita US which is very high up there so I don't
see how anyone can argue the US is not a very rich country.
Despite many problems, the US has many advantages like half the world's Ashkenazim who are
very good at creating unbeatable new companies. Just look at how the half the 40 riches
entrepreneurs under 40 in the US according to Forbes are Jewish. Jews are producing so much
innovation in the US that it offsets a lot of the problems like military spending at 4% of
GDP and less productive sub-populations.
Good article, Phil. I served in the 1970s, tail end of Vietnam Stateside, and never heard a
shot fired in anger. I am grateful for the G. I. benefits I received.
No institution in a representative democracy ought to be above measured criticism. I have
a relative who volunteers at the local VA clinic, and there's some sketchy evidence that some
patients with very good group health insurance benefits are working the system and getting VA
treatment to avoid co-pays.
I personally found David Hackworth's criticism of the American military fairly persuasive.
Deep bureaucratization, tunnel vision, advancing officers for their inoffensiveness and
favor-currying chops, the whole mess.
Plus add the big three already mentioned by some folks above. (1) America's armed forces
are a Petri dish for social engineering, (2) corruption, (3) the political mafia-zation of
America's armed forces so that it's acting as a White House-directed quasi-mercenary
"enforcer" for corporate interests and various other sovereign interests.
"An Air Force four-star general named Arthur Lichte was reduced in rank to a two-star in 2017
after he was found guilty of having raped a lower ranking woman officer".
You say he was ***reduced in rank*** for raping a female subordinate?
Why wasn't he given 50 lashes, a dishonourable discharge, and a prison sentence? Even a
random civilian would get the prison sentence for rape. And for such a senior officer to
commit a crime like that is, of course far, far worse.
Israel and their ziocons control every facet of the U.S. gov and have used the U.S. army as a
proxy army of Israel to fight and die for Israel in the ME while they sit it out in their
ivory towers in Tel Aviv and New York City and London.
To add to the tragedy millions of civilians have been killed in these wars for Israel in
Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Yemen and various other places through out the
ME, and all of this carnage for Israel.
Just like the Roman empire where the rulers paraded their conquering armies through Rome ,
Trump wants to parade his Israeli proxy armies through D.C. and take their review as a
Caligula. Trump is a puppet of the zionists and Netanyahu and his controllers the ROTHCHILDS
ie the RED SHIELD which is dripping with Americans blood.
Orwell was right, the wars never end in OCEANIA and we have become Oceania, and all
because of our zionist masters.
That was a very good article with lots of facts that I was unaware regarding the various
forms of compensation. I have not been in the miltary. I will tell you that I have seen how
things work on the procurement end, and that is the real shitshow, moneywise. The amount of
wasted money in personnel involved in trying to micromanage a contractor, the "generation" of
paperwork that must weigh 10X vehicle max-gross-weight in order to sign off on it, and other
things, ruin the job for the technician or engineer in any company making stuff for the US
military.
(BTW, that last sentence of mine brought up the only one (little tiny) thing that I didn't
like about the article. You KEEP USING "his and her", "he and she", etc. Enough of that crap,
please, Mr. Giraldi. Unz is one of a number of place on-line on which one doesn't have to be
PC. He can write as he pleases. The rest of your English is very professional,
so why this?).
Anyway, great article, just the facts and honest opinion without any hyperbole. Regarding
your very last paragraph, BTW, it's not just that the army is so costly, but if America ever
had to defend itself from one of the countries we buy parts from, cough, China , cough, cough,
that'll be a laugh. We are operating on borrowed money, as Jack S (#16) stated, AND foreign
supply lines. We're number 1! Yeah!
Among the lots of good comments on the thread so far, yours is kind of an outlier, to put
it nicely. No, you cannot be both rich and in debt (6 – 7 X more than your yearly
income) at the same time. . There are perhaps different definitions of broke that people
or families may use for themselves.
1) Out of spending cash – got assets, but awaiting more income before any spending
can resume. That's not too bad – it just shows lack of foresight or bad luck.
2) Broke even – got some assets, but owe the same amount – income is about the
same as expenditures expected. There are lots like this – they need to buckle down, but
will probably be OK.
3) Flat broke – can't borrow anymore due to bad payment history, even to friends and
family – not enough income to pay expenditures or even on this.
4) Broke like the US Feral Government – borrowing 1/3 of the money for the
$4,000,000,000,000 budget each year, as only 2/3 can be collected via personal
income/corporate income/excise/etc. taxes (just look near the back of the IRS 1040
instructions – they're not hiding this stuff). Total debt of $20,000,000,000,000 is 5 X
the budget each year and 6-7 X the income collected yearly. It is > 100 % of the total
GDP. There is no coming out of this hole without financial pain for almost everyone but those
with a Challenger or other large/medium-cabin business jet with precious metals stashed on an
island or S. American/Oriental country with a runway on your compound with armed guards.
"some"? Har-Dee-Har-Har. What percentage of people who separate from the military claim a
"service related disability"? With that designation they not only get the retirement benefit
bump but also set-asides for government jobs and contracts as well. Based on the number of
service related disability claims by veterans, the United States must have the most
physically fragile fighting force on the planet.
And in this age of stupid perpetual wars, every "disabled veteran" is assumed have been
shot up in the Middle East when if fact it's more likely they tripped on the steps on the way
back from lunch at Fort Leavenworth. That erroneous assumption of a combat related disability
is great for milking benefits from a sympathetic public.
And there's more. Sleep apnea claims as a service related disability by veterans have
exploded. Same with PTSD.
The web is saturated with advice on how to game the military disability system.
A vet I knew laughed as he told me he got a disability award for his knee. Only that
injury came from playing too much basketball at his U.S. base. Another "disabled veteran" I
know does Cross Fit to stay in shape. His most dangerous deployment was to southern Europe
where he met his wife. And yes, he advertises his disability on his business web site and
does qualify for government contract set-asides.
Too bad for the taxpayers though. Since the military has been sanctified by the powerful
Pentagon/MSM "Warrior-Hero" propaganda engine, challenging out of control military benefits
is a political and social third rail.
The web is saturated with advice on how to game the military disability system.
A vet I knew laughed as he told me he got a disability award for his knee. Only that
injury came from playing too much basketball at his U.S. base. Another "disabled veteran" I
know does Cross Fit to stay in shape. His most dangerous deployment was to southern Europe
where he met his wife. And yes, he advertises his disability on his business web site and
does qualify for government contract set-asides.
Too bad for the taxpayers though. Since the military has been sanctified by the powerful
Pentagon/MSM "Warrior-Hero" propaganda engine, challenging out of control military benefits
is a political and social third rail.
From reader comments: If I had my way, I would bring back the draft with NO college
deferments. In fact, the sons and daughters of politicians would get called up first. Service in
the IDF doesn't count. ... ... "Yes, but expand that. Mandate that we first enlist, train, and promptly deploy any children and
grandchildren of all members of Congress, members of the President's Cabinet, federal judges, Federal Reserve Board of Governors,
and the CEOs/CFOs/CIOs etc. of military companies (including Northrup Grumman, Boeing, and their ilk). "
This is a very large "sinecure"
At a deeper level, military forces are agents/enforcers for the elite. Its primary role is the providing expansion and the
defense of the interests of the ruling elite against external and internal enemies. Without addressing the dominant social
interests in the state, a focus on shringking the military budget is quite inadequate.
I don't have a problem with 4% of GDP, but I have a big problem with what we're getting for
our money.
A quarter million for a four-star general is fine, if the general is any good (almost none
of them are by design). In theory a general is equivalent to a division manager in a Fortune
500 company, but COs in the US military have amazingly little power. They're not even free to
hire and fire their own subordinates in most cases. So our senior officers are really paid
generously to pretend they are great military commanders.
The average SAT score at West Point is only 1340 these days. Prior to the Vietnam War I
believe West Point was academically competitive with Ivy League schools, or at least that's
what Class of '68 veteran John T. Reed states.
The Naval Academy is 1322 and the Air Force Academy is 1370.
These aren't bad scores, but clearly these officers aren't elite academically.
The enlisted personnel seem adequate in quality thanks to the AFQT, other than women of
course. They're overpaid compared to what is available for them in the private sector.
The pension system, in addition to being overly generous, has perverse incentives. As any
service-member approaches that magical 20 year mark, any kind of independent thinking must
disappear (which the military already does so much to eliminate). Want your fat pension?
Better shut up and emulate your COs in every way possible. It should just be replaced with a
Thrift Savings Plan (gov't equivalent of a 401k).
One sixth of the force consists of women. Every last one of them subtracts from the
efficacy of the military.
One sixth of personnel are officers, which is far too many officers.
Then you have all the unnecessary EO officers, JAGs, and other political commissars.
I don't have an issue with the various recreational perks in the armed forces as they
contribute to espirit de corps. The private sector could use more of this, honestly.
The GI Bill is also politically objectionable as we should not be giving money to The
Enemy (colleges in this case).
This is the price a mercantile republic pays for an all volunteer fighting force.
When you have less than 5% of the population serving in the military and commitments all
over the globe, then you need to be prepared to pay for those professional services (yes, the
military is a profession like any other). If you're prepared to go back to a draft force, then we can start talking about changes to
the pay and benefit system.
Personally, I think service of some kind, be it military or community, ought to be a
requirement to vote. Service guarantees citizenship.
Maybe you can help me on the following ancillary matter? F.y.i., Mighty John Bolton passed on an opportunity to fight LBJ's atrocious war against
communism, in Vietnam. As PreZident Trump's present Iranophobe-warmongering N.S.A. Adviser, I tried (but failed)
to determine how much pay & "bennies" Bolton now gets from the bottomless Executive
Branch feeding trough.
Same scam, different tactics. 40 years ago we lived in Annapolis, MD in the lowest tier of a then – New housing
development concept. Our cramped townhouses were on the scrabble outer ring.
The most lavish houses were in the inner-ring, on a divided boulevard, extensively
landscaped and maintained. At least 3/4 of those homes were owned by "Double-Dippers"–
military retirees collecting military retirement pay while employed as civil servants in
Federal gov, with defense contractor consulting on the side.
"Thank you for your service,"– in cash, if you please.
I do not mind community service, but I object to military service and I do not want to
vote. Voting gives legitimacy to a system that I oppose. I was born in the geographical area
now ruled by the government of the United States of America. Perhaps, LT Dan, you would be in
favor of a status such as non-citizen resident. I was born in this area by a quirk of fate,
not any choice on my part. I do not usually agree with US government policy, nor do I want
the US government to represent me or "protect" me. It would be just for me to pay less taxes
since I do not desire and would gladly refuse most of the "services" the government provides,
especially those noted in the above article.
Neither me, my father, my grandfather, nor my great grandmother served in the US Military,
but one of the large defense contractors put bread on the table for four generations of my
family. My 90-year old grandmother is still collecting my grandfather's pension from that
firm and he's been dead for 30 years!
US is rich and the debt is high. Both can be true at the same time. But taxes are relatively low so if there is a
government debt crisis paying down the debt would just involve raising taxes. Just look at GDP per capita US which is very
high up there so I don't see how anyone can argue the US is not a very rich country.
Despite many problems, the US has many advantages like half the world's Ashkenazim who are very good at creating
unbeatable new companies .etc., etc., etc .
Thanks for the laughs. You must be of the Maven-Krugman school of debt. You're all wrong, and it's obviously beyond your
understanding that though you can fool almost all of the goyim almost all of the time, you can't fool all of us all the time.
AEN, thank you for your fine input, but I suspect you're throwing pearls to swine who
don't even want to understand.
Even worse, when they claim that debt is good, they conveniently leave out the part about
who it's good for.
We dumb goyim have repeatedly proven ourselves to be pretty easy marks, but some of us
have a clue as to who's paying for it all, and its good to know that a few know who that
would be, so thanks again.
That was a jolting eye-catcher. So this general still receives a six-figure pension
check!? I've often marveled at the moral fiber exhibited by these gilded peacocks, who, when
faced with supporting criminal actions by their government, such as invading countries who've
done us no harm, click their heels and proceed. Instead of taking an instant retirement,
knowing their pensions are secure.
You would still be required to pay some kind of lease or tax for the land which you
occupy, but would otherwise be left alone. You would also be subject to the criminal laws of
the jurisdiction you occupied. You would also pay taxes for any consumption that requires use
of infrastructure or interstate commerce.
The United States is large enough that such an arrangement is still possible.
" US spends 4% of GDP on the military versus 2% in China, France, UK. That's high but
considering how rich the US is, not unbearable. Weak article "
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Every productive dollar that's ever existed has been flushed down the MIC rathole. The
whole "budget "is an elaborate ruse to conceal the chains that bind you.
10's of trillions disappear with gleeful approval on a regular basis.
Mr. Girard, buon giorno. You must be my elder. In '68 I was paid $96 plus $26 combat pay
while in Nam.
Yea, things are out of control. Unfortunately, the store clerk you ran into the other day is
representative of how the majority of "we the people" think. Hence, don't expect change
anytime soon.
I have been a fan of yours for sometime now. Mostly at NEO, sometimes art Rense. I recently
began accessing UNZ and was pleased to see your name in the list of contributors. Sadly I
don't predict improvement in the majorities attitude. But, you do fine work, dom't quit just
yet. As long as we can keep the internet affordable reality may trickle down. I believe the
net is the reason the "fake news" moniker had to be. Sort if like "conspiracy theory". Same
party owns both copyrights.
Keep your head up.
Joseph
Foreign entanglements, searching for monsters to destroy, acting as the world police
– this is the main problem.
Yooge problems for sure, but playing Sugar Daddy to Izzie-land is the biggest one of all
in terms of dollars as well as moral capital, and it probably dwarfs welfare subsidies to
"defense" corporations.
When I joined the U.S. Army in 1965 my starting pay was slightly less than 100 dollars per
month. Soldiers then were said to be "in the service". Today they are "in the military".
Later in life I realized that I had been "in the service" of evil. Still later I learned that
the love of money is the root of evil.
The American Dollar Dies in New York – a Satire from Uganda:
JS, Since Rumsfeld admitted, the day before 911 when he helped murder 30 forensic
accountants plus a handful of Naval Investigators, you are 1 of the few I ever heard mention
the stolen money. Since the Clinton administration up to 2016 the number is now $21
$Trillions, from just 2 departments.
BB, I personally know a couple who are around seventy, very healthy and active, who have
parlayed multiple pension-qualifying careers between them in the armed forces, postal
service, teaching, and county government, into astounding lifestyles. Harley motorcycle,
Winnebago, big house, weekend cottage, cruises, the whole shebang.
They're very nice people, part of the local Puerto Rican ascendancy, first generation
descendants of the Puerto Ricans recruited by the now defunct local steel mills back in the
1950s.
I'm sure it can be said they worked for what they got, but, still . . . you gotta wonder
what's going on.
Military spending has one virtue, it is constitutional as it fulfills one duty of the
FedGov, one it has often shirked, defend the country.
Giraldi can whine all he likes, but the DOD is not an entitlement program, nor does the
Pentagon get all it wants. It never has gotten all it wants, no matter how much Giraldi
whines to the contrary.
I've never seen such a warped and delusional understanding of the voracious, insatiable,
wasteful and corrupt National Security State presented so succinctly
P.S. I have a feeling that War Machine accounts have written Quatermaster a lot of checks
over the years. I.e., he knows what side his bread is buttered on.
anon, tell it like it is. Everyone should also know the debt servce cost to our budget is
the interest Americans pay. What's 2% of 20 trillions? 40 billions? IDK l, but it's alot.
Well that's the federal reserve *a private corp.) income estimate for the yeat, which the
share holders, all 6 of them, pay no income tax.
Since the Clinton administration up to 2016 the number is now $21 $Trillions, from just
2 departments.
Can you explain to me how that even works, technically? E.g. the DoD is supposed to have
"stolen" a lot more money than its entire regular budget – how could they even lay
their hands on such sums? What accounts did that money sit in before it was siphoned off,
without anyone noticing?
The US military are the equivalent of the Roman Empire's honestiores, or upper classes. As
well as the benefits accruing from service, they had special legal treatment, like being
exempt from judicial torture. So Arthur Lichte merely gets part of his pension docked for
raping a woman. Nothing to see here , mate, move along. Even someone like Chelsea ( " They
call her Natasha, but she looks like Elsie" ) Manning spends a mere 7 years in prison and
gets the Defence Department to pay for "gender reassignment".
The point about judicial torture is important as America has recently revived the practice.
Would Assange be waterboarded if they got hold of him ? Would he have met a fatal "accident"
in custody?
Who knows ? But don't you even think about doing that to an American serviceman, even one as
degenerate as Manning.
That wasn't a response. It was just name calling. So if you aren't convinced by my
rebuttal it's certainly not because you had more intelligent analysis.
You use a lot of figures but not the appropriate statistics. What do big aggregate numbers
like 200k in debt per family really mean?
I look at the percentage of tax revenue v. GDP compared to other first world countries. US
is actually on the low side by this measure. That means it's possible to raise taxes and only
moderately harm the economic growth engine. And no one has addressed the advantages the US
economy has in particular having half of the world's Ashkenazim.
Rumsfeld admitted, the day before 911 when he helped murder 30 forensic accountants plus
a handful of Naval Investigators,
Thanks, it's nice to know that there are others who are wide awake. Trouble is, even those
who have a clue can't even imagine the .0001% of it, I'm sure.
What accounts did that money sit in before it was siphoned off, without anyone
noticing?
We'll probably never know. The system is not exactly designed for transparency, and
besides, guess where the missile, errr, "plane" hit the Penta-graft?
Wouldn't it be fun to ask Rummy the Smirking Dummy that question?
I bet this swinish character could provide a bit of insight with a little Nuremberg or Abu
Ghraib style info gathering as well, and here's a partial rap sheet
Dov S. Zakheim was sworn in as the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief
Financial Officer for the Department of Defense on May 4, 2001. Dr. Zakheim has previously
served in a number of key positions in government and private business.
Most recently, he
was corporate vice president of System Planning Corp., a technology, research and analysis
firm based in Arlington, Va. He also served as chief executive officer of SPC International
Corp., a subsidiary specializing in political, military and economic consulting. During the
2000 presidential campaign, he served as a senior foreign policy advisor to then-Governor
Bush.
From 1985 until March 1987, Dr. Zakheim was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for
Planning and Resources in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy). In that
capacity, he played an active role in the Department's system acquisition and strategic
planning processes. Dr. Zakheim held a variety of other DoD posts from 1981 to 1985.
Earlier, he was employed by the National Security and International Affairs Division of the
Congressional Budget Office.
Dr. Zakheim has been a participant on a number of government, corporate, non-profit and
charitable boards.
The United States military is a giant jobs program, Giraldi!
So what of it! Who cares. Conjure up those dollars out of thin air and let the troops have
some loot. Did the Founding Fathers warn us about large standing armies in their writings and
actions? Yes.
Did the Founding Fathers know that a large standing army would require a concentrated form
of governmental power to collect the loot to pay for that army? Yes.
Did we just pass the 800 year anniversary of the Magna Carta? Yes. Was the Magna Carta
about standing armies and concentrated government power, among other things?
Were the Founding Fathers somewhat ungrateful to the British Empire for its efforts in the
French and Indian War? Yes.
Would the Founding Fathers be surprised to find a Jew billionaire named Shelly Adelson
controlling the use of the US military in the Middle East and West Asia? The cynical and
smart ones wouldn't be surprised at all.
The GOP has the War budget and the US military and the Democrats have the public schools
and many other government workers. The GOP always promises to spend more loot on the War
budget and the US military and the Democrats always promise to spend more money on the public
schools and other government programs.
Giraldi has written a CLUNKER of a blog post, folks!
Giraldi should write about mass immigration, monetary extremism and the impossibility of
paying for the retirement of the baby boomers.
Mass Immigration: DEMOGRAPHY
Monetary Policy: DEBT
Baby Boomers: NATION WRECKERS
The American Empire is soon to go belly up in a manner similar to the upcoming demise of
treasonous rat John McCain.
The WASP /JEW ruling class of the American Empire knows this. A pleasant consolation is
that China, Japan and Europe are just as badly bankrupt as the American Empire is.
Raise the federal funds rate to 10 percent and implode the American Empire. Young people
must no longer be saddled with massive unpayable debt and the unpayable retirement of the
baby boomers. Pull the plug on the baby boomers now, and let the young people have a
future.
The Chinese, Japanese and Europeans will implode also. Use the nuclear deterrent and
offshore balancing to keep global peace.
Giraldi can whine all he likes, but the DOD is not an entitlement program, nor does the
Pentagon get all it wants.
If it isn't an entitlement program, then what would one look like? Do you know the meaning
of "sinecure?"
You can whine about Giraldi all you want but he's right and yer wrong, and thank G-d that
the Pantygon doesn't get all it wants. Can you explain whether it should and why?
PS: Read the comments regarding disabilities and retirement bennies and then get back to
us.
You really don't want affirmative action nurses looking after anymore than those Bombay
specials that the VA hires as doctors. It's not a perk, it's just free.
The VA is a train wreck because of these people. No one wants to say squat because you
have to point a finger at all the AA hires and that would get you labeled as a racist.
And oh they are paid, very, very well. The average RN makes over a $100k at the VA. I know
private sector nurses who went to work for the VA because of the pay and bennies. Plus you
can't get fired.
You do realize that "waterboarding" is part and parcel of SERE school in the military and
has been for a very long time. It's where the Pentagon/CIA got idea of applying to a bunch of
sand monkeys.
Anyone who is special ops gets waterboarded so are fighter pilots and the like. The MSM
always neglects this fact.
Dov Zakheim is a nasty Neo-Conservative Jew rat, that is widely known. Zakheim was one of the
Neo-Conservative rats who helped to drag the US military into the Iraq War debacle. Seems
Neo-Conservative rat boy Dov Zakheim also made himself a wealthy rat through his connections
to the WASP / JEW ruling class of the American Empire.
But,
Let's not forget nasty Neo-Conservative Jew rat Michael Chertoff and his pal General
Michael Hayden. Baby boomers Chertoff and Hayden have made out like bandits from their involvement in the
Deep State of the American Empire. I say the baby boomers are an evil generation of nation wreckers. Tweets from 2015:
At least half of our military bills should be sent to Israel. Practically all of our wars
these days are on their behalf. The other half should be paid by a war tax. All those who
support going to "necessary" wars overseas for "humanitarian" reasons or other will pay into
this tax, starting with the neocons and the media (not just mainstream liberal media but many
right wing neocon mouthpieces like National Review, Breitbart, DailyCaller).
Last but not least, any elected official who votes for or calls for war with any nation,
from Trump to Pence, Nikki Haley, John McCain, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo et al. should fork
out 100% of their salaries to pay for the war until it ends.
What evidence is there that the trade discussion is based on China reducing treasury
holdings rather than counter-tariffs on US agricultural goods and potentially in a number of
other areas like education services (blocking Chinese families from sending kids to lower
ranked US colleges)?
America's Republican politicians complain that "entitlements," by which they mean
pensions and medical care, are leading the country to bankruptcy even as they fatten the
spending on the Pentagon, which now takes 12 percent of the overall budget.
The US military budget should be $100 billion .do what you can.
"Despite many problems, the US has many advantages like half the world's Ashkenazim who
are very good at creating unbeatable new companies. Just look at how the half the 40 riches
entrepreneurs under 40 in the US according to Forbes are Jewish. Jews are producing so much
innovation in the US that it offsets a lot of the problems like military spending at 4% of
GDP and less productive sub-populations."
Average daily volume in the Treasury market is $500 billion, and the Federal Reserve
System is authorized to create unlimited quantities of currency to purchase Treasuries (and
other gov't securities) in any case.
This isn't the financial weapon of mass destruction people think it is.
The Chinese themselves know this, which is why they stopped adding to their position and
have gradually reduced it.
A more effective strategy would be to focus financial firepower where the Federal Reserve
isn't authorized to operate, such as the commercial paper market. Probably Congress itself
would then act, but if you can buy enough seats for hard money dweebs you might be able to
cause serious trouble.
I'm sure the Roman Empire had some version of waterboarding.
The Roman Army's form of punishment was known as decimation , a word now
commonly used by semi-literates to torture knowledgeable historians, philologists, and
wordsmiths, including not a few Baby Boomers , who apparently know a lot more than
you, and who also are smart enough to blame the guilty -- and not an entire generation -- for
the misdeeds or evil gains of a relatively few assholes.
But I know subtle nuance like that must be difficult to understand for those who can paint
-- or splatter -- only with a very broad brush.
As if remotely possible to do so, Realist recommended:
"The US military budget should be $100 billion .do what you can."
Hi (Sur)Realist,
A question. Above, who would meaningfully tell that to the ZUS Defense Department, Joint Chiefs of
Staff, & the military contractors? Sheldon Adelson? Netanyahu? Take heart! I trust Peter Aus will appear & bring your do-gooder passion into
practical reality. Thanks, nevertheless!
You make my point for me.
As I said, Judicial Torture was used on humiliores, and, indeed, in European Inquisitorial
Systems until the late C18th and early C19th.
A person or entity whose liabilities outweigh its assets, is not rich.
This is more true when the entity, like the US Fed Gov, has vastly more liabilities than
physical assets, let alone readily marketable assets.
The fed gov has promised to pay more each year than it has recently taken in as revenue,
and more than it has any realistic hope of generating anytime soon.
The fed gov is in hock more than 20 trillion in the books right now, and over 100 trillion
projected forward.
Yeah the fed gov is rich.
Looking at average and median private-household net worth will not make the picture much
rosier.
Commissaries, gyms, and hair salons on bases in the USA must end.
Pay the soldiers well, but have them live and try to get by in the same economy and world
as their employers -- WE THE TAXPAYERS.
Also, require soldiers to live off base and pay their own housing (boosting their cash pay
accordingly) OR start counting their housing as taxable income as it would be for the rest of
us mere TAXPAYERS.
Evil baby boomers in Europe, England and the United States have been protected by the
monetary extremism of the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve
Bank.
It is now time to financially liquidate the evil baby boomer generation. If the Federal
Reserve Bank raised the federal funds rate to 10 percent, and the ECB and BoE raised interest
rates similarly, the baby boomers in the USA, England and most of Europe would be financially
busted. The baby boomers have been the generation that benefited the most from the monetary
extremism of the last few decades, and especially since 2008.
The federal funds rate went over 20 percent in 1981, 10 percent now would wipe out the
asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate. Do it.
The baby boomers are an evil generation of nation-wreckers. Bill Clinton and George W Bush
are prime examples of evil globalizer baby boomers.
Tough shit that you don't like his tone. We don't like being systematically ripped off and
told it's patriotic.
We should start either taxing the military employees' housing allowance OR require them to
buy their own housing off-base. I'd be fine with increasing cash salary to make up for it.
Let's get an honest number on what their salaries really are and then debate whether they get
paid enough.
And by all means let's reform and reduce officer pensions. End this last-three-years
calculation and require more than 20 years "service" to get half or more of one's salary as
pension. They are desk jobs and they can and should work at least, say, THIRTY years before
being able to retire st that level of pension and work elsewhere.
Military is a wasteful fraudulent untrustworthy bureaucracy like any other in the fed gov
-- or worse because they get a free pass from a lot of people.
The oil and gas resources alone owned by the federal government are worth some $200
trillion. Then there's the fact that the taxing authority of the federal government makes any fiscal
deficit a matter of choice to begin with.
Am fairly sure you know about Donald Rumsfeld early political career, including his
special assignment as an ambitious congressman, & on behalf of the A.Z.C.
If not, below I link ZUS Defense Secretary "Shit Happens" treasonous letter to Robert F.
Kennedy.
And we need Russian equipment to get into space these days, apparently. That would be troublesome even if Russia were an ally, as perhaps they should be.
It's worse when our gov chooses to slander, threaten, sanction, and encircle the country
on whom we are relying.
Imagine China refusing to sell us what we need AND Russia refusing to let us use or buy
its space equipment.
For that matter, there's so much demand for oil and natural gas in India and China --
likely to keep increasing, too -- Russia eventually may be able to say "we will sell to
anyone EXCEPT companies and facilities in the USA, and anyone caught reselling to the USA
will join them on the blacklist." If Iran and, say, Venezuela or Nigeria did the same, watch
out.
Deliberate dishonest distraction. Whether the DOD got as much as it wanted, it gets much
more than our actual defense requires, and the people on the gravy train know it.
The fact that defense is a specifically enumerated duty and power of the fed government,
has nothing to do with the proper amount to spend on that function.
Money spent attacking countries that are not attacking us here in the USA, are not
preparing for imminent attack on us here in the USA, and are not aiding those who are
attacking or preparing to imminently attack us here in the USA is NOT part of that legitimate
constitutional function.
Same with money spent defending Israel or Saudi Arabia, helping the saudis kill Yemenis in
Yemen, helping islamists or anyone else overthrow the gov of Syria, etc.
Same with money spent defending (or controlling) Germany, France, South Korea, Japan,
etc.
Calling that "whining" is not an argument. It suggests that you lack an honest, logical
argument on this issue.
The threat is the Mexicans we have allowed in, not any credible military threat from
Mexico's armed forces.
Our military should be posted on the entire southern border with orders to kill all
invaders who do not heed warnings to turn back. Add a minefield, barbed wire fencing where
absent, and armed drones.
The clothing allowance is for purchase, upkeep, and repair of uniforms. There is a
bureaucratic mindset of having things clearly laid out which guarantees a lot of this
spending, especially when the time preferences of new enlistees bears out the wisdom of
having a specially set aside and clearly labeled clothing allowance. Many good critics with
detailed grievamces skip over the governmental addiction to trying to solve reality with
longer and longer rulebooks.
Radical Center proposed: "Russia eventually may be able to say "we will sell to anyone
EXCEPT companies and facilities in the USA, and anyone caught reselling to the USA will join
them on the blacklist."
Hi Radical Center,
Speaking with utmost respect for your typical sound-thought, have you ever approached the
issue from the Globalist's (ideal) "Radical Center" perspective where the planet's economic
& military Superpowers decide how crude oil & natural gas sale & distribution is
done?
Radical Center opined: "Our military should be posted on the entire southern border with
orders to kill all invaders who do not heed warnings to turn back."
Hi Radical Center,
The biggest problem I have with the solution (above) is your having used, in error, the
words, "Our military."
Were that the actual case, Jewish Lobbies, billionaire ZUS Jews, Congress, & PreZident
Trump would be very pissed at Mr. Giraldi's for provocatively having the gall to use the
description, "American military" in his article title.
Thanks again, Radical Center. By increment, you are getting there! So please simply
consider dropping the word "Our"?
Like one of the Maven Shama's "old grey mares, "That ain't what it used to be."
There are two standards one for enlisted personnel and the other for officers. During the
Grenada situation some enlisted personnel and officers were caught attempting to ship
captured AK-47 rifles back to the states. The enlisted personnel got "hard time" in
Leavenworth while the officers got "letters of reprimand". Double standard, indeed.
I might have made the military a career, but the disparities in both facilities and treatment
of officers vs. enlisted was a real turn-off. I completed my enlistment honorably and
returned to civilian life.
It is my humble opinion (and personal observation) that the commissioned officer rank
structure where there is concern for the enlisted troops ends with the rank of colonel. The
general staff is more akin to political office than it is to serving in the military and
taking care of their military subordinates.
As to "pay and allowances", when I was active duty (1969-1971) it was not much. In fact, at
the time, those of us in uniform were looked down upon and blamed for the prosecution of the
Vietnam conflict. Not only that, legislated job programs that were supposed to go to us
Vietnam veterans never materialized.
Yes, the all-volunteer forced made it necessary to increase "pay and allowances" to
relatively attractive levels.
If I had my way, I would bring back the draft with NO college deferments. In fact, the sons
and daughters of politicians would get called up first. Service in the IDF doesn't count.
You are correct. The rest of the world that falls under the USA "defense umbrella" can
afford extravagant social programs as they do not pay for their defense. In fact, WE are
required to pay rent on foreign bases in which to place our troops.
If I had my way, all foreign troop deployments would stop. Those countries requesting our
"protection" would have to pay for it.
Seems to me, that was one of President Trump's campaign promises–making foreign
countries pay for their defense.
You sir are an American hating leftist. The military, until the left decided it was the
government's job to provide cradel to grave care for everyone accounted for more than 75
percent of the federal budget. To complain that the military consumes 12 of the budget while
Medicaid consumes 50 percent is a straw man. Having been an infantry man I can tell you that
anyone who can do 20 or 30 years deserves a life long pension. Being a man is hard on the
body.
He's currently a court bailiff, a patronage job here, earning maybe in the low $30s. Plus,
his 20-year Army pension, plus his 20+-year postal service pension. He's a high school grad.
His wife is fully retired with a 20-year Army pension, and a teacher's pension with about 20
years in.
I'll take a wild guess their retirement income is no less than $100,000 a year in my very
low-cost area.
A go-figure sort of deal. Not just double-dipping. More than that, as you and other folks
here have said. It's a mentality, a mind-set. For some of the worst of those high-salary
government folks, there are only three types of Americans: Bill Gates and other billionaires,
government workers, and Americans who are too stupid to find a corporate or government milch
cow.
You're right, of course. These days I try to always write and say "the US government"
rather than "OUR government." I should have done the same with "US military."
Mandate that we first enlist, train, and promptly deploy any children and grandchildren of
all members of Congress, members of the President's Cabinet, federal judges, Federal Reserve
Board of Governors, and the CEOs/CFOs/CIOs etc. of military companies (including Northrup
Grumman, Boeing, and their ilk).
Looks like US military belong to the privileged class like it was in late Roman empire
Notable quotes:
"... This why career servicemen love the military, they are making 2-3 times more than comparable civilians, and they know it! Read my article if you are confused. Then many of these "retirees" leave at age 40 with nice retirement, then get a regular federal job, and put in for every minor ache and pain and get a thousand or more dollars each month in VA tax free "disability" pay. Sleep Apnea (aka snoring) is a popular disability to claim worth up to 50%. Some get 100% disability but you wouldn't know it if you met them, and still work for Uncle Sam full time! The LA Times reported that after Senator John McCain announced he was fit to run for President, he was getting military retirement, 100% tax free VA disability, his Senator pay and social security retirement! ..."
"... For me the pay and benefits aren't the core problem. We are paying to destabilize the world, kill US citizens, kill civilians, increase terror all for wars that don't benefit the American citizenry as a whole in any way. ..."
Today's United States has 2,083,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen on active duty
plus reserves. Now that the military is an all-volunteer rather than a conscript force, it is
understandable that pay and benefits should be close to or equivalent to civilian pay scales.
Currently, a sergeant first class with 10 years in service gets paid $3968 a month. A captain
with ten years gets $6271. That amounts to $47,616 and $75,252 a year respectively plus
healthcare, food, housing, cost of living increases and bonuses to include combat pay.
Though there are several options for retirement, generally speaking a soldier, sailor Marine
or airman can retire after 20 years with half of his or her final "high three" pay as a
pension, which means an 18-year-old who enlists right out of high school will be 38 and if he
or she makes sergeant first class (E-7) he or she will be collecting $2338 a month or more for
a rest of his or her life adjusted for cost of living,
Many Americans would be astonished at the pensions that general officers and admirals
receive, particularly since 80% of them also land in "retirement" generously remunerated
positions with defense contractors either in active positions soliciting new contracts from
their former peers or sitting on boards. General David Petraeus, whom
The Nation describes as the "general who lost two wars," pulls in a pension of $220,000
even though he was forced to resign as CIA Director due to passing classified information to
his mistress. He is also chairman of a New York City based company KKR Global, which is part of
a private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts. He reportedly is paid in six figures plus
bonuses for "oversee[ing] the institute's thought leadership platform focused on geopolitical
and macro-economic trends, as well as environmental, social, and governance issues."
It apparently is difficult to take money away from general and flag officers. An Air Force
four-star general named Arthur Lichte was reduced in
rank to a two-star in 2017 after he was found guilty of having raped a lower ranking woman
officer. His pension went down from $216,000 to $156,000 due to the reduction. Normally,
however, America's 1,000 general and flag officers can look forward to comfortable
retirements.
But on top of that rather generous bit of cash there are the considerable other benefits, as
the old recruiting sergeants would put it, the "bennies." Military retirees can receive full
tuition and expenses at a college or technical school if they choose to go back to school. This
is why one sees so many ads for online universities on television – they are trolling for
soldier dollars knowing that it's free money. The retiree will also have access to heavily
subsidized medical care for him or herself plus family. The medical care is a significant bonus
under the Tricare system, which describes itself on its website as "the gold standard for
medical coverage, [that] is government managed health insurance." A friend who is retired
recently had a hip replacement operation that would have cost $39,000 for only a few hundred
dollars through Tricare.
What is significant is that even enlisted military personnel can start a second career on
top of their pension, given that many of them are still in their thirties. Some that have
security clearances can jump into highly paid jobs with defense contractors immediately while
others also find places in the bureaucracy with the Department of Homeland Security. Working
for the government twice is called "double dipping."
Some would argue that military personnel deserve what they get because the jobs are by their
very nature dangerous, sometimes fatal. Indeed, the number of maimed and PTSD-afflicted
soldiers returning from the endless wars is a national tragedy and caring for them should be a
top priority. But the truth is that only a very small fraction, by some estimates far less than
20% of Army and Marine personnel in so-called "combat arms," ever are in danger. Air Force and
Navy personnel rarely experience combat at all apart from bombing targets far below or
launching cruise missiles against Syrians. It is true that given the volatile nature of war
against insurgents in places like Afghanistan many soldiers in support roles can come under
fire, but it is far from normal and most men and women in service never experience a gun fired
in anger.
Some numbers-crunchers in the Pentagon have already raised the alarm that the current pay,
benefits and retirement levels for military personnel is unsustainable if the United States
continues its worldwide mission against terrorists and allegedly rogue regimes. And it is also
unsustainable if the U.S. seeks to return to a constitutional arrangement whereby the nation is
actually defended by its military, not subordinated to it and being bankrupted by its
costs.
Wait, so this is a lefty Democrat blog now, where The Nation is cited favorably?
Our men in uniform, particularly the grunts, make sacrifices that the others don't make.
Sure, some officers are corrupt and the military manages to manufacture demand for its
expensive products, but this article goes way too far.
Captains with just eight years in service rake in over $100,000 a year with nothing more than
a four-year degree in history! Senior enlisted can also make over $100,000 a year with a high
school diploma, plus free family health care and zero contributions to retirement. After just
four years of service, a married GI is making more than the average American college graduate
with 20 years of work experience! I wrote about this several years ago for those who still
fall for the draft era "poor GI myth".
Note our military spends billions of dollars on recruiting ads, but never mentions high
pay. If they did, Congress may end the annual pay boost and lines would form at recruiting
stations. Even most "experts" and reporters are confused because military lobbyists use the
inflated ECI index (which includes increased health care and workers comp costs) rather than
just wages, and pretend housing and food allowances are not income. Even the average military
pilot earns twice a much as the average airline pilot, based on facts not Pentagon spin
stories.
This why career servicemen love the military, they are making 2-3 times more than
comparable civilians, and they know it! Read my article if you are confused. Then many of
these "retirees" leave at age 40 with nice retirement, then get a regular federal job, and
put in for every minor ache and pain and get a thousand or more dollars each month in VA tax
free "disability" pay. Sleep Apnea (aka snoring) is a popular disability to claim worth up to
50%. Some get 100% disability but you wouldn't know it if you met them, and still work for
Uncle Sam full time! The LA Times reported that after Senator John McCain announced he was
fit to run for President, he was getting military retirement, 100% tax free VA disability,
his Senator pay and social security retirement!
Now before some ignorant servicemen whine about those serving in combat zones or deployed
on ships, note that fewer than 10% of GIs ever serve in a real combat zone, not the fake ones
like Bahrain. They rate their pay, but not those working soft office jobs in Hawaii or San
Diego or Florida. Keep in mind that we have a volunteer force, and our military must constant
prune the career force since far too many want to stay in as long as possible. No one leaves
because of poor pay, but because of political BS.
I usually share your disdain for The Nation magazine. But in the vein of stopped
clock correctness twice a day even it can sometimes be correct, witness its editor Steve
Cohen's completely admirable efforts to lend sanity and substance to America's Russian
foreign policy!
I've seen articles decrying that first-year married privates are eligible for food stamps.
Because their housing, medical, and the cost of living differential are not "income". They're
living on more than twice the reported income. So yeah, they have arranged the pay precisely
so that they are not subject to any income tax, and are in some cases eligible for food
stamps.
They have rec vehicles they can check out, boats and four-wheelers, snowmobiles and etc.,
special parks and land reservations, scenic cabins they can stay at with trifling fees or are
free. Ours has a golf course that must be staggering for upkeep. Gyms, facilities for parties
and events – stuff you'd pay a lot for in the private sector. The subsidized shopping
is still there, but is not the huge discount it was at one time, at the bases in this
state.
The state gives them all kinds of benefits like instant residency for hunting and fishing.
The stores give them discounts. Military appreciation days.
And frankly it isn't your STEM people, business and tech fields going into the military.
Their next best alternatives are a pittance by comparison. For who you are getting, the
quality of recruit, this is well paid.
I don't mind that so much as having three times the size we need to defend our borders,
which is what we should be doing and no more. Foreign entanglements, searching for monsters
to destroy, acting as the world police – this is the main problem.
4% of GDP, is it? Not sure about that but I do know it's 30% of federal tax revenue.
Military spending is about $1 trillion, if you include
all the various categories , per annum; whereas Federal receipts are about $3.3 trillion
per annum.
So about 30% of all Federal tax receipts – 30% of the money stolen from me at
gunpoint, which forces me to labor for months every year without pay – goes to corrupt
contractors, murderers and war criminals to oppress and murder people and destroy property
throughout the world in service to the Evil Empire, including, of course, Jew supremacist
Israel.
So since you think it's so "bearable", you Evil Empire supporter, why don't you kindly
give me back my 1 month of stolen labor every year to pay for your beloved Evil Empire's
perpetual Campaign of Death, Oppression and Destruction?
Clearly is if you look at your debt to GDP and deficit.
Interesting because the US has its history as part of the English tradition of no standing
armies, militias, all possible due to the favourable geography of having a strip of water, or
moat as Shakespeare put it, to deter potential invaders. The US military really is a WWII and
Cold War creation. That the US seems to be the only nation not have benefited from the end of
the cold war dividend in reduced military spending is an impressive feat by lobbyists and
neocon ideologues.
For me the pay and benefits aren't the core problem. We are paying to destabilize the
world, kill US citizens, kill civilians, increase terror all for wars that don't benefit the
American citizenry as a whole in any way. At one time they might have been for
corporations now they are for Israel.
You're spot on. By the Late Roman Empire, society was divided into 2 groups – the
humiliores ( lower classes ) and the honestiores ( upper classes ). Soldiers belonged to the
latter group, and most historians consider that the common soldier never had a higher status
in any society.
History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but modern day America has largely followed the Roman
route. Certainly, the sheer cost of the Roman Military was a factor in the decline and fall
of the Roman Empire.
The Roman soldier had a much more dangerous period of military service than the risk averse
modern American military. Roman veterans certainly earned their benefits.
What is the real "defense burden" (the percentage of our GDP spent on the military) sans
bullshit accounting tricks and "reclassification" of expenses.
For example, if we used accounting methods as used in some of the more efficient, less
bloated military establishments of our allies, what would be the actual cost to our economy
of our defense spending?
For all we know, military expenditures may actually be back to Reagan Cold War percentage
levels, or slightly more.
Article didn't mention the dependency allowance. I looked on military websites to find the
amount but you have to be registered military to find the amount
There is a clothing allowance, why? And the military is heavily affirmative action
Hispanic black and female I live near a big VA. Twice a day hundreds of VA employees drive
right past my house. Almost all are black. I drive through the VA often. Most everyone I see
is black except for the Indian immigrant Drs.
California vets get some kind of no down payment low interest mortgage. When they retire
they can get a loan for $50,000 to use for setting up a business or buying rental
property.
Our men in uniform, particularly the grunts, make sacrifices that the others don't
make.
Based on my experience as a young kid, and observations as an old fart, I call BS on that
unless "sacrifice" has acquired a new meaning on the street that I'm unaware of.
US spends 4% of GDP on the military versus 2% in China, France, UK. That's high but
considering how rich the US is, not unbearable. Weak article.
The US is rich? Living on borrowed, stolen and extorted money and we're rich? The US has
become a huge third world strip mall republic, complete with an overstuffed and parasitic
military, and you think we're rich?The whole murderous,mendacious, thieving, and morally and
financially bankrupt enterprise is poor by any significant measure, so your "reasoning" is
what's weak.
Rank 'Ol Rummie spoke the truth once and it happened one day before the towers were
pulled.
Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon
"The adversary is closer to home; it's the Pentagon bureaucracy "
- Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 10, 2001
PS: For those who don't know where the missile, err, "plane" hit the Pentagon on 9/11, do
a tad of research and tell me, with a straight face, that it was some coincidence.
Federal Debt $20 trillion, Accumulated Balance of Trade Deficit since 1990 $12 trillion (
unadjusted for inflation ). That's not even including State and Local Debt, never mind
Private Debt.
The only thing preventing complete bankruptcy is that the Dollar is the World's Reserve
Currency- for now. Once China and others start dumping US Treasury Bonds, that will be
over.
Two of my friends own motorcycle dealerships in San Antonio. Gee. I wonder how they can
sell so many, compared to dealers in towns without major military bases
We spend more than the next ten nations, COMBINED. To "defend ourselves" from goat herders
that can't afford passports or air tickets. 800 bases scattered across the planet. But,
thinking about it, folks like somalians have been invading the US OH. WAIT! Federal refugee
programs have been importing somalis. NEVER MIND.
We fight them there so we can bring them here and put them on welfare/food stamps? Makes
perfect sense.
I was in the field and in a number of firefights during my year in Vietnam, 69 – 70,
and I find the idea of some store or VA clerk thanking me for my service offensive as all get
out because I know these well meaning strangers, who owe me nothing at all, are being played
for fools to serve the interests of America's worst enemy, Israel and its American fifth
column. I'm also disgusted by this new breed of soldier who's less any sort of manly patriot
than a skin-headed, "muh brothers, muh mission" wind-up martinet who mistakes the vain
daintiness of pumping iron as well as technical superiority's easy targets for manliness. As
for the Pentagon, it's the mother of all bureaucracies whose leaders but for the costumes are
no more warriors than the time-serving hacks in any other bloated bureaucracy, who couldn't
care less, as the facts make clear, about sending young Americans to die and be maimed so the
sons of their Israeli masters need not.
I used to feel smug after jumping from the US military to banking in the knowledge that my
starting pay was several multiples of my military pay and even outstripped that of the JCS
heads who I served under.
Somewhere along the way, probably in the 2000s during the so-called War for Talent,
Federal civilian and military pay got a significant uptick well in excess of what the KSAs
(Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities) of these folks as measured by OPM and DoD, and there has
been no looking back.
Giraldi might be right that the troops are overpaid, but that is just the tip of the
iceberg that is the Military Industrial Security Academic Complex.
Defense spending is allegedly 3.6% of GDP ($700B / $19,000B) but is actually over 5% if you
factor in the hidden Defense spending. VA benefits, over $100B, nuclear arsenal covered under
Dept of Energy (my favorite) over $30B, Defense portion of debt service over $100B, and other
places that I'd have to dig up.
Defense spending is over 30% of the budget, the low ball 15% is only if you include social
security and medicare which you should not because that is covered by dedicated payroll
taxes. If payroll taxes were eliminated, those programs would go away but the budget deficit
would not be impacted. This is a trick that defense consultants play to make Defense spending
look smaller.
Defense spending is over 50% if you also discount our annual debt service, this is why the
$1.3T featured $600B for domestic vs $700B for Defense.
I thought that singling out military pay was a tad mean spirited. Capping pensions that
disproportionately benefit Generals who then go onto consulting jobs for Defense contractors
and get paid positions on FOX might be a good idea but I didn't like the tone of this
column.
No serious person who says they care about budget deficits can approach them without
looking at Defense Spending.
- Chris Chuba
One of the disturbing actions of the soldier worshipping conservatives is the Wounded Warrior
scam which uses crippled and deformed GIs in ads aimed at the heartstrings of the American
public. The fact that so many soldiers are returning from useless wars in dire condition
should be the responsibility of the Department of Defense (War) and its Government which is
responsible for the mayhem and violence in so many parts of the world not a subject for
organized begging which often preys on the suffering of the young.
Re; Mr. Giraldi's brave & unspoken words: "(ZUS military) Pay and benefits are way out of
control"
With a long history of planning & implementation, below, presstv explains how radical
"citizens" were headhunted & placed in control as to when & how our hallowed ZUS
troop commanders do their Jewish job assignments.
US is rich and the debt is high. Both can be true at the same time. But taxes are
relatively low so if there is a government debt crisis paying down the debt would just
involve raising taxes. Just look at GDP per capita US which is very high up there so I don't
see how anyone can argue the US is not a very rich country.
Despite many problems, the US has many advantages like half the world's Ashkenazim who are
very good at creating unbeatable new companies. Just look at how the half the 40 riches
entrepreneurs under 40 in the US according to Forbes are Jewish. Jews are producing so much
innovation in the US that it offsets a lot of the problems like military spending at 4% of
GDP and less productive sub-populations.
Good article, Phil. I served in the 1970s, tail end of Vietnam Stateside, and never heard a
shot fired in anger. I am grateful for the G. I. benefits I received.
No institution in a representative democracy ought to be above measured criticism. I have
a relative who volunteers at the local VA clinic, and there's some sketchy evidence that some
patients with very good group health insurance benefits are working the system and getting VA
treatment to avoid co-pays.
I personally found David Hackworth's criticism of the American military fairly persuasive.
Deep bureaucratization, tunnel vision, advancing officers for their inoffensiveness and
favor-currying chops, the whole mess.
Plus add the big three already mentioned by some folks above. (1) America's armed forces
are a Petri dish for social engineering, (2) corruption, (3) the political mafia-zation of
America's armed forces so that it's acting as a White House-directed quasi-mercenary
"enforcer" for corporate interests and various other sovereign interests.
"An Air Force four-star general named Arthur Lichte was reduced in rank to a two-star in 2017
after he was found guilty of having raped a lower ranking woman officer".
You say he was ***reduced in rank*** for raping a female subordinate?
Why wasn't he given 50 lashes, a dishonourable discharge, and a prison sentence? Even a
random civilian would get the prison sentence for rape. And for such a senior officer to
commit a crime like that is, of course far, far worse.
Israel and their ziocons control every facet of the U.S. gov and have used the U.S. army as a
proxy army of Israel to fight and die for Israel in the ME while they sit it out in their
ivory towers in Tel Aviv and New York City and London.
To add to the tragedy millions of civilians have been killed in these wars for Israel in
Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Yemen and various other places through out the
ME, and all of this carnage for Israel.
Just like the Roman empire where the rulers paraded their conquering armies through Rome ,
Trump wants to parade his Israeli proxy armies through D.C. and take their review as a
Caligula. Trump is a puppet of the zionists and Netanyahu and his controllers the ROTHCHILDS
ie the RED SHIELD which is dripping with Americans blood.
Orwell was right, the wars never end in OCEANIA and we have become Oceania, and all
because of our zionist masters.
That was a very good article with lots of facts that I was unaware regarding the various
forms of compensation. I have not been in the miltary. I will tell you that I have seen how
things work on the procurement end, and that is the real shitshow, moneywise. The amount of
wasted money in personnel involved in trying to micromanage a contractor, the "generation" of
paperwork that must weigh 10X vehicle max-gross-weight in order to sign off on it, and other
things, ruin the job for the technician or engineer in any company making stuff for the US
military.
(BTW, that last sentence of mine brought up the only one (little tiny) thing that I didn't
like about the article. You KEEP USING "his and her", "he and she", etc. Enough of that crap,
please, Mr. Giraldi. Unz is one of a number of place on-line on which one doesn't have to be
PC. He can write as he pleases. The rest of your English is very professional,
so why this?).
Anyway, great article, just the facts and honest opinion without any hyperbole. Regarding
your very last paragraph, BTW, it's not just that the army is so costly, but if America ever
had to defend itself from one of the countries we buy parts from, cough, China , cough, cough,
that'll be a laugh. We are operating on borrowed money, as Jack S (#16) stated, AND foreign
supply lines. We're number 1! Yeah!
Among the lots of good comments on the thread so far, yours is kind of an outlier, to put
it nicely. No, you cannot be both rich and in debt (6 – 7 X more than your yearly
income) at the same time. . There are perhaps different definitions of broke that people
or families may use for themselves.
1) Out of spending cash – got assets, but awaiting more income before any spending
can resume. That's not too bad – it just shows lack of foresight or bad luck.
2) Broke even – got some assets, but owe the same amount – income is about the
same as expenditures expected. There are lots like this – they need to buckle down, but
will probably be OK.
3) Flat broke – can't borrow anymore due to bad payment history, even to friends and
family – not enough income to pay expenditures or even on this.
4) Broke like the US Feral Government – borrowing 1/3 of the money for the
$4,000,000,000,000 budget each year, as only 2/3 can be collected via personal
income/corporate income/excise/etc. taxes (just look near the back of the IRS 1040
instructions – they're not hiding this stuff). Total debt of $20,000,000,000,000 is 5 X
the budget each year and 6-7 X the income collected yearly. It is > 100 % of the total
GDP. There is no coming out of this hole without financial pain for almost everyone but those
with a Challenger or other large/medium-cabin business jet with precious metals stashed on an
island or S. American/Oriental country with a runway on your compound with armed guards.
"some"? Har-Dee-Har-Har. What percentage of people who separate from the military claim a
"service related disability"? With that designation they not only get the retirement benefit
bump but also set-asides for government jobs and contracts as well. Based on the number of
service related disability claims by veterans, the United States must have the most
physically fragile fighting force on the planet.
And in this age of stupid perpetual wars, every "disabled veteran" is assumed have been
shot up in the Middle East when if fact it's more likely they tripped on the steps on the way
back from lunch at Fort Leavenworth. That erroneous assumption of a combat related disability
is great for milking benefits from a sympathetic public.
And there's more. Sleep apnea claims as a service related disability by veterans have
exploded. Same with PTSD.
The web is saturated with advice on how to game the military disability system.
A vet I knew laughed as he told me he got a disability award for his knee. Only that
injury came from playing too much basketball at his U.S. base. Another "disabled veteran" I
know does Cross Fit to stay in shape. His most dangerous deployment was to southern Europe
where he met his wife. And yes, he advertises his disability on his business web site and
does qualify for government contract set-asides.
Too bad for the taxpayers though. Since the military has been sanctified by the powerful
Pentagon/MSM "Warrior-Hero" propaganda engine, challenging out of control military benefits
is a political and social third rail.
The web is saturated with advice on how to game the military disability system.
A vet I knew laughed as he told me he got a disability award for his knee. Only that
injury came from playing too much basketball at his U.S. base. Another "disabled veteran" I
know does Cross Fit to stay in shape. His most dangerous deployment was to southern Europe
where he met his wife. And yes, he advertises his disability on his business web site and
does qualify for government contract set-asides.
Too bad for the taxpayers though. Since the military has been sanctified by the powerful
Pentagon/MSM "Warrior-Hero" propaganda engine, challenging out of control military benefits
is a political and social third rail.
In an ongoing operation, the US imperialist hawks seek to wipe out the last Leftist governments in Latin America
Ten years ago, most of Latin America was governed by Center-Left progressive or even Leftist governments. For example, Cristina Fernandez
in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Manuel Zelaya
in Honduras, and Lula da Silva in Brazil, just as an example. And Hugo Chavez, of course, in Venezuela. Since then, the so-called
'pink tide' has receded quite dramatically. Of these 10 governments that were Left of Center, only four remain. Nicolas Maduro in
Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Vazquez in Uruguay, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. What happened? Some would argue that the US played
an important role in at least some of these changes.
Speaking to Greg Wilpert and the RealNews , Mark Weisbrot
explains the impact of the Leftist or Center-Left governments on Latin America, as well as the US efforts to overthrow these governments
and replace them by Rright-Wing puppet regimes. This is a struggle that has become common in a region that heavily suffers for decades
by the US dirty interventions as it is considered the backyard of the US empire and the primary colonial field for the big US corporations:
If you look at the region as a whole, the poverty rate dropped from 44 to 28 percent. That was from around 2003-2013. And that
was after the two decades prior where poverty had actually increased, there was no progress at all. So that was a huge change, and
it was accomplished in different countries, in different ways.
There were large increases in public investment in Bolivia and Ecuador. In Brazil you had also some increase in public investment,
big increases in the minimum wage. Every country did different things to help bring healthcare, and increase, in some countries,
access to education. And there were a whole lot of reforms, changes in macroeconomic policy, getting rid of the IMF.
So there were a lot of different things that these governments did that prior governments were either unable, or unwilling to
do to improve people's living standards during a period of higher economic growth, which they also contributed to.
When Right-Wing governments took over most of the continent you have different things that have changed.
One is, of course, they're implementing, as you would expect, Right-Wing reforms. Trying to cut pension system, the pension in
Brazil. Passing a constitutional amendment which, even most economists in the world wouldn't support in Brazil, which prohibits the
government from increasing spending beyond the rate of inflation. You have huge increases in utility prices in Argentina, laying
off thousands of public sector workers. So, everywhere where the Right has come back, you do have some regressive changes.
The US has been involved in most of these countries in various ways. Obviously in Venezuela they've been involved since the coup
in 2002, and they tried to overthrow the government and tried to help people topple the government on several occasions there.
In Brazil, they supported the coup against Dilma, the parliamentary coup. So, they didn't do that strongly, but they sent enough
signals, for example, as the House was voting to impeach Dilma without actually presenting a crime that she committed. The head of
the Foreign Relations Committee from the Senate came and met with the No3 official from the US State Department, Tom Shannon. And
then, in August of that year, the Secretary of State, John Kerry, went down there and had a press conference with the Acting Foreign
Minister, Jose Serra. And they talked about how great relations with the US were going to be before Dilma was actually removed from
office. So these were ways of endorsing the coup.
The FBI, the Department of Justice contributed to the investigation that was instrumental in imprisoning Lula. What they did in
that investigation we don't know exactly, but we do know enough about it to know that it wasn't a neutral investigation. That is,
the investigation did end up decapitating the Workers' Party for now. First helping get rid of Dilma, but more importantly, or more
substantially, in terms of its contribution, they helped put Lula in prison and prevent him from running for office.
In Paraguay, the US helped in the consolidation of that parliamentary coup by organizing within the Organization of American States.
In Haiti, in 2004, they took the president and put him on a rendition plane, and flew him out of the country. That was in broad
daylight.
In Honduras, is probably the biggest role that the US has played, both in consolidating the military coup in 2009. Hillary Clinton
acknowledged her role in making sure that President Zelaya, the democratically elected president, would not return to office, and
then more recently, in November, they helped consolidate the results of an election which pretty much all observers regarded as stolen.
In Argentina, other branches of government were involved as well as the executive, but the executive cut off lending from multilateral
development banks such as the Inter-American Development Bank, and tried to block loans at the World Bank, as well. And they restored
everything as soon as the Right-Wing government was elected. And then, there was Judge Griesa in New York, who took over 90 percent
of Argentina's creditors hostage in order to squeeze them so that the government would pay off the vulture funds. And this was very
political, because he also lifted the injunction as soon as you had the Right-Wing government.
This is very important, because obviously it's not necessarily a conspiracy of all these branches of government. The legislative
branch was involved in this as well, in the United States. But they all have the same mindset, and they're all trying to get rid
of these Left governments, and they had a massive contribution. In Argentina, that did contribute to the downfall of Cristina Kirchner.
It contributed to balance of payments problems that they had there. So this was important, and it's totally ignored in the United
States.
You have intervention in Mexico, for example. US officials have already said how worried they are that AMLO, Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, who is the frontrunner in the upcoming election in July. And he's probably going to win, but they're already trying to undermine
him, lobbying accusations of Russia involvement, which is the new trend. Of course, completely unsubstantiated.
In Venezuela they're doing something probably never done in the last 50 years, openly calling for a military coup, and actually
a financial embargo they've put in place, and threatening even a worse embargo if they don't get rid of the current government. So
that's a more aggressive form of intervention than you had even under the prior administrations.
A wave of neoliberal onslaught shakes currently Latin America. While in Argentina, Mauricio
Macri allegedly took the power normally, the
constitutional
coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as, the
usual actions
of the Right opposition in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro with the help of the US finger, are far more obvious.
The special weight of these three countries in Latin America is extremely important for the US imperialism to regain ground in
the global geopolitical arena. Especially the last ten to fifteen years, each of them developed increasingly autonomous policies
away from the US close custody, under Leftist governments, and this was something that alarmed the US imperialism components.
Brazil appears to be the most important among the three, not only due to its size, but also as a member of the BRICS, the team
of fast growing economies who threaten the US and generally the Western global dominance. The constitutional coup against Rousseff
was rather a sloppy action and reveals the anxiety of the US establishment to regain control through puppet regimes. This is a well-known
situation from the past through which the establishment attempts to secure absolute dominance in the US backyard.
The importance of Venezuela due to its oil reserves is also significant. When Maduro tried to approach Russia in order to strengthen
the economic cooperation between the two countries, he must had set the alarm for the neocons in the US. Venezuela could find an
alternative in Russia and BRICS, in order to breathe from the multiple economic war that was set off by the US. It is characteristic
that the economic war against Russia by the US and the Saudis, by keeping the oil prices in historically low levels, had significant
impact on the Venezuelan economy too. It is also known that the US organizations are funding the opposition since Chávez era, in
order to proceed in provocative operations that could overthrow the Leftist governments.
The case of Venezuela is really interesting. The US imperialists were fiercely trying to overthrow the Leftist governments since
Chávez administration. They found now a weaker president, Nicolás Maduro - who certainly does not have the strength and personality
of Hugo Chávez - to achieve their goal.
The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth,
with a big overdose of exaggeration.
The establishment
parrots are demonizing Socialism , but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the
Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about
the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.
Regarding Argentina, former president, Cristina Kirchner, had also made some important moves towards the stronger cooperation
with Russia, which was something unacceptable for Washington's hawks. Not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because Argentina
could escape from the vulture funds that sucking its blood since its default. This would give the country an alternative to the neoliberal
monopoly of destruction. The US big banks and corporations would never accept such a perspective because the debt-enslaved Argentina
is a golden opportunity for a new round of huge profits. It's
happening right
now in debt colony, Greece.
In an ongoing operation, the US imperialist hawks seek to wipe out the last Leftist governments in Latin America
Ten years ago, most of Latin America was governed by Center-Left progressive or even Leftist governments. For example, Cristina Fernandez
in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Manuel Zelaya
in Honduras, and Lula da Silva in Brazil, just as an example. And Hugo Chavez, of course, in Venezuela. Since then, the so-called
'pink tide' has receded quite dramatically. Of these 10 governments that were Left of Center, only four remain. Nicolas Maduro in
Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Vazquez in Uruguay, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. What happened? Some would argue that the US played
an important role in at least some of these changes.
Speaking to Greg Wilpert and the RealNews , Mark Weisbrot
explains the impact of the Leftist or Center-Left governments on Latin America, as well as the US efforts to overthrow these governments
and replace them by Rright-Wing puppet regimes. This is a struggle that has become common in a region that heavily suffers for decades
by the US dirty interventions as it is considered the backyard of the US empire and the primary colonial field for the big US corporations:
If you look at the region as a whole, the poverty rate dropped from 44 to 28 percent. That was from around 2003-2013. And that
was after the two decades prior where poverty had actually increased, there was no progress at all. So that was a huge change, and
it was accomplished in different countries, in different ways.
There were large increases in public investment in Bolivia and Ecuador. In Brazil you had also some increase in public investment,
big increases in the minimum wage. Every country did different things to help bring healthcare, and increase, in some countries,
access to education. And there were a whole lot of reforms, changes in macroeconomic policy, getting rid of the IMF.
So there were a lot of different things that these governments did that prior governments were either unable, or unwilling to
do to improve people's living standards during a period of higher economic growth, which they also contributed to.
When Right-Wing governments took over most of the continent you have different things that have changed.
One is, of course, they're implementing, as you would expect, Right-Wing reforms. Trying to cut pension system, the pension in
Brazil. Passing a constitutional amendment which, even most economists in the world wouldn't support in Brazil, which prohibits the
government from increasing spending beyond the rate of inflation. You have huge increases in utility prices in Argentina, laying
off thousands of public sector workers. So, everywhere where the Right has come back, you do have some regressive changes.
The US has been involved in most of these countries in various ways. Obviously in Venezuela they've been involved since the coup
in 2002, and they tried to overthrow the government and tried to help people topple the government on several occasions there.
In Brazil, they supported the coup against Dilma, the parliamentary coup. So, they didn't do that strongly, but they sent enough
signals, for example, as the House was voting to impeach Dilma without actually presenting a crime that she committed. The head of
the Foreign Relations Committee from the Senate came and met with the No3 official from the US State Department, Tom Shannon. And
then, in August of that year, the Secretary of State, John Kerry, went down there and had a press conference with the Acting Foreign
Minister, Jose Serra. And they talked about how great relations with the US were going to be before Dilma was actually removed from
office. So these were ways of endorsing the coup.
The FBI, the Department of Justice contributed to the investigation that was instrumental in imprisoning Lula. What they did in
that investigation we don't know exactly, but we do know enough about it to know that it wasn't a neutral investigation. That is,
the investigation did end up decapitating the Workers' Party for now. First helping get rid of Dilma, but more importantly, or more
substantially, in terms of its contribution, they helped put Lula in prison and prevent him from running for office.
In Paraguay, the US helped in the consolidation of that parliamentary coup by organizing within the Organization of American States.
In Haiti, in 2004, they took the president and put him on a rendition plane, and flew him out of the country. That was in broad
daylight.
In Honduras, is probably the biggest role that the US has played, both in consolidating the military coup in 2009. Hillary Clinton
acknowledged her role in making sure that President Zelaya, the democratically elected president, would not return to office, and
then more recently, in November, they helped consolidate the results of an election which pretty much all observers regarded as stolen.
In Argentina, other branches of government were involved as well as the executive, but the executive cut off lending from multilateral
development banks such as the Inter-American Development Bank, and tried to block loans at the World Bank, as well. And they restored
everything as soon as the Right-Wing government was elected. And then, there was Judge Griesa in New York, who took over 90 percent
of Argentina's creditors hostage in order to squeeze them so that the government would pay off the vulture funds. And this was very
political, because he also lifted the injunction as soon as you had the Right-Wing government.
This is very important, because obviously it's not necessarily a conspiracy of all these branches of government. The legislative
branch was involved in this as well, in the United States. But they all have the same mindset, and they're all trying to get rid
of these Left governments, and they had a massive contribution. In Argentina, that did contribute to the downfall of Cristina Kirchner.
It contributed to balance of payments problems that they had there. So this was important, and it's totally ignored in the United
States.
You have intervention in Mexico, for example. US officials have already said how worried they are that AMLO, Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, who is the frontrunner in the upcoming election in July. And he's probably going to win, but they're already trying to undermine
him, lobbying accusations of Russia involvement, which is the new trend. Of course, completely unsubstantiated.
In Venezuela they're doing something probably never done in the last 50 years, openly calling for a military coup, and actually
a financial embargo they've put in place, and threatening even a worse embargo if they don't get rid of the current government. So
that's a more aggressive form of intervention than you had even under the prior administrations.
A wave of neoliberal onslaught shakes currently Latin America. While in Argentina, Mauricio
Macri allegedly took the power normally, the
constitutional
coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as, the
usual actions
of the Right opposition in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro with the help of the US finger, are far more obvious.
The special weight of these three countries in Latin America is extremely important for the US imperialism to regain ground in
the global geopolitical arena. Especially the last ten to fifteen years, each of them developed increasingly autonomous policies
away from the US close custody, under Leftist governments, and this was something that alarmed the US imperialism components.
Brazil appears to be the most important among the three, not only due to its size, but also as a member of the BRICS, the team
of fast growing economies who threaten the US and generally the Western global dominance. The constitutional coup against Rousseff
was rather a sloppy action and reveals the anxiety of the US establishment to regain control through puppet regimes. This is a well-known
situation from the past through which the establishment attempts to secure absolute dominance in the US backyard.
The importance of Venezuela due to its oil reserves is also significant. When Maduro tried to approach Russia in order to strengthen
the economic cooperation between the two countries, he must had set the alarm for the neocons in the US. Venezuela could find an
alternative in Russia and BRICS, in order to breathe from the multiple economic war that was set off by the US. It is characteristic
that the economic war against Russia by the US and the Saudis, by keeping the oil prices in historically low levels, had significant
impact on the Venezuelan economy too. It is also known that the US organizations are funding the opposition since Chávez era, in
order to proceed in provocative operations that could overthrow the Leftist governments.
The case of Venezuela is really interesting. The US imperialists were fiercely trying to overthrow the Leftist governments since
Chávez administration. They found now a weaker president, Nicolás Maduro - who certainly does not have the strength and personality
of Hugo Chávez - to achieve their goal.
The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth,
with a big overdose of exaggeration.
The establishment
parrots are demonizing Socialism , but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the
Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about
the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.
Regarding Argentina, former president, Cristina Kirchner, had also made some important moves towards the stronger cooperation
with Russia, which was something unacceptable for Washington's hawks. Not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because Argentina
could escape from the vulture funds that sucking its blood since its default. This would give the country an alternative to the neoliberal
monopoly of destruction. The US big banks and corporations would never accept such a perspective because the debt-enslaved Argentina
is a golden opportunity for a new round of huge profits. It's
happening right
now in debt colony, Greece.
"... A historically low percentage of our population -- less than half a percent -- actually serves in the military. Compare that to around 9% during the Vietnam War, and 12% during World War II. Remarkably few of us ever see combat, ever even know anyone who was in combat, ever get to hear firsthand stories of what went on or witness what life is like for such a returning veteran. Not surprisingly, America's wars now largely go on without us. There is no personal connection. Here in "the homeland" -- despite the overblown fears of "terrorism" -- it remains "peacetime." As a consequence, few of us are engaged by veterans' issues or the prospect -- essentially, the guarantee -- of more war in the American future. ..."
Memorial Day is over. You had your barbeque. Now, you can stop thinking about America's wars and the casualties from them
for another year. As for me, I only wish it were so.
It's been Memorial Day for me ever since I first met Tomas Young. And in truth, it should have felt that way from the moment I
hunkered down in Somalia in 1993 and the firing began. After all, we've been at war across the Greater Middle East ever since. But
somehow it was Tomas who, in 2013, first brought my own experience in the US military home to me in ways I hadn't been able to do
on my own.
That gravely wounded, living, breathing casualty of our second war in Iraq who wouldn't let go of life or stop thinking and critiquing
America's never-ending warscape brought me so much closer to myself, so bear with me for a moment while I return to Mogadishu, the
Somalian capital, and bring you -- and me -- closer to him.
Boom!
In that spring of 1993, I was a 22-year-old Army sergeant, newly married, and had just been dropped into a famine-ridden, war-torn
country on the other side of the planet, a place I hadn't previously given a thought. I didn't know what hit me. I couldn't begin
to take it in. That first day I remember sitting on my cot with a wet t-shirt draped over my head, chugging a bottle of water to
counter the oppressive heat.
I'd trained for this -- a real mission -- for more than five years. I was a Black Hawk helicopter crew chief. Still, I had no
idea what I was in for.
So much happened in Somalia in that " Black
Hawk Down " year that foreshadowed America's fruitless wars of the twenty-first century across the Greater Middle East and parts
of Africa, but you wouldn't have known it by me. That first day, sitting in a tent on the old Somali Air Force base in Baledogle,
a couple of hours inland from the capital city of Mogadishu, I had a face-to-face encounter with a poisonous black mamba snake. Somehow
it didn't register. Not really.
This is real , I kept telling myself in the six months I spent there, but in a way it wasn't or didn't seem to be.
After about a month, my unit moved to the airport in Mogadishu -- away from the snakes, scorpions, and bugs that infested Baledogle,
but closer to dangers of a more human sort. Within a few weeks, I became used to the nightly rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire
coming at us from the city. I watched the tracers streak by as we crouched behind our sandbagged fighting positions. We would return
from missions to find bullet holes in the skin or rotor blades of our Black Hawk helicopters, or in one case a beer-can-sized hole
that a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) round punched cleanly through the rear stabilizer without -- mercifully -- detonating.
And yet none of it felt like it was quite happening to me. I remember lying on my cot late at night, not far from the flight line
full of Black Hawks and Cobras, hearing the drone of low-flying American AC-130 gunships firing overhead for hours on end. The first
boom would come from the seaward side of the field as the gunship fired its M102 howitzer. A few seconds later, another
boom would mark the round's arrival at its target across town, sometimes with secondary explosions as ammunition stores went
up. Lying there, I remember thinking that those weren't the routine training rounds I'd heard a hundred times as they hit some random
target in a desolate training area. They were landing on real targets, actual people.
Two other memorable boom s come to mind -- one as we waited in the back of a sun-baked supply truck, heading out on a volunteer
mission to give inoculations to kids at a Somali orphanage. Boom . The ground shook to the sound of one of our Humvees and
the four Army soldiers in it being
blown apart by the sort
of remote-controlled bomb that would become a commonplace of insurgents in America's twenty-first century wars. And a second, the
loudest during my six months there, as a generator perhaps 20 feet from our tent exploded into flames from an incoming RPG round
that found its target in the middle of the night.
This is real . I kept saying that to myself, but truthfully the more accurate word would have been surreal . The
care packages I was receiving, the Tootsie Rolls and Cracker Jacks and letters from my wife back home telling me how much she missed
me might as well have been from another planet.
Our helicopters flew daily reconnaissance missions ("Eyes over Mog" we called them) above the Somali capital. We did battle damage
assessments, checking out pockmarked buildings the AC-130s had targeted the night before, or the shot-up safe house that Somali warlord
Mohamed Aidid -- our operation's target (just as the US would target Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and the leaders of various
terror groups) -- had reportedly been using as a control center. Once a beautiful mansion, it was now riddled with thousands of bullet
holes and TOW missile craters.
We flew over Mogadishu's bustling marketplace, sometimes so low that the corrugated metal roofs of the stalls would blow off from
our rotor wash. We were always looking for what we called "technicals" -- pick-up trucks with machine guns mounted in their beds
-- to take out. Viewing that crowded marketplace through the sight of a ready-to-rock M-60 machine gun helped reinforce the message
that all of this was beyond surreal.
Lives were ending violently here every day, and my own life, too, could have ended at any moment. Yet it was just about impossible
to believe that all of a sudden I was in the middle of a violent set of incidents in a third-world hellhole, the sort of thing you
might read about in the paper, or more likely, would never hear about at all. You'd never know about our near-nightly scrambles to
our fighting positions behind a pile of sandbags, as the AK-47s cracked and the tracers flew overhead. It wouldn't even register
as a blip in the news back home. In some bizarre way, I was there and it still wasn't registering.
A Soldier Just Like Me
Just days after returning home from Somalia, I (like so many others) watched the footage of dead American soldiers -- at least
one a Black Hawk crew chief -- being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by cheering Somalis. For the first time, I found myself
filled with a sense of dread, a profound that-could-have-been-me feeling. I imagined my mother looking at such a photo of me, of
her dead son's body -- as someone's mother was undoubtedly doing.
If my interior landscape was beginning to shift in unsettling ways, if the war, my war, was finally starting to come home, I remained
only minimally aware of it. My wife and I started a family, I got a civilian job, went to college in the evening using the GI Bill,
and wrote a couple of books about music -- my refuge.
Still, after Somalia, I found myself drawn to stories about war. I reread Stephen Ambrose's blow-by-blow account of the D-Day
landings, picked up Ron Kovic's Vietnam memoir, Born On The Fourth Of July , for the first time, and even read All Quiet
On The Western Front . And all of them somehow floored me. But it wasn't until I watched
Body of War , Phil Donahue's 2008 documentary about Iraq war veteran
and antiwar activist Tomas Young, that something seemed truly different, that I simply couldn't shake the feeling it could have been
me.
Tomas was a kid who had limited options -- just like me. He signed up for the military, at least in part, because he wanted to
go to college -- just like me. Yes, just like so many other kids, too -- but above all, just like me.
He, too, was deployed to one of America's misbegotten wars in a later hellhole, and that's where our stories began to differ.
Five days after his unit arrived in Iraq -- a place he deployed to grudgingly, never understanding why he was being sent there and
not Afghanistan -- Tomas was shot, his spinal cord severed, and most of his body paralyzed. When he came home at age 24, he fought
the natural urge to suffer in silence and instead spoke out against the war in Iraq. Body of War chronicled his first full
year of very partial recovery and the blossoming of his antiwar activism.
Just a few weeks after the film's release, however, it all came crashing down. He suffered a pulmonary embolism and sank into
a coma, awakening to find that he'd suffered a brain injury and lost much of the use of his hands and his ability to speak clearly.
The ensuing years were filled with pain and debilitating health setbacks. By early 2013, he was in hospice care, suffering excruciating
abdominal pain, without his colon, and on a feeding tube and a pain pump. Gaunt, withered, exhausted, he continued to agitate against
America's never-ending war on terror from his bed, and finally wrote a "
last letter " to former President George
W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, airing his grievances, which got
significant media
attention .
When I read it, I felt that he might have been me if I hadn't lucked out in Mogadishu two decades earlier. Maybe that's what made
me reach out to him that April and tell him I wanted to learn more about what had happened to him in the years between Body of
War and his last letter, about what it meant to go from being an antiwar agitator in a manual wheelchair to a bedridden quadriplegic
on a feeding tube and under hospice care, planning to soon end his own life.
A Map of the Ravages of War
When I finally met Tomas, I realized how much he and I had in common: the same taste in music and books, the same urge to be a
writer. We were both quick with the smart-ass comment and never made to be model soldiers because we liked to question things.
Each moment we spent together only connected us more deeply and brought me closer to the self that war had created in me, the
self I had kept at such a distance all these years. I began writing his story because I felt compelled to show other Americans someone
no different from them who had had his life, his reality, upended by one of our military adventures abroad, by deployment to a country
so distant that it's an abstraction to most of us who, in these days of the All-Volunteer Army, don't have a personal connection
either to the US military or to the wars it so regularly fights.
A historically low percentage of our population -- less than
half a percent
-- actually serves in the military. Compare that to around 9% during the Vietnam War, and 12% during World War II. Remarkably
few of us ever see combat, ever even know anyone who was in combat, ever get to hear firsthand stories of what went on or witness
what life is like for such a returning veteran. Not surprisingly, America's wars now largely go on without us. There is no personal
connection. Here in "the homeland" -- despite the overblown fears of "terrorism" -- it remains "peacetime." As a consequence, few
of us are engaged by veterans' issues or the prospect -- essentially, the guarantee -- of more war in the American future.
Tomas understood the importance of sharing the brutal fullness of his story. For him, there were to be no pulled punches. When
I told him I wanted others to learn of his harrowing tale, of his version of the human cost of war, that I wanted to help him to
tell that story, he responded that he had indeed wanted to write his own book. He'd scrapped the project because he could no longer
write, and even Dragon voice-to-text software wouldn't work because his speech had become so degraded after the embolism struck.
Instead, he shared everything. Tomas and his wife, Claudia, opened their lives to me. I slept in their basement. During my periodic
visits, he introduced me to an expansive mind in a shrunken world, a mind that wanted to range widely in a body mostly confined to
a hospital bed, surrounded by books, magazines, and an array of tubing that delivered medications and removed bodily wastes in a
darkened bedroom.
"I need to be fed," he said to me one day. "Do you want to see what that's like?" Then, he lifted his shirt and showed me the
maze of tubing and scars on his body. It was a map of the ravages of war.
He was unflinchingly honest, sensing the importance of his story in a country where such experiences have become uncommon fare.
Like his comic book heroes Batman and the Punisher, he wanted to make sure that no one would have to endure what he'd gone through.
An All-Too-Real Life and Surreal Wars
Tomas Young's war ended on the night before Veterans' Day 2014 when he passed away quietly in his sleep. His pain finally came
to an end.
The bullets that hit him in the streets of Baghdad in 2004 brought on more than a decade of agony and hardship, not only for him,
but for his mother, his siblings, and his wife. Their suffering has yet to end.
Stories of the reality of war and its impact on this country are more crucial now than ever as America's wars seem only to multiply.
Among us are more than
2.5 million veterans of our recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We owe it to them to read their accounts -- and an
increasing number of them are out there
-- and do our best to understand what they've been through, and what they continue to go through. Then perhaps we can use that knowledge
not only to properly address their needs, but to properly debate and possibly -- like Tomas Young -- even protest America's ongoing
wars.
It would have been perfectly understandable for Tomas to have faced the pain, frustration, and failing health of his final years
privately and in silence, but that wasn't him. Instead, he made his story part of our American record. To stay on top of important
articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com
here .
Mark Wilkerson spent eight years in the
US Army as an AH-1 Cobra and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crew chief with the 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions. He was deployed
with the 101st to Somalia for six months in 1993. He is the author of Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend and co-wrote
Pearl Jam Twenty . He has three children: Alex, Nick and Sam. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Melissa. His
latest book is Tomas Young's War
(Haymarket Books).
"... A historically low percentage of our population -- less than half a percent -- actually serves in the military. Compare that to around 9% during the Vietnam War, and 12% during World War II. Remarkably few of us ever see combat, ever even know anyone who was in combat, ever get to hear firsthand stories of what went on or witness what life is like for such a returning veteran. Not surprisingly, America's wars now largely go on without us. There is no personal connection. Here in "the homeland" -- despite the overblown fears of "terrorism" -- it remains "peacetime." As a consequence, few of us are engaged by veterans' issues or the prospect -- essentially, the guarantee -- of more war in the American future. ..."
Memorial Day is over. You had your barbeque. Now, you can stop thinking about America's wars and the casualties from them
for another year. As for me, I only wish it were so.
It's been Memorial Day for me ever since I first met Tomas Young. And in truth, it should have felt that way from the moment I
hunkered down in Somalia in 1993 and the firing began. After all, we've been at war across the Greater Middle East ever since. But
somehow it was Tomas who, in 2013, first brought my own experience in the US military home to me in ways I hadn't been able to do
on my own.
That gravely wounded, living, breathing casualty of our second war in Iraq who wouldn't let go of life or stop thinking and critiquing
America's never-ending warscape brought me so much closer to myself, so bear with me for a moment while I return to Mogadishu, the
Somalian capital, and bring you -- and me -- closer to him.
Boom!
In that spring of 1993, I was a 22-year-old Army sergeant, newly married, and had just been dropped into a famine-ridden, war-torn
country on the other side of the planet, a place I hadn't previously given a thought. I didn't know what hit me. I couldn't begin
to take it in. That first day I remember sitting on my cot with a wet t-shirt draped over my head, chugging a bottle of water to
counter the oppressive heat.
I'd trained for this -- a real mission -- for more than five years. I was a Black Hawk helicopter crew chief. Still, I had no
idea what I was in for.
So much happened in Somalia in that " Black
Hawk Down " year that foreshadowed America's fruitless wars of the twenty-first century across the Greater Middle East and parts
of Africa, but you wouldn't have known it by me. That first day, sitting in a tent on the old Somali Air Force base in Baledogle,
a couple of hours inland from the capital city of Mogadishu, I had a face-to-face encounter with a poisonous black mamba snake. Somehow
it didn't register. Not really.
This is real , I kept telling myself in the six months I spent there, but in a way it wasn't or didn't seem to be.
After about a month, my unit moved to the airport in Mogadishu -- away from the snakes, scorpions, and bugs that infested Baledogle,
but closer to dangers of a more human sort. Within a few weeks, I became used to the nightly rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire
coming at us from the city. I watched the tracers streak by as we crouched behind our sandbagged fighting positions. We would return
from missions to find bullet holes in the skin or rotor blades of our Black Hawk helicopters, or in one case a beer-can-sized hole
that a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) round punched cleanly through the rear stabilizer without -- mercifully -- detonating.
And yet none of it felt like it was quite happening to me. I remember lying on my cot late at night, not far from the flight line
full of Black Hawks and Cobras, hearing the drone of low-flying American AC-130 gunships firing overhead for hours on end. The first
boom would come from the seaward side of the field as the gunship fired its M102 howitzer. A few seconds later, another
boom would mark the round's arrival at its target across town, sometimes with secondary explosions as ammunition stores went
up. Lying there, I remember thinking that those weren't the routine training rounds I'd heard a hundred times as they hit some random
target in a desolate training area. They were landing on real targets, actual people.
Two other memorable boom s come to mind -- one as we waited in the back of a sun-baked supply truck, heading out on a volunteer
mission to give inoculations to kids at a Somali orphanage. Boom . The ground shook to the sound of one of our Humvees and
the four Army soldiers in it being
blown apart by the sort
of remote-controlled bomb that would become a commonplace of insurgents in America's twenty-first century wars. And a second, the
loudest during my six months there, as a generator perhaps 20 feet from our tent exploded into flames from an incoming RPG round
that found its target in the middle of the night.
This is real . I kept saying that to myself, but truthfully the more accurate word would have been surreal . The
care packages I was receiving, the Tootsie Rolls and Cracker Jacks and letters from my wife back home telling me how much she missed
me might as well have been from another planet.
Our helicopters flew daily reconnaissance missions ("Eyes over Mog" we called them) above the Somali capital. We did battle damage
assessments, checking out pockmarked buildings the AC-130s had targeted the night before, or the shot-up safe house that Somali warlord
Mohamed Aidid -- our operation's target (just as the US would target Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and the leaders of various
terror groups) -- had reportedly been using as a control center. Once a beautiful mansion, it was now riddled with thousands of bullet
holes and TOW missile craters.
We flew over Mogadishu's bustling marketplace, sometimes so low that the corrugated metal roofs of the stalls would blow off from
our rotor wash. We were always looking for what we called "technicals" -- pick-up trucks with machine guns mounted in their beds
-- to take out. Viewing that crowded marketplace through the sight of a ready-to-rock M-60 machine gun helped reinforce the message
that all of this was beyond surreal.
Lives were ending violently here every day, and my own life, too, could have ended at any moment. Yet it was just about impossible
to believe that all of a sudden I was in the middle of a violent set of incidents in a third-world hellhole, the sort of thing you
might read about in the paper, or more likely, would never hear about at all. You'd never know about our near-nightly scrambles to
our fighting positions behind a pile of sandbags, as the AK-47s cracked and the tracers flew overhead. It wouldn't even register
as a blip in the news back home. In some bizarre way, I was there and it still wasn't registering.
A Soldier Just Like Me
Just days after returning home from Somalia, I (like so many others) watched the footage of dead American soldiers -- at least
one a Black Hawk crew chief -- being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by cheering Somalis. For the first time, I found myself
filled with a sense of dread, a profound that-could-have-been-me feeling. I imagined my mother looking at such a photo of me, of
her dead son's body -- as someone's mother was undoubtedly doing.
If my interior landscape was beginning to shift in unsettling ways, if the war, my war, was finally starting to come home, I remained
only minimally aware of it. My wife and I started a family, I got a civilian job, went to college in the evening using the GI Bill,
and wrote a couple of books about music -- my refuge.
Still, after Somalia, I found myself drawn to stories about war. I reread Stephen Ambrose's blow-by-blow account of the D-Day
landings, picked up Ron Kovic's Vietnam memoir, Born On The Fourth Of July , for the first time, and even read All Quiet
On The Western Front . And all of them somehow floored me. But it wasn't until I watched
Body of War , Phil Donahue's 2008 documentary about Iraq war veteran
and antiwar activist Tomas Young, that something seemed truly different, that I simply couldn't shake the feeling it could have been
me.
Tomas was a kid who had limited options -- just like me. He signed up for the military, at least in part, because he wanted to
go to college -- just like me. Yes, just like so many other kids, too -- but above all, just like me.
He, too, was deployed to one of America's misbegotten wars in a later hellhole, and that's where our stories began to differ.
Five days after his unit arrived in Iraq -- a place he deployed to grudgingly, never understanding why he was being sent there and
not Afghanistan -- Tomas was shot, his spinal cord severed, and most of his body paralyzed. When he came home at age 24, he fought
the natural urge to suffer in silence and instead spoke out against the war in Iraq. Body of War chronicled his first full
year of very partial recovery and the blossoming of his antiwar activism.
Just a few weeks after the film's release, however, it all came crashing down. He suffered a pulmonary embolism and sank into
a coma, awakening to find that he'd suffered a brain injury and lost much of the use of his hands and his ability to speak clearly.
The ensuing years were filled with pain and debilitating health setbacks. By early 2013, he was in hospice care, suffering excruciating
abdominal pain, without his colon, and on a feeding tube and a pain pump. Gaunt, withered, exhausted, he continued to agitate against
America's never-ending war on terror from his bed, and finally wrote a "
last letter " to former President George
W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, airing his grievances, which got
significant media
attention .
When I read it, I felt that he might have been me if I hadn't lucked out in Mogadishu two decades earlier. Maybe that's what made
me reach out to him that April and tell him I wanted to learn more about what had happened to him in the years between Body of
War and his last letter, about what it meant to go from being an antiwar agitator in a manual wheelchair to a bedridden quadriplegic
on a feeding tube and under hospice care, planning to soon end his own life.
A Map of the Ravages of War
When I finally met Tomas, I realized how much he and I had in common: the same taste in music and books, the same urge to be a
writer. We were both quick with the smart-ass comment and never made to be model soldiers because we liked to question things.
Each moment we spent together only connected us more deeply and brought me closer to the self that war had created in me, the
self I had kept at such a distance all these years. I began writing his story because I felt compelled to show other Americans someone
no different from them who had had his life, his reality, upended by one of our military adventures abroad, by deployment to a country
so distant that it's an abstraction to most of us who, in these days of the All-Volunteer Army, don't have a personal connection
either to the US military or to the wars it so regularly fights.
A historically low percentage of our population -- less than
half a percent
-- actually serves in the military. Compare that to around 9% during the Vietnam War, and 12% during World War II. Remarkably
few of us ever see combat, ever even know anyone who was in combat, ever get to hear firsthand stories of what went on or witness
what life is like for such a returning veteran. Not surprisingly, America's wars now largely go on without us. There is no personal
connection. Here in "the homeland" -- despite the overblown fears of "terrorism" -- it remains "peacetime." As a consequence, few
of us are engaged by veterans' issues or the prospect -- essentially, the guarantee -- of more war in the American future.
Tomas understood the importance of sharing the brutal fullness of his story. For him, there were to be no pulled punches. When
I told him I wanted others to learn of his harrowing tale, of his version of the human cost of war, that I wanted to help him to
tell that story, he responded that he had indeed wanted to write his own book. He'd scrapped the project because he could no longer
write, and even Dragon voice-to-text software wouldn't work because his speech had become so degraded after the embolism struck.
Instead, he shared everything. Tomas and his wife, Claudia, opened their lives to me. I slept in their basement. During my periodic
visits, he introduced me to an expansive mind in a shrunken world, a mind that wanted to range widely in a body mostly confined to
a hospital bed, surrounded by books, magazines, and an array of tubing that delivered medications and removed bodily wastes in a
darkened bedroom.
"I need to be fed," he said to me one day. "Do you want to see what that's like?" Then, he lifted his shirt and showed me the
maze of tubing and scars on his body. It was a map of the ravages of war.
He was unflinchingly honest, sensing the importance of his story in a country where such experiences have become uncommon fare.
Like his comic book heroes Batman and the Punisher, he wanted to make sure that no one would have to endure what he'd gone through.
An All-Too-Real Life and Surreal Wars
Tomas Young's war ended on the night before Veterans' Day 2014 when he passed away quietly in his sleep. His pain finally came
to an end.
The bullets that hit him in the streets of Baghdad in 2004 brought on more than a decade of agony and hardship, not only for him,
but for his mother, his siblings, and his wife. Their suffering has yet to end.
Stories of the reality of war and its impact on this country are more crucial now than ever as America's wars seem only to multiply.
Among us are more than
2.5 million veterans of our recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We owe it to them to read their accounts -- and an
increasing number of them are out there
-- and do our best to understand what they've been through, and what they continue to go through. Then perhaps we can use that knowledge
not only to properly address their needs, but to properly debate and possibly -- like Tomas Young -- even protest America's ongoing
wars.
It would have been perfectly understandable for Tomas to have faced the pain, frustration, and failing health of his final years
privately and in silence, but that wasn't him. Instead, he made his story part of our American record. To stay on top of important
articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com
here .
Mark Wilkerson spent eight years in the
US Army as an AH-1 Cobra and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crew chief with the 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions. He was deployed
with the 101st to Somalia for six months in 1993. He is the author of Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend and co-wrote
Pearl Jam Twenty . He has three children: Alex, Nick and Sam. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Melissa. His
latest book is Tomas Young's War
(Haymarket Books).
FBI monitored phone calls of Trump's personal lawyer
Notable quotes:
"... US prosecutors, according to news reports, have also been covertly reading Cohen's emails. ..."
"... Spying on a lawyer's phone calls and Internet communications is considered highly unusual, given the principle of lawyer-client privilege. However, the Daily Beast ..."
"... Indeed, Trump's enemies within the ruling elite and the state apparatus know with whom they are dealing. The billionaire president is a representative of the criminal American financial oligarchy, a product of the New York real estate, casino gambling and reality TV milieu. His election expressed the degradation of American bourgeois politics and the entire political system. ..."
"... That being said, the methods being employed by Trump's factional opponents within the ruling elite are profoundly anti-democratic. The Mueller investigation itself is based on concocted and unsubstantiated allegations of Russian "meddling" in the elections and collusion by the Trump campaign in Moscow's supposed efforts to swing the election in his favor. ..."
"... This narrative, which has dominated US politics for nearly two years, has been used by the Democratic Party and most of the corporate media to attempt to whip up a war hysteria against Russia and force Trump to more rapidly escalate Washington's wars in the Middle East. It is also the pretext for the expanding campaign to censor the Internet and criminalize political dissent in the name of combating foreign-inspired "fake news." ..."
"... The context for the latest revelations is a sharpening of the conflict between the Trump White House and Mueller. Over the past several weeks, Trump has reshuffled the legal team handling his dealings with the special counsel to pursue a more aggressive legal response to the investigation. Last month, Trump named former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to head the team, following the resignation of John Dowd in March. ..."
"... This week, the White House announced the resignation of Ty Cobb, who had counseled Trump to adopt a cooperative posture toward Mueller, advising that such a course would lead to a more rapid conclusion to the investigation. Not only has that not occurred, but Mueller has increased pressure on Trump to agree to an interview with his investigators. ..."
"... Flood has been described in the press as a "wartime consigliere." His appointment is seen as increasing the possibility of a legal fight to block an interview with Mueller that could ultimately go to the US Supreme Court. ..."
"... In a Wednesday night television interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Giuliani excoriated former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired last May after Comey announced that the FBI was investigating possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Giuliani called him "a disgraceful liar" and said he should be indicted for leaking "confidential FBI information." He called the Mueller probe "a completely tainted investigation" and denounced the FBI raid on Cohen as a "storm trooper" operation. ..."
Multiple media reports on Thursday revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation monitored and logged the phone calls of President
Donald Trump's personal lawyer and confidante, Michael Cohen, in the period leading up to the FBI raid on Cohen's office and residences
in April.
According to NBC News, at least one of the calls that were tracked was between Cohen and Trump.
The extraordinary fact that the federal government's chief police agency, an integral part of the country's intelligence network,
is monitoring telephone communications between the president and his self-described "fixer" points to the explosive level of conflict
within the American ruling class and its state.
The revelation comes a month after the FBI, based on a referral from Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating
alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign, raided Cohen's office and residences
as part of a criminal probe into his business dealings. FBI agents seized Cohen's financial records, computer hard drive, cell phones
and taped recordings of conversations. Ostensibly, the main concern of federal prosecutors is Cohen's involvement in hush-money payoffs
to two women, a porn star and a former Playboy playmate, who claim to have had sexual relations with Trump.
US prosecutors, according to news reports, have also been covertly reading Cohen's emails.
Spying on a lawyer's phone calls and Internet communications is considered highly unusual, given the principle of lawyer-client
privilege. However, the Daily Beast quoted Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, as saying, "That sort of thing happens
all the time if you're dealing with mob wiretaps."
Indeed, Trump's enemies within the ruling elite and the state apparatus know with whom they are dealing. The billionaire president
is a representative of the criminal American financial oligarchy, a product of the New York real estate, casino gambling and reality
TV milieu. His election expressed the degradation of American bourgeois politics and the entire political system.
There is little doubt that the FBI and Mueller have seized more than enough evidence of wrong-doing in Trump's business dealings
to bring down an indictment, either to attempt a criminal prosecution -- never before carried out against a sitting president --
or force Trump to resign. Alternately, an indictment could become part of an impeachment effort should the Democrats win control
of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections.
No one is more aware of the threat posed by these developments than Trump himself.
That being said, the methods being employed by Trump's factional opponents within the ruling elite are profoundly anti-democratic.
The Mueller investigation itself is based on concocted and unsubstantiated allegations of Russian "meddling" in the elections and
collusion by the Trump campaign in Moscow's supposed efforts to swing the election in his favor.
This narrative, which has dominated US politics for nearly two years, has been used by the Democratic Party and most of the corporate
media to attempt to whip up a war hysteria against Russia and force Trump to more rapidly escalate Washington's wars in the Middle
East. It is also the pretext for the expanding campaign to censor the Internet and criminalize political dissent in the name of combating
foreign-inspired "fake news."
These are the methods of palace coup, without the slightest democratic or progressive content. Should Trump be removed as a result
of such a campaign, the result would be to shift the political system even further to the right.
The context for the latest revelations is a sharpening of the conflict between the Trump White House and Mueller. Over the past
several weeks, Trump has reshuffled the legal team handling his dealings with the special counsel to pursue a more aggressive legal
response to the investigation. Last month, Trump named former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to head the team, following the resignation
of John Dowd in March.
This week, the White House announced the resignation of Ty Cobb, who had counseled Trump to adopt a cooperative posture toward
Mueller, advising that such a course would lead to a more rapid conclusion to the investigation. Not only has that not occurred,
but Mueller has increased pressure on Trump to agree to an interview with his investigators.
This week, it was reported that in discussions with Trump's lawyers in March, Mueller threatened to subpoena Trump to appear before
a grand jury if he did not voluntarily agree to an interview. On Wednesday, it was announced that Emmet Flood, a Republican who served
as one of Bill Clinton's lawyers during the House of Representatives impeachment process in 1998, would replace Cobb.
Flood has been described in the press as a "wartime consigliere." His appointment is seen as increasing the possibility of a legal
fight to block an interview with Mueller that could ultimately go to the US Supreme Court.
In a Wednesday night television interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Giuliani excoriated former FBI Director James Comey, whom
Trump fired last May after Comey announced that the FBI was investigating possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Giuliani
called him "a disgraceful liar" and said he should be indicted for leaking "confidential FBI information." He called the Mueller
probe "a completely tainted investigation" and denounced the FBI raid on Cohen as a "storm trooper" operation.
He cited a list of 49 questions for Trump prepared by Trump's lawyers on the basis of an oral presentation by Mueller's investigators
and called the wide-ranging queries concerning links to Russians and potential obstruction of justice, including the firing of Comey,
a "perjury trap." The questions were leaked and published earlier this week by the New York Times . The Times ,
along with the Washington Post , have been in the forefront of the media witch hunt against Russia.
On the question of Trump agreeing to be interviewed by Mueller, Giuliani said, "Right now, the odds are against it."
Most of the media commentary on the interview has focused on Giuliani's statement that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000
in hush money he paid to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Cohen has said he paid the money from his own
funds and without Trump's knowledge, and last month Trump told reporters that he had no knowledge of the payoff.
It is striking that despite the media obsession with Trump and Russia, and the single-minded focus of the Democratic Party on
this reactionary campaign, the public remains skeptical, if not hostile, to the entire matter. The Democrats have said virtually
nothing about Trump's war on immigrants, including the barbaric treatment of the Central American caravan of refugees forced to camp
out at the US border and the denial of their right to asylum. The Democratic Party has dropped its phony opposition to Trump's tax
cut for corporations and the rich and barely noted the mounting assault on social programs, from Medicaid to food stamps to housing
subsidies for the poor.
This is reflected in recent polls, which show Trump's approval rating actually increasing and the Democrats' edge in the coming
midterm elections cut in half since the beginning of the year.
There is mass opposition in the working class and among young people to Trump and his chauvinist, militarist and pro-corporate
policies. It is reflected in the upsurge of teachers' strikes and protests in defiance of the corporatist unions, which the unions
and the Democrats are doing everything they can to isolate and suppress.
This emerging movement of the working class in the US and internationally is intensifying the warfare within the American ruling
class and state. The crisis is being fueled not only by sharp differences over foreign policy -- including tactical differences over
Trump's threat to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and his trade war measures -- but also by a general loss of confidence in Trump's
ability to manage either the global affairs of US imperialism or the tense internal social and political situation.
The independent social and political struggle of the working class is the only basis for a progressive solution to the crisis
of American capitalism. The opposition of workers to Trump can find no progressive outlet within the framework of the capitalist
two-party system. Both factions in the current political wars, notwithstanding their bitter differences, agree on a strategy of expanding
war abroad and austerity and repression at home.
FBI monitored phone calls of Trump's personal lawyer
Notable quotes:
"... US prosecutors, according to news reports, have also been covertly reading Cohen's emails. ..."
"... Spying on a lawyer's phone calls and Internet communications is considered highly unusual, given the principle of lawyer-client privilege. However, the Daily Beast ..."
"... Indeed, Trump's enemies within the ruling elite and the state apparatus know with whom they are dealing. The billionaire president is a representative of the criminal American financial oligarchy, a product of the New York real estate, casino gambling and reality TV milieu. His election expressed the degradation of American bourgeois politics and the entire political system. ..."
"... That being said, the methods being employed by Trump's factional opponents within the ruling elite are profoundly anti-democratic. The Mueller investigation itself is based on concocted and unsubstantiated allegations of Russian "meddling" in the elections and collusion by the Trump campaign in Moscow's supposed efforts to swing the election in his favor. ..."
"... This narrative, which has dominated US politics for nearly two years, has been used by the Democratic Party and most of the corporate media to attempt to whip up a war hysteria against Russia and force Trump to more rapidly escalate Washington's wars in the Middle East. It is also the pretext for the expanding campaign to censor the Internet and criminalize political dissent in the name of combating foreign-inspired "fake news." ..."
"... The context for the latest revelations is a sharpening of the conflict between the Trump White House and Mueller. Over the past several weeks, Trump has reshuffled the legal team handling his dealings with the special counsel to pursue a more aggressive legal response to the investigation. Last month, Trump named former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to head the team, following the resignation of John Dowd in March. ..."
"... This week, the White House announced the resignation of Ty Cobb, who had counseled Trump to adopt a cooperative posture toward Mueller, advising that such a course would lead to a more rapid conclusion to the investigation. Not only has that not occurred, but Mueller has increased pressure on Trump to agree to an interview with his investigators. ..."
"... Flood has been described in the press as a "wartime consigliere." His appointment is seen as increasing the possibility of a legal fight to block an interview with Mueller that could ultimately go to the US Supreme Court. ..."
"... In a Wednesday night television interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Giuliani excoriated former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired last May after Comey announced that the FBI was investigating possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Giuliani called him "a disgraceful liar" and said he should be indicted for leaking "confidential FBI information." He called the Mueller probe "a completely tainted investigation" and denounced the FBI raid on Cohen as a "storm trooper" operation. ..."
Multiple media reports on Thursday revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation monitored and logged the phone calls of President
Donald Trump's personal lawyer and confidante, Michael Cohen, in the period leading up to the FBI raid on Cohen's office and residences
in April.
According to NBC News, at least one of the calls that were tracked was between Cohen and Trump.
The extraordinary fact that the federal government's chief police agency, an integral part of the country's intelligence network,
is monitoring telephone communications between the president and his self-described "fixer" points to the explosive level of conflict
within the American ruling class and its state.
The revelation comes a month after the FBI, based on a referral from Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating
alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign, raided Cohen's office and residences
as part of a criminal probe into his business dealings. FBI agents seized Cohen's financial records, computer hard drive, cell phones
and taped recordings of conversations. Ostensibly, the main concern of federal prosecutors is Cohen's involvement in hush-money payoffs
to two women, a porn star and a former Playboy playmate, who claim to have had sexual relations with Trump.
US prosecutors, according to news reports, have also been covertly reading Cohen's emails.
Spying on a lawyer's phone calls and Internet communications is considered highly unusual, given the principle of lawyer-client
privilege. However, the Daily Beast quoted Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, as saying, "That sort of thing happens
all the time if you're dealing with mob wiretaps."
Indeed, Trump's enemies within the ruling elite and the state apparatus know with whom they are dealing. The billionaire president
is a representative of the criminal American financial oligarchy, a product of the New York real estate, casino gambling and reality
TV milieu. His election expressed the degradation of American bourgeois politics and the entire political system.
There is little doubt that the FBI and Mueller have seized more than enough evidence of wrong-doing in Trump's business dealings
to bring down an indictment, either to attempt a criminal prosecution -- never before carried out against a sitting president --
or force Trump to resign. Alternately, an indictment could become part of an impeachment effort should the Democrats win control
of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections.
No one is more aware of the threat posed by these developments than Trump himself.
That being said, the methods being employed by Trump's factional opponents within the ruling elite are profoundly anti-democratic.
The Mueller investigation itself is based on concocted and unsubstantiated allegations of Russian "meddling" in the elections and
collusion by the Trump campaign in Moscow's supposed efforts to swing the election in his favor.
This narrative, which has dominated US politics for nearly two years, has been used by the Democratic Party and most of the corporate
media to attempt to whip up a war hysteria against Russia and force Trump to more rapidly escalate Washington's wars in the Middle
East. It is also the pretext for the expanding campaign to censor the Internet and criminalize political dissent in the name of combating
foreign-inspired "fake news."
These are the methods of palace coup, without the slightest democratic or progressive content. Should Trump be removed as a result
of such a campaign, the result would be to shift the political system even further to the right.
The context for the latest revelations is a sharpening of the conflict between the Trump White House and Mueller. Over the past
several weeks, Trump has reshuffled the legal team handling his dealings with the special counsel to pursue a more aggressive legal
response to the investigation. Last month, Trump named former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to head the team, following the resignation
of John Dowd in March.
This week, the White House announced the resignation of Ty Cobb, who had counseled Trump to adopt a cooperative posture toward
Mueller, advising that such a course would lead to a more rapid conclusion to the investigation. Not only has that not occurred,
but Mueller has increased pressure on Trump to agree to an interview with his investigators.
This week, it was reported that in discussions with Trump's lawyers in March, Mueller threatened to subpoena Trump to appear before
a grand jury if he did not voluntarily agree to an interview. On Wednesday, it was announced that Emmet Flood, a Republican who served
as one of Bill Clinton's lawyers during the House of Representatives impeachment process in 1998, would replace Cobb.
Flood has been described in the press as a "wartime consigliere." His appointment is seen as increasing the possibility of a legal
fight to block an interview with Mueller that could ultimately go to the US Supreme Court.
In a Wednesday night television interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Giuliani excoriated former FBI Director James Comey, whom
Trump fired last May after Comey announced that the FBI was investigating possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Giuliani
called him "a disgraceful liar" and said he should be indicted for leaking "confidential FBI information." He called the Mueller
probe "a completely tainted investigation" and denounced the FBI raid on Cohen as a "storm trooper" operation.
He cited a list of 49 questions for Trump prepared by Trump's lawyers on the basis of an oral presentation by Mueller's investigators
and called the wide-ranging queries concerning links to Russians and potential obstruction of justice, including the firing of Comey,
a "perjury trap." The questions were leaked and published earlier this week by the New York Times . The Times ,
along with the Washington Post , have been in the forefront of the media witch hunt against Russia.
On the question of Trump agreeing to be interviewed by Mueller, Giuliani said, "Right now, the odds are against it."
Most of the media commentary on the interview has focused on Giuliani's statement that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000
in hush money he paid to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Cohen has said he paid the money from his own
funds and without Trump's knowledge, and last month Trump told reporters that he had no knowledge of the payoff.
It is striking that despite the media obsession with Trump and Russia, and the single-minded focus of the Democratic Party on
this reactionary campaign, the public remains skeptical, if not hostile, to the entire matter. The Democrats have said virtually
nothing about Trump's war on immigrants, including the barbaric treatment of the Central American caravan of refugees forced to camp
out at the US border and the denial of their right to asylum. The Democratic Party has dropped its phony opposition to Trump's tax
cut for corporations and the rich and barely noted the mounting assault on social programs, from Medicaid to food stamps to housing
subsidies for the poor.
This is reflected in recent polls, which show Trump's approval rating actually increasing and the Democrats' edge in the coming
midterm elections cut in half since the beginning of the year.
There is mass opposition in the working class and among young people to Trump and his chauvinist, militarist and pro-corporate
policies. It is reflected in the upsurge of teachers' strikes and protests in defiance of the corporatist unions, which the unions
and the Democrats are doing everything they can to isolate and suppress.
This emerging movement of the working class in the US and internationally is intensifying the warfare within the American ruling
class and state. The crisis is being fueled not only by sharp differences over foreign policy -- including tactical differences over
Trump's threat to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and his trade war measures -- but also by a general loss of confidence in Trump's
ability to manage either the global affairs of US imperialism or the tense internal social and political situation.
The independent social and political struggle of the working class is the only basis for a progressive solution to the crisis
of American capitalism. The opposition of workers to Trump can find no progressive outlet within the framework of the capitalist
two-party system. Both factions in the current political wars, notwithstanding their bitter differences, agree on a strategy of expanding
war abroad and austerity and repression at home.
Key figures on anti-trump color revolution including Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey are closely connected with Clinton foundation
Notable quotes:
"... Guess who took over this investigation in 2002? Bet you can't guess. No other than James Comey. ..."
"... Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005? No other than the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein. ..."
"... Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame??? I know, it's a miracle, just a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances: Robert Mueller. ..."
"... Then of all surprises, in April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy on Halloween. ..."
"... The DOJ didn't even convene a Grand Jury. Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself, like the true "Gangsta" Homey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016 and exonerates the Hillary from any wrongdoing. ..."
"... It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation witch hunt by Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues. ..."
I'm on the other side of the planet but a friend in the Mid-West sent me this and I thought I'd ask if anyone else had seen
it?
Is there corruption in DC?
From 2001 to 2005 there was an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation. A Grand Jury had been empaneled. The investigation
was triggered by the pardon of Marc Rich ..
Governments from around the world had donated to the "Charity". Yet, from 2001 to 2003 none of those "Donations" to the Clinton
Foundation were declared.
Guess who took over this investigation in 2002? Bet you can't guess. No other than James Comey.
Guess who was transferred in to the Internal Revenue Service to run the Tax Exemption Branch of the IRS? Your friend and mine,
Lois "Be on The Look Out" (BOLO) Lerner.
It gets better, well not really, but this is all just a series of strange coincidences, right?
Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005? No other than the Assistant Attorney
General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein.
Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame??? I know, it's a miracle, just
a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances: Robert Mueller.
What do all four casting characters have in common? They all were briefed and were front line investigators into the Clinton
Foundation Investigation.
Now that's just a coincidence, right? Ok, lets chalk the last one up to mere chance.
Let's fast forward to 2009. James Comey leaves the Justice Department to go and cash-in at Lockheed Martin.
Hillary Clinton is running the State Department, on her own personal email server.
The Uranium One "issue" comes to the attention of the Hillary. Like all good public servants do, you know looking out for America's
best interest, she decides to support the decision and approve the sale of 20% of US Uranium to no other than, the Russians.
Now you would think that this is a fairly straight up deal, except it wasn't, I question what did the People get out of it??
Oddly enough, prior to the sales approval, Bill Clinton goes to Moscow, gets paid 500K for a one-hour speech then meets with Vladimir
Putin at his home for a few hours.
Ok, no big deal right? Well, not so fast, the FBI had a mole inside this scheme.
Guess who was the FBI Director during this time frame? Yep, Robert Mueller. He requested the State Department allow himself
to deliver a Uranium Sample to Moscow in 2009, under the guise of a "sting" operation -- (see leaked secret cable 09STATE38943)..
while it is never clear if Mueller did deliver the sample, the "implication" is there ..
Guess who was handling that case within the Justice Department out of the US Attorney's Office in Maryland ?? No other than,
Rod Rosenstein.
Remember the "informant" inside the FBI -- - Guess what happened to the informant? Department of Justice placed a GAG order
on him and threatened to lock him up if he spoke about the Uranium Deal. Personally, I have to question how does 20% of the most
strategic asset of the United States of America end up in Russian hands??? The FBI had an informant, a mole providing inside information
to the FBI on the criminal enterprise and NOTHING happens, except to the informant -- Strange !!
Guess what happened soon after the sale was approved? 145 million dollars in "donations" made their way into the Clinton Foundation
from entities directly connected to the Uranium One deal.
Guess who was still at the Internal Revenue Service working the Charitable Division?
No other than, Lois Lerner. Ok, that's all just another series of coincidences, nothing to see here, right? Let's fast forward
to 2015.
Due to a series of tragic events in Benghazi and after the nine "investigations" the House, Senate and at State Department,
Trey Gowdy who was running the 10th investigation as Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, discovers that the Hillary
ran the State Department on an unclassified, unauthorized, outlaw personal email server.
He also discovered that none of those emails had been turned over when she departed her "Public Service" as Secretary of State
which was required by law.
He also discovered that there was Top Secret information contained within her personally archived email. Sparing you the State
Departments cover up, the nostrums they floated, the delay tactics that were employed and the outright lies that were spewed forth
from the necks of the Kerry State Department, they did everything humanly possible to cover for Hillary.
Guess who became FBI Director in 2013? Guess who secured 17 no bid contracts for his employer (Lockheed Martin) with the State
Department and was rewarded with a six million dollar thank you present when he departed his employer. No other than James Comey.
Folks if I did this when I worked for the government, I would have been locked up -- The State Department didn't even comply with
the EEO and small business requirements the government places on all Request For Proposals (RFP) on contracts -- It amazes me
how all those no-bids just went right through at State -- simply amazing and no Inspector General investigation !!
Next after leaving the private sector Comey is the FBI Director in charge of the "Clinton Email Investigation" after of course
his FBI Investigates the Lois Lerner "Matter" at the Internal Revenue Service and exonerates her. Nope couldn't find any crimes
there. Nothing here to report --
Then of all surprises, in April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the
DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy on Halloween.
The DOJ didn't even convene a Grand Jury. Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself,
like the true "Gangsta" Homey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016 and
exonerates the Hillary from any wrongdoing. As I've said many times, July 8, 2016 is the date that will live in infamy of
the American Justice System ..
Can you see the pattern?
It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey
leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation witch hunt by Rosenstein to provide
cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues.
FISA Abuse, political espionage .. pick a crime, any crime, chances are this group and a few others did it. All the same players.
All compromised and conflicted. All working fervently to NOT go to jail themselves. All connected in one way or another to the
Clinton's. They are like battery acid, they corrode and corrupt everything they touch. How many lives have the Clinton's destroyed?
As of this writing, the Clinton Foundation, in its 20+ years of operation of being the largest International Charity Fraud
in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Let us not forget that Comey's brother works for DLA Piper, the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation's taxes.
"... In 2007, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Fellowship of Reconciliation used a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to reveal more than 1,900 military projects conducted at 26 universities between 2001 and 2006, worth a total of £725 million. ..."
Rupert Murdoch's the Times attempted a witch-hunt of UK academics who have
questioned the government's narrative on Syria. This scurrilous campaign, targeting Professor
Tim Hayward (University of Edinburgh), Professor Piers Robinson (University of Sheffield) and
Lecturer Tara McCormack (Leicester University) as "Apologists for Assad," is a sharp expression
of how universities have become battlegrounds in the global drive to war.
As the ruling class work to militarise society in accordance with the recently outlined
Fusion Doctrine, higher education and research institutions are being transformed into
appendages of British imperialism.
The process is well underway. Contrary to the Times ' ravings about
universities being hotbeds of left-wing and anti-war sentiment, the institutions and their
leaderships are already deeply integrated with the armed forces and private military
contractors.
In 2007, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Fellowship of Reconciliation used a
series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to reveal more than 1,900 military projects
conducted at 26 universities between 2001 and 2006, worth a total of £725
million.
The UK Government's military research establishment -- the Ministry of Defence (MoD),
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Defence Evaluation and Research Agency and Atomics
Weapons Establishment (AWE) -- were involved in a quarter of these projects. Arms
manufacturers, led by Rolls Royce, BAE Systems and QinetiQ, sponsored the remainder.
Between 2008 and 2011, according to research by the Huffington Post , the Russell
Group of 24 elite British universities received £83 million from the same sources listed
above. Imperial College London topped the list with £15.2 million, mainly from the AWE.
Imperial is joined by Bristol, Cambridge, Cranfield, and Heriot-Watt in a "strategic alliance"
with the AWE: The five universities received £15 million in the years 2010-12.
More recently, figures released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that, in
the past three years, 15 universities with prestigious engineering departments have received
£40 million in grants from military contractors. These grants have funded projects
including collaboration on military submarine technology between Rolls Royce and the University
of Leeds, a drone project worked on by Boeing and Bristol University, and a stealth drone
project at Manchester run by BAE.
While the money involved is relatively small when compared to total university research
funding, the military projects have a weight of influence beyond their size. Military funding
is concentrated in institutions and departments -- mainly engineering -- where the armed forces
and arms dealers have a special authority. Such funding is considered a prestigious source of
investment, from which other grants and opportunities will flow. Military contracts are
fiercely competed for and proudly advertised.
On the back of this commercial turn to the military-industrial complex, moreover,
universities are working closely with the armed forces to provide education and recruitment
opportunities. Fourteen institutions (including Aston, Birmingham, Cambridge, Imperial College,
Loughborough, Newcastle, Northumbria, Portsmouth, Southampton and Strathclyde) are in a
partnership with the MoD to provide the Defence Technical Undergraduate Scheme (DTUS). This is
a university sponsorship programme for students who want to join the Royal Navy, British Army,
Royal Air Force or Engineering and Science branch of the MoD Civil Service as technical
officers after they graduate.
There are roughly 800 of these students (who formally hold the ranks of Officer Cadet or
Midshipman in their respective reserve forces) in any one year, grouped into four regional
units: Taurus Squadron, Thunderer Squadron, Trojan Squadron and Typhoon Squadron. The
commanding officer of each unit has visiting lecturer status at the associated universities.
Graduates are required to serve in the armed forces or MoD for a minimum of three years after
graduating and completing Initial Officer Training.
University resources are thus put at the service of the military to train its key technical
staff. They return the favour by lending the armed forces' support to the running of student
life on campus, doubtless with the associated military ethos. Loughborough University describes
how its DTUS students "regularly support Open Days, Freshers' Fairs and other student
activities."
In addition to the DTUS programme, the Army, Navy and RAF provide a range of other
scholarships for prospective soldiers.
The Army offers 150 standard bursaries a year, worth £6,000, as well as Technical and
Enhanced Army undergraduate bursaries, worth up to £14,000 and £24,000
respectively. Students can also receive £5,000-10,000 a year through the Army Medical
Service Professionally Qualified Officer bursary. The Royal Navy also offers a standard
bursary, worth £1,500 a year and a Technical Bursary worth £4,000 a year. Future
RAF Medical Officers can get a grant to cover all their tuition fees.
All sponsorship requires three years of service in the armed forces after completing
education.
While at university, these and other students can participate in one of the University
Service Units -- the University Officer Training Corps, University Air Squadrons, or University
Royal Navy Units -- who maintain a permanent presence on numerous university campuses.
In 2015, there were 6,580 members of these organisations in Britain, spread across 19
Officer Training Corps units and 14 Air and Navy units. The fundamental purpose of these
groups, besides providing a path into the officer ranks, is to train propagandists for the
military within higher education and wider society. The University Royal Navy Unit at Cambridge
describes its role as being to "educate and inform society's future potential opinion formers
and leaders of the need for and role of the Royal Navy."
So great is the influence of the armed forces on campus that several universities have
established specific military-focused degree courses.
In 2011, the University of Wolverhampton created a BSc in Armed Forces, Armed Forces and
Combat Medicine, and Armed Forces and Combat Engineering. The list of universities currently
offering War Studies or related courses includes Queens Belfast, Glasgow, Kent, Coventry,
Swansea, Buckingham, Bradford, King's College London (KCL) and others. KCL is home to "the only
academic department in the world to focus solely on the complexities of conflict and security,"
comprising 95 academic staff and over 2,000 students.
Cranfield University offers courses in subjects like Military Economic Systems Engineering,
Military Aerospace and Airworthiness, Communication Electronic Warfare, and Explosives Ordnance
Engineering.
As well as providing training for the military, universities across the country are happy to
play host to recruiting sergeants at Freshers' Fairs and Welcome Weeks. In 2013, FOI requests
found that the armed forces had made 341 visits to universities in the previous two years.
None of these developments has gone unopposed. Demilitarisation campaigning groups are
active at many universities, with some institutions having banned visits from the armed forces
in response to student protests. Organisations like the Campaign Against the Arms and Trade and
Scientists for Global Responsibility have consistently exposed and opposed the involvement of
military forces in universities. All of this is testimony to the immense anti-war sentiment
which exists among the student body and academics.
To wage a successful struggle against the encroachment of the military on campus, however,
requires that this sentiment be consciously organised behind a socialist, anti-war perspective.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is dedicated to the formation
of such a movement on campuses across the country. Eric Sommer • 2 days
ago
Getting financial support and training for science and for university students sounds nice,
and being part of the 'royal' navy or 'royal' airforce seems appealing for some - until we
remember the purpose: To induct students into research and other support work for criminal
wars and war crimes involving the UK governments participation in military aggression against
helpless nations and which slaughters people who have never attacked or endangered Britain or
its people.
Key figures on anti-trump color revolution including Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey are closely connected with Clinton foundation
Notable quotes:
"... Guess who took over this investigation in 2002? Bet you can't guess. No other than James Comey. ..."
"... Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005? No other than the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein. ..."
"... Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame??? I know, it's a miracle, just a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances: Robert Mueller. ..."
"... Then of all surprises, in April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy on Halloween. ..."
"... The DOJ didn't even convene a Grand Jury. Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself, like the true "Gangsta" Homey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016 and exonerates the Hillary from any wrongdoing. ..."
"... It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation witch hunt by Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues. ..."
I'm on the other side of the planet but a friend in the Mid-West sent me this and I thought I'd ask if anyone else had seen
it?
Is there corruption in DC?
From 2001 to 2005 there was an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation. A Grand Jury had been empaneled. The investigation
was triggered by the pardon of Marc Rich ..
Governments from around the world had donated to the "Charity". Yet, from 2001 to 2003 none of those "Donations" to the Clinton
Foundation were declared.
Guess who took over this investigation in 2002? Bet you can't guess. No other than James Comey.
Guess who was transferred in to the Internal Revenue Service to run the Tax Exemption Branch of the IRS? Your friend and mine,
Lois "Be on The Look Out" (BOLO) Lerner.
It gets better, well not really, but this is all just a series of strange coincidences, right?
Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005? No other than the Assistant Attorney
General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein.
Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame??? I know, it's a miracle, just
a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances: Robert Mueller.
What do all four casting characters have in common? They all were briefed and were front line investigators into the Clinton
Foundation Investigation.
Now that's just a coincidence, right? Ok, lets chalk the last one up to mere chance.
Let's fast forward to 2009. James Comey leaves the Justice Department to go and cash-in at Lockheed Martin.
Hillary Clinton is running the State Department, on her own personal email server.
The Uranium One "issue" comes to the attention of the Hillary. Like all good public servants do, you know looking out for America's
best interest, she decides to support the decision and approve the sale of 20% of US Uranium to no other than, the Russians.
Now you would think that this is a fairly straight up deal, except it wasn't, I question what did the People get out of it??
Oddly enough, prior to the sales approval, Bill Clinton goes to Moscow, gets paid 500K for a one-hour speech then meets with Vladimir
Putin at his home for a few hours.
Ok, no big deal right? Well, not so fast, the FBI had a mole inside this scheme.
Guess who was the FBI Director during this time frame? Yep, Robert Mueller. He requested the State Department allow himself
to deliver a Uranium Sample to Moscow in 2009, under the guise of a "sting" operation -- (see leaked secret cable 09STATE38943)..
while it is never clear if Mueller did deliver the sample, the "implication" is there ..
Guess who was handling that case within the Justice Department out of the US Attorney's Office in Maryland ?? No other than,
Rod Rosenstein.
Remember the "informant" inside the FBI -- - Guess what happened to the informant? Department of Justice placed a GAG order
on him and threatened to lock him up if he spoke about the Uranium Deal. Personally, I have to question how does 20% of the most
strategic asset of the United States of America end up in Russian hands??? The FBI had an informant, a mole providing inside information
to the FBI on the criminal enterprise and NOTHING happens, except to the informant -- Strange !!
Guess what happened soon after the sale was approved? 145 million dollars in "donations" made their way into the Clinton Foundation
from entities directly connected to the Uranium One deal.
Guess who was still at the Internal Revenue Service working the Charitable Division?
No other than, Lois Lerner. Ok, that's all just another series of coincidences, nothing to see here, right? Let's fast forward
to 2015.
Due to a series of tragic events in Benghazi and after the nine "investigations" the House, Senate and at State Department,
Trey Gowdy who was running the 10th investigation as Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, discovers that the Hillary
ran the State Department on an unclassified, unauthorized, outlaw personal email server.
He also discovered that none of those emails had been turned over when she departed her "Public Service" as Secretary of State
which was required by law.
He also discovered that there was Top Secret information contained within her personally archived email. Sparing you the State
Departments cover up, the nostrums they floated, the delay tactics that were employed and the outright lies that were spewed forth
from the necks of the Kerry State Department, they did everything humanly possible to cover for Hillary.
Guess who became FBI Director in 2013? Guess who secured 17 no bid contracts for his employer (Lockheed Martin) with the State
Department and was rewarded with a six million dollar thank you present when he departed his employer. No other than James Comey.
Folks if I did this when I worked for the government, I would have been locked up -- The State Department didn't even comply with
the EEO and small business requirements the government places on all Request For Proposals (RFP) on contracts -- It amazes me
how all those no-bids just went right through at State -- simply amazing and no Inspector General investigation !!
Next after leaving the private sector Comey is the FBI Director in charge of the "Clinton Email Investigation" after of course
his FBI Investigates the Lois Lerner "Matter" at the Internal Revenue Service and exonerates her. Nope couldn't find any crimes
there. Nothing here to report --
Then of all surprises, in April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the
DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy on Halloween.
The DOJ didn't even convene a Grand Jury. Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself,
like the true "Gangsta" Homey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016 and
exonerates the Hillary from any wrongdoing. As I've said many times, July 8, 2016 is the date that will live in infamy of
the American Justice System ..
Can you see the pattern?
It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey
leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation witch hunt by Rosenstein to provide
cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues.
FISA Abuse, political espionage .. pick a crime, any crime, chances are this group and a few others did it. All the same players.
All compromised and conflicted. All working fervently to NOT go to jail themselves. All connected in one way or another to the
Clinton's. They are like battery acid, they corrode and corrupt everything they touch. How many lives have the Clinton's destroyed?
As of this writing, the Clinton Foundation, in its 20+ years of operation of being the largest International Charity Fraud
in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Let us not forget that Comey's brother works for DLA Piper, the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation's taxes.
"... In 2007, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Fellowship of Reconciliation used a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to reveal more than 1,900 military projects conducted at 26 universities between 2001 and 2006, worth a total of £725 million. ..."
Rupert Murdoch's the Times attempted a witch-hunt of UK academics who have
questioned the government's narrative on Syria. This scurrilous campaign, targeting Professor
Tim Hayward (University of Edinburgh), Professor Piers Robinson (University of Sheffield) and
Lecturer Tara McCormack (Leicester University) as "Apologists for Assad," is a sharp expression
of how universities have become battlegrounds in the global drive to war.
As the ruling class work to militarise society in accordance with the recently outlined
Fusion Doctrine, higher education and research institutions are being transformed into
appendages of British imperialism.
The process is well underway. Contrary to the Times ' ravings about
universities being hotbeds of left-wing and anti-war sentiment, the institutions and their
leaderships are already deeply integrated with the armed forces and private military
contractors.
In 2007, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Fellowship of Reconciliation used a
series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to reveal more than 1,900 military projects
conducted at 26 universities between 2001 and 2006, worth a total of £725
million.
The UK Government's military research establishment -- the Ministry of Defence (MoD),
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Defence Evaluation and Research Agency and Atomics
Weapons Establishment (AWE) -- were involved in a quarter of these projects. Arms
manufacturers, led by Rolls Royce, BAE Systems and QinetiQ, sponsored the remainder.
Between 2008 and 2011, according to research by the Huffington Post , the Russell
Group of 24 elite British universities received £83 million from the same sources listed
above. Imperial College London topped the list with £15.2 million, mainly from the AWE.
Imperial is joined by Bristol, Cambridge, Cranfield, and Heriot-Watt in a "strategic alliance"
with the AWE: The five universities received £15 million in the years 2010-12.
More recently, figures released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that, in
the past three years, 15 universities with prestigious engineering departments have received
£40 million in grants from military contractors. These grants have funded projects
including collaboration on military submarine technology between Rolls Royce and the University
of Leeds, a drone project worked on by Boeing and Bristol University, and a stealth drone
project at Manchester run by BAE.
While the money involved is relatively small when compared to total university research
funding, the military projects have a weight of influence beyond their size. Military funding
is concentrated in institutions and departments -- mainly engineering -- where the armed forces
and arms dealers have a special authority. Such funding is considered a prestigious source of
investment, from which other grants and opportunities will flow. Military contracts are
fiercely competed for and proudly advertised.
On the back of this commercial turn to the military-industrial complex, moreover,
universities are working closely with the armed forces to provide education and recruitment
opportunities. Fourteen institutions (including Aston, Birmingham, Cambridge, Imperial College,
Loughborough, Newcastle, Northumbria, Portsmouth, Southampton and Strathclyde) are in a
partnership with the MoD to provide the Defence Technical Undergraduate Scheme (DTUS). This is
a university sponsorship programme for students who want to join the Royal Navy, British Army,
Royal Air Force or Engineering and Science branch of the MoD Civil Service as technical
officers after they graduate.
There are roughly 800 of these students (who formally hold the ranks of Officer Cadet or
Midshipman in their respective reserve forces) in any one year, grouped into four regional
units: Taurus Squadron, Thunderer Squadron, Trojan Squadron and Typhoon Squadron. The
commanding officer of each unit has visiting lecturer status at the associated universities.
Graduates are required to serve in the armed forces or MoD for a minimum of three years after
graduating and completing Initial Officer Training.
University resources are thus put at the service of the military to train its key technical
staff. They return the favour by lending the armed forces' support to the running of student
life on campus, doubtless with the associated military ethos. Loughborough University describes
how its DTUS students "regularly support Open Days, Freshers' Fairs and other student
activities."
In addition to the DTUS programme, the Army, Navy and RAF provide a range of other
scholarships for prospective soldiers.
The Army offers 150 standard bursaries a year, worth £6,000, as well as Technical and
Enhanced Army undergraduate bursaries, worth up to £14,000 and £24,000
respectively. Students can also receive £5,000-10,000 a year through the Army Medical
Service Professionally Qualified Officer bursary. The Royal Navy also offers a standard
bursary, worth £1,500 a year and a Technical Bursary worth £4,000 a year. Future
RAF Medical Officers can get a grant to cover all their tuition fees.
All sponsorship requires three years of service in the armed forces after completing
education.
While at university, these and other students can participate in one of the University
Service Units -- the University Officer Training Corps, University Air Squadrons, or University
Royal Navy Units -- who maintain a permanent presence on numerous university campuses.
In 2015, there were 6,580 members of these organisations in Britain, spread across 19
Officer Training Corps units and 14 Air and Navy units. The fundamental purpose of these
groups, besides providing a path into the officer ranks, is to train propagandists for the
military within higher education and wider society. The University Royal Navy Unit at Cambridge
describes its role as being to "educate and inform society's future potential opinion formers
and leaders of the need for and role of the Royal Navy."
So great is the influence of the armed forces on campus that several universities have
established specific military-focused degree courses.
In 2011, the University of Wolverhampton created a BSc in Armed Forces, Armed Forces and
Combat Medicine, and Armed Forces and Combat Engineering. The list of universities currently
offering War Studies or related courses includes Queens Belfast, Glasgow, Kent, Coventry,
Swansea, Buckingham, Bradford, King's College London (KCL) and others. KCL is home to "the only
academic department in the world to focus solely on the complexities of conflict and security,"
comprising 95 academic staff and over 2,000 students.
Cranfield University offers courses in subjects like Military Economic Systems Engineering,
Military Aerospace and Airworthiness, Communication Electronic Warfare, and Explosives Ordnance
Engineering.
As well as providing training for the military, universities across the country are happy to
play host to recruiting sergeants at Freshers' Fairs and Welcome Weeks. In 2013, FOI requests
found that the armed forces had made 341 visits to universities in the previous two years.
None of these developments has gone unopposed. Demilitarisation campaigning groups are
active at many universities, with some institutions having banned visits from the armed forces
in response to student protests. Organisations like the Campaign Against the Arms and Trade and
Scientists for Global Responsibility have consistently exposed and opposed the involvement of
military forces in universities. All of this is testimony to the immense anti-war sentiment
which exists among the student body and academics.
To wage a successful struggle against the encroachment of the military on campus, however,
requires that this sentiment be consciously organised behind a socialist, anti-war perspective.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is dedicated to the formation
of such a movement on campuses across the country. Eric Sommer • 2 days
ago
Getting financial support and training for science and for university students sounds nice,
and being part of the 'royal' navy or 'royal' airforce seems appealing for some - until we
remember the purpose: To induct students into research and other support work for criminal
wars and war crimes involving the UK governments participation in military aggression against
helpless nations and which slaughters people who have never attacked or endangered Britain or
its people.
Philip May, husband of Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May happens to be a senior executive
of Capital Group which is a major holder of both Lockheed Martin and British Aerospace
(BAE).
Theresa May's husband's Investment Firm made a financial killing from the bombing of
Syria
According to Investopedia, Philip May's Capital Group owned around 7.09% of Lockheed Martin
in March 2018 – a stake said to be worth more than £7Bn at this time.
...
Every single JASSM used in the recent bombing of Syria costs more than $1,000,000, and as a
result of their widespread use during the recent bombing of Syria by Western forces, the share
price of Lockheed Martin soared.
With the still largely ignored Saudi slaughter in Yemen now in its fourth year, RT's
In The Now
has resurrected a
forgotten clip from a 2016 CNN interview with Senator Rand Paul, which is currently going
viral.
In a piece of cable news history that rivals Madeleine Albright's infamous words during a
1996
60 Minutes
appearance
where she calmly and coldly proclaimed of 500,000 dead Iraqi children that
"the price is
worth it,"
CNN's Wolf Blitzer railed against Senator Paul's opposition to a proposed $1.1
billion US arms sale to Saudi Arabia by arguing that slaughter of Yemeni civilians was worth it
so long as it benefits US jobs and defense contractors.
At the time of the
2016 CNN interview
, Saudi
Arabia with the help of its regional and Western allies -- notably the U.S. and Britain -- had
been bombing Yemen for a year-and-a-half, and as
the
United Nations noted
, the Saudi coalition had been responsible for the majority of the
war's (at that point) 10,000 mostly civilian deaths.
At that time the war was still in its early phases, but now multiple years into the
Saudi-led bombing campaign which began in March 2015,
the
U.N. reports at least
"5,000 children dead or hurt and 400,000 malnourished."
... ... ...
Senator Paul began the interview by outlining the rising civilian death toll
and massive refugee crisis that the U.S. continued facilitating
due to deep military assistance
to the Saudis
:
There are now millions of displaced people in Yemen. They're refugees. So we supply the
Saudis with arms, they create havoc and refugees in Yemen. Then what's the answer? Then we're
going to take the Yemeni refugees in the United States? Maybe we ought to quit arming both
sides of this war.
Paul then narrowed in on the Pentagon's role in the crisis: "We are refueling the Saudi
bombers that are dropping the bombs. It is said that thousands of civilians have died in Yemen
because of this."
CNN's Blitzer responded, "So for you this is a moral issue. Because you know, there's a lot
of jobs at stake. Certainly if a lot of these defense contractors stop selling war planes,
other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia, there's going to be a significant loss of jobs,
of revenue here in the United States. That's secondary from your standpoint?"
Paul countered, "Well not only is it a moral question, its a constitutional question." And
noted that Obama had partnered with the Saudi attack on Yemen without Congressional approval:
"Our founding fathers very directly and specifically did not give the president the power to go
to war. They gave it to Congress. So Congress needs to step up and this is what I'm doing."
* * *
For further context of what the world knew at the time the CNN interview took place, we can
look no further than the United Nations and other international monitoring groups.
A year after Blitzer's statements,
Foreign Policy published a bombshell report
based on possession of a leaked 41-page draft
UN document, which found Saudi Arabia and its partner coalition allies in Yemen (among them the
United States) of being guilty of horrific war crimes, including the bombing of dozens of
schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure.
The U.N. study focused on child and civilian deaths during the first two years of the Saudi
coalition bombing campaign - precisely the time frame during which the CNN Wolf Blitzer and
Rand Paul interview took place.
"The killing and maiming of children remained the most prevalent violation" of children's
rights in Yemen , according to the 41-page draft report obtained by Foreign Policy.
The chief author of the confidential draft report, Virginia Gamba, the U.N. chief's
special representative for children abused in war time, informed top U.N. officials Monday,
that she intends to recommend the Saudi-led coalition be added to a list a countries and
entities that kill and maim children , according to a well-placed source.
The UN report further identified that air attacks "were the cause of over half of all child
casualties, with at least 349 children killed and 333 children injured" during the designated
period of time studied, and documented that, "the U.N. verified a total of 1,953 youngsters
killed and injured in Yemen in 2015 -- a six-fold increase compared with 2014" - with the
majority of these deaths being the result of Saudi and coalition air power.
Also according
AP reporting at the time
: "It said nearly three-quarters of attacks on schools and
hospitals -- 38 of 52 -- were also carried out by the coalition."
But again, Wolf Blitzer's first thought was those poor defense contractors:
...Because you know, there's a lot of jobs at stake. Certainly if a lot of these defense
contractors stop selling war planes, other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia, there's
going to be a significant loss of jobs, of revenue here in the United States.
* * *
This trip down memory lane elicited suitable responses on Twitter:
Honestly, with all these drug addicts, pedos, government dependents,
and fraudulent finance and advertising pieces of shit at home, I'd
really like to see some infighting here. No need to sell abroad.
Philip May, husband of Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May happens to be a senior executive
of Capital Group which is a major holder of both Lockheed Martin and British Aerospace
(BAE).
Theresa May's husband's Investment Firm made a financial killing from the bombing of
Syria
According to Investopedia, Philip May's Capital Group owned around 7.09% of Lockheed Martin
in March 2018 – a stake said to be worth more than £7Bn at this time.
...
Every single JASSM used in the recent bombing of Syria costs more than $1,000,000, and as a
result of their widespread use during the recent bombing of Syria by Western forces, the share
price of Lockheed Martin soared.
With the still largely ignored Saudi slaughter in Yemen now in its fourth year, RT's
In The Now
has resurrected a
forgotten clip from a 2016 CNN interview with Senator Rand Paul, which is currently going
viral.
In a piece of cable news history that rivals Madeleine Albright's infamous words during a
1996
60 Minutes
appearance
where she calmly and coldly proclaimed of 500,000 dead Iraqi children that
"the price is
worth it,"
CNN's Wolf Blitzer railed against Senator Paul's opposition to a proposed $1.1
billion US arms sale to Saudi Arabia by arguing that slaughter of Yemeni civilians was worth it
so long as it benefits US jobs and defense contractors.
At the time of the
2016 CNN interview
, Saudi
Arabia with the help of its regional and Western allies -- notably the U.S. and Britain -- had
been bombing Yemen for a year-and-a-half, and as
the
United Nations noted
, the Saudi coalition had been responsible for the majority of the
war's (at that point) 10,000 mostly civilian deaths.
At that time the war was still in its early phases, but now multiple years into the
Saudi-led bombing campaign which began in March 2015,
the
U.N. reports at least
"5,000 children dead or hurt and 400,000 malnourished."
... ... ...
Senator Paul began the interview by outlining the rising civilian death toll
and massive refugee crisis that the U.S. continued facilitating
due to deep military assistance
to the Saudis
:
There are now millions of displaced people in Yemen. They're refugees. So we supply the
Saudis with arms, they create havoc and refugees in Yemen. Then what's the answer? Then we're
going to take the Yemeni refugees in the United States? Maybe we ought to quit arming both
sides of this war.
Paul then narrowed in on the Pentagon's role in the crisis: "We are refueling the Saudi
bombers that are dropping the bombs. It is said that thousands of civilians have died in Yemen
because of this."
CNN's Blitzer responded, "So for you this is a moral issue. Because you know, there's a lot
of jobs at stake. Certainly if a lot of these defense contractors stop selling war planes,
other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia, there's going to be a significant loss of jobs,
of revenue here in the United States. That's secondary from your standpoint?"
Paul countered, "Well not only is it a moral question, its a constitutional question." And
noted that Obama had partnered with the Saudi attack on Yemen without Congressional approval:
"Our founding fathers very directly and specifically did not give the president the power to go
to war. They gave it to Congress. So Congress needs to step up and this is what I'm doing."
* * *
For further context of what the world knew at the time the CNN interview took place, we can
look no further than the United Nations and other international monitoring groups.
A year after Blitzer's statements,
Foreign Policy published a bombshell report
based on possession of a leaked 41-page draft
UN document, which found Saudi Arabia and its partner coalition allies in Yemen (among them the
United States) of being guilty of horrific war crimes, including the bombing of dozens of
schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure.
The U.N. study focused on child and civilian deaths during the first two years of the Saudi
coalition bombing campaign - precisely the time frame during which the CNN Wolf Blitzer and
Rand Paul interview took place.
"The killing and maiming of children remained the most prevalent violation" of children's
rights in Yemen , according to the 41-page draft report obtained by Foreign Policy.
The chief author of the confidential draft report, Virginia Gamba, the U.N. chief's
special representative for children abused in war time, informed top U.N. officials Monday,
that she intends to recommend the Saudi-led coalition be added to a list a countries and
entities that kill and maim children , according to a well-placed source.
The UN report further identified that air attacks "were the cause of over half of all child
casualties, with at least 349 children killed and 333 children injured" during the designated
period of time studied, and documented that, "the U.N. verified a total of 1,953 youngsters
killed and injured in Yemen in 2015 -- a six-fold increase compared with 2014" - with the
majority of these deaths being the result of Saudi and coalition air power.
Also according
AP reporting at the time
: "It said nearly three-quarters of attacks on schools and
hospitals -- 38 of 52 -- were also carried out by the coalition."
But again, Wolf Blitzer's first thought was those poor defense contractors:
...Because you know, there's a lot of jobs at stake. Certainly if a lot of these defense
contractors stop selling war planes, other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia, there's
going to be a significant loss of jobs, of revenue here in the United States.
* * *
This trip down memory lane elicited suitable responses on Twitter:
Honestly, with all these drug addicts, pedos, government dependents,
and fraudulent finance and advertising pieces of shit at home, I'd
really like to see some infighting here. No need to sell abroad.
A few thoughts on our disastrous trillion-dollar military:
It is unnecessary. It does not defend the United States. The last time it did so was in
1945. The United States has no military enemies. No nation has anything even close to the
forces necessary to invade America, and probably none the desire. A fifth of the budget would
suffice for any real needs.
"Our boys" are not noble warriors protecting democracy, rescuing maidens, and righting
wrongs. They are, like all soldiers, obedient and amoral killers. Pilots bombing Iraq or Syria
know they are killing civilians. They do not care. If ordered to bomb Switzerland, they would
do it. This is the nature of all armies. Glamorizing this most reprehensible trades is just a
means of usefully stimulating the pack instinct which we often call patriotism.
The militarily is America's worst enemy. It does enormous damage to the United
States while providing almost no benefit. Start with the war on Vietnam that cost hugely in
money and lives, ours and theirs, with no benefit. Iraq: high cost, no benefit. Afghanistan:
High cost, no benefit. Syria: High cost, no benefit.
The costs in lives and money do not include the staggering cost of weapons that do nothing
for America or Americans. Do you, the reader, believe that you are safer because of the F-35?
Do a dozen aircraft carriers improve the lives of your children? Will the B-21, an unbelievably
expensive new thermonuclear bomber, make your streets safer? Then add the bleeding of
engineering talent better spent on advancing America's economic competitiveness. The country
has many crying needs, falls behind China, but money and talent go to the military.
We cannot escape from the soldiers. The armed forces have embedded themselves so deeply into
the country that they have almost become the country. America is little more than a funding
mechanism for what clumsily may be called the military-industrial-intelligence-media-Israeli
complex. Some of these entities belong to the military (NSA). Some depend on it
(Lockheed-Martin). Some use it to their own ends (Israel), but the military is the central
infection from which the other symptoms flow. Congress? A storefront, a subcommittee of the
Knesset or, as P. J. O'Rourke put it, a parliament of whores. Factories, jobs, contracts, towns
depend on military spending. If the Second Marine Division folded, Jacksonville NC would dry up
and blow away. So would dozens of other towns. Without military spending, California's economy
would crash. Universities depend on military research funding.
The military has achieved its current autonomy by degrees, unnoticed. The Pentagon learned
much in Vietnam, not about fighting wars, which it still cannot do well, but about managing its
real enemy, the public. The media, which savaged the war on Vietnam, are now firmly controlled
by the corporations that own them. Thus we do not see photos of the horrors committed by
American aircraft bombing cities. While the existence of phenomenally expensive weapons like
the B-21 is not quite suppressed, coverage is so slight that most Americans have never heard of
it. This the Complex learned from the F-35 debacle. And of course Congress, thoroughly bought
and wanting jobs in its districts, allows no serious opposition to anything military. Neither
Congress nor the media point out the extent to which military expenditure dominates the
economy, draining resources from civilian needs.
Why does the military not win wars? In part because winning is not in the interest of the
Pentagon and those who feed on it. Wars generate profitable contracts for all manner of
supplies and equipment. Either winning or losing ends the gravy train. For example, the war on
Afghanistan of almost two decades has become an entitlement program for the arms industry,
accomplishing nothing, killing countless peasants, and lacking purpose other than maintaining
an unneeded empire and funneling money to the Complex.
How did the Complex free itself from civilian control? The crucial step in depriving the
public of influence was the neutering of the constitutional requirement that wars be declared
by Congress. The military thus became the private army of the President and those who control
him. Then came the All Volunteer Army, which ended inconvenience to or mutilation of the
children of people of importance, leaving the body bags to be filled by deplorables from
Memphis or Appalachia or Mexico. America's wars then became air wars and finally drone wars,
reducing casualties to very few. The public, both ignorant and uninvolved, became
acquiescent.
As I write, we wait to see whether Trump, and those behind him, will put America deeper into
the Mid-East and perhaps war with Russia. If he does, we will read about it the next day in the
newspapers. It will be expensive, dangerous, and of no benefit to anyone but the arms industry
and Israel.
Despite the asphyxiating economic presence, the military keeps aloof from America. This too
serves the purposes of the Complex, further preventing attention by the public to what is not
its business. In the days of conscription there was a familiarity with the armed services.
Young men from most social classes wore the uniform however ruefully and told of their
experiences. Not now. The career military have always tended to keep to themselves, to
socialize with each other as the police do. Now the isolation is almost hermetic. You can spend
years in Washington or New York and never meet a colonel. Military society with its
authoritarianism, its uniforms and its uniform government-issue outlook is not compatible with
civil society. To the cultivated, military officers seem simple-minded, conformist and well,
weird.
ORDER IT NOW
Add it all up and you see that the citizenry has no say–none–over the Complex,
which is autonomous and out of control. If the Complex wants war with Russia or China, we will
have-war with Russia or China. Ask people whether they would prefer a naval base in
Qatar–which most have never heard of, either the base or the country–or decent
heath care. Then ask them which they have.
The military destroys America and there is nothing–nothing at all–that you can
do about it.
Further, the Complex drives foreign policy, and in directions of no benefit to America or
Americans. For example, the contrived fury against Russia. Why this? Russia presents no danger
to America or anyone else. The Complex makes foreign policy for its own ends, not ours.
A rising Asia is challenging the America military Empire. The tide runs against the Complex.
North Korea faced Washington down and became a nuclear power. The Crimea went back irrevocably
to Russia. East Ukraine does the same. Iran got its treaty and becomes part of the world order.
In the South China Sea, China ignores the US, which once was supreme in all the seas. The war
against Afghanistan heads for its third decade and the war on Syria seems to have failed. Other
things go badly for the Empire. The dollar is under siege as reserve currency. China grows
economically, advances rapidly in technology and, doubtless terrifying to Washington, tries to
integrate Asia and Europe into a vast economic bloc. The Complex beats the war drums as its
fingers loosen on the world's collective throat.
Washington desperately needs to stop the rollback of American power, stop the erosion of the
dollar, block the economic integration of Eurasia and Latin America, keep Russia from trading
amicably with Europe. It will do anything to maintain its grip. All of its remote wars in
far-off savage lands, of no importance to America or Americans, are to this purpose. A
militarized America threatens Russia, threatens China, threatens Iran, threatens North Korea,
threatens Venezuela, expands NATO, on and on.
America has been hijacked.
Fred Reed is a retired news weasel and part-time sociopath living in Mexico with his
wife and three sueless but agreeable street dogs. (Republished from
Fred on Everything by permission of author or representative) ← Herding
Hamsters and Other Cosmic Refle...
Fred, a bit harsh in places. Having served for twenty-four years, '76-'00, active &
reserve, I can say with certainty that the men & women who comprise the armed forces are
a more complex & nuanced group than your brief description of them as "obedient and
amoral killers." The number that are amoral killers is probably about the same as those whose
main motivation for joining is patriotism, i.e. relatively small.
That said, I get what you're saying. The problem is that nature abhors a vacuum. If
America brings the troops home, closes all the bases and "raises the drawbridge" the various
bad-actors of the world will proceed to aggress against their neighbors much more so than
they already do. Would be an interesting experiment, though, for America to cease being the
world's policeman. I suspect that the rest of the so-called free world would be begging us to
resume the role almost immediately.
Sad to say, the principle "bad actor" in the world today, and the one committing the most
aggression, is the United States itself. The United States generates the most instability and
is the country that threatens world peace the most. I half expect to see the U.S. try to
torpedo the Korean peace talks, just to be able to maintain troops on the Korean
peninsula.
Fred's had two good articles in a row and his conclusion is spot on: the United States has
been hijacked.
because certain countries/people within the reach of "various bad-actors of the world"
would pay the price.Heavy price.
There is that prevalent mantra here about Russia/China being forces of good. Yeah ..
I've used the analogy here several times:
US is like Tywin Lannister. Russia Rose Bolton, China Slavers Bay.
Neither that good, but, definitely prefer the first.
We live in strange times. Back in 50s/60s, the Anglo-Right represented militarism &
empire while Jewish Left represented anti-war & peace with USSR. Today, the Real Right
oppose war & support peace while Jewish 'left' call for more empire, intervention, &
new cold war.
Sirs,y
I worked as an electrical inspector for the DCMA under contractors to the DCMA. I worked for
2 years in Iraq and 6 in Afghanistan. I meet and worked many honorable and competent military
people; I also had the misfortune to meet a great many who were not so good. Unfortunately,
the people that can't make in the military are sent over to the contractors who hire them
because of the old boys network and the vets perf. These are the worst.; if you are a
civilian working under LOGCAP without the military service you WILL NEVER get advancement .
The slugs from the military get all the gravy jobs and it is AA run wild. The ethnics stick
together and the dumb white guys who believe in merit end up in the crappy jobs doing all the
work and not getting any credit and the first to be laid off.
Not only that the LOGCAP program brinsg in Balkans and Indians to cut Americans out of
jobs. Indians make about 700 USD a month 4 times what they would make at home. Balkans,
around 4K 3 times what the make at home. These guys worm their way in and never leave; so
your average American contract employee shows up and he is getting screwed from the get
go.
The story I was told if you get 100K the contractor get 200-250K
Fred, you'd best look out the window to see who's at the door for the next few weeks. You may
have written too much truth for the military-industrial-intelligence-media-Israeli complex to
tolerate. Mossad has a few idle operatives in Mexico. Don't get too high-profile. They kill
people for a lot less.
The U.S. military is basically the right-wing/Republican version of the social welfare
state:
[...] Welfare's last stand Long in retreat in the US, the welfare state found a haven in an unlikely place –
the military, where it thrived for decades
[...]
– https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-us-military-became-a-welfare-state
Listen to Jennifer Mittelstadt explain the term "military welfare state" on The
Strategy Bridge's podcast :
[...]
America's all-volunteer army took shape in the 1970s, in the wake of widespread opposition
to the draft. Abandoning compulsory conscription, it wrestled with how to attract and
retain soldiers -- a task made more difficult by the military's plummeting prestige after
Vietnam. The army solved the problem, Jennifer Mittelstadt shows, by promising to take care
of its own -- the more than ten million Americans who volunteered for active duty after
1973 and their families. While the United States dismantled its civilian welfare system in
the 1980s and 1990s, army benefits continued to expand.
Yet not everyone was pleased by programs that, in their view, encouraged dependency,
infantilized soldiers, and feminized the institution. Fighting to outsource and privatize
the army's "socialist" system and to reinforce "self-reliance" among American soldiers,
opponents rolled back some of the military welfare state's signature achievements, even as
a new era of war began.
Right now, since unemployment is so low, recruiters have a harder time finding qualified
candidates:
Trump Wants To Beef Up The Military, But Recruiters Are Having Trouble Finding People
(HBO)
Booming military benefits
The cost of military pay raises and benefits programs, which have increased almost 90 percent
since 2001, have become the fastest-growing part of the Pentagon's budget and now account for
more than a quarter of all defense spending. Here is a look at the types of compensation
provided to active-duty troops and retirees, how those costs have grown and where they are
headed. – https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/national/booming-military-benefits/200/
OMG Yet another nitpicking, mean-spirited, petty, big-mouth,, intellectually bone-lazy
commenter. Do you actually carefully read and ponder what is written? Is your attention span
longer than a few minutes? Do you have any respect for an author–or for yourself? Has
it occurred to you that the author's main points are on the whole absolutely correct and even
self-evident? If you're going to take the trouble to critique, how about doing it with
intellectual and moral integrity, with some degree of thoroughness and, frankly, coherent
thought? Are you even capable of it? Wouldn't it have been better for you to exercise some
self-control and keep silent?
I'd suggest you read a little outside of what American MSM wants you to believe.
Russia is, as Fred has said, of no danger to anybody. I would add – to anybody who
leaves her alone.
As with poking a bear; if you leave it alone, it ignores you. Start hitting it, it rips you
to bits. Same analogy.
As to Ukraine, everyone now who still has 2 brain cells synapsing is aware that Ukraine was a
US organised, backed and paid for coup d'etat. IN fact, Putin gets a huge amount of crap from
many Alt-Med sites and commentators for NOT going in with tanks and levelling Kiev to the
ground, which she could have done in 1.5 days flat. Including tea breaks.
Russia has nothing to do with Moldova.
Georgia, with some encouragement from a few CIA types had an insane President, who launched
an unprovoked attack on South Ossetia, and fired on and killed Russian peacekeepers at 2 a.m.
one morning. Many in Georgia were being air-bombed. A young girl there visiting from America
with her aunt was rescued – by Russian soldiers. She tried to thank them on US tv, and
was cut off by the anchor!! Once the situation in Georgia had been resolved with the Georgian
troops returned to base, Russia left. Something America has never, ever, done. Where ever it
goes, it stays, like brown sticky stuff on your shoe.
So get your facts straight. Remember, Putin made a small comment that the Empire appears to
have overlooked. You should never, he said, corner anyone. Read up about what a cornered rat
did to him, and what he learned from it.
The Empire is pushing and pushing and pushing. Putin has warned and warned and warned.
Russia is no danger to anyone who leaves her alone – something the Ruling Regime of the
Fascist Empire of America seems unable to grasp.
Even assuming Vladimir Putin has such designs (I'm skeptical that he wants more ethnic
minority headaches than he has already), why is any of this the business of the United
States?
Fine job stating the obvious Fred. I mean that as a compliment. It is the obvious that is
most likely to be overlooked by my countrymen.
It's the foggy bottom. The District of Corruption. The seat of the Anglo/Zio Empire that
is the most dangerous enemy of the people of earth. The good news – the empire is in
steep decline. The bad news – it will reach peak madness just before it dies.
The US military just got an unneeded 10% budget boost because of spin that its budget was
cut, while it has increased each year. The only cuts were to the big increases demanded. The
Pentagon also lies and says that every military readiness issue is not caused by
incompetence, but a lack of money.
Watch the idiotic responses by Fox News propagandists when former Republican Congressmen
David Stockman recently informed them that the Pentagon budget should be slashed, not
increased.
Totally agree. The US is seen in most of the world as the bully of the nations, not the
policeman, even in the EU (don't be fooled by our leaders, we don't control them).
OMG, that "news" video. Not only do these "journalists" babble like first-graders –
they have even unlearned to present facial expressions appropriate for sentient human beings.
Turn off the sound and it's like watching "Finding Nemo".
No Isreal could'nt take over the Mid-East if we weren't around, they would either get
along with their neighbors or cease to exist,the world gained nothing in Korea except the
thousands and millions slaughtered,the world gained nothing with our false flag to get us
into Nam except for the thousands and millions slaughtered and then it was on to
Afghanistan,Yemen Syria,yes your right the world would be a safer place without out endless
wars, and if we can't fine one we create one, the Mid-East is more than proof of that, and
you know I don't know of any country or countries who are crying for us to be the policeman,
when we lack the capability to even control the whores in congress>>>
How did the Complex free itself from civilian control? The crucial step in depriving
the public of influence was the neutering of the constitutional requirement that wars be
declared by Congress . The military thus became the private army of the President and
those who control him.
If I'd come upon this paragraph first, I'd have thought I was reading an article by
Ron Paul . However,
most Americans don't want to hear the old boring stuff about "muh Constitution", right, so
they will never understand this.
Good column, Mr. Reed. About the only thing I see missing is the American elites' use of
the US military as a grand social experiment, which will make these forces not so effective
in a real war with a serious enemy. Being the big bully of the world will work out fine until
the first knock-out punch, or the money runs out. The latter will probably happen first
– (see peak neocon here and here .)
LOTS of ad hominem directed at Fred in these comments, without even the slightest refutation
whatsoever at the content of his article. There is clearly a strong emotional need to believe
that the US military is "a global force for good" among many commenters, since there shouting
down of Fred is emotional and without evidence of where he has made an error in his thinking.
And to the first commenter who thinks people of earth who would be begging to have the US
military back in their homelands should it ever leave: you have obviously never met a person
who is not from America. There is really nothing else I can say to such an insane, immature,
deliberately stupid remark. God help you. No country on earth wants the US military in it. If
any sizeable portion of the brainwashed, two-digit IQ, blaspheming american "christian"
population ever wakes up to the scam, it could be over in an election cycle, but it's
probably impossible. The crushing weight of universal propoganda and perfectly orchestrated
identity politics is just too much.
On a personal level, I have met many men who work for the war profiteers, some at fairly
influential levels. They are pure, straight evil; filled with more explosive anger and hate
than anyone you've ever met. They are as bad as bad gets. Trust me. To this day, I have never
met people like them.
That aeon article was stupid. The first half summarized the (prescient, in my view as a
one-and-done army officer) worry that adding all these social welfare bennies would turn the
army into a bunch of single mothers, which it did, and undermine readiness. The second half,
which I guess was the overall point of the article, was whining about how "boo hoo the
military is getting its bennies privatized, how are we going to care for all these single
mothers?"
Another hit-and-run one post wonder. Fred Reed's columns seem to be literally filled with
you deranged sockpuppets. One post and then poof -- you're gone, never to be seen
again. Quite interesting.
A few thoughts on our disastrous trillion-dollar military:
It is unnecessary. It does not defend the United States. The last time it did so was in
1945. The United States has no military enemies. No nation has anything even close to the
forces necessary to invade America, and probably none the desire. A fifth of the budget would
suffice for any real needs.
"Our boys" are not noble warriors protecting democracy, rescuing maidens, and righting
wrongs. They are, like all soldiers, obedient and amoral killers. Pilots bombing Iraq or Syria
know they are killing civilians. They do not care. If ordered to bomb Switzerland, they would
do it. This is the nature of all armies. Glamorizing this most reprehensible trades is just a
means of usefully stimulating the pack instinct which we often call patriotism.
The militarily is America's worst enemy. It does enormous damage to the United
States while providing almost no benefit. Start with the war on Vietnam that cost hugely in
money and lives, ours and theirs, with no benefit. Iraq: high cost, no benefit. Afghanistan:
High cost, no benefit. Syria: High cost, no benefit.
The costs in lives and money do not include the staggering cost of weapons that do nothing
for America or Americans. Do you, the reader, believe that you are safer because of the F-35?
Do a dozen aircraft carriers improve the lives of your children? Will the B-21, an unbelievably
expensive new thermonuclear bomber, make your streets safer? Then add the bleeding of
engineering talent better spent on advancing America's economic competitiveness. The country
has many crying needs, falls behind China, but money and talent go to the military.
We cannot escape from the soldiers. The armed forces have embedded themselves so deeply into
the country that they have almost become the country. America is little more than a funding
mechanism for what clumsily may be called the military-industrial-intelligence-media-Israeli
complex. Some of these entities belong to the military (NSA). Some depend on it
(Lockheed-Martin). Some use it to their own ends (Israel), but the military is the central
infection from which the other symptoms flow. Congress? A storefront, a subcommittee of the
Knesset or, as P. J. O'Rourke put it, a parliament of whores. Factories, jobs, contracts, towns
depend on military spending. If the Second Marine Division folded, Jacksonville NC would dry up
and blow away. So would dozens of other towns. Without military spending, California's economy
would crash. Universities depend on military research funding.
The military has achieved its current autonomy by degrees, unnoticed. The Pentagon learned
much in Vietnam, not about fighting wars, which it still cannot do well, but about managing its
real enemy, the public. The media, which savaged the war on Vietnam, are now firmly controlled
by the corporations that own them. Thus we do not see photos of the horrors committed by
American aircraft bombing cities. While the existence of phenomenally expensive weapons like
the B-21 is not quite suppressed, coverage is so slight that most Americans have never heard of
it. This the Complex learned from the F-35 debacle. And of course Congress, thoroughly bought
and wanting jobs in its districts, allows no serious opposition to anything military. Neither
Congress nor the media point out the extent to which military expenditure dominates the
economy, draining resources from civilian needs.
Why does the military not win wars? In part because winning is not in the interest of the
Pentagon and those who feed on it. Wars generate profitable contracts for all manner of
supplies and equipment. Either winning or losing ends the gravy train. For example, the war on
Afghanistan of almost two decades has become an entitlement program for the arms industry,
accomplishing nothing, killing countless peasants, and lacking purpose other than maintaining
an unneeded empire and funneling money to the Complex.
How did the Complex free itself from civilian control? The crucial step in depriving the
public of influence was the neutering of the constitutional requirement that wars be declared
by Congress. The military thus became the private army of the President and those who control
him. Then came the All Volunteer Army, which ended inconvenience to or mutilation of the
children of people of importance, leaving the body bags to be filled by deplorables from
Memphis or Appalachia or Mexico. America's wars then became air wars and finally drone wars,
reducing casualties to very few. The public, both ignorant and uninvolved, became
acquiescent.
As I write, we wait to see whether Trump, and those behind him, will put America deeper into
the Mid-East and perhaps war with Russia. If he does, we will read about it the next day in the
newspapers. It will be expensive, dangerous, and of no benefit to anyone but the arms industry
and Israel.
Despite the asphyxiating economic presence, the military keeps aloof from America. This too
serves the purposes of the Complex, further preventing attention by the public to what is not
its business. In the days of conscription there was a familiarity with the armed services.
Young men from most social classes wore the uniform however ruefully and told of their
experiences. Not now. The career military have always tended to keep to themselves, to
socialize with each other as the police do. Now the isolation is almost hermetic. You can spend
years in Washington or New York and never meet a colonel. Military society with its
authoritarianism, its uniforms and its uniform government-issue outlook is not compatible with
civil society. To the cultivated, military officers seem simple-minded, conformist and well,
weird.
ORDER IT NOW
Add it all up and you see that the citizenry has no say–none–over the Complex,
which is autonomous and out of control. If the Complex wants war with Russia or China, we will
have-war with Russia or China. Ask people whether they would prefer a naval base in
Qatar–which most have never heard of, either the base or the country–or decent
heath care. Then ask them which they have.
The military destroys America and there is nothing–nothing at all–that you can
do about it.
Further, the Complex drives foreign policy, and in directions of no benefit to America or
Americans. For example, the contrived fury against Russia. Why this? Russia presents no danger
to America or anyone else. The Complex makes foreign policy for its own ends, not ours.
A rising Asia is challenging the America military Empire. The tide runs against the Complex.
North Korea faced Washington down and became a nuclear power. The Crimea went back irrevocably
to Russia. East Ukraine does the same. Iran got its treaty and becomes part of the world order.
In the South China Sea, China ignores the US, which once was supreme in all the seas. The war
against Afghanistan heads for its third decade and the war on Syria seems to have failed. Other
things go badly for the Empire. The dollar is under siege as reserve currency. China grows
economically, advances rapidly in technology and, doubtless terrifying to Washington, tries to
integrate Asia and Europe into a vast economic bloc. The Complex beats the war drums as its
fingers loosen on the world's collective throat.
Washington desperately needs to stop the rollback of American power, stop the erosion of the
dollar, block the economic integration of Eurasia and Latin America, keep Russia from trading
amicably with Europe. It will do anything to maintain its grip. All of its remote wars in
far-off savage lands, of no importance to America or Americans, are to this purpose. A
militarized America threatens Russia, threatens China, threatens Iran, threatens North Korea,
threatens Venezuela, expands NATO, on and on.
America has been hijacked.
Fred Reed is a retired news weasel and part-time sociopath living in Mexico with his
wife and three sueless but agreeable street dogs. (Republished from
Fred on Everything by permission of author or representative) ← Herding
Hamsters and Other Cosmic Refle...
Fred, a bit harsh in places. Having served for twenty-four years, '76-'00, active &
reserve, I can say with certainty that the men & women who comprise the armed forces are
a more complex & nuanced group than your brief description of them as "obedient and
amoral killers." The number that are amoral killers is probably about the same as those whose
main motivation for joining is patriotism, i.e. relatively small.
That said, I get what you're saying. The problem is that nature abhors a vacuum. If
America brings the troops home, closes all the bases and "raises the drawbridge" the various
bad-actors of the world will proceed to aggress against their neighbors much more so than
they already do. Would be an interesting experiment, though, for America to cease being the
world's policeman. I suspect that the rest of the so-called free world would be begging us to
resume the role almost immediately.
Sad to say, the principle "bad actor" in the world today, and the one committing the most
aggression, is the United States itself. The United States generates the most instability and
is the country that threatens world peace the most. I half expect to see the U.S. try to
torpedo the Korean peace talks, just to be able to maintain troops on the Korean
peninsula.
Fred's had two good articles in a row and his conclusion is spot on: the United States has
been hijacked.
because certain countries/people within the reach of "various bad-actors of the world"
would pay the price.Heavy price.
There is that prevalent mantra here about Russia/China being forces of good. Yeah ..
I've used the analogy here several times:
US is like Tywin Lannister. Russia Rose Bolton, China Slavers Bay.
Neither that good, but, definitely prefer the first.
We live in strange times. Back in 50s/60s, the Anglo-Right represented militarism &
empire while Jewish Left represented anti-war & peace with USSR. Today, the Real Right
oppose war & support peace while Jewish 'left' call for more empire, intervention, &
new cold war.
Sirs,y
I worked as an electrical inspector for the DCMA under contractors to the DCMA. I worked for
2 years in Iraq and 6 in Afghanistan. I meet and worked many honorable and competent military
people; I also had the misfortune to meet a great many who were not so good. Unfortunately,
the people that can't make in the military are sent over to the contractors who hire them
because of the old boys network and the vets perf. These are the worst.; if you are a
civilian working under LOGCAP without the military service you WILL NEVER get advancement .
The slugs from the military get all the gravy jobs and it is AA run wild. The ethnics stick
together and the dumb white guys who believe in merit end up in the crappy jobs doing all the
work and not getting any credit and the first to be laid off.
Not only that the LOGCAP program brinsg in Balkans and Indians to cut Americans out of
jobs. Indians make about 700 USD a month 4 times what they would make at home. Balkans,
around 4K 3 times what the make at home. These guys worm their way in and never leave; so
your average American contract employee shows up and he is getting screwed from the get
go.
The story I was told if you get 100K the contractor get 200-250K
Fred, you'd best look out the window to see who's at the door for the next few weeks. You may
have written too much truth for the military-industrial-intelligence-media-Israeli complex to
tolerate. Mossad has a few idle operatives in Mexico. Don't get too high-profile. They kill
people for a lot less.
The U.S. military is basically the right-wing/Republican version of the social welfare
state:
[...] Welfare's last stand Long in retreat in the US, the welfare state found a haven in an unlikely place –
the military, where it thrived for decades
[...]
– https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-us-military-became-a-welfare-state
Listen to Jennifer Mittelstadt explain the term "military welfare state" on The
Strategy Bridge's podcast :
[...]
America's all-volunteer army took shape in the 1970s, in the wake of widespread opposition
to the draft. Abandoning compulsory conscription, it wrestled with how to attract and
retain soldiers -- a task made more difficult by the military's plummeting prestige after
Vietnam. The army solved the problem, Jennifer Mittelstadt shows, by promising to take care
of its own -- the more than ten million Americans who volunteered for active duty after
1973 and their families. While the United States dismantled its civilian welfare system in
the 1980s and 1990s, army benefits continued to expand.
Yet not everyone was pleased by programs that, in their view, encouraged dependency,
infantilized soldiers, and feminized the institution. Fighting to outsource and privatize
the army's "socialist" system and to reinforce "self-reliance" among American soldiers,
opponents rolled back some of the military welfare state's signature achievements, even as
a new era of war began.
Right now, since unemployment is so low, recruiters have a harder time finding qualified
candidates:
Trump Wants To Beef Up The Military, But Recruiters Are Having Trouble Finding People
(HBO)
Booming military benefits
The cost of military pay raises and benefits programs, which have increased almost 90 percent
since 2001, have become the fastest-growing part of the Pentagon's budget and now account for
more than a quarter of all defense spending. Here is a look at the types of compensation
provided to active-duty troops and retirees, how those costs have grown and where they are
headed. – https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/national/booming-military-benefits/200/
OMG Yet another nitpicking, mean-spirited, petty, big-mouth,, intellectually bone-lazy
commenter. Do you actually carefully read and ponder what is written? Is your attention span
longer than a few minutes? Do you have any respect for an author–or for yourself? Has
it occurred to you that the author's main points are on the whole absolutely correct and even
self-evident? If you're going to take the trouble to critique, how about doing it with
intellectual and moral integrity, with some degree of thoroughness and, frankly, coherent
thought? Are you even capable of it? Wouldn't it have been better for you to exercise some
self-control and keep silent?
I'd suggest you read a little outside of what American MSM wants you to believe.
Russia is, as Fred has said, of no danger to anybody. I would add – to anybody who
leaves her alone.
As with poking a bear; if you leave it alone, it ignores you. Start hitting it, it rips you
to bits. Same analogy.
As to Ukraine, everyone now who still has 2 brain cells synapsing is aware that Ukraine was a
US organised, backed and paid for coup d'etat. IN fact, Putin gets a huge amount of crap from
many Alt-Med sites and commentators for NOT going in with tanks and levelling Kiev to the
ground, which she could have done in 1.5 days flat. Including tea breaks.
Russia has nothing to do with Moldova.
Georgia, with some encouragement from a few CIA types had an insane President, who launched
an unprovoked attack on South Ossetia, and fired on and killed Russian peacekeepers at 2 a.m.
one morning. Many in Georgia were being air-bombed. A young girl there visiting from America
with her aunt was rescued – by Russian soldiers. She tried to thank them on US tv, and
was cut off by the anchor!! Once the situation in Georgia had been resolved with the Georgian
troops returned to base, Russia left. Something America has never, ever, done. Where ever it
goes, it stays, like brown sticky stuff on your shoe.
So get your facts straight. Remember, Putin made a small comment that the Empire appears to
have overlooked. You should never, he said, corner anyone. Read up about what a cornered rat
did to him, and what he learned from it.
The Empire is pushing and pushing and pushing. Putin has warned and warned and warned.
Russia is no danger to anyone who leaves her alone – something the Ruling Regime of the
Fascist Empire of America seems unable to grasp.
Even assuming Vladimir Putin has such designs (I'm skeptical that he wants more ethnic
minority headaches than he has already), why is any of this the business of the United
States?
Fine job stating the obvious Fred. I mean that as a compliment. It is the obvious that is
most likely to be overlooked by my countrymen.
It's the foggy bottom. The District of Corruption. The seat of the Anglo/Zio Empire that
is the most dangerous enemy of the people of earth. The good news – the empire is in
steep decline. The bad news – it will reach peak madness just before it dies.
The US military just got an unneeded 10% budget boost because of spin that its budget was
cut, while it has increased each year. The only cuts were to the big increases demanded. The
Pentagon also lies and says that every military readiness issue is not caused by
incompetence, but a lack of money.
Watch the idiotic responses by Fox News propagandists when former Republican Congressmen
David Stockman recently informed them that the Pentagon budget should be slashed, not
increased.
Totally agree. The US is seen in most of the world as the bully of the nations, not the
policeman, even in the EU (don't be fooled by our leaders, we don't control them).
OMG, that "news" video. Not only do these "journalists" babble like first-graders –
they have even unlearned to present facial expressions appropriate for sentient human beings.
Turn off the sound and it's like watching "Finding Nemo".
No Isreal could'nt take over the Mid-East if we weren't around, they would either get
along with their neighbors or cease to exist,the world gained nothing in Korea except the
thousands and millions slaughtered,the world gained nothing with our false flag to get us
into Nam except for the thousands and millions slaughtered and then it was on to
Afghanistan,Yemen Syria,yes your right the world would be a safer place without out endless
wars, and if we can't fine one we create one, the Mid-East is more than proof of that, and
you know I don't know of any country or countries who are crying for us to be the policeman,
when we lack the capability to even control the whores in congress>>>
How did the Complex free itself from civilian control? The crucial step in depriving
the public of influence was the neutering of the constitutional requirement that wars be
declared by Congress . The military thus became the private army of the President and
those who control him.
If I'd come upon this paragraph first, I'd have thought I was reading an article by
Ron Paul . However,
most Americans don't want to hear the old boring stuff about "muh Constitution", right, so
they will never understand this.
Good column, Mr. Reed. About the only thing I see missing is the American elites' use of
the US military as a grand social experiment, which will make these forces not so effective
in a real war with a serious enemy. Being the big bully of the world will work out fine until
the first knock-out punch, or the money runs out. The latter will probably happen first
– (see peak neocon here and here .)
LOTS of ad hominem directed at Fred in these comments, without even the slightest refutation
whatsoever at the content of his article. There is clearly a strong emotional need to believe
that the US military is "a global force for good" among many commenters, since there shouting
down of Fred is emotional and without evidence of where he has made an error in his thinking.
And to the first commenter who thinks people of earth who would be begging to have the US
military back in their homelands should it ever leave: you have obviously never met a person
who is not from America. There is really nothing else I can say to such an insane, immature,
deliberately stupid remark. God help you. No country on earth wants the US military in it. If
any sizeable portion of the brainwashed, two-digit IQ, blaspheming american "christian"
population ever wakes up to the scam, it could be over in an election cycle, but it's
probably impossible. The crushing weight of universal propoganda and perfectly orchestrated
identity politics is just too much.
On a personal level, I have met many men who work for the war profiteers, some at fairly
influential levels. They are pure, straight evil; filled with more explosive anger and hate
than anyone you've ever met. They are as bad as bad gets. Trust me. To this day, I have never
met people like them.
That aeon article was stupid. The first half summarized the (prescient, in my view as a
one-and-done army officer) worry that adding all these social welfare bennies would turn the
army into a bunch of single mothers, which it did, and undermine readiness. The second half,
which I guess was the overall point of the article, was whining about how "boo hoo the
military is getting its bennies privatized, how are we going to care for all these single
mothers?"
Another hit-and-run one post wonder. Fred Reed's columns seem to be literally filled with
you deranged sockpuppets. One post and then poof -- you're gone, never to be seen
again. Quite interesting.
The scary thing about all this is pax-americana is slowly dying. Recent economic figures
coming out of the west show this. All recent gains have nothing in common with industrial
output. Profits are all related to the stock market grandest Ponzi scheme in the history of
western man.
The US does need $ Trillions in debt to pay for 1) ME wars, 2) stock market speculation 3)
keep the US "consumer" afloat and 4) cover endless government and trade deficits.
However, there is a problem. It only works in a ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy)
environment where borrowing is almost free (i.e. it can be almost unlimited), and the FED has
been working hard on providing it.
Paying interest on this debt is something that can't happen -- although in fact the
impossible does seem to be happening. Interest rates have recently run up to 3%, which is
very bad news in this environment.
Monster leverage in places like the NASDAQ can't accept higher rates, the government can't
pay market interest rates on its debt, and over-borrowed consumers only took loans because of
low monthly payments, so what gives?
Probably credit worthiness (counter-party risk) in a replay of 2008.
When the thing goes into reverse, the FED will once again flood the banks with money (QE
Infinity) but this time it's going to be more obvious than ever that the money doesn't
represent anything real -- and my guess -- for what it's worth -- is that the US dollar will
finally risk its credibility (i.e. a 10% increase in the money supply = a 10% fall in the
dollar) and US Reserve Currency status is gone.
The scary thing about all this is pax-americana is slowly dying. Recent economic figures
coming out of the west show this. All recent gains have nothing in common with industrial
output. Profits are all related to the stock market grandest Ponzi scheme in the history of
western man.
The US does need $ Trillions in debt to pay for 1) ME wars, 2) stock market speculation 3)
keep the US "consumer" afloat and 4) cover endless government and trade deficits.
However, there is a problem. It only works in a ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy)
environment where borrowing is almost free (i.e. it can be almost unlimited), and the FED has
been working hard on providing it.
Paying interest on this debt is something that can't happen -- although in fact the
impossible does seem to be happening. Interest rates have recently run up to 3%, which is
very bad news in this environment.
Monster leverage in places like the NASDAQ can't accept higher rates, the government can't
pay market interest rates on its debt, and over-borrowed consumers only took loans because of
low monthly payments, so what gives?
Probably credit worthiness (counter-party risk) in a replay of 2008.
When the thing goes into reverse, the FED will once again flood the banks with money (QE
Infinity) but this time it's going to be more obvious than ever that the money doesn't
represent anything real -- and my guess -- for what it's worth -- is that the US dollar will
finally risk its credibility (i.e. a 10% increase in the money supply = a 10% fall in the
dollar) and US Reserve Currency status is gone.
...President Barack Obama, who had run a quasi-antiwar liberal campaign for the White House, had embraced the assassination program
and had decreed, "the CIA gets what it wants." Intelligence budgets were maintaining the steep upward curve that had started in 2001,
and while all agencies were benefiting, none had done as well as the CIA At just under $15 billion, the agency's budget had climbed
by 56 percent just since 2004.
Decades earlier, Richard Helms, the CIA director for whom the event was named, would customarily
refer to the defense contractors who pressured him to spend his budget on their wares as "those bastards." Such disdain for commerce
in the world of spooks was now long gone, as demonstrated by the corporate sponsorship of the tables jammed into the Grand Ballroom
that evening. The executives, many of whom had passed through the revolving door from government service, were there to rub shoulders
with old friends and current partners. "It was totally garish," one attendee told me afterward. "It seemed like every arms manufacturer
in the country had taken a table. Everyone was doing business, right and left."
In the decade since 9/11, the CIA had been regularly blighted by scandal-revelations of torture, renditions, secret "black site"
prisons, bogus intelligence justifying the invasion of Iraq, ignored signs of the impending 9/11 attacks-but such unwholesome realities
found no echo in this comradely gathering. Even George Tenet, the CIA director who had presided over all of the aforementioned scandals,
was greeted with heartfelt affection by erstwhile colleagues as he, along with almost every other living former CIA director, stood
to be introduced by Master of Ceremonies John McLaughlin, a former deputy director himself deeply complicit in the Iraq fiasco. Each,
with the exception of Stansfield Turner (still bitterly resented for downsizing the agency post-Vietnam), received ringing applause,
but none more than the night's honoree, former CIA director and then-current secretary of defense Robert M. Gates.
Although Gates had left the CIA eighteen years before, he was very much the father figure of the institution and a mentor to the
intelligence chieftains, active and retired, who cheered him so fervently that night at the Ritz-Carlton. He had climbed through
the ranks of the national security bureaucracy with a ruthless determination all too evident to those around him. Ray McGovern, his
supervisor in his first agency post, as an analyst with the intelligence directorate's soviet foreign policy branch, recalls writing
in an efficiency report that the young man's "evident and all-consuming ambition is a disruptive influence in the branch." There
had come a brief check on his rise to power when his involvement in the Iran-Contra imbroglio cratered an initial attempt to win
confirmation as CIA director, but success came a few years later, in 1991, despite vehement protests from former colleagues over
his persistent willingness to sacrifice analytic objectivity to the political convenience of his masters.
Gates's successful 1991 confirmation as CIA chief owed much, so colleagues assessed, to diligent work behind the scenes on the
part of the Senate Intelligence Committee's staff director, George Tenet. In 1993, Tenet moved on to be director for intelligence
programs on the Clinton White House national security staff, in which capacity he came to know and esteem John Brennan, a midlevel
and hitherto undistinguished CIA analyst assigned to brief White House staffers. Tenet liked Brennan so much that when he himself
moved to the CIA as deputy director in 1995, he had the briefer appointed station chief in Riyadh, an important position normally
reserved for someone with actual operational experience. In this sensitive post Brennan worked tirelessly to avoid irritating his
Saudi hosts, showing reluctance, for example, to press them for Osama bin Laden's biographical details when asked to do so by the
bin Laden unit back at headquarters.
Brennan returned to Washington in 1999 under Tenet's patronage, initially as his chief of staff and then as CIA executive director,
and by 2003 he had transitioned to the burgeoning field of intelligence fusion bureaucracy. The notion that the way to avert miscommunication
between intelligence bureaucracies was to create yet more layers of bureaucracy was popular in Washington in the aftermath of 9/11.
One concrete expression of this trend was the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, known as T-TIC and then renamed the National Counter
Terrorism Center a year later. Brennan was the first head of T-TIC, distinguishing himself in catering to the abiding paranoia of
the times. On one occasion, notorious within the community, he circulated an urgent report that al-Qaeda was encrypting targeting
information for terrorist attacks in the broadcasts of the al-Jazeera TV network, thereby generating an "orange" alert and the cancellation
of dozens of international flights. The initiative was greeted with malicious amusement over at the CIA's own Counterterrorism Center,
whose chief at the time, José Rodríguez, later opined that Brennan had been trying to build up his profile with higher authority.
"Brennan was a major factor in keeping [the al-Jazeera/al-Qaeda story] alive. We thought it was ridiculous," he told a reporter.
"My own view is he saw this, he took this, as a way to have relevance, to take something to the White House." Tellingly, an Obama
White House spokesman later excused Brennan's behavior on the grounds that though he had circulated the report, he hadn't believed
it himself.
Exiting government service in 2005, Brennan spent the next three years heading The Analysis Corporation, an obscure but profitable
intelligence contractor engaged in preparing terrorist watch lists for the government, work for which he was paid $763,000 in 2008.
Among the useful relationships he had cultivated over the years was well-connected Democrat Anthony Lake, a former national security
adviser to Bill Clinton, who recommended him to presidential candidate Barack Obama. Meeting for the first time shortly after Obama's
election victory, the pair bonded immediately, with Obama "finishing Brennan's sentences," by one account. Among their points of
wholehearted agreement was the merit of a surgical approach to terrorist threats, the "need to target the metastasizing disease without
destroying the surrounding tissue," as Brennan put it, for which drones and their Hellfire missiles seemed the ideal tools. Obama
was initially balked in his desire to make Brennan CIA director because of the latter's all-too-close association with the agency's
torture program, so instead the new president made him his assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, with an office down
the hall from the Oval Office. Two years into the administration, everyone in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom knew that the bulky Irishman
was the most powerful man in U.S. intelligence as the custodian of the president's kill list, on which the chief executive and former
constitutional law professor insisted on reserving the last word, making his final selections for execution at regularly scheduled
Tuesday afternoon meetings. "You know, our president has his brutal side," a CIA source cognizant of Obama's involvement observed
to me at the time.
Now, along with the other six hundred diners at the Helms dinner, Brennan listened attentively as Gates rose to accept the coveted
award for "exemplary service to the nation and the Central Intelligence Agency." After paying due tribute to previous honorees as
well as his pride in being part of the CIA "family," Gates spoke movingly of a recent and particularly tragic instance of CIA sacrifice,
the seven men and women killed by a suicide bomber at an agency base, Forward Operating Base Chapman, in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009.
All present bowed their heads in silent tribute.
Gates then moved on to a more upbeat topic. When first he arrived at the Pentagon in 2007, he said, he had found deep-rooted resistance
to "new technology" among "flyboys with silk scarves" still wedded to venerable traditions of fighter-plane combat. But all that,
he informed his rapt audience, had changed. Factories were working "day and night, day and night," to turn out the vital weapons
for the fight against terrorism. "So from now on," he concluded, his voice rising, "the watchword is: drones, baby, drones!"
...President Barack Obama, who had run a quasi-antiwar liberal campaign for the White House, had embraced the assassination program
and had decreed, "the CIA gets what it wants." Intelligence budgets were maintaining the steep upward curve that had started in 2001,
and while all agencies were benefiting, none had done as well as the CIA At just under $15 billion, the agency's budget had climbed
by 56 percent just since 2004.
Decades earlier, Richard Helms, the CIA director for whom the event was named, would customarily
refer to the defense contractors who pressured him to spend his budget on their wares as "those bastards." Such disdain for commerce
in the world of spooks was now long gone, as demonstrated by the corporate sponsorship of the tables jammed into the Grand Ballroom
that evening. The executives, many of whom had passed through the revolving door from government service, were there to rub shoulders
with old friends and current partners. "It was totally garish," one attendee told me afterward. "It seemed like every arms manufacturer
in the country had taken a table. Everyone was doing business, right and left."
In the decade since 9/11, the CIA had been regularly blighted by scandal-revelations of torture, renditions, secret "black site"
prisons, bogus intelligence justifying the invasion of Iraq, ignored signs of the impending 9/11 attacks-but such unwholesome realities
found no echo in this comradely gathering. Even George Tenet, the CIA director who had presided over all of the aforementioned scandals,
was greeted with heartfelt affection by erstwhile colleagues as he, along with almost every other living former CIA director, stood
to be introduced by Master of Ceremonies John McLaughlin, a former deputy director himself deeply complicit in the Iraq fiasco. Each,
with the exception of Stansfield Turner (still bitterly resented for downsizing the agency post-Vietnam), received ringing applause,
but none more than the night's honoree, former CIA director and then-current secretary of defense Robert M. Gates.
Although Gates had left the CIA eighteen years before, he was very much the father figure of the institution and a mentor to the
intelligence chieftains, active and retired, who cheered him so fervently that night at the Ritz-Carlton. He had climbed through
the ranks of the national security bureaucracy with a ruthless determination all too evident to those around him. Ray McGovern, his
supervisor in his first agency post, as an analyst with the intelligence directorate's soviet foreign policy branch, recalls writing
in an efficiency report that the young man's "evident and all-consuming ambition is a disruptive influence in the branch." There
had come a brief check on his rise to power when his involvement in the Iran-Contra imbroglio cratered an initial attempt to win
confirmation as CIA director, but success came a few years later, in 1991, despite vehement protests from former colleagues over
his persistent willingness to sacrifice analytic objectivity to the political convenience of his masters.
Gates's successful 1991 confirmation as CIA chief owed much, so colleagues assessed, to diligent work behind the scenes on the
part of the Senate Intelligence Committee's staff director, George Tenet. In 1993, Tenet moved on to be director for intelligence
programs on the Clinton White House national security staff, in which capacity he came to know and esteem John Brennan, a midlevel
and hitherto undistinguished CIA analyst assigned to brief White House staffers. Tenet liked Brennan so much that when he himself
moved to the CIA as deputy director in 1995, he had the briefer appointed station chief in Riyadh, an important position normally
reserved for someone with actual operational experience. In this sensitive post Brennan worked tirelessly to avoid irritating his
Saudi hosts, showing reluctance, for example, to press them for Osama bin Laden's biographical details when asked to do so by the
bin Laden unit back at headquarters.
Brennan returned to Washington in 1999 under Tenet's patronage, initially as his chief of staff and then as CIA executive director,
and by 2003 he had transitioned to the burgeoning field of intelligence fusion bureaucracy. The notion that the way to avert miscommunication
between intelligence bureaucracies was to create yet more layers of bureaucracy was popular in Washington in the aftermath of 9/11.
One concrete expression of this trend was the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, known as T-TIC and then renamed the National Counter
Terrorism Center a year later. Brennan was the first head of T-TIC, distinguishing himself in catering to the abiding paranoia of
the times. On one occasion, notorious within the community, he circulated an urgent report that al-Qaeda was encrypting targeting
information for terrorist attacks in the broadcasts of the al-Jazeera TV network, thereby generating an "orange" alert and the cancellation
of dozens of international flights. The initiative was greeted with malicious amusement over at the CIA's own Counterterrorism Center,
whose chief at the time, José Rodríguez, later opined that Brennan had been trying to build up his profile with higher authority.
"Brennan was a major factor in keeping [the al-Jazeera/al-Qaeda story] alive. We thought it was ridiculous," he told a reporter.
"My own view is he saw this, he took this, as a way to have relevance, to take something to the White House." Tellingly, an Obama
White House spokesman later excused Brennan's behavior on the grounds that though he had circulated the report, he hadn't believed
it himself.
Exiting government service in 2005, Brennan spent the next three years heading The Analysis Corporation, an obscure but profitable
intelligence contractor engaged in preparing terrorist watch lists for the government, work for which he was paid $763,000 in 2008.
Among the useful relationships he had cultivated over the years was well-connected Democrat Anthony Lake, a former national security
adviser to Bill Clinton, who recommended him to presidential candidate Barack Obama. Meeting for the first time shortly after Obama's
election victory, the pair bonded immediately, with Obama "finishing Brennan's sentences," by one account. Among their points of
wholehearted agreement was the merit of a surgical approach to terrorist threats, the "need to target the metastasizing disease without
destroying the surrounding tissue," as Brennan put it, for which drones and their Hellfire missiles seemed the ideal tools. Obama
was initially balked in his desire to make Brennan CIA director because of the latter's all-too-close association with the agency's
torture program, so instead the new president made him his assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, with an office down
the hall from the Oval Office. Two years into the administration, everyone in the Ritz-Carlton ballroom knew that the bulky Irishman
was the most powerful man in U.S. intelligence as the custodian of the president's kill list, on which the chief executive and former
constitutional law professor insisted on reserving the last word, making his final selections for execution at regularly scheduled
Tuesday afternoon meetings. "You know, our president has his brutal side," a CIA source cognizant of Obama's involvement observed
to me at the time.
Now, along with the other six hundred diners at the Helms dinner, Brennan listened attentively as Gates rose to accept the coveted
award for "exemplary service to the nation and the Central Intelligence Agency." After paying due tribute to previous honorees as
well as his pride in being part of the CIA "family," Gates spoke movingly of a recent and particularly tragic instance of CIA sacrifice,
the seven men and women killed by a suicide bomber at an agency base, Forward Operating Base Chapman, in Khost, Afghanistan, in 2009.
All present bowed their heads in silent tribute.
Gates then moved on to a more upbeat topic. When first he arrived at the Pentagon in 2007, he said, he had found deep-rooted resistance
to "new technology" among "flyboys with silk scarves" still wedded to venerable traditions of fighter-plane combat. But all that,
he informed his rapt audience, had changed. Factories were working "day and night, day and night," to turn out the vital weapons
for the fight against terrorism. "So from now on," he concluded, his voice rising, "the watchword is: drones, baby, drones!"
"A very senior civilian colleague in DIA once asked me why sophisticated weapons so often
malfunction or are otherwise defeated. I told her that it was simply a fact of life that in
actual warfare "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." She resolutely stated that this should
not be. "The manufacturers guarantee that they will work as advertised," she insisted. "
Another reason we can't win wars and we get into wars we shouldn't. Senior officials that
naive and uninformed about warfare.
Lockheed Martin got $35.2 billion from taxpayers last year. That's more than many
federal agencies.
Of Lockheed Martin's $51 billion in sales last year, nearly 70 percent, or $35.2
billion, came from sales to the U.S. government. It's a colossal figure, hard to
comprehend.
Boeing is in second place with annual sales of $26.5 billion in 2016, a year in which
the top five defense contractors -- including General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop
Grumman -- had total sales of nearly $110 billion to the U.S. government, according to
federal procurement data. The five biggest defense contractors took in more money from the
U.S. government than the next 30 companies combined.
But no one can touch Lockheed, the manufacturer of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The
company is so big that some have likened it to a government agency and have quipped that
Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed's chief executive, is as powerful as a Cabinet secretary -- or
higher. When she gives her annual state of the company speeches, flanked by a pair of flags
-- one American, one with the company logo -- she looks, well, presidential.
In 2013, Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, now the secretary of defense, told Congress, "If
you don't fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition."
Analysts say that to make the Lockheed-Martin Marietta merger successful, the new
company will have to slash thousands of jobs.
" This merger can't create more revenue. It can only pay off through reduced
costs , and that means people" will be laid off, said Robert D. Paulson, who heads the
aerospace industry practice for the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in Los Angeles.
--
Norman Augustine was the focus of the article and head of the merged companies who was
expected to wield the "scalpel" in order make the merger financially viable.
Over the years I'd done some research on Augustine, so when I saw a video of Augustine
schmoozing with George W. Bush at the Cosmos Club celebrating Bush's inauguration early in
2001, I thought, Uh oh, the game's afoot.
Cutting staff simply was not producing the revenue stream Lockheed Martin needed to
support lavish lifestyles that even LM weapons sellers enjoyed, particularly when their major
clients were based in TelAviv, requiring visits of 5 to 8 months' duration.
"A very senior civilian colleague in DIA once asked me why sophisticated weapons so often
malfunction or are otherwise defeated. I told her that it was simply a fact of life that in
actual warfare "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." She resolutely stated that this should
not be. "The manufacturers guarantee that they will work as advertised," she insisted. "
Another reason we can't win wars and we get into wars we shouldn't. Senior officials that
naive and uninformed about warfare.
Lockheed Martin got $35.2 billion from taxpayers last year. That's more than many
federal agencies.
Of Lockheed Martin's $51 billion in sales last year, nearly 70 percent, or $35.2
billion, came from sales to the U.S. government. It's a colossal figure, hard to
comprehend.
Boeing is in second place with annual sales of $26.5 billion in 2016, a year in which
the top five defense contractors -- including General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop
Grumman -- had total sales of nearly $110 billion to the U.S. government, according to
federal procurement data. The five biggest defense contractors took in more money from the
U.S. government than the next 30 companies combined.
But no one can touch Lockheed, the manufacturer of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The
company is so big that some have likened it to a government agency and have quipped that
Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed's chief executive, is as powerful as a Cabinet secretary -- or
higher. When she gives her annual state of the company speeches, flanked by a pair of flags
-- one American, one with the company logo -- she looks, well, presidential.
In 2013, Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, now the secretary of defense, told Congress, "If
you don't fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition."
Analysts say that to make the Lockheed-Martin Marietta merger successful, the new
company will have to slash thousands of jobs.
" This merger can't create more revenue. It can only pay off through reduced
costs , and that means people" will be laid off, said Robert D. Paulson, who heads the
aerospace industry practice for the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in Los Angeles.
--
Norman Augustine was the focus of the article and head of the merged companies who was
expected to wield the "scalpel" in order make the merger financially viable.
Over the years I'd done some research on Augustine, so when I saw a video of Augustine
schmoozing with George W. Bush at the Cosmos Club celebrating Bush's inauguration early in
2001, I thought, Uh oh, the game's afoot.
Cutting staff simply was not producing the revenue stream Lockheed Martin needed to
support lavish lifestyles that even LM weapons sellers enjoyed, particularly when their major
clients were based in TelAviv, requiring visits of 5 to 8 months' duration.
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies. ..."
"... the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies. ..."
"... The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule. ..."
"... But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils. ..."
In a three-part series published last week,
the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic
Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican
incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.
... ... ...
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA,
NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus.
This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts"
for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump's attacks
on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs
like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the
military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the
intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen
candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation
with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its
operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that
score. A chorus of media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire editorial board
of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip
up support on alleged "human rights" grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers
to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic
Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining
the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence
operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience
invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given
preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration
has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened
its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of
American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose
interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class
is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry
out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx
of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that
the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the
corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
The fact that 99.9% of neocons are chickenhawks and never experienced the level of sufferings
the wat inflicts on people is defining chanracteristic of all US neocons. Especially female
neocon -- a unique US breed.
Notable quotes:
"... At the core of the American philosophy is voluntarism, the justification of action based purely and simply on the will. ..."
"... The clearest and perhaps the best expression of American voluntarism come of age was expressed by Karl Rove during the George W. Bush administration, as reported by Ron Suskind in New York Times Magazine ..."
"... We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. ..."
"... The point of the voluntarist order is to act, to impose one's will on global reality by any means necessary. The truth is not something to be understood, or grasped, still less something that should condition one's own actions and limit them in any way. Truth is reducible to whatever is useful for imposing one's will. ..."
"... For America's voluntarist order, whether these events as described are true in the objective sense is of no more importance than whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You will recall that, just prior to the Iraq invasion, the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah some 83 times in order to oblige him to confess a nonexistent connection between Saddam's Iraq, al-Qaeda, and chemical weaponry. That is voluntarism in action right there. "We're an empire now and we create our own reality." It was not a one-off. It is now the norm to make sure the facts are fixed to match the desired policy. ..."
"... Voluntarism is the fruit of an anti-civilization, and of a technological way of knowing, as the great Canadian philosopher George Grant put it, that bears a striking resemblance to what C.S. Lewis described in his pre- Nineteen Eighty-Four ..."
At the core of the American philosophy is voluntarism, the justification of action based
purely and simply on the will. The distinguishing characteristic of voluntarism is that it
gives pride of place to the will as such, to the will as power, the will abstracted from
everything else, but especially abstracted from the good. The notion of the good is necessarily
inclusive of the whole, of all sides. Concern exclusively for oneself goes by a different
name.
The clearest and perhaps the best expression of American voluntarism come of age was
expressed by Karl Rove during the George W. Bush administration, as reported by Ron Suskind in
New York Times Magazine on October 17, 2004:
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying
that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities,
which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you,
all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
This oft-quoted statement is naively assumed to have been the expression of a single moment
in American politics, rather than a summation of its ethos by one of its shrewder and more
self-aware practitioners. The point of the voluntarist order is to act, to impose one's will on
global reality by any means necessary. The truth is not something to be understood, or grasped,
still less something that should condition one's own actions and limit them in any way. Truth
is reducible to whatever is useful for imposing one's will.
We can see this voluntarism at work among our forebears. The Skripal affair in Britain led
to almost immediate action -- the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the United States
alone -- well before the facts of this dubious incident, which has led to zero deaths, could be
established. Indeed, when the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, suggested first
establishing what had happened and only then acting, he was widely accused of weakness. When
one is "history's actor," action mustn't be delayed. That, after all, is the whole point.
The suffering of innocents should always concern us. But in Syria, the facts regarding who
is the guilty party, including in this latest case of a gas attack in Douma, are very far from
having been established. What's more, though reputable investigators such as Hans Blix and
MIT's Theodore Postol have cast serious
doubt on the reliability of the evidence linking such attacks to Assad's government,
official accounts in the U.S. proceed as if there is not the slightest controversy about the
matter.
For America's voluntarist order, whether these events as described are true in the objective
sense is of no more importance than whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You
will recall that, just prior to the Iraq invasion, the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah some 83
times in order to oblige him to
confess a nonexistent connection between Saddam's Iraq, al-Qaeda, and chemical weaponry.
That is voluntarism in action right there. "We're an empire now and we create our own reality."
It was not a one-off. It is now the norm to make sure the facts are fixed
to match the desired policy.
Voluntarism is the fruit of an anti-civilization, and of a technological way of knowing, as
the great Canadian philosopher George Grant put it, that bears a striking resemblance to what
C.S. Lewis described in his pre- Nineteen Eighty-Four anti-utopia That Hideous
Strength . In that novel, the institution called N.I.C.E., like the U.S. foreign policy
establishment today, is essentially a voluntarist bureaucracy run by men without culture,
trained in technical sciences and sociology-like "disciplines" and "law" understood in a purely
formalistic sense, who assume human affairs are understandable as aggregates of facts without
value. Such "men without chests" (Lewis's phrase) live in a world where the good and the true
have forever been severed of their mutually defining link. The resulting, essentially
irrational world they inhabit is one that has only one logic left: that of will and power.
It is an American empire where we create our own reality, the mirror image of ourselves, and
it is indeed precisely hideous. If the builders of empire continue to get their way, it may all
soon enough come to a violent and ignominious end. Historians, if they still exist, will marvel
at our folly.
Paul Grenier, an essayist and translator who writes regularly on
political-philosophical issues, is founder of the Simone Weil Center for Political
Philosophy.
For another outstanding account of 'a technological way of knowing', check out Jacques
Ellul's 'The Technological Society'.
Not only was this incident fabricated, it was known the preparations were known in
advance. I remember reading an article two weeks before Douma about the preparations for the
fabrication. Felix Somary was quite right in writing in July 1914 that "the information
available to insiders, and precisely the most highly placed among them, is all to often
misleading" (quoted in Jim Rickards "The Road to Ruin").
Volunteerism, voluntarism, the mysterious workings of the "will," we're famous for all of it,
but this is not so uniquely American, Rove's comment reminds me of something that Tolstoy
might put in Napoleon's mouth, actually. Pride, plus the tunnel-vision typical of
technocrats, academics, specialists
Karl Rove is a man without a chest–a "chickenhawk," a proud and willful man puffed
up on ignorance and willpower, wrecking the world–and nothing more than that, unless he
wills it to be.
Volunteerism is two things, Power to the Ladies Who Lunch, and we don't have to pay for a
social safety net because somebody else will provide it voluntarily for free.
It has no larger meaning, and no role in foreign policy.
The foreign policy described here is just Smedley Butler's "racket" using US foreign
policy and forces for private ends.
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies. ..."
"... the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies. ..."
"... The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule. ..."
"... But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils. ..."
In a three-part series published last week,
the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic
Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican
incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.
... ... ...
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA,
NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus.
This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts"
for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump's attacks
on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs
like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the
military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the
intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen
candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation
with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its
operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that
score. A chorus of media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire editorial board
of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip
up support on alleged "human rights" grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers
to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic
Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining
the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence
operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience
invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given
preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration
has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened
its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of
American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose
interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class
is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry
out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx
of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that
the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the
corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
The fact that 99.9% of neocons are chickenhawks and never experienced the level of sufferings
the wat inflicts on people is defining chanracteristic of all US neocons. Especially female
neocon -- a unique US breed.
Notable quotes:
"... At the core of the American philosophy is voluntarism, the justification of action based purely and simply on the will. ..."
"... The clearest and perhaps the best expression of American voluntarism come of age was expressed by Karl Rove during the George W. Bush administration, as reported by Ron Suskind in New York Times Magazine ..."
"... We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. ..."
"... The point of the voluntarist order is to act, to impose one's will on global reality by any means necessary. The truth is not something to be understood, or grasped, still less something that should condition one's own actions and limit them in any way. Truth is reducible to whatever is useful for imposing one's will. ..."
"... For America's voluntarist order, whether these events as described are true in the objective sense is of no more importance than whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You will recall that, just prior to the Iraq invasion, the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah some 83 times in order to oblige him to confess a nonexistent connection between Saddam's Iraq, al-Qaeda, and chemical weaponry. That is voluntarism in action right there. "We're an empire now and we create our own reality." It was not a one-off. It is now the norm to make sure the facts are fixed to match the desired policy. ..."
"... Voluntarism is the fruit of an anti-civilization, and of a technological way of knowing, as the great Canadian philosopher George Grant put it, that bears a striking resemblance to what C.S. Lewis described in his pre- Nineteen Eighty-Four ..."
At the core of the American philosophy is voluntarism, the justification of action based
purely and simply on the will. The distinguishing characteristic of voluntarism is that it
gives pride of place to the will as such, to the will as power, the will abstracted from
everything else, but especially abstracted from the good. The notion of the good is necessarily
inclusive of the whole, of all sides. Concern exclusively for oneself goes by a different
name.
The clearest and perhaps the best expression of American voluntarism come of age was
expressed by Karl Rove during the George W. Bush administration, as reported by Ron Suskind in
New York Times Magazine on October 17, 2004:
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying
that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities,
which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you,
all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
This oft-quoted statement is naively assumed to have been the expression of a single moment
in American politics, rather than a summation of its ethos by one of its shrewder and more
self-aware practitioners. The point of the voluntarist order is to act, to impose one's will on
global reality by any means necessary. The truth is not something to be understood, or grasped,
still less something that should condition one's own actions and limit them in any way. Truth
is reducible to whatever is useful for imposing one's will.
We can see this voluntarism at work among our forebears. The Skripal affair in Britain led
to almost immediate action -- the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the United States
alone -- well before the facts of this dubious incident, which has led to zero deaths, could be
established. Indeed, when the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, suggested first
establishing what had happened and only then acting, he was widely accused of weakness. When
one is "history's actor," action mustn't be delayed. That, after all, is the whole point.
The suffering of innocents should always concern us. But in Syria, the facts regarding who
is the guilty party, including in this latest case of a gas attack in Douma, are very far from
having been established. What's more, though reputable investigators such as Hans Blix and
MIT's Theodore Postol have cast serious
doubt on the reliability of the evidence linking such attacks to Assad's government,
official accounts in the U.S. proceed as if there is not the slightest controversy about the
matter.
For America's voluntarist order, whether these events as described are true in the objective
sense is of no more importance than whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You
will recall that, just prior to the Iraq invasion, the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah some 83
times in order to oblige him to
confess a nonexistent connection between Saddam's Iraq, al-Qaeda, and chemical weaponry.
That is voluntarism in action right there. "We're an empire now and we create our own reality."
It was not a one-off. It is now the norm to make sure the facts are fixed
to match the desired policy.
Voluntarism is the fruit of an anti-civilization, and of a technological way of knowing, as
the great Canadian philosopher George Grant put it, that bears a striking resemblance to what
C.S. Lewis described in his pre- Nineteen Eighty-Four anti-utopia That Hideous
Strength . In that novel, the institution called N.I.C.E., like the U.S. foreign policy
establishment today, is essentially a voluntarist bureaucracy run by men without culture,
trained in technical sciences and sociology-like "disciplines" and "law" understood in a purely
formalistic sense, who assume human affairs are understandable as aggregates of facts without
value. Such "men without chests" (Lewis's phrase) live in a world where the good and the true
have forever been severed of their mutually defining link. The resulting, essentially
irrational world they inhabit is one that has only one logic left: that of will and power.
It is an American empire where we create our own reality, the mirror image of ourselves, and
it is indeed precisely hideous. If the builders of empire continue to get their way, it may all
soon enough come to a violent and ignominious end. Historians, if they still exist, will marvel
at our folly.
Paul Grenier, an essayist and translator who writes regularly on
political-philosophical issues, is founder of the Simone Weil Center for Political
Philosophy.
For another outstanding account of 'a technological way of knowing', check out Jacques
Ellul's 'The Technological Society'.
Not only was this incident fabricated, it was known the preparations were known in
advance. I remember reading an article two weeks before Douma about the preparations for the
fabrication. Felix Somary was quite right in writing in July 1914 that "the information
available to insiders, and precisely the most highly placed among them, is all to often
misleading" (quoted in Jim Rickards "The Road to Ruin").
Volunteerism, voluntarism, the mysterious workings of the "will," we're famous for all of it,
but this is not so uniquely American, Rove's comment reminds me of something that Tolstoy
might put in Napoleon's mouth, actually. Pride, plus the tunnel-vision typical of
technocrats, academics, specialists
Karl Rove is a man without a chest–a "chickenhawk," a proud and willful man puffed
up on ignorance and willpower, wrecking the world–and nothing more than that, unless he
wills it to be.
Volunteerism is two things, Power to the Ladies Who Lunch, and we don't have to pay for a
social safety net because somebody else will provide it voluntarily for free.
It has no larger meaning, and no role in foreign policy.
The foreign policy described here is just Smedley Butler's "racket" using US foreign
policy and forces for private ends.
"... This popular question completely misses the point. The US attack on Syria is a clear and indisputable war crime against a sovereign country regardless of whether Syria used a chemical weapon in driving the Washington supported terrorists from Douma. ..."
"... It is unlikely that the UN Security Council will condemn Washington, which pays 25% of the UN's budget. Moreover, the Security Council is loaded up with Washington's vassals, and they will not vote to censure their liegelord. ..."
"... Putin is wasting his time taking the matter to the Security Council, unless his purpose is to prove that every Western institution is completely corrupt. ..."
"... During the entirety of the Cold War no US ambassador to the UN spoke aggressively and disrespectfully to the Soviet representative as Nikki Haley speaks to the Russian ambassador. During the Cold War no American president would have tolerated Nikki Haley. The crazed bitch would have instantly been fired. ..."
"... Until Washington is effectively resisted, Washington's European vassals, the UN Security Council and the OPCW will stand with Washington. ..."
Many, including Russia's President Putin, have asked why the US launched an illegal attack on Syria prior to the chemical weapons
inspectors examining the site of the alleged chemical attack.
This popular question completely misses the point. The US attack on Syria is a clear and indisputable war crime against a
sovereign country regardless of whether Syria used a chemical weapon in driving the Washington supported terrorists from Douma.
No one acted to stop Washington's war crime. Some of Washington's vassals, such as Germany and Italy, refused to participate in Washington's
war crime, but no one attempted to block it. The impotent UN Security Council, to which Russia is wasting its time appealing, the
EU, NATO, Russia and China themselves did nothing to stop Washington's Nazi era war crime.
Russia said that if Washington's attack harmed its citizens, there would be military consequences, but Russia did not protect
its ally Syria from the attack.
Perhaps it doesn't matter as Washington's attack was carefully conducted so as to have no effect except to serve as a face-saver
for Trump. Apparently no one was killed and no damage was done to anything real except to a facility in which anti-venom for snake
bites was being produced.
On the other hand, it does matter, because of the perception that the American presstitutes have created that it was a great victory
for America over the evil Syrian government and the evil Russian government that supports them. This perception, which the presstitutes
have created with their fake news, justifies the war crime and will lead to more attacks on Syria.
It is unlikely that the UN Security Council will condemn Washington, which pays 25% of the UN's budget. Moreover, the Security
Council is loaded up with Washington's vassals, and they will not vote to censure their liegelord.
Putin is wasting his time taking the matter to the Security Council, unless his purpose is to prove that every Western institution
is completely corrupt. As most informed people already know this, I don't understand the point of proving the known. Putin should
read Eric Zuesse's article before he puts too much faith in the UN.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/17/how-us-has-virtually-destroyed-un.html
As I have written on a number of occasions, I admire Putin's Christian character of sidestepping the beatings he continuously
takes from Washington in order to save the world from the massive deaths of a world war. The problem is that by turning the other
cheek, Putin encourages more aggression from Washington. Putin is dealing with neoconservative psychopaths. He is not dealing with
common sense.
During the entirety of the Cold War no US ambassador to the UN spoke aggressively and disrespectfully to the Soviet representative
as Nikki Haley speaks to the Russian ambassador. During the Cold War no American president would have tolerated Nikki Haley. The
crazed bitch would have instantly been fired.
The Russian government is captured by delusion if the Russians believe that the US government, in which Nikki Haley is Trump's
choice to be America's spokesperson to the world, in which the crazed neoconservative war monger John Bolton is a principal influence
over US military and foreign policy, and in which the President himself is under threat of indictment for wanting to normalize relations
with Russia, has any prospect of avoiding war.
The best chance of preventing the oncoming war is Russian-Chinese-Iranian unity and a defeat for American arms in a regional context
not worth the Washington psychopaths launching of nuclear weapons. Until Washington is effectively resisted, Washington's European
vassals, the UN Security Council and the OPCW will stand with Washington. Once Washington experiences a defeat, NATO will dissolve
and with this dissolution Washington's ability to threaten other countries will lose its cover and evaporate.
"... This popular question completely misses the point. The US attack on Syria is a clear and indisputable war crime against a sovereign country regardless of whether Syria used a chemical weapon in driving the Washington supported terrorists from Douma. ..."
"... It is unlikely that the UN Security Council will condemn Washington, which pays 25% of the UN's budget. Moreover, the Security Council is loaded up with Washington's vassals, and they will not vote to censure their liegelord. ..."
"... Putin is wasting his time taking the matter to the Security Council, unless his purpose is to prove that every Western institution is completely corrupt. ..."
"... During the entirety of the Cold War no US ambassador to the UN spoke aggressively and disrespectfully to the Soviet representative as Nikki Haley speaks to the Russian ambassador. During the Cold War no American president would have tolerated Nikki Haley. The crazed bitch would have instantly been fired. ..."
"... Until Washington is effectively resisted, Washington's European vassals, the UN Security Council and the OPCW will stand with Washington. ..."
Many, including Russia's President Putin, have asked why the US launched an illegal attack on Syria prior to the chemical weapons
inspectors examining the site of the alleged chemical attack.
This popular question completely misses the point. The US attack on Syria is a clear and indisputable war crime against a
sovereign country regardless of whether Syria used a chemical weapon in driving the Washington supported terrorists from Douma.
No one acted to stop Washington's war crime. Some of Washington's vassals, such as Germany and Italy, refused to participate in Washington's
war crime, but no one attempted to block it. The impotent UN Security Council, to which Russia is wasting its time appealing, the
EU, NATO, Russia and China themselves did nothing to stop Washington's Nazi era war crime.
Russia said that if Washington's attack harmed its citizens, there would be military consequences, but Russia did not protect
its ally Syria from the attack.
Perhaps it doesn't matter as Washington's attack was carefully conducted so as to have no effect except to serve as a face-saver
for Trump. Apparently no one was killed and no damage was done to anything real except to a facility in which anti-venom for snake
bites was being produced.
On the other hand, it does matter, because of the perception that the American presstitutes have created that it was a great victory
for America over the evil Syrian government and the evil Russian government that supports them. This perception, which the presstitutes
have created with their fake news, justifies the war crime and will lead to more attacks on Syria.
It is unlikely that the UN Security Council will condemn Washington, which pays 25% of the UN's budget. Moreover, the Security
Council is loaded up with Washington's vassals, and they will not vote to censure their liegelord.
Putin is wasting his time taking the matter to the Security Council, unless his purpose is to prove that every Western institution
is completely corrupt. As most informed people already know this, I don't understand the point of proving the known. Putin should
read Eric Zuesse's article before he puts too much faith in the UN.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/17/how-us-has-virtually-destroyed-un.html
As I have written on a number of occasions, I admire Putin's Christian character of sidestepping the beatings he continuously
takes from Washington in order to save the world from the massive deaths of a world war. The problem is that by turning the other
cheek, Putin encourages more aggression from Washington. Putin is dealing with neoconservative psychopaths. He is not dealing with
common sense.
During the entirety of the Cold War no US ambassador to the UN spoke aggressively and disrespectfully to the Soviet representative
as Nikki Haley speaks to the Russian ambassador. During the Cold War no American president would have tolerated Nikki Haley. The
crazed bitch would have instantly been fired.
The Russian government is captured by delusion if the Russians believe that the US government, in which Nikki Haley is Trump's
choice to be America's spokesperson to the world, in which the crazed neoconservative war monger John Bolton is a principal influence
over US military and foreign policy, and in which the President himself is under threat of indictment for wanting to normalize relations
with Russia, has any prospect of avoiding war.
The best chance of preventing the oncoming war is Russian-Chinese-Iranian unity and a defeat for American arms in a regional context
not worth the Washington psychopaths launching of nuclear weapons. Until Washington is effectively resisted, Washington's European
vassals, the UN Security Council and the OPCW will stand with Washington. Once Washington experiences a defeat, NATO will dissolve
and with this dissolution Washington's ability to threaten other countries will lose its cover and evaporate.
Trump's Establishment Sin: Being an Open and Unabashed Devil
It's the open crassness of Trump as much as his policy substance that bothers establishment
operatives. Look at Trump's recent yucky White House sit-down with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS),
the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. You can view it on YouTube here . It's incredible. With MBS grinning
sheepishly next to him, the Insane Clown President held up posters showing all the big-dollar
weapons and war systems the Saudis are purchasing from the U.S. Trump brazenly boasted about
Washington's $12.5 billion arms deal with the most reactionary government on the planet.
"That's peanuts for you," Trump chided the crown prince while dangling the posters under his
nose. "Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation, and they're going to give the United States some
of that wealth, hopefully, in the form of jobs, in the form of the purchase of the finest
military equipment anywhere in the world," Trump told reporters. MBS looked embarrassed as
Trump listed the prices of the weapons the U.S. was selling to the Saudis: "$880 million $645
million $6 billion that's for frigates."
The president sounded like a car dealer boasting about the bargains at Trump Ford-Mazda. It
was ugly and humiliating for everyone involved and has been condemned in the dominant corporate
media for its decadent unpleasantness.
"Trump administration plans to make the U.S. an even larger weapons exporter by loosening
restrictions on the sale of equipment ranging from fighter jets and drones to warships and
artillery. Reuters reveals that the new initiative will provide guidelines that
could allow more countries to be granted faster deal approvals, and will call on Cabinet
officials to help close deals between foreign governments and U.S. defense contractors The
role U.S. Cabinet officials may be asked to play in pushing arms exports abroad as part of
the new initiative, which will call for a 'whole of government' approach -- from the
president and his Cabinet to military attachés and diplomats -- to help draw in
billions of dollars more in arms business overseas."
So, do you think the Obama administrations sold arms to Saudi Arabia and other reactionary
governments around the world? Do you think it enlisted Cabinet officials and U.S. diplomats in
the project of advancing U.S. arms sales across a blood-drenched planet? If you answered "Hell
yes it did" to both questions, then you are correct. Here is a
forgotten story from the final days of the Obama administration, penned by
Motherboard 's Farid Farid, who was understandably underwhelmed by Obama's suspension
of the sale of one type of munition to the Saudis in early 2017:
Obama's Administration Sold More Weapons Than Any Other Since World War II
Many were sold to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.
President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, will leave office in a few
weeks with the dubious honor of having sold more weapons than any other American president
since World War II. Most of the arms deals totaling over $200 billion in the period from 2008
to 2015 have ended up in the Middle East, according to a Congressional Research Service
report published in December Focusing on arms deals to developing nations, the extensive
report found that Saudi Arabia was the top arms importer with deals worth around $94 billion
from 2008-2015. Under Obama the overall sales, pending delivery of equipment and specialized
training for troops, to Saudi Arabia alone has ballooned to $115 billion.
Saudi Arabia is spearheading a coalition of Arab nations in a bombing campaign closing in
on two years against the insurgent Houthi militias in Yemen, who took over the capital Sanaa
in September 2014. The United States has sent special operations forces to assist the Arab
coalition in a grinding war that has seen over 10,000 killed, 2.2 million displaced and
nearly half a million children on the brink of famine from the ensuing crisis.
Earlier this month, the United States decided to halt future sales of precision-guided
munitions, which are supposed to hit specific targets and minimize collateral damage, to the
Gulf kingdom citing civilian deaths in Yemen. But experts are skeptical this will deter Saudi
Arabia from continuing to fuel its regional proxy wars.
"Frankly it was a really minor and temporary punishment. I don't view it as a major
consequence and it is more symbolic than anything," said Cole Bockenfeld, deputy director of
policy at Project on Middle East Democracy.
He pointed to the US partially suspending military aid to Egypt after the military
overthrew the unpopular government in July 2013 as another example of the lack of political
will of the Obama administration to rock relations with its allies. The Congressional report,
Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations 2008-2015, noted that Egypt was the biggest
recipient of arms deliveries last year worth $5.3 billion.
"What's changed during the Obama administration is that increasing arms sales has become a
standardized component of diplomacy at all levels of government, not just in the defense
department," Bockenfeld told Motherboard. "For US diplomats to become the salesmen, that has
been a new element which really increased exports."
What's the main difference between Trump and Obama when it comes to U.S. arms sales abroad?
As the noted liberal arms trade analyst William
Hartung told DN's Amy Goodman this week , "Well, [Trump's] much more blatant about it.
He's shouting it from the rooftops . He's playing a very personal role .he held up a chart
[during his appalling meeting before reporters with MBS] that showed 40,000 jobs from Saudi
arms sales, and it showed the states, and they were all the swing states -- Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michigan, Florida. So, among other things, not only is this a business proposition for Trump,
but it's a blatant political move to shore up his base."
So here's an interesting question: which is worse – (a) quietly equipping the most
reactionary government on Earth and much of the rest of the world with lethal, high-tech means
of mass destruction while posing as some kind of progressive and noble peace agent or (b)
loudly equipping the most reactionary government on Earth and much of the rest of the world
with lethal, high-tech means of mass destruction while boasting about the resulting revenue and
jobs to reporters and your white-nationalist political base?
Something tells me the Yemeni victims of Riyadh's U.S.- made bombs, missiles, bullets, and
artillery don't care all that much either way.
Trump's Establishment Sin: Being an Open and Unabashed Devil
It's the open crassness of Trump as much as his policy substance that bothers establishment
operatives. Look at Trump's recent yucky White House sit-down with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS),
the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. You can view it on YouTube here . It's incredible. With MBS grinning
sheepishly next to him, the Insane Clown President held up posters showing all the big-dollar
weapons and war systems the Saudis are purchasing from the U.S. Trump brazenly boasted about
Washington's $12.5 billion arms deal with the most reactionary government on the planet.
"That's peanuts for you," Trump chided the crown prince while dangling the posters under his
nose. "Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation, and they're going to give the United States some
of that wealth, hopefully, in the form of jobs, in the form of the purchase of the finest
military equipment anywhere in the world," Trump told reporters. MBS looked embarrassed as
Trump listed the prices of the weapons the U.S. was selling to the Saudis: "$880 million $645
million $6 billion that's for frigates."
The president sounded like a car dealer boasting about the bargains at Trump Ford-Mazda. It
was ugly and humiliating for everyone involved and has been condemned in the dominant corporate
media for its decadent unpleasantness.
"Trump administration plans to make the U.S. an even larger weapons exporter by loosening
restrictions on the sale of equipment ranging from fighter jets and drones to warships and
artillery. Reuters reveals that the new initiative will provide guidelines that
could allow more countries to be granted faster deal approvals, and will call on Cabinet
officials to help close deals between foreign governments and U.S. defense contractors The
role U.S. Cabinet officials may be asked to play in pushing arms exports abroad as part of
the new initiative, which will call for a 'whole of government' approach -- from the
president and his Cabinet to military attachés and diplomats -- to help draw in
billions of dollars more in arms business overseas."
So, do you think the Obama administrations sold arms to Saudi Arabia and other reactionary
governments around the world? Do you think it enlisted Cabinet officials and U.S. diplomats in
the project of advancing U.S. arms sales across a blood-drenched planet? If you answered "Hell
yes it did" to both questions, then you are correct. Here is a
forgotten story from the final days of the Obama administration, penned by
Motherboard 's Farid Farid, who was understandably underwhelmed by Obama's suspension
of the sale of one type of munition to the Saudis in early 2017:
Obama's Administration Sold More Weapons Than Any Other Since World War II
Many were sold to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.
President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, will leave office in a few
weeks with the dubious honor of having sold more weapons than any other American president
since World War II. Most of the arms deals totaling over $200 billion in the period from 2008
to 2015 have ended up in the Middle East, according to a Congressional Research Service
report published in December Focusing on arms deals to developing nations, the extensive
report found that Saudi Arabia was the top arms importer with deals worth around $94 billion
from 2008-2015. Under Obama the overall sales, pending delivery of equipment and specialized
training for troops, to Saudi Arabia alone has ballooned to $115 billion.
Saudi Arabia is spearheading a coalition of Arab nations in a bombing campaign closing in
on two years against the insurgent Houthi militias in Yemen, who took over the capital Sanaa
in September 2014. The United States has sent special operations forces to assist the Arab
coalition in a grinding war that has seen over 10,000 killed, 2.2 million displaced and
nearly half a million children on the brink of famine from the ensuing crisis.
Earlier this month, the United States decided to halt future sales of precision-guided
munitions, which are supposed to hit specific targets and minimize collateral damage, to the
Gulf kingdom citing civilian deaths in Yemen. But experts are skeptical this will deter Saudi
Arabia from continuing to fuel its regional proxy wars.
"Frankly it was a really minor and temporary punishment. I don't view it as a major
consequence and it is more symbolic than anything," said Cole Bockenfeld, deputy director of
policy at Project on Middle East Democracy.
He pointed to the US partially suspending military aid to Egypt after the military
overthrew the unpopular government in July 2013 as another example of the lack of political
will of the Obama administration to rock relations with its allies. The Congressional report,
Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations 2008-2015, noted that Egypt was the biggest
recipient of arms deliveries last year worth $5.3 billion.
"What's changed during the Obama administration is that increasing arms sales has become a
standardized component of diplomacy at all levels of government, not just in the defense
department," Bockenfeld told Motherboard. "For US diplomats to become the salesmen, that has
been a new element which really increased exports."
What's the main difference between Trump and Obama when it comes to U.S. arms sales abroad?
As the noted liberal arms trade analyst William
Hartung told DN's Amy Goodman this week , "Well, [Trump's] much more blatant about it.
He's shouting it from the rooftops . He's playing a very personal role .he held up a chart
[during his appalling meeting before reporters with MBS] that showed 40,000 jobs from Saudi
arms sales, and it showed the states, and they were all the swing states -- Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michigan, Florida. So, among other things, not only is this a business proposition for Trump,
but it's a blatant political move to shore up his base."
So here's an interesting question: which is worse – (a) quietly equipping the most
reactionary government on Earth and much of the rest of the world with lethal, high-tech means
of mass destruction while posing as some kind of progressive and noble peace agent or (b)
loudly equipping the most reactionary government on Earth and much of the rest of the world
with lethal, high-tech means of mass destruction while boasting about the resulting revenue and
jobs to reporters and your white-nationalist political base?
Something tells me the Yemeni victims of Riyadh's U.S.- made bombs, missiles, bullets, and
artillery don't care all that much either way.
"... British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called 'national interest' abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including terrorist organizations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain's global power in the face of increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is intimately related to that of Britain's imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world. ..."
"... But whereas Sharif Hussein was a follower of orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Saud adhered to the radical doctrine of Wahhabism, which Winston Churchill was moved to describe as " bloodthirsty ..."
"... British support for the mujahideen, married to the huge support provided by Washington, was indispensable in the eventual success of these self-styled 'holy warriors' in taking control of a country that had embraced modernity and turning it into a failed state mired in religious oppression, brutality, backwardness and poverty. ..."
"... Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. Military, financial and diplomatic backing was given to Islamist forces which, while forcing a Soviet withdrawal, soon organized themselves into terrorist networks ready to strike Western targets. ..."
"... Islamic resistance ..."
"... We trust the Western leaders are prepared for the enormous beneficial possibilities that could just possibly open up if the Afghan rebellion were to succeed. ..."
"... Manchester, England is home to the largest Libyan community in Britain, and there is strong evidence to suggest that when the Libyan uprising broke out MI6 facilitated the ability of Libyan Islamists in Britain to travel to Libya to participate in the fighting. Among them was Salman Abedi, who it is thought received military training in the country before being allowed to return to the UK thereafter. ..."
"... This brings us on to Syria and, as with Libya, the question of how so many British Muslims have been able to travel from the UK to Syria via Turkey to take part in the anti-Assad insurgency since 2011? It also brings into sharp focus a policy that has veered between the ludicrous and the reckless. ..."
"... As for the recklessness of Britain's actions in Syria, look no further than the country's recent participation in the illegal missile strikes that were carried out in conjunction with the US and France, justified on the basis of as yet unproven allegations that Syrian government forces had carried out a chemical weapons attack on Douma, just outside Damascus. The only beneficiaries of such actions by the Western powers are Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS (whom it was later reported took advantage of the missile strike to mount a short-lived offensive), Al-Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam. ..."
"... The latter of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, is a Saudi proxy. It was the dominant group in Douma and throughout Eastern Ghouta until the district's liberation by the Syrian Army and its allies with Russian support. ..."
Britain's strategic relationship with radical Islam goes back decades and continues to this
day. There is no more foul a stench than the stench of hypocrisy, and there is no more foul a
hypocrisy than the British government painting Bashar al-Assad as a monster when in truth he
and the Syrian people have been grappling with a twin-headed monster in the shape of
Salafi-jihadi terror and Western imperialism. Both are committed to destroying Syria as an
independent, non-sectarian state, and both are inextricably linked.
Author and journalist Mark Curtis charts in detail
the contours of this history in his book 'Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical
Islam':
" British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called
'national interest' abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including
terrorist organizations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes
trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments
have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain's global power in the face of
increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will
and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is intimately related to that of Britain's
imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world. "
As far back as the First World War, when the Middle East began to assume strategic
importance in the capitals of Western imperial and colonial powers, the British ruling class
went out of its way to identify and recruit loyal local proxies in pursuit of its regional
objectives. Britain's relationship with the Arab tribal chief, Ibn Saud, who would go on to
establish Saudi Arabia in the early 1930s, began in 1915 with the Darin Pact, demarcating the
territory then controlled by Saud as a British protectorate.
The following year, the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans erupted. Begun and inspired by
Saud's fierce rival, Sharif Hussein, head of the Hashemite Arab tribe, the revolt was heavily
bankrolled and supported by the British – a period immortalized in the exploits of
British military agent T E Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia.
But whereas Sharif Hussein was a follower of orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Saud adhered to the
radical doctrine of Wahhabism, which Winston Churchill was moved to describe as "
bloodthirsty " and " intolerant ." Regardless, when it came to its imperial
interests there was no tiger upon whose back the British ruling class was not willing to ride
during this period, and which, as events have proved, it has not been willing to ride
since.
The most egregious example of this policy, one that continues to have ramifications today,
was the support provided by the UK to the Afghan mujahideen in the late 1970s and 1980s. The
insurgency's objective was the overthrow of Kabul's secular and left-leaning government, whose
crime in the eyes of the Islamist insurgency's US and UK sponsors was that it had embraced the
social and economic model of Moscow rather than Washington during the first Cold War.
British support for the mujahideen, married to the huge support provided by Washington, was
indispensable in the eventual success of these self-styled 'holy warriors' in taking control of
a country that had embraced modernity and turning it into a failed state mired in religious
oppression, brutality, backwardness and poverty.
Mark Curtis again:
" Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the
resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. Military, financial and diplomatic
backing was given to Islamist forces which, while forcing a Soviet withdrawal, soon organized
themselves into terrorist networks ready to strike Western targets. "
While Washington's primary role in channeling military and financial support to the Afghan
mujahideen, known as
Operation Cyclone , may until have succeeded in overshadowing London's role in this dirty
war, declassified British government cabinet papers which were made public in 2010 and
reported in the UK media make grim reading.
They reveal that three weeks after Soviet forces arrived in Afghanistan at the request of
the Afghan government in Kabul, struggling to deal with an insurgency that had broken out in
the countryside, the Thatcher government was planning to supply military aid to the "
Islamic resistance ." A confidential government memo provides a chilling insight into
the insanity that passed for official policy: " We trust the Western leaders are prepared
for the enormous beneficial possibilities that could just possibly open up if the Afghan
rebellion were to succeed. "
It will be recalled that out of the ensuing collapse of Afghanistan emerged the Taliban,
under whose rule the country was turned into a vast militant jihadist school and training camp.
Many of the most notorious Islamist terrorists began their careers there, fighting the Soviets
and then later broadening out their activities to other parts of the region and wider world. In
this regard, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda loom large.
Other notorious names from the world of Salafi-jihadism for whom Afghanistan proved
indispensable include the Jordanian Abu al-Zarqawi, who founded Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) during
the US-UK occupation, an organization that would over time morph into ISIS.
Abdelhakim Belhaj and other Libyan Islamists cut their jihadist teeth in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Returning to Libya, they formed the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group (LIFG) in the eastern city of Benghazi. Though the group may have been
disbanded in 2010, having failed to topple Gaddafi despite repeated attempts to assassinate the
Libyan leader with, it's been
claimed , the support of Britain's MI6, former members of the LIFG, including Belhaj, were
important actors in the 2011 Libyan uprising.
By way of a reminder, the uprising in Libya started in Benghazi and would not have succeeded
without the air support it received from NATO. Britain's then prime minister, David Cameron,
was key in pushing for that air support and the sanction of the UN under the auspices of
Security Council Resolution 1973. Though protecting civilians was central in wording of this
UNSC resolution, it was shamefully distorted to justify regime change, culminating in Gaddafi's
murder by the 'rebels.'
Staying with the LIFG, in the wake of the Manchester suicide-bomb attack in May 2017, which
left 23 people dead and 500 injured, the fact that the bomber, a young Libyan by the name of
Salman Abedi, was the son of a former member of the LIFG, did not receive anything like the
media attention it should have at the time.
Manchester, England is home to the largest Libyan community in Britain, and there is strong
evidence to suggest that when the Libyan uprising broke out MI6 facilitated the ability of
Libyan Islamists in Britain to travel to Libya to participate in the fighting. Among them was
Salman Abedi, who it is thought received military training in the country before being allowed
to return to the UK thereafter.
This brings us on to Syria and, as with Libya, the question of how so
many British Muslims have been able to travel from the UK to Syria via Turkey to take part
in the anti-Assad insurgency since 2011? It also brings into sharp focus a policy that has
veered between the ludicrous and the reckless.
Emblematic of the former was ex-prime minister David Cameron's
claim , which he made during a 2015 Commons debate over whether the Royal Air Force should
engage in air strikes against ISIS in Syria, that fighting as part of the Syrian were 70,000
moderates.
As for the recklessness of Britain's actions in Syria, look no further than the country's
recent participation in the illegal missile strikes that were carried out in conjunction with
the US and France, justified on the basis of as yet unproven allegations that Syrian government
forces had carried out a chemical weapons attack on Douma, just outside Damascus. The only
beneficiaries of such actions by the Western powers are Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS
(whom it was later
reported took advantage of the missile strike to mount a short-lived offensive), Al-Nusra
and Jaysh al-Islam.
The latter of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, is a Saudi proxy. It was the dominant group in
Douma and throughout Eastern Ghouta until the district's liberation by the Syrian Army and its
allies with Russian support.
Given the deep and longstanding ties between London and Riyadh; given the fact,
reported towards the end of 2017, that British military personnel were embedded in a
training role with Saudi forces in Yemen; given the news that a British special forces sergeant was
killed in northern Syria at the end of March this year while embedded with the Kurds, revealing
for the first time that British troops were operating in the country on the ground –
given all that, the question of who else British special forces and military personnel may be
embedded with in Syria is legitimate.
In the context of the British state's long and sordid history when it comes to riding the
back of radical Islam in pursuit of its strategic objectives, readers will doubtless draw their
own conclusions.
John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the
Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and
Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently
working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on
Twitter @JohnWight1
I've just stumbled on this absolute gem, from the New York Times, 17/1/2003:
"Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S.
government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi
defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show
(1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja [a 1988 chemical attack on Kurdish
villages that killed 5000 civilians], and
(2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a
fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack. The State Department instructed its
diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame."
I've just stumbled on this absolute gem, from the New York Times, 17/1/2003:
"Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S.
government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi
defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show
(1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja [a 1988 chemical attack on Kurdish
villages that killed 5000 civilians], and
(2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a
fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack. The State Department instructed its
diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame."
"... British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called 'national interest' abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including terrorist organizations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain's global power in the face of increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is intimately related to that of Britain's imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world. ..."
"... But whereas Sharif Hussein was a follower of orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Saud adhered to the radical doctrine of Wahhabism, which Winston Churchill was moved to describe as " bloodthirsty ..."
"... British support for the mujahideen, married to the huge support provided by Washington, was indispensable in the eventual success of these self-styled 'holy warriors' in taking control of a country that had embraced modernity and turning it into a failed state mired in religious oppression, brutality, backwardness and poverty. ..."
"... Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. Military, financial and diplomatic backing was given to Islamist forces which, while forcing a Soviet withdrawal, soon organized themselves into terrorist networks ready to strike Western targets. ..."
"... Islamic resistance ..."
"... We trust the Western leaders are prepared for the enormous beneficial possibilities that could just possibly open up if the Afghan rebellion were to succeed. ..."
"... Manchester, England is home to the largest Libyan community in Britain, and there is strong evidence to suggest that when the Libyan uprising broke out MI6 facilitated the ability of Libyan Islamists in Britain to travel to Libya to participate in the fighting. Among them was Salman Abedi, who it is thought received military training in the country before being allowed to return to the UK thereafter. ..."
"... This brings us on to Syria and, as with Libya, the question of how so many British Muslims have been able to travel from the UK to Syria via Turkey to take part in the anti-Assad insurgency since 2011? It also brings into sharp focus a policy that has veered between the ludicrous and the reckless. ..."
"... As for the recklessness of Britain's actions in Syria, look no further than the country's recent participation in the illegal missile strikes that were carried out in conjunction with the US and France, justified on the basis of as yet unproven allegations that Syrian government forces had carried out a chemical weapons attack on Douma, just outside Damascus. The only beneficiaries of such actions by the Western powers are Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS (whom it was later reported took advantage of the missile strike to mount a short-lived offensive), Al-Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam. ..."
"... The latter of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, is a Saudi proxy. It was the dominant group in Douma and throughout Eastern Ghouta until the district's liberation by the Syrian Army and its allies with Russian support. ..."
Britain's strategic relationship with radical Islam goes back decades and continues to this
day. There is no more foul a stench than the stench of hypocrisy, and there is no more foul a
hypocrisy than the British government painting Bashar al-Assad as a monster when in truth he
and the Syrian people have been grappling with a twin-headed monster in the shape of
Salafi-jihadi terror and Western imperialism. Both are committed to destroying Syria as an
independent, non-sectarian state, and both are inextricably linked.
Author and journalist Mark Curtis charts in detail
the contours of this history in his book 'Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical
Islam':
" British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called
'national interest' abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including
terrorist organizations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes
trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments
have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain's global power in the face of
increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will
and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is intimately related to that of Britain's
imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world. "
As far back as the First World War, when the Middle East began to assume strategic
importance in the capitals of Western imperial and colonial powers, the British ruling class
went out of its way to identify and recruit loyal local proxies in pursuit of its regional
objectives. Britain's relationship with the Arab tribal chief, Ibn Saud, who would go on to
establish Saudi Arabia in the early 1930s, began in 1915 with the Darin Pact, demarcating the
territory then controlled by Saud as a British protectorate.
The following year, the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans erupted. Begun and inspired by
Saud's fierce rival, Sharif Hussein, head of the Hashemite Arab tribe, the revolt was heavily
bankrolled and supported by the British – a period immortalized in the exploits of
British military agent T E Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia.
But whereas Sharif Hussein was a follower of orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Saud adhered to the
radical doctrine of Wahhabism, which Winston Churchill was moved to describe as "
bloodthirsty " and " intolerant ." Regardless, when it came to its imperial
interests there was no tiger upon whose back the British ruling class was not willing to ride
during this period, and which, as events have proved, it has not been willing to ride
since.
The most egregious example of this policy, one that continues to have ramifications today,
was the support provided by the UK to the Afghan mujahideen in the late 1970s and 1980s. The
insurgency's objective was the overthrow of Kabul's secular and left-leaning government, whose
crime in the eyes of the Islamist insurgency's US and UK sponsors was that it had embraced the
social and economic model of Moscow rather than Washington during the first Cold War.
British support for the mujahideen, married to the huge support provided by Washington, was
indispensable in the eventual success of these self-styled 'holy warriors' in taking control of
a country that had embraced modernity and turning it into a failed state mired in religious
oppression, brutality, backwardness and poverty.
Mark Curtis again:
" Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the
resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. Military, financial and diplomatic
backing was given to Islamist forces which, while forcing a Soviet withdrawal, soon organized
themselves into terrorist networks ready to strike Western targets. "
While Washington's primary role in channeling military and financial support to the Afghan
mujahideen, known as
Operation Cyclone , may until have succeeded in overshadowing London's role in this dirty
war, declassified British government cabinet papers which were made public in 2010 and
reported in the UK media make grim reading.
They reveal that three weeks after Soviet forces arrived in Afghanistan at the request of
the Afghan government in Kabul, struggling to deal with an insurgency that had broken out in
the countryside, the Thatcher government was planning to supply military aid to the "
Islamic resistance ." A confidential government memo provides a chilling insight into
the insanity that passed for official policy: " We trust the Western leaders are prepared
for the enormous beneficial possibilities that could just possibly open up if the Afghan
rebellion were to succeed. "
It will be recalled that out of the ensuing collapse of Afghanistan emerged the Taliban,
under whose rule the country was turned into a vast militant jihadist school and training camp.
Many of the most notorious Islamist terrorists began their careers there, fighting the Soviets
and then later broadening out their activities to other parts of the region and wider world. In
this regard, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda loom large.
Other notorious names from the world of Salafi-jihadism for whom Afghanistan proved
indispensable include the Jordanian Abu al-Zarqawi, who founded Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) during
the US-UK occupation, an organization that would over time morph into ISIS.
Abdelhakim Belhaj and other Libyan Islamists cut their jihadist teeth in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Returning to Libya, they formed the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group (LIFG) in the eastern city of Benghazi. Though the group may have been
disbanded in 2010, having failed to topple Gaddafi despite repeated attempts to assassinate the
Libyan leader with, it's been
claimed , the support of Britain's MI6, former members of the LIFG, including Belhaj, were
important actors in the 2011 Libyan uprising.
By way of a reminder, the uprising in Libya started in Benghazi and would not have succeeded
without the air support it received from NATO. Britain's then prime minister, David Cameron,
was key in pushing for that air support and the sanction of the UN under the auspices of
Security Council Resolution 1973. Though protecting civilians was central in wording of this
UNSC resolution, it was shamefully distorted to justify regime change, culminating in Gaddafi's
murder by the 'rebels.'
Staying with the LIFG, in the wake of the Manchester suicide-bomb attack in May 2017, which
left 23 people dead and 500 injured, the fact that the bomber, a young Libyan by the name of
Salman Abedi, was the son of a former member of the LIFG, did not receive anything like the
media attention it should have at the time.
Manchester, England is home to the largest Libyan community in Britain, and there is strong
evidence to suggest that when the Libyan uprising broke out MI6 facilitated the ability of
Libyan Islamists in Britain to travel to Libya to participate in the fighting. Among them was
Salman Abedi, who it is thought received military training in the country before being allowed
to return to the UK thereafter.
This brings us on to Syria and, as with Libya, the question of how so
many British Muslims have been able to travel from the UK to Syria via Turkey to take part
in the anti-Assad insurgency since 2011? It also brings into sharp focus a policy that has
veered between the ludicrous and the reckless.
Emblematic of the former was ex-prime minister David Cameron's
claim , which he made during a 2015 Commons debate over whether the Royal Air Force should
engage in air strikes against ISIS in Syria, that fighting as part of the Syrian were 70,000
moderates.
As for the recklessness of Britain's actions in Syria, look no further than the country's
recent participation in the illegal missile strikes that were carried out in conjunction with
the US and France, justified on the basis of as yet unproven allegations that Syrian government
forces had carried out a chemical weapons attack on Douma, just outside Damascus. The only
beneficiaries of such actions by the Western powers are Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS
(whom it was later
reported took advantage of the missile strike to mount a short-lived offensive), Al-Nusra
and Jaysh al-Islam.
The latter of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, is a Saudi proxy. It was the dominant group in
Douma and throughout Eastern Ghouta until the district's liberation by the Syrian Army and its
allies with Russian support.
Given the deep and longstanding ties between London and Riyadh; given the fact,
reported towards the end of 2017, that British military personnel were embedded in a
training role with Saudi forces in Yemen; given the news that a British special forces sergeant was
killed in northern Syria at the end of March this year while embedded with the Kurds, revealing
for the first time that British troops were operating in the country on the ground –
given all that, the question of who else British special forces and military personnel may be
embedded with in Syria is legitimate.
In the context of the British state's long and sordid history when it comes to riding the
back of radical Islam in pursuit of its strategic objectives, readers will doubtless draw their
own conclusions.
John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the
Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and
Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently
working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on
Twitter @JohnWight1
The Corrupt U.S. Congress Cheers as the War Industry Steals Billions from the People's
Coffers !
Christian Sorensen | April 13, 2018
"Missile Production Capacity
In February, Newsbud reported on the war industry increasing its capacity to produce
Hellfire missiles.
Capacity to produce other missile types is expanding as well.
On 6 March 2018, BAE Systems received close to $13.7 million to help increase production
capacity of the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS). With its headquarters in
London, BAE Systems links the U.K. war industry to the United States, effectively
underpinning the 'special relationship' between the two countries.
On 19 March 2018, Raytheon received roughly $7.8 million to improve the production
capacity of AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles. Steps Raytheon might take to increase missile
production include adding more equipment, altering staffing levels, and upgrading its
facilities.
The war industry has been operating at full steam for the past seventeen years. Now, these
contracts tell us, the boardrooms of prominent war industry giants believe there is reason to
produce more Hellfire, APKWS, and Sidewinder missiles. Is it war with Iran? A bigger
offensive against President Assad's forces in Syria? Conflict in Korea?
The U.S. war industry is expecting more sustained, high-tempo hostilities in the near
future. You've been warned."
The Corrupt U.S. Congress Cheers as the War Industry Steals Billions from the People's
Coffers !
Christian Sorensen | April 13, 2018
"Missile Production Capacity
In February, Newsbud reported on the war industry increasing its capacity to produce
Hellfire missiles.
Capacity to produce other missile types is expanding as well.
On 6 March 2018, BAE Systems received close to $13.7 million to help increase production
capacity of the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS). With its headquarters in
London, BAE Systems links the U.K. war industry to the United States, effectively
underpinning the 'special relationship' between the two countries.
On 19 March 2018, Raytheon received roughly $7.8 million to improve the production
capacity of AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles. Steps Raytheon might take to increase missile
production include adding more equipment, altering staffing levels, and upgrading its
facilities.
The war industry has been operating at full steam for the past seventeen years. Now, these
contracts tell us, the boardrooms of prominent war industry giants believe there is reason to
produce more Hellfire, APKWS, and Sidewinder missiles. Is it war with Iran? A bigger
offensive against President Assad's forces in Syria? Conflict in Korea?
The U.S. war industry is expecting more sustained, high-tempo hostilities in the near
future. You've been warned."
While this isn't a great analogy consider the USA as a huge, immensely strong, obnoxious drunk
that is being belligerent and needs to be arrested. The police show up, a bunch of them, and
now need to corral the drunk. The drunk is so insensate that it can't feel any damage and the
police need to be careful of how they use force. Generally the best outcome for the cops is the
drunk trips and collapses whereby the police restrain him and hope he doesn't choke to death on
his own vomit.
The USA is a zombie(drunk) country; dead but doesn't know it yet. Yet it is enormously
significant in the world. If it suddenly collapses the rest of the world is going to be hugely
impacted. While it has an enormous military it is extremely brittle and has virtually no depth;
it can't sustain any meaningful military engagement for more than a couple of months.
Israel has created a really stupid situation for itself. It's dug this very small pit and
stuffed it full of Jewish folk. A single nuke dropped on it would end the question of Israel.
Yet the strut and bully like they are bullet proof.
In each case be too aggressive with them and they will panic. Conversely, and frustrating as
hell, both the US and Israel have lots of leeway to cause mischief.
Russia and China are doing their best to patiently sheppard the USA along the path of its
decline. They will grit their teeth and suffer humiliation but the alternative is a global
economic collapse and many millions dying.
On a side note I would add that 3-4 years ago when Ukraine was boiling, much of the
discussion by concerned people focused on countries outside of the US, and the damage caused by
the US. The US, in this context, was largely regarded as an evil but coherent entity.
But that coherence has now come more and more into question. Discussion shifted gradually,
as the US made more and more mistakes and lost battle after battle in so many theaters, and
revealed itself as a failing actor. And in the last year or two there's much more discussion
about the US itself, largely trying to pierce the obscurity of how that country is actually run
and by whom. This shift was already happening, and Trump of course added to the
fascination.
I was glad to see that gradual shift. To me it indicated the war itself was won, while many
battles were yet to be fought. I think it's true that Russia, China, Iran and others are
increasingly concerned with curtailing the damage that the US can still inflict. Every day they
increase in actual, effective power, and the US decreases in that power. Yesterday's battle
will be fought differently tomorrow, because the balance of that power will have shifted again
by then.
Syria has been an enormously useful magnifying glass to show us so much about the relative
power balances of many nations. And even as the US lashes out in its death throes, it is
increasingly cornered and stymied. The same is true of Israel. It's reaching the point - if not
already there - that every move made by the US will result in clear damage to itself, with no
gain, and no damage to its targets.
The other side has had sufficient time to wargame countless contingencies, and think them
through and make preparations for them. Increasingly, it gets to choose what damage to allow
and what to stop, because the costs of every action have now been calculated - and the passage
of time reduces the costs too, so the equation constantly updates.
This is true outside of Syria also, in all theaters and on many planes of
activity.
The US Deep State doesn't want to "conquer" any country. Then they'd have to pay the bill
for the destruction they caused... think an actual Marshall Plan, not the Iraq and Afghan
Debacles. It is not trying to "win". It is trying to destroy those countries' ability to
function outside the iron-fist influence of the IMF/BIS/etc. banks/economy.
... ... ..
As for US operations in Syria being handed off "to others", i.e. to Prince's latest
iteration of Blackwater/Xi/Academia, the last we heard of Erik was trying to sell a budget
airforce/drone system to countries in Africa. What a joke.
Not going to happen in Syria,
because Russia, Iran, Hezbolla and Syria would have no qualms about directly assaulting
Prince's Kurd/Arab/Wahabbist mercenaries... Eric may be a self-serving parasite, but he's not
stupid enough to directly take on the Russian military, or even the SAA for that matter.
Especially with no NATO air cover...
Killary is not around to unilaterally impose a Libya-style
no-fly-zone.
Trumpty Dumbdy is trapped, just trying to convince his base that he really is getting the US
out of being Israel's and the Rothschilds' bitch, but that is not a potential reality.
It would
involve dismantling the FED and cutting off the yearly $multi-billion military aid tap to
Israel. I doubt he is smart or informed enough to comprehend the situation he is in. Any sane,
intelligent person would walk away and tell the Zionist/Rothschild/Deep State to find another
patsy.
These skirmishes (not skirmishes to those who live or die because of them), even ones that
are war crimes, as this was, seem to me to be in large part ways in which the major powers test
out their combat systems. I would think the Pentagon would like to test the Russian defense
systems, and the Russians can't be completely sorry they got the opportunity to see how those
new systems worked under operational conditions. The winners are the arms manufacturers. The
losers are everybody else.
Update : Interfax reports that the Russian military has discovered a rebel-owned chemical weapons lab in Douma.
The Russian Defense Ministry says that components for Mustard Gas production were discovered along with cylinders of chlorine
at a alb belonging to militants in Douma.
Additionally, Moscow has said it is stunned by a French statement that Russia is obstructing OPCW experts from entering Syria's
Douma (echoing Ambassador Ward's). the Russian foreign ministry confirms OPCW expoerts are already in Douma.
* * *
And on the game goes...
While Russia's foreign ministry warns that Western powers are interfering with OPCW's work in Syria (noting that the chemical
weapons experts' access to Douma is being hampered by remaining militants, supported by Washington),
as Caitlin Johnstone details , we are now being told by US officials (and I assure you I am not making this up) that if the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons doesn't find evidence that the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapons attack in Douma
last week, it's because Russia hid the evidence .
"It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site,"
reports U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward.
"It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission
to conduct an effective investigation."
I guess the idea is that this international top-level investigative team on which tremendous credibility has been placed by the
western world can be thwarted by Russians showing up with a Hoover and spraying some Febreze in the air like a teenage stoner when
mom comes home? I'm not sure, but given the immense dearth of evidence we've been seeing in support of the establishment Douma narrative
and the
mounting pile of evidence contradicting it, it sure does sound fishy.
The Independent 's Robert Fisk has published a report which affirms
the story so many westerners have been dismissing
as Kremlin propaganda for days now after interviewing a doctor from the hospital of the area where the Douma attack was supposed
to have occurred. Dr Assim Rahaibani told Fisk that what was in actuality an outbreak of respiratory distress among occupants of
a dusty oxygen-deprived tunnel was made to look like the aftereffects of a chemical weapons attack when a member of the White Helmets
started shouting about a gas attack in front of a bunch of video cameras. Everyone panicked and started hosing themselves down, but
in the video, according to Rahaibani, "what you see are people suffering from hypoxia -- not gas poisoning."
This report was independently backed up by a reporter from One America News Network named Pearson Sharp, who
gave a detailed account of his interviews with officials, doctors, as
well as many civilians on the street Sharp says he deliberately selected at random in order to avoid accusations of bias. Many people
hadn't even heard that a chemical weapons attack had taken place, and the ones who had said it was staged by Jaysh al-Islam. The
staff at the hospital, including a medic-in-training who was an eyewitness to the incident, gave the same story as the account in
Fisk's report.
The increasing confidence with which these unapproved narratives are being voiced and the increasing discomfort being exhibited
by empire loyalists like Ambassador Ward indicate a weakening narrative in the greater propaganda campaign against the Assad government
and its allies, but don't hold your breath for the part where Fox News and the BBC turn around and start asking critical questions
of the governments that they are meant to be holding to account.
The journalists who have been advancing the establishment narrative on Syria aren't about to start reporting that they've gotten
the entire Syria story assballs backward and have been promoting a version of events manufactured for the benefit of CIA-MI6-Mossad
agendas. You're not about to see CNN, who last year
staged a fake scripted interview with a seven year-old Syrian girl to manufacture support for escalations against Assad, suddenly
turn around and start asking if we're being told the full story about what's happening Syria.
Watch them closely. Watch how they steadfastly ignore the growing mountain of evidence and keep promoting the Syrian regime change
agenda that the western empire has been
working toward for decades . Watch them dismiss all evidence they can't ignore as Kremlin propaganda and shift the narrative
whenever things start to look bad for them. Those riding the crest of the wave of establishment media are too far gone into the blob
to ever admit error and change. The least among us aren't about to stop constructing a public reality tunnel which depicts them as
heroes of truth, tear it all down, and start advancing a narrative which makes them look like fools at best and villains at worst.
It will not happen.
Luckily for us, it doesn't need to. Internet censorship is still far from closing the door on our ability to network and share
information, and we've been very effective at sowing skepticism among the masses. The war propagandists are not nearly as good at
their jobs as they want to believe, and we can beat them.
They work so hard to manufacture support for war because they require that consent. If the oligarchs try to launch a war against
a disobedient nation amidst very clear opposition from the public, they will shatter the illusion of freedom and democracy that their
entire empire is built upon, and then they're exposed. Corporatist oligarchy has succeeded in weaving its web of dominance because
its oppression has thus far remained hidden and its depravity disguised as humanitarianism. They cannot expose themselves by transgressing
a loud NO from the public or else the masses will realize that everything they used to believe about their country, their government
and their world is a lie.
They won't risk that. We can force them into retreating from open war by circulating facts and information and keeping a healthy
level of skepticism circulating among the public. Watch them squirm, move goalposts and shift narratives, and point and yell about
it whenever it happens. We can win the media war against the propagandists. We have truth on our side.
* * *
Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing my daily articles is to get on the mailing list for my
website , so you'll get an email notification for everything I publish.
My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around,
liking me on Facebook , following my antics on
Twitter , checking out my
podcast , throwing some money into my hat on
Patreon or
Paypal , or buying my new book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
That fact-finding body (OPCW) could change the whole paradigm IF it finds conclusive evidence this was a false flag event,
and IF they trumpet their findings to the world, and IF people get all the real ramifications of such a potential finding/announcement.
This said, I fully expect their "findings" to be a masterpiece of ambiguous language and weaslespeak.
This body after all is a creation of politicians and bureaucrats answering to many governments. They, almost certainly, will
"punt."
The OPCW had better release their findings if they contradict the "official" narrative before they fly out from Douma as they
could well end up like the passengers on MH17.
That in itself will be another problem because the "good guys" will know within minutes that Russia did it.
"No conlusive evidence was found" will be the finding which either side can spin to their desire.
Russia - there is no evidence so there was no attack
US - the evidence was no conclusive but only because enough time has passed that it degraded to the point where a good sample
could not be located.....and Russia kept the inspectors from the site in order for this to happen.
While this isn't a great analogy consider the USA as a huge, immensely strong, obnoxious drunk
that is being belligerent and needs to be arrested. The police show up, a bunch of them, and
now need to corral the drunk. The drunk is so insensate that it can't feel any damage and the
police need to be careful of how they use force. Generally the best outcome for the cops is the
drunk trips and collapses whereby the police restrain him and hope he doesn't choke to death on
his own vomit.
The USA is a zombie(drunk) country; dead but doesn't know it yet. Yet it is enormously
significant in the world. If it suddenly collapses the rest of the world is going to be hugely
impacted. While it has an enormous military it is extremely brittle and has virtually no depth;
it can't sustain any meaningful military engagement for more than a couple of months.
Israel has created a really stupid situation for itself. It's dug this very small pit and
stuffed it full of Jewish folk. A single nuke dropped on it would end the question of Israel.
Yet the strut and bully like they are bullet proof.
In each case be too aggressive with them and they will panic. Conversely, and frustrating as
hell, both the US and Israel have lots of leeway to cause mischief.
Russia and China are doing their best to patiently sheppard the USA along the path of its
decline. They will grit their teeth and suffer humiliation but the alternative is a global
economic collapse and many millions dying.
On a side note I would add that 3-4 years ago when Ukraine was boiling, much of the
discussion by concerned people focused on countries outside of the US, and the damage caused by
the US. The US, in this context, was largely regarded as an evil but coherent entity.
But that coherence has now come more and more into question. Discussion shifted gradually,
as the US made more and more mistakes and lost battle after battle in so many theaters, and
revealed itself as a failing actor. And in the last year or two there's much more discussion
about the US itself, largely trying to pierce the obscurity of how that country is actually run
and by whom. This shift was already happening, and Trump of course added to the
fascination.
I was glad to see that gradual shift. To me it indicated the war itself was won, while many
battles were yet to be fought. I think it's true that Russia, China, Iran and others are
increasingly concerned with curtailing the damage that the US can still inflict. Every day they
increase in actual, effective power, and the US decreases in that power. Yesterday's battle
will be fought differently tomorrow, because the balance of that power will have shifted again
by then.
Syria has been an enormously useful magnifying glass to show us so much about the relative
power balances of many nations. And even as the US lashes out in its death throes, it is
increasingly cornered and stymied. The same is true of Israel. It's reaching the point - if not
already there - that every move made by the US will result in clear damage to itself, with no
gain, and no damage to its targets.
The other side has had sufficient time to wargame countless contingencies, and think them
through and make preparations for them. Increasingly, it gets to choose what damage to allow
and what to stop, because the costs of every action have now been calculated - and the passage
of time reduces the costs too, so the equation constantly updates.
This is true outside of Syria also, in all theaters and on many planes of
activity.
The US Deep State doesn't want to "conquer" any country. Then they'd have to pay the bill
for the destruction they caused... think an actual Marshall Plan, not the Iraq and Afghan
Debacles. It is not trying to "win". It is trying to destroy those countries' ability to
function outside the iron-fist influence of the IMF/BIS/etc. banks/economy.
... ... ..
As for US operations in Syria being handed off "to others", i.e. to Prince's latest
iteration of Blackwater/Xi/Academia, the last we heard of Erik was trying to sell a budget
airforce/drone system to countries in Africa. What a joke.
Not going to happen in Syria,
because Russia, Iran, Hezbolla and Syria would have no qualms about directly assaulting
Prince's Kurd/Arab/Wahabbist mercenaries... Eric may be a self-serving parasite, but he's not
stupid enough to directly take on the Russian military, or even the SAA for that matter.
Especially with no NATO air cover...
Killary is not around to unilaterally impose a Libya-style
no-fly-zone.
Trumpty Dumbdy is trapped, just trying to convince his base that he really is getting the US
out of being Israel's and the Rothschilds' bitch, but that is not a potential reality.
It would
involve dismantling the FED and cutting off the yearly $multi-billion military aid tap to
Israel. I doubt he is smart or informed enough to comprehend the situation he is in. Any sane,
intelligent person would walk away and tell the Zionist/Rothschild/Deep State to find another
patsy.
These skirmishes (not skirmishes to those who live or die because of them), even ones that
are war crimes, as this was, seem to me to be in large part ways in which the major powers test
out their combat systems. I would think the Pentagon would like to test the Russian defense
systems, and the Russians can't be completely sorry they got the opportunity to see how those
new systems worked under operational conditions. The winners are the arms manufacturers. The
losers are everybody else.
Update : Interfax reports that the Russian military has discovered a rebel-owned chemical weapons lab in Douma.
The Russian Defense Ministry says that components for Mustard Gas production were discovered along with cylinders of chlorine
at a alb belonging to militants in Douma.
Additionally, Moscow has said it is stunned by a French statement that Russia is obstructing OPCW experts from entering Syria's
Douma (echoing Ambassador Ward's). the Russian foreign ministry confirms OPCW expoerts are already in Douma.
* * *
And on the game goes...
While Russia's foreign ministry warns that Western powers are interfering with OPCW's work in Syria (noting that the chemical
weapons experts' access to Douma is being hampered by remaining militants, supported by Washington),
as Caitlin Johnstone details , we are now being told by US officials (and I assure you I am not making this up) that if the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons doesn't find evidence that the Syrian government conducted a chemical weapons attack in Douma
last week, it's because Russia hid the evidence .
"It is our understanding the Russians may have visited the attack site,"
reports U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Ward.
"It is our concern that they may have tampered with it with the intent of thwarting the efforts of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission
to conduct an effective investigation."
I guess the idea is that this international top-level investigative team on which tremendous credibility has been placed by the
western world can be thwarted by Russians showing up with a Hoover and spraying some Febreze in the air like a teenage stoner when
mom comes home? I'm not sure, but given the immense dearth of evidence we've been seeing in support of the establishment Douma narrative
and the
mounting pile of evidence contradicting it, it sure does sound fishy.
The Independent 's Robert Fisk has published a report which affirms
the story so many westerners have been dismissing
as Kremlin propaganda for days now after interviewing a doctor from the hospital of the area where the Douma attack was supposed
to have occurred. Dr Assim Rahaibani told Fisk that what was in actuality an outbreak of respiratory distress among occupants of
a dusty oxygen-deprived tunnel was made to look like the aftereffects of a chemical weapons attack when a member of the White Helmets
started shouting about a gas attack in front of a bunch of video cameras. Everyone panicked and started hosing themselves down, but
in the video, according to Rahaibani, "what you see are people suffering from hypoxia -- not gas poisoning."
This report was independently backed up by a reporter from One America News Network named Pearson Sharp, who
gave a detailed account of his interviews with officials, doctors, as
well as many civilians on the street Sharp says he deliberately selected at random in order to avoid accusations of bias. Many people
hadn't even heard that a chemical weapons attack had taken place, and the ones who had said it was staged by Jaysh al-Islam. The
staff at the hospital, including a medic-in-training who was an eyewitness to the incident, gave the same story as the account in
Fisk's report.
The increasing confidence with which these unapproved narratives are being voiced and the increasing discomfort being exhibited
by empire loyalists like Ambassador Ward indicate a weakening narrative in the greater propaganda campaign against the Assad government
and its allies, but don't hold your breath for the part where Fox News and the BBC turn around and start asking critical questions
of the governments that they are meant to be holding to account.
The journalists who have been advancing the establishment narrative on Syria aren't about to start reporting that they've gotten
the entire Syria story assballs backward and have been promoting a version of events manufactured for the benefit of CIA-MI6-Mossad
agendas. You're not about to see CNN, who last year
staged a fake scripted interview with a seven year-old Syrian girl to manufacture support for escalations against Assad, suddenly
turn around and start asking if we're being told the full story about what's happening Syria.
Watch them closely. Watch how they steadfastly ignore the growing mountain of evidence and keep promoting the Syrian regime change
agenda that the western empire has been
working toward for decades . Watch them dismiss all evidence they can't ignore as Kremlin propaganda and shift the narrative
whenever things start to look bad for them. Those riding the crest of the wave of establishment media are too far gone into the blob
to ever admit error and change. The least among us aren't about to stop constructing a public reality tunnel which depicts them as
heroes of truth, tear it all down, and start advancing a narrative which makes them look like fools at best and villains at worst.
It will not happen.
Luckily for us, it doesn't need to. Internet censorship is still far from closing the door on our ability to network and share
information, and we've been very effective at sowing skepticism among the masses. The war propagandists are not nearly as good at
their jobs as they want to believe, and we can beat them.
They work so hard to manufacture support for war because they require that consent. If the oligarchs try to launch a war against
a disobedient nation amidst very clear opposition from the public, they will shatter the illusion of freedom and democracy that their
entire empire is built upon, and then they're exposed. Corporatist oligarchy has succeeded in weaving its web of dominance because
its oppression has thus far remained hidden and its depravity disguised as humanitarianism. They cannot expose themselves by transgressing
a loud NO from the public or else the masses will realize that everything they used to believe about their country, their government
and their world is a lie.
They won't risk that. We can force them into retreating from open war by circulating facts and information and keeping a healthy
level of skepticism circulating among the public. Watch them squirm, move goalposts and shift narratives, and point and yell about
it whenever it happens. We can win the media war against the propagandists. We have truth on our side.
* * *
Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing my daily articles is to get on the mailing list for my
website , so you'll get an email notification for everything I publish.
My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around,
liking me on Facebook , following my antics on
Twitter , checking out my
podcast , throwing some money into my hat on
Patreon or
Paypal , or buying my new book
Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
That fact-finding body (OPCW) could change the whole paradigm IF it finds conclusive evidence this was a false flag event,
and IF they trumpet their findings to the world, and IF people get all the real ramifications of such a potential finding/announcement.
This said, I fully expect their "findings" to be a masterpiece of ambiguous language and weaslespeak.
This body after all is a creation of politicians and bureaucrats answering to many governments. They, almost certainly, will
"punt."
The OPCW had better release their findings if they contradict the "official" narrative before they fly out from Douma as they
could well end up like the passengers on MH17.
That in itself will be another problem because the "good guys" will know within minutes that Russia did it.
"No conlusive evidence was found" will be the finding which either side can spin to their desire.
Russia - there is no evidence so there was no attack
US - the evidence was no conclusive but only because enough time has passed that it degraded to the point where a good sample
could not be located.....and Russia kept the inspectors from the site in order for this to happen.
Gore Vidal preferred chaos to order. According to his wisdom centrifugal forces create gaps
and spaces in which freedom can fornicate.
As things stand that's probably the best we can hope for. Indeed we might as well embrace
what's happening all around us. Because the Anglo-American gang that filled the last 200 years
with liberal imperialism is losing the mendacious plot. The grand illusion is falling
apart.
The grand chessboard isn't in the best of shape either. The Anglo-American game plan to
dominate Euro-Asia is being ripped apart by the Euro-Asians. The grandfather of ISIS –
Zbigniew Brzezinski – must be rolling in his grave. According to him geopolitics is all
about hegemony. And that's something no one possesses at the moment – least of all the
Anglo-Americans.
The consequence is that there's space for an Assad and an Ali Khameini in the Middle East;
for a Kim Jong-un and a Xi Jinping in the East. And for a Putin everywhere. And in Latin
America there's room for a Maduro. And a Castro is still there.
And the chaotic spaces aren't disappearing. As Steve Bannon said recently – in the
context of North Korea but which can be applied generally: there is no military solution. And
he may as well have added that there isn't an economic solution. There's not even an
ideological solution.
A few years ago the Anglo-Americans would've invaded and carpet bombed the chaotic spaces
without a second thought. And only yesterday the use of proxies was the tactic. Russia though
has unilaterally thrown a spanner into the workings of all this naked Anglo-American
aggression.
The net result is that the UN Security Council will no longer back anymore "humanitarian
wars". And the use of "Islamic fundamentalism" has been check mated. All the Anglo-Americans
can do now is nuke the world or shut up.
A few years ago the Anglo-Americans could have also used economics to eliminate or control
the chaotic spaces. Sanctions, shock therapy and structural adjustment policies were their
alternative WMD. But even these bombs from Bretton Woods are now of limited or no value. Why?
The BRICS. Or in another word – China.
Today the English speaking way is not as omnipotent as before. Back in 1955 the Bandung
Conference in Indonesia was an attempt to create a space for chaotic freedom but it hadn't the
military or economic power to establish itself. Today is different.
The non-aligned countries that emerged from the Bandung Conference now in the early 21st
Century have accumulated and generate enough capital to give substance to their 1955
desire.
And as well as that significant fact is the connection these countries have made to a born
again Russia. The latter has dramatically added to whatever military power the non-aligned
movement has had in the face of the Anglo-American Empire.
The passing of time has seen the passing away of the Empire's military and economic
monopolies. The non-aligned movement plus Russia, the Third World, BRICS or whatever you want
to call it has at last a sufficient industrial base upon which to construct a liberating
chaos.
Alternative banking systems and alternative trading systems have slowly but surely emerged
on top of the National Liberation struggles of the 20th Century – to the detriment of
Wall Street and London.
And the anchors of this New World Disorder are proving to be the great Russian and Chinese
Revolutions of the last century. The radical independence these world changing events gave to
Russia and China was – to say the least – no short term phenomenon.
In the long term the universal values of the Enlightenment have successfully taken root.
Despite the cynicism, fatalism and pessimism (the postmodernism) in the Anglo-American sphere
– reason has found fertile ground in the lands despised by the original
Enlightenment.
Its now the Anglo-Americans (and their European clones and clowns) who rely upon religion,
hysteria and lies. Its they who are building great walls. And it is they who want to hide
behind protectionism. Liberalism had its chance a long time ago to live up to its ideals but
for the love of money it chose to do otherwise.
The extremely influential American planner George F. Kennan best expressed this ideological
sellout in 1948 (Memo PPS23) when he officially recommended that the US forget about democracy,
living standards and human rights in the world if it wanted to maintain its control of global
wealth.
The intention of liberalism was top secret back then but is common knowledge now (outside
the mainstream media, that is). It has always been Anglo-America and financial wealth first
– Trump makes it crystal clear today. The Anglo-Americans severed their ideological links
to the world a long time ago – if they were ever there in the first place.
The unprincipled ruthlessness Kennan demanded and got from Anglo-America was – around
1950 – dressed up in the clothes of freedom. Today however its clothes are nothing but
farce.
Uncomfortable laughter, embarrassment and disbelief are the feelings associated with
Anglo-America now around the non-NATO world. Its not just Trump, Russia-gate, Bolton, Theresa
May, the Skripal poisoning-case and the chemical stories in Syria. Each one more fake than the
next. Its the stock market bubble and the military bubble as well. Each one more irrational and
ripe for revolution than the other.
And underlining it all and the insurance for us all is the cowardice of the Anglo-Americans.
Like school yard bullies they only pick on the weak and defenseless. Or its probably more apt
to say that like psychopathic serial killers they only pick on the weak and defenseless.
So the chances of Washington D.C. and London confronting head on the Russians, Chinese,
Iranians, North Koreans, Venezuelans and Syrians are slim. Against a well organized defense the
Empire is a coward.
The Anglo-Americans can rant and rave as much as they like – the rest of the world
will work around them and NATO – like the way we avoid the insane on the street. There
are roads, bridges and railways to be built across Euro-Asia and across Africa too. And in
Latin America there's still time for Bolivar and Che to build something new.
The Anglo-Americans are very much redundant today. The Empire is empty. Its authority in
every way has shrank rapidly in the last two decades. It preaches with blood on its hands. Its
lectures are lies. And its precious money is nothing but paper. Its New World Order is in
chaos. And the world is better because of it. Finally the free world is emerging. Join the debate
on Facebook More articles by: Aidan O'Brien
Gore Vidal preferred chaos to order. According to his wisdom centrifugal forces create gaps
and spaces in which freedom can fornicate.
As things stand that's probably the best we can hope for. Indeed we might as well embrace
what's happening all around us. Because the Anglo-American gang that filled the last 200 years
with liberal imperialism is losing the mendacious plot. The grand illusion is falling
apart.
The grand chessboard isn't in the best of shape either. The Anglo-American game plan to
dominate Euro-Asia is being ripped apart by the Euro-Asians. The grandfather of ISIS –
Zbigniew Brzezinski – must be rolling in his grave. According to him geopolitics is all
about hegemony. And that's something no one possesses at the moment – least of all the
Anglo-Americans.
The consequence is that there's space for an Assad and an Ali Khameini in the Middle East;
for a Kim Jong-un and a Xi Jinping in the East. And for a Putin everywhere. And in Latin
America there's room for a Maduro. And a Castro is still there.
And the chaotic spaces aren't disappearing. As Steve Bannon said recently – in the
context of North Korea but which can be applied generally: there is no military solution. And
he may as well have added that there isn't an economic solution. There's not even an
ideological solution.
A few years ago the Anglo-Americans would've invaded and carpet bombed the chaotic spaces
without a second thought. And only yesterday the use of proxies was the tactic. Russia though
has unilaterally thrown a spanner into the workings of all this naked Anglo-American
aggression.
The net result is that the UN Security Council will no longer back anymore "humanitarian
wars". And the use of "Islamic fundamentalism" has been check mated. All the Anglo-Americans
can do now is nuke the world or shut up.
A few years ago the Anglo-Americans could have also used economics to eliminate or control
the chaotic spaces. Sanctions, shock therapy and structural adjustment policies were their
alternative WMD. But even these bombs from Bretton Woods are now of limited or no value. Why?
The BRICS. Or in another word – China.
Today the English speaking way is not as omnipotent as before. Back in 1955 the Bandung
Conference in Indonesia was an attempt to create a space for chaotic freedom but it hadn't the
military or economic power to establish itself. Today is different.
The non-aligned countries that emerged from the Bandung Conference now in the early 21st
Century have accumulated and generate enough capital to give substance to their 1955
desire.
And as well as that significant fact is the connection these countries have made to a born
again Russia. The latter has dramatically added to whatever military power the non-aligned
movement has had in the face of the Anglo-American Empire.
The passing of time has seen the passing away of the Empire's military and economic
monopolies. The non-aligned movement plus Russia, the Third World, BRICS or whatever you want
to call it has at last a sufficient industrial base upon which to construct a liberating
chaos.
Alternative banking systems and alternative trading systems have slowly but surely emerged
on top of the National Liberation struggles of the 20th Century – to the detriment of
Wall Street and London.
And the anchors of this New World Disorder are proving to be the great Russian and Chinese
Revolutions of the last century. The radical independence these world changing events gave to
Russia and China was – to say the least – no short term phenomenon.
In the long term the universal values of the Enlightenment have successfully taken root.
Despite the cynicism, fatalism and pessimism (the postmodernism) in the Anglo-American sphere
– reason has found fertile ground in the lands despised by the original
Enlightenment.
Its now the Anglo-Americans (and their European clones and clowns) who rely upon religion,
hysteria and lies. Its they who are building great walls. And it is they who want to hide
behind protectionism. Liberalism had its chance a long time ago to live up to its ideals but
for the love of money it chose to do otherwise.
The extremely influential American planner George F. Kennan best expressed this ideological
sellout in 1948 (Memo PPS23) when he officially recommended that the US forget about democracy,
living standards and human rights in the world if it wanted to maintain its control of global
wealth.
The intention of liberalism was top secret back then but is common knowledge now (outside
the mainstream media, that is). It has always been Anglo-America and financial wealth first
– Trump makes it crystal clear today. The Anglo-Americans severed their ideological links
to the world a long time ago – if they were ever there in the first place.
The unprincipled ruthlessness Kennan demanded and got from Anglo-America was – around
1950 – dressed up in the clothes of freedom. Today however its clothes are nothing but
farce.
Uncomfortable laughter, embarrassment and disbelief are the feelings associated with
Anglo-America now around the non-NATO world. Its not just Trump, Russia-gate, Bolton, Theresa
May, the Skripal poisoning-case and the chemical stories in Syria. Each one more fake than the
next. Its the stock market bubble and the military bubble as well. Each one more irrational and
ripe for revolution than the other.
And underlining it all and the insurance for us all is the cowardice of the Anglo-Americans.
Like school yard bullies they only pick on the weak and defenseless. Or its probably more apt
to say that like psychopathic serial killers they only pick on the weak and defenseless.
So the chances of Washington D.C. and London confronting head on the Russians, Chinese,
Iranians, North Koreans, Venezuelans and Syrians are slim. Against a well organized defense the
Empire is a coward.
The Anglo-Americans can rant and rave as much as they like – the rest of the world
will work around them and NATO – like the way we avoid the insane on the street. There
are roads, bridges and railways to be built across Euro-Asia and across Africa too. And in
Latin America there's still time for Bolivar and Che to build something new.
The Anglo-Americans are very much redundant today. The Empire is empty. Its authority in
every way has shrank rapidly in the last two decades. It preaches with blood on its hands. Its
lectures are lies. And its precious money is nothing but paper. Its New World Order is in
chaos. And the world is better because of it. Finally the free world is emerging. Join the debate
on Facebook More articles by: Aidan O'Brien
This is US specific bank of chickenhawks, who feed from MIC cramps. this breed is really entrenched in State Department too (Madeleine
Albright, Nuland, Powell, Haley, etc)
Notable quotes:
"... War and peace! About 75% of the on-air personalities on Fox Jews are women. Do any of them have a peaceful brain cell – it appears not. They are all 100% on message – bomb Syria! ..."
"... It is feminism gone mad – the traditional female role of hope for peace has been extinguished in America. How sad – how unnatural – how dangerous – how bloody – dare we call them names? ..."
War and peace! About 75% of the on-air personalities on Fox Jews are women. Do any of them have a peaceful brain cell – it
appears not. They are all 100% on message – bomb Syria!
It is feminism gone mad – the traditional female role of hope
for peace has been extinguished in America. How sad – how unnatural – how dangerous – how bloody – dare we call them names?
This is US specific bank of chickenhawks, who feed from MIC cramps. this breed is really entrenched in State Department too (Madeleine
Albright, Nuland, Powell, Haley, etc)
Notable quotes:
"... War and peace! About 75% of the on-air personalities on Fox Jews are women. Do any of them have a peaceful brain cell – it appears not. They are all 100% on message – bomb Syria! ..."
"... It is feminism gone mad – the traditional female role of hope for peace has been extinguished in America. How sad – how unnatural – how dangerous – how bloody – dare we call them names? ..."
War and peace! About 75% of the on-air personalities on Fox Jews are women. Do any of them have a peaceful brain cell – it
appears not. They are all 100% on message – bomb Syria!
It is feminism gone mad – the traditional female role of hope
for peace has been extinguished in America. How sad – how unnatural – how dangerous – how bloody – dare we call them names?
Ukraine is a debilitated state, created under Soviet auspices, hampered by a difficult
Soviet inheritance, and hollowed out by its own predatory elites during two decades of misrule.
But it is also a nation that is too big and independent for Russia to swallow up. Russia,
meanwhile, is a damaged yet still formidable great power whose rulers cannot be intimidated
into allowing Ukraine to enter the Western orbit. Hence the standoff. No external power or aid
package can solve Ukraine's problems or compensate for its inherent vulnerabilities
vis-à-vis Russia. Nor would sending lethal weaponry to Ukraine's brave but ragtag
volunteer fighters and corrupt state structures improve the situation; in fact, it would send
it spiraling further downward, by failing to balance Russian predominance while giving Moscow a
pretext to escalate the conflict even more. Rather, the way forward must begin with a
recognition of some banal facts and some difficult bargaining.
Russia's seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine do not challenge the entire
post-1945 international order. The forward positions the Soviet Union occupied in the heart of
Europe as a result of defeating Nazi Germany were voluntarily relinquished in the early 1990s,
and they are not going to be reoccupied. But nor should every detail of the post–Cold War
settlement worked out in 1989–91 be considered eternal and inviolate. That settlement
emerged during an anomalous time. Russia was flat on its back but would not remain prostrate
forever, and when it recovered, some sort of pushback was to be expected.
Something similar happened following the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, many of the
provisions of which were not enforced. Even if France, the United Kingdom, and the United
States had been willing and able to enforce the peace, their efforts would not have worked,
because the treaty had been imposed during a temporary anomaly, the simultaneous collapse of
German and Russian power, and would inevitably have been challenged when that power
returned.
Territorial revisionism ensued after World War II as well, of course, and continued
sporadically for decades. Since 1991, there have been some negotiated revisions: Hong Kong and
Macao underwent peaceful reabsorption into China. Yugoslavia was broken up in violence and war,
leading to the independence of its six federal units and eventually Kosovo, as well.
Unrecognized statelets such as Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan; Transnistria, a sliver of
Moldova; Abkhazia and South Ossetia, disputed units of Georgia; and now Donetsk and Luhansk,
parts of Ukraine -- each entails a story of Stalinist border-making.
The European Union cannot resolve this latest standoff, nor can the United Nations. The
United States has indeed put together "coalitions of the willing" to legitimize some of its
recent interventions, but it is not going to go to war over Ukraine or start bombing Russia,
and the wherewithal and will for indefinite sanctions against Russia are lacking. Distasteful
as it might sound, Washington faces the prospect of trying to work out some negotiated larger
territorial settlement.
Such negotiations would have to acknowledge that Russia is a great power with leverage, but
they would not need to involve the formal acceptance of some special Russian sphere of interest
in its so-called near abroad. The chief goals would be, first, to exchange international
recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea for an end to all the frozen conflicts in which
Russia is an accomplice and, second, to disincentivize such behavior in the future. Russia
should have to pay monetary compensation for Crimea. There could be some federal solutions,
referendums, even land swaps and population transfers (which in many cases have already taken
place). Sanctions on Russia would remain in place until a settlement was mutually agreed on,
and new sanctions could be levied if Russia were to reject negotiations or were deemed to be
conducting them in bad faith. Recognition of the new status of Crimea would occur in stages,
over an extended period.
It would be a huge challenge to devise incentives that were politically plausible in the
West while at the same time powerful enough for Russia to agree to a just settlement -- and for
Ukraine to be willing to take part. But the search for a settlement would be an opportunity as
well as a headache.
NATO expansion can be judged to have been a strategic error -- not because it angered Russia
but because it weakened NATO as a military alliance. Russia's elites would likely have become
revanchist even without NATO's advance, because they believe, nearly universally, that the
United States took advantage of Russia in 1991 and has denied the country its rightful place as
an equal in international diplomacy ever since. But NATO expansion's critics have not offered
much in the way of practicable alternatives. Would it really have been appropriate, for
example, to deny the requests of all the countries east of Germany to join the alliance?
Then as now, the only real alternative was the creation of an entirely new trans-European
security architecture, one that fully transcended its Cold War counterpart. This was an
oft-expressed Russian wish, but in the early 1990s, there was neither the imagination nor the
incentives in Washington for such a heavy lift. Whether there is such capacity in Washington
today remains to be seen. But even if comprehensive new security arrangements are unlikely
anytime soon, Washington could still undertake much useful groundwork.
Critics might object on the grounds that the sanctions are actually biting, reinforced by
the oil price free fall -- so why offer even minimal concessions to Putin now? The answer is
because neither the sanctions, nor the oil price collapse, nor the two in conjunction have
altered Russia's behavior, diminished its potential as a spoiler, or afforded Ukraine a chance
to recover.
Whether they acknowledge it or not, Western opponents of a negotiated settlement are really
opting for another long-term, open-ended attempt to contain Russia and hope for regime change
-- a policy likely to last until the end of Putin's life and possibly well beyond. The costs of
such an approach are likely to be quite high, and other global issues will continue to demand
attention and resources. And all the while, Ukraine would effectively remain crippled, Europe's
economy would suffer, and Russia would grow ever more embittered and difficult to handle. All
of that might occur no matter what. But if negotiations hold out a chance of somehow averting
such an outcome, they are worth a try. And the attempt would hold few costs, because failed
negotiations would only solidify the case for containment in Europe and in the United
States.
It is ultimately up to Russia's leaders to take meaningful steps to integrate their country
into the existing world order, one that they can vex but not fully overturn. To the extent that
the Ukraine debacle has brought this reality into sharper focus, it might actually have been
useful in helping Putin to see some light, and the same goes for the collapse of oil prices and
the accompanying unavoidable devaluation of the ruble. After the nadir of 1998, smart policy
choices in Moscow, together with some lucky outside breaks, helped Russia transform a crisis
into a breakthrough, with real and impressive steps forward. That history could replay itself
-- but whether it will remains the prerogative of one person alone.
Ukraine is a debilitated state, created under Soviet auspices, hampered by a difficult
Soviet inheritance, and hollowed out by its own predatory elites during two decades of misrule.
But it is also a nation that is too big and independent for Russia to swallow up. Russia,
meanwhile, is a damaged yet still formidable great power whose rulers cannot be intimidated
into allowing Ukraine to enter the Western orbit. Hence the standoff. No external power or aid
package can solve Ukraine's problems or compensate for its inherent vulnerabilities
vis-à-vis Russia. Nor would sending lethal weaponry to Ukraine's brave but ragtag
volunteer fighters and corrupt state structures improve the situation; in fact, it would send
it spiraling further downward, by failing to balance Russian predominance while giving Moscow a
pretext to escalate the conflict even more. Rather, the way forward must begin with a
recognition of some banal facts and some difficult bargaining.
Russia's seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine do not challenge the entire
post-1945 international order. The forward positions the Soviet Union occupied in the heart of
Europe as a result of defeating Nazi Germany were voluntarily relinquished in the early 1990s,
and they are not going to be reoccupied. But nor should every detail of the post–Cold War
settlement worked out in 1989–91 be considered eternal and inviolate. That settlement
emerged during an anomalous time. Russia was flat on its back but would not remain prostrate
forever, and when it recovered, some sort of pushback was to be expected.
Something similar happened following the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, many of the
provisions of which were not enforced. Even if France, the United Kingdom, and the United
States had been willing and able to enforce the peace, their efforts would not have worked,
because the treaty had been imposed during a temporary anomaly, the simultaneous collapse of
German and Russian power, and would inevitably have been challenged when that power
returned.
Territorial revisionism ensued after World War II as well, of course, and continued
sporadically for decades. Since 1991, there have been some negotiated revisions: Hong Kong and
Macao underwent peaceful reabsorption into China. Yugoslavia was broken up in violence and war,
leading to the independence of its six federal units and eventually Kosovo, as well.
Unrecognized statelets such as Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan; Transnistria, a sliver of
Moldova; Abkhazia and South Ossetia, disputed units of Georgia; and now Donetsk and Luhansk,
parts of Ukraine -- each entails a story of Stalinist border-making.
The European Union cannot resolve this latest standoff, nor can the United Nations. The
United States has indeed put together "coalitions of the willing" to legitimize some of its
recent interventions, but it is not going to go to war over Ukraine or start bombing Russia,
and the wherewithal and will for indefinite sanctions against Russia are lacking. Distasteful
as it might sound, Washington faces the prospect of trying to work out some negotiated larger
territorial settlement.
Such negotiations would have to acknowledge that Russia is a great power with leverage, but
they would not need to involve the formal acceptance of some special Russian sphere of interest
in its so-called near abroad. The chief goals would be, first, to exchange international
recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea for an end to all the frozen conflicts in which
Russia is an accomplice and, second, to disincentivize such behavior in the future. Russia
should have to pay monetary compensation for Crimea. There could be some federal solutions,
referendums, even land swaps and population transfers (which in many cases have already taken
place). Sanctions on Russia would remain in place until a settlement was mutually agreed on,
and new sanctions could be levied if Russia were to reject negotiations or were deemed to be
conducting them in bad faith. Recognition of the new status of Crimea would occur in stages,
over an extended period.
It would be a huge challenge to devise incentives that were politically plausible in the
West while at the same time powerful enough for Russia to agree to a just settlement -- and for
Ukraine to be willing to take part. But the search for a settlement would be an opportunity as
well as a headache.
NATO expansion can be judged to have been a strategic error -- not because it angered Russia
but because it weakened NATO as a military alliance. Russia's elites would likely have become
revanchist even without NATO's advance, because they believe, nearly universally, that the
United States took advantage of Russia in 1991 and has denied the country its rightful place as
an equal in international diplomacy ever since. But NATO expansion's critics have not offered
much in the way of practicable alternatives. Would it really have been appropriate, for
example, to deny the requests of all the countries east of Germany to join the alliance?
Then as now, the only real alternative was the creation of an entirely new trans-European
security architecture, one that fully transcended its Cold War counterpart. This was an
oft-expressed Russian wish, but in the early 1990s, there was neither the imagination nor the
incentives in Washington for such a heavy lift. Whether there is such capacity in Washington
today remains to be seen. But even if comprehensive new security arrangements are unlikely
anytime soon, Washington could still undertake much useful groundwork.
Critics might object on the grounds that the sanctions are actually biting, reinforced by
the oil price free fall -- so why offer even minimal concessions to Putin now? The answer is
because neither the sanctions, nor the oil price collapse, nor the two in conjunction have
altered Russia's behavior, diminished its potential as a spoiler, or afforded Ukraine a chance
to recover.
Whether they acknowledge it or not, Western opponents of a negotiated settlement are really
opting for another long-term, open-ended attempt to contain Russia and hope for regime change
-- a policy likely to last until the end of Putin's life and possibly well beyond. The costs of
such an approach are likely to be quite high, and other global issues will continue to demand
attention and resources. And all the while, Ukraine would effectively remain crippled, Europe's
economy would suffer, and Russia would grow ever more embittered and difficult to handle. All
of that might occur no matter what. But if negotiations hold out a chance of somehow averting
such an outcome, they are worth a try. And the attempt would hold few costs, because failed
negotiations would only solidify the case for containment in Europe and in the United
States.
It is ultimately up to Russia's leaders to take meaningful steps to integrate their country
into the existing world order, one that they can vex but not fully overturn. To the extent that
the Ukraine debacle has brought this reality into sharper focus, it might actually have been
useful in helping Putin to see some light, and the same goes for the collapse of oil prices and
the accompanying unavoidable devaluation of the ruble. After the nadir of 1998, smart policy
choices in Moscow, together with some lucky outside breaks, helped Russia transform a crisis
into a breakthrough, with real and impressive steps forward. That history could replay itself
-- but whether it will remains the prerogative of one person alone.
To
borrow from the British definition of an ambassador, United States military leaders are honest soldiers promoted in rank to champion
war with reckless disregard for the truth. This practice persists despite the catastrophic waste of lives and money because the untruths
are never punished. Congress needs to correct this problem forthwith.
General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, exemplifies the phenomenon. As reported in The Washington
Post , Dunford recently voiced optimism about defeating the Afghan Taliban in the seventeenth year of a trillion-dollar war that
has multiplied safe havens for international terrorists, the opposite of the war's original mission. While not under oath, Dunford
insisted, "This is not another year of the same thing we've been doing for 17 years. This is a fundamentally different approach [T]he
right people at the right level with the right training [are in place] "
There, the general recklessly disregarded the truth. He followed the instruction of General William Westmoreland who stated at
the National Press Club on November 21, 1967 that the Vietnam War had come to a point "where the end begins to come into view." The
1968 Tet Offensive was then around the corner, which would provoke Westmoreland to ask for 200,000 more American troops. The Pentagon
Papers and Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty have meticulously documented the military's reckless disregard
for the truth throughout the Vietnam War.
Any fool can understand that continuing our 17-year-old war in Afghanistan is a fool's errand. The nation is artificial. Among
other things, its disputed border with Pakistan, the Durand Line, was drawn in 1896 between the British Raj and Afghan Amir Abdur
Rahmen Khair. Afghanistan's population splinters along tribal, ethnic, and sectarian lines, including Pushtans, Uzbeks, Hazara, Tajiks,
Turkmen, and Balochi. Its government is riddled with nepotism, corruption, ineptitude, and lawlessness. Election fraud and political
sclerosis are endemic. Opium production and trafficking replenish the Taliban's coffers.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) is a paper tiger. Desertion and attrition rates are alarming. Disloyalty is widespread. American
weapons are sold to the Taliban or captured. ANA soldiers will not risk that last full measure of devotion for an illegitimate, unrepresentative,
decrepit government.
The Taliban also has a safe haven in Pakistan. A staggering portion -- maybe up to 90 percent -- of United States assistance to
Afghanistan is embezzled, diverted, or wasted. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
related to Chatham House in London that "SIGAR was finding waste, fraud, and abuse nearly everywhere we looked in Afghanistan --
from the $488 million worth of aircraft that couldn't fly, to the navy the U.S. bought for a landlocked country, to the buildings
the U.S. paid for that literally melted in the rain ."
"The Taliban are getting stronger, the government is on the retreat, they are losing ground to the Taliban day by day," Abdul
Jabbar Qahraman, a retired Afghan general who was the Afghan government's military envoy to Helmand Province until 2016, told the
New York Times last summer. ISIS has now joined the Taliban and al-Qaeda in fighting the United States. Secretary of Defense
General James Mattis conceded to Congress last June that "we are not winning in Afghanistan right now," but added polyannaishly,
"And we will correct this as soon as possible." Only two months earlier, the Defense Department insisted that dropping the Mother
of All Bombs on Afghanistan would reverse the losing trend.
Upton Sinclair sermonized: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding
it." Thus do military leaders deceive themselves about futile wars to extract more spending, to maintain their professional reputations
and public stature, and to avoid the embarrassment of explaining to Congress and the American people that astronomical sums have
been wasted and tens of thousands of American soldiers have died or were crippled in vain.
To deter such self-deception, Congress should enact a statute requiring the retirement without pension of any general or admiral
who materially misleads legislators or the public about prospective or ongoing wars with reckless disregard for the truth. That sanction
might have prompted General Dunford to acknowledge the grim truth about Afghanistan: that the United States is clueless about how
to win that war.
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan and is the founding partner of Fein & DelValle PLLC.
Or How China and the U.S. Are Spawning a New Great Power Naval Rivalry
Amid the intense coverage of Russian cyber-maneuvering and North Korean missile threats, another kind of great-power rivalry has
been playing out quietly in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The U.S. and Chinese navies have been repositioning warships and establishing
naval bases as if they were so many pawns on a geopolitical chessboard. To some it might seem curious, even quaint, that gunboats
and naval bastions, once emblematic of the Victorian age, remain even remotely relevant in our own era of cyber-threats and space
warfare.
Yet if you examine, even briefly, the central role that naval power has played and still plays in the fate of empires, the deadly
serious nature of this new naval competition makes more sense. Indeed, if war were to break out among the major powers today, don't
discount the possibility that it might come from a naval clash over Chinese bases in the South China Sea rather than a missile strike
against North Korea or a Russian cyber attack.
The Age of Empire
For the past 500 years, from the 50 fortified Portuguese ports that dotted the world in the sixteenth century to the
800 U.S. military bases
that dominate much of it today, empires have used such enclaves as Archimedean levers to move the globe. Viewed historically, naval
bastions were invaluable when it came to the aspirations of any would-be hegemonic power, yet also surprisingly vulnerable to capture
in times of conflict.
Throughout the twentieth century and the first years of this one, military bases in the South China Sea in particular have been
flashpoints for geopolitical change. The U.S. victory at Manila Bay in 1898, the fall of the British bastion of Singapore to the
Japanese in 1942, America's withdrawal from Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1992, and China's construction of airstrips and missile
launchers in the Spratly Islands since 2014 – all have been iconic markers for both geopolitical dominion and imperial transition.
Indeed, in his 1890 study of naval history, that famed advocate of seapower Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, arguably America's only
original strategic thinker, stated that "the maintenance
of suitable naval stations , when combined with decided preponderance at sea, makes a scattered and extensive empire, like that of
England, secure." In marked contrast to the British Navy's 300 ships and 30 bases circling the globe, he worried that U.S. warships
with "no foreign establishments, either colonial or military will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To
provide resting-places for them would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power
of the nation at sea."
So important did Captain Mahan consider naval bases for America's defense that he
argued
"it should be an inviolable resolution of our national policy that no European state should henceforth acquire a coaling position
within three thousand miles of San Francisco" – a span that reached the Hawaiian Islands, which Washington would soon seize. In a
series of influential dictums, he also argued that a large fleet and overseas bases were essential to both the exercise of global
power and national defense.
Although Mahan was read as gospel by everyone from American President Teddy Roosevelt to German Kaiser Wilhelm II, his observations
do not explain the persistent geopolitical significance of such naval bases. Especially in periods between wars, these bastions seem
to allow empires to project their power in crucial ways.
Historian Paul Kennedy has suggested
that Britain's "naval mastery" in the nineteenth century made it "extremely difficult for other lesser states to undertake maritime
operations or trade without at least its tacit consent." But modern bases do even more. Naval bastions and the warships they serve
can weave a web of dominion across an open sea, transforming an unbounded ocean into de facto territorial waters. Even in an age
of cyberwarfare, they remain essential to geopolitical gambits of almost any sort, as the United States has shown repeatedly during
its tumultuous century as a Pacific power.
America as a Pacific Power
As the U.S. began its ascent to global power by expanding its navy in the 1890s, Captain Mahan, then head of the Naval War College,
argued that Washington had to build a battle fleet and capture island bastions, particularly in the Pacific, that could control the
surrounding sea-lanes. Influenced in part by his doctrine, Admiral George Dewey's squadron sank the Spanish fleet and seized the
key harbor of Manila Bay in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War of 1898.
In 1905, however, Japan's stunning victory over the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Tsushima Strait (between southern Japan and Korea)
suddenly revealed the vulnerability of the slender string of bases the U.S. then possessed, stretching from Panama to the Philippines.
Under the pressure of the imperial Japanese navy, Washington soon abandoned its plans for a major naval presence in the Western Pacific.
Within a year, President Theodore Roosevelt had removed the last Navy battleship from the region and later authorized the construction
of a new Pacific bastion not in distant Manila Bay but at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, insisting that "the Philippines form our heel of
Achilles." When the Versailles settlement at the end of World War I awarded Micronesia in the Western Pacific to Japan, the dispatch
of any fleet from Pearl Harbor to Manila Bay became problematic in time of war and rendered the Philippines essentially indefensible.
It was partly for this reason, in mid-1941, that Secretary of War Henry Stimson decided that the B-17 bomber, aptly named the
"Flying Fortress," would be the wonder weapon capable of countering the Japanese navy's control of the Western Pacific and sent 35
of these new aircraft to Manila. Stimson's strategy was, however, a flight of imperial fantasy that condemned most of those planes
to destruction by Japanese fighters in the first days of World War II in the Pacific and doomed General Douglas MacArthur's army
in the Philippines to a humiliating defeat at Bataan.
As bomber ranges tripled during that global conflict, however, the War Department decided in 1943 that the country's postwar defense
required retaining forward bases in the Philippines. These ambitions were fully realized in 1947 when the newly independent republic
signed the Military Bases Agreement granting the U.S. a 99-year lease on 23 military installations, including the Seventh Fleet's
future homeport at Subic Bay and the massive Clark Air Base near Manila.
Simultaneously, during its postwar occupation of Japan, the U.S. acquired more than a hundred military facilities that stretched
from Misawa Air Base in the north of that country to Sasebo Naval Base in the south. With its strategic location, the island of Okinawa
had 32 active U.S. installations covering about 20% of its entire area.
As the Cold War came to Asia in 1951, Washington concluded mutual defense pacts with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and
Australia that made the Pacific littoral the eastern anchor for its strategic dominion over Eurasia. By 1955, the early enclaves
in Japan and the Philippines had been integrated into a global network of 450 overseas bases aimed largely at containing the Sino-Soviet
bloc behind an Iron Curtain that bisected the vast Eurasian continent.
After surveying the rise and fall of Eurasian empires for the past 600 years, Oxford historian John Darwin
concluded that Washington
had achieved its "colossal Imperium on an unprecedented scale" by becoming the first power to control the strategic axial points
"at both ends of Eurasia" – in the west through the NATO alliance and in the east via those four mutual security pacts. During the
later decades of the Cold War, moreover, the U.S. Navy completed its encirclement of the continent,
taking over
the old British base at Bahrain in 1971 and later
building a multibillion-dollar base at the epicenter of the Indian Ocean on the island of Diego Garcia for its air and naval
patrols.
Among these many bases ringing Eurasia, those along the Pacific littoral were of particular strategic import before, during, and
after the Cold War. As the geopolitical fulcrum between the defense of one continent (North America) and control of another (Asia),
the Pacific littoral has remained a constant focus in Washington's century-long effort to extend and maintain its global power.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, as Washington elites reveled in their role as leaders of the world's sole superpower, former
national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a master of Eurasia's unforgiving geopolitics,
warned that
the U.S. could preserve its global power only as long as the eastern end of that vast Eurasian landmass did not unify itself in a
way that might lead to "the expulsion of America from its offshore bases." Otherwise, he asserted with some prescience, "a potential
rival to America might at some point arise."
In fact, the weakening of those "offshore bases" had already begun in 1991, the very year the Soviet Union imploded, when the
Philippines refused to extend the U.S. lease on the Seventh Fleet's bastion at Subic Bay. As Navy tugs towed Subic's floating dry
docks home to Pearl Harbor, the Philippines assumed full responsibility for its own defense without actually putting any more of
its funds into air or naval power. Consequently, during a raging typhoon in 1994, China was able to suddenly
occupy some shoals in the
nearby Spratly Islands that went by the name of Mischief Reef – and that would turn out to be just its first step in a bid to control
the South China Sea. Without the ability to launch its own air and navy patrols, in 1998 the Philippine military, in an attempt to
reassert its claim to the area, grounded a rusting U.S.-surplus ship on nearby Ayungin Shoal as a "base" for a squad of barefoot
soldiers who were forced to fish for their rations.
In the meantime, the U.S. Navy suffered its own decline with a
40% reduction in surface warships and attack
submarines from 1990 to 1996. Over the next two decades, the Navy's Pacific posture weakened further as the focus of naval deployments
shifted to wars in the Middle East, the service's overall size
shrank by an additional 20% (to just 271 ships), and crews strained under the pressure of ever-extending deployments – leaving
the Seventh Fleet ill-prepared to meet China's unexpected challenge.
China's Naval Gambit
After years of seeming compliance with Washington's rules for good global citizenship, China's recent actions in Central Asia
and the continent's surrounding seas have revealed a two-phase strategy that would, if successful, undercut the perpetuation of American
global power. First, China is spending a
trillion
dollars to fund a vast
transcontinental
grid of new railroads, highways, and oil and natural gas pipelines that could harness Eurasia's vast resources as an economic
engine to drive its ascent to world power.
In a parallel move, China is building a blue-water navy and creating its first overseas bases in the Arabian and South China seas.
As Beijing stated in a 2015 white paper, "The traditional mentality
that land outweighs the sea must be abandoned It is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force structure commensurate
with its national security." Though the force it contemplates will hardly compete with the U.S. Navy's global presence, China seems
determined to dominate a significant arc of waters around Asia, from the horn of Africa, across the Indian Ocean, all the way to
Korea.
Beijing's bid for overseas bases began quietly in 2011 when it started investing almost $250 million in the
transformation of a sleepy fishing village at Gwadar, Pakistan, on the shores of the Arabian Sea, into a modern commercial port
only 370 miles from the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Four years later, President Xi Jinping committed another $46 billion to the
building of a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor of roads, railways, and pipelines stretching for 2,000 miles from western China
to the now-modernized port at Gwadar. It still avoided any admission that military aims might be involved so as not to alarm New
Delhi or Washington. In 2016, however, Pakistan's Navy
announced that it was indeed opening a naval base at Gwadar (soon strengthened with
two warships donated by China) and added that Beijing was
welcome to base its own ships there as well.
That same year, China began building a major
military facility at Djibouti on
the Horn of Africa and, in August 2017, opened its first official overseas base there, giving its navy access to the oil-rich Arabian
Sea. Simultaneously, Sri Lanka, located at a midpoint in the Indian Ocean, settled a billion-dollar debt to China by ceding it a
strategic port at Hambantota, creating
a future potential for dual military use there, too – in effect, the Gwadar stealth strategy revisited.
As controversial as these enclaves might be (at least from an American point of view), they paled before China's attempts to claim
an entire ocean. Starting in April 2014, Beijing escalated its bid for exclusive territorial control over the South China Sea by
expanding Longpo Naval Base on its own Hainan
Island into a homeport for its four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Without any announcement, the Chinese also began
dredging seven artificial atolls in the disputed Spratly Islands to create military airfields and future anchorages. In just four
years, Beijing's armada of dredges had sucked up countless tons of sand from the ocean floor, slowly transforming those minimalist
reefs and atolls into active military bases. Today, China's army
operates a
jet runway protected by HQ-9 anti-aircraft missile batteries on Woody Island, a radar base on Cuareton Reef, and has mobile missile
launchers near runways ready for jet fighters at three more of these "islands."
While fighter planes and submarines are pawns in China's opening gambit in the contest for the South China Sea, Beijing hopes
one day to at least check (if not checkmate) Washington with a growing armada of aircraft carriers, the modern dreadnaughts in this
latter-day game of empires. After acquiring an unfinished Soviet Kuznetsov -class carrier from Ukraine in 1998, the naval
dockyard at Dalian retrofitted the rusting hulk and launched it in 2012 as the Liaoning , China's first aircraft carrier.
That hull was already 30 years old, an age that would normally have assured such a warship a place in some scrap metal yard. Though
not combat capable, it was a platform for training China's first generation of naval aviators in landing speeding jets on heaving
decks in high seas. In marked contrast to the 15 years needed to retrofit this first ship, the Dalian yards took just five years
to
construct , from the keel up, a much-improved second carrier capable of full combat operations.
The narrow hulls and ski-jump prows that limit these first two carriers to just 24 "Flying Shark" fighter planes won't hold for
the country's third carrier, now
being
built from indigenous designs in Shanghai. When launched next year, it will be able to carry on-board fuel reserves that will
give it a longer cruising range and a complement of 40 aircraft, as well as electromagnetic systems for faster launches. Thanks to
an accelerating tempo of training, technology, and construction, by 2030 China should have enough aircraft carriers to ensure that
the South China Sea will become what the
Pentagon has termed
a "Chinese lake."
Such carriers are the vanguard of a sustained naval expansion that, by 2017, had already given China a
modern navy of 320 ships, backed by land-based missiles, jet
fighters, and a global system of surveillance satellites. Its current anti-ship ballistic missiles have a range of 2,500 miles and
so could strike U.S. Navy vessels anywhere in the Western Pacific. Beijing has also made strides in
mastering the volatile technology
for hypersonic missiles with speeds of up to 5,000 miles per hour, making them impossible to stop. By building two new submarines
every year, China has already assembled a fleet of 57, both
diesel- and nuclear-powered, and is projected to reach 80 soon. Each of its four nuclear submarines carries 12 ballistic missiles
that could reach anywhere in the western United States. In addition, Beijing has
launched dozens of amphibious ships and coastal corvettes,
giving it naval dominance in its own waters.
Within just five years, according to the U.S. Office of Naval
Intelligence , China "will complete its transition" from the coastal force of the 1990s to a modern navy capable of "sustained
blue water operations" and "multiple missions around the world," including full-spectrum warfare. In other words, China is forging
a future capacity to control its "home" waters from the East China Sea to the South China Sea. In the process, it will become the
first power in 70 years to challenge the U.S. Navy's dominion over the Pacific basin.
The American Response
After taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama came to the conclusion that China's rise represented a serious threat and
so he developed a geopolitical strategy to counter it. First, he promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation commercial pact
that would direct 40% of world trade toward the United States. Then, in March 2014, after announcing a military "pivot to Asia" in
an address to the Australian parliament, he deployed a full battalion of Marines to a base at the city of Darwin on the Timor Sea.
A month later, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines signed an enhanced defense cooperation agreement with that country allowing
U.S. forces to be stationed at five of its bases.
Combining existing installations in Japan with access to naval bases in Subic Bay, Darwin, and Singapore, Obama rebuilt America's
chain of military enclaves along the Asian littoral. To make full use of these installations, the Pentagon began
planning to "forward base
60% of [its] naval assets in the Pacific by 2020" and launched its first regular "freedom of navigation" patrols in the South China
Sea as a challenge to the Chinese navy, even sending in full carrier strike groups.
President Trump, however, cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership right after his inauguration and, with the endless war on terror
in the Greater Middle East grinding on, the shift of naval forces to the Pacific slowed. More broadly, Trump's unilateral, America-first
foreign policy has damaged relations with the four allies that underpin its line of defense in the Pacific:
Japan , South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. Moreover, in his obsessive courtship of Beijing's help in the Korean crisis,
the president even suspended, for five months, those naval patrols into the South China Sea.
The administration's new $700 billion defense budget will
fund 46 new ships for the Navy by 2023 (for a total of 326), but the White House seems incapable, as reflected in its
recentNational
Security Strategy , of grasping the geostrategic importance of Eurasia or devising an effective scheme for the deployment of
its expanding military to check China's rise. After declaring Obama's "pivot to Asia" officially
dead
, the Trump administration has instead
offered its own "free and open Indo-Pacific" founded on an unworkable alliance of four supposedly kindred democracies – Australia,
India, Japan, and the United States.
While Trump stumbles from one foreign policy crisis to the next, his admirals, mindful of Mahan's strategic dictums, are acutely
aware of the geopolitical requisites of American imperial power and have been vocal about their determination to preserve it. Indeed,
China's naval expansion, along with advances in Russia's submarine fleet, have led the Navy to a fundamental
strategic shift from limited operations against regional powers
like Iran to full-spectrum readiness for "a return to great power competition." After a sweeping strategic review of his forces in
2017, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson reported
that China's "growing and modernized fleet" was "shrinking" the traditional American advantage in the Pacific. "The competition is
on," he warned, "and pace dominates. In an exponential competition, the winner takes all. We must shake off any vestiges of comfort
or complacency."
In a parallel review of the Navy's surface force, its commander, Vice Admiral Thomas Rowden,
proclaimed "a new age of seapower"
with a return to "great power dynamics" from "near-peer competitors." Any potential naval attack, he added, must be met with a "distributed
lethality" capable of "inflicting damage of such magnitude that it compels an adversary to cease hostilities." Summoning the ghost
of Captain Mahan, the admiral warned: "From Europe to Asia, history is replete with nations that rose to global power only to cede
it back through lack of seapower."
Great Power Rivalry in the Twenty-First Century
As such rhetoric indicates, there is already a rising tempo of naval competition in the South China Sea. Just last month, after
a protracted hiatus in freedom-of-navigation patrols, the Trump administration sent the
supercarrierUSS Carl Vinson , with its full complement of 5,000 sailors and 90 aircraft, steaming across the South China
Sea for a symbolic visit to Vietnam, which has its own long-running dispute with China over oil rights in those waters.
Just three weeks later,
satellite imagery captured an extraordinary "display of maritime might" as a flotilla of some 40 Chinese warships, including
the carrier Liaoning , steamed through that same sea in a formation that stretched for miles. Combined with the
maneuvers it
staged in those waters with the Cambodian and Russian navies in 2016, China, like empires past, is clearly planning to use its gunboats
and future naval bases to weave a web of de facto imperial control across the waters of Asia.
Naysayers who dismiss China's challenge might remind us that its navy only operates in two of the metaphoric "seven seas," a pale
imitation of the U.S. Navy's robust global posture. Yet China's rising presence in the Indian and Pacific oceans has far-reaching
geostrategic implications for our world order. In a cascading series of consequences, China's future dominance over significant parts
of those oceans will compromise the U.S. position on the Pacific littoral, shatter its control over that axial end of Eurasia, and
open that vast continental expanse, home to 70% of the world's population and resources, to China's dominion. Just as Brzezinski
once warned, Washington's failure to control Eurasia could well mean the end of its global hegemony and the rise of a new world empire
based in Beijing.
Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch
regular , is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics
of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade , the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and
covert operations over 50 years, and the recently published
In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power (Dispatch Books).
Chemical false flag attacks is the traditional way Syria islamists are calling for the US air support. From comments: "After all
they had lost in Douma - there were no point in Syrian gas attack - the fighting was done. Jaish al Islam must be having a great
laugh at our expensive for falling for their trick of gassing their own people. Let us not help the Islamists."
Anther interesting comment: "With "experts" at president's disposal, seems to me moment Trump announced Syrian withdrawal, at
least one should have anticipated - based on past occurrences - a gas attack aimed to engage US and therefore maintain US presence."
And another " including their mouthpieces at the times manufacture
a chemical attack and claim Assad -- who has no reason whatsoever to do such things -- is some horrible monster that deserves to have
bombs rained down on him. How totally corrupt the MIC has become."
That act reported by White helmets looks like a classic MI6 provocation. Russian investigation has shown that no attack took place.
Moreover the rumors about this false flag were circulating long ago. Russians warned about this possiblity a month or so ago telling
the jihadists prepare such provocation. Looks like all that was needed for Trump is a plausible justification -- the desire to "decapitate"
Assad is too strong to resist.
Notable quotes:
"... Syria is a crappy place primarily because of insane overpopulation and limited water. Getting Assad out is not going to help with population or with water. Moving the entire Syrian population to Europe could be done and they are working on that. ..."
"... With "experts" at president's disposal, seems to me moment Trump announced Syrian withdrawal, at least one should have anticipated - based on past occurrences - a gas attack aimed to engage US and therefore maintain US presence. ..."
President Trump on Monday denounced the suspected chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of people in
Syria over the weekend as a "barbaric act," and said
he will make a decision in the next 24 to 48 hours about whether to retaliate militarily as he did to a similar assault last year.
Congress has skirted their responsibility to authorize war in Syria and Trump is suggesting taking actions that could drag
us into a deep and costly war. The American people deserve to hear this debated in Congress.
Retaliate? They don't even know for sure who it was, could well have been an ally. The place is a mess of competing outside
forces.
Retaliate - and therein lies the problem. Too much to ask that for once they think, discuss, decide a long term policy with
other countries. Last time the 45th tried 'me-big-man-with-bomb' there was no follow up, nothing was done, what was the point?
Look at me I have the biggest, noisiest fire cracker! Pathetic. Careless. Irresponsible. Uniformed. Murderous. The list is endless.
I suppose the President can launch a missile attack, or any military action, based on whatever authority from Congress permitted
the US military to be fighting in Syria in the first place. The more fundamental issue is that Congress long ago ceded to the
President its constitutional responsibility to declare war . This must be corrected with checks restored on the President's power
to deploy the military at will. Otherwise, the US will continue to be in a perpetual state of war, which may be good for the extended
military supply industry but damaging to country as a whole.
What if.....what if this chemical attack was sanctioned not by Assad but by a state or a non-state force that wants the U.S.
to retaliate?
Just why did this chemical attack follow Trump's announced desire to get out of Syria?
Why, also, is Israel urging us to attack now? Could it be to distract from the human rights catastrophe in Gaza?
We all know what John Bolton would have us do.
Where's the proof that this was Assad's work? More WMD ?
Trump wined and dined MBS of Saudi Arabia who has been conducting airstrikes on Yemen with hundreds of casualties, as high
as 68 civilian deaths in one day. It would be hard to imagine a better example of hypocrisy.
Syria is a part of a complex series of issues that make up the problem of Middle Eastern diplomacy. Trump does not have the
capacity to manage any of this. Selling arms to the Saudis to continue their war in Yemen added to the Syrian problem. The cholera
epidemic in Yemen is a form of biological warfare that is killing more civilians than chemical warfare in Syria. Starving the
population of Yemen is also warfare. By supporting the Saudis we have lost the moral high ground in Syria.
Was it the rebels again? Or is it chlorine again? Chlorine is used for several commercial and health purposes--to clean bottles,
to clean water, and for refrigeration. So it is quite easy for a bomb or explosive to hit a container and then there is a serious
gas problem. If pool acid and chlorine are stored together it might be worse when mixed. I do not believe Assad needs to use chemicals
because he has Russians who will do air strikes on his enemies. I call fake news.
The solution to Syria was obvious years ago, if you just wanted to see the obvious. And that was Syria as it had been for years,
in peace, secular, under a government of Assad who, eventually, knew it had to evolve into a more democratic regime . Now that
has changed, and all to Israel´s advantage. It seems as if the whole world has forgotten that the whole Middle East problem was
born, and is still the Occupation of Palestinian Land. Israel is a thorn in Arab Middle East.The only one that has attacked ALL
its neighbours !
We should do nothing. We need to leave Syria to the Syrian. We can't and musn't involve our military in every tragedy in the
world. There is no doubt in my mind that if we mistakenly and stupidly attack the Syrian Army we are aiding the Jihadist who planned
thit attack. After all they had lost in Douma - there were no point in Syrian gas attack - the fighting was done. Jaish al Islam
must be having a great laugh at our expensive for falling for their trick of gassing their own people. Let us not help the Islamists.
The US government LIES about everything. We know this. This has been proved repeatedly.
Yet, here we are with the US government, and its stenographers in the mainstream media, i.e., the stuff that's not Fake News,
right, assuring us that Assad gassed his own people. Again.
Even if we could believe this, or even if we gave the government the benefit of the doubt for . . . what? . . . its integrity?,
we are after all exceptional, right, how is this America's business?
Yes, other countries shouldn't gas their own people. But countries shouldn't commit war crimes either, and that goes on every
day. America is as dirty as any other country. Despite our treaty obligations, even torture is legal here.
We're supposedly the richest country in the world, but we can barely keep our streets paved and lit. And not only that, but
it is a proven fact that one dollar invested in domestic economics brings back much more return than one dollar spent on bombs.
Trump is right. We need to stomp the madness in the Middle East. The oil companies can pay for their own security with all of
the money they don't pay in taxes.
Right now our cities are clogged with people living in tents and defecating on the sidewalks and in the streets. Look at old
pictures from the Depression. It looks the same today.
The left is seeing Russians responsible for every wrong in the world. The right sees itself as the rescuer of the wrongs of
the world. I pray that this does not move this country into a war with Russia.
This nation needs a "policy". Something with careful thought and backed by facts, expert analysis, and wisdom; Aim first and
carefully.
A "Shoot from the Hip" flourish that can be touted at the next Trump self congratulatory ego rally Will Not Do. Either this
nation has a leader or it doesn't - Trump's move!
One of the few things I liked about Trump was his anti-involvement stance in the middle east. We have SO MUCH to fix and worry
about at home. Nothing that Trump does on immigration, environment, or anything else will make me more angry than dragging us
into another war.
I don't see any ink being given to the very likely possibility that the gas attack was a ploy by rebels to get the US (and
their air cover) to stick around. If you ask the question, "Who benefits?" the Assad regime had nothing to gain by gassing a few
civilians -- they're about to win the war, so why would they? OTOH, the rebels need us badly, and know that we will reflexively
blame Assad.
Just a few days ago, Trump talked about withdrawing from Syria. Now, he says he will decide whether to attack Syria within
the next couple of days. One day we're out, the next day we're in. And just a few days ago, Trump said he didn't like to reveal
his military plans in advance. Now, he is announcing to the world that he is consideration retaliation against Syria. His contradictions
make the U.S. look as if it is led by a very confused commander in chief.
Yes, chemical weapons are barbaric, but who launched the attack? Which faction in this complicated civil war? How does trump
know the answer to this question when no one else does? Why would the U.S. "retaliate" based on speculation, especially after
trump recently said, "we need to get out of there and leave it to someone else"? What good would military action do at this point?
Are we anxious to put our "expensive new military" to the test? So many questions...and an administration unable / unwilling to
answer them. Too bad trump can't simply tweet his way out of this one...
The U.S. should respond militarily to Syria's gas attack only on two conditions:
1. The leaders of all key U.S. allies (European countries, Canada, Japan, S. Korea, Australia, etc.) sign a joint declaration
of support for the action.
2. Each of these countries pays a population-weighted share of the expense of the U.S. military operation.
We are either all in this together, or it's not worth doing.
Let's find out if our allies are willing to back up their pious declarations of condemnation.
I don't get it. Subjecting people, women, children and even men, to crushing, burning, lacerating and penetrating wounds is
par for the course. It's war after all. But poison! Oh the (in)humanity!
Also, anyone think it's weird that Assad does this just when the US is making motions to pull out?
It is impossible to know what is really going on as the world's powers continue to fight this proxy war. The only thing that
is certain is the continued suffering of the Syrian people - including the poor sods who will be conventionally incinerated by
American "retaliation" in a day or so.
The President should have no authority to declare war or commit troops, period. So far, there has been no urgent "national
emergency," as required by the War Powers Resolution, which would justify the President to effectively declare war unilaterally
and yet here we are, with presidents on both sides completely ignoring the Constitution, using the WPA as an enabler to bypass
the text which says that only Congress can declare war.
Saddam used gas on the Iranians and we were good with that. It is not clear about this gas in Syria. These "freedom fighters"
have no compunction about using civilians as human shields. How do we know the truth? They are various branches of Al Quaeda and
given their huge birth rate they don't seem to place much weight on human life in the here and now....maybe they focus on the
afterlife more. So why can't we just leave Assad alone and let him be the strong man there? Yes Syria is a crappy place primarily
because of insane overpopulation and limited water. Getting Assad out is not going to help with population or with water. Moving
the entire Syrian population to Europe could be done and they are working on that.
Trump says he was getting us out of Syria. Much to my relief to this endless war.
And I'm pretty sure the president of Syria, Assad, whose regime has been under attack by both the US supported Syrian rebels
and their ISIS allies did not want the US on their soil. So why would he do something like this? I don't believe he did. By the
way if the US was not meddling over in the M.E. there would be no refugees and fewer immigrants.
"Conventional" deaths by artillery and bullets are perfectly acceptable - when bodies are vaporized, ripped and torn apart
unrecognizably. But use a deadly gas and leave the corpses in "beautiful" condition - there you have crossed the line mister.
Lemme get this straight: The US policy doesn't care *how many* Syrians were killed; it only cares *how* they were killed? Nothing
good can come from such an ethically bankrupt policy.
As painful as it is, the possession of chlorine is not in violation of the standards we all signed in to to stop chemical and
biological weapons. Hence, the agreement under Obama, by almost all standards, worked well. Or at least unless we wanted a few
hundred thousands troop on the ground to search the entire country. This use of chlorine is. Maybe Trump will propose a huge tariff
on chlorine exports to Syria?
What is the logic for Assad to provoke the US right after Trump announces his intention to withdraw? Would it not be more strategic
for the regime to hold off until US troops were withdrawn and then go after the rebels? Does Assad assume that the US response
will be more moderate if we still have troops in country? Any chance this was a rogue action to delay or reverse US plans to withdraw?
If so, who benefits from US continuing to maintain troops in Syria?
With "experts" at president's disposal, seems to me moment Trump announced Syrian withdrawal, at least one should have
anticipated - based on past occurrences - a gas attack aimed to engage US and therefore maintain US presence.
Or How China and the U.S. Are Spawning a New Great Power Naval Rivalry
Amid the intense coverage of Russian cyber-maneuvering and North Korean missile threats, another kind of great-power rivalry has
been playing out quietly in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The U.S. and Chinese navies have been repositioning warships and establishing
naval bases as if they were so many pawns on a geopolitical chessboard. To some it might seem curious, even quaint, that gunboats
and naval bastions, once emblematic of the Victorian age, remain even remotely relevant in our own era of cyber-threats and space
warfare.
Yet if you examine, even briefly, the central role that naval power has played and still plays in the fate of empires, the deadly
serious nature of this new naval competition makes more sense. Indeed, if war were to break out among the major powers today, don't
discount the possibility that it might come from a naval clash over Chinese bases in the South China Sea rather than a missile strike
against North Korea or a Russian cyber attack.
The Age of Empire
For the past 500 years, from the 50 fortified Portuguese ports that dotted the world in the sixteenth century to the
800 U.S. military bases
that dominate much of it today, empires have used such enclaves as Archimedean levers to move the globe. Viewed historically, naval
bastions were invaluable when it came to the aspirations of any would-be hegemonic power, yet also surprisingly vulnerable to capture
in times of conflict.
Throughout the twentieth century and the first years of this one, military bases in the South China Sea in particular have been
flashpoints for geopolitical change. The U.S. victory at Manila Bay in 1898, the fall of the British bastion of Singapore to the
Japanese in 1942, America's withdrawal from Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1992, and China's construction of airstrips and missile
launchers in the Spratly Islands since 2014 – all have been iconic markers for both geopolitical dominion and imperial transition.
Indeed, in his 1890 study of naval history, that famed advocate of seapower Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, arguably America's only
original strategic thinker, stated that "the maintenance
of suitable naval stations , when combined with decided preponderance at sea, makes a scattered and extensive empire, like that of
England, secure." In marked contrast to the British Navy's 300 ships and 30 bases circling the globe, he worried that U.S. warships
with "no foreign establishments, either colonial or military will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To
provide resting-places for them would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power
of the nation at sea."
So important did Captain Mahan consider naval bases for America's defense that he
argued
"it should be an inviolable resolution of our national policy that no European state should henceforth acquire a coaling position
within three thousand miles of San Francisco" – a span that reached the Hawaiian Islands, which Washington would soon seize. In a
series of influential dictums, he also argued that a large fleet and overseas bases were essential to both the exercise of global
power and national defense.
Although Mahan was read as gospel by everyone from American President Teddy Roosevelt to German Kaiser Wilhelm II, his observations
do not explain the persistent geopolitical significance of such naval bases. Especially in periods between wars, these bastions seem
to allow empires to project their power in crucial ways.
Historian Paul Kennedy has suggested
that Britain's "naval mastery" in the nineteenth century made it "extremely difficult for other lesser states to undertake maritime
operations or trade without at least its tacit consent." But modern bases do even more. Naval bastions and the warships they serve
can weave a web of dominion across an open sea, transforming an unbounded ocean into de facto territorial waters. Even in an age
of cyberwarfare, they remain essential to geopolitical gambits of almost any sort, as the United States has shown repeatedly during
its tumultuous century as a Pacific power.
America as a Pacific Power
As the U.S. began its ascent to global power by expanding its navy in the 1890s, Captain Mahan, then head of the Naval War College,
argued that Washington had to build a battle fleet and capture island bastions, particularly in the Pacific, that could control the
surrounding sea-lanes. Influenced in part by his doctrine, Admiral George Dewey's squadron sank the Spanish fleet and seized the
key harbor of Manila Bay in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War of 1898.
In 1905, however, Japan's stunning victory over the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Tsushima Strait (between southern Japan and Korea)
suddenly revealed the vulnerability of the slender string of bases the U.S. then possessed, stretching from Panama to the Philippines.
Under the pressure of the imperial Japanese navy, Washington soon abandoned its plans for a major naval presence in the Western Pacific.
Within a year, President Theodore Roosevelt had removed the last Navy battleship from the region and later authorized the construction
of a new Pacific bastion not in distant Manila Bay but at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, insisting that "the Philippines form our heel of
Achilles." When the Versailles settlement at the end of World War I awarded Micronesia in the Western Pacific to Japan, the dispatch
of any fleet from Pearl Harbor to Manila Bay became problematic in time of war and rendered the Philippines essentially indefensible.
It was partly for this reason, in mid-1941, that Secretary of War Henry Stimson decided that the B-17 bomber, aptly named the
"Flying Fortress," would be the wonder weapon capable of countering the Japanese navy's control of the Western Pacific and sent 35
of these new aircraft to Manila. Stimson's strategy was, however, a flight of imperial fantasy that condemned most of those planes
to destruction by Japanese fighters in the first days of World War II in the Pacific and doomed General Douglas MacArthur's army
in the Philippines to a humiliating defeat at Bataan.
As bomber ranges tripled during that global conflict, however, the War Department decided in 1943 that the country's postwar defense
required retaining forward bases in the Philippines. These ambitions were fully realized in 1947 when the newly independent republic
signed the Military Bases Agreement granting the U.S. a 99-year lease on 23 military installations, including the Seventh Fleet's
future homeport at Subic Bay and the massive Clark Air Base near Manila.
Simultaneously, during its postwar occupation of Japan, the U.S. acquired more than a hundred military facilities that stretched
from Misawa Air Base in the north of that country to Sasebo Naval Base in the south. With its strategic location, the island of Okinawa
had 32 active U.S. installations covering about 20% of its entire area.
As the Cold War came to Asia in 1951, Washington concluded mutual defense pacts with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and
Australia that made the Pacific littoral the eastern anchor for its strategic dominion over Eurasia. By 1955, the early enclaves
in Japan and the Philippines had been integrated into a global network of 450 overseas bases aimed largely at containing the Sino-Soviet
bloc behind an Iron Curtain that bisected the vast Eurasian continent.
After surveying the rise and fall of Eurasian empires for the past 600 years, Oxford historian John Darwin
concluded that Washington
had achieved its "colossal Imperium on an unprecedented scale" by becoming the first power to control the strategic axial points
"at both ends of Eurasia" – in the west through the NATO alliance and in the east via those four mutual security pacts. During the
later decades of the Cold War, moreover, the U.S. Navy completed its encirclement of the continent,
taking over
the old British base at Bahrain in 1971 and later
building a multibillion-dollar base at the epicenter of the Indian Ocean on the island of Diego Garcia for its air and naval
patrols.
Among these many bases ringing Eurasia, those along the Pacific littoral were of particular strategic import before, during, and
after the Cold War. As the geopolitical fulcrum between the defense of one continent (North America) and control of another (Asia),
the Pacific littoral has remained a constant focus in Washington's century-long effort to extend and maintain its global power.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, as Washington elites reveled in their role as leaders of the world's sole superpower, former
national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a master of Eurasia's unforgiving geopolitics,
warned that
the U.S. could preserve its global power only as long as the eastern end of that vast Eurasian landmass did not unify itself in a
way that might lead to "the expulsion of America from its offshore bases." Otherwise, he asserted with some prescience, "a potential
rival to America might at some point arise."
In fact, the weakening of those "offshore bases" had already begun in 1991, the very year the Soviet Union imploded, when the
Philippines refused to extend the U.S. lease on the Seventh Fleet's bastion at Subic Bay. As Navy tugs towed Subic's floating dry
docks home to Pearl Harbor, the Philippines assumed full responsibility for its own defense without actually putting any more of
its funds into air or naval power. Consequently, during a raging typhoon in 1994, China was able to suddenly
occupy some shoals in the
nearby Spratly Islands that went by the name of Mischief Reef – and that would turn out to be just its first step in a bid to control
the South China Sea. Without the ability to launch its own air and navy patrols, in 1998 the Philippine military, in an attempt to
reassert its claim to the area, grounded a rusting U.S.-surplus ship on nearby Ayungin Shoal as a "base" for a squad of barefoot
soldiers who were forced to fish for their rations.
In the meantime, the U.S. Navy suffered its own decline with a
40% reduction in surface warships and attack
submarines from 1990 to 1996. Over the next two decades, the Navy's Pacific posture weakened further as the focus of naval deployments
shifted to wars in the Middle East, the service's overall size
shrank by an additional 20% (to just 271 ships), and crews strained under the pressure of ever-extending deployments – leaving
the Seventh Fleet ill-prepared to meet China's unexpected challenge.
China's Naval Gambit
After years of seeming compliance with Washington's rules for good global citizenship, China's recent actions in Central Asia
and the continent's surrounding seas have revealed a two-phase strategy that would, if successful, undercut the perpetuation of American
global power. First, China is spending a
trillion
dollars to fund a vast
transcontinental
grid of new railroads, highways, and oil and natural gas pipelines that could harness Eurasia's vast resources as an economic
engine to drive its ascent to world power.
In a parallel move, China is building a blue-water navy and creating its first overseas bases in the Arabian and South China seas.
As Beijing stated in a 2015 white paper, "The traditional mentality
that land outweighs the sea must be abandoned It is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force structure commensurate
with its national security." Though the force it contemplates will hardly compete with the U.S. Navy's global presence, China seems
determined to dominate a significant arc of waters around Asia, from the horn of Africa, across the Indian Ocean, all the way to
Korea.
Beijing's bid for overseas bases began quietly in 2011 when it started investing almost $250 million in the
transformation of a sleepy fishing village at Gwadar, Pakistan, on the shores of the Arabian Sea, into a modern commercial port
only 370 miles from the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Four years later, President Xi Jinping committed another $46 billion to the
building of a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor of roads, railways, and pipelines stretching for 2,000 miles from western China
to the now-modernized port at Gwadar. It still avoided any admission that military aims might be involved so as not to alarm New
Delhi or Washington. In 2016, however, Pakistan's Navy
announced that it was indeed opening a naval base at Gwadar (soon strengthened with
two warships donated by China) and added that Beijing was
welcome to base its own ships there as well.
That same year, China began building a major
military facility at Djibouti on
the Horn of Africa and, in August 2017, opened its first official overseas base there, giving its navy access to the oil-rich Arabian
Sea. Simultaneously, Sri Lanka, located at a midpoint in the Indian Ocean, settled a billion-dollar debt to China by ceding it a
strategic port at Hambantota, creating
a future potential for dual military use there, too – in effect, the Gwadar stealth strategy revisited.
As controversial as these enclaves might be (at least from an American point of view), they paled before China's attempts to claim
an entire ocean. Starting in April 2014, Beijing escalated its bid for exclusive territorial control over the South China Sea by
expanding Longpo Naval Base on its own Hainan
Island into a homeport for its four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Without any announcement, the Chinese also began
dredging seven artificial atolls in the disputed Spratly Islands to create military airfields and future anchorages. In just four
years, Beijing's armada of dredges had sucked up countless tons of sand from the ocean floor, slowly transforming those minimalist
reefs and atolls into active military bases. Today, China's army
operates a
jet runway protected by HQ-9 anti-aircraft missile batteries on Woody Island, a radar base on Cuareton Reef, and has mobile missile
launchers near runways ready for jet fighters at three more of these "islands."
While fighter planes and submarines are pawns in China's opening gambit in the contest for the South China Sea, Beijing hopes
one day to at least check (if not checkmate) Washington with a growing armada of aircraft carriers, the modern dreadnaughts in this
latter-day game of empires. After acquiring an unfinished Soviet Kuznetsov -class carrier from Ukraine in 1998, the naval
dockyard at Dalian retrofitted the rusting hulk and launched it in 2012 as the Liaoning , China's first aircraft carrier.
That hull was already 30 years old, an age that would normally have assured such a warship a place in some scrap metal yard. Though
not combat capable, it was a platform for training China's first generation of naval aviators in landing speeding jets on heaving
decks in high seas. In marked contrast to the 15 years needed to retrofit this first ship, the Dalian yards took just five years
to
construct , from the keel up, a much-improved second carrier capable of full combat operations.
The narrow hulls and ski-jump prows that limit these first two carriers to just 24 "Flying Shark" fighter planes won't hold for
the country's third carrier, now
being
built from indigenous designs in Shanghai. When launched next year, it will be able to carry on-board fuel reserves that will
give it a longer cruising range and a complement of 40 aircraft, as well as electromagnetic systems for faster launches. Thanks to
an accelerating tempo of training, technology, and construction, by 2030 China should have enough aircraft carriers to ensure that
the South China Sea will become what the
Pentagon has termed
a "Chinese lake."
Such carriers are the vanguard of a sustained naval expansion that, by 2017, had already given China a
modern navy of 320 ships, backed by land-based missiles, jet
fighters, and a global system of surveillance satellites. Its current anti-ship ballistic missiles have a range of 2,500 miles and
so could strike U.S. Navy vessels anywhere in the Western Pacific. Beijing has also made strides in
mastering the volatile technology
for hypersonic missiles with speeds of up to 5,000 miles per hour, making them impossible to stop. By building two new submarines
every year, China has already assembled a fleet of 57, both
diesel- and nuclear-powered, and is projected to reach 80 soon. Each of its four nuclear submarines carries 12 ballistic missiles
that could reach anywhere in the western United States. In addition, Beijing has
launched dozens of amphibious ships and coastal corvettes,
giving it naval dominance in its own waters.
Within just five years, according to the U.S. Office of Naval
Intelligence , China "will complete its transition" from the coastal force of the 1990s to a modern navy capable of "sustained
blue water operations" and "multiple missions around the world," including full-spectrum warfare. In other words, China is forging
a future capacity to control its "home" waters from the East China Sea to the South China Sea. In the process, it will become the
first power in 70 years to challenge the U.S. Navy's dominion over the Pacific basin.
The American Response
After taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama came to the conclusion that China's rise represented a serious threat and
so he developed a geopolitical strategy to counter it. First, he promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation commercial pact
that would direct 40% of world trade toward the United States. Then, in March 2014, after announcing a military "pivot to Asia" in
an address to the Australian parliament, he deployed a full battalion of Marines to a base at the city of Darwin on the Timor Sea.
A month later, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines signed an enhanced defense cooperation agreement with that country allowing
U.S. forces to be stationed at five of its bases.
Combining existing installations in Japan with access to naval bases in Subic Bay, Darwin, and Singapore, Obama rebuilt America's
chain of military enclaves along the Asian littoral. To make full use of these installations, the Pentagon began
planning to "forward base
60% of [its] naval assets in the Pacific by 2020" and launched its first regular "freedom of navigation" patrols in the South China
Sea as a challenge to the Chinese navy, even sending in full carrier strike groups.
President Trump, however, cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership right after his inauguration and, with the endless war on terror
in the Greater Middle East grinding on, the shift of naval forces to the Pacific slowed. More broadly, Trump's unilateral, America-first
foreign policy has damaged relations with the four allies that underpin its line of defense in the Pacific:
Japan , South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. Moreover, in his obsessive courtship of Beijing's help in the Korean crisis,
the president even suspended, for five months, those naval patrols into the South China Sea.
The administration's new $700 billion defense budget will
fund 46 new ships for the Navy by 2023 (for a total of 326), but the White House seems incapable, as reflected in its
recentNational
Security Strategy , of grasping the geostrategic importance of Eurasia or devising an effective scheme for the deployment of
its expanding military to check China's rise. After declaring Obama's "pivot to Asia" officially
dead
, the Trump administration has instead
offered its own "free and open Indo-Pacific" founded on an unworkable alliance of four supposedly kindred democracies – Australia,
India, Japan, and the United States.
While Trump stumbles from one foreign policy crisis to the next, his admirals, mindful of Mahan's strategic dictums, are acutely
aware of the geopolitical requisites of American imperial power and have been vocal about their determination to preserve it. Indeed,
China's naval expansion, along with advances in Russia's submarine fleet, have led the Navy to a fundamental
strategic shift from limited operations against regional powers
like Iran to full-spectrum readiness for "a return to great power competition." After a sweeping strategic review of his forces in
2017, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson reported
that China's "growing and modernized fleet" was "shrinking" the traditional American advantage in the Pacific. "The competition is
on," he warned, "and pace dominates. In an exponential competition, the winner takes all. We must shake off any vestiges of comfort
or complacency."
In a parallel review of the Navy's surface force, its commander, Vice Admiral Thomas Rowden,
proclaimed "a new age of seapower"
with a return to "great power dynamics" from "near-peer competitors." Any potential naval attack, he added, must be met with a "distributed
lethality" capable of "inflicting damage of such magnitude that it compels an adversary to cease hostilities." Summoning the ghost
of Captain Mahan, the admiral warned: "From Europe to Asia, history is replete with nations that rose to global power only to cede
it back through lack of seapower."
Great Power Rivalry in the Twenty-First Century
As such rhetoric indicates, there is already a rising tempo of naval competition in the South China Sea. Just last month, after
a protracted hiatus in freedom-of-navigation patrols, the Trump administration sent the
supercarrierUSS Carl Vinson , with its full complement of 5,000 sailors and 90 aircraft, steaming across the South China
Sea for a symbolic visit to Vietnam, which has its own long-running dispute with China over oil rights in those waters.
Just three weeks later,
satellite imagery captured an extraordinary "display of maritime might" as a flotilla of some 40 Chinese warships, including
the carrier Liaoning , steamed through that same sea in a formation that stretched for miles. Combined with the
maneuvers it
staged in those waters with the Cambodian and Russian navies in 2016, China, like empires past, is clearly planning to use its gunboats
and future naval bases to weave a web of de facto imperial control across the waters of Asia.
Naysayers who dismiss China's challenge might remind us that its navy only operates in two of the metaphoric "seven seas," a pale
imitation of the U.S. Navy's robust global posture. Yet China's rising presence in the Indian and Pacific oceans has far-reaching
geostrategic implications for our world order. In a cascading series of consequences, China's future dominance over significant parts
of those oceans will compromise the U.S. position on the Pacific littoral, shatter its control over that axial end of Eurasia, and
open that vast continental expanse, home to 70% of the world's population and resources, to China's dominion. Just as Brzezinski
once warned, Washington's failure to control Eurasia could well mean the end of its global hegemony and the rise of a new world empire
based in Beijing.
Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch
regular , is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics
of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade , the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and
covert operations over 50 years, and the recently published
In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power (Dispatch Books).
Chemical false flag attacks is the traditional way Syria islamists are calling for the US air support. From comments: "After all
they had lost in Douma - there were no point in Syrian gas attack - the fighting was done. Jaish al Islam must be having a great
laugh at our expensive for falling for their trick of gassing their own people. Let us not help the Islamists."
Anther interesting comment: "With "experts" at president's disposal, seems to me moment Trump announced Syrian withdrawal, at
least one should have anticipated - based on past occurrences - a gas attack aimed to engage US and therefore maintain US presence."
And another " including their mouthpieces at the times manufacture
a chemical attack and claim Assad -- who has no reason whatsoever to do such things -- is some horrible monster that deserves to have
bombs rained down on him. How totally corrupt the MIC has become."
That act reported by White helmets looks like a classic MI6 provocation. Russian investigation has shown that no attack took place.
Moreover the rumors about this false flag were circulating long ago. Russians warned about this possiblity a month or so ago telling
the jihadists prepare such provocation. Looks like all that was needed for Trump is a plausible justification -- the desire to "decapitate"
Assad is too strong to resist.
Notable quotes:
"... Syria is a crappy place primarily because of insane overpopulation and limited water. Getting Assad out is not going to help with population or with water. Moving the entire Syrian population to Europe could be done and they are working on that. ..."
"... With "experts" at president's disposal, seems to me moment Trump announced Syrian withdrawal, at least one should have anticipated - based on past occurrences - a gas attack aimed to engage US and therefore maintain US presence. ..."
President Trump on Monday denounced the suspected chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of people in
Syria over the weekend as a "barbaric act," and said
he will make a decision in the next 24 to 48 hours about whether to retaliate militarily as he did to a similar assault last year.
Congress has skirted their responsibility to authorize war in Syria and Trump is suggesting taking actions that could drag
us into a deep and costly war. The American people deserve to hear this debated in Congress.
Retaliate? They don't even know for sure who it was, could well have been an ally. The place is a mess of competing outside
forces.
Retaliate - and therein lies the problem. Too much to ask that for once they think, discuss, decide a long term policy with
other countries. Last time the 45th tried 'me-big-man-with-bomb' there was no follow up, nothing was done, what was the point?
Look at me I have the biggest, noisiest fire cracker! Pathetic. Careless. Irresponsible. Uniformed. Murderous. The list is endless.
I suppose the President can launch a missile attack, or any military action, based on whatever authority from Congress permitted
the US military to be fighting in Syria in the first place. The more fundamental issue is that Congress long ago ceded to the
President its constitutional responsibility to declare war . This must be corrected with checks restored on the President's power
to deploy the military at will. Otherwise, the US will continue to be in a perpetual state of war, which may be good for the extended
military supply industry but damaging to country as a whole.
What if.....what if this chemical attack was sanctioned not by Assad but by a state or a non-state force that wants the U.S.
to retaliate?
Just why did this chemical attack follow Trump's announced desire to get out of Syria?
Why, also, is Israel urging us to attack now? Could it be to distract from the human rights catastrophe in Gaza?
We all know what John Bolton would have us do.
Where's the proof that this was Assad's work? More WMD ?
Trump wined and dined MBS of Saudi Arabia who has been conducting airstrikes on Yemen with hundreds of casualties, as high
as 68 civilian deaths in one day. It would be hard to imagine a better example of hypocrisy.
Syria is a part of a complex series of issues that make up the problem of Middle Eastern diplomacy. Trump does not have the
capacity to manage any of this. Selling arms to the Saudis to continue their war in Yemen added to the Syrian problem. The cholera
epidemic in Yemen is a form of biological warfare that is killing more civilians than chemical warfare in Syria. Starving the
population of Yemen is also warfare. By supporting the Saudis we have lost the moral high ground in Syria.
Was it the rebels again? Or is it chlorine again? Chlorine is used for several commercial and health purposes--to clean bottles,
to clean water, and for refrigeration. So it is quite easy for a bomb or explosive to hit a container and then there is a serious
gas problem. If pool acid and chlorine are stored together it might be worse when mixed. I do not believe Assad needs to use chemicals
because he has Russians who will do air strikes on his enemies. I call fake news.
The solution to Syria was obvious years ago, if you just wanted to see the obvious. And that was Syria as it had been for years,
in peace, secular, under a government of Assad who, eventually, knew it had to evolve into a more democratic regime . Now that
has changed, and all to Israel´s advantage. It seems as if the whole world has forgotten that the whole Middle East problem was
born, and is still the Occupation of Palestinian Land. Israel is a thorn in Arab Middle East.The only one that has attacked ALL
its neighbours !
We should do nothing. We need to leave Syria to the Syrian. We can't and musn't involve our military in every tragedy in the
world. There is no doubt in my mind that if we mistakenly and stupidly attack the Syrian Army we are aiding the Jihadist who planned
thit attack. After all they had lost in Douma - there were no point in Syrian gas attack - the fighting was done. Jaish al Islam
must be having a great laugh at our expensive for falling for their trick of gassing their own people. Let us not help the Islamists.
The US government LIES about everything. We know this. This has been proved repeatedly.
Yet, here we are with the US government, and its stenographers in the mainstream media, i.e., the stuff that's not Fake News,
right, assuring us that Assad gassed his own people. Again.
Even if we could believe this, or even if we gave the government the benefit of the doubt for . . . what? . . . its integrity?,
we are after all exceptional, right, how is this America's business?
Yes, other countries shouldn't gas their own people. But countries shouldn't commit war crimes either, and that goes on every
day. America is as dirty as any other country. Despite our treaty obligations, even torture is legal here.
We're supposedly the richest country in the world, but we can barely keep our streets paved and lit. And not only that, but
it is a proven fact that one dollar invested in domestic economics brings back much more return than one dollar spent on bombs.
Trump is right. We need to stomp the madness in the Middle East. The oil companies can pay for their own security with all of
the money they don't pay in taxes.
Right now our cities are clogged with people living in tents and defecating on the sidewalks and in the streets. Look at old
pictures from the Depression. It looks the same today.
The left is seeing Russians responsible for every wrong in the world. The right sees itself as the rescuer of the wrongs of
the world. I pray that this does not move this country into a war with Russia.
This nation needs a "policy". Something with careful thought and backed by facts, expert analysis, and wisdom; Aim first and
carefully.
A "Shoot from the Hip" flourish that can be touted at the next Trump self congratulatory ego rally Will Not Do. Either this
nation has a leader or it doesn't - Trump's move!
One of the few things I liked about Trump was his anti-involvement stance in the middle east. We have SO MUCH to fix and worry
about at home. Nothing that Trump does on immigration, environment, or anything else will make me more angry than dragging us
into another war.
I don't see any ink being given to the very likely possibility that the gas attack was a ploy by rebels to get the US (and
their air cover) to stick around. If you ask the question, "Who benefits?" the Assad regime had nothing to gain by gassing a few
civilians -- they're about to win the war, so why would they? OTOH, the rebels need us badly, and know that we will reflexively
blame Assad.
Just a few days ago, Trump talked about withdrawing from Syria. Now, he says he will decide whether to attack Syria within
the next couple of days. One day we're out, the next day we're in. And just a few days ago, Trump said he didn't like to reveal
his military plans in advance. Now, he is announcing to the world that he is consideration retaliation against Syria. His contradictions
make the U.S. look as if it is led by a very confused commander in chief.
Yes, chemical weapons are barbaric, but who launched the attack? Which faction in this complicated civil war? How does trump
know the answer to this question when no one else does? Why would the U.S. "retaliate" based on speculation, especially after
trump recently said, "we need to get out of there and leave it to someone else"? What good would military action do at this point?
Are we anxious to put our "expensive new military" to the test? So many questions...and an administration unable / unwilling to
answer them. Too bad trump can't simply tweet his way out of this one...
The U.S. should respond militarily to Syria's gas attack only on two conditions:
1. The leaders of all key U.S. allies (European countries, Canada, Japan, S. Korea, Australia, etc.) sign a joint declaration
of support for the action.
2. Each of these countries pays a population-weighted share of the expense of the U.S. military operation.
We are either all in this together, or it's not worth doing.
Let's find out if our allies are willing to back up their pious declarations of condemnation.
I don't get it. Subjecting people, women, children and even men, to crushing, burning, lacerating and penetrating wounds is
par for the course. It's war after all. But poison! Oh the (in)humanity!
Also, anyone think it's weird that Assad does this just when the US is making motions to pull out?
It is impossible to know what is really going on as the world's powers continue to fight this proxy war. The only thing that
is certain is the continued suffering of the Syrian people - including the poor sods who will be conventionally incinerated by
American "retaliation" in a day or so.
The President should have no authority to declare war or commit troops, period. So far, there has been no urgent "national
emergency," as required by the War Powers Resolution, which would justify the President to effectively declare war unilaterally
and yet here we are, with presidents on both sides completely ignoring the Constitution, using the WPA as an enabler to bypass
the text which says that only Congress can declare war.
Saddam used gas on the Iranians and we were good with that. It is not clear about this gas in Syria. These "freedom fighters"
have no compunction about using civilians as human shields. How do we know the truth? They are various branches of Al Quaeda and
given their huge birth rate they don't seem to place much weight on human life in the here and now....maybe they focus on the
afterlife more. So why can't we just leave Assad alone and let him be the strong man there? Yes Syria is a crappy place primarily
because of insane overpopulation and limited water. Getting Assad out is not going to help with population or with water. Moving
the entire Syrian population to Europe could be done and they are working on that.
Trump says he was getting us out of Syria. Much to my relief to this endless war.
And I'm pretty sure the president of Syria, Assad, whose regime has been under attack by both the US supported Syrian rebels
and their ISIS allies did not want the US on their soil. So why would he do something like this? I don't believe he did. By the
way if the US was not meddling over in the M.E. there would be no refugees and fewer immigrants.
"Conventional" deaths by artillery and bullets are perfectly acceptable - when bodies are vaporized, ripped and torn apart
unrecognizably. But use a deadly gas and leave the corpses in "beautiful" condition - there you have crossed the line mister.
Lemme get this straight: The US policy doesn't care *how many* Syrians were killed; it only cares *how* they were killed? Nothing
good can come from such an ethically bankrupt policy.
As painful as it is, the possession of chlorine is not in violation of the standards we all signed in to to stop chemical and
biological weapons. Hence, the agreement under Obama, by almost all standards, worked well. Or at least unless we wanted a few
hundred thousands troop on the ground to search the entire country. This use of chlorine is. Maybe Trump will propose a huge tariff
on chlorine exports to Syria?
What is the logic for Assad to provoke the US right after Trump announces his intention to withdraw? Would it not be more strategic
for the regime to hold off until US troops were withdrawn and then go after the rebels? Does Assad assume that the US response
will be more moderate if we still have troops in country? Any chance this was a rogue action to delay or reverse US plans to withdraw?
If so, who benefits from US continuing to maintain troops in Syria?
With "experts" at president's disposal, seems to me moment Trump announced Syrian withdrawal, at least one should have
anticipated - based on past occurrences - a gas attack aimed to engage US and therefore maintain US presence.
To
borrow from the British definition of an ambassador, United States military leaders are honest soldiers promoted in rank to champion
war with reckless disregard for the truth. This practice persists despite the catastrophic waste of lives and money because the untruths
are never punished. Congress needs to correct this problem forthwith.
General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, exemplifies the phenomenon. As reported in The Washington
Post , Dunford recently voiced optimism about defeating the Afghan Taliban in the seventeenth year of a trillion-dollar war that
has multiplied safe havens for international terrorists, the opposite of the war's original mission. While not under oath, Dunford
insisted, "This is not another year of the same thing we've been doing for 17 years. This is a fundamentally different approach [T]he
right people at the right level with the right training [are in place] "
There, the general recklessly disregarded the truth. He followed the instruction of General William Westmoreland who stated at
the National Press Club on November 21, 1967 that the Vietnam War had come to a point "where the end begins to come into view." The
1968 Tet Offensive was then around the corner, which would provoke Westmoreland to ask for 200,000 more American troops. The Pentagon
Papers and Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty have meticulously documented the military's reckless disregard
for the truth throughout the Vietnam War.
Any fool can understand that continuing our 17-year-old war in Afghanistan is a fool's errand. The nation is artificial. Among
other things, its disputed border with Pakistan, the Durand Line, was drawn in 1896 between the British Raj and Afghan Amir Abdur
Rahmen Khair. Afghanistan's population splinters along tribal, ethnic, and sectarian lines, including Pushtans, Uzbeks, Hazara, Tajiks,
Turkmen, and Balochi. Its government is riddled with nepotism, corruption, ineptitude, and lawlessness. Election fraud and political
sclerosis are endemic. Opium production and trafficking replenish the Taliban's coffers.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) is a paper tiger. Desertion and attrition rates are alarming. Disloyalty is widespread. American
weapons are sold to the Taliban or captured. ANA soldiers will not risk that last full measure of devotion for an illegitimate, unrepresentative,
decrepit government.
The Taliban also has a safe haven in Pakistan. A staggering portion -- maybe up to 90 percent -- of United States assistance to
Afghanistan is embezzled, diverted, or wasted. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
related to Chatham House in London that "SIGAR was finding waste, fraud, and abuse nearly everywhere we looked in Afghanistan --
from the $488 million worth of aircraft that couldn't fly, to the navy the U.S. bought for a landlocked country, to the buildings
the U.S. paid for that literally melted in the rain ."
"The Taliban are getting stronger, the government is on the retreat, they are losing ground to the Taliban day by day," Abdul
Jabbar Qahraman, a retired Afghan general who was the Afghan government's military envoy to Helmand Province until 2016, told the
New York Times last summer. ISIS has now joined the Taliban and al-Qaeda in fighting the United States. Secretary of Defense
General James Mattis conceded to Congress last June that "we are not winning in Afghanistan right now," but added polyannaishly,
"And we will correct this as soon as possible." Only two months earlier, the Defense Department insisted that dropping the Mother
of All Bombs on Afghanistan would reverse the losing trend.
Upton Sinclair sermonized: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding
it." Thus do military leaders deceive themselves about futile wars to extract more spending, to maintain their professional reputations
and public stature, and to avoid the embarrassment of explaining to Congress and the American people that astronomical sums have
been wasted and tens of thousands of American soldiers have died or were crippled in vain.
To deter such self-deception, Congress should enact a statute requiring the retirement without pension of any general or admiral
who materially misleads legislators or the public about prospective or ongoing wars with reckless disregard for the truth. That sanction
might have prompted General Dunford to acknowledge the grim truth about Afghanistan: that the United States is clueless about how
to win that war.
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan and is the founding partner of Fein & DelValle PLLC.
Twelve days
after 9/11, on the night of September 23, 2001, the CIA's Islamabad station chief, Robert Grenier, received a telephone
call from his boss, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. "Listen, Bob," Tenet said, "we're meeting tomorrow at
Camp David to discuss our war strategy in Afghanistan. How should we begin? What targets do we hit? How do we sequence our
actions?"
Grenier later wrote in his book,
88 Days to
Kandahar
, that while he was surprised by the call he'd been thinking about these
same questions -- "mulling them over and over and over," as he later told me -- so he was ready. President George Bush's address
to the U.S. Congress just a few days before, Grenier told Tenet, was a good start: demand that Afghanistan's Taliban ruler,
Mullah Omar, turn bin Laden over to the United States. If he refused, the U.S. should launch a campaign to oust him.
Grenier had thought through the plan, but before going into its details with Tenet he abruptly stopped the conversation.
"Mr. Director," he said, "this isn't going to work. I need to write this all down clearly." Tenet agreed.
Grenier set to work, and over the next three hours he laid out the battle for
Afghanistan. Included in the paper was a detailed program of how the CIA could deploy undercover teams to recruit bin
Laden's enemies among Afghanistan's northern Tajik and Uzbek tribes (an uneasy coalition of ethnic militias operating as
the Northern Alliance), supply them with cash and weapons, and use them in a rolling offensive that would oust the Taliban
in Kabul. With U.S. help, which included deploying American Special Forces teams (under CIA leadership) coupled with
American airpower, the Northern Alliance (more properly, the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan) would
start from its Panjshir Valley enclave in Afghanistan's far northeast and, recruiting support from anti-Taliban forces
along the way, roll all the way into Kabul.
Grenier gave the eight-page draft paper to his staff to review, then sent it to Tenet in
Washington, who passed it through the deputies committee (the second-in-command of each of the major national security
agencies), then presented it to Bush. "I regard that cable," Grenier wrote, "as the best three hours of work I ever did in
my twenty-seven-year career."
Three days after the Tenet-Grenier telephone conversation, on September 26, the CIA
landed a covert-operations team in Afghanistan to recruit local allies in the hunt for bin Laden. The quick action was
impressive, but then events slowed to a crawl. It wasn't until October 20 that the first U.S. Special Forces team linked up
with anti-Taliban rebels, and it took another week for U.S. units to land in strength. But by early November al Qaeda was
on the run and the Taliban's grip on the country was slipping away. On November 13, militias of the Northern Alliance
seized Kabul. The Taliban was defeated, its badly mauled units fleeing south and east (its last bastion, in the south, fell
on December 6), and into nearby Pakistan, while what remained of al Qaeda holed up in a series of cave complexes in the
Spin Ghar mountain range of eastern Afghanistan.
By almost any measure, the CIA-led anti-al Qaeda and anti-Taliban offensive (dubbed
Operation Enduring Freedom by George Bush) marked a decisive victory in the war on terror. The U.S. had set out a plan,
marshaled the forces to carry it out, and then seen it to completion.
But this triumph came with problems. The first was that the offensive was hampered by
Washington infighting that pitted the CIA against a puzzlingly recalcitrant U.S. military and a carping Donald Rumsfeld,
who questioned George Tenet's leadership of the effort. This bureaucratic squabbling, focused on just who was responsible
for what (and who exactly was running the Afghanistan war), would remain a hallmark of American efforts well into the Obama
administration. The second problem was that Afghanistan's southern Pashtun tribes were only marginally included in the
effort, and they remained suspicious of their northern non-Pashtun counterparts. The mistrust, CIA officers believed, would
almost certainly plant the seeds of an endless inter-tribal Afghan conflict, embroiling the United States in an effort to
prop up an unpopular Kabul government. The third problem was Pakistan -- or, more precisely, Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence agency, the ISI, and the ISI's "Directorate S," responsible for covertly supplying, training, and arming
Pakistan's Islamist allies, including the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.
♦♦♦
The intractability of these variables, and America's 17-year effort (sometimes focused
but often feckless) to resolve them, form the basis of Steve Coll's
Directorate S
,
a thick but eminently readable account of America's Afghanistan misadventure. While
Directorate S
stands alone as a comprehensive
exposition of the Afghanistan conflict dating from 9/11, it's actually a follow-on of
Ghost Wars
, Coll's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004
narrative of America's efforts to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan following their invasion in December 1979. Given the
breadth of Coll's dual treatments and the depth of his research, it's likely that these books will remain the standard
exposition of the period for years to come.
While the focus of
Directorate S
is on Pakistan and its shady intelligence services, each of the obstacles that confronted the United States in Afghanistan
from the moment the Taliban abandoned Kabul is embraced in detail. These obstacles included America's post-9/11 attention
deficit disorder (the pivot away from al Qaeda to Iraq was being considered in Washington even as the Northern Alliance
cleared the Afghan capital) and the deeply embedded antipathy toward the new Kabul government among Pakistani-supported
southern tribesman. Thus, after the United States ousted al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters, it embarked on a program to
strengthen the new Kabul government, anointing Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's president and pledging billions in
reconstruction aid. And so, or so it seemed, everything had gone as planned. The Taliban was routed; al Qaeda was on the
run; a new anti-terrorism government was in place in Kabul; and the United States had signed Pakistan on as a willing
accomplice. On May 1, 2003, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld declared an end to major combat operations in Afghanistan. The war
was over. Won.
But of course it wasn't.
Coll's account provides a disturbing catalogue of the U.S. mistakes in the wake of the
Taliban defeat. Almost all of them are well known: Hamid Karzai, the consensus choice of a grand assembly (a loya jirga) as
Afghanistan's interim president, proved to be a weak leader. The monies appropriated for Afghanistan's postwar
reconstruction were woefully inadequate for the task -- "laughable," as one U.S. official put it. American soldiers
responsible for countering the Taliban's return (and hunting al Qaeda terrorist cells) were thinly and poorly deployed
(and, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, of secondary importance in the Pentagon). Tentative Taliban efforts to engage the
United States in political talks were summarily and unwisely spurned. Allegations of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention
facilities consistently undermined U.S. legitimacy. American funds were funneled into Afghan ministries laced with corrupt
officials. Afghani poppy production increased, despite faint-hearted U.S. eradication efforts. And U.S. counter-terrorism
actions proved ham-handed and caused preventable civilian casualties, pushing Afghanis into a resurgent anti-Kabul
resistance.
More crucially, Pakistan's unstinting support for America's Afghanistan efforts proved to
be anything but unstinting. The reason for this was not only entirely predictable but was actually the unintended result of
the American victory. When the Northern Alliance and U.S. airpower pushed what remained of the Taliban (along with the
remnants of al Qaeda) out of Afghanistan, they pushed them into Pakistan, creating conditions that, as Coll tells us,
"deepened resentment among Pakistan's generals, who would come to see their country's rising violence as a price of
American folly . . ." Put simply, for the United States to seal the Operation Enduring Freedom victory, it had to ensure
that its effects did not spill over into the one nation that could ensure that its victory would, in fact, be enduring.
That didn't happen. The result was that the Taliban was able to rebuild and rearm its networks not only in Pakistan, and
under the eyes of the ISI, but also in Afghanistan.
It might have been otherwise. During a series of discussions I had about America's
intervention in Afghanistan in the months immediately following 9/11, a number of currently serving and former senior U.S.
officials told me they believed that, given enough time, the Taliban might well have handed bin Laden over to the
Americans, obviating the need for a full-on invasion. One of these officials was Milton Bearden, a famed CIA officer (his
close friends refer to him as "Uncle Milty") who, during his time as a station chief in Pakistan, had helped to head up the
CIA's war against the Soviets in the mid 1980s.
♦♦♦
After 9/11, Bearden recharged his Pakistan and Afghanistan networks in an effort to
convince the Taliban that turning bin Laden over to the Americans was a better option than the one they were facing. All
the while, Bearden kept senior U.S. officials apprised of what he was doing, even as he was attempting to head off their
rush to war. Bearden told me that, while his efforts had not reached fruition by the time the Bush White House had decided
on a course of action, he believes the United States had not fully explored all of its options -- or thought through the
long-term impact of its intervention. "I don't know what would have happened, I don't know," he says wistfully, "but I
think we have a handhold in history. We should have seen what was coming." He notes that Alexander the Great "took one look
at Afghanistan's mountains and decided against it. He thought his whole army could get swallowed up in there, and he wasn't
going to take that chance. So, well, you tell me if I'm wrong, but Alexander was no slouch, right?"
Not everyone agrees with this, of course. The dissenters include Robert Grenier, the
first drafter of what became the American war plan. Taliban leader Mullah Omar, he told me, was committed to his pledge to
protect Osama bin Laden; he viewed it as a blood oath that could not be broken. Moreover, argues Grenier, "Omar viewed
himself as a kind of world historical figure, a person on whom the axis of history would turn." One result was that he
believed his fight against the Americans would be epochal.
That said, Grenier believes America's foray into Afghanistan, and the mistakes that
followed, might at least have been dampened by a more diligent focus on the inherent divisions of Afghan society. "We [at
the CIA]," he told me several months ago, "were very aware that the march of the Northern Alliance into Kabul would likely
create real difficulties in the south. And we tried to slow it, precisely for this reason. But events overtook us, and it
just wasn't possible. So, yes, things might have been otherwise, but in truth we just don't know."
The value in Coll's
Directorate S
comes not from the elegant telling of a story not fully known, but from the dawning realization that Afghanistan is the
kind of lock for which there is no key. There is no reason to believe that a different outcome would have ensued if other
events had intruded -- for example, more personnel, money, focused diplomacy, or robust and disciplined enemy-defeating and
nation building; or that our war there and the occupation that followed would have yielded the same results that we
realized in, say, Japan after 1945. The real hubris here is not that we tried and failed but that we thought we could
actually succeed. Afghanistan is simply not that kind of place.
There is a term of art for this in the military, which found its first usage in Iraq in
2009, when U.S. commanders adopted it as an appreciation of what could and could not be accomplished. Instead of focusing
on defeating corruption, inefficiency, disunity, and poor leadership, the focus shifted almost exclusively to dampening
violence, to keeping the doors to Iraq open even as its factions battled for its control. More importantly, the adoption of
the phrase marked the abandonment of high expectations and an embrace of realism. The United States would have to yield the
business of replicating a Western-style democracy on the banks of the Euphrates. That goal, if it was going to be
accomplished at all, would have to be realized by the Iraqis.
Analyst Anthony Cordesman, one of America's premier military thinkers, adopted the phrase
and applied to Afghanistan in 2012 in an essay he entitled, "Time to Focus on 'Afghan Good Enough.'" His plan was simply
stated but had all the elegance of actually working: keep the Taliban out of Kabul and the major cities, preserve the
central and provincial government even in the face of endemic corruption, and work to provide security to large numbers of
Afghanis. Cordesman conceded that this was not the kind of victory that Americans had hoped for on September 12. And it was
difficult to describe the outcome as even vaguely passable -- or "good." But it was far better than adopting goals that could
not be realized or embracing an illusion that disappeared even as it was grasped. For the time being at least, it would
have to be "good enough."
Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst, a contributing editor to
The American Conservative
and the author of
The Pentagon's Wars
.
Twelve days
after 9/11, on the night of September 23, 2001, the CIA's Islamabad station chief, Robert Grenier, received a telephone
call from his boss, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. "Listen, Bob," Tenet said, "we're meeting tomorrow at
Camp David to discuss our war strategy in Afghanistan. How should we begin? What targets do we hit? How do we sequence our
actions?"
Grenier later wrote in his book,
88 Days to
Kandahar
, that while he was surprised by the call he'd been thinking about these
same questions -- "mulling them over and over and over," as he later told me -- so he was ready. President George Bush's address
to the U.S. Congress just a few days before, Grenier told Tenet, was a good start: demand that Afghanistan's Taliban ruler,
Mullah Omar, turn bin Laden over to the United States. If he refused, the U.S. should launch a campaign to oust him.
Grenier had thought through the plan, but before going into its details with Tenet he abruptly stopped the conversation.
"Mr. Director," he said, "this isn't going to work. I need to write this all down clearly." Tenet agreed.
Grenier set to work, and over the next three hours he laid out the battle for
Afghanistan. Included in the paper was a detailed program of how the CIA could deploy undercover teams to recruit bin
Laden's enemies among Afghanistan's northern Tajik and Uzbek tribes (an uneasy coalition of ethnic militias operating as
the Northern Alliance), supply them with cash and weapons, and use them in a rolling offensive that would oust the Taliban
in Kabul. With U.S. help, which included deploying American Special Forces teams (under CIA leadership) coupled with
American airpower, the Northern Alliance (more properly, the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan) would
start from its Panjshir Valley enclave in Afghanistan's far northeast and, recruiting support from anti-Taliban forces
along the way, roll all the way into Kabul.
Grenier gave the eight-page draft paper to his staff to review, then sent it to Tenet in
Washington, who passed it through the deputies committee (the second-in-command of each of the major national security
agencies), then presented it to Bush. "I regard that cable," Grenier wrote, "as the best three hours of work I ever did in
my twenty-seven-year career."
Three days after the Tenet-Grenier telephone conversation, on September 26, the CIA
landed a covert-operations team in Afghanistan to recruit local allies in the hunt for bin Laden. The quick action was
impressive, but then events slowed to a crawl. It wasn't until October 20 that the first U.S. Special Forces team linked up
with anti-Taliban rebels, and it took another week for U.S. units to land in strength. But by early November al Qaeda was
on the run and the Taliban's grip on the country was slipping away. On November 13, militias of the Northern Alliance
seized Kabul. The Taliban was defeated, its badly mauled units fleeing south and east (its last bastion, in the south, fell
on December 6), and into nearby Pakistan, while what remained of al Qaeda holed up in a series of cave complexes in the
Spin Ghar mountain range of eastern Afghanistan.
By almost any measure, the CIA-led anti-al Qaeda and anti-Taliban offensive (dubbed
Operation Enduring Freedom by George Bush) marked a decisive victory in the war on terror. The U.S. had set out a plan,
marshaled the forces to carry it out, and then seen it to completion.
But this triumph came with problems. The first was that the offensive was hampered by
Washington infighting that pitted the CIA against a puzzlingly recalcitrant U.S. military and a carping Donald Rumsfeld,
who questioned George Tenet's leadership of the effort. This bureaucratic squabbling, focused on just who was responsible
for what (and who exactly was running the Afghanistan war), would remain a hallmark of American efforts well into the Obama
administration. The second problem was that Afghanistan's southern Pashtun tribes were only marginally included in the
effort, and they remained suspicious of their northern non-Pashtun counterparts. The mistrust, CIA officers believed, would
almost certainly plant the seeds of an endless inter-tribal Afghan conflict, embroiling the United States in an effort to
prop up an unpopular Kabul government. The third problem was Pakistan -- or, more precisely, Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence agency, the ISI, and the ISI's "Directorate S," responsible for covertly supplying, training, and arming
Pakistan's Islamist allies, including the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.
♦♦♦
The intractability of these variables, and America's 17-year effort (sometimes focused
but often feckless) to resolve them, form the basis of Steve Coll's
Directorate S
,
a thick but eminently readable account of America's Afghanistan misadventure. While
Directorate S
stands alone as a comprehensive
exposition of the Afghanistan conflict dating from 9/11, it's actually a follow-on of
Ghost Wars
, Coll's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004
narrative of America's efforts to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan following their invasion in December 1979. Given the
breadth of Coll's dual treatments and the depth of his research, it's likely that these books will remain the standard
exposition of the period for years to come.
While the focus of
Directorate S
is on Pakistan and its shady intelligence services, each of the obstacles that confronted the United States in Afghanistan
from the moment the Taliban abandoned Kabul is embraced in detail. These obstacles included America's post-9/11 attention
deficit disorder (the pivot away from al Qaeda to Iraq was being considered in Washington even as the Northern Alliance
cleared the Afghan capital) and the deeply embedded antipathy toward the new Kabul government among Pakistani-supported
southern tribesman. Thus, after the United States ousted al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters, it embarked on a program to
strengthen the new Kabul government, anointing Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's president and pledging billions in
reconstruction aid. And so, or so it seemed, everything had gone as planned. The Taliban was routed; al Qaeda was on the
run; a new anti-terrorism government was in place in Kabul; and the United States had signed Pakistan on as a willing
accomplice. On May 1, 2003, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld declared an end to major combat operations in Afghanistan. The war
was over. Won.
But of course it wasn't.
Coll's account provides a disturbing catalogue of the U.S. mistakes in the wake of the
Taliban defeat. Almost all of them are well known: Hamid Karzai, the consensus choice of a grand assembly (a loya jirga) as
Afghanistan's interim president, proved to be a weak leader. The monies appropriated for Afghanistan's postwar
reconstruction were woefully inadequate for the task -- "laughable," as one U.S. official put it. American soldiers
responsible for countering the Taliban's return (and hunting al Qaeda terrorist cells) were thinly and poorly deployed
(and, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, of secondary importance in the Pentagon). Tentative Taliban efforts to engage the
United States in political talks were summarily and unwisely spurned. Allegations of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention
facilities consistently undermined U.S. legitimacy. American funds were funneled into Afghan ministries laced with corrupt
officials. Afghani poppy production increased, despite faint-hearted U.S. eradication efforts. And U.S. counter-terrorism
actions proved ham-handed and caused preventable civilian casualties, pushing Afghanis into a resurgent anti-Kabul
resistance.
More crucially, Pakistan's unstinting support for America's Afghanistan efforts proved to
be anything but unstinting. The reason for this was not only entirely predictable but was actually the unintended result of
the American victory. When the Northern Alliance and U.S. airpower pushed what remained of the Taliban (along with the
remnants of al Qaeda) out of Afghanistan, they pushed them into Pakistan, creating conditions that, as Coll tells us,
"deepened resentment among Pakistan's generals, who would come to see their country's rising violence as a price of
American folly . . ." Put simply, for the United States to seal the Operation Enduring Freedom victory, it had to ensure
that its effects did not spill over into the one nation that could ensure that its victory would, in fact, be enduring.
That didn't happen. The result was that the Taliban was able to rebuild and rearm its networks not only in Pakistan, and
under the eyes of the ISI, but also in Afghanistan.
It might have been otherwise. During a series of discussions I had about America's
intervention in Afghanistan in the months immediately following 9/11, a number of currently serving and former senior U.S.
officials told me they believed that, given enough time, the Taliban might well have handed bin Laden over to the
Americans, obviating the need for a full-on invasion. One of these officials was Milton Bearden, a famed CIA officer (his
close friends refer to him as "Uncle Milty") who, during his time as a station chief in Pakistan, had helped to head up the
CIA's war against the Soviets in the mid 1980s.
♦♦♦
After 9/11, Bearden recharged his Pakistan and Afghanistan networks in an effort to
convince the Taliban that turning bin Laden over to the Americans was a better option than the one they were facing. All
the while, Bearden kept senior U.S. officials apprised of what he was doing, even as he was attempting to head off their
rush to war. Bearden told me that, while his efforts had not reached fruition by the time the Bush White House had decided
on a course of action, he believes the United States had not fully explored all of its options -- or thought through the
long-term impact of its intervention. "I don't know what would have happened, I don't know," he says wistfully, "but I
think we have a handhold in history. We should have seen what was coming." He notes that Alexander the Great "took one look
at Afghanistan's mountains and decided against it. He thought his whole army could get swallowed up in there, and he wasn't
going to take that chance. So, well, you tell me if I'm wrong, but Alexander was no slouch, right?"
Not everyone agrees with this, of course. The dissenters include Robert Grenier, the
first drafter of what became the American war plan. Taliban leader Mullah Omar, he told me, was committed to his pledge to
protect Osama bin Laden; he viewed it as a blood oath that could not be broken. Moreover, argues Grenier, "Omar viewed
himself as a kind of world historical figure, a person on whom the axis of history would turn." One result was that he
believed his fight against the Americans would be epochal.
That said, Grenier believes America's foray into Afghanistan, and the mistakes that
followed, might at least have been dampened by a more diligent focus on the inherent divisions of Afghan society. "We [at
the CIA]," he told me several months ago, "were very aware that the march of the Northern Alliance into Kabul would likely
create real difficulties in the south. And we tried to slow it, precisely for this reason. But events overtook us, and it
just wasn't possible. So, yes, things might have been otherwise, but in truth we just don't know."
The value in Coll's
Directorate S
comes not from the elegant telling of a story not fully known, but from the dawning realization that Afghanistan is the
kind of lock for which there is no key. There is no reason to believe that a different outcome would have ensued if other
events had intruded -- for example, more personnel, money, focused diplomacy, or robust and disciplined enemy-defeating and
nation building; or that our war there and the occupation that followed would have yielded the same results that we
realized in, say, Japan after 1945. The real hubris here is not that we tried and failed but that we thought we could
actually succeed. Afghanistan is simply not that kind of place.
There is a term of art for this in the military, which found its first usage in Iraq in
2009, when U.S. commanders adopted it as an appreciation of what could and could not be accomplished. Instead of focusing
on defeating corruption, inefficiency, disunity, and poor leadership, the focus shifted almost exclusively to dampening
violence, to keeping the doors to Iraq open even as its factions battled for its control. More importantly, the adoption of
the phrase marked the abandonment of high expectations and an embrace of realism. The United States would have to yield the
business of replicating a Western-style democracy on the banks of the Euphrates. That goal, if it was going to be
accomplished at all, would have to be realized by the Iraqis.
Analyst Anthony Cordesman, one of America's premier military thinkers, adopted the phrase
and applied to Afghanistan in 2012 in an essay he entitled, "Time to Focus on 'Afghan Good Enough.'" His plan was simply
stated but had all the elegance of actually working: keep the Taliban out of Kabul and the major cities, preserve the
central and provincial government even in the face of endemic corruption, and work to provide security to large numbers of
Afghanis. Cordesman conceded that this was not the kind of victory that Americans had hoped for on September 12. And it was
difficult to describe the outcome as even vaguely passable -- or "good." But it was far better than adopting goals that could
not be realized or embracing an illusion that disappeared even as it was grasped. For the time being at least, it would
have to be "good enough."
Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst, a contributing editor to
The American Conservative
and the author of
The Pentagon's Wars
.
Just consider 9/11. Mossad was caught with bombs in NYC the day of and yet they were released and there's no mention in the
media. All the evidence Chris Bollyn and others have put together points to a zionist "inside" operation. Over 2,300 engineers
conclude the government's narrative "defies physics", not to mention logic. WTC Building 7 collapses in 7 seconds and this is
ignored without repercussion. 3,000 died that day and millions since as a result (fake "War on Terror", actual "War OF Terror").
The country has been overthrown from within. The question is what to do? How do we wake up the masses suffering from Stockholm
Syndrome? Or is it best to get the heck out of dodge before things unravel and escalate?
We have a fake government, fake media, fake legal system (UCC contract law, no common law), fake education, fake history, fake
air/skies (chemtrails, geo-engineering), fake water (fluoridated), fake food (GMO). 5G is coming, cameras are going up everywhere.
We're close to a police state and martial law can't be far off. Fake President. I deep down knew he wasn't real because it's not
possible. http://themillenniumreport.com
It's a pretty bleak picture. We need an awakening / revolution.
The vampire squid has its much larger and more powerful prey so under control that there is almost no need for it to deliver
orders and commands. The evil parasite has a thought and the host carries out the action as if the blood/brain barrier has been
breached. The only remaining question for sensible realists concerns how much time should pass before they begin to wish for/hope
for/work to bring about the downfall of the host prey as it becomes clearer and more obvious that its downfall is the only way
to destroy the evil parasite and spare the rest of the world.
The critical mistake that the CIA and other institutions of the American deep state made was in failing to understand that media
is critical infrastructure just as much as roads, bridges, ports and the electrical grid and therefore needed to be kept out of
the cartelized control of a tiny ethnic group with foreign allegiances. They allowed this critical infrastructure be bought up
by this foreign minority and thereby used to brainwash the American public and control the perimeter of the debate. This was a
catastrophic mistake which is the primary root cause of most of America's greatest problems from immigration to foreign wars in
the Middle East.
If effect, the American media is controlled by a foreign mafia, until and unless it is dealt with as such, in the same manner
as the Italian mafia, if necessary, America will continue to be run for foreign interests. Most countries are much smarter than
us (e.g., China). They never would have let this happen.
Brian Roberts: Comcast and MSNBC
Aviv Nevo: Time Warner and CNN.
Sulzburger family: NYTimes
Sumner Rothstein: CBS
You won't hear about shooting Gaza protesters on prime time MSNBC, CNN shows for two reasons. The guests either wouldn't
be inclined to speak about it, for ideological and ethic reasons. Or, those that might like to express concern would feel sufficiently
threatened that they would never be asked to come back.
Oh Lord, I want that money is a line from The Producers . But it's applicable here. Many of these cable contributors
know what's expected of them and deliver safe answers so they can continue cashing scale appearance checks. And any show with
a negative focus on Israel would be attacked by the Israel Lobby, forthwith.
I spent several summers in Israel when I was a college student in 1968 and 1969. When I went back to the University of North Carolina
I took a course in the Arab/Israel Dispute; it was a seminar that was methodically fair, telling both sides of the story. After
class the professor and I would walk to our cars in faculty parking areas. He would actually look over his shoulder before admitting
that most to the people in his field were strongly in favor of the Palestinians, since the Jews had such a strangle-hold on every
American university.
Certainly those on the right whose priorities are most directly under attack by powerful jewish lobbies and oligarchs should tactically
support the idea of cutting off any positive connections with Israel, until jewish money stops promoting:
Interventionist wars;
The imposition of speech taboos and ultimately speechcrime laws (as in Europe and the UK) under the pretexts of suppressing
"hate speech" and the political correctness smears (anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, islamophobia etc);
"When Mr. Bush [the lesser] cited its most simplified tenet -- that the US should seek to promote liberal democracy around
the world -- as a key case for invading Iraq, neoconservatism was suddenly everywhere. It was a unified ideology that justified
military adventurism, sanctioned torture and promoted aggressive Zionism."
Normally, on the 50th anniversary of any notable event, there is almost always recognition in the mainstream media not so for
the deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (GTR-5). The American mainstream media was totally silent -- not a single peep
or mention of this act of war by Israel. This is PROOF that our mainstream media is "owned", lock, stock and barrel by Israel
"One of the most influential neoconservatives in Washington is Robert Kagan, the husband of Victoria Nuland who was the Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs under the Obama administration (and one of the architects of the Ukraine's civil war)
describes himself as a "liberal interventionist"
Between the 1950′s and the 1960′s, a political movement known as Neo-conservatism was born under the liberal hawks of the Democratic
Party in the United States. Then came the Vietnam war where the liberal hawks called for military action to prevent the Communists
from taking power in Vietnam. The neocons were also proponents of the Cold War and supporters of Israel's illegal occupation of
Palestine The neocons made their way to the Reagan administration with Eliot Abrams and company with wars in Central America including
Nicaragua and El Salvador."
-- In any civilized society, the Kagans clan et al would have been isolated like a plague from the population. The US has become
truly zionized by the Trotskyists who have been working synergetically with the MIC and the CIA.
.
It is a loosely guarded secret that American "law enforcement" has embraced Israeli "law enforcement" tactics (which are akin
to military practices). As Israel is on a constant "war footing", its tactics are contentious and confrontational. In fact, American
"law enforcement" agencies routinely send their officers to Israel to receive "training" in Israeli police tactics. There is no
room for Israeli tactics in American "law enforcement".
"Escalation of force" used to be the cornerstone of American "law enforcement", but no more. Police expect us mere mundanes
to cower in fear, and obey their (sometimes confusing and ridiculous) commands without question. This goes hand-in-hand with the
militarization of American "law enforcement". Of course, us mere mundanes are expected to embrace the "escalation of force" doctrine
under penalty of law.
SERIOUS question for people that want to roll back borders to where they were over a half century ago (or wherever their 0 year,
they made up, is):
Can we put Instanbul back in charge of the muddy yeast, being as Erdogan seems tremendously trustworthy, or maybe swap ruling
families back to where they were before some of the swaps? Moving royal fams around is near tradition, at this point.
Not a proper history, but, if you are actually interested, there is much more to read. They even put most of this history in
books, which are often the place to go after web comments. Peer review and everything, on a good day.
If you stand in front of a Chinese tank, you die. If you throw rocks at an Israeli tank, you die. Nothing novel in either case.
Russia has been very restrained re: ukies. Was zero reason to turn it into Chechnya, and that is exactly what State was angling
for. On a meddling n garbage angle: Hell, Obummer tried to pull off a coup in Tatarstan (on the Volga ) and I wish I was imagining
it, but they tried to create a Free Tatarstan Army was heavily under-reported by Western media.
Funny how perfectly the Israelis mimic the Nazis they kvetch about all the time, if one believe the stories they tell. They keep
the untermensch Palestinians in ghettos, where they shoot them and gas them, and otherwise treat them like vermin. No doubt some
commenters here agree that they are vermin. How long until Israel builds them showers?
I appreciate Giraldi's articulate and concise summary of the problem. I would also add that Israel had also been designated by
the UN as the world's leader in human slavery and sex trafficking, another thing you'll never hear reported in America's Jewish-controlled
media. Based on that alone we should be enacting sanctions against Israel.
But I have noticed for decades the recurring quiet void that follows the "something must be done" part in the endless articles
I've read on the subject, as if that iron wall of Jewish censorship and power is eternally insurmountable. It isn't.
We should know by now that there is not going to be a political solution, and I have long since stopped dreaming about voting
Israeli collaborators out of our government.
Put simply, Jewish power comes from money and that money comes from us. The populace may complain endlessly about Washington
Post propaganda and its pernicious efforts to overthrow our democratically elected president, but every December Americans will
dump a few billion dollars into Jeff Bezos' pocket. It's time to stop.
You can already see the effects of Americans boycotting Hollywood and the NFL -- it works.
What I would like to see everyone do is offer a solution instead of another explication of the problems. Essentially, how do
we overthrow this Jewish police state we live in and regain control of our own country before it's too late?
My suggestion is a comprehensive economic boycott against all Jewish goods and services.
You have a better solution? Let's hear it. In fact, I would love to see the Unz Review commit to a series of "solution" articles.
8Are you saying that only a response which shows that a civlian's life is not safe if he engages in a peaceful -- and certainly
not life threatening -- demonstration against the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is adequate to deal with such a demonstration
without severely risking the security of Israel?
Your answer, impled by what you have already said, appears to be "Yes". Really!?
Some of this blame has to be put on the lap of the feckless Arab nation. Egypt, Jordan and of course the coward princes in
Saudi Arabia. El Sisi is a banana republic despot looking, poor man's version of Mubarak, the King of Jordan is trying to stay
above it all and the worst is that 'idiot savant' gorilla sized 'clown prince' MBS who has become good buds with that weird (even
for a Jew) Trump son-in-law Jared . Does he own a chain of jewelry stores? (Grin)
The Turkish emir Erdogan is doing the heavy lifting for these weak Arabs. At least he's trading insults with 'Yahoo'.
The United States, my country, unfortunately is Zionist Occupied Territory. I just started picking fights on Beitbart and while
many of the posters I assume are Zionist trolls some have to be real posters and there the pro Zionist posters outnumbered
the anti Zionist ones at least 5 to 1.
I bow my head in shame for my once great and now Zionist occupied country.
The sad truth is, most Americans don't really care what is happening eight thousand miles away, no matter how horrific, and no
matter that their money is being used to support it. They drink the media koolaid, and think mostly about what's for dinner and
where to go on vacation this year. This is how the farce goes on. It makes the zio animals smile.
Yes, there's a lot of fakery going on, Paul. I agree that the "special relationship" benefits Israel exclusively and that it
has reached the stage of being undeniable. I can't quite accept this latest Q, though. His communiques sound too much like the
average blog commenter's repetitive postings, as though the average blog commenter is the target audience.
Everyone should hope that Justin Raimondo and the readership of "Antiwar.com" reads Giraldi's facts as written in this article.
Moreover, all the subscribers of the New York Times and Washington Post should be apprised of the facts that these two publishers
deliberately withhold from readers. U.S. citizens who are taxed to support these war crimes are purposely kept ignorant of the
facts. Nevertheless, the world is aware of U.S. hypocritical support for Israel's disdain of international law and the horrible
war crimes that occur in Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestinian captured land.
sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands
Sad to say, most Americans don't know, don't want to know and don't care. The US, since the end of the last world war, has
caused millions to die all over the world either directly or indirectly. This has gone on up to the present day. The collective
response of the average American to all that has been a collective yawn. The only fightback came during the Vietnam war when the
costs and body counts started getting too high. Otherwise if the furriners get killed at a low cost to us then no problem. Only
about perhaps 2-5% of the American public evinces any moral misgivings about the mass atrocities it's supposed government has
carried out routinely. Because of this it's safe to conclude that America is a nation of moral defectives so don't expect much
from them. In this context the recent Israeli actions are small change and will be memory-holed quickly. They are America's local
pit bull and therefore have the umbrella of American protection. It's also interesting to note how the Palestinians have been
abandoned by the leadership of some of their supposed fellow Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all US client-flunkies.
Non-Arabs seem to be among the ones most discomfited by these recent events.
I would suspect I am not the first to say it (but may be), from the outside, this 'special relationship' looks much like the special
relationship between the face-hugger and the character John Hurt is playing in Alien .
"The sad truth is, most Americans don't really care what is happening eight thousand miles away"
They didn't care what happened in Vegas, either. Illegal gun running, money laundering, mobsters working with the FBI and ATF,
58 innocent Americans dead, hundreds more wounded.
But hey, pretty girls and Harvey Weinstein's wee wee are much more important. Everyone did see that this sex scandal was a
deliberate news bomb to knock Vegas off the news, right?
The Leon Trotsky position was that all gentile Christians must be forced to deny Christ and Church and affirm atheism, and
all nations on the planet must be forced to accept Marxism.
Are you stupid enough to label Trotsky a right winger?
Not many leftists do, but all kinds of leftist Jews and Jewish Neocons call Stalin some type of fascist. Of course, economically,
all fascists are socialists.
Just consider 9/11. Mossad was caught with bombs in NYC the day of and yet they were released and there's no mention in the
media. All the evidence Chris Bollyn and others have put together points to a zionist "inside" operation. Over 2,300 engineers
conclude the government's narrative "defies physics", not to mention logic. WTC Building 7 collapses in 7 seconds and this is
ignored without repercussion. 3,000 died that day and millions since as a result (fake "War on Terror", actual "War OF Terror").
The country has been overthrown from within. The question is what to do? How do we wake up the masses suffering from Stockholm
Syndrome? Or is it best to get the heck out of dodge before things unravel and escalate?
We have a fake government, fake media, fake legal system (UCC contract law, no common law), fake education, fake history, fake
air/skies (chemtrails, geo-engineering), fake water (fluoridated), fake food (GMO). 5G is coming, cameras are going up everywhere.
We're close to a police state and martial law can't be far off. Fake President. I deep down knew he wasn't real because it's not
possible. http://themillenniumreport.com
It's a pretty bleak picture. We need an awakening / revolution.
The vampire squid has its much larger and more powerful prey so under control that there is almost no need for it to deliver
orders and commands. The evil parasite has a thought and the host carries out the action as if the blood/brain barrier has been
breached. The only remaining question for sensible realists concerns how much time should pass before they begin to wish for/hope
for/work to bring about the downfall of the host prey as it becomes clearer and more obvious that its downfall is the only way
to destroy the evil parasite and spare the rest of the world.
The critical mistake that the CIA and other institutions of the American deep state made was in failing to understand that media
is critical infrastructure just as much as roads, bridges, ports and the electrical grid and therefore needed to be kept out of
the cartelized control of a tiny ethnic group with foreign allegiances. They allowed this critical infrastructure be bought up
by this foreign minority and thereby used to brainwash the American public and control the perimeter of the debate. This was a
catastrophic mistake which is the primary root cause of most of America's greatest problems from immigration to foreign wars in
the Middle East.
If effect, the American media is controlled by a foreign mafia, until and unless it is dealt with as such, in the same manner
as the Italian mafia, if necessary, America will continue to be run for foreign interests. Most countries are much smarter than
us (e.g., China). They never would have let this happen.
Brian Roberts: Comcast and MSNBC
Aviv Nevo: Time Warner and CNN.
Sulzburger family: NYTimes
Sumner Rothstein: CBS
You won't hear about shooting Gaza protesters on prime time MSNBC, CNN shows for two reasons. The guests either wouldn't
be inclined to speak about it, for ideological and ethic reasons. Or, those that might like to express concern would feel sufficiently
threatened that they would never be asked to come back.
Oh Lord, I want that money is a line from The Producers . But it's applicable here. Many of these cable contributors
know what's expected of them and deliver safe answers so they can continue cashing scale appearance checks. And any show with
a negative focus on Israel would be attacked by the Israel Lobby, forthwith.
I spent several summers in Israel when I was a college student in 1968 and 1969. When I went back to the University of North Carolina
I took a course in the Arab/Israel Dispute; it was a seminar that was methodically fair, telling both sides of the story. After
class the professor and I would walk to our cars in faculty parking areas. He would actually look over his shoulder before admitting
that most to the people in his field were strongly in favor of the Palestinians, since the Jews had such a strangle-hold on every
American university.
Certainly those on the right whose priorities are most directly under attack by powerful jewish lobbies and oligarchs should tactically
support the idea of cutting off any positive connections with Israel, until jewish money stops promoting:
Interventionist wars;
The imposition of speech taboos and ultimately speechcrime laws (as in Europe and the UK) under the pretexts of suppressing
"hate speech" and the political correctness smears (anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, islamophobia etc);
"When Mr. Bush [the lesser] cited its most simplified tenet -- that the US should seek to promote liberal democracy around
the world -- as a key case for invading Iraq, neoconservatism was suddenly everywhere. It was a unified ideology that justified
military adventurism, sanctioned torture and promoted aggressive Zionism."
Normally, on the 50th anniversary of any notable event, there is almost always recognition in the mainstream media not so for
the deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (GTR-5). The American mainstream media was totally silent -- not a single peep
or mention of this act of war by Israel. This is PROOF that our mainstream media is "owned", lock, stock and barrel by Israel
"One of the most influential neoconservatives in Washington is Robert Kagan, the husband of Victoria Nuland who was the Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs under the Obama administration (and one of the architects of the Ukraine's civil war)
describes himself as a "liberal interventionist"
Between the 1950′s and the 1960′s, a political movement known as Neo-conservatism was born under the liberal hawks of the Democratic
Party in the United States. Then came the Vietnam war where the liberal hawks called for military action to prevent the Communists
from taking power in Vietnam. The neocons were also proponents of the Cold War and supporters of Israel's illegal occupation of
Palestine The neocons made their way to the Reagan administration with Eliot Abrams and company with wars in Central America including
Nicaragua and El Salvador."
-- In any civilized society, the Kagans clan et al would have been isolated like a plague from the population. The US has become
truly zionized by the Trotskyists who have been working synergetically with the MIC and the CIA.
.
It is a loosely guarded secret that American "law enforcement" has embraced Israeli "law enforcement" tactics (which are akin
to military practices). As Israel is on a constant "war footing", its tactics are contentious and confrontational. In fact, American
"law enforcement" agencies routinely send their officers to Israel to receive "training" in Israeli police tactics. There is no
room for Israeli tactics in American "law enforcement".
"Escalation of force" used to be the cornerstone of American "law enforcement", but no more. Police expect us mere mundanes
to cower in fear, and obey their (sometimes confusing and ridiculous) commands without question. This goes hand-in-hand with the
militarization of American "law enforcement". Of course, us mere mundanes are expected to embrace the "escalation of force" doctrine
under penalty of law.
SERIOUS question for people that want to roll back borders to where they were over a half century ago (or wherever their 0 year,
they made up, is):
Can we put Instanbul back in charge of the muddy yeast, being as Erdogan seems tremendously trustworthy, or maybe swap ruling
families back to where they were before some of the swaps? Moving royal fams around is near tradition, at this point.
Not a proper history, but, if you are actually interested, there is much more to read. They even put most of this history in
books, which are often the place to go after web comments. Peer review and everything, on a good day.
If you stand in front of a Chinese tank, you die. If you throw rocks at an Israeli tank, you die. Nothing novel in either case.
Russia has been very restrained re: ukies. Was zero reason to turn it into Chechnya, and that is exactly what State was angling
for. On a meddling n garbage angle: Hell, Obummer tried to pull off a coup in Tatarstan (on the Volga ) and I wish I was imagining
it, but they tried to create a Free Tatarstan Army was heavily under-reported by Western media.
Funny how perfectly the Israelis mimic the Nazis they kvetch about all the time, if one believe the stories they tell. They keep
the untermensch Palestinians in ghettos, where they shoot them and gas them, and otherwise treat them like vermin. No doubt some
commenters here agree that they are vermin. How long until Israel builds them showers?
I appreciate Giraldi's articulate and concise summary of the problem. I would also add that Israel had also been designated by
the UN as the world's leader in human slavery and sex trafficking, another thing you'll never hear reported in America's Jewish-controlled
media. Based on that alone we should be enacting sanctions against Israel.
But I have noticed for decades the recurring quiet void that follows the "something must be done" part in the endless articles
I've read on the subject, as if that iron wall of Jewish censorship and power is eternally insurmountable. It isn't.
We should know by now that there is not going to be a political solution, and I have long since stopped dreaming about voting
Israeli collaborators out of our government.
Put simply, Jewish power comes from money and that money comes from us. The populace may complain endlessly about Washington
Post propaganda and its pernicious efforts to overthrow our democratically elected president, but every December Americans will
dump a few billion dollars into Jeff Bezos' pocket. It's time to stop.
You can already see the effects of Americans boycotting Hollywood and the NFL -- it works.
What I would like to see everyone do is offer a solution instead of another explication of the problems. Essentially, how do
we overthrow this Jewish police state we live in and regain control of our own country before it's too late?
My suggestion is a comprehensive economic boycott against all Jewish goods and services.
You have a better solution? Let's hear it. In fact, I would love to see the Unz Review commit to a series of "solution" articles.
8Are you saying that only a response which shows that a civlian's life is not safe if he engages in a peaceful -- and certainly
not life threatening -- demonstration against the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is adequate to deal with such a demonstration
without severely risking the security of Israel?
Your answer, impled by what you have already said, appears to be "Yes". Really!?
Some of this blame has to be put on the lap of the feckless Arab nation. Egypt, Jordan and of course the coward princes in
Saudi Arabia. El Sisi is a banana republic despot looking, poor man's version of Mubarak, the King of Jordan is trying to stay
above it all and the worst is that 'idiot savant' gorilla sized 'clown prince' MBS who has become good buds with that weird (even
for a Jew) Trump son-in-law Jared . Does he own a chain of jewelry stores? (Grin)
The Turkish emir Erdogan is doing the heavy lifting for these weak Arabs. At least he's trading insults with 'Yahoo'.
The United States, my country, unfortunately is Zionist Occupied Territory. I just started picking fights on Beitbart and while
many of the posters I assume are Zionist trolls some have to be real posters and there the pro Zionist posters outnumbered
the anti Zionist ones at least 5 to 1.
I bow my head in shame for my once great and now Zionist occupied country.
The sad truth is, most Americans don't really care what is happening eight thousand miles away, no matter how horrific, and no
matter that their money is being used to support it. They drink the media koolaid, and think mostly about what's for dinner and
where to go on vacation this year. This is how the farce goes on. It makes the zio animals smile.
Yes, there's a lot of fakery going on, Paul. I agree that the "special relationship" benefits Israel exclusively and that it
has reached the stage of being undeniable. I can't quite accept this latest Q, though. His communiques sound too much like the
average blog commenter's repetitive postings, as though the average blog commenter is the target audience.
Everyone should hope that Justin Raimondo and the readership of "Antiwar.com" reads Giraldi's facts as written in this article.
Moreover, all the subscribers of the New York Times and Washington Post should be apprised of the facts that these two publishers
deliberately withhold from readers. U.S. citizens who are taxed to support these war crimes are purposely kept ignorant of the
facts. Nevertheless, the world is aware of U.S. hypocritical support for Israel's disdain of international law and the horrible
war crimes that occur in Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestinian captured land.
sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands
Sad to say, most Americans don't know, don't want to know and don't care. The US, since the end of the last world war, has
caused millions to die all over the world either directly or indirectly. This has gone on up to the present day. The collective
response of the average American to all that has been a collective yawn. The only fightback came during the Vietnam war when the
costs and body counts started getting too high. Otherwise if the furriners get killed at a low cost to us then no problem. Only
about perhaps 2-5% of the American public evinces any moral misgivings about the mass atrocities it's supposed government has
carried out routinely. Because of this it's safe to conclude that America is a nation of moral defectives so don't expect much
from them. In this context the recent Israeli actions are small change and will be memory-holed quickly. They are America's local
pit bull and therefore have the umbrella of American protection. It's also interesting to note how the Palestinians have been
abandoned by the leadership of some of their supposed fellow Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all US client-flunkies.
Non-Arabs seem to be among the ones most discomfited by these recent events.
I would suspect I am not the first to say it (but may be), from the outside, this 'special relationship' looks much like the special
relationship between the face-hugger and the character John Hurt is playing in Alien .
"The sad truth is, most Americans don't really care what is happening eight thousand miles away"
They didn't care what happened in Vegas, either. Illegal gun running, money laundering, mobsters working with the FBI and ATF,
58 innocent Americans dead, hundreds more wounded.
But hey, pretty girls and Harvey Weinstein's wee wee are much more important. Everyone did see that this sex scandal was a
deliberate news bomb to knock Vegas off the news, right?
The Leon Trotsky position was that all gentile Christians must be forced to deny Christ and Church and affirm atheism, and
all nations on the planet must be forced to accept Marxism.
Are you stupid enough to label Trotsky a right winger?
Not many leftists do, but all kinds of leftist Jews and Jewish Neocons call Stalin some type of fascist. Of course, economically,
all fascists are socialists.
The record is clear that 'our' (that is, the ruling Establishment's) intelligence agencies,
such as the CIA, have lied to the public many times, actually lie routinely -- but these lies
are always revealed only decades later, by historians, which is too late, because the damage
was already done. Think, for example, of just two of the now-famous cases, Iran 1953 , and Chile 1973 , in both of
which instances the US Government ended a democracy abroad, and established a brutal
dictatorship there (the Shah in Iran, and Pinochet in Chile) -- but what good can a historian
do, when the Government and its 'news'-media were persistently lying, and they had fooled the
US public, at the time -- which is all that really counted (and ever
will count)? Can a historian undo the damage that the Government and its
propaganda-agencies had perpetrated, by means of their lies, and coups, and invasions? Never.
But this Government, and its propaganda-agents, claim to defend democracies, not to end them.
Can it actually be a democracy, if it's doing such things, and doing it time after time?
Something's deeply wrong here. Government by deceit, cannot be a democracy. And, yet, the
public still don't get the message, even after it has been delivered to us in history-books. By
then, it's no longer in the news, and so only few people really care about it. The message of
history is not learned. The public still accepts the ongoing lies -- the new lies, in the new
'news', for the new atrocities.
During the period after the Soviet Union, and its communism, and its Warsaw Pact military
alliance, all ended in 1991, the US-and-allied historical record (all now after the Cold War
has supposedly been over) is even worse, and is even more clearly evil, because the ideological
excuse that had formerly existed (and which was only the excuse, and not the reason,
in most cases, such as in Iran, and in Chile) is gone.
Iraq in 2003 was a particularly blatant demonstration of the US-Government's psychopathy
regarding foreign affairs. So: let's consider this example (hopefully, to learn a lesson from
it -- which still hasn't yet been learnt):
Bill Clinton's CIA chief George Tenet told President George W. Bush that convincing the American people
that Saddam Hussein had WMD, weapons of mass destruction, was "a slam-dunk." His job wasn't
to find the truth, but to authenticate the 'evidence' to back up the President, and Tenet did
just that. The American people went for it, even though no WMD actually remained in Iraq,
because the U.N. inspectors in 1998 had destroyed all of them, and because there was no
indication (other than hired and coerced testimony, and especially fabrications from
CIA-partnered anti-Saddam Iraqis such as Ahmed Chalabi ) that there had been restored
in Iraq any WMD program. A crucial date was
7 September 2002, when George W. Bush and Tony Blair both said that a new report had just
been issued by the IAEA saying that Saddam Hussein was only six months away from having a
nuclear weapon. The IAEA promptly denied that it had issued any such "new report" at all, and
the 'news' media simply ignored the denial, which the IAEA then repeated weeks later, and
it again was
ignored ; so, the false impression, that such an IAEA report had been issued, remained in
the publics' minds, and they favored invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein before there
would be,
as Condoleezza Rice warned the next day following Bush-Blair, on September 8th, a "mushroom
cloud" . It was all just lies -- lies that were believed, at the time, and even believed by
many for a long time after we invaded. Some of these lies were derived from torturing detainees
-- torturing them to say what the US and British regimes wanted them to say.
"We do not – I don't talk about techniques," Tenet replies.
"It's torture," Pelley says.
"And we don't torture people."
US President Donald Trump has
now appointed to lead the CIA the very same woman, Gina Haspel, who had operated, under Tenet,
under Bush, the CIA "black site" in Thailand, where Abu Zubaydeh was waterboarded 83 times and
otherwise tortured so that he lost his left eye. The reason why he was being tortured was
in order to extract from him testimony that Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, but
Zubaydeh didn't even know anything about any such matter, and tried desperately to say what he
thought his torturers wanted him to say, so as to stop these tortures, but he didn't know that
they were intending to torture him until he would implicate Saddam Hussein in causing the 9/11
attacks. And so the torturing just went on and on. The CIA's Haspel finally gave up, after
deciding that he'd die if they continued any further. The problem now was to hide him from the
public. So, Zubaydeh subsequently has been held incommunicado at Guantanamo since 2001, so that
he can't communicate with anyone in the outside world, and thus the crimes of George Bush and
his employee George Tenet and his employee Gina Haspel, can't be prosecuted. And, now, Trump
appoints her to Tenet's old spot, as the CIA Director. So: Bush had hired her, then protected
her. Obama protected instead of prosecuted her. And, finally, Trump now promotes her, to be the
CIA's new chief. She has demonstrated herself to be a reliable liar for whomever is her boss.
Trump therefore can trust her to vouch for whatever he wants her to 'prove', to whatever
American suckers still remain, as being American suckers.
Globally, there is a competition between aristocracies, and they are contending gangs.
That's no different than was
the case leading up to WW I . But WW III will end it all -- and all of us -- unless the
public wises up, and fast, and recognizes whom their
real enemies are (which are internal, not external). Without cooperation from the
news-media (owned by those aristocracies), to expose (instead of spread) the frauds, WW III --
the end of everything -- is in the cards. It's in the cards, right now. And, this time, it's
not a mistake. It won't need any wild
assassin to spark the conflagration . Instead, it's the plan
. It has actually been building ever since
24 February 1990 . And this has been even more confirmed now .
Patriotism is to the public, not to the rulers. Any rulers who expect it to be to them,
instead of to the public, are simply tyrants -- they are traitors, who happen to rule the
public. Do we live in a dictatorship, or
in a democracy? If it's a dictatorship ( such as the best available evidence shows that America is ), then
this, which we are now experiencing, is simply par for the course. But will we continue to
accept it? Or, will we, finally, learn from
history ? (And, if so, then will we do it fast enough, under the prevailing circumstances?)
The time to decide, and to act, could be short . Have
we had enough now, of that lying? Because, accepting just a little bit more of it, could mean
the end of everything. If it's not going to be the end of the liars, it will probably soon be
the end of everything. Because that's the path we now are on.
"... The first, perhaps most dominant ingredient of the Cold War is missing: ideological competition. America remains aggressive internationally, determined to transform the world in its image, or at least in its interest. Of course, invading Iraq, nation-building in Afghanistan, blowing up Libya and messing around in Syria all failed dramatically -- even disastrously. Nevertheless, so far Washington's governing elite appears to have learned nothing. ..."
"... Putinism is no philosophy. It is just traditional authoritarian nationalism. Even those in the West who seem to admire him -- reactionary conservatives, intolerant nationalists and wannabe authoritarians -- are more enamored of his methods than his person. There is no Putinist version of the Comintern, no global Putinist revolutionary movement devoted to world conquest. Putin cares about the world only insofar as it affects Russia. ..."
"... Second, Russia's foreign policy is essentially conservative and restrained, though not pacifist. (In contrast, America's is unconstrained and frankly militarist.) This approach explains the conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as attempts to influence American and European elections. The United States views expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders as the natural evolution of American global domination. Moscow considers the incorporation of Ukraine into the alliance created to constrain Russia as a security threat, rather as Washington might view Mexico's entry into the Warsaw Pact. While to Americans Moscow is wildly inflating the threat -- in truth, the idea of the Europeans attacking Russia sounds like the plot for a fantasy movie -- the United States has not suffered multiple invasions from its European neighbors. ..."
President Donald Trump entered office with praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and
support for improving Washington-Moscow relations. A year later President Trump surprised even
his aides by congratulating Putin on the latter's reelection and suggesting a summit meeting
between the two leaders.
A chilling political wind is blowing through the capitals of America, Europe and Russia.
There is talk of a new Cold War, as the two sides trade diplomatic expulsions. In the West, at
least, there is even a hint of war as NATO fusses over European defense capabilities (poor) and
the United States deploys more troops to the continent (as usual).
President Trump has stood by, mostly silently, as bilateral relations continued their
slow-motion collapse, demonstrating his essential irrelevance to much of U.S. foreign policy.
For instance, he allowed the State Department to announce the latest expulsion of Russian
diplomats. This is one area where his gut instincts -- the value of an improved relationship --
are correct, but what he personally believes obviously doesn't much matter for policy. That
could change as he asserts himself with a new secretary of state and national security advisor,
but they both have hawkish instincts and have demonstrated no interest in détente with
Moscow.
Despite the diplomatic spiral, however, there is no new Cold War. And there won't be a hot
war unless Washington ignites a confrontation while pursuing an ever more interventionist and
activist foreign policy in areas viewed as vital by Russia.
The first, perhaps most dominant ingredient of the Cold War is missing: ideological
competition. America remains aggressive internationally, determined to transform the world in
its image, or at least in its interest. Of course, invading Iraq, nation-building in
Afghanistan, blowing up Libya and messing around in Syria all failed dramatically -- even
disastrously. Nevertheless, so far Washington's governing elite appears to have learned
nothing.
In contrast, Vladimir Putin clearly grasped the lessons of the Soviet Union's collapse. He
is a pragmatic authoritarian, rather than a communist. His ambitions look far more traditional,
like that of the Tsar and the Russian Empire. His government's greatest concerns are
maintaining control, gaining respect for Russia's interests and safeguarding its
boundaries.
Putinism is no philosophy. It is just traditional authoritarian nationalism. Even those in
the West who seem to admire him -- reactionary conservatives, intolerant nationalists and
wannabe authoritarians -- are more enamored of his methods than his person. There is no
Putinist version of the Comintern, no global Putinist revolutionary movement devoted to world
conquest. Putin cares about the world only insofar as it affects Russia.
Second, Russia's foreign policy is essentially conservative and restrained, though not
pacifist. (In contrast, America's is unconstrained and frankly militarist.) This approach
explains the conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as attempts to influence American and
European elections. The United States views expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders as the
natural evolution of American global domination. Moscow considers the incorporation of Ukraine
into the alliance created to constrain Russia as a security threat, rather as Washington might
view Mexico's entry into the Warsaw Pact. While to Americans Moscow is wildly inflating the
threat -- in truth, the idea of the Europeans attacking Russia sounds like the plot for a
fantasy movie -- the United States has not suffered multiple invasions from its European
neighbors.
Moreover, Putin and many other Russians believe the West violated its commitment not to
expand the transatlantic alliance eastward. Perhaps Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill
Clinton merely encouraged the Gorbachev and Yeltsin governments to believe what they wanted.
However, newly declassified diplomatic records help explain Moscow's anger. To that must be
added the dismemberment of Serbia, long linked to Russia, and "color revolutions," always to
Moscow's detriment. Again, one can imagine the reaction of U.S. policymakers most exercised
over Vladimir Putin had Russia backed a street putsch against a democratically elected,
pro-American president in Mexico City. Such does not justify Moscow's reaction, but it helps
explain it.
Putin wants to disrupt and divide those countries most directly threatening Russia
(ironically, his actions have done more to unite the fractious transatlantic alliance). He also
wants to prevent NATO from incorporating Georgia and Ukraine (in this he has been more
successful). Ironically, there was nothing in his early years in power which suggested animus
toward the West. Rather, he appeared to be a typically cynical and worldly KGB officer
determined to enhance his nation's domestic power and international standing. From his
perspective Russia's foreign policy is just business, nothing personal.
Even Putin's Syrian adventure demonstrates the limits of his ambition. He backed a long-time
ally to thwart what would be another aggressive U.S. advance. Far from threatening to dominate
the Middle East, Moscow is seeking to preserve a small role in a region long dominated by
America, which is allied with Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf States. Only pretentious
Washington policymakers, who successively intervened militarily to oust established governments
in three Middle Eastern countries and backed an ally's invasion of a fourth country would have
the chutzpah to accuse Russia of aggressive designs for supporting a recognized government in
one.
Third, the world no longer is bipolar. China and the European Union both enjoy economic
wealth and power akin to that of the United States, even though Americans remain wealthier and,
at least until the Trump administration, were the primary drivers of international economic
policy. Beijing is building a significant military while the Europeans are capable of doing so,
in whatever form they desire. India is moving onto center stage as well, with virtually
unlimited possibilities in the future.
In a broad sense the Europeans are on America's side while the People's Republic of China
(PRC) backs Russia, but the divisions are far more complex than during the Cold War. Several
European governments have resisted U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow as well as other American
initiatives, while the PRC and Russia are friends out of necessity, mostly drawn together by
Washington's hostility. Such an alliance, if it deserves to be called that, likely will prove
of little value if truly tested. There is no "Evil Empire," as President Ronald Reagan once
characterized the Soviet Union and its satellite states.
Fourth, there are no essential conflicts between Washington and Moscow. There are no
disputed territories, no vital regions occupied by the opposing power. Neither nation has any
interest in conquering the other. The only genuine area of conflict is the desire of American
policymakers to impose their will virtually everywhere on earth, including areas of
long-standing Russian interest. U.S. policy is an inverted form of the Monroe Doctrine: Other
nations are not allowed to exercise influence even in their own neighborhood. Washington
desires to treat the world as it originally deigned to handle Latin America, viewing any
outside interference as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United
States."
This irrationally aggressive approach is evident in Syria, a long-time ally of Moscow.
American policymakers speak with outrage at Russia's military involvement in one nation even
though Washington has spent decades intervening -- often militarily -- virtually everywhere
else in the region: Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Yemen, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait and the
other Gulf States. Similarly misguided are Washington's complaints about Russian involvement in
Central Asia, which any map shows to be a lot closer to Russia than America. The denizens of
the District of Columbia might aspire to a world in which America dominates every region, but
such an objective is not important let alone vital to the nation's security. And such an overly
ambitious and unsustainable policy certainly is not worth war.
As for Europe, despite the frenzied complaints of the Baltic states and Poland, there is no
evidence of any aggressive Russian designs. And why would there be? The meal would be
indigestible. Indeed, nearing eighteen years in power Putin has gained nothing but Crimea,
which probably was welcomed by a majority of residents. Beyond that influence over South
Ossetia, Abkhazia, and the Donbass is a pretty pitiful empire, while the United States has
bombed, invaded, occupied and/or dismembered several states. If he was biding his time then he
made a huge error, since the Europeans are finally taking steps to create a more effective and
better coordinated continental defense.
Even if Moscow were to win against a Baltic state, Russia would only gain ravaged territory
along with enduring enmity, brutal sanctions and military retaliation. Worse, if NATO chose to
fight -- as it almost certainly would -- Russia would lose the war. Unsurprisingly, Putin has
done nothing to suggests he wants anything other than to secure Russia itself, a goal he has
advanced by destabilizing, but not conquering, Georgia and Ukraine, to prevent their inclusion
in NATO. The easiest way for Washington to avoid conflict with Moscow is to not
advance its security guarantees and military deployments to Russia's borders in Asia.
Fifth, Russia is no match militarily to the United States. Despite the widespread wailing
and gnashing of teeth about the tragically underfunded American military, Washington spends ten
times as much on the armed services as does Moscow. Congress sometimes votes larger annual
increases in outlays than Russia's total annual expenditures.
Such comparisons obviously are imperfect, but only in nuclear weapons does Moscow have
relative military parity. It possesses one aircraft carrier, sort of, versus ten American
carrier groups. The Russian air force and air defense system are competent, and would force the
Pentagon to plan a war without absolute air superiority, for once, but they likely would not
prevail. The Putin government has rebuilt the army after its less than stellar performance in
Georgia, but there is no adjoining American territory for Moscow to invade. And Russia lacks
air or naval lift to reach the United States, and would regret arriving if it could.
Which leaves Europe. However, the continent enjoys almost twelve times Russia's economic
strength -- Italy alone (as well as Germany, the United Kingdom and France) has a larger GDP
than Russia. The Europeans already spend upwards of five times as much on the military as
Moscow; collectively the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, despite their anemic efforts,
devote almost two and a half times as much as Russia to the military.
True, the Europeans suffer problems of interoperability, coordination, and deployment.
Nevertheless, the idea that Moscow could successfully attack America and Europe is a fantasy.
While the allies should prepare for any eventuality, the primary responsibility should fall on
Europe, which both is relatively more vulnerable and entirely capable of defending itself.
How to pull U.S.-Russia relations out of their tailspin? Federal, state, and local officials
should defend the one vital interest at stake, the integrity of American democracy. Of course,
Washington would have greater credibility in doing so if it acknowledged having interfered in
scores of democratic elections worldwide, including in Russia. U.S. policymakers should stop
meddling to help America's foreign friends, improve electoral safeguards at home, and prepare
to retaliate in response to future interference by Russia or anyone else.
Washington should end the diplomatic tit-for-tats. Communication channels need to remain
open. The more people -- businessmen, tourists, students, family members, athletes, performers
and others -- who visit each way, the better. This would be one way to demonstrate that this is
not Cold War II.
The United States also should address Moscow's security concerns. American policymakers
express shock and sadness that anyone anywhere fears the United States, but any nation on
Washington's naughty list should worry about covert or overt efforts at regime change. The
United States and Europeans should explore a settlement with Russia involving Georgia and
Ukraine which includes the end to NATO expansion. In return, the Putin government would stop
supporting anti-Kiev rebels. Moscow isn't going to return Crimea, which historically was part
of Russia: the United States and Europe should de facto accept the annexation, dropping
sanctions if Moscow stops undermining Ukraine's territorial integrity.
On other issues -- Syria, Iran, North Korea and more -- the two sides should return to
old-fashioned compromise. Russian interests are legitimate and need to be taken into account.
Along the way Washington should look for ways to loosen the China-Russia partnership. The PRC
poses a far greater long-term challenge to America. A friendlier Moscow, like India, could act
as an important counterweight to Beijing.
The state of the U.S.-Russia relationship is bad, but it is not Cold War II. Washington
should ensure that relations do not further deteriorate. The Russian Federation is too
important a country to treat as an enemy. No one would gain from a new conflict, whether cold
or hot.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan. He is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
The record is clear that 'our' (that is, the ruling Establishment's) intelligence agencies,
such as the CIA, have lied to the public many times, actually lie routinely -- but these lies
are always revealed only decades later, by historians, which is too late, because the damage
was already done. Think, for example, of just two of the now-famous cases, Iran 1953 , and Chile 1973 , in both of
which instances the US Government ended a democracy abroad, and established a brutal
dictatorship there (the Shah in Iran, and Pinochet in Chile) -- but what good can a historian
do, when the Government and its 'news'-media were persistently lying, and they had fooled the
US public, at the time -- which is all that really counted (and ever
will count)? Can a historian undo the damage that the Government and its
propaganda-agencies had perpetrated, by means of their lies, and coups, and invasions? Never.
But this Government, and its propaganda-agents, claim to defend democracies, not to end them.
Can it actually be a democracy, if it's doing such things, and doing it time after time?
Something's deeply wrong here. Government by deceit, cannot be a democracy. And, yet, the
public still don't get the message, even after it has been delivered to us in history-books. By
then, it's no longer in the news, and so only few people really care about it. The message of
history is not learned. The public still accepts the ongoing lies -- the new lies, in the new
'news', for the new atrocities.
During the period after the Soviet Union, and its communism, and its Warsaw Pact military
alliance, all ended in 1991, the US-and-allied historical record (all now after the Cold War
has supposedly been over) is even worse, and is even more clearly evil, because the ideological
excuse that had formerly existed (and which was only the excuse, and not the reason,
in most cases, such as in Iran, and in Chile) is gone.
Iraq in 2003 was a particularly blatant demonstration of the US-Government's psychopathy
regarding foreign affairs. So: let's consider this example (hopefully, to learn a lesson from
it -- which still hasn't yet been learnt):
Bill Clinton's CIA chief George Tenet told President George W. Bush that convincing the American people
that Saddam Hussein had WMD, weapons of mass destruction, was "a slam-dunk." His job wasn't
to find the truth, but to authenticate the 'evidence' to back up the President, and Tenet did
just that. The American people went for it, even though no WMD actually remained in Iraq,
because the U.N. inspectors in 1998 had destroyed all of them, and because there was no
indication (other than hired and coerced testimony, and especially fabrications from
CIA-partnered anti-Saddam Iraqis such as Ahmed Chalabi ) that there had been restored
in Iraq any WMD program. A crucial date was
7 September 2002, when George W. Bush and Tony Blair both said that a new report had just
been issued by the IAEA saying that Saddam Hussein was only six months away from having a
nuclear weapon. The IAEA promptly denied that it had issued any such "new report" at all, and
the 'news' media simply ignored the denial, which the IAEA then repeated weeks later, and
it again was
ignored ; so, the false impression, that such an IAEA report had been issued, remained in
the publics' minds, and they favored invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein before there
would be,
as Condoleezza Rice warned the next day following Bush-Blair, on September 8th, a "mushroom
cloud" . It was all just lies -- lies that were believed, at the time, and even believed by
many for a long time after we invaded. Some of these lies were derived from torturing detainees
-- torturing them to say what the US and British regimes wanted them to say.
"We do not – I don't talk about techniques," Tenet replies.
"It's torture," Pelley says.
"And we don't torture people."
US President Donald Trump has
now appointed to lead the CIA the very same woman, Gina Haspel, who had operated, under Tenet,
under Bush, the CIA "black site" in Thailand, where Abu Zubaydeh was waterboarded 83 times and
otherwise tortured so that he lost his left eye. The reason why he was being tortured was
in order to extract from him testimony that Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, but
Zubaydeh didn't even know anything about any such matter, and tried desperately to say what he
thought his torturers wanted him to say, so as to stop these tortures, but he didn't know that
they were intending to torture him until he would implicate Saddam Hussein in causing the 9/11
attacks. And so the torturing just went on and on. The CIA's Haspel finally gave up, after
deciding that he'd die if they continued any further. The problem now was to hide him from the
public. So, Zubaydeh subsequently has been held incommunicado at Guantanamo since 2001, so that
he can't communicate with anyone in the outside world, and thus the crimes of George Bush and
his employee George Tenet and his employee Gina Haspel, can't be prosecuted. And, now, Trump
appoints her to Tenet's old spot, as the CIA Director. So: Bush had hired her, then protected
her. Obama protected instead of prosecuted her. And, finally, Trump now promotes her, to be the
CIA's new chief. She has demonstrated herself to be a reliable liar for whomever is her boss.
Trump therefore can trust her to vouch for whatever he wants her to 'prove', to whatever
American suckers still remain, as being American suckers.
Globally, there is a competition between aristocracies, and they are contending gangs.
That's no different than was
the case leading up to WW I . But WW III will end it all -- and all of us -- unless the
public wises up, and fast, and recognizes whom their
real enemies are (which are internal, not external). Without cooperation from the
news-media (owned by those aristocracies), to expose (instead of spread) the frauds, WW III --
the end of everything -- is in the cards. It's in the cards, right now. And, this time, it's
not a mistake. It won't need any wild
assassin to spark the conflagration . Instead, it's the plan
. It has actually been building ever since
24 February 1990 . And this has been even more confirmed now .
Patriotism is to the public, not to the rulers. Any rulers who expect it to be to them,
instead of to the public, are simply tyrants -- they are traitors, who happen to rule the
public. Do we live in a dictatorship, or
in a democracy? If it's a dictatorship ( such as the best available evidence shows that America is ), then
this, which we are now experiencing, is simply par for the course. But will we continue to
accept it? Or, will we, finally, learn from
history ? (And, if so, then will we do it fast enough, under the prevailing circumstances?)
The time to decide, and to act, could be short . Have
we had enough now, of that lying? Because, accepting just a little bit more of it, could mean
the end of everything. If it's not going to be the end of the liars, it will probably soon be
the end of everything. Because that's the path we now are on.
"... The first, perhaps most dominant ingredient of the Cold War is missing: ideological competition. America remains aggressive internationally, determined to transform the world in its image, or at least in its interest. Of course, invading Iraq, nation-building in Afghanistan, blowing up Libya and messing around in Syria all failed dramatically -- even disastrously. Nevertheless, so far Washington's governing elite appears to have learned nothing. ..."
"... Putinism is no philosophy. It is just traditional authoritarian nationalism. Even those in the West who seem to admire him -- reactionary conservatives, intolerant nationalists and wannabe authoritarians -- are more enamored of his methods than his person. There is no Putinist version of the Comintern, no global Putinist revolutionary movement devoted to world conquest. Putin cares about the world only insofar as it affects Russia. ..."
"... Second, Russia's foreign policy is essentially conservative and restrained, though not pacifist. (In contrast, America's is unconstrained and frankly militarist.) This approach explains the conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as attempts to influence American and European elections. The United States views expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders as the natural evolution of American global domination. Moscow considers the incorporation of Ukraine into the alliance created to constrain Russia as a security threat, rather as Washington might view Mexico's entry into the Warsaw Pact. While to Americans Moscow is wildly inflating the threat -- in truth, the idea of the Europeans attacking Russia sounds like the plot for a fantasy movie -- the United States has not suffered multiple invasions from its European neighbors. ..."
President Donald Trump entered office with praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and
support for improving Washington-Moscow relations. A year later President Trump surprised even
his aides by congratulating Putin on the latter's reelection and suggesting a summit meeting
between the two leaders.
A chilling political wind is blowing through the capitals of America, Europe and Russia.
There is talk of a new Cold War, as the two sides trade diplomatic expulsions. In the West, at
least, there is even a hint of war as NATO fusses over European defense capabilities (poor) and
the United States deploys more troops to the continent (as usual).
President Trump has stood by, mostly silently, as bilateral relations continued their
slow-motion collapse, demonstrating his essential irrelevance to much of U.S. foreign policy.
For instance, he allowed the State Department to announce the latest expulsion of Russian
diplomats. This is one area where his gut instincts -- the value of an improved relationship --
are correct, but what he personally believes obviously doesn't much matter for policy. That
could change as he asserts himself with a new secretary of state and national security advisor,
but they both have hawkish instincts and have demonstrated no interest in détente with
Moscow.
Despite the diplomatic spiral, however, there is no new Cold War. And there won't be a hot
war unless Washington ignites a confrontation while pursuing an ever more interventionist and
activist foreign policy in areas viewed as vital by Russia.
The first, perhaps most dominant ingredient of the Cold War is missing: ideological
competition. America remains aggressive internationally, determined to transform the world in
its image, or at least in its interest. Of course, invading Iraq, nation-building in
Afghanistan, blowing up Libya and messing around in Syria all failed dramatically -- even
disastrously. Nevertheless, so far Washington's governing elite appears to have learned
nothing.
In contrast, Vladimir Putin clearly grasped the lessons of the Soviet Union's collapse. He
is a pragmatic authoritarian, rather than a communist. His ambitions look far more traditional,
like that of the Tsar and the Russian Empire. His government's greatest concerns are
maintaining control, gaining respect for Russia's interests and safeguarding its
boundaries.
Putinism is no philosophy. It is just traditional authoritarian nationalism. Even those in
the West who seem to admire him -- reactionary conservatives, intolerant nationalists and
wannabe authoritarians -- are more enamored of his methods than his person. There is no
Putinist version of the Comintern, no global Putinist revolutionary movement devoted to world
conquest. Putin cares about the world only insofar as it affects Russia.
Second, Russia's foreign policy is essentially conservative and restrained, though not
pacifist. (In contrast, America's is unconstrained and frankly militarist.) This approach
explains the conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, as well as attempts to influence American and
European elections. The United States views expansion of NATO up to Russia's borders as the
natural evolution of American global domination. Moscow considers the incorporation of Ukraine
into the alliance created to constrain Russia as a security threat, rather as Washington might
view Mexico's entry into the Warsaw Pact. While to Americans Moscow is wildly inflating the
threat -- in truth, the idea of the Europeans attacking Russia sounds like the plot for a
fantasy movie -- the United States has not suffered multiple invasions from its European
neighbors.
Moreover, Putin and many other Russians believe the West violated its commitment not to
expand the transatlantic alliance eastward. Perhaps Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill
Clinton merely encouraged the Gorbachev and Yeltsin governments to believe what they wanted.
However, newly declassified diplomatic records help explain Moscow's anger. To that must be
added the dismemberment of Serbia, long linked to Russia, and "color revolutions," always to
Moscow's detriment. Again, one can imagine the reaction of U.S. policymakers most exercised
over Vladimir Putin had Russia backed a street putsch against a democratically elected,
pro-American president in Mexico City. Such does not justify Moscow's reaction, but it helps
explain it.
Putin wants to disrupt and divide those countries most directly threatening Russia
(ironically, his actions have done more to unite the fractious transatlantic alliance). He also
wants to prevent NATO from incorporating Georgia and Ukraine (in this he has been more
successful). Ironically, there was nothing in his early years in power which suggested animus
toward the West. Rather, he appeared to be a typically cynical and worldly KGB officer
determined to enhance his nation's domestic power and international standing. From his
perspective Russia's foreign policy is just business, nothing personal.
Even Putin's Syrian adventure demonstrates the limits of his ambition. He backed a long-time
ally to thwart what would be another aggressive U.S. advance. Far from threatening to dominate
the Middle East, Moscow is seeking to preserve a small role in a region long dominated by
America, which is allied with Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf States. Only pretentious
Washington policymakers, who successively intervened militarily to oust established governments
in three Middle Eastern countries and backed an ally's invasion of a fourth country would have
the chutzpah to accuse Russia of aggressive designs for supporting a recognized government in
one.
Third, the world no longer is bipolar. China and the European Union both enjoy economic
wealth and power akin to that of the United States, even though Americans remain wealthier and,
at least until the Trump administration, were the primary drivers of international economic
policy. Beijing is building a significant military while the Europeans are capable of doing so,
in whatever form they desire. India is moving onto center stage as well, with virtually
unlimited possibilities in the future.
In a broad sense the Europeans are on America's side while the People's Republic of China
(PRC) backs Russia, but the divisions are far more complex than during the Cold War. Several
European governments have resisted U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow as well as other American
initiatives, while the PRC and Russia are friends out of necessity, mostly drawn together by
Washington's hostility. Such an alliance, if it deserves to be called that, likely will prove
of little value if truly tested. There is no "Evil Empire," as President Ronald Reagan once
characterized the Soviet Union and its satellite states.
Fourth, there are no essential conflicts between Washington and Moscow. There are no
disputed territories, no vital regions occupied by the opposing power. Neither nation has any
interest in conquering the other. The only genuine area of conflict is the desire of American
policymakers to impose their will virtually everywhere on earth, including areas of
long-standing Russian interest. U.S. policy is an inverted form of the Monroe Doctrine: Other
nations are not allowed to exercise influence even in their own neighborhood. Washington
desires to treat the world as it originally deigned to handle Latin America, viewing any
outside interference as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United
States."
This irrationally aggressive approach is evident in Syria, a long-time ally of Moscow.
American policymakers speak with outrage at Russia's military involvement in one nation even
though Washington has spent decades intervening -- often militarily -- virtually everywhere
else in the region: Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Yemen, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait and the
other Gulf States. Similarly misguided are Washington's complaints about Russian involvement in
Central Asia, which any map shows to be a lot closer to Russia than America. The denizens of
the District of Columbia might aspire to a world in which America dominates every region, but
such an objective is not important let alone vital to the nation's security. And such an overly
ambitious and unsustainable policy certainly is not worth war.
As for Europe, despite the frenzied complaints of the Baltic states and Poland, there is no
evidence of any aggressive Russian designs. And why would there be? The meal would be
indigestible. Indeed, nearing eighteen years in power Putin has gained nothing but Crimea,
which probably was welcomed by a majority of residents. Beyond that influence over South
Ossetia, Abkhazia, and the Donbass is a pretty pitiful empire, while the United States has
bombed, invaded, occupied and/or dismembered several states. If he was biding his time then he
made a huge error, since the Europeans are finally taking steps to create a more effective and
better coordinated continental defense.
Even if Moscow were to win against a Baltic state, Russia would only gain ravaged territory
along with enduring enmity, brutal sanctions and military retaliation. Worse, if NATO chose to
fight -- as it almost certainly would -- Russia would lose the war. Unsurprisingly, Putin has
done nothing to suggests he wants anything other than to secure Russia itself, a goal he has
advanced by destabilizing, but not conquering, Georgia and Ukraine, to prevent their inclusion
in NATO. The easiest way for Washington to avoid conflict with Moscow is to not
advance its security guarantees and military deployments to Russia's borders in Asia.
Fifth, Russia is no match militarily to the United States. Despite the widespread wailing
and gnashing of teeth about the tragically underfunded American military, Washington spends ten
times as much on the armed services as does Moscow. Congress sometimes votes larger annual
increases in outlays than Russia's total annual expenditures.
Such comparisons obviously are imperfect, but only in nuclear weapons does Moscow have
relative military parity. It possesses one aircraft carrier, sort of, versus ten American
carrier groups. The Russian air force and air defense system are competent, and would force the
Pentagon to plan a war without absolute air superiority, for once, but they likely would not
prevail. The Putin government has rebuilt the army after its less than stellar performance in
Georgia, but there is no adjoining American territory for Moscow to invade. And Russia lacks
air or naval lift to reach the United States, and would regret arriving if it could.
Which leaves Europe. However, the continent enjoys almost twelve times Russia's economic
strength -- Italy alone (as well as Germany, the United Kingdom and France) has a larger GDP
than Russia. The Europeans already spend upwards of five times as much on the military as
Moscow; collectively the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, despite their anemic efforts,
devote almost two and a half times as much as Russia to the military.
True, the Europeans suffer problems of interoperability, coordination, and deployment.
Nevertheless, the idea that Moscow could successfully attack America and Europe is a fantasy.
While the allies should prepare for any eventuality, the primary responsibility should fall on
Europe, which both is relatively more vulnerable and entirely capable of defending itself.
How to pull U.S.-Russia relations out of their tailspin? Federal, state, and local officials
should defend the one vital interest at stake, the integrity of American democracy. Of course,
Washington would have greater credibility in doing so if it acknowledged having interfered in
scores of democratic elections worldwide, including in Russia. U.S. policymakers should stop
meddling to help America's foreign friends, improve electoral safeguards at home, and prepare
to retaliate in response to future interference by Russia or anyone else.
Washington should end the diplomatic tit-for-tats. Communication channels need to remain
open. The more people -- businessmen, tourists, students, family members, athletes, performers
and others -- who visit each way, the better. This would be one way to demonstrate that this is
not Cold War II.
The United States also should address Moscow's security concerns. American policymakers
express shock and sadness that anyone anywhere fears the United States, but any nation on
Washington's naughty list should worry about covert or overt efforts at regime change. The
United States and Europeans should explore a settlement with Russia involving Georgia and
Ukraine which includes the end to NATO expansion. In return, the Putin government would stop
supporting anti-Kiev rebels. Moscow isn't going to return Crimea, which historically was part
of Russia: the United States and Europe should de facto accept the annexation, dropping
sanctions if Moscow stops undermining Ukraine's territorial integrity.
On other issues -- Syria, Iran, North Korea and more -- the two sides should return to
old-fashioned compromise. Russian interests are legitimate and need to be taken into account.
Along the way Washington should look for ways to loosen the China-Russia partnership. The PRC
poses a far greater long-term challenge to America. A friendlier Moscow, like India, could act
as an important counterweight to Beijing.
The state of the U.S.-Russia relationship is bad, but it is not Cold War II. Washington
should ensure that relations do not further deteriorate. The Russian Federation is too
important a country to treat as an enemy. No one would gain from a new conflict, whether cold
or hot.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan. He is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
"... I wanted to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed a political agenda. ..."
"... I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared by different circles within the American political class and promoted through programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies, activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation's political reputation. ..."
"... To these individuals, Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism in the former Soviet region. ..."
"... Anti-American attitudes are strongly present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse. ..."
"... The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies. The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves, and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective. Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power. In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international politics. ..."
"... According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this "New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a threat from arising in the first place."4 ..."
"... Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S. interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned, no other choice was available. ..."
"... This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure."6 ..."
"... Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity ..."
"... The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist, autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15 ..."
"... During the period of 2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with the Kremlin. ..."
"... Cheney could not tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91 ..."
"... In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important attributes of sovereign statehood. ..."
"... In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces, the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy. ..."
"... The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle. ..."
"... Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114 ..."
It was during the spring of 2006 that I began this project. I wanted
to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes
by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed
a political agenda.
As I researched the subject, I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared
by different circles within the American political class and promoted through
programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies,
activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia,
but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining
the nation's political reputation.
... ... ....
Although a critical analysis of Russia and its political system is entirely
legitimate, the issue is the balance of such analysis. Russia's role in the
world is growing, yet many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter
in the global arena. Preoccupied with international issues, such as Iraq and
Afghanistan, they find it difficult to accept that they now have to nego- tiate
and coordinate their international policies with a nation that only yesterday
seemed so weak, introspective, and dependent on the West. To these individuals,
Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the
United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most
precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown
increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated
that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism
in the former Soviet region.
And some in Moscow are tempted to provoke a much greater confrontation with
Western states. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia
tells us volumes about the United States' lack of preparation for the twenty-first
century's central challenges that include political instability, weapons proliferation,
and energy insecurity. Despite the dislike of Russia by a considerable number
of American elites, this attitude is far from universally shared. Many Americans
understand that Russia has gone a long way from communism and that the overwhelming
support for Putin's policies at home cannot be adequately explained by high
oil prices and the Kremlin's manipulation of the public-despite the frequent
assertions of Russophobic observers.
Balanced analysts are also aware that many Russian problems are typical difficulties
that nations encounter with state-building, and should not be presented as indicative
of Russia's "inherent drive" to autocracy or empire. As the United States and
Russia move further to the twenty-first century, it will be increasingly important
to redefine the relationship between the two nations in a mutually enriching
way.
Political and cultural phobias are, of course, not limited to those of an
anti-Russian nature. For instance, Russia has its share of America-phobia --
a phenomenon that I have partly researched in my book Whose World Order (Notre
Dame, 2004) and in several articles. Anti-American attitudes are strongly
present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies
of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies
tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often
commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's
political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies
by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly
more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse.
The Anti-Russian Lobby
When the facile optimism was disappointed, Western euphoria faded, and
Russophobia returned ... The new Russophobia was expressed not by the
governments, but in the statements of out-of-office politicians, the
publications of academic experts, the sensational writings of jour-
nalists, and the products of the entertainment industry. (Rodric Braithwaite,
Across the Moscow River, 2002)1
....
Russophobia is not a myth, not an invention of the Red-Brovvns, but
a real phenomenon of political thought in the main political think tanks
in the West . .. [T]he Yeltsin-Kozyrev's pro-U.S. "giveaway game" was
approved across the ocean. There is reason to say that the period in
ques- tion left the West with the illusion that Russia's role was to
serve Washington's interests and that it would remain such in the future.
(Sergei Mikoyati, International Affairs /October 2006j)2
This chapter formulates a theory of Russophobia and the anti-Russian lobby's
influence on the U.S. Russia policy. 1 discuss the Lobby's objec- tives, its
tactics to achieve them, the history of its formation and rise to prominence,
and the conditions that preserved its influence in the after- math of 9/11.1
argue that Russophobia has been important to American hegemonic elites in pressuring
Russia for economic and political conces- sions in the post-Cold War era.
1. Goals and Means
Objectives
The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen
America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies.
The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves,
and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective.
Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one
capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were
worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power.
In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military
and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people
and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues
across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device
for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some
the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to
others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international
politics.
According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this
"New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually
to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy
reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American
Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to
the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought
to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great
threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a
threat from arising in the first place."4
Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving
its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S.
interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system
sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared
by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival
in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned,
no other choice was available.
This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within
the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For
example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the
Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy
ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's
"grand failure."6
In his view, the Soviet "totalitarian" state was incapable of reform. Communism's
decline was therefore irreversible and inevitable. It would have made the system's
"practice and its dogma largely irrelevant to the human conditions," and communism
would be remembered as the twentieth century's "political and intellectual aberration."7
Other com- mentators argued the case for a global spread of Western values.
In 1990 Francis Fukuyama first formulated his triumphalist "end of history"
thesis, arguing a global ascendancy of the Western-style market democracy.®
... ... ...
Marc Plattner declared the emergence of a "world with one dominant principle
of legitimacy, democracy."9 When the Soviet system had indeed disintegrated,
the leading establishment journal Foreign Affairs pronounced that "the Soviet
system collapsed because of what it was, or more exactly, because of what it
was not. The West 'won' because of what the democracies were-because they were
free, prosperous and successful, because they did justice, or convincingly tried
to do so."10 Still others, such as Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to
proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which
only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the
world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity.11
In this context of U.S. triumphalism, at least some Russophobes expected
Russia to follow the American agenda. Still, they were worried that Russia may
still have surprises to offer and would recover as an enemy.12
Soon after the Soviet disintegration, Russia indeed surprised many, although
not quite in the sense of presenting a power challenge to the United States.
Rather, the surprise was the unexpectedly high degree of corruption, social
and economic decay, and the rapid disappointment of pro-Western reforms inside
Russia. By late 1992, the domestic economic situation was much worsened, as
the failure of Western-style shock ther- apy reform put most of the population
on the verge of poverty. Russia was preoccupied not with the projection of power
but with survival, as poverty, crime, and corruption degraded it from the status
of the indus- trialized country it once was. In the meantime, the economy was
largely controlled by and divided among former high-ranking party and state
officials and their associates. The so-called oligarchs, or a group of extremely
wealthy individuals, played the role of the new post-Soviet nomenklatura; they
influenced many key decisions of the state and suc- cessfully blocked the development
of small- and medium-sized business in the country.13 Under these conditions,
the Russophobes warned that the conditions in Russia may soon be ripe for the
rise of an anti-Western nationalist regime and that Russia was not fit for any
partnership with the United States.14
The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's
ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths
of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist,
autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new
conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's
unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15
... ... ...
The impact of structural and institutional factors is further reinforced
by policy factors, such as the divide within the policy community and the lack
of presidential leadership. Not infrequently, politicians tend to defend their
personal and corporate interests, and lobbying makes a difference in the absence
of firm policy commitments.
Experts recognize that the community of Russia watchers is split and that
the split, which goes all the way to the White House, has been responsible for
the absence of a coherent policy toward the country. During the period of
2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan
group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with
the Kremlin. The brain behind the invasion of Iraq, Cheney could not
tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide
US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91
Since November 2004, when the administration launched a review of its policy
on Russia,92 Cheney became a critically important voice in whom the Lobby found
its advocate. Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and, until November 2004,
Colin Powell opposed the vice president's approach, arguing for a softer and
more accommodating style in relations with Moscow.
President Bush generally sided with Rice and Powell, but he proved unable
to form a consistent Russia policy. Because of America's involvement in the
Middle East, Bush failed to provide the leadership committed to devising mutually
acceptable rules in relations with Russia that could have prevented the deterioration
in their relationship. Since the end of 2003, he also became doubtful about
the direction of Russia's domestic transformation.93 As a result, the promising
post-9/11 cooperation never materialized. The new cold war and the American
Sense of History
It's time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the
United States. (Bret Stephens, "Russia: The Enemy," The Wall Street Journal,
November 28, 2006)
If today's reality of Russian politics continues ... then there is the real
risk that Russia's leadership will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate.
(John Edwards and Jack Kemp, "We Need to Be Tough with Russia," International
Herald Tribune, July 12, 2006)
On Iran, Kosovo, U.S. missile defense, Iraq, the Caucasus and Caspian basin,
Ukraine-the list goes on-Russia puts itself in conflict with the U.S. and its
allies . . . here are worse models than the united Western stand that won the
Cold War the first time around.
("Putin Institutionalized," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007) In
order to derail the U.S.-Russia partnership, the Lobby has sought to revive
the image of Russias as an enemy of the United States. The Russophobic groups
have exploited important differences between the two countries' historical self-perceptions,
presenting those differences as incompatible.
1. Contested History
Two versions of history
The story of the Cold War as told from the U.S. perspective is about American
ideas of Western-style democracy as rescued from the Soviet threat of totalitarian
communism. Although scholars and politicians disagreed over the methods of responding
to the Soviet threat, they rarely questioned their underlying assumptions about
history and freedom.' It therefore should not come as surprise that many in
the United States have interpreted the end of the Cold War as a victory of the
Western freedom narrative. Celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure"-as
Zbigniew Brzezinski put it2-the American discourse assumed that from now on
there would be little resistance to freedom's worldwide progression. When Francis
Fukuyama offered his bold summary of these optimistic feelings and asserted
in a famous passage that "what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the
Cold War... but the end of history as such,"3 he meant to convey the disappearance
of an alternative to the familiar idea of free- dom, or "the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."4
In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty
and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it
is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important
attributes of sovereign statehood.
In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces,
the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal
and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy.
Russians formulated the narrative of independence centuries ago, as they successfully
withstood external invasions from Napoleon to Hitler. The defeat of the Nazi
regime was important to the Soviets because it legitimized their claims to continue
with the tradition of freedom as independence.
The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing
myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold
War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods
but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle.
This helps to understand why Russians could never agree with the Western
interpretation of the end of the Cold War. What they find missing from the U.S.
narrative is the tribute to Russia's ability to defend its freedom from expansionist
ambitions of larger powers. The Cold War too is viewed by many Russians as a
necessarily defensive response to the West's policies, and it is important that
even while occupying Eastern Europe, the Soviets never celebrated the occupation,
emphasizing instead the war vic- tory.6 The Russians officially admitted "moral
responsibility" and apolo- gized for the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.7
They may be prepared to fully recognize the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe,
but only in the context of the two sides' responsibility for the Cold War. Russians
also find it offensive that Western VE Day celebrations ignore the crucial contribution
of Soviet troops, even though none of the Allies, as one historian put it, "paid
dearer than the Soviet Union for the victory. Forty Private Ivans fell in battle
to every Private Ryan."8 Victory over Nazi Germany constitutes, as another Russian
wrote, "the only undisputable foundation of the national myth."9
If the two sides are to build foundations for a future partnership, the two
historical narratives must be bridged. First, it is important to recognize the
difficulty of negotiating a common meaning of freedom and accept that the idea
of freedom may vary greatly across nations. The urge for freedom may be universal,
but its social content is a specific product of national his- tories and local
circumstances. For instance, the American vision of democracy initially downplayed
the role of elections and emphasized selection by merit or meritocracy. Under
the influence of the Great Depression, the notion of democracy incorporated
a strong egalitarian and poverty-fighting component, and it was not until the
Cold War- and not without its influence-that democracy has become associated
with elections and pluralistic institutions.10 Second, it is essential to acknowledge
the two nations' mutual respon- sibility for the misunderstanding that has resulted
in the Cold War. A historically sensitive account will recognize that both sides
were thinking in terms of expanding a territorial space to protect their visions
of security. While the Soviets wanted to create a buffer zone to prevent a future
attack from Germany, the Americans believed in reconstructing the European continent
in accordance with their ideas of security and democracy. A mutual mistrust
of the two countries' leaders exacerbated the situation, making it ever more
difficult to prevent a full-fledged political confronta- tion. Western leaders
had reason to be suspicious of Stalin, who, in his turn, was driven by the perception
of the West's greed and by betrayals from the dubious Treaty of Versailles to
the appeasement of Hitler in Munich. Arrangements for the post-World War II
world made by Britain, the USSR, and the United States proved insufficient to
address these deep-seated suspicions.
In addition, most Eastern European states created as a result of the Versailles
Treaty were neither free nor democratic and collaborated with Nazi Germany in
its racist and expansionist policies. The European post-World War 1 security
system was not working properly, and it was only a matter of time before it
would have to be transformed.
Third, if an agreeable historical account is to emerge, it would have to
accept that the end of the Cold War was a product of mutually beneficial a second
Cold War, "it also does not want the reversal of the U.S. geopolitical gains
that it made in the decade or so after the end of the Cold War."112 Another
expert asked, "What possible explanation is there for the fact that today-at
a moment when both the U.S. and Russia face the common enemy of Islamist terrorism-hard-liners
within the Bush administration, and especially in the office of Vice President
Dick Cheney, are arguing for a new tough line against Moscow along the lines
of a scaled-down Cold War?"113
Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was
given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest
nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost
perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel
between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO
onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with
our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France
treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114
"... I wanted to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed a political agenda. ..."
"... I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared by different circles within the American political class and promoted through programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies, activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation's political reputation. ..."
"... To these individuals, Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism in the former Soviet region. ..."
"... Anti-American attitudes are strongly present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse. ..."
"... The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies. The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves, and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective. Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power. In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international politics. ..."
"... According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this "New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a threat from arising in the first place."4 ..."
"... Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S. interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned, no other choice was available. ..."
"... This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure."6 ..."
"... Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity ..."
"... The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist, autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15 ..."
"... During the period of 2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with the Kremlin. ..."
"... Cheney could not tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91 ..."
"... In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important attributes of sovereign statehood. ..."
"... In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces, the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy. ..."
"... The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle. ..."
"... Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114 ..."
It was during the spring of 2006 that I began this project. I wanted
to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes
by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed
a political agenda.
As I researched the subject, I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared
by different circles within the American political class and promoted through
programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies,
activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia,
but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining
the nation's political reputation.
... ... ....
Although a critical analysis of Russia and its political system is entirely
legitimate, the issue is the balance of such analysis. Russia's role in the
world is growing, yet many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter
in the global arena. Preoccupied with international issues, such as Iraq and
Afghanistan, they find it difficult to accept that they now have to nego- tiate
and coordinate their international policies with a nation that only yesterday
seemed so weak, introspective, and dependent on the West. To these individuals,
Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the
United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most
precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown
increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated
that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism
in the former Soviet region.
And some in Moscow are tempted to provoke a much greater confrontation with
Western states. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia
tells us volumes about the United States' lack of preparation for the twenty-first
century's central challenges that include political instability, weapons proliferation,
and energy insecurity. Despite the dislike of Russia by a considerable number
of American elites, this attitude is far from universally shared. Many Americans
understand that Russia has gone a long way from communism and that the overwhelming
support for Putin's policies at home cannot be adequately explained by high
oil prices and the Kremlin's manipulation of the public-despite the frequent
assertions of Russophobic observers.
Balanced analysts are also aware that many Russian problems are typical difficulties
that nations encounter with state-building, and should not be presented as indicative
of Russia's "inherent drive" to autocracy or empire. As the United States and
Russia move further to the twenty-first century, it will be increasingly important
to redefine the relationship between the two nations in a mutually enriching
way.
Political and cultural phobias are, of course, not limited to those of an
anti-Russian nature. For instance, Russia has its share of America-phobia --
a phenomenon that I have partly researched in my book Whose World Order (Notre
Dame, 2004) and in several articles. Anti-American attitudes are strongly
present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies
of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies
tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often
commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's
political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies
by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly
more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse.
The Anti-Russian Lobby
When the facile optimism was disappointed, Western euphoria faded, and
Russophobia returned ... The new Russophobia was expressed not by the
governments, but in the statements of out-of-office politicians, the
publications of academic experts, the sensational writings of jour-
nalists, and the products of the entertainment industry. (Rodric Braithwaite,
Across the Moscow River, 2002)1
....
Russophobia is not a myth, not an invention of the Red-Brovvns, but
a real phenomenon of political thought in the main political think tanks
in the West . .. [T]he Yeltsin-Kozyrev's pro-U.S. "giveaway game" was
approved across the ocean. There is reason to say that the period in
ques- tion left the West with the illusion that Russia's role was to
serve Washington's interests and that it would remain such in the future.
(Sergei Mikoyati, International Affairs /October 2006j)2
This chapter formulates a theory of Russophobia and the anti-Russian lobby's
influence on the U.S. Russia policy. 1 discuss the Lobby's objec- tives, its
tactics to achieve them, the history of its formation and rise to prominence,
and the conditions that preserved its influence in the after- math of 9/11.1
argue that Russophobia has been important to American hegemonic elites in pressuring
Russia for economic and political conces- sions in the post-Cold War era.
1. Goals and Means
Objectives
The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen
America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies.
The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves,
and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective.
Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one
capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were
worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power.
In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military
and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people
and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues
across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device
for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some
the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to
others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international
politics.
According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this
"New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually
to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy
reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American
Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to
the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought
to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great
threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a
threat from arising in the first place."4
Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving
its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S.
interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system
sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared
by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival
in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned,
no other choice was available.
This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within
the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For
example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the
Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy
ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's
"grand failure."6
In his view, the Soviet "totalitarian" state was incapable of reform. Communism's
decline was therefore irreversible and inevitable. It would have made the system's
"practice and its dogma largely irrelevant to the human conditions," and communism
would be remembered as the twentieth century's "political and intellectual aberration."7
Other com- mentators argued the case for a global spread of Western values.
In 1990 Francis Fukuyama first formulated his triumphalist "end of history"
thesis, arguing a global ascendancy of the Western-style market democracy.®
... ... ...
Marc Plattner declared the emergence of a "world with one dominant principle
of legitimacy, democracy."9 When the Soviet system had indeed disintegrated,
the leading establishment journal Foreign Affairs pronounced that "the Soviet
system collapsed because of what it was, or more exactly, because of what it
was not. The West 'won' because of what the democracies were-because they were
free, prosperous and successful, because they did justice, or convincingly tried
to do so."10 Still others, such as Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to
proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which
only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the
world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity.11
In this context of U.S. triumphalism, at least some Russophobes expected
Russia to follow the American agenda. Still, they were worried that Russia may
still have surprises to offer and would recover as an enemy.12
Soon after the Soviet disintegration, Russia indeed surprised many, although
not quite in the sense of presenting a power challenge to the United States.
Rather, the surprise was the unexpectedly high degree of corruption, social
and economic decay, and the rapid disappointment of pro-Western reforms inside
Russia. By late 1992, the domestic economic situation was much worsened, as
the failure of Western-style shock ther- apy reform put most of the population
on the verge of poverty. Russia was preoccupied not with the projection of power
but with survival, as poverty, crime, and corruption degraded it from the status
of the indus- trialized country it once was. In the meantime, the economy was
largely controlled by and divided among former high-ranking party and state
officials and their associates. The so-called oligarchs, or a group of extremely
wealthy individuals, played the role of the new post-Soviet nomenklatura; they
influenced many key decisions of the state and suc- cessfully blocked the development
of small- and medium-sized business in the country.13 Under these conditions,
the Russophobes warned that the conditions in Russia may soon be ripe for the
rise of an anti-Western nationalist regime and that Russia was not fit for any
partnership with the United States.14
The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's
ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths
of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist,
autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new
conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's
unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15
... ... ...
The impact of structural and institutional factors is further reinforced
by policy factors, such as the divide within the policy community and the lack
of presidential leadership. Not infrequently, politicians tend to defend their
personal and corporate interests, and lobbying makes a difference in the absence
of firm policy commitments.
Experts recognize that the community of Russia watchers is split and that
the split, which goes all the way to the White House, has been responsible for
the absence of a coherent policy toward the country. During the period of
2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan
group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with
the Kremlin. The brain behind the invasion of Iraq, Cheney could not
tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide
US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91
Since November 2004, when the administration launched a review of its policy
on Russia,92 Cheney became a critically important voice in whom the Lobby found
its advocate. Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and, until November 2004,
Colin Powell opposed the vice president's approach, arguing for a softer and
more accommodating style in relations with Moscow.
President Bush generally sided with Rice and Powell, but he proved unable
to form a consistent Russia policy. Because of America's involvement in the
Middle East, Bush failed to provide the leadership committed to devising mutually
acceptable rules in relations with Russia that could have prevented the deterioration
in their relationship. Since the end of 2003, he also became doubtful about
the direction of Russia's domestic transformation.93 As a result, the promising
post-9/11 cooperation never materialized. The new cold war and the American
Sense of History
It's time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the
United States. (Bret Stephens, "Russia: The Enemy," The Wall Street Journal,
November 28, 2006)
If today's reality of Russian politics continues ... then there is the real
risk that Russia's leadership will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate.
(John Edwards and Jack Kemp, "We Need to Be Tough with Russia," International
Herald Tribune, July 12, 2006)
On Iran, Kosovo, U.S. missile defense, Iraq, the Caucasus and Caspian basin,
Ukraine-the list goes on-Russia puts itself in conflict with the U.S. and its
allies . . . here are worse models than the united Western stand that won the
Cold War the first time around.
("Putin Institutionalized," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007) In
order to derail the U.S.-Russia partnership, the Lobby has sought to revive
the image of Russias as an enemy of the United States. The Russophobic groups
have exploited important differences between the two countries' historical self-perceptions,
presenting those differences as incompatible.
1. Contested History
Two versions of history
The story of the Cold War as told from the U.S. perspective is about American
ideas of Western-style democracy as rescued from the Soviet threat of totalitarian
communism. Although scholars and politicians disagreed over the methods of responding
to the Soviet threat, they rarely questioned their underlying assumptions about
history and freedom.' It therefore should not come as surprise that many in
the United States have interpreted the end of the Cold War as a victory of the
Western freedom narrative. Celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure"-as
Zbigniew Brzezinski put it2-the American discourse assumed that from now on
there would be little resistance to freedom's worldwide progression. When Francis
Fukuyama offered his bold summary of these optimistic feelings and asserted
in a famous passage that "what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the
Cold War... but the end of history as such,"3 he meant to convey the disappearance
of an alternative to the familiar idea of free- dom, or "the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."4
In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty
and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it
is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important
attributes of sovereign statehood.
In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces,
the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal
and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy.
Russians formulated the narrative of independence centuries ago, as they successfully
withstood external invasions from Napoleon to Hitler. The defeat of the Nazi
regime was important to the Soviets because it legitimized their claims to continue
with the tradition of freedom as independence.
The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing
myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold
War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods
but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle.
This helps to understand why Russians could never agree with the Western
interpretation of the end of the Cold War. What they find missing from the U.S.
narrative is the tribute to Russia's ability to defend its freedom from expansionist
ambitions of larger powers. The Cold War too is viewed by many Russians as a
necessarily defensive response to the West's policies, and it is important that
even while occupying Eastern Europe, the Soviets never celebrated the occupation,
emphasizing instead the war vic- tory.6 The Russians officially admitted "moral
responsibility" and apolo- gized for the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.7
They may be prepared to fully recognize the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe,
but only in the context of the two sides' responsibility for the Cold War. Russians
also find it offensive that Western VE Day celebrations ignore the crucial contribution
of Soviet troops, even though none of the Allies, as one historian put it, "paid
dearer than the Soviet Union for the victory. Forty Private Ivans fell in battle
to every Private Ryan."8 Victory over Nazi Germany constitutes, as another Russian
wrote, "the only undisputable foundation of the national myth."9
If the two sides are to build foundations for a future partnership, the two
historical narratives must be bridged. First, it is important to recognize the
difficulty of negotiating a common meaning of freedom and accept that the idea
of freedom may vary greatly across nations. The urge for freedom may be universal,
but its social content is a specific product of national his- tories and local
circumstances. For instance, the American vision of democracy initially downplayed
the role of elections and emphasized selection by merit or meritocracy. Under
the influence of the Great Depression, the notion of democracy incorporated
a strong egalitarian and poverty-fighting component, and it was not until the
Cold War- and not without its influence-that democracy has become associated
with elections and pluralistic institutions.10 Second, it is essential to acknowledge
the two nations' mutual respon- sibility for the misunderstanding that has resulted
in the Cold War. A historically sensitive account will recognize that both sides
were thinking in terms of expanding a territorial space to protect their visions
of security. While the Soviets wanted to create a buffer zone to prevent a future
attack from Germany, the Americans believed in reconstructing the European continent
in accordance with their ideas of security and democracy. A mutual mistrust
of the two countries' leaders exacerbated the situation, making it ever more
difficult to prevent a full-fledged political confronta- tion. Western leaders
had reason to be suspicious of Stalin, who, in his turn, was driven by the perception
of the West's greed and by betrayals from the dubious Treaty of Versailles to
the appeasement of Hitler in Munich. Arrangements for the post-World War II
world made by Britain, the USSR, and the United States proved insufficient to
address these deep-seated suspicions.
In addition, most Eastern European states created as a result of the Versailles
Treaty were neither free nor democratic and collaborated with Nazi Germany in
its racist and expansionist policies. The European post-World War 1 security
system was not working properly, and it was only a matter of time before it
would have to be transformed.
Third, if an agreeable historical account is to emerge, it would have to
accept that the end of the Cold War was a product of mutually beneficial a second
Cold War, "it also does not want the reversal of the U.S. geopolitical gains
that it made in the decade or so after the end of the Cold War."112 Another
expert asked, "What possible explanation is there for the fact that today-at
a moment when both the U.S. and Russia face the common enemy of Islamist terrorism-hard-liners
within the Bush administration, and especially in the office of Vice President
Dick Cheney, are arguing for a new tough line against Moscow along the lines
of a scaled-down Cold War?"113
Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was
given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest
nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost
perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel
between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO
onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with
our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France
treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114
The last paragraph torpedoes the rest of the article! If anyone deserves to be called a
"fatcat" and a member of the "US plutocrat class", it's Donald Trump! If that class is
seeking to "take back" the US from somebody, it can't possibly be Trump. He's one of them.
Isn't it more likely that they are trying to take it back from the "Russian plutocrat
class" of gangsters behind Vladimir Putin and their American supporters? Trying to take
one's country back from foreigners, or prevent foreigners from getting control of it, is
hardly an ignoble enterprise! Certainly not where I come from!
The analysis of the UVA Amsterdam professor Laslo Maracs is that Trump, and his rich
friends, understand that the USA is no longer capable of maintaining an empire, and that war
for enlarging the empire is even more suicide than trying to maintain the empire.
Already around 1910 the British empire no longer could maintain the two fleet standard,
Obama had to lower the USA two war standard to one and a half.
What a half war accomplishes we see in Syria.
WWII destroyed the British empire, as the British said after the war, poor, after Truman
ended LendLease overnight, less food than in the war 'we won the war, and lost the
peace'.
So the fact that Trump is rich, and has rich friends, does not mean he's part of the whole
rich USA clique.
The question remains: Is Washington prepared to accept its defeat and acknowledge that it
has lost control of the world and pull out of Syria?
US political "top" certainly is not ready since they don't have competent enough people to
recognize a disaster before it buries them. US military people certainly know the score but, as
history teaches, in the times when US military has bad news--it is next to impossible to
communicate it to the political top. In general, American "elites" do not have a grasp of the
nature of the military power nor of its application.
That is why they are dangerous, not to mention that many of them have a proud history of draft
dodging and egos larger than cathedral.
This all, against the background of a dramatic, precipitous really, decline of the always not
very "intellectual" level of American power elites in the last 20 or so years. But then again,
unprecedented anti-Russian hysteria in the West is a good indication that they are cornered.
The world is heading toward pluralism. . . .The question remains: Is Washington prepared
to accept its defeat and acknowledge that it has lost control of the world and pull out of
Syria?
In the recently published National Defense Strategy there is no hint that the United States
will accept decline or even a multipolar world. "The Department of Defense will remain the
preeminent military power in the world, ensure the balance of power remains in our favor, and
advance an international order that is most conducive to our security and prosperity."
That especially applies to the Middle East. "We will foster a stable and secure Middle East
that denies safe havens for terrorists, is not dominated by any power hostile to the United
States, and that contributes to stable global energy markets and secure trade routes," the
National Defense Strategy states. So the US strategy continues to be oriented toward world domination, and in fact has little to
do with national defense/security. Specifically it involves a larger Navy and Army. The most recent budget provides some of the
additional funds required for that, in preparation for a naval war against China and a ground
war against Russia, perhaps simultaneously.
[The Pentagon hasn't won a war in generations, even against rag-tag civilian left-behinds,
but they can dream.]
The top Pentagon general Dunford gave an indication of the future when he was asked about
reserve forces, which are necessary because of battlefield "attrition," during a senate hearing
in September.
Q: Do you believe we must also have a sufficient strategic and operational reserve, national
mobilization capability, and robust defense industrial base to provide a second echelon of
follow-on forces if a contingency arises in a particular region, especially against a near
peer, great power state?
A: Yes. Any conflict with a near-peer competitor will require follow-on forces. In a major
contingency, our formations will almost certainly face battlefield attrition. To sustain a
fight and see it through to conclusion on favorable terms, we will have to have additional
forces available to maintain the initiative. This will assuredly draw on our strategic and
operational reserves, test our national mobilization capability, and place demands on our
defense industrial base as spare parts, end items, and critical munitions are consumed or
destroyed.
"the US has gone from a reasonably free country where civil liberties were protected under the law, to a state-of-the-art
surveillance state ruled by invisible elites who see the American people as an obstacle to their global ambitions"
One of the clearest telltales that indicate just how far we have deviated from our former "reasonably free country" is how
today, the wealthy, elite corporate and civic leaders have isolated themselves from the general community. Formerly anyone could
find the address of his community's leaders because they lived scattered amongst the common people. Even Who's Who gave out the
city in which a prominent person lived and from there one could consult the telephone directory.
Today, the elite have wiped clean any public trace of where they live. Their phone numbers are not published in a public telephone
directory. It's as though they don't want their fellow citizens to know their whereabouts. Why is that?
As I say, there's no clearer indication that our leaders no longer identify with the people of the communities they rule. Either
they are afraid--and justifiably so because of their treasonous behavior--or they are just plain disdainful--also likely, since
the two are not mutually exclusive. Their fear is the opposite side of the coin of their disdain but at any rate, it's an acknowledgement
by them that the sense of community knitted together by common bonds, is gone.
everything you say is true and it does not matter unless you are an American.
our elites along with the english have been ruling the world for 5 centuries and are now in hysteria because all that is now
drawing to a close. without the usa military acting as a global enforcer for elites wet dreams they remain wet dreams.
Russia now technically has thwarted our elites from using muscle. China's economic rise will supplant the usa within a decade
and by the 2030′s the financial center of the world will move to shanghai from new york/london.
The entire history of mankind speaks the same tale. once and empire collapses it NEVER recovers its former status and power.
the anglosaxon empire is now running on empty ergo the media hysteria of russia this and that. even the serfs ..thats you and
i ..can no longer be trusted to vote the way we are told.
the msm is dying as the go to organization for people control. we no longer live in the 20th century so the iron fist of ruling
is pretty much out as an option.
the elites have their wealth but their power at least here is on the downswing.
ideas and opinion are how societies are controlled and the elite orgs for disseminating these things have become embarassingly
overt which makes their effectivness drop towards zero . hence the hysteria.
when you have nothing to sell or nothing anyone with a brain will purchase you have to appeal to irrational emotions but that
is a futile game plan because maintaining that level of frantic enrgy is exhausting and collapses in time of its own accord.
all the rising east has to do is watch us eat ourselves to death. they have to do nothing aggressive towards our deep state
idiots in power do it for them.
at the end of the day americans will still be stuck with the swamp until it collapses into bankruptcy once the dollar loses
its reserve status still some years ahead . by 2030.
once the dollars loses its status america becomes regular nation. how we pick up the pieces after that will be the real story.
Germany - if I remember correctly - was instrumental on behalf of her client state Croatia
in persuading the U S to acquise in the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Many could see at the time that this would unravel all the balances put into place after the
travail of World War 2 . So it is proving to be . The German peoples' for whatever reasons have
a history of 'overeach'. On one hand the Germans are now - after millennium - within settled
borders but the political and economic wisdom and patience still seems lacking .
The last paragraph torpedoes the rest of the article! If anyone deserves to be called a
"fatcat" and a member of the "US plutocrat class", it's Donald Trump! If that class is
seeking to "take back" the US from somebody, it can't possibly be Trump. He's one of them.
Isn't it more likely that they are trying to take it back from the "Russian plutocrat
class" of gangsters behind Vladimir Putin and their American supporters? Trying to take
one's country back from foreigners, or prevent foreigners from getting control of it, is
hardly an ignoble enterprise! Certainly not where I come from!
The analysis of the UVA Amsterdam professor Laslo Maracs is that Trump, and his rich
friends, understand that the USA is no longer capable of maintaining an empire, and that war
for enlarging the empire is even more suicide than trying to maintain the empire.
Already around 1910 the British empire no longer could maintain the two fleet standard,
Obama had to lower the USA two war standard to one and a half.
What a half war accomplishes we see in Syria.
WWII destroyed the British empire, as the British said after the war, poor, after Truman
ended LendLease overnight, less food than in the war 'we won the war, and lost the
peace'.
So the fact that Trump is rich, and has rich friends, does not mean he's part of the whole
rich USA clique.
The question remains: Is Washington prepared to accept its defeat and acknowledge that it
has lost control of the world and pull out of Syria?
US political "top" certainly is not ready since they don't have competent enough people to
recognize a disaster before it buries them. US military people certainly know the score but, as
history teaches, in the times when US military has bad news--it is next to impossible to
communicate it to the political top. In general, American "elites" do not have a grasp of the
nature of the military power nor of its application.
That is why they are dangerous, not to mention that many of them have a proud history of draft
dodging and egos larger than cathedral.
This all, against the background of a dramatic, precipitous really, decline of the always not
very "intellectual" level of American power elites in the last 20 or so years. But then again,
unprecedented anti-Russian hysteria in the West is a good indication that they are cornered.
The world is heading toward pluralism. . . .The question remains: Is Washington prepared
to accept its defeat and acknowledge that it has lost control of the world and pull out of
Syria?
In the recently published National Defense Strategy there is no hint that the United States
will accept decline or even a multipolar world. "The Department of Defense will remain the
preeminent military power in the world, ensure the balance of power remains in our favor, and
advance an international order that is most conducive to our security and prosperity."
That especially applies to the Middle East. "We will foster a stable and secure Middle East
that denies safe havens for terrorists, is not dominated by any power hostile to the United
States, and that contributes to stable global energy markets and secure trade routes," the
National Defense Strategy states. So the US strategy continues to be oriented toward world domination, and in fact has little to
do with national defense/security. Specifically it involves a larger Navy and Army. The most recent budget provides some of the
additional funds required for that, in preparation for a naval war against China and a ground
war against Russia, perhaps simultaneously.
[The Pentagon hasn't won a war in generations, even against rag-tag civilian left-behinds,
but they can dream.]
The top Pentagon general Dunford gave an indication of the future when he was asked about
reserve forces, which are necessary because of battlefield "attrition," during a senate hearing
in September.
Q: Do you believe we must also have a sufficient strategic and operational reserve, national
mobilization capability, and robust defense industrial base to provide a second echelon of
follow-on forces if a contingency arises in a particular region, especially against a near
peer, great power state?
A: Yes. Any conflict with a near-peer competitor will require follow-on forces. In a major
contingency, our formations will almost certainly face battlefield attrition. To sustain a
fight and see it through to conclusion on favorable terms, we will have to have additional
forces available to maintain the initiative. This will assuredly draw on our strategic and
operational reserves, test our national mobilization capability, and place demands on our
defense industrial base as spare parts, end items, and critical munitions are consumed or
destroyed.
"the US has gone from a reasonably free country where civil liberties were protected under the law, to a state-of-the-art
surveillance state ruled by invisible elites who see the American people as an obstacle to their global ambitions"
One of the clearest telltales that indicate just how far we have deviated from our former "reasonably free country" is how
today, the wealthy, elite corporate and civic leaders have isolated themselves from the general community. Formerly anyone could
find the address of his community's leaders because they lived scattered amongst the common people. Even Who's Who gave out the
city in which a prominent person lived and from there one could consult the telephone directory.
Today, the elite have wiped clean any public trace of where they live. Their phone numbers are not published in a public telephone
directory. It's as though they don't want their fellow citizens to know their whereabouts. Why is that?
As I say, there's no clearer indication that our leaders no longer identify with the people of the communities they rule. Either
they are afraid--and justifiably so because of their treasonous behavior--or they are just plain disdainful--also likely, since
the two are not mutually exclusive. Their fear is the opposite side of the coin of their disdain but at any rate, it's an acknowledgement
by them that the sense of community knitted together by common bonds, is gone.
everything you say is true and it does not matter unless you are an American.
our elites along with the english have been ruling the world for 5 centuries and are now in hysteria because all that is now
drawing to a close. without the usa military acting as a global enforcer for elites wet dreams they remain wet dreams.
Russia now technically has thwarted our elites from using muscle. China's economic rise will supplant the usa within a decade
and by the 2030′s the financial center of the world will move to shanghai from new york/london.
The entire history of mankind speaks the same tale. once and empire collapses it NEVER recovers its former status and power.
the anglosaxon empire is now running on empty ergo the media hysteria of russia this and that. even the serfs ..thats you and
i ..can no longer be trusted to vote the way we are told.
the msm is dying as the go to organization for people control. we no longer live in the 20th century so the iron fist of ruling
is pretty much out as an option.
the elites have their wealth but their power at least here is on the downswing.
ideas and opinion are how societies are controlled and the elite orgs for disseminating these things have become embarassingly
overt which makes their effectivness drop towards zero . hence the hysteria.
when you have nothing to sell or nothing anyone with a brain will purchase you have to appeal to irrational emotions but that
is a futile game plan because maintaining that level of frantic enrgy is exhausting and collapses in time of its own accord.
all the rising east has to do is watch us eat ourselves to death. they have to do nothing aggressive towards our deep state
idiots in power do it for them.
at the end of the day americans will still be stuck with the swamp until it collapses into bankruptcy once the dollar loses
its reserve status still some years ahead . by 2030.
once the dollars loses its status america becomes regular nation. how we pick up the pieces after that will be the real story.
Germany - if I remember correctly - was instrumental on behalf of her client state Croatia
in persuading the U S to acquise in the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Many could see at the time that this would unravel all the balances put into place after the
travail of World War 2 . So it is proving to be . The German peoples' for whatever reasons have
a history of 'overeach'. On one hand the Germans are now - after millennium - within settled
borders but the political and economic wisdom and patience still seems lacking .
Firs of all Mark Galeotti is very weak. That's incurable.
I want your money poor Pinocchio -- that the new slogan of May government. Kind of
compensation for Brexit losses at Russian oligarchs expense.
What Russophobe Galiotti does not understand is that this another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. As soon as you
start to distriminate between oligarche neoliberalism stops and nationalism starts
Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing Putin's work for him ..."
"... He has launched a " de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31 billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's $154 billion . ..."
"... The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to undermine the regime in Moscow. ..."
This is also a project in which further international cooperation would be crucial. Chasing
that money and the influence it buys out of London but seeing it find comfortable new homes in
Paris, Frankfurt, and New York is only half the job done and will do little to chasten Moscow.
Although it will be difficult to persuade others to turn away tempting business, the unexpected
support Britain is receiving from European Union partners in particular suggests this may be an
opportune moment to convince them that in its experience this money is too toxic to be safe and
that this is a Western, not just a British, problem.
Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing
Putin's work for him . Since 2014, the Russian economy has been in the doldrums.
Furthermore, Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to
see elites stash their money outside his grasp.
Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to see elites
stash their money outside his grasp.
He has launched a "
de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and
minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as
a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31
billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's
$154 billion .
The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be
an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to
undermine the regime in Moscow. Overt efforts at regime change would be dangerous and
likely counterproductive, but London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to
weaken the Kremlin
London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to weaken the Kremlin
, in the hope that this may tame its appetite for playing confrontational
geopolitics.
... ... ...
Mark Galeotti is a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs Prague and a visiting fellow with
the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Firs of all Mark Galeotti is very weak. That's incurable.
I want your money poor Pinocchio -- that the new slogan of May government. Kind of
compensation for Brexit losses at Russian oligarchs expense.
What Russophobe Galiotti does not understand is that this another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. As soon as you
start to distriminate between oligarche neoliberalism stops and nationalism starts
Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing Putin's work for him ..."
"... He has launched a " de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31 billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's $154 billion . ..."
"... The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to undermine the regime in Moscow. ..."
This is also a project in which further international cooperation would be crucial. Chasing
that money and the influence it buys out of London but seeing it find comfortable new homes in
Paris, Frankfurt, and New York is only half the job done and will do little to chasten Moscow.
Although it will be difficult to persuade others to turn away tempting business, the unexpected
support Britain is receiving from European Union partners in particular suggests this may be an
opportune moment to convince them that in its experience this money is too toxic to be safe and
that this is a Western, not just a British, problem.
Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing
Putin's work for him . Since 2014, the Russian economy has been in the doldrums.
Furthermore, Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to
see elites stash their money outside his grasp.
Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to see elites
stash their money outside his grasp.
He has launched a "
de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and
minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as
a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31
billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's
$154 billion .
The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be
an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to
undermine the regime in Moscow. Overt efforts at regime change would be dangerous and
likely counterproductive, but London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to
weaken the Kremlin
London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to weaken the Kremlin
, in the hope that this may tame its appetite for playing confrontational
geopolitics.
... ... ...
Mark Galeotti is a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs Prague and a visiting fellow with
the European Council on Foreign Relations.
So how do you reform the Secret Police? It is an interesting idea. The National Security
State has locked out any outside criticism and made reform almost impossible.
Then, there is also the whole indoctrination process. From hire to retire, these three
letter agencies indoctrinate their employees with esprit de corps and being a team player
with the greatest enthusiasm for the mission.
Claim made by high level persons in the link, suggest need for deep investigation into who in
the USA is getting paid to deliver or make available American taxpayer paid for resources to
foreign payee governments conducting terrorism and destabilization programs?
John Brennan is a propaganda whore for the family that owns Comcast. Comcast runs NBC. I
would call them the Roberts family, but none of them look like Henry Fonda, so I won't. I
don't dare speculate what their real name is.
Mike Morell is a propaganda whore for the family that owns Viacom. Viacom runs CBS. I
don't care how convoluted those shysters made the exact corporate control of CBS, they run
it. The family name of these nasty Viacom shysters ain't their real name either.
President Trump should have declared war on the corporate propaganda apparatus and the
Deep State on day number one of his administration. Trump let the shysters who run the
corporate media and the treasonous rats in the Deep State off the hook.
President Trump won the GOP presidential primary and the presidency itself because Trump
promised to put the safety, security and sovereignty of America first. The largest vote
getter in terms of specific issues was the IMMIGRATION issue. Trump had the chance to fire
every damn treasonous rat in the Deep State and he didn't do it. Trump betrayed his voters
who wanted immigration reduced and illegal aliens deported.
President Trump should face a GOP presidential primary challenger. Maybe that will force
Trump to remove the Deep State, remove the current controllers of the corporate media and put
America first.
Trump should also call for an immigration moratorium and begin deporting all illegal
aliens immediately.
Trump's problems with the corporate media and the Deep State stem from the fact that Trump
didn't immediately remove them when he had the chance. Trump's voter base was more than ready
for a "burn the boats on the beach" battle plan to defend the United States against the
treasonous rats in the Deep State and the anti-White, anti-Christian shyster rats in the
corporate media.
"He [Brennan] said that the U.S. President is 'afraid of the president of Russia' and
that the Kremlin 'may have something on him personally.' "
Brennan is PROJECTING.
They have the goods on HIM, and will squeeze out of him every last second of influence
operations as long as he draws breath. Brennan will never be able to get off the HAMSTER
WHEEL alive.
More definitive is Mr. Giraldi's identifying him as a "possible war criminal."
Americans are pragmatic people. Identifying John Brennan as a so-called "war criminal"
because he was involved in all the extraneous crap the American Empire is pulling overseas
won't get the interest of ordinary Americans. Calling John Brennan a "propaganda whore" for
the family that controls Comcast will pique their interest.
I would suggest that John Brennan could be politically damaged the most by stating that
John Brennan supports open borders mass immigration. John Brennan and the rest of the Deep
State are dangerous to Americans because they all support open borders mass immigration. The
corporate media all supports mass immigration.
Over 60 million of us voted for Trump because Trump said he would stop the unnecessary
overseas wars, reduce immigration and scrap the sovereignty-sapping trade deal scams. We
voted for Trump to make the American Empire act more like a republic. We're stuck with the
American Empire until it croaks or is croaked in turn. And the empires all turn into rust
again.
The treasonous rats in the American Empire's Deep State all push nation-wrecking mass
immigration.
But was it CIA or DIA that helped to count Trump votes?
Hmmm, let's see here.
Counted Trump votes but not Clinton's?
Counted but reduced the number of Trump votes?
Counted all of the votes, but inflated Clinton's?
Successfully hacked the voting machines in some states to inflate Clinton votes and deflate
Trump votes?
How Brennon came to power, should draw questions. Was the dethroning of Gen. David Petraeus,
as CIA chief, a palace coup? Was Brennen spying on Petraeus? Was the NSA tapping his phones?
Did the idea that a military man was heading the CIA, anathema to the institution – so
they got rid of him?
Just how much actual power does the CIA have in the American permanent Deep State?
Congress is NO check on the CIA – all the politicians on the intel security
committees are handpicked dedicated worshipers.
The CIA is the most anti democracy organization on the planet. From its beginning, it has
played with, subverted, and toppled democracies and sovereign governments. Today it
assonates, tortures, and bombs people around the world. (Has Trump given them a free
hand?)
The commie cold war is over – let's not start another one. The CIA's covert
activities must stop.
Within a week after Brennan's 'routine' visit in April 2014 to the Ukraine the Ukrainian army
launched a civil war. That was within 2 weeks of the CIA instigated coup an the end of
February 2014.
"... In addition to expelling the diplomats, Trump ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington. The decision cited the consulate's proximity to a US submarine base and to Boeing production facilities, implying the diplomats were really intelligence operatives. ..."
"... That was echoed by White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, who told reporters the expulsion is aimed at "significantly degrading their intelligence capabilities around the world, not just in the US." ..."
"... "coordinated with NATO allies," ..."
"... "brazen and reckless" ..."
"... "highly likely" ..."
"... "Thousand-year Reich" ..."
"... "joined at the hip" ..."
"... "entangling alliances," ..."
"... "blindly follow the principle of Euro-Atlantic unity at the expense of common sense, the rules of civilized state-to-state dialogue and the principles of international law," ..."
"... "up to the Russian government and up to Putin," ..."
"... "special relationship" ..."
"... "What we are witnessing now is part of a long-term program of unbridled Russophobia," ..."
"... "what took so long" ..."
"... "Russian oligarchs" ..."
"... "The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States, ..."
The decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats suggests that President Donald Trump is either
following the siren call of 'entangling alliances,' or taking the lead in escalating the
conflict with Moscow to appease domestic critics. Not only did Trump's order affect more than
twice as many diplomats as the March 14 move by London, it accounts for more than half of the
total Russian diplomats expelled by various US allies on Monday. Monday's action is the biggest
expulsion of alleged "intelligence officers" since the Cold War and the largest in US
history, according to US ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman.
Though Trump campaigned on the "America First" foreign policy , openly
critical of the nation-building and "humanitarian" interventions his predecessors engaged in,
little of that remains after the first year of his presidency. The media and the opposition
Democrats appear to have buttonholed the president with never-ending accusations that he is
somehow "soft" on Russia.
In reality, the current administration has taken the hostility toward Moscow, inherited from
Barack Obama's second term, and turned it up a notch, from pressuring Russian media to register
as foreign agents and approving the sale of anti-tank missiles to
Ukraine, to expelling more Russian diplomats and shutting down consulates
.
In addition to expelling the diplomats, Trump ordered the closure of the Russian consulate
in Seattle, Washington. The decision cited the consulate's proximity to a US submarine base and
to Boeing production facilities, implying the diplomats were really intelligence
operatives.
That was echoed by White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, who told reporters the
expulsion is aimed at "significantly degrading their intelligence capabilities around the
world, not just in the US."
Shah said the move was "coordinated with NATO allies," and represented a US
response to Russia's "brazen and reckless" actions, namely, the alleged nerve agent
attack that reportedly injured former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury,
UK, three weeks ago.
16 EU states now expelling 33 Russian diplos
🇩🇪 Germany 4
🇵🇱 Poland 4
🇨🇵 France 4
🇨🇿 Czech 3
🇱🇹 Lithuania 3
🇮🇹 Italy 2
🇩🇰 Denmark 2
🇳🇱 Netherlands 2
🇪🇸 Spain 2
🇱🇻 Latvia 1
🇫🇮 Finland 1
🇪🇪 Estonia 1
🇷🇴 Romania 1
🇸🇪 Sweden 1
🇭🇷 Croatia 1
🇭🇺 Hungary 1
British authorities have asserted that Russia was "highly likely" to have been
behind the incident, but have refused to provide any evidence to back up Prime Minister Theresa
May and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson's words. Johnson even went so far as to compare Russian
President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler - twice! -
though it was Russia that carried the disproportionate burden in defeating Hitler's
"Thousand-year Reich" in the Second World War.
On March 14, May ordered the expulsion of 23 Russian
diplomats. Russia retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats, as well as
shutting down the consulate in St. Petersburg and British Council operations in Russia.
Seasoned observers of international relations might note that it is usually Britain that
follows the US lead – whether in the 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, or the 2011 regime change operation in Libya – and not the other way around. Yet,
according to White House's Shah, the US is "joined at the hip" with the UK on this.
What gives?
This needs to be emphasized. The majority of the EU countries did not join in this mass
expulsion. As for those that did, expulsions were mostly pro forma, undertaken in order to
keep the British happy. Why then the wildly disproportionate response from Trump? https://t.co/4FldvIS80W
America's first president, George Washington, warned way back in 1796 of the danger of
"entangling alliances," which would draw the newly created country into foreign wars
on behalf of allied governments. Such alliances would also lead to poor relations with other
nations and distort US policies to favor the wishes of its allies over the will of the American
people.
Yet today's US policymakers, from the highest officials of the Trump administration to the
NeverTrump think-tanks, treat it as an article of faith that the US is strong because it has
entangling alliances with countries all over the world, and a military presence all over the
planet.
Washington and other allies of London "blindly follow the principle of Euro-Atlantic
unity at the expense of common sense, the rules of civilized state-to-state dialogue and the
principles of international law," the Russian Foreign Ministry said , condemning the expulsions.
Shah's comments, that the US relationship with Russia is entirely "up to the Russian
government and up to Putin," as if Washington had no agency in the matter, certainly seems
to suggest that Trump is all tangled up in the "special relationship" with London.
However, there is also the possibility that Trump or some of his advisers are pursuing
hostility towards Moscow in order to counter the narrative of 'Russian collusion' – which
originated from the Hillary Clinton campaign after the humiliating loss in the 2016 election,
and continues to be pushed by many in the US media and the Democratic party.
"What we are witnessing now is part of a long-term program of unbridled
Russophobia," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Rossiya-1 TV.
Reporters covering the White House presented a good example on Monday. In the rare moments
when they digressed from discussing Trump's alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels,
reporters mostly wanted to know "what took so long" to expel the diplomats and why
more is not being done against Russia. CNN's Jim Sciutto finally got a question, only to demand
more sanctions against "Russian oligarchs" and Putin personally.
No matter what Trump does against Russia, it fails to mollify his critics, who see evidence
of his "collusion" with Moscow in absolutely everything.
Closing Russia's consulate in Seattle hurts Americans in our Northwest who want to visit
Russia, not Putin's oligarchs. Typical misdirection by Trump Administration.
Trump didn't have an option to keep the 60 Russian spies posing as diplomats in the US,
but I guarantee he looked for one. He also hasn't criticized Putin or implemented all of the
sanctions Congress passed against Russia. Trump's a traitor & shouldn't be president.
#ImpeachTrump
Whatever the intent behind Monday's decision, its timing and execution were certainly
problematic. The expulsion of diplomats came as Russia was collectively mourning the deaths of
64 people, many of them children , in
a mall fire in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. Adding insult to injury sounds like really poor
diplomacy, no matter who's behind it.
Then again, as the former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali noted in his 1999
memoir, Washington sees no need for diplomacy when power will do.
"The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States, " wrote
Boutros-Ghali.
Authored Among
Western political leaders there is not an ounce of integrity or morality . The Western print
and TV media is dishonest and corrupt beyond repair. Yet the Russian government persists in its
fantasy of "working with Russia's Western partners." The only way Russia can work with crooks
is to become a crook. Is that what the Russian government wants?
Finian
Cunningham notes the absurdity in the political and media uproar over Trump (belatedly)
telephoning Putin to congratulate him on his reelection with 77 percent of the vote, a show of
public approval that no Western political leader could possibly attain. The crazed US senator
from Arizona called the person with the largest majority vote of our time "a dictator." Yet a
real blood-soaked dictator from Saudi Arabia is feted at the White House and fawned over by the
president of the United States.
The Western politicians and presstitutes are morally outraged over an alleged poisoning,
unsupported by any evidence, of a former spy of no consequence on orders by the president of
Russia himself. These kind of insane insults thrown at the leader of the world's most powerful
military nation -- and Russia is a nation, unlike the mongrel Western countries -- raise the
chances of nuclear Armageddon beyond the risks during the 20th century's Cold War. The insane
fools making these unsupported accusations show total disregard for all life on earth. Yet they
regard themselves as the salt of the earth and as "exceptional, indispensable" people.
Think about the alleged poisoning of Skirpal by Russia. What can this be other than an
orchestrated effort to demonize the president of Russia? How can the West be so outraged over
the death of a former double-agent, that is, a deceptive person, and completely indifferent to
the millions of peoples destroyed by the West in the 21st century alone. Where is the outrage
among Western peoples over the massive deaths for which the West, acting through its Saudi
agent, is responsible in Yemen? Where is the Western outrage among Western peoples over the
deaths in Syria? The deaths in Libya, in Somalia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan? Where is the
outrage in the West over the constant Western interference in the internal affairs of other
countries? How many times has Washington overthrown a democratically-elected government in
Honduras and reinstalled a Washington puppet?
The corruption in the West extends beyond politicians, presstitutes, and an insouciant
public to experts. When the ridiculous Condi Rice, national security adviser to president
George W. Bush, spoke of Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction sending up a
nuclear cloud over an American city, experts did not laugh her out of court. The chance of any
such event was precisely zero and every expert knew it, but the corrupt experts held their
tongues. If they spoke the truth, they knew that they would not get on TV, would not get a
government grant, would be out of the running for a government appointment. So they accepted
the absurd lie designed to justify an American invasion that destroyed a country.
This is the West. There is nothing but lies and indifference to the deaths of others. The
only outrage is orchestrated and directed against a target: the Taliban, Saddam Hussein,
Gaddafi, Iran, Assad, Russia and Putin, and against reformist leaders in Latin America. The
targets for Western outrage are always those who act independently of Washington or who are no
longer useful to Washington's purposes.
Orchestrations this blatant demonstrate that Western governments have no respect for the
intelligence of their peoples. That Western governments get away with these fantastic lies
indicates that the governments are immune to accountability. Even if accountability were
possible, there is no sign that Western peoples are capable of holding their governments
accountable. As Washington drives the world to nuclear war, where are the protests? The only
protest is brainwashed school children protesting the National Rifle Association and the Second
Amendment.
Western democracy is a hoax. Consider Catalonia. The people voted for independence and were
denounced for doing so by European politicians. The Spanish government invaded Catalonia
alleging that the popular referendum, in which people expressed their opinion about their own
future, was illegal. Catalonian leaders are in prison awaiting trial, except for Carles
Puigdemont who escaped to Belgium. Now Germany has captured
him on his return to Belgium from Finland where he lectured at the University of Hesinki
and is holding him in jail for a Spanish government that bears more resemblance to Francisco
Franco than to democracy. The European Union itself is a conspiracy against democracy.
The success of Western propaganda in creating non-existent virtues for itself is the
greatest public relations success in history. Tags Politics
So how do you reform the Secret Police? It is an interesting idea. The National Security
State has locked out any outside criticism and made reform almost impossible.
Then, there is also the whole indoctrination process. From hire to retire, these three
letter agencies indoctrinate their employees with esprit de corps and being a team player
with the greatest enthusiasm for the mission.
Claim made by high level persons in the link, suggest need for deep investigation into who in
the USA is getting paid to deliver or make available American taxpayer paid for resources to
foreign payee governments conducting terrorism and destabilization programs?
John Brennan is a propaganda whore for the family that owns Comcast. Comcast runs NBC. I
would call them the Roberts family, but none of them look like Henry Fonda, so I won't. I
don't dare speculate what their real name is.
Mike Morell is a propaganda whore for the family that owns Viacom. Viacom runs CBS. I
don't care how convoluted those shysters made the exact corporate control of CBS, they run
it. The family name of these nasty Viacom shysters ain't their real name either.
President Trump should have declared war on the corporate propaganda apparatus and the
Deep State on day number one of his administration. Trump let the shysters who run the
corporate media and the treasonous rats in the Deep State off the hook.
President Trump won the GOP presidential primary and the presidency itself because Trump
promised to put the safety, security and sovereignty of America first. The largest vote
getter in terms of specific issues was the IMMIGRATION issue. Trump had the chance to fire
every damn treasonous rat in the Deep State and he didn't do it. Trump betrayed his voters
who wanted immigration reduced and illegal aliens deported.
President Trump should face a GOP presidential primary challenger. Maybe that will force
Trump to remove the Deep State, remove the current controllers of the corporate media and put
America first.
Trump should also call for an immigration moratorium and begin deporting all illegal
aliens immediately.
Trump's problems with the corporate media and the Deep State stem from the fact that Trump
didn't immediately remove them when he had the chance. Trump's voter base was more than ready
for a "burn the boats on the beach" battle plan to defend the United States against the
treasonous rats in the Deep State and the anti-White, anti-Christian shyster rats in the
corporate media.
"He [Brennan] said that the U.S. President is 'afraid of the president of Russia' and
that the Kremlin 'may have something on him personally.' "
Brennan is PROJECTING.
They have the goods on HIM, and will squeeze out of him every last second of influence
operations as long as he draws breath. Brennan will never be able to get off the HAMSTER
WHEEL alive.
More definitive is Mr. Giraldi's identifying him as a "possible war criminal."
Americans are pragmatic people. Identifying John Brennan as a so-called "war criminal"
because he was involved in all the extraneous crap the American Empire is pulling overseas
won't get the interest of ordinary Americans. Calling John Brennan a "propaganda whore" for
the family that controls Comcast will pique their interest.
I would suggest that John Brennan could be politically damaged the most by stating that
John Brennan supports open borders mass immigration. John Brennan and the rest of the Deep
State are dangerous to Americans because they all support open borders mass immigration. The
corporate media all supports mass immigration.
Over 60 million of us voted for Trump because Trump said he would stop the unnecessary
overseas wars, reduce immigration and scrap the sovereignty-sapping trade deal scams. We
voted for Trump to make the American Empire act more like a republic. We're stuck with the
American Empire until it croaks or is croaked in turn. And the empires all turn into rust
again.
The treasonous rats in the American Empire's Deep State all push nation-wrecking mass
immigration.
But was it CIA or DIA that helped to count Trump votes?
Hmmm, let's see here.
Counted Trump votes but not Clinton's?
Counted but reduced the number of Trump votes?
Counted all of the votes, but inflated Clinton's?
Successfully hacked the voting machines in some states to inflate Clinton votes and deflate
Trump votes?
How Brennon came to power, should draw questions. Was the dethroning of Gen. David Petraeus,
as CIA chief, a palace coup? Was Brennen spying on Petraeus? Was the NSA tapping his phones?
Did the idea that a military man was heading the CIA, anathema to the institution – so
they got rid of him?
Just how much actual power does the CIA have in the American permanent Deep State?
Congress is NO check on the CIA – all the politicians on the intel security
committees are handpicked dedicated worshipers.
The CIA is the most anti democracy organization on the planet. From its beginning, it has
played with, subverted, and toppled democracies and sovereign governments. Today it
assonates, tortures, and bombs people around the world. (Has Trump given them a free
hand?)
The commie cold war is over – let's not start another one. The CIA's covert
activities must stop.
Within a week after Brennan's 'routine' visit in April 2014 to the Ukraine the Ukrainian army
launched a civil war. That was within 2 weeks of the CIA instigated coup an the end of
February 2014.
"... In addition to expelling the diplomats, Trump ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington. The decision cited the consulate's proximity to a US submarine base and to Boeing production facilities, implying the diplomats were really intelligence operatives. ..."
"... That was echoed by White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, who told reporters the expulsion is aimed at "significantly degrading their intelligence capabilities around the world, not just in the US." ..."
"... "coordinated with NATO allies," ..."
"... "brazen and reckless" ..."
"... "highly likely" ..."
"... "Thousand-year Reich" ..."
"... "joined at the hip" ..."
"... "entangling alliances," ..."
"... "blindly follow the principle of Euro-Atlantic unity at the expense of common sense, the rules of civilized state-to-state dialogue and the principles of international law," ..."
"... "up to the Russian government and up to Putin," ..."
"... "special relationship" ..."
"... "What we are witnessing now is part of a long-term program of unbridled Russophobia," ..."
"... "what took so long" ..."
"... "Russian oligarchs" ..."
"... "The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States, ..."
The decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats suggests that President Donald Trump is either
following the siren call of 'entangling alliances,' or taking the lead in escalating the
conflict with Moscow to appease domestic critics. Not only did Trump's order affect more than
twice as many diplomats as the March 14 move by London, it accounts for more than half of the
total Russian diplomats expelled by various US allies on Monday. Monday's action is the biggest
expulsion of alleged "intelligence officers" since the Cold War and the largest in US
history, according to US ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman.
Though Trump campaigned on the "America First" foreign policy , openly
critical of the nation-building and "humanitarian" interventions his predecessors engaged in,
little of that remains after the first year of his presidency. The media and the opposition
Democrats appear to have buttonholed the president with never-ending accusations that he is
somehow "soft" on Russia.
In reality, the current administration has taken the hostility toward Moscow, inherited from
Barack Obama's second term, and turned it up a notch, from pressuring Russian media to register
as foreign agents and approving the sale of anti-tank missiles to
Ukraine, to expelling more Russian diplomats and shutting down consulates
.
In addition to expelling the diplomats, Trump ordered the closure of the Russian consulate
in Seattle, Washington. The decision cited the consulate's proximity to a US submarine base and
to Boeing production facilities, implying the diplomats were really intelligence
operatives.
That was echoed by White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, who told reporters the
expulsion is aimed at "significantly degrading their intelligence capabilities around the
world, not just in the US."
Shah said the move was "coordinated with NATO allies," and represented a US
response to Russia's "brazen and reckless" actions, namely, the alleged nerve agent
attack that reportedly injured former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury,
UK, three weeks ago.
16 EU states now expelling 33 Russian diplos
🇩🇪 Germany 4
🇵🇱 Poland 4
🇨🇵 France 4
🇨🇿 Czech 3
🇱🇹 Lithuania 3
🇮🇹 Italy 2
🇩🇰 Denmark 2
🇳🇱 Netherlands 2
🇪🇸 Spain 2
🇱🇻 Latvia 1
🇫🇮 Finland 1
🇪🇪 Estonia 1
🇷🇴 Romania 1
🇸🇪 Sweden 1
🇭🇷 Croatia 1
🇭🇺 Hungary 1
British authorities have asserted that Russia was "highly likely" to have been
behind the incident, but have refused to provide any evidence to back up Prime Minister Theresa
May and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson's words. Johnson even went so far as to compare Russian
President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler - twice! -
though it was Russia that carried the disproportionate burden in defeating Hitler's
"Thousand-year Reich" in the Second World War.
On March 14, May ordered the expulsion of 23 Russian
diplomats. Russia retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats, as well as
shutting down the consulate in St. Petersburg and British Council operations in Russia.
Seasoned observers of international relations might note that it is usually Britain that
follows the US lead – whether in the 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, or the 2011 regime change operation in Libya – and not the other way around. Yet,
according to White House's Shah, the US is "joined at the hip" with the UK on this.
What gives?
This needs to be emphasized. The majority of the EU countries did not join in this mass
expulsion. As for those that did, expulsions were mostly pro forma, undertaken in order to
keep the British happy. Why then the wildly disproportionate response from Trump? https://t.co/4FldvIS80W
America's first president, George Washington, warned way back in 1796 of the danger of
"entangling alliances," which would draw the newly created country into foreign wars
on behalf of allied governments. Such alliances would also lead to poor relations with other
nations and distort US policies to favor the wishes of its allies over the will of the American
people.
Yet today's US policymakers, from the highest officials of the Trump administration to the
NeverTrump think-tanks, treat it as an article of faith that the US is strong because it has
entangling alliances with countries all over the world, and a military presence all over the
planet.
Washington and other allies of London "blindly follow the principle of Euro-Atlantic
unity at the expense of common sense, the rules of civilized state-to-state dialogue and the
principles of international law," the Russian Foreign Ministry said , condemning the expulsions.
Shah's comments, that the US relationship with Russia is entirely "up to the Russian
government and up to Putin," as if Washington had no agency in the matter, certainly seems
to suggest that Trump is all tangled up in the "special relationship" with London.
However, there is also the possibility that Trump or some of his advisers are pursuing
hostility towards Moscow in order to counter the narrative of 'Russian collusion' – which
originated from the Hillary Clinton campaign after the humiliating loss in the 2016 election,
and continues to be pushed by many in the US media and the Democratic party.
"What we are witnessing now is part of a long-term program of unbridled
Russophobia," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Rossiya-1 TV.
Reporters covering the White House presented a good example on Monday. In the rare moments
when they digressed from discussing Trump's alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels,
reporters mostly wanted to know "what took so long" to expel the diplomats and why
more is not being done against Russia. CNN's Jim Sciutto finally got a question, only to demand
more sanctions against "Russian oligarchs" and Putin personally.
No matter what Trump does against Russia, it fails to mollify his critics, who see evidence
of his "collusion" with Moscow in absolutely everything.
Closing Russia's consulate in Seattle hurts Americans in our Northwest who want to visit
Russia, not Putin's oligarchs. Typical misdirection by Trump Administration.
Trump didn't have an option to keep the 60 Russian spies posing as diplomats in the US,
but I guarantee he looked for one. He also hasn't criticized Putin or implemented all of the
sanctions Congress passed against Russia. Trump's a traitor & shouldn't be president.
#ImpeachTrump
Whatever the intent behind Monday's decision, its timing and execution were certainly
problematic. The expulsion of diplomats came as Russia was collectively mourning the deaths of
64 people, many of them children , in
a mall fire in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. Adding insult to injury sounds like really poor
diplomacy, no matter who's behind it.
Then again, as the former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali noted in his 1999
memoir, Washington sees no need for diplomacy when power will do.
"The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States, " wrote
Boutros-Ghali.
Authored Among
Western political leaders there is not an ounce of integrity or morality . The Western print
and TV media is dishonest and corrupt beyond repair. Yet the Russian government persists in its
fantasy of "working with Russia's Western partners." The only way Russia can work with crooks
is to become a crook. Is that what the Russian government wants?
Finian
Cunningham notes the absurdity in the political and media uproar over Trump (belatedly)
telephoning Putin to congratulate him on his reelection with 77 percent of the vote, a show of
public approval that no Western political leader could possibly attain. The crazed US senator
from Arizona called the person with the largest majority vote of our time "a dictator." Yet a
real blood-soaked dictator from Saudi Arabia is feted at the White House and fawned over by the
president of the United States.
The Western politicians and presstitutes are morally outraged over an alleged poisoning,
unsupported by any evidence, of a former spy of no consequence on orders by the president of
Russia himself. These kind of insane insults thrown at the leader of the world's most powerful
military nation -- and Russia is a nation, unlike the mongrel Western countries -- raise the
chances of nuclear Armageddon beyond the risks during the 20th century's Cold War. The insane
fools making these unsupported accusations show total disregard for all life on earth. Yet they
regard themselves as the salt of the earth and as "exceptional, indispensable" people.
Think about the alleged poisoning of Skirpal by Russia. What can this be other than an
orchestrated effort to demonize the president of Russia? How can the West be so outraged over
the death of a former double-agent, that is, a deceptive person, and completely indifferent to
the millions of peoples destroyed by the West in the 21st century alone. Where is the outrage
among Western peoples over the massive deaths for which the West, acting through its Saudi
agent, is responsible in Yemen? Where is the Western outrage among Western peoples over the
deaths in Syria? The deaths in Libya, in Somalia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan? Where is the
outrage in the West over the constant Western interference in the internal affairs of other
countries? How many times has Washington overthrown a democratically-elected government in
Honduras and reinstalled a Washington puppet?
The corruption in the West extends beyond politicians, presstitutes, and an insouciant
public to experts. When the ridiculous Condi Rice, national security adviser to president
George W. Bush, spoke of Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction sending up a
nuclear cloud over an American city, experts did not laugh her out of court. The chance of any
such event was precisely zero and every expert knew it, but the corrupt experts held their
tongues. If they spoke the truth, they knew that they would not get on TV, would not get a
government grant, would be out of the running for a government appointment. So they accepted
the absurd lie designed to justify an American invasion that destroyed a country.
This is the West. There is nothing but lies and indifference to the deaths of others. The
only outrage is orchestrated and directed against a target: the Taliban, Saddam Hussein,
Gaddafi, Iran, Assad, Russia and Putin, and against reformist leaders in Latin America. The
targets for Western outrage are always those who act independently of Washington or who are no
longer useful to Washington's purposes.
Orchestrations this blatant demonstrate that Western governments have no respect for the
intelligence of their peoples. That Western governments get away with these fantastic lies
indicates that the governments are immune to accountability. Even if accountability were
possible, there is no sign that Western peoples are capable of holding their governments
accountable. As Washington drives the world to nuclear war, where are the protests? The only
protest is brainwashed school children protesting the National Rifle Association and the Second
Amendment.
Western democracy is a hoax. Consider Catalonia. The people voted for independence and were
denounced for doing so by European politicians. The Spanish government invaded Catalonia
alleging that the popular referendum, in which people expressed their opinion about their own
future, was illegal. Catalonian leaders are in prison awaiting trial, except for Carles
Puigdemont who escaped to Belgium. Now Germany has captured
him on his return to Belgium from Finland where he lectured at the University of Hesinki
and is holding him in jail for a Spanish government that bears more resemblance to Francisco
Franco than to democracy. The European Union itself is a conspiracy against democracy.
The success of Western propaganda in creating non-existent virtues for itself is the
greatest public relations success in history. Tags Politics
Looks like the rules of neoliberal game for Ukraine are as following: Ukraine should be ready
for fight Russia till the last Ukrainian, serving as cannon fodder for EU geopolitical interests
in Eurasia; (2) As a "debt slave" Ukraine should allow the transfer of ownership of all strategic
assets and commodities to EU corporations for pennies on dollar independently of how Donbass
situation is resolved; (3) Ukraine should buy EU products, no matter how poor they are and local
production should be be iether eliminated ("Baltics style deindustrialization"), or outsourced to
transnational corporations with Ukrainian as a cheap labor force (wage slaves).
Notable quotes:
"... And the Ukraine made a massive mistake. Their situation is completely different to Poland after USSR fell. ..."
And the Ukraine made a massive mistake. Their situation is completely different to
Poland after USSR fell.
Very true. Poland was the first Eastern European country which adopted neoliberal model
and thus served to a certain extent as "photo model" of neoliberalism for the rest of Eastern
Europe and xUSSR space. So standard of living did not drop too low. The country was somewhat
supported by EU and by the USA.
Ukraine was royally raped economically in 1991-2000. Probably as bad as Russia, may be
even worse.
In 2014 Ukrainians were lured by unrealistic dream of getting Western European standard of
living as a gift for breaking with Russia. As well as the resentment toward kleptocrat
Yanukovich (which actually was pretty typical neoliberal politician; not much worse then
Poroshenko )
Now they start to understand that the EU will devour the corpse to the bones and they are
stuck at the Central African level poverty of $2 a day or so (on average), but this is too
late.
A very typical story, a very typical outcome. Neoliberalism is a cancer. As Russian prime
minister quipped about economic rape of Russia by local and Western neoliberals in 1991-2000:
"We strived to get the best [economic] outcome, but it turned out like we got even worse then
average. As always." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Chernomyrdin
)
So in a way they stepped on the same rake twice: once in 1991 and the second time in 2014.
That's unforgivable.
On a related note, this article by Prof. Niels Harrit claims that a document declassified
in 2008 was the basis for the ongoing war in Afghanstian, and that the document is as
evidence free as the Novichok claims:
Is there any forensic evidence provided in this document to serve as a legal basis for
the invocation of Article 5? Nothing. There is absolutely no forensic evidence in support of
the claim that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated from Afghanistan. Only a small part of the
introductory text deals with 9/11, in the form of summary claims like the citation in Lord
Robertson's press release. The main body of the text deals with the alleged actions of
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the nineties.
On 4 October, NATO officially went to war based on a document that provided only
'talking points' and no evidence to support the key claim.
Sound familiar? Of course, I've no idea if he's right.
The Taliban foreign minister at the time tried to warn the Americans of the attack they
learned about it from a third party that is about as far removed from being behind the attack
as it gets. Didn't help them did it the Americans were after vengeance and wanted to satisfy
their bloodlust by bombing a country which didn't even have a single one of its citizens
involved in the attack. Classic scapegoating.
They had other reasons to want to attack Afghanistan . In fact, they warned the Taliban
that they would if the Taliban did not permit the desired pipeline.
What do you expect from Johnson? A grindingly stupid man who has never got a job on merit
and is now desperately hoping the public don't see through his lies for the Americans. No
wonder the government don't want to bring back grammar schools.
New Viz character; Boris the Bullshitter. Textbook bullshitting:
-- "Let me be clear with you" (though what is to follow is as clear as mud,)
" When I look at the evidence, I mean" (not me, actually, I mean) "the people
from Porton Down, the laboratory So they have the samples They do." (believe me)
"And they were absolutely categorical" (about what?) "and I asked the guy
myself," (what did you ask him, Boris?) "I said, "Are you sure?" And he said there's
no doubt" (no doubt of WHAT, Boris?)
Craig, I have to set you straight on this. Boris is as incapable of lying as he is of
telling the truth. As strange as it may seem to rational minds, the concepts of truth and
falsity simply do not exist in minds such as his. To him, everything is merely an
opportunity for achieving his goals, or a threat to his credibility that needs to be bluffed
over, and to those ends every statement he makes will be as vague as he can get away with
under the circumstances.
Looks like the rules of neoliberal game for Ukraine are as following: Ukraine should be ready
for fight Russia till the last Ukrainian, serving as cannon fodder for EU geopolitical interests
in Eurasia; (2) As a "debt slave" Ukraine should allow the transfer of ownership of all strategic
assets and commodities to EU corporations for pennies on dollar independently of how Donbass
situation is resolved; (3) Ukraine should buy EU products, no matter how poor they are and local
production should be be iether eliminated ("Baltics style deindustrialization"), or outsourced to
transnational corporations with Ukrainian as a cheap labor force (wage slaves).
Notable quotes:
"... And the Ukraine made a massive mistake. Their situation is completely different to Poland after USSR fell. ..."
And the Ukraine made a massive mistake. Their situation is completely different to
Poland after USSR fell.
Very true. Poland was the first Eastern European country which adopted neoliberal model
and thus served to a certain extent as "photo model" of neoliberalism for the rest of Eastern
Europe and xUSSR space. So standard of living did not drop too low. The country was somewhat
supported by EU and by the USA.
Ukraine was royally raped economically in 1991-2000. Probably as bad as Russia, may be
even worse.
In 2014 Ukrainians were lured by unrealistic dream of getting Western European standard of
living as a gift for breaking with Russia. As well as the resentment toward kleptocrat
Yanukovich (which actually was pretty typical neoliberal politician; not much worse then
Poroshenko )
Now they start to understand that the EU will devour the corpse to the bones and they are
stuck at the Central African level poverty of $2 a day or so (on average), but this is too
late.
A very typical story, a very typical outcome. Neoliberalism is a cancer. As Russian prime
minister quipped about economic rape of Russia by local and Western neoliberals in 1991-2000:
"We strived to get the best [economic] outcome, but it turned out like we got even worse then
average. As always." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Chernomyrdin
)
So in a way they stepped on the same rake twice: once in 1991 and the second time in 2014.
That's unforgivable.
On a related note, this article by Prof. Niels Harrit claims that a document declassified
in 2008 was the basis for the ongoing war in Afghanstian, and that the document is as
evidence free as the Novichok claims:
Is there any forensic evidence provided in this document to serve as a legal basis for
the invocation of Article 5? Nothing. There is absolutely no forensic evidence in support of
the claim that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated from Afghanistan. Only a small part of the
introductory text deals with 9/11, in the form of summary claims like the citation in Lord
Robertson's press release. The main body of the text deals with the alleged actions of
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the nineties.
On 4 October, NATO officially went to war based on a document that provided only
'talking points' and no evidence to support the key claim.
Sound familiar? Of course, I've no idea if he's right.
The Taliban foreign minister at the time tried to warn the Americans of the attack they
learned about it from a third party that is about as far removed from being behind the attack
as it gets. Didn't help them did it the Americans were after vengeance and wanted to satisfy
their bloodlust by bombing a country which didn't even have a single one of its citizens
involved in the attack. Classic scapegoating.
They had other reasons to want to attack Afghanistan . In fact, they warned the Taliban
that they would if the Taliban did not permit the desired pipeline.
What do you expect from Johnson? A grindingly stupid man who has never got a job on merit
and is now desperately hoping the public don't see through his lies for the Americans. No
wonder the government don't want to bring back grammar schools.
New Viz character; Boris the Bullshitter. Textbook bullshitting:
-- "Let me be clear with you" (though what is to follow is as clear as mud,)
" When I look at the evidence, I mean" (not me, actually, I mean) "the people
from Porton Down, the laboratory So they have the samples They do." (believe me)
"And they were absolutely categorical" (about what?) "and I asked the guy
myself," (what did you ask him, Boris?) "I said, "Are you sure?" And he said there's
no doubt" (no doubt of WHAT, Boris?)
Craig, I have to set you straight on this. Boris is as incapable of lying as he is of
telling the truth. As strange as it may seem to rational minds, the concepts of truth and
falsity simply do not exist in minds such as his. To him, everything is merely an
opportunity for achieving his goals, or a threat to his credibility that needs to be bluffed
over, and to those ends every statement he makes will be as vague as he can get away with
under the circumstances.
I've been waiting to see what happens with the SDR (Special Drawing Right). The IMF
(International Monetary Fund) added it to the SDR basket in October 2016 after a lot of foot
dragging by the US. The AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) was setup largely as a
Chinese alternative to the US dominated IMF and World Bank because they were not being given
an appropriate "place at the table" in the IMF, which was founded as part of the Bretton
Woods Agreement at the end of WWII.
I see the global monetary reset currently underway as the slowly moving, but
unstoppable, glacier that is forcing all other events.
"... "the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." ..."
The Nuremberg judges rejected the Nuremberg defense, and both Jodl and Keitel were hanged.
The United Nations International Law Commission later codified the
underlying principle from Nuremberg as "the fact that a person acted pursuant to order
of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international
law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."
This is likely the most famous declaration in the history of international law and is as
settled as anything possibly can be.
However, many members of the Washington, D.C. elite are now stating that it, in fact, is a
legitimate defense for American officials who violate international law to claim they were just
following orders.
Specifically, they say Gina Haspel, a top CIA officer whom President
Donald Trump has designated to be the agency's next director, bears no responsibility for the
torture she supervised during George W. Bush's administration.
Haspel
oversaw a secret "black site" in Thailand, at which prisoners were waterboarded and
subjected to other severe forms of abuse. Haspel later participated in the destruction of the
CIA's videotapes of some of its torture sessions. There is informed
speculation that part of the CIA's motivation for destroying these records may have been
that they showed operatives employing torture to generate false "intelligence" used to justify
the invasion of Iraq.
John Kiriakou, a former CIA operative who helped capture many Al Qaeda prisoners, recently
said that Haspel was known to some at the agency as "Bloody Gina" and that "Gina and people
like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of
torture, not for the sake of gathering information." (In 2012, in a convoluted
case , Kiriakou
pleaded guilty to leaking the identity of a covert CIA officer to the press and spent a
year in prison.)
Article of interest at link below.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"WASHINGTON BREAKS OUT THE "JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS" NAZI DEFENSE FOR CIA DIRECTOR-DESIGNATE
GINA HASPEL"
Jon Schwarz
I've been waiting to see what happens with the SDR (Special Drawing Right). The IMF
(International Monetary Fund) added it to the SDR basket in October 2016 after a lot of foot
dragging by the US. The AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) was setup largely as a
Chinese alternative to the US dominated IMF and World Bank because they were not being given
an appropriate "place at the table" in the IMF, which was founded as part of the Bretton
Woods Agreement at the end of WWII.
I see the global monetary reset currently underway as the slowly moving, but
unstoppable, glacier that is forcing all other events.
"... "the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." ..."
The Nuremberg judges rejected the Nuremberg defense, and both Jodl and Keitel were hanged.
The United Nations International Law Commission later codified the
underlying principle from Nuremberg as "the fact that a person acted pursuant to order
of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international
law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."
This is likely the most famous declaration in the history of international law and is as
settled as anything possibly can be.
However, many members of the Washington, D.C. elite are now stating that it, in fact, is a
legitimate defense for American officials who violate international law to claim they were just
following orders.
Specifically, they say Gina Haspel, a top CIA officer whom President
Donald Trump has designated to be the agency's next director, bears no responsibility for the
torture she supervised during George W. Bush's administration.
Haspel
oversaw a secret "black site" in Thailand, at which prisoners were waterboarded and
subjected to other severe forms of abuse. Haspel later participated in the destruction of the
CIA's videotapes of some of its torture sessions. There is informed
speculation that part of the CIA's motivation for destroying these records may have been
that they showed operatives employing torture to generate false "intelligence" used to justify
the invasion of Iraq.
John Kiriakou, a former CIA operative who helped capture many Al Qaeda prisoners, recently
said that Haspel was known to some at the agency as "Bloody Gina" and that "Gina and people
like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of
torture, not for the sake of gathering information." (In 2012, in a convoluted
case , Kiriakou
pleaded guilty to leaking the identity of a covert CIA officer to the press and spent a
year in prison.)
Article of interest at link below.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"WASHINGTON BREAKS OUT THE "JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS" NAZI DEFENSE FOR CIA DIRECTOR-DESIGNATE
GINA HASPEL"
Jon Schwarz
March 20 marks a major anniversary. You'd be forgiven for not knowing it. Fifteen years
after we invaded Iraq, few in the US are addressing our legacy there. But it's worth recalling
we shattered that country.
We made it a terrorist hotspot, as expected. US and British intelligence, in the months
preceding the invasion, expected Bush's planned assault would invigorate Al-Qaeda. The group "
would see an opportunity
to accelerate its operational tempo and increase terrorist attacks," particularly "
in the US and UK ," assessments warned. Due course for the War on Terror.
Follow-up reports confirmed these predictions. "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause
celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and
cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement," Washington analysts explained in
2006.
Fawaz Gerges
lists two groups this milieu produced: Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), "a creature of the 2003
US-led invasion," and ISIS, "an extension of AQI."
There were good reasons for anyone -- not just jihadists -- to resent US involvement.
Consider sectarianism. "The most serious sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq's modern history
followed the 2003 US-led occupation," Sami Ramadani affirmed .
Nabil Al-Tikriti concurs , citing US
policies that "led to a progressive, incessant increase in sectarian tensions." The Shia death
squads "
organized by U.S. operatives" were one such decision.
The extent to which these squads succeeded is, in part, what scholars debate when they tally
the war deaths. Low estimates, like Iraq Body Count's, put civilians killed at just over 200,000. One research
team determined
some "half million deaths in Iraq could be attributable to the war." Physicians for Social
Responsibility concluded "that the war has, directly or
indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq," plus 300,000 more in Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
Iraqis surviving the inferno confronted a range of nightmares. The UN " reported that over 4.4
million Iraqis were internally displaced, and an additional 264,100 were refugees abroad," for
example. US forces dealt with Iraqi prisoners -- 70-90% of whom were " arrested by
mistake " -- by "arranging naked detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;" "breaking
chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;" and "forcing groups of male
detainees to masturbate themselves," to list some of the ways we imparted , with the approval of top
Bush administration officials, democratic principles.
Then there are the generations of future Iraqis in bomb-battered cities: Fallujah, Basra. In
the former, "the reported increases in cancer and infant
mortality are alarmingly high" -- perhaps "
worse than Hiroshima " -- while "birth defects reached in 2010 unprecedented
numbers." In the same vein, "a pattern of increase in congenital birth defects" plagues Basra, and
"many suspect that pollution created by the bombardment of Iraqi cities has caused the current
birth defect crisis in that country."
This bombardment began decades before 2003, it's crucial to clarify. We can recall UN
Under-Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari's mission to Baghdad after Operation Desert Storm. He
and his team were familiar with the literature on the bombings, he wrote in March 1991, "fully
conversant with media reports regarding the situation in Iraq," but realized upon arrival "that
nothing that we had seen or read had quite prepared us for the particular form of devastation"
-- "near-apocalyptic" -- "which has now befallen the country," condemning it "to a
pre-industrial age" for the foreseeable future. This was the scale of ruin when the UN Security
Council imposed sanctions. The measures were "at every turn
shaped by the United States," whose "consistent
policy " was "to inflict the most extreme economic damage possible on Iraq."
The policy was, in this respect, a ripping success. The UN estimated
in 1995 that the sanctions had murdered over a half-million children -- " worth it ," Madeleine Albright said --
one factor prompting two successive UN Humanitarian Coordinators in Iraq to resign. Denis
Halliday
thought the sanctions "criminally flawed and genocidal;" Hans von Sponeck
agreed , citing evidence of "conscious violation of human rights and humanitarian law on
the part of governments represented in the Security Council, first and foremost those of the
United States and the United Kingdom."
Eliminating hundreds of thousands of starving children was just the prequel to the
occupation -- "the biggest cultural disaster since the descendants of Genghis Khan destroyed
Baghdad in 1258," in one writer's judgment
. But try to find more than a handful of commentators reflecting on any of these issues on this
dark anniversary. Instead, silence shows the deep US capacity for forgetting.
Nick Alexandrov lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He can be reached at: [email protected]
"... We don't want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer. We have no more respect for you, and for those amongst us that you support, and for all those people who support you. That's how this 5% came to be. ..."
"... For that you only have yourself to blame. And also your Western politicians and analysts, newsmakers and scouts. Our people are capable to forgive a lot. But we don't forgive arrogance, and no normal nation would. Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn history of its allies, all of them are former empires. To learn the ways they lost their empires. Only because of their arrogance. ..."
"... (in English in the original text -- trans. ..."
"... Neo-Liberalism is the worst because under this pseudo science they consider all things including the land, the air, the water, the human beings and the same life (all nature) as their rightful commodities. ..."
"... Unfortunately in this case Karl Rove is only making reference to what has been decided in political circles in Washington at that time. This habit of "defining new realities" is what all MSM and most Western politicians work after today. At any time at any case the MSM and the West system can change one reality perception to another without being held responsible for the factual truth. ..."
And that's your fault, my Western friends. It was you who pushed us into "Russians never
surrender" mode.
I've been telling you for a long time to find normal advisers on Russia. Sack all those
parasites. With their short-sighted sanctions, heartless humiliation of our athletes (including
athletes with disabilities ), with their "skripals" and ostentatious disregard of the most
basic liberal values, like a presumption of innocence, that they manage to hypocritically
combined with forcible imposition of ultra-liberal ideas in their own countries, their
epileptic mass hysteria, causing in a healthy person a sigh of relief that he lives in Russia,
and not in Hollywood, with their post-electoral mess in the United States, in Germany, and in
the Brexit-zone;
with their attacks on RT, which they cannot forgive for taking advantage of the freedom of
speech and showing to the world how to use it, and it turned out that the freedom of speech
never was intended to be used for good, but was invented as an object of beauty, like some sort
of crystal mop that shines from afar, but is not suitable to clean your stables, with all your
injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you.
You and your so called "values."
We don't want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we
wanted to live like you, but not any longer. We have no more respect for you, and for those
amongst us that you support, and for all those people who support you. That's how this 5% came
to be.
For that you only have yourself to blame. And also your Western politicians and
analysts, newsmakers and scouts. Our people are capable to forgive a lot. But we don't forgive
arrogance, and no normal nation would. Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn
history of its allies, all of them are former empires. To learn the ways they lost their
empires. Only because of their arrogance.
(in English in the original text --
trans. )
But the only Empire, you have left, ignores history, it doesn't teach it and refuses to
learn it, meaning that it all will end the way it always does, in such cases.
In meantime, you've pushed us to rally around your enemy. Immediately, after you declared
him an enemy, we united around him.
Before, he was just our President, who could be reelected. Now, he has become our Leader. We
won't let you change this. And it was you, who created this situation.
It was you who imposed an opposition between patriotism and liberalism. Although, they
shouldn't be mutually exclusive notions. This false dilemma, created by you, made us to chose
patriotism.
Even though, many of us are really liberals, myself included.
Get cleaned up, now. You don't have much time left.
I agree with you, Margarita, and I am American! I remember as a child, being taught about
that horrid USSR - to be so feared, ready at any moment to bomb us into oblivion! I remember
the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. - not knowing the full details, but being told that Kennedy saved us
all from WWIII. As time went on, we'd watch humorous shows detailing the large percentage of
Russians in USSR wanting to AND defecting to America. We were shown Russians lined up around
city blocks to buy toilet paper, shoes (any size, any color would do). Russians naivety was
always made fun of, casting the majority of you as either clowns or criminals capable of all
heinous crimes. Then came the 90s. I watched Yeltsin tottering around drunk, watched in
horror as the USSR collapsed, wondering what had happened to you. Then came Putin - this
young man being handed the reins of your collapsed, ruined country. Suddenly it seemed, we
saw more and more of him. I remember watching his face when he had to explain to the tearful,
waiting parents and friends of the mariners from the Kursk. His remark that if he could go
down there himself and rescue them he would! I knew then, that this was a man to be watched,
because I admired him at that moment. Over the years, after one successful term after
another, I saw Russia rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the USSR. I saw the pride
returning to the Russian faces, saw smiles returning to their faces, watched you regaining
your honor, your sovereignty as we started losing ours. Watching and listening, in horror and
fear as more and more of our rights were taken away after 9/11. Discovering that it was a
false flag (one of many, it seems), that took the lives of ordinary Americans and used their
deaths to start killing more people in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack. More
time going by, more rights taken away here, yet for you, rising ever more to greater economy,
more business friendly environments in Russia, more world trade with an increasing number of
trading partners.
Then started the demonization again - not of USSR, but of Russia - same story, different
name. Putin - guilty of all crimes of mankind, blamed for everything under the sun, capable
and willing to kill people around the globe with impunity, using chemicals and all other
nefarious things! I watched the crimes committed in Ukraine, which deposed the legally
elected president, and that tried to kill him after a coup that put Nazis in his place. I
watched Crimea hold it's referendum, saw the fireworks display afterwards with all the happy
faces. Russia was demonized even more and sanctioned greatly for that. Now to 2017 - I prayed
that Putin would run again - (he waited a long time before stating he would run.) I knew that
Russia sorely needed him to remain at the reins, guiding Russia (and the world, it seems)
around the icebergs of hate, crimes against humanity, local wars, demise of any empathetic
feelings towards others as we are all dragged along to the next, last war. Putin has been the
one who has prevented it from happening in several situations, where it could have been
started. But the demonization continues - little wonder America has lost it's appeal to most
of you!
The deep state has us in thrall - (no Kennedy here now to protect us). I pray daily that
all of us will survive to realize our hopes - yours and ours, but feel on a deep level that
this time it won't happen. It seems that some people here truly want a war - feel they could
survive the strike and retaliate to ruin your country, but that ours would remain mainly
untouched. They think their bunkers will protect them - their expansive underground cities
built for the richest and 'best' of America, while the rest of us are collateral damage. I am
not rich - have no real savings, so am definitely not one of those to be saved - like so
others around me. I'm sure many of you are in the same position, have the same fears and
dreams as I do. I offer all of you my best wishes for a happy, healthy, free and safe world.
Maybe your Putin actually does have a rabbit in his hat, or that silver bullet - the magic
needed to save us all! I truly hope so.
As a Canadian, thank you for your excellent summary of what I have concluded for some
time. Sadly, the US is no longer a Constitutional Republic as established by the founders; it
is not even a representative democracy. What the US has become is an Evil American Empire
that is the greatest threat to peace and prosperity in the US and throughout the entire
world. The good news is that a growing number of people in the US and the Western World
realize this and are working very hard to return America to its founding ideals. The first
stage in this process is the exposure of powerful members of the Deep State who have
infiltrated and corrupted the essential institutions of government, freedom and justice.
I used to be liberal before liberalism became a symbol of stupidity, war mongering and
affiliated with the Deep State and it's rush to rule the world by destroying every society
whose people chose to live life as they saw fit. The translation mechanism for understanding
US leadership is projection. If the mouthpieces ramble on about their values, the meaning is
that they are stating the values of their opponent or target country. If they're accusing a
country of terrorism, they're talking about their own support for terrorism for geopolitical
gains. If they're accusing a country of using chemical weapons, they're really talking about
their own use of chemical weapons to launch another war and destroy yet another country's
society. So one can easily see the true meaning of these psychopaths rantings and rhetoric by
merely using the simple mechanism of projection to determine the truth.
Many times I am completely confused by the use that Americans make of traditional
political or economic terms. "Socialism", for example, applied to Democrats? Calling
"Liberals" those who like to defy society's traditional customs? "Marxism" is no longer a
theory about the conflict of classes, or a dialectical understanding of society! Many
political discussions are due to the different interpretations that people give to the same
words. The US political science vocabulary is in chaos- along with many other US things!
Seventy years ago, George Orwell wrote the prophetic essay, "Politics
and the English Language," in which he noted that politicians,
journalists and academics were increasingly using meaningless words and
euphemisms to make "lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and...
give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Source:
https://www.alternet.org/el...
Totally agree. Fundamental or Philosophical Liberalism has to be with the human being and
his liberties and rights.
Economic Liberalism has to be with the commodities trade and physical money, financial money,
and their privileges put over the human beings, of course this is a euphemism because whom
are really self conceded such privileges are the owners of those goods i.e. International
Usurers.
Economic Liberalism morphed into the worst; into Neo-(Economic)-Liberalism (They call it only
"liberalism" in order to confuse their enemies, all the people). Neo-Liberalism is the worst because under this pseudo science they consider all things
including the land, the air, the water, the human beings and the same life (all nature) as
their rightful commodities.
You're absolutely correct! We've had the worst of the worst running and influencing those
that run the country and this man was a psycho, but we have more, too many!
The arrogance of the man. I do hope he lives long enough to see the fruits of his labor
whilst the economy collapses around him. I guess when that happens he and his other hapless
miscreants will keep their heads down and rely on security to protect them from the karma
hurtling towards them.
Nothing this man has done has benefited the American people.
Unfortunately in this case Karl Rove is only making reference to what has been decided
in political circles in Washington at that time. This habit of "defining new realities" is
what all MSM and most Western politicians work after today. At any time at any case the MSM
and the West system can change one reality perception to another without being held
responsible for the factual truth.
"... We don't want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer. We have no more respect for you, and for those amongst us that you support, and for all those people who support you. That's how this 5% came to be. ..."
"... For that you only have yourself to blame. And also your Western politicians and analysts, newsmakers and scouts. Our people are capable to forgive a lot. But we don't forgive arrogance, and no normal nation would. Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn history of its allies, all of them are former empires. To learn the ways they lost their empires. Only because of their arrogance. ..."
"... (in English in the original text -- trans. ..."
"... Neo-Liberalism is the worst because under this pseudo science they consider all things including the land, the air, the water, the human beings and the same life (all nature) as their rightful commodities. ..."
"... Unfortunately in this case Karl Rove is only making reference to what has been decided in political circles in Washington at that time. This habit of "defining new realities" is what all MSM and most Western politicians work after today. At any time at any case the MSM and the West system can change one reality perception to another without being held responsible for the factual truth. ..."
And that's your fault, my Western friends. It was you who pushed us into "Russians never
surrender" mode.
I've been telling you for a long time to find normal advisers on Russia. Sack all those
parasites. With their short-sighted sanctions, heartless humiliation of our athletes (including
athletes with disabilities ), with their "skripals" and ostentatious disregard of the most
basic liberal values, like a presumption of innocence, that they manage to hypocritically
combined with forcible imposition of ultra-liberal ideas in their own countries, their
epileptic mass hysteria, causing in a healthy person a sigh of relief that he lives in Russia,
and not in Hollywood, with their post-electoral mess in the United States, in Germany, and in
the Brexit-zone;
with their attacks on RT, which they cannot forgive for taking advantage of the freedom of
speech and showing to the world how to use it, and it turned out that the freedom of speech
never was intended to be used for good, but was invented as an object of beauty, like some sort
of crystal mop that shines from afar, but is not suitable to clean your stables, with all your
injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you.
You and your so called "values."
We don't want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we
wanted to live like you, but not any longer. We have no more respect for you, and for those
amongst us that you support, and for all those people who support you. That's how this 5% came
to be.
For that you only have yourself to blame. And also your Western politicians and
analysts, newsmakers and scouts. Our people are capable to forgive a lot. But we don't forgive
arrogance, and no normal nation would. Your only remaining Empire would be wise to learn
history of its allies, all of them are former empires. To learn the ways they lost their
empires. Only because of their arrogance.
(in English in the original text --
trans. )
But the only Empire, you have left, ignores history, it doesn't teach it and refuses to
learn it, meaning that it all will end the way it always does, in such cases.
In meantime, you've pushed us to rally around your enemy. Immediately, after you declared
him an enemy, we united around him.
Before, he was just our President, who could be reelected. Now, he has become our Leader. We
won't let you change this. And it was you, who created this situation.
It was you who imposed an opposition between patriotism and liberalism. Although, they
shouldn't be mutually exclusive notions. This false dilemma, created by you, made us to chose
patriotism.
Even though, many of us are really liberals, myself included.
Get cleaned up, now. You don't have much time left.
I agree with you, Margarita, and I am American! I remember as a child, being taught about
that horrid USSR - to be so feared, ready at any moment to bomb us into oblivion! I remember
the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. - not knowing the full details, but being told that Kennedy saved us
all from WWIII. As time went on, we'd watch humorous shows detailing the large percentage of
Russians in USSR wanting to AND defecting to America. We were shown Russians lined up around
city blocks to buy toilet paper, shoes (any size, any color would do). Russians naivety was
always made fun of, casting the majority of you as either clowns or criminals capable of all
heinous crimes. Then came the 90s. I watched Yeltsin tottering around drunk, watched in
horror as the USSR collapsed, wondering what had happened to you. Then came Putin - this
young man being handed the reins of your collapsed, ruined country. Suddenly it seemed, we
saw more and more of him. I remember watching his face when he had to explain to the tearful,
waiting parents and friends of the mariners from the Kursk. His remark that if he could go
down there himself and rescue them he would! I knew then, that this was a man to be watched,
because I admired him at that moment. Over the years, after one successful term after
another, I saw Russia rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the USSR. I saw the pride
returning to the Russian faces, saw smiles returning to their faces, watched you regaining
your honor, your sovereignty as we started losing ours. Watching and listening, in horror and
fear as more and more of our rights were taken away after 9/11. Discovering that it was a
false flag (one of many, it seems), that took the lives of ordinary Americans and used their
deaths to start killing more people in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack. More
time going by, more rights taken away here, yet for you, rising ever more to greater economy,
more business friendly environments in Russia, more world trade with an increasing number of
trading partners.
Then started the demonization again - not of USSR, but of Russia - same story, different
name. Putin - guilty of all crimes of mankind, blamed for everything under the sun, capable
and willing to kill people around the globe with impunity, using chemicals and all other
nefarious things! I watched the crimes committed in Ukraine, which deposed the legally
elected president, and that tried to kill him after a coup that put Nazis in his place. I
watched Crimea hold it's referendum, saw the fireworks display afterwards with all the happy
faces. Russia was demonized even more and sanctioned greatly for that. Now to 2017 - I prayed
that Putin would run again - (he waited a long time before stating he would run.) I knew that
Russia sorely needed him to remain at the reins, guiding Russia (and the world, it seems)
around the icebergs of hate, crimes against humanity, local wars, demise of any empathetic
feelings towards others as we are all dragged along to the next, last war. Putin has been the
one who has prevented it from happening in several situations, where it could have been
started. But the demonization continues - little wonder America has lost it's appeal to most
of you!
The deep state has us in thrall - (no Kennedy here now to protect us). I pray daily that
all of us will survive to realize our hopes - yours and ours, but feel on a deep level that
this time it won't happen. It seems that some people here truly want a war - feel they could
survive the strike and retaliate to ruin your country, but that ours would remain mainly
untouched. They think their bunkers will protect them - their expansive underground cities
built for the richest and 'best' of America, while the rest of us are collateral damage. I am
not rich - have no real savings, so am definitely not one of those to be saved - like so
others around me. I'm sure many of you are in the same position, have the same fears and
dreams as I do. I offer all of you my best wishes for a happy, healthy, free and safe world.
Maybe your Putin actually does have a rabbit in his hat, or that silver bullet - the magic
needed to save us all! I truly hope so.
As a Canadian, thank you for your excellent summary of what I have concluded for some
time. Sadly, the US is no longer a Constitutional Republic as established by the founders; it
is not even a representative democracy. What the US has become is an Evil American Empire
that is the greatest threat to peace and prosperity in the US and throughout the entire
world. The good news is that a growing number of people in the US and the Western World
realize this and are working very hard to return America to its founding ideals. The first
stage in this process is the exposure of powerful members of the Deep State who have
infiltrated and corrupted the essential institutions of government, freedom and justice.
I used to be liberal before liberalism became a symbol of stupidity, war mongering and
affiliated with the Deep State and it's rush to rule the world by destroying every society
whose people chose to live life as they saw fit. The translation mechanism for understanding
US leadership is projection. If the mouthpieces ramble on about their values, the meaning is
that they are stating the values of their opponent or target country. If they're accusing a
country of terrorism, they're talking about their own support for terrorism for geopolitical
gains. If they're accusing a country of using chemical weapons, they're really talking about
their own use of chemical weapons to launch another war and destroy yet another country's
society. So one can easily see the true meaning of these psychopaths rantings and rhetoric by
merely using the simple mechanism of projection to determine the truth.
Many times I am completely confused by the use that Americans make of traditional
political or economic terms. "Socialism", for example, applied to Democrats? Calling
"Liberals" those who like to defy society's traditional customs? "Marxism" is no longer a
theory about the conflict of classes, or a dialectical understanding of society! Many
political discussions are due to the different interpretations that people give to the same
words. The US political science vocabulary is in chaos- along with many other US things!
Seventy years ago, George Orwell wrote the prophetic essay, "Politics
and the English Language," in which he noted that politicians,
journalists and academics were increasingly using meaningless words and
euphemisms to make "lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and...
give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Source:
https://www.alternet.org/el...
Totally agree. Fundamental or Philosophical Liberalism has to be with the human being and
his liberties and rights.
Economic Liberalism has to be with the commodities trade and physical money, financial money,
and their privileges put over the human beings, of course this is a euphemism because whom
are really self conceded such privileges are the owners of those goods i.e. International
Usurers.
Economic Liberalism morphed into the worst; into Neo-(Economic)-Liberalism (They call it only
"liberalism" in order to confuse their enemies, all the people). Neo-Liberalism is the worst because under this pseudo science they consider all things
including the land, the air, the water, the human beings and the same life (all nature) as
their rightful commodities.
You're absolutely correct! We've had the worst of the worst running and influencing those
that run the country and this man was a psycho, but we have more, too many!
The arrogance of the man. I do hope he lives long enough to see the fruits of his labor
whilst the economy collapses around him. I guess when that happens he and his other hapless
miscreants will keep their heads down and rely on security to protect them from the karma
hurtling towards them.
Nothing this man has done has benefited the American people.
Unfortunately in this case Karl Rove is only making reference to what has been decided
in political circles in Washington at that time. This habit of "defining new realities" is
what all MSM and most Western politicians work after today. At any time at any case the MSM
and the West system can change one reality perception to another without being held
responsible for the factual truth.
March 20 marks a major anniversary. You'd be forgiven for not knowing it. Fifteen years
after we invaded Iraq, few in the US are addressing our legacy there. But it's worth recalling
we shattered that country.
We made it a terrorist hotspot, as expected. US and British intelligence, in the months
preceding the invasion, expected Bush's planned assault would invigorate Al-Qaeda. The group "
would see an opportunity
to accelerate its operational tempo and increase terrorist attacks," particularly "
in the US and UK ," assessments warned. Due course for the War on Terror.
Follow-up reports confirmed these predictions. "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause
celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and
cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement," Washington analysts explained in
2006.
Fawaz Gerges
lists two groups this milieu produced: Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), "a creature of the 2003
US-led invasion," and ISIS, "an extension of AQI."
There were good reasons for anyone -- not just jihadists -- to resent US involvement.
Consider sectarianism. "The most serious sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq's modern history
followed the 2003 US-led occupation," Sami Ramadani affirmed .
Nabil Al-Tikriti concurs , citing US
policies that "led to a progressive, incessant increase in sectarian tensions." The Shia death
squads "
organized by U.S. operatives" were one such decision.
The extent to which these squads succeeded is, in part, what scholars debate when they tally
the war deaths. Low estimates, like Iraq Body Count's, put civilians killed at just over 200,000. One research
team determined
some "half million deaths in Iraq could be attributable to the war." Physicians for Social
Responsibility concluded "that the war has, directly or
indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq," plus 300,000 more in Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
Iraqis surviving the inferno confronted a range of nightmares. The UN " reported that over 4.4
million Iraqis were internally displaced, and an additional 264,100 were refugees abroad," for
example. US forces dealt with Iraqi prisoners -- 70-90% of whom were " arrested by
mistake " -- by "arranging naked detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;" "breaking
chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;" and "forcing groups of male
detainees to masturbate themselves," to list some of the ways we imparted , with the approval of top
Bush administration officials, democratic principles.
Then there are the generations of future Iraqis in bomb-battered cities: Fallujah, Basra. In
the former, "the reported increases in cancer and infant
mortality are alarmingly high" -- perhaps "
worse than Hiroshima " -- while "birth defects reached in 2010 unprecedented
numbers." In the same vein, "a pattern of increase in congenital birth defects" plagues Basra, and
"many suspect that pollution created by the bombardment of Iraqi cities has caused the current
birth defect crisis in that country."
This bombardment began decades before 2003, it's crucial to clarify. We can recall UN
Under-Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari's mission to Baghdad after Operation Desert Storm. He
and his team were familiar with the literature on the bombings, he wrote in March 1991, "fully
conversant with media reports regarding the situation in Iraq," but realized upon arrival "that
nothing that we had seen or read had quite prepared us for the particular form of devastation"
-- "near-apocalyptic" -- "which has now befallen the country," condemning it "to a
pre-industrial age" for the foreseeable future. This was the scale of ruin when the UN Security
Council imposed sanctions. The measures were "at every turn
shaped by the United States," whose "consistent
policy " was "to inflict the most extreme economic damage possible on Iraq."
The policy was, in this respect, a ripping success. The UN estimated
in 1995 that the sanctions had murdered over a half-million children -- " worth it ," Madeleine Albright said --
one factor prompting two successive UN Humanitarian Coordinators in Iraq to resign. Denis
Halliday
thought the sanctions "criminally flawed and genocidal;" Hans von Sponeck
agreed , citing evidence of "conscious violation of human rights and humanitarian law on
the part of governments represented in the Security Council, first and foremost those of the
United States and the United Kingdom."
Eliminating hundreds of thousands of starving children was just the prequel to the
occupation -- "the biggest cultural disaster since the descendants of Genghis Khan destroyed
Baghdad in 1258," in one writer's judgment
. But try to find more than a handful of commentators reflecting on any of these issues on this
dark anniversary. Instead, silence shows the deep US capacity for forgetting.
Nick Alexandrov lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He can be reached at: [email protected]
"... Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved. ..."
"... Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade. ..."
"... Car is lifted by straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I doing? Got a better tale? ..."
"... Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why would anyone take you seriously? ..."
"... People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what it has meant historically. ..."
"Sir, Further to your report ("Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment", TIMES Mar
14)' may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in
Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several
people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None
has had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have
shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent
involved."
Stephen Davies. Consultant in emergency medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how
she found Ms Skripal..She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying "there was no
sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripals face or body."
The woman, who asked not to be named, told the NNC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery
position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.
she said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical
agent on Ms Skripal's face or body.
The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, hut added that
she "feels fine".
Some nerve agent.
We read that Vladimir Putin's passport was found three days later at the scene.
One wonders how the Skripals are right now. Have they recovered completely, or partially? Are
they still deathly ill? Has one or both of them died?
In any case, why have there been no public announcements of these important facts? It is
useless to cite privacy, when the government hastened to trumpet the case – and its own
dubious conclusions – as publicly as possible.
Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been
to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of
evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong
impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved.
Incidentally, I wonder where the Skripals are and why. Apparently the Russian government
applied for consular access to Yulia (who is a Russian citizen) but this was bluntly refused
– against all norms of international law and civilized behaviour.
Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person
trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a
morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go
sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says
probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade.
How does the doctor know this: He is just down the street from the British Nerve Agent
Factory and has been trained to recognize and treat real exposures to potent nerve agents. A
policeman ends up in same hospital as Skripal because he sees car parked overtime or
illegally, opens door to check for ownership gets zapped by toxic agent. Car is lifted by
straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory
is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I
doing? Got a better tale?
Good, understanding that you are a joke is the first step on the road to possible
recovery.
Try for once to imagine a reverse scenario: an Englishman dies under suspicious
circumstances in a provincial town in Russia. (Or 3-4 of them over 15-20 years.) He was
considered a 'traitor' by UK for whatever reason. Immediately Russia declares that it was an
' unacceptable attack on Russia's sovereignty, that Britain did it, and that it is 'highly
likely' that Teresa May ordered it herself' . Russian government also says that they will
not disclose any details, show no evidence and will not even allow basis diplomatic protocol
for UK embassy. Why? For reasons of ' state security '. Wouldn't any rational outsider
consider that a joke?
Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are
special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You
have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia
based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why
would anyone take you seriously?
People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or
that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you
are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what
it has meant historically.
"... Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved. ..."
"... Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade. ..."
"... Car is lifted by straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I doing? Got a better tale? ..."
"... Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why would anyone take you seriously? ..."
"... People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what it has meant historically. ..."
"Sir, Further to your report ("Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment", TIMES Mar
14)' may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in
Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several
people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None
has had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have
shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent
involved."
Stephen Davies. Consultant in emergency medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how
she found Ms Skripal..She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying "there was no
sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripals face or body."
The woman, who asked not to be named, told the NNC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery
position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.
she said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical
agent on Ms Skripal's face or body.
The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, hut added that
she "feels fine".
Some nerve agent.
We read that Vladimir Putin's passport was found three days later at the scene.
One wonders how the Skripals are right now. Have they recovered completely, or partially? Are
they still deathly ill? Has one or both of them died?
In any case, why have there been no public announcements of these important facts? It is
useless to cite privacy, when the government hastened to trumpet the case – and its own
dubious conclusions – as publicly as possible.
Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been
to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of
evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong
impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved.
Incidentally, I wonder where the Skripals are and why. Apparently the Russian government
applied for consular access to Yulia (who is a Russian citizen) but this was bluntly refused
– against all norms of international law and civilized behaviour.
Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person
trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a
morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go
sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says
probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade.
How does the doctor know this: He is just down the street from the British Nerve Agent
Factory and has been trained to recognize and treat real exposures to potent nerve agents. A
policeman ends up in same hospital as Skripal because he sees car parked overtime or
illegally, opens door to check for ownership gets zapped by toxic agent. Car is lifted by
straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory
is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I
doing? Got a better tale?
Good, understanding that you are a joke is the first step on the road to possible
recovery.
Try for once to imagine a reverse scenario: an Englishman dies under suspicious
circumstances in a provincial town in Russia. (Or 3-4 of them over 15-20 years.) He was
considered a 'traitor' by UK for whatever reason. Immediately Russia declares that it was an
' unacceptable attack on Russia's sovereignty, that Britain did it, and that it is 'highly
likely' that Teresa May ordered it herself' . Russian government also says that they will
not disclose any details, show no evidence and will not even allow basis diplomatic protocol
for UK embassy. Why? For reasons of ' state security '. Wouldn't any rational outsider
consider that a joke?
Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are
special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You
have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia
based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why
would anyone take you seriously?
People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or
that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you
are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what
it has meant historically.
Senators Mark Udall and
Ron Wyden are upset about something, they just can't say what. In a
letter
sent to the National Security Agency this week about a fact sheet on its surveillance programs, the senators complained about
what they refer to only as "the inaccuracy". The inaccuracy is "significant". The inaccuracy could "decrease public confidence in
the NSA's openness and its commitment to protecting Americans' constitutional rights". But, because the information underlying it
is classified, the inaccuracy can't be described.
This is either a frustrating illustration of the absurdities of America's secrecy regime, or the start of a pretty solid vaudeville
act.
The frenzied public debate over the NSA leaks has
focused on the correctness of the government surveillance programs themselves. But America cannot properly debate these and future
surveillance efforts until it decides what can be debated.
As an official in the first Obama administration, I worked in jobs requiring top secret clearance. I know firsthand how essential
secrecy can be to effecting policy goals and how devastating leaks can be. I navigated diplomatic relationships threatened by the
indiscriminate release of WikiLeaks documents, and volunteered on the taskforce that sifted through them, piecing together the damage
done. But it is also true that a culture of over-classification has shielded too much from public debate and that more could be disclosed
without damaging the efficacy of intelligence programs.
Trillions of new pages of text are classified each year. More than 4.8 million people now have a security clearance, including
low level contractors like Edward Snowden . A committee
established by Congress, the Public Interest Declassification Board, warned in December that rampant over-classification is "imped[ing]
informed government decisions and an informed public" and, worse, "enabl[ing] corruption and malfeasance". In one instance it documented,
a government agency was found to be classifying one petabyte of new data every 18 months, the equivalent of 20m filing cabinets filled
with text.
It is difficult to argue that all or even most of that information should be classified. By keeping too many secrets, America
has created fertile ground for their escape. Already, the Obama administration has been forced to initiate six espionage prosecutions
for leaks – twice as many as every previous administration combined.
It has also left the American people disillusioned and mistrustful. This is especially true of a new generation raised in a networked
world that has made them expect far greater transparency from the institutions around them. According to a recent
Pew
Research Center/ USA Today poll , a clear majority of young people (60%) feels that the NSA leaks served the public interest.
The leaks illustrate how bad the lack of trust has become - and present an opportunity for greater disclosure.
There is no doubt that some secrecy is essential to the efficacy of surveillance programs like those revealed by the
NSA leaks. The specific sources and methods of such programs
should be protected. However, it is entirely possible to protect those specifics while also broadly disclosing to the public the
scope of information subject to collection, and the rationale behind doing so.
That level of disclosure should be the norm for future programs, and can still be instated in the case of the current NSA surveillance
programs. Two Congressmen – Democrat Adam Schiff, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, and Republican Todd Rokita – introduced
a bill last week that would call on the Department of Justice to declassify the legal justifications for NSA surveillance efforts.
Universal public disclosure of individual decisions could impede the efficacy of the program, but there is no reason the Department
of Justice can't disclose its generalized legal reasoning. That's a drawer in the stadium of filing cabinets that America can safely
open.
"You can't have 100% security and then have 100% privacy," President Obama said in the days immediately following the leaks. "We're
going to have to make some choices as a society." But the government can and should let Americans know what choices it is that they're
making. The intelligence community might find Americans, particularly young Americans most suspicious of government institutions,
more sympathetic to their delicate balancing act as informed participants.
Senators Mark Udall and
Ron Wyden are upset about something, they just can't say what. In a
letter
sent to the National Security Agency this week about a fact sheet on its surveillance programs, the senators complained about
what they refer to only as "the inaccuracy". The inaccuracy is "significant". The inaccuracy could "decrease public confidence in
the NSA's openness and its commitment to protecting Americans' constitutional rights". But, because the information underlying it
is classified, the inaccuracy can't be described.
This is either a frustrating illustration of the absurdities of America's secrecy regime, or the start of a pretty solid vaudeville
act.
The frenzied public debate over the NSA leaks has
focused on the correctness of the government surveillance programs themselves. But America cannot properly debate these and future
surveillance efforts until it decides what can be debated.
As an official in the first Obama administration, I worked in jobs requiring top secret clearance. I know firsthand how essential
secrecy can be to effecting policy goals and how devastating leaks can be. I navigated diplomatic relationships threatened by the
indiscriminate release of WikiLeaks documents, and volunteered on the taskforce that sifted through them, piecing together the damage
done. But it is also true that a culture of over-classification has shielded too much from public debate and that more could be disclosed
without damaging the efficacy of intelligence programs.
Trillions of new pages of text are classified each year. More than 4.8 million people now have a security clearance, including
low level contractors like Edward Snowden . A committee
established by Congress, the Public Interest Declassification Board, warned in December that rampant over-classification is "imped[ing]
informed government decisions and an informed public" and, worse, "enabl[ing] corruption and malfeasance". In one instance it documented,
a government agency was found to be classifying one petabyte of new data every 18 months, the equivalent of 20m filing cabinets filled
with text.
It is difficult to argue that all or even most of that information should be classified. By keeping too many secrets, America
has created fertile ground for their escape. Already, the Obama administration has been forced to initiate six espionage prosecutions
for leaks – twice as many as every previous administration combined.
It has also left the American people disillusioned and mistrustful. This is especially true of a new generation raised in a networked
world that has made them expect far greater transparency from the institutions around them. According to a recent
Pew
Research Center/ USA Today poll , a clear majority of young people (60%) feels that the NSA leaks served the public interest.
The leaks illustrate how bad the lack of trust has become - and present an opportunity for greater disclosure.
There is no doubt that some secrecy is essential to the efficacy of surveillance programs like those revealed by the
NSA leaks. The specific sources and methods of such programs
should be protected. However, it is entirely possible to protect those specifics while also broadly disclosing to the public the
scope of information subject to collection, and the rationale behind doing so.
That level of disclosure should be the norm for future programs, and can still be instated in the case of the current NSA surveillance
programs. Two Congressmen – Democrat Adam Schiff, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, and Republican Todd Rokita – introduced
a bill last week that would call on the Department of Justice to declassify the legal justifications for NSA surveillance efforts.
Universal public disclosure of individual decisions could impede the efficacy of the program, but there is no reason the Department
of Justice can't disclose its generalized legal reasoning. That's a drawer in the stadium of filing cabinets that America can safely
open.
"You can't have 100% security and then have 100% privacy," President Obama said in the days immediately following the leaks. "We're
going to have to make some choices as a society." But the government can and should let Americans know what choices it is that they're
making. The intelligence community might find Americans, particularly young Americans most suspicious of government institutions,
more sympathetic to their delicate balancing act as informed participants.
"If We Should Have to Leave Our Bleached Bones on These Desert Sands in Vain, Then Beware the Anger of the Legions."
Quote Investigator
Notable quotes:
"... Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously spoke of the " fog of war ," the confusion created by and inherent uncertainty built into that complex human endeavor. As thick as that fog often is, in these years the fog of phony war has proven even thicker and more disorienting. ..."
A bizarre version of blitzkrieg overseas and an even stranger version of sitzkrieg at home could be said to define this peculiar
American moment. These two versions exist in a curiously yin-yang relationship to each other. For how can a nation's military be
engaged in warfare at a near-global level -- blitzing people across vast swaths of the globe -- when its citizens are sitting on
their collective duffs,
demobilized
and mentally disarmed? Such a schizoid state of mind can exist only when it's in the interest of those in power. Appeals to "patriotism"
(especially to revering "our" troops) and an overwhelming
atmosphere
of secrecy to preserve American "safety" and "security" have been remarkably effective in
controlling and stifling interest in the
country's wars and their
costs
, long before such an interest might morph into dissent or opposition. If you want an image of just how effective this has been,
recall the moment in July 2016 when small numbers of earnest war protesters quite literally had the
lights turned
off on them at the Democratic National Convention.
To use an expression I heard more than a few times in my years in the military, when it comes to its wars, the government treats
the people like mushrooms, keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit.
The Fog of Phony War
Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously spoke of the "
fog of war ," the confusion created by and inherent uncertainty
built into that complex human endeavor. As thick as that fog often is, in these years the fog of phony war has proven even thicker
and more disorienting.
By its very nature, a real war of necessity, of survival, like the Civil War or World War II brings with it clarity of purpose
and a demand for results. Poorly performing leaders are relieved of command when not killed outright in combat. Consider the number
of mediocre Union generals Abraham Lincoln cycled through before he found Ulysses S. Grant. Consider the number of
senior officers relieved
during World War II by General George C. Marshall, who knew that, in a global struggle against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, subpar
performances couldn't be tolerated. In wars of necessity or survival, moreover, the people are invariably involved. In part, they
may have little choice, but they also know (or at least believe they know) "
why we fight " -- and generally approve of it.
Admittedly, even in wars of necessity there are always those who will find ways to duck service. In the Civil War, for example,
the rich could pay others to fight in their place. But typically in such wars, everyone serves in some capacity. Necessity demands
it.
The definition of twenty-first-century phony war, on the other hand, is its lack of clarity, its lack of purpose, its lack of
any true imperative for national survival (despite a never-ending hysteria over the "terrorist threat"). The fog it produces is especially
disorienting. Americans today have little idea "why we fight" other than a vague sense of fighting them over there (Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, etc.) so they won't kill us here, to cite George W. Bush's
rationale for launching the war on terror. Meanwhile, with
such a lack of national involvement and accountability, there's no pressure for the Pentagon or the rest of the national security
state to up its game; there's no one even to point out that wherever the U.S. military has gone into battle in these years, yet more
terror groups have subsequently sprouted like so many malignant weeds. Bureaucracy and mediocrity go unchallenged;
massive boosts in military spending reward incompetency and the creation of a series of quagmire-like "
generational
" wars.
Think of it as war on a Möbius strip. More money shoveled into the Pentagon brings more chaos overseas, more imperial overreach,
and undoubtedly more
blowback
here at home, all witnessed -- or rather largely ignored -- by a sitzkrieg citizenry.
Of course, for those fighting the wars, they are anything but phony. It's just that their experience remains largely isolated
from that of the rest of us, an isolation that only serves to elevate
post-traumatic stress disorder rates,
suicides , and the like. When
today's troops come home, they generally suffer in silence and among themselves.
America's New (Phony) National Defense Strategy
Even phony wars need enemies. In fact, they may need them more (and more of them) than real wars do. No surprise then that the
Trump administration's recently announced
National Defense Strategy (NDS) offers a laundry list of such enemies. China and Russia top it as "revisionist powers" looking
to reverse America's putative victory over Communism in the Cold War. "Rogue" powers like North Korea and Iran are singled out as
especially dangerous because of their nuclear ambitions. (The United States, of course, doesn't have a "rogue" bone in its body,
even if it is now devoting at least $1.2
trillion to building a new generation of more usable nuclear
weapons.) Nor does the NDS neglect Washington's need to
hammer
away at global terrorists until the end of time or to extend "full-spectrum dominance" not just to the traditional realms of
combat (land, sea, and air) but also to
space and cyberspace.
Amid such a plethora of enemies, only one thing is missing in America's
new defense strategy
, the very thing that's been missing all these years, that makes twenty-first-century American war so phony: any sense of national
mobilization and shared sacrifice (or its opposite,
antiwar resistance ). If the United
States truly faces all these existential threats to our democracy and our way of life, what are we doing frittering away more than
$45
billion annually in a quagmire war in Afghanistan? What are we doing spending staggering sums on exotic weaponry like the F-35
jet fighter (total projected program cost:
$1.45 trillion ) when we
have far more pressing national needs to deal with?
Like so much else in Washington in these years, the NDS doesn't represent a strategy for real war, only a call for more of the
same raised to a higher power. That mainly means more money for the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and related "defense"
agencies, facilitating more blitz attacks on various enemies overseas. The formula -- serial blitzkrieg abroad, serial sitzkrieg
in the homeland -- adds up to
victory , but only for the military-industrial complex.
Solutions to Sitzkrieg
Of course, one solution to phony war would be to engage in real war, but for that the famed American way of life would actually
have to be endangered. (By Afghans? Syrians? Iraqis? Yemenis? Really?) Congress would then have to declare war; the public would
have to be mobilized, a draft undoubtedly reinstated, and taxes raised. And those would be just for starters. A clear strategy would
have to be defined and losing generals demoted or dismissed.
Who could imagine such an approach when it comes to America's forever wars? Another solution to phony war would be for the American
people to actually start paying attention. The Pentagon would then have to be starved of funds. (With less money, admirals and generals
might actually have to think.) All those attacks overseas that blitzed innocents and spread chaos would have to end. Here at home,
the cheerleaders would have to put down the pom-poms, stop mindlessly praising the troops for their service, and pick up a few protest
signs.
In point of fact, America's all-too-real wars overseas aren't likely to end until the phony war here at home is dispatched to
oblivion.
A final thought: Americans tell pollsters that, after all these years of failed wars abroad, they continue to
trust the
military more than any other societal institution. Consistent with phony war, however, much of that trust is based on ignorance,
on not really knowing what that military is doing overseas. So, is there a chance that, one of these days, Americans might actually
begin to pay some attention to "their" wars? And if so, would those polls begin to change and how might that military, which has
experienced its share of blood, sweat, and tears, respond to such a loss of societal prestige? Beware the
anger of the legions .
Faith in institutions undergirds democracy. Keeping the people deliberately demobilized and in the dark about the costs and carnage
of America's wars follows a pattern of governmental lying and deceit that stretches from the
Vietnam War to the
Iraq Wars of
1991 and 2003
, to military operations in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere today. Systemic lies and the phony war that goes with them continue
to contribute to a slow-motion process of political and social disintegration that could result in a much grimmer future for this
country: perhaps an authoritarian one; certainly, a more chaotic and less democratic one.
Societal degradation and democratic implosion, caused in part by endless phony war and the lies associated with it, are this country's
real existential enemies, even if you can't find them listed in any National Defense Strategy. Indeed, the price tag for America's
wars may in the end prove not just heavy but catastrophic.
The text of the letter in French as it appeared in "Les Centurions" [LCJL] has been appended near the bottom of this post. Here
is the English language version published in the 1962 edition of "The Centurions" [TCJL]:
We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many
of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our
assistance and our civilization.
We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood,
to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I
am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty
and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment and vilify our action.
I cannot believe that all this is true and yet recent wars have shown how pernicious such a state of mind could be and to
where it could lead.
Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we
ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire.
If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the
anger of the Legions!
Marcus Flavinius,
Centurion in the 2nd Cohort of the Augusta Legion,
to his cousin Tertullus in Rome
William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and history professor, is a
TomDispatch
regular . He blogs at Bracing Views .
I'm not sure why the US's actions overseas are called "wars". They're attacks upon weak 3rd and 4th world countries with little
capability to resist. The US has never fought a peer enemy despite all it's self-promotion. It moved in on the Germans at the
last moment after they were already on the ropes, despite all the WWII movie hype. All other enemies have been carefully chosen
for their vulnerability. But who actually wants a "real" war? Only an insane person wants that. These phony wars serve as an income
transfer scheme siphoning tax money upward from the masses to the upper classes. Funny how that works. An actual war with a country
that can defend itself and inflict real damage might have the effect of upsetting this racket they have going and they don't want
that. Of course the money spent for Afghanistan could be better put to use domestically for roads, medical research and other
ways of spending our money on ourselves but apparently that's not in the cards. What's important is to keep the hysteria going
so as to maintain the .1% in the style to which they're entitled. The people getting killed are the expendables and of no importance.
It's all just a money transfer. Ya have to be in the thick of things around DC, the Pentagon, the likes of Lockheed, the spooks
at NSA, certain aspects of Federal Law Enforcement, the whole Alphabet Soup. The dough is a-flowing and they're up to their hand-sewn
collars in it. Their mansions, their 5 BMWs or whatever, the Rolexes, the vacations, beautiful women at home AND on the road.
They intend to hand it all over to their children as their fathers handed it over to them. They are NOT giving this up. Ever.
Get in the way, Mr. Senator or Congressman or President? Here's what we have on YOU sir, usually a girlfriend or some depravity,
they're politicians after all. End of the day, these are the people that get richer every day by killing people. They're very
good at it. Even in Britain, the UK, even Russians aren't safe in the quest to keep it all going. Get in the way of the cabal
and their income streams in any way, they can disappear you and blame it on Putin. These are the people that kill people. Remember
that, you'll be well-served.
But: there IS sacrifice. All those trillions of dollars wasted on pointless winless foreign wars are coming out of the standard
of living of the United States, one way or the other. It's just indirect and hard to trace.
One is reminded that Donald Trump, during his presidential campaign, suggested that we stop wasting all these trillions on
stupid wars, and spend it on ourselves. For this he was excoriated as "literally Hitler." A lot of Americans voted for him because,
propaganda aside, they are not stupid and they don't want this phony war nonsense. After the election, though, he finally caved,
and now it's back to business as usual. The elites really like their war profits and they will not shy away from playing dirty
to keep them. That's why these phony wars continue.
Remember: IN THE LAST ELECTION THE AMERICAN PEOPLE VOTED AGAINST PHONY WARS. It's just that we don't live in a Democracy.
But there is an alternate view. One is reminded that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were only possible because the immigration
policy of the United States is increasingly open to people from unstable nations full of extremists. That attack could not have
happened a decade or so earlier.
Even if the United States had the most benevolent foreign policy imaginable, it's a big messy world. There will always be people
who hate the United States, for whatever reason. In the past these people would just stew in their own misery and kill each other.
Now they can come here no questions asked. Now every extremist group in Tyrannia or Fanatistan is our concern, and we need to
break up any potentially hostile organized faction anywhere in the world. So maybe – maybe – these stupid wars aren't that stupid
after all. Maybe these phony wars is just one more price for "there shall be open borders."
Minding our own business was never a strong suit of our ruling classes, but it would have saved the world a lot of grief. However,
it would have shaved the profits of the bankers and other war profiteers.
The "war for profit group" seem to labor under the impression that it is their war, and that it shall be their material
gain. That group, surely is the cause of wars
-Charles A. Lindbergh, Why is your country at war and what happens to you after the war, and related subjects" p77, (1917)
In the battle of Manchuria ( China ) , August 1945 , or " August Storm " , the Russians defeated the imperial japanese army
, the road to Japan was open for the Red Army and the chinese . Then the yankees threw the atomic bombs to Japan to threaten the
Russians ( who still did not have the atomic bomb at the time ) to not to invade Japan .
Japan was completeley defeated , there was not any military need to throw atomic bombs on Japan . The Americans have a sad
record for bombing unarmed civilians : Corea , Vietnam , Germany , Irak, Afganistan , Libia , Siria , Japan , etc ..
Americans are no longer allowed to see the reality of war, as some old movies showed. From my blog:
Jun 8, 2017 – Patriotic Nonsense
Do you become angry when you hear nonsense that our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for our freedoms? Do you become
enraged when the death of soldiers is explained by claiming they protected us? This is nothing new, as shown in this short movie
clip with Korean War vet James Garner. Most blame the Generals and politicians, but he also blames the people back home for glorifying
wars, thus allowing the deadly ruse to continue. He stated: "It is always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parade" as
though their husbands died by accident.
Back when Reagan was doing his impersonation of POTUS, the defense deficit was some measly amount and the cry went out to privatize
defense because the free market could do it for less. Pretty funny in retrospect.
They also fixed our inefficient corporations and markets, then went on to fix housing, inequality and end poverty. As if that
wasn't enough, they also fixed healthcare and banking. I'm surprised we're still afloat. I expect a Wiley Coyote moment soon.
"If We Should Have to Leave Our Bleached Bones on These Desert Sands in Vain, Then Beware the Anger of the Legions."
Quote Investigator
Notable quotes:
"... Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously spoke of the " fog of war ," the confusion created by and inherent uncertainty built into that complex human endeavor. As thick as that fog often is, in these years the fog of phony war has proven even thicker and more disorienting. ..."
A bizarre version of blitzkrieg overseas and an even stranger version of sitzkrieg at home could be said to define this peculiar
American moment. These two versions exist in a curiously yin-yang relationship to each other. For how can a nation's military be
engaged in warfare at a near-global level -- blitzing people across vast swaths of the globe -- when its citizens are sitting on
their collective duffs,
demobilized
and mentally disarmed? Such a schizoid state of mind can exist only when it's in the interest of those in power. Appeals to "patriotism"
(especially to revering "our" troops) and an overwhelming
atmosphere
of secrecy to preserve American "safety" and "security" have been remarkably effective in
controlling and stifling interest in the
country's wars and their
costs
, long before such an interest might morph into dissent or opposition. If you want an image of just how effective this has been,
recall the moment in July 2016 when small numbers of earnest war protesters quite literally had the
lights turned
off on them at the Democratic National Convention.
To use an expression I heard more than a few times in my years in the military, when it comes to its wars, the government treats
the people like mushrooms, keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit.
The Fog of Phony War
Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously spoke of the "
fog of war ," the confusion created by and inherent uncertainty
built into that complex human endeavor. As thick as that fog often is, in these years the fog of phony war has proven even thicker
and more disorienting.
By its very nature, a real war of necessity, of survival, like the Civil War or World War II brings with it clarity of purpose
and a demand for results. Poorly performing leaders are relieved of command when not killed outright in combat. Consider the number
of mediocre Union generals Abraham Lincoln cycled through before he found Ulysses S. Grant. Consider the number of
senior officers relieved
during World War II by General George C. Marshall, who knew that, in a global struggle against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, subpar
performances couldn't be tolerated. In wars of necessity or survival, moreover, the people are invariably involved. In part, they
may have little choice, but they also know (or at least believe they know) "
why we fight " -- and generally approve of it.
Admittedly, even in wars of necessity there are always those who will find ways to duck service. In the Civil War, for example,
the rich could pay others to fight in their place. But typically in such wars, everyone serves in some capacity. Necessity demands
it.
The definition of twenty-first-century phony war, on the other hand, is its lack of clarity, its lack of purpose, its lack of
any true imperative for national survival (despite a never-ending hysteria over the "terrorist threat"). The fog it produces is especially
disorienting. Americans today have little idea "why we fight" other than a vague sense of fighting them over there (Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, etc.) so they won't kill us here, to cite George W. Bush's
rationale for launching the war on terror. Meanwhile, with
such a lack of national involvement and accountability, there's no pressure for the Pentagon or the rest of the national security
state to up its game; there's no one even to point out that wherever the U.S. military has gone into battle in these years, yet more
terror groups have subsequently sprouted like so many malignant weeds. Bureaucracy and mediocrity go unchallenged;
massive boosts in military spending reward incompetency and the creation of a series of quagmire-like "
generational
" wars.
Think of it as war on a Möbius strip. More money shoveled into the Pentagon brings more chaos overseas, more imperial overreach,
and undoubtedly more
blowback
here at home, all witnessed -- or rather largely ignored -- by a sitzkrieg citizenry.
Of course, for those fighting the wars, they are anything but phony. It's just that their experience remains largely isolated
from that of the rest of us, an isolation that only serves to elevate
post-traumatic stress disorder rates,
suicides , and the like. When
today's troops come home, they generally suffer in silence and among themselves.
America's New (Phony) National Defense Strategy
Even phony wars need enemies. In fact, they may need them more (and more of them) than real wars do. No surprise then that the
Trump administration's recently announced
National Defense Strategy (NDS) offers a laundry list of such enemies. China and Russia top it as "revisionist powers" looking
to reverse America's putative victory over Communism in the Cold War. "Rogue" powers like North Korea and Iran are singled out as
especially dangerous because of their nuclear ambitions. (The United States, of course, doesn't have a "rogue" bone in its body,
even if it is now devoting at least $1.2
trillion to building a new generation of more usable nuclear
weapons.) Nor does the NDS neglect Washington's need to
hammer
away at global terrorists until the end of time or to extend "full-spectrum dominance" not just to the traditional realms of
combat (land, sea, and air) but also to
space and cyberspace.
Amid such a plethora of enemies, only one thing is missing in America's
new defense strategy
, the very thing that's been missing all these years, that makes twenty-first-century American war so phony: any sense of national
mobilization and shared sacrifice (or its opposite,
antiwar resistance ). If the United
States truly faces all these existential threats to our democracy and our way of life, what are we doing frittering away more than
$45
billion annually in a quagmire war in Afghanistan? What are we doing spending staggering sums on exotic weaponry like the F-35
jet fighter (total projected program cost:
$1.45 trillion ) when we
have far more pressing national needs to deal with?
Like so much else in Washington in these years, the NDS doesn't represent a strategy for real war, only a call for more of the
same raised to a higher power. That mainly means more money for the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and related "defense"
agencies, facilitating more blitz attacks on various enemies overseas. The formula -- serial blitzkrieg abroad, serial sitzkrieg
in the homeland -- adds up to
victory , but only for the military-industrial complex.
Solutions to Sitzkrieg
Of course, one solution to phony war would be to engage in real war, but for that the famed American way of life would actually
have to be endangered. (By Afghans? Syrians? Iraqis? Yemenis? Really?) Congress would then have to declare war; the public would
have to be mobilized, a draft undoubtedly reinstated, and taxes raised. And those would be just for starters. A clear strategy would
have to be defined and losing generals demoted or dismissed.
Who could imagine such an approach when it comes to America's forever wars? Another solution to phony war would be for the American
people to actually start paying attention. The Pentagon would then have to be starved of funds. (With less money, admirals and generals
might actually have to think.) All those attacks overseas that blitzed innocents and spread chaos would have to end. Here at home,
the cheerleaders would have to put down the pom-poms, stop mindlessly praising the troops for their service, and pick up a few protest
signs.
In point of fact, America's all-too-real wars overseas aren't likely to end until the phony war here at home is dispatched to
oblivion.
A final thought: Americans tell pollsters that, after all these years of failed wars abroad, they continue to
trust the
military more than any other societal institution. Consistent with phony war, however, much of that trust is based on ignorance,
on not really knowing what that military is doing overseas. So, is there a chance that, one of these days, Americans might actually
begin to pay some attention to "their" wars? And if so, would those polls begin to change and how might that military, which has
experienced its share of blood, sweat, and tears, respond to such a loss of societal prestige? Beware the
anger of the legions .
Faith in institutions undergirds democracy. Keeping the people deliberately demobilized and in the dark about the costs and carnage
of America's wars follows a pattern of governmental lying and deceit that stretches from the
Vietnam War to the
Iraq Wars of
1991 and 2003
, to military operations in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere today. Systemic lies and the phony war that goes with them continue
to contribute to a slow-motion process of political and social disintegration that could result in a much grimmer future for this
country: perhaps an authoritarian one; certainly, a more chaotic and less democratic one.
Societal degradation and democratic implosion, caused in part by endless phony war and the lies associated with it, are this country's
real existential enemies, even if you can't find them listed in any National Defense Strategy. Indeed, the price tag for America's
wars may in the end prove not just heavy but catastrophic.
The text of the letter in French as it appeared in "Les Centurions" [LCJL] has been appended near the bottom of this post. Here
is the English language version published in the 1962 edition of "The Centurions" [TCJL]:
We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many
of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our
assistance and our civilization.
We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood,
to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I
am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty
and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment and vilify our action.
I cannot believe that all this is true and yet recent wars have shown how pernicious such a state of mind could be and to
where it could lead.
Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we
ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire.
If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the
anger of the Legions!
Marcus Flavinius,
Centurion in the 2nd Cohort of the Augusta Legion,
to his cousin Tertullus in Rome
William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and history professor, is a
TomDispatch
regular . He blogs at Bracing Views .
I'm not sure why the US's actions overseas are called "wars". They're attacks upon weak 3rd and 4th world countries with little
capability to resist. The US has never fought a peer enemy despite all it's self-promotion. It moved in on the Germans at the
last moment after they were already on the ropes, despite all the WWII movie hype. All other enemies have been carefully chosen
for their vulnerability. But who actually wants a "real" war? Only an insane person wants that. These phony wars serve as an income
transfer scheme siphoning tax money upward from the masses to the upper classes. Funny how that works. An actual war with a country
that can defend itself and inflict real damage might have the effect of upsetting this racket they have going and they don't want
that. Of course the money spent for Afghanistan could be better put to use domestically for roads, medical research and other
ways of spending our money on ourselves but apparently that's not in the cards. What's important is to keep the hysteria going
so as to maintain the .1% in the style to which they're entitled. The people getting killed are the expendables and of no importance.
It's all just a money transfer. Ya have to be in the thick of things around DC, the Pentagon, the likes of Lockheed, the spooks
at NSA, certain aspects of Federal Law Enforcement, the whole Alphabet Soup. The dough is a-flowing and they're up to their hand-sewn
collars in it. Their mansions, their 5 BMWs or whatever, the Rolexes, the vacations, beautiful women at home AND on the road.
They intend to hand it all over to their children as their fathers handed it over to them. They are NOT giving this up. Ever.
Get in the way, Mr. Senator or Congressman or President? Here's what we have on YOU sir, usually a girlfriend or some depravity,
they're politicians after all. End of the day, these are the people that get richer every day by killing people. They're very
good at it. Even in Britain, the UK, even Russians aren't safe in the quest to keep it all going. Get in the way of the cabal
and their income streams in any way, they can disappear you and blame it on Putin. These are the people that kill people. Remember
that, you'll be well-served.
But: there IS sacrifice. All those trillions of dollars wasted on pointless winless foreign wars are coming out of the standard
of living of the United States, one way or the other. It's just indirect and hard to trace.
One is reminded that Donald Trump, during his presidential campaign, suggested that we stop wasting all these trillions on
stupid wars, and spend it on ourselves. For this he was excoriated as "literally Hitler." A lot of Americans voted for him because,
propaganda aside, they are not stupid and they don't want this phony war nonsense. After the election, though, he finally caved,
and now it's back to business as usual. The elites really like their war profits and they will not shy away from playing dirty
to keep them. That's why these phony wars continue.
Remember: IN THE LAST ELECTION THE AMERICAN PEOPLE VOTED AGAINST PHONY WARS. It's just that we don't live in a Democracy.
But there is an alternate view. One is reminded that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were only possible because the immigration
policy of the United States is increasingly open to people from unstable nations full of extremists. That attack could not have
happened a decade or so earlier.
Even if the United States had the most benevolent foreign policy imaginable, it's a big messy world. There will always be people
who hate the United States, for whatever reason. In the past these people would just stew in their own misery and kill each other.
Now they can come here no questions asked. Now every extremist group in Tyrannia or Fanatistan is our concern, and we need to
break up any potentially hostile organized faction anywhere in the world. So maybe – maybe – these stupid wars aren't that stupid
after all. Maybe these phony wars is just one more price for "there shall be open borders."
Minding our own business was never a strong suit of our ruling classes, but it would have saved the world a lot of grief. However,
it would have shaved the profits of the bankers and other war profiteers.
The "war for profit group" seem to labor under the impression that it is their war, and that it shall be their material
gain. That group, surely is the cause of wars
-Charles A. Lindbergh, Why is your country at war and what happens to you after the war, and related subjects" p77, (1917)
In the battle of Manchuria ( China ) , August 1945 , or " August Storm " , the Russians defeated the imperial japanese army
, the road to Japan was open for the Red Army and the chinese . Then the yankees threw the atomic bombs to Japan to threaten the
Russians ( who still did not have the atomic bomb at the time ) to not to invade Japan .
Japan was completeley defeated , there was not any military need to throw atomic bombs on Japan . The Americans have a sad
record for bombing unarmed civilians : Corea , Vietnam , Germany , Irak, Afganistan , Libia , Siria , Japan , etc ..
Americans are no longer allowed to see the reality of war, as some old movies showed. From my blog:
Jun 8, 2017 – Patriotic Nonsense
Do you become angry when you hear nonsense that our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for our freedoms? Do you become
enraged when the death of soldiers is explained by claiming they protected us? This is nothing new, as shown in this short movie
clip with Korean War vet James Garner. Most blame the Generals and politicians, but he also blames the people back home for glorifying
wars, thus allowing the deadly ruse to continue. He stated: "It is always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parade" as
though their husbands died by accident.
Back when Reagan was doing his impersonation of POTUS, the defense deficit was some measly amount and the cry went out to privatize
defense because the free market could do it for less. Pretty funny in retrospect.
They also fixed our inefficient corporations and markets, then went on to fix housing, inequality and end poverty. As if that
wasn't enough, they also fixed healthcare and banking. I'm surprised we're still afloat. I expect a Wiley Coyote moment soon.
"... That Washington's principal focus currently is on attacking another country (Russia) which due to USA incompetence is punching far above its weight in world affairs. The latest anti-Russia attacks center on a sick Russian spook and some Facebook ads (new weak USA sanctions just announced) are two examples of USA weakness (together with its Europe puppets, also losers). ..."
"... It is the obvious finale of Pax Americana, the period of controlling USA global influence now coming slowly to an inglorious end due to USA incompetence. Coincidentally, the USA is faced with overwhelming problems domestically in many fields, including citizen disparity, health care, transportation, crime and unemployment. So let's celebrate the potential shift against a forced USA withdrawal on the world scene and a possible improvement in domestic policy. ..."
That Washington's principal focus currently is on attacking another country (Russia) which
due to USA incompetence is punching far above its weight in world affairs. The latest
anti-Russia attacks center on a sick Russian spook and some Facebook ads (new weak USA
sanctions just announced) are two examples of USA weakness (together with its Europe puppets,
also losers).
It is the obvious finale of Pax Americana, the period of controlling USA global influence
now coming slowly to an inglorious end due to USA incompetence. Coincidentally, the USA is
faced with overwhelming problems domestically in many fields, including citizen disparity,
health care, transportation, crime and unemployment. So let's celebrate the potential shift
against a forced USA withdrawal on the world scene and a possible improvement in domestic
policy.
It won't happen soon though, as the current incompetent president is advocating huge
increases in wasteful military spending including the expansion of an army which has no
productive purpose to exist at all.
"... That Washington's principal focus currently is on attacking another country (Russia) which due to USA incompetence is punching far above its weight in world affairs. The latest anti-Russia attacks center on a sick Russian spook and some Facebook ads (new weak USA sanctions just announced) are two examples of USA weakness (together with its Europe puppets, also losers). ..."
"... It is the obvious finale of Pax Americana, the period of controlling USA global influence now coming slowly to an inglorious end due to USA incompetence. Coincidentally, the USA is faced with overwhelming problems domestically in many fields, including citizen disparity, health care, transportation, crime and unemployment. So let's celebrate the potential shift against a forced USA withdrawal on the world scene and a possible improvement in domestic policy. ..."
That Washington's principal focus currently is on attacking another country (Russia) which
due to USA incompetence is punching far above its weight in world affairs. The latest
anti-Russia attacks center on a sick Russian spook and some Facebook ads (new weak USA
sanctions just announced) are two examples of USA weakness (together with its Europe puppets,
also losers).
It is the obvious finale of Pax Americana, the period of controlling USA global influence
now coming slowly to an inglorious end due to USA incompetence. Coincidentally, the USA is
faced with overwhelming problems domestically in many fields, including citizen disparity,
health care, transportation, crime and unemployment. So let's celebrate the potential shift
against a forced USA withdrawal on the world scene and a possible improvement in domestic
policy.
It won't happen soon though, as the current incompetent president is advocating huge
increases in wasteful military spending including the expansion of an army which has no
productive purpose to exist at all.
A very meaningful head line by Izvestia on Potomac, WP. For WP editors, a victory for legal
army of Syria in their own country' is defying the INTERNATIONAL order. One wonders who are
these International community, are Russians, Chinese, Iran and many others part of this
community? Or this so-called community is another of US' international country clubs. Too
bad, i think the international community should just STFU and live with it.
"Syrian military pushes for victory in Ghouta, defying international outcry" https://goo.gl/StPpjp
Military Contractors have 400 lobbyists, revolving doors with military officers and
civilian officials, jobs in congressional districts; plus, corporations and their employees
contribute to election campaigns. Most importantly, they are part of the connected elite. You
are groomed to succeed and are paid handsomely if you belong to their exclusive club.
Unfortunately, today the system is corrupt and the global establishment has absolutely no
concern for the well-being of American citizens.
Blaming Russia for the 2016 election and Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatening U.S. troops in
Manjib Syria are signs of the House of Cards collapsing around us.
A very meaningful head line by Izvestia on Potomac, WP. For WP editors, a victory for legal
army of Syria in their own country' is defying the INTERNATIONAL order. One wonders who are
these International community, are Russians, Chinese, Iran and many others part of this
community? Or this so-called community is another of US' international country clubs. Too
bad, i think the international community should just STFU and live with it.
"Syrian military pushes for victory in Ghouta, defying international outcry" https://goo.gl/StPpjp
Military Contractors have 400 lobbyists, revolving doors with military officers and
civilian officials, jobs in congressional districts; plus, corporations and their employees
contribute to election campaigns. Most importantly, they are part of the connected elite. You
are groomed to succeed and are paid handsomely if you belong to their exclusive club.
Unfortunately, today the system is corrupt and the global establishment has absolutely no
concern for the well-being of American citizens.
Blaming Russia for the 2016 election and Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatening U.S. troops in
Manjib Syria are signs of the House of Cards collapsing around us.
"... If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. ..."
"... Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice. ..."
"... The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD; ..."
"... Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century. ..."
"... The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated." ..."
"... The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins ..."
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks . ..."
"... This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine. ..."
"... The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. ..."
"... The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments. ..."
In a three-part series published last week, the
World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and
military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence
candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant
seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant
swing to the Democrats.
If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control
of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department
officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The
presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature
is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.
Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry
Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the
activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation,
assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice.
In the wake of the Watergate crisis and the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon,
reporter Seymour Hersh published the first devastating exposure of the CIA domestic spying, in
an investigative report for the New York Times on December 22, 1974. This report
triggered the establishment of the Rockefeller Commission, a White House effort at damage
control, and Senate and House select committees, named after their chairmen, Senator Frank
Church and Representative Otis Pike, which conducted hearings and made serious attempts to
investigate and expose the crimes of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against
foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in
Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly
subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD;
Operation Mockingbird, in
which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an
effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the
telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century.
The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating
political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA
became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was
widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated."
In that period, it would have been unthinkable either for dozens of "former"
military-intelligence operatives to participate openly in electoral politics, or for them to be
welcomed and even recruited by the two corporate-controlled parties. The Democrats and
Republicans sought to distance themselves, at least for public relations purposes, from the spy
apparatus, while the CIA publicly declared that it would no longer recruit or pay American
journalists to publish material originating in Langley, Virginia. Even in the 1980s, the
Iran-Contra scandal involved the exposure of the illegal operations of the Reagan
administration's CIA director, William Casey.
How times have changed. One of the main functions of the "war on terror," launched in the
wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to
rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed
protector of the American people against terrorism.
This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al
Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in
Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US
intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.
The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies,
backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies
glorifying American spies and assassins ( 24 , Homeland , Zero Dark
Thirty , etc.)
The American media has been directly recruited to this effort. Judith Miller of the New
York Times , with her reports on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, is only the most
notorious of the stable of "plugged-in" intelligence-connected journalists at the
Times , the Washington Post , and the major television networks. More
recently, the Times has installed as its editorial page editor James Bennet, brother
of a Democratic senator and son of the former administrator of the Agency for International
Development, which has been accused of working as a front for the operations of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based
entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either
unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been
accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly
paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while
essentially ignoring Trump's attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with
ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food
stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the
agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political
voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and
expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United
States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the
Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate
the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of
resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the
campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of
media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire
editorial board of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part
of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged "human rights" grounds
for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence
operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in
Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are
"former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however,
purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the
Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not
covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic
primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat
experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on
their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party
officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand,
the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other
previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a
"friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an
expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the
extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state
apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working
class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right
policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects
the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of
military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade
unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary,
working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled
two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
"... If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. ..."
"... Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice. ..."
"... The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD; ..."
"... Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century. ..."
"... The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated." ..."
"... The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins ..."
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks . ..."
"... This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine. ..."
"... The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. ..."
"... The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments. ..."
In a three-part series published last week, the
World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and
military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence
candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant
seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant
swing to the Democrats.
If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control
of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department
officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The
presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature
is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.
Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry
Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the
activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation,
assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice.
In the wake of the Watergate crisis and the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon,
reporter Seymour Hersh published the first devastating exposure of the CIA domestic spying, in
an investigative report for the New York Times on December 22, 1974. This report
triggered the establishment of the Rockefeller Commission, a White House effort at damage
control, and Senate and House select committees, named after their chairmen, Senator Frank
Church and Representative Otis Pike, which conducted hearings and made serious attempts to
investigate and expose the crimes of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against
foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in
Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly
subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD;
Operation Mockingbird, in
which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an
effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the
telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century.
The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating
political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA
became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was
widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated."
In that period, it would have been unthinkable either for dozens of "former"
military-intelligence operatives to participate openly in electoral politics, or for them to be
welcomed and even recruited by the two corporate-controlled parties. The Democrats and
Republicans sought to distance themselves, at least for public relations purposes, from the spy
apparatus, while the CIA publicly declared that it would no longer recruit or pay American
journalists to publish material originating in Langley, Virginia. Even in the 1980s, the
Iran-Contra scandal involved the exposure of the illegal operations of the Reagan
administration's CIA director, William Casey.
How times have changed. One of the main functions of the "war on terror," launched in the
wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to
rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed
protector of the American people against terrorism.
This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al
Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in
Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US
intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.
The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies,
backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies
glorifying American spies and assassins ( 24 , Homeland , Zero Dark
Thirty , etc.)
The American media has been directly recruited to this effort. Judith Miller of the New
York Times , with her reports on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, is only the most
notorious of the stable of "plugged-in" intelligence-connected journalists at the
Times , the Washington Post , and the major television networks. More
recently, the Times has installed as its editorial page editor James Bennet, brother
of a Democratic senator and son of the former administrator of the Agency for International
Development, which has been accused of working as a front for the operations of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based
entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either
unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been
accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly
paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while
essentially ignoring Trump's attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with
ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food
stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the
agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political
voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and
expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United
States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the
Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate
the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of
resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the
campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of
media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire
editorial board of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part
of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged "human rights" grounds
for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence
operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in
Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are
"former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however,
purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the
Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not
covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic
primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat
experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on
their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party
officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand,
the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other
previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a
"friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an
expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the
extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state
apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working
class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right
policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects
the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of
military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade
unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary,
working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled
two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
"... If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress. ..."
"... Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. ..."
"... The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. ..."
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA,
Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic
candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political
history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely
predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as
half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the
lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting
candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the
best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the
field for a favored "star" recruit.
A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, who
worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top
aide to John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence. After her deep
involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a principal
deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of
responsibility included drone warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its
top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable
Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which
includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term
Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At
the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political
vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic
Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic
primary campaigns that, with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
"... If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress. ..."
"... Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit. ..."
"... The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political vehicle. ..."
An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA,
Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic
candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political
history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely
predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as
half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the
lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting
candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the
best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the
field for a favored "star" recruit.
A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, who
worked as Iraq director for the National Security Council in the Obama White House and as a top
aide to John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence. After her deep
involvement in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a principal
deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, her areas of
responsibility included drone warfare, "homeland defense" and cyber warfare.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated Slotkin as one of its
top candidates, part of the so-called "Red to Blue" program targeting the most vulnerable
Republican-held seats -- in this case, the Eighth Congressional District of Michigan, which
includes Lansing and Brighton. The House seat for the district is now held by two-term
Republican Representative Mike Bishop.
The Democratic leaders are promoting CIA agents and Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. At
the same time, such people are choosing the Democratic Party as their preferred political
vehicle. There are far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic
Party than of the Republican Party. There are so many that there is a subset of Democratic
primary campaigns that, with a nod to Mad magazine, one might call "spy vs. spy."
"... In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties. The neoliberal economic model of deregulation, downsizing, and privatization was preached by the Reagan-Thatcher junta, liberalized by the Clinton regime, temporarily given a bad name by the unhinged Bush administration, and saved by telegenic restoration of the Obama years. ..."
"... Today think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute, Stratfor, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, Carnegie Endowment, the Open Society Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, among many others, funnel millions of dollars in donations into cementing neoliberal attitudes in the American mind. ..."
"... The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics, are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic institutions like the state. Activist governments are inherently inefficient and lead directly to totalitarianism. Markets must be free and individuals must be free to act in those markets. People must be free to choose, both politically and commercially, in the voting booth and at the cash register. ..."
"... This conception of markets and individuals is most often formulated as "free-market democracy," a misleading conceit that conflates individual freedom with the economic freedom of capital to exploit labor. So when it comes to foreign relations, American and western aid would only be given on the condition that the borrowers accepted the tenets of an (highly manipulable) electoral system and vowed to establish the institutions and legal structures required to fully realize a western market economy. ..."
In Christopher Nolan's captivating and visually dazzling film Inception, a practitioner of
psychic corporate espionage must plant and idea inside a CEO's head. The process is called
inception, and it represents the frontier of corporate influence, in which mind spies no longer
just "extract" ideas from the dreams of others, but seed useful ideas in a target's
subconscious.
Inception is a well-crafted piece of futuristic sci-fi drama, but some of the ideas it
imparts are already deeply embedded in the American subconscious.
The notion of inception, of hatching an idea in the mind of a man or woman without his or
her knowledge, is the kernel of propaganda, a black art practiced in the States since the First
World War. Today we live beneath an invisible cultural hegemony, a set of ideas implanted in
the mass mind by the U.S. state and its corporate media over decades. Invisibility seems to
happen when something is either obscure or ubiquitous. In a propaganda system, an overarching
objective is to render the messaging invisible by universalizing it within the culture.
Difference is known by contrast. If there are no contrasting views in your field of vision,
it's easier to accept the ubiquitous explanation. The good news is that the ideology is
well-known to some who have, for one lucky reason or another, found themselves outside the
hegemonic field and are thus able to contrast the dominant worldview with alternative opinions.
On the left, the ruling ideology might be described as neoliberalism, a particularly vicious
form of imperial capitalism that, as would be expected, is camouflaged in the lineaments of
humanitarian aid and succor.
Inception 1971
In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the
western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell
Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties.
The neoliberal economic model of deregulation, downsizing, and privatization was preached by
the Reagan-Thatcher junta, liberalized by the Clinton regime, temporarily given a bad name by
the unhinged Bush administration, and saved by telegenic restoration of the Obama years.
The
ideology that underlay the
model saturated academia, notably at the University of Chicago, and the mainstream media,
principally at The New York Times. Since then it has trickled down to the general populace, to
whom it now feels second nature.
Today think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings
Institute, Stratfor, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign
Relations, Carnegie Endowment, the Open Society Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, among
many others, funnel millions of dollars in donations into cementing neoliberal attitudes in the
American mind.
The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics,
are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic
institutions like the state. Activist governments are inherently inefficient and lead directly
to totalitarianism. Markets must be free and individuals must be free to act in those markets.
People must be free to choose, both politically and commercially, in the voting booth and at
the cash register.
This conception of markets and individuals is most often formulated as
"free-market democracy," a misleading conceit that conflates individual freedom with the
economic freedom of capital to exploit labor. So when it comes to foreign relations, American
and western aid would only be given on the condition that the borrowers accepted the tenets of
an (highly manipulable) electoral system and vowed to establish the institutions and legal
structures required to fully realize a western market economy.
These demands were supplemented
with notions of the individual right to be free of oppression, some fine rhetoric about women
and minorities, and somewhat more quietly, a judicial understanding that corporations were
people, too. Together, an unshackled economy and an unfettered populace, newly equipped with
individual rights, would produce the same flourishing and nourishing demos of mid-century
America that had been the envy of humanity.
"... In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties. The neoliberal economic model of deregulation, downsizing, and privatization was preached by the Reagan-Thatcher junta, liberalized by the Clinton regime, temporarily given a bad name by the unhinged Bush administration, and saved by telegenic restoration of the Obama years. ..."
"... Today think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute, Stratfor, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, Carnegie Endowment, the Open Society Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, among many others, funnel millions of dollars in donations into cementing neoliberal attitudes in the American mind. ..."
"... The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics, are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic institutions like the state. Activist governments are inherently inefficient and lead directly to totalitarianism. Markets must be free and individuals must be free to act in those markets. People must be free to choose, both politically and commercially, in the voting booth and at the cash register. ..."
"... This conception of markets and individuals is most often formulated as "free-market democracy," a misleading conceit that conflates individual freedom with the economic freedom of capital to exploit labor. So when it comes to foreign relations, American and western aid would only be given on the condition that the borrowers accepted the tenets of an (highly manipulable) electoral system and vowed to establish the institutions and legal structures required to fully realize a western market economy. ..."
In Christopher Nolan's captivating and visually dazzling film Inception, a practitioner of
psychic corporate espionage must plant and idea inside a CEO's head. The process is called
inception, and it represents the frontier of corporate influence, in which mind spies no longer
just "extract" ideas from the dreams of others, but seed useful ideas in a target's
subconscious.
Inception is a well-crafted piece of futuristic sci-fi drama, but some of the ideas it
imparts are already deeply embedded in the American subconscious.
The notion of inception, of hatching an idea in the mind of a man or woman without his or
her knowledge, is the kernel of propaganda, a black art practiced in the States since the First
World War. Today we live beneath an invisible cultural hegemony, a set of ideas implanted in
the mass mind by the U.S. state and its corporate media over decades. Invisibility seems to
happen when something is either obscure or ubiquitous. In a propaganda system, an overarching
objective is to render the messaging invisible by universalizing it within the culture.
Difference is known by contrast. If there are no contrasting views in your field of vision,
it's easier to accept the ubiquitous explanation. The good news is that the ideology is
well-known to some who have, for one lucky reason or another, found themselves outside the
hegemonic field and are thus able to contrast the dominant worldview with alternative opinions.
On the left, the ruling ideology might be described as neoliberalism, a particularly vicious
form of imperial capitalism that, as would be expected, is camouflaged in the lineaments of
humanitarian aid and succor.
Inception 1971
In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the
western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell
Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties.
The neoliberal economic model of deregulation, downsizing, and privatization was preached by
the Reagan-Thatcher junta, liberalized by the Clinton regime, temporarily given a bad name by
the unhinged Bush administration, and saved by telegenic restoration of the Obama years.
The
ideology that underlay the
model saturated academia, notably at the University of Chicago, and the mainstream media,
principally at The New York Times. Since then it has trickled down to the general populace, to
whom it now feels second nature.
Today think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings
Institute, Stratfor, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Council on Foreign
Relations, Carnegie Endowment, the Open Society Foundation, and the Atlantic Council, among
many others, funnel millions of dollars in donations into cementing neoliberal attitudes in the
American mind.
The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics,
are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic
institutions like the state. Activist governments are inherently inefficient and lead directly
to totalitarianism. Markets must be free and individuals must be free to act in those markets.
People must be free to choose, both politically and commercially, in the voting booth and at
the cash register.
This conception of markets and individuals is most often formulated as
"free-market democracy," a misleading conceit that conflates individual freedom with the
economic freedom of capital to exploit labor. So when it comes to foreign relations, American
and western aid would only be given on the condition that the borrowers accepted the tenets of
an (highly manipulable) electoral system and vowed to establish the institutions and legal
structures required to fully realize a western market economy.
These demands were supplemented
with notions of the individual right to be free of oppression, some fine rhetoric about women
and minorities, and somewhat more quietly, a judicial understanding that corporations were
people, too. Together, an unshackled economy and an unfettered populace, newly equipped with
individual rights, would produce the same flourishing and nourishing demos of mid-century
America that had been the envy of humanity.
Are powerful intelligence agencies compatible even with limited neoliberal democracy, or
democracy for top 10 or 1%?
Notable quotes:
"... I recall during the George II administration someone in congress advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to bankruptcy ..."
"... Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he demands of them. ..."
"... Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us mopes have only slave roles to play... ..."
You have a good point, but I often think that, a the machinery of surveillance and repression
becomes so well oiled and refined, the ruling oligarchs will soon stop even paying lip
service to 'American workers', or the "American middle class" and go full authoritarian. Karl
Rove's dream to return the economy to the late 19th Century standard.
The Clintonoid project seems set on taking it to the late 16th century. Probably with a
return of chattel slavery. I recall during the George II administration someone in congress
advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to
bankruptcy
Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he
demands of them.
Do you really contend that Soros and the Koch brothers, and people like Adelson, aren't busily "undermining American democracy," whatever that is, via their
organizations (like ALEC and such) in favor of their oligarchic kleptocratic interests, and
going at it 24/7?
The phrase "reductio ad absurdam" comes to mind, for some reason...
Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the
Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are
putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us
mopes have only slave roles to play...
Looks like neocons represent a trap in which the US society got and out of which there is not easy end. That trap
which can be fatal.
Notable quotes:
"... American power elites, the majority of whom have never served a day in uniform nor ever attended serious military academic institutions and whose expertise on serious military-technological and geopolitical issues is limited to a couple of seminars on nuclear weapons and, in the best case scenario, the efforts of the Congressional Research Service are simply not qualified to grasp the complexity, the nature, and application of military force. They simply have no reference points ..."
"... In the " Empire of Illusions ," facts simply don't matter at all. In fact, I predict that the now self-evidently useless ABM program will proceed as if nothing had happened. ..."
"... The zombified US general public won't be told what is going on, those who will understand will be marginalized and powerless to make any changes, as for the corrupt parasites who have been making millions and billions from this total waste of taxpayer money, they have way too much at stake to throw in the towel ..."
"... In fact, since the US is now run by Neocons, we can very easily predict what they will do. They will do what Neocons always do: double down. So, after it has become public knowledge that the entire US ABM deployment is useless and outdated, expect a further injection in cash into it by "patriotic" "Congresspersons" (my attempt at being politically correct!), surrounded by flags who will explain to the lobotomized public that they are "taking a firm stance" against "the Russian dictator" and that the proud US of A shall not cave in to the "Russian nuclear blackmail". These colors don't run! United we stand! Etc. etc. etc. ..."
Bringing a sense of reality to a deeply delusional Empire
The leaders of the Empire, along with their brainwashed ideological
drones , live in a world completely detached from reality. This is why Martyanov writes
that the US " still continues to reside in her bubble which insulates her from any outside
voices of reason and peace " and that Putin's speech aimed at " coercing America's
elites into, if not peace, at least into some form of sanity, given that they are currently
completely detached from the geopolitical, military and economic realities of a newly emerging
world ". Martyanov explains that:
American power elites, the majority of whom have never served a day in uniform nor ever
attended serious military academic institutions and whose expertise on serious
military-technological and geopolitical issues is limited to a couple of seminars on nuclear
weapons and, in the best case scenario, the efforts of the Congressional Research Service are
simply not qualified to grasp the complexity, the nature, and application of military force.
They simply have no reference points. Yet, being a product of the American pop-military
culture, also known as military porn and propaganda, these people -- this collection of
lawyers, political "scientists", sociologists and journalists who dominate the American
strategic kitchen which cooks non-stop delusional geopolitical and military doctrines, can
understand one thing for sure, and that is when their poor dears get a bulls-eye on their
backs or foreheads.
The fact that in the real world these elites have had a bulls-eye on their backs for decades
doesn't change the fact that they also managed to convince themselves that they could remove
that bulls-eye by means of withdrawing from the ABM treaty and by surrounding Russia with
anti-missile launchers. The fact that some (many? most?) US politicians realized, at least in
the back of their minds, that their ABM systems would never truly protect the US from a Russian
counter-strike did not really matter because there were some uniquely American psychological
factors which made the notion of an ABM system irresistibly attractive:
1) An ABM system promised the US impunity : impunity is, along with military superiority,
one of the great American myths (as discussed here ). From Reagan
with this "weapons which kill weapons" to the current crisis in Korea, Americans have always
strived for impunity for their actions abroad: let all countries drown in an ocean of fire,
murder and mayhem as long as our "homeland" remains the untouchable sacrosanct citadel. Since
WWII Americans have killed many millions of people abroad, but when 9/11 came (nevermind that
it was obviously a false flag) the country went into something like clinical shock from the
loss of about 3'000 innocent civilians. Soviet, and then later, Russian nuclear weapons
promised to deliver many tens of millions of deaths if the USSR/Russia was attacked and that is
why spinning the fairy tale about an ABM "shield" was so appealing even if it was
technologically speaking either a pipe-dream (Reagan's "Star Wars") or an extremely limited
system capable of stopping maybe a few missiles at most (the current ABM system in Europe).
Again, facts don't matter at all, at least not in American politics or in the US collective
psyche.
2) An ABM system promised a huge financial bonanza for the fantastically corrupt US
Military-Industrial Complex for which millions of Americans work and which made many of them
fantastically rich. Frankly, I suspect that many (most?) folks involved in the ABM programs
fully realized that this was a waste of time, but as long as they were getting their bank
accounts filled with money, they simply did not care: hey, they pay me – I will take
it!
3) The US military culture never had much of an emphasis on personal courage or
self-sacrifice (for obvious reasons). The various variations of the ABM fairy tale make it
possible for Americans to believe that the next war would be mostly fought by pressing buttons
and relying on computers. And if real bombs start falling, let them fall somewhere else,
preferably on some remote brown people who, well, ain't quite as precious to God and humanity
as us, the White "indispensable nation".
Add to this a quasi-religious belief (a dogma, really) in the myth of American technological
superiority and you understand that the Russian leaders began to realize that their US
counterparts were gradually forgetting that they did have a bulls-eye painted on their backs.
So what Putin did is simply paint a few more, different ones, just to make sure that US leaders
come back to reality.
The goal of Putin's speech was also to prove both Obama ("the Russian economy is in
tatters") and McCain ("Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country") wrong. The Russian
message to the US ruling elites was simple: no, not only are we not lagging behind you
technologically, in many ways we are decades ahead of you, in spite of sanctions, your attempts
to isolate us, the dramatic drop in energy prices or your attempts at limiting our access to
world markets (the successful development of this new generation of weapons systems is a clear
indicator of the real state of fundamental research in Russia in such spheres are advanced
alloys, nanotechnology, super-computing, etc.).
To the warmongers at the Pentagon, the message was equally clear and tough: we spend less
than 10% of what you can spend on global aggression; we will match your quantitative advantage
with our qualitative superiority. Simply put, you fight with dollars, we will fight with
brains. US propagandists, who love to speak about how Russia always uses huge numbers of
unskilled soldiers and dumb but brutal weapons now have to deal with a paradigm which they are
completely unfamiliar with: a Russian soldier is much better trained, much better equipped,
much better commanded and their morale and willpower is almost infinitely higher than one of
the typical US serviceman. For a military culture used to mantrically repeat that everything
about it is "the best in the world" or even "the best in history" this kind of new reality will
come as a very painful shock and most will respond to it by going into deep denial. To those
who believed in the (historically completely false) narrative about the US and Reagan
bankrupting the USSR by means of a successful arms race, it must feel very strange to have sort
of "traded places" with the bad old USSR and being in the situation of having to face
military-spending induced bankruptcy.
Nothing will change in the Empire of Illusions (at least for the foreseeable
future)
Speaking of bankruptcy. The recent revelations have confirmed what the Russians have been
warning about for years: all the immense sums of money spent by the US in ABM defenses have
been completely wasted. Russia did find and deploy an asymmetrical response which makes the
entire US ABM program completely useless and obsolete. Furthermore, as Martyanov also points
out, the current force structure of the US surface fleet has also been made basically obsolete
and useless, at least against Russia (but you can be sure that China is following close
behind). Potentially, this state of affairs should have immense, tectonic repercussions:
immense amounts US taxpayer money has been completely wasted, the US nuclear and naval
strategies have been completely misguided, intelligence has failed (either on the acquisition
or the analytical level), US politicians have made disastrous decisions and this is all a total
"cluster-bleep" which should trigger God knows how many investigations, resignations, and
numerous sanctions, administrative or even criminal ones. But, of course, absolutely nothing of
this, nothing at all, will happen. Not a single head will roll
In the " Empire of
Illusions ," facts simply don't matter at all. In fact, I predict that the now
self-evidently useless ABM program will proceed as if nothing had happened. And, in a way, that
is true.
The zombified US general public won't be told what is going on, those who will
understand will be marginalized and powerless to make any changes, as for the corrupt parasites
who have been making millions and billions from this total waste of taxpayer money, they have
way too much at stake to throw in the towel.
In fact, since the US is now run by Neocons, we
can very easily predict what they will do. They will do what Neocons always do: double down.
So, after it has become public knowledge that the entire US ABM deployment is useless and
outdated, expect a further injection in cash into it by "patriotic" "Congresspersons" (my
attempt at being politically correct!), surrounded by flags who will explain to the lobotomized
public that they are "taking a firm stance" against "the Russian dictator" and that the proud
US of A shall not cave in to the "Russian nuclear blackmail". These colors don't run! United we
stand! Etc. etc. etc.
"... In many ways, Barack Obama's presidency was a blessing to US Empire, and this begins to make sense when you examine his presidency using McCoy's theoretical framework. McCoy says of Empires "When their revenue shrink, empires become brittle. Consider the collapse of the Soviet sphere after its command economy imploded. ..."
"... Zbignew Brzezinski was almost callous when it came to the blowback of "Operation Cyclone", and despite the US coming out of the Cold War as the world's sole superpower, has been unable to use that Super power to defeat the Frankenstein they cooked up in the laboratories of Langley. With Barack Obama, the Trans Pacific Partnership faced bipartisan backlash from a country whose economy was already wrecked by previous trade policies. Presidential candidates (including Hillary Clinton, who originally spearheaded the pivot to Asia initiative) came out against the trade pact and it eventually died when Trump came into office and ended trade talks. The lesson that McCoy is trying to get across here is perhaps unintended, but still important. The will of the people can trump (no pun intended) the power of Empire. ..."
"... That last point is important in terms of illustrating the importance of understanding the Empire we live in, especially those dedicated to resisting it. For me, the one criticism I have of this book is perhaps its greatest strength. The book itself is a tour de force of US imperialism, treating the world as if it were a game of Diplomacy, or a "Grand Chessboard". This sort of mindset fosters a callousness towards the people of this world, who are increasingly seen and used as pawns in a game being played only by wealthy and powerful people in suits isolated from the pain and suffering caused by their "ideas". ..."
American power. No two words seem to fit better in the modern
political lexicon. America is associated with power like peanut butter and jelly, and there really are no
deviations from this fundamental axiom in mainstream discourse. That said, American power is also taken for
granted, mainly because Americans possess only a cursory level of knowledge when it comes to world history. Gore
Vidal once referred to the this country as
"The United States of Amnesia"
, and while that certainly describes the short term memory of many Americans in
regards to their history, America has sort of a collective amnesia that disconnects them from the rest of
humanity. This amnesia makes Americans forget that when it comes to history, great powers rise and fall, so not
even Empires are exempt from simple laws of gravity.
Alfred McCoy's new book
'In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power'
does not take American power
for granted. McCoy's book takes a critical look at American empire by fitting it within a theoretical framework
that presents a model for the rise and collapse of Empire. What we will see from a critical examination of McCoy's
framework and model, is that America is not exempt from these historical laws.
McCoy in many ways is equipped to write such a
tour de force, being a historian that specializes in Southeast Asian studies. Once you consider that the genesis
of America's overseas Empire began in the Asia-Pacific region with the
"opening" (read invasion)
of Japan, as well as the
brutal occupation
of the Philippines, it makes sense to begin in that region when talking about US global
power. McCoy's research also took him all around the globe, particularly to Southeast Asia, and in the process
came into the crosshairs of the clandestine drug trade that,
thanks to the CIA
, was permeating in the region, particularly Vietnam. McCoy is also a frequent contributor to
Tom Dispatch, a subsidiary of The Nation Institute founded by journalist Tom Engelhardt, and you can read his many
essays
here
.
When approaching the topic of Empire, McCoy lays the
groundwork by delving into a subject that too few political analysts seem to understand, which is the study of
Geopolitics. The term geopolitics itself was coined by a 19th century Swede named Kjellen
defining
it as "the theory of the state as a geographical organism or phenomenon in space". McCoy begins his
analysis elsewhere, with the work of British imperialist and founder of modern Geopolitics Sir Halford Mackinder.
Mackinder is known mostly for his work
"The Geographical Pivot of History."
laying out his theory of Geopolitics. Mackinder's theory is interesting
considering that from the perspective of a British imperialist, his theory involves looking at Europe as the
periphery and concentrating on the massive continent of Eurasia as the center of Geopolitical power.
McCoy
writes
of Mackinder's theory(quoted at length for importance):
Mackinder argued that the future of global power lay not, as most British then imagined, in controlling the
global sea lanes, but in controlling a vast land mass he called "Euro-Asia." By turning the globe away from
America to place central Asia at the planet's epicenter, and then tilting the Earth's axis northward just a bit
beyond Mercator's equatorial projection, Mackinder redrew and thus reconceptualized the world map.
His new map showed Africa, Asia, and Europe not as three separate continents, but as a unitary land mass, a
veritable "world island." Its broad, deep "heartland" -- 4,000 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Siberian
Sea -- was so enormous that it could only be controlled from its "rimlands" in Eastern Europe or what he called
its maritime "marginal" in the surrounding seas.
Mackinder's map highlighting "Euro-Asia" as the "Pivot Area" or epicenter of
global power
To illustrate
how this geopolitical reality has played out, McCoy uses the historical example of the nineteenth century battle
between the British Empire and Russia over what is referred to as the "Heartland" of the "world Island".
McCoy ties this into his Geopolitical framework
noting:
From this geopolitical perspective, the nineteenth century was, at heart, a strategic rivalry, often called
"the Great Game," between Russia "in command of nearly the whole of the Heartland knocking at the landward
gates of the Indies," and Britain "advancing inland from the sea gates of India to meet the menace from the
northwest." In other words, Mackinder concluded, "the final Geographical Realities" of the modern age were sea
power versus land power or "the World-Island and the Heartland."
To see how this ties into American Empire, we
have to circle yet again back to Mackinder, who noted that the future of the world would come down to a
balancing of power
between sea powers operating on what is called the "maritime marginal" and "expansive
internal forces" within the Eurasian heartland. McCoy quotes imperial historian John Darwin, who wrote in his book
'After Tamerlane'
, that the United States achieved its "colossal imperium on an unprecedented scale". This was
accomplished through controlling what are called "the strategic axial points" on both sides of Eurasia. America
maintains this axial domination through strategic alliances with Pacific powers such as Japan, South Korea, and
the Philippines, while enforcing the axial point in Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
A cursory look at this Empire shows American primacy when it comes to dominance of land, sea, air, cyber, space,
institutional, economic, and clandestine. The aforementioned institutional supremacy through defensive alliances
like NATO and bilateral treaties with strategic nations in the Pacific allow America to surround the "world
island" with military bases and naval fleets, allowing for easier power projection into the heartland. Over the
years, that power projection has evolved from messy deployments of high numbers of ground troops, to the use of
mechanized unmanned vehicles called drones. These drones are becoming so commonplace that, McCoy notes "they
emerged from the war on terror as one of America's wonder weapons for preserving its global power."
Drones of course are used within the command of the
armed forces, but they are also used by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
, making them a tool of clandestine operations. McCoy refers to this as the
"Netherworld" where American power is projected behind a veil of secrecy. The clandestine realm played a major
role in the development of American power, as covert operations became the preferred method of fomenting discord
in countries the US deemed hostile. This evolution of power projection came during a very tumultuous period in
history, with the rise of US power coinciding with the collapse of the British Empire, and with that the shift
from Britain's traditional sea dominance to a new kind of dominance that is only seen from the shadows.
Clandestine power projection from the early days of the CIA was mostly used for
fomenting coups, overthrowing elected governments, and even assassination.
Over time, this evolved into a much
more sophisticated network that combined your typical covert operations with a sort of underworld diplomacy that
focused on preserving alliances with some less than savory characters. McCoy in particular brings attention to US
involvement with the
Contra's in Nicaragua
and the
Mujahadeen rebels in Afghanistan
during the 1980's. This upswing in Clandestine power projection also
coincided with the rise of the largest surveillance dragnet in the history of the world. The US intelligence
community, primarily through the National Security Agency (NSA) has the ability to monitor all telephone
communications that pass through
US cell towers
, as well as the ability to monitor the
internet traffic
of all Americans. The NSA also has the ability to monitor the activities of
foreign leaders
, whether they are "allies" or "hostile".
The NSA also has a strange alliance with the rest of
the Anglo-Saxon world called
"The Five Eyes"
which consists of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These five nations openly
share any collected intelligence amongst themselves and the alliance itself can be traced back to the founding of
the UKUSA Agreement of 1946, in which the US and the UK agreed to share intelligence with one another. The US also
utilized the realms of cyberspace and outer space to project power and influence, attacking Iran's nuclear
reactors with the
Stuxnet virus
, which was the first case of weaponized cyber warfare (that we know of). Much of Washington's
space warfare strategy remains classified, but we know that the
National Geospacial Intelligence Agency
is crucial in the collection of intelligence, analyzing all video
captured by surveillance drones and spy satellites circling the globe.
NSA Headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland
It is important to examine all the layers of what makes the US such a unique imperial power, because without such
context, there are a lot of misconceptions regarding US foreign policy. Alfred McCoy illustrates this best when
discussing what he calls "The Grandmasters of the Great Game". McCoy developed his fundamental model of
geopolitics in order to give us a picture of how imperial policymakers conduct policy. From that model, McCoy
states that in the history of our nation, only three figures were effective at playing "the great game". Those
three men were Elihu Root, Zbignew Brzezinski, and Barack Obama. Some people (especially those on the right) may
have a conniption at the thought of Obama being on the list considering his mistaken reputation as a foreign
policy dove. In the context of McCoy's framework, it makes perfect sense, whereas it makes sense to leave someone
like Henry Kissinger, who McCoy sees as reckless and someone who damaged American credibility, off the list.
Elihu Root is a forgotten individual in US history, despite the fact that he served as Secretary of War for
William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, Secretary of State, Senator, and an envoy who served under several
presidents. Root was at the center of power during the transition of America from a largely domestic Empire to a
global Empire, and as secretary of war led efforts when it came to reforming the structure of the army, creating a
centralized general staff, a modern war college, and expanding training for army officers. Root established
colonial regimes in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and dictated the constitution to an
"Independent"
Cuba which led to the establishment of a US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. Root was also
instrumental in the formation of the Council on Foreign Relations, and through his friendship with Andrew
Carnegie, helped to found the Peace Palace, where the Permanent Court of Arbitration would be set up at The Hague.
Root was an early builder of American Empire, and his policies and contributions to US imperialism are still being
felt today. The US is still in Guantanamo, still is occupying the Philippines, and Puerto Rico is reeling from
having to recover from a disaster, a recovery which has faced many obstacles due to their status as a "territory".
Root's policies would be essential in laying the foundation for US global power for the next century, but it
wouldn't be for another 60 years until the next imperial grandmaster used US global power for the purpose of
playing "The Great Game"
Zbignew Brzezinski, a Polish emigre and professor of
international relations, is perhaps the closest thing we have to an intellectual successor of Halford Mackinder.
Brzezinski
embraced
Mackinder's theoretical framework of Geopolitics, including Eurasia's designation of being a "world
island" and the "heartland" being the "pivot" of global power. Brzezinski believed that "Who rules East Europe
commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the
world." Brzezinski would apply this philosophy during his time as National Security Adviser to President Jimmy
Carter as he set about to free Eastern Europe from the clutches of the Soviet Union. In order to accomplish that,
Brzezinski spearheaded a policy culminating in
"Operation Cyclone"
, which involved the funneling of money, weapons, and other resources to Islamic rebels
fighting the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan, in hopes that the civil war would draw the Soviets in to defend
their proxy government. The plan worked, and the long term Soviet occupation of Afghanistan drained their economy
to the point of collapse, resulting in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Baltic and
Balkan states of Eastern Europe.
Of course, the unintended consequences of this policy would be the creation of a
super powered global army of terrorists, some of which would go on to plan and execute the 9/11 attacks, but that
wasn't a concern for Brzezinski. During a 1998 interview for a French magazine, Brzezinski was asked if he had any
regrets about the operation. He
responded
by asking "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the
Soviet Union? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?".
We
clearly can see the fault in his logic, but this type of hubris is probably common among people who view the world
as "The Grand Chessboard", to use the title of Brzezinski's most famous work. For now, it is important to note
that while the blowback from funding terrorism has created a global situation that is nearly without precedence,
the collapse of the Soviet Union left the world with one superpower, which was the United States. From there, the
US would look to once again create a world order in its image, and there was no better person to do so than our
next "Grandmaster of the Great Game", a friendly face for Imperialism and Neoliberalism, Barack Obama.
Brzezinski speaking with Taliban fighters in Pakistan
In many ways, Barack Obama's presidency was a blessing to US Empire, and this begins to make sense when you
examine his presidency using McCoy's theoretical framework. McCoy says of Empires "When their revenue shrink,
empires become brittle. Consider the collapse of the Soviet sphere after its command economy imploded.
Or recall
the rapid dissolution of the British Empire after World War II as London faced an irresolvable conflict between
"domestic recovery and its imperial commitments"". Taking this into consideration, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a
disaster for US empire. Solely from the perspective of an imperialist in McCoy's framework, that war cost lives,
credibility, and an insane amount of money that didn't go to repairing the needs of the country. More importantly,
during those years in which the US was bogged down in the Middle East, China began the next phase of its rise,
using it's massive collection of sovereign wealth funds to launch massive infrastructure development across the
entire Eurasian Continent. In comes Barack Obama, a friendly face of "hope and change" who vowed to end the Iraq
war, while at the same time maintaining the occupation of Afghanistan. One thing that set Obama's foreign policy
apart from his recent peers was his "pivot to Asia". When the pivot was first announced, many pundits didn't know
how to react, with one pundit even referring to it as a
"pivot to nowhere"
.
The pivot to Asia strategy makes sense when you look at it from the geopolitical framework
given to us by McCoy, and sheds new light on the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact that the
Obama administration was trying to implement. The trade pact would encompass countries that make up 40% of world
trade, and China would not be included, clearly illustrating the geopolitical nature of the agreement. The reasons
in which this agreement was not successful will become apparent, but the question that needs to be asked regarding
such an agreement is whether it came too late. In order to answer this question, we have to take a look at how
"The Great Game" has been playing out over the last couple decades and who is winning.
China's grand strategy certainly isn't your typical
imperial grand strategy, depending moreso on economic soft power than pure power projection through military
might. Nevertheless the strategy, if implemented would clearly change the geopolitical power dynamics of the
world, and that obviously has some policymakers concerned in Washington. One of the main post-World War II pillars
of US empire is
"The Washington Consensus"
, a philosophical framework of global governance that emphasizes the primacy of
western financial and governance institutions in conducting global politics. Institutions like the IMF, World
Bank, and WTO are products of this framework, and these institutions, along with military alliances like NATO,
have served to maintain a western-centric global supremacy with the US government at the helm. China's strategy
looks to reorient the entire landscape, shifting the epicenter of global governance from a "unipolar" model, which
emphasizes the need for a single powerful hegemon, to a more "multipolar" model, which emphasizes regional
hegemons.
Halford Mackinder once wrote that "Trans-continental railways are now transmuting the conditions of land
power," and that " the century will not be old before all Asia is covered with railways,". He wrote this back in
1904, and due to the damage accumulated in the wake of two world wars, it wouldn't be until the next century that
his vision was realized. China by 2030 plans on linking all of their major cities by high speed rail, while
simultaneously working with surrounding states to make the effort transcontinental. Plans on constructing a
"Eurasian Land Bridge" or a high speed rail line that would go from
Chongqing to Leipzig, Germany in 20 days
is an example of one such ambitious project. Why is this significant?
China being able to ship via high speed rail allows it to circumvent shipping lanes, most of which are patrolled
by either the US navy or US allies. Circumventing these shipping lanes gives the Chinese ability to get around any
obstacles that may arise if any diplomatic or geopolitical tensions arise between China and the US. Chinese grand
strategy also involves the construction of a vast network of pipelines for the purpose of importing oil and gas.
One of the most significant deals in this realm was between the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and
Russian state owned Gazprom.
The deal was worth
$400 billion
, and it came during a time where Russia was facing increased sanctions from the West due to its
annexation of Crimea. Russia as a geostrategic partner is essential for China's implementation of their grand
strategy. As long as Russia is the primary boogeyman of the West, and keeping the West bogged down in a two front
proxy war in Syria and Ukraine, China can simply step in strategically without getting their hands dirty while
continuing to implement what some in the US media are beginning to refer to as China's
"manifest destiny"
. China is also looking to end the monopoly on military alliances, security alliances, and
international economic institutions through alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organizations(SCO),
functioning as a Asian security alliance, and the establishment of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB),
built in the likeness and image of the IMF, and already has support from many countries, including US allies like
the UK, Australia, and South Korea.
Hopefully, this brings everything full circle,
and allows us to contextualize McCoy's rationale when it comes to his selected geopolitical grandmasters, in
particular Barack Obama and his "pivot to Asia" strategy. Within the framework of McCoy's model of geopolitics,
the strategies of Root, Brzezinski, and Obama seem like the perfect Imperial chess maneuvers, and it would be hard
to disagree. With that being said, McCoy's work is not a celebration of imperialist mastery, and the seeming
omnipotence of this "Great Game" does not have as much power as some may like to think. McCoy dedicates much to
discussing "the limits of vision" and how imperial grand strategies have one blindspot when it comes to long term
implementation, which is the will of the people. When it came to the long term vision of Root's globalism, he was
unable to foresee the populist backlash post-WWI which led to Congress rejecting the League of Nations, another of
Root's imperial projects, as well as the isolationist presidency of Warren G. Harding. Zbignew Brzezinski was
almost callous when it came to the blowback of "Operation Cyclone", and despite the US coming out of the Cold War
as the world's sole superpower, has been unable to use that Super power to defeat the Frankenstein they cooked up
in the laboratories of Langley. With Barack Obama, the Trans Pacific Partnership faced bipartisan backlash from a
country whose economy was already wrecked by previous trade policies. Presidential candidates (including Hillary
Clinton, who originally spearheaded the pivot to Asia initiative) came out against the trade pact and it
eventually died when Trump came into office and ended trade talks. The lesson that McCoy is trying to get across
here is perhaps unintended, but still important. The will of the people can trump (no pun intended) the power of
Empire.
That last point is important in terms
of illustrating the importance of understanding the Empire we live in, especially those dedicated to resisting it.
For me, the one criticism I have of this book is perhaps its greatest strength. The book itself is a tour de force
of US imperialism, treating the world as if it were a game of Diplomacy, or a "Grand Chessboard". This sort of
mindset fosters a callousness towards the people of this world, who are increasingly seen and used as pawns in a
game being played only by wealthy and powerful people in suits isolated from the pain and suffering caused by
their "ideas". With that being said, it is essential to maintain a realistic outlook when critically examining how
an imperialist sees the world, and that is the gift that this book offers. McCoy's entire examination of the
collapse of American power serves us two ways. One, it exposes the blindspots of imperialism, by demonstrating
that the visions of imperial grand strategy are limited by the lack of knowledge of the imperialist towards the
people they are trying to manipulate. This perhaps demonstrates that imperialism isn't as inundated in the culture
of America as we perhaps thought. Two, it offers us a look into the imperialist mindset, and gives the
anti-imperialist a chance to learn more about their adversary. McCoy's theoretical framework also proves to be
highly dependable in forecasting geopolitical trends, which could serve as a useful tool when figuring out where
and when future conflicts may arise. The most important lesson learned, and to reiterate what was said in the
previous paragraph, is the power of the people, especially people in this country, to combat imperialism.
Americans sit in the heart of the empire, and the land that we occupy allows the US empire to project its power
all over the world. Without the foundation, the entire empire comes crumbling down, and the people of this country
are that foundation. With enough outcry, we can combat imperialism, and with the current decline of US Global
Power, there is no better time to speak out.
Are powerful intelligence agencies compatible even with limited neoliberal democracy, or
democracy for top 10 or 1%?
Notable quotes:
"... I recall during the George II administration someone in congress advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to bankruptcy ..."
"... Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he demands of them. ..."
"... Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us mopes have only slave roles to play... ..."
You have a good point, but I often think that, a the machinery of surveillance and repression
becomes so well oiled and refined, the ruling oligarchs will soon stop even paying lip
service to 'American workers', or the "American middle class" and go full authoritarian. Karl
Rove's dream to return the economy to the late 19th Century standard.
The Clintonoid project seems set on taking it to the late 16th century. Probably with a
return of chattel slavery. I recall during the George II administration someone in congress
advocating for he return of debtor's prisons during the 'debat' over ending access to
bankruptcy
Soros, like the Koch brothers, heads an organization. He has lots of "people" who do what he
demands of them.
Do you really contend that Soros and the Koch brothers, and people like Adelson, aren't busily "undermining American democracy," whatever that is, via their
organizations (like ALEC and such) in favor of their oligarchic kleptocratic interests, and
going at it 24/7?
The phrase "reductio ad absurdam" comes to mind, for some reason...
Let's give these guys (and gals, too, let's not forget the Pritzkers and DeVoses and the
Walton Family, just among us Norte Americanos) full credit for all the hard work they are
putting in, and money too, of course, to buy a world the way they want it -- one which us
mopes have only slave roles to play...
Looks like neocons represent a trap in which the US society got and out of which there is not easy end. That trap
which can be fatal.
Notable quotes:
"... American power elites, the majority of whom have never served a day in uniform nor ever attended serious military academic institutions and whose expertise on serious military-technological and geopolitical issues is limited to a couple of seminars on nuclear weapons and, in the best case scenario, the efforts of the Congressional Research Service are simply not qualified to grasp the complexity, the nature, and application of military force. They simply have no reference points ..."
"... In the " Empire of Illusions ," facts simply don't matter at all. In fact, I predict that the now self-evidently useless ABM program will proceed as if nothing had happened. ..."
"... The zombified US general public won't be told what is going on, those who will understand will be marginalized and powerless to make any changes, as for the corrupt parasites who have been making millions and billions from this total waste of taxpayer money, they have way too much at stake to throw in the towel ..."
"... In fact, since the US is now run by Neocons, we can very easily predict what they will do. They will do what Neocons always do: double down. So, after it has become public knowledge that the entire US ABM deployment is useless and outdated, expect a further injection in cash into it by "patriotic" "Congresspersons" (my attempt at being politically correct!), surrounded by flags who will explain to the lobotomized public that they are "taking a firm stance" against "the Russian dictator" and that the proud US of A shall not cave in to the "Russian nuclear blackmail". These colors don't run! United we stand! Etc. etc. etc. ..."
Bringing a sense of reality to a deeply delusional Empire
The leaders of the Empire, along with their brainwashed ideological
drones , live in a world completely detached from reality. This is why Martyanov writes
that the US " still continues to reside in her bubble which insulates her from any outside
voices of reason and peace " and that Putin's speech aimed at " coercing America's
elites into, if not peace, at least into some form of sanity, given that they are currently
completely detached from the geopolitical, military and economic realities of a newly emerging
world ". Martyanov explains that:
American power elites, the majority of whom have never served a day in uniform nor ever
attended serious military academic institutions and whose expertise on serious
military-technological and geopolitical issues is limited to a couple of seminars on nuclear
weapons and, in the best case scenario, the efforts of the Congressional Research Service are
simply not qualified to grasp the complexity, the nature, and application of military force.
They simply have no reference points. Yet, being a product of the American pop-military
culture, also known as military porn and propaganda, these people -- this collection of
lawyers, political "scientists", sociologists and journalists who dominate the American
strategic kitchen which cooks non-stop delusional geopolitical and military doctrines, can
understand one thing for sure, and that is when their poor dears get a bulls-eye on their
backs or foreheads.
The fact that in the real world these elites have had a bulls-eye on their backs for decades
doesn't change the fact that they also managed to convince themselves that they could remove
that bulls-eye by means of withdrawing from the ABM treaty and by surrounding Russia with
anti-missile launchers. The fact that some (many? most?) US politicians realized, at least in
the back of their minds, that their ABM systems would never truly protect the US from a Russian
counter-strike did not really matter because there were some uniquely American psychological
factors which made the notion of an ABM system irresistibly attractive:
1) An ABM system promised the US impunity : impunity is, along with military superiority,
one of the great American myths (as discussed here ). From Reagan
with this "weapons which kill weapons" to the current crisis in Korea, Americans have always
strived for impunity for their actions abroad: let all countries drown in an ocean of fire,
murder and mayhem as long as our "homeland" remains the untouchable sacrosanct citadel. Since
WWII Americans have killed many millions of people abroad, but when 9/11 came (nevermind that
it was obviously a false flag) the country went into something like clinical shock from the
loss of about 3'000 innocent civilians. Soviet, and then later, Russian nuclear weapons
promised to deliver many tens of millions of deaths if the USSR/Russia was attacked and that is
why spinning the fairy tale about an ABM "shield" was so appealing even if it was
technologically speaking either a pipe-dream (Reagan's "Star Wars") or an extremely limited
system capable of stopping maybe a few missiles at most (the current ABM system in Europe).
Again, facts don't matter at all, at least not in American politics or in the US collective
psyche.
2) An ABM system promised a huge financial bonanza for the fantastically corrupt US
Military-Industrial Complex for which millions of Americans work and which made many of them
fantastically rich. Frankly, I suspect that many (most?) folks involved in the ABM programs
fully realized that this was a waste of time, but as long as they were getting their bank
accounts filled with money, they simply did not care: hey, they pay me – I will take
it!
3) The US military culture never had much of an emphasis on personal courage or
self-sacrifice (for obvious reasons). The various variations of the ABM fairy tale make it
possible for Americans to believe that the next war would be mostly fought by pressing buttons
and relying on computers. And if real bombs start falling, let them fall somewhere else,
preferably on some remote brown people who, well, ain't quite as precious to God and humanity
as us, the White "indispensable nation".
Add to this a quasi-religious belief (a dogma, really) in the myth of American technological
superiority and you understand that the Russian leaders began to realize that their US
counterparts were gradually forgetting that they did have a bulls-eye painted on their backs.
So what Putin did is simply paint a few more, different ones, just to make sure that US leaders
come back to reality.
The goal of Putin's speech was also to prove both Obama ("the Russian economy is in
tatters") and McCain ("Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country") wrong. The Russian
message to the US ruling elites was simple: no, not only are we not lagging behind you
technologically, in many ways we are decades ahead of you, in spite of sanctions, your attempts
to isolate us, the dramatic drop in energy prices or your attempts at limiting our access to
world markets (the successful development of this new generation of weapons systems is a clear
indicator of the real state of fundamental research in Russia in such spheres are advanced
alloys, nanotechnology, super-computing, etc.).
To the warmongers at the Pentagon, the message was equally clear and tough: we spend less
than 10% of what you can spend on global aggression; we will match your quantitative advantage
with our qualitative superiority. Simply put, you fight with dollars, we will fight with
brains. US propagandists, who love to speak about how Russia always uses huge numbers of
unskilled soldiers and dumb but brutal weapons now have to deal with a paradigm which they are
completely unfamiliar with: a Russian soldier is much better trained, much better equipped,
much better commanded and their morale and willpower is almost infinitely higher than one of
the typical US serviceman. For a military culture used to mantrically repeat that everything
about it is "the best in the world" or even "the best in history" this kind of new reality will
come as a very painful shock and most will respond to it by going into deep denial. To those
who believed in the (historically completely false) narrative about the US and Reagan
bankrupting the USSR by means of a successful arms race, it must feel very strange to have sort
of "traded places" with the bad old USSR and being in the situation of having to face
military-spending induced bankruptcy.
Nothing will change in the Empire of Illusions (at least for the foreseeable
future)
Speaking of bankruptcy. The recent revelations have confirmed what the Russians have been
warning about for years: all the immense sums of money spent by the US in ABM defenses have
been completely wasted. Russia did find and deploy an asymmetrical response which makes the
entire US ABM program completely useless and obsolete. Furthermore, as Martyanov also points
out, the current force structure of the US surface fleet has also been made basically obsolete
and useless, at least against Russia (but you can be sure that China is following close
behind). Potentially, this state of affairs should have immense, tectonic repercussions:
immense amounts US taxpayer money has been completely wasted, the US nuclear and naval
strategies have been completely misguided, intelligence has failed (either on the acquisition
or the analytical level), US politicians have made disastrous decisions and this is all a total
"cluster-bleep" which should trigger God knows how many investigations, resignations, and
numerous sanctions, administrative or even criminal ones. But, of course, absolutely nothing of
this, nothing at all, will happen. Not a single head will roll
In the " Empire of
Illusions ," facts simply don't matter at all. In fact, I predict that the now
self-evidently useless ABM program will proceed as if nothing had happened. And, in a way, that
is true.
The zombified US general public won't be told what is going on, those who will
understand will be marginalized and powerless to make any changes, as for the corrupt parasites
who have been making millions and billions from this total waste of taxpayer money, they have
way too much at stake to throw in the towel.
In fact, since the US is now run by Neocons, we
can very easily predict what they will do. They will do what Neocons always do: double down.
So, after it has become public knowledge that the entire US ABM deployment is useless and
outdated, expect a further injection in cash into it by "patriotic" "Congresspersons" (my
attempt at being politically correct!), surrounded by flags who will explain to the lobotomized
public that they are "taking a firm stance" against "the Russian dictator" and that the proud
US of A shall not cave in to the "Russian nuclear blackmail". These colors don't run! United we
stand! Etc. etc. etc.
"... In many ways, Barack Obama's presidency was a blessing to US Empire, and this begins to make sense when you examine his presidency using McCoy's theoretical framework. McCoy says of Empires "When their revenue shrink, empires become brittle. Consider the collapse of the Soviet sphere after its command economy imploded. ..."
"... Zbignew Brzezinski was almost callous when it came to the blowback of "Operation Cyclone", and despite the US coming out of the Cold War as the world's sole superpower, has been unable to use that Super power to defeat the Frankenstein they cooked up in the laboratories of Langley. With Barack Obama, the Trans Pacific Partnership faced bipartisan backlash from a country whose economy was already wrecked by previous trade policies. Presidential candidates (including Hillary Clinton, who originally spearheaded the pivot to Asia initiative) came out against the trade pact and it eventually died when Trump came into office and ended trade talks. The lesson that McCoy is trying to get across here is perhaps unintended, but still important. The will of the people can trump (no pun intended) the power of Empire. ..."
"... That last point is important in terms of illustrating the importance of understanding the Empire we live in, especially those dedicated to resisting it. For me, the one criticism I have of this book is perhaps its greatest strength. The book itself is a tour de force of US imperialism, treating the world as if it were a game of Diplomacy, or a "Grand Chessboard". This sort of mindset fosters a callousness towards the people of this world, who are increasingly seen and used as pawns in a game being played only by wealthy and powerful people in suits isolated from the pain and suffering caused by their "ideas". ..."
American power. No two words seem to fit better in the modern
political lexicon. America is associated with power like peanut butter and jelly, and there really are no
deviations from this fundamental axiom in mainstream discourse. That said, American power is also taken for
granted, mainly because Americans possess only a cursory level of knowledge when it comes to world history. Gore
Vidal once referred to the this country as
"The United States of Amnesia"
, and while that certainly describes the short term memory of many Americans in
regards to their history, America has sort of a collective amnesia that disconnects them from the rest of
humanity. This amnesia makes Americans forget that when it comes to history, great powers rise and fall, so not
even Empires are exempt from simple laws of gravity.
Alfred McCoy's new book
'In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power'
does not take American power
for granted. McCoy's book takes a critical look at American empire by fitting it within a theoretical framework
that presents a model for the rise and collapse of Empire. What we will see from a critical examination of McCoy's
framework and model, is that America is not exempt from these historical laws.
McCoy in many ways is equipped to write such a
tour de force, being a historian that specializes in Southeast Asian studies. Once you consider that the genesis
of America's overseas Empire began in the Asia-Pacific region with the
"opening" (read invasion)
of Japan, as well as the
brutal occupation
of the Philippines, it makes sense to begin in that region when talking about US global
power. McCoy's research also took him all around the globe, particularly to Southeast Asia, and in the process
came into the crosshairs of the clandestine drug trade that,
thanks to the CIA
, was permeating in the region, particularly Vietnam. McCoy is also a frequent contributor to
Tom Dispatch, a subsidiary of The Nation Institute founded by journalist Tom Engelhardt, and you can read his many
essays
here
.
When approaching the topic of Empire, McCoy lays the
groundwork by delving into a subject that too few political analysts seem to understand, which is the study of
Geopolitics. The term geopolitics itself was coined by a 19th century Swede named Kjellen
defining
it as "the theory of the state as a geographical organism or phenomenon in space". McCoy begins his
analysis elsewhere, with the work of British imperialist and founder of modern Geopolitics Sir Halford Mackinder.
Mackinder is known mostly for his work
"The Geographical Pivot of History."
laying out his theory of Geopolitics. Mackinder's theory is interesting
considering that from the perspective of a British imperialist, his theory involves looking at Europe as the
periphery and concentrating on the massive continent of Eurasia as the center of Geopolitical power.
McCoy
writes
of Mackinder's theory(quoted at length for importance):
Mackinder argued that the future of global power lay not, as most British then imagined, in controlling the
global sea lanes, but in controlling a vast land mass he called "Euro-Asia." By turning the globe away from
America to place central Asia at the planet's epicenter, and then tilting the Earth's axis northward just a bit
beyond Mercator's equatorial projection, Mackinder redrew and thus reconceptualized the world map.
His new map showed Africa, Asia, and Europe not as three separate continents, but as a unitary land mass, a
veritable "world island." Its broad, deep "heartland" -- 4,000 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Siberian
Sea -- was so enormous that it could only be controlled from its "rimlands" in Eastern Europe or what he called
its maritime "marginal" in the surrounding seas.
Mackinder's map highlighting "Euro-Asia" as the "Pivot Area" or epicenter of
global power
To illustrate
how this geopolitical reality has played out, McCoy uses the historical example of the nineteenth century battle
between the British Empire and Russia over what is referred to as the "Heartland" of the "world Island".
McCoy ties this into his Geopolitical framework
noting:
From this geopolitical perspective, the nineteenth century was, at heart, a strategic rivalry, often called
"the Great Game," between Russia "in command of nearly the whole of the Heartland knocking at the landward
gates of the Indies," and Britain "advancing inland from the sea gates of India to meet the menace from the
northwest." In other words, Mackinder concluded, "the final Geographical Realities" of the modern age were sea
power versus land power or "the World-Island and the Heartland."
To see how this ties into American Empire, we
have to circle yet again back to Mackinder, who noted that the future of the world would come down to a
balancing of power
between sea powers operating on what is called the "maritime marginal" and "expansive
internal forces" within the Eurasian heartland. McCoy quotes imperial historian John Darwin, who wrote in his book
'After Tamerlane'
, that the United States achieved its "colossal imperium on an unprecedented scale". This was
accomplished through controlling what are called "the strategic axial points" on both sides of Eurasia. America
maintains this axial domination through strategic alliances with Pacific powers such as Japan, South Korea, and
the Philippines, while enforcing the axial point in Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
A cursory look at this Empire shows American primacy when it comes to dominance of land, sea, air, cyber, space,
institutional, economic, and clandestine. The aforementioned institutional supremacy through defensive alliances
like NATO and bilateral treaties with strategic nations in the Pacific allow America to surround the "world
island" with military bases and naval fleets, allowing for easier power projection into the heartland. Over the
years, that power projection has evolved from messy deployments of high numbers of ground troops, to the use of
mechanized unmanned vehicles called drones. These drones are becoming so commonplace that, McCoy notes "they
emerged from the war on terror as one of America's wonder weapons for preserving its global power."
Drones of course are used within the command of the
armed forces, but they are also used by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
, making them a tool of clandestine operations. McCoy refers to this as the
"Netherworld" where American power is projected behind a veil of secrecy. The clandestine realm played a major
role in the development of American power, as covert operations became the preferred method of fomenting discord
in countries the US deemed hostile. This evolution of power projection came during a very tumultuous period in
history, with the rise of US power coinciding with the collapse of the British Empire, and with that the shift
from Britain's traditional sea dominance to a new kind of dominance that is only seen from the shadows.
Clandestine power projection from the early days of the CIA was mostly used for
fomenting coups, overthrowing elected governments, and even assassination.
Over time, this evolved into a much
more sophisticated network that combined your typical covert operations with a sort of underworld diplomacy that
focused on preserving alliances with some less than savory characters. McCoy in particular brings attention to US
involvement with the
Contra's in Nicaragua
and the
Mujahadeen rebels in Afghanistan
during the 1980's. This upswing in Clandestine power projection also
coincided with the rise of the largest surveillance dragnet in the history of the world. The US intelligence
community, primarily through the National Security Agency (NSA) has the ability to monitor all telephone
communications that pass through
US cell towers
, as well as the ability to monitor the
internet traffic
of all Americans. The NSA also has the ability to monitor the activities of
foreign leaders
, whether they are "allies" or "hostile".
The NSA also has a strange alliance with the rest of
the Anglo-Saxon world called
"The Five Eyes"
which consists of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These five nations openly
share any collected intelligence amongst themselves and the alliance itself can be traced back to the founding of
the UKUSA Agreement of 1946, in which the US and the UK agreed to share intelligence with one another. The US also
utilized the realms of cyberspace and outer space to project power and influence, attacking Iran's nuclear
reactors with the
Stuxnet virus
, which was the first case of weaponized cyber warfare (that we know of). Much of Washington's
space warfare strategy remains classified, but we know that the
National Geospacial Intelligence Agency
is crucial in the collection of intelligence, analyzing all video
captured by surveillance drones and spy satellites circling the globe.
NSA Headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland
It is important to examine all the layers of what makes the US such a unique imperial power, because without such
context, there are a lot of misconceptions regarding US foreign policy. Alfred McCoy illustrates this best when
discussing what he calls "The Grandmasters of the Great Game". McCoy developed his fundamental model of
geopolitics in order to give us a picture of how imperial policymakers conduct policy. From that model, McCoy
states that in the history of our nation, only three figures were effective at playing "the great game". Those
three men were Elihu Root, Zbignew Brzezinski, and Barack Obama. Some people (especially those on the right) may
have a conniption at the thought of Obama being on the list considering his mistaken reputation as a foreign
policy dove. In the context of McCoy's framework, it makes perfect sense, whereas it makes sense to leave someone
like Henry Kissinger, who McCoy sees as reckless and someone who damaged American credibility, off the list.
Elihu Root is a forgotten individual in US history, despite the fact that he served as Secretary of War for
William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, Secretary of State, Senator, and an envoy who served under several
presidents. Root was at the center of power during the transition of America from a largely domestic Empire to a
global Empire, and as secretary of war led efforts when it came to reforming the structure of the army, creating a
centralized general staff, a modern war college, and expanding training for army officers. Root established
colonial regimes in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and dictated the constitution to an
"Independent"
Cuba which led to the establishment of a US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. Root was also
instrumental in the formation of the Council on Foreign Relations, and through his friendship with Andrew
Carnegie, helped to found the Peace Palace, where the Permanent Court of Arbitration would be set up at The Hague.
Root was an early builder of American Empire, and his policies and contributions to US imperialism are still being
felt today. The US is still in Guantanamo, still is occupying the Philippines, and Puerto Rico is reeling from
having to recover from a disaster, a recovery which has faced many obstacles due to their status as a "territory".
Root's policies would be essential in laying the foundation for US global power for the next century, but it
wouldn't be for another 60 years until the next imperial grandmaster used US global power for the purpose of
playing "The Great Game"
Zbignew Brzezinski, a Polish emigre and professor of
international relations, is perhaps the closest thing we have to an intellectual successor of Halford Mackinder.
Brzezinski
embraced
Mackinder's theoretical framework of Geopolitics, including Eurasia's designation of being a "world
island" and the "heartland" being the "pivot" of global power. Brzezinski believed that "Who rules East Europe
commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the
world." Brzezinski would apply this philosophy during his time as National Security Adviser to President Jimmy
Carter as he set about to free Eastern Europe from the clutches of the Soviet Union. In order to accomplish that,
Brzezinski spearheaded a policy culminating in
"Operation Cyclone"
, which involved the funneling of money, weapons, and other resources to Islamic rebels
fighting the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan, in hopes that the civil war would draw the Soviets in to defend
their proxy government. The plan worked, and the long term Soviet occupation of Afghanistan drained their economy
to the point of collapse, resulting in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Baltic and
Balkan states of Eastern Europe.
Of course, the unintended consequences of this policy would be the creation of a
super powered global army of terrorists, some of which would go on to plan and execute the 9/11 attacks, but that
wasn't a concern for Brzezinski. During a 1998 interview for a French magazine, Brzezinski was asked if he had any
regrets about the operation. He
responded
by asking "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the
Soviet Union? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?".
We
clearly can see the fault in his logic, but this type of hubris is probably common among people who view the world
as "The Grand Chessboard", to use the title of Brzezinski's most famous work. For now, it is important to note
that while the blowback from funding terrorism has created a global situation that is nearly without precedence,
the collapse of the Soviet Union left the world with one superpower, which was the United States. From there, the
US would look to once again create a world order in its image, and there was no better person to do so than our
next "Grandmaster of the Great Game", a friendly face for Imperialism and Neoliberalism, Barack Obama.
Brzezinski speaking with Taliban fighters in Pakistan
In many ways, Barack Obama's presidency was a blessing to US Empire, and this begins to make sense when you
examine his presidency using McCoy's theoretical framework. McCoy says of Empires "When their revenue shrink,
empires become brittle. Consider the collapse of the Soviet sphere after its command economy imploded.
Or recall
the rapid dissolution of the British Empire after World War II as London faced an irresolvable conflict between
"domestic recovery and its imperial commitments"". Taking this into consideration, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a
disaster for US empire. Solely from the perspective of an imperialist in McCoy's framework, that war cost lives,
credibility, and an insane amount of money that didn't go to repairing the needs of the country. More importantly,
during those years in which the US was bogged down in the Middle East, China began the next phase of its rise,
using it's massive collection of sovereign wealth funds to launch massive infrastructure development across the
entire Eurasian Continent. In comes Barack Obama, a friendly face of "hope and change" who vowed to end the Iraq
war, while at the same time maintaining the occupation of Afghanistan. One thing that set Obama's foreign policy
apart from his recent peers was his "pivot to Asia". When the pivot was first announced, many pundits didn't know
how to react, with one pundit even referring to it as a
"pivot to nowhere"
.
The pivot to Asia strategy makes sense when you look at it from the geopolitical framework
given to us by McCoy, and sheds new light on the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact that the
Obama administration was trying to implement. The trade pact would encompass countries that make up 40% of world
trade, and China would not be included, clearly illustrating the geopolitical nature of the agreement. The reasons
in which this agreement was not successful will become apparent, but the question that needs to be asked regarding
such an agreement is whether it came too late. In order to answer this question, we have to take a look at how
"The Great Game" has been playing out over the last couple decades and who is winning.
China's grand strategy certainly isn't your typical
imperial grand strategy, depending moreso on economic soft power than pure power projection through military
might. Nevertheless the strategy, if implemented would clearly change the geopolitical power dynamics of the
world, and that obviously has some policymakers concerned in Washington. One of the main post-World War II pillars
of US empire is
"The Washington Consensus"
, a philosophical framework of global governance that emphasizes the primacy of
western financial and governance institutions in conducting global politics. Institutions like the IMF, World
Bank, and WTO are products of this framework, and these institutions, along with military alliances like NATO,
have served to maintain a western-centric global supremacy with the US government at the helm. China's strategy
looks to reorient the entire landscape, shifting the epicenter of global governance from a "unipolar" model, which
emphasizes the need for a single powerful hegemon, to a more "multipolar" model, which emphasizes regional
hegemons.
Halford Mackinder once wrote that "Trans-continental railways are now transmuting the conditions of land
power," and that " the century will not be old before all Asia is covered with railways,". He wrote this back in
1904, and due to the damage accumulated in the wake of two world wars, it wouldn't be until the next century that
his vision was realized. China by 2030 plans on linking all of their major cities by high speed rail, while
simultaneously working with surrounding states to make the effort transcontinental. Plans on constructing a
"Eurasian Land Bridge" or a high speed rail line that would go from
Chongqing to Leipzig, Germany in 20 days
is an example of one such ambitious project. Why is this significant?
China being able to ship via high speed rail allows it to circumvent shipping lanes, most of which are patrolled
by either the US navy or US allies. Circumventing these shipping lanes gives the Chinese ability to get around any
obstacles that may arise if any diplomatic or geopolitical tensions arise between China and the US. Chinese grand
strategy also involves the construction of a vast network of pipelines for the purpose of importing oil and gas.
One of the most significant deals in this realm was between the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and
Russian state owned Gazprom.
The deal was worth
$400 billion
, and it came during a time where Russia was facing increased sanctions from the West due to its
annexation of Crimea. Russia as a geostrategic partner is essential for China's implementation of their grand
strategy. As long as Russia is the primary boogeyman of the West, and keeping the West bogged down in a two front
proxy war in Syria and Ukraine, China can simply step in strategically without getting their hands dirty while
continuing to implement what some in the US media are beginning to refer to as China's
"manifest destiny"
. China is also looking to end the monopoly on military alliances, security alliances, and
international economic institutions through alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organizations(SCO),
functioning as a Asian security alliance, and the establishment of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB),
built in the likeness and image of the IMF, and already has support from many countries, including US allies like
the UK, Australia, and South Korea.
Hopefully, this brings everything full circle,
and allows us to contextualize McCoy's rationale when it comes to his selected geopolitical grandmasters, in
particular Barack Obama and his "pivot to Asia" strategy. Within the framework of McCoy's model of geopolitics,
the strategies of Root, Brzezinski, and Obama seem like the perfect Imperial chess maneuvers, and it would be hard
to disagree. With that being said, McCoy's work is not a celebration of imperialist mastery, and the seeming
omnipotence of this "Great Game" does not have as much power as some may like to think. McCoy dedicates much to
discussing "the limits of vision" and how imperial grand strategies have one blindspot when it comes to long term
implementation, which is the will of the people. When it came to the long term vision of Root's globalism, he was
unable to foresee the populist backlash post-WWI which led to Congress rejecting the League of Nations, another of
Root's imperial projects, as well as the isolationist presidency of Warren G. Harding. Zbignew Brzezinski was
almost callous when it came to the blowback of "Operation Cyclone", and despite the US coming out of the Cold War
as the world's sole superpower, has been unable to use that Super power to defeat the Frankenstein they cooked up
in the laboratories of Langley. With Barack Obama, the Trans Pacific Partnership faced bipartisan backlash from a
country whose economy was already wrecked by previous trade policies. Presidential candidates (including Hillary
Clinton, who originally spearheaded the pivot to Asia initiative) came out against the trade pact and it
eventually died when Trump came into office and ended trade talks. The lesson that McCoy is trying to get across
here is perhaps unintended, but still important. The will of the people can trump (no pun intended) the power of
Empire.
That last point is important in terms
of illustrating the importance of understanding the Empire we live in, especially those dedicated to resisting it.
For me, the one criticism I have of this book is perhaps its greatest strength. The book itself is a tour de force
of US imperialism, treating the world as if it were a game of Diplomacy, or a "Grand Chessboard". This sort of
mindset fosters a callousness towards the people of this world, who are increasingly seen and used as pawns in a
game being played only by wealthy and powerful people in suits isolated from the pain and suffering caused by
their "ideas". With that being said, it is essential to maintain a realistic outlook when critically examining how
an imperialist sees the world, and that is the gift that this book offers. McCoy's entire examination of the
collapse of American power serves us two ways. One, it exposes the blindspots of imperialism, by demonstrating
that the visions of imperial grand strategy are limited by the lack of knowledge of the imperialist towards the
people they are trying to manipulate. This perhaps demonstrates that imperialism isn't as inundated in the culture
of America as we perhaps thought. Two, it offers us a look into the imperialist mindset, and gives the
anti-imperialist a chance to learn more about their adversary. McCoy's theoretical framework also proves to be
highly dependable in forecasting geopolitical trends, which could serve as a useful tool when figuring out where
and when future conflicts may arise. The most important lesson learned, and to reiterate what was said in the
previous paragraph, is the power of the people, especially people in this country, to combat imperialism.
Americans sit in the heart of the empire, and the land that we occupy allows the US empire to project its power
all over the world. Without the foundation, the entire empire comes crumbling down, and the people of this country
are that foundation. With enough outcry, we can combat imperialism, and with the current decline of US Global
Power, there is no better time to speak out.
"... The figures contained in the recent budget deal that kept Congress open, as well as in President Trump's budget proposal for 2019, are a case in point: $700 billion for the Pentagon and related programs in 2018 and $716 billion the following year. ..."
"... Though the Pentagon's budget was already through the roof, it will get an extra $165 billion over the next two years, thanks to the congressional budget deal reached earlier this month. ..."
"... Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy put the new Pentagon budget numbers in perspective when he pointed out that just the approximately $80 billion annual increase in the department's top line between 2017 and 2019 will be double the current budget of the State Department; higher than the gross domestic products of more than 100 countries; and larger than the entire military budget of any country in the world, except China's. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the majority of Republican fiscal conservatives were thrilled to sign off on a Pentagon increase that, combined with the Trump tax cut for the rich, funds ballooning deficits as far as the eye can see -- a total of $7.7 trillion worth of them over the next decade. ..."
"... Although Congress is likely to rein in the administration's most extreme proposals, the figures are stark indeed -- a proposed cut of $120 billion in the domestic spending levels both parties agreed to. The biggest reductions include a 41% cut in funding for diplomacy and foreign aid; a 36% cut in funding for energy and the environment; and a 35% cut in housing and community development. And that's just the beginning. The Trump administration is also preparing to launch full-scale assaults on food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare. It's war on everything except the US military. ..."
"... Items that snagged billions in new funding in Trump's proposed 2019 budget included Lockheed Martin's overpriced, underperforming F-35 aircraft, at $10.6 billion; Boeing's F-18 "Super Hornet," which was in the process of being phased out by the Obama administration but is now written in for $2.4 billion; Northrop Grumman's B-21 nuclear bomber at $2.3 billion; General Dynamics' Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine at $3.9 billion; and $12 billion for an array of missile-defense programs that will redound to the benefit of you guessed it: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, among other companies. These are just a few of the dozens of weapons programs that will be feeding the bottom lines of such companies in the next two years and beyond. For programs still in their early stages, like that new bomber and the new ballistic missile submarine, their banner budgetary years are yet to come. ..."
"... Trump wants to create jobs, jobs, jobs he can point to, and pumping up the military-industrial complex must seem like the path of least resistance to that end in present-day Washington. Under the circumstances, what does it matter that virtually any other form of spending would create more jobs and not saddle Americans with weaponry we don't need? ..."
"... The list of wasteful expenditures is already staggeringly long and early projections are that bureaucratic waste at the Pentagon will amount to $125 billion over the next five years. Among other things, the Defense Department already employs a shadow work force of more than 600,000 private contractors whose responsibilities overlap significantly with work already being done by government employees. Meanwhile, sloppy buying practices regularly result in stories like the recent ones on the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency losing track of how it spent $800 million and how two American commands were unable to account for $500 million meant for the war on drugs in the Greater Middle East and Africa. ..."
"... Most important of all, this flood of new funding, which could crush a generation of Americans under a mountain of debt, will make it easier to sustain the seemingly endless seven wars that the United States is fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. So call this one of the worst investments in history, ensuring as it does failed wars to the horizon. ..."
The Military-Industrial Complex Is on Corporate WelfareThe Pentagon will get an
extra $165 billion over the next two years -- that's even more than Donald Trump asked
for.
Imagine for a moment a scheme in which American taxpayers were taken to the cleaners to the
tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and there was barely a hint of criticism or outrage.
Imagine as well that the White House and a majority of the politicians in Washington, no matter
the party, acquiesced in the arrangement. In fact, the annual quest to boost Pentagon spending
into the stratosphere regularly follows that very scenario, assisted by predictions of imminent
doom from industry-funded hawks with a vested interest in increased military outlays. Most
Americans are probably aware that the Pentagon spends a lot of money, but it's unlikely they
grasp just how huge those sums really are. All too often, astonishingly lavish military budgets
are treated as if they were part of the natural order, like death or taxes.
The figures contained in the recent budget deal that kept Congress open, as well as in
President Trump's budget proposal for 2019, are a case in point: $700 billion for the Pentagon
and related programs in 2018 and $716 billion the following year.
Remarkably, such numbers far exceeded even the Pentagon's own expansive expectations.
According to Donald Trump, admittedly not the most reliable source in all cases, Secretary of
Defense Jim Mattis reportedly said, "Wow, I can't believe we got everything we wanted" -- a
rare admission from the head of an organization whose only response to virtually any budget
proposal is to ask for more. The public reaction to such staggering Pentagon budget hikes was
muted, to put it mildly.
Unlike last year's tax giveaway to the rich, throwing near-record amounts of tax dollars at
the Department of Defense generated no visible public outrage. Yet those tax cuts and Pentagon
increases are closely related. The Trump administration's pairing of the two mimics the failed
approach of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s -- only more so. It's a phenomenon I've termed
"Reaganomics on steroids." Reagan's approach yielded oceans of red ink and a severe weakening
of the social safety net. It also provoked such a strong pushback that he later backtracked by
raising taxes and set the stage for sharp reductions in nuclear weapons.
Donald Trump's retrograde policies on immigration, women's rights, racial justice, LGBT
rights, and economic inequality have spawned an impressive and growing resistance. It remains
to be seen whether his generous treatment of the Pentagon at the expense of basic human needs
will spur a similar backlash. Of course, it's hard to even get a bead on what's being lavished
on the Pentagon when much of the media coverage failed to drive home just how enormous these
sums actually are. A rare exception was an Associated Press story headlined "Congress, Trump
Give the Pentagon a Budget the Likes of Which It Has Never Seen." This was certainly far closer
to the truth than claims like that of Mackenzie Eaglen of the conservative American Enterprise
Institute, which over the years has housed such uber-hawks as Dick Cheney and John Bolton. She
described the new budget as a "modest year-on-year increase." If that's the case, one shudders
to think what an immodest increase might look like.
The Pentagon Wins Big
So let's look at the money.
Though the Pentagon's budget was already through the roof, it will get an extra $165
billion over the next two years, thanks to the congressional budget deal reached earlier this
month. To put that figure in context, it was tens of billions of dollars more than Donald
Trump had asked for last spring to "rebuild" the US military (as he put it). It even exceeded
the figures, already higher than Trump's, Congress had agreed to last December. It brings total
spending on the Pentagon and related programs for nuclear weapons to levels higher than those
reached during the Korean and Vietnam wars in the 1950s and 1960s, or even at the height of
Ronald Reagan's vaunted military buildup of the 1980s. Only in two years of Barack Obama's
presidency, when there were roughly 150,000 US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or about seven
times current levels of personnel deployed there, was spending higher.
Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy put the new Pentagon budget numbers
in perspective when he pointed out that just the approximately $80 billion annual increase in
the department's top line between 2017 and 2019 will be double the current budget of the State
Department; higher than the gross domestic products of more than 100 countries; and larger than
the entire military budget of any country in the world, except China's.
Democrats signed on to that congressional budget as part of a deal to blunt some of the most
egregious Trump administration cuts proposed last spring. The administration, for example, kept
the State Department's budget from being radically slashed and it reauthorized the imperiled
Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for another 10 years. In the process, however, the
Democrats also threw millions of young immigrants under the bus by dropping an insistence that
any new budget protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or "Dreamers," program.
Meanwhile, the majority of Republican fiscal conservatives were thrilled to sign off on a
Pentagon increase that, combined with the Trump tax cut for the rich, funds ballooning deficits
as far as the eye can see -- a total of $7.7 trillion worth of them over the next
decade.
While domestic spending fared better in the recent congressional budget deal than it would
have if Trump's draconian plan for 2018 had been enacted, it still lags far behind what
Congress is investing in the Pentagon. And calculations by the National Priorities Project
indicate that the Department of Defense is slated to be an even bigger winner in Trump's 2019
budget blueprint. Its share of the discretionary budget, which includes virtually everything
the government does other than programs like Medicare and Social Security, will mushroom to a
once-unimaginable 61 cents on the dollar, a hefty boost from the already startling 54 cents on
the dollar in the final year of the Obama administration.
The skewed priorities in Trump's latest budget proposal are fueled in part by the
administration's decision to embrace the Pentagon increases Congress agreed to last month,
while tossing that body's latest decisions on non-military spending out the window.
Although Congress is likely to rein in the administration's most extreme proposals, the
figures are stark indeed -- a proposed cut of $120 billion in the domestic spending levels both
parties agreed to. The biggest reductions include a 41% cut in funding for diplomacy and
foreign aid; a 36% cut in funding for energy and the environment; and a 35% cut in housing and
community development. And that's just the beginning. The Trump administration is also
preparing to launch full-scale assaults on food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare. It's war on
everything except the US military.
Corporate Welfare
The recent budget plans have brought joy to the hearts of one group of needy Americans: the
top executives of major weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman,
Raytheon, and General Dynamics. They expect a bonanza from the skyrocketing Pentagon
expenditures. Don't be surprised if the CEOs of these five firms give themselves nice salary
boosts, something to truly justify their work, rather than the paltry $96 million they drew as
a group in 2016 (the most recent year for which full statistics are available).
And keep in mind that, like all other US-based corporations, those military-industrial
behemoths will benefit richly from the Trump administration's slashing of the corporate tax
rate. According to one respected industry analyst, a good portion of this windfall will go
towards bonuses and increased dividends for company shareholders rather than investments in new
and better ways to defend the United States. In short, in the Trump era, Lockheed Martin and
its cohorts are guaranteed to make money coming and going.
Items that snagged billions in new funding in Trump's proposed 2019 budget included
Lockheed Martin's overpriced, underperforming F-35 aircraft, at $10.6 billion; Boeing's F-18
"Super Hornet," which was in the process of being phased out by the Obama administration but is
now written in for $2.4 billion; Northrop Grumman's B-21 nuclear bomber at $2.3 billion;
General Dynamics' Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine at $3.9 billion; and $12 billion for
an array of missile-defense programs that will redound to the benefit of you guessed it:
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, among other companies. These are just a few of the
dozens of weapons programs that will be feeding the bottom lines of such companies in the next
two years and beyond. For programs still in their early stages, like that new bomber and the
new ballistic missile submarine, their banner budgetary years are yet to come.
In explaining the flood of funding that enables a company like Lockheed Martin to reap $35
billion per year in government dollars, defense analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group
noted that "diplomacy is out; air strikes are in In this sort of environment, it's tough to
keep a lid on costs. If demand goes up, prices don't generally come down. And, of course, it's
virtually impossible to kill stuff. You don't have to make any kind of tough choices when
there's such a rising tide."
Pentagon Pork Versus Human Security
Loren Thompson is a consultant to many of those weapons contractors. His think tank, the
Lexington Institute, also gets contributions from the arms industry. He caught the spirit of
the moment when he praised the administration's puffed-up Pentagon proposal for using the
Defense Department budget as a jobs creator in key states, including the crucial swing state of
Ohio, which helped propel Donald Trump to victory in 2016. Thompson was particularly pleased
with a plan to ramp up General Dynamics's production of M-1 tanks in Lima, Ohio, in a factory
whose production line the Army had tried to put on hold just a few years ago because it was
already drowning in tanks and had no conceivable use for more of them.
Thompson argues that the new tanks are needed to keep up with Russia's production of armored
vehicles, a dubious assertion with a decidedly Cold War flavor to it. His claim is backed up,
of course, by the administration's new National Security Strategy, which targets Russia and
China as the most formidable threats to the United States. Never mind that the likely
challenges posed by these two powers -- cyberattacks in the Russian case and economic expansion
in the Chinese one -- have nothing to do with how many tanks the US Army possesses.
Trump wants to create jobs, jobs, jobs he can point to, and pumping up the
military-industrial complex must seem like the path of least resistance to that end in
present-day Washington. Under the circumstances, what does it matter that virtually any other
form of spending would create more jobs and not saddle Americans with weaponry we don't
need?
If past performance offers any indication, none of the new money slated to pour into the
Pentagon will make anyone safer. As Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies has noted, there is a danger that the Pentagon will just get "fatter not stronger" as
its worst spending habits are reinforced by a new gusher of dollars that relieves its planners
of making any reasonably hard choices at all.
The list of wasteful expenditures is already staggeringly long and early projections are
that bureaucratic waste at the Pentagon will amount to $125 billion over the next five years.
Among other things, the Defense Department already employs a shadow work force of more than
600,000 private contractors whose responsibilities overlap significantly with work already
being done by government employees. Meanwhile, sloppy buying practices regularly result in
stories like the recent ones on the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency losing track of how it
spent $800 million and how two American commands were unable to account for $500 million meant
for the war on drugs in the Greater Middle East and Africa.
Add to this the $1.5 trillion slated to be spent on F-35s that the nonpartisan Project on
Government Oversight has noted may never be ready for combat and the unnecessary
"modernization" of the US nuclear arsenal, including a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers,
submarines, and missiles at a minimum cost of $1.2 trillion over the next three decades. In
other words, a large part of the Pentagon's new funding will do much to fuel good times in the
military-industrial complex but little to help the troops or defend the country.
Most important of all, this flood of new funding, which could crush a generation of
Americans under a mountain of debt, will make it easier to sustain the seemingly endless seven
wars that the United States is fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia,
and Yemen. So call this one of the worst investments in history, ensuring as it does failed
wars to the horizon.
It would be a welcome change in 21st-century America if the reckless decision to throw yet
more unbelievable sums of money at a Pentagon already vastly overfunded sparked a serious
discussion about America's hyper-militarized foreign policy. A national debate about such
matters in the run-up to the 2018 and 2020 elections could determine whether it continues to be
business-as-usual at the Pentagon or whether the largest agency in the federal government is
finally reined in and relegated to an appropriately defensive posture.
The US Power Elite ... would be rightfully called the „Deep State" of the USA (
http://tinyurl.com/ho2nz87
).
And this Deep State has become more and more ruthless over the time. They have brought
nightmares over the Southern Hemisphere by installing brutal dictatorships ( http://tinyurl.com/kkpvcf7 ) in their
interest and waging bloody colonial wars, in the last one and a half decades especially with
their „War on Terror" ( http://tinyurl.com/nrxxej5 ).
One of their aims is to prevent countries of Africa, Latin America, Near and Middle East and
Southern Asia from choosing their trade partners freely and from making use of their resources
and industrialize, since that would mean a division of resources and allowing them their part
of „consuming ecologic Earth capacity".
"... The figures contained in the recent budget deal that kept Congress open, as well as in President Trump's budget proposal for 2019, are a case in point: $700 billion for the Pentagon and related programs in 2018 and $716 billion the following year. ..."
"... Though the Pentagon's budget was already through the roof, it will get an extra $165 billion over the next two years, thanks to the congressional budget deal reached earlier this month. ..."
"... Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy put the new Pentagon budget numbers in perspective when he pointed out that just the approximately $80 billion annual increase in the department's top line between 2017 and 2019 will be double the current budget of the State Department; higher than the gross domestic products of more than 100 countries; and larger than the entire military budget of any country in the world, except China's. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the majority of Republican fiscal conservatives were thrilled to sign off on a Pentagon increase that, combined with the Trump tax cut for the rich, funds ballooning deficits as far as the eye can see -- a total of $7.7 trillion worth of them over the next decade. ..."
"... Although Congress is likely to rein in the administration's most extreme proposals, the figures are stark indeed -- a proposed cut of $120 billion in the domestic spending levels both parties agreed to. The biggest reductions include a 41% cut in funding for diplomacy and foreign aid; a 36% cut in funding for energy and the environment; and a 35% cut in housing and community development. And that's just the beginning. The Trump administration is also preparing to launch full-scale assaults on food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare. It's war on everything except the US military. ..."
"... Items that snagged billions in new funding in Trump's proposed 2019 budget included Lockheed Martin's overpriced, underperforming F-35 aircraft, at $10.6 billion; Boeing's F-18 "Super Hornet," which was in the process of being phased out by the Obama administration but is now written in for $2.4 billion; Northrop Grumman's B-21 nuclear bomber at $2.3 billion; General Dynamics' Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine at $3.9 billion; and $12 billion for an array of missile-defense programs that will redound to the benefit of you guessed it: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, among other companies. These are just a few of the dozens of weapons programs that will be feeding the bottom lines of such companies in the next two years and beyond. For programs still in their early stages, like that new bomber and the new ballistic missile submarine, their banner budgetary years are yet to come. ..."
"... Trump wants to create jobs, jobs, jobs he can point to, and pumping up the military-industrial complex must seem like the path of least resistance to that end in present-day Washington. Under the circumstances, what does it matter that virtually any other form of spending would create more jobs and not saddle Americans with weaponry we don't need? ..."
"... The list of wasteful expenditures is already staggeringly long and early projections are that bureaucratic waste at the Pentagon will amount to $125 billion over the next five years. Among other things, the Defense Department already employs a shadow work force of more than 600,000 private contractors whose responsibilities overlap significantly with work already being done by government employees. Meanwhile, sloppy buying practices regularly result in stories like the recent ones on the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency losing track of how it spent $800 million and how two American commands were unable to account for $500 million meant for the war on drugs in the Greater Middle East and Africa. ..."
"... Most important of all, this flood of new funding, which could crush a generation of Americans under a mountain of debt, will make it easier to sustain the seemingly endless seven wars that the United States is fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. So call this one of the worst investments in history, ensuring as it does failed wars to the horizon. ..."
The Military-Industrial Complex Is on Corporate WelfareThe Pentagon will get an
extra $165 billion over the next two years -- that's even more than Donald Trump asked
for.
Imagine for a moment a scheme in which American taxpayers were taken to the cleaners to the
tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and there was barely a hint of criticism or outrage.
Imagine as well that the White House and a majority of the politicians in Washington, no matter
the party, acquiesced in the arrangement. In fact, the annual quest to boost Pentagon spending
into the stratosphere regularly follows that very scenario, assisted by predictions of imminent
doom from industry-funded hawks with a vested interest in increased military outlays. Most
Americans are probably aware that the Pentagon spends a lot of money, but it's unlikely they
grasp just how huge those sums really are. All too often, astonishingly lavish military budgets
are treated as if they were part of the natural order, like death or taxes.
The figures contained in the recent budget deal that kept Congress open, as well as in
President Trump's budget proposal for 2019, are a case in point: $700 billion for the Pentagon
and related programs in 2018 and $716 billion the following year.
Remarkably, such numbers far exceeded even the Pentagon's own expansive expectations.
According to Donald Trump, admittedly not the most reliable source in all cases, Secretary of
Defense Jim Mattis reportedly said, "Wow, I can't believe we got everything we wanted" -- a
rare admission from the head of an organization whose only response to virtually any budget
proposal is to ask for more. The public reaction to such staggering Pentagon budget hikes was
muted, to put it mildly.
Unlike last year's tax giveaway to the rich, throwing near-record amounts of tax dollars at
the Department of Defense generated no visible public outrage. Yet those tax cuts and Pentagon
increases are closely related. The Trump administration's pairing of the two mimics the failed
approach of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s -- only more so. It's a phenomenon I've termed
"Reaganomics on steroids." Reagan's approach yielded oceans of red ink and a severe weakening
of the social safety net. It also provoked such a strong pushback that he later backtracked by
raising taxes and set the stage for sharp reductions in nuclear weapons.
Donald Trump's retrograde policies on immigration, women's rights, racial justice, LGBT
rights, and economic inequality have spawned an impressive and growing resistance. It remains
to be seen whether his generous treatment of the Pentagon at the expense of basic human needs
will spur a similar backlash. Of course, it's hard to even get a bead on what's being lavished
on the Pentagon when much of the media coverage failed to drive home just how enormous these
sums actually are. A rare exception was an Associated Press story headlined "Congress, Trump
Give the Pentagon a Budget the Likes of Which It Has Never Seen." This was certainly far closer
to the truth than claims like that of Mackenzie Eaglen of the conservative American Enterprise
Institute, which over the years has housed such uber-hawks as Dick Cheney and John Bolton. She
described the new budget as a "modest year-on-year increase." If that's the case, one shudders
to think what an immodest increase might look like.
The Pentagon Wins Big
So let's look at the money.
Though the Pentagon's budget was already through the roof, it will get an extra $165
billion over the next two years, thanks to the congressional budget deal reached earlier this
month. To put that figure in context, it was tens of billions of dollars more than Donald
Trump had asked for last spring to "rebuild" the US military (as he put it). It even exceeded
the figures, already higher than Trump's, Congress had agreed to last December. It brings total
spending on the Pentagon and related programs for nuclear weapons to levels higher than those
reached during the Korean and Vietnam wars in the 1950s and 1960s, or even at the height of
Ronald Reagan's vaunted military buildup of the 1980s. Only in two years of Barack Obama's
presidency, when there were roughly 150,000 US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or about seven
times current levels of personnel deployed there, was spending higher.
Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy put the new Pentagon budget numbers
in perspective when he pointed out that just the approximately $80 billion annual increase in
the department's top line between 2017 and 2019 will be double the current budget of the State
Department; higher than the gross domestic products of more than 100 countries; and larger than
the entire military budget of any country in the world, except China's.
Democrats signed on to that congressional budget as part of a deal to blunt some of the most
egregious Trump administration cuts proposed last spring. The administration, for example, kept
the State Department's budget from being radically slashed and it reauthorized the imperiled
Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for another 10 years. In the process, however, the
Democrats also threw millions of young immigrants under the bus by dropping an insistence that
any new budget protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or "Dreamers," program.
Meanwhile, the majority of Republican fiscal conservatives were thrilled to sign off on a
Pentagon increase that, combined with the Trump tax cut for the rich, funds ballooning deficits
as far as the eye can see -- a total of $7.7 trillion worth of them over the next
decade.
While domestic spending fared better in the recent congressional budget deal than it would
have if Trump's draconian plan for 2018 had been enacted, it still lags far behind what
Congress is investing in the Pentagon. And calculations by the National Priorities Project
indicate that the Department of Defense is slated to be an even bigger winner in Trump's 2019
budget blueprint. Its share of the discretionary budget, which includes virtually everything
the government does other than programs like Medicare and Social Security, will mushroom to a
once-unimaginable 61 cents on the dollar, a hefty boost from the already startling 54 cents on
the dollar in the final year of the Obama administration.
The skewed priorities in Trump's latest budget proposal are fueled in part by the
administration's decision to embrace the Pentagon increases Congress agreed to last month,
while tossing that body's latest decisions on non-military spending out the window.
Although Congress is likely to rein in the administration's most extreme proposals, the
figures are stark indeed -- a proposed cut of $120 billion in the domestic spending levels both
parties agreed to. The biggest reductions include a 41% cut in funding for diplomacy and
foreign aid; a 36% cut in funding for energy and the environment; and a 35% cut in housing and
community development. And that's just the beginning. The Trump administration is also
preparing to launch full-scale assaults on food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare. It's war on
everything except the US military.
Corporate Welfare
The recent budget plans have brought joy to the hearts of one group of needy Americans: the
top executives of major weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman,
Raytheon, and General Dynamics. They expect a bonanza from the skyrocketing Pentagon
expenditures. Don't be surprised if the CEOs of these five firms give themselves nice salary
boosts, something to truly justify their work, rather than the paltry $96 million they drew as
a group in 2016 (the most recent year for which full statistics are available).
And keep in mind that, like all other US-based corporations, those military-industrial
behemoths will benefit richly from the Trump administration's slashing of the corporate tax
rate. According to one respected industry analyst, a good portion of this windfall will go
towards bonuses and increased dividends for company shareholders rather than investments in new
and better ways to defend the United States. In short, in the Trump era, Lockheed Martin and
its cohorts are guaranteed to make money coming and going.
Items that snagged billions in new funding in Trump's proposed 2019 budget included
Lockheed Martin's overpriced, underperforming F-35 aircraft, at $10.6 billion; Boeing's F-18
"Super Hornet," which was in the process of being phased out by the Obama administration but is
now written in for $2.4 billion; Northrop Grumman's B-21 nuclear bomber at $2.3 billion;
General Dynamics' Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine at $3.9 billion; and $12 billion for
an array of missile-defense programs that will redound to the benefit of you guessed it:
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, among other companies. These are just a few of the
dozens of weapons programs that will be feeding the bottom lines of such companies in the next
two years and beyond. For programs still in their early stages, like that new bomber and the
new ballistic missile submarine, their banner budgetary years are yet to come.
In explaining the flood of funding that enables a company like Lockheed Martin to reap $35
billion per year in government dollars, defense analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group
noted that "diplomacy is out; air strikes are in In this sort of environment, it's tough to
keep a lid on costs. If demand goes up, prices don't generally come down. And, of course, it's
virtually impossible to kill stuff. You don't have to make any kind of tough choices when
there's such a rising tide."
Pentagon Pork Versus Human Security
Loren Thompson is a consultant to many of those weapons contractors. His think tank, the
Lexington Institute, also gets contributions from the arms industry. He caught the spirit of
the moment when he praised the administration's puffed-up Pentagon proposal for using the
Defense Department budget as a jobs creator in key states, including the crucial swing state of
Ohio, which helped propel Donald Trump to victory in 2016. Thompson was particularly pleased
with a plan to ramp up General Dynamics's production of M-1 tanks in Lima, Ohio, in a factory
whose production line the Army had tried to put on hold just a few years ago because it was
already drowning in tanks and had no conceivable use for more of them.
Thompson argues that the new tanks are needed to keep up with Russia's production of armored
vehicles, a dubious assertion with a decidedly Cold War flavor to it. His claim is backed up,
of course, by the administration's new National Security Strategy, which targets Russia and
China as the most formidable threats to the United States. Never mind that the likely
challenges posed by these two powers -- cyberattacks in the Russian case and economic expansion
in the Chinese one -- have nothing to do with how many tanks the US Army possesses.
Trump wants to create jobs, jobs, jobs he can point to, and pumping up the
military-industrial complex must seem like the path of least resistance to that end in
present-day Washington. Under the circumstances, what does it matter that virtually any other
form of spending would create more jobs and not saddle Americans with weaponry we don't
need?
If past performance offers any indication, none of the new money slated to pour into the
Pentagon will make anyone safer. As Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies has noted, there is a danger that the Pentagon will just get "fatter not stronger" as
its worst spending habits are reinforced by a new gusher of dollars that relieves its planners
of making any reasonably hard choices at all.
The list of wasteful expenditures is already staggeringly long and early projections are
that bureaucratic waste at the Pentagon will amount to $125 billion over the next five years.
Among other things, the Defense Department already employs a shadow work force of more than
600,000 private contractors whose responsibilities overlap significantly with work already
being done by government employees. Meanwhile, sloppy buying practices regularly result in
stories like the recent ones on the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency losing track of how it
spent $800 million and how two American commands were unable to account for $500 million meant
for the war on drugs in the Greater Middle East and Africa.
Add to this the $1.5 trillion slated to be spent on F-35s that the nonpartisan Project on
Government Oversight has noted may never be ready for combat and the unnecessary
"modernization" of the US nuclear arsenal, including a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers,
submarines, and missiles at a minimum cost of $1.2 trillion over the next three decades. In
other words, a large part of the Pentagon's new funding will do much to fuel good times in the
military-industrial complex but little to help the troops or defend the country.
Most important of all, this flood of new funding, which could crush a generation of
Americans under a mountain of debt, will make it easier to sustain the seemingly endless seven
wars that the United States is fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia,
and Yemen. So call this one of the worst investments in history, ensuring as it does failed
wars to the horizon.
It would be a welcome change in 21st-century America if the reckless decision to throw yet
more unbelievable sums of money at a Pentagon already vastly overfunded sparked a serious
discussion about America's hyper-militarized foreign policy. A national debate about such
matters in the run-up to the 2018 and 2020 elections could determine whether it continues to be
business-as-usual at the Pentagon or whether the largest agency in the federal government is
finally reined in and relegated to an appropriately defensive posture.
The US Power Elite ... would be rightfully called the „Deep State" of the USA (
http://tinyurl.com/ho2nz87
).
And this Deep State has become more and more ruthless over the time. They have brought
nightmares over the Southern Hemisphere by installing brutal dictatorships ( http://tinyurl.com/kkpvcf7 ) in their
interest and waging bloody colonial wars, in the last one and a half decades especially with
their „War on Terror" ( http://tinyurl.com/nrxxej5 ).
One of their aims is to prevent countries of Africa, Latin America, Near and Middle East and
Southern Asia from choosing their trade partners freely and from making use of their resources
and industrialize, since that would mean a division of resources and allowing them their part
of „consuming ecologic Earth capacity".
"... " Incidental collection " is the claimed inadvertent or accidental monitoring of Americans' communications under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Incidental collection exists alongside court-approved warranted surveillance authorized on a specific individual. But for incidental collection, no probable cause is needed, no warrant is needed, and no court or judge is involved. It just gets vacuumed up. ..."
"... While exactly how many Americans have their communications monitored this way is unknown , we know these Republican Trump supporters and staffers were caught up in surveillance authorized by a Democratic administration (no evidence of incidental surveillance of the Clinton campaign exists). Election-time claims that the Obama administration wasn't " wiretapping " Trump were disingenuous. They in fact gathered an unprecedented level of inside information. How was it used? ..."
"... Incidental collection nailed Michael Flynn : the NSA was ostensibly not surveilling Flynn, just listening in on the Russian ambassador as the two spoke. The embarrassing intercept formed the basis for Flynn's firing as Trump's national security advisor, his guilty plea for perjury, and very possibly his "game-changing" testimony against others. ..."
A significant number of Trump's people were electronically monitored by
a Democratic administration -- many "by accident." We now know that a significant number of
people affiliated with Donald Trump were surveilled during and after the 2016 campaign, some
under warrants, some via "inadvertent" or accidental surveillance. That surveillance is now
being used against these individuals in perjury cases, particularly to press them to testify
against others, and will likely form the basis of Robert Mueller's eventual action against the
president himself.
How did the surveillance state become so fully entrenched in the American political process?
Better yet, how did we let it happen?
The role pervasive surveillance plays in politics today has been grossly underreported. Set
aside what you think about the Trump presidency for a moment and focus instead on the new
paradigm for how politics and justice work inside the surveillance state.
" Incidental
collection " is the claimed inadvertent or accidental monitoring of Americans'
communications under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Incidental collection exists
alongside court-approved warranted surveillance authorized on a specific individual. But for
incidental collection, no probable
cause is needed, no
warrant is needed, and no court or judge is involved. It just gets vacuumed up.
While exactly how many Americans have their communications monitored this way is
unknown , we know these Republican Trump supporters and staffers were caught up in
surveillance authorized by a Democratic administration (no evidence of incidental surveillance
of the Clinton campaign exists). Election-time claims that the Obama administration wasn't "
wiretapping
" Trump were disingenuous. They in fact gathered an unprecedented level of inside information.
How was it used?
Incidental collection nailed Michael
Flynn : the NSA was ostensibly not surveilling Flynn, just listening in on the Russian
ambassador as the two spoke. The embarrassing intercept formed the basis for Flynn's firing as
Trump's national security advisor, his guilty plea for perjury, and very possibly his
"game-changing" testimony against others.
Jeff Sessions was similarly incidentally surveilled, as was former White House chief
strategist Steve
Bannon , whose conversations were picked
up as part of a FISA warrant issued against Trump associate
Carter Page .
Paul Manafort and
Richard Gates were also the subjects of FISA-warranted surveillance: they were surveilled
in 2014, the case was dropped for lack of evidence, and then they were re-surveilled after they
joined the Trump team and became more interesting to the state.
Officials on the National Security Council revealed that
Trump himself may also have been swept up in the surveillance of foreign targets. Devin
Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, claims multiple communications by Trump
transition
staff were inadvertently picked up.
Trump officials were monitored by British
GCHQ with the information shared with their NSA partners. Some reports
claim that after a criminal warrant was denied to look into
whether or not Trump Tower servers
were communicating with a Russian bank, a FISA warrant was issued.
How much information the White House may have acquired on Trump's political strategy, as
well as the full story of what might have been done with that information, will never be known.
We do know that the director of national intelligence Dan Coats saw enough after he took office
to
specify that the "intelligence community may not engage in political activity, including
dissemination of U.S. person identities to the White House, for the purpose of affecting the
political process of the United States."
Coats likely had in mind the use of unmasking by the Obama administration. Identities of
U.S. persons picked up inadvertently by surveillance are supposed to be masked, hidden from
most users of the data. However, a select group of officials, including political appointees in
the White House, can unmask and include names if they believe it is important to understanding
the intelligence, or to show evidence of a crime.
Former Obama national security advisor Susan Rice
told House investigators in at least one instance she unmasked the identities of Michael
Flynn,
Jared Kushner , and Steve Bannon. Obama's ambassador to the United Nations,
Samantha Power , also made a number of unmasking requests
in her final year in office.
But no one knows who unmasked Flynn in his conversations with the Russian ambassador. That
and the subsequent leaking of what was said were used not only to snare Flynn in a perjury
trap, but also to force him out of government. Prior to the leak that took Flynn down, Obama
holdover and then-acting attorney general Sally Yates warned Trump that Flynn could be
blackmailed by Moscow for lying about his calls. When Trump didn't immediately fire Flynn, the
unmasked surveillance was leaked by a "senior government official" (likely
Yates ) to the
Washington Post . The disclosure pressured the administration to dump Flynn.
Similar leaks were used to try to pressure Attorney General
Jeff Sessions to resign, though they only resulted in him recusing himself from the
Russiagate investigation. Following James Comey's firing, that recusal ultimately opened the
door for the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller.
A highly classified leak was used to help marginalize Jared Kushner. The Washington
Post ,
based on leaked intercepts, claimed foreign officials' from four countries spoke of
exploiting Kushner's economic vulnerabilities to push him into acting against the United
States. If the story is true, the leakers passed on data revealing sources and methods; those
foreign officials now know that, however they communicated their thoughts about Kushner, the
NSA was listening. Access to that level of information and the power to expose it is not a
rank-and-file action. One analyst
described the matter as "the Deep State takes out the White House's Dark Clown Prince."
Pervasive surveillance has shown its power perhaps most significantly in creating
perjury traps to manufacture indictments to pressure people to testify against others.
Trump associate George
Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about several meetings concerning Clinton's emails. The FBI
knew about the meetings, "
propelled in part by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British
and Dutch." The feds asked him questions solely in the hope that Papadopoulos would commit
perjury, even though there was nothing shown to be criminal about the meetings themselves. Now
guilty of a crime, the FBI will use the promise of a light punishment to press Papadopoulos into
testifying against others.
There is a common thread here of using surveillance to create a process crime out of a
non-material lie (the FBI already knew) where no underlying crime of turpitude exists (the
meetings were legal). That this is then used to press someone to testify in an investigation
that will have a significant political impact seems undemocratic -- yet it appears to be a
primary tool Mueller is using.
This is a far cry from a traditional plea deal, giving someone a light sentence for actual
crimes so that they will testify against others. Mueller should know. He famously allowed Mafia
hitman Sammy the Bull to escape more serious punishment for 19 first-degree
murders in return for testimony against John Gotti. No need to manufacture a perjury trap;
the pile of bodies that never saw justice did the trick.
Don't be lured into thinking the ends justify the means, that whatever it takes to purge
Trump is acceptable. Say what you want about Flynn, Kushner, et al, what matters most is the
dark process being used. The arrival of pervasive surveillance as a political weapon is a
harbinger that should chill Americans to their cores.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author ofWe Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the
Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People andHooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan. He tweets@WeMeantWell.MORE FROM THIS
AUTHOR
Pervasive surveillance has shown its power perhaps most significantly in creating
perjury traps to manufacture indictments to pressure people to testify against others.
Key advice: Never talk to a cop. Never trust an agent of the Security State. They may still wreck your life, but at least you won't make it easy for them.
Are you really arguing that using surveillance on foreign agents and spies to catch and
compel traders to testify against each other is bad????? Isn't that the way it is usually
done?
It is extremely easy to avoid a perjury trap: don't tell lies. And don't tell me the
government has no right to investigate what could be treason by the president and his staff.
I know how you love Trump and Russia.
I voted for Trump but now I'm completely disgusted with his failures and betrayals and won't
vote for him again.
Setting that aside, it's starting to look to me like the Hillary campaign and allies in
the Obama federal bureaucracy were spying on the Trump campaign.
They fully expected Hillary to win and therefore to be able to cover up what they were
doing.
But then they lost, and now they're ginning up the Russia/national security angle to blow
smoke over what's starting to look like the worst campaign skullduggery since Nixon and
Watergate.
It needs to be investigated, and if there's any fire there, vigorously prosecuted. I don't
give a damn about Trump anymore, but I give a damn about our democracy and system of
government, and if it turns out that some government filth was spying on Trump's campaign, I
want them arrested, prosecuted, and thrown in the darkest, dirtiest hole in our prison
system. We can't have that kind of s***.
If I see one more variation on "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" in a
comment my brain will explode. Anyone who writes that kind of thing ("Well maybe they
shouldn't lie") is missing the point: our political process was surveilled and no one can
control what happens to information gathered. Even if you think it good to "take down" Trump,
the process will exist past him to be aimed at a future candidate you support.
"It is extremely easy to avoid a perjury trap: don't tell lies."
Even if true, do you think it is fair for Flynn to be hit with felony charges for his
"less than candid answers" with regard to politically and diplomatically sensitive phone
calls to the Russian ambassador after the elections were over?
Republicans created this mess in their desire to make "security" a partisan issue after 9/11.
If they now regret it and wish to undo the mess, more power to them!
Peter: "If I see one more variation on 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear'
in a comment my brain will explode."
The Left used to be vociferously in favor of privacy rights. I took note during the Obama
years that it really only mattered for abortion and library books, nothing beyond that.
But a thought experiment: How many progressives, for that matter how many Black and
Hispanic Americans would be comfortable with the following government requirements:
– Federal, state, and local law enforcement have your name and current address on
file at all times.
– Federal, state, and local law enforcement have a key to your home at all times.
– Federal, state, and local law enforcement have a tracking device on your car or your
person at all times.
If you have nothing to hide, you should have no objections to any of those
requirements.
[[It is extremely easy to avoid a perjury trap: don't tell lies.]]
Even easier: Be a Democrat, preferably the Party's presidential candidate, and then it
doesn't matter whether you tell lies or commit felonies because the corrupt Deep
State-lib-Dem-media alliance will hold you safely above the law.
Even in the midst of all of this, the ongoing ability to continue to spy on our own citizens
was recently voted on and passed overwhelmingly, with large bipartisan support. Save your
crocodile tears now.
Russia is not an enemy of the United States despite all the hoopla about how eeeevil they
are, we are not at war. Treason is not on the table unless you, you know, amend the
constitution, or abandon it, or something.
@MM: apart from the key to your house (and even that might be questionable if you have
certain "smart" appliances), you are describing Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and/or
Microsoft. Adding Federal Government to that list isn't as much of a jump as you seem to
believe.
"The arrival of pervasive surveillance as a political weapon is a harbinger that should chill
Americans to their cores."
Thankfully J. Edgar Hoover practiced his job with restraint.
That being said, while there is certainly a need for improvement of the FISA program (sadly,
the 'principled' Devin Nunes, Trey Gowdy, Matt Gaetz, et al., missed their opportunity in
January when they voted for reauthorization), those individuals caught in the web "by
accident" were regularly communicating with targets of legitimately obtained warrants. It was
their choice to subsequently lie.
With respect to their "unmasking", it doesn't seem unreasonable that policy makers in the
White House should have knowledge of their identity (even in the politicized environment of a
presidential campaign), especially when there's the taint of influence of an adversarial
government and/or organized crime on a potential POTUS.
It is amazing how many law and order Conservatives start screaming about abuses of power, and
targeting specific people when they are the ones at the receiving end.
As a rule, if they did defended the police when the subject was racial profiling, they get
to shut up on the subject now.
(Maybe they SHOULD team up with Black Lives Matter..)
We have come a long way from the reactionary and authoritarian chants of "if you have done
nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" in the lead-up and then wake of the sarcastically
name PATRIOT Act.
Surveillance and monitoring are, like all other "national securities" spending, primarily
profit extraction driven public-private "partnerships", but the major point here always was
"if you build it, they will use it".
That, too, is the foundational criticism driving Global Zero and the insistence that
Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty be honored by all signatory nuclear powers.
The basic principle of any evolutionary stable open society based on checks and balances
is that no self-inflating institutions and power centers are permissible – whether that
is inbred, networked multi-generational wealth, incorporated power such as financial
institutions, or specific government institutions, such as the military, the "intelligence"
agencies etc.
Of course, the whole idea of having secret courts applying secret law in secret decisions
without adversary parties, and no mandatory disclosure after the fact, is also fundamentally
incompatible with the idea of transparency and accountability, without which free speech and
elections are little more than a travelling circus and a vehicle for advertising profit.
mark_be: Sorry, I meant to include fingerprints and DNA samples in that list of items for all
levels of law enforcement to retain on file on every American.
Any government whose interests clash with ours must be considered a potential enemy
– not enough to go to war, of course, but to be wary of what steps they may take to
protect their interests and thwart ours.
As for Russia, alas, she is known for playing very dirty. Before there was a KGB, there
was an Okhrana, among whose achievements was the writing and disemination of the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion. Anyone who thinks that because they are no longer communists they
Russians are nice guys lives in a fool's paradise
YKW: "As a rule, if they did defended the police when the subject was racial profiling, they
get to shut up on the subject now."
There is no such rule in a free society. People are within their rights to be as
hypocritical and inconsistent as they like.
But if there were such a rule, where are the civil libertarians in the Democratic Party?
Why aren't they castigating DOJ abuse of power in the previous administration?
Why are neoconservatives and Bush era creeps like Brennan, Clapper, and Hayden darlings of
the Left?
"... " Incidental collection " is the claimed inadvertent or accidental monitoring of Americans' communications under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Incidental collection exists alongside court-approved warranted surveillance authorized on a specific individual. But for incidental collection, no probable cause is needed, no warrant is needed, and no court or judge is involved. It just gets vacuumed up. ..."
"... While exactly how many Americans have their communications monitored this way is unknown , we know these Republican Trump supporters and staffers were caught up in surveillance authorized by a Democratic administration (no evidence of incidental surveillance of the Clinton campaign exists). Election-time claims that the Obama administration wasn't " wiretapping " Trump were disingenuous. They in fact gathered an unprecedented level of inside information. How was it used? ..."
"... Incidental collection nailed Michael Flynn : the NSA was ostensibly not surveilling Flynn, just listening in on the Russian ambassador as the two spoke. The embarrassing intercept formed the basis for Flynn's firing as Trump's national security advisor, his guilty plea for perjury, and very possibly his "game-changing" testimony against others. ..."
A significant number of Trump's people were electronically monitored by
a Democratic administration -- many "by accident." We now know that a significant number of
people affiliated with Donald Trump were surveilled during and after the 2016 campaign, some
under warrants, some via "inadvertent" or accidental surveillance. That surveillance is now
being used against these individuals in perjury cases, particularly to press them to testify
against others, and will likely form the basis of Robert Mueller's eventual action against the
president himself.
How did the surveillance state become so fully entrenched in the American political process?
Better yet, how did we let it happen?
The role pervasive surveillance plays in politics today has been grossly underreported. Set
aside what you think about the Trump presidency for a moment and focus instead on the new
paradigm for how politics and justice work inside the surveillance state.
" Incidental
collection " is the claimed inadvertent or accidental monitoring of Americans'
communications under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Incidental collection exists
alongside court-approved warranted surveillance authorized on a specific individual. But for
incidental collection, no probable
cause is needed, no
warrant is needed, and no court or judge is involved. It just gets vacuumed up.
While exactly how many Americans have their communications monitored this way is
unknown , we know these Republican Trump supporters and staffers were caught up in
surveillance authorized by a Democratic administration (no evidence of incidental surveillance
of the Clinton campaign exists). Election-time claims that the Obama administration wasn't "
wiretapping
" Trump were disingenuous. They in fact gathered an unprecedented level of inside information.
How was it used?
Incidental collection nailed Michael
Flynn : the NSA was ostensibly not surveilling Flynn, just listening in on the Russian
ambassador as the two spoke. The embarrassing intercept formed the basis for Flynn's firing as
Trump's national security advisor, his guilty plea for perjury, and very possibly his
"game-changing" testimony against others.
Jeff Sessions was similarly incidentally surveilled, as was former White House chief
strategist Steve
Bannon , whose conversations were picked
up as part of a FISA warrant issued against Trump associate
Carter Page .
Paul Manafort and
Richard Gates were also the subjects of FISA-warranted surveillance: they were surveilled
in 2014, the case was dropped for lack of evidence, and then they were re-surveilled after they
joined the Trump team and became more interesting to the state.
Officials on the National Security Council revealed that
Trump himself may also have been swept up in the surveillance of foreign targets. Devin
Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, claims multiple communications by Trump
transition
staff were inadvertently picked up.
Trump officials were monitored by British
GCHQ with the information shared with their NSA partners. Some reports
claim that after a criminal warrant was denied to look into
whether or not Trump Tower servers
were communicating with a Russian bank, a FISA warrant was issued.
How much information the White House may have acquired on Trump's political strategy, as
well as the full story of what might have been done with that information, will never be known.
We do know that the director of national intelligence Dan Coats saw enough after he took office
to
specify that the "intelligence community may not engage in political activity, including
dissemination of U.S. person identities to the White House, for the purpose of affecting the
political process of the United States."
Coats likely had in mind the use of unmasking by the Obama administration. Identities of
U.S. persons picked up inadvertently by surveillance are supposed to be masked, hidden from
most users of the data. However, a select group of officials, including political appointees in
the White House, can unmask and include names if they believe it is important to understanding
the intelligence, or to show evidence of a crime.
Former Obama national security advisor Susan Rice
told House investigators in at least one instance she unmasked the identities of Michael
Flynn,
Jared Kushner , and Steve Bannon. Obama's ambassador to the United Nations,
Samantha Power , also made a number of unmasking requests
in her final year in office.
But no one knows who unmasked Flynn in his conversations with the Russian ambassador. That
and the subsequent leaking of what was said were used not only to snare Flynn in a perjury
trap, but also to force him out of government. Prior to the leak that took Flynn down, Obama
holdover and then-acting attorney general Sally Yates warned Trump that Flynn could be
blackmailed by Moscow for lying about his calls. When Trump didn't immediately fire Flynn, the
unmasked surveillance was leaked by a "senior government official" (likely
Yates ) to the
Washington Post . The disclosure pressured the administration to dump Flynn.
Similar leaks were used to try to pressure Attorney General
Jeff Sessions to resign, though they only resulted in him recusing himself from the
Russiagate investigation. Following James Comey's firing, that recusal ultimately opened the
door for the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller.
A highly classified leak was used to help marginalize Jared Kushner. The Washington
Post ,
based on leaked intercepts, claimed foreign officials' from four countries spoke of
exploiting Kushner's economic vulnerabilities to push him into acting against the United
States. If the story is true, the leakers passed on data revealing sources and methods; those
foreign officials now know that, however they communicated their thoughts about Kushner, the
NSA was listening. Access to that level of information and the power to expose it is not a
rank-and-file action. One analyst
described the matter as "the Deep State takes out the White House's Dark Clown Prince."
Pervasive surveillance has shown its power perhaps most significantly in creating
perjury traps to manufacture indictments to pressure people to testify against others.
Trump associate George
Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about several meetings concerning Clinton's emails. The FBI
knew about the meetings, "
propelled in part by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British
and Dutch." The feds asked him questions solely in the hope that Papadopoulos would commit
perjury, even though there was nothing shown to be criminal about the meetings themselves. Now
guilty of a crime, the FBI will use the promise of a light punishment to press Papadopoulos into
testifying against others.
There is a common thread here of using surveillance to create a process crime out of a
non-material lie (the FBI already knew) where no underlying crime of turpitude exists (the
meetings were legal). That this is then used to press someone to testify in an investigation
that will have a significant political impact seems undemocratic -- yet it appears to be a
primary tool Mueller is using.
This is a far cry from a traditional plea deal, giving someone a light sentence for actual
crimes so that they will testify against others. Mueller should know. He famously allowed Mafia
hitman Sammy the Bull to escape more serious punishment for 19 first-degree
murders in return for testimony against John Gotti. No need to manufacture a perjury trap;
the pile of bodies that never saw justice did the trick.
Don't be lured into thinking the ends justify the means, that whatever it takes to purge
Trump is acceptable. Say what you want about Flynn, Kushner, et al, what matters most is the
dark process being used. The arrival of pervasive surveillance as a political weapon is a
harbinger that should chill Americans to their cores.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author ofWe Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the
Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People andHooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan. He tweets@WeMeantWell.MORE FROM THIS
AUTHOR
Pervasive surveillance has shown its power perhaps most significantly in creating
perjury traps to manufacture indictments to pressure people to testify against others.
Key advice: Never talk to a cop. Never trust an agent of the Security State. They may still wreck your life, but at least you won't make it easy for them.
Are you really arguing that using surveillance on foreign agents and spies to catch and
compel traders to testify against each other is bad????? Isn't that the way it is usually
done?
It is extremely easy to avoid a perjury trap: don't tell lies. And don't tell me the
government has no right to investigate what could be treason by the president and his staff.
I know how you love Trump and Russia.
I voted for Trump but now I'm completely disgusted with his failures and betrayals and won't
vote for him again.
Setting that aside, it's starting to look to me like the Hillary campaign and allies in
the Obama federal bureaucracy were spying on the Trump campaign.
They fully expected Hillary to win and therefore to be able to cover up what they were
doing.
But then they lost, and now they're ginning up the Russia/national security angle to blow
smoke over what's starting to look like the worst campaign skullduggery since Nixon and
Watergate.
It needs to be investigated, and if there's any fire there, vigorously prosecuted. I don't
give a damn about Trump anymore, but I give a damn about our democracy and system of
government, and if it turns out that some government filth was spying on Trump's campaign, I
want them arrested, prosecuted, and thrown in the darkest, dirtiest hole in our prison
system. We can't have that kind of s***.
If I see one more variation on "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" in a
comment my brain will explode. Anyone who writes that kind of thing ("Well maybe they
shouldn't lie") is missing the point: our political process was surveilled and no one can
control what happens to information gathered. Even if you think it good to "take down" Trump,
the process will exist past him to be aimed at a future candidate you support.
"It is extremely easy to avoid a perjury trap: don't tell lies."
Even if true, do you think it is fair for Flynn to be hit with felony charges for his
"less than candid answers" with regard to politically and diplomatically sensitive phone
calls to the Russian ambassador after the elections were over?
Republicans created this mess in their desire to make "security" a partisan issue after 9/11.
If they now regret it and wish to undo the mess, more power to them!
Peter: "If I see one more variation on 'if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear'
in a comment my brain will explode."
The Left used to be vociferously in favor of privacy rights. I took note during the Obama
years that it really only mattered for abortion and library books, nothing beyond that.
But a thought experiment: How many progressives, for that matter how many Black and
Hispanic Americans would be comfortable with the following government requirements:
– Federal, state, and local law enforcement have your name and current address on
file at all times.
– Federal, state, and local law enforcement have a key to your home at all times.
– Federal, state, and local law enforcement have a tracking device on your car or your
person at all times.
If you have nothing to hide, you should have no objections to any of those
requirements.
[[It is extremely easy to avoid a perjury trap: don't tell lies.]]
Even easier: Be a Democrat, preferably the Party's presidential candidate, and then it
doesn't matter whether you tell lies or commit felonies because the corrupt Deep
State-lib-Dem-media alliance will hold you safely above the law.
Even in the midst of all of this, the ongoing ability to continue to spy on our own citizens
was recently voted on and passed overwhelmingly, with large bipartisan support. Save your
crocodile tears now.
Russia is not an enemy of the United States despite all the hoopla about how eeeevil they
are, we are not at war. Treason is not on the table unless you, you know, amend the
constitution, or abandon it, or something.
@MM: apart from the key to your house (and even that might be questionable if you have
certain "smart" appliances), you are describing Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and/or
Microsoft. Adding Federal Government to that list isn't as much of a jump as you seem to
believe.
"The arrival of pervasive surveillance as a political weapon is a harbinger that should chill
Americans to their cores."
Thankfully J. Edgar Hoover practiced his job with restraint.
That being said, while there is certainly a need for improvement of the FISA program (sadly,
the 'principled' Devin Nunes, Trey Gowdy, Matt Gaetz, et al., missed their opportunity in
January when they voted for reauthorization), those individuals caught in the web "by
accident" were regularly communicating with targets of legitimately obtained warrants. It was
their choice to subsequently lie.
With respect to their "unmasking", it doesn't seem unreasonable that policy makers in the
White House should have knowledge of their identity (even in the politicized environment of a
presidential campaign), especially when there's the taint of influence of an adversarial
government and/or organized crime on a potential POTUS.
It is amazing how many law and order Conservatives start screaming about abuses of power, and
targeting specific people when they are the ones at the receiving end.
As a rule, if they did defended the police when the subject was racial profiling, they get
to shut up on the subject now.
(Maybe they SHOULD team up with Black Lives Matter..)
We have come a long way from the reactionary and authoritarian chants of "if you have done
nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" in the lead-up and then wake of the sarcastically
name PATRIOT Act.
Surveillance and monitoring are, like all other "national securities" spending, primarily
profit extraction driven public-private "partnerships", but the major point here always was
"if you build it, they will use it".
That, too, is the foundational criticism driving Global Zero and the insistence that
Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty be honored by all signatory nuclear powers.
The basic principle of any evolutionary stable open society based on checks and balances
is that no self-inflating institutions and power centers are permissible – whether that
is inbred, networked multi-generational wealth, incorporated power such as financial
institutions, or specific government institutions, such as the military, the "intelligence"
agencies etc.
Of course, the whole idea of having secret courts applying secret law in secret decisions
without adversary parties, and no mandatory disclosure after the fact, is also fundamentally
incompatible with the idea of transparency and accountability, without which free speech and
elections are little more than a travelling circus and a vehicle for advertising profit.
mark_be: Sorry, I meant to include fingerprints and DNA samples in that list of items for all
levels of law enforcement to retain on file on every American.
Any government whose interests clash with ours must be considered a potential enemy
– not enough to go to war, of course, but to be wary of what steps they may take to
protect their interests and thwart ours.
As for Russia, alas, she is known for playing very dirty. Before there was a KGB, there
was an Okhrana, among whose achievements was the writing and disemination of the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion. Anyone who thinks that because they are no longer communists they
Russians are nice guys lives in a fool's paradise
YKW: "As a rule, if they did defended the police when the subject was racial profiling, they
get to shut up on the subject now."
There is no such rule in a free society. People are within their rights to be as
hypocritical and inconsistent as they like.
But if there were such a rule, where are the civil libertarians in the Democratic Party?
Why aren't they castigating DOJ abuse of power in the previous administration?
Why are neoconservatives and Bush era creeps like Brennan, Clapper, and Hayden darlings of
the Left?
"... It was President Bill Clinton who moved NATO eastwards, abrogating a 1991 agreement with the Russians not to recruit former members of the Warsaw Pact that is at the root of current tensions with Moscow. And, while the U.S. and NATO point to Russia's annexation of the Crimea as a sign of a "revanchist" Moscow, it was NATO that set the precedent of altering borders when it dismembered Serbia to create Kosovo after the 1999 Yugoslav war. ..."
"... And it was President Barack Obama who further chilled relations with the Russians by tacitly backing the 2014 coup in the Ukraine, and whose "Asia pivot" has led to tensions between Washington and Beijing. ..."
"... In speaking at Johns Hopkins, Defense Secretary James Mattis warned , "If you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day" -- a remark aimed directly at Russia. ..."
"... NATO ally Britain went even further. Chief of the United Kingdom General Staff, Nick Carter, told the Defense and Security Forum that "our generation has become used to wars of choice since the end of the Cold War," but "we may not have a choice about conflict with Russia." He added , "The parallels with 1914 are stark." ..."
"... Certainly the verbiage about Russia and China is alarming. Russia is routinely described as "aggressive," "revisionist," and "expansionist." In a recent attack on China, U.S. Defense Secretary Rex Tillerson described China's trade with Latin America as " imperial ," an ironic choice of words given Washington's more overtly imperial history in the region. ..."
"... While Moscow is certainly capable of destroying the world with its nuclear weapons, Russia today bears little resemblance to 1914 Russia -- or, for that matter, the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The U.S. and its NATO allies currently spend more than 12 times what Russia does on its armaments, and even that vastly underestimates Washington's actual military outlay. A great deal of U.S. spending is not counted as "military," including nuclear weapons, currently being modernized to the tune of $1.5 trillion. ..."
"... The balance between China and the U.S. is more even, but the U.S. still outspends China almost three to one. Fact in Washington's major regional allies -- Japan, Australia, and South Korea -- and that figure is almost four to one. In nuclear weapons, the ratio is vastly greater: 26 to 1 in favor of the U.S. Add NATO and the ratios are 28 to 1. ..."
"... Meanwhile, China has two military goals: to secure its sea-borne energy supplies by building up its navy, and to establish a buffer zone in the East and South China seas to keep potential enemies at arm's length. To that end it has constructed smaller, more agile ships, and missiles capable of keeping U.S. aircraft carriers out of range, a strategy called "area denial." It has also modernized its military, cutting back on land-based forces and investing in air and sea assets. However, it spends less of its GDP on its military than does the U.S.: 1.9 percent as opposed to 3.3 percent as of 2016. ..."
"... But China has been invaded several times, starting with the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1856, when Britain forced the Chinese to lift their ban on importing the drug. Japan invaded in 1895 and 1937. If the Chinese are touchy about their coastline, one can hardly blame them. ..."
"... Is this a new Cold War, when the U.S. attempted to surround and isolate the Soviet Union? There are parallels, but the Cold War was an ideological battle between two systems, socialism and capitalism. The fight today is over market access and economic domination. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Latin America about China and Russia, it wasn't about "Communist subversion," but trade. ..."
"... For one, the big arms manufacturers -- Lockheed Martian, Boeing, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics -- have lots of cash to hand out come election time. "Great power competition" will be expensive, with lots of big-ticket items: aircraft carriers, submarines, surface ships, and an expanded air force. ..."
"... And many of the Democrats are ahead of the curve when it comes to demonizing the Russians. The Russian bug-a-boo has allowed the party to shift the blame for Hillary Clinton's loss to Moscow's manipulation of the election, thus avoiding having to examine its own lackluster campaign and unimaginative political program. ..."
"... Piling onto Moscow may have consequences as well. Andrei Kostin, head of one of Russia's largest banks, VTB, told the Financial Times that adding more sanctions against Russia " would be like declaring war ." ..."
The U.S. has never taken its eyes off its big competitors.
It was President Bill Clinton who moved NATO eastwards, abrogating a 1991 agreement with the
Russians not to recruit former members of the Warsaw Pact that is at the root of current
tensions with Moscow. And, while the U.S. and NATO point to Russia's annexation of the Crimea
as a sign of a "revanchist" Moscow, it was NATO that set the precedent of altering borders when
it dismembered Serbia to create Kosovo after the 1999 Yugoslav war.
It was President George W. Bush who designated China a "strategic competitor," and who tried
to lure India into an anti-Chinese alliance by allowing New Delhi to violate the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Letting India purchase uranium on the international market -- it was
barred from doing so by refusing to sign the NPT -- helped ignite the dangerous nuclear arms
race with Pakistan in South Asia.
And it was President Barack Obama who further chilled relations with the Russians by tacitly
backing the 2014 coup in the Ukraine, and whose "Asia pivot" has led to tensions between
Washington and Beijing.
So is jettisoning "terrorism" as the enemy in favor of "great powers" just old wine, new
bottle? Not quite. For one thing the new emphasis has a decidedly more dangerous edge to
it.
1914 vs. Today
In speaking at Johns Hopkins, Defense Secretary
James Mattis warned , "If you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day" -- a
remark aimed directly at Russia.
NATO ally Britain went even further. Chief of the United Kingdom General Staff, Nick
Carter, told the Defense and Security Forum that "our generation has become used to wars of
choice since the end of the Cold War," but "we may not have a choice about conflict with
Russia."
He added , "The parallels with 1914 are stark."
Certainly the verbiage about Russia and China is alarming. Russia is routinely described
as "aggressive," "revisionist," and "expansionist." In a recent attack on China, U.S. Defense
Secretary Rex Tillerson described China's trade with Latin America as "
imperial ," an ironic choice of words given Washington's more overtly imperial history in the
region.
But there are differences between now and the run up to the First World War. In 1914, there
were several powerful and evenly matched empires at odds. That is not the case today.
While Moscow is certainly capable of destroying the world with its nuclear weapons,
Russia today bears little resemblance to 1914 Russia -- or, for that matter, the Soviet
Union.
The U.S. and its NATO allies currently spend
more than 12 times what Russia does on its armaments, and even that vastly underestimates
Washington's actual military outlay. A great deal of U.S. spending is not counted as
"military," including nuclear weapons, currently being modernized to the tune of $1.5
trillion.
The balance between China and the U.S. is more even, but the U.S. still outspends China
almost three to one. Fact in Washington's major regional allies -- Japan, Australia, and South
Korea -- and that figure is almost four to one. In nuclear weapons, the ratio is vastly
greater: 26 to 1 in favor of the U.S. Add NATO and the ratios are 28 to 1.
This isn't to say that the military forces of Russia and China are irrelevant. Russia's
intervention in the Syrian civil war helped turn the tide against the anti-Assad coalition put
together by the United States. But its economy is smaller than Italy's, and its "aggression" is
arguably a response to NATO establishing a presence on Moscow's doorstep.
Meanwhile, China has two military goals: to secure its sea-borne energy supplies by
building up its navy, and to establish a buffer zone in the East and South China seas to keep
potential enemies at arm's length. To that end it has constructed smaller, more agile ships,
and missiles capable of keeping U.S. aircraft carriers out of range, a strategy called "area
denial." It has also modernized its military, cutting back on land-based forces and investing
in air and sea assets. However, it spends less of its GDP on its military than does the U.S.:
1.9 percent as
opposed to 3.3 percent as of 2016.
Beijing has been heavy-handed in establishing "area denial," alienating many of its
neighbors -- Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan -- by claiming most of the South
China Sea and building bases in the Paracel and Spratly islands.
But China has been invaded several times, starting with the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1856,
when Britain forced the Chinese to lift their ban on importing the drug. Japan invaded in 1895
and 1937. If the Chinese are touchy about their coastline, one can hardly blame them.
China is, however, the United States' major competitor and the second largest economy in the
world. It has replaced the U.S. as Latin America's largest trading partner and successfully
outflanked Washington's attempts to throttle its economic influence. When the U.S. asked its
key allies to boycott China's new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, with
the exception of Japan , they ignored Washington.
However, commercial success is hardly "imperial."
Is this a new Cold War, when the U.S. attempted to surround and isolate the Soviet
Union? There are parallels, but the Cold War was an ideological battle between two systems,
socialism and capitalism. The fight today is over market access and economic domination. When
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Latin America about China and Russia, it wasn't about
"Communist subversion," but trade.
Behind the Shift
There are other players behind this shift.
For one, the big arms manufacturers -- Lockheed Martian, Boeing, Raytheon, BAE Systems,
Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics -- have lots of cash to hand out come election time.
"Great power competition" will be expensive, with lots of big-ticket items: aircraft carriers,
submarines, surface ships, and an expanded air force.
This is not to say that the U.S. has altered its foreign policy focus because of arms
company lobbies, but they do have a seat at the table. And given that those companies have
spread their operations to all 50 states, local political representatives and governors have a
stake in keeping -- and expanding -- those often high paying jobs.
Nor are the Republicans going to get much opposition on increased defense spending from the
Democrats, many of whom are as hawkish as their colleagues across the aisle. That's true even
though higher defense spending -- coupled with the recent tax cut bill -- will rule out funding
many of the programs the Democrats hold dear. Of course, for the Republicans that dilemma is a
major side benefit: cut taxes, increase defense spending, then dismantle social services,
Social Security, and Medicare in order to service the deficit.
And many of the Democrats are ahead of the curve when it comes to demonizing the
Russians. The Russian bug-a-boo has allowed the party to shift the blame for Hillary Clinton's
loss to Moscow's manipulation of the election, thus avoiding having to examine its own
lackluster campaign and unimaginative political program.
There are other actors pushing this new emphasis as well, including the Bush
administration's neoconservatives who launched the Iraq War. Their new target is Iran, even
though inflating Iran to the level of a "great power" is laughable. Iran's military budget is
$12.3 billion. Saudi Arabia alone spends $63.7 billion on defense, slightly less than Russia,
which has five times the population and eight times the land area. In a clash between Iran and
the U.S. and its local allies, the disparity in military strength would be closer to 60 to 1 .
However, in terms of disasters, even Iraq would pale before a war with Iran.
The most dangerous place in the world right now is the Korean Peninsula, where the Trump
administration appears to be casting around for some kind of military demonstration that will
not ignite a nuclear war. But how would China react to an attack that might put hostile troops
on its southern border?
Piling onto Moscow may have consequences as well. Andrei Kostin, head of one of Russia's
largest banks, VTB, told the Financial Times that adding more sanctions against Russia "
would be like
declaring war ."
"... Therefore, if we must see this in terms of conflict, we see a dramatically less powerful and dramatically poorer but essentially unified Russia facing up to a threat from a West that is far superior militarily and economically but that is divided in itself and slipping further into decline. ..."
"... This does of course lead to the unstable world you say we are faced with. Dangerously unstable. But I do not believe you are admitting to yourself that it is an instability we in the West are causing. ..."
I don't understand the last three paragraphs of your comment so I may be missing
your central point. However, I believe this sentence taken in isolation could do with
qualifying:-
"No doubt there is a lot of noise, but the reality is that economically Russia is a basket
case and the US is rapidly joining them."
The picture one gets of Russia is of a country slowly digging itself out of the
disintegrative corruption of the 90's. Putin's recent remarks indicate how slowly.
President Carter's characterisation of the US as now being an oligarchy shows the US
slowly going the other way. Even including Germany that is the general picture in the
West.
Some recent remarks and examples from DH show the Russian people, or rather a substantial
number of them, soberly and consciously preparing to address the threat from the West. Unless
it's all Russian PR there is a sense of national unity there, at least for many, and that is
reflected by the Russian leadership.
I'm afraid our host is correct when he characterises the current anti-Russian sentiment in
the West as hysterical. That, however, is I believe largely top down. It is a product of PR
from the media and from the Western politicians. Behind it is no deep sense of unity or
national resolve. In fact we see the reverse - most Western countries are deeply divided
within themselves.
The Russians seem also to have escaped the demoralising effects of the more far out social
trends in the US and other Western countries.
Therefore, if we must see this in terms of conflict, we see a dramatically less
powerful and dramatically poorer but essentially unified Russia facing up to a threat from a
West that is far superior militarily and economically but that is divided in itself and
slipping further into decline.
This does of course lead to the unstable world you say we are faced with. Dangerously
unstable. But I do not believe you are admitting to yourself that it is an instability we in
the West are causing.
"... Politically the situation we see in Ukraine is that the ordinary people don't really care about the politics they are genuinely concerned about bread and butter it is quite sad actually that the US is treating the Ukraine as a pawn and a quite cheap one at that in its game with Russia ..."
1. There is some mystery in this Putin "bragging" about new formidable weapons. This is
not his style. Why now? Why do it when sanctions are in place and can be easily be tightened
as the result? Looks like in order to make such a statement Putin should have intelligence
information about a real threat of attack from the USA, or some large scale provocation in
Syria or Ukraine. Only in this case his statement makes some sense. As a open warning: do not
do it. Otherwise this is just an open invitation for the new, more destructive and expensive
stage in nuclear arms race. The scenario that Russia should try to avoid.
2. Also the rule is: if your adversary is making a mistake, you should not try to stop
him. If missile defense systems and aircraft carriers are useless why not to allow the USA to
put another 100 billion dollars into it ? Something does not compute here. BTW both remain
perfectly viable as the first strike weapons (you never know what those tubes contain and
they can hold cruise missiles as well). The fact that they will perish is just part of the
cost of the whole operation.
3. Russia has way too many problems, both economic and political. So each dollar put into
military technology is stolen from the civilian sector and makes sanctions more effective. So
succumbing to the arm race is like self-sanctions.
4. After 2012 it is clear that the way the USA will try to undermine Russia is most
probably via political interference during the next election, in which there will be a power
vacuum as Putin finishes his last term, and there is no Putin II. The problem of the leader
succession is a well-known Achilles' spot of Russia. In 2012 the "collective West" achieved
pretty significant success in staging color revolution in Russia using pro-West (aka
Zapadniki) and comprador sector in Moscow as the fifth column. The political situation in
Moscow will always favor pro-European forces, as this city has a huge concentration of
employees of foreign companies, professionals and entrepreneurs who depend on the West and
earn money from the West (compradors) . Efforts to put in power a classic neoliberal like
Macron in France will be multiplied for elections in 2024. I do not see, why they can't be
more successful then in 2012.
5. While weakened by the recent McCarthyism campaign in the USA, Russian comprador sector
and neoliberals are still a very powerful political force and control a significant part of
media and oligarch money. Russian constitution was written by the USA. And scars from the
economic rape of Russia in 90th still did not fully heal. In other words, pro-Western forces
in Russia are powerful enough to serve as a base to stage another color revolution. Probably
along with crashing oil prices before the elections again, or some other nasty trick. In this
case you do not need any missiles. As long as Russia is a neoliberal country Putin and his
policies remain a political anomaly. And Putin himself a maverick. There will be no another
Putin, but there can well be another Gorbachov, or, worse, Yeltsin. The same is true for
China, but at least China has political control of the Communist Party and state ownership of
the financial sector. The latter is not true for Russia and is a huge political risk. While
neoliberalism entered the stage of decline there is no viable alternatives on the
horizon.
6. Loss of Ukraine was/is a huge geopolitical defeat of Putin (and Russia as a country)
which can't be compensated any bragging about new weapon systems. It was and still is a
geopolitical knockdown.
7. Hopes about "some sensible conversation on the new world order may start between key
geopolitical players" are naïve. The US elite is hell-bent on world superiority as this
is a pre-condition of the existence of the dollar as the primary world currency. This
situation will not probably change until the end of cheap oil, which might take another
twenty years or more.
8. If time is working against the USA, why not to sit quiet and try not to anger aging
hegemon as China supposedly does (having also advantage of host of "offshored" manufacturing
from the USA and having the USA as debtor).
9. The level of brain drain from Russia actually is a huge limiting factor, which makes a
claim about cruising missile with a nuclear reactor as a part of propulsion engine highly
suspect.
10. The network of intelligence agencies around Russia (which now include Estonia and
Ukraine) probably represents much more serious threat then the "first strike" capability of
the USA, if such thing can ever exist.
11. "Collective West" can easily tighten sanction expanding them on more technological
sectors, thus damaging Russia economic growth. So bragging about new weapons is bad diplomacy
when the opponent is much stronger economically and politically.
12. China has less than 300 nuclear weapons and still is regarded as a formidable nuclear
power, probably spending 20 times less money in this area.
13. The claim that "The Kinzhal effectively removes any non-suicidal surface force
thousands of miles away from Russia's shores and renders its capabilities irrelevant" is
highly questionable. The idea of the first strike includes the elimination of the possibility
of launching most (or all) Kinzhal missiles carriers, as a necessary part required for the
success of the operation. Any losses of forward deployed units are acceptable in such a huge
game.
Just a pre-empt, tiring if you say you don't understand Ukraine, etc. then twenty
comments; dem Jews.
No rain, too much rain, dem Jews.
Well, you did utter the trigger word.
Guess your family believes religiously in the eternal victimhood and in the right of
Jewish people to demand special treatment from "others"– "because of Holocaust." --
This is over. After the fraternization of the Kagans' clan (via Nuland-Kagan) with neo-Nazi
in Ukraine and after Israeli's support for ISIS, Jewish pretenses on superior morality (and
similar fantastic inventions) have become unrealistic.
Putin should have intelligence information about a real threat of attack from the USA,
or some large scale provocation in Syria or Ukraine.
I'd go for Ukraine.
Something does not compute here.
Well, "if we can't have it it's not good."
Sour grapes.
Russia has way too many problems, both economic and political. So each dollar put into
military technology is stolen from the civilian sector and makes sanctions more effective.
So succumbing to the arm race is like self-sanctions.
Agree.
In other words, pro-Western forces in Russia are powerful enough to serve as a base to
stage another color revolution. In this case you do not need any missiles.
...While neoliberalism entered the stage of decline there is no viable alternatives on the
horizon.
Agree.
Loss of Ukraine was/is a huge geopolitical defeat of Putin (and Russia as a country)
which can't be compensated any bragging about new weapon systems. It was and still is a
geopolitical knockdown.
Agree.
But, perhaps that's not true. In any case, the resident "Team Russia" will now explain that.
As victory, of course.
Hopes about "some sensible conversation on the new world order may start between key
geopolitical players" are naïve. The US elite is hell-bent on world superiority as
this is a pre-condition of the existence of the dollar as the primary world currency.
Agree.
If time is working against the US, why not to sit quiet and try not to anger aging
hegemon as China supposedly does (having also advantage of host of "offshored"
manufacturing from the USA and having the USA as debtor).
and
The level of brain drain from Russia actually is a huge limiting factor, which makes a
claim about cruising missile with a nuclear reactor as a part of propulsion engine highly
suspect.
and
"Collective West" can easily tighten sanction expanding them on more technological
sectors, thus damaging Russia economic growth. So bragging about new weapons is bad
diplomacy when the opponent is much stronger economically and politically.
"Team Russia" coming up. You are about to see the light. Somehow.
Putin and those around him would better do concentrate on internal issues or eventually
issues will concentrate on them.
Agree.
This obsession with high tech is actually puzzling.
Not only that, but, overall, which "military" is better. "Whose father/older brother is
stronger" kid talk.
The Empire shall go for the Russia's internal problems and try to capitalize on that.
Ukraine was taken down using that approach. Oh, wait, not only Ukraine but all those who
didn't tow the line. Thinking that, somehow, a conventional war, only, will settle the issue
is not only delusional but stupid. Why would The Empire do that? No reason whatsoever.
It will try to do exactly what's been doing since '91. Internal dissent.
So, while Russian elites will keep building high tech weaponry (remember USSR), The Empire
will keep working on getting all those "unhappy" with Putin regime onboard and using them for
weakening the regime.
If the regime in Moscow can't, or doesn't want to see it, well, it doesn't deserve that
position. True, weapons industry is good for making money and stashing most of it offshore.
Not sharing that wealth, though, with general population is not that smart, just, they simply
can't help it. That's the way of the world there. Czars and serfs.
The problem is, of course, they can't step down even if they wanted to. Nobody wants
kangaroo courts and hanging. Or public murder broadcast live on Internet. Conundrum.
You make some interesting observations and your comment is thought-provoking
However I think the intent of the article was to explore some of the technical
issues of what we saw on March 1 not so much the political dimension and certainly your
approach is to try to get an overall wide angle picture that gets every possible Russia issue
into the frame
which by necessity means you give up some resolution or granularity if you will compared
to a more tightly focused article
You start with an initial premise of why announce these weapons now and question the
wisdom the simple answer may be technical related these weapons may be already mature
technically and now is the time to show them ?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
A couple more points you mention sanctions quite a bit but we have seen that Russia is
able to carry on just fine sanctions or not
The key indicator there is that sanctions are having a much bigger blowback on the US
itself i.e. the US is losing Europe
Germany has been quite vocal about US going a step too far in trying to dictate energy
policy which is key to German industrial export economy and besides they may finally be
finding their sea legs after years of subservience to an increasingly unhinged country that
is heading for the cliff
The Germans are going to get Nordstream 2 because they want it. It is actually more
important to Germany than to Russia Russia has been supplying energy to Europe for many
decades going back to Soviet times but is just now starting to feed the biggest energy
consumer in the world China
Other, smaller EU countries notably Italy have become quite vocal about Russia sanctions
hurting them we saw just now an election in Italy where the ruling claque were turfed
So it seems that the days of US dictating the politics to its European vassals may be over
the kind of friction they are making with sanctions and their increasing hysteria is only
hastening this process of vassals breaking off
The other issue is Ukraine you bring to this the the typical US perspective of 'losing' a
country this again goes back to the vassal game
The US gained all of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union but did Russia
lose anything sensible people will say the lost they burden of empire long after it had
ceased being profitable as with the British previously
Ukraine is historically something of an artificial country the original Kievan Rus
[Rurivik dynasty] was the original Russia it fell apart after the Mongol invasions but the
Russian and Ukrainian language and people are mostly indistinguishable other than the
Galician Catholic minority
For several hundred years the peoples of the Ukraine [ie even then it was more than a
single national people] were under rule by the Poles and Lithuania while the new Russian
empire based in Moscow gained strength and eventually took over 300 years ago
There are and have always been Ukrainian nationalists that do not like Russia but they are
in the minority the best way to think of Ukraine is similar to Scotland even the Irish are
more distant from the English than Ukrainians from Russians
Politically the situation we see in Ukraine is that the ordinary people don't really care
about the politics they are genuinely concerned about bread and butter it is quite sad
actually that the US is treating the Ukraine as a pawn and a quite cheap one at that in its
game with Russia
I don't believe the Russians look at the situation that way there is real fraternity among
many Russians and Ukrainians that goes to a fundamental level again similar to Scotland where
the country is divided on the issue of the English
So unless the EU and US are prepared to do a full Marshall plan to drag Ukraine into a
reasonable living standard then this 'win' will turn out to be something of a chimera
Heck the polls even in eastern Europe are trending against the post Cold War direction
with about half the people now questioning if the new boss is really better than the old
boss
And finally if you are going to do a wide angle shot like this then get the crazy cousin
into the picture also ie the US and its failing Ponzi economy that is bound to collapse just
on the principles of mathematics
China and Russia are working to bury the source of all US strength the petrodollar this is
literally kryptonite the US is quite simply toast once the petrodollar sinks
China is the world's biggest economy and biggest energy buyer Russia is the world's
biggest energy seller other nations too that are not so strong and have felt the body blows
of US economic warfare such as Iran, Venezuela and other will gladly join in
It's starting to feel like US has used up all its chips and all its markers
The entire developing world wants real prosperity not economic colonialism and corporate
plunder
These are some large and powerful currents that have to be taken into account if one is
going to take a wide angle shot of geopolitics
Ukraine is historically something of an artificial country the original Kievan Rus
[Rurivik dynasty] was the original Russia it fell apart after the Mongol invasions
Relationship of Kievan Rus to modern Russia and Ukraine is somewhat analogous to the
relationship of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire to modern France or Germany. Although both
Germany and France would have to be in the same linguistic family for the analogy to be more
accurate.
For several hundred years the peoples of the Ukraine [ie even then it was more than a
single national people] were under rule by the Poles and Lithuania
Correct. This meant not only political separation but largescale settlement (about 10% of
the population were Polish settlers – these were absorbed by the natives, so most
Ukrainians have some Polish roots), centuries of schooling, etc. And this was enough to lead
to a different culture, language, identity.
eventually took over 300 years ago
The eastern half of Ukraine was linked to Moscow in the 1650s (so indeed about 300 years),
but the western half in the 1770s (so 200 years) and Galicia not until 1939.
but the Russian and Ukrainian language and people are mostly indistinguishable
Incorrect. Ukrainian is about as close to Russian as it is to Polish (Ukrainian grammar
and pronunciation is closer to Russian, but Ukrainian vocabulary actually has more words in
common with Polish than with Russian). The Scandinavian languages are closer to each other
Russian is to Ukrainian. The catch is that in everyday life about half of Ukrainians, and
most urban Ukrainians other than people in Lviv, use Russian rather than Ukrainian. Kiev is a
Russian-speaking city (and Dublin an English-speaking one).
the best way to think of Ukraine is similar to Scotland
Anatol Lieven correctly observed that Ukraine's relationship to Russia is somewhere
between that of Scotland and that of Ireland, to England. Viewing it as Scotland is too
positive, as Ireland too negative. Given that Scotland itself nearly separated, it is natural
to see Ukraine as separate.
"... Politically the situation we see in Ukraine is that the ordinary people don't really care about the politics they are genuinely concerned about bread and butter it is quite sad actually that the US is treating the Ukraine as a pawn and a quite cheap one at that in its game with Russia ..."
1. There is some mystery in this Putin "bragging" about new formidable weapons. This is
not his style. Why now? Why do it when sanctions are in place and can be easily be tightened
as the result? Looks like in order to make such a statement Putin should have intelligence
information about a real threat of attack from the USA, or some large scale provocation in
Syria or Ukraine. Only in this case his statement makes some sense. As a open warning: do not
do it. Otherwise this is just an open invitation for the new, more destructive and expensive
stage in nuclear arms race. The scenario that Russia should try to avoid.
2. Also the rule is: if your adversary is making a mistake, you should not try to stop
him. If missile defense systems and aircraft carriers are useless why not to allow the USA to
put another 100 billion dollars into it ? Something does not compute here. BTW both remain
perfectly viable as the first strike weapons (you never know what those tubes contain and
they can hold cruise missiles as well). The fact that they will perish is just part of the
cost of the whole operation.
3. Russia has way too many problems, both economic and political. So each dollar put into
military technology is stolen from the civilian sector and makes sanctions more effective. So
succumbing to the arm race is like self-sanctions.
4. After 2012 it is clear that the way the USA will try to undermine Russia is most
probably via political interference during the next election, in which there will be a power
vacuum as Putin finishes his last term, and there is no Putin II. The problem of the leader
succession is a well-known Achilles' spot of Russia. In 2012 the "collective West" achieved
pretty significant success in staging color revolution in Russia using pro-West (aka
Zapadniki) and comprador sector in Moscow as the fifth column. The political situation in
Moscow will always favor pro-European forces, as this city has a huge concentration of
employees of foreign companies, professionals and entrepreneurs who depend on the West and
earn money from the West (compradors) . Efforts to put in power a classic neoliberal like
Macron in France will be multiplied for elections in 2024. I do not see, why they can't be
more successful then in 2012.
5. While weakened by the recent McCarthyism campaign in the USA, Russian comprador sector
and neoliberals are still a very powerful political force and control a significant part of
media and oligarch money. Russian constitution was written by the USA. And scars from the
economic rape of Russia in 90th still did not fully heal. In other words, pro-Western forces
in Russia are powerful enough to serve as a base to stage another color revolution. Probably
along with crashing oil prices before the elections again, or some other nasty trick. In this
case you do not need any missiles. As long as Russia is a neoliberal country Putin and his
policies remain a political anomaly. And Putin himself a maverick. There will be no another
Putin, but there can well be another Gorbachov, or, worse, Yeltsin. The same is true for
China, but at least China has political control of the Communist Party and state ownership of
the financial sector. The latter is not true for Russia and is a huge political risk. While
neoliberalism entered the stage of decline there is no viable alternatives on the
horizon.
6. Loss of Ukraine was/is a huge geopolitical defeat of Putin (and Russia as a country)
which can't be compensated any bragging about new weapon systems. It was and still is a
geopolitical knockdown.
7. Hopes about "some sensible conversation on the new world order may start between key
geopolitical players" are naïve. The US elite is hell-bent on world superiority as this
is a pre-condition of the existence of the dollar as the primary world currency. This
situation will not probably change until the end of cheap oil, which might take another
twenty years or more.
8. If time is working against the USA, why not to sit quiet and try not to anger aging
hegemon as China supposedly does (having also advantage of host of "offshored" manufacturing
from the USA and having the USA as debtor).
9. The level of brain drain from Russia actually is a huge limiting factor, which makes a
claim about cruising missile with a nuclear reactor as a part of propulsion engine highly
suspect.
10. The network of intelligence agencies around Russia (which now include Estonia and
Ukraine) probably represents much more serious threat then the "first strike" capability of
the USA, if such thing can ever exist.
11. "Collective West" can easily tighten sanction expanding them on more technological
sectors, thus damaging Russia economic growth. So bragging about new weapons is bad diplomacy
when the opponent is much stronger economically and politically.
12. China has less than 300 nuclear weapons and still is regarded as a formidable nuclear
power, probably spending 20 times less money in this area.
13. The claim that "The Kinzhal effectively removes any non-suicidal surface force
thousands of miles away from Russia's shores and renders its capabilities irrelevant" is
highly questionable. The idea of the first strike includes the elimination of the possibility
of launching most (or all) Kinzhal missiles carriers, as a necessary part required for the
success of the operation. Any losses of forward deployed units are acceptable in such a huge
game.
Just a pre-empt, tiring if you say you don't understand Ukraine, etc. then twenty
comments; dem Jews.
No rain, too much rain, dem Jews.
Well, you did utter the trigger word.
Guess your family believes religiously in the eternal victimhood and in the right of
Jewish people to demand special treatment from "others"– "because of Holocaust." --
This is over. After the fraternization of the Kagans' clan (via Nuland-Kagan) with neo-Nazi
in Ukraine and after Israeli's support for ISIS, Jewish pretenses on superior morality (and
similar fantastic inventions) have become unrealistic.
Putin should have intelligence information about a real threat of attack from the USA,
or some large scale provocation in Syria or Ukraine.
I'd go for Ukraine.
Something does not compute here.
Well, "if we can't have it it's not good."
Sour grapes.
Russia has way too many problems, both economic and political. So each dollar put into
military technology is stolen from the civilian sector and makes sanctions more effective.
So succumbing to the arm race is like self-sanctions.
Agree.
In other words, pro-Western forces in Russia are powerful enough to serve as a base to
stage another color revolution. In this case you do not need any missiles.
...While neoliberalism entered the stage of decline there is no viable alternatives on the
horizon.
Agree.
Loss of Ukraine was/is a huge geopolitical defeat of Putin (and Russia as a country)
which can't be compensated any bragging about new weapon systems. It was and still is a
geopolitical knockdown.
Agree.
But, perhaps that's not true. In any case, the resident "Team Russia" will now explain that.
As victory, of course.
Hopes about "some sensible conversation on the new world order may start between key
geopolitical players" are naïve. The US elite is hell-bent on world superiority as
this is a pre-condition of the existence of the dollar as the primary world currency.
Agree.
If time is working against the US, why not to sit quiet and try not to anger aging
hegemon as China supposedly does (having also advantage of host of "offshored"
manufacturing from the USA and having the USA as debtor).
and
The level of brain drain from Russia actually is a huge limiting factor, which makes a
claim about cruising missile with a nuclear reactor as a part of propulsion engine highly
suspect.
and
"Collective West" can easily tighten sanction expanding them on more technological
sectors, thus damaging Russia economic growth. So bragging about new weapons is bad
diplomacy when the opponent is much stronger economically and politically.
"Team Russia" coming up. You are about to see the light. Somehow.
Putin and those around him would better do concentrate on internal issues or eventually
issues will concentrate on them.
Agree.
This obsession with high tech is actually puzzling.
Not only that, but, overall, which "military" is better. "Whose father/older brother is
stronger" kid talk.
The Empire shall go for the Russia's internal problems and try to capitalize on that.
Ukraine was taken down using that approach. Oh, wait, not only Ukraine but all those who
didn't tow the line. Thinking that, somehow, a conventional war, only, will settle the issue
is not only delusional but stupid. Why would The Empire do that? No reason whatsoever.
It will try to do exactly what's been doing since '91. Internal dissent.
So, while Russian elites will keep building high tech weaponry (remember USSR), The Empire
will keep working on getting all those "unhappy" with Putin regime onboard and using them for
weakening the regime.
If the regime in Moscow can't, or doesn't want to see it, well, it doesn't deserve that
position. True, weapons industry is good for making money and stashing most of it offshore.
Not sharing that wealth, though, with general population is not that smart, just, they simply
can't help it. That's the way of the world there. Czars and serfs.
The problem is, of course, they can't step down even if they wanted to. Nobody wants
kangaroo courts and hanging. Or public murder broadcast live on Internet. Conundrum.
You make some interesting observations and your comment is thought-provoking
However I think the intent of the article was to explore some of the technical
issues of what we saw on March 1 not so much the political dimension and certainly your
approach is to try to get an overall wide angle picture that gets every possible Russia issue
into the frame
which by necessity means you give up some resolution or granularity if you will compared
to a more tightly focused article
You start with an initial premise of why announce these weapons now and question the
wisdom the simple answer may be technical related these weapons may be already mature
technically and now is the time to show them ?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
A couple more points you mention sanctions quite a bit but we have seen that Russia is
able to carry on just fine sanctions or not
The key indicator there is that sanctions are having a much bigger blowback on the US
itself i.e. the US is losing Europe
Germany has been quite vocal about US going a step too far in trying to dictate energy
policy which is key to German industrial export economy and besides they may finally be
finding their sea legs after years of subservience to an increasingly unhinged country that
is heading for the cliff
The Germans are going to get Nordstream 2 because they want it. It is actually more
important to Germany than to Russia Russia has been supplying energy to Europe for many
decades going back to Soviet times but is just now starting to feed the biggest energy
consumer in the world China
Other, smaller EU countries notably Italy have become quite vocal about Russia sanctions
hurting them we saw just now an election in Italy where the ruling claque were turfed
So it seems that the days of US dictating the politics to its European vassals may be over
the kind of friction they are making with sanctions and their increasing hysteria is only
hastening this process of vassals breaking off
The other issue is Ukraine you bring to this the the typical US perspective of 'losing' a
country this again goes back to the vassal game
The US gained all of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union but did Russia
lose anything sensible people will say the lost they burden of empire long after it had
ceased being profitable as with the British previously
Ukraine is historically something of an artificial country the original Kievan Rus
[Rurivik dynasty] was the original Russia it fell apart after the Mongol invasions but the
Russian and Ukrainian language and people are mostly indistinguishable other than the
Galician Catholic minority
For several hundred years the peoples of the Ukraine [ie even then it was more than a
single national people] were under rule by the Poles and Lithuania while the new Russian
empire based in Moscow gained strength and eventually took over 300 years ago
There are and have always been Ukrainian nationalists that do not like Russia but they are
in the minority the best way to think of Ukraine is similar to Scotland even the Irish are
more distant from the English than Ukrainians from Russians
Politically the situation we see in Ukraine is that the ordinary people don't really care
about the politics they are genuinely concerned about bread and butter it is quite sad
actually that the US is treating the Ukraine as a pawn and a quite cheap one at that in its
game with Russia
I don't believe the Russians look at the situation that way there is real fraternity among
many Russians and Ukrainians that goes to a fundamental level again similar to Scotland where
the country is divided on the issue of the English
So unless the EU and US are prepared to do a full Marshall plan to drag Ukraine into a
reasonable living standard then this 'win' will turn out to be something of a chimera
Heck the polls even in eastern Europe are trending against the post Cold War direction
with about half the people now questioning if the new boss is really better than the old
boss
And finally if you are going to do a wide angle shot like this then get the crazy cousin
into the picture also ie the US and its failing Ponzi economy that is bound to collapse just
on the principles of mathematics
China and Russia are working to bury the source of all US strength the petrodollar this is
literally kryptonite the US is quite simply toast once the petrodollar sinks
China is the world's biggest economy and biggest energy buyer Russia is the world's
biggest energy seller other nations too that are not so strong and have felt the body blows
of US economic warfare such as Iran, Venezuela and other will gladly join in
It's starting to feel like US has used up all its chips and all its markers
The entire developing world wants real prosperity not economic colonialism and corporate
plunder
These are some large and powerful currents that have to be taken into account if one is
going to take a wide angle shot of geopolitics
Ukraine is historically something of an artificial country the original Kievan Rus
[Rurivik dynasty] was the original Russia it fell apart after the Mongol invasions
Relationship of Kievan Rus to modern Russia and Ukraine is somewhat analogous to the
relationship of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire to modern France or Germany. Although both
Germany and France would have to be in the same linguistic family for the analogy to be more
accurate.
For several hundred years the peoples of the Ukraine [ie even then it was more than a
single national people] were under rule by the Poles and Lithuania
Correct. This meant not only political separation but largescale settlement (about 10% of
the population were Polish settlers – these were absorbed by the natives, so most
Ukrainians have some Polish roots), centuries of schooling, etc. And this was enough to lead
to a different culture, language, identity.
eventually took over 300 years ago
The eastern half of Ukraine was linked to Moscow in the 1650s (so indeed about 300 years),
but the western half in the 1770s (so 200 years) and Galicia not until 1939.
but the Russian and Ukrainian language and people are mostly indistinguishable
Incorrect. Ukrainian is about as close to Russian as it is to Polish (Ukrainian grammar
and pronunciation is closer to Russian, but Ukrainian vocabulary actually has more words in
common with Polish than with Russian). The Scandinavian languages are closer to each other
Russian is to Ukrainian. The catch is that in everyday life about half of Ukrainians, and
most urban Ukrainians other than people in Lviv, use Russian rather than Ukrainian. Kiev is a
Russian-speaking city (and Dublin an English-speaking one).
the best way to think of Ukraine is similar to Scotland
Anatol Lieven correctly observed that Ukraine's relationship to Russia is somewhere
between that of Scotland and that of Ireland, to England. Viewing it as Scotland is too
positive, as Ireland too negative. Given that Scotland itself nearly separated, it is natural
to see Ukraine as separate.
"... It was President Bill Clinton who moved NATO eastwards, abrogating a 1991 agreement with the Russians not to recruit former members of the Warsaw Pact that is at the root of current tensions with Moscow. And, while the U.S. and NATO point to Russia's annexation of the Crimea as a sign of a "revanchist" Moscow, it was NATO that set the precedent of altering borders when it dismembered Serbia to create Kosovo after the 1999 Yugoslav war. ..."
"... And it was President Barack Obama who further chilled relations with the Russians by tacitly backing the 2014 coup in the Ukraine, and whose "Asia pivot" has led to tensions between Washington and Beijing. ..."
"... In speaking at Johns Hopkins, Defense Secretary James Mattis warned , "If you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day" -- a remark aimed directly at Russia. ..."
"... NATO ally Britain went even further. Chief of the United Kingdom General Staff, Nick Carter, told the Defense and Security Forum that "our generation has become used to wars of choice since the end of the Cold War," but "we may not have a choice about conflict with Russia." He added , "The parallels with 1914 are stark." ..."
"... Certainly the verbiage about Russia and China is alarming. Russia is routinely described as "aggressive," "revisionist," and "expansionist." In a recent attack on China, U.S. Defense Secretary Rex Tillerson described China's trade with Latin America as " imperial ," an ironic choice of words given Washington's more overtly imperial history in the region. ..."
"... While Moscow is certainly capable of destroying the world with its nuclear weapons, Russia today bears little resemblance to 1914 Russia -- or, for that matter, the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The U.S. and its NATO allies currently spend more than 12 times what Russia does on its armaments, and even that vastly underestimates Washington's actual military outlay. A great deal of U.S. spending is not counted as "military," including nuclear weapons, currently being modernized to the tune of $1.5 trillion. ..."
"... The balance between China and the U.S. is more even, but the U.S. still outspends China almost three to one. Fact in Washington's major regional allies -- Japan, Australia, and South Korea -- and that figure is almost four to one. In nuclear weapons, the ratio is vastly greater: 26 to 1 in favor of the U.S. Add NATO and the ratios are 28 to 1. ..."
"... Meanwhile, China has two military goals: to secure its sea-borne energy supplies by building up its navy, and to establish a buffer zone in the East and South China seas to keep potential enemies at arm's length. To that end it has constructed smaller, more agile ships, and missiles capable of keeping U.S. aircraft carriers out of range, a strategy called "area denial." It has also modernized its military, cutting back on land-based forces and investing in air and sea assets. However, it spends less of its GDP on its military than does the U.S.: 1.9 percent as opposed to 3.3 percent as of 2016. ..."
"... But China has been invaded several times, starting with the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1856, when Britain forced the Chinese to lift their ban on importing the drug. Japan invaded in 1895 and 1937. If the Chinese are touchy about their coastline, one can hardly blame them. ..."
"... Is this a new Cold War, when the U.S. attempted to surround and isolate the Soviet Union? There are parallels, but the Cold War was an ideological battle between two systems, socialism and capitalism. The fight today is over market access and economic domination. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Latin America about China and Russia, it wasn't about "Communist subversion," but trade. ..."
"... For one, the big arms manufacturers -- Lockheed Martian, Boeing, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics -- have lots of cash to hand out come election time. "Great power competition" will be expensive, with lots of big-ticket items: aircraft carriers, submarines, surface ships, and an expanded air force. ..."
"... And many of the Democrats are ahead of the curve when it comes to demonizing the Russians. The Russian bug-a-boo has allowed the party to shift the blame for Hillary Clinton's loss to Moscow's manipulation of the election, thus avoiding having to examine its own lackluster campaign and unimaginative political program. ..."
"... Piling onto Moscow may have consequences as well. Andrei Kostin, head of one of Russia's largest banks, VTB, told the Financial Times that adding more sanctions against Russia " would be like declaring war ." ..."
The U.S. has never taken its eyes off its big competitors.
It was President Bill Clinton who moved NATO eastwards, abrogating a 1991 agreement with the
Russians not to recruit former members of the Warsaw Pact that is at the root of current
tensions with Moscow. And, while the U.S. and NATO point to Russia's annexation of the Crimea
as a sign of a "revanchist" Moscow, it was NATO that set the precedent of altering borders when
it dismembered Serbia to create Kosovo after the 1999 Yugoslav war.
It was President George W. Bush who designated China a "strategic competitor," and who tried
to lure India into an anti-Chinese alliance by allowing New Delhi to violate the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Letting India purchase uranium on the international market -- it was
barred from doing so by refusing to sign the NPT -- helped ignite the dangerous nuclear arms
race with Pakistan in South Asia.
And it was President Barack Obama who further chilled relations with the Russians by tacitly
backing the 2014 coup in the Ukraine, and whose "Asia pivot" has led to tensions between
Washington and Beijing.
So is jettisoning "terrorism" as the enemy in favor of "great powers" just old wine, new
bottle? Not quite. For one thing the new emphasis has a decidedly more dangerous edge to
it.
1914 vs. Today
In speaking at Johns Hopkins, Defense Secretary
James Mattis warned , "If you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day" -- a
remark aimed directly at Russia.
NATO ally Britain went even further. Chief of the United Kingdom General Staff, Nick
Carter, told the Defense and Security Forum that "our generation has become used to wars of
choice since the end of the Cold War," but "we may not have a choice about conflict with
Russia."
He added , "The parallels with 1914 are stark."
Certainly the verbiage about Russia and China is alarming. Russia is routinely described
as "aggressive," "revisionist," and "expansionist." In a recent attack on China, U.S. Defense
Secretary Rex Tillerson described China's trade with Latin America as "
imperial ," an ironic choice of words given Washington's more overtly imperial history in the
region.
But there are differences between now and the run up to the First World War. In 1914, there
were several powerful and evenly matched empires at odds. That is not the case today.
While Moscow is certainly capable of destroying the world with its nuclear weapons,
Russia today bears little resemblance to 1914 Russia -- or, for that matter, the Soviet
Union.
The U.S. and its NATO allies currently spend
more than 12 times what Russia does on its armaments, and even that vastly underestimates
Washington's actual military outlay. A great deal of U.S. spending is not counted as
"military," including nuclear weapons, currently being modernized to the tune of $1.5
trillion.
The balance between China and the U.S. is more even, but the U.S. still outspends China
almost three to one. Fact in Washington's major regional allies -- Japan, Australia, and South
Korea -- and that figure is almost four to one. In nuclear weapons, the ratio is vastly
greater: 26 to 1 in favor of the U.S. Add NATO and the ratios are 28 to 1.
This isn't to say that the military forces of Russia and China are irrelevant. Russia's
intervention in the Syrian civil war helped turn the tide against the anti-Assad coalition put
together by the United States. But its economy is smaller than Italy's, and its "aggression" is
arguably a response to NATO establishing a presence on Moscow's doorstep.
Meanwhile, China has two military goals: to secure its sea-borne energy supplies by
building up its navy, and to establish a buffer zone in the East and South China seas to keep
potential enemies at arm's length. To that end it has constructed smaller, more agile ships,
and missiles capable of keeping U.S. aircraft carriers out of range, a strategy called "area
denial." It has also modernized its military, cutting back on land-based forces and investing
in air and sea assets. However, it spends less of its GDP on its military than does the U.S.:
1.9 percent as
opposed to 3.3 percent as of 2016.
Beijing has been heavy-handed in establishing "area denial," alienating many of its
neighbors -- Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan -- by claiming most of the South
China Sea and building bases in the Paracel and Spratly islands.
But China has been invaded several times, starting with the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1856,
when Britain forced the Chinese to lift their ban on importing the drug. Japan invaded in 1895
and 1937. If the Chinese are touchy about their coastline, one can hardly blame them.
China is, however, the United States' major competitor and the second largest economy in the
world. It has replaced the U.S. as Latin America's largest trading partner and successfully
outflanked Washington's attempts to throttle its economic influence. When the U.S. asked its
key allies to boycott China's new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, with
the exception of Japan , they ignored Washington.
However, commercial success is hardly "imperial."
Is this a new Cold War, when the U.S. attempted to surround and isolate the Soviet
Union? There are parallels, but the Cold War was an ideological battle between two systems,
socialism and capitalism. The fight today is over market access and economic domination. When
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Latin America about China and Russia, it wasn't about
"Communist subversion," but trade.
Behind the Shift
There are other players behind this shift.
For one, the big arms manufacturers -- Lockheed Martian, Boeing, Raytheon, BAE Systems,
Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics -- have lots of cash to hand out come election time.
"Great power competition" will be expensive, with lots of big-ticket items: aircraft carriers,
submarines, surface ships, and an expanded air force.
This is not to say that the U.S. has altered its foreign policy focus because of arms
company lobbies, but they do have a seat at the table. And given that those companies have
spread their operations to all 50 states, local political representatives and governors have a
stake in keeping -- and expanding -- those often high paying jobs.
Nor are the Republicans going to get much opposition on increased defense spending from the
Democrats, many of whom are as hawkish as their colleagues across the aisle. That's true even
though higher defense spending -- coupled with the recent tax cut bill -- will rule out funding
many of the programs the Democrats hold dear. Of course, for the Republicans that dilemma is a
major side benefit: cut taxes, increase defense spending, then dismantle social services,
Social Security, and Medicare in order to service the deficit.
And many of the Democrats are ahead of the curve when it comes to demonizing the
Russians. The Russian bug-a-boo has allowed the party to shift the blame for Hillary Clinton's
loss to Moscow's manipulation of the election, thus avoiding having to examine its own
lackluster campaign and unimaginative political program.
There are other actors pushing this new emphasis as well, including the Bush
administration's neoconservatives who launched the Iraq War. Their new target is Iran, even
though inflating Iran to the level of a "great power" is laughable. Iran's military budget is
$12.3 billion. Saudi Arabia alone spends $63.7 billion on defense, slightly less than Russia,
which has five times the population and eight times the land area. In a clash between Iran and
the U.S. and its local allies, the disparity in military strength would be closer to 60 to 1 .
However, in terms of disasters, even Iraq would pale before a war with Iran.
The most dangerous place in the world right now is the Korean Peninsula, where the Trump
administration appears to be casting around for some kind of military demonstration that will
not ignite a nuclear war. But how would China react to an attack that might put hostile troops
on its southern border?
Piling onto Moscow may have consequences as well. Andrei Kostin, head of one of Russia's
largest banks, VTB, told the Financial Times that adding more sanctions against Russia "
would be like
declaring war ."
"... Therefore, if we must see this in terms of conflict, we see a dramatically less powerful and dramatically poorer but essentially unified Russia facing up to a threat from a West that is far superior militarily and economically but that is divided in itself and slipping further into decline. ..."
"... This does of course lead to the unstable world you say we are faced with. Dangerously unstable. But I do not believe you are admitting to yourself that it is an instability we in the West are causing. ..."
I don't understand the last three paragraphs of your comment so I may be missing
your central point. However, I believe this sentence taken in isolation could do with
qualifying:-
"No doubt there is a lot of noise, but the reality is that economically Russia is a basket
case and the US is rapidly joining them."
The picture one gets of Russia is of a country slowly digging itself out of the
disintegrative corruption of the 90's. Putin's recent remarks indicate how slowly.
President Carter's characterisation of the US as now being an oligarchy shows the US
slowly going the other way. Even including Germany that is the general picture in the
West.
Some recent remarks and examples from DH show the Russian people, or rather a substantial
number of them, soberly and consciously preparing to address the threat from the West. Unless
it's all Russian PR there is a sense of national unity there, at least for many, and that is
reflected by the Russian leadership.
I'm afraid our host is correct when he characterises the current anti-Russian sentiment in
the West as hysterical. That, however, is I believe largely top down. It is a product of PR
from the media and from the Western politicians. Behind it is no deep sense of unity or
national resolve. In fact we see the reverse - most Western countries are deeply divided
within themselves.
The Russians seem also to have escaped the demoralising effects of the more far out social
trends in the US and other Western countries.
Therefore, if we must see this in terms of conflict, we see a dramatically less
powerful and dramatically poorer but essentially unified Russia facing up to a threat from a
West that is far superior militarily and economically but that is divided in itself and
slipping further into decline.
This does of course lead to the unstable world you say we are faced with. Dangerously
unstable. But I do not believe you are admitting to yourself that it is an instability we in
the West are causing.
"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
"... he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit. ..."
"... I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all. ..."
"... My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg ..."
jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me
with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out
their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially
in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).
Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and
it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a
basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a
form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the
personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of
the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns
this around and I doubt it's even possible.
Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of
evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst
themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a
country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of
course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his
clients.
I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with
this post:
Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various
defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed
war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their
torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy.
Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching
on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine
before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.
By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell
themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters
rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians.
Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny
accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept
responsibility.
That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking
to save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united
against Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that --
unlike Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability
threatens the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary
Clinton was a sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.
... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He
captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring
rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He
made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem
progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily
valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a
corrupt empire together.
Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does
another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's
simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability
to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable
hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.
------------
I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as
I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's
probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much
better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and
disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.
My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg
At the core of Trumpism is the rejection of neoliberalism
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands: " Consider
this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built
a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have
been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican
presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
Notable quotes:
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." ..."
"I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this
great man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world. We regard Marshal Stalin's life as most precious to the
hopes and hearts of all of us."
Returning home, Churchill assured a skeptical Parliament, "I know of no Government which stands to its obligations, even in its
own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government."
George W. Bush, with the U.S. establishment united behind him, invaded Iraq with the goal of creating a Vermont in the Middle
East that would be a beacon of democracy to the Arab and Islamic world.
Ex-Director of the NSA Gen. William Odom correctly called the U.S. invasion the greatest strategic blunder in American history.
But Bush, un-chastened, went on to preach a crusade for democracy with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."
... ... ...
After our victory in the Cold War, we not only plunged into the Middle East to remake it in our image, we issued war guarantees
to every ex-member state of the Warsaw Pact, and threatened Russia with war if she ever intervened again in the Baltic Republics.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing such an in-your-face challenge to a great nuclear power like Russia. If Putin's
Russia does not become the pacifist nation it has never been, these guarantees will one day be called. And America will either back
down -- or face a nuclear confrontation. Why would we risk something like this?
Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one
of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since
Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence
Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history.
But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants,
many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million,
composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.
Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation
and one people?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and
Divided America Forever."
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands:
" Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants,
not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits
since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic
independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
The truth is that now Trump does not represent "Trumpism" -- the movement that he created which includes the following:
– rejection of neoliberal globalization;
– rejection of unrestricted immigration;
– fight against suppression of wages by multinationals via cheap imported labor;
– fight against the elimination of meaningful, well-paying jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing;
– rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as global policemen and wars for
Washington client Israel in the Middle East;
– détente with Russia;
– more pragmatic relations with Israel and suppression of Israeli agents of influence;
– revision of relations with China and addressing the problem of trade deficit.
– rejection of total surveillance on all citizens;
– the cut of military expenses to one third or less of the current level and concentrating on revival on national infrastructure,
education, and science.
– abandonment of maintenance of the "sole superpower" status and global neoliberal empire for more practical and less costly "semi-isolationist"
foreign policy; closing of unnecessary foreign military bases and cutting aid to the current clients.
Of course, the notion of "Trumpism" is fuzzy and different people might include some additional issues and disagree with some
listed here, but the core probably remains.
Of course, Trump is under relentless attack (coup d'état or, more precisely, a color revolution) of neoliberal fifth column,
which includes Clinton gang, fifth column elements within his administration (Rosenstein, etc) as well from remnants of Obama
administration (Brennan, Comey, Clapper) and associated elements within corresponding intelligence agencies. He probably was forced
into some compromises just to survive. He also has members of the neoliberal fifth column within his family (Ivanka and Kushner).
So the movement now is in deep need of a new leader.
That's a good summary of what the public voted for and didn't get.
And whether Trump has sold out, or was blackmailed or was a cynical manipulative liar for the beginning is really irrelevant.
The fact is that he is not doing it – so he is just blocking the way.
At some point the US public are going to have to forget about their "representatives" (Trump and Congress and the rest of
them) and get out onto the street to make themselves heard. The population of the US is 323 million people and if just 1/2
of 1% (1,6 million) of them decided to visit Congress directly the US administration might get the message.
pyrrhus, March 3, 2018 at 2:15 am GMT
@anon
Finally, Pat understands that the American [Neoliberal] Empire and habit of intervention all over the world is a disaster.
With Ukrainian officials continuing to
talk up their hostility with neighboring Russia, the Pentagon announced on Thursday that
approval has been granted for the sale of Javelin anti-tank systems to Ukraine.
Russia is protesting the sale, however, arguing that the sale of the missiles would
encourage Ukraine to resume the use of force against Eastern Ukraine's ethnic Russian rebels,
with the idea that they would deploy the missiles against any rebel tanks, and also against
any Russian tanks that might join the fight.
Pentagon officials downplayed the issue, saying they don't believe the Javelin missiles
will materially change the military balance of power in the region. Despite obvious offensive
uses for such missiles, the US is trying to spin this as another "defensive" sale to
Ukraine.
The first line of the Ukrainian national anthem is "Ukraine has not yet died," one
interviewee says in "Breaking Point," a fierce documentary about that country and its recent
clashes with Russia. For a land often perched on the edge of ruin, she says, mere survival is
something to celebrate.
Directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and Oles Sanin, the film starts with a rundown of a history
that has repeated itself for centuries -- invaders have long prized Ukraine for its resources
and geography, and modern times are no exception.
... ... ...
The filmmakers supply terrifying footage: At civilian rallies, we see nightstick beatings
and bloody riots. During military battles, bullets whiz by and explosions shake the cameras.
Nerve-racking scenes follow Ukraine's extraordinarily bold volunteer soldiers.
"... Yes but very slowly. Russia consistently confounds my western sense of escalation by slicing all situations into tiny increments, smaller than I would have guessed they could be sliced, but on inspection completely realistic and sane. ..."
"... And at the end of each gradual path of escalation sits a hammer blow so final that every time it strikes the world has changed, in the blink of an eye. ..."
"... You wake up and Russia's in Syria. You wake up and every map of Crimea needs to be changed. You wake up and it takes the sane perspective of people like b to narrate how the Munich speech warning of consequences spent 11 years in the preparation, and on this day the Kremlin decided the time to announce this had come. ..."
"... The US has shown nothing but developmental incompetence for some years now. No amount of forced science on special projects can compensate for the systemic failures of a naval fleet that can't steer straight, a trillion-dollar 5th-gen plane that actually doesn't work to 5th-gen standards, and the clear display of a Military Complex saturated with corruption. The gang that can't shoot straight is incapable of peer warfare. You'd hate to be a village without some nuclear arms to protect you in the next 3-4 years, but otherwise the US is done as a world force, and Putin's speech is the milestone of that. ..."
"... The stupidity that the US is trapped it is fealty to the God of Mammon. If your first priority is to make profit then making good stuff become secondary and your competitors have you for lunch ..."
"... Pushing the US into an arms race will be the final nail in its bankruptcy coffin. Are the other nations of the world going to continue to buy Treasuries so we can build weapons to suppress them more? ..."
@39 V. Arnold - "I sense the gloves are coming off"
Yes but very slowly. Russia consistently confounds my western sense of escalation by
slicing all situations into tiny increments, smaller than I would have guessed they could be
sliced, but on inspection completely realistic and sane.
And at the end of each gradual path of escalation sits a hammer blow so final that every
time it strikes the world has changed, in the blink of an eye.
You wake up and Russia's in
Syria. You wake up and every map of Crimea needs to be changed. You wake up and it takes the
sane perspective of people like b to narrate how the Munich speech warning of consequences
spent 11 years in the preparation, and on this day the Kremlin decided the time to announce
this had come.
And with the announcement of the fruition of the last warning comes also the next warning,
that new systems are in development and they will be developed.
~~
@14 karlof1
I like what you're saying about an arms race. And so let the US try. Let it either do
nothing and bluster in its media, or else attempt to catch up and step into the real world to
match the forces playing at the table. Either way it achieves nothing of substance.
The US has shown nothing but developmental incompetence for some years now. No amount of
forced science on special projects can compensate for the systemic failures of a naval fleet
that can't steer straight, a trillion-dollar 5th-gen plane that actually doesn't work to
5th-gen standards, and the clear display of a Military Complex saturated with corruption. The
gang that can't shoot straight is incapable of peer warfare. You'd hate to be a village
without some nuclear arms to protect you in the next 3-4 years, but otherwise the US is done
as a world force, and Putin's speech is the milestone of that.
The US is trapped in its own stupidity.
I'd say, stick a fork in it, but Putin could probably describe the 36 gradations of
fork-sticking, and advise me to be patient ;)
@ Grieved who wrote: "The US is trapped in its own stupidity."
The stupidity that the US is trapped it is fealty to the God of Mammon. If your first
priority is to make profit then making good stuff become secondary and your competitors have
you for lunch
Pushing the US into an arms race will be the final nail in its bankruptcy coffin. Are the
other nations of the world going to continue to buy Treasuries so we can build weapons to
suppress them more?
Pushing the US out of Syria will be the test of Putin's strategy. Will it work? I suspect
we will know soon enough.
More than likely the same clown as went by the username milomilo back in the aussie
ambassador thread.
The username this time round links back to a junk news site.
Grieved | Mar 1, 2018 8:58:39 PM | 44
Indeed, Putin seems a man of infinite patience; but calculating and analyzing might be a
better descriptive.
And then there is NATO; standing naked in front of the Bear. When will its citizens (of so
many countries) realize they'll be the first recipients of nuclear wrath wrought by a corrupt
hegemon and its sycophant vassals (redundant?) following an insane behavior not their own? Or
rather, do they realize they now own that inane behavior?
Greived 44 "You'd hate to be a village without some nuclear arms to protect you in the next
3-4 years, but otherwise the US is done as a world force"
I have felt for some time that Putin's aim is to see the US empire done and dusted before
he retires. 3-4 years looks about right as he will be getting on a bit by the end of the next
term.'
America's Beltway wonks admit the USA won't be able to keep up with Russia, bring idea of
abolishing nukes altogether. I have to admit that although I view condition of the United
States as dire and hopeless, I didn't expect to see first signs of folding so soon.
It is Daniel 8. The watchman (Trump) will unfortunately decide to have a big go at
eliminating Syria. The descendant of the Greek shaggy goat is RF. This announcement will be
misread. The US will fall into the Daniel 8 trap. 2017 it erected its first facilities
between the holy mountain and the sea. We are being puppeted into Armageddon. And for a
little tickle consider the Sanhedrin minted coin celebrating Trump's movement of the US
embassy to Jerusalem...he is put on same level as Cyrus...the anointed one...messiah...Cyrus
is considered by the Judaics as a messiah...Trump is being lauded by them as a new messiah in
the vein of Cyrus.
p
You are right on. The hypersonic Russian cruise missile rules; the US has nothing like it. And
we have seen that the evolution of battleship-->carrier-->cruise missile is complete.
First planes from carriers out-distanced battleship rounds, now cruise missiles have
out-distanced carrier planes (plus speed and maneuver). Bye-bye carrier fleets in peer
conflict. At 12 billion each, plus the cost of the escorts and the 5,000 crew (prospects for
Davey Jones's locker). Still effective against third world.
Actually they have a small presence anyhow because they are high maintenance. Currently, as
usual, only two carriers of the US eleven are deployed as seen here . Two of eleven!!
Posted by: Don Bacon | Mar 1, 2018 10:24:24 PM |
52
With Ukrainian officials continuing to
talk up their hostility with neighboring Russia, the Pentagon announced on Thursday that
approval has been granted for the sale of Javelin anti-tank systems to Ukraine.
Russia is protesting the sale, however, arguing that the sale of the missiles would
encourage Ukraine to resume the use of force against Eastern Ukraine's ethnic Russian rebels,
with the idea that they would deploy the missiles against any rebel tanks, and also against
any Russian tanks that might join the fight.
Pentagon officials downplayed the issue, saying they don't believe the Javelin missiles
will materially change the military balance of power in the region. Despite obvious offensive
uses for such missiles, the US is trying to spin this as another "defensive" sale to
Ukraine.
The first line of the Ukrainian national anthem is "Ukraine has not yet died," one
interviewee says in "Breaking Point," a fierce documentary about that country and its recent
clashes with Russia. For a land often perched on the edge of ruin, she says, mere survival is
something to celebrate.
Directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and Oles Sanin, the film starts with a rundown of a history
that has repeated itself for centuries -- invaders have long prized Ukraine for its resources
and geography, and modern times are no exception.
... ... ...
The filmmakers supply terrifying footage: At civilian rallies, we see nightstick beatings
and bloody riots. During military battles, bullets whiz by and explosions shake the cameras.
Nerve-racking scenes follow Ukraine's extraordinarily bold volunteer soldiers.
"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
"... he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit. ..."
"... I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all. ..."
"... My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg ..."
jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me
with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out
their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially
in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).
Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and
it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a
basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a
form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the
personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of
the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns
this around and I doubt it's even possible.
Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of
evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst
themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a
country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of
course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his
clients.
I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with
this post:
Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various
defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed
war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their
torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy.
Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching
on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine
before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.
By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell
themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters
rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians.
Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny
accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept
responsibility.
That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking
to save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united
against Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that --
unlike Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability
threatens the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary
Clinton was a sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.
... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He
captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring
rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He
made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem
progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily
valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a
corrupt empire together.
Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does
another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's
simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability
to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable
hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.
------------
I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as
I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's
probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much
better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and
disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.
My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg
At the core of Trumpism is the rejection of neoliberalism
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands: " Consider
this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built
a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have
been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican
presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
Notable quotes:
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." ..."
"I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this
great man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world. We regard Marshal Stalin's life as most precious to the
hopes and hearts of all of us."
Returning home, Churchill assured a skeptical Parliament, "I know of no Government which stands to its obligations, even in its
own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government."
George W. Bush, with the U.S. establishment united behind him, invaded Iraq with the goal of creating a Vermont in the Middle
East that would be a beacon of democracy to the Arab and Islamic world.
Ex-Director of the NSA Gen. William Odom correctly called the U.S. invasion the greatest strategic blunder in American history.
But Bush, un-chastened, went on to preach a crusade for democracy with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."
... ... ...
After our victory in the Cold War, we not only plunged into the Middle East to remake it in our image, we issued war guarantees
to every ex-member state of the Warsaw Pact, and threatened Russia with war if she ever intervened again in the Baltic Republics.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing such an in-your-face challenge to a great nuclear power like Russia. If Putin's
Russia does not become the pacifist nation it has never been, these guarantees will one day be called. And America will either back
down -- or face a nuclear confrontation. Why would we risk something like this?
Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one
of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since
Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence
Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history.
But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants,
many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million,
composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.
Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation
and one people?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and
Divided America Forever."
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands:
" Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants,
not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits
since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic
independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
The truth is that now Trump does not represent "Trumpism" -- the movement that he created which includes the following:
– rejection of neoliberal globalization;
– rejection of unrestricted immigration;
– fight against suppression of wages by multinationals via cheap imported labor;
– fight against the elimination of meaningful, well-paying jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing;
– rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as global policemen and wars for
Washington client Israel in the Middle East;
– détente with Russia;
– more pragmatic relations with Israel and suppression of Israeli agents of influence;
– revision of relations with China and addressing the problem of trade deficit.
– rejection of total surveillance on all citizens;
– the cut of military expenses to one third or less of the current level and concentrating on revival on national infrastructure,
education, and science.
– abandonment of maintenance of the "sole superpower" status and global neoliberal empire for more practical and less costly "semi-isolationist"
foreign policy; closing of unnecessary foreign military bases and cutting aid to the current clients.
Of course, the notion of "Trumpism" is fuzzy and different people might include some additional issues and disagree with some
listed here, but the core probably remains.
Of course, Trump is under relentless attack (coup d'état or, more precisely, a color revolution) of neoliberal fifth column,
which includes Clinton gang, fifth column elements within his administration (Rosenstein, etc) as well from remnants of Obama
administration (Brennan, Comey, Clapper) and associated elements within corresponding intelligence agencies. He probably was forced
into some compromises just to survive. He also has members of the neoliberal fifth column within his family (Ivanka and Kushner).
So the movement now is in deep need of a new leader.
That's a good summary of what the public voted for and didn't get.
And whether Trump has sold out, or was blackmailed or was a cynical manipulative liar for the beginning is really irrelevant.
The fact is that he is not doing it – so he is just blocking the way.
At some point the US public are going to have to forget about their "representatives" (Trump and Congress and the rest of
them) and get out onto the street to make themselves heard. The population of the US is 323 million people and if just 1/2
of 1% (1,6 million) of them decided to visit Congress directly the US administration might get the message.
pyrrhus, March 3, 2018 at 2:15 am GMT
@anon
Finally, Pat understands that the American [Neoliberal] Empire and habit of intervention all over the world is a disaster.
"... Yes but very slowly. Russia consistently confounds my western sense of escalation by slicing all situations into tiny increments, smaller than I would have guessed they could be sliced, but on inspection completely realistic and sane. ..."
"... And at the end of each gradual path of escalation sits a hammer blow so final that every time it strikes the world has changed, in the blink of an eye. ..."
"... You wake up and Russia's in Syria. You wake up and every map of Crimea needs to be changed. You wake up and it takes the sane perspective of people like b to narrate how the Munich speech warning of consequences spent 11 years in the preparation, and on this day the Kremlin decided the time to announce this had come. ..."
"... The US has shown nothing but developmental incompetence for some years now. No amount of forced science on special projects can compensate for the systemic failures of a naval fleet that can't steer straight, a trillion-dollar 5th-gen plane that actually doesn't work to 5th-gen standards, and the clear display of a Military Complex saturated with corruption. The gang that can't shoot straight is incapable of peer warfare. You'd hate to be a village without some nuclear arms to protect you in the next 3-4 years, but otherwise the US is done as a world force, and Putin's speech is the milestone of that. ..."
"... The stupidity that the US is trapped it is fealty to the God of Mammon. If your first priority is to make profit then making good stuff become secondary and your competitors have you for lunch ..."
"... Pushing the US into an arms race will be the final nail in its bankruptcy coffin. Are the other nations of the world going to continue to buy Treasuries so we can build weapons to suppress them more? ..."
@39 V. Arnold - "I sense the gloves are coming off"
Yes but very slowly. Russia consistently confounds my western sense of escalation by
slicing all situations into tiny increments, smaller than I would have guessed they could be
sliced, but on inspection completely realistic and sane.
And at the end of each gradual path of escalation sits a hammer blow so final that every
time it strikes the world has changed, in the blink of an eye.
You wake up and Russia's in
Syria. You wake up and every map of Crimea needs to be changed. You wake up and it takes the
sane perspective of people like b to narrate how the Munich speech warning of consequences
spent 11 years in the preparation, and on this day the Kremlin decided the time to announce
this had come.
And with the announcement of the fruition of the last warning comes also the next warning,
that new systems are in development and they will be developed.
~~
@14 karlof1
I like what you're saying about an arms race. And so let the US try. Let it either do
nothing and bluster in its media, or else attempt to catch up and step into the real world to
match the forces playing at the table. Either way it achieves nothing of substance.
The US has shown nothing but developmental incompetence for some years now. No amount of
forced science on special projects can compensate for the systemic failures of a naval fleet
that can't steer straight, a trillion-dollar 5th-gen plane that actually doesn't work to
5th-gen standards, and the clear display of a Military Complex saturated with corruption. The
gang that can't shoot straight is incapable of peer warfare. You'd hate to be a village
without some nuclear arms to protect you in the next 3-4 years, but otherwise the US is done
as a world force, and Putin's speech is the milestone of that.
The US is trapped in its own stupidity.
I'd say, stick a fork in it, but Putin could probably describe the 36 gradations of
fork-sticking, and advise me to be patient ;)
@ Grieved who wrote: "The US is trapped in its own stupidity."
The stupidity that the US is trapped it is fealty to the God of Mammon. If your first
priority is to make profit then making good stuff become secondary and your competitors have
you for lunch
Pushing the US into an arms race will be the final nail in its bankruptcy coffin. Are the
other nations of the world going to continue to buy Treasuries so we can build weapons to
suppress them more?
Pushing the US out of Syria will be the test of Putin's strategy. Will it work? I suspect
we will know soon enough.
More than likely the same clown as went by the username milomilo back in the aussie
ambassador thread.
The username this time round links back to a junk news site.
Grieved | Mar 1, 2018 8:58:39 PM | 44
Indeed, Putin seems a man of infinite patience; but calculating and analyzing might be a
better descriptive.
And then there is NATO; standing naked in front of the Bear. When will its citizens (of so
many countries) realize they'll be the first recipients of nuclear wrath wrought by a corrupt
hegemon and its sycophant vassals (redundant?) following an insane behavior not their own? Or
rather, do they realize they now own that inane behavior?
Greived 44 "You'd hate to be a village without some nuclear arms to protect you in the next
3-4 years, but otherwise the US is done as a world force"
I have felt for some time that Putin's aim is to see the US empire done and dusted before
he retires. 3-4 years looks about right as he will be getting on a bit by the end of the next
term.'
America's Beltway wonks admit the USA won't be able to keep up with Russia, bring idea of
abolishing nukes altogether. I have to admit that although I view condition of the United
States as dire and hopeless, I didn't expect to see first signs of folding so soon.
It is Daniel 8. The watchman (Trump) will unfortunately decide to have a big go at
eliminating Syria. The descendant of the Greek shaggy goat is RF. This announcement will be
misread. The US will fall into the Daniel 8 trap. 2017 it erected its first facilities
between the holy mountain and the sea. We are being puppeted into Armageddon. And for a
little tickle consider the Sanhedrin minted coin celebrating Trump's movement of the US
embassy to Jerusalem...he is put on same level as Cyrus...the anointed one...messiah...Cyrus
is considered by the Judaics as a messiah...Trump is being lauded by them as a new messiah in
the vein of Cyrus.
p
You are right on. The hypersonic Russian cruise missile rules; the US has nothing like it. And
we have seen that the evolution of battleship-->carrier-->cruise missile is complete.
First planes from carriers out-distanced battleship rounds, now cruise missiles have
out-distanced carrier planes (plus speed and maneuver). Bye-bye carrier fleets in peer
conflict. At 12 billion each, plus the cost of the escorts and the 5,000 crew (prospects for
Davey Jones's locker). Still effective against third world.
Actually they have a small presence anyhow because they are high maintenance. Currently, as
usual, only two carriers of the US eleven are deployed as seen here . Two of eleven!!
Posted by: Don Bacon | Mar 1, 2018 10:24:24 PM |
52
What Washington really haptes about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order.
Notable quotes:
"... The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. ..."
"... That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny. ..."
"... John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling back democracy" in Russia. ..."
"... What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a "unipolar" world order. ..."
"... Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day. ..."
"... But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. ..."
"... The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression is really the victim. ..."
"... Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground. ..."
"... The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. ..."
"... The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble. ..."
"... After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders committed abroad. ..."
"... China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. ..."
"... American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free' trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike. ..."
"... not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs. ..."
"... Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows administered by US/NATO. A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example? ..."
"... Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example. It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for. ..."
"... Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence. Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has. ..."
"... When asked by a Germany-based academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests." ..."
"... America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria. Very sad. ..."
"... America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes. Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. ..."
"... In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons ..."
"... The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors. ..."
"... GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British empire now? ..."
"... US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them militarily. Good luck with that. ..."
"... The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various "dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British style. ..."
"It is essential to provide conditions for creative labor and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division
of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least
a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development,
and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to
all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems." Vladimir Putin, President
Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club
Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system
that divides the world into "permanent winners and losers"? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a "KGB thug",
Putin is the "new Hitler"?
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For
example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in
universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but
there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility.
Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right. Here's what he said at the annual meeting of the Valdai International
Discussion Club:
"Another priority is global healthcare . All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long
and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all
priority areas of human development." (Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion
Club)
How many "liberal" politicians in the US would support a recommendation like Putin's? Not very many. The Democrats are much more
partial to market-based reforms like Obamacare that guarantee an ever-increasing slice of the pie goes to the giant HMOs and the
voracious pharmaceutical companies. The Dems no longer make any attempt to promote universal healthcare as a basic human right. They've
simply thrown in the towel and moved on to other issues.
Many Americans would find Putin's views on climate change equally surprising. Here's another clip from the Valdai speech:
"Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. I suggest that
we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new,
groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us
to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.
It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity
to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities,
and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN
to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia
is willing to co-sponsor such a forum .." Valdai)
Most people would never suspect that Putin supports a global effort to address climate change. And, how would they know, after
all, bits of information like that– that help to soften Putin's image and make him seem like a rational human being– are scrubbed
from the media's coverage in order to cast him in the worst possible light. The media doesn't want people to know that Putin is a
reflective and modest man who has worked tirelessly to make Russia and the world a better place. No, they want them to believe that
he's is a scheming tyrannical despot who's obsessive hatred for America poses a very real threat to US national security. But it's
not true.
Putin is not the ghoulish caricature the media makes him out to be nor does he hate America, that's just more propaganda from
the corporate echo-chamber. The truth is Putin has been good for Russia, good for regional stability, and good for global security.
He pulled the Russian Federation back from the brink of annihilation in 2000, and has had the country moving in a positive direction
ever since. His impact on the Russian economy has been particularly impressive. According to Wikipedia:
"Between 2000 and 2012 Russia's energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising
by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than sevenfold increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the
same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction also rose significantly."
Inequality is a problem in Russia just like it is in the US, but the vast majority of working people have benefited greatly from
Putin's reforms and a system of distribution that –judging by steady uptick in disposable incomes – is significantly superior to that
in the United States where wages have flatlined for over 2 decades and where virtually all of the nation's wealth trickles upward
to the parasitic 1 percent.
Since Putin took office in 2000, workers have seen across-the-board increase in wages, benefits, healthcare and pensions. Poverty
and unemployment have been reduced by more than half while foreign investment has experienced steady growth. Onerous IMF loans have
been repaid in full, capital flight has all-but ceased, hundreds in billions in reserves have been accumulated, personal and corporate
taxes have been slashed, and technology has experienced an unprecedented renaissance. The notorious Russian oligarchs still have
a stranglehold on many privately-owned industries, but their grip has begun to loosen and the "kleptocracy has begun to fade."
Things are far from perfect, but the Russian economy has flourished under Putin and, generally speaking, the people are appreciative.
This helps to explain why Putin's public approval ratings are typically in the stratosphere. (70 to 80 percent) Simply put: Putin
the most popular Russian president of all time. And his popularity is not limited to Russia either, in fact, he typically ranks at
the top of most global leadership polls such as the recent Gallup International End of Year Survey (EoY) where Putin came in third
(43 percent positive rating) behind Germany's Angela Merkel (49 percent) and French President Emmanuel Macron. (45 percent) According
to Gallup: "Putin has gone from one in three (33 percent) viewing him favourably to 43 percent, a significant increase over two years."
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations
where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. This should come as no surprise to Americans
who know that the chances of stumbling across an article that treats Putin with even minimal objectivity is about as likely as finding
a copper coin at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The consensus view of the western media is that Putin is a maniacal autocrat who
kills journalists and political opponents (no proof), who meddles in US elections to "sow discord" and destroy our precious democracy
(no proof), and who is conducting a secret and sinister cyberwar against the United States. (no proof). It's a pathetic litany of
libels and fabrications, but its impact on the brainwashed American people has been quite impressive as Gallup's results indicate.
Bottom line: Propaganda works.
The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist
the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. This is when the powerful Council on Foreign Relations funded
a report titled "Russia's Wrong Direction" that suggested that Russia's increasingly independent foreign policy and insistence that
it control its own vast oil and natural gas resources meant that "the very idea of a 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic."
That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny.
John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling
back democracy" in Russia. They claimed that the government had become increasingly authoritarian and that the society was growing
less "open and pluralistic". Kemp and Edwards provided the ideological foundation upon which the entire public relations campaign
against Putin has been built. Twelve years later, the same charges are still being leveled at Putin along with the additional allegations
that he meddled in the 2016 presidential elections.
Needless to say, none of the nation's newspapers, magazines or broadcast media ever publish anything that deviates even slightly
from the prevailing, propagandistic narrative about Putin. One can only assume that the MSM's views on Putin are either universally
accepted by all 325 million Americans or that the so-called "free press" is a wretched farce that conceals an authoritarian corporate
machine that censors all opinions that don't promote their own malign political agenda.
What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order. As he said at the annual Security Conference at Munich in 2007:
"The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign; one center of authority, one center of force,
one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for
the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."
Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival
that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against
each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day.
But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the
turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced
the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. At present, US Special Forces and
their allies are clinging to a strip of arid wasteland in the Syrian outback hoping that the Pentagon brass can settle on a forward-operating
strategy that reverses their fortunes or brings the war to a swift end.
The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current
war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression
is really the victim. More important, failure in Syria has led to a reevaluation of how Washington conducts its wars abroad. The
War on Terror pretext has been jettisoned for a more direct approach laid out in the Trump administration's National Defense Strategy.
The focus going forward will be on "Great Power Competition", that is, the US is subordinating its covert proxy operations to more
flagrant displays of military force particularly in regards to the "growing threat from revisionist powers", Russia and China. In
short, the gloves are coming off and Washington is ramping up for a land war.
Putin has become an obstacle to Washington's imperial ambitions which is why he's has been elevated to Public Enemy Number 1.
It has nothing to do with the fictitious meddling in the 2016 elections or the nonsensical "rolling back democracy" in Russia. It's
all about power. In the United States the group with the tightest grip on power is the foreign policy establishment. These are the
towering mandarins who dictate the policy, tailor the politics to fit their strategic vision, and dispatch their lackeys in the media
to shape the narrative. These are the people who decided that Putin must be demonized to pave the way for more foreign interventions,
more regime change wars, more bloody aggression against sovereign states.
Putin has repeatedly warned Washington that Russia would not stand by while the US destroyed one country after the other in its
lust for global domination. He reiterated his claim that Washington's "uncontained hyper-use of force" was creating "new centers
of tension", exacerbating regional conflicts, undermining international relations, and "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent
conflicts." He has pointed out how the US routinely displayed its contempt for international law and "overstepped its national borders
in every way." As a result of Washington's aggressive behavior, public confidence in international law and global security has steadily
eroded and "No one feels safe. I want to emphasize this," Putin thundered in Munich. "No one feels safe."
On September 28, 2015 Putin finally threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly
in New York. After reiterating his commitment to international law, the UN, and state sovereignty, he provided a brief but disturbing
account of recent events in the Middle East, all of which have gotten significantly worse due to Washington's use of force. Here's
Putin:
"Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention
destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty,
social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life
The power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy,
which were quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting
for it, including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many recruits come from Libya whose
statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 ."
US interventions have decimated Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond. Over a million people have been killed while tens of millions
have been forced to flee their homes and their countries. The refugee spillover has added to social tensions across the EU where
anti-immigrant sentiment has precipitated the explosive growth in right wing groups and political organizations. From Northern
Africa, across the Middle East, and into Central Asia, global security has steadily deteriorated under Washington's ruthless stewardship.
Here's more from Putin:
"The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes.
Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions .It is irresponsible
to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you'll find a way to get rid of
them or somehow eliminate them ."
Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy
to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform
at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct
a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground.
Putin: "We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world."
Less than 48 hours after these words were uttered, Russian warplanes began pounding militant targets in Syria.
Putin again: "Dear colleagues, relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are
facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism .Russia is confident of the United Nations' enormous
potential, which should help us avoid a new confrontation and embrace a strategy of cooperation. Hand in hand with other nations,
we will consistently work to strengthen the UN's central, coordinating role. I am convinced that by working together, we will make
the world stable and safe, and provide an enabling environment for the development of all nations and peoples."
So, here's the question: Is Putin "evil" for opposing Washington's regime change wars, for stopping the spread of terrorism, and
for rejecting the idea that one unipolar world power should rule the world? Is that why he's evil, because he won't click his heels
and do as he's told by the global hegemon?
The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century.
The next war, if it comes, will be over something like Cobalt. The future lies in big and plentiful electric batteries and China
and Russia between them control almost 50% of the known supply of Cobalt, while the US has none. Stand by and wait, folks.
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the
two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class.
I would be staggered is only 14 percent of Americans had a negative view of Putin – almost everybody I have spoken to
has completely swallowed the media line. In Europe UK in particular has been brainwashed against him – southern Europe far less
so. The 28 percent is more realistic.
Is China trying to trash our constitution? Is China invading other countries, killing people with missiles and bombs all over
the world, staging "color revolutions" and subverting legitimate governments in the "West"? Is China patrolling the Gulf of Mexico
and putting missiles in Mexico and Canada? China hasn't done anything bad to me or to anyone I know, so please explain how China
is "our" "rival"?
This is a great article. The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful
for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble.
There's a simple reason why Putin is talking sense. He's doing nothing more than stating customary international law. Those
economic quotes have been set out in a series of UN resolutions including A/RES/41/128 on the right to development. This is the
acquis of the civilized world. No country in the world opposes it – except the USA. The US votes alone against it every time it
comes up, even though customary international law is US federal and state common law under the Supreme Court decision, The Paquete
Habana.
Mr. Whitney has accepted the official framing that it's all about Putin. That clever decision makes his article more provocative.
Calm appraisal of the current official foreign devil is inherently inflammatory. However, this has nothing to do with Putin. Rigid
legalist that he is, his hands are tied. Russia has ratified the ICESCR.
Russia has ratified the ICESCR. The USA has not. Here are some of the rights Russians have that you do not:
OHCHR has a convenient compilation showing how each government meets its legal obligations and commitments. The synoptic heatmap
below shows the US deep down in the shithole with Wahhabi headchoppers and neocolonial African presidents-for-life.
The exhaustively documented fact here is, the Russian state meets world standards. The US government does not. The Russian
government respects, protects, and fulfils human rights. The US government fights tooth and nail to keep them out of your reach,
and negates your incomplete half-assed constitutional rights with statist red tape. Russians get a better deal than you do. Merely
by reciting the law as he does, Putin would win a fair election here with Roosevelt-scale majorities, again and again. That's
why he drives the US government up the wall.
Where is it the propaganda campaign going? We have seen this before as preparation for a war or a regime change. In Russia both
are unlikely to succeed. That leaves an ever increasing propaganda bombast in the West, people brainwashed to the point where
outright racism against anything 'Russian' will become widespread. Then what? Move movies with white Russian villains, as if that
is what threatens West the most?
Russia can neither be isolated, nor 'collapsed' economically, nor ignored. It is too resource rich and powerful. Russia could
possibly be checked in a second tier conflict (Syria?), but that would be of minimal consequence. Ukraine could be escalated,
but there Russia has an enormous local logistics advantage, it would be a disaster for Kiev. And Russia is on friendly terms with
China, its only potential military threat on land.
Propaganda by itself does nothing, it is only means to an end. West is in no position to go beyond propaganda, so we might
experience a bizarre example of a mindless propaganda that goes on and on. As with all propaganda the main target is the domestic
population – in other words it is the common people in the West who are being propagandised and in effect made more stupid, less
capable of making rational decisions.
Even a slight u-turn is at this point unthinkable, almost all elites have too visibly engaged in the evil-Russia talk, how
could they let go of it? We are stuck, we might get saved by an unrelated 'big event' somewhere else. If not, this could just
be fatal, after all this belligerent talk we could perish because somebody dared to call Clinton a satan on Facebook. And they
didn't use their real name – the horror .
My own view is that Putin is probably as trustworthy and honest as any other ex-KGB man. On the other hand he does come across
as intelligent, cautious, and calm. Especially when compared to the crook Hillary or the oaf Trump.
The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.
This is starting to bother me. Stuff is disappearing from the web. Look at the link below to an Al Jazeera documentary which
has disappeared from YouTube and the web.
Si1ver1ock, interesting problems you're having. I had no problem with the links, but then the magic of Tor means I'm reaching
them from the Netherlands. State censorship is harder when you can access suppressed URLs from a couple dozen different countries.
Please do respond, and in good faith, to the reply of commenter Harold Smith. I share his apparent concern that you may be
conflating the interests of the American people with the imperial ambitions of their Uncle Sam.
I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing. I
tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade and business,
while China certainly is.
Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned. However, I am afraid our national focus in this
unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious competition is actually coming from and be able
to deal with it in a timely fashion.
"I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing."
In your original comment you said:
"The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century."
Since a big part of the U.S. "focus" on Russia is military encirclement, confrontation by proxy, the threat of direct conflict
even nuclear war, etc., this statement clearly suggests a "military solution" to "contain" an economically "rising" China, IMO.
(After all, when the only tool the U.S. "government" has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail).
But so what if China has some kind of "mastery" of the Eastern hemisphere? To the extent that's true, at least they didn't
do it by way of lawless imperial treachery.
The U.S. is losing influence all over the world because it's making itself hated; it's imposing itself everywhere and squandering
everything of value on the hopeless pursuit of world domination and control.
"I tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade
and business, while China certainly is."
The thing is "we" don't demonize Russia "as a nation"; rather, it's done by the Satanic ruling class that hates Russia – not
for any rational reason, but for the same reason that Cain hated Abel: because "evil" hates a "good" example.
"Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned."
Unless you're going change the definition of "rival" again, I should point out that the U.S. "government" doesn't generally
attack "rivals" but deems any country that asserts its sovereign independence and refuses to take orders an "enemy", subject to
economic, political and military attack.
"However, I am afraid our national focus in this unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious
competition is actually coming from and be able to deal with it in a timely fashion."
You seem to be conflating "us as a people" with the U.S. "government" which has by now lost even the pretense of moral and
constitutional legitimacy, and thus has nothing remotely to do with what's in the best interests of "us as a people".
Here is the explanation. China is economic rival to US. That is not only inconvenient, rival, it is the most efficient and
most dangerous rival, because who is wining the economic competition is pushing out the opponent from world markets.
That people in the West believe the lies that TPTB concoct for their consumption, I can conceive, though only after a convoluted
intellectual effort, for given all the now exposed deceit, one is left in wonder as to why the masses still believe proven liars.
After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very
low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders
committed abroad.
Still, I can't figure out if TPTB believe their own narrative. It takes a very peculiar mindset to be able to live in permanent
lies. Contrary to truth which can exist per se and is therefore essentially cost-free, lies demand permanent maintenance and have
high maintenance cost.
So, TPTB of the West are either delusional in thinking they can maintain their lies ad vitam aeternam, or they are mythomaniacs.
Either way, just think what happens when lies cannot be maintained any more and the liars don't want to relinquish power.
Bear in mind that lying being effectively irrational, they cannot be considered as rational actors. Prepare your shelters folks.
Very seldom, I've read such a realistic article on President Putin and his policy. I've been following not only his administration
but also that of the US Empire, and I'm always flabbergasted about the US elites demonization of this leader. He belongs to the
few leaders who got their act together compared to the political exorcists in Washington. The real thugs and psychopaths are the
members of the American political elite and their cheerleaders in the fawning US mainstream media. Following their analysis, I
often think they stem from lunatics who are coming from outer space.
Yes, China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically
facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour.
So -- Dr Frankenstein is now scared of his own monster. Oh the irony !
In the last two weeks a virtual book burning has begun on YouTube. Scores of independent truth seeking channels have been deleted.
Some were pretty amateur and sensationalist, many were good, top notch investigative fact checking in nature. Many had large numbers
of subscribers, a few had 100,000s subscribers.
Common denominator seemed to question official mainstream media narrative on mass shootings, 9/11, war on terror, human sex
trafficking, Clinton Foundation corruption, and even UFO coverups. One channel was a woman skilled at body language commenting
on videos of people like John Podesta being interviewed as to whether he was lying.
None of these channels advocated violence, quite the contrary. Most couched opinion alongside probable facts by asking deductive
and inductive questions. The YouTube virtual book burning appears to have gathered pace in last week.
So much for free speech in the fake but very slickly fake Western democracies. Where the geopolitical narrative is uniformly
uniform.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution.
American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free'
trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike.
"I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve
introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony
with it "
I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable energy–whether
or not global warming is real.
not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him
trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs.
"China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. "
We all know the drill here. China makes stuff cheap so that WalMart can undercut competitors and grow rich. Therefore, alas,
what can be done?
Except that WalMart has over four hundred stores IN CHINA and plans to build forty more! So what's our excuse now for not being
able to compete?
Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows
administered by US/NATO.
A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed
to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example?
Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough
shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example.
It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for.
Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined
military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence.
Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms
race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has.
Alden, sounds like you stopped with the maps and didn't read any of the underlying documents because of the preconceptions you
wear on your sleeve: "idealistic pie in the sky by and by UN treaties impossible to effect." Those preconceptions happen to coincide
with the residual message of one persistent strand of US statist propaganda.
Have you ever read, in any US institution or medium, criticism as comprehensive and incisive as this?
IGs can't do this. Courts can't begin to do this. Congress wouldn't dare do this. Media would never do it if they could. The
recommendations are legally binding and the US government knows it. Each review is videoed. You haven't lived until you've seen
State and Justice bureaucrats crawling and sniveling and tying themselves in logical knots, making fools of themselves in the
most public forum in the world. You get to watch the US regime bleeding influence and standing and 'soft power.' It's public disgrace
in front of the 96% of the world outside the US iron curtain. You may not want to watch impartial legal experts make a laughingstock
of the USG, but everybody else in the world watches with amusement, so you might as well know.
Treaty body review has driven more reforms than Congress ever did. You know perfectly well how bad your government sucks, what
a useless parasite it is. The treaty bodies and charter bodies give you more say than either state-controlled political party.
Face it, human rights review is all you got. When your government sucks, you go over its head to the world.
"During a policy talk at the Valdai Discussion Club, the Russian leader spoke on a number of issues, especially criticizing
U.S. foreign policy moves across the globe and lauding Russia's increasingly relevant role as a world power. When asked by a Germany-based
academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust
in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests."
Well maybe you can make Vladimir Putin feel better about this. You can tell him that blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in
the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all, since Russia couldn't have done a single thing
about it anyway, right?
This is a ridiculous statement. When Putin came aboard, there was no Russian economy to speak of. Now it's grown strong enough
to withstand the events in Ukraine, sanctions and what not and even derive benefits from these challenges. I am not saying everything's
coming up roses but it could hardly be expected considering the deep hole Russia dug itself into in the 1990s.
the entire region is upset with Putin's behavior as they have seen Putin's behavior in Crimea and the Donbas.
The entire region, it you mean our Eastern European neighbors, can like it or lump it. They, Poland in particular, participated
very willingly and actively in the coup in Ukraine. Crimea and Donbass are direct, and perfectly predictable, consequences of
that coup. If they forgot the law of physics that every action has a reaction, this is just as good a reminder as any.
the thing is, because of the recent study by J. Leroy Hulsey, Putin could still do it, but I predict that he unfortunately
will do nothing of the kind.
blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all,
since Russia couldn't have done a single thing about it anyway, right?
Actually, it could've done a lot. Right at the beginning, Russia could've refused to trust in the word of the West's leaders
about the NATO expansion and demand guarantees. A formal treaty plus a couple of remaining military bases, say, in Poland and
East Germany, would've sufficed. This likely would've saved Yugoslavia as well.
Russia could've refrained from stopping the development of many weapon system and from destroying others. It could've also
kept its own industry (civil aviation comes to mind) instead of relying on cooperation with the West. It could've refrained from
allowing the US troops to use the Russia territory to move supplies to Afghanistan. Even recently it did occur to someone exceedingly
smart to order aircraft carriers in France – speaking about trust! I do hope they learned their lesson, finally.
America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic
how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria.
Very sad.
America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes.
Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. Come on dudes !
This is just a phase, we will turn it around and make America great again ( as opposed to israel which was never great anyway).
It is just a question of how long it will take.
It will start the day when we'll tell that terrorist, shit-hole country called israel to go the hell, fight your own wars,
pay for your own wars.
In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons.
Because of this the Sept 11 shock, while in reality it meant very little, as USA citizens working in the Netherlands soon afterwards
said 'we have 30.000 traffic deaths each year'.
Good comeback there that was one of the best ones in a while!
I'm sorry, but no we're not. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we here in the "West" are living under a Satanic judeo-communist
dictatorship, bent on world domination and control at any cost.
The difference between corporate state, and totalitarian state like old Soviet system is getting blurier all the time. Like
planned economies of command systems, now they just create money for the cronies, who might as well be commies, and they don't
give a care about what's true or honest, they lie and that's, like you mentioned, (Satanic), the truth isn't in 'em.
' I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable
energy–whether or not global warming is real '
Good comment however the environment is about more than just 'global warming' which may or may not be man-caused there is no
scientific certainty but certainly what looks like a concerted push by certain quarters
But there is also habitat loss the toxins introduced through pollution industrial farming and the problems it causes with erosion,
bad food etc
Putin's comments and Mike's citation of them reflect a thoughtful and realistic approach to at least start looking at these
problems
Anon from TN
The author is painting Putin as larger-than-life figure, which he isn't. Just like the Soviet Union was not defeated by the US,
but actually collapsed due to internal problems, regime change rampage is over largely because the United States pushed their
luck and overextended themselves, and not just thanks to Putin. Throughout history, all dominant empires lose their grip and eventually
crumble (remember Roman or British), and now it's the turn of the US Empire. Fortunately or unfortunately, the next will be the
Chinese Empire, not Russian. (PS. Muslims missed the train. Again)
It's not like he used the term 'enemy,' which too many unfortunately resort to in these discussions. During Cold War 1.0, a
lot of us referred to the Sovs as the 'Adversary' because it was a less loaded term than enemy, though many equate the two. Are
the Chinese rivals? Sure. Are they adversaries? You bet, especially when we keep stepping into their back yard. Are they enemies?
The will be if we keep stepping into their back yard and telling them how to behave with their next door neighbours. All of this
applies to Russia as well.
The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying
to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors.
GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British
empire now?
From an empire on which the sun never sets, pretty soon they'll be a country where the sun never rises – thanks to their stupid
immigration policies and preoccupations with Russia (still!), like they (the British) are still even a factor in the global power
games.
US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them
militarily. Good luck with that.
The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various
"dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using
those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British
style.
If anything the British military record was at least better than US's, at least they used to win wars – they pretty much went
down undefeated – but they did went down and US military doesn't have the same success rate and even if they did, they will not
accomplish holding the world back – same as Britain didn't.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution
I do not see anything 'liberal' in Putin's ideas, certainly not as in the liberal agendas in the US.
I see him advocating Balance . creating a better order for the needs of populations and interactions between nations
. therefore preserving nations, people and earth. Balance is not rocket science .nature is the ultimate example of balance, when it is tampered with all species eventually suffer.
The neocons were/are Zionist in essence and mainly Jewish in thought leadership – this is inarguable.
Also inarguable, though I am not aware of very many well-written essays on the topic, is that under Yeltsin, brought to power
in no small part by US meddling, there was a fire sale of Russian assets – something arranged very largely by Jewish economists
and Jewish bureaucrats. And the new 'oligarchs?' Why 6 of 7 of the most enriches were Jews in a nation <3% Jewish.
Ukraine was largely a coup by Nuland, Pyatt, Feltman ato help Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine who suddenly found themselves in
the very top of the new govt. Jewish names pop up inordinately as to authors and editors of unhinged Russophobic articles. At what point do we say that the mideast wars are driven by Jews, so, disproportionately (maybe even mainly as to the media)
is the aggression and disinfo on Russia.
The Jewish Problem is to be taken seriously. We need to find a way to discuss it, rescued from Zionists and bona fide Judeophobes. Our lives may well depend on it.
What Washington really haptes about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order.
Notable quotes:
"... The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. ..."
"... That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny. ..."
"... John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling back democracy" in Russia. ..."
"... What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a "unipolar" world order. ..."
"... Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day. ..."
"... But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. ..."
"... The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression is really the victim. ..."
"... Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground. ..."
"... The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. ..."
"... The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble. ..."
"... After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders committed abroad. ..."
"... China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. ..."
"... American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free' trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike. ..."
"... not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs. ..."
"... Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows administered by US/NATO. A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example? ..."
"... Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example. It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for. ..."
"... Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence. Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has. ..."
"... When asked by a Germany-based academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests." ..."
"... America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria. Very sad. ..."
"... America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes. Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. ..."
"... In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons ..."
"... The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors. ..."
"... GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British empire now? ..."
"... US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them militarily. Good luck with that. ..."
"... The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various "dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British style. ..."
"It is essential to provide conditions for creative labor and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division
of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least
a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development,
and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to
all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems." Vladimir Putin, President
Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club
Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system
that divides the world into "permanent winners and losers"? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a "KGB thug",
Putin is the "new Hitler"?
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For
example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer in
universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but
there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility.
Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right. Here's what he said at the annual meeting of the Valdai International
Discussion Club:
"Another priority is global healthcare . All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long
and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all
priority areas of human development." (Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion
Club)
How many "liberal" politicians in the US would support a recommendation like Putin's? Not very many. The Democrats are much more
partial to market-based reforms like Obamacare that guarantee an ever-increasing slice of the pie goes to the giant HMOs and the
voracious pharmaceutical companies. The Dems no longer make any attempt to promote universal healthcare as a basic human right. They've
simply thrown in the towel and moved on to other issues.
Many Americans would find Putin's views on climate change equally surprising. Here's another clip from the Valdai speech:
"Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. I suggest that
we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new,
groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us
to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.
It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity
to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities,
and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN
to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia
is willing to co-sponsor such a forum .." Valdai)
Most people would never suspect that Putin supports a global effort to address climate change. And, how would they know, after
all, bits of information like that– that help to soften Putin's image and make him seem like a rational human being– are scrubbed
from the media's coverage in order to cast him in the worst possible light. The media doesn't want people to know that Putin is a
reflective and modest man who has worked tirelessly to make Russia and the world a better place. No, they want them to believe that
he's is a scheming tyrannical despot who's obsessive hatred for America poses a very real threat to US national security. But it's
not true.
Putin is not the ghoulish caricature the media makes him out to be nor does he hate America, that's just more propaganda from
the corporate echo-chamber. The truth is Putin has been good for Russia, good for regional stability, and good for global security.
He pulled the Russian Federation back from the brink of annihilation in 2000, and has had the country moving in a positive direction
ever since. His impact on the Russian economy has been particularly impressive. According to Wikipedia:
"Between 2000 and 2012 Russia's energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising
by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than sevenfold increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the
same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction also rose significantly."
Inequality is a problem in Russia just like it is in the US, but the vast majority of working people have benefited greatly from
Putin's reforms and a system of distribution that –judging by steady uptick in disposable incomes – is significantly superior to that
in the United States where wages have flatlined for over 2 decades and where virtually all of the nation's wealth trickles upward
to the parasitic 1 percent.
Since Putin took office in 2000, workers have seen across-the-board increase in wages, benefits, healthcare and pensions. Poverty
and unemployment have been reduced by more than half while foreign investment has experienced steady growth. Onerous IMF loans have
been repaid in full, capital flight has all-but ceased, hundreds in billions in reserves have been accumulated, personal and corporate
taxes have been slashed, and technology has experienced an unprecedented renaissance. The notorious Russian oligarchs still have
a stranglehold on many privately-owned industries, but their grip has begun to loosen and the "kleptocracy has begun to fade."
Things are far from perfect, but the Russian economy has flourished under Putin and, generally speaking, the people are appreciative.
This helps to explain why Putin's public approval ratings are typically in the stratosphere. (70 to 80 percent) Simply put: Putin
the most popular Russian president of all time. And his popularity is not limited to Russia either, in fact, he typically ranks at
the top of most global leadership polls such as the recent Gallup International End of Year Survey (EoY) where Putin came in third
(43 percent positive rating) behind Germany's Angela Merkel (49 percent) and French President Emmanuel Macron. (45 percent) According
to Gallup: "Putin has gone from one in three (33 percent) viewing him favourably to 43 percent, a significant increase over two years."
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations
where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. This should come as no surprise to Americans
who know that the chances of stumbling across an article that treats Putin with even minimal objectivity is about as likely as finding
a copper coin at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The consensus view of the western media is that Putin is a maniacal autocrat who
kills journalists and political opponents (no proof), who meddles in US elections to "sow discord" and destroy our precious democracy
(no proof), and who is conducting a secret and sinister cyberwar against the United States. (no proof). It's a pathetic litany of
libels and fabrications, but its impact on the brainwashed American people has been quite impressive as Gallup's results indicate.
Bottom line: Propaganda works.
The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin's second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist
the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. This is when the powerful Council on Foreign Relations funded
a report titled "Russia's Wrong Direction" that suggested that Russia's increasingly independent foreign policy and insistence that
it control its own vast oil and natural gas resources meant that "the very idea of a 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic."
That's right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny.
John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was "rolling
back democracy" in Russia. They claimed that the government had become increasingly authoritarian and that the society was growing
less "open and pluralistic". Kemp and Edwards provided the ideological foundation upon which the entire public relations campaign
against Putin has been built. Twelve years later, the same charges are still being leveled at Putin along with the additional allegations
that he meddled in the 2016 presidential elections.
Needless to say, none of the nation's newspapers, magazines or broadcast media ever publish anything that deviates even slightly
from the prevailing, propagandistic narrative about Putin. One can only assume that the MSM's views on Putin are either universally
accepted by all 325 million Americans or that the so-called "free press" is a wretched farce that conceals an authoritarian corporate
machine that censors all opinions that don't promote their own malign political agenda.
What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their
model of a "unipolar" world order. As he said at the annual Security Conference at Munich in 2007:
"The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign; one center of authority, one center of force,
one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for
the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."
Despite Russia's efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival
that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against
each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day.
But Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back. Russia's intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the
turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington's nose and forced
the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. At present, US Special Forces and
their allies are clinging to a strip of arid wasteland in the Syrian outback hoping that the Pentagon brass can settle on a forward-operating
strategy that reverses their fortunes or brings the war to a swift end.
The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current
war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression
is really the victim. More important, failure in Syria has led to a reevaluation of how Washington conducts its wars abroad. The
War on Terror pretext has been jettisoned for a more direct approach laid out in the Trump administration's National Defense Strategy.
The focus going forward will be on "Great Power Competition", that is, the US is subordinating its covert proxy operations to more
flagrant displays of military force particularly in regards to the "growing threat from revisionist powers", Russia and China. In
short, the gloves are coming off and Washington is ramping up for a land war.
Putin has become an obstacle to Washington's imperial ambitions which is why he's has been elevated to Public Enemy Number 1.
It has nothing to do with the fictitious meddling in the 2016 elections or the nonsensical "rolling back democracy" in Russia. It's
all about power. In the United States the group with the tightest grip on power is the foreign policy establishment. These are the
towering mandarins who dictate the policy, tailor the politics to fit their strategic vision, and dispatch their lackeys in the media
to shape the narrative. These are the people who decided that Putin must be demonized to pave the way for more foreign interventions,
more regime change wars, more bloody aggression against sovereign states.
Putin has repeatedly warned Washington that Russia would not stand by while the US destroyed one country after the other in its
lust for global domination. He reiterated his claim that Washington's "uncontained hyper-use of force" was creating "new centers
of tension", exacerbating regional conflicts, undermining international relations, and "plunging the world into an abyss of permanent
conflicts." He has pointed out how the US routinely displayed its contempt for international law and "overstepped its national borders
in every way." As a result of Washington's aggressive behavior, public confidence in international law and global security has steadily
eroded and "No one feels safe. I want to emphasize this," Putin thundered in Munich. "No one feels safe."
On September 28, 2015 Putin finally threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly
in New York. After reiterating his commitment to international law, the UN, and state sovereignty, he provided a brief but disturbing
account of recent events in the Middle East, all of which have gotten significantly worse due to Washington's use of force. Here's
Putin:
"Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention
destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty,
social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life
The power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy,
which were quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting
for it, including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many recruits come from Libya whose
statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 ."
US interventions have decimated Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond. Over a million people have been killed while tens of millions
have been forced to flee their homes and their countries. The refugee spillover has added to social tensions across the EU where
anti-immigrant sentiment has precipitated the explosive growth in right wing groups and political organizations. From Northern
Africa, across the Middle East, and into Central Asia, global security has steadily deteriorated under Washington's ruthless stewardship.
Here's more from Putin:
"The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes.
Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions .It is irresponsible
to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you'll find a way to get rid of
them or somehow eliminate them ."
Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington's strategy
to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform
at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct
a war against Washington's jihadist proxies on the ground.
Putin: "We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world."
Less than 48 hours after these words were uttered, Russian warplanes began pounding militant targets in Syria.
Putin again: "Dear colleagues, relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are
facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism .Russia is confident of the United Nations' enormous
potential, which should help us avoid a new confrontation and embrace a strategy of cooperation. Hand in hand with other nations,
we will consistently work to strengthen the UN's central, coordinating role. I am convinced that by working together, we will make
the world stable and safe, and provide an enabling environment for the development of all nations and peoples."
So, here's the question: Is Putin "evil" for opposing Washington's regime change wars, for stopping the spread of terrorism, and
for rejecting the idea that one unipolar world power should rule the world? Is that why he's evil, because he won't click his heels
and do as he's told by the global hegemon?
The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century.
The next war, if it comes, will be over something like Cobalt. The future lies in big and plentiful electric batteries and China
and Russia between them control almost 50% of the known supply of Cobalt, while the US has none. Stand by and wait, folks.
The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the
two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class.
I would be staggered is only 14 percent of Americans had a negative view of Putin – almost everybody I have spoken to
has completely swallowed the media line. In Europe UK in particular has been brainwashed against him – southern Europe far less
so. The 28 percent is more realistic.
Is China trying to trash our constitution? Is China invading other countries, killing people with missiles and bombs all over
the world, staging "color revolutions" and subverting legitimate governments in the "West"? Is China patrolling the Gulf of Mexico
and putting missiles in Mexico and Canada? China hasn't done anything bad to me or to anyone I know, so please explain how China
is "our" "rival"?
This is a great article. The problem is that the propaganda power structure behind the yankee imperium is probably too powerful
for rationality to triumph, so we are in for serious trouble.
There's a simple reason why Putin is talking sense. He's doing nothing more than stating customary international law. Those
economic quotes have been set out in a series of UN resolutions including A/RES/41/128 on the right to development. This is the
acquis of the civilized world. No country in the world opposes it – except the USA. The US votes alone against it every time it
comes up, even though customary international law is US federal and state common law under the Supreme Court decision, The Paquete
Habana.
Mr. Whitney has accepted the official framing that it's all about Putin. That clever decision makes his article more provocative.
Calm appraisal of the current official foreign devil is inherently inflammatory. However, this has nothing to do with Putin. Rigid
legalist that he is, his hands are tied. Russia has ratified the ICESCR.
Russia has ratified the ICESCR. The USA has not. Here are some of the rights Russians have that you do not:
OHCHR has a convenient compilation showing how each government meets its legal obligations and commitments. The synoptic heatmap
below shows the US deep down in the shithole with Wahhabi headchoppers and neocolonial African presidents-for-life.
The exhaustively documented fact here is, the Russian state meets world standards. The US government does not. The Russian
government respects, protects, and fulfils human rights. The US government fights tooth and nail to keep them out of your reach,
and negates your incomplete half-assed constitutional rights with statist red tape. Russians get a better deal than you do. Merely
by reciting the law as he does, Putin would win a fair election here with Roosevelt-scale majorities, again and again. That's
why he drives the US government up the wall.
Where is it the propaganda campaign going? We have seen this before as preparation for a war or a regime change. In Russia both
are unlikely to succeed. That leaves an ever increasing propaganda bombast in the West, people brainwashed to the point where
outright racism against anything 'Russian' will become widespread. Then what? Move movies with white Russian villains, as if that
is what threatens West the most?
Russia can neither be isolated, nor 'collapsed' economically, nor ignored. It is too resource rich and powerful. Russia could
possibly be checked in a second tier conflict (Syria?), but that would be of minimal consequence. Ukraine could be escalated,
but there Russia has an enormous local logistics advantage, it would be a disaster for Kiev. And Russia is on friendly terms with
China, its only potential military threat on land.
Propaganda by itself does nothing, it is only means to an end. West is in no position to go beyond propaganda, so we might
experience a bizarre example of a mindless propaganda that goes on and on. As with all propaganda the main target is the domestic
population – in other words it is the common people in the West who are being propagandised and in effect made more stupid, less
capable of making rational decisions.
Even a slight u-turn is at this point unthinkable, almost all elites have too visibly engaged in the evil-Russia talk, how
could they let go of it? We are stuck, we might get saved by an unrelated 'big event' somewhere else. If not, this could just
be fatal, after all this belligerent talk we could perish because somebody dared to call Clinton a satan on Facebook. And they
didn't use their real name – the horror .
My own view is that Putin is probably as trustworthy and honest as any other ex-KGB man. On the other hand he does come across
as intelligent, cautious, and calm. Especially when compared to the crook Hillary or the oaf Trump.
The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
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This is starting to bother me. Stuff is disappearing from the web. Look at the link below to an Al Jazeera documentary which
has disappeared from YouTube and the web.
Si1ver1ock, interesting problems you're having. I had no problem with the links, but then the magic of Tor means I'm reaching
them from the Netherlands. State censorship is harder when you can access suppressed URLs from a couple dozen different countries.
Please do respond, and in good faith, to the reply of commenter Harold Smith. I share his apparent concern that you may be
conflating the interests of the American people with the imperial ambitions of their Uncle Sam.
I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing. I
tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade and business,
while China certainly is.
Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned. However, I am afraid our national focus in this
unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious competition is actually coming from and be able
to deal with it in a timely fashion.
"I feel we have a problem with the term 'rival' here. All the negatives you describe represent a rivalry that I in no way imply
in my statements. Rivalry can be strictly limited to trade and business and not in the war-making processes you are citing."
In your original comment you said:
"The dumbest thing about the US focus on Russia and Putin is that it leaves China, our actual rival, free to continue its march
to overwhelming mastery of the entire Eastern Hemisphere. Without firing a shot or wasting a bullet China has moved into a position
of influence the US has dreamed of for a century."
Since a big part of the U.S. "focus" on Russia is military encirclement, confrontation by proxy, the threat of direct conflict
even nuclear war, etc., this statement clearly suggests a "military solution" to "contain" an economically "rising" China, IMO.
(After all, when the only tool the U.S. "government" has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail).
But so what if China has some kind of "mastery" of the Eastern hemisphere? To the extent that's true, at least they didn't
do it by way of lawless imperial treachery.
The U.S. is losing influence all over the world because it's making itself hated; it's imposing itself everywhere and squandering
everything of value on the hopeless pursuit of world domination and control.
"I tried to point out that we as a nation miss the mark in constantly demonizing Russia, who is certainly no rival in trade
and business, while China certainly is."
The thing is "we" don't demonize Russia "as a nation"; rather, it's done by the Satanic ruling class that hates Russia – not
for any rational reason, but for the same reason that Cain hated Abel: because "evil" hates a "good" example.
"Our zealous attacking of rivals has a long history and is not easily abandoned."
Unless you're going change the definition of "rival" again, I should point out that the U.S. "government" doesn't generally
attack "rivals" but deems any country that asserts its sovereign independence and refuses to take orders an "enemy", subject to
economic, political and military attack.
"However, I am afraid our national focus in this unproductive way will cause us as a people to not be aware of where our serious
competition is actually coming from and be able to deal with it in a timely fashion."
You seem to be conflating "us as a people" with the U.S. "government" which has by now lost even the pretense of moral and
constitutional legitimacy, and thus has nothing remotely to do with what's in the best interests of "us as a people".
Here is the explanation. China is economic rival to US. That is not only inconvenient, rival, it is the most efficient and
most dangerous rival, because who is wining the economic competition is pushing out the opponent from world markets.
That people in the West believe the lies that TPTB concoct for their consumption, I can conceive, though only after a convoluted
intellectual effort, for given all the now exposed deceit, one is left in wonder as to why the masses still believe proven liars.
After having spent 36 years in the West and having seen Westerners vote for the likes of Blair, Sarkozy or Macron, I have a very
low opinion of Western intelligence, and Western moral relativism and indifference with regards to the crimes their elected leaders
committed abroad.
Still, I can't figure out if TPTB believe their own narrative. It takes a very peculiar mindset to be able to live in permanent
lies. Contrary to truth which can exist per se and is therefore essentially cost-free, lies demand permanent maintenance and have
high maintenance cost.
So, TPTB of the West are either delusional in thinking they can maintain their lies ad vitam aeternam, or they are mythomaniacs.
Either way, just think what happens when lies cannot be maintained any more and the liars don't want to relinquish power.
Bear in mind that lying being effectively irrational, they cannot be considered as rational actors. Prepare your shelters folks.
Very seldom, I've read such a realistic article on President Putin and his policy. I've been following not only his administration
but also that of the US Empire, and I'm always flabbergasted about the US elites demonization of this leader. He belongs to the
few leaders who got their act together compared to the political exorcists in Washington. The real thugs and psychopaths are the
members of the American political elite and their cheerleaders in the fawning US mainstream media. Following their analysis, I
often think they stem from lunatics who are coming from outer space.
Yes, China is a rival but an odd kind of rival. Let's not forget that the US, over the last 30 whatever years has enthusiastically
facilitated China's rise. China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour.
So -- Dr Frankenstein is now scared of his own monster. Oh the irony !
In the last two weeks a virtual book burning has begun on YouTube. Scores of independent truth seeking channels have been deleted.
Some were pretty amateur and sensationalist, many were good, top notch investigative fact checking in nature. Many had large numbers
of subscribers, a few had 100,000s subscribers.
Common denominator seemed to question official mainstream media narrative on mass shootings, 9/11, war on terror, human sex
trafficking, Clinton Foundation corruption, and even UFO coverups. One channel was a woman skilled at body language commenting
on videos of people like John Podesta being interviewed as to whether he was lying.
None of these channels advocated violence, quite the contrary. Most couched opinion alongside probable facts by asking deductive
and inductive questions. The YouTube virtual book burning appears to have gathered pace in last week.
So much for free speech in the fake but very slickly fake Western democracies. Where the geopolitical narrative is uniformly
uniform.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution.
American liberals support lifting living standards and ending poverty? You mean, the same American liberals who support 'free'
trade and importing unlimited amounts of scab labor? You must have us confused with some other country, Mike.
"I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue .What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve
introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony
with it "
I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable energy–whether
or not global warming is real.
not like he had a choice. dc was about to have it's hands on his throat and he finally reacted. That was ukraine. syria was him
trying to protect another one of his naval bases. the bear simply reacted to attempts at cutting off it's legs.
"China has become the world's factory because the US and other countries Co's want CHEAP labour. "
We all know the drill here. China makes stuff cheap so that WalMart can undercut competitors and grow rich. Therefore, alas,
what can be done?
Except that WalMart has over four hundred stores IN CHINA and plans to build forty more! So what's our excuse now for not being
able to compete?
Putin inherited a broken Russia in 2000. A Russia on the verge of collapse due to misrule of drunkard Yeltsin and body blows
administered by US/NATO.
A broken down military; economy in shambles; demographic collapse. During his presidency US/EU/NATO engineered a collapse of oil prices and assaults on ruble: what exactly was Putin supposed
to non-passively do to counter the collapse of world oil prices, for example?
Putin was wise enough and cautious enough not to go head-to-head with US/NATO until his military and economy were in good enough
shape to do and make a difference, as in Syria for example.
It would have been very bad for Russia to act prematurely and get bled dry, which warmongering US Neocons were hoping for.
Obviously Putin knows the strengths and weaknesses of Russia better than any of us here. He is butting heads with the combined
military industrial might of US+EU: that block has a lot of human resources, wealth, worldwide financial and political influence.
Also Putin has to – has to – improve the living standards of citizens of RF, so he cannot afford to get into an expensive arms
race with the West. Putin is doing very well with what he has, as far as human and military-industrial resources Russia has.
Alden, sounds like you stopped with the maps and didn't read any of the underlying documents because of the preconceptions you
wear on your sleeve: "idealistic pie in the sky by and by UN treaties impossible to effect." Those preconceptions happen to coincide
with the residual message of one persistent strand of US statist propaganda.
Have you ever read, in any US institution or medium, criticism as comprehensive and incisive as this?
IGs can't do this. Courts can't begin to do this. Congress wouldn't dare do this. Media would never do it if they could. The
recommendations are legally binding and the US government knows it. Each review is videoed. You haven't lived until you've seen
State and Justice bureaucrats crawling and sniveling and tying themselves in logical knots, making fools of themselves in the
most public forum in the world. You get to watch the US regime bleeding influence and standing and 'soft power.' It's public disgrace
in front of the 96% of the world outside the US iron curtain. You may not want to watch impartial legal experts make a laughingstock
of the USG, but everybody else in the world watches with amusement, so you might as well know.
Treaty body review has driven more reforms than Congress ever did. You know perfectly well how bad your government sucks, what
a useless parasite it is. The treaty bodies and charter bodies give you more say than either state-controlled political party.
Face it, human rights review is all you got. When your government sucks, you go over its head to the world.
"During a policy talk at the Valdai Discussion Club, the Russian leader spoke on a number of issues, especially criticizing
U.S. foreign policy moves across the globe and lauding Russia's increasingly relevant role as a world power. When asked by a Germany-based
academic where Russia had most seriously gone wrong in the past decade and a half, Putin said he had too readily laid his trust
in the West, which he then accused of having abused its relationship with Moscow to further its own interests."
Well maybe you can make Vladimir Putin feel better about this. You can tell him that blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in
the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all, since Russia couldn't have done a single thing
about it anyway, right?
This is a ridiculous statement. When Putin came aboard, there was no Russian economy to speak of. Now it's grown strong enough
to withstand the events in Ukraine, sanctions and what not and even derive benefits from these challenges. I am not saying everything's
coming up roses but it could hardly be expected considering the deep hole Russia dug itself into in the 1990s.
the entire region is upset with Putin's behavior as they have seen Putin's behavior in Crimea and the Donbas.
The entire region, it you mean our Eastern European neighbors, can like it or lump it. They, Poland in particular, participated
very willingly and actively in the coup in Ukraine. Crimea and Donbass are direct, and perfectly predictable, consequences of
that coup. If they forgot the law of physics that every action has a reaction, this is just as good a reminder as any.
the thing is, because of the recent study by J. Leroy Hulsey, Putin could still do it, but I predict that he unfortunately
will do nothing of the kind.
blindly trusting the corrupt "West" (in the face of shamelessly obvious provocations) was actually not a mistake at all,
since Russia couldn't have done a single thing about it anyway, right?
Actually, it could've done a lot. Right at the beginning, Russia could've refused to trust in the word of the West's leaders
about the NATO expansion and demand guarantees. A formal treaty plus a couple of remaining military bases, say, in Poland and
East Germany, would've sufficed. This likely would've saved Yugoslavia as well.
Russia could've refrained from stopping the development of many weapon system and from destroying others. It could've also
kept its own industry (civil aviation comes to mind) instead of relying on cooperation with the West. It could've refrained from
allowing the US troops to use the Russia territory to move supplies to Afghanistan. Even recently it did occur to someone exceedingly
smart to order aircraft carriers in France – speaking about trust! I do hope they learned their lesson, finally.
America is in a very ugly spot and getting worse everyday. Living here I can sense it. Americans are going crazy. Pathetic
how they are trying and build hate for Russia/Putin mainly because America got triple fucked across the ME and especially in Syria.
Very sad.
America's greatest historical truth: in foreign policy the USA just cannot learn from experience. We keep making the same mistakes.
Stupid, idiotic, nation building b/s. Come on dudes !
This is just a phase, we will turn it around and make America great again ( as opposed to israel which was never great anyway).
It is just a question of how long it will take.
It will start the day when we'll tell that terrorist, shit-hole country called israel to go the hell, fight your own wars,
pay for your own wars.
In my opinion, the USA, until now, could afford to conduct foreign policy for internal reasons.
Because of this the Sept 11 shock, while in reality it meant very little, as USA citizens working in the Netherlands soon afterwards
said 'we have 30.000 traffic deaths each year'.
Good comeback there that was one of the best ones in a while!
I'm sorry, but no we're not. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we here in the "West" are living under a Satanic judeo-communist
dictatorship, bent on world domination and control at any cost.
The difference between corporate state, and totalitarian state like old Soviet system is getting blurier all the time. Like
planned economies of command systems, now they just create money for the cronies, who might as well be commies, and they don't
give a care about what's true or honest, they lie and that's, like you mentioned, (Satanic), the truth isn't in 'em.
' I note that he says nothing about 'cap and trade,' or any other Western bankster-scam. I have nothing against renewable
energy–whether or not global warming is real '
Good comment however the environment is about more than just 'global warming' which may or may not be man-caused there is no
scientific certainty but certainly what looks like a concerted push by certain quarters
But there is also habitat loss the toxins introduced through pollution industrial farming and the problems it causes with erosion,
bad food etc
Putin's comments and Mike's citation of them reflect a thoughtful and realistic approach to at least start looking at these
problems
Anon from TN
The author is painting Putin as larger-than-life figure, which he isn't. Just like the Soviet Union was not defeated by the US,
but actually collapsed due to internal problems, regime change rampage is over largely because the United States pushed their
luck and overextended themselves, and not just thanks to Putin. Throughout history, all dominant empires lose their grip and eventually
crumble (remember Roman or British), and now it's the turn of the US Empire. Fortunately or unfortunately, the next will be the
Chinese Empire, not Russian. (PS. Muslims missed the train. Again)
It's not like he used the term 'enemy,' which too many unfortunately resort to in these discussions. During Cold War 1.0, a
lot of us referred to the Sovs as the 'Adversary' because it was a less loaded term than enemy, though many equate the two. Are
the Chinese rivals? Sure. Are they adversaries? You bet, especially when we keep stepping into their back yard. Are they enemies?
The will be if we keep stepping into their back yard and telling them how to behave with their next door neighbours. All of this
applies to Russia as well.
The reason why the US empire will follow the British empire into the graveyard is because they are based on the same model – trying
to prevent others from becoming equal to them instead of trying to get better than the competitors.
GB was preoccupied with preventing Germany from surpassing them – and guess what? They succeeded. And where is the British
empire now?
From an empire on which the sun never sets, pretty soon they'll be a country where the sun never rises – thanks to their stupid
immigration policies and preoccupations with Russia (still!), like they (the British) are still even a factor in the global power
games.
US is on a similar path of self-destruction. First they made China an economic superpower and now they want to contain them
militarily. Good luck with that.
The money that the US spent on military misadventures – they could have bribed with far lesser amount of money the various
"dictatorships" that they were so democratically inclined to topple – and would have achieved better results. Instead of using
those money to make US better – for their citizens, they are trying to prevent the world from catching up with them – British
style.
If anything the British military record was at least better than US's, at least they used to win wars – they pretty much went
down undefeated – but they did went down and US military doesn't have the same success rate and even if they did, they will not
accomplish holding the world back – same as Britain didn't.
American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support.
For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he's also a big believer
in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution
I do not see anything 'liberal' in Putin's ideas, certainly not as in the liberal agendas in the US.
I see him advocating Balance . creating a better order for the needs of populations and interactions between nations
. therefore preserving nations, people and earth. Balance is not rocket science .nature is the ultimate example of balance, when it is tampered with all species eventually suffer.
The neocons were/are Zionist in essence and mainly Jewish in thought leadership – this is inarguable.
Also inarguable, though I am not aware of very many well-written essays on the topic, is that under Yeltsin, brought to power
in no small part by US meddling, there was a fire sale of Russian assets – something arranged very largely by Jewish economists
and Jewish bureaucrats. And the new 'oligarchs?' Why 6 of 7 of the most enriches were Jews in a nation <3% Jewish.
Ukraine was largely a coup by Nuland, Pyatt, Feltman ato help Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine who suddenly found themselves in
the very top of the new govt. Jewish names pop up inordinately as to authors and editors of unhinged Russophobic articles. At what point do we say that the mideast wars are driven by Jews, so, disproportionately (maybe even mainly as to the media)
is the aggression and disinfo on Russia.
The Jewish Problem is to be taken seriously. We need to find a way to discuss it, rescued from Zionists and bona fide Judeophobes. Our lives may well depend on it.
Looks like Mueller investigation was a part of color revolution to depose Trump, using
consequentialism slogan widely attributed to
Machiavelli's The Prince "the end justifies
the means".
Mueller witch hunt is a part of neoliberalism counterattack on forces that are against neoliberal globalization, dropping
standard of living of common people and offshoring of manufacturing. That means tiny greedy elite against the majority of the USA
population. We read about such situations in history books, did not we?
Notable quotes:
"... The full force of the U.S. intelligence community has been looking for evidence of Russian government (not just "some Russians") interference in the election for 18 months (the recently released Schiff memo reveals five Trump campaign officials were under investigation as of September 2016, including Flynn), with the aim of finding proof of Trump's collusion with Russia in the same caper for about a year. ..."
"... It is reasonable to conclude they do not have definitive intelligence, no tape of a Team Trump official cutting a deal with a Russian spy. The same goes for the Steele dossier and its salacious accusations . If a tape existed or if there was proof the dossier was true, we'd watching impeachment hearings. ..."
"... What's left is the battle cry of Trump's opponents since Election Day: "Just you wait." They exhibit a scary, gleeful certainty that Trump worked with the Russians, because how else could he have won? ..."
"... It's not enough. Mueller is charged with nothing less than proving the president knowingly worked with a foreign government, receiving help in the election in return for some quid pro quo, an act that can be demonstrated so clearly to the American people as to overturn an election probably a full two years after it was decided. ..."
"... Given the stakes -- a Kremlin-controlled man in the Oval Office -- you'd think every person in government would be on this 24/7 to save the nation, not a relatively small staff of prosecutors leisurely filing indictments that so far have little to do with their core charge in the hope that someone will join their felony hunt and testify to crimes that may not have been committed. ..."
So here's what Mueller has: evidence of unrelated-to-Trump financial crimes by Paul Manafort and others, based mostly from FISA
surveillance on Manafort dating back to
2014
. The FBI's earlier investigation was dropped for lack of evidence, and it appears Mueller revived it now in part so the information
could be repurposed to press Manafort to testify. The role pervasive surveillance has played in setting perjury traps to manufacture
indictments to pressure people to testify against others has been grossly underreported. We'll see more of it, unfortunately, a new
tool of justice in a surveillance state.
Flynn and Papadopoulos are currently charged with relatively minor offenses whose connections to Russiagate are tenuous. Flynn's
contact with the Russian ambassador can be seen as a lot of uncomplimentary things, but it does not appear to have been a crime.
With Papadopoulos there may be a conspiracy charge in there with some shady lawyering, but little more. Further offstage, Carter
Page, a key actor in the
Steele dossier and the
subject of
FISA warrants, has not been charged with anything.
Here's what Mueller is missing. The full force of the U.S. intelligence community has been looking for evidence of Russian government
(not just "some Russians") interference in the election for 18 months (the recently released Schiff
memo reveals
five Trump campaign officials were under investigation as of September 2016, including Flynn), with the aim of finding proof of Trump's
collusion with Russia in the same caper for about a year.
It is reasonable to conclude they do not have definitive intelligence,
no tape of a Team Trump official cutting a deal with a Russian spy. The same goes for the Steele
dossier and its salacious
accusations . If a tape existed or if there was proof the dossier was true, we'd watching impeachment hearings.
What's left is the battle cry of Trump's opponents since Election Day: "Just you wait." They exhibit a scary, gleeful certainty
that Trump worked with the Russians, because how else could he have won?
But so far the booked charges against Flynn and Papadopoulos and the guilty pleas of others point towards relatively minor sentences
to bargain over -- assuming they have game-changing information to share in the first place. These are process crimes, not ones of
turpitude. Manafort says he'll go to court and defend himself, lips sealed.
It's not enough. Mueller is charged with nothing less than proving the president knowingly worked with a foreign government, receiving
help in the election in return for some quid pro quo, an act that can be demonstrated so clearly to the American people as to overturn
an election probably a full two years after it was decided.
Given the stakes -- a Kremlin-controlled man in the Oval Office -- you'd think every person in government would be on this 24/7
to save the nation, not a relatively small staff of prosecutors leisurely filing indictments that so far have little to do with their
core charge in the hope that someone will join their felony hunt and testify to crimes that may not have been committed.
A limping-to-the-finish line conclusion to Mueller's work just ahead of the midterms alleging Trump technically obstructed justice,
or a "conspiracy to commit something" charge without a finding of an underlying crime, will risk tearing the nation apart. Mueller
holds a lot in his hands, and he needs soon to produce the conclusive report to Congress he was charged to write. Until then, absent
evidence, skepticism remains a healthy stance.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of
We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People andHooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan. He Tweets
@WeMeantWell.
there has been dramatic improvement in number of soldiers, usability of
equipment
That is the show.
The Ukrainian army's battlefield performance after February 2015 has not improved, nor
will the odds ever again be as favourable as they were in Mid-2014. Kiev has assembled an
army suitable for skirmishing and the occasional terrorist attack, nothing more strenuous.
Building an army capable of winning the war would entail discipline and sacrifice, and the
effort would be for nothing since the RF forces would move in and crush Kiev's army if it
were ever on the point of victory.
Kiev is content with the status quo – it's far from ideal for them but it's not so
bad as to justify the risks involved in a new offensive (this will never happen). Barring
black swan events, the Ukraine is meta-stable and can muddle along indefinitely, so long as
Moscow does not pull its finger out of its backside and resolve the situation properly.
Kiev is content with the status quo – it's far from ideal for them but it's not so
bad as to justify the risks involved in a new offensive (this will never happen). Barring
black swan events, the Ukraine is meta-stable and can muddle along indefinitely, so long as
Moscow does not pull its finger out of its backside and resolve the situation properly.
Two consideration:
1. Ukraine decides very little. Government was outsourced to Washington, DC. If creation
of tension with Russia is necessary, they will launch offensive.
2. Nationalist movements, especially far-right, have their own often destructive dynamics and
can do things that are illogical and/or highly harmful for the country. They also are ready
to fight and die for their ideas. In this sense Poroshenko is a hostage of Galician far right
"revolutionaries. "
there has been dramatic improvement in number of soldiers, usability of
equipment
That is the show.
The Ukrainian army's battlefield performance after February 2015 has not improved, nor
will the odds ever again be as favourable as they were in Mid-2014. Kiev has assembled an
army suitable for skirmishing and the occasional terrorist attack, nothing more strenuous.
Building an army capable of winning the war would entail discipline and sacrifice, and the
effort would be for nothing since the RF forces would move in and crush Kiev's army if it
were ever on the point of victory.
Kiev is content with the status quo – it's far from ideal for them but it's not so
bad as to justify the risks involved in a new offensive (this will never happen). Barring
black swan events, the Ukraine is meta-stable and can muddle along indefinitely, so long as
Moscow does not pull its finger out of its backside and resolve the situation properly.
Kiev is content with the status quo – it's far from ideal for them but it's not so
bad as to justify the risks involved in a new offensive (this will never happen). Barring
black swan events, the Ukraine is meta-stable and can muddle along indefinitely, so long as
Moscow does not pull its finger out of its backside and resolve the situation properly.
Two consideration:
1. Ukraine decides very little. Government was outsourced to Washington, DC. If creation
of tension with Russia is necessary, they will launch offensive.
2. Nationalist movements, especially far-right, have their own often destructive dynamics and
can do things that are illogical and/or highly harmful for the country. They also are ready
to fight and die for their ideas. In this sense Poroshenko is a hostage of Galician far right
"revolutionaries. "
Looks like Mueller investigation was a part of color revolution to depose Trump, using
consequentialism slogan widely attributed to
Machiavelli's The Prince "the end justifies
the means".
Mueller witch hunt is a part of neoliberalism counterattack on forces that are against neoliberal globalization, dropping
standard of living of common people and offshoring of manufacturing. That means tiny greedy elite against the majority of the USA
population. We read about such situations in history books, did not we?
Notable quotes:
"... The full force of the U.S. intelligence community has been looking for evidence of Russian government (not just "some Russians") interference in the election for 18 months (the recently released Schiff memo reveals five Trump campaign officials were under investigation as of September 2016, including Flynn), with the aim of finding proof of Trump's collusion with Russia in the same caper for about a year. ..."
"... It is reasonable to conclude they do not have definitive intelligence, no tape of a Team Trump official cutting a deal with a Russian spy. The same goes for the Steele dossier and its salacious accusations . If a tape existed or if there was proof the dossier was true, we'd watching impeachment hearings. ..."
"... What's left is the battle cry of Trump's opponents since Election Day: "Just you wait." They exhibit a scary, gleeful certainty that Trump worked with the Russians, because how else could he have won? ..."
"... It's not enough. Mueller is charged with nothing less than proving the president knowingly worked with a foreign government, receiving help in the election in return for some quid pro quo, an act that can be demonstrated so clearly to the American people as to overturn an election probably a full two years after it was decided. ..."
"... Given the stakes -- a Kremlin-controlled man in the Oval Office -- you'd think every person in government would be on this 24/7 to save the nation, not a relatively small staff of prosecutors leisurely filing indictments that so far have little to do with their core charge in the hope that someone will join their felony hunt and testify to crimes that may not have been committed. ..."
So here's what Mueller has: evidence of unrelated-to-Trump financial crimes by Paul Manafort and others, based mostly from FISA
surveillance on Manafort dating back to
2014
. The FBI's earlier investigation was dropped for lack of evidence, and it appears Mueller revived it now in part so the information
could be repurposed to press Manafort to testify. The role pervasive surveillance has played in setting perjury traps to manufacture
indictments to pressure people to testify against others has been grossly underreported. We'll see more of it, unfortunately, a new
tool of justice in a surveillance state.
Flynn and Papadopoulos are currently charged with relatively minor offenses whose connections to Russiagate are tenuous. Flynn's
contact with the Russian ambassador can be seen as a lot of uncomplimentary things, but it does not appear to have been a crime.
With Papadopoulos there may be a conspiracy charge in there with some shady lawyering, but little more. Further offstage, Carter
Page, a key actor in the
Steele dossier and the
subject of
FISA warrants, has not been charged with anything.
Here's what Mueller is missing. The full force of the U.S. intelligence community has been looking for evidence of Russian government
(not just "some Russians") interference in the election for 18 months (the recently released Schiff
memo reveals
five Trump campaign officials were under investigation as of September 2016, including Flynn), with the aim of finding proof of Trump's
collusion with Russia in the same caper for about a year.
It is reasonable to conclude they do not have definitive intelligence,
no tape of a Team Trump official cutting a deal with a Russian spy. The same goes for the Steele
dossier and its salacious
accusations . If a tape existed or if there was proof the dossier was true, we'd watching impeachment hearings.
What's left is the battle cry of Trump's opponents since Election Day: "Just you wait." They exhibit a scary, gleeful certainty
that Trump worked with the Russians, because how else could he have won?
But so far the booked charges against Flynn and Papadopoulos and the guilty pleas of others point towards relatively minor sentences
to bargain over -- assuming they have game-changing information to share in the first place. These are process crimes, not ones of
turpitude. Manafort says he'll go to court and defend himself, lips sealed.
It's not enough. Mueller is charged with nothing less than proving the president knowingly worked with a foreign government, receiving
help in the election in return for some quid pro quo, an act that can be demonstrated so clearly to the American people as to overturn
an election probably a full two years after it was decided.
Given the stakes -- a Kremlin-controlled man in the Oval Office -- you'd think every person in government would be on this 24/7
to save the nation, not a relatively small staff of prosecutors leisurely filing indictments that so far have little to do with their
core charge in the hope that someone will join their felony hunt and testify to crimes that may not have been committed.
A limping-to-the-finish line conclusion to Mueller's work just ahead of the midterms alleging Trump technically obstructed justice,
or a "conspiracy to commit something" charge without a finding of an underlying crime, will risk tearing the nation apart. Mueller
holds a lot in his hands, and he needs soon to produce the conclusive report to Congress he was charged to write. Until then, absent
evidence, skepticism remains a healthy stance.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of
We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People andHooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan. He Tweets
@WeMeantWell.
Prize-winning historian Alfred W. McCoy first came to prominence with his 1972 book, "The
Politics of Heroin in South East Asia". His latest book "In the Shadows of the American
Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power", explores America's rise as a world
power--from the 1890s through the Cold War--and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the
twenty-first century through a fusion of cyberwar, space warfare, trade pacts, and military
alliances and analyzes the marquee instruments of US hegemony--torture, client elites,
psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance. McCoy exposes a military and economic battle
for global domination fought in the shadows, largely unknown to those outside the highest rungs
of power.
Professor McCoy was in Seattle when he gave this rousing talk.
Remember USA has boots on the ground in 172 countries over 1000 military bases world wide.
Remember USA always first to kill, Nukes, Napalm, Agent Orange, Cluster munitions, Depleted
uranium, MOAB bomb and first to kill with drones killing in 8 Muslim countries flooding
Europe with refugees. Thanks USA. USA military says "full spectrum domination, we own the
world, Land, waters, Air, cyber and outer space. Yes Hitler´s dream come true is
America. YES EMPIRE OF Killers. Born killing Native Indians, this has gone
global.
People keep trying to predict and keep hoping for the demise of the USA. Ever since I was
a small child I have always heard this and now 40 years later, they are still singing the
same old song. The US role in this world is diminishing, I agree, but I think it's more due
to other nations becoming self aware and participating in the world's economy (and decisions
of US policy makers, of course).
Great analysis. I hope for a peaceful multi-polar world. The US full spectrum dominance
since WWII was heavy-handed and largely anti-social. Here's to a better future!
This ninconpoop of a historian, like so many other delusional Americans and others,
painted for America as the ideal society vis a vis China, Russia and the rest of the world,
that is not just a lie, a myth and a fraudulent claim, but which is also both delusional and
illusional.
Imperial America has grown too greedy, too delusional, too arrogant, too self
assured, too hegemonic and indulge itself too much in its own filth, to see the new world
that exist out there.
A number of numbers aren't all that relevant. However, the turbo-capitalism, without
oversight and rules or counterbalance is what is erroding the US. And, of course, the desire
to rule in the first place. Notes: "A few coups" is an understatement. It still works.
Blackmail of presidents and their corruption too.
But more and more, there is a lack of real
strategy and just crazy ideological wars on the one, and short-term financial gain action on
the other.
There is some US delusion there, though. Clearly, that is known, NK missile can't
do a thing. They aren't even properly directed. So there is no actual threat. The relations
with the Philipines were never good.
They were conquered and they simply cease the
opportunity to break free. The British Empire was bound to fall, no big surprise there...
Russia (or the Soviet Union) is just reforming.
The venerated 'leaders' of the British Empire sweated and exploited the local workforce
and the workers of the countries invaded. Consequently the collapse of the British Empire
lead to an historic rise in living standards, life expectancy and security for the British
working class. Workers of the world unite to end all empire builders and purge all historical
apologists.
"... Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the decline of the United States as a global power and the rise of the Chinese empire. ..."
Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the decline of the United
States as a global power and the rise of the Chinese empire.
Only elites benefited from these trade agreements. The US middle class has disappeared,
and more than one-half of the population now lives on a salary of less than $50,000 per
annum. Yet, this professor seems to think that the rise of poverty, on a personal level, is
far less important than the American 'empire' and its globalist conclusion. I imagine this
professor would have been against storming the Bastille.
Brzezinski was a criminal - all he cared about was the destruction of the Soviet Union,
due to his own, personal history. To view him as anything other than a corrupt puppeteer for
his own personal satisfaction, is absurd, as is evidenced by his response about Bin Laden,
the Middle East, etc. These issues made no difference to him . His entire political world
revolved around the destruction of the USSR.
This professor is a true patriot - even in 2017 he still believes the bullshit of the US
standing for democracy and freedom. He made me laugh when he said "the BBC is until today
recognized world wide as the standard bearer for news and objectivity" You have to have been
away fro the last decade to believe that.
You are a Globalist, Professor, and you are losing. One Trump can trump your Empire.
Lay-down hand, we ancient bridge-players used to say. Did you ever play bridge?
Meh, I started off enthusiastic, but then the professor started to come across as a bit of
a militarist, Hedges cuts him off before he says anything too imperious, does it several
times in fact, but the guy seems like a guy pitching for tenure at West Point
tbh.
If people can't see its too late for the U.S you are blind. The U.S is sooo desperate to
hold on the title and status as the #1 country they have made too many greedy, reckless and
fatal decisions when it came to destabilizing the middle east. They have stretched the
military too thin all around the world trying to control countries and now countries are fed
up teaming up with each other to get rid of the U.S bullying. You can't do evil forever and
think no repercussions won't happen. All empires fall and you reap what you sow. The world
feels a major shift is happening and when the dust settles I doubt the U.S will be on
top.
America's decline ... a world led by China ...WHY ISN'T THIS GOOD NEWS? THE GREATEST
THREAT TO HUMANITY WAS NEVER NORTH KOREA OR IRAN, ISIS, AL QUIDA, NOR WAS IT GLOBAL WARMING
.....RATHER ...WHITE SUPREMACY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE SINGLE GREATEST THREAT THE
WORLD!!
Decline of the American empire what? you guys looking at a picture yet you can not see or
determine the real image. America is not an empire or like anything else the worlds political
elite are in Decline . look at England look at Westminster chaos look ad the world political
chaos. people are losing out mankind is losing out humanity is is decline for what? POWER AND
GREED ! CAPITALISM ITS FURTHER END> !@
Looks like Poroshenko is playing with fire. the longer Donetsk and Lugansk republics exists as a separate political
entities the more difficult and costly will be to bring them back. Each year matters in this respect. After, say, ten year
probably no compromise could ever emerge, unless Russia is weakened and /or dissolved into smaller statelets (the permanent
problem for Russia is change of leadership, so 2024 will be a very important year, as Putin does not have any realistic successor
who can continue his policies. So iether Russian "economic nationalists" (to borrow Bannon's term) or Pro-European faction
will come to power. In both cases foreign policies change. Or the US economy crash again and military budget will be
drastically cut, leaving no money for foreign military adventure and the protection of neoliberal empire. Direct attach
might elicit Russian response and as such is highly risky (especially in view of Russia being pissed by the USA all the time now
and might want to make Ukraine, as a US client, a boy for beating) , but periodic skirmishes just run this territory into
wasteland that Syria regions now are. They also drive population out.
Notable quotes:
"... IMO the emerging partition is likely to last a long time. Syria is only 80 years old as a state and a prolonged de facto partition as opposed to wartime occupation can easily become more or less perm ..."
"... If the Kurds of Afrin throw themselves on the mercy of the Syrian government in Damascus then Kurdish autonomy is squashed in that enclave. And, when it is all said and done, isn't that what Erdogan really wants? ..."
You don't understand what I mean. IMO the emerging partition is likely to last a long
time. Syria is only 80 years old as a state and a prolonged de facto partition as opposed to
wartime occupation can easily become more or less permanent as was the case with Turkey's
acquisition of Hatay. pl
I certainly don't dispute that Turkey is invading Afrin. And I agree with you that if things
continue to stand as they are now then that invasion will continue until all of Afrin has
been overrun.
But to simply extrapolate from what has happened into the future suggests that
circumstances won't change or - if they do - that Erdogan will continue on like some wind-up
automaton.
If the Kurds of Afrin throw themselves on the mercy of the Syrian government in Damascus
then Kurdish autonomy is squashed in that enclave. And, when it is all said and done, isn't
that what Erdogan really wants?
If the Kurds are too stupid or too proud to play that card then, yeah, sure, you and I
both agree that they will be ground into the dirt.
But if they do supplicate to Assad then the situation changes.
You (I assume) believe that in that circumstance Erdogan will continue to grind on with
this invasion regardless.
I believe he will beat his chest and then go home.
One of us will be wrong, and one of us will be right.
Looks like Poroshenko is playing with fire. the longer Donetsk and Lugansk republics exists as a separate political
entities the more difficult and costly will be to bring them back. Each year matters in this respect. After, say, ten year
probably no compromise could ever emerge, unless Russia is weakened and /or dissolved into smaller statelets (the permanent
problem for Russia is change of leadership, so 2024 will be a very important year, as Putin does not have any realistic successor
who can continue his policies. So iether Russian "economic nationalists" (to borrow Bannon's term) or Pro-European faction
will come to power. In both cases foreign policies change. Or the US economy crash again and military budget will be
drastically cut, leaving no money for foreign military adventure and the protection of neoliberal empire. Direct attach
might elicit Russian response and as such is highly risky (especially in view of Russia being pissed by the USA all the time now
and might want to make Ukraine, as a US client, a boy for beating) , but periodic skirmishes just run this territory into
wasteland that Syria regions now are. They also drive population out.
Notable quotes:
"... IMO the emerging partition is likely to last a long time. Syria is only 80 years old as a state and a prolonged de facto partition as opposed to wartime occupation can easily become more or less perm ..."
"... If the Kurds of Afrin throw themselves on the mercy of the Syrian government in Damascus then Kurdish autonomy is squashed in that enclave. And, when it is all said and done, isn't that what Erdogan really wants? ..."
You don't understand what I mean. IMO the emerging partition is likely to last a long
time. Syria is only 80 years old as a state and a prolonged de facto partition as opposed to
wartime occupation can easily become more or less permanent as was the case with Turkey's
acquisition of Hatay. pl
I certainly don't dispute that Turkey is invading Afrin. And I agree with you that if things
continue to stand as they are now then that invasion will continue until all of Afrin has
been overrun.
But to simply extrapolate from what has happened into the future suggests that
circumstances won't change or - if they do - that Erdogan will continue on like some wind-up
automaton.
If the Kurds of Afrin throw themselves on the mercy of the Syrian government in Damascus
then Kurdish autonomy is squashed in that enclave. And, when it is all said and done, isn't
that what Erdogan really wants?
If the Kurds are too stupid or too proud to play that card then, yeah, sure, you and I
both agree that they will be ground into the dirt.
But if they do supplicate to Assad then the situation changes.
You (I assume) believe that in that circumstance Erdogan will continue to grind on with
this invasion regardless.
I believe he will beat his chest and then go home.
One of us will be wrong, and one of us will be right.
Prize-winning historian Alfred W. McCoy first came to prominence with his 1972 book, "The
Politics of Heroin in South East Asia". His latest book "In the Shadows of the American
Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power", explores America's rise as a world
power--from the 1890s through the Cold War--and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the
twenty-first century through a fusion of cyberwar, space warfare, trade pacts, and military
alliances and analyzes the marquee instruments of US hegemony--torture, client elites,
psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance. McCoy exposes a military and economic battle
for global domination fought in the shadows, largely unknown to those outside the highest rungs
of power.
Professor McCoy was in Seattle when he gave this rousing talk.
Remember USA has boots on the ground in 172 countries over 1000 military bases world wide.
Remember USA always first to kill, Nukes, Napalm, Agent Orange, Cluster munitions, Depleted
uranium, MOAB bomb and first to kill with drones killing in 8 Muslim countries flooding
Europe with refugees. Thanks USA. USA military says "full spectrum domination, we own the
world, Land, waters, Air, cyber and outer space. Yes Hitler´s dream come true is
America. YES EMPIRE OF Killers. Born killing Native Indians, this has gone
global.
People keep trying to predict and keep hoping for the demise of the USA. Ever since I was
a small child I have always heard this and now 40 years later, they are still singing the
same old song. The US role in this world is diminishing, I agree, but I think it's more due
to other nations becoming self aware and participating in the world's economy (and decisions
of US policy makers, of course).
Great analysis. I hope for a peaceful multi-polar world. The US full spectrum dominance
since WWII was heavy-handed and largely anti-social. Here's to a better future!
This ninconpoop of a historian, like so many other delusional Americans and others,
painted for America as the ideal society vis a vis China, Russia and the rest of the world,
that is not just a lie, a myth and a fraudulent claim, but which is also both delusional and
illusional.
Imperial America has grown too greedy, too delusional, too arrogant, too self
assured, too hegemonic and indulge itself too much in its own filth, to see the new world
that exist out there.
A number of numbers aren't all that relevant. However, the turbo-capitalism, without
oversight and rules or counterbalance is what is erroding the US. And, of course, the desire
to rule in the first place. Notes: "A few coups" is an understatement. It still works.
Blackmail of presidents and their corruption too.
But more and more, there is a lack of real
strategy and just crazy ideological wars on the one, and short-term financial gain action on
the other.
There is some US delusion there, though. Clearly, that is known, NK missile can't
do a thing. They aren't even properly directed. So there is no actual threat. The relations
with the Philipines were never good.
They were conquered and they simply cease the
opportunity to break free. The British Empire was bound to fall, no big surprise there...
Russia (or the Soviet Union) is just reforming.
The venerated 'leaders' of the British Empire sweated and exploited the local workforce
and the workers of the countries invaded. Consequently the collapse of the British Empire
lead to an historic rise in living standards, life expectancy and security for the British
working class. Workers of the world unite to end all empire builders and purge all historical
apologists.
"... Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the decline of the United States as a global power and the rise of the Chinese empire. ..."
Alfred McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the decline of the United
States as a global power and the rise of the Chinese empire.
Only elites benefited from these trade agreements. The US middle class has disappeared,
and more than one-half of the population now lives on a salary of less than $50,000 per
annum. Yet, this professor seems to think that the rise of poverty, on a personal level, is
far less important than the American 'empire' and its globalist conclusion. I imagine this
professor would have been against storming the Bastille.
Brzezinski was a criminal - all he cared about was the destruction of the Soviet Union,
due to his own, personal history. To view him as anything other than a corrupt puppeteer for
his own personal satisfaction, is absurd, as is evidenced by his response about Bin Laden,
the Middle East, etc. These issues made no difference to him . His entire political world
revolved around the destruction of the USSR.
This professor is a true patriot - even in 2017 he still believes the bullshit of the US
standing for democracy and freedom. He made me laugh when he said "the BBC is until today
recognized world wide as the standard bearer for news and objectivity" You have to have been
away fro the last decade to believe that.
You are a Globalist, Professor, and you are losing. One Trump can trump your Empire.
Lay-down hand, we ancient bridge-players used to say. Did you ever play bridge?
Meh, I started off enthusiastic, but then the professor started to come across as a bit of
a militarist, Hedges cuts him off before he says anything too imperious, does it several
times in fact, but the guy seems like a guy pitching for tenure at West Point
tbh.
If people can't see its too late for the U.S you are blind. The U.S is sooo desperate to
hold on the title and status as the #1 country they have made too many greedy, reckless and
fatal decisions when it came to destabilizing the middle east. They have stretched the
military too thin all around the world trying to control countries and now countries are fed
up teaming up with each other to get rid of the U.S bullying. You can't do evil forever and
think no repercussions won't happen. All empires fall and you reap what you sow. The world
feels a major shift is happening and when the dust settles I doubt the U.S will be on
top.
America's decline ... a world led by China ...WHY ISN'T THIS GOOD NEWS? THE GREATEST
THREAT TO HUMANITY WAS NEVER NORTH KOREA OR IRAN, ISIS, AL QUIDA, NOR WAS IT GLOBAL WARMING
.....RATHER ...WHITE SUPREMACY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE SINGLE GREATEST THREAT THE
WORLD!!
Decline of the American empire what? you guys looking at a picture yet you can not see or
determine the real image. America is not an empire or like anything else the worlds political
elite are in Decline . look at England look at Westminster chaos look ad the world political
chaos. people are losing out mankind is losing out humanity is is decline for what? POWER AND
GREED ! CAPITALISM ITS FURTHER END> !@
This is mainly about the defense of neoliberal empire which is challenge by Russia who does not wants to be Washington
vassal and China who is rising economic power that challenge the US world dominance and status quo of dollar as the main reserve
currency. There are also some oil related consideration as weakening and dismembering Russia while capturing its oil and gar
resources can postpone the day of becoming for the USA and Western Europe.
Notable quotes:
"... `We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, but great-power competition – not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security.' Henceforth Russia and China will be America's main enemies, with Iran and North Korea thrown in for good measure. ..."
"... At the same time, the US is fast running out of Muslim targets to bomb, now that the bogeyman ISIS has vanished into thin air and US air attacks in Syria are being minimized for fear of clashing with Russia. Iran still remains on the US potential hit list. ..."
"... Which brings us back to General 'Mad Dog' Mattis. He is quite right that so-called terrorists (that's anyone who actively opposes the Lex Americana) pose no real life or death threat to the US mainland. ..."
"... Of course, this supposes the US is ready for war. In truth, neither the US and NATO nor Russia are in any way prepared to fight a real war on land, sea and air. Military forces on both sides have been so run down and depleted by little wars and budget cuts that there are serious shortages of war stocks and aging equipment. ..."
"... Key NATO member Germany is in a shambles. Its feminized military, run by a nice but incompetent lady defense minister, could not fight its way out of a paper bag. France is not much better off. The US armed forces and Britain are critically short of spares, munitions, transport, and armor. Russia's once mighty Red Army is short of everything. Both east and west are simply unready for a real war. ..."
"... As if there is any reason for one. There is not. Those jackanapes in the US Congress and media trying to inflate online mischief by 20-something Russian hackers into a second Pearl Harbor are crying 'fire' in a crowded theater. ..."
"... A final respectful note to Gen. Mattis (my dad was a marine): A good general does not pick a fight with two, far–away major powers at once. The trick is to turn them against one another. Declaring a future war against China and Russia is a crazy idea. Only draft-dodgers and generals who lost the Vietnam War could come up with it. ..."
`We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, but great-power competition
– not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security.' Henceforth
Russia and China will be America's main enemies, with Iran and North Korea thrown in for good
measure.
So declared US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, last week in a statement of profound
importance for the world.
For the past seventeen years, the US military has been laying waste to the Muslim world in
the faux `war on terrorism.' Afghanistan, Iraq, much of Syria, Somalia, Pakistan – all
have been heavily bombed. US B-52's and B-1 heavy bombers have tried to pound those resisting
American 'guidance' into submission.
In Afghanistan, America's longest war, President Donald Trump ordered a doubling of bombing
against Taliban forces battling US occupation. Now, the US is running very low on bombs, guided
munitions and even air-to-air missiles for some reason. Stores of munitions are being rushed
from the US Pacific command to the Mideast.
At the same time, the US is fast running out of Muslim targets to bomb, now that the
bogeyman ISIS has vanished into thin air and US air attacks in Syria are being minimized for
fear of clashing with Russia. Iran still remains on the US potential hit list.
Which brings us back to General 'Mad Dog' Mattis. He is quite right that so-called
terrorists (that's anyone who actively opposes the Lex Americana) pose no real life or death
threat to the US mainland.
But if so, how then to maintain the $1 trillion US military budget? Well, of course, trot
out those good old 'Reds Under Our Beds.' Actually, the Pentagon has been planning a new war
with China for the past three years, a mainly air and naval conflict to dominate China's coasts
and seas. The Pentagon is loading up on new aircraft, missiles, satellites and naval craft for
the next Pacific War, and trying to enlist India as an ally against China.
But what then about Russia? Not so easy. The likely theater for a US-Russia clash is on the
Baltic coast, Ukraine, the Black Sea or Syria. In this case, the US would be confronted by the
same problem that afflicted France in the fall of 1939.
Few people know that it was France that first attacked Germany, not the other way around.
Responding to the German invasion of Poland, France and Britain declared war on Germany. French
divisions began to invade Germany's Rhineland. But after a few skirmishes the French high
command, under the inept Gen. Maurice Gamelin, didn't know what to do next. Germany was large,
and the defensive-minded French did not anticipate occupying its entire country.
After a brief demonstration, the French Army withdrew behind the Maginot Line. Hitler did
not counter-attack in hope he could forge a peace treaty with London and Paris. Winston
Churchill and his fellow imperialists furiously sought to push Britain into war with Germany.
But months of inactivity went by, known as the 'Sitzkrieg' or ' drôle de guerre'
until Germany acted decisively.
This would also be America's problem in a war against Russia. How deep into Russia to attack
(assuming no use of nuclear weapons)? How to protect ever lengthening supply lines? Napoleon
and Hitler faced the same challenges and failed.
Of course, this supposes the US is ready for war. In truth, neither the US and NATO nor
Russia are in any way prepared to fight a real war on land, sea and air. Military forces on
both sides have been so run down and depleted by little wars and budget cuts that there are
serious shortages of war stocks and aging equipment.
Key NATO member Germany is in a shambles. Its feminized military, run by a nice but
incompetent lady defense minister, could not fight its way out of a paper bag. France is not
much better off. The US armed forces and Britain are critically short of spares, munitions,
transport, and armor. Russia's once mighty Red Army is short of everything. Both east and west
are simply unready for a real war.
As if there is any reason for one. There is not. Those jackanapes in the US Congress and
media trying to inflate online mischief by 20-something Russian hackers into a second Pearl
Harbor are crying 'fire' in a crowded theater.
A final respectful note to Gen. Mattis (my dad was a marine): A good general does not
pick a fight with two, far–away major powers at once. The trick is to turn them against
one another. Declaring a future war against China and Russia is a crazy idea. Only
draft-dodgers and generals who lost the Vietnam War could come up with it.
This is mainly about the defense of neoliberal empire which is challenge by Russia who does not wants to be Washington
vassal and China who is rising economic power that challenge the US world dominance and status quo of dollar as the main reserve
currency. There are also some oil related consideration as weakening and dismembering Russia while capturing its oil and gar
resources can postpone the day of becoming for the USA and Western Europe.
Notable quotes:
"... `We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, but great-power competition – not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security.' Henceforth Russia and China will be America's main enemies, with Iran and North Korea thrown in for good measure. ..."
"... At the same time, the US is fast running out of Muslim targets to bomb, now that the bogeyman ISIS has vanished into thin air and US air attacks in Syria are being minimized for fear of clashing with Russia. Iran still remains on the US potential hit list. ..."
"... Which brings us back to General 'Mad Dog' Mattis. He is quite right that so-called terrorists (that's anyone who actively opposes the Lex Americana) pose no real life or death threat to the US mainland. ..."
"... Of course, this supposes the US is ready for war. In truth, neither the US and NATO nor Russia are in any way prepared to fight a real war on land, sea and air. Military forces on both sides have been so run down and depleted by little wars and budget cuts that there are serious shortages of war stocks and aging equipment. ..."
"... Key NATO member Germany is in a shambles. Its feminized military, run by a nice but incompetent lady defense minister, could not fight its way out of a paper bag. France is not much better off. The US armed forces and Britain are critically short of spares, munitions, transport, and armor. Russia's once mighty Red Army is short of everything. Both east and west are simply unready for a real war. ..."
"... As if there is any reason for one. There is not. Those jackanapes in the US Congress and media trying to inflate online mischief by 20-something Russian hackers into a second Pearl Harbor are crying 'fire' in a crowded theater. ..."
"... A final respectful note to Gen. Mattis (my dad was a marine): A good general does not pick a fight with two, far–away major powers at once. The trick is to turn them against one another. Declaring a future war against China and Russia is a crazy idea. Only draft-dodgers and generals who lost the Vietnam War could come up with it. ..."
`We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, but great-power competition
– not terrorism – is now the primary focus of US national security.' Henceforth
Russia and China will be America's main enemies, with Iran and North Korea thrown in for good
measure.
So declared US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, last week in a statement of profound
importance for the world.
For the past seventeen years, the US military has been laying waste to the Muslim world in
the faux `war on terrorism.' Afghanistan, Iraq, much of Syria, Somalia, Pakistan – all
have been heavily bombed. US B-52's and B-1 heavy bombers have tried to pound those resisting
American 'guidance' into submission.
In Afghanistan, America's longest war, President Donald Trump ordered a doubling of bombing
against Taliban forces battling US occupation. Now, the US is running very low on bombs, guided
munitions and even air-to-air missiles for some reason. Stores of munitions are being rushed
from the US Pacific command to the Mideast.
At the same time, the US is fast running out of Muslim targets to bomb, now that the
bogeyman ISIS has vanished into thin air and US air attacks in Syria are being minimized for
fear of clashing with Russia. Iran still remains on the US potential hit list.
Which brings us back to General 'Mad Dog' Mattis. He is quite right that so-called
terrorists (that's anyone who actively opposes the Lex Americana) pose no real life or death
threat to the US mainland.
But if so, how then to maintain the $1 trillion US military budget? Well, of course, trot
out those good old 'Reds Under Our Beds.' Actually, the Pentagon has been planning a new war
with China for the past three years, a mainly air and naval conflict to dominate China's coasts
and seas. The Pentagon is loading up on new aircraft, missiles, satellites and naval craft for
the next Pacific War, and trying to enlist India as an ally against China.
But what then about Russia? Not so easy. The likely theater for a US-Russia clash is on the
Baltic coast, Ukraine, the Black Sea or Syria. In this case, the US would be confronted by the
same problem that afflicted France in the fall of 1939.
Few people know that it was France that first attacked Germany, not the other way around.
Responding to the German invasion of Poland, France and Britain declared war on Germany. French
divisions began to invade Germany's Rhineland. But after a few skirmishes the French high
command, under the inept Gen. Maurice Gamelin, didn't know what to do next. Germany was large,
and the defensive-minded French did not anticipate occupying its entire country.
After a brief demonstration, the French Army withdrew behind the Maginot Line. Hitler did
not counter-attack in hope he could forge a peace treaty with London and Paris. Winston
Churchill and his fellow imperialists furiously sought to push Britain into war with Germany.
But months of inactivity went by, known as the 'Sitzkrieg' or ' drôle de guerre'
until Germany acted decisively.
This would also be America's problem in a war against Russia. How deep into Russia to attack
(assuming no use of nuclear weapons)? How to protect ever lengthening supply lines? Napoleon
and Hitler faced the same challenges and failed.
Of course, this supposes the US is ready for war. In truth, neither the US and NATO nor
Russia are in any way prepared to fight a real war on land, sea and air. Military forces on
both sides have been so run down and depleted by little wars and budget cuts that there are
serious shortages of war stocks and aging equipment.
Key NATO member Germany is in a shambles. Its feminized military, run by a nice but
incompetent lady defense minister, could not fight its way out of a paper bag. France is not
much better off. The US armed forces and Britain are critically short of spares, munitions,
transport, and armor. Russia's once mighty Red Army is short of everything. Both east and west
are simply unready for a real war.
As if there is any reason for one. There is not. Those jackanapes in the US Congress and
media trying to inflate online mischief by 20-something Russian hackers into a second Pearl
Harbor are crying 'fire' in a crowded theater.
A final respectful note to Gen. Mattis (my dad was a marine): A good general does not
pick a fight with two, far–away major powers at once. The trick is to turn them against
one another. Declaring a future war against China and Russia is a crazy idea. Only
draft-dodgers and generals who lost the Vietnam War could come up with it.
Somehow in numerous statements in this thread, mostly boiling down to "mine is more
Russian than yours", the key issues were missed. I am not even talking about obvious trolls
trying to denigrate Putin's foreign policy feats. He achieved a lot more with a relatively
weak hand than the US with a much stronger one, both in Syria and in Ukraine.
Admittedly, Ukraine does not count: only Americans, who have no history and don't know the
history of other countries, could have stepped into that particular pile of s Ukraine brings
ruin to anyone it supports. At the beginning of the eighteens century Ukrainian Hetman Mazepa
betrayed Russia and joined the Swedes. Peter the Great decimated Swedes in the battle near
Poltava. That was the end of Sweden as a great European power. Western Ukrainians fought for
Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI. Where is that Empire now? Then "independent" Ukraine
supported Germans. Well, they lost WWI. Then Ukrainians served Hitler in WWII. USSR smeared
Nazi Germany over he wall. Then Ukrainians were "holier then thou" supporters of the Soviet
Union. Where is it now? So, if I were in the US or EU leadership, I'd make sure that Ukraine
is not my friend, simply for the sake of self-preservation.
Syria is a totally different story. The Empire, on behalf of Israel and Saudis, tried to
break it up into a bunch of powerless Bantustans. The plan seemed to be close to bearing
fruit until Putin threw a wrench into the works. With ridiculously small ground and air force
he turned the tide of the war. The Empire was frustrated. Hence the hysterics.
Anyway, IMHO Putin's Russia has two major weaknesses. One is the profusion of oligarchs
who stole their riches from the state and hid the loot offshore. He does not seem inclined to
tackle them, likely honoring the deal he made in 2000. "Protected" appear to include even
such notorious figures as Chubais (if you ask Russians, ~90% would say that oligarchs should
be stripped of their wealth, tried, and imprisoned; but as many or more would say that
Chubais should be publicly hanged). The other weakness is that it remains a one-man show,
i.e., the absence of credible state institutions and an obvious successor. The rest is
chaff.
"what we see is that western democracies are run by gangs of oligarchs and bureaucrats who
have almost nothing in common with the people they are supposed to represent."
Just for a moment I will take you seriously, although you sometimes write truly silly
stuff, and respond.
Yes, the AngloZionist would prefer to turn and absorb the Russian and Chinese elite, but
only as low subordinates. This is what they have been doing in other conquered countries
– generating a mix of the new and compliant part of the old elite with a greater
proportion of the new elite. The Russian neo-Liberals are ready and waiting for the job,
looking down on their compatriots as cattle (the same word as goyim, what an amazing
coincidence!?). Read what this Felix writes about the Russians. This gang turned Russia into
killing fields in 1917 and will gladly do it again given half a chance by their foreign
masters.
The masters are underwriting the full-time writing of puppets such as Karlin.
Karlin is the Russian Elliot Higgins , interpreting data without a faintest idea of
solid data analysis, a paid full-time hack drawing the right conclusions for the empire.
Perhaps he sees himself as a minister in the Russian puppet government after the successful
regime change.
Therefore, this group of regular trolls (about 10 nicks) on all Saker's
writings are aiming to be that future new Russian servant elite when Russia would be
absorbed. They are truly the last thing that Russian people need.
As I said above, I have seen it all before, it is deja vu all over again (Yogi Bear).
Actually life in Ukraine was not that bad in 2010-2014. Hopefully "After-Maydan" deterioration might be temporary,
although without new markets for Ukrainian industrial goods recovery is almost impossible. Also the level of foreign
debt is now much higher, so they dig a deeper hole for themselves to climb out. Other probable scenario is bankruptcy.
See also
Bill
Black Once a Poster Child for Austerity, Latvia Becomes a Hotbed of Corruption naked capitalism
Poland's level of GDP per capita is 6 times bigger than Ukraine's. They started out
around the same level in 1991 and were supposed to follow the same playbook. To the extent
that their paths diverged can be explained by Ukrainian corruption and incompetence.
Poland received hundreds of billions of dollars in EU subsidies and transfers. Not a fair
comparison. Even still today they are receiving this transfer of wealth from net contributor
countries in the EU (there's another good reason EU became unpopular in net contributor
countries like the UK and the Netherlands):
Energy subsidies from Russia to the Ukraine are estimated at hundreds of billions of
dollars since 1991. The Ukraine has been well subsidized since independence. What they have
been desperately lacking is governance.
Syria's prolonged conflict and misery going into its eighth year is no accident. It is by
design. American imperialist design.
First though, we note the increasing reprehensible absurdity in this conflict.
Turkey, which invaded Syria nearly a month ago in violation of Syria's sovereignty, this
week accused Damascus of "terrorism" after the Syrian government sent forces to defend the
northern area near Afrin under assault from Turkey.
Meanwhile, US forces, again illegally occupying Syria in violation of international law,
claim to be fighting terrorist militia. Yet more often than not, the Americans are affording
protection to various terrorist groups. Then when Syrian state forces advance to clear the
terror groups, the US claims it is acting in "self-defense" by massacring whole units of the
Syrian army.
Further absurdity is due to France, which has been bombing Syria illegally along with the US
and Britain, warning Iranian militia, who are legally present in Syria owing to Damascus'
approval, that they have to withdraw from the country.
As if the situation couldn't get any more bizarre, Israel has carried out more than 100 air
strikes on Syria, claiming that the aggression are "acts of self-defense".
The Syrian government of President Assad is the sovereign authority of the country, as
recognized by UN resolutions. It has the right to defend its nation and to reclaim areas which
have been usurped by illegally armed groups. Virtually all of these insurgents are
foreign-backed proxies who have been waging a war for regime change according to the designs of
their foreign sponsors.
The only armed forces legally present in Syria are those of Russia, Iran and associated
militia who have been requested legally by the Syrian government to assist in defending the
state from a foreign-backed war.
It is within the sovereign right of the Syrian government to take back all areas, including
the suburb of East Ghouta near the capital Damascus. The district has been held under siege by
foreign-backed extremists going by the name of Jaysh al Islam who are affiliated with
internationally proscribed terror groups Al Nusra Front and Islamic State.
The impetus to liberate East Ghouta has come about because the militants have been firing
mortars at nearby Damascus with deadly results.
Not only are Western states violating international law by militarily hampering the Syrian
army and its allies in rescuing the country from foreign insurgents, the Western governments
and media are mounting a propaganda campaign in an attempt to tie the Syrian state forces'
hands behind their backs by distorting their legal duty as "barbarism".
Out of the half million people who have died in the past seven years of war in Syria, it is
estimated that nearly half of that total were members of the Syrian army.
Added to the Western calumnies over Syria are claims that Syrian state forces have been
using chemical weapons on civilian populations. The evidence points in fact to the
Western-backed so-called jihadists who have been stealthily using these weapons for false-flag
propaganda stunts.
To understand the chaotic conflict in Syria, we must refer to the decades-old imperial
designs that the US and its allies have had towards the country. The Americans and the British
governments going back to Eisenhower and Churchill in the 1950s wanted to destabilize and
subjugate the Arab republic – a former French colony.
In 1996, a new generation of imperialists in Washington led by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith,
David Wurmser and other neoconservatives formulated the "Clean Break" strategy. The strategy in
conjunction with Israel sought to destabilize and "roll back" Syria because of its alliance
with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
More widely, the neoconservatives in Washington openly declared their aim of balkanizing the
entire region in order to, in their calculation, make Israel more secure. Syria and Iraq were
top priorities for US-imposed chaos.
Significantly, the Clean Break strategy designated Turkey as a key partner to the US and
Israel for implementing this plan.
The same American neoconservative planners went on to occupy key positions at the Pentagon
and State Department during President George W Bush administrations. There is every reason to
believe their stratagem of organized chaos – as a way of exerting hegemony over the
oil-rich Middle East – continues to be the guiding, albeit tacit, policy of the US
government under President Trump.
Russia, Iran and Hezbollah largely helped Syria bring the war to a close at the end of last
year with the widespread routing of foreign-backed insurgents. However, a subsequent peace
process
brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey has lost momentum. The violence in Syria appears to be
re-igniting.
The increasingly overt military presence of US and Turkish forces, as well as Israeli
incursions, is the clearest factor in the resurgence of conflict. More than ever, the US and
its allies are operating on a brazen imperial design to dismember Syria and its territorial
integrity.
This is nothing short of criminal aggression by Washington following a deliberate plan for
regional domination. This imperialist intrigue should be called out for what it is by the
United Nations. But rather than upholding the UN Charter, the body's senior figures are
joining
in the Western chorus of condemning Syria for defending its national rights.
The UN is appearing like the ineffectual League of Nations in the 1930s when it pandered to
Nazi and fascist aggression. What the US and its allies are doing now in Syria is a repeat
– fanning the flames of wider war in the Middle East.
Laws and sovereignty are being smashed at will and yet the Western media and UN are blind to
the aggression. Indeed, they are turning reality on its head, by blaming victim-states for the
aggression.
The straightforward bottom line is that the US, Turkey, Israel and other NATO powers must
withdraw from Syria. Respect Syria's sovereignty and desist from criminal intrigues for regime
change. This is a minimum of abiding by international law.
If these protagonists persist in their criminal schemes, the region is heading for a
conflagration sparing no-one.
We can't continue to run the world... sentiment toward the US has started to shift too; there was a time when we were welcome...
We often have a foreign policy, especially in the last several decades, of being the dominant power. We pressure people; if they
do what we tell 'em,
we send them more money, since we can print the world currency. And if they don't do what we
tell 'em, then we have to participate in a little aggression by bombing and doing these kinds of things.
Former Texas Congressman and leading libertarian thinker Dr. Ron Paul has shared his views
on President Trump's job as president after his first year in office, the situation in Syria
and the renewed debate on gun control in the wake of the Florida school shooting.
Trump's
Year in Office
Sputnik: Donald Trump has been in office for over a year. What is your general assessment of
his job as president?
Ron Paul: Mediocre; probably not worse than the other options. But I don't think presidents
really have much control. I think the deep state – the people behind the scenes and the
shadow government, who control the monetary system, who control our foreign policy and the
welfare state, and are connected to the media and the military-industrial complex. – I
don't think the presidency is as important as it's made out to be. But everybody talks about
it; it's a political thing, and they keep churning the issue and directing everybody to ask 'is
Trump a good guy or a bad guy, and are we going to impeach him or what's going to happen',
rather than [asking] what kind of philosophy do we have: why do we have this philosophy of
welfare-warfare, spend money, run up debt and let the central bank print all that money.
They don't even talk about it; the major parties, including Trump, they sign even more
controls on us when it comes to FISA courts and spying on us. In spite of the fact that
government officials like the FBI and others actually spy on our own president, he supports
this; he passes and signs bills on that. So that really raises questions about 'does the
president really have much to say', and I think he has much less to say than a lot of people
believe. I believe that if he had stuck to his guns and had a different relationship with
Russia and started bringing troops home and not aggravating things, he wouldn't have been
tolerated. Something would have happened.
Syria and America's Place in the World
Sputnik: Moving on to the Middle East, in your reports you've stated that with so many
countries controlling territory in Syria, there's very little left for the Syrians. Do you
think there's a good chance that government forces can regain control of the country?
Ron Paul: I do. I think there will always be a Syria. What it's going to look like is the
big problem. At the moment, it's hard to predict and say that the people who have invaded --
the Turks, the Israelis, the United States will leave. They're going to have to suffer a defeat
somewhere along the way. That may occur soon –another defeat like Aleppo. That might make
them think differently, but it's still a hotbed
Sputnik: There's an ongoing campaign in the east of Demascus in Eastern Ghouta, with media
portrayals of it in the West comparing the ongoing campaign to Srebrenica and what happened in
Bosnia. Why do you think this is, and how is the situation being portrayed in the West? Do
Americans know what's actually going on?
Ron Paul: I think this, indirectly, may be a subtle bit of good news You know Aleppo was
seen as a return of Syrian territory, and a lot of people moved back! Everybody said that 'it's
Assad who wants to kill his people and gas his people,' and yet they all moved back after the
fighting stopped. So maybe this is one of the last desperate stands [for the anti-Damascus
forces], at least for the part of Syria where Assad is stronger
Sputnik: The UN has been commenting on this to emphasize how bad things are in Syria, and
particularly in Eastern Ghouta. But the situation was also really bad in Mosul in Iraq, with
recent video footage showing the results of US airstrikes. Where do you think the UN was
then?
Ron Paul: Probably cheering them on. We often have a foreign policy, especially in the last
several decades, of being the dominant power. We pressure people; if they do what we tell 'em,
we send them more money, since we can print the world currency. And if they don't do what we
tell 'em, then we have to participate in a little aggression by bombing and doing these kinds
of things. My argument from the day they started, back to 1998 – I argued don't mess
around with sanctions on Iraq, it'll lead to war.
Someday, we'll go broke. I don't think that we all of a sudden will have a reasonable
foreign policy. I think it's going to be financial. I believe it was the financing of the
Soviet system that brought it down as much as anything; that's the way most authoritarian
empires end, and I think that's the way our system is going to end. Who knows when that's going
to happen, but we can't continue to do what we're doing.
We can't continue to run the world. Our deficit's exploding. I think the sentiment toward
the United States has started to shift too; there was a time when we were welcome, and were on
the side of trying to help people, but right now it's on the side of expanding our controls
around the world.
... ... ...
You can find the complete audio from Dr. Paul's full interview with Sputnik below
Somehow in numerous statements in this thread, mostly boiling down to "mine is more
Russian than yours", the key issues were missed. I am not even talking about obvious trolls
trying to denigrate Putin's foreign policy feats. He achieved a lot more with a relatively
weak hand than the US with a much stronger one, both in Syria and in Ukraine.
Admittedly, Ukraine does not count: only Americans, who have no history and don't know the
history of other countries, could have stepped into that particular pile of s Ukraine brings
ruin to anyone it supports. At the beginning of the eighteens century Ukrainian Hetman Mazepa
betrayed Russia and joined the Swedes. Peter the Great decimated Swedes in the battle near
Poltava. That was the end of Sweden as a great European power. Western Ukrainians fought for
Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI. Where is that Empire now? Then "independent" Ukraine
supported Germans. Well, they lost WWI. Then Ukrainians served Hitler in WWII. USSR smeared
Nazi Germany over he wall. Then Ukrainians were "holier then thou" supporters of the Soviet
Union. Where is it now? So, if I were in the US or EU leadership, I'd make sure that Ukraine
is not my friend, simply for the sake of self-preservation.
Syria is a totally different story. The Empire, on behalf of Israel and Saudis, tried to
break it up into a bunch of powerless Bantustans. The plan seemed to be close to bearing
fruit until Putin threw a wrench into the works. With ridiculously small ground and air force
he turned the tide of the war. The Empire was frustrated. Hence the hysterics.
Anyway, IMHO Putin's Russia has two major weaknesses. One is the profusion of oligarchs
who stole their riches from the state and hid the loot offshore. He does not seem inclined to
tackle them, likely honoring the deal he made in 2000. "Protected" appear to include even
such notorious figures as Chubais (if you ask Russians, ~90% would say that oligarchs should
be stripped of their wealth, tried, and imprisoned; but as many or more would say that
Chubais should be publicly hanged). The other weakness is that it remains a one-man show,
i.e., the absence of credible state institutions and an obvious successor. The rest is
chaff.
"what we see is that western democracies are run by gangs of oligarchs and bureaucrats who
have almost nothing in common with the people they are supposed to represent."
Just for a moment I will take you seriously, although you sometimes write truly silly
stuff, and respond.
Yes, the AngloZionist would prefer to turn and absorb the Russian and Chinese elite, but
only as low subordinates. This is what they have been doing in other conquered countries
– generating a mix of the new and compliant part of the old elite with a greater
proportion of the new elite. The Russian neo-Liberals are ready and waiting for the job,
looking down on their compatriots as cattle (the same word as goyim, what an amazing
coincidence!?). Read what this Felix writes about the Russians. This gang turned Russia into
killing fields in 1917 and will gladly do it again given half a chance by their foreign
masters.
The masters are underwriting the full-time writing of puppets such as Karlin.
Karlin is the Russian Elliot Higgins , interpreting data without a faintest idea of
solid data analysis, a paid full-time hack drawing the right conclusions for the empire.
Perhaps he sees himself as a minister in the Russian puppet government after the successful
regime change.
Therefore, this group of regular trolls (about 10 nicks) on all Saker's
writings are aiming to be that future new Russian servant elite when Russia would be
absorbed. They are truly the last thing that Russian people need.
As I said above, I have seen it all before, it is deja vu all over again (Yogi Bear).
Actually life in Ukraine was not that bad in 2010-2014. Hopefully "After-Maydan" deterioration might be temporary,
although without new markets for Ukrainian industrial goods recovery is almost impossible. Also the level of foreign
debt is now much higher, so they dig a deeper hole for themselves to climb out. Other probable scenario is bankruptcy.
See also
Bill
Black Once a Poster Child for Austerity, Latvia Becomes a Hotbed of Corruption naked capitalism
Poland's level of GDP per capita is 6 times bigger than Ukraine's. They started out
around the same level in 1991 and were supposed to follow the same playbook. To the extent
that their paths diverged can be explained by Ukrainian corruption and incompetence.
Poland received hundreds of billions of dollars in EU subsidies and transfers. Not a fair
comparison. Even still today they are receiving this transfer of wealth from net contributor
countries in the EU (there's another good reason EU became unpopular in net contributor
countries like the UK and the Netherlands):
Energy subsidies from Russia to the Ukraine are estimated at hundreds of billions of
dollars since 1991. The Ukraine has been well subsidized since independence. What they have
been desperately lacking is governance.
Syria's prolonged conflict and misery going into its eighth year is no accident. It is by
design. American imperialist design.
First though, we note the increasing reprehensible absurdity in this conflict.
Turkey, which invaded Syria nearly a month ago in violation of Syria's sovereignty, this
week accused Damascus of "terrorism" after the Syrian government sent forces to defend the
northern area near Afrin under assault from Turkey.
Meanwhile, US forces, again illegally occupying Syria in violation of international law,
claim to be fighting terrorist militia. Yet more often than not, the Americans are affording
protection to various terrorist groups. Then when Syrian state forces advance to clear the
terror groups, the US claims it is acting in "self-defense" by massacring whole units of the
Syrian army.
Further absurdity is due to France, which has been bombing Syria illegally along with the US
and Britain, warning Iranian militia, who are legally present in Syria owing to Damascus'
approval, that they have to withdraw from the country.
As if the situation couldn't get any more bizarre, Israel has carried out more than 100 air
strikes on Syria, claiming that the aggression are "acts of self-defense".
The Syrian government of President Assad is the sovereign authority of the country, as
recognized by UN resolutions. It has the right to defend its nation and to reclaim areas which
have been usurped by illegally armed groups. Virtually all of these insurgents are
foreign-backed proxies who have been waging a war for regime change according to the designs of
their foreign sponsors.
The only armed forces legally present in Syria are those of Russia, Iran and associated
militia who have been requested legally by the Syrian government to assist in defending the
state from a foreign-backed war.
It is within the sovereign right of the Syrian government to take back all areas, including
the suburb of East Ghouta near the capital Damascus. The district has been held under siege by
foreign-backed extremists going by the name of Jaysh al Islam who are affiliated with
internationally proscribed terror groups Al Nusra Front and Islamic State.
The impetus to liberate East Ghouta has come about because the militants have been firing
mortars at nearby Damascus with deadly results.
Not only are Western states violating international law by militarily hampering the Syrian
army and its allies in rescuing the country from foreign insurgents, the Western governments
and media are mounting a propaganda campaign in an attempt to tie the Syrian state forces'
hands behind their backs by distorting their legal duty as "barbarism".
Out of the half million people who have died in the past seven years of war in Syria, it is
estimated that nearly half of that total were members of the Syrian army.
Added to the Western calumnies over Syria are claims that Syrian state forces have been
using chemical weapons on civilian populations. The evidence points in fact to the
Western-backed so-called jihadists who have been stealthily using these weapons for false-flag
propaganda stunts.
To understand the chaotic conflict in Syria, we must refer to the decades-old imperial
designs that the US and its allies have had towards the country. The Americans and the British
governments going back to Eisenhower and Churchill in the 1950s wanted to destabilize and
subjugate the Arab republic – a former French colony.
In 1996, a new generation of imperialists in Washington led by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith,
David Wurmser and other neoconservatives formulated the "Clean Break" strategy. The strategy in
conjunction with Israel sought to destabilize and "roll back" Syria because of its alliance
with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
More widely, the neoconservatives in Washington openly declared their aim of balkanizing the
entire region in order to, in their calculation, make Israel more secure. Syria and Iraq were
top priorities for US-imposed chaos.
Significantly, the Clean Break strategy designated Turkey as a key partner to the US and
Israel for implementing this plan.
The same American neoconservative planners went on to occupy key positions at the Pentagon
and State Department during President George W Bush administrations. There is every reason to
believe their stratagem of organized chaos – as a way of exerting hegemony over the
oil-rich Middle East – continues to be the guiding, albeit tacit, policy of the US
government under President Trump.
Russia, Iran and Hezbollah largely helped Syria bring the war to a close at the end of last
year with the widespread routing of foreign-backed insurgents. However, a subsequent peace
process
brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey has lost momentum. The violence in Syria appears to be
re-igniting.
The increasingly overt military presence of US and Turkish forces, as well as Israeli
incursions, is the clearest factor in the resurgence of conflict. More than ever, the US and
its allies are operating on a brazen imperial design to dismember Syria and its territorial
integrity.
This is nothing short of criminal aggression by Washington following a deliberate plan for
regional domination. This imperialist intrigue should be called out for what it is by the
United Nations. But rather than upholding the UN Charter, the body's senior figures are
joining
in the Western chorus of condemning Syria for defending its national rights.
The UN is appearing like the ineffectual League of Nations in the 1930s when it pandered to
Nazi and fascist aggression. What the US and its allies are doing now in Syria is a repeat
– fanning the flames of wider war in the Middle East.
Laws and sovereignty are being smashed at will and yet the Western media and UN are blind to
the aggression. Indeed, they are turning reality on its head, by blaming victim-states for the
aggression.
The straightforward bottom line is that the US, Turkey, Israel and other NATO powers must
withdraw from Syria. Respect Syria's sovereignty and desist from criminal intrigues for regime
change. This is a minimum of abiding by international law.
If these protagonists persist in their criminal schemes, the region is heading for a
conflagration sparing no-one.
We can't continue to run the world... sentiment toward the US has started to shift too; there was a time when we were welcome...
We often have a foreign policy, especially in the last several decades, of being the dominant power. We pressure people; if they
do what we tell 'em,
we send them more money, since we can print the world currency. And if they don't do what we
tell 'em, then we have to participate in a little aggression by bombing and doing these kinds of things.
Former Texas Congressman and leading libertarian thinker Dr. Ron Paul has shared his views
on President Trump's job as president after his first year in office, the situation in Syria
and the renewed debate on gun control in the wake of the Florida school shooting.
Trump's
Year in Office
Sputnik: Donald Trump has been in office for over a year. What is your general assessment of
his job as president?
Ron Paul: Mediocre; probably not worse than the other options. But I don't think presidents
really have much control. I think the deep state – the people behind the scenes and the
shadow government, who control the monetary system, who control our foreign policy and the
welfare state, and are connected to the media and the military-industrial complex. – I
don't think the presidency is as important as it's made out to be. But everybody talks about
it; it's a political thing, and they keep churning the issue and directing everybody to ask 'is
Trump a good guy or a bad guy, and are we going to impeach him or what's going to happen',
rather than [asking] what kind of philosophy do we have: why do we have this philosophy of
welfare-warfare, spend money, run up debt and let the central bank print all that money.
They don't even talk about it; the major parties, including Trump, they sign even more
controls on us when it comes to FISA courts and spying on us. In spite of the fact that
government officials like the FBI and others actually spy on our own president, he supports
this; he passes and signs bills on that. So that really raises questions about 'does the
president really have much to say', and I think he has much less to say than a lot of people
believe. I believe that if he had stuck to his guns and had a different relationship with
Russia and started bringing troops home and not aggravating things, he wouldn't have been
tolerated. Something would have happened.
Syria and America's Place in the World
Sputnik: Moving on to the Middle East, in your reports you've stated that with so many
countries controlling territory in Syria, there's very little left for the Syrians. Do you
think there's a good chance that government forces can regain control of the country?
Ron Paul: I do. I think there will always be a Syria. What it's going to look like is the
big problem. At the moment, it's hard to predict and say that the people who have invaded --
the Turks, the Israelis, the United States will leave. They're going to have to suffer a defeat
somewhere along the way. That may occur soon –another defeat like Aleppo. That might make
them think differently, but it's still a hotbed
Sputnik: There's an ongoing campaign in the east of Demascus in Eastern Ghouta, with media
portrayals of it in the West comparing the ongoing campaign to Srebrenica and what happened in
Bosnia. Why do you think this is, and how is the situation being portrayed in the West? Do
Americans know what's actually going on?
Ron Paul: I think this, indirectly, may be a subtle bit of good news You know Aleppo was
seen as a return of Syrian territory, and a lot of people moved back! Everybody said that 'it's
Assad who wants to kill his people and gas his people,' and yet they all moved back after the
fighting stopped. So maybe this is one of the last desperate stands [for the anti-Damascus
forces], at least for the part of Syria where Assad is stronger
Sputnik: The UN has been commenting on this to emphasize how bad things are in Syria, and
particularly in Eastern Ghouta. But the situation was also really bad in Mosul in Iraq, with
recent video footage showing the results of US airstrikes. Where do you think the UN was
then?
Ron Paul: Probably cheering them on. We often have a foreign policy, especially in the last
several decades, of being the dominant power. We pressure people; if they do what we tell 'em,
we send them more money, since we can print the world currency. And if they don't do what we
tell 'em, then we have to participate in a little aggression by bombing and doing these kinds
of things. My argument from the day they started, back to 1998 – I argued don't mess
around with sanctions on Iraq, it'll lead to war.
Someday, we'll go broke. I don't think that we all of a sudden will have a reasonable
foreign policy. I think it's going to be financial. I believe it was the financing of the
Soviet system that brought it down as much as anything; that's the way most authoritarian
empires end, and I think that's the way our system is going to end. Who knows when that's going
to happen, but we can't continue to do what we're doing.
We can't continue to run the world. Our deficit's exploding. I think the sentiment toward
the United States has started to shift too; there was a time when we were welcome, and were on
the side of trying to help people, but right now it's on the side of expanding our controls
around the world.
... ... ...
You can find the complete audio from Dr. Paul's full interview with Sputnik below
An interesting discussion with two polar views on the situation. There is no good guys in the
story anyway. Nether the USA, or Russia, or Ukrainian nationalists, or separatists qualify. Truth
probably lies somewhere in between. The debate itself reminds the current political debate in the
USA between neoliberals/globalists and "economic nationalists"/isolationalists : the two sides do
not hear other and their positions are irreconcilable. Each has its own set of grievances. Its
own version of history. And its own vision of the desirable future.
Independence by itself meant huge stimulus to Western Ukrainian nationalists (who
historically lived a long time under Hapsburg empire). So their political ascendance were given
and Maydan was just the culmination point of a long process (actually encouraged by EU members
such as Germany, Poland , Baltic republics and Sweden)
The USA clearly tried to secure it geopolitical interests via forcefully turning Ukraine to
the West. Despite the fact that it was not completely ready for such a move yet; although were
slowly moving in this direction since independence. Germany (and EU in general) played the same
fatal role of "accelerator" as well. They wanted new markets for their goods and also have
geopolitical interests in weakening Russia (which did happened; Ukraine was the biggest strategic
defeat of Putin). The Nazi Lebensraum was, after all, about Ukraine.
But the process of "separation" from Russia was pretty much under way since independence and
proceeded at a brisk pace under Yanukovich too, who actually supported Ukrainian nationalists
during his term (especially Svoboda, hoping to create something like the USA two party systems:
nationalists vs Party of Regions). And it was Yanukovich government which prepared and intended
to sign the association agreement with the EU. Then Yanukovich hesitated to sign it and at this
point was doomed as pro-Western forces has already their own dynamics and financial support from
abroad. With the financial. organizational and political support support of the USA and EU were
able to depose him. Large (for Ukraine political scene) amount of money was injected, protesters
bused from Western Ukraine, and eventually yet another color revolution (the first was so called
Orange revolution which brought to power Yushchenko government) took care of Yanukovich regime.
The problem is that this "alternative" political course and a new vision of Ukrainian future
proved to be a minefield. Also the association agreement with EU was very unfair to Ukrainian
economic interests and essentially downgraded the status of Ukraine to the status of neo-colony
openly promoting deindustrialization like in Baltic Republics.
Some unrealistic dreams about benefits of Ukraine association with EU were pretty widespread
and become a political factor in the success of the Maydan. nobody understood that by trying to
balance between Russia and the West Yanukovich postponed the day of reckoning and kept economics
expanding. Everybody hated corrupt Yanukovich although some members of his cabinet were pretty
competent technocrats. Nobody calculated losses from the separation of economic ties with Russia
and having a hostile Russia as a neighbor. Hopes that EU will open its market for Ukrainian
agricultural goods and to Ukrainian gastarbeiters proved to be exaggerated. To say nothing about
the danger (or even mere possibility) of civil war as the result of Maydan. All those dreams
about improving the standard of living via association with EU were buried after the Maydan very
soon. The currency dropped around 300% after 2014 from 8.5 to 27 grivna per dollar. Markets in
Russia are almost completely lost.
Ukrainian nationalists decided that the success of Maydan gave them carte blanche on
neo-colonization of Eastern Ukraine as well as the suppression of Russian language and culture.
They miscalculated. This policy was similar to "Polinization of Western Ukraine" by Poles and it
faced growing resistance. Lugansk and Donetsk republic are direct results of this resistance (not
without Russia help). In other words this policy backfired, and now those regions represent a
Gordian knot for both the USA, EU, Russia and Ukraine. For Poroshenko government to agree on
federalization (which Minsk accords presuppose) means to lose face politically (Why to organize
Maydan in such cases, if the net result is a huge drop of the standard of living, loss of Crimea,
and federalization of Ukraine?), and they prefer military solution to the problem. The USA under
Trump administration are only happy to sell weapons to them (as well as coal to replace lost coal
from Donetsk region). And nuclear fuel to electrical stations inread of Russia. Meanwhile
economics is not improving and that also represents a political threat to Poroshenko, making push
for the military solution more probable.
Notable quotes:
"... Any agreement, however -- at least as far as the U.S. State Department is concerned -- would require that Russia must make the first move to ease tensions. ..."
"... Secretary Tillerson has made it abundantly clear that Russia must take the first steps to de-escalate violence and resolve this conflict by fully implementing the Minsk Accords." ..."
"... Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for ..."
"... . You can follow him on Twitter: ..."
"... This country is screwed, alas. Peacekeepers will not change much, but they could help stop shellings and thus help regular people who suffer the most. ..."
"... Strelkov came into Donbass on April 12, 2014 and the acting president Turchinov announced ATO (Anti terrorist operation) on April 7. The people of Donbass protested peacefully for months and no one wanted to talk with them. They sent tanks and jets instead. ..."
"... "And yes, his self-promotion as the "governor of Donetsk" was both illegal and unpopular with the locals." ..."
"... Indeed, that is why there is a civil war in Ukraine. "Red Cross officially declares Ukraine civil war" https://www.thelocal.ch/201... ..."
Any agreement, however -- at least as far as the U.S. State Department is concerned --
would require that Russia must make the first move to ease tensions. However, it is
unclear is Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or anyone in his department truly speaks for the
Trump Administration.
"It's important to be clear about U.S. policy towards the conflict: Crimea is Ukraine. The
Donbas is Ukraine. We will never accept trading one region of Ukraine for another. We will
never make a deal about Ukraine without Ukraine," John J. Sullivan, deputy secretary of state,
said during a speech in at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Diplomatic Academy in Kiev on
Feb.
21 . "To advance these fundamental goals, Secretary Tillerson appointed Ambassador Kurt
Volker as Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations in July of last year. And his mandate
is to break the deadlock with Russia over Ukraine. Secretary Tillerson has made it
abundantly clear that Russia must take the first steps to de-escalate violence and resolve this
conflict by fully implementing the Minsk Accords."
Time will tell if any progress will be made in solving the Donbas situation.
Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest . You can follow
him on Twitter:@davemajumdar.
If that's the case, then America needs to pull it's own illegal occupation forces out of
eastern Syria ASAP too! Eastern Syria is Syria. Eastern Syria is NOT part of Kurdistan! What
a bunch of hypocrites.
"One potential approach -- which as been proposed by U.S. special representative to
Ukraine Kurt Volker -- is where peacekeepers would be deployed in phases while Ukraine
implements some of the measures it agreed to under the Minsk agreements."
It stipulates that Ukraine should complete a number of things, and by the end of it
Donbass will be returned to Ukraine. If you add phased peacekeepers to this it could work,
the peacekeepers would start between Donbass and Ukraine, and then move into Donbass and get
more control the more of the Minsk 2 agreement Ukraine completed.
The peacekeepers could not be NATO or Russian troops for each side to agree obviously
Europe and the US have nothing of value to offer to Ukraine because there's little to
exchange it for. There is no economy and too few natural resources to fight for. Thus,
Ukraine will remain a suitcase without a handle despite wet dreams of its ultra-nationalists
(should be represented in the troll section of this thread).
It will remain useless as an economical ally to Russia in the upcoming years because
Ukraine is divided within itself.
The only thing it will be good for, is to serve as an example for everybody on how foolish
it is to overthrow democratically elected governments for the sake of fairy tales.
The conflict there will be frozen for decades, as it was frozen in Moldova and Georgia.
Without Russian and European investments, there will be no economical development in
Ukraine.
This country is screwed, alas. Peacekeepers will not change much, but they could help
stop shellings and thus help regular people who suffer the most.
Vadim, if Ukraine is not important, why do you spend so much of your precious time writing
about it? Why does Russia keep financing the war in Donbass if its so uninteresting to invest
in Ukraine? Why did Russia steal Ukrainian gas in the Azov Sea? Or why does it steal
ukrainian coal in Donbass? Where did the machinery from the Donbass factories go, Vadim?
-The coal belongs to the people of Donbass, not Ukraine, and Ukraine itself banned buying
gas from these territories in hope that it will cause more misery to the civilians living
there, just like Ukraine stole their pensions and their social welfare in hope for causing
maximal suffering.
The Donbass is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Second Ukraine is not
obliged to pay for the Russian occupation of its territory. The occupation force is
responsible for everything that happens inside that territory, even the payment or not of
pensions.
That is a pure lie, the conflict between Donbass and Ukraine is a civil war. Russia is not
occupying those territories. And Donbass will return to Ukraine if they can follow thru on
the Minsk 2 agreement like they agreed to, but never will of course, because the
hyper-corrupt Ukrainian government need the legitimacy and distraction that war brings both
domestically to avoid coup and internationally as an excuse.
Strelkov, referring to the war he helped start in Donbas: "In the beginning, nobody there
wanted to fight."
Pro-Russian agitators like Pavel Gubarev tried to illegally take over government buildings
in E Ukraine, and also tried to organize protests, but they had little support from the local
population. The local population was cynical about Kiev, but they certainly weren't
interested in starting a civil war. That is why Strelkov and other Russians had to start the
war.
"but they certainly weren't interested in starting a civil war. That is why Strelkov
and other Russians had to start the war."
-Nobody wanted a war of course, that is one reason why the Kiev government became so
dependent on volunteer n4zists, they were the only one that was eager and willing to kill
their brothers at the whims of the unconstitutional coup regime. The average Ukrainian
soldiers didn't want to fight and a lot of the Donbass fighters came from defected Ukrainian
soldiers.
Again, all I have to do is point to Strelkov: "In the beginning, nobody there wanted to
fight."
"I dream of a Russia in its natural borders," he says. "At least those of 1939." He claims
to have been the one who convinced Putin to intervene militarily in Ukraine, at a time, he
says, when the Kremlin was still debating the proper approach to the country."
"I was the one who pulled the trigger for war," Strelkov boasts."
Doesn't matter at all what some commanders "boasts" , the war was started when the
unconstitutional and unelected government of Ukraine sent its army to crush the rebels.
Strelkov came into Donbass on April 12, 2014 and the acting president Turchinov
announced ATO (Anti terrorist operation) on April 7.
The people of Donbass protested peacefully for months and no one wanted to talk with them.
They sent tanks and jets instead.
"and also tried to organize protests, but they had little support from the local
population. "
Strelkov took Slavyansk on April 12 - that's not when he arrived. As for the ATO, yes, it
was announced on April 7, after armed separatists stormed regional government buildings in
Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov, raised Russian flags, and said they would hold an independence
referendum. What would Russia do if Karelia was taken over by pro-Finnish separatists? And
keep in mind, when the ATO was announced, Turchynov promised amnesty for separatists who laid
down arms.
No, the "people" of Donbass did not protest peacefully (Gubarev and others were not
representative of the people of Donbass). Gubarev and others repeatedly tried to seize
buildings and declare self-rule/independence. But polls during that time clearly showed that
people did not want independence, even if they were unhappy about Yanukovych being ousted
from the presidency. Public opinion did not really shift towards independence until after the
fire of Odessa and Mariupol, when Donbass regions were under separatist control and
influenced by Russian propaganda.
"Strelkov, referring to the war he helped start in Donbas: "In the beginning, nobody there
wanted to fight.""
-The civil war was started when the unelected and unconstitutional coup government sent
the army to kill the rebels in Donbass for just wanting their language rights protected.
"Pro-Russian agitators like Pavel Gubarev tried to illegally take over government
buildings in E Ukraine,"
-Pavel is a Ukrainian, and it is pretty far fetched to call it illegal to resist to an
illegal unconstitutional coup government.
I have not seen any proof that there was a coordinated coup to remove Yanukovych. On Feb
21st, Western powers got what they wanted when Yanukovych agreed to form a coalition
government with Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and Tyahnybok (OK, maybe Tyahnbok wasn't they're first
choice) and have early elections. Yanukovych fled because the security forces abandoned him.
They most likely abandoned him because the Feb 21st agreement called for investigation into
violence on the Maidan, and they thought they would be blamed for everything.
I never said Gubarev wasn't Ukrainian. But he was clearly a pro-Russian agitator. And yes,
his self-promotion as the "governor of Donetsk" was both illegal and unpopular with the
locals.
He was in Kharkiv, but not on an official visit. He was fleeing. And sorry, but protests
attended by a few thousand people do not mean that Gubarev had widespread support.
"And yes, his self-promotion as the "governor of Donetsk" was both illegal and unpopular
with the locals."
-Hardly illegal, quite the opposite, more like it was a duty to resist an unconstitutional
coup government. And while I have not found a opinion poll on rebel controlled areas, the
closes I found suggest that the rebels has a very high support among the Donbass
population.
"An opinion poll that was taken on the day of the referendum and the day before by a
correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Washington Post, and five other
media outlets found that of those people who intended to vote, 94.8% would vote for
independence. The poll did not claim to have scientific precision, but was carried out to get
a basis from which to judge the outcome of the referendum, given that independent observers
were not present to monitor it. Even with those who said they would not vote counted in, a
65.6% majority supported separation from Ukraine"
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/...
You should probably try reading the actual article, instead of quoting Wikipedia. The
journalists polled 186 people, and of those 110 supported independence. That's a tiny and
insignificant sample size. People voting for independence had been going through a war
started by pro-Russian separatists, they were under the martial law of pro-Russian
separatists, and their only news was Russian propaganda telling them that Kiev was all Nazis
who wanted to exterminate Russia. Also, as you no doubt saw while reading Wikipedia, polls
taken before Strelkov and the others started the war showed that the locals were not
supportive of independence.
" them that Kiev was all Nazis who wanted to exterminate Russia"
-Pretty close to the truth actually, Kiev certainly did and are doing everything they can
do exterminate the local civilians in Donbas, but stealing their pensions, cutting of social
pay, hindering and stoping food, medicine and water.
Actually I mentioned that in my comment, there are no opinion polls but the closes we get
is the opinion polls from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Washington Post, which shows a
massive support for the rebels. Which is no surprise as we are talking about an illegal
unconstitutional pro-nazi government seizing power.
"tthe locals were not supportive of independence.
-The support for rebels are as all sources show quite high, of course nobody wanted the
war, but that was forced on them by the unelected coup government. If Ukraine had just
language right of the Donbass people there would have been no war.
No, Kiev was not filled with Nazis. Russia engaged in fearmongering to get Crimeans to
vote for independence. And what happened? The Ukrainian Army in Crimea resisted all
provocations to start a war. Kiev thought that the international community would come to its
aid. Remember the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2014? Svoboda and Right Sector
barely had any public support at all. The lie that Kiev was filled with Nazis was just that -
a lie.
Again, your Frankfurter Allgemeine poll was less than 200 people who happened to be
willing to talk to Western journalists. Only 110 of them said they wanted independence, and
this was after living under martial law and Russian propaganda for months. There were plenty
of actual scientific polls conducted in April before the "referendum" which showed that there
was no support for secession - at most, people wanted decentralisation.
Well, depends on what you mean with proof I suppose, is an American marxist oligarchs
admitting they spent millions to training demonstrators to subvert Ukrainian democracy
proof?
Is the fact that 100% of NATO controlled media support the Ukrainian opposition proof?
Is that fact that USA leaders went down to Ukraine and gave out cookies to the undemocratic
opposition and held speeches encouraging them to overthrow their government proof?
Is leaked phone calls from USA telling Ukraine which leaders should be installed(which later
were installed) proof?
Is Obama openly admitting they handled the "transition of power" in Ukraine proof?
Is the fact that the fascist and ultra-nationalist groups used used to overthrow the
democratic government of Ukraine(OUN) known CIA assets proof? I mean, basically, it was the
most blatant coup in world history. But if you literally want the USA government to totally
in details describe and admit to every detail you will just have to wait a few years or
decades until it is released in a FOI report like the fact that USA created ISIS.
- I'm assuming you mean the $5 billion the US invested over 20+ years? Russia invested $40
billion in the same time frame - 8x as much as the US (see Sergey Glazyev's March 24, 2014
interview with National Review). Financial investments in democratic institutions are not
proof of a coup, but nice try.
- NATO controlled media? There's no such thing.
- Why is it such a big deal with Nuland giving out cookies?
- John McCain didn't encourage them to "overthrow their government". When did he say that?
He said "We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine
its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe."
- Did you know that government officials from European countries and the EU also
encouraged the protesters?
- Nuland and the US were clearly operating to keep the opposition united, and yes, they
pushed their interests by encouraging Yatsenyuk to take the lead. But Yatsenyuk, Klitschko,
and Tyahnybok were already established as opposition politicians in general, and had been
accepted by the Maidan protesters before the US arrived on the scene. And besides, the Feb
21st agreement was what the US wanted - it would have placed those three figures in a
coalition government with Yanukovych, followed by early elections. All of that considered,
the fact that they emerged as leaders after Yanukovych left is really not surprising.
- Obama admitted what everyone knew - the US had entered into the crisis on the side of
the EU to push Yanukovych to listen to the protesters. Russia, of course, was pushing
Yanukovych to crack down. I remember when RT and Sputnik tried to twist it to mean Obama was
claiming the US was behind a coup - it was the most blatant spin/propaganda I've ever seen.
Go back and watch Obama's interview with Fareed Zakaria.
- You'll have to provide at least an ounce of proof that ultranationalist, far-right, or
neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine are "CIA assets". Otherwise you're just another baseless
conspiracy theorist.
- Yes, the US and USSR (Russia) have engaged in regime changes in the past. There's zero
proof though, that there was a coup in Ukraine.
lol, yes, that is what is called a coup. Not only a coup but the most blatant coup in
history I would say, I can only imagine if Russia funded trained and funded demonstrators
Mexico, Russian leaders went to Mexico handing out cookies and giving support to the
demonstrators, and ordering the opposition which leaders should be installed after the coup
and so forth,and then afterwards openly admitting it did it.Hilarious. But I guess you are
paid troll, and even when FYI releases information where USA planned the entire thing in
detail, like it has with its creation of ISIS and al-qaeda you will deny it still.
Here is the head of Stratfor by the way, the "Shadow CIA" saying the exact same thing,
xD
"Head of Stratfor, 'Private CIA,' Says Overthrow of Yanukovych Was 'The Most Blatant Coup
in History'"
http://www.washingtonsblog....
Watch the video of Obama's interview (
https://www.youtube.com/wat... - he clearly states "Yanukovych then fleeing after we had
brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine." In other words, he openly admits to helping
form the February 21st "Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine". Obviously
he's not talking about the Rada removing Yanukovych from office.
Nuland's conversation backs this up. It shows the Obama administration was helping
Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and Tyahnybok stay united. Yanukovych was individually offering them
posts in his government. The US was pushing them to resist those offers. This culminated in
the February 21st agreement, where the US and EU got additional concessions from Yanukovych -
a coalition government with those three leaders, early elections, and investigations of the
violence on Maidan.
As for the head of Stratfor, George Friedman went on to write an article in which he said
that his quote was completely taken out of context (
http://www.businessinsider.... .
You think handing out cookies means people are funding coups. I'll have to remember that
when giving cookies to my children.
Russia does not steal anything, the Crimean people voted to join Russia and that is their
democratic right.
"With two studies out of the way, both Western-based, it seems without question that the
vast majority of Crimeans do not feel they were duped into voting for annexation, and that
life with Russia will be better for them and their families than life with Ukraine. A year
ago this week, 83% of Crimeans went to the polling stations and almost 97% expressed support
for reunification with their former Soviet parent."
https://www.forbes.com/site...
Crimea was a coup, initiated on February 27, 2014 when armed/masked militants (Spetsnaz?)
stormed the Crimean parliamentary building, raised the Russian flag over the building, and
barricaded themselves inside. During this occupation, an emergency parliamentary session was
called. It is unknown how many MPs participated - a number have said they were not there,
even though they were claimed to have been there. But in that emergency session, the Crimean
PM (Anatolii Mohyliov) was illegally removed and replaced with an unpopular pro-Russian MP
(Sergey Aksyonov). Aksyonov immediately called for the independence referendum. Just to
emphasize, all of this happened while the parliamentary building was under armed occupation
from unknown pro-Russian forces (most likely Spetsnaz), and against the will of the current
Crimean and Ukrainian governments. Interestingly, just the day before (February 26), the
Crimean government had told pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian protesters outside the building
that there would be no effort to seek independence from Ukraine.
Derp, there is quite literally a source right above you debunking your lies and linking to
several USA and Germany opinion polls verifying that the result of the referendum was
reflective of the democratic will of the Crimean people.
I didn't dispute the poll. What I said is that before the referendum Russia instigated a
coup, suppressed protests, and created a sense of fear in Crimea that drove people to think
Kiev was filled with Nazis. Of course they voted to join Russia after that.
Isn't that what happened throughout Ukraine when "protestors" (more accurately thugs) took
over the Regional Administration buildings and occupied them? Well, before the coup in Kiev,
numerous government buildings in other regions were occupied.
You said that it was a big propaganda exercise to portray being pro-Ukraine as being
pro-Nazi. Then why was the Euromaidan far right? Why were the most prominent activists and
leaders of the "revolution" associated with Svodoba and Right Sector? Why were there thugs
destroying monuments to Lenin? Why were many activists extolling Stepan Bandera and Roman
Shukhevych?
The people on the Maidan behaved like far-right lunatics and brigands. No wonder why there
it isn't difficult to conceive of them as Nazis.
If I were a woman in Crimea, I would be grateful that I am not living under the jackboot
of the Maidan thugs.
"... Nevertheless, the US retains its political clients in the Baltic , the Balkans and Eastern and Central European regimes. However, these clients are unruly and often eager to confront a nuclear-armed Russia, confident that the US-NATO will intervene, in spite of the probability of being vaporized in a nuclear Armageddon. ..."
"... Despite President Trump's campaign promises to 'pull-back', the US has re-entered Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in a big way. The Trump shift from global containment and realism to 'rollback and aggression' against Russia and China has failed to secure a positive response from past and present allies. ..."
"... China has increased economic ties with the EU. Russia and the EU share strategic gas and oil trade ties. Domestically, the US military budget deepens the fiscal deficit and drastically threatens social spending. This creates a scenario of increasing US isolation with its futile aggression against a dynamic and changing world. ..."
Russia has reduced and challenged the US pursuit of a uni-polar global empire following the
recovery of its sovereignty and economic growth after the disaster of the 1990's. With the
ascent of President Putin, the US-EU empire lost their biggest and most lucrative client and
source of naked pillage.
Nevertheless, the US retains its political clients in the Baltic , the Balkans and
Eastern and Central European regimes. However, these clients are unruly and often eager to
confront a nuclear-armed Russia, confident that the US-NATO will intervene, in spite of the
probability of being vaporized in a nuclear Armageddon.
Washington's efforts to recapture and return Russia to vassalage have failed. Out of
frustration Washington has resorted to a growing series of failed provocations and conflicts
between the US and the EU, within the US between Trump and the Democrats; and among the
warlords controlling the Trump cabinet.
Germany has continued lucrative trade ties with Russia, despite US sanctions, underscoring
the decline of US power to dictate policy to the European Union. The Democratic Party and the
ultra-militaristic Clinton faction remains pathologically nostalgic for a return to the 1990's
Golden Age of Pillage (before Putin). Clinton's faction is fixated on the politics of
revanchism . As a result, they vigorously fought against candidate Donald Trump's campaign
promises to pursue a new realistic understanding with Russia. The Russia-Gate Investigation is
not merely a domestic electoral squabble led by hysterical 'liberals.' What is a stake is
nothing less than a profound conflict over the remaking of the US global map. Trump recognized
and accepted the re-emergence of Russia as a global power to be 'contained', while the
Democrats campaigned to roll-back reality, overthrow Putin and return to the robber baron
orgies of the Clinton years. As a result of this ongoing strategic conflict, Washington is
unable to develop a coherent global strategy, which in turn has further weakened US influence
in the EU in Europe and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the intense Democratic onslaught against Trump's initial foreign policy
pronouncements regarding Russia succeeded in destroying his 'pivot to realism' and facilitated
the rise of a fanatical militaristic faction within his cabinet, which have intensified the
anti-Russia policies of the Clintonite Democrats. In less than a year, all of Trump's realist
advisers and cabinet members have been purged and replaced by militarists. Their hard core
confrontational anti-Russia policy has become the platform for launching a global military
strategy based on vast increases in military spending, demands that the EU nations increase
their military budgets, and open opposition to an EU-centered military alliance, such as the
one recently proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Despite President Trump's campaign promises to 'pull-back', the US has re-entered
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in a big way. The Trump shift from global containment and realism
to 'rollback and aggression' against Russia and China has failed to secure a positive response
from past and present allies.
China
has increased economic ties with the EU. Russia and the EU share strategic gas and oil trade
ties. Domestically, the US military budget deepens the fiscal deficit and drastically threatens
social spending. This creates a scenario of increasing US isolation with its futile aggression
against a dynamic and changing world.
The Department of Homeland Security's first problem is its name. Mainstream American political
thought long celebrated the United States as a multicultural nation, one that forged a common civic
identity among people from disparate cultures. Except for the Native Americans, this country is no
one's "homeland," a word that evokes the blood-and-soil ethno-nationalism of the Old World.
"The word 'homeland' is a strange
word," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
mused
to his staff in one of his
infamous "snowflake" memos
in February 2001. "'Homeland' Defense sounds more German than
American. Also, it smacks of isolationism, which I am uncomfortable with."
But after the September 11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration rallied around the phrase
to describe its anti-terrorism efforts, reportedly pulling it from a 1998 defense report that
called for an "
increased
emphasis on homeland defense
." The White House established an umbrella Office of Homeland
Security under former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, then proposed the creation of a massive,
Cabinet-level department by the same name to oversee the nation's domestic security.
It's now been more than 15 years since the U.S. government reorganized itself in response to a
terrorist attack committed by 19 people. International terrorism's threat to the United States has
largely receded: Al-Qaeda is a remnant of its former self, and the Islamic State has been largely
defeated in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the bloated Department of Homeland Security turned
into a boondoggle -- an opinion shared across the political spectrum for years.
As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approached, in a
paper
for the libertarian Cato Institute, David Rittgers argued that the department's unusually
broad mandate is a recipe for waste and inefficiency. "This arrangement has not enhanced the
government's competence," he wrote. "Americans are not safer because the head of DHS is
simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu
epidemics." Matt Mayer, a Homeland Security official under President George W. Bush, argued in 2015
that DHS has too much responsibility. "It goes without saying that I observed up-close the
dysfunction, turf battles, and inherent limitations in an entity that does so much," he
wrote
in
Reason
magazine. "These problems are exacerbated due to the fact that, in many
cases, the activities DHS engages in require enormous coordination with entities embedded in other
federal departments."
Rittgers and Mayer both called for eliminating DHS and distributing its
responsibilities among various independent agencies. Vox's
Dara
Lind
and the Freedom of the Press Foundation's
Trevor Timm
argued likewise in 2015, largely on account of DHS' struggles with accountability
and waste. But the last year has seen the emergence of a deeper problem than mismanagement. Under
Trump, some of the department's agencies have turned openly abusive towards vulnerable members of
American society. The case for abolishing DHS has never been more urgent.
Washington began to rethink its national-security apparatus after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, and in 1998 the Department of Defense established the Hart-Rudman Commission to study how
America should defend itself in the twenty-first century. The commission's
final report
proposed the creation of a National Homeland Security Agency, recommending the
Federal Emergency Management Agency as the NHSA's core, combined with the Customs Service from the
Treasury Department, the Border Patrol from the Justice Department, and the Coast Guard from the
Transportation Department.
"Bringing these organizations together under one agency will create important synergies," the
report said. "Their individual capabilities will be molded into a stronger and more effective
system, and this realignment will help ensure that sufficient resources are devoted to tasks
crucial to both public safety and U.S. trade and economic interests."
Creating such a department wasn't a priority for the Bush administration, even initially after
9/11. A
Washington Post
report on DHS's early days
noted
that its most determined early proponent was Joe Lieberman, then a Democratic senator
from Connecticut, who faced resistance from administration officials like Vice President Dick
Cheney. But in June 2002, the Bush administration endorsed the calls for a cabinet-level department
to handle homeland security, an
announcement
that came as Bush officials were facing tough questions on Capitol Hill about what
clues they had missed about the imminent attacks.
Altogether, the department's creation amounted to the most sweeping reorganization in the federal
government's history. As the Hart-Rudman Commission had proposed, DHS incorporated FEMA and the
Coast Guard. The department also absorbed the entire Immigration and Naturalization Service,
merging the Border Patrol and the Customs Service to create Customs and Border Protection and
moving the INS' domestic enforcement functions into Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Coast
Guard and Secret Service were brought under DHS, too. All told, the department combined 22 agencies
from across the government.
The result was a sprawling new federal bureaucracy. In its current form, DHS employs almost a
quarter-million people and doles out tens of billions of dollars in grants and programs each year.
Its missions include taking the lead on counter-terrorism programs, helping Americans recover from
natural disasters, protecting and regulating the U.S. border, and defending the nation from
cyberattacks. In all these efforts, DHS has been either incompetent, wasteful, redundant, or
abusive -- and Congress knows it.
In January 2015, on his final day in office, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
released a report
summarizing what he'd seen during his tenure on the Senate Homeland Security
Committee. "Despite spending nearly $61 billion annually and $544 billion since 2003, the
Department of Homeland Security is not successfully executing any of its five main missions," the
report found. DHS is focused on counterterrorism, Coburn wrote, "but a review of DHS's programs
shows that DHS's main domestic counterterrorism programs -- including its intelligence initiatives and
homeland security grants -- are yielding little value for the nation's counterterrorism efforts."
But lawmakers are hesitant to cut funding for a department designed to fight terrorism, and
reports of wasteful spending abound. Critics often point to so-called fusion centers -- regional hubs
for information sharing -- as the quintessential DHS boondoggle. In theory, these centers should
enable the sort of inter-agency cooperation that may have prevented the 9/11 attacks. But the
reality has fallen far short. A damning 2012 Senate Homeland Security Committee report
found
that the 77 fusion centers scattered across the United States "often produced irrelevant,
useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS, and many produced no intelligence reporting
whatsoever."
Fusion centers aren't the only program to draw scrutiny. By 2008, the Government Accountability
Office
reported
that DHS had overseen almost $15 billion in failed contracts. In 2011, for example,
the department
canceled
a radiation-detection project that cost $230 million over five years after watchdogs
raised questions about its efficacy. A 2013 GAO
analysis
on
a $900 million program to staff Transportation Security Administration checkpoints with
behavioral-detection officers "found that the ability of human observers to accurately identify
deceptive behavior ... is the same as or slightly better than chance." The list of such failures is
long
.
DHS also has a poor track record on disaster relief. The department failed its first major test
when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005. FEMA Director Michael Brown resigned amid
widespread public criticism for the federal government's slow response to the crisis. An inspector
general's
report
issued the following year concluded that "much of the criticism is warranted" and found
shortcomings in communications, management, response plans, and implementation during the disaster.
FEMA handled subsequent hurricanes with less controversy, but in 2017 the department again drew
criticism for its slow reaction after two hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico. At one point, FEMA
tapped
an inexperienced Atlanta entrepreneur to provide 30 million meals for the island; she
only delivered 50,000 before the agency ended her contract.
The department also has a responsibility to protect the nation from cyber-attacks, but took a
sluggish approach to Russian interference in the 2016 election. Many states
didn't find out
their systems had been targeted until the department notified them almost a
year after the election. After when they did find out, California and Wisconsin officials
accused DHS
of giving them flawed information about the Russian attacks on their systems, an
allegation department officials denied. (In fairness to the department,
institutional paralysis
also characterized much of the Obama administration's response to the
attack on American democracy.)
No agency within Homeland Security has received as much scorn as Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and for good reason. "Every year," according to a recent
New Yorker
report
, "the branch of the agency tasked with making immigration arrests, called Enforcement
and Removal Operations, detains at least a hundred thousand people -- more arrests per year than the
F.B.I., the U.S. Marshals, and the Secret Service make combined." In 2017, under Trump, that figure
surged
by 40 percent. And the arrest of people without criminal records
doubled
after Trump reversed Obama-era guidelines that prioritized undocumented immigrants with
convictions.
In effect, ICE has become the "deportation force" that Trump, as a
candidate, had
threatened
to build. Agents have carried out arrest operations at
courthouses
,
hospitals
, and
schools
where its targets were dropping off their children. With astonishing cruelty, the
agency targets undocumented immigrants with jobs, families, and deep roots in American society. ICE
seized
Syed Jamal, a chemistry professor in Kansas who has lived in the U.S for 30 years and
has no criminal record, on his front lawn while he was getting his kids ready for school. Lukasz
Niec, a Polish-born doctor from Michigan who came to the U.S. when he was 5 years old,
faces deportation
to a country whose language he doesn't speak.
The agency has also become nakedly political. After California
passed
a sanctuary-state law last October, ICE ramped up its enforcement in the state,
apparently in retaliation
for the move. Thomas Homan, ICE's acting director,
called for
local and state officials in sanctuary cities to face criminal prosecution for not
cooperating with his crackdown. "We've got to take these sanctuary cities on," he
said
on Fox News last month. "We've got to take them to court and we've got to start charging
some of these politicians with crimes."
It's not just ICE, either. Customs and Border Protection has taken a disturbing turn since Trump
took office. The DHS inspector general
found
that CBP officers violated multiple federal court orders in their zeal to aggressively
enforce the first version of the president's travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries
last January. And like ICE, CBP has a cruel streak. Last month, a nonprofit group released footage
showing
Border Patrol agents pouring out water jugs and destroying other humanitarian supplies
left for migrants crossing the deadly desert between the U.S. and Mexico.
If these issues were found in only one part of DHS and its subsidiary agencies, there might be
an option for reform. But the problem is both cultural and systemic. The department will always be
the hastily assembled product of a dark, paranoid moment in American history. It also helps give
permanence to that moment, preventing the country from moving beyond the post-9/11 era.
The solution: Reverse the 2003 law and send almost every agency back to where it came from.
Abolish ICE and return its deportation powers to the Justice Department, whose internal culture is
far more professionalized and less susceptible to systemic abuse. Immigration and citizenship
responsibilities can be transferred to the State Department, which is far better equipped for the
task. Transfer Customs and Border Protection to the Treasury, where the Customs Service existed for
decades.
Not everything will necessarily fit somewhere else. After a
wave of scandals
in recent years, the Secret Service might fare better under the president's
direct oversight. Whatever else is left of DHS can be reorganized under a Federal Emergency
Management Agency that's independent once more. Congress could even change FEMA's name to something
more encompassing of its broadened mission -- just as long as it's less Germanic than what came
before.
An interesting discussion with two polar views on the situation. There is no good guys in the
story anyway. Nether the USA, or Russia, or Ukrainian nationalists, or separatists qualify. Truth
probably lies somewhere in between. The debate itself reminds the current political debate in the
USA between neoliberals/globalists and "economic nationalists"/isolationalists : the two sides do
not hear other and their positions are irreconcilable. Each has its own set of grievances. Its
own version of history. And its own vision of the desirable future.
Independence by itself meant huge stimulus to Western Ukrainian nationalists (who
historically lived a long time under Hapsburg empire). So their political ascendance were given
and Maydan was just the culmination point of a long process (actually encouraged by EU members
such as Germany, Poland , Baltic republics and Sweden)
The USA clearly tried to secure it geopolitical interests via forcefully turning Ukraine to
the West. Despite the fact that it was not completely ready for such a move yet; although were
slowly moving in this direction since independence. Germany (and EU in general) played the same
fatal role of "accelerator" as well. They wanted new markets for their goods and also have
geopolitical interests in weakening Russia (which did happened; Ukraine was the biggest strategic
defeat of Putin). The Nazi Lebensraum was, after all, about Ukraine.
But the process of "separation" from Russia was pretty much under way since independence and
proceeded at a brisk pace under Yanukovich too, who actually supported Ukrainian nationalists
during his term (especially Svoboda, hoping to create something like the USA two party systems:
nationalists vs Party of Regions). And it was Yanukovich government which prepared and intended
to sign the association agreement with the EU. Then Yanukovich hesitated to sign it and at this
point was doomed as pro-Western forces has already their own dynamics and financial support from
abroad. With the financial. organizational and political support support of the USA and EU were
able to depose him. Large (for Ukraine political scene) amount of money was injected, protesters
bused from Western Ukraine, and eventually yet another color revolution (the first was so called
Orange revolution which brought to power Yushchenko government) took care of Yanukovich regime.
The problem is that this "alternative" political course and a new vision of Ukrainian future
proved to be a minefield. Also the association agreement with EU was very unfair to Ukrainian
economic interests and essentially downgraded the status of Ukraine to the status of neo-colony
openly promoting deindustrialization like in Baltic Republics.
Some unrealistic dreams about benefits of Ukraine association with EU were pretty widespread
and become a political factor in the success of the Maydan. nobody understood that by trying to
balance between Russia and the West Yanukovich postponed the day of reckoning and kept economics
expanding. Everybody hated corrupt Yanukovich although some members of his cabinet were pretty
competent technocrats. Nobody calculated losses from the separation of economic ties with Russia
and having a hostile Russia as a neighbor. Hopes that EU will open its market for Ukrainian
agricultural goods and to Ukrainian gastarbeiters proved to be exaggerated. To say nothing about
the danger (or even mere possibility) of civil war as the result of Maydan. All those dreams
about improving the standard of living via association with EU were buried after the Maydan very
soon. The currency dropped around 300% after 2014 from 8.5 to 27 grivna per dollar. Markets in
Russia are almost completely lost.
Ukrainian nationalists decided that the success of Maydan gave them carte blanche on
neo-colonization of Eastern Ukraine as well as the suppression of Russian language and culture.
They miscalculated. This policy was similar to "Polinization of Western Ukraine" by Poles and it
faced growing resistance. Lugansk and Donetsk republic are direct results of this resistance (not
without Russia help). In other words this policy backfired, and now those regions represent a
Gordian knot for both the USA, EU, Russia and Ukraine. For Poroshenko government to agree on
federalization (which Minsk accords presuppose) means to lose face politically (Why to organize
Maydan in such cases, if the net result is a huge drop of the standard of living, loss of Crimea,
and federalization of Ukraine?), and they prefer military solution to the problem. The USA under
Trump administration are only happy to sell weapons to them (as well as coal to replace lost coal
from Donetsk region). And nuclear fuel to electrical stations inread of Russia. Meanwhile
economics is not improving and that also represents a political threat to Poroshenko, making push
for the military solution more probable.
Notable quotes:
"... Any agreement, however -- at least as far as the U.S. State Department is concerned -- would require that Russia must make the first move to ease tensions. ..."
"... Secretary Tillerson has made it abundantly clear that Russia must take the first steps to de-escalate violence and resolve this conflict by fully implementing the Minsk Accords." ..."
"... Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for ..."
"... . You can follow him on Twitter: ..."
"... This country is screwed, alas. Peacekeepers will not change much, but they could help stop shellings and thus help regular people who suffer the most. ..."
"... Strelkov came into Donbass on April 12, 2014 and the acting president Turchinov announced ATO (Anti terrorist operation) on April 7. The people of Donbass protested peacefully for months and no one wanted to talk with them. They sent tanks and jets instead. ..."
"... "And yes, his self-promotion as the "governor of Donetsk" was both illegal and unpopular with the locals." ..."
"... Indeed, that is why there is a civil war in Ukraine. "Red Cross officially declares Ukraine civil war" https://www.thelocal.ch/201... ..."
Any agreement, however -- at least as far as the U.S. State Department is concerned --
would require that Russia must make the first move to ease tensions. However, it is
unclear is Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or anyone in his department truly speaks for the
Trump Administration.
"It's important to be clear about U.S. policy towards the conflict: Crimea is Ukraine. The
Donbas is Ukraine. We will never accept trading one region of Ukraine for another. We will
never make a deal about Ukraine without Ukraine," John J. Sullivan, deputy secretary of state,
said during a speech in at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Diplomatic Academy in Kiev on
Feb.
21 . "To advance these fundamental goals, Secretary Tillerson appointed Ambassador Kurt
Volker as Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations in July of last year. And his mandate
is to break the deadlock with Russia over Ukraine. Secretary Tillerson has made it
abundantly clear that Russia must take the first steps to de-escalate violence and resolve this
conflict by fully implementing the Minsk Accords."
Time will tell if any progress will be made in solving the Donbas situation.
Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest . You can follow
him on Twitter:@davemajumdar.
If that's the case, then America needs to pull it's own illegal occupation forces out of
eastern Syria ASAP too! Eastern Syria is Syria. Eastern Syria is NOT part of Kurdistan! What
a bunch of hypocrites.
"One potential approach -- which as been proposed by U.S. special representative to
Ukraine Kurt Volker -- is where peacekeepers would be deployed in phases while Ukraine
implements some of the measures it agreed to under the Minsk agreements."
It stipulates that Ukraine should complete a number of things, and by the end of it
Donbass will be returned to Ukraine. If you add phased peacekeepers to this it could work,
the peacekeepers would start between Donbass and Ukraine, and then move into Donbass and get
more control the more of the Minsk 2 agreement Ukraine completed.
The peacekeepers could not be NATO or Russian troops for each side to agree obviously
Europe and the US have nothing of value to offer to Ukraine because there's little to
exchange it for. There is no economy and too few natural resources to fight for. Thus,
Ukraine will remain a suitcase without a handle despite wet dreams of its ultra-nationalists
(should be represented in the troll section of this thread).
It will remain useless as an economical ally to Russia in the upcoming years because
Ukraine is divided within itself.
The only thing it will be good for, is to serve as an example for everybody on how foolish
it is to overthrow democratically elected governments for the sake of fairy tales.
The conflict there will be frozen for decades, as it was frozen in Moldova and Georgia.
Without Russian and European investments, there will be no economical development in
Ukraine.
This country is screwed, alas. Peacekeepers will not change much, but they could help
stop shellings and thus help regular people who suffer the most.
Vadim, if Ukraine is not important, why do you spend so much of your precious time writing
about it? Why does Russia keep financing the war in Donbass if its so uninteresting to invest
in Ukraine? Why did Russia steal Ukrainian gas in the Azov Sea? Or why does it steal
ukrainian coal in Donbass? Where did the machinery from the Donbass factories go, Vadim?
-The coal belongs to the people of Donbass, not Ukraine, and Ukraine itself banned buying
gas from these territories in hope that it will cause more misery to the civilians living
there, just like Ukraine stole their pensions and their social welfare in hope for causing
maximal suffering.
The Donbass is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Second Ukraine is not
obliged to pay for the Russian occupation of its territory. The occupation force is
responsible for everything that happens inside that territory, even the payment or not of
pensions.
That is a pure lie, the conflict between Donbass and Ukraine is a civil war. Russia is not
occupying those territories. And Donbass will return to Ukraine if they can follow thru on
the Minsk 2 agreement like they agreed to, but never will of course, because the
hyper-corrupt Ukrainian government need the legitimacy and distraction that war brings both
domestically to avoid coup and internationally as an excuse.
Strelkov, referring to the war he helped start in Donbas: "In the beginning, nobody there
wanted to fight."
Pro-Russian agitators like Pavel Gubarev tried to illegally take over government buildings
in E Ukraine, and also tried to organize protests, but they had little support from the local
population. The local population was cynical about Kiev, but they certainly weren't
interested in starting a civil war. That is why Strelkov and other Russians had to start the
war.
"but they certainly weren't interested in starting a civil war. That is why Strelkov
and other Russians had to start the war."
-Nobody wanted a war of course, that is one reason why the Kiev government became so
dependent on volunteer n4zists, they were the only one that was eager and willing to kill
their brothers at the whims of the unconstitutional coup regime. The average Ukrainian
soldiers didn't want to fight and a lot of the Donbass fighters came from defected Ukrainian
soldiers.
Again, all I have to do is point to Strelkov: "In the beginning, nobody there wanted to
fight."
"I dream of a Russia in its natural borders," he says. "At least those of 1939." He claims
to have been the one who convinced Putin to intervene militarily in Ukraine, at a time, he
says, when the Kremlin was still debating the proper approach to the country."
"I was the one who pulled the trigger for war," Strelkov boasts."
Doesn't matter at all what some commanders "boasts" , the war was started when the
unconstitutional and unelected government of Ukraine sent its army to crush the rebels.
Strelkov came into Donbass on April 12, 2014 and the acting president Turchinov
announced ATO (Anti terrorist operation) on April 7.
The people of Donbass protested peacefully for months and no one wanted to talk with them.
They sent tanks and jets instead.
"and also tried to organize protests, but they had little support from the local
population. "
Strelkov took Slavyansk on April 12 - that's not when he arrived. As for the ATO, yes, it
was announced on April 7, after armed separatists stormed regional government buildings in
Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov, raised Russian flags, and said they would hold an independence
referendum. What would Russia do if Karelia was taken over by pro-Finnish separatists? And
keep in mind, when the ATO was announced, Turchynov promised amnesty for separatists who laid
down arms.
No, the "people" of Donbass did not protest peacefully (Gubarev and others were not
representative of the people of Donbass). Gubarev and others repeatedly tried to seize
buildings and declare self-rule/independence. But polls during that time clearly showed that
people did not want independence, even if they were unhappy about Yanukovych being ousted
from the presidency. Public opinion did not really shift towards independence until after the
fire of Odessa and Mariupol, when Donbass regions were under separatist control and
influenced by Russian propaganda.
"Strelkov, referring to the war he helped start in Donbas: "In the beginning, nobody there
wanted to fight.""
-The civil war was started when the unelected and unconstitutional coup government sent
the army to kill the rebels in Donbass for just wanting their language rights protected.
"Pro-Russian agitators like Pavel Gubarev tried to illegally take over government
buildings in E Ukraine,"
-Pavel is a Ukrainian, and it is pretty far fetched to call it illegal to resist to an
illegal unconstitutional coup government.
I have not seen any proof that there was a coordinated coup to remove Yanukovych. On Feb
21st, Western powers got what they wanted when Yanukovych agreed to form a coalition
government with Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and Tyahnybok (OK, maybe Tyahnbok wasn't they're first
choice) and have early elections. Yanukovych fled because the security forces abandoned him.
They most likely abandoned him because the Feb 21st agreement called for investigation into
violence on the Maidan, and they thought they would be blamed for everything.
I never said Gubarev wasn't Ukrainian. But he was clearly a pro-Russian agitator. And yes,
his self-promotion as the "governor of Donetsk" was both illegal and unpopular with the
locals.
He was in Kharkiv, but not on an official visit. He was fleeing. And sorry, but protests
attended by a few thousand people do not mean that Gubarev had widespread support.
"And yes, his self-promotion as the "governor of Donetsk" was both illegal and unpopular
with the locals."
-Hardly illegal, quite the opposite, more like it was a duty to resist an unconstitutional
coup government. And while I have not found a opinion poll on rebel controlled areas, the
closes I found suggest that the rebels has a very high support among the Donbass
population.
"An opinion poll that was taken on the day of the referendum and the day before by a
correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Washington Post, and five other
media outlets found that of those people who intended to vote, 94.8% would vote for
independence. The poll did not claim to have scientific precision, but was carried out to get
a basis from which to judge the outcome of the referendum, given that independent observers
were not present to monitor it. Even with those who said they would not vote counted in, a
65.6% majority supported separation from Ukraine"
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/...
You should probably try reading the actual article, instead of quoting Wikipedia. The
journalists polled 186 people, and of those 110 supported independence. That's a tiny and
insignificant sample size. People voting for independence had been going through a war
started by pro-Russian separatists, they were under the martial law of pro-Russian
separatists, and their only news was Russian propaganda telling them that Kiev was all Nazis
who wanted to exterminate Russia. Also, as you no doubt saw while reading Wikipedia, polls
taken before Strelkov and the others started the war showed that the locals were not
supportive of independence.
" them that Kiev was all Nazis who wanted to exterminate Russia"
-Pretty close to the truth actually, Kiev certainly did and are doing everything they can
do exterminate the local civilians in Donbas, but stealing their pensions, cutting of social
pay, hindering and stoping food, medicine and water.
Actually I mentioned that in my comment, there are no opinion polls but the closes we get
is the opinion polls from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Washington Post, which shows a
massive support for the rebels. Which is no surprise as we are talking about an illegal
unconstitutional pro-nazi government seizing power.
"tthe locals were not supportive of independence.
-The support for rebels are as all sources show quite high, of course nobody wanted the
war, but that was forced on them by the unelected coup government. If Ukraine had just
language right of the Donbass people there would have been no war.
No, Kiev was not filled with Nazis. Russia engaged in fearmongering to get Crimeans to
vote for independence. And what happened? The Ukrainian Army in Crimea resisted all
provocations to start a war. Kiev thought that the international community would come to its
aid. Remember the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2014? Svoboda and Right Sector
barely had any public support at all. The lie that Kiev was filled with Nazis was just that -
a lie.
Again, your Frankfurter Allgemeine poll was less than 200 people who happened to be
willing to talk to Western journalists. Only 110 of them said they wanted independence, and
this was after living under martial law and Russian propaganda for months. There were plenty
of actual scientific polls conducted in April before the "referendum" which showed that there
was no support for secession - at most, people wanted decentralisation.
Well, depends on what you mean with proof I suppose, is an American marxist oligarchs
admitting they spent millions to training demonstrators to subvert Ukrainian democracy
proof?
Is the fact that 100% of NATO controlled media support the Ukrainian opposition proof?
Is that fact that USA leaders went down to Ukraine and gave out cookies to the undemocratic
opposition and held speeches encouraging them to overthrow their government proof?
Is leaked phone calls from USA telling Ukraine which leaders should be installed(which later
were installed) proof?
Is Obama openly admitting they handled the "transition of power" in Ukraine proof?
Is the fact that the fascist and ultra-nationalist groups used used to overthrow the
democratic government of Ukraine(OUN) known CIA assets proof? I mean, basically, it was the
most blatant coup in world history. But if you literally want the USA government to totally
in details describe and admit to every detail you will just have to wait a few years or
decades until it is released in a FOI report like the fact that USA created ISIS.
- I'm assuming you mean the $5 billion the US invested over 20+ years? Russia invested $40
billion in the same time frame - 8x as much as the US (see Sergey Glazyev's March 24, 2014
interview with National Review). Financial investments in democratic institutions are not
proof of a coup, but nice try.
- NATO controlled media? There's no such thing.
- Why is it such a big deal with Nuland giving out cookies?
- John McCain didn't encourage them to "overthrow their government". When did he say that?
He said "We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine
its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe."
- Did you know that government officials from European countries and the EU also
encouraged the protesters?
- Nuland and the US were clearly operating to keep the opposition united, and yes, they
pushed their interests by encouraging Yatsenyuk to take the lead. But Yatsenyuk, Klitschko,
and Tyahnybok were already established as opposition politicians in general, and had been
accepted by the Maidan protesters before the US arrived on the scene. And besides, the Feb
21st agreement was what the US wanted - it would have placed those three figures in a
coalition government with Yanukovych, followed by early elections. All of that considered,
the fact that they emerged as leaders after Yanukovych left is really not surprising.
- Obama admitted what everyone knew - the US had entered into the crisis on the side of
the EU to push Yanukovych to listen to the protesters. Russia, of course, was pushing
Yanukovych to crack down. I remember when RT and Sputnik tried to twist it to mean Obama was
claiming the US was behind a coup - it was the most blatant spin/propaganda I've ever seen.
Go back and watch Obama's interview with Fareed Zakaria.
- You'll have to provide at least an ounce of proof that ultranationalist, far-right, or
neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine are "CIA assets". Otherwise you're just another baseless
conspiracy theorist.
- Yes, the US and USSR (Russia) have engaged in regime changes in the past. There's zero
proof though, that there was a coup in Ukraine.
lol, yes, that is what is called a coup. Not only a coup but the most blatant coup in
history I would say, I can only imagine if Russia funded trained and funded demonstrators
Mexico, Russian leaders went to Mexico handing out cookies and giving support to the
demonstrators, and ordering the opposition which leaders should be installed after the coup
and so forth,and then afterwards openly admitting it did it.Hilarious. But I guess you are
paid troll, and even when FYI releases information where USA planned the entire thing in
detail, like it has with its creation of ISIS and al-qaeda you will deny it still.
Here is the head of Stratfor by the way, the "Shadow CIA" saying the exact same thing,
xD
"Head of Stratfor, 'Private CIA,' Says Overthrow of Yanukovych Was 'The Most Blatant Coup
in History'"
http://www.washingtonsblog....
Watch the video of Obama's interview (
https://www.youtube.com/wat... - he clearly states "Yanukovych then fleeing after we had
brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine." In other words, he openly admits to helping
form the February 21st "Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine". Obviously
he's not talking about the Rada removing Yanukovych from office.
Nuland's conversation backs this up. It shows the Obama administration was helping
Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and Tyahnybok stay united. Yanukovych was individually offering them
posts in his government. The US was pushing them to resist those offers. This culminated in
the February 21st agreement, where the US and EU got additional concessions from Yanukovych -
a coalition government with those three leaders, early elections, and investigations of the
violence on Maidan.
As for the head of Stratfor, George Friedman went on to write an article in which he said
that his quote was completely taken out of context (
http://www.businessinsider.... .
You think handing out cookies means people are funding coups. I'll have to remember that
when giving cookies to my children.
Russia does not steal anything, the Crimean people voted to join Russia and that is their
democratic right.
"With two studies out of the way, both Western-based, it seems without question that the
vast majority of Crimeans do not feel they were duped into voting for annexation, and that
life with Russia will be better for them and their families than life with Ukraine. A year
ago this week, 83% of Crimeans went to the polling stations and almost 97% expressed support
for reunification with their former Soviet parent."
https://www.forbes.com/site...
Crimea was a coup, initiated on February 27, 2014 when armed/masked militants (Spetsnaz?)
stormed the Crimean parliamentary building, raised the Russian flag over the building, and
barricaded themselves inside. During this occupation, an emergency parliamentary session was
called. It is unknown how many MPs participated - a number have said they were not there,
even though they were claimed to have been there. But in that emergency session, the Crimean
PM (Anatolii Mohyliov) was illegally removed and replaced with an unpopular pro-Russian MP
(Sergey Aksyonov). Aksyonov immediately called for the independence referendum. Just to
emphasize, all of this happened while the parliamentary building was under armed occupation
from unknown pro-Russian forces (most likely Spetsnaz), and against the will of the current
Crimean and Ukrainian governments. Interestingly, just the day before (February 26), the
Crimean government had told pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian protesters outside the building
that there would be no effort to seek independence from Ukraine.
Derp, there is quite literally a source right above you debunking your lies and linking to
several USA and Germany opinion polls verifying that the result of the referendum was
reflective of the democratic will of the Crimean people.
I didn't dispute the poll. What I said is that before the referendum Russia instigated a
coup, suppressed protests, and created a sense of fear in Crimea that drove people to think
Kiev was filled with Nazis. Of course they voted to join Russia after that.
Isn't that what happened throughout Ukraine when "protestors" (more accurately thugs) took
over the Regional Administration buildings and occupied them? Well, before the coup in Kiev,
numerous government buildings in other regions were occupied.
You said that it was a big propaganda exercise to portray being pro-Ukraine as being
pro-Nazi. Then why was the Euromaidan far right? Why were the most prominent activists and
leaders of the "revolution" associated with Svodoba and Right Sector? Why were there thugs
destroying monuments to Lenin? Why were many activists extolling Stepan Bandera and Roman
Shukhevych?
The people on the Maidan behaved like far-right lunatics and brigands. No wonder why there
it isn't difficult to conceive of them as Nazis.
If I were a woman in Crimea, I would be grateful that I am not living under the jackboot
of the Maidan thugs.
"... Nevertheless, the US retains its political clients in the Baltic , the Balkans and Eastern and Central European regimes. However, these clients are unruly and often eager to confront a nuclear-armed Russia, confident that the US-NATO will intervene, in spite of the probability of being vaporized in a nuclear Armageddon. ..."
"... Despite President Trump's campaign promises to 'pull-back', the US has re-entered Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in a big way. The Trump shift from global containment and realism to 'rollback and aggression' against Russia and China has failed to secure a positive response from past and present allies. ..."
"... China has increased economic ties with the EU. Russia and the EU share strategic gas and oil trade ties. Domestically, the US military budget deepens the fiscal deficit and drastically threatens social spending. This creates a scenario of increasing US isolation with its futile aggression against a dynamic and changing world. ..."
Russia has reduced and challenged the US pursuit of a uni-polar global empire following the
recovery of its sovereignty and economic growth after the disaster of the 1990's. With the
ascent of President Putin, the US-EU empire lost their biggest and most lucrative client and
source of naked pillage.
Nevertheless, the US retains its political clients in the Baltic , the Balkans and
Eastern and Central European regimes. However, these clients are unruly and often eager to
confront a nuclear-armed Russia, confident that the US-NATO will intervene, in spite of the
probability of being vaporized in a nuclear Armageddon.
Washington's efforts to recapture and return Russia to vassalage have failed. Out of
frustration Washington has resorted to a growing series of failed provocations and conflicts
between the US and the EU, within the US between Trump and the Democrats; and among the
warlords controlling the Trump cabinet.
Germany has continued lucrative trade ties with Russia, despite US sanctions, underscoring
the decline of US power to dictate policy to the European Union. The Democratic Party and the
ultra-militaristic Clinton faction remains pathologically nostalgic for a return to the 1990's
Golden Age of Pillage (before Putin). Clinton's faction is fixated on the politics of
revanchism . As a result, they vigorously fought against candidate Donald Trump's campaign
promises to pursue a new realistic understanding with Russia. The Russia-Gate Investigation is
not merely a domestic electoral squabble led by hysterical 'liberals.' What is a stake is
nothing less than a profound conflict over the remaking of the US global map. Trump recognized
and accepted the re-emergence of Russia as a global power to be 'contained', while the
Democrats campaigned to roll-back reality, overthrow Putin and return to the robber baron
orgies of the Clinton years. As a result of this ongoing strategic conflict, Washington is
unable to develop a coherent global strategy, which in turn has further weakened US influence
in the EU in Europe and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the intense Democratic onslaught against Trump's initial foreign policy
pronouncements regarding Russia succeeded in destroying his 'pivot to realism' and facilitated
the rise of a fanatical militaristic faction within his cabinet, which have intensified the
anti-Russia policies of the Clintonite Democrats. In less than a year, all of Trump's realist
advisers and cabinet members have been purged and replaced by militarists. Their hard core
confrontational anti-Russia policy has become the platform for launching a global military
strategy based on vast increases in military spending, demands that the EU nations increase
their military budgets, and open opposition to an EU-centered military alliance, such as the
one recently proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Despite President Trump's campaign promises to 'pull-back', the US has re-entered
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in a big way. The Trump shift from global containment and realism
to 'rollback and aggression' against Russia and China has failed to secure a positive response
from past and present allies.
China
has increased economic ties with the EU. Russia and the EU share strategic gas and oil trade
ties. Domestically, the US military budget deepens the fiscal deficit and drastically threatens
social spending. This creates a scenario of increasing US isolation with its futile aggression
against a dynamic and changing world.
The Department of Homeland Security's first problem is its name. Mainstream American political
thought long celebrated the United States as a multicultural nation, one that forged a common civic
identity among people from disparate cultures. Except for the Native Americans, this country is no
one's "homeland," a word that evokes the blood-and-soil ethno-nationalism of the Old World.
"The word 'homeland' is a strange
word," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
mused
to his staff in one of his
infamous "snowflake" memos
in February 2001. "'Homeland' Defense sounds more German than
American. Also, it smacks of isolationism, which I am uncomfortable with."
But after the September 11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration rallied around the phrase
to describe its anti-terrorism efforts, reportedly pulling it from a 1998 defense report that
called for an "
increased
emphasis on homeland defense
." The White House established an umbrella Office of Homeland
Security under former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, then proposed the creation of a massive,
Cabinet-level department by the same name to oversee the nation's domestic security.
It's now been more than 15 years since the U.S. government reorganized itself in response to a
terrorist attack committed by 19 people. International terrorism's threat to the United States has
largely receded: Al-Qaeda is a remnant of its former self, and the Islamic State has been largely
defeated in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the bloated Department of Homeland Security turned
into a boondoggle -- an opinion shared across the political spectrum for years.
As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approached, in a
paper
for the libertarian Cato Institute, David Rittgers argued that the department's unusually
broad mandate is a recipe for waste and inefficiency. "This arrangement has not enhanced the
government's competence," he wrote. "Americans are not safer because the head of DHS is
simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu
epidemics." Matt Mayer, a Homeland Security official under President George W. Bush, argued in 2015
that DHS has too much responsibility. "It goes without saying that I observed up-close the
dysfunction, turf battles, and inherent limitations in an entity that does so much," he
wrote
in
Reason
magazine. "These problems are exacerbated due to the fact that, in many
cases, the activities DHS engages in require enormous coordination with entities embedded in other
federal departments."
Rittgers and Mayer both called for eliminating DHS and distributing its
responsibilities among various independent agencies. Vox's
Dara
Lind
and the Freedom of the Press Foundation's
Trevor Timm
argued likewise in 2015, largely on account of DHS' struggles with accountability
and waste. But the last year has seen the emergence of a deeper problem than mismanagement. Under
Trump, some of the department's agencies have turned openly abusive towards vulnerable members of
American society. The case for abolishing DHS has never been more urgent.
Washington began to rethink its national-security apparatus after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, and in 1998 the Department of Defense established the Hart-Rudman Commission to study how
America should defend itself in the twenty-first century. The commission's
final report
proposed the creation of a National Homeland Security Agency, recommending the
Federal Emergency Management Agency as the NHSA's core, combined with the Customs Service from the
Treasury Department, the Border Patrol from the Justice Department, and the Coast Guard from the
Transportation Department.
"Bringing these organizations together under one agency will create important synergies," the
report said. "Their individual capabilities will be molded into a stronger and more effective
system, and this realignment will help ensure that sufficient resources are devoted to tasks
crucial to both public safety and U.S. trade and economic interests."
Creating such a department wasn't a priority for the Bush administration, even initially after
9/11. A
Washington Post
report on DHS's early days
noted
that its most determined early proponent was Joe Lieberman, then a Democratic senator
from Connecticut, who faced resistance from administration officials like Vice President Dick
Cheney. But in June 2002, the Bush administration endorsed the calls for a cabinet-level department
to handle homeland security, an
announcement
that came as Bush officials were facing tough questions on Capitol Hill about what
clues they had missed about the imminent attacks.
Altogether, the department's creation amounted to the most sweeping reorganization in the federal
government's history. As the Hart-Rudman Commission had proposed, DHS incorporated FEMA and the
Coast Guard. The department also absorbed the entire Immigration and Naturalization Service,
merging the Border Patrol and the Customs Service to create Customs and Border Protection and
moving the INS' domestic enforcement functions into Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Coast
Guard and Secret Service were brought under DHS, too. All told, the department combined 22 agencies
from across the government.
The result was a sprawling new federal bureaucracy. In its current form, DHS employs almost a
quarter-million people and doles out tens of billions of dollars in grants and programs each year.
Its missions include taking the lead on counter-terrorism programs, helping Americans recover from
natural disasters, protecting and regulating the U.S. border, and defending the nation from
cyberattacks. In all these efforts, DHS has been either incompetent, wasteful, redundant, or
abusive -- and Congress knows it.
In January 2015, on his final day in office, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
released a report
summarizing what he'd seen during his tenure on the Senate Homeland Security
Committee. "Despite spending nearly $61 billion annually and $544 billion since 2003, the
Department of Homeland Security is not successfully executing any of its five main missions," the
report found. DHS is focused on counterterrorism, Coburn wrote, "but a review of DHS's programs
shows that DHS's main domestic counterterrorism programs -- including its intelligence initiatives and
homeland security grants -- are yielding little value for the nation's counterterrorism efforts."
But lawmakers are hesitant to cut funding for a department designed to fight terrorism, and
reports of wasteful spending abound. Critics often point to so-called fusion centers -- regional hubs
for information sharing -- as the quintessential DHS boondoggle. In theory, these centers should
enable the sort of inter-agency cooperation that may have prevented the 9/11 attacks. But the
reality has fallen far short. A damning 2012 Senate Homeland Security Committee report
found
that the 77 fusion centers scattered across the United States "often produced irrelevant,
useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS, and many produced no intelligence reporting
whatsoever."
Fusion centers aren't the only program to draw scrutiny. By 2008, the Government Accountability
Office
reported
that DHS had overseen almost $15 billion in failed contracts. In 2011, for example,
the department
canceled
a radiation-detection project that cost $230 million over five years after watchdogs
raised questions about its efficacy. A 2013 GAO
analysis
on
a $900 million program to staff Transportation Security Administration checkpoints with
behavioral-detection officers "found that the ability of human observers to accurately identify
deceptive behavior ... is the same as or slightly better than chance." The list of such failures is
long
.
DHS also has a poor track record on disaster relief. The department failed its first major test
when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005. FEMA Director Michael Brown resigned amid
widespread public criticism for the federal government's slow response to the crisis. An inspector
general's
report
issued the following year concluded that "much of the criticism is warranted" and found
shortcomings in communications, management, response plans, and implementation during the disaster.
FEMA handled subsequent hurricanes with less controversy, but in 2017 the department again drew
criticism for its slow reaction after two hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico. At one point, FEMA
tapped
an inexperienced Atlanta entrepreneur to provide 30 million meals for the island; she
only delivered 50,000 before the agency ended her contract.
The department also has a responsibility to protect the nation from cyber-attacks, but took a
sluggish approach to Russian interference in the 2016 election. Many states
didn't find out
their systems had been targeted until the department notified them almost a
year after the election. After when they did find out, California and Wisconsin officials
accused DHS
of giving them flawed information about the Russian attacks on their systems, an
allegation department officials denied. (In fairness to the department,
institutional paralysis
also characterized much of the Obama administration's response to the
attack on American democracy.)
No agency within Homeland Security has received as much scorn as Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and for good reason. "Every year," according to a recent
New Yorker
report
, "the branch of the agency tasked with making immigration arrests, called Enforcement
and Removal Operations, detains at least a hundred thousand people -- more arrests per year than the
F.B.I., the U.S. Marshals, and the Secret Service make combined." In 2017, under Trump, that figure
surged
by 40 percent. And the arrest of people without criminal records
doubled
after Trump reversed Obama-era guidelines that prioritized undocumented immigrants with
convictions.
In effect, ICE has become the "deportation force" that Trump, as a
candidate, had
threatened
to build. Agents have carried out arrest operations at
courthouses
,
hospitals
, and
schools
where its targets were dropping off their children. With astonishing cruelty, the
agency targets undocumented immigrants with jobs, families, and deep roots in American society. ICE
seized
Syed Jamal, a chemistry professor in Kansas who has lived in the U.S for 30 years and
has no criminal record, on his front lawn while he was getting his kids ready for school. Lukasz
Niec, a Polish-born doctor from Michigan who came to the U.S. when he was 5 years old,
faces deportation
to a country whose language he doesn't speak.
The agency has also become nakedly political. After California
passed
a sanctuary-state law last October, ICE ramped up its enforcement in the state,
apparently in retaliation
for the move. Thomas Homan, ICE's acting director,
called for
local and state officials in sanctuary cities to face criminal prosecution for not
cooperating with his crackdown. "We've got to take these sanctuary cities on," he
said
on Fox News last month. "We've got to take them to court and we've got to start charging
some of these politicians with crimes."
It's not just ICE, either. Customs and Border Protection has taken a disturbing turn since Trump
took office. The DHS inspector general
found
that CBP officers violated multiple federal court orders in their zeal to aggressively
enforce the first version of the president's travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries
last January. And like ICE, CBP has a cruel streak. Last month, a nonprofit group released footage
showing
Border Patrol agents pouring out water jugs and destroying other humanitarian supplies
left for migrants crossing the deadly desert between the U.S. and Mexico.
If these issues were found in only one part of DHS and its subsidiary agencies, there might be
an option for reform. But the problem is both cultural and systemic. The department will always be
the hastily assembled product of a dark, paranoid moment in American history. It also helps give
permanence to that moment, preventing the country from moving beyond the post-9/11 era.
The solution: Reverse the 2003 law and send almost every agency back to where it came from.
Abolish ICE and return its deportation powers to the Justice Department, whose internal culture is
far more professionalized and less susceptible to systemic abuse. Immigration and citizenship
responsibilities can be transferred to the State Department, which is far better equipped for the
task. Transfer Customs and Border Protection to the Treasury, where the Customs Service existed for
decades.
Not everything will necessarily fit somewhere else. After a
wave of scandals
in recent years, the Secret Service might fare better under the president's
direct oversight. Whatever else is left of DHS can be reorganized under a Federal Emergency
Management Agency that's independent once more. Congress could even change FEMA's name to something
more encompassing of its broadened mission -- just as long as it's less Germanic than what came
before.
"... We must find a way to displace or destroy the economic oligarchy that controls elections and mass media, for that is the only path to restoration of democracy, and restoration of the humanitarian purpose of our 18th century founders. Only then shall we see an American Century; otherwise we are doomed to the disdain of history, our lives wasted as cogs in an engine of destruction. ..."
"... Our unregulated free market economy allows the unethical bully to prevail in nearly all areas, including politics. Tyranny is a subculture, a groupthink of bullies who tyrannize each other, and the worst of the bullies rise to the top. This is why the US founders opposed a standing military, and they were right. ..."
"... After years and years of allegiance to the Democratic party, I have begun to realize that neither they nor other mail (political) party can undo the evil that has been done. (See "THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY" by Gabriel Kolko, "Epiloque: Readon and Radicalism". ..."
"... What better way to maximize the sale of all types of armaments than to ensure continuous chaos? Wasn't a CIA presentation on just such a plan leaked some time back? ..."
"... I would beg to differ. The British Empire still exists today although it is mainly a financial and information warfare empire. Yes you are right about the families but mainly these are old aristocratic European and their married in to Jr. partners in America. The empire consists of the City of London,Wall Street, The British monarchy, The Saudi Royal family and many other of there agents and subsidiaries. ..."
"... The violence of the military serves the interests of elites with overwhelming consistency. From creating the necessary conditions for plundering of natural resources, opening new markets for U.S. corporations to exploit, and funneling tax payer monies via "aid" to corporations and elites, all the while allowing the politicians who advance these elite interests to themselves profit greatly via revolving door jobs, speeches, and donations to their "humanitarian" foundations. How is this not rational? It is completely rational and organized and planned to be executed exactly how it does. Furthering your own wealth, power, and interests is not rational? ..."
"... It is undeniable that the military violence has served the interest of the powerful elite in a very consistent manner for centuries. Furthermore, I would submit to you that the military has shown very little remorse by being the murderous tool of elites and that more often than not; They have been happy to oblige. ..."
"... This is a more ultimate claim of power than any prior regime in history ever maintained. Sheldon Wolin's Inverted Totalitarianism has morphed into something even more odious. The central problem, of course, is how a soft landing can be effected in light of the massive number of nukes possessed by this outlaw regime. ..."
Exclusive: Without solid economic, political and ideological bases, the U.S. lacks the
legitimacy and authority it needs to operate beyond its borders, argues Nicolas J.S. Davies in
this essay.
By Nicolas J.S. Davies
I recently reread Michael Mann's book, Incoherent Empire , which he
wrote in 2003, soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Mann is a sociology professor at UCLA and
the author of a four-volume series called
The Sources of Social Power , in which he explained the major developments of world
history as the interplay between four types of power: military, economic, political, and
ideological.
In Incoherent Empire ,
Mann used the same framework to examine what he called the U.S.'s "new imperialism" after the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He predicted that, "The American Empire will turn out to be
a military giant; a back-seat economic driver; a political schizophrenic; and an ideological
phantom."
What struck me most forcefully as I reread Incoherent Empire was that absolutely
nothing has changed in the "incoherence" of U.S. imperialism. If I picked up the book for the
first time today and didn't know it was written 15 years ago, I could read nearly all of it as
a perceptive critique of American imperialism exactly as it exists today.
In the intervening 15 years, U.S. policy failures have resulted in ever-spreading violence
and chaos that affect hundreds of millions of people in at least a dozen countries. The U.S.
has utterly failed to bring any of its neo-imperial wars to a stable or peaceful end. And yet
the U.S. imperial project sails on, seemingly blind to its consistently catastrophic
results.
Instead, U.S. civilian and military leaders shamelessly blame their victims for the violence
and chaos they have unleashed on them, and endlessly repackage the same old war propaganda to
justify record
military budgets and threaten new wars.
But they never hold themselves or each other accountable for their catastrophic failures or
the carnage and human misery they inflict. So they have made no genuine effort to remedy any of
the systemic problems, weaknesses and contradictions of U.S. imperialism that Michael Mann
identified in 2003 or that other critical analysts like Noam Chomsky, Gabriel Kolko, William
Blum and Richard Barnet have described for decades.
Let's examine each of Mann's four images of the foundations of the U.S.'s Incoherent Empire,
and see how they relate to the continuing crisis of U.S. imperialism that he presciently
foretold:
Military Giant
As Mann noted in 2003, imperial armed forces have to do four things: defend their own
territory; strike offensively; conquer territories and people; then pacify and rule them.
Today's U.S. military dwarfs
any other country's military forces . It has unprecedented firepower, which it can use from
unprecedented distances to kill more people and wreak more destruction than any previous war
machine in history, while minimizing U.S. casualties and thus the domestic political blowback
for its violence.
But that's where its power ends. When it comes to actually conquering and pacifying a
foreign country, America's technological way of war is worse than useless. The very power of
U.S. weapons, the "Robocop" appearance of American troops, their lack of language skills and
their isolation from other cultures make U.S. forces a grave danger to the populations they are
charged with controlling and pacifying, never a force for law and order, whether in Iraq,
Afghanistan or North Korea.
John Pace, who headed the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq during the U.S. occupation compared
U.S. efforts to pacify the country to "trying to swat
a fly with a bomb."
Burhan Fasa'a, an Iraqi reporter for Lebanon's LBC TV network, survived the second U.S.
assault on Fallujah in November 2004. He spent nine days in a house with a population that grew
to 26 people as neighboring homes were damaged or destroyed and more and more people sought
shelter with Fasa'a and his hosts.
Finally a squad of U.S. Marines burst in, yelling orders in English that most of the
residents didn't understand and shooting them if they didn't respond. "Americans did not have
interpreters with them, " Fasa'a explained , "so they
entered houses and killed people because they didn't speak English Soldiers thought the people
were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the people just couldn't understand
them."
This is one personal account of one episode in a pattern of atrocities that grinds on, day
in day out, in country after country, as it has done for the last 16 years. To the extent that
the Western media cover these atrocities at all, the mainstream narrative is that they are a
combination of unfortunate but isolated incidents and the "normal" horrors of war.
But that is not true. They are the direct result of the American way of war, which
prioritizes "force protection" over the lives of human beings in other countries to minimize
U.S. casualties and thus domestic political opposition to war. In practice, this means using
overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower in ways that make it impossible to distinguish
combatants from non-combatants or protect civilians from the horrors of war as the Geneva
Conventions require.
When lower ranks have been prosecuted for war crimes against civilians, they have been
acquitted or given light sentences because they were acting on orders from senior officers. But
courts martial have allowed the senior officers implicated in these cases to testify in secret
or have not called them to testify at all, and none have been prosecuted.
After nearly a hundred deaths in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, including torture
deaths that are capital crimes under U.S. federal law, the harshest sentence handed down was a
5 month prison sentence, and the most senior officer prosecuted was a major, although the
orders to torture prisoners came from the very top of the chain of command. As Rear Admiral
John Hutson, the retired Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy, wrote in Human
Rights First's Command's Responsibility report after investigating just 12 of these deaths,
"One such incident would be an isolated transgression; two would be a serious problem; a dozen
of them is policy."
So the Military Giant is not just a war machine. It is also a war crimes machine.
The logic of force protection and technological warfare also means that the roughly 800 U.S.
military bases in other countries are surrounded by barbed wire and concrete blast-walls and
staffed mainly by Americans, so that the
290,000 U.S. troops occupying 183 foreign countries have little contact with the local
people their empire aspires to rule.
Donald Rumsfeld described this empire of self-contained bases as "lily pads," from which his
forces could hop like frogs from one base to another by plane, helicopter or armored vehicle,
or launch strikes on the surrounding territory, without exposing themselves to the dangers of
meeting the locals.
Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East reporter for the U.K.'s Independent newspaper, had
another name for these bases:
"crusader castles" -- after the medieval fortresses built by equally isolated foreign
invaders a thousand years ago that still dot the landscape of the Middle East.
Michael Mann contrasted the isolation of U.S. troops in their empire of bases to the lives
of British officers in India, "where officers' clubs were typically on the edge of the
encampment, commanding the nicest location and view. The officers were relaxed about their
personal safety, sipping their whisky and soda and gin and tonic in full view of the natives,
(who) comprised most of the inhabitants -- NCOs and soldiers, servants, stable-hands, drivers
and sometimes their families."
In 1945, a wiser generation of American leaders brought to their senses by the mass
destruction of two world wars realized the imperial game was up. They worked hard to frame
their new-found power and economic dominance within an international system that the rest of
the world would accept as legitimate, with a central role for President Roosevelt's vision of the United
Nations .
Roosevelt promised that his "permanent structure of peace," would, "spell the end of the
system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of
power, and all the expedients that have been tried for centuries -- and have always failed,"
and that "the forces of aggression (would be) permanently outlawed."
America's World War II leaders were wisely on guard against the kind of militarism they had
confronted and defeated in Germany and Japan. When an ugly militarism reared its head in the
U.S. in the late 1940s, threatening a "preemptive" nuclear war to destroy the USSR before it
could develop its own nuclear deterrent, General Eisenhower responded forcefully in a speech to
the U.S. Conference of Mayors in St. Louis,
"I decry loose and sometimes gloating talk about the high degree of security implicit in a
weapon that might destroy millions overnight," Eisenhower declared. "Those who measure security
solely in terms of offensive capacity distort its meaning and mislead those who pay them heed.
No modern nation has ever equaled the crushing offensive power attained by the German war
machine in 1939. No modern country was broken and smashed as was Germany six years later."
U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Robert Jackson , the chief US representative at the London Conference that drew up
the Nuremberg Principles in 1945, stated as the official U.S. position, "If certain acts in
violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or
whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct
against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
That was the U.S. government of 1945 explicitly agreeing to the prosecution of Americans who
commit aggression, which Jackson and the judges at Nuremberg defined as "the supreme
international crime." That would now include the last six U.S. presidents: Reagan (Grenada and
Nicaragua), Bush I (Panama), Clinton (Yugoslavia), Bush II (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and
Somalia), Obama (Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen) and Trump (Syria and Yemen).
Since Mann wrote Incoherent Empire in 2003, the Military Giant has rampaged around the world
waging wars that have killed millions of
people and wrecked country after country. But its unaccountable campaign of serial
aggression has failed to bring peace or security to any of the countries it has attacked or
invaded. As even some members of the U.S.
military now recognize, the mindless violence of the Military Giant serves no rational or
constructive purpose, imperialist or otherwise.
Economic Back Seat Driver
In 2003, Michael Mann wrote that, "The U.S. productive engine remains formidable, the global
financial system providing its fuel. But the U.S. is only a back-seat driver since it cannot
directly control either foreign investors or foreign economies."
Since 2003, the U.S. role in the global economy has declined further, now comprising only
22% of global economic activity, compared with 40% at the height of its economic dominance in
the 1950s and 60s. China is displacing the U.S. as the largest trading partner of countries
around the world, and its "new silk road" initiatives are building the infrastructure to cement
and further expand its role as the global hub of manufacturing and commerce.
The U.S. can still wield its financial clout as an arsenal of carrots and sticks to pressure
poorer, weaker countries do what it wants. But this is a far cry from the actions of an
imperial power that actually rules far-flung territories and subjects on other continents. As
Mann put it, "Even if they are in debt, the U.S. cannot force reform on them. In the global
economy, it is only a back-seat driver, nagging the real driver, the sovereign state, sometimes
administering sharp blows to his head."
At the extreme, the U.S. uses economic sanctions as a brutal form of economic warfare that
hurts and kills ordinary people, while generally inflicting less pain on the leaders who are
their nominal target. U.S. leaders claim that the pain of economic sanctions is intended to
force people to abandon and overthrow their leaders, a way to achieve regime change without the
violence and horror of war. But Robert Pape of the University of Chicago conducted
an extensive study of the effects of sanctions and concluded that only 5 out of 115
sanctions regimes have ever achieved that goal.
When sanctions inevitably fail, they can still be useful to U.S. officials as part of a
political narrative to blame the victims and frame war as a last resort. But this is only a
political ploy, not a legal pretext for war.
A secondary goal of all such imperial bullying is to make an example of the victims to put
other weak countries on notice that resisting imperial demands can be dangerous. The obvious
counter to such strategies is for poorer, weaker countries to band together to resist imperial
bullying, as in collective groupings like CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and also in the UN General Assembly, where the U.S.
often finds itself outvoted.
The dominant position of the U.S. and the dollar in the international financial system have
given the U.S. a unique ability to finance its imperial wars and global military expansion
without bankrupting itself in the process. As Mann described in Incoherent Empire,
"In principle, the world is free to withdraw its subsidies to the U.S., but unless the U.S.
really alienates the world and over-stretches its economy, this is unlikely. For the moment,
the U.S. can finance substantial imperial activity. It does so carefully, spending billions on
its strategic allies, however unworthy and oppressive they may be."
The economic clout of the U.S. back-seat driver was tested in 2003 when it deployed maximum
pressure on other countries to support its invasion of Iraq. Chile, Mexico, Pakistan, Guinea,
Angola and Cameroon were on the Security Council at the time but were all ready to vote against
the use of force. It didn't help the U.S. case that it had failed to deliver the "carrots" it
promised to the countries who voted for war on Iraq in 1991, nor that the money it promised
Pakistan for supporting its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was not paid until the U.S. wanted
its support again in 2003 over Iraq.
Mann concluded, "An administration which is trying to cut taxes while waging war will not be
able to hand out much cash around the world. This back-seat driver will not pay for the gas. It
is difficult to build an Empire without spending money."
Fifteen years later, remarkably, the wealthy investors of the world have continued to
subsidize U.S. war-making by investing in record U.S. debt, and a deceptive global charm
offensive by President Obama partially rebuilt U.S. alliances. But the U.S. failure to abandon
its illegal policies of aggression and war crimes have only increased its isolation since 2003,
especially from countries in the Global South. People all over the world now tell pollsters
they view the U.S. as the greatest threat to peace in the world.
It is also possible that their U.S. debt holdings give China and other creditors (Germany?)
some leverage by which they can ultimately discipline U.S. imperialism. In 1956, President
Eisenhower reportedly threatened to call in the U.K.'s debts if it did not withdraw its forces
from Egypt during the Suez crisis, and there has long been speculation that China could
exercise similar economic leverage to stop U.S. aggression at some strategic moment.
It seems more likely that boom and bust financial bubbles, shifts in global trade and
investment and international opposition to U.S. wars will more gradually erode U.S. financial
hegemony along with other forms of power.
Michael Mann wrote in 2003 that the world was unlikely to "withdraw its subsidies" for U.S.
imperialism "unless the U.S. really alienates the world and over-stretches its economy." But
that prospect seems more likely than ever in 2018 as President Trump seems doggedly determined
to do both.
Political Schizophrenic
In its isolated fantasy world, the Political Schizophrenic is the greatest country in the
world, the "shining city on a hill," the land of opportunity where anyone can find their
American dream. The rest of the world so desperately wants what we have that we have to build a
wall to keep them out. Our armed forces are the greatest force for good that the world has ever
known, valiantly fighting to give other people the chance to experience the democracy and
freedom that we enjoy.
But if we seriously compare the U.S. to other wealthy countries, we find a completely
different picture. The United States has the most extreme inequality, the most widespread
poverty, the least social and economic mobility and the least effective social safety net of
any technologically advanced country.
America is exceptional, not in the imaginary blessings our Political Schizophrenic
politicians take credit for, but in its unique failure to provide healthcare, education and
other necessities of life to large parts of its population, and in its systematic violations of
the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and other binding international treaties.
If the U.S. was really the democracy it claims to be, the American public could elect
leaders who would fix all these problems. But the U.S. political system is so endemically
corrupt that only a Political Schizophrenic could call it a democracy. Former President Jimmy
Carter believes that the U.S. is now "just
an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery." U.S. voter turnout is understandably
among the lowest in the developed world.
Sheldon Wolin, who taught political science at Berkeley and Princeton for 40 years,
described the actually existing U.S. political system as "inverted totalitarianism."
Instead of abolishing democratic institutions on the "classical totalitarian" model, the U.S.'s
inverted totalitarian system preserves the hollowed-out trappings of democracy to falsely
legitimize the oligarchy and political bribery described by President Carter.
As Wolin explained, this has been more palatable and sustainable, and therefore more
effective, than the classical form of totalitarianism as a means of concentrating wealth and
power in the hands of a corrupt ruling class.
The corruption of the U.S. political system is increasingly obvious to Americans, but also
to people in other countries. Billion-dollar U.S.-style "elections" would be illegal in most
developed countries, because they inevitably throw up corrupt leaders who offer the public no
more than empty slogans and vague promises to disguise their plutocratic loyalties.
In 2018, U.S. party bosses are still determined to divide us along the artificial
fault-lines of the 2016 election between two of the most unpopular candidates in history, as if
their vacuous slogans, mutual accusations and plutocratic policies define the fixed poles of
American politics and our country's future.
The Political Schizophrenic's noise machine is working overtime to stuff the alternate
visions of Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and other candidates who challenge the corrupt status quo
down the "memory hole," by closing ranks, purging progressives from DNC committees and swamping
the airwaves with Trump tweets and Russiagate updates.
Ordinary Americans who try to engage with or confront members of the corrupt political,
business and media class find it almost impossible. The Political Schizophrenic moves in a
closed and isolated social circle, where the delusions of his fantasy world or "political
reality" are accepted as incontrovertible truths. When real people talk about real problems and
suggest real solutions to them, he dismisses us as naive idealists. When we question the dogma
of his fantasy world, he thinks we are the ones who are out of touch with reality. We cannot
communicate with him, because he lives in a different world and speaks a different
language.
It is difficult for the winners in any society to recognize that their privileges are the
product of a corrupt and unfair system, not of their own superior worth or ability. But the
inherent weakness of "inverted totalitarianism" is that the institutions of American politics
still exist and can still be made to serve democracy, if and when enough Americans wake up from
this Political Schizophrenia, organize around real solutions to real problems, and elect people
who are genuinely committed to turning those solutions into public policy.
As I was taught when I worked with schizophrenics as a social worker, they tend to become
agitated and angry if you question the reality of their fantasy world. If the patient in
question is also armed to the teeth, it is a matter of life and death to handle them with kid
gloves.
The danger of a Political Schizophrenic armed with a trillion dollar a year war machine and
nuclear weapons is becoming more obvious to more of our neighbors around the world as each year
goes by. In 2017, 122 of them voted to approve the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
U.S. allies have pursued an opportunistic policy of appeasement, as many of the same
countries did with Germany in the 1930s. But Russia, China and countries in the Global South
have gradually begun to take a firmer line, to try to respond to U.S. aggression and to
shepherd the world through this incredibly dangerous transitional period to a multipolar,
peaceful and sustainable world. The Political Schizophrenic has, predictably, responded with
propaganda, demonization, threats and sanctions, now amounting to a Second Cold War.
Ideological Phantom
During the First Cold War, each side presented its own society in an idealized way, but was
more honest about the flaws and problems of its opposite number. As a former East German now
living in the U.S. explained to me, "When our government and state media told us our society
was perfect and wonderful, we knew they were lying to us. So when they told us about all the
social problems in America, we assumed they were lying about them too."
Now living in the U.S., he realized that the picture of life in the U.S. painted by the East
German media was quite accurate, and that there really are people sleeping in the street,
people with no access to healthcare and widespread poverty.
My East German acquaintance came to regret that Eastern Europe had traded the ills of the
Soviet Empire for the ills of the U.S. Empire. Nobody ever explained to him and his friends why
this had to be a "take it or leave it" neoliberal package deal, with "shock therapy" and large
declines in living standards for most Eastern Europeans. Why could they not have Western-style
political freedom without giving up the social protections and standard of living they enjoyed
before?
American leaders at the end of the Cold War lacked the wisdom and caution of their
predecessors in 1945, and quickly succumbed to what Mikhail Gorbachev now calls
"triumphalism." The version of capitalism and "managed democracy" they expanded into
Eastern Europe was the radical neoliberal ideology introduced by
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and consolidated by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The people
of Eastern Europe were no more or less vulnerable to neoliberalism's siren song than Americans
and Western Europeans.
The unconstrained freedom of ruling classes to exploit working people that is the foundation
of neoliberalism has always been an Ideological Phantom, as Michael Mann called it, with a hard
core of greed and militarism and an outer wrapping of deceptive propaganda.
So the "peace dividend" most people longed for at the end of the Cold War was quickly
trumped by the "power dividend." Now that the U.S. was no longer constrained by the fear of war
with the U.S.S.R., it was free to expand its own global military presence and use military
force more aggressively. As Michael Mandelbaum of the Council on Foreign Relations
crowed to the New York Times as the U.S. prepared to attack Iraq in 1990, "For the first
time in 40 years we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about
triggering World War III."
Without the Cold War to justify U.S. militarism, the prohibition against the threat
or use of military force in the UN Charter took on new meaning, and the Ideological Phantom
embarked on an urgent quest for political rationales and propaganda narratives to justify what
international law clearly defines as the crime of aggression.
During the transition to the incoming Clinton administration after the 1992 election,
Madeleine Albright confronted General Colin Powell at a meeting and asked him, "What's the
point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
The correct answer would have been that, after the end of the Cold War, the legitimate
defense needs of the U.S. required much smaller, strictly defensive military forces and a
greatly reduced military presence around the world. Former Cold Warriors, Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara and Assistant Secretary Lawrence Korb, told the Senate Budget Committee in 1989
that the
U.S. military budget could safely be cut in half over 10 years. Instead, it is now even
higher than when they said that (after adjusting for inflation).
The U.S.'s Cold War Military Industrial Complex was still dominant in Washington. All it
lacked was a new ideology to justify its existence. But that was just an interesting
intellectual challenge, almost a game, for the Ideological Phantom.
The ideology that emerged to justify the U.S.'s new imperialism is a narrative of a world
threatened by "dictators" and "terrorists," with only the power of the U.S. military standing
between the "free" people of the American Empire and the loss of all we hold dear. Like the
fantasy world of the Political Schizophrenic, this is a counter-factual picture of the world
that only becomes more ludicrous with each year that passes and each new phase of the
ever-expanding humanitarian and military catastrophe it has unleashed.
The Ideological Phantom defends the world against terrorists on a consistently selective and
self-serving basis. It is always ready to recruit, arm and support terrorists to fight its
enemies, as in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s or more recently in Libya and
Syria. U.S. support for jihadis in Afghanistan led to the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil
on September 11th 2001.
But that didn't prevent the U.S. and its allies from supporting the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group (LIFG) and other jihadis in Libya less than ten years later, leading to the Manchester
Arena bombing by
the son of an LIFG member in 2017. And it hasn't prevented the CIA from pouring thousands
of tons of weapons into Syria, from sniper rifles to howitzers, to arm Al Qaeda-led
fighters from 2011 to the present.
When it comes to opposing dictators, the Ideological Phantom's closest allies always include
the most oppressive dictators in the world, from Pinochet, Somoza, Suharto, Mbuto and the Shah
of Iran to its newest super-client, Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. In the
name of freedom and democracy, the U.S. keeps overthrowing democratically elected leaders and
replacing them with coup-leaders and dictators, from Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 to
Haiti in 2004, Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2014.
Nowhere is the Ideological Phantom more ideologically bankrupt than in the countries the
U.S. has dispatched its armed forces and foreign proxy forces to "liberate" since 2001:
Afghanistan; Iraq; Libya; Syria; Somalia and Yemen. In every case, ordinary people have been
slaughtered, devastated and utterly disillusioned by the ugly reality behind the Phantom's
mask.
In Afghanistan, after 16 years of U.S. occupation, a recent BBC survey found that people feel safer in areas
governed by the Taliban. In Iraq, people say their lives were better under
Saddam Hussein . Libya has been reduced from one of the most stable and prosperous countries in
Africa to a failed state ruled by competing militias, while Somalia, Syria and Yemen have met
similar fates.
Incredibly, American ideologists in the 1990s saw the Ideological Phantom's ability to
project counter-factual, glamorized images of itself as a source of irresistible ideological
power. In 1997, Major Ralph Peters, who is better known as a best-selling novelist, turned his
vivid imagination and skills as a fiction writer to the bright future of the Ideological
Phantom in a military journal article titled "Constant Conflict."
Peters imagined an endless campaign of "information warfare" in which U.S. propagandists,
aided by Hollywood and Silicon Valley, would overwhelm other cultures with powerful images of
American greatness that their own cultures could not resist.
"One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information
masters and information victims," Peters wrote. "We are already masters of information warfare
(we) will be writing the scripts, producing (the videos) and collecting the royalties."
But while Peters' view of U.S. imperialism was based on media, technology and cultural
chauvinism, he was not suggesting that the Ideological Phantom would conquer the world without
a fight -- quite the opposite. Peters' vision was a war plan, not a futuristic fantasy.
"There will be no peace," he wrote. "At any given moment for the rest of our lives, there
will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate
the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more
decisive. The de facto role of the U.S. armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our
economy and open to our cultural assault."
"To those ends," he added, "We will do a fair amount of killing."
Conclusion
After reviewing the early results of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003,
Michael Mann concluded, "We saw in action that the new imperialism turned into simple
militarism."
Without solid economic, political and ideological bases, the Military Giant lacks the
economic, political and ideological power and authority required to govern the world beyond its
shores. The Military Giant can only destroy and bring chaos, never rebuild or bring order.
The sooner the people of the U.S. and the world wake up to this dangerous and destructive
reality, the sooner we can begin to lay the new economic, political and ideological foundations
of a peaceful, just and sustainable world.
Like past aggressors, the Military Giant is sowing the seeds of his own destruction. But
there is only one group of people in the world who can peacefully tame him and cut him down to
size. That is us, the 323 million people who call ourselves Americans.
We have waited far too long to claim the peace dividend that our warmongering leaders stole
from us after the end of the First Cold War. Millions of our fellow human beings have paid the
ultimate price for our confusion, weakness and passivity.
Now we must be united, clear and strong as we begin the essential work of transforming our
country from an Incoherent Empire into an Economic High-Speed Train to a Sustainable Future; a
Real Political Democracy; an Ideological Humanitarian -- and a Military Law-Abiding
Citizen.
"Like past aggressors, the Military Giant is sowing the seeds of his own destruction. But
there is only one group of people in the world who can peacefully tame him and cut him down
to size. That is us, the 323 million people who call ourselves Americans."
So what is keeping people from the Libertarian Party to pursue these ends? Could it be
political censorship and election rigging disguised as "ballot access" laws? You don't think
the Democratic or Republican parties are going to turn anti-imperialists do you?
Disclosure: I am a co-founder of the Libertarian Party.
Sam F , February 20, 2018 at 8:00 pm
We do need new parties that truly represent their followers, and can form coalitions to
gain a majority. But with corruption and oligarchy control throughout the legislative,
executive, and judicial branches and mass media, and political suppression by secret agencies
and IT companies, I doubt that political action can be more than a palliative for the
credulous. Please feel free to challenge my pessimism, referring to my comment below..
Very interesting to see the advice he gives in his speech to the various departments of the
Russian government, asking them to please focus on certain issues for the sake of improvement
vis-a-vis the judiciary, economic, trade, financial, etc. Very transparent, open, and gives a
clear idea of where Russia stands.
Yes, the article is a fine review of the corruption of US government and society.
We must find a way to displace or destroy the economic oligarchy that controls elections
and mass media, for that is the only path to restoration of democracy, and restoration of the
humanitarian purpose of our 18th century founders. Only then shall we see an American
Century; otherwise we are doomed to the disdain of history, our lives wasted as cogs in an
engine of destruction.
Our unregulated free market economy allows the unethical bully to prevail in nearly all
areas, including politics. Tyranny is a subculture, a groupthink of bullies who tyrannize
each other, and the worst of the bullies rise to the top. This is why the US founders opposed
a standing military, and they were right.
If the US had spent the billions wasted on war since WWII, on building the roads, schools,
and hospitals of the developing nations, we would have eliminated poverty for the poorest
half of humanity, a true American century, and we would have no enemies. Instead we have
willfully killed over six million innocents for nothing, have destroyed democracies and
replaced them with dictators, and have allowed the MIC/Israel/WallSt oligarchy to control our
former democracy with campaign bribes, control of mass media to promote violence as
patriotism, promiscuous surveillance, and militarized police. They have destroyed America and
have spent all we could borrow on destruction for their personal gain. We have the lowest per
capita foreign aid of all developed nations, almost all of it military "aid," a total of less
than one meal a year for the world's poorest.
Apart from NATO and a few other treaties, the US would have no constitutional power to
wage foreign wars, just to repel invasions and suppress insurrections, and that is the way it
should be. NATO has been nothing but an excuse for warmongering since 1989.
I suggest re-purposing about 80 percent of the US military for international aid projects,
to create James' (and Carter's) "moral equivalent of war," to train the young, the citizen,
and the mass media to see humanitarianism as robust and to reject the selfish amorality of US
oligarchy pop culture, to serve as a "backup" peacekeeping or defense force (probably little
used), and to avoid alienating their staff with unemployment.
Eventually "financial bubbles, shifts in global trade and investment and international
opposition to U.S. wars" will make it unable to afford an empire, but it will remain an
oligarchy. We cannot stop the wars, establish a humanitarian democracy, nor achieve benefits
for the people, until the oligarchy is deposed; this is the greatest problem of civilization.
We must resolve that deposing oligarchy is the only historical meaning of our lives.
Apart from the historical revolutions of the largest present democracies (US and India),
where the colonial power was small and remote, every solution to oligarchy in history has
involved external conquest (e.g. Rome) or violent revolution (e.g. Russia, China, and Cuba).
Unfortunately the US is now in the latter category. If democracy is ever restored in the US,
it must be stabilized by amendments to protect elections and mass media debate from economic
power, better checks and balances within the government branches, purging the corrupt
judiciary and Congress, monitoring of government officials for corruption, and regulation of
business so that oligarchic bullies and scammers do not rise to control economic power.
frank scott , February 20, 2018 at 9:39 pm
we cannot "restore" a democracy which has never existed, nationally, nor continue the
nearly religious worship of the so-called creators of this fiction, the holy founders, many
of them owning slaves and having stolen land from the indigenous people and hardly any
meaning to have non-property owners voting in elections, no matter what their skin tone,
religious or sexual preference might be once we get past the mythology about our country we
may well be able to create a reality which is closer to what we idealize than the horror it
has always been for some, even while making life extremely pleasant for others..market forces
need to be replaced by human forces which means democracy in a material sense -- majority
rule -- rather than the religious, therapeutic and drug induced excuse we live.
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 1:24 pm
Yes, the undemocratic processes throughout US history tempt one to conclude that democracy
never was. and this is true in an ideal sense. But the intent of democracy was there, and it
was a fact in the early federal era for most citizens, extending with ever greater corruption
through FDR. Had there been no predominance of economic power 1850-1945, likely democracy
with many flaws would have generalized to all persons within the US.
Yes, we must "get past the mythology about our country" by accepting its wrongs and the
corruption of its institutions and popular culture, but if the good in that tradition is
preserved, we have a better starting point for reform, which avoids scaring off those who
will otherwise see, or pretend to see, only "radicalism" and "anarchism."
Nancy , February 21, 2018 at 1:51 pm
I don't believe in the myths taught about the history of the United States. Our glorious
founding fathers were not only slaveholders, rapists and imperialists, they were aristocrats
who just wanted to be free of British rule. They had no intention of sharing their freedom
and independence (or the bounty of the land) with the less well off inhabitants, regardless
of their race, color or creed. This is just a story they tell to keep us hoping that some day
we can be one of them.
Hey, there's always the lottery!
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 6:25 pm
Thanks, Nancy, I agree that today the national mythology largely serves that purpose of
burying the truth and creating false hopes. I discern some sincerity behind the best of the
founders, even acknowledging their contradictory ownership of slaves (as Robert Parry very
well elucidated for Jefferson). The sincere ones were nonetheless products of the
contradictions of their times and circumstances, and their good intentions did not extend to
impoverishing themselves to free their slaves, thereby ruining their families and good
political influences.
Even today good people consume products made with essentially slave labor in poor
countries, and I have heard few other than myself demanding serious foreign aid, and/or
tariffs sufficient to nearly bring such products to US wholesale prices, to fund foreign aid
for the poorest of those nations. Few would support such a sacrifice. While it irritates me,
I can see that they too are the products of circumstances, unwilling to impoverish themselves
while trying to get by, support families, improve their circumstances, and so on.
So I look for the good side of better characters, and try to build on that, as it is the
only building material we have. But of course you are right to call out the selfishness,
hypocrisy, and malice. So I presume that we must preserve the best of the national mythology
for the young, and teach them better when they are ready. We can preserve the institutions
(after they are fixed) and monuments, but the educated must be very critical of
mythology.
Brent Riley , February 21, 2018 at 12:29 am
A couple years ago I heard a Chilean woman saying when she was a girl, one couldn't go out
of the house after 9 PM because you would get shot. I piped up, "Thanks to Nixon and
Kissinger." A serious look came over her face, she looked directly at me and forcefully said,
"Americans are a GOOD people. Their government IS NOT".
I believe a serious campaign for war reparations to Iraq could be hard to dismiss and may
jolt our nation into a sense of responsibility or acknowledge we don't accept responsibility
for our behavior. Either, a step forward.
geeyp , February 21, 2018 at 4:40 am
Yes, that might start with not writing as Nicholas J.S. Davies has: "U.S. support for
jihadis in Afghanistan led to the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil on" Sept. 11, 2001.
Peter Loeb , February 21, 2018 at 7:33 am
THANKS FIRST TO NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES.
And to KiwiAnts. for his reply.
Davies touched on my major heroes -- authors and analysts.
I would add one:
I "discovered" recently. Francis Jennings (1918-1980)
especially THE CREATION OF AMERICA, his late work. He points out
that a "democracy" was never intended (African Americans, Native
Americans, pacifist organizations such as the Quakers, and women
were all excluded. Instead (excuse my paraphrasing) Americans
wanted "liberty" from the English Empire in order to form their own
Empire maintaining their (economic) needs (slave labor, elimination
of Native American claims to land etc.)
After years and years of allegiance to the Democratic party, I have
begun to realize that neither they nor other mail (political) party
can undo the evil that has been done. (See "THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN
FOREIGN POLICY" by Gabriel Kolko, "Epiloque: Readon and Radicalism".
-- Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
Lisa , February 21, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Peter,
You confirm something I have read much earlier – that the 13 US colonies were in a
hurry to separate themselves from the British Empire, because Britons were about to abolish
slavery within their Empire. US needed to maintain the slavery for economical reasons,
therefore the heroic struggle for independence.
I don't remember the source, and unfortunately cannot give a link to it.
Annie , February 20, 2018 at 6:34 pm
I referenced this in an article before which was a discussion I had with a cousin who is
an international lawyer in the military. I said I wasn't voting in this election, but he
insisted I vote for Hilary as she was the lesser of the two evils, well, that's how it
started out. He went on to claim that Russia was a real threat to the US and in breech of
international law in her annexation of Crimea. I told him I would really be afraid of Russia
if she was bombing and destroying one country after another in the Middle East, created a
coup in the Ukraine and crossed sovereign borders, dropping drones and killing civilians, and
had no qualms about creating mayhem in our wars. Wars based on lies, since none of the
countries we invaded represented an aggressive threat to us. He accused me of being
un-american and failed to acknowledge we were in breech of any international law. What ever
we do seems to be justifiable, but are so called enemies are held to the letter of the law.
For me he represents the mentality expressed in this article, and unfortunately it is all too
real. I guess his position is what's good for the goose, is not good for the gander, an
interestingly he applies the same mind set in his marriage.
Sam F , February 20, 2018 at 7:48 pm
Cheers for your courage in facing your cousin. Rare is the lawyer who does not regard
argument as a domain of propaganda warfare for private gain, rather than of truth and
justice. Most choose the career for money and power, and learn to substitute scamming for
reason. There is little point in discussing anything with them.
Annie , February 20, 2018 at 7:56 pm
Thanks Sam, and the outcome was, he no longer speaks to me because of my position, but I
really don't care.
Nicolas J S Davies , February 20, 2018 at 8:29 pm
I think your friend is an exception among JAG officers. The father of a JAG officer told
me that his son and his colleagues saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as crimes of
aggression, and retired JAGs have told me they saw them that way too. Jess Bravin's book, The
Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo, describes how JAG officers fought our
government's efforts to deny justice and due process to accused terrorists, and presciently
predicted that this would lead to a failure to convict anyone of the crimes of 9/11. Admiral
Hutson's role in investigating and condemning torture deaths in US custody was exemplary and
uncompromising. Military lawyers have tried to uphold the law, but have been overridden by
their criminal and corrupt military and political bosses.
rosemerry , February 21, 2018 at 4:05 pm
The breach of international law ie the overthrow of the Ukrainian government by the USA
did not count, of course! In Oliver Stone's interviews with Pres. Putin I remember the
explanation of how Putin's government worked with the pro-Western previous Ukrainian
government for four years, managing to cooperate, but as soon as the "pro-Russian government"
was elected, the USA/West could not wait to barge in.
Often the USA chooses a date to begin
the discussion to make it seem justified eg always 1979 for Iran, never 1953 when the USA/UK
overthrew the elected government to instal and keep in power the Shah and the brutal SAVAK
police. Israel is good at this too, choosing a selected "violent act" of a Palestinian after
vast earlier Israeli attacks, as its starting point.
Mike Martin , February 20, 2018 at 6:38 pm
"And yet the U.S. imperial project sails on, seemingly blind to its consistently
catastrophic results." -- J S Davies
?? Really?? But what if the resulting chaos is exactly what is intended?
What better way to maximize the sale of all types of armaments than to ensure continuous
chaos? Wasn't a CIA presentation on just such a plan leaked some time back?
joe defiant , February 20, 2018 at 7:56 pm
Yeah this "incoherent" and "stupid blundering" excuse is complete bullshit. USA military
via imperialism consistently furthers elites interests all over the world and at home.
Michael Parenti has covered this excuse extensively in a few of his books like 'Faces of
Imperialism' and 'Against Empire'. Liberal political writers constantly trot out this excuse
as if only our leaders would listen to the liberal critiques the empire would be this vast
power for good and elites would forget about furthering their own interests and start "doing
good".
Sam F , February 20, 2018 at 8:21 pm
Yes, but by "seemingly blind" he means not blind at all. Using moderation in contrast with
the strong argument, he urges you to jump ahead. By not offering finally a means to the ends,
he leaves the door open to those who will throw out the facts if they see only an extreme
solution. Let the readers decide how to get there.
evelync , February 21, 2018 at 1:23 pm
"What better way to ,maximize the sale of all types of armaments than to ensure continuous
chaos?"
I think you put your finger on what it all boils down to, Mike Martin – what drives
the whole Neoconservative and Neoliberal economic/political/military rape and pillage around
the world and, now, here at home – I was going to say that here at home it is a
financial rape and pillage (which it is) but then I remembered the for profit prisons which
blossomed on Bill Clinton's watch and then, on Obama's watch they mindlessly offered excess
military equipment to city police departments. Such a brazen act by compromised politicians.
No problem having a militarized for profit scheme here at home too.
You pointed out what drives the whole planet eating machine, Mike Martin. Just plain old
grand theft larceny mixed with an Al Capone level of violence, dressed up in a pack of
lies.
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 6:32 pm
Very true.
Dr. Ibrahim Soudy , February 20, 2018 at 7:33 pm
There is no such thing as American Empire. The British Empire was a misnomer ..The real
Empire is the Banking Empire owned and run by a number of known families. Since the
Industrial Revolution and those families needed a military machine paid for by the people.
That military machine is needed to help steal the natural resources of other people or subdue
them if they get out of line First it was the British and since WWII they moved it to the US
..As long as the Americans are willing to pay for it, the banking families (Empire) will
remain happy to continue exploiting them .
I would beg to differ. The British Empire still exists today although it is mainly a
financial and information warfare empire. Yes you are right about the families but mainly
these are old aristocratic European and their married in to Jr. partners in America. The
empire consists of the City of London,Wall Street, The British monarchy, The Saudi Royal
family and many other of there agents and subsidiaries.
The members of the British monarchy
still refer to the United States in private as the wayward British colony hence they have
never accepted US independence or our constitution. No offense to the British people they are
for the most part a warm, kind and hardworking people but are still seen as subjects by the
Monarchy. Remember to British prime minister has to sware loyalty to the Queen not to the
nation of Great Britain.
joe defiant , February 20, 2018 at 7:51 pm
"As even some members of the U.S. military now recognize, the mindless violence of the
Military Giant serves no rational or constructive purpose, imperialist or otherwise."
This is complete nonsense. The violence of the military serves the interests of elites
with overwhelming consistency. From creating the necessary conditions for plundering of
natural resources, opening new markets for U.S. corporations to exploit, and funneling tax
payer monies via "aid" to corporations and elites, all the while allowing the politicians who
advance these elite interests to themselves profit greatly via revolving door jobs, speeches,
and donations to their "humanitarian" foundations. How is this not rational? It is completely
rational and organized and planned to be executed exactly how it does. Furthering your own
wealth, power, and interests is not rational?
jose , February 20, 2018 at 8:49 pm
You do have a valid point Mr. Joe Defiant: Although some military members may think that.
"mindless violence of the Military Giant serves no rational or constructive purpose,
imperialist or otherwise." It is undeniable that the military violence has served the
interest of the powerful elite in a very consistent manner for centuries. Furthermore, I
would submit to you that the military has shown very little remorse by being the murderous
tool of elites and that more often than not; They have been happy to oblige.
Banger , February 21, 2018 at 12:36 pm
One thing that is often ignored is that wartime provides rapid promotions and lucrative
employment free retirement with major corporations. So military officers have a strong
interest in promoting war
Nancy , February 21, 2018 at 2:05 pm
Why would someone join the military if they didn't support the well-known violence it
inflicts upon the world? I know that some consider it to be a valid "career" compared to the
options available in the civilian world, but unless they are completely clueless they have to
know that the military is a killing operation, first and foremost.
Realist , February 21, 2018 at 3:10 am
You are correct, these policies are pursued for a "reason," or as they say, "there is
method to their madness." However, the reason, which is basically pure selfishness and greed,
is generally not recognised as a legitimate one by most folks who claim to be civilised or
moral. If you are a self-proclaimed Nietzchean then "all would be permitted," but that would
not make you very popular here or in most other venues.
rosemerry , February 21, 2018 at 4:17 pm
Surely this is the point. The USA pretends to be a democracy and a model to us all, but
the leaders are always from or controlled by the élite (look at the Froman emails to
Obama before his inauguration, telling him who to appoint to his cabinet-Larry Summers et
al). If the people were able to turn away from the MSM, facebook, twitter,the hopelessness of
knowing that their "vote", the one aspect of democracy the USA has, is meaningless as none of
the "reps" cares at all about their welfare, then as Chris Hedges always writes, a revolution
would be needed. Can you imagine this as likely? People are held down by poverty, by no job
or too many, by lack of housing, healthcare, yet they are told how lucky they are to be in
the best country on earth. The description of the rich few winning is obvious, but 300
million people if they believed in solidarity, would frighten even the Big Boys!!
jose , February 20, 2018 at 8:40 pm
As I was reading this excellent article, a familiar concept came to mind: Cognitive
dissonance which is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes,
especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. A phycologist would tell
you that cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by
a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. The US
ruling elite knows that this worldwide " Full Spectrum Dominance" can only be sustained by
sheer brutish force; The consequences have been disastrous for US victims. When confronted
with this elemental reality, the ruling elite will tell you that is American destiny to do
good around the world even though the majority of the world considers US the greatest threat
to piece. For instance, If a person believes that US invading Iraq is both immoral and
criminal but gives full support to the invasion any way: a dissonance will be created. So to
resolve it, the person could convince himself that Iraq is a dictatorship worth toppling or
Iraqis are evil so they deserve what is coming to them. This reminds me when on May 12 of
1996,Lesley Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq asked Madeleine Albright: "We have
heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in
Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Madeleine Albright: "I think this is
a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." I rest my case.
irene , February 20, 2018 at 8:55 pm
Many people have forgotten, or did not know in the first place, that the Iraq war started
long before
the horrifying display of "Shock & Awe" over Baghdad in March of 2003. I clearly remember
watching
the jet fighter planes leaving Eielson Air Force Base enroute to Bush the Elder's Iraq War in
1991 . . .
And when the brief but brutal sorties were over, we simply continued the war by the
'sanitary' modern
method known as Sanctions. How did that work again ? Let's see, first we bombed Iraq's
water
treatment plants. Then we 'sanctioned' the materials needed to repair them and treat the
water.
The result was the ugly Albright's 'hard choice'.
jose , February 20, 2018 at 9:19 pm
Dear Irene: I would add the following to your post. Regarding on to deal with Iraq, many
republicans were suggesting to bomb Iraq to the stone age: On the other hand, democrats
asserted that this was a barbaric conduct unworthy of US magnanimity and righteousness. So
the latter recommended placing brutal and genocidal economic sanctions on Iraqis to bring
about the desire result. The fact that US did not have constitutional or moral grounds to
pursue both courses of actions was not debated. Many of them were church goers so I wonder
how each dealt with his cognitive dissonance.
Tannenhouser , February 21, 2018 at 10:57 am
Yes papa bush turned Iraq into a live fire training exercise for at least a dozen years,
then his offspring invaded once they were positive there were no remnants of the chemical
weapons they provided to kill Iranians. In a sense this first attack on Iraq was WW3 as it
was the 'world' under the guise of a UN resolution which enabled the war of aggression crime
against humanity.
Nothing i disagree with in this article, but the final statement sums up the dilemma, how
to get the 323 million to wake up and smell the blood in their coffee? Sam F stated the
problem, the corruption is so endemic that people have just succumbed to it. It's the classic
psychological conditioning of "learned helplessness", the subjects finally submit to the
shocks. I must confess that sometimes i have thought David Icke is onto something, there are
evil reptilian overlords from another dimension controlling our planet. The US has definitely
gone over to the "dark side", in the words of the demented Dick Cheney.
Realist , February 21, 2018 at 2:55 am
Really! The unjustified killing of a single human being is a crime, and even a sin if you
have morals. Yet, for all of my lifetime of 70+ years, our government has wantonly killed
MILLIONS for goals as gratuitous as the pursuit of foreign policy. Moreover, we all know with
surety that they have many more military actions planned which are guaranteed to result in
the deaths and maiming of millions more, most innocent of any offense against the United
States. Just their tough luck to be "collateral damage." What a piece of work is the United
States of America, surely not the handiwork of any "loving god." To believe that is the
epitome of "double think."
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 7:03 pm
Indeed we have learned helplessness, first as employees and dependents of businesses
rather than farmers and woodsmen, and now as dependents upon mass media and groupthink for
social acceptance, with no representative in power unless we betray humanity and serve
oligarchy. Some of that furious feeling of entrapment is harvested by the oligarchy
warmongers for their schemes, portraying the killer of random victims as the liberator of
himself. Only bread and circus stand between the oligarchy and public fury, and there may be
less of that to go around when the US is isolated and defeated on all fronts by the rest of
the world.
irina , February 21, 2018 at 12:10 pm
Dmitry Orlov strikes me as being quite prescient in that respect. We are FAR too smug and cozy in our creature comforts.
exiled off mainstreet , February 21, 2018 at 12:51 am
This is a great article. There is nothing I can add, and nothing I can argue with. The
fact that torture has become the modus operandi of yankee centurions and the fact they
massacre first and ask questions later is not covered at all by the propaganda machine which
obfuscates all of these facts.Things are pretty serious, especially since, as a result of the
economic, political and ideological nakedness of the regime, it has lost any semblance of
legitimacy. The latest "indictment" of individual non state actor- Russians living in Russia
for internet activities which would be protected under free speech if the rule of law still
obtained, appears to be the ultimate arrogation of power: that the yankee imperium can outlaw
anybody anywhere who takes actions unfavourable to it.
This is a more ultimate claim of power
than any prior regime in history ever maintained. Sheldon Wolin's Inverted Totalitarianism
has morphed into something even more odious. The central problem, of course, is how a soft
landing can be effected in light of the massive number of nukes possessed by this outlaw
regime.
Bob Van Noy , February 21, 2018 at 11:10 am
I like to bring Imperialist discussion down from the heights of government theory such as
R2P, to the individual soldier, especially those infantry men and women who must confront
each other "eye to eye" because that is where the individual decision must be made to kill or
be killed, and the theory about why you've been placed in that circumstance is likely not
considered.
I had a personal awakening while photographing the "Old North Bridge" in Concord,
Massachusetts. There is a small monument by the side of the bridge that is barely noticeable
and as a photographer, I've learned to notice such things. I was surprised when I realized
that it was a British Monument, not American, it read:
Grave of British Soldiers
"They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne:
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan."
April 19, 1775
American Politicians have now made the same mistake of sending their soldiers into
multiple foreign populations, ill equipped in language and purpose to win. It always was a
fools errand.
That reminds one of the many lost in the Graveyard of Empires, from which only one British
soldier returned from their first invasion. They had been fearful that Russia would invade
Afghanistan, which it did not, even after their defeat. They did not have any specific goals
there, just alleged defense operations. But the lesson did not stop their imperialist masters
from further invasions, every other generation interestingly, each larger and longer and
unsuccessful, until WWI and WWII distracted them. Kipling wrote both accolades and warnings
of imperialism, including a poem about the one who survived the first invasion.
Unfettered Fire , February 21, 2018 at 11:55 am
"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation
of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the
United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize
control and consolidate the four centers of power political, monetary, intellectual and
ecclesiastical. What the Trilateral Commission intends is to create a worldwide economic
power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. As managers and
creators of the system, they will rule the future." – U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater in
his l979 book, With No Apologies.
Neoliberalism, at last, has failed. Even Ben Bernanke had to admit that "Monetary policy
is not a panacea." The nation-state is still valuable. It is necessary to have an institution
that will protect society from predatory capitalism. The dramatic increase in violence is a
direct result of the 40 years of neoliberal dictate, which has shredded the social fabric of
America and much of the world.
Global banks are global in health and national in death. ~ Mervyn King
Banger , February 21, 2018 at 1:01 pm
Very fine essay and many excellent comments here. Meanwhile people who share our insights
have been totally marginalized in this society. Yet, thus analysis goes back to the sixties
and we still are marginalized. The reason is as simple as it was then. We must organize into
a community that could easily become a major power block in this society. I'm guessing our
views represent from one to five percent of the population. If we organized as a disciplined
community of, say, ten thousand then millions would follow. I've been talking about this for
50 years and there has been little action because whether you are on our side or any side we
are all, from a cultural perspective narcissists. Ego us as much a currency as money and has
moved all of us away from community-mindedness. This is why there can never be major
political change in thus country unless the underlying social morality (or lack thereof)
changes dramatically the only hope for change can only happen from top down.
Onyx , February 21, 2018 at 1:10 pm
This article is a long winded attempt to explain why we (the US) always fails in our noble
pursuits.
"In the intervening 15 years, U.S. policy failures have resulted in ever-spreading
violence and chaos that affect hundreds of millions of people in at least a dozen countries.
The U.S. has utterly failed to bring any of its neo-imperial wars to a stable or peaceful
end. And yet the U.S. imperial project sails on, seemingly blind to its consistently
catastrophic results."
I say this by design and the outcomes are exactly as desired. They are not failures in the
eyes of the powerful.
There are two things we can do with our power. 1) use it to compete with our competitors
2) use it to destroy or stymie or competitors. The powers that be in the US have long chosen
the later. Divide and conquer is the game we've been play for my entire life. Death,
destruction and chaos have been rained own on the middle east for 60 years because of its
geographical relevance. It sits geographically between all of our current and potential
competitors. If it can be kept in chaos we win because all the other powers alone cannot
defend themselves. Together they can. So now we are threatening nuclear war with Russia in
order to scare them into submitting their sovereignty and dropping their cooperation with
China and others.
We need to give up the psychopathic ideal of a mono-polar world and join Russia, China,
the EU, Africa, India, in a multi-polar world where everyone's interested are negotiated
instead of dictated by the one most capable of resorting to might makes right.
rosemerry , February 21, 2018 at 4:27 pm
There are two things we can do with our power. 1) use it to compete with our competitors
2) use it to destroy or stymie or competitors. This is exactly the no-win ( or as Trump would
say, loser) strategy that ignores the possibility of peace or cooperation.
The 323 million have plenty of work to do!
Major Peters' rapture over our Darwinian PAC MAN ravaging of those victims he delights in
calling the "uninformed" around the world and here at home, reveals a deep ignorance of
economics and finance, IMO. (Are these "uninformed" the cousins of Hillary Clinton's
"deplorables"?)
And thanks to Mike Martin and others for reminding us that it's the oligarchs who write
policy for their own greed.
Former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volker, when asked about the impact of the gigantic
banks a few years ago – I think it was after the 2008-2009 big crash – he said
that over the last 30 years the only useful innovation he was aware of that was produced by
the big banks was the ATM machine. Say what????????
The Oligarchs that Jimmy Carter refers to have taken over policy decisions within the
Congress and the White House.
Endless regime change wars and financial deregulation have looted wealth abroad and now here
at home. Our Secretary of the Treasury, Mnuchin, became fabulously wealthy, foreclosing on
millions of homeowners who were set up by unscrupulous banksters who misled them with teaser
rates and delayed mortgage debt pile ons. http://wallstreetonparade.com
The Oligarchs have succeeded in becoming our largest "socialist institution" –
Eisenhower's "MIC.
As Andrew Bacevich says – our regime change war policies have created a mess and will
continue doing so. Then why continue? The profiteers run our government.
Zenobia van Dongen , February 21, 2018 at 4:23 pm
You Americans will never stop contemplating your own imperial navel, even as it slips into
oblivion. In Latin America, Usimp's traditional stomping ground, US imperialism is being
eclipsed by Chinese imperialism, which to nobody's surprise is every bit as ruthless as the
US variety. This is an article (in Spanish) about how the indigenouses and sundry others are
getting ripped off by China.
Inversiones chinas en América Latina fuera de control, CIVICUS, 12 February 2018
https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/civicus/inversiones-chinas-en-america-latina-fuera-de-control
E. Leete , February 21, 2018 at 6:48 pm
doesn't matter what country they come from – wealthpower giants DO what wealthpower
giants DO. as the author and everyone here appear to already know, militarism and imperialism
are genosadistic projects of psychopathic wealthpower giants. Money is power.
overpower/underpower = tyranny/slavery. always. see history. Humans are too dangerous a
species to be allowed to have unlimited fortunes, which are extreme injustice. no justice no
peace. wealthpower giants can't even see the ants they crush. Can't get rid of wealthpower
giants by chopping off the heads of the current ones – next ones are waiting in the
wings. always. only way out of the nightmare is to wake everyone up to what the nightmare is:
the terrible idea to allow unlimited fortunes on planet earth. everything else is static and
noise.
ToivoS , February 21, 2018 at 5:19 pm
The term incoherence came to my mind when trying to figure out Obama's foreign policy
towards Libya and Syria, especially after Kerry became SoS. I get it that many here are
arguing that these policies are rational if one accepts that there is deep state whose
interests they serve is a plutocracy who are only interested in looting the American people
and that "American interests" is just a political smoke screen that allows them in doing so.
I don't really accept that.
I think that people like Obama, Kerry and even Hillary believe they were serving American
national interests. Even idiots like Samantha Power and Anne-Marie Slaughter likely believed
that they were serving our national interests. If so, then we have to conclude, using the
parsimony principle, that the US is being led by some serious incompetents. That is the scary
part. If these fools had any understanding that the ultimate stakes for their folly is the
possibility of nuclear war then perhaps a little "coherence" or rational thought might begin
to guide them.
John Neal Spangler , February 21, 2018 at 6:39 pm
The author's book on the Iraq War is very good and well worth reading.
Joe Tedesky , February 22, 2018 at 12:21 am
We Americans have no conscience. We Americans need to step of outside of ourselves, and
re-examine to what kind of society we have become.
We Americans need to abandon our colonialism, after all wasn't that what our Revolutionary
War was all about? We Americans must tell our generals to quit studying to how we could have
won the Vietnam War, and rather to how we could avoid such disasters. We Americans need to
ask Madeline Albright, for why should America have the world's most sophisticated State
Department if we are not going to use it.
We Americans need to change our society, but instead of a revolution using bullets we will
work from within using a pen, and keep what's good of our government, and throw to the wind
the bad.
Joe Tedesky , February 22, 2018 at 12:36 am
I know some of you take issue with Glenn Greenwald on occasion, but here with this linked
article he hits the nail on the head. Take note to the names Greenwald mentions, and take
notes to who we should get out of office or out of our media, because these are the very same
people who constantly take the U.S. to war, and the very same people who's blood of millions
they have on America's hands.
"... We must find a way to displace or destroy the economic oligarchy that controls elections and mass media, for that is the only path to restoration of democracy, and restoration of the humanitarian purpose of our 18th century founders. Only then shall we see an American Century; otherwise we are doomed to the disdain of history, our lives wasted as cogs in an engine of destruction. ..."
"... Our unregulated free market economy allows the unethical bully to prevail in nearly all areas, including politics. Tyranny is a subculture, a groupthink of bullies who tyrannize each other, and the worst of the bullies rise to the top. This is why the US founders opposed a standing military, and they were right. ..."
"... After years and years of allegiance to the Democratic party, I have begun to realize that neither they nor other mail (political) party can undo the evil that has been done. (See "THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY" by Gabriel Kolko, "Epiloque: Readon and Radicalism". ..."
"... What better way to maximize the sale of all types of armaments than to ensure continuous chaos? Wasn't a CIA presentation on just such a plan leaked some time back? ..."
"... I would beg to differ. The British Empire still exists today although it is mainly a financial and information warfare empire. Yes you are right about the families but mainly these are old aristocratic European and their married in to Jr. partners in America. The empire consists of the City of London,Wall Street, The British monarchy, The Saudi Royal family and many other of there agents and subsidiaries. ..."
"... The violence of the military serves the interests of elites with overwhelming consistency. From creating the necessary conditions for plundering of natural resources, opening new markets for U.S. corporations to exploit, and funneling tax payer monies via "aid" to corporations and elites, all the while allowing the politicians who advance these elite interests to themselves profit greatly via revolving door jobs, speeches, and donations to their "humanitarian" foundations. How is this not rational? It is completely rational and organized and planned to be executed exactly how it does. Furthering your own wealth, power, and interests is not rational? ..."
"... It is undeniable that the military violence has served the interest of the powerful elite in a very consistent manner for centuries. Furthermore, I would submit to you that the military has shown very little remorse by being the murderous tool of elites and that more often than not; They have been happy to oblige. ..."
"... This is a more ultimate claim of power than any prior regime in history ever maintained. Sheldon Wolin's Inverted Totalitarianism has morphed into something even more odious. The central problem, of course, is how a soft landing can be effected in light of the massive number of nukes possessed by this outlaw regime. ..."
Exclusive: Without solid economic, political and ideological bases, the U.S. lacks the
legitimacy and authority it needs to operate beyond its borders, argues Nicolas J.S. Davies in
this essay.
By Nicolas J.S. Davies
I recently reread Michael Mann's book, Incoherent Empire , which he
wrote in 2003, soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Mann is a sociology professor at UCLA and
the author of a four-volume series called
The Sources of Social Power , in which he explained the major developments of world
history as the interplay between four types of power: military, economic, political, and
ideological.
In Incoherent Empire ,
Mann used the same framework to examine what he called the U.S.'s "new imperialism" after the
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He predicted that, "The American Empire will turn out to be
a military giant; a back-seat economic driver; a political schizophrenic; and an ideological
phantom."
What struck me most forcefully as I reread Incoherent Empire was that absolutely
nothing has changed in the "incoherence" of U.S. imperialism. If I picked up the book for the
first time today and didn't know it was written 15 years ago, I could read nearly all of it as
a perceptive critique of American imperialism exactly as it exists today.
In the intervening 15 years, U.S. policy failures have resulted in ever-spreading violence
and chaos that affect hundreds of millions of people in at least a dozen countries. The U.S.
has utterly failed to bring any of its neo-imperial wars to a stable or peaceful end. And yet
the U.S. imperial project sails on, seemingly blind to its consistently catastrophic
results.
Instead, U.S. civilian and military leaders shamelessly blame their victims for the violence
and chaos they have unleashed on them, and endlessly repackage the same old war propaganda to
justify record
military budgets and threaten new wars.
But they never hold themselves or each other accountable for their catastrophic failures or
the carnage and human misery they inflict. So they have made no genuine effort to remedy any of
the systemic problems, weaknesses and contradictions of U.S. imperialism that Michael Mann
identified in 2003 or that other critical analysts like Noam Chomsky, Gabriel Kolko, William
Blum and Richard Barnet have described for decades.
Let's examine each of Mann's four images of the foundations of the U.S.'s Incoherent Empire,
and see how they relate to the continuing crisis of U.S. imperialism that he presciently
foretold:
Military Giant
As Mann noted in 2003, imperial armed forces have to do four things: defend their own
territory; strike offensively; conquer territories and people; then pacify and rule them.
Today's U.S. military dwarfs
any other country's military forces . It has unprecedented firepower, which it can use from
unprecedented distances to kill more people and wreak more destruction than any previous war
machine in history, while minimizing U.S. casualties and thus the domestic political blowback
for its violence.
But that's where its power ends. When it comes to actually conquering and pacifying a
foreign country, America's technological way of war is worse than useless. The very power of
U.S. weapons, the "Robocop" appearance of American troops, their lack of language skills and
their isolation from other cultures make U.S. forces a grave danger to the populations they are
charged with controlling and pacifying, never a force for law and order, whether in Iraq,
Afghanistan or North Korea.
John Pace, who headed the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq during the U.S. occupation compared
U.S. efforts to pacify the country to "trying to swat
a fly with a bomb."
Burhan Fasa'a, an Iraqi reporter for Lebanon's LBC TV network, survived the second U.S.
assault on Fallujah in November 2004. He spent nine days in a house with a population that grew
to 26 people as neighboring homes were damaged or destroyed and more and more people sought
shelter with Fasa'a and his hosts.
Finally a squad of U.S. Marines burst in, yelling orders in English that most of the
residents didn't understand and shooting them if they didn't respond. "Americans did not have
interpreters with them, " Fasa'a explained , "so they
entered houses and killed people because they didn't speak English Soldiers thought the people
were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the people just couldn't understand
them."
This is one personal account of one episode in a pattern of atrocities that grinds on, day
in day out, in country after country, as it has done for the last 16 years. To the extent that
the Western media cover these atrocities at all, the mainstream narrative is that they are a
combination of unfortunate but isolated incidents and the "normal" horrors of war.
But that is not true. They are the direct result of the American way of war, which
prioritizes "force protection" over the lives of human beings in other countries to minimize
U.S. casualties and thus domestic political opposition to war. In practice, this means using
overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower in ways that make it impossible to distinguish
combatants from non-combatants or protect civilians from the horrors of war as the Geneva
Conventions require.
When lower ranks have been prosecuted for war crimes against civilians, they have been
acquitted or given light sentences because they were acting on orders from senior officers. But
courts martial have allowed the senior officers implicated in these cases to testify in secret
or have not called them to testify at all, and none have been prosecuted.
After nearly a hundred deaths in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, including torture
deaths that are capital crimes under U.S. federal law, the harshest sentence handed down was a
5 month prison sentence, and the most senior officer prosecuted was a major, although the
orders to torture prisoners came from the very top of the chain of command. As Rear Admiral
John Hutson, the retired Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy, wrote in Human
Rights First's Command's Responsibility report after investigating just 12 of these deaths,
"One such incident would be an isolated transgression; two would be a serious problem; a dozen
of them is policy."
So the Military Giant is not just a war machine. It is also a war crimes machine.
The logic of force protection and technological warfare also means that the roughly 800 U.S.
military bases in other countries are surrounded by barbed wire and concrete blast-walls and
staffed mainly by Americans, so that the
290,000 U.S. troops occupying 183 foreign countries have little contact with the local
people their empire aspires to rule.
Donald Rumsfeld described this empire of self-contained bases as "lily pads," from which his
forces could hop like frogs from one base to another by plane, helicopter or armored vehicle,
or launch strikes on the surrounding territory, without exposing themselves to the dangers of
meeting the locals.
Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East reporter for the U.K.'s Independent newspaper, had
another name for these bases:
"crusader castles" -- after the medieval fortresses built by equally isolated foreign
invaders a thousand years ago that still dot the landscape of the Middle East.
Michael Mann contrasted the isolation of U.S. troops in their empire of bases to the lives
of British officers in India, "where officers' clubs were typically on the edge of the
encampment, commanding the nicest location and view. The officers were relaxed about their
personal safety, sipping their whisky and soda and gin and tonic in full view of the natives,
(who) comprised most of the inhabitants -- NCOs and soldiers, servants, stable-hands, drivers
and sometimes their families."
In 1945, a wiser generation of American leaders brought to their senses by the mass
destruction of two world wars realized the imperial game was up. They worked hard to frame
their new-found power and economic dominance within an international system that the rest of
the world would accept as legitimate, with a central role for President Roosevelt's vision of the United
Nations .
Roosevelt promised that his "permanent structure of peace," would, "spell the end of the
system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of
power, and all the expedients that have been tried for centuries -- and have always failed,"
and that "the forces of aggression (would be) permanently outlawed."
America's World War II leaders were wisely on guard against the kind of militarism they had
confronted and defeated in Germany and Japan. When an ugly militarism reared its head in the
U.S. in the late 1940s, threatening a "preemptive" nuclear war to destroy the USSR before it
could develop its own nuclear deterrent, General Eisenhower responded forcefully in a speech to
the U.S. Conference of Mayors in St. Louis,
"I decry loose and sometimes gloating talk about the high degree of security implicit in a
weapon that might destroy millions overnight," Eisenhower declared. "Those who measure security
solely in terms of offensive capacity distort its meaning and mislead those who pay them heed.
No modern nation has ever equaled the crushing offensive power attained by the German war
machine in 1939. No modern country was broken and smashed as was Germany six years later."
U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Robert Jackson , the chief US representative at the London Conference that drew up
the Nuremberg Principles in 1945, stated as the official U.S. position, "If certain acts in
violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or
whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct
against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
That was the U.S. government of 1945 explicitly agreeing to the prosecution of Americans who
commit aggression, which Jackson and the judges at Nuremberg defined as "the supreme
international crime." That would now include the last six U.S. presidents: Reagan (Grenada and
Nicaragua), Bush I (Panama), Clinton (Yugoslavia), Bush II (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and
Somalia), Obama (Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen) and Trump (Syria and Yemen).
Since Mann wrote Incoherent Empire in 2003, the Military Giant has rampaged around the world
waging wars that have killed millions of
people and wrecked country after country. But its unaccountable campaign of serial
aggression has failed to bring peace or security to any of the countries it has attacked or
invaded. As even some members of the U.S.
military now recognize, the mindless violence of the Military Giant serves no rational or
constructive purpose, imperialist or otherwise.
Economic Back Seat Driver
In 2003, Michael Mann wrote that, "The U.S. productive engine remains formidable, the global
financial system providing its fuel. But the U.S. is only a back-seat driver since it cannot
directly control either foreign investors or foreign economies."
Since 2003, the U.S. role in the global economy has declined further, now comprising only
22% of global economic activity, compared with 40% at the height of its economic dominance in
the 1950s and 60s. China is displacing the U.S. as the largest trading partner of countries
around the world, and its "new silk road" initiatives are building the infrastructure to cement
and further expand its role as the global hub of manufacturing and commerce.
The U.S. can still wield its financial clout as an arsenal of carrots and sticks to pressure
poorer, weaker countries do what it wants. But this is a far cry from the actions of an
imperial power that actually rules far-flung territories and subjects on other continents. As
Mann put it, "Even if they are in debt, the U.S. cannot force reform on them. In the global
economy, it is only a back-seat driver, nagging the real driver, the sovereign state, sometimes
administering sharp blows to his head."
At the extreme, the U.S. uses economic sanctions as a brutal form of economic warfare that
hurts and kills ordinary people, while generally inflicting less pain on the leaders who are
their nominal target. U.S. leaders claim that the pain of economic sanctions is intended to
force people to abandon and overthrow their leaders, a way to achieve regime change without the
violence and horror of war. But Robert Pape of the University of Chicago conducted
an extensive study of the effects of sanctions and concluded that only 5 out of 115
sanctions regimes have ever achieved that goal.
When sanctions inevitably fail, they can still be useful to U.S. officials as part of a
political narrative to blame the victims and frame war as a last resort. But this is only a
political ploy, not a legal pretext for war.
A secondary goal of all such imperial bullying is to make an example of the victims to put
other weak countries on notice that resisting imperial demands can be dangerous. The obvious
counter to such strategies is for poorer, weaker countries to band together to resist imperial
bullying, as in collective groupings like CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and also in the UN General Assembly, where the U.S.
often finds itself outvoted.
The dominant position of the U.S. and the dollar in the international financial system have
given the U.S. a unique ability to finance its imperial wars and global military expansion
without bankrupting itself in the process. As Mann described in Incoherent Empire,
"In principle, the world is free to withdraw its subsidies to the U.S., but unless the U.S.
really alienates the world and over-stretches its economy, this is unlikely. For the moment,
the U.S. can finance substantial imperial activity. It does so carefully, spending billions on
its strategic allies, however unworthy and oppressive they may be."
The economic clout of the U.S. back-seat driver was tested in 2003 when it deployed maximum
pressure on other countries to support its invasion of Iraq. Chile, Mexico, Pakistan, Guinea,
Angola and Cameroon were on the Security Council at the time but were all ready to vote against
the use of force. It didn't help the U.S. case that it had failed to deliver the "carrots" it
promised to the countries who voted for war on Iraq in 1991, nor that the money it promised
Pakistan for supporting its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was not paid until the U.S. wanted
its support again in 2003 over Iraq.
Mann concluded, "An administration which is trying to cut taxes while waging war will not be
able to hand out much cash around the world. This back-seat driver will not pay for the gas. It
is difficult to build an Empire without spending money."
Fifteen years later, remarkably, the wealthy investors of the world have continued to
subsidize U.S. war-making by investing in record U.S. debt, and a deceptive global charm
offensive by President Obama partially rebuilt U.S. alliances. But the U.S. failure to abandon
its illegal policies of aggression and war crimes have only increased its isolation since 2003,
especially from countries in the Global South. People all over the world now tell pollsters
they view the U.S. as the greatest threat to peace in the world.
It is also possible that their U.S. debt holdings give China and other creditors (Germany?)
some leverage by which they can ultimately discipline U.S. imperialism. In 1956, President
Eisenhower reportedly threatened to call in the U.K.'s debts if it did not withdraw its forces
from Egypt during the Suez crisis, and there has long been speculation that China could
exercise similar economic leverage to stop U.S. aggression at some strategic moment.
It seems more likely that boom and bust financial bubbles, shifts in global trade and
investment and international opposition to U.S. wars will more gradually erode U.S. financial
hegemony along with other forms of power.
Michael Mann wrote in 2003 that the world was unlikely to "withdraw its subsidies" for U.S.
imperialism "unless the U.S. really alienates the world and over-stretches its economy." But
that prospect seems more likely than ever in 2018 as President Trump seems doggedly determined
to do both.
Political Schizophrenic
In its isolated fantasy world, the Political Schizophrenic is the greatest country in the
world, the "shining city on a hill," the land of opportunity where anyone can find their
American dream. The rest of the world so desperately wants what we have that we have to build a
wall to keep them out. Our armed forces are the greatest force for good that the world has ever
known, valiantly fighting to give other people the chance to experience the democracy and
freedom that we enjoy.
But if we seriously compare the U.S. to other wealthy countries, we find a completely
different picture. The United States has the most extreme inequality, the most widespread
poverty, the least social and economic mobility and the least effective social safety net of
any technologically advanced country.
America is exceptional, not in the imaginary blessings our Political Schizophrenic
politicians take credit for, but in its unique failure to provide healthcare, education and
other necessities of life to large parts of its population, and in its systematic violations of
the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and other binding international treaties.
If the U.S. was really the democracy it claims to be, the American public could elect
leaders who would fix all these problems. But the U.S. political system is so endemically
corrupt that only a Political Schizophrenic could call it a democracy. Former President Jimmy
Carter believes that the U.S. is now "just
an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery." U.S. voter turnout is understandably
among the lowest in the developed world.
Sheldon Wolin, who taught political science at Berkeley and Princeton for 40 years,
described the actually existing U.S. political system as "inverted totalitarianism."
Instead of abolishing democratic institutions on the "classical totalitarian" model, the U.S.'s
inverted totalitarian system preserves the hollowed-out trappings of democracy to falsely
legitimize the oligarchy and political bribery described by President Carter.
As Wolin explained, this has been more palatable and sustainable, and therefore more
effective, than the classical form of totalitarianism as a means of concentrating wealth and
power in the hands of a corrupt ruling class.
The corruption of the U.S. political system is increasingly obvious to Americans, but also
to people in other countries. Billion-dollar U.S.-style "elections" would be illegal in most
developed countries, because they inevitably throw up corrupt leaders who offer the public no
more than empty slogans and vague promises to disguise their plutocratic loyalties.
In 2018, U.S. party bosses are still determined to divide us along the artificial
fault-lines of the 2016 election between two of the most unpopular candidates in history, as if
their vacuous slogans, mutual accusations and plutocratic policies define the fixed poles of
American politics and our country's future.
The Political Schizophrenic's noise machine is working overtime to stuff the alternate
visions of Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and other candidates who challenge the corrupt status quo
down the "memory hole," by closing ranks, purging progressives from DNC committees and swamping
the airwaves with Trump tweets and Russiagate updates.
Ordinary Americans who try to engage with or confront members of the corrupt political,
business and media class find it almost impossible. The Political Schizophrenic moves in a
closed and isolated social circle, where the delusions of his fantasy world or "political
reality" are accepted as incontrovertible truths. When real people talk about real problems and
suggest real solutions to them, he dismisses us as naive idealists. When we question the dogma
of his fantasy world, he thinks we are the ones who are out of touch with reality. We cannot
communicate with him, because he lives in a different world and speaks a different
language.
It is difficult for the winners in any society to recognize that their privileges are the
product of a corrupt and unfair system, not of their own superior worth or ability. But the
inherent weakness of "inverted totalitarianism" is that the institutions of American politics
still exist and can still be made to serve democracy, if and when enough Americans wake up from
this Political Schizophrenia, organize around real solutions to real problems, and elect people
who are genuinely committed to turning those solutions into public policy.
As I was taught when I worked with schizophrenics as a social worker, they tend to become
agitated and angry if you question the reality of their fantasy world. If the patient in
question is also armed to the teeth, it is a matter of life and death to handle them with kid
gloves.
The danger of a Political Schizophrenic armed with a trillion dollar a year war machine and
nuclear weapons is becoming more obvious to more of our neighbors around the world as each year
goes by. In 2017, 122 of them voted to approve the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
U.S. allies have pursued an opportunistic policy of appeasement, as many of the same
countries did with Germany in the 1930s. But Russia, China and countries in the Global South
have gradually begun to take a firmer line, to try to respond to U.S. aggression and to
shepherd the world through this incredibly dangerous transitional period to a multipolar,
peaceful and sustainable world. The Political Schizophrenic has, predictably, responded with
propaganda, demonization, threats and sanctions, now amounting to a Second Cold War.
Ideological Phantom
During the First Cold War, each side presented its own society in an idealized way, but was
more honest about the flaws and problems of its opposite number. As a former East German now
living in the U.S. explained to me, "When our government and state media told us our society
was perfect and wonderful, we knew they were lying to us. So when they told us about all the
social problems in America, we assumed they were lying about them too."
Now living in the U.S., he realized that the picture of life in the U.S. painted by the East
German media was quite accurate, and that there really are people sleeping in the street,
people with no access to healthcare and widespread poverty.
My East German acquaintance came to regret that Eastern Europe had traded the ills of the
Soviet Empire for the ills of the U.S. Empire. Nobody ever explained to him and his friends why
this had to be a "take it or leave it" neoliberal package deal, with "shock therapy" and large
declines in living standards for most Eastern Europeans. Why could they not have Western-style
political freedom without giving up the social protections and standard of living they enjoyed
before?
American leaders at the end of the Cold War lacked the wisdom and caution of their
predecessors in 1945, and quickly succumbed to what Mikhail Gorbachev now calls
"triumphalism." The version of capitalism and "managed democracy" they expanded into
Eastern Europe was the radical neoliberal ideology introduced by
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and consolidated by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The people
of Eastern Europe were no more or less vulnerable to neoliberalism's siren song than Americans
and Western Europeans.
The unconstrained freedom of ruling classes to exploit working people that is the foundation
of neoliberalism has always been an Ideological Phantom, as Michael Mann called it, with a hard
core of greed and militarism and an outer wrapping of deceptive propaganda.
So the "peace dividend" most people longed for at the end of the Cold War was quickly
trumped by the "power dividend." Now that the U.S. was no longer constrained by the fear of war
with the U.S.S.R., it was free to expand its own global military presence and use military
force more aggressively. As Michael Mandelbaum of the Council on Foreign Relations
crowed to the New York Times as the U.S. prepared to attack Iraq in 1990, "For the first
time in 40 years we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about
triggering World War III."
Without the Cold War to justify U.S. militarism, the prohibition against the threat
or use of military force in the UN Charter took on new meaning, and the Ideological Phantom
embarked on an urgent quest for political rationales and propaganda narratives to justify what
international law clearly defines as the crime of aggression.
During the transition to the incoming Clinton administration after the 1992 election,
Madeleine Albright confronted General Colin Powell at a meeting and asked him, "What's the
point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
The correct answer would have been that, after the end of the Cold War, the legitimate
defense needs of the U.S. required much smaller, strictly defensive military forces and a
greatly reduced military presence around the world. Former Cold Warriors, Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara and Assistant Secretary Lawrence Korb, told the Senate Budget Committee in 1989
that the
U.S. military budget could safely be cut in half over 10 years. Instead, it is now even
higher than when they said that (after adjusting for inflation).
The U.S.'s Cold War Military Industrial Complex was still dominant in Washington. All it
lacked was a new ideology to justify its existence. But that was just an interesting
intellectual challenge, almost a game, for the Ideological Phantom.
The ideology that emerged to justify the U.S.'s new imperialism is a narrative of a world
threatened by "dictators" and "terrorists," with only the power of the U.S. military standing
between the "free" people of the American Empire and the loss of all we hold dear. Like the
fantasy world of the Political Schizophrenic, this is a counter-factual picture of the world
that only becomes more ludicrous with each year that passes and each new phase of the
ever-expanding humanitarian and military catastrophe it has unleashed.
The Ideological Phantom defends the world against terrorists on a consistently selective and
self-serving basis. It is always ready to recruit, arm and support terrorists to fight its
enemies, as in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s or more recently in Libya and
Syria. U.S. support for jihadis in Afghanistan led to the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil
on September 11th 2001.
But that didn't prevent the U.S. and its allies from supporting the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group (LIFG) and other jihadis in Libya less than ten years later, leading to the Manchester
Arena bombing by
the son of an LIFG member in 2017. And it hasn't prevented the CIA from pouring thousands
of tons of weapons into Syria, from sniper rifles to howitzers, to arm Al Qaeda-led
fighters from 2011 to the present.
When it comes to opposing dictators, the Ideological Phantom's closest allies always include
the most oppressive dictators in the world, from Pinochet, Somoza, Suharto, Mbuto and the Shah
of Iran to its newest super-client, Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. In the
name of freedom and democracy, the U.S. keeps overthrowing democratically elected leaders and
replacing them with coup-leaders and dictators, from Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 to
Haiti in 2004, Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2014.
Nowhere is the Ideological Phantom more ideologically bankrupt than in the countries the
U.S. has dispatched its armed forces and foreign proxy forces to "liberate" since 2001:
Afghanistan; Iraq; Libya; Syria; Somalia and Yemen. In every case, ordinary people have been
slaughtered, devastated and utterly disillusioned by the ugly reality behind the Phantom's
mask.
In Afghanistan, after 16 years of U.S. occupation, a recent BBC survey found that people feel safer in areas
governed by the Taliban. In Iraq, people say their lives were better under
Saddam Hussein . Libya has been reduced from one of the most stable and prosperous countries in
Africa to a failed state ruled by competing militias, while Somalia, Syria and Yemen have met
similar fates.
Incredibly, American ideologists in the 1990s saw the Ideological Phantom's ability to
project counter-factual, glamorized images of itself as a source of irresistible ideological
power. In 1997, Major Ralph Peters, who is better known as a best-selling novelist, turned his
vivid imagination and skills as a fiction writer to the bright future of the Ideological
Phantom in a military journal article titled "Constant Conflict."
Peters imagined an endless campaign of "information warfare" in which U.S. propagandists,
aided by Hollywood and Silicon Valley, would overwhelm other cultures with powerful images of
American greatness that their own cultures could not resist.
"One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information
masters and information victims," Peters wrote. "We are already masters of information warfare
(we) will be writing the scripts, producing (the videos) and collecting the royalties."
But while Peters' view of U.S. imperialism was based on media, technology and cultural
chauvinism, he was not suggesting that the Ideological Phantom would conquer the world without
a fight -- quite the opposite. Peters' vision was a war plan, not a futuristic fantasy.
"There will be no peace," he wrote. "At any given moment for the rest of our lives, there
will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate
the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more
decisive. The de facto role of the U.S. armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our
economy and open to our cultural assault."
"To those ends," he added, "We will do a fair amount of killing."
Conclusion
After reviewing the early results of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003,
Michael Mann concluded, "We saw in action that the new imperialism turned into simple
militarism."
Without solid economic, political and ideological bases, the Military Giant lacks the
economic, political and ideological power and authority required to govern the world beyond its
shores. The Military Giant can only destroy and bring chaos, never rebuild or bring order.
The sooner the people of the U.S. and the world wake up to this dangerous and destructive
reality, the sooner we can begin to lay the new economic, political and ideological foundations
of a peaceful, just and sustainable world.
Like past aggressors, the Military Giant is sowing the seeds of his own destruction. But
there is only one group of people in the world who can peacefully tame him and cut him down to
size. That is us, the 323 million people who call ourselves Americans.
We have waited far too long to claim the peace dividend that our warmongering leaders stole
from us after the end of the First Cold War. Millions of our fellow human beings have paid the
ultimate price for our confusion, weakness and passivity.
Now we must be united, clear and strong as we begin the essential work of transforming our
country from an Incoherent Empire into an Economic High-Speed Train to a Sustainable Future; a
Real Political Democracy; an Ideological Humanitarian -- and a Military Law-Abiding
Citizen.
"Like past aggressors, the Military Giant is sowing the seeds of his own destruction. But
there is only one group of people in the world who can peacefully tame him and cut him down
to size. That is us, the 323 million people who call ourselves Americans."
So what is keeping people from the Libertarian Party to pursue these ends? Could it be
political censorship and election rigging disguised as "ballot access" laws? You don't think
the Democratic or Republican parties are going to turn anti-imperialists do you?
Disclosure: I am a co-founder of the Libertarian Party.
Sam F , February 20, 2018 at 8:00 pm
We do need new parties that truly represent their followers, and can form coalitions to
gain a majority. But with corruption and oligarchy control throughout the legislative,
executive, and judicial branches and mass media, and political suppression by secret agencies
and IT companies, I doubt that political action can be more than a palliative for the
credulous. Please feel free to challenge my pessimism, referring to my comment below..
Very interesting to see the advice he gives in his speech to the various departments of the
Russian government, asking them to please focus on certain issues for the sake of improvement
vis-a-vis the judiciary, economic, trade, financial, etc. Very transparent, open, and gives a
clear idea of where Russia stands.
Yes, the article is a fine review of the corruption of US government and society.
We must find a way to displace or destroy the economic oligarchy that controls elections
and mass media, for that is the only path to restoration of democracy, and restoration of the
humanitarian purpose of our 18th century founders. Only then shall we see an American
Century; otherwise we are doomed to the disdain of history, our lives wasted as cogs in an
engine of destruction.
Our unregulated free market economy allows the unethical bully to prevail in nearly all
areas, including politics. Tyranny is a subculture, a groupthink of bullies who tyrannize
each other, and the worst of the bullies rise to the top. This is why the US founders opposed
a standing military, and they were right.
If the US had spent the billions wasted on war since WWII, on building the roads, schools,
and hospitals of the developing nations, we would have eliminated poverty for the poorest
half of humanity, a true American century, and we would have no enemies. Instead we have
willfully killed over six million innocents for nothing, have destroyed democracies and
replaced them with dictators, and have allowed the MIC/Israel/WallSt oligarchy to control our
former democracy with campaign bribes, control of mass media to promote violence as
patriotism, promiscuous surveillance, and militarized police. They have destroyed America and
have spent all we could borrow on destruction for their personal gain. We have the lowest per
capita foreign aid of all developed nations, almost all of it military "aid," a total of less
than one meal a year for the world's poorest.
Apart from NATO and a few other treaties, the US would have no constitutional power to
wage foreign wars, just to repel invasions and suppress insurrections, and that is the way it
should be. NATO has been nothing but an excuse for warmongering since 1989.
I suggest re-purposing about 80 percent of the US military for international aid projects,
to create James' (and Carter's) "moral equivalent of war," to train the young, the citizen,
and the mass media to see humanitarianism as robust and to reject the selfish amorality of US
oligarchy pop culture, to serve as a "backup" peacekeeping or defense force (probably little
used), and to avoid alienating their staff with unemployment.
Eventually "financial bubbles, shifts in global trade and investment and international
opposition to U.S. wars" will make it unable to afford an empire, but it will remain an
oligarchy. We cannot stop the wars, establish a humanitarian democracy, nor achieve benefits
for the people, until the oligarchy is deposed; this is the greatest problem of civilization.
We must resolve that deposing oligarchy is the only historical meaning of our lives.
Apart from the historical revolutions of the largest present democracies (US and India),
where the colonial power was small and remote, every solution to oligarchy in history has
involved external conquest (e.g. Rome) or violent revolution (e.g. Russia, China, and Cuba).
Unfortunately the US is now in the latter category. If democracy is ever restored in the US,
it must be stabilized by amendments to protect elections and mass media debate from economic
power, better checks and balances within the government branches, purging the corrupt
judiciary and Congress, monitoring of government officials for corruption, and regulation of
business so that oligarchic bullies and scammers do not rise to control economic power.
frank scott , February 20, 2018 at 9:39 pm
we cannot "restore" a democracy which has never existed, nationally, nor continue the
nearly religious worship of the so-called creators of this fiction, the holy founders, many
of them owning slaves and having stolen land from the indigenous people and hardly any
meaning to have non-property owners voting in elections, no matter what their skin tone,
religious or sexual preference might be once we get past the mythology about our country we
may well be able to create a reality which is closer to what we idealize than the horror it
has always been for some, even while making life extremely pleasant for others..market forces
need to be replaced by human forces which means democracy in a material sense -- majority
rule -- rather than the religious, therapeutic and drug induced excuse we live.
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 1:24 pm
Yes, the undemocratic processes throughout US history tempt one to conclude that democracy
never was. and this is true in an ideal sense. But the intent of democracy was there, and it
was a fact in the early federal era for most citizens, extending with ever greater corruption
through FDR. Had there been no predominance of economic power 1850-1945, likely democracy
with many flaws would have generalized to all persons within the US.
Yes, we must "get past the mythology about our country" by accepting its wrongs and the
corruption of its institutions and popular culture, but if the good in that tradition is
preserved, we have a better starting point for reform, which avoids scaring off those who
will otherwise see, or pretend to see, only "radicalism" and "anarchism."
Nancy , February 21, 2018 at 1:51 pm
I don't believe in the myths taught about the history of the United States. Our glorious
founding fathers were not only slaveholders, rapists and imperialists, they were aristocrats
who just wanted to be free of British rule. They had no intention of sharing their freedom
and independence (or the bounty of the land) with the less well off inhabitants, regardless
of their race, color or creed. This is just a story they tell to keep us hoping that some day
we can be one of them.
Hey, there's always the lottery!
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 6:25 pm
Thanks, Nancy, I agree that today the national mythology largely serves that purpose of
burying the truth and creating false hopes. I discern some sincerity behind the best of the
founders, even acknowledging their contradictory ownership of slaves (as Robert Parry very
well elucidated for Jefferson). The sincere ones were nonetheless products of the
contradictions of their times and circumstances, and their good intentions did not extend to
impoverishing themselves to free their slaves, thereby ruining their families and good
political influences.
Even today good people consume products made with essentially slave labor in poor
countries, and I have heard few other than myself demanding serious foreign aid, and/or
tariffs sufficient to nearly bring such products to US wholesale prices, to fund foreign aid
for the poorest of those nations. Few would support such a sacrifice. While it irritates me,
I can see that they too are the products of circumstances, unwilling to impoverish themselves
while trying to get by, support families, improve their circumstances, and so on.
So I look for the good side of better characters, and try to build on that, as it is the
only building material we have. But of course you are right to call out the selfishness,
hypocrisy, and malice. So I presume that we must preserve the best of the national mythology
for the young, and teach them better when they are ready. We can preserve the institutions
(after they are fixed) and monuments, but the educated must be very critical of
mythology.
Brent Riley , February 21, 2018 at 12:29 am
A couple years ago I heard a Chilean woman saying when she was a girl, one couldn't go out
of the house after 9 PM because you would get shot. I piped up, "Thanks to Nixon and
Kissinger." A serious look came over her face, she looked directly at me and forcefully said,
"Americans are a GOOD people. Their government IS NOT".
I believe a serious campaign for war reparations to Iraq could be hard to dismiss and may
jolt our nation into a sense of responsibility or acknowledge we don't accept responsibility
for our behavior. Either, a step forward.
geeyp , February 21, 2018 at 4:40 am
Yes, that might start with not writing as Nicholas J.S. Davies has: "U.S. support for
jihadis in Afghanistan led to the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil on" Sept. 11, 2001.
Peter Loeb , February 21, 2018 at 7:33 am
THANKS FIRST TO NICOLAS J.S. DAVIES.
And to KiwiAnts. for his reply.
Davies touched on my major heroes -- authors and analysts.
I would add one:
I "discovered" recently. Francis Jennings (1918-1980)
especially THE CREATION OF AMERICA, his late work. He points out
that a "democracy" was never intended (African Americans, Native
Americans, pacifist organizations such as the Quakers, and women
were all excluded. Instead (excuse my paraphrasing) Americans
wanted "liberty" from the English Empire in order to form their own
Empire maintaining their (economic) needs (slave labor, elimination
of Native American claims to land etc.)
After years and years of allegiance to the Democratic party, I have
begun to realize that neither they nor other mail (political) party
can undo the evil that has been done. (See "THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN
FOREIGN POLICY" by Gabriel Kolko, "Epiloque: Readon and Radicalism".
-- Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
Lisa , February 21, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Peter,
You confirm something I have read much earlier – that the 13 US colonies were in a
hurry to separate themselves from the British Empire, because Britons were about to abolish
slavery within their Empire. US needed to maintain the slavery for economical reasons,
therefore the heroic struggle for independence.
I don't remember the source, and unfortunately cannot give a link to it.
Annie , February 20, 2018 at 6:34 pm
I referenced this in an article before which was a discussion I had with a cousin who is
an international lawyer in the military. I said I wasn't voting in this election, but he
insisted I vote for Hilary as she was the lesser of the two evils, well, that's how it
started out. He went on to claim that Russia was a real threat to the US and in breech of
international law in her annexation of Crimea. I told him I would really be afraid of Russia
if she was bombing and destroying one country after another in the Middle East, created a
coup in the Ukraine and crossed sovereign borders, dropping drones and killing civilians, and
had no qualms about creating mayhem in our wars. Wars based on lies, since none of the
countries we invaded represented an aggressive threat to us. He accused me of being
un-american and failed to acknowledge we were in breech of any international law. What ever
we do seems to be justifiable, but are so called enemies are held to the letter of the law.
For me he represents the mentality expressed in this article, and unfortunately it is all too
real. I guess his position is what's good for the goose, is not good for the gander, an
interestingly he applies the same mind set in his marriage.
Sam F , February 20, 2018 at 7:48 pm
Cheers for your courage in facing your cousin. Rare is the lawyer who does not regard
argument as a domain of propaganda warfare for private gain, rather than of truth and
justice. Most choose the career for money and power, and learn to substitute scamming for
reason. There is little point in discussing anything with them.
Annie , February 20, 2018 at 7:56 pm
Thanks Sam, and the outcome was, he no longer speaks to me because of my position, but I
really don't care.
Nicolas J S Davies , February 20, 2018 at 8:29 pm
I think your friend is an exception among JAG officers. The father of a JAG officer told
me that his son and his colleagues saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as crimes of
aggression, and retired JAGs have told me they saw them that way too. Jess Bravin's book, The
Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo, describes how JAG officers fought our
government's efforts to deny justice and due process to accused terrorists, and presciently
predicted that this would lead to a failure to convict anyone of the crimes of 9/11. Admiral
Hutson's role in investigating and condemning torture deaths in US custody was exemplary and
uncompromising. Military lawyers have tried to uphold the law, but have been overridden by
their criminal and corrupt military and political bosses.
rosemerry , February 21, 2018 at 4:05 pm
The breach of international law ie the overthrow of the Ukrainian government by the USA
did not count, of course! In Oliver Stone's interviews with Pres. Putin I remember the
explanation of how Putin's government worked with the pro-Western previous Ukrainian
government for four years, managing to cooperate, but as soon as the "pro-Russian government"
was elected, the USA/West could not wait to barge in.
Often the USA chooses a date to begin
the discussion to make it seem justified eg always 1979 for Iran, never 1953 when the USA/UK
overthrew the elected government to instal and keep in power the Shah and the brutal SAVAK
police. Israel is good at this too, choosing a selected "violent act" of a Palestinian after
vast earlier Israeli attacks, as its starting point.
Mike Martin , February 20, 2018 at 6:38 pm
"And yet the U.S. imperial project sails on, seemingly blind to its consistently
catastrophic results." -- J S Davies
?? Really?? But what if the resulting chaos is exactly what is intended?
What better way to maximize the sale of all types of armaments than to ensure continuous
chaos? Wasn't a CIA presentation on just such a plan leaked some time back?
joe defiant , February 20, 2018 at 7:56 pm
Yeah this "incoherent" and "stupid blundering" excuse is complete bullshit. USA military
via imperialism consistently furthers elites interests all over the world and at home.
Michael Parenti has covered this excuse extensively in a few of his books like 'Faces of
Imperialism' and 'Against Empire'. Liberal political writers constantly trot out this excuse
as if only our leaders would listen to the liberal critiques the empire would be this vast
power for good and elites would forget about furthering their own interests and start "doing
good".
Sam F , February 20, 2018 at 8:21 pm
Yes, but by "seemingly blind" he means not blind at all. Using moderation in contrast with
the strong argument, he urges you to jump ahead. By not offering finally a means to the ends,
he leaves the door open to those who will throw out the facts if they see only an extreme
solution. Let the readers decide how to get there.
evelync , February 21, 2018 at 1:23 pm
"What better way to ,maximize the sale of all types of armaments than to ensure continuous
chaos?"
I think you put your finger on what it all boils down to, Mike Martin – what drives
the whole Neoconservative and Neoliberal economic/political/military rape and pillage around
the world and, now, here at home – I was going to say that here at home it is a
financial rape and pillage (which it is) but then I remembered the for profit prisons which
blossomed on Bill Clinton's watch and then, on Obama's watch they mindlessly offered excess
military equipment to city police departments. Such a brazen act by compromised politicians.
No problem having a militarized for profit scheme here at home too.
You pointed out what drives the whole planet eating machine, Mike Martin. Just plain old
grand theft larceny mixed with an Al Capone level of violence, dressed up in a pack of
lies.
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 6:32 pm
Very true.
Dr. Ibrahim Soudy , February 20, 2018 at 7:33 pm
There is no such thing as American Empire. The British Empire was a misnomer ..The real
Empire is the Banking Empire owned and run by a number of known families. Since the
Industrial Revolution and those families needed a military machine paid for by the people.
That military machine is needed to help steal the natural resources of other people or subdue
them if they get out of line First it was the British and since WWII they moved it to the US
..As long as the Americans are willing to pay for it, the banking families (Empire) will
remain happy to continue exploiting them .
I would beg to differ. The British Empire still exists today although it is mainly a
financial and information warfare empire. Yes you are right about the families but mainly
these are old aristocratic European and their married in to Jr. partners in America. The
empire consists of the City of London,Wall Street, The British monarchy, The Saudi Royal
family and many other of there agents and subsidiaries.
The members of the British monarchy
still refer to the United States in private as the wayward British colony hence they have
never accepted US independence or our constitution. No offense to the British people they are
for the most part a warm, kind and hardworking people but are still seen as subjects by the
Monarchy. Remember to British prime minister has to sware loyalty to the Queen not to the
nation of Great Britain.
joe defiant , February 20, 2018 at 7:51 pm
"As even some members of the U.S. military now recognize, the mindless violence of the
Military Giant serves no rational or constructive purpose, imperialist or otherwise."
This is complete nonsense. The violence of the military serves the interests of elites
with overwhelming consistency. From creating the necessary conditions for plundering of
natural resources, opening new markets for U.S. corporations to exploit, and funneling tax
payer monies via "aid" to corporations and elites, all the while allowing the politicians who
advance these elite interests to themselves profit greatly via revolving door jobs, speeches,
and donations to their "humanitarian" foundations. How is this not rational? It is completely
rational and organized and planned to be executed exactly how it does. Furthering your own
wealth, power, and interests is not rational?
jose , February 20, 2018 at 8:49 pm
You do have a valid point Mr. Joe Defiant: Although some military members may think that.
"mindless violence of the Military Giant serves no rational or constructive purpose,
imperialist or otherwise." It is undeniable that the military violence has served the
interest of the powerful elite in a very consistent manner for centuries. Furthermore, I
would submit to you that the military has shown very little remorse by being the murderous
tool of elites and that more often than not; They have been happy to oblige.
Banger , February 21, 2018 at 12:36 pm
One thing that is often ignored is that wartime provides rapid promotions and lucrative
employment free retirement with major corporations. So military officers have a strong
interest in promoting war
Nancy , February 21, 2018 at 2:05 pm
Why would someone join the military if they didn't support the well-known violence it
inflicts upon the world? I know that some consider it to be a valid "career" compared to the
options available in the civilian world, but unless they are completely clueless they have to
know that the military is a killing operation, first and foremost.
Realist , February 21, 2018 at 3:10 am
You are correct, these policies are pursued for a "reason," or as they say, "there is
method to their madness." However, the reason, which is basically pure selfishness and greed,
is generally not recognised as a legitimate one by most folks who claim to be civilised or
moral. If you are a self-proclaimed Nietzchean then "all would be permitted," but that would
not make you very popular here or in most other venues.
rosemerry , February 21, 2018 at 4:17 pm
Surely this is the point. The USA pretends to be a democracy and a model to us all, but
the leaders are always from or controlled by the élite (look at the Froman emails to
Obama before his inauguration, telling him who to appoint to his cabinet-Larry Summers et
al). If the people were able to turn away from the MSM, facebook, twitter,the hopelessness of
knowing that their "vote", the one aspect of democracy the USA has, is meaningless as none of
the "reps" cares at all about their welfare, then as Chris Hedges always writes, a revolution
would be needed. Can you imagine this as likely? People are held down by poverty, by no job
or too many, by lack of housing, healthcare, yet they are told how lucky they are to be in
the best country on earth. The description of the rich few winning is obvious, but 300
million people if they believed in solidarity, would frighten even the Big Boys!!
jose , February 20, 2018 at 8:40 pm
As I was reading this excellent article, a familiar concept came to mind: Cognitive
dissonance which is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes,
especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. A phycologist would tell
you that cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by
a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. The US
ruling elite knows that this worldwide " Full Spectrum Dominance" can only be sustained by
sheer brutish force; The consequences have been disastrous for US victims. When confronted
with this elemental reality, the ruling elite will tell you that is American destiny to do
good around the world even though the majority of the world considers US the greatest threat
to piece. For instance, If a person believes that US invading Iraq is both immoral and
criminal but gives full support to the invasion any way: a dissonance will be created. So to
resolve it, the person could convince himself that Iraq is a dictatorship worth toppling or
Iraqis are evil so they deserve what is coming to them. This reminds me when on May 12 of
1996,Lesley Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq asked Madeleine Albright: "We have
heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in
Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Madeleine Albright: "I think this is
a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." I rest my case.
irene , February 20, 2018 at 8:55 pm
Many people have forgotten, or did not know in the first place, that the Iraq war started
long before
the horrifying display of "Shock & Awe" over Baghdad in March of 2003. I clearly remember
watching
the jet fighter planes leaving Eielson Air Force Base enroute to Bush the Elder's Iraq War in
1991 . . .
And when the brief but brutal sorties were over, we simply continued the war by the
'sanitary' modern
method known as Sanctions. How did that work again ? Let's see, first we bombed Iraq's
water
treatment plants. Then we 'sanctioned' the materials needed to repair them and treat the
water.
The result was the ugly Albright's 'hard choice'.
jose , February 20, 2018 at 9:19 pm
Dear Irene: I would add the following to your post. Regarding on to deal with Iraq, many
republicans were suggesting to bomb Iraq to the stone age: On the other hand, democrats
asserted that this was a barbaric conduct unworthy of US magnanimity and righteousness. So
the latter recommended placing brutal and genocidal economic sanctions on Iraqis to bring
about the desire result. The fact that US did not have constitutional or moral grounds to
pursue both courses of actions was not debated. Many of them were church goers so I wonder
how each dealt with his cognitive dissonance.
Tannenhouser , February 21, 2018 at 10:57 am
Yes papa bush turned Iraq into a live fire training exercise for at least a dozen years,
then his offspring invaded once they were positive there were no remnants of the chemical
weapons they provided to kill Iranians. In a sense this first attack on Iraq was WW3 as it
was the 'world' under the guise of a UN resolution which enabled the war of aggression crime
against humanity.
Nothing i disagree with in this article, but the final statement sums up the dilemma, how
to get the 323 million to wake up and smell the blood in their coffee? Sam F stated the
problem, the corruption is so endemic that people have just succumbed to it. It's the classic
psychological conditioning of "learned helplessness", the subjects finally submit to the
shocks. I must confess that sometimes i have thought David Icke is onto something, there are
evil reptilian overlords from another dimension controlling our planet. The US has definitely
gone over to the "dark side", in the words of the demented Dick Cheney.
Realist , February 21, 2018 at 2:55 am
Really! The unjustified killing of a single human being is a crime, and even a sin if you
have morals. Yet, for all of my lifetime of 70+ years, our government has wantonly killed
MILLIONS for goals as gratuitous as the pursuit of foreign policy. Moreover, we all know with
surety that they have many more military actions planned which are guaranteed to result in
the deaths and maiming of millions more, most innocent of any offense against the United
States. Just their tough luck to be "collateral damage." What a piece of work is the United
States of America, surely not the handiwork of any "loving god." To believe that is the
epitome of "double think."
Sam F , February 21, 2018 at 7:03 pm
Indeed we have learned helplessness, first as employees and dependents of businesses
rather than farmers and woodsmen, and now as dependents upon mass media and groupthink for
social acceptance, with no representative in power unless we betray humanity and serve
oligarchy. Some of that furious feeling of entrapment is harvested by the oligarchy
warmongers for their schemes, portraying the killer of random victims as the liberator of
himself. Only bread and circus stand between the oligarchy and public fury, and there may be
less of that to go around when the US is isolated and defeated on all fronts by the rest of
the world.
irina , February 21, 2018 at 12:10 pm
Dmitry Orlov strikes me as being quite prescient in that respect. We are FAR too smug and cozy in our creature comforts.
exiled off mainstreet , February 21, 2018 at 12:51 am
This is a great article. There is nothing I can add, and nothing I can argue with. The
fact that torture has become the modus operandi of yankee centurions and the fact they
massacre first and ask questions later is not covered at all by the propaganda machine which
obfuscates all of these facts.Things are pretty serious, especially since, as a result of the
economic, political and ideological nakedness of the regime, it has lost any semblance of
legitimacy. The latest "indictment" of individual non state actor- Russians living in Russia
for internet activities which would be protected under free speech if the rule of law still
obtained, appears to be the ultimate arrogation of power: that the yankee imperium can outlaw
anybody anywhere who takes actions unfavourable to it.
This is a more ultimate claim of power
than any prior regime in history ever maintained. Sheldon Wolin's Inverted Totalitarianism
has morphed into something even more odious. The central problem, of course, is how a soft
landing can be effected in light of the massive number of nukes possessed by this outlaw
regime.
Bob Van Noy , February 21, 2018 at 11:10 am
I like to bring Imperialist discussion down from the heights of government theory such as
R2P, to the individual soldier, especially those infantry men and women who must confront
each other "eye to eye" because that is where the individual decision must be made to kill or
be killed, and the theory about why you've been placed in that circumstance is likely not
considered.
I had a personal awakening while photographing the "Old North Bridge" in Concord,
Massachusetts. There is a small monument by the side of the bridge that is barely noticeable
and as a photographer, I've learned to notice such things. I was surprised when I realized
that it was a British Monument, not American, it read:
Grave of British Soldiers
"They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne:
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan."
April 19, 1775
American Politicians have now made the same mistake of sending their soldiers into
multiple foreign populations, ill equipped in language and purpose to win. It always was a
fools errand.
That reminds one of the many lost in the Graveyard of Empires, from which only one British
soldier returned from their first invasion. They had been fearful that Russia would invade
Afghanistan, which it did not, even after their defeat. They did not have any specific goals
there, just alleged defense operations. But the lesson did not stop their imperialist masters
from further invasions, every other generation interestingly, each larger and longer and
unsuccessful, until WWI and WWII distracted them. Kipling wrote both accolades and warnings
of imperialism, including a poem about the one who survived the first invasion.
Unfettered Fire , February 21, 2018 at 11:55 am
"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation
of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the
United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize
control and consolidate the four centers of power political, monetary, intellectual and
ecclesiastical. What the Trilateral Commission intends is to create a worldwide economic
power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. As managers and
creators of the system, they will rule the future." – U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater in
his l979 book, With No Apologies.
Neoliberalism, at last, has failed. Even Ben Bernanke had to admit that "Monetary policy
is not a panacea." The nation-state is still valuable. It is necessary to have an institution
that will protect society from predatory capitalism. The dramatic increase in violence is a
direct result of the 40 years of neoliberal dictate, which has shredded the social fabric of
America and much of the world.
Global banks are global in health and national in death. ~ Mervyn King
Banger , February 21, 2018 at 1:01 pm
Very fine essay and many excellent comments here. Meanwhile people who share our insights
have been totally marginalized in this society. Yet, thus analysis goes back to the sixties
and we still are marginalized. The reason is as simple as it was then. We must organize into
a community that could easily become a major power block in this society. I'm guessing our
views represent from one to five percent of the population. If we organized as a disciplined
community of, say, ten thousand then millions would follow. I've been talking about this for
50 years and there has been little action because whether you are on our side or any side we
are all, from a cultural perspective narcissists. Ego us as much a currency as money and has
moved all of us away from community-mindedness. This is why there can never be major
political change in thus country unless the underlying social morality (or lack thereof)
changes dramatically the only hope for change can only happen from top down.
Onyx , February 21, 2018 at 1:10 pm
This article is a long winded attempt to explain why we (the US) always fails in our noble
pursuits.
"In the intervening 15 years, U.S. policy failures have resulted in ever-spreading
violence and chaos that affect hundreds of millions of people in at least a dozen countries.
The U.S. has utterly failed to bring any of its neo-imperial wars to a stable or peaceful
end. And yet the U.S. imperial project sails on, seemingly blind to its consistently
catastrophic results."
I say this by design and the outcomes are exactly as desired. They are not failures in the
eyes of the powerful.
There are two things we can do with our power. 1) use it to compete with our competitors
2) use it to destroy or stymie or competitors. The powers that be in the US have long chosen
the later. Divide and conquer is the game we've been play for my entire life. Death,
destruction and chaos have been rained own on the middle east for 60 years because of its
geographical relevance. It sits geographically between all of our current and potential
competitors. If it can be kept in chaos we win because all the other powers alone cannot
defend themselves. Together they can. So now we are threatening nuclear war with Russia in
order to scare them into submitting their sovereignty and dropping their cooperation with
China and others.
We need to give up the psychopathic ideal of a mono-polar world and join Russia, China,
the EU, Africa, India, in a multi-polar world where everyone's interested are negotiated
instead of dictated by the one most capable of resorting to might makes right.
rosemerry , February 21, 2018 at 4:27 pm
There are two things we can do with our power. 1) use it to compete with our competitors
2) use it to destroy or stymie or competitors. This is exactly the no-win ( or as Trump would
say, loser) strategy that ignores the possibility of peace or cooperation.
The 323 million have plenty of work to do!
Major Peters' rapture over our Darwinian PAC MAN ravaging of those victims he delights in
calling the "uninformed" around the world and here at home, reveals a deep ignorance of
economics and finance, IMO. (Are these "uninformed" the cousins of Hillary Clinton's
"deplorables"?)
And thanks to Mike Martin and others for reminding us that it's the oligarchs who write
policy for their own greed.
Former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volker, when asked about the impact of the gigantic
banks a few years ago – I think it was after the 2008-2009 big crash – he said
that over the last 30 years the only useful innovation he was aware of that was produced by
the big banks was the ATM machine. Say what????????
The Oligarchs that Jimmy Carter refers to have taken over policy decisions within the
Congress and the White House.
Endless regime change wars and financial deregulation have looted wealth abroad and now here
at home. Our Secretary of the Treasury, Mnuchin, became fabulously wealthy, foreclosing on
millions of homeowners who were set up by unscrupulous banksters who misled them with teaser
rates and delayed mortgage debt pile ons. http://wallstreetonparade.com
The Oligarchs have succeeded in becoming our largest "socialist institution" –
Eisenhower's "MIC.
As Andrew Bacevich says – our regime change war policies have created a mess and will
continue doing so. Then why continue? The profiteers run our government.
Zenobia van Dongen , February 21, 2018 at 4:23 pm
You Americans will never stop contemplating your own imperial navel, even as it slips into
oblivion. In Latin America, Usimp's traditional stomping ground, US imperialism is being
eclipsed by Chinese imperialism, which to nobody's surprise is every bit as ruthless as the
US variety. This is an article (in Spanish) about how the indigenouses and sundry others are
getting ripped off by China.
Inversiones chinas en América Latina fuera de control, CIVICUS, 12 February 2018
https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/civicus/inversiones-chinas-en-america-latina-fuera-de-control
E. Leete , February 21, 2018 at 6:48 pm
doesn't matter what country they come from – wealthpower giants DO what wealthpower
giants DO. as the author and everyone here appear to already know, militarism and imperialism
are genosadistic projects of psychopathic wealthpower giants. Money is power.
overpower/underpower = tyranny/slavery. always. see history. Humans are too dangerous a
species to be allowed to have unlimited fortunes, which are extreme injustice. no justice no
peace. wealthpower giants can't even see the ants they crush. Can't get rid of wealthpower
giants by chopping off the heads of the current ones – next ones are waiting in the
wings. always. only way out of the nightmare is to wake everyone up to what the nightmare is:
the terrible idea to allow unlimited fortunes on planet earth. everything else is static and
noise.
ToivoS , February 21, 2018 at 5:19 pm
The term incoherence came to my mind when trying to figure out Obama's foreign policy
towards Libya and Syria, especially after Kerry became SoS. I get it that many here are
arguing that these policies are rational if one accepts that there is deep state whose
interests they serve is a plutocracy who are only interested in looting the American people
and that "American interests" is just a political smoke screen that allows them in doing so.
I don't really accept that.
I think that people like Obama, Kerry and even Hillary believe they were serving American
national interests. Even idiots like Samantha Power and Anne-Marie Slaughter likely believed
that they were serving our national interests. If so, then we have to conclude, using the
parsimony principle, that the US is being led by some serious incompetents. That is the scary
part. If these fools had any understanding that the ultimate stakes for their folly is the
possibility of nuclear war then perhaps a little "coherence" or rational thought might begin
to guide them.
John Neal Spangler , February 21, 2018 at 6:39 pm
The author's book on the Iraq War is very good and well worth reading.
Joe Tedesky , February 22, 2018 at 12:21 am
We Americans have no conscience. We Americans need to step of outside of ourselves, and
re-examine to what kind of society we have become.
We Americans need to abandon our colonialism, after all wasn't that what our Revolutionary
War was all about? We Americans must tell our generals to quit studying to how we could have
won the Vietnam War, and rather to how we could avoid such disasters. We Americans need to
ask Madeline Albright, for why should America have the world's most sophisticated State
Department if we are not going to use it.
We Americans need to change our society, but instead of a revolution using bullets we will
work from within using a pen, and keep what's good of our government, and throw to the wind
the bad.
Joe Tedesky , February 22, 2018 at 12:36 am
I know some of you take issue with Glenn Greenwald on occasion, but here with this linked
article he hits the nail on the head. Take note to the names Greenwald mentions, and take
notes to who we should get out of office or out of our media, because these are the very same
people who constantly take the U.S. to war, and the very same people who's blood of millions
they have on America's hands.
This is an old method to unite the nation against external enemy. Carnage (with so much oil and gas) needs to be
destroyed. And it's working only partially with the major divisions between Trump and Hillary supporters remaining
open and unaffected by Russiagate witch hunt.
Notable quotes:
"... It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as part of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances. ..."
"... The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is "sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media. ..."
"... A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it, Americans need to begin working together." ..."
"... He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic institutions, the Russians are winning." ..."
"... The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law. ..."
"... The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies? ..."
"... The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged "Russian interference". ..."
"... Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV. ..."
Russophobia - "blame it all on Russia" - is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious
and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances
It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external
enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as
part of the Soviet Union.
But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal problems. Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are
only hastening their institutional demise.
Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day
of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for
their legitimate grievances.
The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is
"sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems
of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media.
This narrative has shifted up a gear since the election of Donald Trump to the White House
in 2016, with accusations that the Kremlin somehow ran "influence operations" to help get him
into office. This outlandish yarn defies common sense. It is also running out of thread to keep
spinning.
Paradoxically, even though President Trump has rightly rebuffed such dubious claims of
"Russiagate" interference as "fake news", he has at other times undermined himself by
subscribing to the notion that Moscow is projecting a campaign of "subversion against the US
and its European allies." See for example the National Security Strategy he signed off in
December.
Pathetically, it's become indoctrinated belief among the Western political class that
"devious Russians" are out to "collapse" Western democracies by
"weaponizing disinformation" and spreading "fake news" through Russia-based
news outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Totalitarian-like, there seems no room for intelligent dissent among political or media
figures.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has chimed in to
accuse Moscow of "sowing division;" Dutch state intelligence claim Russia
destabilized the US presidential election; the European Union commissioner for security, Sir
Julian King, casually lampoons Russian news media as "Kremlin-orchestrated
disinformation" to destabilize the 28-nation bloc; CIA chief Mike Pompeo recently warned
that Russia is stepping up its efforts to tarnish the Congressional mid-term elections later
this year.
On and on goes the narrative that Western states are essentially victims of a nefarious
Russian assault to bring about collapse.
A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan
Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary"
, he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save
it, Americans need to begin working together."
Congressman Hurd asserts: "Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in our democratic
institutions It has weaponized disinformation to achieve this goal for decades in Eastern and
Central Europe; in 2016, Western Europe and America were aggressively targeted as
well."
Lamentably, all these claims above are made with scant, or no, verifiable evidence. It is
simply a Big Lie technique of relentless repetition transforming itself into "fact"
.
It's instructive to follow Congressman Hurd's thought-process a bit further.
He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When
the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general
public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the
executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic
institutions, the Russians are winning."
As a putative solution, Representative Hurd calls for "a national counter-disinformation
strategy" against Russian "influence operations" , adding, "Americans must
stop contributing to a corrosive political environment".
The latter is a chilling advocacy of uniformity tantamount to a police state whereby any
dissent or criticism is a "thought-crime."
It is, however, such anti-democratic and paranoid thinking by Western politicians -- aided
and abetted by dutiful media -- that is killing democracy from within, not some supposed
foreign enemy.
There is evidently a foreboding sense of demise in authority and legitimacy among Western
states, even if the real cause for the demise is ignored or denied. Systems of governance,
politicians of all stripes, and institutions like the established media and intelligence
services are increasingly held in contempt and distrust by the public.
Whose fault is that loss of political and moral authority? Western governments and
institutions need to take a look in the mirror.
The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across
the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in
grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law.
The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public
accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When
does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and
its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies?
How then can properly informed citizens be expected to have respect for such criminal
government policies and the complicit news media covering up for their crimes?
Western public disaffection with governments, politicians and media surely stems also from
the grotesque gulf in social inequality and poverty among citizens from slavish adherence to
economic policies that enrich the wealthy while consigning the vast majority to unrelenting
austerity.
The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more
plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged
"Russian interference".
Yet the Western media indulge this fantastical "Russiagate" escapism instead of campaigning
on real social problems facing ordinary citizens. No wonder such media are then viewed with
disdain and distrust. Adding insult to injury, these media want the public to believe Russia is
the enemy?
Instead of acknowledging and addressing real threats to citizens: economic insecurity,
eroding education and health services, lost career opportunities for future generations, the
looming dangers of ecological adversity, wars prompted by Western governments trashing
international and diplomacy, and so on -- the Western public is insultingly plied with corny
tales of Russia's "malign influence" and "assault on democracy."
Just think of the disproportionate amount of media attention and public resources wasted on
the Russiagate scandal over the past year. And now gradually emerging is the real scandal that
the American FBI probably colluded with the Obama administration to corrupt the democratic
process against Trump.
Again, is there any wonder the public has sheer contempt and distrust for "authorities" that
have been lying through their teeth and playing them for fools?
The collapsing state of Western democracies has got nothing to do with Russia. The
Russophobia of blaming Russia for the demise of Western institutions is an attempt at
scapegoating for the very real problems facing governments and institutions like the news
media. Those problems are inherent and wholly owned by these governments owing to chronic
anti-democratic functioning, as well as systematic violation of international law in their
pursuit of criminal wars and other subterfuges for regime-change objectives.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several
languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For
over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation
and Press TV.
Ukraine is crucial in this Russian sense of territorial imperative. It's a tragically split
country, with part tilting toward the West and part facing eastward toward Russia. That makes
for a delicate political and geopolitical situation, but for centuries that delicate political
and geopolitical situation has been overseen by Russia. Now the West wants to end that.
Upending a duly elected (though corrupt) Ukrainian president was part of the plan. Getting
Ukraine into NATO is the endgame.
Note that the Ukrainian revolution occurred in 2014, which just happened to be the year,
according to the U.S. indictments, that Russia initiated its grand program to influence
America's 2016 elections. Kennan was right: Russia inevitably would react badly to the NATO
encirclement policy, and then America's anti-Russian cadres would cite that as evidence that
the encirclement was necessary all along. That's precisely what's happening now.
Which brings us to the fifth and final fundamental reality surrounding the revelation of
Russia's grand effort to influence the U.S. election. It was an incredible blunder. Given all
that's happened in U.S.-Russian relations this century, there probably wasn't much prospect
that those relations could ever be normalized, much less made cordial. But that is now utterly
impossible.
Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of seeking better relations with Russia. After getting
elected he repeatedly asserted in his first news conference that it would be "positive,"
"good," or "great" if "we could get along with Russia." Unlike most of America's elites, he
vowed to seek Moscow's cooperation on global issues, accepted some U.S. share of blame for the
two countries' sour relations, and acknowledged "the right of all nations to put their
interests first."
This suggested a possible dramatic turn in U.S.-Russian relations -- an end to the
encirclement push, curtailment of the hostile rhetoric, a pullback on economic sanctions, and
serious efforts to work with Russia on such nettlesome matters as Syria and Ukraine. That was
largely put on hold with the narrative of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and vague
allegations of campaign "collusion" with Russia on behalf of Trump's presidential
ambitions.
It doesn't appear likely that investigators will turn up any evidence of collusion that
rises to any kind of criminality. But it doesn't matter now, in terms of U.S.-Russian
relations, because these indictments will cement the anti-Russian sentiment of Americans for
the foreseeable future. No overtures of the kind envisioned by Trump will be possible for any
president for a long time. It won't matter that every nation does it or that America in
particular has done it or that the West's aggressive encirclement contributed to the Russian
actions. The U.S.-Russian hostility is set. Where it leads is impossible to predict, but it
won't be good. It could be tragic.
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is
editor of The American Conservative . His latest book,President McKinley: Architect of the American Century, was
released in September.
"... The circumstances leading to new clients in Latin America is significant but has been more than countered by retreats in Asia, divisions in Europe, turmoil domestically and strategic incoherence. ..."
"... The key shift from realism toward a recovered Russia to militarization and confrontation has precipitated the breakdown of the US as a unified coherent leader of a global empire. ..."
"... The US embraces prolonged losing wars in peripheral regions while embracing destructive trade wars in strategic regions. It budgeted vast sums on non-productive activities while impoverishing state and local governments via sweeping tax 'reform' favoring the oligarchs. ..."
"... There is no longer a coherent imperial empire controlling the fate of the globe. We live in a world of political maps centered on regional powers and unruly clients, while the most incompetent, gossip-mongering politicians in Washington compete with an arrogant, benighted President Trump and his fractured regime. ..."
The US empire spans the globe; it expands and contracts, according to its ability to secure
strategic assets, willing and able to further military and economic power to counter emerging
adversaries.
The map of empire is a shorthand measure of the vectors, reach and durability of global
power and wealth. The map of empire is changing -- adding and subtracting assets and
liabilities, according to the successes and retreats of domestic and overseas power centers.
While the US empire has been engaged in intense conflicts in the Middle East, the imperial map
has been enlarged elsewhere at lower cost and greater success.
Enlarging the Empire
The US empire has substantially increased its scope and presence in several regions,
especially in Latin America. The additions and enlargements include Argentina, Brazil,
Colombia, Mexico, Central America, Peru and the Caribbean. The most important asset redrawing
the empire in Latin America is Argentina. The US has gained military, economic and political
advantages. In the case of Argentina, political and economic advances preceded military
expansion.
The US provided ideological and political support to secure the election of its client
Mauricio Macri. The new Argentine President immediately transferred over $5 billion dollars to
the notorious Wall Street Vulture speculator, Paul Singer, and proceeded to open the floodgates
for a lucrative multi-billion dollar flow of financial capital. President Macri then followed
up by inviting the Pentagon and US intelligence services to establish military bases, spy
stations and training operations along its borders. Equally important, Argentina embraced the
US directives designed to overthrow the government of Venezuela, undermine Bolivia's
nationalist government under Evo Morales and pursue a policy of US-centered regional
integration.
Argentina: A Client without an Economic Patron
While Argentina is a useful political and military addition to the US empire, it lacks
access to the US market -- it still depends on China – and has failed to secure a
strategic trade agreement with the European Union. Washington has enlarged its military
presence with a one-legged client.
Colombia and Mexico, long time US client states, have provided springboards for enlarging US
influence in Central America, the Andean region and the Caribbean. In the case of Colombia, the
US has financed its war of extermination against anti-imperialist insurgents and their peasant
and working class supporters and secured seven military bases as launch pads for Washington's
destabilization campaign against Venezuela.
Mexico has served a multitude of military and economic functions – from billion dollar
manufacturing platforms to multi-billion dollar laundering of narco-profits to US banks.
Brazil is the new addition to the empire with the ousting and arrest of the leaders of the
Workers Party. The shift in political and economic power has enhanced US influence through its
leverage over the wealthiest country in the continent. In sum,the US has enlarged imperial
influence and control via its acquisition of Latin America. There is one caveat: At least in
the cases of Brazil and Argentina, the US advance is tentative and subject to reversal, as it
lacks firm economic and political foundations.
If Latin America reflects an enlargement and upsurge of US imperial influence, the rest of
the global map is mostly negative or at best contradictory.
The empire-building mission has failed to gain ground in Northeast Asia, the Middle East and
North Africa. In Europe, the US retains influence but it appears to face obstacles to enlarging
its presence.
The key to the enlargement or decline of empire revolves around the performance of the US
domestic economy.
Imperial Decline: China
The determination of the US in remapping the global empire is most evident in Asia. The most
notable shift in US political and economic relations in the region has taken place with China's
displacement of the US as the dominant investment, trading infrastructure building and lending
country in the region. Moreover, China has increased its role as the leading exporter to the
US, accumulating trade surpluses of hundreds of billions of dollars each year. In 2017, China's
trade surplus reached $375 billion dollars.
Against the relative economic decline of the US, Washington has compensated by widening the
scope of its maritime-military presence in the South China Sea, and increased its air and
ground forces in South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Philippines and Guam. As to how the
bolstering of the US military presence affects the US 're-mapping' of its imperial presence, it
depends on the dynamics of the US domestic economy and its ability to retain its existing
principal military clients – South Korea, Japan, Australia and the Philippines. Recent
evidence suggest that South Korea shows signs of slipping outside of the US economic and
military orbit. Seoul has trade issues with the US 'protectionist agenda' and opportunities to
expand its trading links with China. Equally important, South Korea has moved toward
reconciliation with North Korea, and downgraded the US military escalation. As goes South
Korea, so goes the US military power base in northern Asia.
The US military strategy is premised on sustaining and expanding its client network.
However, its protectionist policies led to the rejection of a multi-lateral trade agreement,
which erodes its economic ties with existing or potential military partners. In contrast to
Latin America, the US remaking of the imperial map has led to economic shrinkage and military
isolation in Asia. US military escalation has poured even more deadly strategic US arms into
the region, but failed to intimidate or isolate China or North Korea.
Re-mapping the Middle East
ORDER IT NOW
The US has spent several trillion dollars over the past two decades in the Middle East ,
North Africa and West Asia. US Intervention from Libya and Southern Sudan, Somalia, across to
Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan has resulted in enormous costs and dubious
advances. The results are meagre except in terms of suffering. The US has spread chaos and
destruction throughout Libya and Syria, but failed to incorporate either into an enlarged
empire. The Middle East wars, initiated at the behest of Israel, have rewarded Tel Aviv with a
sense of invulnerability and a thirst for more, while multiplying and unifying US
adversaries.
Empires are not effectively enlarged through alliances with with armed tribal, sectarian and
separatist organizations. Empires, allied with disparate, fractured and self-aggrandizing
entities do not expand or strengthen their global powers.
The US has waged war against Libya and lost the political leverage and economic resources it
enjoyed during the Gaddafi regime. It intervened in Somalia, South Sudan and Syria, and has
gained enclaves of warring self-serving 'separatists' and subsidized mercenaries. Afghanistan,
the US's longest war in history, is an unmitigated military disaster. After seventeen years of
warfare and occupation, the US is holed up in the walled enclaves of the capital, Kabul.
Meanwhile, the puppet regime feeds on multi-billion dollar monthly subsidies.
Iraq is a 'shared' imperial outpost -- the result of fifteen years of military intervention.
Kurdish clients, Sunni-Saudi warlords, Shia militia, Baghdad kleptocrats and US
contractor-mercenaries all compete for control and a larger piece of the pillage. Every square
meter of contested 'terrain has cost the US five hundred million dollars and scores of
casualties.
Iran remains forever under threat, but retains its independence outside of the
US-Saudi-Israeli orbit. The US geo-political map has been reduced to dubious alliance with
Saudi Arabia and its micro-clients among the Emirate statelets – which are constantly
fighting among themselves – as well as Israel, the 'client' that openly revels in leading
its patron by the nose!
Compared to the period before the turn of the millennium, the US imperial map has shrunk and
faces further retrenchment.
The US-NATO-EU Map
Russia has reduced and challenged the US pursuit of a uni-polar global empire following the
recovery of its sovereignty and economic growth after the disaster of the 1990's. With the
ascent of President Putin, the US-EU empire lost their biggest and most lucrative client and
source of naked pillage.
Nevertheless, the US retains its political clients in the Baltic , the Balkans and Eastern
and Central European regimes. However, these clients are unruly and often eager to confront a
nuclear-armed Russia, confident that the US-NATO will intervene, in spite of the probability of
being vaporized in a nuclear Armageddon.
Washington's efforts to recapture and return Russia to vassalage have failed. Out of
frustration Washington has resorted to a growing series of failed provocations and conflicts
between the US and the EU, within the US between Trump and the Democrats; and among the
warlords controlling the Trump cabinet.
Germany has continued lucrative trade ties with Russia, despite US sanctions, underscoring
the decline of US power to dictate policy to the European Union. The Democratic Party and the
ultra-militaristic Clinton faction remains pathologically nostalgic for a return to the 1990's
Golden Age of Pillage (before Putin). Clinton's faction is fixated on the politics of
revanchism . As a result, they vigorously fought against candidate Donald Trump's campaign
promises to pursue a new realistic understanding with Russia. The Russia-Gate Investigation is
not merely a domestic electoral squabble led by hysterical 'liberals.' What is a stake is
nothing less than a profound conflict over the remaking of the US global map. Trump recognized
and accepted the re-emergence of Russia as a global power to be 'contained', while the
Democrats campaigned to roll-back reality, overthrow Putin and return to the robber baron
orgies of the Clinton years. As a result of this ongoing strategic conflict, Washington is
unable to develop a coherent global strategy, which in turn has further weakened US influence
in the EU in Europe and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the intense Democratic onslaught against Trump's initial foreign policy
pronouncements regarding Russia succeeded in destroying his 'pivot to realism' and facilitated
the rise of a fanatical militaristic faction within his cabinet, which have intensified the
anti-Russia policies of the Clintonite Democrats. In less than a year, all of Trump's realist
advisers and cabinet members have been purged and replaced by militarists. Their hard core
confrontational anti-Russia policy has become the platform for launching a global military
strategy based on vast increases in military spending, demands that the EU nations increase
their military budgets, and open opposition to an EU-centered military alliance, such as the
one recently proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Despite President Trump's campaign promises to 'pull-back', the US has re-entered
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in a big way. The Trump shift from global containment and realism
to 'rollback and aggression' against Russia and China has failed to secure a positive response
from past and present allies.
China has increased economic ties with the EU. Russia and the EU share strategic gas and oil
trade ties. Domestically, the US military budget deepens the fiscal deficit and drastically
threatens social spending. This creates a scenario of increasing US isolation with its futile
aggression against a dynamic and changing world.
Conclusion
The Trump remaking of the global empire has had uneven results, which are mostly negative
from a strategic viewpoint.
The circumstances leading to new clients in Latin America is significant but has been
more than countered by retreats in Asia, divisions in Europe, turmoil domestically and
strategic incoherence.
Remaking global empires requires realism – the recognition of new power alignments,
accommodation with allies and, above all, domestic political stability balancing economic
interests and military commitments.
The key shift from realism toward a recovered Russia to militarization and confrontation
has precipitated the breakdown of the US as a unified coherent leader of a global
empire.
The US embraces prolonged losing wars in peripheral regions while embracing destructive
trade wars in strategic regions. It budgeted vast sums on non-productive activities while
impoverishing state and local governments via sweeping tax 'reform' favoring the
oligarchs.
Global remapping now involves a volatile and impulsive US-driven empire incapable of
succeeding, while emerging powers are immersed in regional power grabs.
There is no longer a coherent imperial empire controlling the fate of the globe. We live
in a world of political maps centered on regional powers and unruly clients, while the most
incompetent, gossip-mongering politicians in Washington compete with an arrogant, benighted
President Trump and his fractured regime.
Ukraine is crucial in this Russian sense of territorial imperative. It's a tragically split
country, with part tilting toward the West and part facing eastward toward Russia. That makes
for a delicate political and geopolitical situation, but for centuries that delicate political
and geopolitical situation has been overseen by Russia. Now the West wants to end that.
Upending a duly elected (though corrupt) Ukrainian president was part of the plan. Getting
Ukraine into NATO is the endgame.
Note that the Ukrainian revolution occurred in 2014, which just happened to be the year,
according to the U.S. indictments, that Russia initiated its grand program to influence
America's 2016 elections. Kennan was right: Russia inevitably would react badly to the NATO
encirclement policy, and then America's anti-Russian cadres would cite that as evidence that
the encirclement was necessary all along. That's precisely what's happening now.
Which brings us to the fifth and final fundamental reality surrounding the revelation of
Russia's grand effort to influence the U.S. election. It was an incredible blunder. Given all
that's happened in U.S.-Russian relations this century, there probably wasn't much prospect
that those relations could ever be normalized, much less made cordial. But that is now utterly
impossible.
Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of seeking better relations with Russia. After getting
elected he repeatedly asserted in his first news conference that it would be "positive,"
"good," or "great" if "we could get along with Russia." Unlike most of America's elites, he
vowed to seek Moscow's cooperation on global issues, accepted some U.S. share of blame for the
two countries' sour relations, and acknowledged "the right of all nations to put their
interests first."
This suggested a possible dramatic turn in U.S.-Russian relations -- an end to the
encirclement push, curtailment of the hostile rhetoric, a pullback on economic sanctions, and
serious efforts to work with Russia on such nettlesome matters as Syria and Ukraine. That was
largely put on hold with the narrative of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and vague
allegations of campaign "collusion" with Russia on behalf of Trump's presidential
ambitions.
It doesn't appear likely that investigators will turn up any evidence of collusion that
rises to any kind of criminality. But it doesn't matter now, in terms of U.S.-Russian
relations, because these indictments will cement the anti-Russian sentiment of Americans for
the foreseeable future. No overtures of the kind envisioned by Trump will be possible for any
president for a long time. It won't matter that every nation does it or that America in
particular has done it or that the West's aggressive encirclement contributed to the Russian
actions. The U.S.-Russian hostility is set. Where it leads is impossible to predict, but it
won't be good. It could be tragic.
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is
editor of The American Conservative . His latest book,President McKinley: Architect of the American Century, was
released in September.
"... The circumstances leading to new clients in Latin America is significant but has been more than countered by retreats in Asia, divisions in Europe, turmoil domestically and strategic incoherence. ..."
"... The key shift from realism toward a recovered Russia to militarization and confrontation has precipitated the breakdown of the US as a unified coherent leader of a global empire. ..."
"... The US embraces prolonged losing wars in peripheral regions while embracing destructive trade wars in strategic regions. It budgeted vast sums on non-productive activities while impoverishing state and local governments via sweeping tax 'reform' favoring the oligarchs. ..."
"... There is no longer a coherent imperial empire controlling the fate of the globe. We live in a world of political maps centered on regional powers and unruly clients, while the most incompetent, gossip-mongering politicians in Washington compete with an arrogant, benighted President Trump and his fractured regime. ..."
The US empire spans the globe; it expands and contracts, according to its ability to secure
strategic assets, willing and able to further military and economic power to counter emerging
adversaries.
The map of empire is a shorthand measure of the vectors, reach and durability of global
power and wealth. The map of empire is changing -- adding and subtracting assets and
liabilities, according to the successes and retreats of domestic and overseas power centers.
While the US empire has been engaged in intense conflicts in the Middle East, the imperial map
has been enlarged elsewhere at lower cost and greater success.
Enlarging the Empire
The US empire has substantially increased its scope and presence in several regions,
especially in Latin America. The additions and enlargements include Argentina, Brazil,
Colombia, Mexico, Central America, Peru and the Caribbean. The most important asset redrawing
the empire in Latin America is Argentina. The US has gained military, economic and political
advantages. In the case of Argentina, political and economic advances preceded military
expansion.
The US provided ideological and political support to secure the election of its client
Mauricio Macri. The new Argentine President immediately transferred over $5 billion dollars to
the notorious Wall Street Vulture speculator, Paul Singer, and proceeded to open the floodgates
for a lucrative multi-billion dollar flow of financial capital. President Macri then followed
up by inviting the Pentagon and US intelligence services to establish military bases, spy
stations and training operations along its borders. Equally important, Argentina embraced the
US directives designed to overthrow the government of Venezuela, undermine Bolivia's
nationalist government under Evo Morales and pursue a policy of US-centered regional
integration.
Argentina: A Client without an Economic Patron
While Argentina is a useful political and military addition to the US empire, it lacks
access to the US market -- it still depends on China – and has failed to secure a
strategic trade agreement with the European Union. Washington has enlarged its military
presence with a one-legged client.
Colombia and Mexico, long time US client states, have provided springboards for enlarging US
influence in Central America, the Andean region and the Caribbean. In the case of Colombia, the
US has financed its war of extermination against anti-imperialist insurgents and their peasant
and working class supporters and secured seven military bases as launch pads for Washington's
destabilization campaign against Venezuela.
Mexico has served a multitude of military and economic functions – from billion dollar
manufacturing platforms to multi-billion dollar laundering of narco-profits to US banks.
Brazil is the new addition to the empire with the ousting and arrest of the leaders of the
Workers Party. The shift in political and economic power has enhanced US influence through its
leverage over the wealthiest country in the continent. In sum,the US has enlarged imperial
influence and control via its acquisition of Latin America. There is one caveat: At least in
the cases of Brazil and Argentina, the US advance is tentative and subject to reversal, as it
lacks firm economic and political foundations.
If Latin America reflects an enlargement and upsurge of US imperial influence, the rest of
the global map is mostly negative or at best contradictory.
The empire-building mission has failed to gain ground in Northeast Asia, the Middle East and
North Africa. In Europe, the US retains influence but it appears to face obstacles to enlarging
its presence.
The key to the enlargement or decline of empire revolves around the performance of the US
domestic economy.
Imperial Decline: China
The determination of the US in remapping the global empire is most evident in Asia. The most
notable shift in US political and economic relations in the region has taken place with China's
displacement of the US as the dominant investment, trading infrastructure building and lending
country in the region. Moreover, China has increased its role as the leading exporter to the
US, accumulating trade surpluses of hundreds of billions of dollars each year. In 2017, China's
trade surplus reached $375 billion dollars.
Against the relative economic decline of the US, Washington has compensated by widening the
scope of its maritime-military presence in the South China Sea, and increased its air and
ground forces in South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Philippines and Guam. As to how the
bolstering of the US military presence affects the US 're-mapping' of its imperial presence, it
depends on the dynamics of the US domestic economy and its ability to retain its existing
principal military clients – South Korea, Japan, Australia and the Philippines. Recent
evidence suggest that South Korea shows signs of slipping outside of the US economic and
military orbit. Seoul has trade issues with the US 'protectionist agenda' and opportunities to
expand its trading links with China. Equally important, South Korea has moved toward
reconciliation with North Korea, and downgraded the US military escalation. As goes South
Korea, so goes the US military power base in northern Asia.
The US military strategy is premised on sustaining and expanding its client network.
However, its protectionist policies led to the rejection of a multi-lateral trade agreement,
which erodes its economic ties with existing or potential military partners. In contrast to
Latin America, the US remaking of the imperial map has led to economic shrinkage and military
isolation in Asia. US military escalation has poured even more deadly strategic US arms into
the region, but failed to intimidate or isolate China or North Korea.
Re-mapping the Middle East
ORDER IT NOW
The US has spent several trillion dollars over the past two decades in the Middle East ,
North Africa and West Asia. US Intervention from Libya and Southern Sudan, Somalia, across to
Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan has resulted in enormous costs and dubious
advances. The results are meagre except in terms of suffering. The US has spread chaos and
destruction throughout Libya and Syria, but failed to incorporate either into an enlarged
empire. The Middle East wars, initiated at the behest of Israel, have rewarded Tel Aviv with a
sense of invulnerability and a thirst for more, while multiplying and unifying US
adversaries.
Empires are not effectively enlarged through alliances with with armed tribal, sectarian and
separatist organizations. Empires, allied with disparate, fractured and self-aggrandizing
entities do not expand or strengthen their global powers.
The US has waged war against Libya and lost the political leverage and economic resources it
enjoyed during the Gaddafi regime. It intervened in Somalia, South Sudan and Syria, and has
gained enclaves of warring self-serving 'separatists' and subsidized mercenaries. Afghanistan,
the US's longest war in history, is an unmitigated military disaster. After seventeen years of
warfare and occupation, the US is holed up in the walled enclaves of the capital, Kabul.
Meanwhile, the puppet regime feeds on multi-billion dollar monthly subsidies.
Iraq is a 'shared' imperial outpost -- the result of fifteen years of military intervention.
Kurdish clients, Sunni-Saudi warlords, Shia militia, Baghdad kleptocrats and US
contractor-mercenaries all compete for control and a larger piece of the pillage. Every square
meter of contested 'terrain has cost the US five hundred million dollars and scores of
casualties.
Iran remains forever under threat, but retains its independence outside of the
US-Saudi-Israeli orbit. The US geo-political map has been reduced to dubious alliance with
Saudi Arabia and its micro-clients among the Emirate statelets – which are constantly
fighting among themselves – as well as Israel, the 'client' that openly revels in leading
its patron by the nose!
Compared to the period before the turn of the millennium, the US imperial map has shrunk and
faces further retrenchment.
The US-NATO-EU Map
Russia has reduced and challenged the US pursuit of a uni-polar global empire following the
recovery of its sovereignty and economic growth after the disaster of the 1990's. With the
ascent of President Putin, the US-EU empire lost their biggest and most lucrative client and
source of naked pillage.
Nevertheless, the US retains its political clients in the Baltic , the Balkans and Eastern
and Central European regimes. However, these clients are unruly and often eager to confront a
nuclear-armed Russia, confident that the US-NATO will intervene, in spite of the probability of
being vaporized in a nuclear Armageddon.
Washington's efforts to recapture and return Russia to vassalage have failed. Out of
frustration Washington has resorted to a growing series of failed provocations and conflicts
between the US and the EU, within the US between Trump and the Democrats; and among the
warlords controlling the Trump cabinet.
Germany has continued lucrative trade ties with Russia, despite US sanctions, underscoring
the decline of US power to dictate policy to the European Union. The Democratic Party and the
ultra-militaristic Clinton faction remains pathologically nostalgic for a return to the 1990's
Golden Age of Pillage (before Putin). Clinton's faction is fixated on the politics of
revanchism . As a result, they vigorously fought against candidate Donald Trump's campaign
promises to pursue a new realistic understanding with Russia. The Russia-Gate Investigation is
not merely a domestic electoral squabble led by hysterical 'liberals.' What is a stake is
nothing less than a profound conflict over the remaking of the US global map. Trump recognized
and accepted the re-emergence of Russia as a global power to be 'contained', while the
Democrats campaigned to roll-back reality, overthrow Putin and return to the robber baron
orgies of the Clinton years. As a result of this ongoing strategic conflict, Washington is
unable to develop a coherent global strategy, which in turn has further weakened US influence
in the EU in Europe and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the intense Democratic onslaught against Trump's initial foreign policy
pronouncements regarding Russia succeeded in destroying his 'pivot to realism' and facilitated
the rise of a fanatical militaristic faction within his cabinet, which have intensified the
anti-Russia policies of the Clintonite Democrats. In less than a year, all of Trump's realist
advisers and cabinet members have been purged and replaced by militarists. Their hard core
confrontational anti-Russia policy has become the platform for launching a global military
strategy based on vast increases in military spending, demands that the EU nations increase
their military budgets, and open opposition to an EU-centered military alliance, such as the
one recently proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Despite President Trump's campaign promises to 'pull-back', the US has re-entered
Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in a big way. The Trump shift from global containment and realism
to 'rollback and aggression' against Russia and China has failed to secure a positive response
from past and present allies.
China has increased economic ties with the EU. Russia and the EU share strategic gas and oil
trade ties. Domestically, the US military budget deepens the fiscal deficit and drastically
threatens social spending. This creates a scenario of increasing US isolation with its futile
aggression against a dynamic and changing world.
Conclusion
The Trump remaking of the global empire has had uneven results, which are mostly negative
from a strategic viewpoint.
The circumstances leading to new clients in Latin America is significant but has been
more than countered by retreats in Asia, divisions in Europe, turmoil domestically and
strategic incoherence.
Remaking global empires requires realism – the recognition of new power alignments,
accommodation with allies and, above all, domestic political stability balancing economic
interests and military commitments.
The key shift from realism toward a recovered Russia to militarization and confrontation
has precipitated the breakdown of the US as a unified coherent leader of a global
empire.
The US embraces prolonged losing wars in peripheral regions while embracing destructive
trade wars in strategic regions. It budgeted vast sums on non-productive activities while
impoverishing state and local governments via sweeping tax 'reform' favoring the
oligarchs.
Global remapping now involves a volatile and impulsive US-driven empire incapable of
succeeding, while emerging powers are immersed in regional power grabs.
There is no longer a coherent imperial empire controlling the fate of the globe. We live
in a world of political maps centered on regional powers and unruly clients, while the most
incompetent, gossip-mongering politicians in Washington compete with an arrogant, benighted
President Trump and his fractured regime.
This is an old method to unite the nation against external enemy. Carnage (with so much oil and gas) needs to be
destroyed. And it's working only partially with the major divisions between Trump and Hillary supporters remaining
open and unaffected by Russiagate witch hunt.
Notable quotes:
"... It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as part of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances. ..."
"... The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is "sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media. ..."
"... A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it, Americans need to begin working together." ..."
"... He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic institutions, the Russians are winning." ..."
"... The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law. ..."
"... The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies? ..."
"... The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged "Russian interference". ..."
"... Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV. ..."
Russophobia - "blame it all on Russia" - is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day of reckoning when furious
and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for their legitimate grievances
It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external
enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as
part of the Soviet Union.
But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal problems. Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are
only hastening their institutional demise.
Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day
of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for
their legitimate grievances.
The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is
"sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems
of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media.
This narrative has shifted up a gear since the election of Donald Trump to the White House
in 2016, with accusations that the Kremlin somehow ran "influence operations" to help get him
into office. This outlandish yarn defies common sense. It is also running out of thread to keep
spinning.
Paradoxically, even though President Trump has rightly rebuffed such dubious claims of
"Russiagate" interference as "fake news", he has at other times undermined himself by
subscribing to the notion that Moscow is projecting a campaign of "subversion against the US
and its European allies." See for example the National Security Strategy he signed off in
December.
Pathetically, it's become indoctrinated belief among the Western political class that
"devious Russians" are out to "collapse" Western democracies by
"weaponizing disinformation" and spreading "fake news" through Russia-based
news outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Totalitarian-like, there seems no room for intelligent dissent among political or media
figures.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has chimed in to
accuse Moscow of "sowing division;" Dutch state intelligence claim Russia
destabilized the US presidential election; the European Union commissioner for security, Sir
Julian King, casually lampoons Russian news media as "Kremlin-orchestrated
disinformation" to destabilize the 28-nation bloc; CIA chief Mike Pompeo recently warned
that Russia is stepping up its efforts to tarnish the Congressional mid-term elections later
this year.
On and on goes the narrative that Western states are essentially victims of a nefarious
Russian assault to bring about collapse.
A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan
Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary"
, he claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save
it, Americans need to begin working together."
Congressman Hurd asserts: "Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in our democratic
institutions It has weaponized disinformation to achieve this goal for decades in Eastern and
Central Europe; in 2016, Western Europe and America were aggressively targeted as
well."
Lamentably, all these claims above are made with scant, or no, verifiable evidence. It is
simply a Big Lie technique of relentless repetition transforming itself into "fact"
.
It's instructive to follow Congressman Hurd's thought-process a bit further.
He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When
the press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general
public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the
executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic
institutions, the Russians are winning."
As a putative solution, Representative Hurd calls for "a national counter-disinformation
strategy" against Russian "influence operations" , adding, "Americans must
stop contributing to a corrosive political environment".
The latter is a chilling advocacy of uniformity tantamount to a police state whereby any
dissent or criticism is a "thought-crime."
It is, however, such anti-democratic and paranoid thinking by Western politicians -- aided
and abetted by dutiful media -- that is killing democracy from within, not some supposed
foreign enemy.
There is evidently a foreboding sense of demise in authority and legitimacy among Western
states, even if the real cause for the demise is ignored or denied. Systems of governance,
politicians of all stripes, and institutions like the established media and intelligence
services are increasingly held in contempt and distrust by the public.
Whose fault is that loss of political and moral authority? Western governments and
institutions need to take a look in the mirror.
The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across
the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in
grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law.
The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public
accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When
does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and
its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies?
How then can properly informed citizens be expected to have respect for such criminal
government policies and the complicit news media covering up for their crimes?
Western public disaffection with governments, politicians and media surely stems also from
the grotesque gulf in social inequality and poverty among citizens from slavish adherence to
economic policies that enrich the wealthy while consigning the vast majority to unrelenting
austerity.
The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more
plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged
"Russian interference".
Yet the Western media indulge this fantastical "Russiagate" escapism instead of campaigning
on real social problems facing ordinary citizens. No wonder such media are then viewed with
disdain and distrust. Adding insult to injury, these media want the public to believe Russia is
the enemy?
Instead of acknowledging and addressing real threats to citizens: economic insecurity,
eroding education and health services, lost career opportunities for future generations, the
looming dangers of ecological adversity, wars prompted by Western governments trashing
international and diplomacy, and so on -- the Western public is insultingly plied with corny
tales of Russia's "malign influence" and "assault on democracy."
Just think of the disproportionate amount of media attention and public resources wasted on
the Russiagate scandal over the past year. And now gradually emerging is the real scandal that
the American FBI probably colluded with the Obama administration to corrupt the democratic
process against Trump.
Again, is there any wonder the public has sheer contempt and distrust for "authorities" that
have been lying through their teeth and playing them for fools?
The collapsing state of Western democracies has got nothing to do with Russia. The
Russophobia of blaming Russia for the demise of Western institutions is an attempt at
scapegoating for the very real problems facing governments and institutions like the news
media. Those problems are inherent and wholly owned by these governments owing to chronic
anti-democratic functioning, as well as systematic violation of international law in their
pursuit of criminal wars and other subterfuges for regime-change objectives.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several
languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For
over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation
and Press TV.
"... ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). ..."
Then Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, would be president of the United States, but the
Senate, probably, and the House of Representatives, certainly, would have remained under
Republican control.
In other words, had Hillary won, we would now have pretty much what we had when Barack Obama
was president – but with the executive branch less competently led and more packed with
Clintonite (neoliberal, liberal imperialist, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later) officials,
and with a Congress run by obstinate Republican troglodytes running roughshod over feckless,
slightly less retrograde Democrats.
Radical impulses would, of course, continue to stir throughout the general population but
notwithstanding widespread and deep popular support, to even less avail than before.
A Clinton presidency wouldn't make the blood of high-minded people boil, the way the Trump
presidency has done, though, for anyone with the courage to face reality squarely, it would be
nearly as painful to endure.
That pain would be much less constructive than the pain that is now so widely felt. Instead
of sparking anodyne "resistance," it would be drowned out in a sea of acquiescence.
In a word, Clinton's first term would be what a third Obama term would have been –
ratcheted down a few notches in the squelched "hope" and "change" departments.
By being African American, Obama stirred up plenty of hope and change illusions, especially
at first, in many, maybe most, sectors of the population. In other sectors, Obama's race
brought barely suppressed prejudices and resentments out into the open.
Because it soon became clear – not to everybody, but to everybody not willfully blind
– that, under Obama, little, if any, good would come, Obamaphilia eventually faded away;
the racism and nativism Obama's election boosted proved more durable.
Hillary, on the other hand, was anything but a beacon of hope – except perhaps to
those of her supporters whose highest priority was electing a woman president. Hardly anyone
else ever expected much good to come from her calling the shots.
In comparison with Obama, she wasn't even good at what she did. Despite a constant barrage
of public relations babble about how experienced and competent she is, this was widely
understood, even if seldom conceded.
She hadn't been much of a First Lady or Senator; among other things, she helped set the
cause of health insurance reform back a generation, and she supported the Afghanistan and Iraq
Wars.
Then, as Secretary of State, she was at least partly responsible for devastating levels of
disorder and mayhem throughout North Africa (Libya especially), the Greater Middle East (not
just Syria), and elsewhere (Honduras, for example). But for her tenure at Foggy Bottom, there
would be many fewer refugees in the world today.
It is therefore a good bet that were she president now, Obama would be sorely missed –
notwithstanding his fondness for terrorizing civilians with weaponized drones, and for
deporting Hispanics and others with a zeal exceeding George Bush's.
Inasmuch as he did break a color line that seemed infrangible, it was impossible for persons
of good will not to root for the man. That would be like not rooting for Jackie Robinson. But
the fact remains: except in comparison to his rivals and to Trump, he was no prize.
Because it was clear to nearly everybody outside the Clinton propaganda circuit that, by
2016, there really was no "glass ceiling" holding women back, Hillary had nothing like that
going for her.
There were and are plenty of people of all ages and genders who would have liked to see a
woman elected president; the time for that is long past due. But, by the time Clinton became
the Democratic standard bearer, hardly anyone could truly believe that patriarchal attitudes or
rampant misogyny were significant factors standing in her way.
To be sure, the lingering effects of attitudes in place years ago have diminished the pool
of plausible female candidates. But then so too did the idea that Clinton was somehow entitled
to the office. Because that attitude was so deeply entrenched, few women wanted to cross
her.
Nevertheless, there are women who, running on the Democratic line, could surely have
defeated Trump. An obvious example is Elizabeth Warren.
I am not alone in thinking that had the Democratic National Committee not rigged the
nomination process in Clinton's favor, Bernie Sanders would have become the party's nominee and
then gone on to defeat Trump. Warren's chances of winning the election were better still
– precisely because, she is a woman.
Clinton's problem was not her gender; it was her politics.
Even so, we would be a lot better off now had she won in 2016 -- not just because the evil
we know (too well!) is easier to deal with than the blooming buzzing confusion we ended up with
instead, but also because, despite her Russophobia and fondness for "military solutions," the
likelihood that the United States would blunder into a nuclear Armageddon would now be
significantly less.
Too bad therefore that she flubbed even more egregiously than those of us who saw through
the public relations myths about her accomplishments and competence thought possible.
Needless to say, in the alternative universe that Democrats and their media flacks have
concocted, they explain the election outcome differently. In their view, Hillary lost because
"the Russians" subverted our democratic institutions.
Or was it because James Comey, then the Director of the FBI, tipped that election to Trump
by refocusing attention on Clinton's emails as Election Day approached?
One would think that it would faze Democratic confabulators that, shortly after the election
was over, Comey rose to the top of Donald Trump's shit list – and was unceremoniously
fired. They really should get their story straight.
While they are sorting that out, they might also make an effort to be a tad less besotted
with the FBI. It is, to say the least, unseemly, even for faux-progressives, to cozy up to the
perennial scourge of every progressive tendency in the American body politic.
And it isn't just the FBI – Democrats nowadays are smitten with the entire national
security state apparatus, including the CIA and the NSA.
Democrats have always been that way to some extent, but, in the pre-Trump era, Republicans
were generally the more gung ho of our two semi-established parties.
For decades, Cold War anti-Communist paranoia endeared the FBI and the others to wide
swathes of the general public and to Republicans and Democrats alike. When a dearth of real
world Communists made that story line impossible to maintain, "Islamic terrorists" were on hand
to take their place.
These obsessions pair well with the right's passion for law and order – in other
words, for keeping the poor generally, and persons of color especially, down.
And so, being the more rightwing of the duopoly parties, Republicans, before Trump, were
especially besotted with the forces of order – from local police (for whom, black lives
don't really matter) on up (or is it down?).
Democrats have never had any real quarrel with any of this, but, being the "nicer" and more
reasonable of the duopoly parties, they were less inclined to go overboard.
It grieves me to say anything good about Donald Trump, but, to his credit, he did force
Republicans onto a less unreasonable track – not in general, but towards Russia, a
country with a nuclear arsenal so formidable that only maniacs would want to mess with it
unnecessarily.
In all likelihood, Trump's reasons are venal or otherwise nefarious, and have little if
anything to do with common sense. But anything that holds back the Doomsday Clock is
welcome.
It is likely, though, that, before long, Republicans will revert back to their old ways.
Indeed, this is already happening: witness Trump's new "defense strategy" – aimed at
the old Cold War bugaboos, Russia and China.
The scare quotes are in order because there is no strategy there, and what Trump is
proposing has nothing to do with defense. It has everything to do, however, with giving free
rein to the Pentagon to squander monies that could be otherwise spent in socially useful ways,
and with stuffing the pockets of death merchants ("defense contractors") and those who feed off
the taxpayer money our political class throws their way.
***
Despite even this, Democrats remain the less odious duopoly party. On nearly all "issues,"
just about any Republican is worse than any Democrat; and the attitudes and instincts
Republicans evince are more execrable by far.
It should be born in mind, however, that the Democratic Party is, if anything, even more
responsible for Trump than the Republicans are.
Insofar as he has set political views and attitudes, they were forged in New York City,
under the aegis of Democratic Party politicians. And the Clintonite (neoliberal) turn in the
larger political culture created the conditions for the possibility of Trump, or someone like
him, rising to national prominence.
Democrats pulled this off by malignly neglecting the working class – and therefore
less well-off white voters, among others – and by euthanizing nascent left oppositions
that showed promise of challenging the economic supremacy and political power of the so-called
"donor class" and of capitalists generally.
Neoliberalism shifts power and resources from the state sector to private capital, it
encourages the globalization of trade, and it facilitates the free flow of capital around the
world.
Its nostrums are integral to a form of class struggle aimed at weakening working class
opposition – largely, but not exclusively, by attacks on the labor movement.
The classical fascism of the interwar years took aim at workers' economic and political
organizations too – more directly, through violent frontal assaults. Neoliberalism works
more gently, through protracted wars of attrition. The consequences, however, are much the
same.
The Clintons and Tony Blair and their counterparts in other countries make a show of their
progressivism – limiting their efforts, however, to cultural issues that do not
materially harm capitalists' interests.
Around election times, they even make nice with union leaders -- because they need the
resources and manpower they can still provide. But it is all a ruse, as workers and others know
well.
Real fascists set out to intimidate workers' organizations; they liked bloodying noses.
Neoliberals take aim at workers' power in such subtle but far-reaching ways that they often
don't even realize that they have been had.
In the early days of the Regan era, Bertram Gross famously introduced the notion of
"friendly fascism." The GOP used to be the friendly fascist's natural home. These days,
however, Republicans are a lot nastier than they were in Reagan's time.
In recent years, the Tea Party and then Trump and the miscreants he has empowered have
accentuated the GOP's racist, nativist, and authoritarian side. It is not a fascist party in
the traditional sense, but the resemblances are more than a little worrisome.
And so, Reagan-style friendly fascism has largely disappeared from the Republican fold. But
for what has taken its place, this would be a reason to celebrate.
Meanwhile, the spirit of the "Reagan revolution" lives on in the other duopoly party
–where, thanks to the Clintons and others like them, efforts to keep "the donor class up"
and everyone else down continue in a seemingly more benign way.
The electoral consequences are predictable. The kinds of working class people whom Trump
derides – basically, everyone who is not white, male and straight – are, of course,
more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. But they are more likely still not to vote
at all.
Why would they when they have nothing to vote for ?
And, in large (mainly rural) swathes of the country, white working class men and the women
who stand by them will vote for anyone, even an obviously incompetent billionaire buffoon whose
policies will do nothing for them materially, provided only that he channels their resentments
at Clintonite policies and people.
However, malign neglect of an important segment of the working class is only partly
responsible for Trump. The absence of a genuine left is of far greater importance.
The reasons for its absence are many, and go far beyond the Democratic Party. Even so,
Democrats have a lot to answer for.
As it became increasingly clear that the Bush-Cheney wars launched after 9/11 were
responsible for enormous harm to people and to geopolitical stability, a peace movement took
shape that, by 2006, had become a force to be reckoned with.
At the same time, in anticipation of the 2008 election, the leadership of the Democratic
Party did its best to keep dissent in bounds. Their aim was to get Hillary Clinton elected
president, and they feared that political turbulence would upset their plans.
At the very least, with the House back under Democratic control in 2006, Democrats could
have initiated impeachment proceedings against George Bush; they had more than ample grounds.
Whether or not he would then have been removed from office, he and his subordinates would have
been impeded to some extent from doing at least some of the harm they went on to do.
But Nancy Pelosi and her co-thinkers in Congress put the kibosh on that idea. Their efforts
did not stifle the growing peace movement entirely, but it did take some of the wind out its
sails.
When it turned out that Obama was a stronger candidate than Clinton, and that the nomination
would go his way, leading Democrats adapted. Hillary was their favorite, but Obama had been
thoroughly vetted for corporate-friendliness and passed all the tests with flying colors. That
was good enough for them.
And so it fell to the Nobel laureate to put the peace movement definitively down, even as he
continued – temporarily even escalating -- the Bush-Cheney wars.
For too long and against too much contrary evidence, liberals took it for granted that Obama
was on the side of the angels. They therefore let pass the murder and mayhem he was responsible
for.
After eight years of that, what little semblance of a genuine left there had been within the
Democratic Party's ambit found itself narcotized into oblivion.
An appetite for real opposition, even rebellion, existed within the general public; under
the pressure of events it was growing all the time. But, with our debilitating duopoly party
system in place, there was no political way out of the status quo.
Had Hillary won, that sad state of affairs would have continued, while the underlying
maladies that Trump exploited for the benefit of himself and his class would have continued to
fester.
And we would now likely be on the brink of even more appalling electoral outcomes than we
suffered through in 2010 and 2014, and in 2016, when the Trump phenomenon defied all
expectations.
Paradoxically, though, with Trump's victory, the prospects for a better mainstream politics
actually improved. Trump is so manifestly unfit for the job he holds that his hold over the
White House and the Republican Party actually harms the right more than it helps it.
His ever expanding docket of impeachable offenses and his crude misogyny are doing the work
an organized left opposition would be doing, if only one existed -- creating space for popular
movements to develop.
It started with the Women's March, immediately after Inauguration Day, and has been growing
ever since; with women – black, brown, and white – leading the surge.
With midterm elections looming, the danger of cooptation is great -- Democrats, their media
in tow, are working overtime to make that happen. But thanks to Trump, things have gone too far
by now to be squelched entirely.
What Obama's victory did to the peace movement after 2008, a Hillary victory in 2016 would
have done ten times over to the several (mainly woman-led) insurgencies that were beginning to
take shape during the campaign.
With Trump in the White House, progressive women remain in the forefront of struggles to
change the world for the better. With Clinton there instead, their best efforts would be
swamped by anodyne campaigns led by well-meaning liberals of the kind that understandably rile
up the Trump base.
All things considered, it would have been better (less catastrophically awful) had Hillary
won. Even so, there is some reason to be grateful that she did not. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Andrew Levine
ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and
POLITICAL KEY WORDS
(Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most
recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong
With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College
Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and
the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).
"... ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). ..."
Then Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, would be president of the United States, but the
Senate, probably, and the House of Representatives, certainly, would have remained under
Republican control.
In other words, had Hillary won, we would now have pretty much what we had when Barack Obama
was president – but with the executive branch less competently led and more packed with
Clintonite (neoliberal, liberal imperialist, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later) officials,
and with a Congress run by obstinate Republican troglodytes running roughshod over feckless,
slightly less retrograde Democrats.
Radical impulses would, of course, continue to stir throughout the general population but
notwithstanding widespread and deep popular support, to even less avail than before.
A Clinton presidency wouldn't make the blood of high-minded people boil, the way the Trump
presidency has done, though, for anyone with the courage to face reality squarely, it would be
nearly as painful to endure.
That pain would be much less constructive than the pain that is now so widely felt. Instead
of sparking anodyne "resistance," it would be drowned out in a sea of acquiescence.
In a word, Clinton's first term would be what a third Obama term would have been –
ratcheted down a few notches in the squelched "hope" and "change" departments.
By being African American, Obama stirred up plenty of hope and change illusions, especially
at first, in many, maybe most, sectors of the population. In other sectors, Obama's race
brought barely suppressed prejudices and resentments out into the open.
Because it soon became clear – not to everybody, but to everybody not willfully blind
– that, under Obama, little, if any, good would come, Obamaphilia eventually faded away;
the racism and nativism Obama's election boosted proved more durable.
Hillary, on the other hand, was anything but a beacon of hope – except perhaps to
those of her supporters whose highest priority was electing a woman president. Hardly anyone
else ever expected much good to come from her calling the shots.
In comparison with Obama, she wasn't even good at what she did. Despite a constant barrage
of public relations babble about how experienced and competent she is, this was widely
understood, even if seldom conceded.
She hadn't been much of a First Lady or Senator; among other things, she helped set the
cause of health insurance reform back a generation, and she supported the Afghanistan and Iraq
Wars.
Then, as Secretary of State, she was at least partly responsible for devastating levels of
disorder and mayhem throughout North Africa (Libya especially), the Greater Middle East (not
just Syria), and elsewhere (Honduras, for example). But for her tenure at Foggy Bottom, there
would be many fewer refugees in the world today.
It is therefore a good bet that were she president now, Obama would be sorely missed –
notwithstanding his fondness for terrorizing civilians with weaponized drones, and for
deporting Hispanics and others with a zeal exceeding George Bush's.
Inasmuch as he did break a color line that seemed infrangible, it was impossible for persons
of good will not to root for the man. That would be like not rooting for Jackie Robinson. But
the fact remains: except in comparison to his rivals and to Trump, he was no prize.
Because it was clear to nearly everybody outside the Clinton propaganda circuit that, by
2016, there really was no "glass ceiling" holding women back, Hillary had nothing like that
going for her.
There were and are plenty of people of all ages and genders who would have liked to see a
woman elected president; the time for that is long past due. But, by the time Clinton became
the Democratic standard bearer, hardly anyone could truly believe that patriarchal attitudes or
rampant misogyny were significant factors standing in her way.
To be sure, the lingering effects of attitudes in place years ago have diminished the pool
of plausible female candidates. But then so too did the idea that Clinton was somehow entitled
to the office. Because that attitude was so deeply entrenched, few women wanted to cross
her.
Nevertheless, there are women who, running on the Democratic line, could surely have
defeated Trump. An obvious example is Elizabeth Warren.
I am not alone in thinking that had the Democratic National Committee not rigged the
nomination process in Clinton's favor, Bernie Sanders would have become the party's nominee and
then gone on to defeat Trump. Warren's chances of winning the election were better still
– precisely because, she is a woman.
Clinton's problem was not her gender; it was her politics.
Even so, we would be a lot better off now had she won in 2016 -- not just because the evil
we know (too well!) is easier to deal with than the blooming buzzing confusion we ended up with
instead, but also because, despite her Russophobia and fondness for "military solutions," the
likelihood that the United States would blunder into a nuclear Armageddon would now be
significantly less.
Too bad therefore that she flubbed even more egregiously than those of us who saw through
the public relations myths about her accomplishments and competence thought possible.
Needless to say, in the alternative universe that Democrats and their media flacks have
concocted, they explain the election outcome differently. In their view, Hillary lost because
"the Russians" subverted our democratic institutions.
Or was it because James Comey, then the Director of the FBI, tipped that election to Trump
by refocusing attention on Clinton's emails as Election Day approached?
One would think that it would faze Democratic confabulators that, shortly after the election
was over, Comey rose to the top of Donald Trump's shit list – and was unceremoniously
fired. They really should get their story straight.
While they are sorting that out, they might also make an effort to be a tad less besotted
with the FBI. It is, to say the least, unseemly, even for faux-progressives, to cozy up to the
perennial scourge of every progressive tendency in the American body politic.
And it isn't just the FBI – Democrats nowadays are smitten with the entire national
security state apparatus, including the CIA and the NSA.
Democrats have always been that way to some extent, but, in the pre-Trump era, Republicans
were generally the more gung ho of our two semi-established parties.
For decades, Cold War anti-Communist paranoia endeared the FBI and the others to wide
swathes of the general public and to Republicans and Democrats alike. When a dearth of real
world Communists made that story line impossible to maintain, "Islamic terrorists" were on hand
to take their place.
These obsessions pair well with the right's passion for law and order – in other
words, for keeping the poor generally, and persons of color especially, down.
And so, being the more rightwing of the duopoly parties, Republicans, before Trump, were
especially besotted with the forces of order – from local police (for whom, black lives
don't really matter) on up (or is it down?).
Democrats have never had any real quarrel with any of this, but, being the "nicer" and more
reasonable of the duopoly parties, they were less inclined to go overboard.
It grieves me to say anything good about Donald Trump, but, to his credit, he did force
Republicans onto a less unreasonable track – not in general, but towards Russia, a
country with a nuclear arsenal so formidable that only maniacs would want to mess with it
unnecessarily.
In all likelihood, Trump's reasons are venal or otherwise nefarious, and have little if
anything to do with common sense. But anything that holds back the Doomsday Clock is
welcome.
It is likely, though, that, before long, Republicans will revert back to their old ways.
Indeed, this is already happening: witness Trump's new "defense strategy" – aimed at
the old Cold War bugaboos, Russia and China.
The scare quotes are in order because there is no strategy there, and what Trump is
proposing has nothing to do with defense. It has everything to do, however, with giving free
rein to the Pentagon to squander monies that could be otherwise spent in socially useful ways,
and with stuffing the pockets of death merchants ("defense contractors") and those who feed off
the taxpayer money our political class throws their way.
***
Despite even this, Democrats remain the less odious duopoly party. On nearly all "issues,"
just about any Republican is worse than any Democrat; and the attitudes and instincts
Republicans evince are more execrable by far.
It should be born in mind, however, that the Democratic Party is, if anything, even more
responsible for Trump than the Republicans are.
Insofar as he has set political views and attitudes, they were forged in New York City,
under the aegis of Democratic Party politicians. And the Clintonite (neoliberal) turn in the
larger political culture created the conditions for the possibility of Trump, or someone like
him, rising to national prominence.
Democrats pulled this off by malignly neglecting the working class – and therefore
less well-off white voters, among others – and by euthanizing nascent left oppositions
that showed promise of challenging the economic supremacy and political power of the so-called
"donor class" and of capitalists generally.
Neoliberalism shifts power and resources from the state sector to private capital, it
encourages the globalization of trade, and it facilitates the free flow of capital around the
world.
Its nostrums are integral to a form of class struggle aimed at weakening working class
opposition – largely, but not exclusively, by attacks on the labor movement.
The classical fascism of the interwar years took aim at workers' economic and political
organizations too – more directly, through violent frontal assaults. Neoliberalism works
more gently, through protracted wars of attrition. The consequences, however, are much the
same.
The Clintons and Tony Blair and their counterparts in other countries make a show of their
progressivism – limiting their efforts, however, to cultural issues that do not
materially harm capitalists' interests.
Around election times, they even make nice with union leaders -- because they need the
resources and manpower they can still provide. But it is all a ruse, as workers and others know
well.
Real fascists set out to intimidate workers' organizations; they liked bloodying noses.
Neoliberals take aim at workers' power in such subtle but far-reaching ways that they often
don't even realize that they have been had.
In the early days of the Regan era, Bertram Gross famously introduced the notion of
"friendly fascism." The GOP used to be the friendly fascist's natural home. These days,
however, Republicans are a lot nastier than they were in Reagan's time.
In recent years, the Tea Party and then Trump and the miscreants he has empowered have
accentuated the GOP's racist, nativist, and authoritarian side. It is not a fascist party in
the traditional sense, but the resemblances are more than a little worrisome.
And so, Reagan-style friendly fascism has largely disappeared from the Republican fold. But
for what has taken its place, this would be a reason to celebrate.
Meanwhile, the spirit of the "Reagan revolution" lives on in the other duopoly party
–where, thanks to the Clintons and others like them, efforts to keep "the donor class up"
and everyone else down continue in a seemingly more benign way.
The electoral consequences are predictable. The kinds of working class people whom Trump
derides – basically, everyone who is not white, male and straight – are, of course,
more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. But they are more likely still not to vote
at all.
Why would they when they have nothing to vote for ?
And, in large (mainly rural) swathes of the country, white working class men and the women
who stand by them will vote for anyone, even an obviously incompetent billionaire buffoon whose
policies will do nothing for them materially, provided only that he channels their resentments
at Clintonite policies and people.
However, malign neglect of an important segment of the working class is only partly
responsible for Trump. The absence of a genuine left is of far greater importance.
The reasons for its absence are many, and go far beyond the Democratic Party. Even so,
Democrats have a lot to answer for.
As it became increasingly clear that the Bush-Cheney wars launched after 9/11 were
responsible for enormous harm to people and to geopolitical stability, a peace movement took
shape that, by 2006, had become a force to be reckoned with.
At the same time, in anticipation of the 2008 election, the leadership of the Democratic
Party did its best to keep dissent in bounds. Their aim was to get Hillary Clinton elected
president, and they feared that political turbulence would upset their plans.
At the very least, with the House back under Democratic control in 2006, Democrats could
have initiated impeachment proceedings against George Bush; they had more than ample grounds.
Whether or not he would then have been removed from office, he and his subordinates would have
been impeded to some extent from doing at least some of the harm they went on to do.
But Nancy Pelosi and her co-thinkers in Congress put the kibosh on that idea. Their efforts
did not stifle the growing peace movement entirely, but it did take some of the wind out its
sails.
When it turned out that Obama was a stronger candidate than Clinton, and that the nomination
would go his way, leading Democrats adapted. Hillary was their favorite, but Obama had been
thoroughly vetted for corporate-friendliness and passed all the tests with flying colors. That
was good enough for them.
And so it fell to the Nobel laureate to put the peace movement definitively down, even as he
continued – temporarily even escalating -- the Bush-Cheney wars.
For too long and against too much contrary evidence, liberals took it for granted that Obama
was on the side of the angels. They therefore let pass the murder and mayhem he was responsible
for.
After eight years of that, what little semblance of a genuine left there had been within the
Democratic Party's ambit found itself narcotized into oblivion.
An appetite for real opposition, even rebellion, existed within the general public; under
the pressure of events it was growing all the time. But, with our debilitating duopoly party
system in place, there was no political way out of the status quo.
Had Hillary won, that sad state of affairs would have continued, while the underlying
maladies that Trump exploited for the benefit of himself and his class would have continued to
fester.
And we would now likely be on the brink of even more appalling electoral outcomes than we
suffered through in 2010 and 2014, and in 2016, when the Trump phenomenon defied all
expectations.
Paradoxically, though, with Trump's victory, the prospects for a better mainstream politics
actually improved. Trump is so manifestly unfit for the job he holds that his hold over the
White House and the Republican Party actually harms the right more than it helps it.
His ever expanding docket of impeachable offenses and his crude misogyny are doing the work
an organized left opposition would be doing, if only one existed -- creating space for popular
movements to develop.
It started with the Women's March, immediately after Inauguration Day, and has been growing
ever since; with women – black, brown, and white – leading the surge.
With midterm elections looming, the danger of cooptation is great -- Democrats, their media
in tow, are working overtime to make that happen. But thanks to Trump, things have gone too far
by now to be squelched entirely.
What Obama's victory did to the peace movement after 2008, a Hillary victory in 2016 would
have done ten times over to the several (mainly woman-led) insurgencies that were beginning to
take shape during the campaign.
With Trump in the White House, progressive women remain in the forefront of struggles to
change the world for the better. With Clinton there instead, their best efforts would be
swamped by anodyne campaigns led by well-meaning liberals of the kind that understandably rile
up the Trump base.
All things considered, it would have been better (less catastrophically awful) had Hillary
won. Even so, there is some reason to be grateful that she did not. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Andrew Levine
ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and
POLITICAL KEY WORDS
(Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most
recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong
With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College
Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and
the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).
Taking oil price to 30th or 40th is a strategic goal of the USA in relation to Russia. Listen at 3:30.
Notable quotes:
"... Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years. ..."
"... You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do. ..."
"... They are the product of the US society as a whole. ..."
"... Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them". ..."
"... In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power? ..."
"... I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors. ..."
"... The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin). ..."
"... Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States. ..."
"... What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference ..."
"... and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too ..."
Another tiresome, butthurt yank/wank? Between the new One Belt, One Road Chinese initiative, the Russians taking control of
ME oil production and the fact that america has NO answers to help it's declining empire, it would seem to the non-partisan observer
that america is well and truly f***ed. You must be talking about their debt expansionism, $20 TRILLION and rising by the second.
Thank you Mario......let's not forget Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia, the entirety of eastern Europe, the entirety of northern Africa,
Rwanda, the Congo, Venezuela, Chili, Guatemala, Panama, Jeeeeeeeze etc......
Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the
extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing
ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI "Investigation"? Nah ... nothing happening there. It is breathtaking
that THIS is the Alice-In-Wonderland world we inhabit.
Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual
level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years.
Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them".
Yeah, that's hilarious. Join the murdering creep in a giggle, Laura, that's cute. Here's a global criminal who should have
been hung years ago for crimes against humanity. No one in their right mind would treat this creep with anything but contempt
and horror, let alone find him funny.
In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of
power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we
in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of
power?
My profound and sincere condolences. You are getting the 'Democracy Treatment' by the West. I hope some of you survive to tell
the tale and take revenge.
Are those ears or bat-wings? WOW! Yet another Jewe, pretending not be be. I guess he would say that the USA murdered all the
Indians and enslaved Africans 'for their own good' as well.
Talmudo-Satanism is the pernicious underlying ideology of the people who have taken over, not just the USA, but, lets face it,
the entire West.
Lets not forget that the U.$.A. meddled in Australia's election of the Whitlam Government. (And several governments there after
as soon as they realised they could get away with it an nothing would happen to them). The United States are a bunch of sick puppies;
really sick puppies the way they have treated Australia.
So much for being allies. With allies like the United States you don't need enemies (Unless the U.$. doctors them up for you
to force you to pay them more money for weapons and protection).
And it makes me sick that so many 'naive' people around the world keep falling for the SH*T that comes out of their mouths.
When dealing with the United States there are a few rules to follow. (Apologies to the innocent Americans out there but 'they'
allow their government to do some unspeakable horrors to the world.)
Rule One: If an American politician is speaking, then they are lying to you.
Rule Two: If an American Politician is quiet, they they want you to believe a lie.
Rule Three: If you have relations with the United States, you will be lied to.
And that goes for the entire planet no matter who the United States is speaking to.
Worst part is the our Gov can't think ahead, if they keep antagonising China on behalf of the Seppo's China will eventually
pull their mineral imports and our economy will crash overnight.
Yes, nobody doubts that the US interferes with elections in other countries - we're the good guys, so this is ok :)
I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the
Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors.
The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch
Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin).
Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election,
2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just
a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their
elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States.
Frederick the Great concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be
disastrous: "A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by
a minority."
and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking
industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too
...and the US bombed half of the world's countries for their own good too. US made Libya a slave market for humanity's good
as well. Oboomer even got the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
MIC controls Trump, not the other way around. That's why Trump deflated just three months
after inauguration. He can tell all he wants, but his actions speak louder then his words. His
actions are typical neocon actions.
Notable quotes:
"... However inadvertently, Trump has thereby bestowed on the American people a singular gift, putting a presidential imprimatur on a point that critics have been making for years, to no avail. Pointing out that our post-9/11 wars have resulted in a multitrillion-dollar waste of lives and treasure represents easily the greatest achievement of his young administration. ..."
"... Now let's look at the rest of the story. I will claim that most US military adventures, since Korea has been a failure often with unintended consequences, squandering taxpayer dollars while the national infrastructure and national psyche crumble. Involving ourselves in Vietnam after the French abandoned it was a horrific mistake with the loss of many lives and the expenditure of immeasurable political and economic capital. Somebody tell me again what Bay of Pigs and Grenada accomplished? There have been numerous other short term in-and-out deployments of troops and materiel since Korea. See Wikipedia's "Timeline of United States military operations." ..."
"... Let's face it. The military-industrial complex continues to lead the country into deeply unfortunate places and situations. Let's tie all this back to the recent school massacre in Parkland FL, one of many in recent years. Military surplus has been given away by the federal government to build up highly militarized SWAT teams in cities, armed with tanks, missile launchers and automatic weapons. Citizens easily and quickly arm themselves with semi-automatic weapons, seizing on loopholes that regulate the buying of hand guns but not AK-15s, all because the NRA owns too many members of Congress. ..."
"... Let's go beyond Trump's simplistic pronouncement. The United States has been and is a bellicose and violent nation. Unfortunately, President Trump's words have been equally bellicose, especially toward North Korea. I have little faith that our country will dial back its aggressiveness under the Trump regime. ..."
In a typically offhand remark, President Trump the other day rendered his personal
assessment of our various post-9/11 wars, interventions, and punitive expeditions. "
Seven trillion dollars. What a mistake ," he said. "But it is what it is."
The seven trillion is merely a guesstimate, of course. No one, least of all the lords of the
Pentagon, really knows how much our sundry military campaigns, large and small, have cost. Yet
at this point, total expenditures certainly reach well into the trillions. And whatever the
current tally, that sum will inevitably increase as our wars drag on and as downstream
obligations – care for veterans, for example – pile up for decades to come.
That Trump himself should characterize those wars as mistaken represents a moment of plain
speaking rare in today's Washington. After all, as the current commander in chief, he owns that
mistake and its myriad consequences. We may doubt that the generals occupying senior positions
in his administration share their boss's assessment. Nor, in all likelihood, does the national
security establishment as a whole. Yet it qualifies as more than mildly interesting that the
individual exercising supreme authority views the entire enterprise as misbegotten.
Imagine the head of Planned Parenthood declaring herself a pro-lifer. Imagine Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos criticizing the American penchant for conspicuous consumption. Imagine Tom Brady
announcing that his son will never play a brutal and dangerous sport like football. A sitting
American president characterizing ongoing American wars as mistaken is hardly less notable and
ought to command widespread public attention.
Imagine the head of Planned Parenthood
declaring herself a pro-lifer. Imagine Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticizing the American penchant
for conspicuous consumption. Imagine Tom Brady announcing that his son will never play a brutal
and dangerous sport like football. A sitting American president characterizing ongoing American
wars as mistaken is hardly less notable and ought to command widespread public attention. Of
course, Trump is an improbable source of truth. His many critics have become accustomed to
dismissing his every word as either false or hateful or simply bizarre. Yet in this instance, I
submit, he has uttered a genuine truth of profound importance.
Unfortunately, Trump's bottom line obscures the implications of that truth: "It is what it
is." There are at least two ways of interpreting that remark. The first is fatalistic: We're
stuck in a heckuva mess and there's no way of getting unstuck. The second is pragmatic: Here
are facts that we dare not ignore.
... ... ...
In Hans Christian Andersen's familiar tale "The Emperor's New Clothes," a young child states
the obvious: The monarch is naked. Now we have the emperor himself making a comparably
self-evident point: Our wars aren't working.
However inadvertently, Trump has thereby bestowed on the American people a singular gift,
putting a presidential imprimatur on a point that critics have been making for years, to no
avail. Pointing out that our post-9/11 wars have resulted in a multitrillion-dollar waste of
lives and treasure represents easily the greatest achievement of his young administration.
We tend to think that the story of that administration thus far has been one of ineptitude
combined with persistent scandal. Yet the real scandal will occur if the American people and
their elected representatives in Washington fail to treat Trump's verdict regarding our recent
wars with the respect and seriousness it deserves.
Thank you, Mr. President, for your candor. If for nothing else, on this score, we owe you
one.
Andrew J. Bacevich is the author, most recently, of "America's War for the Greater
Middle East: A Military History."
Reubenhop 02/16/18 09:49 AM The
trouble is Trump criticizes these wars only because they are not his wars. He needs to be the
outsider who will do better than those that preceded him. But what does he do? He builds up
the military for future wars (even nuclear wars) and engages in dangerous saber rattling and
shows of strength. He learned nothing from his criticisms.
bernieman
02/16/18 09:57 AM said this before: arm both sides with our most destructive weapons, nukes
included, withdraw from the midevil east and let them kill each other. problem solved in
probably less than a year.
MassGuy2 02/16/18 09:57 AM Another
big mistake we're continuing to make is paying for these wars without raising taxes. In
fact, Trump is lowering taxes. Its like a homeowner taking out an expensive loan to buy
something he can't afford, and then cutting back on his work hours. As long as these wars
are being funded by future debt, most Americans will not seriously question the need to
spend money on foolish wars. If Trump is really serious, he should propose taxes be
immediately raised to pay for these wars, bring back the draft, and scrap the volunteer
army. Then see how fast the American people demand good answers as to why we're fighting
these wars.
CambridgeMAry 02/16/18 12:07 PM
I agree. Getting rid of the draft was a mistake, and it does not redound to the credit of
those who opposed the Vietnam War that most of their opposition to it evaporated when the
draft was abolished.
The draft during WWII applied to all men, including the sons of Members of Congress.
Hitler was devastating Europe, and attempting to bomb and strafe the UK into submission,
but the US did not really become involved until we were actually attacked at Pearl
Harbor.
Now, it is too easy for us to dismiss the dangers we send our service persons into
because "They volunteered."
no-name- 02/16/18 04:20
PM "Getting rid of the draft was a mistake, and it does not redound to the credit of
those who opposed the Vietnam War that most of their opposition to it evaporated when
the draft was abolished."
you're misinformed. there was strong and ever-growing opposition to the war until it
ended.
Eurydice9276 02/16/18 01:29 PM
Not at all defending Trump - but stating the obvious doesn't have to be an original
thought.
NinjaLibn 02/16/18 10:15 AM
I've long admired Andrew's insights and incisive writing. It would have been interesting to
hear his recommendations for disentangling ourselves from these wars.
Ben-Myers-not-gutless-anonymous
02/16/18 10:51 AM Trump was almost right, and he did not go far enough. Bush 41's quick
in-and-out adventure in Kuwait makes some sense. Bush 41 and his advisors smartly realized
that a surgical removal of Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait would have few long term
implications.
Now let's look at the rest of the story. I will claim that most US military adventures,
since Korea has been a failure often with unintended consequences, squandering taxpayer
dollars while the national infrastructure and national psyche crumble. Involving ourselves
in Vietnam after the French abandoned it was a horrific mistake with the loss of many lives
and the expenditure of immeasurable political and economic capital. Somebody tell me again
what Bay of Pigs and Grenada accomplished? There have been numerous other short term
in-and-out deployments of troops and materiel since Korea. See Wikipedia's "Timeline of
United States military operations."
Let's face it. The military-industrial complex continues to lead the country into deeply
unfortunate places and situations. Let's tie all this back to the recent school massacre in
Parkland FL, one of many in recent years. Military surplus has been given away by the
federal government to build up highly militarized SWAT teams in cities, armed with tanks,
missile launchers and automatic weapons. Citizens easily and quickly arm themselves with
semi-automatic weapons, seizing on loopholes that regulate the buying of hand guns but not
AK-15s, all because the NRA owns too many members of Congress.
Let's go beyond Trump's simplistic pronouncement. The United States has been and is a
bellicose and violent nation. Unfortunately, President Trump's words have been equally
bellicose, especially toward North Korea. I have little faith that our country will dial
back its aggressiveness under the Trump regime.
MNMoore 02/16/18 12:00 PM Right.
Our economy is addicted to war. The goal is not to win the war. It is to sustain it.
"... Lockheed Martin, after all, gets nearly as much money from the US government as the State Department. CEO Marilyn Hewson is, by the reckoning of some analysts, as powerful as most US cabinet secretaries. ..."
Lockheed Martin, after all, gets nearly as much money from the US government as the
State Department. CEO Marilyn Hewson is, by the reckoning of some analysts, as powerful as most
US cabinet secretaries.
Teal Group's Richard Aboulafia has the gold medal quote on this – "
diplomacy is out; airstrikes are in. " From the F-35 on, Lockheed is a key facilitator of
airstrikes, and soaring demands for its products are leading to soaring revenue and rising
profit margins.
Reports on the company brag about "juicy" shipbuilding deals, and the money pouring in from
nuclear weapons upgrades. Lockheed Martin's status as a main seller of US arms and the US
obsession with growing its military seem to ensure that the company will remain rich, and
wildly influential, for years to come.
Here is an interesting article that points to the new American strategy with respect to Iran and central Asia. Iran is already
being attacked from West and East in the North. And central Asia is next. This might force Iran to pull back some forces from Syria
and Iraq.
Taking oil price to 30th or 40th is a strategic goal of the USA in relation to Russia. Listen at 3:30.
Notable quotes:
"... Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years. ..."
"... You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do. ..."
"... They are the product of the US society as a whole. ..."
"... Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them". ..."
"... In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power? ..."
"... I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors. ..."
"... The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin). ..."
"... Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States. ..."
"... What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference ..."
"... and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too ..."
Another tiresome, butthurt yank/wank? Between the new One Belt, One Road Chinese initiative, the Russians taking control of
ME oil production and the fact that america has NO answers to help it's declining empire, it would seem to the non-partisan observer
that america is well and truly f***ed. You must be talking about their debt expansionism, $20 TRILLION and rising by the second.
Thank you Mario......let's not forget Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia, the entirety of eastern Europe, the entirety of northern Africa,
Rwanda, the Congo, Venezuela, Chili, Guatemala, Panama, Jeeeeeeeze etc......
Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the
extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing
ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI "Investigation"? Nah ... nothing happening there. It is breathtaking
that THIS is the Alice-In-Wonderland world we inhabit.
Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual
level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years.
Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them".
Yeah, that's hilarious. Join the murdering creep in a giggle, Laura, that's cute. Here's a global criminal who should have
been hung years ago for crimes against humanity. No one in their right mind would treat this creep with anything but contempt
and horror, let alone find him funny.
In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of
power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we
in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of
power?
My profound and sincere condolences. You are getting the 'Democracy Treatment' by the West. I hope some of you survive to tell
the tale and take revenge.
Are those ears or bat-wings? WOW! Yet another Jewe, pretending not be be. I guess he would say that the USA murdered all the
Indians and enslaved Africans 'for their own good' as well.
Talmudo-Satanism is the pernicious underlying ideology of the people who have taken over, not just the USA, but, lets face it,
the entire West.
Lets not forget that the U.$.A. meddled in Australia's election of the Whitlam Government. (And several governments there after
as soon as they realised they could get away with it an nothing would happen to them). The United States are a bunch of sick puppies;
really sick puppies the way they have treated Australia.
So much for being allies. With allies like the United States you don't need enemies (Unless the U.$. doctors them up for you
to force you to pay them more money for weapons and protection).
And it makes me sick that so many 'naive' people around the world keep falling for the SH*T that comes out of their mouths.
When dealing with the United States there are a few rules to follow. (Apologies to the innocent Americans out there but 'they'
allow their government to do some unspeakable horrors to the world.)
Rule One: If an American politician is speaking, then they are lying to you.
Rule Two: If an American Politician is quiet, they they want you to believe a lie.
Rule Three: If you have relations with the United States, you will be lied to.
And that goes for the entire planet no matter who the United States is speaking to.
Worst part is the our Gov can't think ahead, if they keep antagonising China on behalf of the Seppo's China will eventually
pull their mineral imports and our economy will crash overnight.
Yes, nobody doubts that the US interferes with elections in other countries - we're the good guys, so this is ok :)
I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the
Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors.
The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch
Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin).
Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election,
2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just
a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their
elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States.
Frederick the Great concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be
disastrous: "A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by
a minority."
and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking
industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too
...and the US bombed half of the world's countries for their own good too. US made Libya a slave market for humanity's good
as well. Oboomer even got the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
MIC controls Trump, not the other way around. That's why Trump deflated just three months
after inauguration. He can tell all he wants, but his actions speak louder then his words. His
actions are typical neocon actions.
Notable quotes:
"... However inadvertently, Trump has thereby bestowed on the American people a singular gift, putting a presidential imprimatur on a point that critics have been making for years, to no avail. Pointing out that our post-9/11 wars have resulted in a multitrillion-dollar waste of lives and treasure represents easily the greatest achievement of his young administration. ..."
"... Now let's look at the rest of the story. I will claim that most US military adventures, since Korea has been a failure often with unintended consequences, squandering taxpayer dollars while the national infrastructure and national psyche crumble. Involving ourselves in Vietnam after the French abandoned it was a horrific mistake with the loss of many lives and the expenditure of immeasurable political and economic capital. Somebody tell me again what Bay of Pigs and Grenada accomplished? There have been numerous other short term in-and-out deployments of troops and materiel since Korea. See Wikipedia's "Timeline of United States military operations." ..."
"... Let's face it. The military-industrial complex continues to lead the country into deeply unfortunate places and situations. Let's tie all this back to the recent school massacre in Parkland FL, one of many in recent years. Military surplus has been given away by the federal government to build up highly militarized SWAT teams in cities, armed with tanks, missile launchers and automatic weapons. Citizens easily and quickly arm themselves with semi-automatic weapons, seizing on loopholes that regulate the buying of hand guns but not AK-15s, all because the NRA owns too many members of Congress. ..."
"... Let's go beyond Trump's simplistic pronouncement. The United States has been and is a bellicose and violent nation. Unfortunately, President Trump's words have been equally bellicose, especially toward North Korea. I have little faith that our country will dial back its aggressiveness under the Trump regime. ..."
In a typically offhand remark, President Trump the other day rendered his personal
assessment of our various post-9/11 wars, interventions, and punitive expeditions. "
Seven trillion dollars. What a mistake ," he said. "But it is what it is."
The seven trillion is merely a guesstimate, of course. No one, least of all the lords of the
Pentagon, really knows how much our sundry military campaigns, large and small, have cost. Yet
at this point, total expenditures certainly reach well into the trillions. And whatever the
current tally, that sum will inevitably increase as our wars drag on and as downstream
obligations – care for veterans, for example – pile up for decades to come.
That Trump himself should characterize those wars as mistaken represents a moment of plain
speaking rare in today's Washington. After all, as the current commander in chief, he owns that
mistake and its myriad consequences. We may doubt that the generals occupying senior positions
in his administration share their boss's assessment. Nor, in all likelihood, does the national
security establishment as a whole. Yet it qualifies as more than mildly interesting that the
individual exercising supreme authority views the entire enterprise as misbegotten.
Imagine the head of Planned Parenthood declaring herself a pro-lifer. Imagine Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos criticizing the American penchant for conspicuous consumption. Imagine Tom Brady
announcing that his son will never play a brutal and dangerous sport like football. A sitting
American president characterizing ongoing American wars as mistaken is hardly less notable and
ought to command widespread public attention.
Imagine the head of Planned Parenthood
declaring herself a pro-lifer. Imagine Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticizing the American penchant
for conspicuous consumption. Imagine Tom Brady announcing that his son will never play a brutal
and dangerous sport like football. A sitting American president characterizing ongoing American
wars as mistaken is hardly less notable and ought to command widespread public attention. Of
course, Trump is an improbable source of truth. His many critics have become accustomed to
dismissing his every word as either false or hateful or simply bizarre. Yet in this instance, I
submit, he has uttered a genuine truth of profound importance.
Unfortunately, Trump's bottom line obscures the implications of that truth: "It is what it
is." There are at least two ways of interpreting that remark. The first is fatalistic: We're
stuck in a heckuva mess and there's no way of getting unstuck. The second is pragmatic: Here
are facts that we dare not ignore.
... ... ...
In Hans Christian Andersen's familiar tale "The Emperor's New Clothes," a young child states
the obvious: The monarch is naked. Now we have the emperor himself making a comparably
self-evident point: Our wars aren't working.
However inadvertently, Trump has thereby bestowed on the American people a singular gift,
putting a presidential imprimatur on a point that critics have been making for years, to no
avail. Pointing out that our post-9/11 wars have resulted in a multitrillion-dollar waste of
lives and treasure represents easily the greatest achievement of his young administration.
We tend to think that the story of that administration thus far has been one of ineptitude
combined with persistent scandal. Yet the real scandal will occur if the American people and
their elected representatives in Washington fail to treat Trump's verdict regarding our recent
wars with the respect and seriousness it deserves.
Thank you, Mr. President, for your candor. If for nothing else, on this score, we owe you
one.
Andrew J. Bacevich is the author, most recently, of "America's War for the Greater
Middle East: A Military History."
Reubenhop 02/16/18 09:49 AM The
trouble is Trump criticizes these wars only because they are not his wars. He needs to be the
outsider who will do better than those that preceded him. But what does he do? He builds up
the military for future wars (even nuclear wars) and engages in dangerous saber rattling and
shows of strength. He learned nothing from his criticisms.
bernieman
02/16/18 09:57 AM said this before: arm both sides with our most destructive weapons, nukes
included, withdraw from the midevil east and let them kill each other. problem solved in
probably less than a year.
MassGuy2 02/16/18 09:57 AM Another
big mistake we're continuing to make is paying for these wars without raising taxes. In
fact, Trump is lowering taxes. Its like a homeowner taking out an expensive loan to buy
something he can't afford, and then cutting back on his work hours. As long as these wars
are being funded by future debt, most Americans will not seriously question the need to
spend money on foolish wars. If Trump is really serious, he should propose taxes be
immediately raised to pay for these wars, bring back the draft, and scrap the volunteer
army. Then see how fast the American people demand good answers as to why we're fighting
these wars.
CambridgeMAry 02/16/18 12:07 PM
I agree. Getting rid of the draft was a mistake, and it does not redound to the credit of
those who opposed the Vietnam War that most of their opposition to it evaporated when the
draft was abolished.
The draft during WWII applied to all men, including the sons of Members of Congress.
Hitler was devastating Europe, and attempting to bomb and strafe the UK into submission,
but the US did not really become involved until we were actually attacked at Pearl
Harbor.
Now, it is too easy for us to dismiss the dangers we send our service persons into
because "They volunteered."
no-name- 02/16/18 04:20
PM "Getting rid of the draft was a mistake, and it does not redound to the credit of
those who opposed the Vietnam War that most of their opposition to it evaporated when
the draft was abolished."
you're misinformed. there was strong and ever-growing opposition to the war until it
ended.
Eurydice9276 02/16/18 01:29 PM
Not at all defending Trump - but stating the obvious doesn't have to be an original
thought.
NinjaLibn 02/16/18 10:15 AM
I've long admired Andrew's insights and incisive writing. It would have been interesting to
hear his recommendations for disentangling ourselves from these wars.
Ben-Myers-not-gutless-anonymous
02/16/18 10:51 AM Trump was almost right, and he did not go far enough. Bush 41's quick
in-and-out adventure in Kuwait makes some sense. Bush 41 and his advisors smartly realized
that a surgical removal of Saddam Hussein's troops from Kuwait would have few long term
implications.
Now let's look at the rest of the story. I will claim that most US military adventures,
since Korea has been a failure often with unintended consequences, squandering taxpayer
dollars while the national infrastructure and national psyche crumble. Involving ourselves
in Vietnam after the French abandoned it was a horrific mistake with the loss of many lives
and the expenditure of immeasurable political and economic capital. Somebody tell me again
what Bay of Pigs and Grenada accomplished? There have been numerous other short term
in-and-out deployments of troops and materiel since Korea. See Wikipedia's "Timeline of
United States military operations."
Let's face it. The military-industrial complex continues to lead the country into deeply
unfortunate places and situations. Let's tie all this back to the recent school massacre in
Parkland FL, one of many in recent years. Military surplus has been given away by the
federal government to build up highly militarized SWAT teams in cities, armed with tanks,
missile launchers and automatic weapons. Citizens easily and quickly arm themselves with
semi-automatic weapons, seizing on loopholes that regulate the buying of hand guns but not
AK-15s, all because the NRA owns too many members of Congress.
Let's go beyond Trump's simplistic pronouncement. The United States has been and is a
bellicose and violent nation. Unfortunately, President Trump's words have been equally
bellicose, especially toward North Korea. I have little faith that our country will dial
back its aggressiveness under the Trump regime.
MNMoore 02/16/18 12:00 PM Right.
Our economy is addicted to war. The goal is not to win the war. It is to sustain it.
"... Lockheed Martin, after all, gets nearly as much money from the US government as the State Department. CEO Marilyn Hewson is, by the reckoning of some analysts, as powerful as most US cabinet secretaries. ..."
Lockheed Martin, after all, gets nearly as much money from the US government as the
State Department. CEO Marilyn Hewson is, by the reckoning of some analysts, as powerful as most
US cabinet secretaries.
Teal Group's Richard Aboulafia has the gold medal quote on this – "
diplomacy is out; airstrikes are in. " From the F-35 on, Lockheed is a key facilitator of
airstrikes, and soaring demands for its products are leading to soaring revenue and rising
profit margins.
Reports on the company brag about "juicy" shipbuilding deals, and the money pouring in from
nuclear weapons upgrades. Lockheed Martin's status as a main seller of US arms and the US
obsession with growing its military seem to ensure that the company will remain rich, and
wildly influential, for years to come.
Here is an interesting article that points to the new American strategy with respect to Iran and central Asia. Iran is already
being attacked from West and East in the North. And central Asia is next. This might force Iran to pull back some forces from Syria
and Iraq.
"... Putin is evil, Putin kills, Putin steals, bla bla bla!!! Putin is only guilty for not being America's vassal. The Russia bashing in MSM will cease by miracle if it becomes America's client state. Putin and Russia are presumed guilty of everything bad that happens in the world. ..."
"... No evidence is needed, high confidence is enough!! It is almost funny that a country like USA which has a long records of meedling and intervention in others countries internal affairs worlwide, now is losing reason about alleged russia meedling. ..."
For a very simple reason. The Deep Staters care first and foremost about themselves. They wanted Hillary to win, badly, but
were not willing to risk too much for her. James Comey in particular cares about James Comey. Remember, this is a guy who views
himself as a historical Religious Figure. He wanted to be able to serve out a full 10 year term. He wanted to please his Democratic
masters enough to avoid being fired by either Obama or Clinton, but not too much to gain excessive ire from Congress. He was afraid
that a Republican Congress under a future Clinton Administration would go after him tooth and nail if he "concealed" new evidence
against Clinton prior to the election - especially since he promised the Congress that he would inform them of new developments.
And Comey probably feared the worst as to what was in Wiener's email archive. When they finally went through that archive, and
failed to find much that was new, he must have breathed a sigh of relief - only to see the wrong person win the election.
The political system in the US is a near complete failure. On one hand the massive levels of corruption legalized in Citizen's
United give influence over political decisions to wealthy elites previously unseen outside of the deeply corrupted and criminal
Russian oligarchy. On the other hand and synergistic with the previous point, the least informed and most easily influenced of
people have votes equal in weight to highly informed, well-educated, expert and professional practitioners.
Rights guaranteed by a difficult-to-alter constitution combined with easily managed and easily created social media content
based on opaque sources of emotionally charged, unverified and unverifiable information have gained control over public opinion
(making alteration of our constitution even more difficult.)
And look at the fourth (Reagan, Bush, Bush, Trump) wave of Republican explosion of national debt under the banner of "fiscal
responsibility."
It is astounding how "A" can be so successfully marketed as "B."
I am afraid that once control of public opinion has been so successfully attained in our form of democracy/legalized-corruption
that there is no way to recover.
It is a sad state of affairs. I'd love to hear solutions.
Great piece by Merry. Not new, but worthy of repetition when presented clearly like this.
It does not matter what you call it, Deep State or something else. What Merry says about the threat it poses to what remnants
of democracy we have is true.
I prefer to call it the Imperial State since its highest priority is the US Empire, with domestic well-being simply an afterthought
or of no cosequence at all.
There is only ONE country that consistently "messes" in the politics of nearly every other country on the planet and that is
not Russia.
It is the USA Deep State. I challenge you to research the evidence, "hidden in plain sight", of these examples:
1) US
money that flowed into France and Italy elections after WW2;
2) overthrow of Greece elected pres in 1974 by US-friendly generals;
3) overthrow of Salvadore Allende in Chile 1973;
4) overthrow of Iran Mossadegh in 1953;
5) overthrow of neutral govt in Indonesia
in early '60s;
6) the massive money that flowed into Russia in 1996 to get Yeltsin re-elected;
7) the money and attention US put
into overthrowing legally elected govt in Ukraine in 2014.
That is just a VERY short list.
NO OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH HAS MAINTAINED THIS FRANTIC PACE OF MASSIVE INTERVENTIONS/MEDDLING/BRIBING/OVERTHROWING/BOMBING/INVADING/DEATH-SQUADing
FOREIGN POLITICAL SYSTEMS FOR 70 YEARS LIKE YOUR "GOOD OLE USA", powered by it's un-elected Deep State.
Putin is evil, Putin kills, Putin steals, bla bla bla!!! Putin is only guilty for not being America's vassal. The
Russia bashing in MSM will cease by miracle if it becomes America's client state. Putin and Russia are presumed guilty of everything
bad that happens in the world.
No evidence is needed, high confidence is enough!! It is almost funny that a country like USA which has a long records
of meedling and intervention in others countries internal affairs worlwide, now is losing reason about alleged russia meedling.
You're right, Kelly, about some of your points. Evil: check. Kill: check. Steal: check. Co-opting the largest per capita criminal
network in the world: check.
"... Putin is evil, Putin kills, Putin steals, bla bla bla!!! Putin is only guilty for not being America's vassal. The Russia bashing in MSM will cease by miracle if it becomes America's client state. Putin and Russia are presumed guilty of everything bad that happens in the world. ..."
"... No evidence is needed, high confidence is enough!! It is almost funny that a country like USA which has a long records of meedling and intervention in others countries internal affairs worlwide, now is losing reason about alleged russia meedling. ..."
For a very simple reason. The Deep Staters care first and foremost about themselves. They wanted Hillary to win, badly, but
were not willing to risk too much for her. James Comey in particular cares about James Comey. Remember, this is a guy who views
himself as a historical Religious Figure. He wanted to be able to serve out a full 10 year term. He wanted to please his Democratic
masters enough to avoid being fired by either Obama or Clinton, but not too much to gain excessive ire from Congress. He was afraid
that a Republican Congress under a future Clinton Administration would go after him tooth and nail if he "concealed" new evidence
against Clinton prior to the election - especially since he promised the Congress that he would inform them of new developments.
And Comey probably feared the worst as to what was in Wiener's email archive. When they finally went through that archive, and
failed to find much that was new, he must have breathed a sigh of relief - only to see the wrong person win the election.
The political system in the US is a near complete failure. On one hand the massive levels of corruption legalized in Citizen's
United give influence over political decisions to wealthy elites previously unseen outside of the deeply corrupted and criminal
Russian oligarchy. On the other hand and synergistic with the previous point, the least informed and most easily influenced of
people have votes equal in weight to highly informed, well-educated, expert and professional practitioners.
Rights guaranteed by a difficult-to-alter constitution combined with easily managed and easily created social media content
based on opaque sources of emotionally charged, unverified and unverifiable information have gained control over public opinion
(making alteration of our constitution even more difficult.)
And look at the fourth (Reagan, Bush, Bush, Trump) wave of Republican explosion of national debt under the banner of "fiscal
responsibility."
It is astounding how "A" can be so successfully marketed as "B."
I am afraid that once control of public opinion has been so successfully attained in our form of democracy/legalized-corruption
that there is no way to recover.
It is a sad state of affairs. I'd love to hear solutions.
Great piece by Merry. Not new, but worthy of repetition when presented clearly like this.
It does not matter what you call it, Deep State or something else. What Merry says about the threat it poses to what remnants
of democracy we have is true.
I prefer to call it the Imperial State since its highest priority is the US Empire, with domestic well-being simply an afterthought
or of no cosequence at all.
There is only ONE country that consistently "messes" in the politics of nearly every other country on the planet and that is
not Russia.
It is the USA Deep State. I challenge you to research the evidence, "hidden in plain sight", of these examples:
1) US
money that flowed into France and Italy elections after WW2;
2) overthrow of Greece elected pres in 1974 by US-friendly generals;
3) overthrow of Salvadore Allende in Chile 1973;
4) overthrow of Iran Mossadegh in 1953;
5) overthrow of neutral govt in Indonesia
in early '60s;
6) the massive money that flowed into Russia in 1996 to get Yeltsin re-elected;
7) the money and attention US put
into overthrowing legally elected govt in Ukraine in 2014.
That is just a VERY short list.
NO OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH HAS MAINTAINED THIS FRANTIC PACE OF MASSIVE INTERVENTIONS/MEDDLING/BRIBING/OVERTHROWING/BOMBING/INVADING/DEATH-SQUADing
FOREIGN POLITICAL SYSTEMS FOR 70 YEARS LIKE YOUR "GOOD OLE USA", powered by it's un-elected Deep State.
Putin is evil, Putin kills, Putin steals, bla bla bla!!! Putin is only guilty for not being America's vassal. The
Russia bashing in MSM will cease by miracle if it becomes America's client state. Putin and Russia are presumed guilty of everything
bad that happens in the world.
No evidence is needed, high confidence is enough!! It is almost funny that a country like USA which has a long records
of meedling and intervention in others countries internal affairs worlwide, now is losing reason about alleged russia meedling.
You're right, Kelly, about some of your points. Evil: check. Kill: check. Steal: check. Co-opting the largest per capita criminal
network in the world: check.
This is how empires truly end. The empire loses legitimacy, in
the eyes of the populace. Mainly because the empire has to
accommodate all the subjugated cultures. The elections have
always been rigged. Nothing good happens to the establishment
when the corruption gets pointed out, even falsely. The only
viable solution would be a verifiable voting method. One that
ensures only legitimate ballots were cast, and every legitimate
vote was counted. The software would have to be open source.
The government should withhold no information from the
public. Secrecy, on the part of government, is always used for
the enrichment of the insiders. The notion of a secret ballot
implies a culture where people fear expressing themselves
freely. A result of political correctness. The politicians sell
themselves as 'tireless public servants', but immediately turn
into lazy, shiftless, gluttonous demagogues, once in office.
A legitimate electoral process would most likely mean an
immediate end to the careers of the likes of Pelosi, Schumer,
McCain, etc. In the private sector, employees have 90 days to
prove themselves capable, with performance reviews at least
annually. In government, they're given 4 years with no review.
The only way a republic can be democratic is if the populace
gets to vote on any legislation the president signs. That would
place far too much burden on congress, making it nearly
impossible to get anything but vital legislation passed.
These idiots have not figured out that they have lost
control of the narrative. Everything they say can, and will be
used against them, in the court of public opinion. They funded
the social media, and now, they are reaping that which they
have sown. They have most likely chosen 13 sacrificial goats,
who will plea bargain, to get out of prison, knowing that they
will spend even more time in prison, during the course of the
phony trial, in which they will make some sort of token court
appearance, for the sake of appearance of 'justice'.
If anything, recent weeks have offered remarkable evidence of just how
victorious this country's losingest commanders and their colleagues really are in our
nation's capital. In the bipartisan style that these days usually applies only to the U.S.
military, Congress has just settled on giving an extra $165 billion
to the Pentagon over the next two years as part of a formula for keeping the government open.
As it happens, the 2017 Pentagon budget was already as large as the defense spending of the next
seven
nations combined. And that was before all those extra tens of billions of dollars ensured
that the two-year military budget (for 2018 and 2019) would crest at a total of more than
$1.4 trillion .
That's the sort of money that only goes to winners, not losers. And if this still seems a
little strange to you, given that military's
dismal record in actual war-fighting since 9/11, all I can say is: don't bring it up. It's
no longer considered polite or proper to complain about our wars and those who fight them or
how we fund them, not in an age when every American soldier is a " hero ," which
means that what they're doing from
Afghanistan to
Yemen , Syria to
Somalia , must be heroic indeed.
In a draft-less
country, those of us not in or connected to our military are expected to say "
thank you " to the warriors and otherwise go about our lives as if their wars (and the
mayhem
they continue to generate abroad) were not a fact of global life. This is the definition of a
demobilized
public. If you happen to be that rarest of all creatures in our country these days -- someone
in active opposition to those wars -- you have a problem. That means Stephanie Savell, who
co-runs the Costs of War
Project , which regularly provides well-researched and devastating information on the
spread of those wars and the money continually being
squandered on them, does indeed have a problem. It's one she understands all too well and
describes vividly today.
This is how empires truly end. The empire loses legitimacy, in
the eyes of the populace. Mainly because the empire has to
accommodate all the subjugated cultures. The elections have
always been rigged. Nothing good happens to the establishment
when the corruption gets pointed out, even falsely. The only
viable solution would be a verifiable voting method. One that
ensures only legitimate ballots were cast, and every legitimate
vote was counted. The software would have to be open source.
The government should withhold no information from the
public. Secrecy, on the part of government, is always used for
the enrichment of the insiders. The notion of a secret ballot
implies a culture where people fear expressing themselves
freely. A result of political correctness. The politicians sell
themselves as 'tireless public servants', but immediately turn
into lazy, shiftless, gluttonous demagogues, once in office.
A legitimate electoral process would most likely mean an
immediate end to the careers of the likes of Pelosi, Schumer,
McCain, etc. In the private sector, employees have 90 days to
prove themselves capable, with performance reviews at least
annually. In government, they're given 4 years with no review.
The only way a republic can be democratic is if the populace
gets to vote on any legislation the president signs. That would
place far too much burden on congress, making it nearly
impossible to get anything but vital legislation passed.
These idiots have not figured out that they have lost
control of the narrative. Everything they say can, and will be
used against them, in the court of public opinion. They funded
the social media, and now, they are reaping that which they
have sown. They have most likely chosen 13 sacrificial goats,
who will plea bargain, to get out of prison, knowing that they
will spend even more time in prison, during the course of the
phony trial, in which they will make some sort of token court
appearance, for the sake of appearance of 'justice'.
If anything, recent weeks have offered remarkable evidence of just how
victorious this country's losingest commanders and their colleagues really are in our
nation's capital. In the bipartisan style that these days usually applies only to the U.S.
military, Congress has just settled on giving an extra $165 billion
to the Pentagon over the next two years as part of a formula for keeping the government open.
As it happens, the 2017 Pentagon budget was already as large as the defense spending of the next
seven
nations combined. And that was before all those extra tens of billions of dollars ensured
that the two-year military budget (for 2018 and 2019) would crest at a total of more than
$1.4 trillion .
That's the sort of money that only goes to winners, not losers. And if this still seems a
little strange to you, given that military's
dismal record in actual war-fighting since 9/11, all I can say is: don't bring it up. It's
no longer considered polite or proper to complain about our wars and those who fight them or
how we fund them, not in an age when every American soldier is a " hero ," which
means that what they're doing from
Afghanistan to
Yemen , Syria to
Somalia , must be heroic indeed.
In a draft-less
country, those of us not in or connected to our military are expected to say "
thank you " to the warriors and otherwise go about our lives as if their wars (and the
mayhem
they continue to generate abroad) were not a fact of global life. This is the definition of a
demobilized
public. If you happen to be that rarest of all creatures in our country these days -- someone
in active opposition to those wars -- you have a problem. That means Stephanie Savell, who
co-runs the Costs of War
Project , which regularly provides well-researched and devastating information on the
spread of those wars and the money continually being
squandered on them, does indeed have a problem. It's one she understands all too well and
describes vividly today.
Note: this article is part of a symposium included in the
March/April 2018 issue of the National Interest .
OF COURSE
there's a Deep State. Why wouldn't there be? Even a cursory understanding of human nature tells
us that power corrupts, as Lord Acton put it; that, when power is concentrated and entrenched,
it will be abused; that, when it is concentrated and entrenched in secrecy, it will be abused
in secret. That's the Deep State.
James Burnham saw it coming. The American philosopher and political theorist
(1905–87), first a Trotskyist, then a leading conservative intellectual, wrote in 1941
that the great political development of the age was not the battle between communism and
capitalism. Rather, it was the rise of a new "managerial" class gaining dominance in business,
finance, organized labor and government. This gathering managerial revolution, as he called it,
would be resisted, but it would be impervious to adversarial counteractions. As the managerial
elites gained more and more power, exercised often in subtle and stealthy ways, they would
exercise that power to embed themselves further into the folds of American society and to
protect themselves from those who might want to bust them up.
Nowhere is this managerial elite more entrenched, more powerful and more shrouded in secrecy
than in what Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, augmented by
intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. That's where America's relentless drive for global
hegemony meshes with defense manufacturers only too willing to provide the tools of
dominance.
Now we have not only a standing army, with hundreds of thousands of troops at the ready, as
in Cold War days. We have also permanent wars, nine of them in progress at the moment and not
one with what could even remotely be called proper congressional approval. That's how power
gets entrenched, how the managerial revolution gains ever greater force and how the Deep State
endures.
Few in the general public know what really happened with regard to the allegations of Trump
campaign "collusion" with Russia, or how the investigation into those troubling allegations
emerged. But we know enough to know we have seen the Deep State in action.
We know that U.S. agencies released an "Intelligence Community Assessment" saying that
Russia and President Putin were behind the release of embarrassing Democratic emails in a plot
to help Trump win the presidency. But we also know that it wasn't really a National
Intelligence Assessment (a term of art denoting a particular process of expansive intelligence
analysis) but rather the work of a controlled task force. As Scott Ritter, the former Marine
intelligence officer and arms-control official,
put it , "This deliberate misrepresentation of the organizational bona fides of the Russia
NIA casts a shadow over the viability of the analysis used to underpin the assessments and
judgments contained within." Besides, the document was long on assertion and short on evidence.
Even the New York Times initially
derided the report as lacking any "hard evidence" and amounting "essentially . . . to
'trust us.'"
It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external
enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as
part of the Soviet Union. But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal
problems.
Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are
only hastening their institutional demise.
Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day
of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for
their legitimate grievances.
The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is
"sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems
of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media.
This narrative has shifted up a gear since the election of Donald Trump to the White House
in 2016, with accusations that the Kremlin somehow ran "influence operations" to help get him
into office. This outlandish yarn defies common sense. It is also running out of thread to keep
spinning.
Paradoxically, even though President Trump has rightly rebuffed such dubious claims of
"Russiagate" interference as "fake news" , he has at other times undermined himself by
subscribing to the notion that Moscow is projecting a campaign of "subversion against the US
and its European allies." See for example the National Security Strategy he signed
off in December.
Pathetically, it's become indoctrinated belief among the Western political class that
"devious Russians" are out to "collapse" Western democracies by "weaponizing disinformation"
and spreading "fake news" through Russia-based news outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Totalitarian-like, there seems no room for intelligent dissent among political or media
figures.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has chimed in to
accuse Moscow of "sowing division;" Dutch state intelligence claim Russia destabilized the
US presidential election; the European Union commissioner for security, Sir Julian King,
casually lampoons Russian news media as "Kremlin-orchestrated disinformation" to destabilize
the 28-nation bloc; CIA chief Mike Pompeo recently warned that Russia is stepping up its
efforts to tarnish the Congressional mid-term elections later this year.
On and on goes the narrative that Western states are essentially victims of a nefarious
Russian assault to bring about collapse.
A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan
Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he
claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it,
Americans need to begin working together."
Congressman Hurd asserts: "Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in our democratic
institutions. It has weaponized disinformation to achieve this goal for decades in Eastern and
Central Europe; in 2016, Western Europe and America were aggressively targeted as well."
Lamentably, all these claims above are made with scant, or no, verifiable evidence. It is
simply a Big Lie technique of relentless repetition transforming itself into "fact" .
It's instructive to follow Congressman Hurd's thought-process a bit further.
He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the
press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general
public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the
executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic
institutions, the Russians are winning."
As a putative solution, Representative Hurd calls for "a national counter-disinformation
strategy" against Russian "influence operations" , adding, "Americans must stop contributing to
a corrosive political environment".
The latter is a chilling advocacy of uniformity tantamount to a police state whereby any
dissent or criticism is a "thought-crime."
It is, however, such anti-democratic and paranoid thinking by Western politicians -- aided
and abetted by dutiful media -- that is killing democracy from within, not some supposed
foreign enemy.
There is evidently a foreboding sense of demise in authority and legitimacy among Western
states, even if the real cause for the demise is ignored or denied. Systems of governance,
politicians of all stripes, and institutions like the established media and intelligence
services are increasingly held in contempt and distrust by the public.
Whose fault is that loss of political and moral authority? Western governments and
institutions need to take a look in the mirror.
The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across
the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in
grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law.
The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public
accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When
does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and
its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies?
How then can properly informed citizens be expected to have respect for such criminal
government policies and the complicit news media covering up for their crimes?
Western public disaffection with governments, politicians and media surely stems also from
the grotesque gulf in social inequality and poverty among citizens from slavish adherence to
economic policies that enrich the wealthy while consigning the vast majority to unrelenting
austerity.
The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more
plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged
"Russian interference".
Yet the Western media indulge this fantastical "Russiagate" escapism instead of campaigning
on real social problems facing ordinary citizens. No wonder such media are then viewed with
disdain and distrust. Adding insult to injury, these media want the public to believe Russia is
the enemy?
Instead of acknowledging and addressing real threats to citizens: economic insecurity,
eroding education and health services, lost career opportunities for future generations, the
looming dangers of ecological adversity, wars prompted by Western governments trashing
international and diplomacy, and so on -- the Western public is insultingly plied with corny
tales of Russia's "malign influence" and "assault on democracy."
Just think of the disproportionate amount of media attention and public resources wasted on
the Russiagate scandal over the past year. And now gradually emerging is the real
scandal that the American FBI probably colluded with the Obama administration to corrupt
the democratic process against Trump.
Again, is there any wonder the public has sheer contempt and distrust for "authorities" that
have been lying through their teeth and playing them for fools?
The collapsing state of Western democracies has got nothing to do with Russia. The
Russophobia of blaming Russia for the demise of Western institutions is an attempt at
scapegoating for the very real problems facing governments and institutions like the news
media. Those problems are inherent and wholly owned by these governments owing to chronic
anti-democratic functioning, as well as systematic violation of international law in their
pursuit of criminal wars and other subterfuges for regime-change objectives.
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published
in several languages. He is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a
career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he
worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish
Times and Independent.
Anyone who believes MSM is totally indoctrinated since it has been proven over and over that
they won't tell the truth of the matter. The only REAL thing this country supplies or
produces is war. Most other industries have been outsourced and given subsidies to so, thus
taking American jobs from our lives. And now they want to take Social Security and Medicare
to PAY for our military buildup????
It is without a doubt true that the political class and their oligharchic owners are falling
and falling fast. They need a war to sustain their enrichment and attempted control of the
world. They have run out of potential victims , while on the home front the naive Amrikan is
starting to reject their nonsense. They can't really afford to take on China as they could
easily dump their US treasuries and sink the financing arrangements for a war. They would
like to stop the OBOR ; but how? Ah Russia. Smaller population but lethal in central Europe
and perhaps beyond. Good geographic position for cutting OBOR. After all why would anyone be
allowed to put in such a mega project and not let the US oligharchic class control it?
A big part of the problem with Washington DC is that they are ruled by the Rothschild
oligarchs and function first and foremost for Rothschild interests such as Israel and other
Rothschild programs. Washington is not focused on the states it was designed to serve.
Rothschild's and other oligarchs, fascists and the like control Washington crippling them.
Countries like China, Russia are making their own destinies while Washington languishes and
dissolves under a Rothschild fascist flag.
"Intel chief: Federal debt poses 'dire threat' to national security"
The above was the title to an article in The Hill, yesterday. The comment was attributed
to Dan Coates, DNI in testimony to Congress. To me, since elected officials CREATE the
federal debt, what the DNI is REALLY saying is that the elected officials are a dire threat
to national security. Their spending and fake borrowing from the Federal Reserve is the
threat-not Syria, Yemen, or other countries that have not attacked the US. The elected
officials, both Democrat and Republicans are on the way to destroying the US. Not Russia,
China, ISIS, or international terrorism.
I recently read a horrifying commentary by John Whitehead on the burgeoning sex trade in this
country where young girls are abducted and sold for sexual favors to deviants in every major
city in the US. Many of these girls are as young a three and four years old, and the average
age of these victims is 13! Thousands of missing children end up as sex slaves and are forced
to be with as many as 40 men a night.
This great evil has become extremely lucrative, and numerous monsters, both men, and women
are reaping billions of dollars from the unspeakable crime of destroying children's lives,
not only physically, but mentally and spiritually as well.
The West has reached a new level of rottenness. Moral decay is actively gnawing at the
very fabric of our society. The Cabal and its rampant criminality in Washington is a
reflection of this terrible decline we are witnessing around us.
The hypocritical cry and hue from our government officials about the terrible human rights
abuses in other countries as they seek to deflect the attention away from their own
criminality and murderous abuses at home and abroad is indeed sickening.
UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was killed in a suspicious plane crash in 1961. He
dared speak Truth to the Power. His quote from over 60 years ago is so relevant to what is
going on Today. It has spread like never before to affect the judgments of the Politicians,
the news media, and the Public.
-The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once
an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an
established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.
American propaganda is scapegoating Russia to absolve Americans of responsibility for
creating their own political divisions.
Observing from CanaDa, this anti-Russia/Putin Propaganda is confirming this Vision of the
Future published 41 years ago.
On September 13, 1976, the major daily THE KANSAS CITY TIMES published this Vision of the
FUTURE: "He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the
election in November TO DO GOD'S BIDDING: To tell the world, from Kansas City, this country
has been found wanting and its days are numbered [...] He gestured toward a gleaming church
dome. "The gold dome is the symbol of Babylon," he said." [...] He wanted to bring to the
Public's attention an "idea being put out subtly and deceptively" by the government that we
have to get prepared for a war with Russia.
It's taken over 40 years, but that 1976 FUTURE is NOW with the Revelation of the details
GENERALLY unfolding in the spirit of the letter. The World is finally waking up to see Trump
just may hasten "its days are numbered" part of the 1976 Public record.
The KANSAS CITY TIMES did a follow up report on ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976. When the TV
movie 'THE DAY AFTER' Kansas City was incinerated in a Nuclear Holocaust appeared in 1983,
most likely, I was the only Human on Earth, including the newspaper reporters, to note at the
END, the movie pauses at the very same picture frame THE KANSAS CITY TIMES chose for the ALL
SOULS DAY record 7 years earlier.
Any way you look at it, that HISTORICAL FACT is a confirming SIGN for our Generations, the
World has arrived at this point of Decision, of an "idea being put out subtly and
deceptively" by the government that we have to get prepared for a war with Russia."
Multitudes! Multitudes in the Valley of Decision. The Day of the LORD IS NEAR in the Valley
of Decision.
Not many will recognize, "this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered"
as the 1st two parts, of the 3 part 'Writing on the Wall" from Daniel 5 and the Captivity of
Babylon some 2600 years ago. The whole world saw The Writing on the Wall for the 1st TIME at
the same TIME, with the Global Financial Meltdown-Economic Pearl Harbour in September of
2008, even if the world does not recognize it as such.
The 3rd part of the Writing on the Wall tells of the decline of Babylon, the 1st Biblical
model of the Nation that reaches Imperial Military-Economic Superpower Status, and the rise
of Persia
Ancient Babylon is now Iraq, and ancient Persia is now Iran.
The US is the latest, greatest of all the Nations reaching Imperial Military-Economic
Superpower Status in the 2600 year old Biblical Babylonian superstructure.
The TAIL struck the HEAD, causing the unravelling of the Earthly Babylonian superstructure
and infrastructure, ushering in the Law of the Jungle to the Middle East and this World.
The Iranian Revolution happened in 1979, 2-1/2 years after the record in the 1976 KANSAS
CITY TIMES Timeline.
All the chaos in the Middle East since then, including the carnage in Syria, is the
consequence of the vain attempt to reverse that God ordained, repeat of History, as a SIGN
for our Generations. http://ray032.com/2013/09/01/signs-of-the-times/
Bulldoze them Georgia Guidestones.
Erase that Denver Airport Artwork.
Send Lady Liberty back to France.
Neandertals, behaving badly.
Stars and Stripes gilded cheap pennant should be changed to Skull n Bones.
What the U.S. political and Deep State accused of Russia today is exactly what they
themselves have done to much of the world. Entire Wikipedia is not big enough to write about
the dirty tricks of the CIA and NSA.
Russia of course has no need to do what was accused. But they are surely laughing at being
accused. Indeed, keep the accusation coming. The more the accusations, the longer they last,
the more sure Russia know the corrupt terror empires of the west are going down.
Without firing a single shot. Now isn't that funny? Just ask the Chinese!
Note: this article is part of a symposium included in the
March/April 2018 issue of the National Interest .
OF COURSE
there's a Deep State. Why wouldn't there be? Even a cursory understanding of human nature tells
us that power corrupts, as Lord Acton put it; that, when power is concentrated and entrenched,
it will be abused; that, when it is concentrated and entrenched in secrecy, it will be abused
in secret. That's the Deep State.
James Burnham saw it coming. The American philosopher and political theorist
(1905–87), first a Trotskyist, then a leading conservative intellectual, wrote in 1941
that the great political development of the age was not the battle between communism and
capitalism. Rather, it was the rise of a new "managerial" class gaining dominance in business,
finance, organized labor and government. This gathering managerial revolution, as he called it,
would be resisted, but it would be impervious to adversarial counteractions. As the managerial
elites gained more and more power, exercised often in subtle and stealthy ways, they would
exercise that power to embed themselves further into the folds of American society and to
protect themselves from those who might want to bust them up.
Nowhere is this managerial elite more entrenched, more powerful and more shrouded in secrecy
than in what Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, augmented by
intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. That's where America's relentless drive for global
hegemony meshes with defense manufacturers only too willing to provide the tools of
dominance.
Now we have not only a standing army, with hundreds of thousands of troops at the ready, as
in Cold War days. We have also permanent wars, nine of them in progress at the moment and not
one with what could even remotely be called proper congressional approval. That's how power
gets entrenched, how the managerial revolution gains ever greater force and how the Deep State
endures.
Few in the general public know what really happened with regard to the allegations of Trump
campaign "collusion" with Russia, or how the investigation into those troubling allegations
emerged. But we know enough to know we have seen the Deep State in action.
We know that U.S. agencies released an "Intelligence Community Assessment" saying that
Russia and President Putin were behind the release of embarrassing Democratic emails in a plot
to help Trump win the presidency. But we also know that it wasn't really a National
Intelligence Assessment (a term of art denoting a particular process of expansive intelligence
analysis) but rather the work of a controlled task force. As Scott Ritter, the former Marine
intelligence officer and arms-control official,
put it , "This deliberate misrepresentation of the organizational bona fides of the Russia
NIA casts a shadow over the viability of the analysis used to underpin the assessments and
judgments contained within." Besides, the document was long on assertion and short on evidence.
Even the New York Times initially
derided the report as lacking any "hard evidence" and amounting "essentially . . . to
'trust us.'"
It is an age-old statecraft technique to seek unity within a state by depicting an external
enemy or threat. Russia is the bête noire again, as it was during the Cold War years as
part of the Soviet Union. But the truth is Western states are challenged by internal
problems.
Ironically, by denying their own internal democratic challenges, Western authorities are
only hastening their institutional demise.
Russophobia -- "blame it all on Russia" -- is a short-term, futile ploy to stave off the day
of reckoning when furious and informed Western citizens will demand democratic restitution for
their legitimate grievances.
The dominant "official" narrative, from the US to Europe, is that "malicious" Russia is
"sowing division;""eroding democratic institutions;" and "undermining public trust" in systems
of governance, credibility of established political parties, and the news media.
This narrative has shifted up a gear since the election of Donald Trump to the White House
in 2016, with accusations that the Kremlin somehow ran "influence operations" to help get him
into office. This outlandish yarn defies common sense. It is also running out of thread to keep
spinning.
Paradoxically, even though President Trump has rightly rebuffed such dubious claims of
"Russiagate" interference as "fake news" , he has at other times undermined himself by
subscribing to the notion that Moscow is projecting a campaign of "subversion against the US
and its European allies." See for example the National Security Strategy he signed
off in December.
Pathetically, it's become indoctrinated belief among the Western political class that
"devious Russians" are out to "collapse" Western democracies by "weaponizing disinformation"
and spreading "fake news" through Russia-based news outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Totalitarian-like, there seems no room for intelligent dissent among political or media
figures.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has chimed in to
accuse Moscow of "sowing division;" Dutch state intelligence claim Russia destabilized the
US presidential election; the European Union commissioner for security, Sir Julian King,
casually lampoons Russian news media as "Kremlin-orchestrated disinformation" to destabilize
the 28-nation bloc; CIA chief Mike Pompeo recently warned that Russia is stepping up its
efforts to tarnish the Congressional mid-term elections later this year.
On and on goes the narrative that Western states are essentially victims of a nefarious
Russian assault to bring about collapse.
A particularly instructive presentation of this trope was given in a recent commentary by Texan
Republican Representative Will Hurd. In his piece headlined, "Russia is our adversary" , he
claims: "Russia is eroding our democracy by exploiting the nation's divisions. To save it,
Americans need to begin working together."
Congressman Hurd asserts: "Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in our democratic
institutions. It has weaponized disinformation to achieve this goal for decades in Eastern and
Central Europe; in 2016, Western Europe and America were aggressively targeted as well."
Lamentably, all these claims above are made with scant, or no, verifiable evidence. It is
simply a Big Lie technique of relentless repetition transforming itself into "fact" .
It's instructive to follow Congressman Hurd's thought-process a bit further.
He contends: "When the public loses trust in the media, the Russians are winning. When the
press is hyper-critical of Congress the Russians are winning. When Congress and the general
public disagree the Russians are winning. When there is friction between Congress and the
executive branch [the president] resulting in further erosion of trust in our democratic
institutions, the Russians are winning."
As a putative solution, Representative Hurd calls for "a national counter-disinformation
strategy" against Russian "influence operations" , adding, "Americans must stop contributing to
a corrosive political environment".
The latter is a chilling advocacy of uniformity tantamount to a police state whereby any
dissent or criticism is a "thought-crime."
It is, however, such anti-democratic and paranoid thinking by Western politicians -- aided
and abetted by dutiful media -- that is killing democracy from within, not some supposed
foreign enemy.
There is evidently a foreboding sense of demise in authority and legitimacy among Western
states, even if the real cause for the demise is ignored or denied. Systems of governance,
politicians of all stripes, and institutions like the established media and intelligence
services are increasingly held in contempt and distrust by the public.
Whose fault is that loss of political and moral authority? Western governments and
institutions need to take a look in the mirror.
The endless, criminal wars that the US and its European NATO allies have been waging across
the planet over the past two decades is one cogent reason why the public has lost faith in
grandiose official claims about respecting democracy and international law.
The US and European media have shown reprehensible dereliction of duty to inform the public
accurately about their governments' warmongering intrigues. Take the example of Syria. When
does the average Western citizen ever read in the corporate Western media about how the US and
its NATO allies have covertly ransacked that country through weaponizing terrorist proxies?
How then can properly informed citizens be expected to have respect for such criminal
government policies and the complicit news media covering up for their crimes?
Western public disaffection with governments, politicians and media surely stems also from
the grotesque gulf in social inequality and poverty among citizens from slavish adherence to
economic policies that enrich the wealthy while consigning the vast majority to unrelenting
austerity.
The destabilizing impact on societies from oppressive economic conditions is a far more
plausible cause for grievance than outlandish claims made by the political class about alleged
"Russian interference".
Yet the Western media indulge this fantastical "Russiagate" escapism instead of campaigning
on real social problems facing ordinary citizens. No wonder such media are then viewed with
disdain and distrust. Adding insult to injury, these media want the public to believe Russia is
the enemy?
Instead of acknowledging and addressing real threats to citizens: economic insecurity,
eroding education and health services, lost career opportunities for future generations, the
looming dangers of ecological adversity, wars prompted by Western governments trashing
international and diplomacy, and so on -- the Western public is insultingly plied with corny
tales of Russia's "malign influence" and "assault on democracy."
Just think of the disproportionate amount of media attention and public resources wasted on
the Russiagate scandal over the past year. And now gradually emerging is the real
scandal that the American FBI probably colluded with the Obama administration to corrupt
the democratic process against Trump.
Again, is there any wonder the public has sheer contempt and distrust for "authorities" that
have been lying through their teeth and playing them for fools?
The collapsing state of Western democracies has got nothing to do with Russia. The
Russophobia of blaming Russia for the demise of Western institutions is an attempt at
scapegoating for the very real problems facing governments and institutions like the news
media. Those problems are inherent and wholly owned by these governments owing to chronic
anti-democratic functioning, as well as systematic violation of international law in their
pursuit of criminal wars and other subterfuges for regime-change objectives.
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published
in several languages. He is a Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a
career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he
worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish
Times and Independent.
Anyone who believes MSM is totally indoctrinated since it has been proven over and over that
they won't tell the truth of the matter. The only REAL thing this country supplies or
produces is war. Most other industries have been outsourced and given subsidies to so, thus
taking American jobs from our lives. And now they want to take Social Security and Medicare
to PAY for our military buildup????
It is without a doubt true that the political class and their oligharchic owners are falling
and falling fast. They need a war to sustain their enrichment and attempted control of the
world. They have run out of potential victims , while on the home front the naive Amrikan is
starting to reject their nonsense. They can't really afford to take on China as they could
easily dump their US treasuries and sink the financing arrangements for a war. They would
like to stop the OBOR ; but how? Ah Russia. Smaller population but lethal in central Europe
and perhaps beyond. Good geographic position for cutting OBOR. After all why would anyone be
allowed to put in such a mega project and not let the US oligharchic class control it?
A big part of the problem with Washington DC is that they are ruled by the Rothschild
oligarchs and function first and foremost for Rothschild interests such as Israel and other
Rothschild programs. Washington is not focused on the states it was designed to serve.
Rothschild's and other oligarchs, fascists and the like control Washington crippling them.
Countries like China, Russia are making their own destinies while Washington languishes and
dissolves under a Rothschild fascist flag.
"Intel chief: Federal debt poses 'dire threat' to national security"
The above was the title to an article in The Hill, yesterday. The comment was attributed
to Dan Coates, DNI in testimony to Congress. To me, since elected officials CREATE the
federal debt, what the DNI is REALLY saying is that the elected officials are a dire threat
to national security. Their spending and fake borrowing from the Federal Reserve is the
threat-not Syria, Yemen, or other countries that have not attacked the US. The elected
officials, both Democrat and Republicans are on the way to destroying the US. Not Russia,
China, ISIS, or international terrorism.
I recently read a horrifying commentary by John Whitehead on the burgeoning sex trade in this
country where young girls are abducted and sold for sexual favors to deviants in every major
city in the US. Many of these girls are as young a three and four years old, and the average
age of these victims is 13! Thousands of missing children end up as sex slaves and are forced
to be with as many as 40 men a night.
This great evil has become extremely lucrative, and numerous monsters, both men, and women
are reaping billions of dollars from the unspeakable crime of destroying children's lives,
not only physically, but mentally and spiritually as well.
The West has reached a new level of rottenness. Moral decay is actively gnawing at the
very fabric of our society. The Cabal and its rampant criminality in Washington is a
reflection of this terrible decline we are witnessing around us.
The hypocritical cry and hue from our government officials about the terrible human rights
abuses in other countries as they seek to deflect the attention away from their own
criminality and murderous abuses at home and abroad is indeed sickening.
UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was killed in a suspicious plane crash in 1961. He
dared speak Truth to the Power. His quote from over 60 years ago is so relevant to what is
going on Today. It has spread like never before to affect the judgments of the Politicians,
the news media, and the Public.
-The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once
an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an
established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.
American propaganda is scapegoating Russia to absolve Americans of responsibility for
creating their own political divisions.
Observing from CanaDa, this anti-Russia/Putin Propaganda is confirming this Vision of the
Future published 41 years ago.
On September 13, 1976, the major daily THE KANSAS CITY TIMES published this Vision of the
FUTURE: "He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the
election in November TO DO GOD'S BIDDING: To tell the world, from Kansas City, this country
has been found wanting and its days are numbered [...] He gestured toward a gleaming church
dome. "The gold dome is the symbol of Babylon," he said." [...] He wanted to bring to the
Public's attention an "idea being put out subtly and deceptively" by the government that we
have to get prepared for a war with Russia.
It's taken over 40 years, but that 1976 FUTURE is NOW with the Revelation of the details
GENERALLY unfolding in the spirit of the letter. The World is finally waking up to see Trump
just may hasten "its days are numbered" part of the 1976 Public record.
The KANSAS CITY TIMES did a follow up report on ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976. When the TV
movie 'THE DAY AFTER' Kansas City was incinerated in a Nuclear Holocaust appeared in 1983,
most likely, I was the only Human on Earth, including the newspaper reporters, to note at the
END, the movie pauses at the very same picture frame THE KANSAS CITY TIMES chose for the ALL
SOULS DAY record 7 years earlier.
Any way you look at it, that HISTORICAL FACT is a confirming SIGN for our Generations, the
World has arrived at this point of Decision, of an "idea being put out subtly and
deceptively" by the government that we have to get prepared for a war with Russia."
Multitudes! Multitudes in the Valley of Decision. The Day of the LORD IS NEAR in the Valley
of Decision.
Not many will recognize, "this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered"
as the 1st two parts, of the 3 part 'Writing on the Wall" from Daniel 5 and the Captivity of
Babylon some 2600 years ago. The whole world saw The Writing on the Wall for the 1st TIME at
the same TIME, with the Global Financial Meltdown-Economic Pearl Harbour in September of
2008, even if the world does not recognize it as such.
The 3rd part of the Writing on the Wall tells of the decline of Babylon, the 1st Biblical
model of the Nation that reaches Imperial Military-Economic Superpower Status, and the rise
of Persia
Ancient Babylon is now Iraq, and ancient Persia is now Iran.
The US is the latest, greatest of all the Nations reaching Imperial Military-Economic
Superpower Status in the 2600 year old Biblical Babylonian superstructure.
The TAIL struck the HEAD, causing the unravelling of the Earthly Babylonian superstructure
and infrastructure, ushering in the Law of the Jungle to the Middle East and this World.
The Iranian Revolution happened in 1979, 2-1/2 years after the record in the 1976 KANSAS
CITY TIMES Timeline.
All the chaos in the Middle East since then, including the carnage in Syria, is the
consequence of the vain attempt to reverse that God ordained, repeat of History, as a SIGN
for our Generations. http://ray032.com/2013/09/01/signs-of-the-times/
Bulldoze them Georgia Guidestones.
Erase that Denver Airport Artwork.
Send Lady Liberty back to France.
Neandertals, behaving badly.
Stars and Stripes gilded cheap pennant should be changed to Skull n Bones.
What the U.S. political and Deep State accused of Russia today is exactly what they
themselves have done to much of the world. Entire Wikipedia is not big enough to write about
the dirty tricks of the CIA and NSA.
Russia of course has no need to do what was accused. But they are surely laughing at being
accused. Indeed, keep the accusation coming. The more the accusations, the longer they last,
the more sure Russia know the corrupt terror empires of the west are going down.
Without firing a single shot. Now isn't that funny? Just ask the Chinese!
"... The liberals and Democrats and their allies in the FBI, political police and other elements of the security state apparatus
were deeply involved in an attempt to implicate Russian government officials in a plot to manipulate US public opinion on Trump's behalf
and corrupt the outcome of the election. However, the FBI, the Justice Department and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller have produced
no evidence of collusion linking the Russian government to a campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy in favor of Trump. This
is despite thousands of interviews and threats of long prison sentences against former Trump campaign advisers. Instead, they focus
their attack on Trump's early campaign promise to find common ground in improving economic and diplomatic ties between the US and Russia,
especially in confronting jihadi terrorists. ..."
"... The liberal-progressive FBI cohort turned into rabid Russia-bashers demanding that Trump take a highly aggressive stance against
Moscow, while systematically eliminating his military and security advisors who expressed anti-confrontation sentiments. In the spirit
of a Joe McCarthy, the liberal-left launched hysterical attacks on any and every Trump campaign adviser who had spoken to, dined with
or exchanged eyebrows with any and all Russians! ..."
"... The conversion of liberalism to the pursuit of political purges is unprecedented. Their collective amnesia about the long-term,
large-scale involvement by the FBI in the worst criminal violations of democratic values is reprehensible. The FBI's anti-communist
crusade led to the purge of thousands of trade unionists from the mid-1940's onward, decimating the AFL-CIO. They blacklisted actors,
screen writers, artists, teachers, university academics, researchers, scientists, journalists and civil rights leaders as part of their
sweeping purge of civil society. ..."
"... President Trump has pursued an agenda mirroring the police state operations of the FBI – only on a global scale. Trump's violation
of international law includes collaboration and support for Saudi Arabia's tyrannical invasion and destruction of the sovereign nation
of Yemen; intensified aid and support for Israel's ethnic war against the Palestinian people; severe sanctions and threatened nuclear
first-strike against North Korea (DPRK); increased deployment of US special forces in collaboration with the jihadi terrorist war to
overthrow the legitimate government of Syria; coup-mongering, sabotage, sanctions and economic blockade of Venezuela; NATO missile and
nuclear encirclement of Russia; and the growing naval threats against China ..."
"... Domestically, Trump's response to the FBI's blackmail has been to replace the original political leadership with his own version;
to expand and increase the police state powers against immigrants; to increase the powers of the major tech companies to police and
intensify work-place exploitation and the invasion of citizens' privacy; to expand the unleash the power of state agents to torture
suspects and to saturate all public events, celebrations and activities with open displays of jingoism and militarism with the goal
of creating pro-war public opinion. ..."
"... Even the fight within the two-headed reactionary party of the US oligarchy has had a positive effect. Each side is hell-bent
on exposing the state-sponsored crimes of the other. In an unprecedented and historic sense, the US and world public is witness to the
spies, lies and crimes of the leadership and elite on prime time and on the wide screen. We head in two directions. In one direction,
there are the threats of nuclear war, economic collapse, environmental disasters and a full blown police state. In the other direction,
there is the demise of empire, a revived and renewed civil society rooted in a participatory economy and a renewed moral order ..."
Few government organizations have been engaged in violation of the US citizens' constitutional rights for as long a time and against
as many individuals as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Seldom has there been greater collusion in the perpetration of
crimes against civil liberties, electoral freedom and free and lawful expression as what has taken place between the FBI and the
US Justice Department.
In the past, the FBI and Justice Department secured the enthusiastic support and public acclaim from the conservative members
of the US Congress, members of the judiciary at all levels and the mass media. The leading liberal voices, public figures, educators,
intellectuals and progressive dissenters opposing the FBI and their witch-hunting tactics were all from the left. Today, the right
and the left have changed places: The most powerful voices endorsing the FBI and the Justice Department's fabrications, and abuse
of constitutional rights are on the left, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and famous liberal media corporations and public
opinion makers.
The recently published Congressional memo, authored by Congressman Devin Nunes, provides ample proof that the FBI spied on Trump
campaign workers with the intent to undermine the Republican candidate and sabotage his bid for the presidency. Private sector investigators,
hired by Trump's rival Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, worked with pro-Clinton operatives within the FBI and
Justice Department to violate the national electoral process while flouting rules governing wiretaps on US citizens. This was done
with the approval of the sitting Democratic President Barack Obama.
The liberals and Democrats and their allies in the FBI, political police and other elements of the security state apparatus
were deeply involved in an attempt to implicate Russian government officials in a plot to manipulate US public opinion on Trump's
behalf and corrupt the outcome of the election. However, the FBI, the Justice Department and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller have
produced no evidence of collusion linking the Russian government to a campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy in favor
of Trump. This is despite thousands of interviews and threats of long prison sentences against former Trump campaign advisers. Instead,
they focus their attack on Trump's early campaign promise to find common ground in improving economic and diplomatic ties between
the US and Russia, especially in confronting jihadi terrorists.
The liberal-progressive FBI cohort turned into rabid Russia-bashers demanding that Trump take a highly aggressive stance against
Moscow, while systematically eliminating his military and security advisors who expressed anti-confrontation sentiments. In the spirit
of a Joe McCarthy, the liberal-left launched hysterical attacks on any and every Trump campaign adviser who had spoken to, dined
with or exchanged eyebrows with any and all Russians!
The conversion of liberalism to the pursuit of political purges is unprecedented. Their collective amnesia about the long-term,
large-scale involvement by the FBI in the worst criminal violations of democratic values is reprehensible. The FBI's anti-communist
crusade led to the purge of thousands of trade unionists from the mid-1940's onward, decimating the AFL-CIO. They blacklisted actors,
screen writers, artists, teachers, university academics, researchers, scientists, journalists and civil rights leaders as part of
their sweeping purge of civil society.
The FBI investigated the private lives of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, even threatening their family members. They illegally
spied on and infiltrated civil liberties organizations, and used provocateurs and spies in anti-war groups. Individuals lives were
destroyed, some were driven to suicide; important popular American organizations were undermined to the detriment of millions. This
has been its focus since its beginning and continues with the current fabrication of anti-Russian propaganda and investigations.
President Trump: Victim and Executor
President Trump has pursued an agenda mirroring the police state operations of the FBI – only on a global scale. Trump's violation
of international law includes collaboration and support for Saudi Arabia's tyrannical invasion and destruction of the sovereign nation
of Yemen; intensified aid and support for Israel's ethnic war against the Palestinian people; severe sanctions and threatened nuclear
first-strike against North Korea (DPRK); increased deployment of US special forces in collaboration with the jihadi terrorist war
to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria; coup-mongering, sabotage, sanctions and economic blockade of Venezuela; NATO missile
and nuclear encirclement of Russia; and the growing naval threats against China .
Domestically, Trump's response to the FBI's blackmail has been to replace the original political leadership with his own version;
to expand and increase the police state powers against immigrants; to increase the powers of the major tech companies to police and
intensify work-place exploitation and the invasion of citizens' privacy; to expand the unleash the power of state agents to torture
suspects and to saturate all public events, celebrations and activities with open displays of jingoism and militarism with the goal
of creating pro-war public opinion.
In a word: From the right to the left there are no political options to choose from among the two ruling political parties. Popular
political movements and mass demonstrations have risen up against Trump with clear justification, but have since dissolved and been
absorbed. They came together from diverse sectors: Women against sexual abuse and workplace humiliation; African-Americans against
police impunity and violence; and immigrants against mass expulsion and harassment. They staged mass demonstrations and then declined
as their 'anti-Trump' animus was frustrated by the liberal-democrats hell-bent on pursuing the Russian connection.
In the face of the national-political debacle local and regional movements became the vehicle to support the struggles. Women
organized at some workplaces and gained better protection of their rights; African-Americans vividly documented and published video
evidence of the systematic brutal violation of their rights by the police state and effectively acted to restrain local police violence
in a few localities; immigrant workers and especially their children gained broad public sympathy and allies within religious and
political organizations; and anti-Trump movements combined with critics of the liberal/democrat apparatus to build broader movements
and especially oppose growing war-fever.
Abroad, bi-partisan wars have failed to defeat independent state and mass popular resistance struggles for national sovereignty
everywhere – from North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela and beyond.
Even the fight within the two-headed reactionary party of the US oligarchy has had a positive effect. Each side is hell-bent
on exposing the state-sponsored crimes of the other. In an unprecedented and historic sense, the US and world public is witness to
the spies, lies and crimes of the leadership and elite on prime time and on the wide screen. We head in two directions. In one direction,
there are the threats of nuclear war, economic collapse, environmental disasters and a full blown police state. In the other direction,
there is the demise of empire, a revived and renewed civil society rooted in a participatory economy and a renewed moral order
.
Judah Grunstein
dubs Trump "the generals' president" because of his total capitulation to whatever the
current and former generals around him want:
Trump's generals have instead gone back to the future, restoring the model of a U.S.
military that faces no fiscal or strategic constraints, while preparing for a conflict -- a
conventional war with either or both of its nuclear-armed big power competitors -- that is
not just unlikely, but unwinnable.
While it is true that Trump voiced some objections to foreign wars long after they were over
or when it was no longer very risky to do so, it is important to remember that he was always in
favor of throwing more money at the military from the beginning of his campaign. He seized on
the nonsense talking point that the military had been "depleted" under Obama, and he has
continued to use it until now, and he made undoing the imaginary "depletion" one of the main
planks of his platform. Since Trump is a militarist, and since he now comes from the more
hawkish of the two parties, it was more or less a given that he would waste huge sums on higher
military spending while agreeing to the policies favored by Mattis, McMaster, et al. Add to
this his fetish for "strength" and "greatness," and you have a recipe for massive wasteful
spending on weapons and programs that the U.S. doesn't need. When there are already Pentagon
agencies losing
track of how they spend hundreds of millions of dollars , throwing more money at a huge
department with inadequate oversight is pure folly.
The increase in military spending that Trump has endorsed reflects his impulse to give the
military whatever they want. In addition to being completely unnecessary, higher military
spending will
indulge the Pentagon in all its worst habits:
The Pentagon budget request for 2019 puts the military on a course of spending unmatched
since the Reagan-era buildup, boosting the number of troops, warplanes and bombs, according
to documents and analysts.
But, defense analysts say, the $716 billion spending plan risks flooding too much money
into a Defense Department that may not spend it wisely.
"The risk is that when the budget is flowing freely, policy makers are usually reluctant
to make hard choices," said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, a non-partisan think tank.
"While this is not a record increase, it comes on top of a budget that was already higher
than the peak of the Reagan buildup when adjusted for inflation [bold mine-DL]," Harrison
said.
The fantasy claim that the military budget suffered significant reductions in the last
decade has been one of the standard hawkish criticisms of the previous administration, and
Trump takes that falsehood as gospel. The truth is that an already bloated military budget has
continued to grow, and Trump proposes to make it grow even faster. Everyone in Washington was
so desperate to have the generals rein in Trump that most of them never thought through what it
meant for Trump to be the military's unthinking yes-man.
Judah Grunstein
dubs Trump "the generals' president" because of his total capitulation to whatever the
current and former generals around him want:
Trump's generals have instead gone back to the future, restoring the model of a U.S.
military that faces no fiscal or strategic constraints, while preparing for a conflict -- a
conventional war with either or both of its nuclear-armed big power competitors -- that is
not just unlikely, but unwinnable.
While it is true that Trump voiced some objections to foreign wars long after they were over
or when it was no longer very risky to do so, it is important to remember that he was always in
favor of throwing more money at the military from the beginning of his campaign. He seized on
the nonsense talking point that the military had been "depleted" under Obama, and he has
continued to use it until now, and he made undoing the imaginary "depletion" one of the main
planks of his platform. Since Trump is a militarist, and since he now comes from the more
hawkish of the two parties, it was more or less a given that he would waste huge sums on higher
military spending while agreeing to the policies favored by Mattis, McMaster, et al. Add to
this his fetish for "strength" and "greatness," and you have a recipe for massive wasteful
spending on weapons and programs that the U.S. doesn't need. When there are already Pentagon
agencies losing
track of how they spend hundreds of millions of dollars , throwing more money at a huge
department with inadequate oversight is pure folly.
The increase in military spending that Trump has endorsed reflects his impulse to give the
military whatever they want. In addition to being completely unnecessary, higher military
spending will
indulge the Pentagon in all its worst habits:
The Pentagon budget request for 2019 puts the military on a course of spending unmatched
since the Reagan-era buildup, boosting the number of troops, warplanes and bombs, according
to documents and analysts.
But, defense analysts say, the $716 billion spending plan risks flooding too much money
into a Defense Department that may not spend it wisely.
"The risk is that when the budget is flowing freely, policy makers are usually reluctant
to make hard choices," said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, a non-partisan think tank.
"While this is not a record increase, it comes on top of a budget that was already higher
than the peak of the Reagan buildup when adjusted for inflation [bold mine-DL]," Harrison
said.
The fantasy claim that the military budget suffered significant reductions in the last
decade has been one of the standard hawkish criticisms of the previous administration, and
Trump takes that falsehood as gospel. The truth is that an already bloated military budget has
continued to grow, and Trump proposes to make it grow even faster. Everyone in Washington was
so desperate to have the generals rein in Trump that most of them never thought through what it
meant for Trump to be the military's unthinking yes-man.
"... anti-Trump movements combined with critics of the liberal/democrat apparatus to build broader movements and especially oppose growing war-fever. ..."
"... Abroad, bi-partisan wars have failed to defeat independent state and mass popular resistance struggles for national sovereignty everywhere – from North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela and beyond. ..."
"... Even the fight within the two-headed reactionary party of the US oligarchy has had a positive effect. Each side is hell-bent on exposing the state-sponsored crimes of the other. In an unprecedented and historic sense, the US and world public is witness to the spies, lies and crimes of the leadership and elite on prime time and on the wide screen. We head in two directions. In one direction, there are the threats of nuclear war, economic collapse, environmental disasters and a full blown police state. In the other direction, there is the demise of empire, a revived and renewed civil society rooted in a participatory economy and a renewed moral order. ..."
President Trump has pursued an agenda mirroring the police state operations of the FBI
– only on a global scale. Trump's violation of international law includes collaboration
and support for Saudi Arabia's tyrannical invasion and destruction of the sovereign nation of
Yemen; intensified aid and support for Israel's ethnic war against the Palestinian people;
severe sanctions and threatened nuclear first-strike against North Korea (DPRK); increased
deployment of US special forces in collaboration with the jihadi terrorist war to overthrow the
legitimate government of Syria; coup-mongering, sabotage, sanctions and economic blockade of
Venezuela; NATO missile and nuclear encirclement of Russia; and the growing naval threats
against China.
... .. ...
In the face of the national-political debacle local and regional movements became the
vehicle to support the struggles. Women organized at some workplaces and gained better
protection of their rights; African-Americans vividly documented and published video evidence
of the systematic brutal violation of their rights by the police state and effectively acted to
restrain local police violence in a few localities; immigrant workers and especially their
children gained broad public sympathy and allies within religious and political organizations;
and anti-Trump movements combined with critics of the liberal/democrat apparatus to build
broader movements and especially oppose growing war-fever.
Abroad, bi-partisan wars have failed to defeat independent state and mass popular resistance
struggles for national sovereignty everywhere – from North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and
Venezuela and beyond.
Even the fight within the two-headed reactionary party of the US oligarchy has had a
positive effect. Each side is hell-bent on exposing the state-sponsored crimes of the other. In
an unprecedented and historic sense, the US and world public is witness to the spies, lies and
crimes of the leadership and elite on prime time and on the wide screen. We head in two
directions. In one direction, there are the threats of nuclear war, economic collapse,
environmental disasters and a full blown police state. In the other direction, there is the
demise of empire, a revived and renewed civil society rooted in a participatory economy and a
renewed moral order.
"... The liberals and Democrats and their allies in the FBI, political police and other elements of the security state apparatus
were deeply involved in an attempt to implicate Russian government officials in a plot to manipulate US public opinion on Trump's behalf
and corrupt the outcome of the election. However, the FBI, the Justice Department and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller have produced
no evidence of collusion linking the Russian government to a campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy in favor of Trump. This
is despite thousands of interviews and threats of long prison sentences against former Trump campaign advisers. Instead, they focus
their attack on Trump's early campaign promise to find common ground in improving economic and diplomatic ties between the US and Russia,
especially in confronting jihadi terrorists. ..."
"... The liberal-progressive FBI cohort turned into rabid Russia-bashers demanding that Trump take a highly aggressive stance against
Moscow, while systematically eliminating his military and security advisors who expressed anti-confrontation sentiments. In the spirit
of a Joe McCarthy, the liberal-left launched hysterical attacks on any and every Trump campaign adviser who had spoken to, dined with
or exchanged eyebrows with any and all Russians! ..."
"... The conversion of liberalism to the pursuit of political purges is unprecedented. Their collective amnesia about the long-term,
large-scale involvement by the FBI in the worst criminal violations of democratic values is reprehensible. The FBI's anti-communist
crusade led to the purge of thousands of trade unionists from the mid-1940's onward, decimating the AFL-CIO. They blacklisted actors,
screen writers, artists, teachers, university academics, researchers, scientists, journalists and civil rights leaders as part of their
sweeping purge of civil society. ..."
"... President Trump has pursued an agenda mirroring the police state operations of the FBI – only on a global scale. Trump's violation
of international law includes collaboration and support for Saudi Arabia's tyrannical invasion and destruction of the sovereign nation
of Yemen; intensified aid and support for Israel's ethnic war against the Palestinian people; severe sanctions and threatened nuclear
first-strike against North Korea (DPRK); increased deployment of US special forces in collaboration with the jihadi terrorist war to
overthrow the legitimate government of Syria; coup-mongering, sabotage, sanctions and economic blockade of Venezuela; NATO missile and
nuclear encirclement of Russia; and the growing naval threats against China ..."
"... Domestically, Trump's response to the FBI's blackmail has been to replace the original political leadership with his own version;
to expand and increase the police state powers against immigrants; to increase the powers of the major tech companies to police and
intensify work-place exploitation and the invasion of citizens' privacy; to expand the unleash the power of state agents to torture
suspects and to saturate all public events, celebrations and activities with open displays of jingoism and militarism with the goal
of creating pro-war public opinion. ..."
"... Even the fight within the two-headed reactionary party of the US oligarchy has had a positive effect. Each side is hell-bent
on exposing the state-sponsored crimes of the other. In an unprecedented and historic sense, the US and world public is witness to the
spies, lies and crimes of the leadership and elite on prime time and on the wide screen. We head in two directions. In one direction,
there are the threats of nuclear war, economic collapse, environmental disasters and a full blown police state. In the other direction,
there is the demise of empire, a revived and renewed civil society rooted in a participatory economy and a renewed moral order ..."
Few government organizations have been engaged in violation of the US citizens' constitutional rights for as long a time and against
as many individuals as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Seldom has there been greater collusion in the perpetration of
crimes against civil liberties, electoral freedom and free and lawful expression as what has taken place between the FBI and the
US Justice Department.
In the past, the FBI and Justice Department secured the enthusiastic support and public acclaim from the conservative members
of the US Congress, members of the judiciary at all levels and the mass media. The leading liberal voices, public figures, educators,
intellectuals and progressive dissenters opposing the FBI and their witch-hunting tactics were all from the left. Today, the right
and the left have changed places: The most powerful voices endorsing the FBI and the Justice Department's fabrications, and abuse
of constitutional rights are on the left, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and famous liberal media corporations and public
opinion makers.
The recently published Congressional memo, authored by Congressman Devin Nunes, provides ample proof that the FBI spied on Trump
campaign workers with the intent to undermine the Republican candidate and sabotage his bid for the presidency. Private sector investigators,
hired by Trump's rival Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, worked with pro-Clinton operatives within the FBI and
Justice Department to violate the national electoral process while flouting rules governing wiretaps on US citizens. This was done
with the approval of the sitting Democratic President Barack Obama.
The liberals and Democrats and their allies in the FBI, political police and other elements of the security state apparatus
were deeply involved in an attempt to implicate Russian government officials in a plot to manipulate US public opinion on Trump's
behalf and corrupt the outcome of the election. However, the FBI, the Justice Department and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller have
produced no evidence of collusion linking the Russian government to a campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy in favor
of Trump. This is despite thousands of interviews and threats of long prison sentences against former Trump campaign advisers. Instead,
they focus their attack on Trump's early campaign promise to find common ground in improving economic and diplomatic ties between
the US and Russia, especially in confronting jihadi terrorists.
The liberal-progressive FBI cohort turned into rabid Russia-bashers demanding that Trump take a highly aggressive stance against
Moscow, while systematically eliminating his military and security advisors who expressed anti-confrontation sentiments. In the spirit
of a Joe McCarthy, the liberal-left launched hysterical attacks on any and every Trump campaign adviser who had spoken to, dined
with or exchanged eyebrows with any and all Russians!
The conversion of liberalism to the pursuit of political purges is unprecedented. Their collective amnesia about the long-term,
large-scale involvement by the FBI in the worst criminal violations of democratic values is reprehensible. The FBI's anti-communist
crusade led to the purge of thousands of trade unionists from the mid-1940's onward, decimating the AFL-CIO. They blacklisted actors,
screen writers, artists, teachers, university academics, researchers, scientists, journalists and civil rights leaders as part of
their sweeping purge of civil society.
The FBI investigated the private lives of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, even threatening their family members. They illegally
spied on and infiltrated civil liberties organizations, and used provocateurs and spies in anti-war groups. Individuals lives were
destroyed, some were driven to suicide; important popular American organizations were undermined to the detriment of millions. This
has been its focus since its beginning and continues with the current fabrication of anti-Russian propaganda and investigations.
President Trump: Victim and Executor
President Trump has pursued an agenda mirroring the police state operations of the FBI – only on a global scale. Trump's violation
of international law includes collaboration and support for Saudi Arabia's tyrannical invasion and destruction of the sovereign nation
of Yemen; intensified aid and support for Israel's ethnic war against the Palestinian people; severe sanctions and threatened nuclear
first-strike against North Korea (DPRK); increased deployment of US special forces in collaboration with the jihadi terrorist war
to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria; coup-mongering, sabotage, sanctions and economic blockade of Venezuela; NATO missile
and nuclear encirclement of Russia; and the growing naval threats against China .
Domestically, Trump's response to the FBI's blackmail has been to replace the original political leadership with his own version;
to expand and increase the police state powers against immigrants; to increase the powers of the major tech companies to police and
intensify work-place exploitation and the invasion of citizens' privacy; to expand the unleash the power of state agents to torture
suspects and to saturate all public events, celebrations and activities with open displays of jingoism and militarism with the goal
of creating pro-war public opinion.
In a word: From the right to the left there are no political options to choose from among the two ruling political parties. Popular
political movements and mass demonstrations have risen up against Trump with clear justification, but have since dissolved and been
absorbed. They came together from diverse sectors: Women against sexual abuse and workplace humiliation; African-Americans against
police impunity and violence; and immigrants against mass expulsion and harassment. They staged mass demonstrations and then declined
as their 'anti-Trump' animus was frustrated by the liberal-democrats hell-bent on pursuing the Russian connection.
In the face of the national-political debacle local and regional movements became the vehicle to support the struggles. Women
organized at some workplaces and gained better protection of their rights; African-Americans vividly documented and published video
evidence of the systematic brutal violation of their rights by the police state and effectively acted to restrain local police violence
in a few localities; immigrant workers and especially their children gained broad public sympathy and allies within religious and
political organizations; and anti-Trump movements combined with critics of the liberal/democrat apparatus to build broader movements
and especially oppose growing war-fever.
Abroad, bi-partisan wars have failed to defeat independent state and mass popular resistance struggles for national sovereignty
everywhere – from North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela and beyond.
Even the fight within the two-headed reactionary party of the US oligarchy has had a positive effect. Each side is hell-bent
on exposing the state-sponsored crimes of the other. In an unprecedented and historic sense, the US and world public is witness to
the spies, lies and crimes of the leadership and elite on prime time and on the wide screen. We head in two directions. In one direction,
there are the threats of nuclear war, economic collapse, environmental disasters and a full blown police state. In the other direction,
there is the demise of empire, a revived and renewed civil society rooted in a participatory economy and a renewed moral order
.
160 billion plus 160 billion are pretty serious money. money that were stolen from ordinary Americans.
PRESIDENT EISENHOWER: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money
alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern
heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter
plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000
people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at
all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. (cited from
The Age of Lunacy The Doomsday Machine naked
capitalism )
Notable quotes:
"... The military talks about needing all these scores of billions to "rebuild." And, sure, there are ships that need to be refitted, planes in need of repairs, equipment that needs to be restocked, and veterans who need to be cared for. But a massive increase in military and war spending, perhaps as high as $320 billion over two years, is a recipe for excessive waste and even more disastrous military adventurism. ..."
"... Perhaps you've heard of the expression, "Spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave." Our military has been drunk with money since 9/11. Is it really wise to give those "sailors" an enormous boost in the loose change they're carrying, trusting them to spend it wisely? ..."
The new Congressional budget boosts military spending in a
big way . Last night's PBS
News report documented how military spending is projected to increase by $160 billion over
two years, but that doesn't include "overseas contingency funding" for wars, which is another
$160 billion over two years. Meanwhile, spending for the opioid crisis, which is killing
roughly 60,000 Americans a year (more Americans than were killed in the Vietnam War), is set at
a paltry $6 billion ($25 billion was requested).
One thing is certain: Ike was right about the undue
influence of the military-industrial-Congressional complex.
The military talks about needing all these scores of billions to "rebuild." And, sure, there
are ships that need to be refitted, planes in need of repairs, equipment that needs to be
restocked, and veterans who need to be cared for. But a massive increase in military and war
spending, perhaps as high as $320 billion over two years, is a recipe for excessive waste and
even more disastrous military adventurism.
Even if you're a supporter of big military budgets, this massive boost in military spending
is bad news. Why? It doesn't force the military to think . To set priorities. To define limits.
To be creative.
Perhaps you've heard of the expression, "Spending money like drunken sailors on shore
leave." Our military has been drunk with money since 9/11. Is it really wise to give those
"sailors" an enormous boost in the loose change they're carrying, trusting them to spend it
wisely?
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen
years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views . He can be reached at [email protected] . Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission.
"... Last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime noted that while West Africa "has long been a transit zone for cocaine and heroin trafficking, it has now turned into a production zone for illicit substances such as amphetamines and precursors" and that drug use "is also a growing issue at the local level." Meanwhile, heroin trafficking has been on the rise in East Africa , along with personal use of the drug. ..."
"... In the spring of 2001, American experts concluded that a ban on opium-poppy cultivation by Afghanistan's Taliban government had wiped out the world's largest heroin-producing crop. Later that year, the U.S. military invaded and, since 2002, America has pumped $8.7 billion in counternarcotics funding into that country. A report issued late last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction detailed the results of anti-drug efforts during CENTCOM's 16-year-old war: "Afghanistan's total area under opium cultivation and opium production reached an all-time high in 2017," it reads in part. "Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer and exporter, producing an estimated 80% of the world's opium." ..."
"... While AFRICOM and, to a lesser extent, CENTCOM have made changes in how they track counternarcotics aid, both seemingly remain hooked on pouring money into efforts that have produced few successes. More effective use of spreadsheets won't solve the underlying problems of America's wars or cure an addiction to policies that continue to fail. ..."
More troubling than the findings in the IG's report or CENTCOM's apparent refusal to heed
its recommendations may be the actual trajectory of the drug trade in the two commands' areas
of responsibility: Africa and the Greater Middle East. Last year, the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime
noted that while West Africa "has long been a transit zone for cocaine and heroin
trafficking, it has now turned into a production zone for illicit substances such as
amphetamines and precursors" and that drug use "is also a growing issue at the local level."
Meanwhile,
heroin trafficking has been on the
rise in
East Africa , along with personal
use of the drug.
Even the Pentagon's Africa Center for Strategic Studies is sounding an alarm. "Drug
trafficking is a major transnational threat in Africa that converges with other illicit
activities ranging from money laundering to human trafficking and terrorism," it
warned last November. "According to the 2017 U.N. World Drug Report, two-thirds of the
cocaine smuggled between South America and Europe passes through West Africa, specifically
Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo. Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania
are among the countries that have seen the highest traffic in opiates passing from Pakistan and
Afghanistan to Western destinations." As badly as this may reflect on AFRICOM's efforts to
bolster the counter-drug-trafficking prowess of key allies like Kenya, Mali, and Nigeria, it
reflects even more dismally on CENTCOM, which oversees Washington's long-running war in
Afghanistan and its seemingly ceaseless
counternarcotics mission there.
In the spring of 2001, American experts concluded
that a ban on opium-poppy cultivation by Afghanistan's Taliban government had wiped out the
world's largest heroin-producing crop. Later that year, the U.S. military invaded and, since
2002, America has pumped
$8.7 billion in counternarcotics funding into that country. A report issued
late last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction detailed the
results of anti-drug efforts during CENTCOM's 16-year-old war: "Afghanistan's total area under
opium cultivation and opium production reached an all-time high in 2017," it reads in part.
"Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer and exporter, producing an estimated
80% of the world's opium."
In many ways, these outcomes mirror those of the larger counterterror efforts of which these
anti-drug campaigns are just a part. In 2001, for example, U.S. forces were fighting just two
enemy forces in Afghanistan: al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Now, according to a recent
Pentagon report , they're battling more than 10 times that number. In Africa, an official
count of
five prime terror groups in 2012 has expanded, depending on the Pentagon source, to more
than
20 or even closer to
50 .
Correlation doesn't equal causation, but given the outcomes of significant counternarcotics
assistance from Africa Command and Central Command -- including some $500 million over just
three recent years -- there's little evidence to suggest that better record-keeping can solve
the problems plaguing the military's anti-drug efforts in the greater Middle East or Africa.
While AFRICOM and, to a lesser extent, CENTCOM have made changes in how they track
counternarcotics aid, both seemingly remain hooked on pouring money into efforts that have
produced few successes. More effective use of spreadsheets won't solve the underlying problems
of America's wars or cure an addiction to policies that continue to fail.
"... Last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime noted that while West Africa "has long been a transit zone for cocaine and heroin trafficking, it has now turned into a production zone for illicit substances such as amphetamines and precursors" and that drug use "is also a growing issue at the local level." Meanwhile, heroin trafficking has been on the rise in East Africa , along with personal use of the drug. ..."
"... In the spring of 2001, American experts concluded that a ban on opium-poppy cultivation by Afghanistan's Taliban government had wiped out the world's largest heroin-producing crop. Later that year, the U.S. military invaded and, since 2002, America has pumped $8.7 billion in counternarcotics funding into that country. A report issued late last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction detailed the results of anti-drug efforts during CENTCOM's 16-year-old war: "Afghanistan's total area under opium cultivation and opium production reached an all-time high in 2017," it reads in part. "Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer and exporter, producing an estimated 80% of the world's opium." ..."
"... While AFRICOM and, to a lesser extent, CENTCOM have made changes in how they track counternarcotics aid, both seemingly remain hooked on pouring money into efforts that have produced few successes. More effective use of spreadsheets won't solve the underlying problems of America's wars or cure an addiction to policies that continue to fail. ..."
More troubling than the findings in the IG's report or CENTCOM's apparent refusal to heed
its recommendations may be the actual trajectory of the drug trade in the two commands' areas
of responsibility: Africa and the Greater Middle East. Last year, the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime
noted that while West Africa "has long been a transit zone for cocaine and heroin
trafficking, it has now turned into a production zone for illicit substances such as
amphetamines and precursors" and that drug use "is also a growing issue at the local level."
Meanwhile,
heroin trafficking has been on the
rise in
East Africa , along with personal
use of the drug.
Even the Pentagon's Africa Center for Strategic Studies is sounding an alarm. "Drug
trafficking is a major transnational threat in Africa that converges with other illicit
activities ranging from money laundering to human trafficking and terrorism," it
warned last November. "According to the 2017 U.N. World Drug Report, two-thirds of the
cocaine smuggled between South America and Europe passes through West Africa, specifically
Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, and Togo. Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania
are among the countries that have seen the highest traffic in opiates passing from Pakistan and
Afghanistan to Western destinations." As badly as this may reflect on AFRICOM's efforts to
bolster the counter-drug-trafficking prowess of key allies like Kenya, Mali, and Nigeria, it
reflects even more dismally on CENTCOM, which oversees Washington's long-running war in
Afghanistan and its seemingly ceaseless
counternarcotics mission there.
In the spring of 2001, American experts concluded
that a ban on opium-poppy cultivation by Afghanistan's Taliban government had wiped out the
world's largest heroin-producing crop. Later that year, the U.S. military invaded and, since
2002, America has pumped
$8.7 billion in counternarcotics funding into that country. A report issued
late last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction detailed the
results of anti-drug efforts during CENTCOM's 16-year-old war: "Afghanistan's total area under
opium cultivation and opium production reached an all-time high in 2017," it reads in part.
"Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer and exporter, producing an estimated
80% of the world's opium."
In many ways, these outcomes mirror those of the larger counterterror efforts of which these
anti-drug campaigns are just a part. In 2001, for example, U.S. forces were fighting just two
enemy forces in Afghanistan: al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Now, according to a recent
Pentagon report , they're battling more than 10 times that number. In Africa, an official
count of
five prime terror groups in 2012 has expanded, depending on the Pentagon source, to more
than
20 or even closer to
50 .
Correlation doesn't equal causation, but given the outcomes of significant counternarcotics
assistance from Africa Command and Central Command -- including some $500 million over just
three recent years -- there's little evidence to suggest that better record-keeping can solve
the problems plaguing the military's anti-drug efforts in the greater Middle East or Africa.
While AFRICOM and, to a lesser extent, CENTCOM have made changes in how they track
counternarcotics aid, both seemingly remain hooked on pouring money into efforts that have
produced few successes. More effective use of spreadsheets won't solve the underlying problems
of America's wars or cure an addiction to policies that continue to fail.
160 billion plus 160 billion are pretty serious money. money that were stolen from ordinary Americans.
PRESIDENT EISENHOWER: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money
alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern
heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter
plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000
people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at
all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. (cited from
The Age of Lunacy The Doomsday Machine naked
capitalism )
Notable quotes:
"... The military talks about needing all these scores of billions to "rebuild." And, sure, there are ships that need to be refitted, planes in need of repairs, equipment that needs to be restocked, and veterans who need to be cared for. But a massive increase in military and war spending, perhaps as high as $320 billion over two years, is a recipe for excessive waste and even more disastrous military adventurism. ..."
"... Perhaps you've heard of the expression, "Spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave." Our military has been drunk with money since 9/11. Is it really wise to give those "sailors" an enormous boost in the loose change they're carrying, trusting them to spend it wisely? ..."
The new Congressional budget boosts military spending in a
big way . Last night's PBS
News report documented how military spending is projected to increase by $160 billion over
two years, but that doesn't include "overseas contingency funding" for wars, which is another
$160 billion over two years. Meanwhile, spending for the opioid crisis, which is killing
roughly 60,000 Americans a year (more Americans than were killed in the Vietnam War), is set at
a paltry $6 billion ($25 billion was requested).
One thing is certain: Ike was right about the undue
influence of the military-industrial-Congressional complex.
The military talks about needing all these scores of billions to "rebuild." And, sure, there
are ships that need to be refitted, planes in need of repairs, equipment that needs to be
restocked, and veterans who need to be cared for. But a massive increase in military and war
spending, perhaps as high as $320 billion over two years, is a recipe for excessive waste and
even more disastrous military adventurism.
Even if you're a supporter of big military budgets, this massive boost in military spending
is bad news. Why? It doesn't force the military to think . To set priorities. To define limits.
To be creative.
Perhaps you've heard of the expression, "Spending money like drunken sailors on shore
leave." Our military has been drunk with money since 9/11. Is it really wise to give those
"sailors" an enormous boost in the loose change they're carrying, trusting them to spend it
wisely?
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen
years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views . He can be reached at [email protected] . Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission.
"... The new weapons for Ukraine coincides with an increase in US troop deployments in the Baltic region on Russia's border, prompting Russia to accuse the United States of violating the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, and position nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in response. ..."
One consequence of the Trump-Russia fixation is the overshadowing of the far-right agenda
that Trump and his Republican allies are carrying out, including, inexorably, policies that
undermine the narrative of Trump-Russian collusion. But as that narrative is also used as a
cudgel against Trump's presidency, it is worth asking if some of those policies are now even a
direct result.
In December, Trump
authorized the sale of new weapons to Ukraine for its fight against Russian-backed
separatists. President Obama had rejected the arms shipments, "fearing that it would only
escalate the bloodshed," as The New York Times noted in 2015. Trump had also opposed such a move during the
campaign, but was swayed by lobbying from
advisers and congressional neoconservatives
. "Overall,"
observed Andrew Weiss , a Russia expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, "I see this discussion [on Trump-Russia] as fitting within a broader effort by people
within the national security bureaucracy to box Trump in on Ukraine."
The new weapons for Ukraine coincides with an increase in US troop deployments in the
Baltic region on Russia's border, prompting Russia to accuse the United States of violating the
1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, and position nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in
response.
After 16 years of war in Afghanistan, experts have stopped asking what victory looks like
and are beginning to consider the spectrum of possible defeats.
All options involve acknowledging the war as failed, American aims as largely unachievable
and Afghanistan's future as only partly salvageable. Their advocates see glimmers of hope
barely worth the stomach-turning trade-offs and slim odds of success.
"I don't think there is any serious analyst of the situation in Afghanistan who believes
that the war is winnable," Laurel Miller, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said
in a
podcast last summer, after leaving her State Department stint as acting special
representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This may be why, even after thousands have died and over $100 billion has been spent, even
after the past two weeks of shocking bloodshed in
Kabul , few expect the United States to try anything other than the status
quo.
It is a strategy, as Ms. Miller described it, to "prevent the defeat of the Afghan
government and prevent military victory by the Taliban" for as long as possible.
Though far from the most promising option, it is the least humiliating. But sooner or later,
the United States and Afghanistan will find themselves facing one of Afghanistan's endgames --
whether by choice or not.
"... The new weapons for Ukraine coincides with an increase in US troop deployments in the Baltic region on Russia's border, prompting Russia to accuse the United States of violating the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, and position nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in response. ..."
One consequence of the Trump-Russia fixation is the overshadowing of the far-right agenda
that Trump and his Republican allies are carrying out, including, inexorably, policies that
undermine the narrative of Trump-Russian collusion. But as that narrative is also used as a
cudgel against Trump's presidency, it is worth asking if some of those policies are now even a
direct result.
In December, Trump
authorized the sale of new weapons to Ukraine for its fight against Russian-backed
separatists. President Obama had rejected the arms shipments, "fearing that it would only
escalate the bloodshed," as The New York Times noted in 2015. Trump had also opposed such a move during the
campaign, but was swayed by lobbying from
advisers and congressional neoconservatives
. "Overall,"
observed Andrew Weiss , a Russia expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, "I see this discussion [on Trump-Russia] as fitting within a broader effort by people
within the national security bureaucracy to box Trump in on Ukraine."
The new weapons for Ukraine coincides with an increase in US troop deployments in the
Baltic region on Russia's border, prompting Russia to accuse the United States of violating the
1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, and position nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in
response.
After 16 years of war in Afghanistan, experts have stopped asking what victory looks like
and are beginning to consider the spectrum of possible defeats.
All options involve acknowledging the war as failed, American aims as largely unachievable
and Afghanistan's future as only partly salvageable. Their advocates see glimmers of hope
barely worth the stomach-turning trade-offs and slim odds of success.
"I don't think there is any serious analyst of the situation in Afghanistan who believes
that the war is winnable," Laurel Miller, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said
in a
podcast last summer, after leaving her State Department stint as acting special
representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This may be why, even after thousands have died and over $100 billion has been spent, even
after the past two weeks of shocking bloodshed in
Kabul , few expect the United States to try anything other than the status
quo.
It is a strategy, as Ms. Miller described it, to "prevent the defeat of the Afghan
government and prevent military victory by the Taliban" for as long as possible.
Though far from the most promising option, it is the least humiliating. But sooner or later,
the United States and Afghanistan will find themselves facing one of Afghanistan's endgames --
whether by choice or not.
"... The post WW2 promotion process in the armed forces has produced a group at the top with a mentality that typically thinks rigorously but not imaginatively or creatively. ..."
"... These men got to their present ranks and positions by being conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of their guidance from on high. They actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board." ..."
"... If asked at the top, where military command and political interaction intersect, what policy should be they always ask for more money and to be allowed to pursue outcomes that they can understand as victory and self fulfilling with regard to their collective self image as warrior chieftains. ..."
"... In Trump's time his essential disinterest in foreign policy has led to a massive delegation of authority to Mattis and the leadership of the empire's forces. Their reaction to that is to look at their dimwitted guidance from on high (defeat IS, depose Assad and the SAG, triumph in Afghanistan) and to seek to impose their considerable available force to seek accomplishment as they see fit of this guidance in the absence of the kind of restrictions that Obama placed on them. ..."
"... Like the brass, I, too, am a graduate of all those service schools that attend success from the Basic Course to the Army War College. I will tell you again that the people at the top are not good at "the vision thing." They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers ..."
"... Academia reinforces the groupthink. The mavericks are shunned or ostracized. The only ones I have seen with some degree of going against the grain are technology entrepreneurs. ..."
"... "They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I have found this to be the case with 80 to 90% of most professions. A good memory and able to perform meticulously what they have been taught, but little thinking outside that narrow box. Often annoying, but very dangerous in this case. ..."
"... Since Afghanistan and the brass were mentioned in the editorial statement, here is an immodest question -- Where the brass have been while the opium production has been risen dramatically in Afghanistan under the US occupation? "Heroin Addiction in America Spearheaded by the US-led War on Afghanistan" by Paul Craig Roberts: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/06/heroin-addiction-america-spearheaded-us-led-war-afghanistan/ ..."
"... A simple Q: What has been the role of the CENTCOM re the racket? Who has arranged the protection for the opium production and for drug dealers? Roberts suggests that the production of opium in Afghanistan "finances the black operations of the CIA and Western intelligence agencies." -- All while Awan brothers, Alperovitch and such tinker with the US national security? ..."
"... God help the poor people of Syria. ..."
"... thanks pat... it seems like the usa has had a steady group of leaders that have no interest in the world outside of the usa, or only in so far as they can exploit it for their own interest... maybe that sums up the foreign policy of the usa at this point... you say trump is disinterested.. so all the blather from trump about 'why are we even in syria?', or 'why can't we be friends with the russia?' is just smoke up everyone's ass... ..."
"... Predictably there is always someone who says that this group is not different from all others. Unfortunately the military function demands more than the level of mediocrity found in most groups ..."
"... A lot of technology entrepreneurs--especially those active today--are stuck in their own groupthink, inflated by their sense that they are born for greatness and can do no wrong. ..."
"... The kind of grand schemes that the top people at Google, Uber, and Facebook think up to remake the universe in their own idea of "good society" are frightening. That they are cleverer (but not necessarily wiser) than the academics, borgists, or generals, I think, makes them even more dangerous. ..."
"... They [the generals] seem to have deliberately completely ignored the issues and policy positions Trump ran on as President. It isn't a case of ignorance but of wilful disregard. ..."
"... So true and as others commented this is a sad feature of the human race and all human organizations. Herd mentality ties into social learning ..."
"... Our massive cultural heritages are learned by observing and taken in as a whole. This process works within organizations as well. ..."
"... I suspect a small percentage of the human race functions differently than the majority and retains creative thinking and openness along with more emphasis on cognitive thinking than social learning but generally they always face a battle when working to change the group "consensus", i.e. Fulton's folly, scepticism on whether man would ever fly, etc. ..."
"... This is an interesting discussion. The top in organisations (civil and military) are increasingly technocrats and thinking like systems managers. They are unable to innovate because they lack the ability to think out of the box. Usually there is a leader who depends on specialists. Others (including laymen) are often excluding from the decision-making-proces. John Ralston Saul's Voltaires Bastards describes this very well. ..."
"... Because of natural selection (conformist people tend to choose similar people who resemble their own values and ways-of-thinking) organizations have a tendency to become homogeneous (especially the higher management/ranks). ..."
"... In combination with the "dumbing" of people (also of people who have a so-called good education (as described in Richard Sale's Sterile Chit-Chat ) this is a disastrous mix. ..."
"... That's true not only of the US military but of US elites in general across all of the spectra. And because that reality is at odds with the group-think of those within the various elements that make up the spectra it doesn't a hearing. Anyone who tries to bring it up risks being ejected from the group. ..."
"... "The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through 2017, according to the former U.S. ambassador to the country. This $12 billion is in addition to the billions more spent to pursue regime change in Syria in the previous three years, after war broke out in 2011." https://goo.gl/8pj5cD ..."
"... "They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I've often pondered that concept. Notice how many of radical extremist leaders were doctors, engineers and such? Narrow and deep. ..."
"... Long ago when I was a professor, I advised my students that "the law is like a pencil sharpener, it sharpens the mind by narrowing it." I tried to encourage them to "think backwards". ..."
"... Col, I think it might help people to think of "the Borg" - as you have defined & applied it - in a broader context. It struck me particularly as you ID'd the launching of our modern military group-think / careerism behavior coming from the watershed of industrialized scale & processes that came out of WWII. ..."
"... We note parallel themes in all significant sectors of our civilization. The ever-expanding security state, the many men in Gray Flannel Suits that inhabit corporate culture, Finance & Banking & Big Health scaling ever larger - all processes aimed to slice the salami thinner & quicker, to the point where meat is moot ... and so it goes. ..."
"... I just finished reading Command & Control (about nuclear weapons policy, systems design & accidents). I am amazed we've made it this far. ..."
The Borgist foreign policy of the administration has little to do with the generals. To comprehend the generals one must understand their collective mentality and the process that raised them on high as a collective
of their own. The post WW2 promotion process in the armed forces has produced a group at the top with a mentality that typically
thinks rigorously but not imaginatively or creatively.
These men got to their present ranks and positions by being conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of
their guidance from on high. They actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board."
If asked at the top, where military command and political interaction intersect, what policy should be they always ask for
more money and to be allowed to pursue outcomes that they can understand as victory and self fulfilling with regard to their collective
self image as warrior chieftains.
In Obama's time they were asked what policy should be in Afghanistan and persuaded him to reinforce their dreams in Afghanistan
no matter how unlikely it always was that a unified Western oriented nation could be made out of a collection of disparate mutually
alien peoples.
In Trump's time his essential disinterest in foreign policy has led to a massive delegation of authority to Mattis and the
leadership of the empire's forces. Their reaction to that is to look at their dimwitted guidance from on high (defeat IS, depose
Assad and the SAG, triumph in Afghanistan) and to seek to impose their considerable available force to seek accomplishment as they
see fit of this guidance in the absence of the kind of restrictions that Obama placed on them.
Like the brass, I, too, am a graduate of all those service schools that attend success from the Basic Course to the Army War
College. I will tell you again that the people at the top are not good at "the vision thing." They are not stupid at all but they
are a collective of narrow thinkers. pl
IMO, this conformism pervades all institutions. I saw when I worked in banking and finance many moons ago how moving up the
ranks in any large organization meant you didn't rock the boat and you conformed to the prevailing groupthink. Even nutty ideas
became respectable because they were expedient.
Academia reinforces the groupthink. The mavericks are shunned or ostracized. The only ones I have seen with some degree of
going against the grain are technology entrepreneurs.
You remind me of an old rumination by Thomas Ricks:
Take the example of General George Casey. According to David Cloud and Greg Jaffe's book Four Stars, General Casey, upon learning
of his assignment to command U.S. forces in Iraq, received a book from the Army Chief of Staff. The book Counterinsurgency Lessons
Learned from Malaya and Vietnam was the first book he ever read about guerilla warfare." This is a damning indictment of the degree
of mental preparation for combat by a general. The Army's reward for such lack of preparation: two more four star assignments.
"They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers."
I have found this to be the case with 80 to 90% of most professions. A good memory and able to perform meticulously what they
have been taught, but little thinking outside that narrow box. Often annoying, but very dangerous in this case.
Since Afghanistan and the brass were mentioned in the editorial statement, here is an immodest question -- Where the brass have
been while the opium production has been risen dramatically in Afghanistan under the US occupation? "Heroin Addiction in America
Spearheaded by the US-led War on Afghanistan" by Paul Craig Roberts:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/06/heroin-addiction-america-spearheaded-us-led-war-afghanistan/
" in 2000-2001
the Taliban government –with the support of the United Nations (UNODC) – implemented a successful ban on poppy cultivation. Opium
production which is used to produce grade 4 heroin and its derivatives declined by more than 90 per cent in 2001. The production
of opium in 2001 was of the order of a meager 185 tons. It is worth noting that the UNODC congratulated the Taliban Government
for its successful opium eradication program. The Taliban government had contributed to literally destabilizing the multibillion
dollar Worldwide trade in heroin.
In 2017, the production of opium in Afghanistan under US military occupation reached 9000 metric tons. The production of opium
in Afghanistan registered a 49 fold increase since Washington's invasion. Afghanistan under US military occupation produces approximately
90% of the World's illegal supply of opium which is used to produce heroin. Who owns the airplanes and ships that transport heroin
from Afghanistan to the US? Who gets the profits?"
---A simple Q: What has been the role of the CENTCOM re the racket? Who has arranged the protection for the opium production
and for drug dealers? Roberts suggests that the production of opium in Afghanistan "finances the black operations of the CIA and
Western intelligence agencies." -- All while Awan brothers, Alperovitch and such tinker with the US national security?
There needs to be a 're-education' of the top, all of them need to be required to attend Green Beret think-school, in other
words they need to be forced to think outside the box, and to to think on their feet. They need to understand fluid situations
where things change at the drop of a hat, be able to dance the two-step and waltz at the same time. In other words they need to
be able to walk and chew gum and not trip over their shoe-laces.
By no means are they stupid, but you hit the nail on the head when you said 'narrow thinkers'. Their collective hive mentality
that has developed is not a good thing.
thanks pat... it seems like the usa has had a steady group of leaders that have no interest in the world outside of the usa, or
only in so far as they can exploit it for their own interest... maybe that sums up the foreign policy of the usa at this point...
you say trump is disinterested.. so all the blather from trump about 'why are we even in syria?', or 'why can't we be friends
with the russia?' is just smoke up everyone's ass...
i like what you said here "conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of their guidance from on high. They
actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board." - that strikes me as very true
- conformist group thinkers... the world needs less of these types and more actual leaders who have a vision for something out
of the box and not always on board... i thought for a while trump might fill this bill, but no such luck by the looks of it now..
As a young person in eighth grade, I learned about the "domino theory" in regard to attempts to slow the spread of communism.
Then my generation was, in a sense, fractured around the raging battles for and against our involvement in Vietnam.
I won't express my own opinion on that. But I mention it because it seems to be a type of "vision thing."
So, now I ask, what would be your vision for the Syrian situation?
Westmoreland certainly, Macarthur certainly not. This all started with the "industrialization" of the armed forces in WW2.
we never recovered the sense of profession as opposed to occupation after the massive expansion and retention of so many placeholders.
a whole new race of Walmart manager arose and persists. pl
The idea of the Domino Theory came from academia, not the generals of that time. They resisted the idea of a war in east Asia
until simply ordered into it by LBJ. After that their instinct for acting according to guidance kicked in and they became committed
to the task. Syria? Do you think I should write you an essay on that? SST has a large archive and a search machine. pl
I am talking about flag officers at present, not those beneath them from the mass of whom they emerge. There are exceptions.
Martin Dempsey may have been one such. The system creates such people at the top. pl
Your usual animosity for non-left wing authority is showing. A commander like the CENTCOM theater commander (look it up) operates
within guidance from Washington, broad guidance. Normally this is the president's guidance as developed in the NSC process. Some
presidents like Obama and LBJ intervene selectively and directly in the execution of that guidance. Obama had a "kill list" of
jihadis suggested by the IC and condemned by him to die in the GWOT. He approved individual missions against them. LBJ picked
individual air targets in NVN. Commanders in the field do not like that . They think that freedom of action within their guidance
should be accorded them. This CinC has not been interested thus far in the details and have given the whole military chain of
command wide discretion to carry out their guidance. pl
"I am not sure that I understand what makes a Borgist different from a military conformist." The Borg and the military leaders
are not of the same tribe. they are two different collectives who in the main dislike and distrust each other. pl
Anna. Their guidance does not include a high priority for eradicating the opium trade. Their guidance has to do with defeating
the jihadis and building up the central government. pl
Predictably there is always someone who says that this group is not different from all others. Unfortunately the military function
demands more than the level of mediocrity found in most groups. pl
Trump would like to better relations with Russia but that is pretty much the limit of his attention to foreign affairs
at any level more sophisticated than expecting deference. He is firmly focused on the economy and base solidifying issues like
immigration. pl
The medical profession comes to mind. GP's and specialists. Many of those working at the leading edge of research seem much wider
thinking and are not locked into the small box of what they have been taught.
Combat Applications Group and SEALS don't even begin to compare, they're not in the same league as 'real deal' GBs. The GBs are
thinkers as well as doers, whereas Combat Applications Group and SEALs all they know is breach and clear, breach and clear.
There is more to life than breach and clear. Having worked with all in one manner or another, I'll take GBs any day hands down. It makes a difference when the brain is
engaged instead of just the heel.
A lot of technology entrepreneurs--especially those active today--are stuck in their own groupthink, inflated by their sense that
they are born for greatness and can do no wrong.
The kind of grand schemes that the top people at Google, Uber, and Facebook think
up to remake the universe in their own idea of "good society" are frightening. That they are cleverer (but not necessarily wiser)
than the academics, borgists, or generals, I think, makes them even more dangerous.
They are indeed "narrow thinkers", but I think the problem runs deeper. They seem to be stuck in the rut of a past era. When
the US was indeed the paramount military power on the globe, and the US military reigned supreme. They can't seem to accept the
reality of the world as it is now.
Of course, these policies ensure that they continue to be well-funded, even if the US is bankrupting itself in the process.
They [the generals] seem to have deliberately completely ignored the issues and policy positions Trump ran on as President. It isn't a case of
ignorance but of wilful disregard.
I've been reading this blog for some time. My question was facetious and written with the understanding of your statement about
the generals not having a good grasp of "the vision thing" on their own.
So true and as others commented this is a sad feature of the human race and all human organizations. Herd mentality ties into
social learning. Chimps are on average more creative and have better short term memory than humans. We gave up some short term
memory in order to be able to learn quickly by mimicking. If shown how to open a puzzle box but also shown unnecessary extra steps
a chimp will ignore the empty steps and open the box with only the required steps. A human will copy what they saw exactly performing
the extra steps as if they have some unknown value to the process. Our massive cultural heritages are learned by observing and
taken in as a whole. This process works within organizations as well.
I suspect a small percentage of the human race functions differently than the majority and retains creative thinking and openness
along with more emphasis on cognitive thinking than social learning but generally they always face a battle when working to change
the group "consensus", i.e. Fulton's folly, scepticism on whether man would ever fly, etc.
One nice feature of the internet allows creative thinkers to connect and watch the idiocy of the world unfold around us.
"A natural desire to be part of the 'in crowd' could damage our ability to make the right decisions, a new study has shown."
The military by definition is a rigid hierarchical structure.
It could not function as a collection of individuals.
This society can only breed conforming narrow leaders as an "individual" would leave or be forced out.
That part of our brain responsible for the desire to be part of the 'in crowd' may affect our decision-making process, but it
is also the reason we keep chimps in zoos and not the other way around. Or, to put it another way; if chimps had invented Facebook,
I might consider them more creative than us.
This is an interesting discussion. The top in organisations (civil and military) are increasingly technocrats and thinking like systems managers. They are unable
to innovate because they lack the ability to think out of the box.
Usually there is a leader who depends on specialists. Others (including laymen) are often excluding from the decision-making-proces.
John Ralston Saul's Voltaires Bastards
describes this very well.
Because of natural selection (conformist people tend to choose similar people who resemble their own values and ways-of-thinking)
organizations have a tendency to become homogeneous (especially the higher management/ranks).
In combination with the "dumbing" of people (also of people who have a so-called good education (as described in Richard Sale's
Sterile Chit-Chat ) this is a disastrous
mix.
Homogeneity is the main culprit. A specialists tends to try to solve problems with the same knowledge-set that created these.
Not all (parts of) organizations and people suffer this fate. Innovations are usually done by laymen and not by specialists.
The organizations are often heterogeneous and the people a-typical and/or eccentric.
(mainly the analytical parts of ) intelligence organizations and investment banks are like that if they are worth anything.
Very heterogeneous with a lot of a-typical people. I think Green Berets are also like that. An open mind and genuine interest
in others (cultures, way of thinking, religion etc) is essential to understand and to perform and also to prevent costly mistakes
(in silver and/or blood).
It is possible to create firewalls against tunnel-vision. The
Jester performed such a role. Also think of the
Emperors New Clothes . The current trend
of people with limited vision and creativity prevents this. Criticism is punished with a lack of promotion, job-loss or even jail
(whistle-blowers)
IMO this is why up to a certain rank (colonel or middle management) a certain amount of creativity or alternative thinking
is allowed, but conformity is essential to rise higher.
I was very interested in the Colonel's remark on the foreign background of the GB in Vietnam. If you would like to expand on this
I would be much obliged? IMO GB are an example of a smart, learning, organization (in deed and not only in word as so many say
of themselves, but who usually are at best mediocre)
Would you then say that a rising military officer who does have the vision thing faces career impediments? If so, would you
say that the vision thing is lost (if it ever was there) at the highest ranks? In any case, the existence of even a few at the top, like Matthis or Shinseki is a blessing.
"When the US was indeed the paramount military power on the globe, and the US military reigned supreme. They can't seem to
accept the reality of the world as it is now."
That's true not only of the US military but of US elites in general across all of the spectra. And because that reality is at
odds with the group-think of those within the various elements that make up the spectra it doesn't a hearing. Anyone who tries
to bring it up risks being ejected from the group.
I forget an important part. I really miss an edit-button. Comment-boxes are like looking at something through a straw. Its easy
to miss the overview.
Innovations and significant new developments are usually made by laymen. IMO mainly because they have a fresh perspective without
being bothered by the (mainstream) knowledge that dominates an area of expertise.
By excluding the laymen errors will continue to be repeated. This can be avoided by using development/decision-making frameworks,
but these tend to become dogma (and thus become part of the problem)
Much better is allowing laymen and allowing a-typical people. Then listen to them carefully. Less rigid flexible and very valuable.
Apparently, according to the last US ambassador to Syria Mr. Ford, from 2014-17 US has spent 12 Billion on Regime change in Syria.
IMO, combinedly Iran and Russia so far, have spent far less in Syria than 12 billion by US alone, not considering the rest of
her so called coalition. This is a war of attrition, and US operations in wars, are usually far more expensive and longer than
anybody else's.
"The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through
2017, according to the former U.S. ambassador to the country.
This $12 billion is in addition to the billions more spent to pursue regime change in Syria in the previous three years, after
war broke out in 2011." https://goo.gl/8pj5cD
It may "demand" it - but does it get it? Soldiers are just as human as everyone else.
I'm reminded of the staff sergeant with the sagging beer belly who informed me, "Stand up straight and look like a soldier..."
Or the First Sergeant who was so hung over one morning at inspection that he couldn't remember which direction he was going down
the hall to the next room to be inspected. I'm sure you have your own stories of less than competence.
It's a question of intelligence and imagination. And frankly, I don't see the military in any country receiving the "best and
brightest" of that country's population, by definition. The fact that someone is patriotic enough to enter the military over a
civilian occupation doesn't make them more intelligent or imaginative than the people who decided on the civilian occupation.
Granted, if you fail at accounting, you don't usually die. Death tends to focus the mind, as they say. Nonetheless, we're not
talking about the grunts at the level who actually die, still less the relatively limited number of Special Forces. We're talking
about the officers and staff at the levels who don't usually die in war - except maybe at their defeat - i.e., most officers over
the level of captain.
One can hardly look at this officer crowd in the Pentagon and CENTCOM and say that their personal death concentrates their
mind. They are in virtually no danger of that. Only career death faces them - with a nice transition to the board of General Dynamics
at ten times the salary.
All in all, I'd have to agree that the military isn't much better at being competent - at many levels above the obvious group
of hyper-trained Special Forces - any more than any other profession.
That is well put.most important is the grading system that is designed to fix a person to a particular slot thereby limiting his
ability to think "outside the box" and consider the many variables that exist in one particular instant.
Creative thinking allows
you to see beyond the storm clouds ahead and realize that the connectedness of different realities both the visible and invisible.
For
instance the picture of the 2 pairs of korean skaters in the news tells an interesting story on many levels. Some will judge them
on their grade of proffiency, while others will see a dance of strategy between 2 foes and a few will know the results in advance
and plan accordingly
"They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I've often pondered that concept. Notice how many of radical extremist leaders were doctors, engineers and such? Narrow and
deep. STEM is enormously useful to us but seems to be a risky when implanted in shallow earth.
These narrow "but deep" thinkers were unable to grasp the nature of the Iraq War for the first couple of years. They thought
of it as a rear area security problem, a combat in cities problem, anything but a popular rebellion based on xenophobia and anti-colonialism
The IED problem? They spent several billion dollars on trying to find a technology fix and never succeeded. I know because they
kept asking me to explain the war to them and then could not understand the answers which were outside their narrow thought. pl
War College selectees, the national board selected creme de la creme test out as 50% SJs (conformists lacking vision) in Myers-Briggs
terms and about 15% NTs (intellectuals). To survive and move upward in a system dominated by SJs, the NTs must pretend to be what
they are not. A few succeed. I do not think Mattis is an intellectual merely because he has read a lot. pl
Long ago when I was a professor, I advised my students that "the law is like a pencil sharpener, it sharpens the mind by narrowing
it."
I tried to encourage them to "think backwards".
My favorite example was a Japanese fisherman who recovered valuable ancient Chinese
pottery. Everyone knew where an ancient ship had sunk, but the water was too deep to dive down to the wreck. And everyone knew
the cargo included these valuable vases. And the fisherman was the first to figure out how to recover them. He attached a line
to an octopus, and lowered it in the area, waited awhile, and pulled it up. Low and behold, the octopus had hidden in an ancient
Chinese vase. The fisherman was familiar with trapping octopuses, by lowering a ceramic pot (called "takosubo") into the ocean,
waiting awhile, then raising the vase with octopus inside. His brilliance was to think backwards, and use an octopus to catch
a vase.
the original GBS were recruited in the 50s to serve in the OSS role with foreign guerrillas behind Soviet lines in th event
of war in Europe. Aaron Bank, the founder, recruited several hundred experienced foreign soldiers from the likely countries who
wanted to become American. By the time we were in VN these men were a small fraction of GBs but important for their expertise
and professionalism. pl
Col, I think it might help people to think of "the Borg" - as you have defined & applied it - in a broader context. It struck
me particularly as you ID'd the launching of our modern military group-think / careerism behavior coming from the watershed of
industrialized scale & processes that came out of WWII.
We note parallel themes in all significant sectors of our civilization.
The ever-expanding security state, the many men in Gray Flannel Suits that inhabit corporate culture, Finance & Banking & Big
Health scaling ever larger - all processes aimed to slice the salami thinner & quicker, to the point where meat is moot ... and
so it goes.
I note many Borgs... Borgism if you will. An organizational behavior that has emerged out of human nature having difficulty adapting
to rapidly accelerating complexity that is just too hard to apprehend in a few generations. If (as many commenters on STT seem
to...) one wishes to view this in an ideological or spiritual framework only, they may overlook an important truth - that what
we are experiencing is a Battle Among Borgs for control over their own space & domination over the other Borgs. How else would
we expect any competitive, powerful interest group to act?
In gov & industry these days, we observe some pretty wild outliers... attached to some wild outcomes. Thus the boring behavior
of our political industries bringing forth Trump, our promethean technology sector yielding a Musk (& yes, a Zuckerberg).
I find it hard to take very seriously analysts that define their perspective based primarily upon their superior ideals & opposition
to others. Isn't every person, every tribe, team or enterprise a borglet-in-becoming? Everybody Wants to Rule the World ... &
Everybody Must Get Stoned... messages about how we are grappling with complexity in our times. I just finished reading Command
& Control (about nuclear weapons policy, systems design & accidents). I am amazed we've made it this far.
Unfortunately, I would
not be amazed if reckless, feckless leaders changed the status quo. I was particularly alarmed hearing Trump in his projection
mode; "I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity, without a major event where people pull together,
that's hard to do.
But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing." It
strikes me that he could be exceptionally willing to risk a Major Event if he felt a form of unity, or self-preservation, was
in the offing. I pray (& I do not pray often or easily) that the Generals you have described have enough heart & guts to honor
their oath at its most profound level in the event of an Event.
As a time traveler from another age, I can only say that for me it means devotion to a set of mores peculiar to a particular
profession as opposed to an occupation. pl
Another springs to mind: James Lovelock (of Gaia hypothesis fame) was once part of the NASA team building the first probe to
go to Mars to look for signs of life. Lovelock didn't make any friends when he told NASA they were wasting their time, there was
none. When asked how he could be so sure, he explained that the composition of the Martian atmosphere made it impossible. "But
Martian life may be able to survive under different conditions" was the retort. Lovelock then went on to explain his view that
the evolution of microbial life determined the atmospheric composition on Earth, so should be expected to do the same if
life had evolved on Mars. Brilliant backwards thinking which ought to have earned him the Nobel prize IMHO (for Gaia). Lovelock,
a classic cross-disciplinary scientist, can't be rewarded with such a box-categorized honor, as his idea doesn't fit well into
any one.
Another example of cross-disciplinary brilliance was Bitcoin, which has as much to do with its creator's deep knowledge of
Anthropology (why people invented & use money) as his expertise in both Economics and Computer Science.
This is they key to creative thinking in my view - familiarity with different fields yields deeper insights.
"... The post WW2 promotion process in the armed forces has produced a group at the top with a mentality that typically thinks rigorously but not imaginatively or creatively. ..."
"... These men got to their present ranks and positions by being conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of their guidance from on high. They actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board." ..."
"... If asked at the top, where military command and political interaction intersect, what policy should be they always ask for more money and to be allowed to pursue outcomes that they can understand as victory and self fulfilling with regard to their collective self image as warrior chieftains. ..."
"... In Trump's time his essential disinterest in foreign policy has led to a massive delegation of authority to Mattis and the leadership of the empire's forces. Their reaction to that is to look at their dimwitted guidance from on high (defeat IS, depose Assad and the SAG, triumph in Afghanistan) and to seek to impose their considerable available force to seek accomplishment as they see fit of this guidance in the absence of the kind of restrictions that Obama placed on them. ..."
"... Like the brass, I, too, am a graduate of all those service schools that attend success from the Basic Course to the Army War College. I will tell you again that the people at the top are not good at "the vision thing." They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers ..."
"... Academia reinforces the groupthink. The mavericks are shunned or ostracized. The only ones I have seen with some degree of going against the grain are technology entrepreneurs. ..."
"... "They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I have found this to be the case with 80 to 90% of most professions. A good memory and able to perform meticulously what they have been taught, but little thinking outside that narrow box. Often annoying, but very dangerous in this case. ..."
"... Since Afghanistan and the brass were mentioned in the editorial statement, here is an immodest question -- Where the brass have been while the opium production has been risen dramatically in Afghanistan under the US occupation? "Heroin Addiction in America Spearheaded by the US-led War on Afghanistan" by Paul Craig Roberts: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/06/heroin-addiction-america-spearheaded-us-led-war-afghanistan/ ..."
"... A simple Q: What has been the role of the CENTCOM re the racket? Who has arranged the protection for the opium production and for drug dealers? Roberts suggests that the production of opium in Afghanistan "finances the black operations of the CIA and Western intelligence agencies." -- All while Awan brothers, Alperovitch and such tinker with the US national security? ..."
"... God help the poor people of Syria. ..."
"... thanks pat... it seems like the usa has had a steady group of leaders that have no interest in the world outside of the usa, or only in so far as they can exploit it for their own interest... maybe that sums up the foreign policy of the usa at this point... you say trump is disinterested.. so all the blather from trump about 'why are we even in syria?', or 'why can't we be friends with the russia?' is just smoke up everyone's ass... ..."
"... Predictably there is always someone who says that this group is not different from all others. Unfortunately the military function demands more than the level of mediocrity found in most groups ..."
"... A lot of technology entrepreneurs--especially those active today--are stuck in their own groupthink, inflated by their sense that they are born for greatness and can do no wrong. ..."
"... The kind of grand schemes that the top people at Google, Uber, and Facebook think up to remake the universe in their own idea of "good society" are frightening. That they are cleverer (but not necessarily wiser) than the academics, borgists, or generals, I think, makes them even more dangerous. ..."
"... They [the generals] seem to have deliberately completely ignored the issues and policy positions Trump ran on as President. It isn't a case of ignorance but of wilful disregard. ..."
"... So true and as others commented this is a sad feature of the human race and all human organizations. Herd mentality ties into social learning ..."
"... Our massive cultural heritages are learned by observing and taken in as a whole. This process works within organizations as well. ..."
"... I suspect a small percentage of the human race functions differently than the majority and retains creative thinking and openness along with more emphasis on cognitive thinking than social learning but generally they always face a battle when working to change the group "consensus", i.e. Fulton's folly, scepticism on whether man would ever fly, etc. ..."
"... This is an interesting discussion. The top in organisations (civil and military) are increasingly technocrats and thinking like systems managers. They are unable to innovate because they lack the ability to think out of the box. Usually there is a leader who depends on specialists. Others (including laymen) are often excluding from the decision-making-proces. John Ralston Saul's Voltaires Bastards describes this very well. ..."
"... Because of natural selection (conformist people tend to choose similar people who resemble their own values and ways-of-thinking) organizations have a tendency to become homogeneous (especially the higher management/ranks). ..."
"... In combination with the "dumbing" of people (also of people who have a so-called good education (as described in Richard Sale's Sterile Chit-Chat ) this is a disastrous mix. ..."
"... That's true not only of the US military but of US elites in general across all of the spectra. And because that reality is at odds with the group-think of those within the various elements that make up the spectra it doesn't a hearing. Anyone who tries to bring it up risks being ejected from the group. ..."
"... "The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through 2017, according to the former U.S. ambassador to the country. This $12 billion is in addition to the billions more spent to pursue regime change in Syria in the previous three years, after war broke out in 2011." https://goo.gl/8pj5cD ..."
"... "They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I've often pondered that concept. Notice how many of radical extremist leaders were doctors, engineers and such? Narrow and deep. ..."
"... Long ago when I was a professor, I advised my students that "the law is like a pencil sharpener, it sharpens the mind by narrowing it." I tried to encourage them to "think backwards". ..."
"... Col, I think it might help people to think of "the Borg" - as you have defined & applied it - in a broader context. It struck me particularly as you ID'd the launching of our modern military group-think / careerism behavior coming from the watershed of industrialized scale & processes that came out of WWII. ..."
"... We note parallel themes in all significant sectors of our civilization. The ever-expanding security state, the many men in Gray Flannel Suits that inhabit corporate culture, Finance & Banking & Big Health scaling ever larger - all processes aimed to slice the salami thinner & quicker, to the point where meat is moot ... and so it goes. ..."
"... I just finished reading Command & Control (about nuclear weapons policy, systems design & accidents). I am amazed we've made it this far. ..."
The Borgist foreign policy of the administration has little to do with the generals. To comprehend the generals one must understand their collective mentality and the process that raised them on high as a collective
of their own. The post WW2 promotion process in the armed forces has produced a group at the top with a mentality that typically
thinks rigorously but not imaginatively or creatively.
These men got to their present ranks and positions by being conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of
their guidance from on high. They actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board."
If asked at the top, where military command and political interaction intersect, what policy should be they always ask for
more money and to be allowed to pursue outcomes that they can understand as victory and self fulfilling with regard to their collective
self image as warrior chieftains.
In Obama's time they were asked what policy should be in Afghanistan and persuaded him to reinforce their dreams in Afghanistan
no matter how unlikely it always was that a unified Western oriented nation could be made out of a collection of disparate mutually
alien peoples.
In Trump's time his essential disinterest in foreign policy has led to a massive delegation of authority to Mattis and the
leadership of the empire's forces. Their reaction to that is to look at their dimwitted guidance from on high (defeat IS, depose
Assad and the SAG, triumph in Afghanistan) and to seek to impose their considerable available force to seek accomplishment as they
see fit of this guidance in the absence of the kind of restrictions that Obama placed on them.
Like the brass, I, too, am a graduate of all those service schools that attend success from the Basic Course to the Army War
College. I will tell you again that the people at the top are not good at "the vision thing." They are not stupid at all but they
are a collective of narrow thinkers. pl
IMO, this conformism pervades all institutions. I saw when I worked in banking and finance many moons ago how moving up the
ranks in any large organization meant you didn't rock the boat and you conformed to the prevailing groupthink. Even nutty ideas
became respectable because they were expedient.
Academia reinforces the groupthink. The mavericks are shunned or ostracized. The only ones I have seen with some degree of
going against the grain are technology entrepreneurs.
You remind me of an old rumination by Thomas Ricks:
Take the example of General George Casey. According to David Cloud and Greg Jaffe's book Four Stars, General Casey, upon learning
of his assignment to command U.S. forces in Iraq, received a book from the Army Chief of Staff. The book Counterinsurgency Lessons
Learned from Malaya and Vietnam was the first book he ever read about guerilla warfare." This is a damning indictment of the degree
of mental preparation for combat by a general. The Army's reward for such lack of preparation: two more four star assignments.
"They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers."
I have found this to be the case with 80 to 90% of most professions. A good memory and able to perform meticulously what they
have been taught, but little thinking outside that narrow box. Often annoying, but very dangerous in this case.
Since Afghanistan and the brass were mentioned in the editorial statement, here is an immodest question -- Where the brass have
been while the opium production has been risen dramatically in Afghanistan under the US occupation? "Heroin Addiction in America
Spearheaded by the US-led War on Afghanistan" by Paul Craig Roberts:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/06/heroin-addiction-america-spearheaded-us-led-war-afghanistan/
" in 2000-2001
the Taliban government –with the support of the United Nations (UNODC) – implemented a successful ban on poppy cultivation. Opium
production which is used to produce grade 4 heroin and its derivatives declined by more than 90 per cent in 2001. The production
of opium in 2001 was of the order of a meager 185 tons. It is worth noting that the UNODC congratulated the Taliban Government
for its successful opium eradication program. The Taliban government had contributed to literally destabilizing the multibillion
dollar Worldwide trade in heroin.
In 2017, the production of opium in Afghanistan under US military occupation reached 9000 metric tons. The production of opium
in Afghanistan registered a 49 fold increase since Washington's invasion. Afghanistan under US military occupation produces approximately
90% of the World's illegal supply of opium which is used to produce heroin. Who owns the airplanes and ships that transport heroin
from Afghanistan to the US? Who gets the profits?"
---A simple Q: What has been the role of the CENTCOM re the racket? Who has arranged the protection for the opium production
and for drug dealers? Roberts suggests that the production of opium in Afghanistan "finances the black operations of the CIA and
Western intelligence agencies." -- All while Awan brothers, Alperovitch and such tinker with the US national security?
There needs to be a 're-education' of the top, all of them need to be required to attend Green Beret think-school, in other
words they need to be forced to think outside the box, and to to think on their feet. They need to understand fluid situations
where things change at the drop of a hat, be able to dance the two-step and waltz at the same time. In other words they need to
be able to walk and chew gum and not trip over their shoe-laces.
By no means are they stupid, but you hit the nail on the head when you said 'narrow thinkers'. Their collective hive mentality
that has developed is not a good thing.
thanks pat... it seems like the usa has had a steady group of leaders that have no interest in the world outside of the usa, or
only in so far as they can exploit it for their own interest... maybe that sums up the foreign policy of the usa at this point...
you say trump is disinterested.. so all the blather from trump about 'why are we even in syria?', or 'why can't we be friends
with the russia?' is just smoke up everyone's ass...
i like what you said here "conformist group thinkers who do not stray outside the "box" of their guidance from on high. They
actually have scheduled conference calls among themselves to make sure everyone is "on board." - that strikes me as very true
- conformist group thinkers... the world needs less of these types and more actual leaders who have a vision for something out
of the box and not always on board... i thought for a while trump might fill this bill, but no such luck by the looks of it now..
As a young person in eighth grade, I learned about the "domino theory" in regard to attempts to slow the spread of communism.
Then my generation was, in a sense, fractured around the raging battles for and against our involvement in Vietnam.
I won't express my own opinion on that. But I mention it because it seems to be a type of "vision thing."
So, now I ask, what would be your vision for the Syrian situation?
Westmoreland certainly, Macarthur certainly not. This all started with the "industrialization" of the armed forces in WW2.
we never recovered the sense of profession as opposed to occupation after the massive expansion and retention of so many placeholders.
a whole new race of Walmart manager arose and persists. pl
The idea of the Domino Theory came from academia, not the generals of that time. They resisted the idea of a war in east Asia
until simply ordered into it by LBJ. After that their instinct for acting according to guidance kicked in and they became committed
to the task. Syria? Do you think I should write you an essay on that? SST has a large archive and a search machine. pl
I am talking about flag officers at present, not those beneath them from the mass of whom they emerge. There are exceptions.
Martin Dempsey may have been one such. The system creates such people at the top. pl
Your usual animosity for non-left wing authority is showing. A commander like the CENTCOM theater commander (look it up) operates
within guidance from Washington, broad guidance. Normally this is the president's guidance as developed in the NSC process. Some
presidents like Obama and LBJ intervene selectively and directly in the execution of that guidance. Obama had a "kill list" of
jihadis suggested by the IC and condemned by him to die in the GWOT. He approved individual missions against them. LBJ picked
individual air targets in NVN. Commanders in the field do not like that . They think that freedom of action within their guidance
should be accorded them. This CinC has not been interested thus far in the details and have given the whole military chain of
command wide discretion to carry out their guidance. pl
"I am not sure that I understand what makes a Borgist different from a military conformist." The Borg and the military leaders
are not of the same tribe. they are two different collectives who in the main dislike and distrust each other. pl
Anna. Their guidance does not include a high priority for eradicating the opium trade. Their guidance has to do with defeating
the jihadis and building up the central government. pl
Predictably there is always someone who says that this group is not different from all others. Unfortunately the military function
demands more than the level of mediocrity found in most groups. pl
Trump would like to better relations with Russia but that is pretty much the limit of his attention to foreign affairs
at any level more sophisticated than expecting deference. He is firmly focused on the economy and base solidifying issues like
immigration. pl
The medical profession comes to mind. GP's and specialists. Many of those working at the leading edge of research seem much wider
thinking and are not locked into the small box of what they have been taught.
Combat Applications Group and SEALS don't even begin to compare, they're not in the same league as 'real deal' GBs. The GBs are
thinkers as well as doers, whereas Combat Applications Group and SEALs all they know is breach and clear, breach and clear.
There is more to life than breach and clear. Having worked with all in one manner or another, I'll take GBs any day hands down. It makes a difference when the brain is
engaged instead of just the heel.
A lot of technology entrepreneurs--especially those active today--are stuck in their own groupthink, inflated by their sense that
they are born for greatness and can do no wrong.
The kind of grand schemes that the top people at Google, Uber, and Facebook think
up to remake the universe in their own idea of "good society" are frightening. That they are cleverer (but not necessarily wiser)
than the academics, borgists, or generals, I think, makes them even more dangerous.
They are indeed "narrow thinkers", but I think the problem runs deeper. They seem to be stuck in the rut of a past era. When
the US was indeed the paramount military power on the globe, and the US military reigned supreme. They can't seem to accept the
reality of the world as it is now.
Of course, these policies ensure that they continue to be well-funded, even if the US is bankrupting itself in the process.
They [the generals] seem to have deliberately completely ignored the issues and policy positions Trump ran on as President. It isn't a case of
ignorance but of wilful disregard.
I've been reading this blog for some time. My question was facetious and written with the understanding of your statement about
the generals not having a good grasp of "the vision thing" on their own.
So true and as others commented this is a sad feature of the human race and all human organizations. Herd mentality ties into
social learning. Chimps are on average more creative and have better short term memory than humans. We gave up some short term
memory in order to be able to learn quickly by mimicking. If shown how to open a puzzle box but also shown unnecessary extra steps
a chimp will ignore the empty steps and open the box with only the required steps. A human will copy what they saw exactly performing
the extra steps as if they have some unknown value to the process. Our massive cultural heritages are learned by observing and
taken in as a whole. This process works within organizations as well.
I suspect a small percentage of the human race functions differently than the majority and retains creative thinking and openness
along with more emphasis on cognitive thinking than social learning but generally they always face a battle when working to change
the group "consensus", i.e. Fulton's folly, scepticism on whether man would ever fly, etc.
One nice feature of the internet allows creative thinkers to connect and watch the idiocy of the world unfold around us.
"A natural desire to be part of the 'in crowd' could damage our ability to make the right decisions, a new study has shown."
The military by definition is a rigid hierarchical structure.
It could not function as a collection of individuals.
This society can only breed conforming narrow leaders as an "individual" would leave or be forced out.
That part of our brain responsible for the desire to be part of the 'in crowd' may affect our decision-making process, but it
is also the reason we keep chimps in zoos and not the other way around. Or, to put it another way; if chimps had invented Facebook,
I might consider them more creative than us.
This is an interesting discussion. The top in organisations (civil and military) are increasingly technocrats and thinking like systems managers. They are unable
to innovate because they lack the ability to think out of the box.
Usually there is a leader who depends on specialists. Others (including laymen) are often excluding from the decision-making-proces.
John Ralston Saul's Voltaires Bastards
describes this very well.
Because of natural selection (conformist people tend to choose similar people who resemble their own values and ways-of-thinking)
organizations have a tendency to become homogeneous (especially the higher management/ranks).
In combination with the "dumbing" of people (also of people who have a so-called good education (as described in Richard Sale's
Sterile Chit-Chat ) this is a disastrous
mix.
Homogeneity is the main culprit. A specialists tends to try to solve problems with the same knowledge-set that created these.
Not all (parts of) organizations and people suffer this fate. Innovations are usually done by laymen and not by specialists.
The organizations are often heterogeneous and the people a-typical and/or eccentric.
(mainly the analytical parts of ) intelligence organizations and investment banks are like that if they are worth anything.
Very heterogeneous with a lot of a-typical people. I think Green Berets are also like that. An open mind and genuine interest
in others (cultures, way of thinking, religion etc) is essential to understand and to perform and also to prevent costly mistakes
(in silver and/or blood).
It is possible to create firewalls against tunnel-vision. The
Jester performed such a role. Also think of the
Emperors New Clothes . The current trend
of people with limited vision and creativity prevents this. Criticism is punished with a lack of promotion, job-loss or even jail
(whistle-blowers)
IMO this is why up to a certain rank (colonel or middle management) a certain amount of creativity or alternative thinking
is allowed, but conformity is essential to rise higher.
I was very interested in the Colonel's remark on the foreign background of the GB in Vietnam. If you would like to expand on this
I would be much obliged? IMO GB are an example of a smart, learning, organization (in deed and not only in word as so many say
of themselves, but who usually are at best mediocre)
Would you then say that a rising military officer who does have the vision thing faces career impediments? If so, would you
say that the vision thing is lost (if it ever was there) at the highest ranks? In any case, the existence of even a few at the top, like Matthis or Shinseki is a blessing.
"When the US was indeed the paramount military power on the globe, and the US military reigned supreme. They can't seem to
accept the reality of the world as it is now."
That's true not only of the US military but of US elites in general across all of the spectra. And because that reality is at
odds with the group-think of those within the various elements that make up the spectra it doesn't a hearing. Anyone who tries
to bring it up risks being ejected from the group.
I forget an important part. I really miss an edit-button. Comment-boxes are like looking at something through a straw. Its easy
to miss the overview.
Innovations and significant new developments are usually made by laymen. IMO mainly because they have a fresh perspective without
being bothered by the (mainstream) knowledge that dominates an area of expertise.
By excluding the laymen errors will continue to be repeated. This can be avoided by using development/decision-making frameworks,
but these tend to become dogma (and thus become part of the problem)
Much better is allowing laymen and allowing a-typical people. Then listen to them carefully. Less rigid flexible and very valuable.
Apparently, according to the last US ambassador to Syria Mr. Ford, from 2014-17 US has spent 12 Billion on Regime change in Syria.
IMO, combinedly Iran and Russia so far, have spent far less in Syria than 12 billion by US alone, not considering the rest of
her so called coalition. This is a war of attrition, and US operations in wars, are usually far more expensive and longer than
anybody else's.
"The United States spent at least $12 billion in Syria-related military and civilian expenses in the four years from 2014 through
2017, according to the former U.S. ambassador to the country.
This $12 billion is in addition to the billions more spent to pursue regime change in Syria in the previous three years, after
war broke out in 2011." https://goo.gl/8pj5cD
It may "demand" it - but does it get it? Soldiers are just as human as everyone else.
I'm reminded of the staff sergeant with the sagging beer belly who informed me, "Stand up straight and look like a soldier..."
Or the First Sergeant who was so hung over one morning at inspection that he couldn't remember which direction he was going down
the hall to the next room to be inspected. I'm sure you have your own stories of less than competence.
It's a question of intelligence and imagination. And frankly, I don't see the military in any country receiving the "best and
brightest" of that country's population, by definition. The fact that someone is patriotic enough to enter the military over a
civilian occupation doesn't make them more intelligent or imaginative than the people who decided on the civilian occupation.
Granted, if you fail at accounting, you don't usually die. Death tends to focus the mind, as they say. Nonetheless, we're not
talking about the grunts at the level who actually die, still less the relatively limited number of Special Forces. We're talking
about the officers and staff at the levels who don't usually die in war - except maybe at their defeat - i.e., most officers over
the level of captain.
One can hardly look at this officer crowd in the Pentagon and CENTCOM and say that their personal death concentrates their
mind. They are in virtually no danger of that. Only career death faces them - with a nice transition to the board of General Dynamics
at ten times the salary.
All in all, I'd have to agree that the military isn't much better at being competent - at many levels above the obvious group
of hyper-trained Special Forces - any more than any other profession.
That is well put.most important is the grading system that is designed to fix a person to a particular slot thereby limiting his
ability to think "outside the box" and consider the many variables that exist in one particular instant.
Creative thinking allows
you to see beyond the storm clouds ahead and realize that the connectedness of different realities both the visible and invisible.
For
instance the picture of the 2 pairs of korean skaters in the news tells an interesting story on many levels. Some will judge them
on their grade of proffiency, while others will see a dance of strategy between 2 foes and a few will know the results in advance
and plan accordingly
"They are not stupid at all but they are a collective of narrow thinkers." I've often pondered that concept. Notice how many of radical extremist leaders were doctors, engineers and such? Narrow and
deep. STEM is enormously useful to us but seems to be a risky when implanted in shallow earth.
These narrow "but deep" thinkers were unable to grasp the nature of the Iraq War for the first couple of years. They thought
of it as a rear area security problem, a combat in cities problem, anything but a popular rebellion based on xenophobia and anti-colonialism
The IED problem? They spent several billion dollars on trying to find a technology fix and never succeeded. I know because they
kept asking me to explain the war to them and then could not understand the answers which were outside their narrow thought. pl
War College selectees, the national board selected creme de la creme test out as 50% SJs (conformists lacking vision) in Myers-Briggs
terms and about 15% NTs (intellectuals). To survive and move upward in a system dominated by SJs, the NTs must pretend to be what
they are not. A few succeed. I do not think Mattis is an intellectual merely because he has read a lot. pl
Long ago when I was a professor, I advised my students that "the law is like a pencil sharpener, it sharpens the mind by narrowing
it."
I tried to encourage them to "think backwards".
My favorite example was a Japanese fisherman who recovered valuable ancient Chinese
pottery. Everyone knew where an ancient ship had sunk, but the water was too deep to dive down to the wreck. And everyone knew
the cargo included these valuable vases. And the fisherman was the first to figure out how to recover them. He attached a line
to an octopus, and lowered it in the area, waited awhile, and pulled it up. Low and behold, the octopus had hidden in an ancient
Chinese vase. The fisherman was familiar with trapping octopuses, by lowering a ceramic pot (called "takosubo") into the ocean,
waiting awhile, then raising the vase with octopus inside. His brilliance was to think backwards, and use an octopus to catch
a vase.
the original GBS were recruited in the 50s to serve in the OSS role with foreign guerrillas behind Soviet lines in th event
of war in Europe. Aaron Bank, the founder, recruited several hundred experienced foreign soldiers from the likely countries who
wanted to become American. By the time we were in VN these men were a small fraction of GBs but important for their expertise
and professionalism. pl
Col, I think it might help people to think of "the Borg" - as you have defined & applied it - in a broader context. It struck
me particularly as you ID'd the launching of our modern military group-think / careerism behavior coming from the watershed of
industrialized scale & processes that came out of WWII.
We note parallel themes in all significant sectors of our civilization.
The ever-expanding security state, the many men in Gray Flannel Suits that inhabit corporate culture, Finance & Banking & Big
Health scaling ever larger - all processes aimed to slice the salami thinner & quicker, to the point where meat is moot ... and
so it goes.
I note many Borgs... Borgism if you will. An organizational behavior that has emerged out of human nature having difficulty adapting
to rapidly accelerating complexity that is just too hard to apprehend in a few generations. If (as many commenters on STT seem
to...) one wishes to view this in an ideological or spiritual framework only, they may overlook an important truth - that what
we are experiencing is a Battle Among Borgs for control over their own space & domination over the other Borgs. How else would
we expect any competitive, powerful interest group to act?
In gov & industry these days, we observe some pretty wild outliers... attached to some wild outcomes. Thus the boring behavior
of our political industries bringing forth Trump, our promethean technology sector yielding a Musk (& yes, a Zuckerberg).
I find it hard to take very seriously analysts that define their perspective based primarily upon their superior ideals & opposition
to others. Isn't every person, every tribe, team or enterprise a borglet-in-becoming? Everybody Wants to Rule the World ... &
Everybody Must Get Stoned... messages about how we are grappling with complexity in our times. I just finished reading Command
& Control (about nuclear weapons policy, systems design & accidents). I am amazed we've made it this far.
Unfortunately, I would
not be amazed if reckless, feckless leaders changed the status quo. I was particularly alarmed hearing Trump in his projection
mode; "I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity, without a major event where people pull together,
that's hard to do.
But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing." It
strikes me that he could be exceptionally willing to risk a Major Event if he felt a form of unity, or self-preservation, was
in the offing. I pray (& I do not pray often or easily) that the Generals you have described have enough heart & guts to honor
their oath at its most profound level in the event of an Event.
As a time traveler from another age, I can only say that for me it means devotion to a set of mores peculiar to a particular
profession as opposed to an occupation. pl
Another springs to mind: James Lovelock (of Gaia hypothesis fame) was once part of the NASA team building the first probe to
go to Mars to look for signs of life. Lovelock didn't make any friends when he told NASA they were wasting their time, there was
none. When asked how he could be so sure, he explained that the composition of the Martian atmosphere made it impossible. "But
Martian life may be able to survive under different conditions" was the retort. Lovelock then went on to explain his view that
the evolution of microbial life determined the atmospheric composition on Earth, so should be expected to do the same if
life had evolved on Mars. Brilliant backwards thinking which ought to have earned him the Nobel prize IMHO (for Gaia). Lovelock,
a classic cross-disciplinary scientist, can't be rewarded with such a box-categorized honor, as his idea doesn't fit well into
any one.
Another example of cross-disciplinary brilliance was Bitcoin, which has as much to do with its creator's deep knowledge of
Anthropology (why people invented & use money) as his expertise in both Economics and Computer Science.
This is they key to creative thinking in my view - familiarity with different fields yields deeper insights.
"... What has happened in America is eerily similar to the color revolutions in targeted countries which leads me to believe the organizers of such revolutions looked at the biggest prize of all and said "Why not.'. ..."
"... Herman.I think you are right. These things are being cooked up–orchestrated to serve the current power block. The mainstream propaganda media plays a big part in that. And sadly, Americans cannot wake up fast enough ..."
"... I am familiar with the tactics of Move-On, and although they would deny it, represent the democratic party. They actually called me up asking for money to create mayhem at Trump's rallies during his run for the presidency. I told them I wouldn't give them a nickel since not only did I see it as undemocratic and contentious, but psychologically idiotic. Idiotic in the sense that the people who supported Trump perceived themselves as victims of a corrupt system who cared little about their needs, and turning Trump's rallies into mayhem would portray him as a victim as well, which would cause his supporters to more fully identify with him, and more committed to getting him elected. ..."
"... This is Jimmy Dore's take on the left falling for Russia-gate and aligning itself with the FBI. As he says, they are reacting to Trump with their lizard brain which makes them easy prey for being led to their own political slaughter. ..."
"... Does anybody ever talk about the failures of capitalism anymore or just about people and politics? ..."
"... Yes, but clearly he doesn't, and therefore he won't. He will drag out his neocon-sponsored witch-hunt as long as possible in order to do the maximum damage possible to all those who don't toe the neocon line. The very existence of Mueller's unholy inquisition constantly forces the president ever-further to the right in an effort to appease his neocon tormentors. That is, further away from détente with Russia and closer to nuclear Armageddon. ..."
"... The neocons' goal is to kill two birds, U.S. democracy and Russia, with one stone -- the Mueller "investigation." ..."
"... yes i agree that Mueller will be exposed (before congress ?) but not in the mainstream media. ..."
"... This article does point to no doubt one of our nation's most evasive, and spookiest courts, which is FISA. Yet, on tv hardly is this subject ever brought up, while instead reissuing every 90 days for permission to monitor Carter Page gets talked about to no end. So far hardly has there been, to when at least I've viewed the anchors and pundits, do they ever discuss the unconstitutionally, or break down of our democratic values, that this FISA court represents. ..."
"... Meanwhile so far what has Robert Mueller come up with? Well, we know that Manafort may be guilty of money laundering with his dealings with foreign officials, which is an easy obstacle splinter to uncover due part and parcel to his trade. We do know that the young up and coming politico operative George Papadopoulos would do well to learn a lesson from his past barroom experience of possibility talking to much to strangers, and skip the bar talk. In many ways it's hard to see to what exactly Lt General Michael Flynn is guilty of. Maybe Flynn as the newly appointed National Security Advisor is guilty of discussing the sanctions imposed onto Russia, or was he guilty of representing Bibi Netanyahu? Probably the former is prosecutable, but of course never the latter for protecting dear sweet Israel in America no matter what is the right thing to do. Protecting Israel may in some people's eyes even seem quite patriotic, as far as that goes, but talking to Russian diplomats, nay, never. ..."
"... Great point Mr. Tedesky. This creepy police-state court is rarely criticized at all in our free [sic] press and establishment media. ..."
"... Population in the country was very poorly informed any how. And now, they, The Ruling Establishment which includes Media, have completely messed the people up – making them compliant and confused. ..."
"... As a foreigner, looking from the outside, it seems Mueller will not find anything on Russia. He already found something on Israel, but he doesn't pursue that. If Americans rally, then it seems you should rally to make an objective and fair inquiry, to nail Israel for what they seem to have done. ..."
"... Many years ago in my early 20s I read 'Guns of August' that described support for the coming WWI. What was so striking about that period was how the public in every relevant European was hell bent on war. Among the major players -- Germany, France, UK, Russia and Austro-hungary -- their populations were demonstrating in the streets and assemblies for war. How was it possible for all of those people to eagerly lust for war that within a few years led to the destruction of the German, Russian and Austrian empires, the deaths of millions of their citizens and multidecade impoverishment for the survivors. The costs of the war resulted in the effective bankruptcy of the UK and French colonial empires as well as millions of dead and traumatized survivors. ..."
"... I never was able to see how so many people then could be so incredibly foolish. In the last two years I have gained some insight. Many of my respected, but now previous, political associates have just gone totally nuts over Russiagate. There was some kind of psychic break in their minds when Hillary lost and they are now little more than raging primates trapped in a cognitive dissonance loop. Not just that, but these are people who are on the verge of supporting war against Russia. ..."
"... Maybe wishful thinking on my part. The Grassley-Graham referral regarding Steele's potential violation of Title 18 Section 1001, lying to the FBI, may or may not be prosecutable depending upon where the "lies" took place and the likely lack of extra-territorial jurisdiction if they occurred in Rome. But even if no criminal violation could be prosecuted, I would think the IG should still investigate the matter for potential administrative discipline. ..."
"... That Russia "meddled in the US election" is totally without foundation and you know it. Any such attempt by them would be pointless, ineffective and detrimental if ever found out. If we had really found out any such thing, we'd all know about it rather than being fed bullshit based upon absolutely no real evidence. America would not be subjected to a year and a half of shenanigans by a thoroughly-biased politically-motivated special prosecutor given a hunting license by a frustrated deep state, a bitter political opposition and a raucous media in the service of both. ..."
"... Give the Clinton right wing credit for achieving what the Republicans had long hoped, but failed, to do. First, they split apart the Dem voting base in the 1990s, middle class vs. poor, and the Obama years served to confirm that this split is permanent. Then they apparently plagiarized old Joe McCarthy's playbook, launching their anti-Russian crusade, splitting apart those who are not on the right wing. Divide, subdivide, conquer. ..."
"... I believe the public is getting played on Mueller. Little hints keep dropping about Trump firing him. Then the media and the left goes into a frenzy, demanding Saint Mueller stay. Mueller has literally become the symbol of hope for the left. ..."
"... Imagine Mueller now coming out and clearing Trump completely while exposing what his real investigative objective was: revealing the deep state. Remember NBC and CNN mentioning Mueller began investigating the Podestas? Then they dropped that story as fast as possible. ..."
"... The thing about liberals is, they'll only accept one result in the Mueller probe. If Trump removes him, he's hiding something. And if Mueller exposes Dem corruption instead of Rep corruption, they'll say its fixed. They want the process to play out, but they'll only accept one result, that of Trump/Russia collusion. They are blinded by their own hate. ..."
"... One of the supreme ironies of our age is how the McCarthyesque focus on Russian interference in our electoral process has completely obscured the domestic politicization of our own institutions of government, that is the damage our now rabid placement of political party party above the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the American population. ..."
"... Our slow descent into the present National Chaos might well've been birthed under McCarthy antics as cloak&cover for Operation Paperclip. One could rightly label his actions "political theater" or straight subversion. -- Whatever, US actual history is a Disappearing Act with imperious propensity. We, as a nation, have always been imperious and domineering, just as were our British forefathers. ..."
"... Is it a diversion? From what? It is obvious that Israel & Trump are on a roll. Bombing Syria on the skirtings of Iran – "oh joy of joys, one step closer," – to doomsday. Elsewhere i have recommended the Palestinian people exit Palestine ASAP. Foolhardy Israel is only the size of a postage stamp, 4 time the size of Hiroshima. when nerves fray hey! ..."
"... I was actually hoping that with Trump taking over the reigns of the war machine that the left would once again mobilize and oppose our wars and the spying state that walks all over our civil liberties. Trump certainly gives them enough legitimate areas of concern that they have plenty to go on. Sadly this really does show the power of the press to manipulate public opinion and the left-wing media loves Russia Gate. ..."
"... For myself personally, I see the threat of a confrontation with Russia as the #1 concern. We have now entered into a new cold war with all the massive spending, proxy wars and yet again the very real chance of it leading to a hot war that could be the end of all of us. Sadly the "left" in this country has once again fallen for the endless propaganda, their hatred of Trump is only part of this issue. ..."
"... With or without the Mueller investigation the Russia hatred will go on. Mueller could exonerate Trump tomorrow and the anti-Russian propaganda will continue. ..."
"... Yes, the Dem's are wasting valuable time chasing after these Russian hackers who weren't there. ..."
"... The so called liberals tried to redefined the left away from working class to LBGT, Black Lives Matter, abortion rights, etc and , in the process, dug their own graves. ..."
"... I maintain that having only two political parties is the crux of the problem, and clearly both are corporate. People don't get how they are being played. A quote attributed to Mark Twain I just read: "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they are being fooled." ..."
"... Nuts' indeed. Before raising the temperature over the Russiagate, first. Shave off the Pentagon budget! ..."
Exclusive: Hundreds of thousands have pledged to take to the streets if Special
Counsel Robert Mueller is removed, reflecting misplaced priorities and some fundamental
misunderstandings, report Coleen Rowley and Nat Parry.
... ... ...
Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work effectively
to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least temporarily, to believe
the exact opposite of the facts. These techniques are known in the intelligence community as
"perception management," and have been refined since the 1980s "to keep the American people
compliant and confused," as the late Robert Parry has reported
. We saw this in action last decade, when after months of disinformation, about 70% of
Americans came to falsely believe that Saddam
Hussein was behind 9/11 when the truth was the opposite – Saddam was actually an enemy of
the Al Qaeda perpetrators.
Such emotional manipulation is the likely explanation for the fact that so many people are
now gearing up to defend someone like Mueller, while largely ignoring other important topics of
far greater consequence. With no demonstrations being organized to stop a possible war with
North Korea – or an escalation in Syria – hundreds of thousands of Americans are
apparently all too eager to go to the mat in defense of an investigation into the president's
possible "collusion" with Russia in its alleged meddling in election 2016.
Setting aside for the moment the merits of the Russiagate narrative, who really is this
Robert Mueller that amnesiac liberals clamor to hold up as the champion of the people and
defender of democracy? Co-author Coleen Rowley, who as an FBI whistleblower exposed numerous
internal problems at the FBI in the early 2000s, didn't have to be privy to his inner circle to
recall just a few of his actions after 9/11 that so shocked the public conscience as to
repeatedly generate moral disapproval even on the part of mainstream media. Rowley was only
able to scratch the surface in listing some of the more widely reported wrongdoing that should
still shock liberal consciences.
Although Mueller and his "joined at the hip" cohort James Comey are now hailed for
their impeccable character by much of Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement
officials of the George W. Bush administration (Mueller as FBI Director and Comey as Deputy
Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the
Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited
stunning levels of incompetence.
Ironically, recent declassifications of House Intelligence Committee's and Senate Judiciary
Committee Leaders letters ( here and
here ) reveal strong parallels between the way the public so quickly forgot Mueller's
spotty track record with the way the FBI and (the Obama administration's) Department of Justice
rushed, during the summer of 2016, to put a former fellow spy, Christopher Steele up on a
pedestal. Steele was declared to be a "reliable source" without apparently vetting or
corroborating any of the "opposition research" allegations that he had been hired (and paid
$160,000) to quickly produce for the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
There are typically at least two major prongs of establishing the "reliability" of any given
source in an affidavit, the first – and the one mostly pointed to – being the
source's track record for having furnished accurate and reliable information in the past. Even
if it is conceded that Steele would have initially satisfied this part of the test for
determining probable cause, based on his having reportedly furnished some important information
to FBI agents investigating the FIFA soccer fraud years before, his track record for
truthfulness would go right up in smoke only a month or so later, when it was discovered that
he had lied to the FBI about his having previously leaked the investigation to the media.
(Moreover, this lie had led the FBI to mislead the FISA court in its first application to
surveil Carter Page.)
The second main factor in establishing the reliability of any source's information would be
even more key in this case. It's the basis of the particular informant's knowledge,
i.e. was the informant an eye witness or merely reporting double-triple hearsay or
just regurgitating the "word on the street?"
If the actual basis of the information is uncertain, the next step for law enforcement would
normally be to seek facts that either corroborate or refute the source's information. It's been
reported that FBI agents did inquire into the basis for Steele's allegations, but it is not
known what Steele told the FBI – other than indications that his info came from secondary
sources making it, at best, second- or third-hand. What if anything did the FBI do to establish
the reliability of the indirect sources that Steele claimed to be getting his info from? Before
vouching for his credibility, did the FBI even consider polygraphing Steele after he (falsely)
denied having leaked his info since the FBI was aware of significant similarities of a news
article to the info he had supplied them?
Obviously, more questions than answers exist at the present time. But even if the FBI was
duped by Steele – whether as the result of their naivete in trusting a fellow former spy,
their own sloppiness or recklessness, or political bias – it should be hoped by everyone
that the Department of Justice Inspector General can get to the bottom of how the FISA court
was ultimately misled.
As they prepare for the "largest mobilization in history" in defense of Mueller and his
probe into Russiagate, liberals have tried to sweep all this under the rug as a "nothing
burger." Yet, how can liberals, who in the past have pointed to so many abusive past practices
by the FBI, ignore the reality that these sorts of abuses of the FISA process more than likely
take place on a daily basis – with the FISA court earning a
well-deserved reputation as little more than a rubberstamp?
Other, more run-of-the-mill FISA applications – if they were to be scrutinized as
thoroughly as the Carter Page one – would reveal similar sloppiness and lack of factual
verification of source information used to secure surveillance orders, especially after FISA
surveillances skyrocketed after 9/11 in the "war on terror." Rather than dismissing the Nunes
Memo as a nothing burger, liberals might be better served by taking a closer look at this FISA
process which could easily be turned against them instead of Trump.
It must be recognized that FBI agents who go before the secret FISA court and who are
virtually assured that whatever they present will be kept secret in perpetuity, have very
little reason to be careful in verifying what they present as factual. FISA court judges are
responsible for knowing the law but have no way of ascertaining the "facts" presented to
them.
Unlike a criminal surveillance authorized by a federal district court, no FBI affidavit
justifying the surveillance will ever end up under the microscope of defense attorneys and
defendants to be pored over to ensure every asserted detail was correct and if not, to
challenge any incorrect factual assertions in pre-trial motions to suppress evidence.
It is therefore shocking to watch how this political manipulation seems to make people who
claim to care about the rule of law now want to bury this case of surveillance targeting Carter
Page based on the ostensibly specious Steele dossier. This is the one case unique in coming to
light among tens of thousands of FISA surveillances cloaked forever in secrecy, given that the
FISA system lacks the checks on abusive authority that inherently exist in the criminal justice
process, and so the Page case is instructive to learn how the sausage really gets made.
Neither the liberal adulation of Mueller nor the unquestioned credibility accorded Steele by
the FBI seem warranted by the facts. It is fair for Americans to ask whether Mueller's
investigation would have ever happened if not for his FBI successor James Comey having signed
off on the investigation triggered by the Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton
campaign to dig up dirt on her opponent.
In any event, please spare us the solicitations of these political NGOs' "national
mobilization" to protect Mueller. There are at least a million attorneys in this country who do
not suffer from the significant conflicts of interest that Robert Mueller has with key
witnesses like his close, long-term colleague James Comey and other public officials involved
in the investigation.
And, at the end of the day, there are far more important issues to be concerned about than
the "integrity" of the Mueller investigation – one being the need to fix FISA court
abuses and restoring constitutional rights.
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002
memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, was named
one of TIME magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002.
What has happened in America is eerily similar to the color revolutions in targeted
countries which leads me to believe the organizers of such revolutions looked at the biggest
prize of all and said "Why not.'.
Tower of Babel , February 9, 2018 at 11:04 am
Herman.I think you are right. These things are being cooked up–orchestrated to serve
the current power block. The mainstream propaganda media plays a big part in that. And sadly,
Americans cannot wake up fast enough
Annie , February 9, 2018 at 10:40 am
I'm not all that familiar with the group Avaaz, but I am familiar with the tactics of
Move-On, and although they would deny it, represent the democratic party. They actually
called me up asking for money to create mayhem at Trump's rallies during his run for the
presidency. I told them I wouldn't give them a nickel since not only did I see it as
undemocratic and contentious, but psychologically idiotic. Idiotic in the sense that the
people who supported Trump perceived themselves as victims of a corrupt system who cared
little about their needs, and turning Trump's rallies into mayhem would portray him as a
victim as well, which would cause his supporters to more fully identify with him, and more
committed to getting him elected.
I discontinued my support for Move-on as a result of these kind of antics. Those I know
who were viciously anti-Trump lost total perspective during his presidential run, and all
supported Clinton whose policies they knew little about. They were hooked into mainstream
media, and none investigated alternative news sources even though they are computer literate
and could have done so. All were hooked into Russia-gate from the beginning, and have never
waivered in their position. I think we have to begin to look at these people not as liberals,
or progressives, but for the most part they are democrats who see their party as representing
liberal causes. None I know who would support this march participated in any anti-war
movement, and were basically silent on Obama's militarism, which informs me these so called
liberals when it comes to war their position is more dependent on who's doing the
killing.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:27 pm
Annie I found this statement of yours a very interesting perspective 'and turning Trump's
rallies into mayhem would portray him as a victim as well'. All this noise coming from the
left is never analyzed from the perspective of what would the average Trump supporter think.
Yet, you did this. Pretty good analytical take on these attacks against Trump.
I thought when Trump honored the 'Natve-American code breakers' that by his doing this
function while standing underneath a picture of Andrew 'Trail of Tears' Jackson was very
telling. Although seen properly by many who may have a good sense of history, I thought that
this was purposely done, and done to insight the Trump supporters who's racist attitude were
served quite well with Trump's staging of this honorable affair.
The Left (which isn't really Left) is wandering around trying to bring down Trump, while
at the same time the American Left ignores what a Trump supporter may think. Both groups of
American citizenry would do well to quit with all of this name calling, and derisive contempt
for each other, and they should begin with a dialog which could eventually bring them
together, in order to create a more perfect union.
Then that's where you come in Annie, as to reassure they keep their eye on the ball, and
to what is most important to remember, and that is because we are all together in this big
crazy thing called America. We Americans should bridge our difference into making the U.S. a
better nation for all to live in, and relieve the world from fears of American bombs falling
on their heads.
This is Jimmy Dore's take on the left falling for Russia-gate and aligning itself with the
FBI. As he says, they are reacting to Trump with their lizard brain which makes them easy
prey for being led to their own political slaughter. He does become more foul mouthed towards
the end. I understand his increasing frustration with this insanity.
Your point is NEVER off-subject. Soros may fund one branch of the Capitalist Party and
Singer the other; but they both and all the rest of their ilk, belong to the same
Brotherhood.
alley cat , February 9, 2018 at 4:28 pm
"I'm not a politician; cannot gauge whether it a good or bad idea that Mueller,
Rosenstein, et al. be fired for cause "
Ray, thanks for not being like most politicians (and journalists) who carefully test which
way the political winds are blowing to decide whether something is a good or bad idea. You do
what you think is right, based on considerations more important than your career (gasp!).
"In my view, if Mueller had an ounce of integrity, he would resign "
Yes, but clearly he doesn't, and therefore he won't. He will drag out his neocon-sponsored
witch-hunt as long as possible in order to do the maximum damage possible to all those who
don't toe the neocon line. The very existence of Mueller's unholy inquisition constantly
forces the president ever-further to the right in an effort to appease his neocon tormentors.
That is, further away from détente with Russia and closer to nuclear Armageddon.
The neocons' goal is to kill two birds, U.S. democracy and Russia, with one stone -- the
Mueller "investigation."
Mueller and his co-conspirators, with all their lies and smears, have been subverting our
democracy long enough. Fire him already and oppose Trump democratically instead.
Zachary Smith , February 9, 2018 at 6:56 pm
Nice summary. I can't really think of anything to say to improve on that title remark of
"This is Nuts.
Virginia , February 9, 2018 at 7:12 pm
Ray, Mueller should resign (" if Mueller had an ounce of integrity, he would resign -- if
only because of the incredibly partisan way in which he staffed his investigation") because there is no there there. Just close the investigation and let
Americans get on with our lives.
GEOFF TEAGUE , February 9, 2018 at 9:12 pm
yes i agree that Mueller will be exposed (before congress ?) but not in the mainstream
media. as long as that dog has a bone he will run with it. where's a dog catcher when you
need one??
CitizenOne , February 10, 2018 at 12:13 pm
Thanks Ray,
Way to little truth out there and a whole bunch of characters involved in some modern day
Shakespearean tragedy.
So Tex , February 9, 2018 at 10:48 am
These organizers are arms of or provocateurs for the failing and flailing Democratic
Party.. They have staked their very lives on the Russia-gate nonsense and removing or just
crippling Trump.. It's all very sad since they could be embracing the current political
climate and reforming the once great Democratic Party. The unfortunate reality is that many
people, including good hearted people, are falling for it.
Tower of Babel , February 9, 2018 at 11:00 am
"It is telling that the liberal establishment is mobilizing on this particular issue."
"Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work
effectively to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least
temporarily, to believe the exact opposite of the facts."
Ain't that the truth. Most Americans want to believe anything that authority tells them to
believe. They are not worthy of the great democracy they inherited. Thank you Colleen. You
are the opposite. We need to see you more often.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 11:25 am
This article does point to no doubt one of our nation's most evasive, and spookiest
courts, which is FISA. Yet, on tv hardly is this subject ever brought up, while instead
reissuing every 90 days for permission to monitor Carter Page gets talked about to no end. So
far hardly has there been, to when at least I've viewed the anchors and pundits, do they ever
discuss the unconstitutionally, or break down of our democratic values, that this FISA court
represents.
Meanwhile so far what has Robert Mueller come up with? Well, we know that Manafort may be
guilty of money laundering with his dealings with foreign officials, which is an easy
obstacle splinter to uncover due part and parcel to his trade. We do know that the young up
and coming politico operative George Papadopoulos would do well to learn a lesson from his
past barroom experience of possibility talking to much to strangers, and skip the bar talk.
In many ways it's hard to see to what exactly Lt General Michael Flynn is guilty of. Maybe
Flynn as the newly appointed National Security Advisor is guilty of discussing the sanctions
imposed onto Russia, or was he guilty of representing Bibi Netanyahu? Probably the former is
prosecutable, but of course never the latter for protecting dear sweet Israel in America no
matter what is the right thing to do. Protecting Israel may in some people's eyes even seem
quite patriotic, as far as that goes, but talking to Russian diplomats, nay, never.
What this Russia-gate investigation has rot among so many other things, is that it has
taken the weakening Left and showed it for what it is. It was one thing when the Clinton's
moved the Democrates over into the Wall Street column, but now with this organized Left push
to support the Mueller Investigation the Left has been moved into the police state category
whether these poorly misguided liberals even realize this fact. This would be akin to Albert
Einstein marching behind a Nazi flag, or his standing next to Joseph Goebbels to help usher
in the sheep to slaughter under the guise of democracy, and everything that's right.
Wake up America.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 11:46 am
"This article does point to no doubt one of our nation's most evasive, and spookiest
courts, which is FISA. Yet, on tv hardly is this subject ever brought up"
Great point Mr. Tedesky. This creepy police-state court is rarely criticized at all in our
free [sic] press and establishment media.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:34 pm
Thank you Mr Hunkins, I've read many a comment post of yours, and hardly do I ever
disagree with you. To bad there are not more of us voices for sanity, but with that there go
I. Joe
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 12:46 am
I just saw this on the Duran. Duran reporter Jim Jatras details some very interesting
angles of the likes you don't very often hear in regard to Russia-Gate. Be notified Mr Jatras
has a typo where he says Mac Blumenthal he really means the father of Max who is Sidney.
Jatras also points to the same circumstance where many Russians assumed Hillary would be
our next president, so the attraction to sabotage Hillary's campaign seemed to a fruitless
proposition. I remember our own beloved Robert Parry making the same observation.
exiled off mainstreet , February 10, 2018 at 3:35 am
The last sentence sums it up. Any former member of the left who supports this (they became
former once they supported this obviously flawed fascistic phony investigation the
implications of which threaten the rule of law and the stability and sustainability of life
itself) has gone zombie and can be compared to Einstein backing Goebbels.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:01 pm
I'm still having a hard time accepting this pseudo Left swing to the National Security
State/Deep State. Nothing in life should surprise me by now, but seeing what calls itself the
Left in the U.S. go the way of the CIA/FBI/NSA is hard to swallow.
The Democrates are soon going to regret spending all of this valuable time wasted on this
Russia-Gate craziness, and then what will they blame? Of course they will blame Trump, and
still invoke Putin's name, because that's what sells tv ratings. In the end the Democrates
may wake up to the realization that they blamed Trump,for all the wrong things that should
have mattered. This distraction for their bend obsession with all things Russian, is what
will have sunk their boat in 2018, and unless the Dem's wise up this unneeded shadow will
hover over them even into 2020. Joe
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 11:42 am
The most disconcerting and heartbreaking thing I've witnessed in my 30 plus years of
studying the politico-economic scene is the manner in which otherwise decent liberals have
fallen for (or of course have been more than willing propagandists for) the hoax Russia-gate
narrative. Sure, with the Schiffs (D-Israel), Schumers (D-Israel) and others in the corporate
DNC, it's all to be expected, and no semi-intelligent CN fan would consider them to be
otherwise decent liberals. But to see good domestic populist liberals sell this dangerous
snake-oil has been illuminating and dismaying. For crying out loud -- on this particular
issue Sean Hannity is better than Rachel Maddow!
It demonstrates more than any other issue the lock that Official Washington and its
military driven empire builders along with the blood soaked mass media have on virtually our
entire political spectrum and social discourse.
The recent Nuclear Posture Review just comes out -- putting the world closer to complete
annihilation and total Armageddon -- and there isn't much of a hue and cry from the smart and
most important people in our media-industrial complex. Frightening.
D.H. Fabian , February 9, 2018 at 11:49 am
An additional layer of disappointment is the fascist ideology seen in the liberal
anti-Israel campaign. We really don't all agree that a "fair partitioning" in the Mideast
would be: 100% for the Arabs, 0% for the Jews. For those who don't know, Israel is a tiny
country (roughly the size of New Jersey). It's the sole Jewish nation, surrounded by vast,
oil-rich Arab countries. Jews are, indeed, indigenous to that bit of land. Those called
"Palestinians" are Arabs who are recruited to work toward the destruction of Israel,
establishing a 100% "pure" Moslem Mideast.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 1:07 pm
"An additional layer of disappointment is the fascist ideology seen in the liberal
anti-Israel campaign."
Set up a strawman much?
What you describe is a very, very marginal phenomenon in the Palestinian justice movement,
marginal enough to be totally insignificant. It's interesting that you bring this
disinformation into CN. The Zionist power configuration in America can be relentless, no
doubt. Hasbara is ubiquitous.
Israel's a criminal state and international pariah bent on wiping out any independent pro
Palestinian nation-state in the Middle East and subverting and destabilizing any independent
pro Palestinian head of state. Bloodthirsty Tel Aviv militarists mow the grass in Gaza by
killing and maiming roughly 2,000 women and children every 6 or 7 years. And no, it's not a
"fascist ideology" to point any of this out.
Read Gilad Atzmon, Norman Finkelstein, James Petras, Mearsheimer and Walt and a few others
I'm forgetting at the moment for the real dope.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:38 pm
I think D.H. just ran a Zionist commercial on 'the Consortium'. Should we run a
pro-Palestinian commercial, just to be 'fair and balanced'?
Zachary Smith , February 9, 2018 at 6:53 pm
I've noticed the dishonest Zionist was trying to act like a "normal" person a few times
recently. Probably the thought was that this would gain "credibility" for BS like this
"Zionist Commercial" you speak of.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:12 pm
Zachary it's interesting to listen to a Zionist using the same talking points that would
describe the horrible plight of the downtrodden Palestinian, and do it so easily without any
conscious effort to hide the truth, of what's really going on. Joe
Lois Gagnon , February 9, 2018 at 11:22 pm
I've seen this troll on other progressive sites using the same exact wording.
Anon , February 9, 2018 at 1:35 pm
Troll alert: please do not reply to DHF comments. This is an attempt to derail the
discussion and debase the participants, a extreme zionist attack, on a site known for more
cautious and fair commenters.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:42 pm
Maybe we should aim our conversation to this maddening frustration over all things
Russian, to better describe America's relationship to the Zionist Bibi Netanyahu. Do you hear
me, Robert Mueller? Can you Mr Mueller lean heavily onto Flynn's Israeli heavy lifting, and
why Flynn was serving the needs of the Israeli's?
Martin - Swedish citizen , February 9, 2018 at 6:21 pm
Yes, this comment is so out of touch that it must be a troll looking to discredit this
site.
A previous comment making the same statement was it seems removed. Israel must be a very
sensitive issue in the US.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 8:20 pm
It is beyond belief how sensitive it is. You have no idea. However, now it actually isn't
as subversive and contentious as it was just 15 to 20 years ago. So there has been a small
amount of progress, long way to go though.
Hey Fabian I have some refugees here so I'm taking your land for them. Pack your trash and
move on.
nonsense factory , February 10, 2018 at 10:54 am
The solution is simple: Allow all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to vote in
Israeli national parliamentary elections. Only then could Israel call itself a 'true
democracy'. This I believe results in about a 50-50 split in the electorate on religious /
ethnic lines so you could even get a Muslim leader of Israel, or at least a balanced
parliament.
This of course raises the issue of the military and executive and judicial structure of
Israel; land ownership and immigration policy would have to be changed so that any citizen
could own land, and non-Jews would be allowed to emigrate back to the region (i.e. the
Palestinian diaspora would have the same rights as the Jewish diaspora).
An even more tricky issue would be the Israeli nuclear weapons program; the first step
there is for the state of Israel to publicly admit its existence and allow for IAEA
inspections of the program.
Bob Van Noy , February 9, 2018 at 12:17 pm
Many thanks Coleen Rowley and Nat Parry. Drew Hunkins, I think your comment about
"otherwise decent liberals" is prescient but I'll bet that we could have a long, extended
discussion on The illiberalness of this generation of democrats (please note the small
d).
I would argue that with the inception of the Clinton/Blair "Third Way" that the Democratic
Party separated itself from its historic roots. In fact I think the very label of liberal
opposition here used is disingenuous.
These people The Clintons and their Neoliberal constituents have never represented the
Democratic Party in act or deed. The Neocons switching sides prior to the last election cycle
underscored their illiberal attitude. In fact classic party alignment has little to do with
this issue of criminal behavior, it is just the vehicle of divisiveness being utilized in
this instance
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 1:09 pm
Points well taken Mr. Van Noy.
Most of the Dem Party has been a complete dumpster fire since corporate Clinton, "New
Democrats!" and DLC completely took over the entire infrastructure.
Nancy , February 9, 2018 at 1:51 pm
Sadly, those decent liberals you speak of also fell for the Clinton/Obama hoax. They are a
big part of the problem -- phonies.
Gregory Herr , February 10, 2018 at 1:45 am
A big part of the problem for sure. Support for the Democrats on the basis of "liberal
causes" is blind, phony. or both. We have suffered soaring housing and health care costs.
Investment in Social Security has been marginalized at the same time war costs are put "off
the books" and deemed a "necessity" of National Security. Public schools are now
"standardized", but standards are lacking and the quality of "higher"education has taken a
hit too while leaving graduates in piles of debt. The safety of our drinking water is suspect
and other environmental concerns take a back seat as well while "fracking" and "drill baby
drill" get passes. Civil liberties are under assault and the war drums beat on. So where are
the liberal Democrats? Taking "contributions", hiding under rocks, or snickering through
3-martini lunches with their Republican cohorts but they certainly haven't been "liberals"
for a long time now. Bill Clinton and Obama were nothing of the sort.
Next time a Democrat calls him/her self a "liberal", they ought to have to express a true
idea of just what that's suppose to mean. And then explain what happened the last
quarter-century and what in the hell their current "resistance" is really about. Don't worry
there won't be any straight answers forthcoming, and likely nary a hint of embarrassment
either. They are shameless traitors or fools
Bob Van Noy , February 10, 2018 at 10:07 am
Nicely done Gregory Herr. The democratic party talks a good game but manages to Never
Deliver the goods. The party hierarchy (DNC) doesn't deserve support
Simply vote for a candidate that delivers. And, never donate to the party
D.H. Fabian , February 9, 2018 at 11:44 am
We saw how powerfully the Clinton "New Democrat Party" gained "influence" over the media
marketed to middle class liberals, from MSNBC to online publications, pulling them well to
the right. The Democrats' anti-Russian crusade does, indeed, mimic Bush's lies about "Iraq's
stockpiles of WMD." What is truly "nuts" is that so much of the liberal media promote the
right wing agenda while wearing their "bold progressive" lapel buttons.
Loretta , February 9, 2018 at 12:05 pm
Thank you for this piece!!
j. D. D. , February 9, 2018 at 12:16 pm
The spectacle of the Democratic Part and even the Black Caucus rallying to support the FBI
is truly a wonder to behold. Have they forgotten the FBI's past in blackmailing presidents
and political leaders including JFK, Robert Kennedy and Matin Luther King? Have they
forgotten its Operation Frugmenschen, which means "ape man" in German to target Balck
politicians and activists, or the threatening dirty tricks letter sent to MLK urging him to
commit suicide? Are they prepared to see through an illegal coup against an elected president
who dared suggest a positive relaitonship with Russia and China, ensuring that no future
president will dare "step out of line" lest the secret files be pulled to create a cripling
scandal?. Apparently not, as the Demcratic Party we knew appears quite dead, perhaps lethally
shot on Nov 22, 1963 and finally buried in 2016 with the nomination of a craven Wall Street
puppet and warmonger.
Thank you, Nat and Coleen, for this article -- as well as continuing and furthering
Consortium News' reputation as one of the few remaining independent outlets that can be
considered trustworthy. In this age, where even Common Dreams has lost its credibility (and
posts by Caitlin Johnstone have to be taken/guarded with grains of salt) it is still a
refreshing rarity.
In overall relation, the following Review is shared as representative:
Robert Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth.org" continually express, show, and Speak
Truth to Power. During our times of First Draft Coalition[s], where we are subjected to 98%
(?) Controlled Narratives, a predominance critically desires to hear/see those sides which
are purposely and collusively repressed, banned and/or censored. In these
exponentially-escalating periods of secret laws based on secret memos, secret courts acting
with secret evidence (which will not be revealed to the accused), absolute torture to the
point of insanity (and death) as a means of interrogation until one gives predetermined
answers (truthful or not), worldwide surveillance on every inhabitant (without probable
cause) that can be (and is) used as a means to instill fear, to threaten, tarnish, oppress,
and silence even peaceful dissenters of basic causes while (resultantly) turning back history
500 years, we need those with (the ability of) absolute courage to Stand Up Now (more than
ever).
Evolution: from Total Information Awareness (which started long before 9/11) to Total
Information (and Population) Control (as a goal in the present).
Steve , February 9, 2018 at 12:19 pm
FAKE NEWS has been used to snooker the Aemnrician people and as it is gobbled up and
digested and spit back with investigation or corroboration it turns decent folks into FAKE
PEOPLE. Mueller is no choir boy and the mess in Washington is not going away sometime soon.
As for damaging democracy, the 2 party system has taken care of that very nicely but
channeling anger into something positive just wont' be allowed to happen as the media are
controlled by huge moneyed interests.
Janet Zampieri , February 9, 2018 at 12:29 pm
The liberals are reacting this way because of the constant lies they are fed by the
mainstream media. The corporate and CIA control of the media must be exposed and put to an
end.
Bruce Dickson , February 9, 2018 at 12:36 pm
Being a mere paycheque away from disaster, most Americans cannot afford to take to any
streets. The Powers That Be know and exploit this, having orchestrated their captives' dire
straits, all along.
So, whence shall cometh these threatening troops from Camps AVAAZ and MoveOn? By process
of elimination, from the minority well-enough-heeled and the Soros-paid.
Slavery is Freedom! War is Peace! 1984 was a cookbook; we've been reading Orwell all
wrong.
johnnieandroidseed , February 9, 2018 at 9:03 pm
My chuckle for the day was "1984 was a cookbook." Reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode
"To Serve Man" which should be the motto of capitalists everywhere.
"We serve the workers" [to our Distinguished Diners.]
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 12:17 am
As the episodes star character Michael Chambers is taken away by the Kanamits for meal
time on their far away planet, Chambers looks at the audience and says, "How about you? You
still on Earth, or on the ship with me? Really doesn't make very much difference, because
sooner or later, all of us will be on the menu all of us."
Yikes how true. Great comment johnnieandroidseed. Joe
Though my instincts tell me there are many more people who are willing to sign a petition
than to actually get out on the street, I might be proved wrong in this particular
instance.
After signing a couple of petitions for this or that, in the forlorn hope they might bring
about change, I began to realize they were mainly designed to make me feel good about myself;
that I was doing something very important to make the world a better place.
Even worse, I saw I was being treated as nothing more than another fish in the net. My
signature had hardly enough time to reach its destination before my inbox was deluged with
requests to sign more petitions, each of which invited me to donate towards the great effort
it takes to think up a petition and put it on the internet. For some unexplained reason, the
process seemed to require highly-remunerated executives, and an awful lot more money than all
the real work needed to run something as work-intensive as Consortium News.
After signing two, I'd already given up the idea of signing more petitions by the time I
was urged to sign one for a no-fly zone over Syria to save hundreds of thousand of lives.
With anti-Russian propaganda being heavily pushed by the corporate media at the time, it was
obvious people who had no idea what a no-fly zone entailed were being manipulated.
We live at a time where, for most people, touchy-feely means engaging with the world
through a screen. No man is an island being far from the state of affairs, all men have
become islands. Far from bringing us together, the internet is being increasingly used to
keep most of us farther and farther away from each other, and the information we need to form
opinions based on facts.
Which leads me to ponder how on earth we arrived at a point where of hundreds of thousands
of people are preparing to come out on the streets to demonstrate their support of an
organization, which just happens to be one of several intelligence agencies, trying to remove
their right to come out on the streets to demonstrate? I hope I'm not the only one who finds
it perversely ironic and extremely disturbing.
Bruce Dickson , February 9, 2018 at 1:16 pm
Do those intending to demonstrate on the FBI's behalf even realize that one of that
agency's most resource-intensive and mission-critical tasks is to record, identify and
profile demonstrators?
"I am marching for my right to be surveilled. Democracy means Dossiers for All! FISA =
Freedom. I'm guided by the beauty of my shackles. Liberty is Liability. Truth is
Treason."
And Insanity is Virtue. Well played, overlords: you have set the stage well – but
for the hubris you can't shake off. Lofty as you are, you don't float above the law of
unintended consequences. Or that of gravity, either.
Gregory Herr , February 10, 2018 at 6:16 am
Love your comments, The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Martin - Swedish citizen , February 9, 2018 at 2:21 pm
My experience with AVAAZ is similar. They petition for many good causes and seem to
achieve quite a lot, but then there appear a slice of the petitions that are political and
naive, like the no fly zone. Inherent problems in their brand of activism. They should
probably reconsider their scope of issues.
Yes, thank you for the link. I had forgot about that. It's very important that we
understand NGO's roles & who they are working for.
Lethal Weapon: NGO Soft Power
"Along with military invasions and missionaries, NGOs help crack countries open like ripe
nuts, paving the way for intensifying waves of exploitation and extraction" " ~ Stephanie
McMillan
""The NGO 'soft power complex' is now one of the most destructive global forces. It is
employed as an interface between civilians of a target nation, with government, economic or
military structures of the colonialist force intent on harnessing any given nation's
resources or undermining its geopolitical influence. The Democratization process, or the path
to regime change is facilitated by these undercover government or corporate proxy employees
who, once embedded into a society, set about producing the propaganda that will justify
intervention, either economically, politically or militarily. NGO propaganda will often
employ slick social media marketing which is underpinned by advance applied behavioural
psychology and advanced NLP-based 'social enterprise' sales pitches.
A recent piece by researcher Eva Bartlett entitled, "Human Rights Front Groups
[Humanitarian Interventionalists] Warring on Syria", provides a detailed insight into how
this new breed of weaponized politics is being deployed right now in the Middle East.
The perception of a 'non profit' complex who purport to be "working for the betterment and
improvement of humanity" can be a difficult nut to crack, but it must be done. In the west.
charities, not-for-profits and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are seen as "do gooders"
and so they rarely fall under public scrutiny. Western governments know the general public
has an inherent faith in their perceived integrity and this provides an ideal cover for
western government and intelligence agencies to operate through their NGO and aid
organisations."
I think it's great that they are calling for massive rallies against the rape of our
democracy by the one percent. It's great to see them rallying hundreds of thousands of us to
protest the state of endless war. It's nice to see them putting all that muscle into the
streets to oppose US foot-dragging on climate change.
Oh wait, I must have misread the article.
On a serious note, we need to see these FISA abuses only as the tools of tyranny. Far more
important is who is wielding them and why.
Thank you Ms. Rowley and Mr. Parry for reporting honestly. If certain factions can set-up
a POTUS, what can they do to "we the people"? Mr. Parry, your father would be proud of
you!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 1:48 pm
"Liberals?" Just another name for war mongering liars these days. "Conservatives?" Just
another brand of liars and thieves. People who put stock in, and vote on the basis of these
baseless tags are the real suckers that enable our whole doomed evil empire. If you vote for
anyone who uses either of those labels, you are a fool, and a dangerous one at that. Come to
think of it, if you vote at all you are an idiot endorsing a corrupt process.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 1:52 pm
Off topic.
What looks to be an outstanding brand new film is coming out soon. It's entitled, "The
Young Karl Marx." This movie looks like a must-see.
Unfortunately for those very many invested in the Russiagate nonsense, the cold reality is
that doubling down on crazy doesn't somehow magically produce sanity. We're watching the
Western power structure fracture before our eyes as their propaganda operations have become
not simply unbelievable, but now have entered into the world of the totally outlandish and
absurd. The notion that "reality" requires some kind of rational connection to observable
events in the physical world seems to have totally lost any meaning in this current climate
of reality meltdown. Quite amazing to witness actually.
Eddie , February 10, 2018 at 12:49 pm
"doubling down on crazy doesn't somehow magically produce sanity."–Great
phrasing!
alley cat , February 9, 2018 at 2:23 pm
The undead hands of those two zombie neocons, HRC and John Brennan, reach out from the
boneyard of U.S. politics to drag democracy down with them.
The neocons' ultimate target is Russia, together with anyone who dares to utter the truth
about Russia. They are drunk with power and will stop at nothing, not even nuclear war, to
eliminate any rival for global domination. They are so reckless and arrogant that they think
a nuclear war is winnable.
Megalomania much?
Goebbels boasted that he could play the German public like a keyboard. The neofascist
neocons are using the same tactics with the so-called U.S. left, which, measured by
international political metrics, corresponds to the traditional imperialist right. American
so-called liberals are allowing themselves to be played, like the German public was played by
the Nazis before WWII. They are attacking Trump from the reactionary right, not from the
left. In their feckless hysteria, they can't even tell the difference.
Fascist tactics bring fascist results. There are multitudinous grounds to oppose Trump
democratically. Impeaching him based on ginned-up, right-wing, smears would tear this country
apart at the seams.
lindaj , February 9, 2018 at 11:46 pm
"American so-called liberals are allowing themselves to be played, like the German public
was played by the Nazis before WWII. They are attacking Trump from the reactionary right, not
from the left. In their feckless hysteria, they can't even tell the difference."
I'm afraid you are right.
Democrats are not "the left." Have they ever really been? That's why you said "so-called
left" I realize. It makes me laugh when mainstream media calls it such.
Richard Hicks , February 9, 2018 at 2:36 pm
The story says: "Considering all of the threats to democracy posed by unconstitutional
overreach, unfair elections, corruption, and voter suppression – not to mention
environmental challenges, economic inequality, an out-of-control U.S. foreign policy,
numerous foreign conflicts that the U.S. is engaged in, and the ever-present threat of
nuclear war – it is telling that the liberal establishment is mobilizing on this
particular issue."
Yes, it is "telling that the liberal establishment is mobilizing on this particular issue".
Except it's not just this issue. Remember that Al Capone was convicted of crimes other than
the crime he was arrested for. It seems that on an almost daily basis evidence is discovered
that the President is/was involved in crimes other than Conspiracy and/or Obstruction of
Justice. As new evidence is uncovered, it may lead the Mueller investigation in another
direction, and apparently, it has. If that is the case, Mueller is doing his job. The job
that The People hired him to do. If Trump were to fire Mueller, it could very well be because
of newly discovered criminal activity that Trump is, or was involved in, and Trump is nervous
about. Our Nation is a Nation of laws, and no one, even the President is above the law. This
President has a long-standing proven reputation, of difficulty with the Truth. Based on that
alone, if Mueller is fired by Trump, people would be justified taking to the streets, in
protest.
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 3:45 pm
A riot to back up the putch against Trump? Not likely, but a disaster if performed. Is
this how some dream of a new US government? It will take something much deeper and wiser to
accomplish that. Again not likely, but if one has to dream, why not something truly
positive?
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:06 pm
"Putin's life work is spying"? You seem to have a rather shallow estimate of someone who
stands against those in the US determined to turn our planet into an ashy corpse.
Best not to lose sight of this fact: there is no liberal cause, especially the incipient
climate disaster, that is not negatively affected by Trump and the legal coup-d etat achieved
by the Republicans. Anyone working to stymie that,whether sinless or simon pure deserves
support. Also, re Russia, Garry Kasparov the Chess Master says it would be naive to think
that Putin whose life work is spying would not use his current sophisticated apparatus to
work his will on any issue or election of interest.
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:00 pm
"legal coup d'etat?" That's a new one on me, on the other hand the whole loony scene in
Washington is illegal – so what the hey! Still, removing a sitting President on the
basis of phony charges against him for colluding with Russia would really kick over the chess
board and empower the crazies to do their worst. Or is there anybody still out there who
believes the Russiagate nonsense has a shred of truth in it? I hope not, but I am afraid I am
in danger of overestimating my fellow citizens .
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:02 pm
As for Gary Kasparov, he should rest on his fading laurels as a chess master, and stay out
of politics. If he had his way Russians would raise Yeltsin from the grave, and turn their
country back over to the international capitalists.
Mark Thomason , February 9, 2018 at 2:52 pm
Russia-gate has nothing to do with the real Russia.
It is entirely a Team Hillary attack on Trump. It is an attempt to deny the election. It
is rage at losing, looking for excuses to express itself. If not Russia it would be Comey, or
many other things. It has been most convenient to use Putin at the pinata, but that is a
matter of internal US politics, not Putin at all.
irina , February 9, 2018 at 4:17 pm
And luckily for us, Putin not only groks that dynamic but has been brave enough
to say so in public.
What's with all the new-name trolls here today ?
Mr Boompi , February 9, 2018 at 3:02 pm
I hate the term derangement syndrome but some people surely do have Trump derangement
syndrome. It's beaten into them every day on TV and certain internet sites. I believe they
want Trump removed using any means possible, including illegal means. Their derangement
syndrome includes the mistaken belief attempting to enforce the law regarding Clinton emails
and the frauds perpetrated on the FISA court are nothing more than an attempt to obstruct
justice for Trump. Even though there is no evidence Trump has done anything wrong. It's a
shame actually.
Alan , February 9, 2018 at 3:06 pm
Let's take a step or two back and try to see the current state of chaos in a broader
perspective. People are angry. The Trump administration is without question aberrant. Where
is true leadership today? Certainly not with Trump or his administration. The real issue
isn't specifically "Russiagate", but what lies beneath.
We have been mislead, lied to, manipulated by virtually every administration to greater
and lesser degrees. Of relevance here is that both Nixon and Reagan manipulated the American
people through their backchannel negotiations with foreign powers prior to inauguration.
While this Consortiumnews article can shine some light on potential abuses which takes
place through the FISA court we must recognize that we form an imperfect union. This
particular article seems to be like arguing for changes to the fire codes while Rome
burns!
Any mobilization of the "liberal establishment" is far more about the egregious threats to
our democracy than whatever "Russiagate" means. An imperfect Mueller seems to represent our
best way forward to finding the hidden truths behind all of Trump's malfeasance. Let the
people be heard!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:10 pm
The people have been heard! They voted for Trump
WheresOurTeddy , February 9, 2018 at 3:16 pm
Damn the people in this country are easy to manipulate. Pathetic.
If the activists of the last generation could see the sellout pieces of garbage that call
themselves democrats today, they'd roll over in their unmarked graves they were dumped into
by the same alphabet agencies of oppression the stooges are standing up for.
Late stage empire in decline.
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:11 pm
Amen.
Maxim , February 9, 2018 at 3:29 pm
They don't want Trump, they want Russia. That's why Trump was "elected". So they could use
Trump to get to Russia. In 2020 Clinton will finally get elected and everyone will be begging
for WWW3 against the Russian Threat. Another false Pearl Harbor is coming. Syria, N.Korea,
Iran or Ukraine are all potential flash points. We're sheep being led to slaughter.
Far , February 9, 2018 at 3:58 pm
In one ponit you are wrong. The orange clown is uninhibited in starting a war. Read just
the new disclosure that pentagon had been resisting requests from the White House to provide
military options for Iran. In his first speach in the UN Trump has threatened to destroy
North Korea totally. This crazy man doesn't deserve to be the president of the US!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Mostly correct, but the Deep State emphatically did NOT want Trump elected. Too
unpredictable. The DS thought Hillary had a lock on the election. Just goes to show that the
DS is not as smart as they like to think they are.
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 4:47 am
For sure, Mike, the DS pulled out all the stops to help Hillary both before and after the
election to no avail. They are still doing it. The most influential insiders in America
couldn't alter the results of the election, yet they would have you believe that Putin merely
snaps his fingers, "meddles in our democracy" and has his way. Yet most people cannot see the
absurdity of that claim because the corporate media, which is part of the real conspiracy
orchestrated by the DS, spews nothing but propaganda full bore 24/7 changing apparent reality
right in front of your own lying eyes.
Now the History Channel is coming out with an extra special demonisation of Putin
extravaganza!!! Be sure to watch if you wanna stay free! These people could rehabilitate
Hitler if it suited their purposes. The American people are putty in their hands. There is no
opposition but those few of us who fail to be hypnotized by the svengalis that represent the
interests of the string puller elites on the boob tube and internets, who and which they
totally own and control. There are so few of us who can still see the truth, I suspect they
could house us all in a single detention camp if it comes to that.
Gregory Herr , February 10, 2018 at 6:49 am
I couldn't suppress a derisive laugh reading an above comment about Putin's ability "to
work his will on any issue or election of interest." Yep, those snapping fingers are rife
with ability not to mention speculation about Putin's desires. What a mad genius he must
be!
Snookered and bamboozled, the show must go on.
Far , February 9, 2018 at 3:45 pm
I would support any measure that tends to an impeachment of a crazy, impulsive and
retarded president. This president is a misfortune for the US and for the world. One can
criticise the actions to support the current investigations in the Russiagate. But if it
helps to get rid of a mentally ill clown then why not!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:18 pm
Good reasoning, but it fails to consider what's next? Believe it or not, there will
probably be a lot worse in store for us than President Donald Trump. Things just tend to get
worse and worse in a collapsing empire ..
Far , February 9, 2018 at 4:39 pm
What's next is a good question. I hope that Clinton leave finally the political world. She
was one of the main reasons that many of voters elected the bad option instead of the worst
option. Collapsing of the system can not be an option. But Trump is well under way to shake
the political system and polarize the civil society more than ever before
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 4:59 am
That's what Susan Sarandon foresaw as the "good" outcome of a Trump victory–the
collapse of the system would be advanced. However, how do we benefit from that opportunity
for change when the only announced candidates for Trump's job are the same ilk (Clinton,
Biden, Kerry) or their even shallower accolytes (Booker, Harris ) that caused all the damage
in the first place? All those idiots are still about fooling and fleecing the American public
and warring upon the rest of the world–friends and foes alike. They offer no peace, no
prosperity, and no future whatsoever, only a bleak struggle for existence in a nuclear winter
by the few survivors of their promised handiwork. You nailed it, Mike, things will only get
worse because our leaders (from both of these two abominable parties) insist upon it.
irina , February 9, 2018 at 4:22 pm
"Why not ?" Because such 'measures' only serve to destroy what little remains of our
democracy. Here's a thought experiment for you : would you support similar 'measures'
if they 'tended to an impeachment' of crazy, impulsive, mentally ill Hillary had she been
elected ? (As co-president with Bill, who she promised to 'put in charge' of the
economy).
Because "We came, we saw, he Died" Hillary is arguably even farther off the rails than
The Donald. And probably more dangerous for many reasons, not the least of which is
that so many people look at her and see someone 'sane'.
Far , February 9, 2018 at 5:06 pm
Crooked Hillary was never be an option. And Trump is definitive not fit for the oval
office. Trump will bury the democracy finally. Damages to the reputation of the US in the
world community is immense. With Trump there is no chance to make a real change. Quit in
contrary the US will face serious social, economic and security challenges without a glimmer
of hope to change the things. My father said that a great ship could be sunk. And if it sinks
it will be just slower than a little one. Trump is not an option anymore to steer the
ship.
Have a look at the less than vigorous investigations run by Mueller into BCCI (Bush crime
family "intelligence" op) pre 911. Mueller can run coverups or smear campaigns. Wonder what
his corporate offshore bank accounts look like
lindaj , February 9, 2018 at 11:50 pm
bank accounts. good question.
weilunion , February 9, 2018 at 5:35 pm
"Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work
effectively to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least
temporarily, to believe the exact opposite of the facts. These techniques are known in the
intelligence community as "perception management," and have been refined since the 1980s "to
keep the American people compliant and confused," as the late Robert Parry has reported. We
saw this in action last decade, when after months of disinformation, about 70% of Americans
came to falsely believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 when the truth was the opposite
– Saddam was actually an enemy of the Al Qaeda perpetrators."
Cognitive dissonance, lack of critical thinking, reliance on authority, in this case a
former head of a criminal organization called the FBI.
People have no class consciousness. They have no idea who their enemies ar or how to
organize.
This is the sad case of liberalism melting like warm butter while the fascists
congeal.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:27 pm
Nicely put.
Dave P. , February 10, 2018 at 2:51 am
"Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work
effectively to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least
temporarily, to believe the exact opposite of the facts. . ."
Yes. On any bar counter, just start some conversation with the person sitting to you. With
all this bizarre drama – Russia-Gate, Iran, memos, dossier . . . going on TV, and in
Washington being enacted knowingly by the the Powers who rule – both, so called
Liberals and Conservatives – one can see how this emotional manipulation has worked to
snooker just about most of the population. I just had the experience today during lunch at a
bar counter. In our conversation, the person sitting next to me was ready to nuke Iran, N.
Korea, and go after Russia; and go after Hillary too.
Population in the country was very poorly informed any how. And now, they, The Ruling
Establishment which includes Media, have completely messed the people up – making them
compliant and confused.
Does any body have idea how they are going to bring an end to this completely concocted
bizarre drama?
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:21 pm
Dave the same stupid asses you speak of will still be the same stupid asses long after
these foreign affairs take any turn for the better. The dumb butts are easy to control. It's
like you point and say bad, and these morons growl, as their faces contort in macho anger.
Although, if one day the U.S. should make friends with Iran, N Korea, or Russia, these silly
little stupid puppies will just go back to work. If you tell them it will be exciting to play
the Russians at hockey, well this might get them going a little bit again, but not to worry
because it's just hockey. Oh, easy on the beer, and make sure the refreshment stands have
plenty of nachos and tip. The jackasses like to eat and drink a lot, what can I say? Joe
Both MoveOn and Avaaz get major funding from George Soros.
Martin - Swedish citizen , February 9, 2018 at 6:30 pm
As a foreigner, looking from the outside, it seems Mueller will not find anything on
Russia. He already found something on Israel, but he doesn't pursue that. If Americans rally,
then it seems you should rally to make an objective and fair inquiry, to nail Israel for what
they seem to have done.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:28 pm
Now your talking. Good idea.
ToivoS , February 9, 2018 at 7:11 pm
"This is nuts" is a great headline for our current problem.
Many years ago in my early 20s I read 'Guns of August' that described support for the
coming WWI. What was so striking about that period was how the public in every relevant
European was hell bent on war. Among the major players -- Germany, France, UK, Russia and
Austro-hungary -- their populations were demonstrating in the streets and assemblies for war.
How was it possible for all of those people to eagerly lust for war that within a few years
led to the destruction of the German, Russian and Austrian empires, the deaths of millions of
their citizens and multidecade impoverishment for the survivors. The costs of the war
resulted in the effective bankruptcy of the UK and French colonial empires as well as
millions of dead and traumatized survivors.
I never was able to see how so many people then could be so incredibly foolish. In the
last two years I have gained some insight. Many of my respected, but now previous, political
associates have just gone totally nuts over Russiagate. There was some kind of psychic break
in their minds when Hillary lost and they are now little more than raging primates trapped in
a cognitive dissonance loop. Not just that, but these are people who are on the verge of
supporting war against Russia.
Reading other comments here it seems my experience has been shared by others.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:49 pm
Yes ToivoS, many of us here have been watching our family, friends, and fellow citizens
lose their minds in mass over the election of Donald J Trump. It's with his Electoral College
win that I noticed the psychic break in many a citizens mind. So now here we are, where this
psychic break has moved good thinking people to the side of the field where the Deep State,
or National Security State if you will, has replaced critical thinking people by turning them
into 'useful idiots', if that is enough of a suitable label to pin on these stray pseudo
liberals.
These misguided liberal thinkers ought to move out of the way, drop this Russia-Gate
travesty, and allow the real Left to emerge so as justice maybe served upon the Trump
Administration. And if these limousine liberal hacks don't wish to travel a different avenue,
as to confront what the Trump team does, then for the love of mike please dear almost
liberals quit getting so cozy with the National Security State. This kind of stuff gives
reason to believe that 'Nightmare on Elm Street' was a documentary, as Freddy Krueger is a
nice guy in real life. Now I'm afraid to go to sleep .take care ToivoS. Joe
Zachary Smith , February 9, 2018 at 11:35 pm
Regarding Guns of August , it's a book I won't be reading. Anything by Barbara
Tuchman connected with WW1 is automatically suspect with me. I've kept many of her other
history books, but will maintain a distinct level of skepticism while reading them. That's
necessary because she was a fanatical Zionist, and lying about Israel-related issues is just
something that type does.
Lois Gagnon , February 10, 2018 at 12:32 am
The term psychic break I think is dead accurate. It made me think of Naomi Klein's "Shock
Doctrine" in that people who are traumatized by natural or man made disasters are taken
advantage of by powerful interests intent on imposing policies that are against the public
interest.
People who are in a state of shock are not equipped to make rational decisions. Trump's
surprise (at least to Clinton voters) win left Democratic Party voters in shock leaving them
vulnerable to the Establishment's agenda of increasing tensions with Russia. Enter
Russia-gate which serves many purposes at once. As we have seen, it worked like a charm.
Those falling for the psy-op have left all reason behind. They are singularly focused. It is
virtually impossible to introduce evidence that contradicts the narrative. It's as
frustrating as talking to a religious fanatic.
Pandas4peace , February 10, 2018 at 11:48 am
In an ironic twist, Naomi Klein today has completely lost her mind due to Trump
Derangement Syndyome.
Larco Marco , February 10, 2018 at 3:34 am
The Ottoman Empire was also destroyed, with the UK subsequently claiming Palestine as a
piece of their own empire.
Sam , February 9, 2018 at 8:26 pm
"[I]t should be hoped by everyone that the Department of Justice Inspector General can get
to the bottom of how the FISA court was ultimately misled."
Is the IG even looking at this? The current investigation by the IG, the one due to report
soon, is looking at the investigation into Clinton's email server. I'm not aware of an IG
investigation on this matter. It would certainly be a good idea – assuming that the IG
is not compromised, which is a big assumption.
Coleen Rowley , February 9, 2018 at 11:20 pm
Maybe wishful thinking on my part. The Grassley-Graham referral regarding Steele's
potential violation of Title 18 Section 1001, lying to the FBI, may or may not be
prosecutable depending upon where the "lies" took place and the likely lack of
extra-territorial jurisdiction if they occurred in Rome. But even if no criminal violation
could be prosecuted, I would think the IG should still investigate the matter for potential
administrative discipline.
GEOFF TEAGUE , February 9, 2018 at 9:05 pm
the so called liberals need god on their side so they can tear down the constitution (at
least what is left of it) and then put trump's head on a pike. the most fearful thing in this
country is watching ignorance in action.
Pandas4peace , February 10, 2018 at 11:45 am
Yes! Stop and think about the consequences of a COUP of a legitimately ELECTED U.S.
President by the Deep State and his political opponents. It's a dangerous game and a slippery
slope. It's frightening to imagine where this could go.
ThomasGilroy , February 9, 2018 at 9:13 pm
To a liberal, the worst possible scenario was the election of Trump – especially
because they are "liberals". That cannot be difficult to see. They rightly see that Russian
inference in the election could have made a significant difference in the swing states.
Whether that is true or not, is irrelevant. There cannot be closure without the
investigation going forward. That Russia meddled in the US election is certainly without
question. Whether Trump colluded or not still needs to be answered.
Finally, future election need to be safeguarded against foreign powers attempting to
influence our system of democracy. Russia had a lot to gain potentially helping to elect
Trump. Trump had a lot to gain by colluding. We need to find out the truth.
Zachary Smith , February 10, 2018 at 1:00 am
"swing states" – do you suppose that Hillary taking several of them for granted had
anything to do with "influencing" the election?
That Russia meddled in the US election is certainly without question.
Without Question! This sounds very much like a religious belief to me. Something like this
1950 declaration by the pope at the time:
By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and
by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma:
that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her
earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
Change a few words in that, and we'd have the Tragedy of Saint Hillary.
Finally, future election need to be safeguarded against foreign powers attempting to
influence our system of democracy. Russia had a lot to gain potentially helping to elect
Trump.
And how do you suggest this "safeguarding" happen? Shut down the internet? Imprison anyone
who says a favorable word about Russia?
ThomasGilroy , February 10, 2018 at 3:48 pm
Zachary
HRC was the second worse candidate in US history – just behind Trump. She is
definitely the one most responsible for her loss in the election. None the less, very few
votes separated a significant amount of electoral votes so the Russian influence could have
made a difference. If you view all of the evidence beginning when US intelligence first
identified Russian-related hackers in 2015, followed by Crowdstrike in 2016 (and at least
five other cybersecurity firms which confirmed Crowdstrike's conclusions) , social media and
the obvious reasons that Putin favored Trump over the anti-Russia candidacy of HRC (motive),
then it becomes much more logical that Russia meddled. Assange served the Russian government
as well (mostly with the aid of the Russian government-funded RT). He clearly looked to
undermine the HRC candidacy despite his denials (lies).
The Daily Beast does a nice job with the time line in the current Mueller investigation
(Trump-Russia Isn't About the Cover-Up. It's About the Crime. http://thebea.st/2slKBBE?source=twitter&via=desktop
via @thedailybeast) and Marcie Wheeler (at Empty Wheel) also does a good job presenting
evidence of Russian perfidy. Mueller probably knows a lot more than he is sharing so it's
just a matter of time before the evidence becomes much more difficult to ignore.
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 5:23 am
That Russia "meddled in the US election" is totally without foundation and you know it.
Any such attempt by them would be pointless, ineffective and detrimental if ever found out.
If we had really found out any such thing, we'd all know about it rather than being fed
bullshit based upon absolutely no real evidence. America would not be subjected to a year and
a half of shenanigans by a thoroughly-biased politically-motivated special prosecutor given a
hunting license by a frustrated deep state, a bitter political opposition and a raucous media
in the service of both.
What's the point in dragging out the process if the object is justice and the removal of a
putative pretender to the presidency? The aforementioned insurrectionists cannot pull off
their desired miracle because the evidence doesn't exist and it doesn't exist because the
purported crime was never committed.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans undoubtedly each cheated to win the election in
their own ways, but not in any way involving the Russians who have just served as unwitting
targets by our own domestic villains. Russia has gained NOTHING by seeing Trump in office.
During the election Putin would not even play favorites, stating the obvious: that he could
not predict the future and that he would have to deal with whomever was elected. Your
scenarios are all delusions, Gilroy.
Dave P. , February 10, 2018 at 3:36 pm
Realist – Excellent summation of this whole false, delusionary, bizarre concocted
drama being enacted on the American people, and on people beyond in the World.
Paul Easton , February 9, 2018 at 9:29 pm
The article mentions "perception management" and I think it is well to generalize. Ever
since 9/11 the permanent government has kept the population in line by playing on their
fears, in Trump's case fear of fascism. (And quite possibly the events of 9/11 were planned
and executed for this very purpose.) As it turned out the perception management was all too
effective and by now most of the population is freaking out, in one way or another, and our
society is disintegrating. Personally I am cheering it on. Goodbye USA Thank God!
Liberals getting behind the most
racist government agency in a pathetic display of supporting the
"enemy of my enemy" Donald Trump
gives further proof they are as
unprincipled as any of history's
other "national socialists".
Zachary Smith , February 10, 2018 at 1:02 am
What the hell is this endless repetition of the word "Liberals"? Try "Corporate Democrats"
and you'd be a LOT closer to reality.
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 5:31 am
To be sure. The other biggest mischaracterisation is to call the ring leaders of this
witch hunt "the left" or "leftists." The genuine left (what little still exists of it) are
the few who rail against this nonsense, largely on this or similar sites (e.g., ICH).
Dave P. , February 10, 2018 at 3:40 pm
I completely agree, Zachary. The true democratic party adherents – which includes
lot of us – should have split from the Corporate Democrats long ago during Clinton
presidency.
Bandrui , February 9, 2018 at 10:27 pm
We live in a hall of mirrors. This is yet another example of how easily most Americans are
manipulated, dumbest populace on the planet apparently. I see no hope for us at all.
D.H. Fabian , February 10, 2018 at 12:36 am
Give the Clinton right wing credit for achieving what the Republicans had long hoped, but
failed, to do. First, they split apart the Dem voting base in the 1990s, middle class vs.
poor, and the Obama years served to confirm that this split is permanent. Then they
apparently plagiarized old Joe McCarthy's playbook, launching their anti-Russian crusade,
splitting apart those who are not on the right wing. Divide, subdivide, conquer.
RandyLee , February 10, 2018 at 9:55 am
so the democrats are going for mob rule now? and they have willing accomplices in liberals
who have no idea why they hate Trump, they just know they are supposed to hate Trump. well I
say take to the streets then! give it your best shot! cry and scream and threaten your little
butts off. when you have no real idea why you are doing something, it won't take long before
you realize how stupid you are and will stop listening to those who encourage you from the
sidelines to attack american principles but aren't actually on the streets with you. its ok
for you to take that bullet but they sure as hell won't be taking one for the cause.
Martin S , February 10, 2018 at 10:19 am
The nefarious results of the Left propaganda: CRUSH THE TRUTH AND THE SHEEP WILL
SWALLOW
I believe the public is getting played on Mueller. Little hints keep dropping about Trump
firing him. Then the media and the left goes into a frenzy, demanding Saint Mueller stay.
Mueller has literally become the symbol of hope for the left.
Imagine Mueller now coming out and clearing Trump completely while exposing what his real
investigative objective was: revealing the deep state. Remember NBC and CNN mentioning
Mueller began investigating the Podestas? Then they dropped that story as fast as
possible.
I think we're witnessing the absolute genius of the deep state getting taken down. My
hunch is that Mueller is part of the team and the media is getting outsmarted.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 1:11 pm
One can only wonder to where all of this may go. Read this .
The thing about liberals is, they'll only accept one result in the Mueller probe. If Trump
removes him, he's hiding something. And if Mueller exposes Dem corruption instead of Rep
corruption, they'll say its fixed. They want the process to play out, but they'll only accept
one result, that of Trump/Russia collusion. They are blinded by their own hate.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:27 pm
Remember when the Dem's hated Comey? Boy, those were the days, weren't they?
Pandas4peace , February 10, 2018 at 11:35 am
Robert Mueller is leading an open-ended investigation that can cover any potential crime
uncovered during the course of the investigation. He has unlimited resources, no deadlines,
and no oversight. He can't be fired, except by the President. He reports to noone. His
targets have no idea what their crimes may be. His team is stacked with partisan hacks. He
uses heavy-handed tactics intended to break his adversaries, even if they haven't been
charged with a crime. He refuses to consider contrary evidence or to examine the DNC
computers. He won't interview witnesses. The Constitutional and human rights abuses are
alarming.
Douglas Mailly , February 10, 2018 at 11:43 am
Great article, but too bad about the polygraph reference, it just perpetuates the myth
that they are useful
One of the supreme ironies of our age is how the McCarthyesque focus on Russian
interference in our electoral process has completely obscured the domestic politicization of
our own institutions of government, that is the damage our now rabid placement of political
party party above the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the American population.
Corporations have taken over our legislatures under the guise of "free speech", and the
country's foreign policy is controlled by a military-industrial-security complex that sees
perpetual war as the answer to domestic economic well being and American world hegemony.
While Russians have no doubt used the internet to sow dissent here via "perception
management", as we no doubt have done there and elsewhere around the globe, what we Americans
as masters of Madison Avenue techniques have done to ourselves pales in comparison. Can we
come to grips with this and then get on to building a more cooperative world? It's a cause
worth fighting for.
Mild -ly - Facetious , February 10, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Well said, Howard Mettee.
Our slow descent into the present National Chaos might well've been birthed under McCarthy
antics as cloak&cover for Operation Paperclip. One could rightly label his actions
"political theater" or straight subversion. -- Whatever, US actual history is a Disappearing
Act with imperious propensity. We, as a nation, have always been imperious and domineering,
just as were our British forefathers.
The present personification of our historical arrogance is this trenchantly self-approving
/ self-adoring Trump; (Mala Mens Malus Animus), whose wanton path of destruction is largely
more perverse than any of his predecessors. His path of DECONSTRUCTION is the portent of a
free-radical DISORGANIZATION of the world structure as we've known it. ( Poe aptly depicted
this in his short story, "The Descent Into The Maelstrom")
The foreboding actions from Mr. Trump foreshadow Perilous Times predicted first in First
Timothy 6: 9-10, Trump as forerunner and Second Timothy 3: 1-5 -- either and both apt
descriptions of Donald Trump.
– – – – – – "mala mens malus animus"
R Davis , February 10, 2018 at 2:21 pm
Is it a diversion?
From what?
It is obvious that Israel & Trump are on a roll.
Bombing Syria on the skirtings of Iran – "oh joy of joys, one step closer," – to
doomsday.
Elsewhere i have recommended the Palestinian people exit Palestine ASAP.
Foolhardy Israel is only the size of a postage stamp, 4 time the size of Hiroshima.
when nerves fray hey!
Brad Smith , February 10, 2018 at 2:22 pm
I was actually hoping that with Trump taking over the reigns of the war machine that the
left would once again mobilize and oppose our wars and the spying state that walks all over
our civil liberties. Trump certainly gives them enough legitimate areas of concern that they
have plenty to go on. Sadly this really does show the power of the press to manipulate public
opinion and the left-wing media loves Russia Gate.
For myself personally, I see the threat of a confrontation with Russia as the #1 concern.
We have now entered into a new cold war with all the massive spending, proxy wars and yet
again the very real chance of it leading to a hot war that could be the end of all of us.
Sadly the "left" in this country has once again fallen for the endless propaganda, their
hatred of Trump is only part of this issue.
With or without the Mueller investigation the Russia hatred will go on. Mueller could
exonerate Trump tomorrow and the anti-Russian propaganda will continue. It was already
ramping up well before our elections and much of it was targeted at the left then as well.
Remember Pussy Riot? Remember the stories about how homophobic Russians are? The left has
been primed to hate Putin for a long time by this propaganda and they fell for it well before
Trump ran for office. Think about it this way, before we had the American "Deplorables" we
had "Russians". They were shown as nothing but drunken, wife beating, homophobic, Religious,
white, gun nuts, etc. etc. etc. This Extreme form of stereotyping was meant to invoke hatred
by the left and it worked.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:33 pm
Brad you got it right. Yes, the Dem's are wasting valuable time chasing after these
Russian hackers who weren't there. Brad you also got it right, that these so called liberals
are blinded by their hatred of Trump, and in my estimation these kool-aid liberals are
passing up any golden opportunity they may have to go after Trump for what they should be
going after him for. Talk about misdirected, the Dem's aren't even close. Joe
Erelis , February 10, 2018 at 3:24 pm
Well, there was middle last year a nationally organized "March for Truth" which called for
investigation of Trump and any Russian ties. The march by newspaper reports got "hundreds" in
Chicago and NYC. I saw a live stream of the Portland march. Maybe just maybe cracked a
hundred. Basically the march attendees looked like older party partisans. I would expect the
same for any pro-Mueller rallies in that they will be pretty much be democratic party
rallies. As the leadership of groups like Planned Parenthood, unions, and other organizations
are aligned with establishment democrats, I am not sure they can convince their bases to
march.
On the electoral side. Sure some people will show up, and show up in democratic dominated
cities, but in the rest of America, more of a yawn. Establishment democrats think that
Russiagate will win them elections. I think not.
dee , February 10, 2018 at 3:48 pm
The so called liberals tried to redefined the left away from working class to LBGT, Black
Lives Matter, abortion rights, etc and , in the process, dug their own graves.
So far these "liberals" have not dug their own graves, because media supports their
position now despite having primed Trump for winning during campaigning. I maintain that
having only two political parties is the crux of the problem, and clearly both are corporate.
People don't get how they are being played. A quote attributed to Mark Twain I just read: "It
is easier to fool people than to convince them that they are being fooled."
Dave Sullivan , February 10, 2018 at 7:12 pm
Yet another "analysis " of russia-gate without mentioning organized crime. The trump
cronies are mobbed up from top to bottom, and the right is shocked they would be looked at by
the FBI. Talk about snookered. Then the author, denigrates FISA, blames liberals, but doesn't
mention the lockstep GOP vote to continue it, or, the majority of dems who opposed .check
your own cognitive dissonance at the door before you sit to "write" again.
No reason for foul language, doesn't enlighten just plays into the already coarse society
we have. Colleen Rowley in the past has written on Mueller's harmful coverups of FBI behavior
including 9/11 collusion with Bush to ignore Saudi complicity, if I remember correctly.
Yoshi Shimizu , February 10, 2018 at 7:34 pm
Nuts' indeed. Before raising the temperature over the Russiagate, first. Shave off the
Pentagon budget!
"... Walmart employs 1.4 million Americans. The military employs 1.3 million active duty soldiers. That's a problem. Peace can't be allowed to break out. And the best way to insure that it doesn't is to kill the minimum number of people and export the maximum number of arms to keep people fighting with each other around the world. ..."
Walmart employs 1.4 million Americans. The military employs 1.3 million active duty
soldiers. That's a problem. Peace can't be allowed to break out. And the best way to insure
that it doesn't is to kill the minimum number of people and export the maximum number of arms
to keep people fighting with each other around the world.
That is all about as far as conceivable away from any notion of a professional
soldier.
How do you stop this? Who will employ those 1.3 million... 1.3 million who have been
brainwashed about "terrorism", "communism", "democracy", "muslims", etc. etc. etc.?
Particularly in the context of the tsunami of social change that is about to hit with the
advent of real artificial intelligence. Doctors? Their jobs are on the line and I suspect
they don't know it. Lawyers? Even worse.
The following article was the start of an epochal change in medicine:
Lasko TA, Denny JC, Levy MA (2013) Computational Phenotype Discovery Using Unsupervised
Feature Learning over Noisy, Sparse, and Irregular Clinical Data. PLoS ONE 8(6): e66341.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066341
I guess I should add, although it should be obvious, that the one thing that absolutely
cannot under any circumstances be allowed to happen is real war. Then you have to figure out
how to employ both the soldiers and the Walmart employees. Those that are still alive. And of
course if you look at the behavior of the U.S. in Syria you see that we are about as
interested in real war as we are in the arts.
"... What has happened in America is eerily similar to the color revolutions in targeted countries which leads me to believe the organizers of such revolutions looked at the biggest prize of all and said "Why not.'. ..."
"... Herman.I think you are right. These things are being cooked up–orchestrated to serve the current power block. The mainstream propaganda media plays a big part in that. And sadly, Americans cannot wake up fast enough ..."
"... I am familiar with the tactics of Move-On, and although they would deny it, represent the democratic party. They actually called me up asking for money to create mayhem at Trump's rallies during his run for the presidency. I told them I wouldn't give them a nickel since not only did I see it as undemocratic and contentious, but psychologically idiotic. Idiotic in the sense that the people who supported Trump perceived themselves as victims of a corrupt system who cared little about their needs, and turning Trump's rallies into mayhem would portray him as a victim as well, which would cause his supporters to more fully identify with him, and more committed to getting him elected. ..."
"... This is Jimmy Dore's take on the left falling for Russia-gate and aligning itself with the FBI. As he says, they are reacting to Trump with their lizard brain which makes them easy prey for being led to their own political slaughter. ..."
"... Does anybody ever talk about the failures of capitalism anymore or just about people and politics? ..."
"... Yes, but clearly he doesn't, and therefore he won't. He will drag out his neocon-sponsored witch-hunt as long as possible in order to do the maximum damage possible to all those who don't toe the neocon line. The very existence of Mueller's unholy inquisition constantly forces the president ever-further to the right in an effort to appease his neocon tormentors. That is, further away from détente with Russia and closer to nuclear Armageddon. ..."
"... The neocons' goal is to kill two birds, U.S. democracy and Russia, with one stone -- the Mueller "investigation." ..."
"... yes i agree that Mueller will be exposed (before congress ?) but not in the mainstream media. ..."
"... This article does point to no doubt one of our nation's most evasive, and spookiest courts, which is FISA. Yet, on tv hardly is this subject ever brought up, while instead reissuing every 90 days for permission to monitor Carter Page gets talked about to no end. So far hardly has there been, to when at least I've viewed the anchors and pundits, do they ever discuss the unconstitutionally, or break down of our democratic values, that this FISA court represents. ..."
"... Meanwhile so far what has Robert Mueller come up with? Well, we know that Manafort may be guilty of money laundering with his dealings with foreign officials, which is an easy obstacle splinter to uncover due part and parcel to his trade. We do know that the young up and coming politico operative George Papadopoulos would do well to learn a lesson from his past barroom experience of possibility talking to much to strangers, and skip the bar talk. In many ways it's hard to see to what exactly Lt General Michael Flynn is guilty of. Maybe Flynn as the newly appointed National Security Advisor is guilty of discussing the sanctions imposed onto Russia, or was he guilty of representing Bibi Netanyahu? Probably the former is prosecutable, but of course never the latter for protecting dear sweet Israel in America no matter what is the right thing to do. Protecting Israel may in some people's eyes even seem quite patriotic, as far as that goes, but talking to Russian diplomats, nay, never. ..."
"... Great point Mr. Tedesky. This creepy police-state court is rarely criticized at all in our free [sic] press and establishment media. ..."
"... Population in the country was very poorly informed any how. And now, they, The Ruling Establishment which includes Media, have completely messed the people up – making them compliant and confused. ..."
"... As a foreigner, looking from the outside, it seems Mueller will not find anything on Russia. He already found something on Israel, but he doesn't pursue that. If Americans rally, then it seems you should rally to make an objective and fair inquiry, to nail Israel for what they seem to have done. ..."
"... Many years ago in my early 20s I read 'Guns of August' that described support for the coming WWI. What was so striking about that period was how the public in every relevant European was hell bent on war. Among the major players -- Germany, France, UK, Russia and Austro-hungary -- their populations were demonstrating in the streets and assemblies for war. How was it possible for all of those people to eagerly lust for war that within a few years led to the destruction of the German, Russian and Austrian empires, the deaths of millions of their citizens and multidecade impoverishment for the survivors. The costs of the war resulted in the effective bankruptcy of the UK and French colonial empires as well as millions of dead and traumatized survivors. ..."
"... I never was able to see how so many people then could be so incredibly foolish. In the last two years I have gained some insight. Many of my respected, but now previous, political associates have just gone totally nuts over Russiagate. There was some kind of psychic break in their minds when Hillary lost and they are now little more than raging primates trapped in a cognitive dissonance loop. Not just that, but these are people who are on the verge of supporting war against Russia. ..."
"... Maybe wishful thinking on my part. The Grassley-Graham referral regarding Steele's potential violation of Title 18 Section 1001, lying to the FBI, may or may not be prosecutable depending upon where the "lies" took place and the likely lack of extra-territorial jurisdiction if they occurred in Rome. But even if no criminal violation could be prosecuted, I would think the IG should still investigate the matter for potential administrative discipline. ..."
"... That Russia "meddled in the US election" is totally without foundation and you know it. Any such attempt by them would be pointless, ineffective and detrimental if ever found out. If we had really found out any such thing, we'd all know about it rather than being fed bullshit based upon absolutely no real evidence. America would not be subjected to a year and a half of shenanigans by a thoroughly-biased politically-motivated special prosecutor given a hunting license by a frustrated deep state, a bitter political opposition and a raucous media in the service of both. ..."
"... Give the Clinton right wing credit for achieving what the Republicans had long hoped, but failed, to do. First, they split apart the Dem voting base in the 1990s, middle class vs. poor, and the Obama years served to confirm that this split is permanent. Then they apparently plagiarized old Joe McCarthy's playbook, launching their anti-Russian crusade, splitting apart those who are not on the right wing. Divide, subdivide, conquer. ..."
"... I believe the public is getting played on Mueller. Little hints keep dropping about Trump firing him. Then the media and the left goes into a frenzy, demanding Saint Mueller stay. Mueller has literally become the symbol of hope for the left. ..."
"... Imagine Mueller now coming out and clearing Trump completely while exposing what his real investigative objective was: revealing the deep state. Remember NBC and CNN mentioning Mueller began investigating the Podestas? Then they dropped that story as fast as possible. ..."
"... The thing about liberals is, they'll only accept one result in the Mueller probe. If Trump removes him, he's hiding something. And if Mueller exposes Dem corruption instead of Rep corruption, they'll say its fixed. They want the process to play out, but they'll only accept one result, that of Trump/Russia collusion. They are blinded by their own hate. ..."
"... One of the supreme ironies of our age is how the McCarthyesque focus on Russian interference in our electoral process has completely obscured the domestic politicization of our own institutions of government, that is the damage our now rabid placement of political party party above the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the American population. ..."
"... Our slow descent into the present National Chaos might well've been birthed under McCarthy antics as cloak&cover for Operation Paperclip. One could rightly label his actions "political theater" or straight subversion. -- Whatever, US actual history is a Disappearing Act with imperious propensity. We, as a nation, have always been imperious and domineering, just as were our British forefathers. ..."
"... Is it a diversion? From what? It is obvious that Israel & Trump are on a roll. Bombing Syria on the skirtings of Iran – "oh joy of joys, one step closer," – to doomsday. Elsewhere i have recommended the Palestinian people exit Palestine ASAP. Foolhardy Israel is only the size of a postage stamp, 4 time the size of Hiroshima. when nerves fray hey! ..."
"... I was actually hoping that with Trump taking over the reigns of the war machine that the left would once again mobilize and oppose our wars and the spying state that walks all over our civil liberties. Trump certainly gives them enough legitimate areas of concern that they have plenty to go on. Sadly this really does show the power of the press to manipulate public opinion and the left-wing media loves Russia Gate. ..."
"... For myself personally, I see the threat of a confrontation with Russia as the #1 concern. We have now entered into a new cold war with all the massive spending, proxy wars and yet again the very real chance of it leading to a hot war that could be the end of all of us. Sadly the "left" in this country has once again fallen for the endless propaganda, their hatred of Trump is only part of this issue. ..."
"... With or without the Mueller investigation the Russia hatred will go on. Mueller could exonerate Trump tomorrow and the anti-Russian propaganda will continue. ..."
"... Yes, the Dem's are wasting valuable time chasing after these Russian hackers who weren't there. ..."
"... The so called liberals tried to redefined the left away from working class to LBGT, Black Lives Matter, abortion rights, etc and , in the process, dug their own graves. ..."
"... I maintain that having only two political parties is the crux of the problem, and clearly both are corporate. People don't get how they are being played. A quote attributed to Mark Twain I just read: "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they are being fooled." ..."
"... Nuts' indeed. Before raising the temperature over the Russiagate, first. Shave off the Pentagon budget! ..."
Exclusive: Hundreds of thousands have pledged to take to the streets if Special
Counsel Robert Mueller is removed, reflecting misplaced priorities and some fundamental
misunderstandings, report Coleen Rowley and Nat Parry.
... ... ...
Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work effectively
to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least temporarily, to believe
the exact opposite of the facts. These techniques are known in the intelligence community as
"perception management," and have been refined since the 1980s "to keep the American people
compliant and confused," as the late Robert Parry has reported
. We saw this in action last decade, when after months of disinformation, about 70% of
Americans came to falsely believe that Saddam
Hussein was behind 9/11 when the truth was the opposite – Saddam was actually an enemy of
the Al Qaeda perpetrators.
Such emotional manipulation is the likely explanation for the fact that so many people are
now gearing up to defend someone like Mueller, while largely ignoring other important topics of
far greater consequence. With no demonstrations being organized to stop a possible war with
North Korea – or an escalation in Syria – hundreds of thousands of Americans are
apparently all too eager to go to the mat in defense of an investigation into the president's
possible "collusion" with Russia in its alleged meddling in election 2016.
Setting aside for the moment the merits of the Russiagate narrative, who really is this
Robert Mueller that amnesiac liberals clamor to hold up as the champion of the people and
defender of democracy? Co-author Coleen Rowley, who as an FBI whistleblower exposed numerous
internal problems at the FBI in the early 2000s, didn't have to be privy to his inner circle to
recall just a few of his actions after 9/11 that so shocked the public conscience as to
repeatedly generate moral disapproval even on the part of mainstream media. Rowley was only
able to scratch the surface in listing some of the more widely reported wrongdoing that should
still shock liberal consciences.
Although Mueller and his "joined at the hip" cohort James Comey are now hailed for
their impeccable character by much of Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement
officials of the George W. Bush administration (Mueller as FBI Director and Comey as Deputy
Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the
Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited
stunning levels of incompetence.
Ironically, recent declassifications of House Intelligence Committee's and Senate Judiciary
Committee Leaders letters ( here and
here ) reveal strong parallels between the way the public so quickly forgot Mueller's
spotty track record with the way the FBI and (the Obama administration's) Department of Justice
rushed, during the summer of 2016, to put a former fellow spy, Christopher Steele up on a
pedestal. Steele was declared to be a "reliable source" without apparently vetting or
corroborating any of the "opposition research" allegations that he had been hired (and paid
$160,000) to quickly produce for the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
There are typically at least two major prongs of establishing the "reliability" of any given
source in an affidavit, the first – and the one mostly pointed to – being the
source's track record for having furnished accurate and reliable information in the past. Even
if it is conceded that Steele would have initially satisfied this part of the test for
determining probable cause, based on his having reportedly furnished some important information
to FBI agents investigating the FIFA soccer fraud years before, his track record for
truthfulness would go right up in smoke only a month or so later, when it was discovered that
he had lied to the FBI about his having previously leaked the investigation to the media.
(Moreover, this lie had led the FBI to mislead the FISA court in its first application to
surveil Carter Page.)
The second main factor in establishing the reliability of any source's information would be
even more key in this case. It's the basis of the particular informant's knowledge,
i.e. was the informant an eye witness or merely reporting double-triple hearsay or
just regurgitating the "word on the street?"
If the actual basis of the information is uncertain, the next step for law enforcement would
normally be to seek facts that either corroborate or refute the source's information. It's been
reported that FBI agents did inquire into the basis for Steele's allegations, but it is not
known what Steele told the FBI – other than indications that his info came from secondary
sources making it, at best, second- or third-hand. What if anything did the FBI do to establish
the reliability of the indirect sources that Steele claimed to be getting his info from? Before
vouching for his credibility, did the FBI even consider polygraphing Steele after he (falsely)
denied having leaked his info since the FBI was aware of significant similarities of a news
article to the info he had supplied them?
Obviously, more questions than answers exist at the present time. But even if the FBI was
duped by Steele – whether as the result of their naivete in trusting a fellow former spy,
their own sloppiness or recklessness, or political bias – it should be hoped by everyone
that the Department of Justice Inspector General can get to the bottom of how the FISA court
was ultimately misled.
As they prepare for the "largest mobilization in history" in defense of Mueller and his
probe into Russiagate, liberals have tried to sweep all this under the rug as a "nothing
burger." Yet, how can liberals, who in the past have pointed to so many abusive past practices
by the FBI, ignore the reality that these sorts of abuses of the FISA process more than likely
take place on a daily basis – with the FISA court earning a
well-deserved reputation as little more than a rubberstamp?
Other, more run-of-the-mill FISA applications – if they were to be scrutinized as
thoroughly as the Carter Page one – would reveal similar sloppiness and lack of factual
verification of source information used to secure surveillance orders, especially after FISA
surveillances skyrocketed after 9/11 in the "war on terror." Rather than dismissing the Nunes
Memo as a nothing burger, liberals might be better served by taking a closer look at this FISA
process which could easily be turned against them instead of Trump.
It must be recognized that FBI agents who go before the secret FISA court and who are
virtually assured that whatever they present will be kept secret in perpetuity, have very
little reason to be careful in verifying what they present as factual. FISA court judges are
responsible for knowing the law but have no way of ascertaining the "facts" presented to
them.
Unlike a criminal surveillance authorized by a federal district court, no FBI affidavit
justifying the surveillance will ever end up under the microscope of defense attorneys and
defendants to be pored over to ensure every asserted detail was correct and if not, to
challenge any incorrect factual assertions in pre-trial motions to suppress evidence.
It is therefore shocking to watch how this political manipulation seems to make people who
claim to care about the rule of law now want to bury this case of surveillance targeting Carter
Page based on the ostensibly specious Steele dossier. This is the one case unique in coming to
light among tens of thousands of FISA surveillances cloaked forever in secrecy, given that the
FISA system lacks the checks on abusive authority that inherently exist in the criminal justice
process, and so the Page case is instructive to learn how the sausage really gets made.
Neither the liberal adulation of Mueller nor the unquestioned credibility accorded Steele by
the FBI seem warranted by the facts. It is fair for Americans to ask whether Mueller's
investigation would have ever happened if not for his FBI successor James Comey having signed
off on the investigation triggered by the Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton
campaign to dig up dirt on her opponent.
In any event, please spare us the solicitations of these political NGOs' "national
mobilization" to protect Mueller. There are at least a million attorneys in this country who do
not suffer from the significant conflicts of interest that Robert Mueller has with key
witnesses like his close, long-term colleague James Comey and other public officials involved
in the investigation.
And, at the end of the day, there are far more important issues to be concerned about than
the "integrity" of the Mueller investigation – one being the need to fix FISA court
abuses and restoring constitutional rights.
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002
memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, was named
one of TIME magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002.
What has happened in America is eerily similar to the color revolutions in targeted
countries which leads me to believe the organizers of such revolutions looked at the biggest
prize of all and said "Why not.'.
Tower of Babel , February 9, 2018 at 11:04 am
Herman.I think you are right. These things are being cooked up–orchestrated to serve
the current power block. The mainstream propaganda media plays a big part in that. And sadly,
Americans cannot wake up fast enough
Annie , February 9, 2018 at 10:40 am
I'm not all that familiar with the group Avaaz, but I am familiar with the tactics of
Move-On, and although they would deny it, represent the democratic party. They actually
called me up asking for money to create mayhem at Trump's rallies during his run for the
presidency. I told them I wouldn't give them a nickel since not only did I see it as
undemocratic and contentious, but psychologically idiotic. Idiotic in the sense that the
people who supported Trump perceived themselves as victims of a corrupt system who cared
little about their needs, and turning Trump's rallies into mayhem would portray him as a
victim as well, which would cause his supporters to more fully identify with him, and more
committed to getting him elected.
I discontinued my support for Move-on as a result of these kind of antics. Those I know
who were viciously anti-Trump lost total perspective during his presidential run, and all
supported Clinton whose policies they knew little about. They were hooked into mainstream
media, and none investigated alternative news sources even though they are computer literate
and could have done so. All were hooked into Russia-gate from the beginning, and have never
waivered in their position. I think we have to begin to look at these people not as liberals,
or progressives, but for the most part they are democrats who see their party as representing
liberal causes. None I know who would support this march participated in any anti-war
movement, and were basically silent on Obama's militarism, which informs me these so called
liberals when it comes to war their position is more dependent on who's doing the
killing.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:27 pm
Annie I found this statement of yours a very interesting perspective 'and turning Trump's
rallies into mayhem would portray him as a victim as well'. All this noise coming from the
left is never analyzed from the perspective of what would the average Trump supporter think.
Yet, you did this. Pretty good analytical take on these attacks against Trump.
I thought when Trump honored the 'Natve-American code breakers' that by his doing this
function while standing underneath a picture of Andrew 'Trail of Tears' Jackson was very
telling. Although seen properly by many who may have a good sense of history, I thought that
this was purposely done, and done to insight the Trump supporters who's racist attitude were
served quite well with Trump's staging of this honorable affair.
The Left (which isn't really Left) is wandering around trying to bring down Trump, while
at the same time the American Left ignores what a Trump supporter may think. Both groups of
American citizenry would do well to quit with all of this name calling, and derisive contempt
for each other, and they should begin with a dialog which could eventually bring them
together, in order to create a more perfect union.
Then that's where you come in Annie, as to reassure they keep their eye on the ball, and
to what is most important to remember, and that is because we are all together in this big
crazy thing called America. We Americans should bridge our difference into making the U.S. a
better nation for all to live in, and relieve the world from fears of American bombs falling
on their heads.
This is Jimmy Dore's take on the left falling for Russia-gate and aligning itself with the
FBI. As he says, they are reacting to Trump with their lizard brain which makes them easy
prey for being led to their own political slaughter. He does become more foul mouthed towards
the end. I understand his increasing frustration with this insanity.
Your point is NEVER off-subject. Soros may fund one branch of the Capitalist Party and
Singer the other; but they both and all the rest of their ilk, belong to the same
Brotherhood.
alley cat , February 9, 2018 at 4:28 pm
"I'm not a politician; cannot gauge whether it a good or bad idea that Mueller,
Rosenstein, et al. be fired for cause "
Ray, thanks for not being like most politicians (and journalists) who carefully test which
way the political winds are blowing to decide whether something is a good or bad idea. You do
what you think is right, based on considerations more important than your career (gasp!).
"In my view, if Mueller had an ounce of integrity, he would resign "
Yes, but clearly he doesn't, and therefore he won't. He will drag out his neocon-sponsored
witch-hunt as long as possible in order to do the maximum damage possible to all those who
don't toe the neocon line. The very existence of Mueller's unholy inquisition constantly
forces the president ever-further to the right in an effort to appease his neocon tormentors.
That is, further away from détente with Russia and closer to nuclear Armageddon.
The neocons' goal is to kill two birds, U.S. democracy and Russia, with one stone -- the
Mueller "investigation."
Mueller and his co-conspirators, with all their lies and smears, have been subverting our
democracy long enough. Fire him already and oppose Trump democratically instead.
Zachary Smith , February 9, 2018 at 6:56 pm
Nice summary. I can't really think of anything to say to improve on that title remark of
"This is Nuts.
Virginia , February 9, 2018 at 7:12 pm
Ray, Mueller should resign (" if Mueller had an ounce of integrity, he would resign -- if
only because of the incredibly partisan way in which he staffed his investigation") because there is no there there. Just close the investigation and let
Americans get on with our lives.
GEOFF TEAGUE , February 9, 2018 at 9:12 pm
yes i agree that Mueller will be exposed (before congress ?) but not in the mainstream
media. as long as that dog has a bone he will run with it. where's a dog catcher when you
need one??
CitizenOne , February 10, 2018 at 12:13 pm
Thanks Ray,
Way to little truth out there and a whole bunch of characters involved in some modern day
Shakespearean tragedy.
So Tex , February 9, 2018 at 10:48 am
These organizers are arms of or provocateurs for the failing and flailing Democratic
Party.. They have staked their very lives on the Russia-gate nonsense and removing or just
crippling Trump.. It's all very sad since they could be embracing the current political
climate and reforming the once great Democratic Party. The unfortunate reality is that many
people, including good hearted people, are falling for it.
Tower of Babel , February 9, 2018 at 11:00 am
"It is telling that the liberal establishment is mobilizing on this particular issue."
"Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work
effectively to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least
temporarily, to believe the exact opposite of the facts."
Ain't that the truth. Most Americans want to believe anything that authority tells them to
believe. They are not worthy of the great democracy they inherited. Thank you Colleen. You
are the opposite. We need to see you more often.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 11:25 am
This article does point to no doubt one of our nation's most evasive, and spookiest
courts, which is FISA. Yet, on tv hardly is this subject ever brought up, while instead
reissuing every 90 days for permission to monitor Carter Page gets talked about to no end. So
far hardly has there been, to when at least I've viewed the anchors and pundits, do they ever
discuss the unconstitutionally, or break down of our democratic values, that this FISA court
represents.
Meanwhile so far what has Robert Mueller come up with? Well, we know that Manafort may be
guilty of money laundering with his dealings with foreign officials, which is an easy
obstacle splinter to uncover due part and parcel to his trade. We do know that the young up
and coming politico operative George Papadopoulos would do well to learn a lesson from his
past barroom experience of possibility talking to much to strangers, and skip the bar talk.
In many ways it's hard to see to what exactly Lt General Michael Flynn is guilty of. Maybe
Flynn as the newly appointed National Security Advisor is guilty of discussing the sanctions
imposed onto Russia, or was he guilty of representing Bibi Netanyahu? Probably the former is
prosecutable, but of course never the latter for protecting dear sweet Israel in America no
matter what is the right thing to do. Protecting Israel may in some people's eyes even seem
quite patriotic, as far as that goes, but talking to Russian diplomats, nay, never.
What this Russia-gate investigation has rot among so many other things, is that it has
taken the weakening Left and showed it for what it is. It was one thing when the Clinton's
moved the Democrates over into the Wall Street column, but now with this organized Left push
to support the Mueller Investigation the Left has been moved into the police state category
whether these poorly misguided liberals even realize this fact. This would be akin to Albert
Einstein marching behind a Nazi flag, or his standing next to Joseph Goebbels to help usher
in the sheep to slaughter under the guise of democracy, and everything that's right.
Wake up America.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 11:46 am
"This article does point to no doubt one of our nation's most evasive, and spookiest
courts, which is FISA. Yet, on tv hardly is this subject ever brought up"
Great point Mr. Tedesky. This creepy police-state court is rarely criticized at all in our
free [sic] press and establishment media.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:34 pm
Thank you Mr Hunkins, I've read many a comment post of yours, and hardly do I ever
disagree with you. To bad there are not more of us voices for sanity, but with that there go
I. Joe
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 12:46 am
I just saw this on the Duran. Duran reporter Jim Jatras details some very interesting
angles of the likes you don't very often hear in regard to Russia-Gate. Be notified Mr Jatras
has a typo where he says Mac Blumenthal he really means the father of Max who is Sidney.
Jatras also points to the same circumstance where many Russians assumed Hillary would be
our next president, so the attraction to sabotage Hillary's campaign seemed to a fruitless
proposition. I remember our own beloved Robert Parry making the same observation.
exiled off mainstreet , February 10, 2018 at 3:35 am
The last sentence sums it up. Any former member of the left who supports this (they became
former once they supported this obviously flawed fascistic phony investigation the
implications of which threaten the rule of law and the stability and sustainability of life
itself) has gone zombie and can be compared to Einstein backing Goebbels.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:01 pm
I'm still having a hard time accepting this pseudo Left swing to the National Security
State/Deep State. Nothing in life should surprise me by now, but seeing what calls itself the
Left in the U.S. go the way of the CIA/FBI/NSA is hard to swallow.
The Democrates are soon going to regret spending all of this valuable time wasted on this
Russia-Gate craziness, and then what will they blame? Of course they will blame Trump, and
still invoke Putin's name, because that's what sells tv ratings. In the end the Democrates
may wake up to the realization that they blamed Trump,for all the wrong things that should
have mattered. This distraction for their bend obsession with all things Russian, is what
will have sunk their boat in 2018, and unless the Dem's wise up this unneeded shadow will
hover over them even into 2020. Joe
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 11:42 am
The most disconcerting and heartbreaking thing I've witnessed in my 30 plus years of
studying the politico-economic scene is the manner in which otherwise decent liberals have
fallen for (or of course have been more than willing propagandists for) the hoax Russia-gate
narrative. Sure, with the Schiffs (D-Israel), Schumers (D-Israel) and others in the corporate
DNC, it's all to be expected, and no semi-intelligent CN fan would consider them to be
otherwise decent liberals. But to see good domestic populist liberals sell this dangerous
snake-oil has been illuminating and dismaying. For crying out loud -- on this particular
issue Sean Hannity is better than Rachel Maddow!
It demonstrates more than any other issue the lock that Official Washington and its
military driven empire builders along with the blood soaked mass media have on virtually our
entire political spectrum and social discourse.
The recent Nuclear Posture Review just comes out -- putting the world closer to complete
annihilation and total Armageddon -- and there isn't much of a hue and cry from the smart and
most important people in our media-industrial complex. Frightening.
D.H. Fabian , February 9, 2018 at 11:49 am
An additional layer of disappointment is the fascist ideology seen in the liberal
anti-Israel campaign. We really don't all agree that a "fair partitioning" in the Mideast
would be: 100% for the Arabs, 0% for the Jews. For those who don't know, Israel is a tiny
country (roughly the size of New Jersey). It's the sole Jewish nation, surrounded by vast,
oil-rich Arab countries. Jews are, indeed, indigenous to that bit of land. Those called
"Palestinians" are Arabs who are recruited to work toward the destruction of Israel,
establishing a 100% "pure" Moslem Mideast.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 1:07 pm
"An additional layer of disappointment is the fascist ideology seen in the liberal
anti-Israel campaign."
Set up a strawman much?
What you describe is a very, very marginal phenomenon in the Palestinian justice movement,
marginal enough to be totally insignificant. It's interesting that you bring this
disinformation into CN. The Zionist power configuration in America can be relentless, no
doubt. Hasbara is ubiquitous.
Israel's a criminal state and international pariah bent on wiping out any independent pro
Palestinian nation-state in the Middle East and subverting and destabilizing any independent
pro Palestinian head of state. Bloodthirsty Tel Aviv militarists mow the grass in Gaza by
killing and maiming roughly 2,000 women and children every 6 or 7 years. And no, it's not a
"fascist ideology" to point any of this out.
Read Gilad Atzmon, Norman Finkelstein, James Petras, Mearsheimer and Walt and a few others
I'm forgetting at the moment for the real dope.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:38 pm
I think D.H. just ran a Zionist commercial on 'the Consortium'. Should we run a
pro-Palestinian commercial, just to be 'fair and balanced'?
Zachary Smith , February 9, 2018 at 6:53 pm
I've noticed the dishonest Zionist was trying to act like a "normal" person a few times
recently. Probably the thought was that this would gain "credibility" for BS like this
"Zionist Commercial" you speak of.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:12 pm
Zachary it's interesting to listen to a Zionist using the same talking points that would
describe the horrible plight of the downtrodden Palestinian, and do it so easily without any
conscious effort to hide the truth, of what's really going on. Joe
Lois Gagnon , February 9, 2018 at 11:22 pm
I've seen this troll on other progressive sites using the same exact wording.
Anon , February 9, 2018 at 1:35 pm
Troll alert: please do not reply to DHF comments. This is an attempt to derail the
discussion and debase the participants, a extreme zionist attack, on a site known for more
cautious and fair commenters.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 1:42 pm
Maybe we should aim our conversation to this maddening frustration over all things
Russian, to better describe America's relationship to the Zionist Bibi Netanyahu. Do you hear
me, Robert Mueller? Can you Mr Mueller lean heavily onto Flynn's Israeli heavy lifting, and
why Flynn was serving the needs of the Israeli's?
Martin - Swedish citizen , February 9, 2018 at 6:21 pm
Yes, this comment is so out of touch that it must be a troll looking to discredit this
site.
A previous comment making the same statement was it seems removed. Israel must be a very
sensitive issue in the US.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 8:20 pm
It is beyond belief how sensitive it is. You have no idea. However, now it actually isn't
as subversive and contentious as it was just 15 to 20 years ago. So there has been a small
amount of progress, long way to go though.
Hey Fabian I have some refugees here so I'm taking your land for them. Pack your trash and
move on.
nonsense factory , February 10, 2018 at 10:54 am
The solution is simple: Allow all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to vote in
Israeli national parliamentary elections. Only then could Israel call itself a 'true
democracy'. This I believe results in about a 50-50 split in the electorate on religious /
ethnic lines so you could even get a Muslim leader of Israel, or at least a balanced
parliament.
This of course raises the issue of the military and executive and judicial structure of
Israel; land ownership and immigration policy would have to be changed so that any citizen
could own land, and non-Jews would be allowed to emigrate back to the region (i.e. the
Palestinian diaspora would have the same rights as the Jewish diaspora).
An even more tricky issue would be the Israeli nuclear weapons program; the first step
there is for the state of Israel to publicly admit its existence and allow for IAEA
inspections of the program.
Bob Van Noy , February 9, 2018 at 12:17 pm
Many thanks Coleen Rowley and Nat Parry. Drew Hunkins, I think your comment about
"otherwise decent liberals" is prescient but I'll bet that we could have a long, extended
discussion on The illiberalness of this generation of democrats (please note the small
d).
I would argue that with the inception of the Clinton/Blair "Third Way" that the Democratic
Party separated itself from its historic roots. In fact I think the very label of liberal
opposition here used is disingenuous.
These people The Clintons and their Neoliberal constituents have never represented the
Democratic Party in act or deed. The Neocons switching sides prior to the last election cycle
underscored their illiberal attitude. In fact classic party alignment has little to do with
this issue of criminal behavior, it is just the vehicle of divisiveness being utilized in
this instance
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 1:09 pm
Points well taken Mr. Van Noy.
Most of the Dem Party has been a complete dumpster fire since corporate Clinton, "New
Democrats!" and DLC completely took over the entire infrastructure.
Nancy , February 9, 2018 at 1:51 pm
Sadly, those decent liberals you speak of also fell for the Clinton/Obama hoax. They are a
big part of the problem -- phonies.
Gregory Herr , February 10, 2018 at 1:45 am
A big part of the problem for sure. Support for the Democrats on the basis of "liberal
causes" is blind, phony. or both. We have suffered soaring housing and health care costs.
Investment in Social Security has been marginalized at the same time war costs are put "off
the books" and deemed a "necessity" of National Security. Public schools are now
"standardized", but standards are lacking and the quality of "higher"education has taken a
hit too while leaving graduates in piles of debt. The safety of our drinking water is suspect
and other environmental concerns take a back seat as well while "fracking" and "drill baby
drill" get passes. Civil liberties are under assault and the war drums beat on. So where are
the liberal Democrats? Taking "contributions", hiding under rocks, or snickering through
3-martini lunches with their Republican cohorts but they certainly haven't been "liberals"
for a long time now. Bill Clinton and Obama were nothing of the sort.
Next time a Democrat calls him/her self a "liberal", they ought to have to express a true
idea of just what that's suppose to mean. And then explain what happened the last
quarter-century and what in the hell their current "resistance" is really about. Don't worry
there won't be any straight answers forthcoming, and likely nary a hint of embarrassment
either. They are shameless traitors or fools
Bob Van Noy , February 10, 2018 at 10:07 am
Nicely done Gregory Herr. The democratic party talks a good game but manages to Never
Deliver the goods. The party hierarchy (DNC) doesn't deserve support
Simply vote for a candidate that delivers. And, never donate to the party
D.H. Fabian , February 9, 2018 at 11:44 am
We saw how powerfully the Clinton "New Democrat Party" gained "influence" over the media
marketed to middle class liberals, from MSNBC to online publications, pulling them well to
the right. The Democrats' anti-Russian crusade does, indeed, mimic Bush's lies about "Iraq's
stockpiles of WMD." What is truly "nuts" is that so much of the liberal media promote the
right wing agenda while wearing their "bold progressive" lapel buttons.
Loretta , February 9, 2018 at 12:05 pm
Thank you for this piece!!
j. D. D. , February 9, 2018 at 12:16 pm
The spectacle of the Democratic Part and even the Black Caucus rallying to support the FBI
is truly a wonder to behold. Have they forgotten the FBI's past in blackmailing presidents
and political leaders including JFK, Robert Kennedy and Matin Luther King? Have they
forgotten its Operation Frugmenschen, which means "ape man" in German to target Balck
politicians and activists, or the threatening dirty tricks letter sent to MLK urging him to
commit suicide? Are they prepared to see through an illegal coup against an elected president
who dared suggest a positive relaitonship with Russia and China, ensuring that no future
president will dare "step out of line" lest the secret files be pulled to create a cripling
scandal?. Apparently not, as the Demcratic Party we knew appears quite dead, perhaps lethally
shot on Nov 22, 1963 and finally buried in 2016 with the nomination of a craven Wall Street
puppet and warmonger.
Thank you, Nat and Coleen, for this article -- as well as continuing and furthering
Consortium News' reputation as one of the few remaining independent outlets that can be
considered trustworthy. In this age, where even Common Dreams has lost its credibility (and
posts by Caitlin Johnstone have to be taken/guarded with grains of salt) it is still a
refreshing rarity.
In overall relation, the following Review is shared as representative:
Robert Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell The Truth.org" continually express, show, and Speak
Truth to Power. During our times of First Draft Coalition[s], where we are subjected to 98%
(?) Controlled Narratives, a predominance critically desires to hear/see those sides which
are purposely and collusively repressed, banned and/or censored. In these
exponentially-escalating periods of secret laws based on secret memos, secret courts acting
with secret evidence (which will not be revealed to the accused), absolute torture to the
point of insanity (and death) as a means of interrogation until one gives predetermined
answers (truthful or not), worldwide surveillance on every inhabitant (without probable
cause) that can be (and is) used as a means to instill fear, to threaten, tarnish, oppress,
and silence even peaceful dissenters of basic causes while (resultantly) turning back history
500 years, we need those with (the ability of) absolute courage to Stand Up Now (more than
ever).
Evolution: from Total Information Awareness (which started long before 9/11) to Total
Information (and Population) Control (as a goal in the present).
Steve , February 9, 2018 at 12:19 pm
FAKE NEWS has been used to snooker the Aemnrician people and as it is gobbled up and
digested and spit back with investigation or corroboration it turns decent folks into FAKE
PEOPLE. Mueller is no choir boy and the mess in Washington is not going away sometime soon.
As for damaging democracy, the 2 party system has taken care of that very nicely but
channeling anger into something positive just wont' be allowed to happen as the media are
controlled by huge moneyed interests.
Janet Zampieri , February 9, 2018 at 12:29 pm
The liberals are reacting this way because of the constant lies they are fed by the
mainstream media. The corporate and CIA control of the media must be exposed and put to an
end.
Bruce Dickson , February 9, 2018 at 12:36 pm
Being a mere paycheque away from disaster, most Americans cannot afford to take to any
streets. The Powers That Be know and exploit this, having orchestrated their captives' dire
straits, all along.
So, whence shall cometh these threatening troops from Camps AVAAZ and MoveOn? By process
of elimination, from the minority well-enough-heeled and the Soros-paid.
Slavery is Freedom! War is Peace! 1984 was a cookbook; we've been reading Orwell all
wrong.
johnnieandroidseed , February 9, 2018 at 9:03 pm
My chuckle for the day was "1984 was a cookbook." Reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode
"To Serve Man" which should be the motto of capitalists everywhere.
"We serve the workers" [to our Distinguished Diners.]
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 12:17 am
As the episodes star character Michael Chambers is taken away by the Kanamits for meal
time on their far away planet, Chambers looks at the audience and says, "How about you? You
still on Earth, or on the ship with me? Really doesn't make very much difference, because
sooner or later, all of us will be on the menu all of us."
Yikes how true. Great comment johnnieandroidseed. Joe
Though my instincts tell me there are many more people who are willing to sign a petition
than to actually get out on the street, I might be proved wrong in this particular
instance.
After signing a couple of petitions for this or that, in the forlorn hope they might bring
about change, I began to realize they were mainly designed to make me feel good about myself;
that I was doing something very important to make the world a better place.
Even worse, I saw I was being treated as nothing more than another fish in the net. My
signature had hardly enough time to reach its destination before my inbox was deluged with
requests to sign more petitions, each of which invited me to donate towards the great effort
it takes to think up a petition and put it on the internet. For some unexplained reason, the
process seemed to require highly-remunerated executives, and an awful lot more money than all
the real work needed to run something as work-intensive as Consortium News.
After signing two, I'd already given up the idea of signing more petitions by the time I
was urged to sign one for a no-fly zone over Syria to save hundreds of thousand of lives.
With anti-Russian propaganda being heavily pushed by the corporate media at the time, it was
obvious people who had no idea what a no-fly zone entailed were being manipulated.
We live at a time where, for most people, touchy-feely means engaging with the world
through a screen. No man is an island being far from the state of affairs, all men have
become islands. Far from bringing us together, the internet is being increasingly used to
keep most of us farther and farther away from each other, and the information we need to form
opinions based on facts.
Which leads me to ponder how on earth we arrived at a point where of hundreds of thousands
of people are preparing to come out on the streets to demonstrate their support of an
organization, which just happens to be one of several intelligence agencies, trying to remove
their right to come out on the streets to demonstrate? I hope I'm not the only one who finds
it perversely ironic and extremely disturbing.
Bruce Dickson , February 9, 2018 at 1:16 pm
Do those intending to demonstrate on the FBI's behalf even realize that one of that
agency's most resource-intensive and mission-critical tasks is to record, identify and
profile demonstrators?
"I am marching for my right to be surveilled. Democracy means Dossiers for All! FISA =
Freedom. I'm guided by the beauty of my shackles. Liberty is Liability. Truth is
Treason."
And Insanity is Virtue. Well played, overlords: you have set the stage well – but
for the hubris you can't shake off. Lofty as you are, you don't float above the law of
unintended consequences. Or that of gravity, either.
Gregory Herr , February 10, 2018 at 6:16 am
Love your comments, The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Martin - Swedish citizen , February 9, 2018 at 2:21 pm
My experience with AVAAZ is similar. They petition for many good causes and seem to
achieve quite a lot, but then there appear a slice of the petitions that are political and
naive, like the no fly zone. Inherent problems in their brand of activism. They should
probably reconsider their scope of issues.
Yes, thank you for the link. I had forgot about that. It's very important that we
understand NGO's roles & who they are working for.
Lethal Weapon: NGO Soft Power
"Along with military invasions and missionaries, NGOs help crack countries open like ripe
nuts, paving the way for intensifying waves of exploitation and extraction" " ~ Stephanie
McMillan
""The NGO 'soft power complex' is now one of the most destructive global forces. It is
employed as an interface between civilians of a target nation, with government, economic or
military structures of the colonialist force intent on harnessing any given nation's
resources or undermining its geopolitical influence. The Democratization process, or the path
to regime change is facilitated by these undercover government or corporate proxy employees
who, once embedded into a society, set about producing the propaganda that will justify
intervention, either economically, politically or militarily. NGO propaganda will often
employ slick social media marketing which is underpinned by advance applied behavioural
psychology and advanced NLP-based 'social enterprise' sales pitches.
A recent piece by researcher Eva Bartlett entitled, "Human Rights Front Groups
[Humanitarian Interventionalists] Warring on Syria", provides a detailed insight into how
this new breed of weaponized politics is being deployed right now in the Middle East.
The perception of a 'non profit' complex who purport to be "working for the betterment and
improvement of humanity" can be a difficult nut to crack, but it must be done. In the west.
charities, not-for-profits and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are seen as "do gooders"
and so they rarely fall under public scrutiny. Western governments know the general public
has an inherent faith in their perceived integrity and this provides an ideal cover for
western government and intelligence agencies to operate through their NGO and aid
organisations."
I think it's great that they are calling for massive rallies against the rape of our
democracy by the one percent. It's great to see them rallying hundreds of thousands of us to
protest the state of endless war. It's nice to see them putting all that muscle into the
streets to oppose US foot-dragging on climate change.
Oh wait, I must have misread the article.
On a serious note, we need to see these FISA abuses only as the tools of tyranny. Far more
important is who is wielding them and why.
Thank you Ms. Rowley and Mr. Parry for reporting honestly. If certain factions can set-up
a POTUS, what can they do to "we the people"? Mr. Parry, your father would be proud of
you!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 1:48 pm
"Liberals?" Just another name for war mongering liars these days. "Conservatives?" Just
another brand of liars and thieves. People who put stock in, and vote on the basis of these
baseless tags are the real suckers that enable our whole doomed evil empire. If you vote for
anyone who uses either of those labels, you are a fool, and a dangerous one at that. Come to
think of it, if you vote at all you are an idiot endorsing a corrupt process.
Drew Hunkins , February 9, 2018 at 1:52 pm
Off topic.
What looks to be an outstanding brand new film is coming out soon. It's entitled, "The
Young Karl Marx." This movie looks like a must-see.
Unfortunately for those very many invested in the Russiagate nonsense, the cold reality is
that doubling down on crazy doesn't somehow magically produce sanity. We're watching the
Western power structure fracture before our eyes as their propaganda operations have become
not simply unbelievable, but now have entered into the world of the totally outlandish and
absurd. The notion that "reality" requires some kind of rational connection to observable
events in the physical world seems to have totally lost any meaning in this current climate
of reality meltdown. Quite amazing to witness actually.
Eddie , February 10, 2018 at 12:49 pm
"doubling down on crazy doesn't somehow magically produce sanity."–Great
phrasing!
alley cat , February 9, 2018 at 2:23 pm
The undead hands of those two zombie neocons, HRC and John Brennan, reach out from the
boneyard of U.S. politics to drag democracy down with them.
The neocons' ultimate target is Russia, together with anyone who dares to utter the truth
about Russia. They are drunk with power and will stop at nothing, not even nuclear war, to
eliminate any rival for global domination. They are so reckless and arrogant that they think
a nuclear war is winnable.
Megalomania much?
Goebbels boasted that he could play the German public like a keyboard. The neofascist
neocons are using the same tactics with the so-called U.S. left, which, measured by
international political metrics, corresponds to the traditional imperialist right. American
so-called liberals are allowing themselves to be played, like the German public was played by
the Nazis before WWII. They are attacking Trump from the reactionary right, not from the
left. In their feckless hysteria, they can't even tell the difference.
Fascist tactics bring fascist results. There are multitudinous grounds to oppose Trump
democratically. Impeaching him based on ginned-up, right-wing, smears would tear this country
apart at the seams.
lindaj , February 9, 2018 at 11:46 pm
"American so-called liberals are allowing themselves to be played, like the German public
was played by the Nazis before WWII. They are attacking Trump from the reactionary right, not
from the left. In their feckless hysteria, they can't even tell the difference."
I'm afraid you are right.
Democrats are not "the left." Have they ever really been? That's why you said "so-called
left" I realize. It makes me laugh when mainstream media calls it such.
Richard Hicks , February 9, 2018 at 2:36 pm
The story says: "Considering all of the threats to democracy posed by unconstitutional
overreach, unfair elections, corruption, and voter suppression – not to mention
environmental challenges, economic inequality, an out-of-control U.S. foreign policy,
numerous foreign conflicts that the U.S. is engaged in, and the ever-present threat of
nuclear war – it is telling that the liberal establishment is mobilizing on this
particular issue."
Yes, it is "telling that the liberal establishment is mobilizing on this particular issue".
Except it's not just this issue. Remember that Al Capone was convicted of crimes other than
the crime he was arrested for. It seems that on an almost daily basis evidence is discovered
that the President is/was involved in crimes other than Conspiracy and/or Obstruction of
Justice. As new evidence is uncovered, it may lead the Mueller investigation in another
direction, and apparently, it has. If that is the case, Mueller is doing his job. The job
that The People hired him to do. If Trump were to fire Mueller, it could very well be because
of newly discovered criminal activity that Trump is, or was involved in, and Trump is nervous
about. Our Nation is a Nation of laws, and no one, even the President is above the law. This
President has a long-standing proven reputation, of difficulty with the Truth. Based on that
alone, if Mueller is fired by Trump, people would be justified taking to the streets, in
protest.
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 3:45 pm
A riot to back up the putch against Trump? Not likely, but a disaster if performed. Is
this how some dream of a new US government? It will take something much deeper and wiser to
accomplish that. Again not likely, but if one has to dream, why not something truly
positive?
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:06 pm
"Putin's life work is spying"? You seem to have a rather shallow estimate of someone who
stands against those in the US determined to turn our planet into an ashy corpse.
Best not to lose sight of this fact: there is no liberal cause, especially the incipient
climate disaster, that is not negatively affected by Trump and the legal coup-d etat achieved
by the Republicans. Anyone working to stymie that,whether sinless or simon pure deserves
support. Also, re Russia, Garry Kasparov the Chess Master says it would be naive to think
that Putin whose life work is spying would not use his current sophisticated apparatus to
work his will on any issue or election of interest.
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:00 pm
"legal coup d'etat?" That's a new one on me, on the other hand the whole loony scene in
Washington is illegal – so what the hey! Still, removing a sitting President on the
basis of phony charges against him for colluding with Russia would really kick over the chess
board and empower the crazies to do their worst. Or is there anybody still out there who
believes the Russiagate nonsense has a shred of truth in it? I hope not, but I am afraid I am
in danger of overestimating my fellow citizens .
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:02 pm
As for Gary Kasparov, he should rest on his fading laurels as a chess master, and stay out
of politics. If he had his way Russians would raise Yeltsin from the grave, and turn their
country back over to the international capitalists.
Mark Thomason , February 9, 2018 at 2:52 pm
Russia-gate has nothing to do with the real Russia.
It is entirely a Team Hillary attack on Trump. It is an attempt to deny the election. It
is rage at losing, looking for excuses to express itself. If not Russia it would be Comey, or
many other things. It has been most convenient to use Putin at the pinata, but that is a
matter of internal US politics, not Putin at all.
irina , February 9, 2018 at 4:17 pm
And luckily for us, Putin not only groks that dynamic but has been brave enough
to say so in public.
What's with all the new-name trolls here today ?
Mr Boompi , February 9, 2018 at 3:02 pm
I hate the term derangement syndrome but some people surely do have Trump derangement
syndrome. It's beaten into them every day on TV and certain internet sites. I believe they
want Trump removed using any means possible, including illegal means. Their derangement
syndrome includes the mistaken belief attempting to enforce the law regarding Clinton emails
and the frauds perpetrated on the FISA court are nothing more than an attempt to obstruct
justice for Trump. Even though there is no evidence Trump has done anything wrong. It's a
shame actually.
Alan , February 9, 2018 at 3:06 pm
Let's take a step or two back and try to see the current state of chaos in a broader
perspective. People are angry. The Trump administration is without question aberrant. Where
is true leadership today? Certainly not with Trump or his administration. The real issue
isn't specifically "Russiagate", but what lies beneath.
We have been mislead, lied to, manipulated by virtually every administration to greater
and lesser degrees. Of relevance here is that both Nixon and Reagan manipulated the American
people through their backchannel negotiations with foreign powers prior to inauguration.
While this Consortiumnews article can shine some light on potential abuses which takes
place through the FISA court we must recognize that we form an imperfect union. This
particular article seems to be like arguing for changes to the fire codes while Rome
burns!
Any mobilization of the "liberal establishment" is far more about the egregious threats to
our democracy than whatever "Russiagate" means. An imperfect Mueller seems to represent our
best way forward to finding the hidden truths behind all of Trump's malfeasance. Let the
people be heard!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:10 pm
The people have been heard! They voted for Trump
WheresOurTeddy , February 9, 2018 at 3:16 pm
Damn the people in this country are easy to manipulate. Pathetic.
If the activists of the last generation could see the sellout pieces of garbage that call
themselves democrats today, they'd roll over in their unmarked graves they were dumped into
by the same alphabet agencies of oppression the stooges are standing up for.
Late stage empire in decline.
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:11 pm
Amen.
Maxim , February 9, 2018 at 3:29 pm
They don't want Trump, they want Russia. That's why Trump was "elected". So they could use
Trump to get to Russia. In 2020 Clinton will finally get elected and everyone will be begging
for WWW3 against the Russian Threat. Another false Pearl Harbor is coming. Syria, N.Korea,
Iran or Ukraine are all potential flash points. We're sheep being led to slaughter.
Far , February 9, 2018 at 3:58 pm
In one ponit you are wrong. The orange clown is uninhibited in starting a war. Read just
the new disclosure that pentagon had been resisting requests from the White House to provide
military options for Iran. In his first speach in the UN Trump has threatened to destroy
North Korea totally. This crazy man doesn't deserve to be the president of the US!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Mostly correct, but the Deep State emphatically did NOT want Trump elected. Too
unpredictable. The DS thought Hillary had a lock on the election. Just goes to show that the
DS is not as smart as they like to think they are.
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 4:47 am
For sure, Mike, the DS pulled out all the stops to help Hillary both before and after the
election to no avail. They are still doing it. The most influential insiders in America
couldn't alter the results of the election, yet they would have you believe that Putin merely
snaps his fingers, "meddles in our democracy" and has his way. Yet most people cannot see the
absurdity of that claim because the corporate media, which is part of the real conspiracy
orchestrated by the DS, spews nothing but propaganda full bore 24/7 changing apparent reality
right in front of your own lying eyes.
Now the History Channel is coming out with an extra special demonisation of Putin
extravaganza!!! Be sure to watch if you wanna stay free! These people could rehabilitate
Hitler if it suited their purposes. The American people are putty in their hands. There is no
opposition but those few of us who fail to be hypnotized by the svengalis that represent the
interests of the string puller elites on the boob tube and internets, who and which they
totally own and control. There are so few of us who can still see the truth, I suspect they
could house us all in a single detention camp if it comes to that.
Gregory Herr , February 10, 2018 at 6:49 am
I couldn't suppress a derisive laugh reading an above comment about Putin's ability "to
work his will on any issue or election of interest." Yep, those snapping fingers are rife
with ability not to mention speculation about Putin's desires. What a mad genius he must
be!
Snookered and bamboozled, the show must go on.
Far , February 9, 2018 at 3:45 pm
I would support any measure that tends to an impeachment of a crazy, impulsive and
retarded president. This president is a misfortune for the US and for the world. One can
criticise the actions to support the current investigations in the Russiagate. But if it
helps to get rid of a mentally ill clown then why not!
mike k , February 9, 2018 at 4:18 pm
Good reasoning, but it fails to consider what's next? Believe it or not, there will
probably be a lot worse in store for us than President Donald Trump. Things just tend to get
worse and worse in a collapsing empire ..
Far , February 9, 2018 at 4:39 pm
What's next is a good question. I hope that Clinton leave finally the political world. She
was one of the main reasons that many of voters elected the bad option instead of the worst
option. Collapsing of the system can not be an option. But Trump is well under way to shake
the political system and polarize the civil society more than ever before
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 4:59 am
That's what Susan Sarandon foresaw as the "good" outcome of a Trump victory–the
collapse of the system would be advanced. However, how do we benefit from that opportunity
for change when the only announced candidates for Trump's job are the same ilk (Clinton,
Biden, Kerry) or their even shallower accolytes (Booker, Harris ) that caused all the damage
in the first place? All those idiots are still about fooling and fleecing the American public
and warring upon the rest of the world–friends and foes alike. They offer no peace, no
prosperity, and no future whatsoever, only a bleak struggle for existence in a nuclear winter
by the few survivors of their promised handiwork. You nailed it, Mike, things will only get
worse because our leaders (from both of these two abominable parties) insist upon it.
irina , February 9, 2018 at 4:22 pm
"Why not ?" Because such 'measures' only serve to destroy what little remains of our
democracy. Here's a thought experiment for you : would you support similar 'measures'
if they 'tended to an impeachment' of crazy, impulsive, mentally ill Hillary had she been
elected ? (As co-president with Bill, who she promised to 'put in charge' of the
economy).
Because "We came, we saw, he Died" Hillary is arguably even farther off the rails than
The Donald. And probably more dangerous for many reasons, not the least of which is
that so many people look at her and see someone 'sane'.
Far , February 9, 2018 at 5:06 pm
Crooked Hillary was never be an option. And Trump is definitive not fit for the oval
office. Trump will bury the democracy finally. Damages to the reputation of the US in the
world community is immense. With Trump there is no chance to make a real change. Quit in
contrary the US will face serious social, economic and security challenges without a glimmer
of hope to change the things. My father said that a great ship could be sunk. And if it sinks
it will be just slower than a little one. Trump is not an option anymore to steer the
ship.
Have a look at the less than vigorous investigations run by Mueller into BCCI (Bush crime
family "intelligence" op) pre 911. Mueller can run coverups or smear campaigns. Wonder what
his corporate offshore bank accounts look like
lindaj , February 9, 2018 at 11:50 pm
bank accounts. good question.
weilunion , February 9, 2018 at 5:35 pm
"Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work
effectively to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least
temporarily, to believe the exact opposite of the facts. These techniques are known in the
intelligence community as "perception management," and have been refined since the 1980s "to
keep the American people compliant and confused," as the late Robert Parry has reported. We
saw this in action last decade, when after months of disinformation, about 70% of Americans
came to falsely believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 when the truth was the opposite
– Saddam was actually an enemy of the Al Qaeda perpetrators."
Cognitive dissonance, lack of critical thinking, reliance on authority, in this case a
former head of a criminal organization called the FBI.
People have no class consciousness. They have no idea who their enemies ar or how to
organize.
This is the sad case of liberalism melting like warm butter while the fascists
congeal.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:27 pm
Nicely put.
Dave P. , February 10, 2018 at 2:51 am
"Social psychologists have long talked about how emotional manipulation can work
effectively to snooker a large percentage of the population, to get them, at least
temporarily, to believe the exact opposite of the facts. . ."
Yes. On any bar counter, just start some conversation with the person sitting to you. With
all this bizarre drama – Russia-Gate, Iran, memos, dossier . . . going on TV, and in
Washington being enacted knowingly by the the Powers who rule – both, so called
Liberals and Conservatives – one can see how this emotional manipulation has worked to
snooker just about most of the population. I just had the experience today during lunch at a
bar counter. In our conversation, the person sitting next to me was ready to nuke Iran, N.
Korea, and go after Russia; and go after Hillary too.
Population in the country was very poorly informed any how. And now, they, The Ruling
Establishment which includes Media, have completely messed the people up – making them
compliant and confused.
Does any body have idea how they are going to bring an end to this completely concocted
bizarre drama?
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:21 pm
Dave the same stupid asses you speak of will still be the same stupid asses long after
these foreign affairs take any turn for the better. The dumb butts are easy to control. It's
like you point and say bad, and these morons growl, as their faces contort in macho anger.
Although, if one day the U.S. should make friends with Iran, N Korea, or Russia, these silly
little stupid puppies will just go back to work. If you tell them it will be exciting to play
the Russians at hockey, well this might get them going a little bit again, but not to worry
because it's just hockey. Oh, easy on the beer, and make sure the refreshment stands have
plenty of nachos and tip. The jackasses like to eat and drink a lot, what can I say? Joe
Both MoveOn and Avaaz get major funding from George Soros.
Martin - Swedish citizen , February 9, 2018 at 6:30 pm
As a foreigner, looking from the outside, it seems Mueller will not find anything on
Russia. He already found something on Israel, but he doesn't pursue that. If Americans rally,
then it seems you should rally to make an objective and fair inquiry, to nail Israel for what
they seem to have done.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:28 pm
Now your talking. Good idea.
ToivoS , February 9, 2018 at 7:11 pm
"This is nuts" is a great headline for our current problem.
Many years ago in my early 20s I read 'Guns of August' that described support for the
coming WWI. What was so striking about that period was how the public in every relevant
European was hell bent on war. Among the major players -- Germany, France, UK, Russia and
Austro-hungary -- their populations were demonstrating in the streets and assemblies for war.
How was it possible for all of those people to eagerly lust for war that within a few years
led to the destruction of the German, Russian and Austrian empires, the deaths of millions of
their citizens and multidecade impoverishment for the survivors. The costs of the war
resulted in the effective bankruptcy of the UK and French colonial empires as well as
millions of dead and traumatized survivors.
I never was able to see how so many people then could be so incredibly foolish. In the
last two years I have gained some insight. Many of my respected, but now previous, political
associates have just gone totally nuts over Russiagate. There was some kind of psychic break
in their minds when Hillary lost and they are now little more than raging primates trapped in
a cognitive dissonance loop. Not just that, but these are people who are on the verge of
supporting war against Russia.
Reading other comments here it seems my experience has been shared by others.
Joe Tedesky , February 9, 2018 at 7:49 pm
Yes ToivoS, many of us here have been watching our family, friends, and fellow citizens
lose their minds in mass over the election of Donald J Trump. It's with his Electoral College
win that I noticed the psychic break in many a citizens mind. So now here we are, where this
psychic break has moved good thinking people to the side of the field where the Deep State,
or National Security State if you will, has replaced critical thinking people by turning them
into 'useful idiots', if that is enough of a suitable label to pin on these stray pseudo
liberals.
These misguided liberal thinkers ought to move out of the way, drop this Russia-Gate
travesty, and allow the real Left to emerge so as justice maybe served upon the Trump
Administration. And if these limousine liberal hacks don't wish to travel a different avenue,
as to confront what the Trump team does, then for the love of mike please dear almost
liberals quit getting so cozy with the National Security State. This kind of stuff gives
reason to believe that 'Nightmare on Elm Street' was a documentary, as Freddy Krueger is a
nice guy in real life. Now I'm afraid to go to sleep .take care ToivoS. Joe
Zachary Smith , February 9, 2018 at 11:35 pm
Regarding Guns of August , it's a book I won't be reading. Anything by Barbara
Tuchman connected with WW1 is automatically suspect with me. I've kept many of her other
history books, but will maintain a distinct level of skepticism while reading them. That's
necessary because she was a fanatical Zionist, and lying about Israel-related issues is just
something that type does.
Lois Gagnon , February 10, 2018 at 12:32 am
The term psychic break I think is dead accurate. It made me think of Naomi Klein's "Shock
Doctrine" in that people who are traumatized by natural or man made disasters are taken
advantage of by powerful interests intent on imposing policies that are against the public
interest.
People who are in a state of shock are not equipped to make rational decisions. Trump's
surprise (at least to Clinton voters) win left Democratic Party voters in shock leaving them
vulnerable to the Establishment's agenda of increasing tensions with Russia. Enter
Russia-gate which serves many purposes at once. As we have seen, it worked like a charm.
Those falling for the psy-op have left all reason behind. They are singularly focused. It is
virtually impossible to introduce evidence that contradicts the narrative. It's as
frustrating as talking to a religious fanatic.
Pandas4peace , February 10, 2018 at 11:48 am
In an ironic twist, Naomi Klein today has completely lost her mind due to Trump
Derangement Syndyome.
Larco Marco , February 10, 2018 at 3:34 am
The Ottoman Empire was also destroyed, with the UK subsequently claiming Palestine as a
piece of their own empire.
Sam , February 9, 2018 at 8:26 pm
"[I]t should be hoped by everyone that the Department of Justice Inspector General can get
to the bottom of how the FISA court was ultimately misled."
Is the IG even looking at this? The current investigation by the IG, the one due to report
soon, is looking at the investigation into Clinton's email server. I'm not aware of an IG
investigation on this matter. It would certainly be a good idea – assuming that the IG
is not compromised, which is a big assumption.
Coleen Rowley , February 9, 2018 at 11:20 pm
Maybe wishful thinking on my part. The Grassley-Graham referral regarding Steele's
potential violation of Title 18 Section 1001, lying to the FBI, may or may not be
prosecutable depending upon where the "lies" took place and the likely lack of
extra-territorial jurisdiction if they occurred in Rome. But even if no criminal violation
could be prosecuted, I would think the IG should still investigate the matter for potential
administrative discipline.
GEOFF TEAGUE , February 9, 2018 at 9:05 pm
the so called liberals need god on their side so they can tear down the constitution (at
least what is left of it) and then put trump's head on a pike. the most fearful thing in this
country is watching ignorance in action.
Pandas4peace , February 10, 2018 at 11:45 am
Yes! Stop and think about the consequences of a COUP of a legitimately ELECTED U.S.
President by the Deep State and his political opponents. It's a dangerous game and a slippery
slope. It's frightening to imagine where this could go.
ThomasGilroy , February 9, 2018 at 9:13 pm
To a liberal, the worst possible scenario was the election of Trump – especially
because they are "liberals". That cannot be difficult to see. They rightly see that Russian
inference in the election could have made a significant difference in the swing states.
Whether that is true or not, is irrelevant. There cannot be closure without the
investigation going forward. That Russia meddled in the US election is certainly without
question. Whether Trump colluded or not still needs to be answered.
Finally, future election need to be safeguarded against foreign powers attempting to
influence our system of democracy. Russia had a lot to gain potentially helping to elect
Trump. Trump had a lot to gain by colluding. We need to find out the truth.
Zachary Smith , February 10, 2018 at 1:00 am
"swing states" – do you suppose that Hillary taking several of them for granted had
anything to do with "influencing" the election?
That Russia meddled in the US election is certainly without question.
Without Question! This sounds very much like a religious belief to me. Something like this
1950 declaration by the pope at the time:
By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and
by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma:
that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her
earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.
Change a few words in that, and we'd have the Tragedy of Saint Hillary.
Finally, future election need to be safeguarded against foreign powers attempting to
influence our system of democracy. Russia had a lot to gain potentially helping to elect
Trump.
And how do you suggest this "safeguarding" happen? Shut down the internet? Imprison anyone
who says a favorable word about Russia?
ThomasGilroy , February 10, 2018 at 3:48 pm
Zachary
HRC was the second worse candidate in US history – just behind Trump. She is
definitely the one most responsible for her loss in the election. None the less, very few
votes separated a significant amount of electoral votes so the Russian influence could have
made a difference. If you view all of the evidence beginning when US intelligence first
identified Russian-related hackers in 2015, followed by Crowdstrike in 2016 (and at least
five other cybersecurity firms which confirmed Crowdstrike's conclusions) , social media and
the obvious reasons that Putin favored Trump over the anti-Russia candidacy of HRC (motive),
then it becomes much more logical that Russia meddled. Assange served the Russian government
as well (mostly with the aid of the Russian government-funded RT). He clearly looked to
undermine the HRC candidacy despite his denials (lies).
The Daily Beast does a nice job with the time line in the current Mueller investigation
(Trump-Russia Isn't About the Cover-Up. It's About the Crime. http://thebea.st/2slKBBE?source=twitter&via=desktop
via @thedailybeast) and Marcie Wheeler (at Empty Wheel) also does a good job presenting
evidence of Russian perfidy. Mueller probably knows a lot more than he is sharing so it's
just a matter of time before the evidence becomes much more difficult to ignore.
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 5:23 am
That Russia "meddled in the US election" is totally without foundation and you know it.
Any such attempt by them would be pointless, ineffective and detrimental if ever found out.
If we had really found out any such thing, we'd all know about it rather than being fed
bullshit based upon absolutely no real evidence. America would not be subjected to a year and
a half of shenanigans by a thoroughly-biased politically-motivated special prosecutor given a
hunting license by a frustrated deep state, a bitter political opposition and a raucous media
in the service of both.
What's the point in dragging out the process if the object is justice and the removal of a
putative pretender to the presidency? The aforementioned insurrectionists cannot pull off
their desired miracle because the evidence doesn't exist and it doesn't exist because the
purported crime was never committed.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans undoubtedly each cheated to win the election in
their own ways, but not in any way involving the Russians who have just served as unwitting
targets by our own domestic villains. Russia has gained NOTHING by seeing Trump in office.
During the election Putin would not even play favorites, stating the obvious: that he could
not predict the future and that he would have to deal with whomever was elected. Your
scenarios are all delusions, Gilroy.
Dave P. , February 10, 2018 at 3:36 pm
Realist – Excellent summation of this whole false, delusionary, bizarre concocted
drama being enacted on the American people, and on people beyond in the World.
Paul Easton , February 9, 2018 at 9:29 pm
The article mentions "perception management" and I think it is well to generalize. Ever
since 9/11 the permanent government has kept the population in line by playing on their
fears, in Trump's case fear of fascism. (And quite possibly the events of 9/11 were planned
and executed for this very purpose.) As it turned out the perception management was all too
effective and by now most of the population is freaking out, in one way or another, and our
society is disintegrating. Personally I am cheering it on. Goodbye USA Thank God!
Liberals getting behind the most
racist government agency in a pathetic display of supporting the
"enemy of my enemy" Donald Trump
gives further proof they are as
unprincipled as any of history's
other "national socialists".
Zachary Smith , February 10, 2018 at 1:02 am
What the hell is this endless repetition of the word "Liberals"? Try "Corporate Democrats"
and you'd be a LOT closer to reality.
Realist , February 10, 2018 at 5:31 am
To be sure. The other biggest mischaracterisation is to call the ring leaders of this
witch hunt "the left" or "leftists." The genuine left (what little still exists of it) are
the few who rail against this nonsense, largely on this or similar sites (e.g., ICH).
Dave P. , February 10, 2018 at 3:40 pm
I completely agree, Zachary. The true democratic party adherents – which includes
lot of us – should have split from the Corporate Democrats long ago during Clinton
presidency.
Bandrui , February 9, 2018 at 10:27 pm
We live in a hall of mirrors. This is yet another example of how easily most Americans are
manipulated, dumbest populace on the planet apparently. I see no hope for us at all.
D.H. Fabian , February 10, 2018 at 12:36 am
Give the Clinton right wing credit for achieving what the Republicans had long hoped, but
failed, to do. First, they split apart the Dem voting base in the 1990s, middle class vs.
poor, and the Obama years served to confirm that this split is permanent. Then they
apparently plagiarized old Joe McCarthy's playbook, launching their anti-Russian crusade,
splitting apart those who are not on the right wing. Divide, subdivide, conquer.
RandyLee , February 10, 2018 at 9:55 am
so the democrats are going for mob rule now? and they have willing accomplices in liberals
who have no idea why they hate Trump, they just know they are supposed to hate Trump. well I
say take to the streets then! give it your best shot! cry and scream and threaten your little
butts off. when you have no real idea why you are doing something, it won't take long before
you realize how stupid you are and will stop listening to those who encourage you from the
sidelines to attack american principles but aren't actually on the streets with you. its ok
for you to take that bullet but they sure as hell won't be taking one for the cause.
Martin S , February 10, 2018 at 10:19 am
The nefarious results of the Left propaganda: CRUSH THE TRUTH AND THE SHEEP WILL
SWALLOW
I believe the public is getting played on Mueller. Little hints keep dropping about Trump
firing him. Then the media and the left goes into a frenzy, demanding Saint Mueller stay.
Mueller has literally become the symbol of hope for the left.
Imagine Mueller now coming out and clearing Trump completely while exposing what his real
investigative objective was: revealing the deep state. Remember NBC and CNN mentioning
Mueller began investigating the Podestas? Then they dropped that story as fast as
possible.
I think we're witnessing the absolute genius of the deep state getting taken down. My
hunch is that Mueller is part of the team and the media is getting outsmarted.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 1:11 pm
One can only wonder to where all of this may go. Read this .
The thing about liberals is, they'll only accept one result in the Mueller probe. If Trump
removes him, he's hiding something. And if Mueller exposes Dem corruption instead of Rep
corruption, they'll say its fixed. They want the process to play out, but they'll only accept
one result, that of Trump/Russia collusion. They are blinded by their own hate.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:27 pm
Remember when the Dem's hated Comey? Boy, those were the days, weren't they?
Pandas4peace , February 10, 2018 at 11:35 am
Robert Mueller is leading an open-ended investigation that can cover any potential crime
uncovered during the course of the investigation. He has unlimited resources, no deadlines,
and no oversight. He can't be fired, except by the President. He reports to noone. His
targets have no idea what their crimes may be. His team is stacked with partisan hacks. He
uses heavy-handed tactics intended to break his adversaries, even if they haven't been
charged with a crime. He refuses to consider contrary evidence or to examine the DNC
computers. He won't interview witnesses. The Constitutional and human rights abuses are
alarming.
Douglas Mailly , February 10, 2018 at 11:43 am
Great article, but too bad about the polygraph reference, it just perpetuates the myth
that they are useful
One of the supreme ironies of our age is how the McCarthyesque focus on Russian
interference in our electoral process has completely obscured the domestic politicization of
our own institutions of government, that is the damage our now rabid placement of political
party party above the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the American population.
Corporations have taken over our legislatures under the guise of "free speech", and the
country's foreign policy is controlled by a military-industrial-security complex that sees
perpetual war as the answer to domestic economic well being and American world hegemony.
While Russians have no doubt used the internet to sow dissent here via "perception
management", as we no doubt have done there and elsewhere around the globe, what we Americans
as masters of Madison Avenue techniques have done to ourselves pales in comparison. Can we
come to grips with this and then get on to building a more cooperative world? It's a cause
worth fighting for.
Mild -ly - Facetious , February 10, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Well said, Howard Mettee.
Our slow descent into the present National Chaos might well've been birthed under McCarthy
antics as cloak&cover for Operation Paperclip. One could rightly label his actions
"political theater" or straight subversion. -- Whatever, US actual history is a Disappearing
Act with imperious propensity. We, as a nation, have always been imperious and domineering,
just as were our British forefathers.
The present personification of our historical arrogance is this trenchantly self-approving
/ self-adoring Trump; (Mala Mens Malus Animus), whose wanton path of destruction is largely
more perverse than any of his predecessors. His path of DECONSTRUCTION is the portent of a
free-radical DISORGANIZATION of the world structure as we've known it. ( Poe aptly depicted
this in his short story, "The Descent Into The Maelstrom")
The foreboding actions from Mr. Trump foreshadow Perilous Times predicted first in First
Timothy 6: 9-10, Trump as forerunner and Second Timothy 3: 1-5 -- either and both apt
descriptions of Donald Trump.
– – – – – – "mala mens malus animus"
R Davis , February 10, 2018 at 2:21 pm
Is it a diversion?
From what?
It is obvious that Israel & Trump are on a roll.
Bombing Syria on the skirtings of Iran – "oh joy of joys, one step closer," – to
doomsday.
Elsewhere i have recommended the Palestinian people exit Palestine ASAP.
Foolhardy Israel is only the size of a postage stamp, 4 time the size of Hiroshima.
when nerves fray hey!
Brad Smith , February 10, 2018 at 2:22 pm
I was actually hoping that with Trump taking over the reigns of the war machine that the
left would once again mobilize and oppose our wars and the spying state that walks all over
our civil liberties. Trump certainly gives them enough legitimate areas of concern that they
have plenty to go on. Sadly this really does show the power of the press to manipulate public
opinion and the left-wing media loves Russia Gate.
For myself personally, I see the threat of a confrontation with Russia as the #1 concern.
We have now entered into a new cold war with all the massive spending, proxy wars and yet
again the very real chance of it leading to a hot war that could be the end of all of us.
Sadly the "left" in this country has once again fallen for the endless propaganda, their
hatred of Trump is only part of this issue.
With or without the Mueller investigation the Russia hatred will go on. Mueller could
exonerate Trump tomorrow and the anti-Russian propaganda will continue. It was already
ramping up well before our elections and much of it was targeted at the left then as well.
Remember Pussy Riot? Remember the stories about how homophobic Russians are? The left has
been primed to hate Putin for a long time by this propaganda and they fell for it well before
Trump ran for office. Think about it this way, before we had the American "Deplorables" we
had "Russians". They were shown as nothing but drunken, wife beating, homophobic, Religious,
white, gun nuts, etc. etc. etc. This Extreme form of stereotyping was meant to invoke hatred
by the left and it worked.
Joe Tedesky , February 10, 2018 at 8:33 pm
Brad you got it right. Yes, the Dem's are wasting valuable time chasing after these
Russian hackers who weren't there. Brad you also got it right, that these so called liberals
are blinded by their hatred of Trump, and in my estimation these kool-aid liberals are
passing up any golden opportunity they may have to go after Trump for what they should be
going after him for. Talk about misdirected, the Dem's aren't even close. Joe
Erelis , February 10, 2018 at 3:24 pm
Well, there was middle last year a nationally organized "March for Truth" which called for
investigation of Trump and any Russian ties. The march by newspaper reports got "hundreds" in
Chicago and NYC. I saw a live stream of the Portland march. Maybe just maybe cracked a
hundred. Basically the march attendees looked like older party partisans. I would expect the
same for any pro-Mueller rallies in that they will be pretty much be democratic party
rallies. As the leadership of groups like Planned Parenthood, unions, and other organizations
are aligned with establishment democrats, I am not sure they can convince their bases to
march.
On the electoral side. Sure some people will show up, and show up in democratic dominated
cities, but in the rest of America, more of a yawn. Establishment democrats think that
Russiagate will win them elections. I think not.
dee , February 10, 2018 at 3:48 pm
The so called liberals tried to redefined the left away from working class to LBGT, Black
Lives Matter, abortion rights, etc and , in the process, dug their own graves.
So far these "liberals" have not dug their own graves, because media supports their
position now despite having primed Trump for winning during campaigning. I maintain that
having only two political parties is the crux of the problem, and clearly both are corporate.
People don't get how they are being played. A quote attributed to Mark Twain I just read: "It
is easier to fool people than to convince them that they are being fooled."
Dave Sullivan , February 10, 2018 at 7:12 pm
Yet another "analysis " of russia-gate without mentioning organized crime. The trump
cronies are mobbed up from top to bottom, and the right is shocked they would be looked at by
the FBI. Talk about snookered. Then the author, denigrates FISA, blames liberals, but doesn't
mention the lockstep GOP vote to continue it, or, the majority of dems who opposed .check
your own cognitive dissonance at the door before you sit to "write" again.
No reason for foul language, doesn't enlighten just plays into the already coarse society
we have. Colleen Rowley in the past has written on Mueller's harmful coverups of FBI behavior
including 9/11 collusion with Bush to ignore Saudi complicity, if I remember correctly.
Yoshi Shimizu , February 10, 2018 at 7:34 pm
Nuts' indeed. Before raising the temperature over the Russiagate, first. Shave off the
Pentagon budget!
"... Walmart employs 1.4 million Americans. The military employs 1.3 million active duty soldiers. That's a problem. Peace can't be allowed to break out. And the best way to insure that it doesn't is to kill the minimum number of people and export the maximum number of arms to keep people fighting with each other around the world. ..."
Walmart employs 1.4 million Americans. The military employs 1.3 million active duty
soldiers. That's a problem. Peace can't be allowed to break out. And the best way to insure
that it doesn't is to kill the minimum number of people and export the maximum number of arms
to keep people fighting with each other around the world.
That is all about as far as conceivable away from any notion of a professional
soldier.
How do you stop this? Who will employ those 1.3 million... 1.3 million who have been
brainwashed about "terrorism", "communism", "democracy", "muslims", etc. etc. etc.?
Particularly in the context of the tsunami of social change that is about to hit with the
advent of real artificial intelligence. Doctors? Their jobs are on the line and I suspect
they don't know it. Lawyers? Even worse.
The following article was the start of an epochal change in medicine:
Lasko TA, Denny JC, Levy MA (2013) Computational Phenotype Discovery Using Unsupervised
Feature Learning over Noisy, Sparse, and Irregular Clinical Data. PLoS ONE 8(6): e66341.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066341
I guess I should add, although it should be obvious, that the one thing that absolutely
cannot under any circumstances be allowed to happen is real war. Then you have to figure out
how to employ both the soldiers and the Walmart employees. Those that are still alive. And of
course if you look at the behavior of the U.S. in Syria you see that we are about as
interested in real war as we are in the arts.
Whether the rationale is the need to wage a war on terror involving 76 countries or renewed preparations for
a struggle against peer competitors Russia
and China (as Defense Secretary James Mattis suggested recently while introducing America's
new National
Defense Strategy ), the U.S. military is engaged globally. A network of 800
military bases spread across
172 countries helps enable its wars and interventions. By the count of the Pentagon, at the
end of the last fiscal year about
291,000 personnel (including reserves and Department of Defense civilians) were deployed in
183 countries worldwide, which is the functional definition of a military uncontained . Lady Liberty may
temporarily close when the U.S. government grinds to a halt, but the country's foreign
military commitments, especially its wars, just keep humming along.
As a student of history, I was warned to avoid the notion of inevitability. Still, given
such data points and others
like them, is there anything more predictable in this country's future than incessant
warfare without a true victory in sight? Indeed, the last clear-cut American victory, the
last true "mission accomplished" moment in a war of any significance, came in 1945 with the end
of World War II.
Yet the lack of clear victories since then seems to faze no one in Washington. In this
century, presidents have regularly boasted that the U.S. military is the finest fighting force in human history,
while no less regularly demanding that the most powerful military in today's world be "
rebuilt
" and funded at ever more staggering levels. Indeed, while on the campaign trail, Donald Trump
promised
he'd invest so much in the military that it would become "so big and so strong and so great,
and it will be so powerful that I don't think we're ever going to have to use it."
As soon as he took office, however, he promptly appointed a set of generals to key positions
in his government, stored the mothballs, and went back to war. Here, then, is a brief rundown
of the first year of his presidency in war terms.
In 2017, Afghanistan saw a mini-surge of roughly 4,000 additional U.S. troops (with
more to come ), a
major spike in air strikes, and an onslaught of munitions of all sorts, including
MOAB (the mother of all
bombs), the never-before-used largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, as well as
precision weapons fired by B-52s against suspected Taliban
drug laboratories . By the Air Force's own count,
4,361 weapons were "released" in Afghanistan in 2017 compared to 1,337 in 2016. Despite
this commitment of warriors and weapons, the Afghan war remains -- according to American
commanders putting the best possible light on the situation -- "
stalemated ," with that country's capital Kabul currently
under siege .
How about Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State? U.S.-led coalition forces
have launched more than 10,000
airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since Donald Trump became president, unleashing
39,577 weapons in 2017. (The figure for 2016 was 30,743.) The "caliphate" is now gone and
ISIS deflated but
not defeated , since you can't extinguish an ideology solely with bombs. Meanwhile, along
the Syrian-Turkish border a new conflict seems to be
heating up between American-backed Kurdish forces and NATO ally Turkey.
Yet another strife-riven country, Yemen, witnessed a
sixfold increase in U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (from 21 in
2016 to more than 131 in 2017). In Somalia, which has also seen a
rise in such strikes against al-Shabaab militants, U.S. forces on the ground have reached
numbers
not seen since the Black Hawk Down incident of 1993. In each of these countries, there are
yet more ruins, yet more civilian casualties, and yet more displaced people.
Finally, we come to North Korea. Though no real shots have yet been fired, rhetorical shots
by two less-than-stable leaders, "Little Rocket Man" Kim Jong-un and " dotard "
Donald Trump, raise the possibility of a regional
bloodbath . Trump, seemingly favoring military solutions to North Korea's nuclear program
even as his administration touts a new generation of more
usable nuclear warheads, has been remarkably successful in moving the world's doomsday
clock
ever closer to midnight.
Clearly, his "great" and "powerful" military has hardly been standing idly on the sidelines
looking "big" and "strong." More than ever, in fact, it seems to be lashing out across the
Greater Middle East and Africa. Seventeen years after the 9/11 attacks began the Global War on
Terror, all of this represents an
eerily familiar attempt by the U.S. military to kill its way to victory, whether against the
Taliban, ISIS, or other terrorist organizations.
This kinetic reality should surprise no one. Once you invest so much in your military -- not
just financially but also culturally (by continually celebrating it in a fashion which has come
to seem like a quasi-faith) -- it's natural to want to put it to use. This has been true of all
recent administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, as reflected in the infamous question
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright posed to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell in
1992: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't
use it?"
With the very word "peace" rarely in Washington's political vocabulary, America's
never-ending version of war seems as inevitable as anything is likely to be in history.
Significant contingents of U.S. troops and contractors remain an enduring presence in Iraq and
there are now 2,000 U.S.
Special Operations forces and other personnel in Syria
for the long haul . They are ostensibly engaged in training and stability operations. In
Washington, however, the urge for regime change in both Syria and Iran
remains strong -- in the case of Iran implacably so. If past is prologue, then considering
previous regime-change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the future looks grim
indeed.
Despite the dismal record of the last decade and a half, our civilian leaders continue to
insist that this country must have a military not only second to none but globally dominant.
And few here wonder what such a quest for total dominance, the desire for absolute power, could
do to this country. Two centuries ago, however, writing to Thomas Jefferson,
John Adams couldn't have been clearer on the subject. Power, he said, "must never be
trusted without a check."
The question today for the American people: How is the dominant military power of which U.S.
leaders so casually boast to be checked? How is the country's almost total reliance on the
military in foreign affairs to be reined in? How can the plans of the profiteers and
arms makers to keep the good times rolling be brought under control?
As a start, consider one of Donald Trump's favorite generals, Douglas MacArthur, speaking to the
Sperry Rand Corporation in 1957:
"Our swollen budgets constantly have been misrepresented to the public. Our government has
kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor --
with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or
some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind
it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never
to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
No peacenik MacArthur. Other famed generals like Smedley Butler and Dwight
D. Eisenhower spoke out with far more vigor against the corruptions of war and the perils
to a democracy of an ever more powerful military, though such sentiments are seldom heard in
this country today. Instead, America's leaders insist that other people judge us by our words,
our stated good intentions, not our murderous deeds and their results.
Perpetual Warfare Whistles Through Washington
Whether in Iraq
, Afghanistan , or
elsewhere in the war on terror, the U.S. is now engaged in generational conflicts that are
costing us trillions of dollars, driving up the national debt while weakening the underpinnings
of our democracy. They have led to foreign casualties by the hundreds of thousands and created
refugees in the
millions , while turning cities like Iraq's Mosul into wastelands .
In today's climate of budget-busting "defense" appropriations, isn't it finally time for
Americans to apply a little commonsense to our disastrous pattern of war-making? To prime the
pump for such a conversation, here are 10 suggestions for ways to focus on, limit, or possibly
change Washington's now eternal
war-making and
profligate war spending :
1. Abandon the notion of perfect security. You can't have it. It doesn't exist. And abandon
as well the idea that a huge military establishment translates into national safety. James
Madison didn't think so and neither did Dwight D. Eisenhower.
2. Who could have anything against calling the Pentagon a "defense" department, if defense
were truly its focus? But let's face it: the Pentagon is actually a war department. So let's
label it what it really is. After all, how can you deal with a problem if you can't even name
it accurately?
3. Isn't it about time to start following the Constitution when it comes to our "wars"?
Isn't it time for Congress to finally step up to its constitutional duties? Whatever the
Pentagon is called, this country should no longer be able to pursue its many conflicts without a
formal congressional declaration of war. If we had followed that rule, the U.S. wouldn't have
fought any of its wars since the end of World War II.
4.
Generational wars -- ones, that is, that never end -- should not be considered a measure of
American resolve, but of American stupidity. If you wage war long, you wage it wrong,
especially if you want to protect democratic institutions in this country.
5. Generals generally like to wage war. Don't blame them. It's their profession. But for
heaven's sake, don't put them in charge of the Department of "Defense" (James Mattis) or the
National Security Council (H.R. McMaster) either -- and above all, don't let one of them (John
Kelly) become the gatekeeper for a volatile, vain president. In our country, civilians should
be in charge of the war makers, end of story.
6. You can't win wars you never should have begun in the first place. America's leaders
failed to learn that lesson from Vietnam. Since then they have continued to wage wars for
less-than-vital interests with predictably dismal results. Following the Vietnam example,
America will only truly win its Afghan War when it chooses to rein in its pride and vanity --
and leave.
7. The serious people in Washington snickered when, as a presidential candidate in
2004 and 2008
, Congressman Dennis Kucinich called for a Department of Peace . Remind me,
though, 17 years into our latest set of wars, what was so funny about that suggestion? Isn't it
better to wage peace than war? If you don't believe me, ask a wounded veteran or a Gold Star
family.
8. Want to invest in American jobs? Good idea! But stop making the military-industrial
complex the preferred path to job creation. That's a loser of a way to go. It's proven that
investments in " butter " create double or triple the
number of jobs as those in "guns." In other words, invest in education, health care, and
civilian infrastructure, not more weaponry.
9. Get rid of the very idea behind the infamous Pottery Barn rule -- the warning
Secretary of State Colin Powell offered George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that if the
U.S. military "breaks" a country, somehow we've "bought" it and so have to take ownership of
the resulting mess. Whether stated or not, it's continued to be the basis for this century's
unending wars. Honestly, if somebody broke something valuable you owned, would you trust that
person to put it back together? Folly doesn't decrease by persisting in it.
10. I was an officer in the Air Force. When I entered that service, the ideal of the
citizen-soldier still held sway. But during my career I witnessed a slow, insidious change . A citizen-soldier military
morphed into a professional ethos of " warriors
" and " warfighters
," a military that saw itself as better than the rest of us. It's time to think about how to
return to that citizen-soldier tradition, which made it harder to fight those generational
wars.
Consider retired General John Kelly, who, while defending the president in a controversy
over the president's words to the mother of a dead Green Beret, refused
to take questions from reporters unless they had a personal connection to fallen troops or to a
Gold Star family. Consider as well the way that U.S. politicians like Vice President Mike Pence
are always so keen to exalt those in
uniform, to speak of them as above the citizenry. ("You are the best of us.")
Isn't it time to stop praising our troops to the rooftops and thanking them endlessly for
what they've done for us -- for fighting those wars without end -- and to start
listening to them instead? Isn't it time to try to understand them not as " heroes " in another universe,
but as people like us in all their frailty and complexity? We're never encouraged to see them
as our neighbors, or as teenagers who struggled through high school, or as harried moms and
dads.
Our troops are, of course, human and vulnerable and imperfect. We don't help them when we
put them on pedestals, give them flags to hold in the breeze, and salute them as icons of a
feel-good brand of patriotism. Talk of warrior-heroes is worse than cheap: it enables our state
of permanent war, elevates the Pentagon, ennobles the national security state, and silences
dissent. That's why it's both dangerous and universally supported in rare bipartisan fashion by
politicians in Washington.
So here's my final point. Think of it as a bonus 11th suggestion:
don't make our troops into heroes, even when they're in harm's way. It would be so much
better to make ourselves into heroes by getting them out of harm's way.
Whether the rationale is the need to wage a war on terror involving 76 countries or renewed preparations for
a struggle against peer competitors Russia
and China (as Defense Secretary James Mattis suggested recently while introducing America's
new National
Defense Strategy ), the U.S. military is engaged globally. A network of 800
military bases spread across
172 countries helps enable its wars and interventions. By the count of the Pentagon, at the
end of the last fiscal year about
291,000 personnel (including reserves and Department of Defense civilians) were deployed in
183 countries worldwide, which is the functional definition of a military uncontained . Lady Liberty may
temporarily close when the U.S. government grinds to a halt, but the country's foreign
military commitments, especially its wars, just keep humming along.
As a student of history, I was warned to avoid the notion of inevitability. Still, given
such data points and others
like them, is there anything more predictable in this country's future than incessant
warfare without a true victory in sight? Indeed, the last clear-cut American victory, the
last true "mission accomplished" moment in a war of any significance, came in 1945 with the end
of World War II.
Yet the lack of clear victories since then seems to faze no one in Washington. In this
century, presidents have regularly boasted that the U.S. military is the finest fighting force in human history,
while no less regularly demanding that the most powerful military in today's world be "
rebuilt
" and funded at ever more staggering levels. Indeed, while on the campaign trail, Donald Trump
promised
he'd invest so much in the military that it would become "so big and so strong and so great,
and it will be so powerful that I don't think we're ever going to have to use it."
As soon as he took office, however, he promptly appointed a set of generals to key positions
in his government, stored the mothballs, and went back to war. Here, then, is a brief rundown
of the first year of his presidency in war terms.
In 2017, Afghanistan saw a mini-surge of roughly 4,000 additional U.S. troops (with
more to come ), a
major spike in air strikes, and an onslaught of munitions of all sorts, including
MOAB (the mother of all
bombs), the never-before-used largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, as well as
precision weapons fired by B-52s against suspected Taliban
drug laboratories . By the Air Force's own count,
4,361 weapons were "released" in Afghanistan in 2017 compared to 1,337 in 2016. Despite
this commitment of warriors and weapons, the Afghan war remains -- according to American
commanders putting the best possible light on the situation -- "
stalemated ," with that country's capital Kabul currently
under siege .
How about Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State? U.S.-led coalition forces
have launched more than 10,000
airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since Donald Trump became president, unleashing
39,577 weapons in 2017. (The figure for 2016 was 30,743.) The "caliphate" is now gone and
ISIS deflated but
not defeated , since you can't extinguish an ideology solely with bombs. Meanwhile, along
the Syrian-Turkish border a new conflict seems to be
heating up between American-backed Kurdish forces and NATO ally Turkey.
Yet another strife-riven country, Yemen, witnessed a
sixfold increase in U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (from 21 in
2016 to more than 131 in 2017). In Somalia, which has also seen a
rise in such strikes against al-Shabaab militants, U.S. forces on the ground have reached
numbers
not seen since the Black Hawk Down incident of 1993. In each of these countries, there are
yet more ruins, yet more civilian casualties, and yet more displaced people.
Finally, we come to North Korea. Though no real shots have yet been fired, rhetorical shots
by two less-than-stable leaders, "Little Rocket Man" Kim Jong-un and " dotard "
Donald Trump, raise the possibility of a regional
bloodbath . Trump, seemingly favoring military solutions to North Korea's nuclear program
even as his administration touts a new generation of more
usable nuclear warheads, has been remarkably successful in moving the world's doomsday
clock
ever closer to midnight.
Clearly, his "great" and "powerful" military has hardly been standing idly on the sidelines
looking "big" and "strong." More than ever, in fact, it seems to be lashing out across the
Greater Middle East and Africa. Seventeen years after the 9/11 attacks began the Global War on
Terror, all of this represents an
eerily familiar attempt by the U.S. military to kill its way to victory, whether against the
Taliban, ISIS, or other terrorist organizations.
This kinetic reality should surprise no one. Once you invest so much in your military -- not
just financially but also culturally (by continually celebrating it in a fashion which has come
to seem like a quasi-faith) -- it's natural to want to put it to use. This has been true of all
recent administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, as reflected in the infamous question
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright posed to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell in
1992: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't
use it?"
With the very word "peace" rarely in Washington's political vocabulary, America's
never-ending version of war seems as inevitable as anything is likely to be in history.
Significant contingents of U.S. troops and contractors remain an enduring presence in Iraq and
there are now 2,000 U.S.
Special Operations forces and other personnel in Syria
for the long haul . They are ostensibly engaged in training and stability operations. In
Washington, however, the urge for regime change in both Syria and Iran
remains strong -- in the case of Iran implacably so. If past is prologue, then considering
previous regime-change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the future looks grim
indeed.
Despite the dismal record of the last decade and a half, our civilian leaders continue to
insist that this country must have a military not only second to none but globally dominant.
And few here wonder what such a quest for total dominance, the desire for absolute power, could
do to this country. Two centuries ago, however, writing to Thomas Jefferson,
John Adams couldn't have been clearer on the subject. Power, he said, "must never be
trusted without a check."
The question today for the American people: How is the dominant military power of which U.S.
leaders so casually boast to be checked? How is the country's almost total reliance on the
military in foreign affairs to be reined in? How can the plans of the profiteers and
arms makers to keep the good times rolling be brought under control?
As a start, consider one of Donald Trump's favorite generals, Douglas MacArthur, speaking to the
Sperry Rand Corporation in 1957:
"Our swollen budgets constantly have been misrepresented to the public. Our government has
kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor --
with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or
some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind
it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never
to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
No peacenik MacArthur. Other famed generals like Smedley Butler and Dwight
D. Eisenhower spoke out with far more vigor against the corruptions of war and the perils
to a democracy of an ever more powerful military, though such sentiments are seldom heard in
this country today. Instead, America's leaders insist that other people judge us by our words,
our stated good intentions, not our murderous deeds and their results.
Perpetual Warfare Whistles Through Washington
Whether in Iraq
, Afghanistan , or
elsewhere in the war on terror, the U.S. is now engaged in generational conflicts that are
costing us trillions of dollars, driving up the national debt while weakening the underpinnings
of our democracy. They have led to foreign casualties by the hundreds of thousands and created
refugees in the
millions , while turning cities like Iraq's Mosul into wastelands .
In today's climate of budget-busting "defense" appropriations, isn't it finally time for
Americans to apply a little commonsense to our disastrous pattern of war-making? To prime the
pump for such a conversation, here are 10 suggestions for ways to focus on, limit, or possibly
change Washington's now eternal
war-making and
profligate war spending :
1. Abandon the notion of perfect security. You can't have it. It doesn't exist. And abandon
as well the idea that a huge military establishment translates into national safety. James
Madison didn't think so and neither did Dwight D. Eisenhower.
2. Who could have anything against calling the Pentagon a "defense" department, if defense
were truly its focus? But let's face it: the Pentagon is actually a war department. So let's
label it what it really is. After all, how can you deal with a problem if you can't even name
it accurately?
3. Isn't it about time to start following the Constitution when it comes to our "wars"?
Isn't it time for Congress to finally step up to its constitutional duties? Whatever the
Pentagon is called, this country should no longer be able to pursue its many conflicts without a
formal congressional declaration of war. If we had followed that rule, the U.S. wouldn't have
fought any of its wars since the end of World War II.
4.
Generational wars -- ones, that is, that never end -- should not be considered a measure of
American resolve, but of American stupidity. If you wage war long, you wage it wrong,
especially if you want to protect democratic institutions in this country.
5. Generals generally like to wage war. Don't blame them. It's their profession. But for
heaven's sake, don't put them in charge of the Department of "Defense" (James Mattis) or the
National Security Council (H.R. McMaster) either -- and above all, don't let one of them (John
Kelly) become the gatekeeper for a volatile, vain president. In our country, civilians should
be in charge of the war makers, end of story.
6. You can't win wars you never should have begun in the first place. America's leaders
failed to learn that lesson from Vietnam. Since then they have continued to wage wars for
less-than-vital interests with predictably dismal results. Following the Vietnam example,
America will only truly win its Afghan War when it chooses to rein in its pride and vanity --
and leave.
7. The serious people in Washington snickered when, as a presidential candidate in
2004 and 2008
, Congressman Dennis Kucinich called for a Department of Peace . Remind me,
though, 17 years into our latest set of wars, what was so funny about that suggestion? Isn't it
better to wage peace than war? If you don't believe me, ask a wounded veteran or a Gold Star
family.
8. Want to invest in American jobs? Good idea! But stop making the military-industrial
complex the preferred path to job creation. That's a loser of a way to go. It's proven that
investments in " butter " create double or triple the
number of jobs as those in "guns." In other words, invest in education, health care, and
civilian infrastructure, not more weaponry.
9. Get rid of the very idea behind the infamous Pottery Barn rule -- the warning
Secretary of State Colin Powell offered George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that if the
U.S. military "breaks" a country, somehow we've "bought" it and so have to take ownership of
the resulting mess. Whether stated or not, it's continued to be the basis for this century's
unending wars. Honestly, if somebody broke something valuable you owned, would you trust that
person to put it back together? Folly doesn't decrease by persisting in it.
10. I was an officer in the Air Force. When I entered that service, the ideal of the
citizen-soldier still held sway. But during my career I witnessed a slow, insidious change . A citizen-soldier military
morphed into a professional ethos of " warriors
" and " warfighters
," a military that saw itself as better than the rest of us. It's time to think about how to
return to that citizen-soldier tradition, which made it harder to fight those generational
wars.
Consider retired General John Kelly, who, while defending the president in a controversy
over the president's words to the mother of a dead Green Beret, refused
to take questions from reporters unless they had a personal connection to fallen troops or to a
Gold Star family. Consider as well the way that U.S. politicians like Vice President Mike Pence
are always so keen to exalt those in
uniform, to speak of them as above the citizenry. ("You are the best of us.")
Isn't it time to stop praising our troops to the rooftops and thanking them endlessly for
what they've done for us -- for fighting those wars without end -- and to start
listening to them instead? Isn't it time to try to understand them not as " heroes " in another universe,
but as people like us in all their frailty and complexity? We're never encouraged to see them
as our neighbors, or as teenagers who struggled through high school, or as harried moms and
dads.
Our troops are, of course, human and vulnerable and imperfect. We don't help them when we
put them on pedestals, give them flags to hold in the breeze, and salute them as icons of a
feel-good brand of patriotism. Talk of warrior-heroes is worse than cheap: it enables our state
of permanent war, elevates the Pentagon, ennobles the national security state, and silences
dissent. That's why it's both dangerous and universally supported in rare bipartisan fashion by
politicians in Washington.
So here's my final point. Think of it as a bonus 11th suggestion:
don't make our troops into heroes, even when they're in harm's way. It would be so much
better to make ourselves into heroes by getting them out of harm's way.
"... On Strategy : A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, ..."
"... In his own work, Summers marginalized all Vietnamese actors (as would so many later military historians), failed to adequately deal with the potential consequences, nuclear or otherwise, of the sorts of escalation he advocated, and didn't even bother to ask whether Vietnam was a core national security interest of the United States. ..."
"... A more sophisticated Clausewitzian analysis came from current National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in a highly acclaimed 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... McMaster is a genuine scholar and a gifted writer, but he still suggested that the Joint Chiefs should have advocated for a more aggressive offensive strategy -- a full ground invasion of the North or unrelenting carpet-bombing of that country. In this sense, he was just another "go-big" Clausewitzian who, as historian Ronald Spector pointed out recently, ignored Vietnamese views and failed to acknowledge -- an observation of historian Edward Miller -- that "the Vietnam War was a Vietnamese war." ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... A Better War : The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ..."
"... Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... David Petraeus and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, co-authors in 2006 of FM 3-24, the first ( New York Times ..."
"... On Strategy ..."
"... Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... Most of the generals leading the war on terror just missed service in the Vietnam War. They graduated from various colleges or West Point in the years immediately following the withdrawal of most U.S. ground troops or thereafter: Petraeus in 1974 , future Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal in 1976 , and present National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in 1984 . Secretary of Defense Mattis finished ROTC and graduated from Central Washington University in 1971 , while Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam War, receiving his commission in 1976 . ..."
"... Petraeus, Mattis, McMaster, and the others entered service when military prestige had reached a nadir or was just rebounding. And those reading lists taught the young officers where to lay the blame for that -- on civilians in Washington (or in the nation's streets) or on a military high command too weak to assert its authority effectively. They would serve in Vietnam's shadow, the shadow of defeat, and the conclusions they would draw from it would only lead to twenty-first-century disasters ..."
"... Meanwhile, President Trump's hearts-and-minds faction consists of officers who have spent three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to approximately 70% of the world's nations. Furthermore, they've recently fought for and been granted a new "mini-surge" in Afghanistan intended to -- in disturbingly Vietnam-esque language -- "break the deadlock ," "reverse the decline," and "end the stalemate " there. Never mind that neither 100,000 U.S. troops (when I was there in 2011) nor 16 full years of combat could, in the term of the trade, "stabilize" Afghanistan. The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced Trump that -- despite his original instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or 6,000 or 7,000) more troops (and yet more drones , planes , and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents tragedy bordering on farce. ..."
"... The hearts and minders and Clausewitzians atop the military establishment since 9/11 are never likely to stop citing their versions of the Vietnam War as the key to victory today; that is, they will never stop focusing on a war that was always unwinnable and never worth fighting. None of today's acclaimed military personalities seems willing to consider that Washington couldn't have won in Vietnam because, as former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak (who flew 269 combat missions over that country) noted in the recent Ken Burns documentary series, "we were fighting on the wrong side." ..."
"... Today's leaders don't even pretend that the post-9/11 wars will ever end. In an interview last June, Petraeus -- still considered a sagacious guru of the Defense establishment -- disturbingly described the Afghan conflict as " generational ." ..."
"... Vietnam lost in the end. Its greedy corrupt elites are now puppets of US. They allow open prostitution in Ho Chi Minh city. They allow Vietnamese women to be a bunch of hookers again. ..."
"... "America tends to gain from commerce what it thinks it will get by warfare. Not so much the other way around" Rather like 20th century Germany, don't you think? ..."
"... The Vietnam war killed the draft. The draft is involuntary servitude, slavery in a sense. For ordinary Americans this was the only positive thing to come from the war. ..."
"... Ultimately, the victory of WW2 due to sheer weight of industrial productivity ramp and hence massive output of planes, tanks, submarines, etc. made defense a large part of the US economy. Since that time, too many entrenched interests just never want the military to downsize. Hence, the US has to keep invented new demand for a product that otherwise would not have such demand, but keeps some major entrenched interests powerful. ..."
"... The BIGGEST lesson to come out of the illegal and immoral War against Vietnam is that the draft was impeding the MIC's effort to sell Americans on the idea of supporting endless war. ..."
"... The same generals who let 911 happen and started the Iraq war still run the show. All of them should have faced a firing squad for that, but instead, the grossly incompetent General Kelly runs the White House and the grossly incompetent Mattis runs the military. ..."
"... The warhawk imperialists – some of them Clausewtizians and most COINdinistas – rule everything. No matter how many lives are lost, no matter how much money is wasted, they demand we remain on the same path of playing world hegemon. George Washington fought the British Empire for our freedom, so our subsequent leaders, starting most importantly with Lincoln, could remake the country into the British Empire 2.0. ..."
"... No; it's psychotic, psychopathic mayhem and mass-murder. Lemma: At any crime-scene, there are one or more perpetrators, possibly accessories, apologists and/or 'idle' bystanders. It is incumbent upon *all* witnesses to attempt to a) restrain malefactors and where possible b) rescue victims from harm. *All* present and not in active resistance to the crime attract proportional guilt. Addendum: Any person profiting from crime also makes him/herself an accessory, like all residents in the 'illegitimate entity' and/or the puppet executives, manufacturers of the means and their enablers = the whole MIC[*] plus all their dependents, say. ..."
"... The US rogue regime = US-M/I/C/4a†-plex, with dog-wagging-tail, its illegitimate sprog the Zionist/Israeli rogue regime + Js = I/J/Z-plex, all components rife with corruption. ..."
"... Save the BS for your fellow geezer drunks at the VFW lounge. Vietnam featured a complete collapse of the conscripted US military, rampant drug use, fragging, insubordination, faked injuries, disintegration of the chain of command, mass murder of civilians, and finally TOTAL DEFEAT after turning tail and running following the negotiation of a charitable "decent interval" allowing the yanks to save some face. Pathetic. ..."
"... Wars fought to make countries like Vietnam open to big corporations to move American jobs there. Corporate money backed by the fist of the Marines has worked all their lives, all their parents' lives, and all the modern history of America. "Why not now?", the sheep ask. ..."
"... According to Bobbie McNamara, American efforts resulted in the murder of over 4 million Vietnamese and the maiming of millions of others .MOSTLY CIVILIANS. ..."
"... If the war mongers had had an all-volunteer army like the one they have today, they could have and would have kept the Vietnam War going indefinitely. But, since they didn't, draftees and their parents wised-up to the Pentagon's money-making scam and put a stop to it by refusing to participate. ..."
"... Very rich families and corporatists started their own think tanks after World War II. This is when the looting began for RAND. These are the bastards Eisenhower was afraid of. Abe Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War -- the military industrial complex of the day -- easily constituted the greatest threat to the American republic. ..."
"... Remember that Eisenhower's definition of the complex included among the bastards, not only the military defense industry corporations, but also right alongside them the news media and the university and private research establishments. ..."
"... That war was a cluster fuck and a crime against humanity. It's only purpose was to make a few rich men richer. The murder and destruction in the MENA is just more of the same. ..."
Vietnam: it's always there. Looming in the past, informing American futures.
A 50-year-old war, once labeled the longest in our history, is still alive and well and
still being refought by one group of Americans: the military high command. And almost half a
century later, they're still losing it and blaming others for doing so.
Of course, the U.S. military and Washington policymakers lost the war in Vietnam in the
previous century and perhaps it's well that they did. The United States really had no business
intervening in that anti-colonial civil war in the first place, supporting a South Vietnamese
government of questionable legitimacy, and stifling promised nationwide elections on both sides
of that country's artificial border. In doing so, Washington presented an easy villain for a
North Vietnamese-backed National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency, a group known to Americans
in those years as the Vietcong.
More than two decades of involvement and, at the war's peak, half a million American troops
never altered the basic weakness of the U.S.-backed regime in Saigon. Despite millions of Asian
deaths and 58,000 American ones, South Vietnam's military could not, in the end, hold the line
without American support and finally collapsed under the weight of a conventional North
Vietnamese invasion in April 1975.
There's just one thing. Though a majority of historians (known in academia as the "orthodox"
school) subscribe to the basic contours of the above narrative, the vast majority of senior
American military officers do not. Instead, they're still refighting the Vietnam War to a far
cheerier outcome through the books they read, the scholarship they publish, and (most
disturbingly) the policies they continue to pursue in the Greater Middle East.
The Big Re-Write
In 1986, future general, Iraq-Afghan War commander, and CIA director David Petraeus penned
an article
for the military journal Parameters that summarized his Princeton doctoral
dissertation on the Vietnam War. It was a piece commensurate with then-Major Petraeus's
impressive intellect, except for its disastrous conclusions on the lessons of that war. Though
he did observe that Vietnam had "cost
the military dearly" and that "the frustrations of Vietnam are deeply etched in the minds of
those who lead the services," his real fear was that the war had left the military unprepared
to wage what were then called "low-intensity conflicts" and are now known as
counterinsurgencies. His takeaway: what the country needed wasn't less Vietnams but
better-fought ones. The next time, he concluded fatefully, the military should do a far better
job of implementing counterinsurgency forces, equipment, tactics, and doctrine to win such
wars.
Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed present itself in Iraq, he
and a whole generation of COINdinistas (like-minded officers
devoted to his favored counterinsurgency approach to modern warfare) embraced those very
conclusions to win the war on terror. The names of some of them -- H.R. McMaster and James
Mattis, for instance -- should ring a bell or two these days. In Iraq and later in Afghanistan,
Petraeus and his acolytes would get their chance to translate theory into practice. Americans
-- and much of the rest of the planet -- still live with the results.
Like Petraeus, an entire generation of senior military leaders, commissioned in the years
after the Vietnam War and now atop the defense behemoth, remain fixated on that ancient
conflict. After all these decades, such "thinking" generals and "soldier-scholars" continue to
draw all the wrong lessons from what, thanks in part to them, has now become America's
second longest war.
Rival Schools
Historian Gary Hess identifies two main schools
of revisionist thinking.
Both schools, however, agreed on something basic: that the U.S. military should have won in
Vietnam.
The danger presented by either school is clear enough in the twenty-first century. Senior
commanders, some now serving in key national security positions, fixated on Vietnam, have
translated that conflict's supposed lessons into what now passes for military strategy in
Washington. The
result has been an ever-expanding war on terror campaign waged ceaselessly from South Asia
to West Africa, which has essentially turned out to be perpetual war based on the can-do belief
that counterinsurgency and advise-and-assist missions should have worked in Vietnam and can
work now.
The Go-Big Option
The leading voice of the Clausewitzian school was U.S. Army Colonel and Korean War/Vietnam
War vet Harry Summers, whose 1982 book, On Strategy : A
Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, became an instant classic within the military. It's
easy enough to understand why. Summers argued that civilian policymakers -- not the military
rank-and-file -- had lost the war by focusing hopelessly on the insurgency in South Vietnam
rather than on the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. More troops, more aggressiveness, even
full-scale invasions of communist safe havens in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, would have
led to victory.
Summers had a deep emotional investment in his topic.
Later , he would argue that the source of post-war pessimistic analyses of the conflict lay
in "draft dodgers and war evaders still [struggling] with their consciences." In his own
work, Summers marginalized all Vietnamese actors (as would so many later military historians),
failed to adequately deal with the potential consequences, nuclear or otherwise, of the sorts
of escalation he advocated, and didn't even bother to ask whether Vietnam was a core national
security interest of the United States.
Perhaps he would have done well to reconsider a famous post-war
encounter he had with a North Vietnamese officer, a Colonel Tu, whom he assured that "you
know you never beat us on the battlefield." "That may be so," replied his former enemy, "but it
is also irrelevant."
Whatever its limitations, his work remains influential in military circles to this day. (I
was assigned the book as a West Point cadet!)
A more sophisticated Clausewitzian analysis came from current National Security Adviser
H.R. McMaster in a highly acclaimed 1997 book, Dereliction of
Duty . He argued that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were derelict in failing to give
President Lyndon Johnson an honest appraisal of what it would take to win, which meant that
"the nation went to war without the benefit of effective military advice." He concluded that
the war was lost not in the field or by the media or even on antiwar college campuses, but in
Washington, D.C., through a failure of nerve by the Pentagon's generals, which led civilian
officials to opt for a deficient strategy.
McMaster is a genuine scholar and a gifted writer, but he still suggested that the Joint
Chiefs should have advocated for a more aggressive offensive strategy -- a full ground invasion
of the North or unrelenting carpet-bombing of that country. In this sense, he was just another
"go-big" Clausewitzian who, as historian Ronald Spector pointed
out recently, ignored Vietnamese views and failed to acknowledge -- an observation
of historian Edward Miller -- that "the Vietnam War was a Vietnamese war."
COIN: A Small (Forever) War
Another Vietnam veteran, retired Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Krepinevich, fired the opening
salvo for the hearts-and-minders. In The Army and Vietnam , published in 1986, he
argued
that the NLF, not the North Vietnamese Army, was the enemy's chief center of gravity and that
the American military's failure to emphasize counterinsurgency principles over conventional
concepts of war sealed its fate. While such arguments were, in reality, no more
impressive than those of the Clausewitzians, they have remained popular with military
audiences, as historian Dale Andrade points
out , because they offer a "simple explanation for the defeat in Vietnam."
Krepinevich would write an influential 2005 Foreign Affairspiece , "How to Win
in Iraq," in which he applied his Vietnam conclusions to a new strategy of prolonged
counterinsurgency in the Middle East, quickly winning over the New
York Times 's resident conservative columnist, David Brooks, and generating "discussion in
the Pentagon, CIA, American Embassy in Baghdad, and the office of the vice president."
In 1999, retired army officer and Vietnam veteran Lewis Sorley penned the definitive
hearts-and-minds tract, A Better War : The
Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam . Sorley boldly
asserted
that, by the spring of 1970, "the fighting wasn't over, but the war was won." According to his
comforting tale, the real explanation for failure lay with the "big-war" strategy of U.S.
commander General William Westmoreland. The counterinsurgency strategy of his successor,
General Creighton Abrams -- Sorley's knight in shining armor -- was (or at least should have
been) a war winner.
Critics
noted that Sorley overemphasized the marginal differences between the two generals'
strategies and produced a remarkably counterfactual work. It didn't matter, however. By 2005,
just as the situation in Iraq, a country then locked in a sectarian civil war amid an American
occupation, went from bad to worse, Sorley's book found
its way into the hands of the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, and State
Department counselor Philip Zelikow. By then, according
to the Washington Post 's David Ignatius, it could also "be found on the
bookshelves of senior military officers in Baghdad."
Another influential hearts-and-minds devotee was Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl. (He even
made it
onto The Daily Show with Jon Stewart .) His Learning to Eat Soup with
a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam followed Krepinevich in
claiming that "if [Creighton] Abrams had gotten the call to lead the American effort at the
start of the war, America might very well have won it." In 2006, the Wall Street
Journalreported that Army Chief of Staff
General Peter Schoomaker "so liked [Nagl's] book that he made it required reading for all
four-star generals," while the Iraq War commander of that moment, General George Casey, gave
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a copy during a visit to Baghdad.
David Petraeus and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, co-authors in 2006 of
FM 3-24, the first ( New York Times -reviewed ) military field manual for counterinsurgency since
Vietnam, must also be considered among the pantheon of hearts-and-minders. Nagl wrote a
foreword for their manual,
while Krepinevich provided a glowing back-cover endorsement .
Such revisionist interpretations would prove tragic in Iraq and Afghanistan, once they had
filtered down to the entire officer corps.
Reading All the Wrong Books
In 2009, when former West Point history professor Colonel Gregory Daddis was deployed
to Iraq as the command historian for the Multinational Corps -- the military's primary tactical
headquarters -- he noted that corps commander Lieutenant General Charles Jacoby had assigned a
professional reading list to his principal subordinates. To his disappointment, Daddis also
discovered that the only Vietnam War book included was Sorley's A Better War . This
should have surprised no one, since his argument -- that American soldiers in Vietnam
were
denied an impending victory by civilian policymakers, a liberal media, and antiwar protestors
-- was still resonant among the officer corps in year six of the Iraq quagmire. It wasn't the
military's fault!
Officers have long distributed professional reading lists for subordinates, intellectual
guideposts to the complex challenges ahead. Indeed, there's much to be admired in the concept,
but also potential dangers in such lists as they inevitably influence the thinking of an entire
generation of future leaders. In the case of Vietnam, the perils are obvious. The generals have
been assigning and reading problematic books for years, works that were essentially meant to
reinforce professional pride in the midst of a series of unsuccessful and unending wars.
Just after 9/11, for instance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers -- who spoke at my
West Point graduation -- included Summers's On
Strategy on his list. A few years later, then-Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker
added
McMaster's Dereliction of Duty . The trend continues today. Marine Corps Commandant
Robert Neller has kept McMaster and added Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (he of the
illegal bombing of both Laos and Cambodia and war
criminal fame). Current Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley kept Kissinger and
added good
old Lewis Sorley. To top it all off, Secretary of Defense Mattis has included
yet another Kissinger book and, in a different list , Krepinevich's
The Army and Vietnam .
Just as important as which books made the lists is what's missing from them: none of these
senior commanders include newer scholarship
,
novels , or journalistic accounts which might raise thorny, uncomfortable questions about
whether the Vietnam War was winnable, necessary, or advisable, or incorporate local voices that
might highlight the limits of American influence and power.
Serving in the Shadow of Vietnam
Most of the generals leading the war on terror just missed service in the Vietnam War.
They graduated from various colleges or West Point in the years immediately following the
withdrawal of most U.S. ground troops or thereafter: Petraeus in
1974 , future Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal in 1976 , and present National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster in 1984 .
Secretary of Defense Mattis finished ROTC and graduated from Central Washington University in
1971 , while
Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam War, receiving his
commission in 1976
.
In other words, the generation of officers now overseeing the still-spreading war on terror
entered military service at the end of or after the tragic war in Southeast Asia. That meant
they narrowly escaped combat duty in the bloodiest American conflict since World War II and so
the professional credibility that went with it. They were mentored and taught by academy
tactical officers, ROTC instructors, and commanders who had cut their teeth on that conflict.
Vietnam literally dominated the discourse of their era -- and it's never ended.
Petraeus, Mattis, McMaster, and the others entered service when military prestige had
reached a nadir or was just rebounding. And those reading lists taught the young officers where
to lay the blame for that -- on civilians in Washington (or in the nation's streets) or on a
military high command too weak to assert its authority effectively. They would serve in
Vietnam's shadow, the shadow of defeat, and the conclusions they would draw from it would only
lead to twenty-first-century disasters .
From Vietnam to the War on Terror to Generational War
All of this misremembering, all of those Vietnam "lessons" inform the U.S. military's
ongoing "surges" and "advise-and-assist" approaches to its wars in the Greater Middle East and
Africa. Representatives of both Vietnam revisionist schools now guide the development of the
Trump administration's version of global strategy. President Trump's in-house Clausewitzians
clamor for -- and receive
-- ever more delegated authority to do their damnedest and what retired General (and Vietnam
vet) Edward Meyer called for
back in 1983: "a freer hand in waging war than they had in Vietnam." In other words, more
bombs, more troops, and carte blanche to escalate such conflicts to their hearts' content.
Meanwhile, President Trump's hearts-and-minds faction consists of officers who have
spent three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to approximately 70%
of the world's nations. Furthermore, they've recently fought for and been granted a new
"mini-surge" in Afghanistan intended to -- in disturbingly Vietnam-esque language -- "break the
deadlock ," "reverse the decline," and "end the
stalemate " there. Never mind that neither 100,000 U.S. troops (when I was
there in 2011) nor 16 full years of combat could, in the term of the trade, "stabilize"
Afghanistan. The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced
Trump that -- despite his original
instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or
6,000 or 7,000) more troops (and yet more
drones ,
planes , and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents tragedy bordering on
farce.
The hearts and minders and Clausewitzians atop the military establishment since 9/11 are
never likely to stop citing their versions of the Vietnam War as the key to victory today; that
is, they will never stop focusing on a war that was always unwinnable and never worth fighting.
None of today's acclaimed military personalities seems willing to consider that Washington
couldn't have won in Vietnam because, as former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak (who
flew
269 combat missions over that country) noted in the
recent Ken Burns documentary series, "we were fighting on the wrong side."
Today's leaders don't even pretend that the post-9/11 wars will ever end. In an
interview last June, Petraeus -- still considered a sagacious guru of the Defense establishment
-- disturbingly described the Afghan conflict as " generational ."
Eerily enough, to cite a Vietnam-era precedent, General Creighton Abrams predicted something
similar. speaking to the White House as the war in Southeast Asia was winding down. Even as
President Richard Nixon slowly withdrew U.S. forces, handing over their duties to the South
Vietnamese Army (ARVN) -- a process known then as "Vietnamization" -- the general warned
that, despite ARVN improvements, continued U.S. support "would be required indefinitely to
maintain an effective force." Vietnam, too, had its "generational" side (until, of course, it
didn't).
It's not that our generals don't read. They do. They just doggedly continue to read the
wrong books.
In 1986, General Petraeus ended his influential Parametersarticle
with a quote from historian George Herring: "Each historical situation is unique and the use of
analogy is at best misleading, at worst, dangerous." When it comes to Vietnam and a cohort of
officers shaped in its shadow (and even now convinced it could have been won), "dangerous"
hardly describes the results. They've helped bring us generational war and, for today's young
soldiers, ceaseless tragedy.
[Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an
unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of
the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]
The book that needs to be written is the one that explores the question, "Does this war need
to be fought by us?"
The guys running the show now were mid-grade officers when I served in the '80s. They know
we already were waging a war on terror, but it was a quiet one, e.g "low-intensity conflict,"
the kind that doesn't pump up budgets or put lots of ribbons and badges on the chests of more
than a few of them, much less punch the ticket for promotion.
The problem here is one of governance: Civilians who should be reigning in and questioning
the military leadership (including the senior civilian leadership at DoD and apparently
State) when it wants to take us on yet another foreign adventure seem instead to be be
captive to them, because the spoils of war accrue to their benefit via procurement in their
districts.
Vietnam and the GWOT are merely symptoms of a bigger problem.
BTW, re Vietnam: Vietnam went through its Communist phase, but in a rather short time came
back to pseudo-capitalism, much like China, so aside from nearly 60k US troops and a few
million Viets killed and 20 years of lost time, what did we gain from fighting there?
America tends to gain from commerce what it thinks it will get by warfare. Not so much the
other way around.
Didn't US realize that it can win any war with bribes and trade?
Vietnam lost in the end. Its greedy corrupt elites are now puppets of US. They allow
open prostitution in Ho Chi Minh city. They allow Vietnamese women to be a bunch of hookers
again.
And Vietnam even has homo parades because it comes with more gibs and bribes.
They established a myth that we almost won in Vietnam but the politicians wouldn't let us
finish the job, claiming we never lost a battle in Vietnam. That is false, so I posted a list
of 104 "Lost Battles of the Vietnam War" that squashed this myth.
"America tends to gain from commerce what it thinks it will get by warfare. Not so
much the other way around" Rather like 20th century Germany, don't you think?
Thanks for that link. I agree, whitewashing those tragedies is a grave disservice to our
soldiers who had to fight in those conditions (how are we supposed to learn from our mistakes
if we can't even come to terms with what we did wrong?).
No the JCS initially said SE Asia was strategically a backwater and not worth the
concentrating of America's limited resources. But military high command were operating within
longstanding army protocols of subordinating the military to civilian policymakers. It was
the CIA's job to say whether the war could be won and they were always skeptical.
America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War makes clear who was responsible for
pressing for escalation and bombing in Vietnam, who was the optimist, and who continued to
insisted after it had finished that the war had stabilized a domino.
If one's fundamental image of the world is as a place full of Quislings, McCains and assorted
dual nationals; then it follows that one will be militarily a Coindinista. If only third
world citizens were like American pols and stayed bought, but they aren't and they don't. If
one's fundamental image is that it is a world full of nationalists, patriots and Churchills:
then the bomb them back to non-existence; then it follows that one is a Summer's soldier.
Unfortunately, if one wishes to debate other nuanced alternatives to this dichotomy; the
enemy gets to shoot first. A policeman walks a beat in his city because he is paid to do it,
the "world's indispensable policeman" is unnecessary to the rest of the world but inevitable
to himself.
The Vietnam war killed the draft. The draft is involuntary servitude, slavery in a sense.
For ordinary Americans this was the only positive thing to come from the war.
Blah blah blah. That war was a cluster fuck and a crime against humanity. It's only purpose
was to make a few rich men richer. The murder and destruction in the MENA is just more of the
same.
It's also weird that the idea of Vietnam War as a missionary conflict is never discussed. The
colonial Vietnam & later South Vietnam government gave preference to christians in
governmental positions, bureaucracy & had a monopoly on education. The prevailing
narrative in the west, is that somehow christianity is better & that people flock to it
due to this, just like their ancestors did. Mosmaiorum.org/persecution_list.html
For example, the anti Buddhist discriminatory laws in Korea are never discussed, neither
is the flooding of Japan with bibles post ww2. In the present age you have missionaries
following closely behind the USA army & organizations like the US council on religious
freedom being headed by missionaries sic. soul vultures.
From that pov, if white nationalists cannot control the predatory instincts of 'their'
people nor disavow them by becoming Pagan; then, they deserve their fate & should expect
no support from outsiders. As others have remarked, tariffs & protectionism help accrue
capital as do socially conservative views. The pushing of free trade & social liberalism
on 2nd/3rd world countries is akin to kicking the ladder. It's probably in everyone's
interest for the Protestant west to collapse under Afro-Islamic demographic pressure so the
great clean up can begin. Tldr yes state power leads to liberalism & liberal views but,
if you view that as the legacy of your people, fuck your people.
we are deeply at odds. We did not lose the Vietnam conflict. I am confident that billions
of dollars have been spent drilling that myth into the minds of well everyone. I remember
being a young poli-sci student in KS. And as I listened to the lecture on Vietnam, did the
reading my conclusion was so distant from his as to cause me no small amount of turmoil. The
contention that we lost Vietnam is so counter to the data -- it makes the Twilight Zone look
like Gilligan's Island, the twists on reality are directionless -- but conclude we lost, when
nothing could be further from the truth.
I have another theory, the reason that Vietnam remains etched in the psyche is because the
analysis was political as opposed to what actually occurred. This kind of hyperventilated
self flagellating recriminations will distort truth. Perception over reality -- then becomes
self fulling history.
_________________
But to the point. The US has lost two wars: The war of 1812 and in my view, the Iraq
conflict -- no direct fault of those on the ground doing the fighting. And we may lose the
Afghanistan gambit. It's a loss because it fell apart during our occupation. The guerrilla
warfare (asymmetrics) was not the issues for that failure. The failure was in
1. unjustifiable cause
2. poor implementation
3. under resourced
4. an inability to maintain order among communities -- (1-3)
5. and just a lot of bad decisions
Trying compare Vietnam to Iraq is like trying compare a stone to water in similarity. You
might be able to some generic references and very tiny specifics, but overall: the
environment politically and strategically, just never mesh. We didn't invade Vietnam. They
had a functioning government. There were clear lines of who was who based on borders (I am
not ignoring the insurgency -- Vietcong, etc.
It was the cold war and unlike Iraq there were not six varying countries throwing a myriad
of combatants into the fray with varying agendas and varying religious convictions. Even the
physical environment demanded a different strategy, insurgents or no insurgents.
One has to plan for insurgent warfare as invading any country is bound to have those who
get the best defense is one of stealth when your foe is as large a target as the US was in
Iraq. But for all of the complaints about Counter-Insurgency the one that no one seems
willing to state is the simplest. Don't invade countries for which there is no clean or clear
motive to do so. It's that simple. There was never a need to invade Iraq, if anything we
should have readjusted our dynamic and began a process of easing sanctions for their aide in
countering terrorism.
There was no reason to invade Afghanistan -- even to distribute more bikinis and advance
killing children in the womb. We wanted twenty guys and instead we stirred a hornet's nest .
. . ok well, more than one.
Vietnam really was an act of selflessness, we wanted to shore up a small republic seeking
a different course to communism. It bolstered our own ideas against the grand schema of the
Soviet Union, rightly or wrongly. Now you are not the only one who has a gripe with
counterinsurgency.
And I think it's a debate/discussion worth having, and while it may be useful to examine
COIN as to Vietnam strategically -- I think it can be done minus the incorrect and yet
incessant sack cloth and ashes built on mountains of liberal psychological faux trauma as if
the trauma of war is somehow unique to Vietnam,. It is not. As you know war is a nasty filthy
business, best left alone. But on occasion one gets pushed into a fight as did S. Vietnam and
when that screw is turned -- well history is replete of the consequences, the waste, the
blood, the brokenness . . . The tragedy of war does not mean one loses a war.
How true! If only the US had recognized the power of man's baser instincts and did what
the US does best -- continue selling its culture of consumerism and hedonism, Vietnam would
have arrived at the point much sooner and with virtually no loss of life.
Ultimately, the victory of WW2 due to sheer weight of industrial productivity ramp and
hence massive output of planes, tanks, submarines, etc. made defense a large part of the US
economy. Since that time, too many entrenched interests just never want the military to
downsize. Hence, the US has to keep invented new demand for a product that otherwise would
not have such demand, but keeps some major entrenched interests powerful.
I mean, the Korean war started just 5 years after WW2 ended. They could barely wait for a
new crop of boys to turn 18 and become cannon fodder. 50,000 in Korea right after the 300,000
in WW2.
When casualties became politically incorrect (after VietNam), the focus shifted towards
lengthy 'nation building', that was not meant to succeed, but just to cost a lot for a long
time. In theory, the Iraq War could have worked, IF the true objective was the installation
of a moderate regime in Iraq, coupled with no extended US occupation. But that was not the
true objective after all, so it did not work.
The BIGGEST lesson to come out of the illegal and immoral War against Vietnam is that the
draft was impeding the MIC's effort to sell Americans on the idea of supporting endless
war.
Get rid of the draft and there will be no protests hell raised back home by people of
draft age–and their families and friends–who don't want to get drafted to fight
wars so colonels can become generals; Wall Street can make a killing on the killing and so
the Pentagon can try out its new 'gee-whiz' weapons in the field on actual people.
The next biggest lesson was that the media must be tamed and brought under control with
embedding, so they'll push the Pentagon's and Wall Street message of duty, honor, Mom and
apple pie onto gullible Americans, who now damn near get orgasmic when they see a
multi-billion dollar killing machine–the B-2–fly over the upcoming gladiator
battle in the newest billion dollar coliseum and go into the State-mandated 'Two Minutes
Hate' whenever they see or hear the word Muslim or Islam.
For the record, I did my time in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne.
So America worships Ares/Mars and doesn't expect the god of War to want to eat them too?
There shall be wars and rumors of wars .I so look forward to watching this love of war spread
itself from sea to shining sea.
Until the young wise up and realize that the military operations in other countries have
nothing to do with the freedoms we have here and that they're being used as fodder for the
investments that the MIC has in the companies that make the tools of war, we will keep having
this nonsense. The kids need to wise up. The government has at its disposal all it needs to
'win' if it wants to. But if you 'win' , the sales and manufacturing of the
goodies is curtailed. They'd rather send the kids into the meat grinder all pumped up
thinking they're 'preserving freedom' LOL!
Nice, thank U. I´d never before had figured out, never outlined such a precise
conceptual sight of the two still remaining American mindsets on HOW to win.
Yes, cause for them Amerika must obviously must always win. So there are two viewpoints, that
in plain clear English we citizens of the shitholin´ countries wherever -- express as
follows:
Yes, you say tariffs and proteccionism help accrue capital.
Have you got any objection against a large, populous but still poor country (like Nigeria,
Indonesia, India or Brazil) sticking to higher (though not sky high) tariffs and
protectionism to raise their production, their income and their living standards?
That was PRECISELY HOW the US, Uk, Germany and the Meiji era Japan, not to mention China
from 1949 to Chu enLai) acted and because of it rose the heights of the present status and
well being societies.
Yes, you naive repeater, let´s us first protect ourselves from the globalist wolves
and THEN, we can sit down and talk but from a firm solid position, not the other way round.
cut the frack! We southern people are fed up with that northern hemispheric sales talk
– it ´s so convenient to you – but the web exists and times change.
It's not that our generals don't read. They do. They just doggedly continue to read the
wrong books.
It's not just the generals. The whole idea of the state is to control the uncontrollable
in order to continue "growing". That's why we conducted Vietnam as we did and why we conduct
operations as we do all over the world. Rather than Total War that produces winners and
losers we are trying to keep a lid on behavioral sinks and modify behavior so that economic
"growth" can continue.
I am not advocating Total War, but I am predicting that horrible war is coming.
How many dead men will it take
To build a dike that will not break?
The Zionists have been the root cause of every war that America has been in since WWI and
right on through the wars in the Mideast and the wars in the Mideast were perpetrated by the
Israeli and Zionist controlled deep state attack on 911.
America is under Zionist control and if anyone doubts this, just remember Israel did the
attack on 911 and got away with and every thinking American knows that Zionist Israel did the
attack which killed 3000 Americans, that is control.
. . .supporting a South Vietnamese government of questionable legitimacy
Actually the US created the "Republic of Vietnam" within Vietnam, which was rather
unusual, and then fought Vietnam. The US grabbed a Christian out of a New Jersey seminary
(Ngo Dinh Diem) to run the Buddhist "country," that didn't help. More recently the US has
overthrown governments (Iraq and Afghanistan) and then fought the natives. Whatever, it
doesn't work. The citizens (AKA dissidents, insurgents, terrorists, etc.) so effected don't
want US troops in their countries, and who can blame them.
Why do credulous Americans read anti-war books written by war criminals? Only brainwashed
people support the troops. Most Americans hated soldiers after Vietnam. They had seen
soldiers raping wives and daughters, burning houses and huts and crops and wiping out entire
villages. They knew that men who agree to kill for a paycheck do other bad things like raping
and looting and then writing books about it later.
The cons put a stop to all those "incorrect" ideas American slaves had developed by
ramping up the propaganda in the 1980s. Movies kicked in and "learned" the zombies about the
wonderfulness of war and killing and how American soldiers kill with love in their hearts and
the tragedy of the boy baby killers left behind – probably by "communists in the US
Government."
The United States really had no business intervening
That's a, maybe "the," key concept. The US has always had enough internal problems
of its own to deal with and it should always have tended to its own interest first. Damned
know-it-all, brainless busybodies!
I suspect most of them would wise up if their elders did so first, and would teach 'em.
One of the most annoying sights to me is to see some ancient fart wearing some sign that he's
a vet. Even though I was once a sucker too, I always make it a point to remind them that we
had no business in whatever war they happen to be glorifying and still wallowing in. How old
does one have to be to get a clue?
Nothing quite says freedom like heavily armed soldiers on the streets demanding papers. Soon
the US will have the same situation, with the "freedom loving" Americans willingly
surrendering all their freedoms for "safety." Today the US government spies on everyone's
communications, conducts over 80,000 SWAT raids a year, locks over 2 million people in actual
slavery, and lets the cops execute people on the street. Nothing quite says Freedom when cops
can execute poor people without any repercussions. Nothing quite says Freedom when opiate
casualties in one year exceed the American total in Vietnam. Nothing quite says zombie when
Americans can't see the war that is being waged on them right now.
Is that true? The Military simply harvested the poors out of the hills, the South and
other rural areas the same way they would have drafted 'em. All the kids respond once the
Government offers them a way out of potential starvation and hopeless poverty. That's just a
better way to draft people, although they won't call it that.
The same generals who let 911 happen and started the Iraq war still run the show. All of
them should have faced a firing squad for that, but instead, the grossly incompetent General
Kelly runs the White House and the grossly incompetent Mattis runs the military.
"The danger presented by either school is clear enough in the twenty-first century."
Apparently it is not close to clear. The warhawk imperialists – some of them
Clausewtizians and most COINdinistas – rule everything. No matter how many lives are
lost, no matter how much money is wasted, they demand we remain on the same path of playing
world hegemon. George Washington fought the British Empire for our freedom, so our subsequent
leaders, starting most importantly with Lincoln, could remake the country into the British
Empire 2.0.
"Because we are here to help the Vietnamese because inside every go*k is an American
trying to get out." Replace 'Vietnamese' with 'Middle Easterners' and 'gook' with 'Arab' or
'Moslem,' and you have the Neocon position. Replace 'Vietnamese' with 'the world' and replace
'gook' with 'dark skinned non-Christian' and place the word "liberal' before 'American,' and
you have the Liberal/Leftist position.
As a youth during that time it seemed like a strange idea that they were pushing. How could
Vietnamese be invading Vietnam? They already live there. The Americans had to travel
thousands of miles to prevent this. Years later I realize my youthful intuition was right;
Vietnamese can't invade Vietnam. This North-South dichotomy was just a made up propaganda
tool. The South was an artificial concoction set up by the West to divide someone else's
country. This question of how could we have won is absurd nonsense. What would 'winning' have
looked like? The South would just have been a multi-billion millstone around our neck.
The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced Trump
that -- despite his original instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or 6,000 or 7,000) more troops
(and yet more drones, planes, and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents
tragedy bordering on farce.
No; it's psychotic, psychopathic mayhem and mass-murder. Lemma: At any crime-scene,
there are one or more perpetrators, possibly accessories, apologists and/or 'idle'
bystanders. It is incumbent upon *all* witnesses to attempt to a) restrain malefactors and
where possible b) rescue victims from harm. *All* present and not in active resistance to the
crime attract proportional guilt. Addendum: Any person profiting from crime also makes
him/herself an accessory, like all residents in the 'illegitimate entity' and/or the puppet
executives, manufacturers of the means and their enablers = the whole MIC[*] plus all their
dependents, say.
[*] The US rogue regime = US-M/I/C/4a†-plex, with dog-wagging-tail, its
illegitimate sprog the Zionist/Israeli rogue regime + Js = I/J/Z-plex, all components rife
with corruption.
a = academic = econ, psy, leg et al.; 4 = MSM+PFBCs, † = churches
add a few significant stragglers like $ = banksters & ¿ = spies
=====
It's a lot, and here I point for emphasis to all the citizens of the two named entities;
silence is acquiescence. Take a look at the result, not 'just' in Afghanistan but Libya,
Syria etc., the WC7in5 [fortunately not
yet Iran]; wherever the US/Zs deploy their 'hammers.'
In the fewest words: The US/Zs including their 'ordinary people' are all true monsters,
with the only exception being the actively objecting few.
Not so BTW, from the above [but not only] I conclude that there can be no 'god' –
for surely, any such would strike all the US/Z villains down.
Again a 'special case' for emphasis, the intellectuals and academics who really should
know better but where again, silence is acquiescence.
*Guilty, your honour; may they all hang by the neck until dead!* rgds
American sheep can't see war even though they are in one. What better weapon than to have a
group of writers spreading disinformation and colorful propaganda that revolves around
discrediting the other propaganda with falsehoods and romanticization of the war that came
before. Let's have yet another debate about the thing that happened half a century ago
because driving the flock in circles gets them no where closer to resistance.
Meanwhile the real war. If the financial crisis wasn't a terrorist attack because the
press never told you, what will you believe? If more men and women die in one year because of
opiates than in the entire Vietnam effort, will the real owners tell you in their newspapers
that they do it because they want to win?
I think the kids are more pumped up with college tuition, VA health , a chance to learn a
civilian applicable skill , citizenship and something to do other than competing with illegal
Indios for low wages.
Save the BS for your fellow geezer drunks at the VFW lounge. Vietnam featured a
complete collapse of the conscripted US military, rampant drug use, fragging,
insubordination, faked injuries, disintegration of the chain of command, mass murder of
civilians, and finally TOTAL DEFEAT after turning tail and running following the negotiation
of a charitable "decent interval" allowing the yanks to save some face. Pathetic.
The Vietnam war was not a "civil-war" but was an INVASION by the North Vietnamese
communists, who were not amenable to letting people decide for themselves what political
system they chose to live under. They wanted "the whole pie". The South Vietnamese and
American military fought courageously, with one hand tied behind their backs, as they were
not permitted to attack the supply lines, logistics and staging areas of the North Vietnamese
communists. The American news media played a large part in the sympathetic attitudes they had
towards the communists, taking every chance to denigrate American and South Vietnamese
troops, a prime example was communist sympathizer Walter Cronkite reporting that the 1968
"Tet offensive" was a "major loss" for Americans and south Vietnamese, despite it being a
total slaughter of North Vietnamese communists and the Viet Cong. In fact, the Viet Cong
operating in the South were almost all totally decimated.
Yes, the final result of the Vietnam war was communist control, BUT, it was not due to the
efforts of South Vietnamese and American troops. The Vietnamese "boat people" who risked life
and limb to escape that communist "paradise" have a totally different story to tell, but
which had been rarely reported. Ken Burns is a communist sympathizer whose "documentary" on
the Vietnam war was so one-sided, even the communists admitted that his whole premise on the
Vietnam war was one-sided and false. Communist sympathizer Ken Burns inadvertently "let it
slip" that "re-education" by the communists was not a "six month deal" (as he claimed) in
which those in positions of power in South Vietnam would be "re-educated", but were actually
prisons, in which "enemies of the (communist) state were to be interned for as long as 20
years. It is interesting to note that the communists could not exert the same harsh level of
control as was the case in the North, to the people in the South.
Apparently unfamiliar with my long and detailed discussions here and at TAC about the
Vietnam War. I don't think you will find a single suggestion in mt two or more years of
discussion on Vietnam , that it was a civil war -- it was not. In every way, the North
Vietnamese were the aggressors. And if anyone looking at the political issues and objectives
of what happened in Vietnam – those who protested got nearly every aspect about Vietnam
wrong, nearly every contention they make was predicated on the incorrect information, except
one.
war is a nasty filthy affair in which a lot hoes wrong – because that is part and
parcel to the nature of war so many moving pieces on so many potential unpredictable planes.
The entire enterprise is best avoided, but sometimes as in the case of S. Vietnam, you are
left little choice but to defend yourself. Boys and girls afraid to fight screaming "Give
peace a chance" at the defenders like pushing a drowning men under the waves and telling him
all he need do is swim.
You are preaching to the choir and the preacher.
I am going to avoid rehashing the conflict, I think the data sets are on my side in tons.
But I think the authors intentions are to really dismantle the cadre and their advocacy of
COIN. Given that the current President has reneged on his campaign agenda to avoid needless
wars violating the territory of others to regime change. The issue of counter insurgency is
relevant. Because it looks like we are in for more than we bargained for. No doubt, SAS, the
French Legionaries, CIA and a spec ops contingents are pre-prepping for insurgencies of our
own.
A brief look suggests that the only effective response to counter insurgency is
intelligence and brutal response. though intended to suggest finesse, in the end -- it's root
them out and destroy them. I think this is one those the cure is worse than the illness,
because without indigenous support for your political and strategic goals in country --
brutal reprisals eventually reignite acts of terror as a means of self defense.
What are you a troll playing the same old broken record spewing forth the same old line,
for there was a vote coming up by the Geneva Accord, to decide just what kind of government
the two Vietnam's wanted, a vote that would'nt go the way we wanted thus the false flag to
get us involved.
FDR had made a deal with Ho that if they would rise up and drive out the Japs that Vietnam
could choose their own destiny, colonialism was dead he said, well until that little man in
the to big a house got into office and then once again America's word wasn't worth a mouth
full of warm spit and its never changed
Today's officer corps would spare us all a great deal of cost, blood and grief and we
Americans would all do much better if the cadets', midshipmen's, officer candidates' and
officer corps' reading list began with the Bernard Fall book Rue Sans Joie .
Rand? American Conservative? Tom's Dispatch? All fake news for the sheep, i.e COIN. If
people want change, they have to refuse to cooperate. That means no voting. Voting means you
agree with the basic trends and just want to tweak the system. All of us have gotten cheated
by the Government all of our lives. Destruction of schools so people can't learn. Wars
fought to make countries like Vietnam open to big corporations to move American jobs there.
Corporate money backed by the fist of the Marines has worked all their lives, all their
parents' lives, and all the modern history of America. "Why not now?", the sheep
ask.
The religious aspect of the Vietnamese CIVIL WAR is overlooked by the senile VFW geezers
posting here. The patriots were mostly Buddhists the quislings were mostly Catholics
(inherited from the French). In between perving little kids, American Cardinals and Bishops
demanded even more war and Vietnamese blood. The bloodthirsty homo, Cardinal Spellman, would
even visit the troops in person and exhort them to create more carnage and mayhem.
According to Bobbie McNamara, American efforts resulted in the murder of over 4 million
Vietnamese and the maiming of millions of others .MOSTLY CIVILIANS. The role of the vile
bloodthirsty Homo Cult of the Seven Hills has been mostly overlooked.
Note, I list of sites is not definitive. There are articles critical and article
supportive of COIN. Some articles are just descriptive of what COIN means. COIN has been a
subject of a good deal of debate for a very long time. Most articles are from TAC because
that is the site I most frequently read and comment. And as Dr. Unz will tell you, they
invite a host of articles by a host of authors -- with varying view points.
About Rand, they are one of the most noteable contributors to government policy via
research and while one may not appreciate their advocacy, it's not a bad idea to read what
they are presenting on issues, in this case COIN. Even considering broad definitions of fake
news -- it is unlikely that Rand would be included as such an outlet.
One of the advances launched in the late sixties -- forward was that Vietnam was a MIC
windfall and in fact manufactured by the MIC.
I don't think there is much evidence of that. Pres Johnson and most of the leadership
actually saw it as a case for democracy against the Chinese, the Soviets -- etc. You are not
going to be able to escape the private sector profiting from war. Sure had democracy and
capitalism actually won the day , I don't think there is any question money would have been
made -- capitalism is a very healthy system -- if operated minus manipulation/unfair
dealings. But that is not unique. One does business where business is. but cold war strategic
aims made money for lots of people -- that doesn't deny that there was actually a system of
proxy engagements for democracy and communism.
I am not a member of the VFW. I don't drink and have never been drunk. There was drug use
how prevalent it was is unclear. not enough to prevent mission readiness, it appears.
A lot has been made of fragging, but if you can find the numbers -- The evidence is very
sparse that this practice was anywhere close to a staple. Here's an estimate 800 such
incidents attempted. But given that there are only about 13 confirms that estimations is
suspect. Some 3 million service members service in Vietnam that's a percentage of
0.026666666666% attempted. The actual number of men who died as the result of fragging
0.0005% and i used the highest number of fifteen actuals.
There were tragic incidents of mass killings, but those two were rare. The next series of
complaints are hard to quantify -- but suffice it to say, whatever the complaints -- when
push came to shove the US service member repeatedly got the job done. And contrary to your
comments, the process of the US withdrawal is well documented. More than anything, they
secured a line of defense, and the situation at home was the most pressing. There is no
evidence that the US ran from the battle field.
OI think the evidence is clear that we should maintained support via air and sea power to
ensure the victory was maintained on behalf of the S. Vietnamese who fought and died to
defend their country. kudos to the Aussie's for their loyal support.
If the war mongers had had an all-volunteer army like the one they have today, they could
have and would have kept the Vietnam War going indefinitely. But, since they didn't, draftees
and their parents wised-up to the Pentagon's money-making scam and put a stop to it by
refusing to participate.
Money's made fighting wars not winning them. 1945 was the last time the US made the
mistake of winning a war, and may not have made that one had Russia not been on the verge of
invading and occupying Japan, thus forcing the US into bringing the war to a close.
Very rich families and corporatists started their own think tanks after World War II.
This is when the looting began for RAND. These are the bastards Eisenhower was afraid of. Abe
Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War
-- the military industrial complex of the day -- easily constituted the greatest threat to
the American republic.
Remember that Eisenhower's definition of the complex included among the bastards, not
only the military defense industry corporations, but also right alongside them the news media
and the university and private research establishments.
Tom Jefferson thought periodic revolution against wealth and authority was desirable to
keep these bastards in check. Which implies that he figured they would inevitably get us by
the throat down on the floor from time to time.
I don't think that you understand at all the history of the USG involvement in
VietNam–an act of selflessness??? What a crock.
The entire foreign policy of the united states has been controlled by the
military/industrial/security/espionage etc etc complex since, at least, the end of WWII. that
group doesn't really care about victory–on going conflict somewhere is the only goal.
Personally, I doubt that the USG has ever committed a selfless act in it's entire history.
VietNam was just one stop in a long line of USG aggression.
Of course, the U.S. military and Washington policymakers lost the war in Vietnam in
the previous century and perhaps it's well that they did.
LOL.. True enough. Yet an assortment of "Church of Rambo" true believers in civilian life,
including several here on Unz, continue to insist that that the US never lost the war, hell,
never even lost a battle -- claims all debunked by credible historians and military men who
fought there.
the vast majority of senior American military officers do not. Instead, they're still
refighting the Vietnam War to a far cheerier outcome through the books they read, the
scholarship they publish, and (most disturbingly) the policies they continue to pursue in
the Greater Middle East.
The weakness of the piece is that you don't say exactly which Vietnam approach today's
generals are following. Are they doing the "big battalions" approach of Westmoreland's
"search and destroy"? Are they doing the "Expanding Inkblot" of Marine General Krulak,
Sorley's "Better war", or John Paul Vann's "Hearts and Minds"?? You say these are all things
from Vietnam but exactly which one is in place, and why is it losing?
Blah blah blah. That war was a cluster fuck and a crime against humanity. It's only
purpose was to make a few rich men richer. The murder and destruction in the MENA is just
more of the same.
Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed present itself in
Iraq, he and a whole generation of COINdinistas (like-minded officers devoted to his
favored counterinsurgency approach to modern warfare) embraced those very conclusions to
win the war on terror.
Again questionable. Petraeus had the correct approach to counter the previous "lets just
invade and beat Saddam" approach of Rumsfeld. Rummy's "lean force" package backed by almost
unlimited air power was enough to win the conventional struggle but was woefully short of the
numbers needed for occupation and pacification. Same thing happened to Hitler in the Balkans.
Initial smooth success, grinding guerrilla attrition for years afterward.
Both schools, however, agreed on something basic: that the U.S. military should have
won in Vietnam.
"Winning" by 1972 did not contemplate victorious US troops marching into Hanoi, or total
abandonment of the field by PAVN/VC but a better final political settlement enabling the
southern regime to survive, and/or a "decent interval" for the US to save face.
n 1999, retired army officer and Vietnam veteran Lewis Sorley penned the definitive
hearts-and-minds tract, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of
America's Last Years in Vietnam. Sorley boldly asserted that, by the spring of 1970, "the
fighting wasn't over, but the war was won." According to his comforting tale, the real
explanation for failure lay with the "big-war" strategy of U.S. commander General William
Westmoreland. The counterinsurgency strategy of his successor, General Creighton Abrams --
Sorley's knight in shining armor -- was (or at least should have been) a war
winner.
You are misrepresenting Sorley's full argument somewhat. Sorley did not envision or claim
that there would have been any sweeping US victory with US troops marching into Hanoi, or
that the VC/NVA would flee and abandon the struggle. A big part of his argument is for "a
better war" – that is- the end game of which inevitably would be a BETTER NEGOTIATED
SETTLEMENT. Sorley knew quite well that the VC would not disappear (their political apparatus
was still in place) and that the NVA would not simply pack up and return north. Sorley's book
"A Better War" contemplates a BETTER FINAL POLITICAL SETTLEMENT as part of the bottom line,
not US troops marching triumphantly into downtown Hanoi, as PAVN armies scurried away into
the jungle.
To his disappointment, Daddis also discovered that the only Vietnam War book included
was Sorley's A Better War. This should have surprised no one, since his argument –
that American soldiers in Vietnam were denied an impending victory by civilian
policymakers, a liberal media, and antiwar protestors – was still resonant among the
officer corps in year six of the Iraq quagmire. It wasn't the military's fault!
Keep in mind that Daddis wrote a book on the Vietnam War called 'No Sure Victory' in which
he pins US failure on not being versed ENOUGH on hearts and minds counterinsurgency war,
hence the reliance on massive and unworkable statistical and reporting systems of
"progress."
"The army's unpreparedness for counterinsurgency in the early 1960s surely encouraged
this confusion. Conventional officers had little experience in developing a
counterinsurgency reporting system and applying it within a larger strategic context.. So
it was for the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Insufficiently versed in the mysteries of
counterinsurgency, officers turned to statistics to assist them in measuring and reporting
progress and effectiveness. Statistics, though, bred more statistics, and the MACV
headquarters soon became awash in a flood of numbers, facts, and figures."
–Daddis, No Sure Victory
but also potential dangers in such lists as they inevitably influence the thinking of
an entire generation of future leaders. In the case of Vietnam, the perils are obvious. The
generals have been assigning and reading problematic books for years, works that were
essentially meant to reinforce professional pride in the midst of a series of unsuccessful
and unending wars.
You are barking up the wrong tree somewhat. Daddis laments reading list limitations as far
as Iraq, but the reading list did not make any difference given 3 issues:
(a) the decision to go to war in Iraq, when it was not necessary
(b) the woefully inadequate number of troops provided the commanders for conquest and
occupation and
(c) the cavalier, careless nature of planning for postwar Iraq.
What was or was not on the reading list is of limited impact given these 3 big realities
the civilian leadership saddled commanders with.
"... On Strategy : A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, ..."
"... In his own work, Summers marginalized all Vietnamese actors (as would so many later military historians), failed to adequately deal with the potential consequences, nuclear or otherwise, of the sorts of escalation he advocated, and didn't even bother to ask whether Vietnam was a core national security interest of the United States. ..."
"... A more sophisticated Clausewitzian analysis came from current National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in a highly acclaimed 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... McMaster is a genuine scholar and a gifted writer, but he still suggested that the Joint Chiefs should have advocated for a more aggressive offensive strategy -- a full ground invasion of the North or unrelenting carpet-bombing of that country. In this sense, he was just another "go-big" Clausewitzian who, as historian Ronald Spector pointed out recently, ignored Vietnamese views and failed to acknowledge -- an observation of historian Edward Miller -- that "the Vietnam War was a Vietnamese war." ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... A Better War : The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ..."
"... Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... David Petraeus and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, co-authors in 2006 of FM 3-24, the first ( New York Times ..."
"... On Strategy ..."
"... Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... Most of the generals leading the war on terror just missed service in the Vietnam War. They graduated from various colleges or West Point in the years immediately following the withdrawal of most U.S. ground troops or thereafter: Petraeus in 1974 , future Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal in 1976 , and present National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in 1984 . Secretary of Defense Mattis finished ROTC and graduated from Central Washington University in 1971 , while Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam War, receiving his commission in 1976 . ..."
"... Petraeus, Mattis, McMaster, and the others entered service when military prestige had reached a nadir or was just rebounding. And those reading lists taught the young officers where to lay the blame for that -- on civilians in Washington (or in the nation's streets) or on a military high command too weak to assert its authority effectively. They would serve in Vietnam's shadow, the shadow of defeat, and the conclusions they would draw from it would only lead to twenty-first-century disasters ..."
"... Meanwhile, President Trump's hearts-and-minds faction consists of officers who have spent three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to approximately 70% of the world's nations. Furthermore, they've recently fought for and been granted a new "mini-surge" in Afghanistan intended to -- in disturbingly Vietnam-esque language -- "break the deadlock ," "reverse the decline," and "end the stalemate " there. Never mind that neither 100,000 U.S. troops (when I was there in 2011) nor 16 full years of combat could, in the term of the trade, "stabilize" Afghanistan. The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced Trump that -- despite his original instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or 6,000 or 7,000) more troops (and yet more drones , planes , and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents tragedy bordering on farce. ..."
"... The hearts and minders and Clausewitzians atop the military establishment since 9/11 are never likely to stop citing their versions of the Vietnam War as the key to victory today; that is, they will never stop focusing on a war that was always unwinnable and never worth fighting. None of today's acclaimed military personalities seems willing to consider that Washington couldn't have won in Vietnam because, as former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak (who flew 269 combat missions over that country) noted in the recent Ken Burns documentary series, "we were fighting on the wrong side." ..."
"... Today's leaders don't even pretend that the post-9/11 wars will ever end. In an interview last June, Petraeus -- still considered a sagacious guru of the Defense establishment -- disturbingly described the Afghan conflict as " generational ." ..."
"... Vietnam lost in the end. Its greedy corrupt elites are now puppets of US. They allow open prostitution in Ho Chi Minh city. They allow Vietnamese women to be a bunch of hookers again. ..."
"... "America tends to gain from commerce what it thinks it will get by warfare. Not so much the other way around" Rather like 20th century Germany, don't you think? ..."
"... The Vietnam war killed the draft. The draft is involuntary servitude, slavery in a sense. For ordinary Americans this was the only positive thing to come from the war. ..."
"... Ultimately, the victory of WW2 due to sheer weight of industrial productivity ramp and hence massive output of planes, tanks, submarines, etc. made defense a large part of the US economy. Since that time, too many entrenched interests just never want the military to downsize. Hence, the US has to keep invented new demand for a product that otherwise would not have such demand, but keeps some major entrenched interests powerful. ..."
"... The BIGGEST lesson to come out of the illegal and immoral War against Vietnam is that the draft was impeding the MIC's effort to sell Americans on the idea of supporting endless war. ..."
"... The same generals who let 911 happen and started the Iraq war still run the show. All of them should have faced a firing squad for that, but instead, the grossly incompetent General Kelly runs the White House and the grossly incompetent Mattis runs the military. ..."
"... The warhawk imperialists – some of them Clausewtizians and most COINdinistas – rule everything. No matter how many lives are lost, no matter how much money is wasted, they demand we remain on the same path of playing world hegemon. George Washington fought the British Empire for our freedom, so our subsequent leaders, starting most importantly with Lincoln, could remake the country into the British Empire 2.0. ..."
"... No; it's psychotic, psychopathic mayhem and mass-murder. Lemma: At any crime-scene, there are one or more perpetrators, possibly accessories, apologists and/or 'idle' bystanders. It is incumbent upon *all* witnesses to attempt to a) restrain malefactors and where possible b) rescue victims from harm. *All* present and not in active resistance to the crime attract proportional guilt. Addendum: Any person profiting from crime also makes him/herself an accessory, like all residents in the 'illegitimate entity' and/or the puppet executives, manufacturers of the means and their enablers = the whole MIC[*] plus all their dependents, say. ..."
"... The US rogue regime = US-M/I/C/4a†-plex, with dog-wagging-tail, its illegitimate sprog the Zionist/Israeli rogue regime + Js = I/J/Z-plex, all components rife with corruption. ..."
"... Save the BS for your fellow geezer drunks at the VFW lounge. Vietnam featured a complete collapse of the conscripted US military, rampant drug use, fragging, insubordination, faked injuries, disintegration of the chain of command, mass murder of civilians, and finally TOTAL DEFEAT after turning tail and running following the negotiation of a charitable "decent interval" allowing the yanks to save some face. Pathetic. ..."
"... Wars fought to make countries like Vietnam open to big corporations to move American jobs there. Corporate money backed by the fist of the Marines has worked all their lives, all their parents' lives, and all the modern history of America. "Why not now?", the sheep ask. ..."
"... According to Bobbie McNamara, American efforts resulted in the murder of over 4 million Vietnamese and the maiming of millions of others .MOSTLY CIVILIANS. ..."
"... If the war mongers had had an all-volunteer army like the one they have today, they could have and would have kept the Vietnam War going indefinitely. But, since they didn't, draftees and their parents wised-up to the Pentagon's money-making scam and put a stop to it by refusing to participate. ..."
"... Very rich families and corporatists started their own think tanks after World War II. This is when the looting began for RAND. These are the bastards Eisenhower was afraid of. Abe Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War -- the military industrial complex of the day -- easily constituted the greatest threat to the American republic. ..."
"... Remember that Eisenhower's definition of the complex included among the bastards, not only the military defense industry corporations, but also right alongside them the news media and the university and private research establishments. ..."
"... That war was a cluster fuck and a crime against humanity. It's only purpose was to make a few rich men richer. The murder and destruction in the MENA is just more of the same. ..."
Vietnam: it's always there. Looming in the past, informing American futures.
A 50-year-old war, once labeled the longest in our history, is still alive and well and
still being refought by one group of Americans: the military high command. And almost half a
century later, they're still losing it and blaming others for doing so.
Of course, the U.S. military and Washington policymakers lost the war in Vietnam in the
previous century and perhaps it's well that they did. The United States really had no business
intervening in that anti-colonial civil war in the first place, supporting a South Vietnamese
government of questionable legitimacy, and stifling promised nationwide elections on both sides
of that country's artificial border. In doing so, Washington presented an easy villain for a
North Vietnamese-backed National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency, a group known to Americans
in those years as the Vietcong.
More than two decades of involvement and, at the war's peak, half a million American troops
never altered the basic weakness of the U.S.-backed regime in Saigon. Despite millions of Asian
deaths and 58,000 American ones, South Vietnam's military could not, in the end, hold the line
without American support and finally collapsed under the weight of a conventional North
Vietnamese invasion in April 1975.
There's just one thing. Though a majority of historians (known in academia as the "orthodox"
school) subscribe to the basic contours of the above narrative, the vast majority of senior
American military officers do not. Instead, they're still refighting the Vietnam War to a far
cheerier outcome through the books they read, the scholarship they publish, and (most
disturbingly) the policies they continue to pursue in the Greater Middle East.
The Big Re-Write
In 1986, future general, Iraq-Afghan War commander, and CIA director David Petraeus penned
an article
for the military journal Parameters that summarized his Princeton doctoral
dissertation on the Vietnam War. It was a piece commensurate with then-Major Petraeus's
impressive intellect, except for its disastrous conclusions on the lessons of that war. Though
he did observe that Vietnam had "cost
the military dearly" and that "the frustrations of Vietnam are deeply etched in the minds of
those who lead the services," his real fear was that the war had left the military unprepared
to wage what were then called "low-intensity conflicts" and are now known as
counterinsurgencies. His takeaway: what the country needed wasn't less Vietnams but
better-fought ones. The next time, he concluded fatefully, the military should do a far better
job of implementing counterinsurgency forces, equipment, tactics, and doctrine to win such
wars.
Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed present itself in Iraq, he
and a whole generation of COINdinistas (like-minded officers
devoted to his favored counterinsurgency approach to modern warfare) embraced those very
conclusions to win the war on terror. The names of some of them -- H.R. McMaster and James
Mattis, for instance -- should ring a bell or two these days. In Iraq and later in Afghanistan,
Petraeus and his acolytes would get their chance to translate theory into practice. Americans
-- and much of the rest of the planet -- still live with the results.
Like Petraeus, an entire generation of senior military leaders, commissioned in the years
after the Vietnam War and now atop the defense behemoth, remain fixated on that ancient
conflict. After all these decades, such "thinking" generals and "soldier-scholars" continue to
draw all the wrong lessons from what, thanks in part to them, has now become America's
second longest war.
Rival Schools
Historian Gary Hess identifies two main schools
of revisionist thinking.
Both schools, however, agreed on something basic: that the U.S. military should have won in
Vietnam.
The danger presented by either school is clear enough in the twenty-first century. Senior
commanders, some now serving in key national security positions, fixated on Vietnam, have
translated that conflict's supposed lessons into what now passes for military strategy in
Washington. The
result has been an ever-expanding war on terror campaign waged ceaselessly from South Asia
to West Africa, which has essentially turned out to be perpetual war based on the can-do belief
that counterinsurgency and advise-and-assist missions should have worked in Vietnam and can
work now.
The Go-Big Option
The leading voice of the Clausewitzian school was U.S. Army Colonel and Korean War/Vietnam
War vet Harry Summers, whose 1982 book, On Strategy : A
Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, became an instant classic within the military. It's
easy enough to understand why. Summers argued that civilian policymakers -- not the military
rank-and-file -- had lost the war by focusing hopelessly on the insurgency in South Vietnam
rather than on the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. More troops, more aggressiveness, even
full-scale invasions of communist safe havens in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, would have
led to victory.
Summers had a deep emotional investment in his topic.
Later , he would argue that the source of post-war pessimistic analyses of the conflict lay
in "draft dodgers and war evaders still [struggling] with their consciences." In his own
work, Summers marginalized all Vietnamese actors (as would so many later military historians),
failed to adequately deal with the potential consequences, nuclear or otherwise, of the sorts
of escalation he advocated, and didn't even bother to ask whether Vietnam was a core national
security interest of the United States.
Perhaps he would have done well to reconsider a famous post-war
encounter he had with a North Vietnamese officer, a Colonel Tu, whom he assured that "you
know you never beat us on the battlefield." "That may be so," replied his former enemy, "but it
is also irrelevant."
Whatever its limitations, his work remains influential in military circles to this day. (I
was assigned the book as a West Point cadet!)
A more sophisticated Clausewitzian analysis came from current National Security Adviser
H.R. McMaster in a highly acclaimed 1997 book, Dereliction of
Duty . He argued that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were derelict in failing to give
President Lyndon Johnson an honest appraisal of what it would take to win, which meant that
"the nation went to war without the benefit of effective military advice." He concluded that
the war was lost not in the field or by the media or even on antiwar college campuses, but in
Washington, D.C., through a failure of nerve by the Pentagon's generals, which led civilian
officials to opt for a deficient strategy.
McMaster is a genuine scholar and a gifted writer, but he still suggested that the Joint
Chiefs should have advocated for a more aggressive offensive strategy -- a full ground invasion
of the North or unrelenting carpet-bombing of that country. In this sense, he was just another
"go-big" Clausewitzian who, as historian Ronald Spector pointed
out recently, ignored Vietnamese views and failed to acknowledge -- an observation
of historian Edward Miller -- that "the Vietnam War was a Vietnamese war."
COIN: A Small (Forever) War
Another Vietnam veteran, retired Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Krepinevich, fired the opening
salvo for the hearts-and-minders. In The Army and Vietnam , published in 1986, he
argued
that the NLF, not the North Vietnamese Army, was the enemy's chief center of gravity and that
the American military's failure to emphasize counterinsurgency principles over conventional
concepts of war sealed its fate. While such arguments were, in reality, no more
impressive than those of the Clausewitzians, they have remained popular with military
audiences, as historian Dale Andrade points
out , because they offer a "simple explanation for the defeat in Vietnam."
Krepinevich would write an influential 2005 Foreign Affairspiece , "How to Win
in Iraq," in which he applied his Vietnam conclusions to a new strategy of prolonged
counterinsurgency in the Middle East, quickly winning over the New
York Times 's resident conservative columnist, David Brooks, and generating "discussion in
the Pentagon, CIA, American Embassy in Baghdad, and the office of the vice president."
In 1999, retired army officer and Vietnam veteran Lewis Sorley penned the definitive
hearts-and-minds tract, A Better War : The
Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam . Sorley boldly
asserted
that, by the spring of 1970, "the fighting wasn't over, but the war was won." According to his
comforting tale, the real explanation for failure lay with the "big-war" strategy of U.S.
commander General William Westmoreland. The counterinsurgency strategy of his successor,
General Creighton Abrams -- Sorley's knight in shining armor -- was (or at least should have
been) a war winner.
Critics
noted that Sorley overemphasized the marginal differences between the two generals'
strategies and produced a remarkably counterfactual work. It didn't matter, however. By 2005,
just as the situation in Iraq, a country then locked in a sectarian civil war amid an American
occupation, went from bad to worse, Sorley's book found
its way into the hands of the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, and State
Department counselor Philip Zelikow. By then, according
to the Washington Post 's David Ignatius, it could also "be found on the
bookshelves of senior military officers in Baghdad."
Another influential hearts-and-minds devotee was Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl. (He even
made it
onto The Daily Show with Jon Stewart .) His Learning to Eat Soup with
a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam followed Krepinevich in
claiming that "if [Creighton] Abrams had gotten the call to lead the American effort at the
start of the war, America might very well have won it." In 2006, the Wall Street
Journalreported that Army Chief of Staff
General Peter Schoomaker "so liked [Nagl's] book that he made it required reading for all
four-star generals," while the Iraq War commander of that moment, General George Casey, gave
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a copy during a visit to Baghdad.
David Petraeus and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, co-authors in 2006 of
FM 3-24, the first ( New York Times -reviewed ) military field manual for counterinsurgency since
Vietnam, must also be considered among the pantheon of hearts-and-minders. Nagl wrote a
foreword for their manual,
while Krepinevich provided a glowing back-cover endorsement .
Such revisionist interpretations would prove tragic in Iraq and Afghanistan, once they had
filtered down to the entire officer corps.
Reading All the Wrong Books
In 2009, when former West Point history professor Colonel Gregory Daddis was deployed
to Iraq as the command historian for the Multinational Corps -- the military's primary tactical
headquarters -- he noted that corps commander Lieutenant General Charles Jacoby had assigned a
professional reading list to his principal subordinates. To his disappointment, Daddis also
discovered that the only Vietnam War book included was Sorley's A Better War . This
should have surprised no one, since his argument -- that American soldiers in Vietnam
were
denied an impending victory by civilian policymakers, a liberal media, and antiwar protestors
-- was still resonant among the officer corps in year six of the Iraq quagmire. It wasn't the
military's fault!
Officers have long distributed professional reading lists for subordinates, intellectual
guideposts to the complex challenges ahead. Indeed, there's much to be admired in the concept,
but also potential dangers in such lists as they inevitably influence the thinking of an entire
generation of future leaders. In the case of Vietnam, the perils are obvious. The generals have
been assigning and reading problematic books for years, works that were essentially meant to
reinforce professional pride in the midst of a series of unsuccessful and unending wars.
Just after 9/11, for instance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers -- who spoke at my
West Point graduation -- included Summers's On
Strategy on his list. A few years later, then-Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker
added
McMaster's Dereliction of Duty . The trend continues today. Marine Corps Commandant
Robert Neller has kept McMaster and added Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (he of the
illegal bombing of both Laos and Cambodia and war
criminal fame). Current Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley kept Kissinger and
added good
old Lewis Sorley. To top it all off, Secretary of Defense Mattis has included
yet another Kissinger book and, in a different list , Krepinevich's
The Army and Vietnam .
Just as important as which books made the lists is what's missing from them: none of these
senior commanders include newer scholarship
,
novels , or journalistic accounts which might raise thorny, uncomfortable questions about
whether the Vietnam War was winnable, necessary, or advisable, or incorporate local voices that
might highlight the limits of American influence and power.
Serving in the Shadow of Vietnam
Most of the generals leading the war on terror just missed service in the Vietnam War.
They graduated from various colleges or West Point in the years immediately following the
withdrawal of most U.S. ground troops or thereafter: Petraeus in
1974 , future Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal in 1976 , and present National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster in 1984 .
Secretary of Defense Mattis finished ROTC and graduated from Central Washington University in
1971 , while
Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam War, receiving his
commission in 1976
.
In other words, the generation of officers now overseeing the still-spreading war on terror
entered military service at the end of or after the tragic war in Southeast Asia. That meant
they narrowly escaped combat duty in the bloodiest American conflict since World War II and so
the professional credibility that went with it. They were mentored and taught by academy
tactical officers, ROTC instructors, and commanders who had cut their teeth on that conflict.
Vietnam literally dominated the discourse of their era -- and it's never ended.
Petraeus, Mattis, McMaster, and the others entered service when military prestige had
reached a nadir or was just rebounding. And those reading lists taught the young officers where
to lay the blame for that -- on civilians in Washington (or in the nation's streets) or on a
military high command too weak to assert its authority effectively. They would serve in
Vietnam's shadow, the shadow of defeat, and the conclusions they would draw from it would only
lead to twenty-first-century disasters .
From Vietnam to the War on Terror to Generational War
All of this misremembering, all of those Vietnam "lessons" inform the U.S. military's
ongoing "surges" and "advise-and-assist" approaches to its wars in the Greater Middle East and
Africa. Representatives of both Vietnam revisionist schools now guide the development of the
Trump administration's version of global strategy. President Trump's in-house Clausewitzians
clamor for -- and receive
-- ever more delegated authority to do their damnedest and what retired General (and Vietnam
vet) Edward Meyer called for
back in 1983: "a freer hand in waging war than they had in Vietnam." In other words, more
bombs, more troops, and carte blanche to escalate such conflicts to their hearts' content.
Meanwhile, President Trump's hearts-and-minds faction consists of officers who have
spent three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to approximately 70%
of the world's nations. Furthermore, they've recently fought for and been granted a new
"mini-surge" in Afghanistan intended to -- in disturbingly Vietnam-esque language -- "break the
deadlock ," "reverse the decline," and "end the
stalemate " there. Never mind that neither 100,000 U.S. troops (when I was
there in 2011) nor 16 full years of combat could, in the term of the trade, "stabilize"
Afghanistan. The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced
Trump that -- despite his original
instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or
6,000 or 7,000) more troops (and yet more
drones ,
planes , and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents tragedy bordering on
farce.
The hearts and minders and Clausewitzians atop the military establishment since 9/11 are
never likely to stop citing their versions of the Vietnam War as the key to victory today; that
is, they will never stop focusing on a war that was always unwinnable and never worth fighting.
None of today's acclaimed military personalities seems willing to consider that Washington
couldn't have won in Vietnam because, as former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak (who
flew
269 combat missions over that country) noted in the
recent Ken Burns documentary series, "we were fighting on the wrong side."
Today's leaders don't even pretend that the post-9/11 wars will ever end. In an
interview last June, Petraeus -- still considered a sagacious guru of the Defense establishment
-- disturbingly described the Afghan conflict as " generational ."
Eerily enough, to cite a Vietnam-era precedent, General Creighton Abrams predicted something
similar. speaking to the White House as the war in Southeast Asia was winding down. Even as
President Richard Nixon slowly withdrew U.S. forces, handing over their duties to the South
Vietnamese Army (ARVN) -- a process known then as "Vietnamization" -- the general warned
that, despite ARVN improvements, continued U.S. support "would be required indefinitely to
maintain an effective force." Vietnam, too, had its "generational" side (until, of course, it
didn't).
It's not that our generals don't read. They do. They just doggedly continue to read the
wrong books.
In 1986, General Petraeus ended his influential Parametersarticle
with a quote from historian George Herring: "Each historical situation is unique and the use of
analogy is at best misleading, at worst, dangerous." When it comes to Vietnam and a cohort of
officers shaped in its shadow (and even now convinced it could have been won), "dangerous"
hardly describes the results. They've helped bring us generational war and, for today's young
soldiers, ceaseless tragedy.
[Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an
unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of
the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]
The book that needs to be written is the one that explores the question, "Does this war need
to be fought by us?"
The guys running the show now were mid-grade officers when I served in the '80s. They know
we already were waging a war on terror, but it was a quiet one, e.g "low-intensity conflict,"
the kind that doesn't pump up budgets or put lots of ribbons and badges on the chests of more
than a few of them, much less punch the ticket for promotion.
The problem here is one of governance: Civilians who should be reigning in and questioning
the military leadership (including the senior civilian leadership at DoD and apparently
State) when it wants to take us on yet another foreign adventure seem instead to be be
captive to them, because the spoils of war accrue to their benefit via procurement in their
districts.
Vietnam and the GWOT are merely symptoms of a bigger problem.
BTW, re Vietnam: Vietnam went through its Communist phase, but in a rather short time came
back to pseudo-capitalism, much like China, so aside from nearly 60k US troops and a few
million Viets killed and 20 years of lost time, what did we gain from fighting there?
America tends to gain from commerce what it thinks it will get by warfare. Not so much the
other way around.
Didn't US realize that it can win any war with bribes and trade?
Vietnam lost in the end. Its greedy corrupt elites are now puppets of US. They allow
open prostitution in Ho Chi Minh city. They allow Vietnamese women to be a bunch of hookers
again.
And Vietnam even has homo parades because it comes with more gibs and bribes.
They established a myth that we almost won in Vietnam but the politicians wouldn't let us
finish the job, claiming we never lost a battle in Vietnam. That is false, so I posted a list
of 104 "Lost Battles of the Vietnam War" that squashed this myth.
"America tends to gain from commerce what it thinks it will get by warfare. Not so
much the other way around" Rather like 20th century Germany, don't you think?
Thanks for that link. I agree, whitewashing those tragedies is a grave disservice to our
soldiers who had to fight in those conditions (how are we supposed to learn from our mistakes
if we can't even come to terms with what we did wrong?).
No the JCS initially said SE Asia was strategically a backwater and not worth the
concentrating of America's limited resources. But military high command were operating within
longstanding army protocols of subordinating the military to civilian policymakers. It was
the CIA's job to say whether the war could be won and they were always skeptical.
America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War makes clear who was responsible for
pressing for escalation and bombing in Vietnam, who was the optimist, and who continued to
insisted after it had finished that the war had stabilized a domino.
If one's fundamental image of the world is as a place full of Quislings, McCains and assorted
dual nationals; then it follows that one will be militarily a Coindinista. If only third
world citizens were like American pols and stayed bought, but they aren't and they don't. If
one's fundamental image is that it is a world full of nationalists, patriots and Churchills:
then the bomb them back to non-existence; then it follows that one is a Summer's soldier.
Unfortunately, if one wishes to debate other nuanced alternatives to this dichotomy; the
enemy gets to shoot first. A policeman walks a beat in his city because he is paid to do it,
the "world's indispensable policeman" is unnecessary to the rest of the world but inevitable
to himself.
The Vietnam war killed the draft. The draft is involuntary servitude, slavery in a sense.
For ordinary Americans this was the only positive thing to come from the war.
Blah blah blah. That war was a cluster fuck and a crime against humanity. It's only purpose
was to make a few rich men richer. The murder and destruction in the MENA is just more of the
same.
It's also weird that the idea of Vietnam War as a missionary conflict is never discussed. The
colonial Vietnam & later South Vietnam government gave preference to christians in
governmental positions, bureaucracy & had a monopoly on education. The prevailing
narrative in the west, is that somehow christianity is better & that people flock to it
due to this, just like their ancestors did. Mosmaiorum.org/persecution_list.html
For example, the anti Buddhist discriminatory laws in Korea are never discussed, neither
is the flooding of Japan with bibles post ww2. In the present age you have missionaries
following closely behind the USA army & organizations like the US council on religious
freedom being headed by missionaries sic. soul vultures.
From that pov, if white nationalists cannot control the predatory instincts of 'their'
people nor disavow them by becoming Pagan; then, they deserve their fate & should expect
no support from outsiders. As others have remarked, tariffs & protectionism help accrue
capital as do socially conservative views. The pushing of free trade & social liberalism
on 2nd/3rd world countries is akin to kicking the ladder. It's probably in everyone's
interest for the Protestant west to collapse under Afro-Islamic demographic pressure so the
great clean up can begin. Tldr yes state power leads to liberalism & liberal views but,
if you view that as the legacy of your people, fuck your people.
we are deeply at odds. We did not lose the Vietnam conflict. I am confident that billions
of dollars have been spent drilling that myth into the minds of well everyone. I remember
being a young poli-sci student in KS. And as I listened to the lecture on Vietnam, did the
reading my conclusion was so distant from his as to cause me no small amount of turmoil. The
contention that we lost Vietnam is so counter to the data -- it makes the Twilight Zone look
like Gilligan's Island, the twists on reality are directionless -- but conclude we lost, when
nothing could be further from the truth.
I have another theory, the reason that Vietnam remains etched in the psyche is because the
analysis was political as opposed to what actually occurred. This kind of hyperventilated
self flagellating recriminations will distort truth. Perception over reality -- then becomes
self fulling history.
_________________
But to the point. The US has lost two wars: The war of 1812 and in my view, the Iraq
conflict -- no direct fault of those on the ground doing the fighting. And we may lose the
Afghanistan gambit. It's a loss because it fell apart during our occupation. The guerrilla
warfare (asymmetrics) was not the issues for that failure. The failure was in
1. unjustifiable cause
2. poor implementation
3. under resourced
4. an inability to maintain order among communities -- (1-3)
5. and just a lot of bad decisions
Trying compare Vietnam to Iraq is like trying compare a stone to water in similarity. You
might be able to some generic references and very tiny specifics, but overall: the
environment politically and strategically, just never mesh. We didn't invade Vietnam. They
had a functioning government. There were clear lines of who was who based on borders (I am
not ignoring the insurgency -- Vietcong, etc.
It was the cold war and unlike Iraq there were not six varying countries throwing a myriad
of combatants into the fray with varying agendas and varying religious convictions. Even the
physical environment demanded a different strategy, insurgents or no insurgents.
One has to plan for insurgent warfare as invading any country is bound to have those who
get the best defense is one of stealth when your foe is as large a target as the US was in
Iraq. But for all of the complaints about Counter-Insurgency the one that no one seems
willing to state is the simplest. Don't invade countries for which there is no clean or clear
motive to do so. It's that simple. There was never a need to invade Iraq, if anything we
should have readjusted our dynamic and began a process of easing sanctions for their aide in
countering terrorism.
There was no reason to invade Afghanistan -- even to distribute more bikinis and advance
killing children in the womb. We wanted twenty guys and instead we stirred a hornet's nest .
. . ok well, more than one.
Vietnam really was an act of selflessness, we wanted to shore up a small republic seeking
a different course to communism. It bolstered our own ideas against the grand schema of the
Soviet Union, rightly or wrongly. Now you are not the only one who has a gripe with
counterinsurgency.
And I think it's a debate/discussion worth having, and while it may be useful to examine
COIN as to Vietnam strategically -- I think it can be done minus the incorrect and yet
incessant sack cloth and ashes built on mountains of liberal psychological faux trauma as if
the trauma of war is somehow unique to Vietnam,. It is not. As you know war is a nasty filthy
business, best left alone. But on occasion one gets pushed into a fight as did S. Vietnam and
when that screw is turned -- well history is replete of the consequences, the waste, the
blood, the brokenness . . . The tragedy of war does not mean one loses a war.
How true! If only the US had recognized the power of man's baser instincts and did what
the US does best -- continue selling its culture of consumerism and hedonism, Vietnam would
have arrived at the point much sooner and with virtually no loss of life.
Ultimately, the victory of WW2 due to sheer weight of industrial productivity ramp and
hence massive output of planes, tanks, submarines, etc. made defense a large part of the US
economy. Since that time, too many entrenched interests just never want the military to
downsize. Hence, the US has to keep invented new demand for a product that otherwise would
not have such demand, but keeps some major entrenched interests powerful.
I mean, the Korean war started just 5 years after WW2 ended. They could barely wait for a
new crop of boys to turn 18 and become cannon fodder. 50,000 in Korea right after the 300,000
in WW2.
When casualties became politically incorrect (after VietNam), the focus shifted towards
lengthy 'nation building', that was not meant to succeed, but just to cost a lot for a long
time. In theory, the Iraq War could have worked, IF the true objective was the installation
of a moderate regime in Iraq, coupled with no extended US occupation. But that was not the
true objective after all, so it did not work.
The BIGGEST lesson to come out of the illegal and immoral War against Vietnam is that the
draft was impeding the MIC's effort to sell Americans on the idea of supporting endless
war.
Get rid of the draft and there will be no protests hell raised back home by people of
draft age–and their families and friends–who don't want to get drafted to fight
wars so colonels can become generals; Wall Street can make a killing on the killing and so
the Pentagon can try out its new 'gee-whiz' weapons in the field on actual people.
The next biggest lesson was that the media must be tamed and brought under control with
embedding, so they'll push the Pentagon's and Wall Street message of duty, honor, Mom and
apple pie onto gullible Americans, who now damn near get orgasmic when they see a
multi-billion dollar killing machine–the B-2–fly over the upcoming gladiator
battle in the newest billion dollar coliseum and go into the State-mandated 'Two Minutes
Hate' whenever they see or hear the word Muslim or Islam.
For the record, I did my time in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne.
So America worships Ares/Mars and doesn't expect the god of War to want to eat them too?
There shall be wars and rumors of wars .I so look forward to watching this love of war spread
itself from sea to shining sea.
Until the young wise up and realize that the military operations in other countries have
nothing to do with the freedoms we have here and that they're being used as fodder for the
investments that the MIC has in the companies that make the tools of war, we will keep having
this nonsense. The kids need to wise up. The government has at its disposal all it needs to
'win' if it wants to. But if you 'win' , the sales and manufacturing of the
goodies is curtailed. They'd rather send the kids into the meat grinder all pumped up
thinking they're 'preserving freedom' LOL!
Nice, thank U. I´d never before had figured out, never outlined such a precise
conceptual sight of the two still remaining American mindsets on HOW to win.
Yes, cause for them Amerika must obviously must always win. So there are two viewpoints, that
in plain clear English we citizens of the shitholin´ countries wherever -- express as
follows:
Yes, you say tariffs and proteccionism help accrue capital.
Have you got any objection against a large, populous but still poor country (like Nigeria,
Indonesia, India or Brazil) sticking to higher (though not sky high) tariffs and
protectionism to raise their production, their income and their living standards?
That was PRECISELY HOW the US, Uk, Germany and the Meiji era Japan, not to mention China
from 1949 to Chu enLai) acted and because of it rose the heights of the present status and
well being societies.
Yes, you naive repeater, let´s us first protect ourselves from the globalist wolves
and THEN, we can sit down and talk but from a firm solid position, not the other way round.
cut the frack! We southern people are fed up with that northern hemispheric sales talk
– it ´s so convenient to you – but the web exists and times change.
It's not that our generals don't read. They do. They just doggedly continue to read the
wrong books.
It's not just the generals. The whole idea of the state is to control the uncontrollable
in order to continue "growing". That's why we conducted Vietnam as we did and why we conduct
operations as we do all over the world. Rather than Total War that produces winners and
losers we are trying to keep a lid on behavioral sinks and modify behavior so that economic
"growth" can continue.
I am not advocating Total War, but I am predicting that horrible war is coming.
How many dead men will it take
To build a dike that will not break?
The Zionists have been the root cause of every war that America has been in since WWI and
right on through the wars in the Mideast and the wars in the Mideast were perpetrated by the
Israeli and Zionist controlled deep state attack on 911.
America is under Zionist control and if anyone doubts this, just remember Israel did the
attack on 911 and got away with and every thinking American knows that Zionist Israel did the
attack which killed 3000 Americans, that is control.
. . .supporting a South Vietnamese government of questionable legitimacy
Actually the US created the "Republic of Vietnam" within Vietnam, which was rather
unusual, and then fought Vietnam. The US grabbed a Christian out of a New Jersey seminary
(Ngo Dinh Diem) to run the Buddhist "country," that didn't help. More recently the US has
overthrown governments (Iraq and Afghanistan) and then fought the natives. Whatever, it
doesn't work. The citizens (AKA dissidents, insurgents, terrorists, etc.) so effected don't
want US troops in their countries, and who can blame them.
Why do credulous Americans read anti-war books written by war criminals? Only brainwashed
people support the troops. Most Americans hated soldiers after Vietnam. They had seen
soldiers raping wives and daughters, burning houses and huts and crops and wiping out entire
villages. They knew that men who agree to kill for a paycheck do other bad things like raping
and looting and then writing books about it later.
The cons put a stop to all those "incorrect" ideas American slaves had developed by
ramping up the propaganda in the 1980s. Movies kicked in and "learned" the zombies about the
wonderfulness of war and killing and how American soldiers kill with love in their hearts and
the tragedy of the boy baby killers left behind – probably by "communists in the US
Government."
The United States really had no business intervening
That's a, maybe "the," key concept. The US has always had enough internal problems
of its own to deal with and it should always have tended to its own interest first. Damned
know-it-all, brainless busybodies!
I suspect most of them would wise up if their elders did so first, and would teach 'em.
One of the most annoying sights to me is to see some ancient fart wearing some sign that he's
a vet. Even though I was once a sucker too, I always make it a point to remind them that we
had no business in whatever war they happen to be glorifying and still wallowing in. How old
does one have to be to get a clue?
Nothing quite says freedom like heavily armed soldiers on the streets demanding papers. Soon
the US will have the same situation, with the "freedom loving" Americans willingly
surrendering all their freedoms for "safety." Today the US government spies on everyone's
communications, conducts over 80,000 SWAT raids a year, locks over 2 million people in actual
slavery, and lets the cops execute people on the street. Nothing quite says Freedom when cops
can execute poor people without any repercussions. Nothing quite says Freedom when opiate
casualties in one year exceed the American total in Vietnam. Nothing quite says zombie when
Americans can't see the war that is being waged on them right now.
Is that true? The Military simply harvested the poors out of the hills, the South and
other rural areas the same way they would have drafted 'em. All the kids respond once the
Government offers them a way out of potential starvation and hopeless poverty. That's just a
better way to draft people, although they won't call it that.
The same generals who let 911 happen and started the Iraq war still run the show. All of
them should have faced a firing squad for that, but instead, the grossly incompetent General
Kelly runs the White House and the grossly incompetent Mattis runs the military.
"The danger presented by either school is clear enough in the twenty-first century."
Apparently it is not close to clear. The warhawk imperialists – some of them
Clausewtizians and most COINdinistas – rule everything. No matter how many lives are
lost, no matter how much money is wasted, they demand we remain on the same path of playing
world hegemon. George Washington fought the British Empire for our freedom, so our subsequent
leaders, starting most importantly with Lincoln, could remake the country into the British
Empire 2.0.
"Because we are here to help the Vietnamese because inside every go*k is an American
trying to get out." Replace 'Vietnamese' with 'Middle Easterners' and 'gook' with 'Arab' or
'Moslem,' and you have the Neocon position. Replace 'Vietnamese' with 'the world' and replace
'gook' with 'dark skinned non-Christian' and place the word "liberal' before 'American,' and
you have the Liberal/Leftist position.
As a youth during that time it seemed like a strange idea that they were pushing. How could
Vietnamese be invading Vietnam? They already live there. The Americans had to travel
thousands of miles to prevent this. Years later I realize my youthful intuition was right;
Vietnamese can't invade Vietnam. This North-South dichotomy was just a made up propaganda
tool. The South was an artificial concoction set up by the West to divide someone else's
country. This question of how could we have won is absurd nonsense. What would 'winning' have
looked like? The South would just have been a multi-billion millstone around our neck.
The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced Trump
that -- despite his original instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or 6,000 or 7,000) more troops
(and yet more drones, planes, and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents
tragedy bordering on farce.
No; it's psychotic, psychopathic mayhem and mass-murder. Lemma: At any crime-scene,
there are one or more perpetrators, possibly accessories, apologists and/or 'idle'
bystanders. It is incumbent upon *all* witnesses to attempt to a) restrain malefactors and
where possible b) rescue victims from harm. *All* present and not in active resistance to the
crime attract proportional guilt. Addendum: Any person profiting from crime also makes
him/herself an accessory, like all residents in the 'illegitimate entity' and/or the puppet
executives, manufacturers of the means and their enablers = the whole MIC[*] plus all their
dependents, say.
[*] The US rogue regime = US-M/I/C/4a†-plex, with dog-wagging-tail, its
illegitimate sprog the Zionist/Israeli rogue regime + Js = I/J/Z-plex, all components rife
with corruption.
a = academic = econ, psy, leg et al.; 4 = MSM+PFBCs, † = churches
add a few significant stragglers like $ = banksters & ¿ = spies
=====
It's a lot, and here I point for emphasis to all the citizens of the two named entities;
silence is acquiescence. Take a look at the result, not 'just' in Afghanistan but Libya,
Syria etc., the WC7in5 [fortunately not
yet Iran]; wherever the US/Zs deploy their 'hammers.'
In the fewest words: The US/Zs including their 'ordinary people' are all true monsters,
with the only exception being the actively objecting few.
Not so BTW, from the above [but not only] I conclude that there can be no 'god' –
for surely, any such would strike all the US/Z villains down.
Again a 'special case' for emphasis, the intellectuals and academics who really should
know better but where again, silence is acquiescence.
*Guilty, your honour; may they all hang by the neck until dead!* rgds
American sheep can't see war even though they are in one. What better weapon than to have a
group of writers spreading disinformation and colorful propaganda that revolves around
discrediting the other propaganda with falsehoods and romanticization of the war that came
before. Let's have yet another debate about the thing that happened half a century ago
because driving the flock in circles gets them no where closer to resistance.
Meanwhile the real war. If the financial crisis wasn't a terrorist attack because the
press never told you, what will you believe? If more men and women die in one year because of
opiates than in the entire Vietnam effort, will the real owners tell you in their newspapers
that they do it because they want to win?
I think the kids are more pumped up with college tuition, VA health , a chance to learn a
civilian applicable skill , citizenship and something to do other than competing with illegal
Indios for low wages.
Save the BS for your fellow geezer drunks at the VFW lounge. Vietnam featured a
complete collapse of the conscripted US military, rampant drug use, fragging,
insubordination, faked injuries, disintegration of the chain of command, mass murder of
civilians, and finally TOTAL DEFEAT after turning tail and running following the negotiation
of a charitable "decent interval" allowing the yanks to save some face. Pathetic.
The Vietnam war was not a "civil-war" but was an INVASION by the North Vietnamese
communists, who were not amenable to letting people decide for themselves what political
system they chose to live under. They wanted "the whole pie". The South Vietnamese and
American military fought courageously, with one hand tied behind their backs, as they were
not permitted to attack the supply lines, logistics and staging areas of the North Vietnamese
communists. The American news media played a large part in the sympathetic attitudes they had
towards the communists, taking every chance to denigrate American and South Vietnamese
troops, a prime example was communist sympathizer Walter Cronkite reporting that the 1968
"Tet offensive" was a "major loss" for Americans and south Vietnamese, despite it being a
total slaughter of North Vietnamese communists and the Viet Cong. In fact, the Viet Cong
operating in the South were almost all totally decimated.
Yes, the final result of the Vietnam war was communist control, BUT, it was not due to the
efforts of South Vietnamese and American troops. The Vietnamese "boat people" who risked life
and limb to escape that communist "paradise" have a totally different story to tell, but
which had been rarely reported. Ken Burns is a communist sympathizer whose "documentary" on
the Vietnam war was so one-sided, even the communists admitted that his whole premise on the
Vietnam war was one-sided and false. Communist sympathizer Ken Burns inadvertently "let it
slip" that "re-education" by the communists was not a "six month deal" (as he claimed) in
which those in positions of power in South Vietnam would be "re-educated", but were actually
prisons, in which "enemies of the (communist) state were to be interned for as long as 20
years. It is interesting to note that the communists could not exert the same harsh level of
control as was the case in the North, to the people in the South.
Apparently unfamiliar with my long and detailed discussions here and at TAC about the
Vietnam War. I don't think you will find a single suggestion in mt two or more years of
discussion on Vietnam , that it was a civil war -- it was not. In every way, the North
Vietnamese were the aggressors. And if anyone looking at the political issues and objectives
of what happened in Vietnam – those who protested got nearly every aspect about Vietnam
wrong, nearly every contention they make was predicated on the incorrect information, except
one.
war is a nasty filthy affair in which a lot hoes wrong – because that is part and
parcel to the nature of war so many moving pieces on so many potential unpredictable planes.
The entire enterprise is best avoided, but sometimes as in the case of S. Vietnam, you are
left little choice but to defend yourself. Boys and girls afraid to fight screaming "Give
peace a chance" at the defenders like pushing a drowning men under the waves and telling him
all he need do is swim.
You are preaching to the choir and the preacher.
I am going to avoid rehashing the conflict, I think the data sets are on my side in tons.
But I think the authors intentions are to really dismantle the cadre and their advocacy of
COIN. Given that the current President has reneged on his campaign agenda to avoid needless
wars violating the territory of others to regime change. The issue of counter insurgency is
relevant. Because it looks like we are in for more than we bargained for. No doubt, SAS, the
French Legionaries, CIA and a spec ops contingents are pre-prepping for insurgencies of our
own.
A brief look suggests that the only effective response to counter insurgency is
intelligence and brutal response. though intended to suggest finesse, in the end -- it's root
them out and destroy them. I think this is one those the cure is worse than the illness,
because without indigenous support for your political and strategic goals in country --
brutal reprisals eventually reignite acts of terror as a means of self defense.
What are you a troll playing the same old broken record spewing forth the same old line,
for there was a vote coming up by the Geneva Accord, to decide just what kind of government
the two Vietnam's wanted, a vote that would'nt go the way we wanted thus the false flag to
get us involved.
FDR had made a deal with Ho that if they would rise up and drive out the Japs that Vietnam
could choose their own destiny, colonialism was dead he said, well until that little man in
the to big a house got into office and then once again America's word wasn't worth a mouth
full of warm spit and its never changed
Today's officer corps would spare us all a great deal of cost, blood and grief and we
Americans would all do much better if the cadets', midshipmen's, officer candidates' and
officer corps' reading list began with the Bernard Fall book Rue Sans Joie .
Rand? American Conservative? Tom's Dispatch? All fake news for the sheep, i.e COIN. If
people want change, they have to refuse to cooperate. That means no voting. Voting means you
agree with the basic trends and just want to tweak the system. All of us have gotten cheated
by the Government all of our lives. Destruction of schools so people can't learn. Wars
fought to make countries like Vietnam open to big corporations to move American jobs there.
Corporate money backed by the fist of the Marines has worked all their lives, all their
parents' lives, and all the modern history of America. "Why not now?", the sheep
ask.
The religious aspect of the Vietnamese CIVIL WAR is overlooked by the senile VFW geezers
posting here. The patriots were mostly Buddhists the quislings were mostly Catholics
(inherited from the French). In between perving little kids, American Cardinals and Bishops
demanded even more war and Vietnamese blood. The bloodthirsty homo, Cardinal Spellman, would
even visit the troops in person and exhort them to create more carnage and mayhem.
According to Bobbie McNamara, American efforts resulted in the murder of over 4 million
Vietnamese and the maiming of millions of others .MOSTLY CIVILIANS. The role of the vile
bloodthirsty Homo Cult of the Seven Hills has been mostly overlooked.
Note, I list of sites is not definitive. There are articles critical and article
supportive of COIN. Some articles are just descriptive of what COIN means. COIN has been a
subject of a good deal of debate for a very long time. Most articles are from TAC because
that is the site I most frequently read and comment. And as Dr. Unz will tell you, they
invite a host of articles by a host of authors -- with varying view points.
About Rand, they are one of the most noteable contributors to government policy via
research and while one may not appreciate their advocacy, it's not a bad idea to read what
they are presenting on issues, in this case COIN. Even considering broad definitions of fake
news -- it is unlikely that Rand would be included as such an outlet.
One of the advances launched in the late sixties -- forward was that Vietnam was a MIC
windfall and in fact manufactured by the MIC.
I don't think there is much evidence of that. Pres Johnson and most of the leadership
actually saw it as a case for democracy against the Chinese, the Soviets -- etc. You are not
going to be able to escape the private sector profiting from war. Sure had democracy and
capitalism actually won the day , I don't think there is any question money would have been
made -- capitalism is a very healthy system -- if operated minus manipulation/unfair
dealings. But that is not unique. One does business where business is. but cold war strategic
aims made money for lots of people -- that doesn't deny that there was actually a system of
proxy engagements for democracy and communism.
I am not a member of the VFW. I don't drink and have never been drunk. There was drug use
how prevalent it was is unclear. not enough to prevent mission readiness, it appears.
A lot has been made of fragging, but if you can find the numbers -- The evidence is very
sparse that this practice was anywhere close to a staple. Here's an estimate 800 such
incidents attempted. But given that there are only about 13 confirms that estimations is
suspect. Some 3 million service members service in Vietnam that's a percentage of
0.026666666666% attempted. The actual number of men who died as the result of fragging
0.0005% and i used the highest number of fifteen actuals.
There were tragic incidents of mass killings, but those two were rare. The next series of
complaints are hard to quantify -- but suffice it to say, whatever the complaints -- when
push came to shove the US service member repeatedly got the job done. And contrary to your
comments, the process of the US withdrawal is well documented. More than anything, they
secured a line of defense, and the situation at home was the most pressing. There is no
evidence that the US ran from the battle field.
OI think the evidence is clear that we should maintained support via air and sea power to
ensure the victory was maintained on behalf of the S. Vietnamese who fought and died to
defend their country. kudos to the Aussie's for their loyal support.
If the war mongers had had an all-volunteer army like the one they have today, they could
have and would have kept the Vietnam War going indefinitely. But, since they didn't, draftees
and their parents wised-up to the Pentagon's money-making scam and put a stop to it by
refusing to participate.
Money's made fighting wars not winning them. 1945 was the last time the US made the
mistake of winning a war, and may not have made that one had Russia not been on the verge of
invading and occupying Japan, thus forcing the US into bringing the war to a close.
Very rich families and corporatists started their own think tanks after World War II.
This is when the looting began for RAND. These are the bastards Eisenhower was afraid of. Abe
Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War
-- the military industrial complex of the day -- easily constituted the greatest threat to
the American republic.
Remember that Eisenhower's definition of the complex included among the bastards, not
only the military defense industry corporations, but also right alongside them the news media
and the university and private research establishments.
Tom Jefferson thought periodic revolution against wealth and authority was desirable to
keep these bastards in check. Which implies that he figured they would inevitably get us by
the throat down on the floor from time to time.
I don't think that you understand at all the history of the USG involvement in
VietNam–an act of selflessness??? What a crock.
The entire foreign policy of the united states has been controlled by the
military/industrial/security/espionage etc etc complex since, at least, the end of WWII. that
group doesn't really care about victory–on going conflict somewhere is the only goal.
Personally, I doubt that the USG has ever committed a selfless act in it's entire history.
VietNam was just one stop in a long line of USG aggression.
Of course, the U.S. military and Washington policymakers lost the war in Vietnam in
the previous century and perhaps it's well that they did.
LOL.. True enough. Yet an assortment of "Church of Rambo" true believers in civilian life,
including several here on Unz, continue to insist that that the US never lost the war, hell,
never even lost a battle -- claims all debunked by credible historians and military men who
fought there.
the vast majority of senior American military officers do not. Instead, they're still
refighting the Vietnam War to a far cheerier outcome through the books they read, the
scholarship they publish, and (most disturbingly) the policies they continue to pursue in
the Greater Middle East.
The weakness of the piece is that you don't say exactly which Vietnam approach today's
generals are following. Are they doing the "big battalions" approach of Westmoreland's
"search and destroy"? Are they doing the "Expanding Inkblot" of Marine General Krulak,
Sorley's "Better war", or John Paul Vann's "Hearts and Minds"?? You say these are all things
from Vietnam but exactly which one is in place, and why is it losing?
Blah blah blah. That war was a cluster fuck and a crime against humanity. It's only
purpose was to make a few rich men richer. The murder and destruction in the MENA is just
more of the same.
Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed present itself in
Iraq, he and a whole generation of COINdinistas (like-minded officers devoted to his
favored counterinsurgency approach to modern warfare) embraced those very conclusions to
win the war on terror.
Again questionable. Petraeus had the correct approach to counter the previous "lets just
invade and beat Saddam" approach of Rumsfeld. Rummy's "lean force" package backed by almost
unlimited air power was enough to win the conventional struggle but was woefully short of the
numbers needed for occupation and pacification. Same thing happened to Hitler in the Balkans.
Initial smooth success, grinding guerrilla attrition for years afterward.
Both schools, however, agreed on something basic: that the U.S. military should have
won in Vietnam.
"Winning" by 1972 did not contemplate victorious US troops marching into Hanoi, or total
abandonment of the field by PAVN/VC but a better final political settlement enabling the
southern regime to survive, and/or a "decent interval" for the US to save face.
n 1999, retired army officer and Vietnam veteran Lewis Sorley penned the definitive
hearts-and-minds tract, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of
America's Last Years in Vietnam. Sorley boldly asserted that, by the spring of 1970, "the
fighting wasn't over, but the war was won." According to his comforting tale, the real
explanation for failure lay with the "big-war" strategy of U.S. commander General William
Westmoreland. The counterinsurgency strategy of his successor, General Creighton Abrams --
Sorley's knight in shining armor -- was (or at least should have been) a war
winner.
You are misrepresenting Sorley's full argument somewhat. Sorley did not envision or claim
that there would have been any sweeping US victory with US troops marching into Hanoi, or
that the VC/NVA would flee and abandon the struggle. A big part of his argument is for "a
better war" – that is- the end game of which inevitably would be a BETTER NEGOTIATED
SETTLEMENT. Sorley knew quite well that the VC would not disappear (their political apparatus
was still in place) and that the NVA would not simply pack up and return north. Sorley's book
"A Better War" contemplates a BETTER FINAL POLITICAL SETTLEMENT as part of the bottom line,
not US troops marching triumphantly into downtown Hanoi, as PAVN armies scurried away into
the jungle.
To his disappointment, Daddis also discovered that the only Vietnam War book included
was Sorley's A Better War. This should have surprised no one, since his argument –
that American soldiers in Vietnam were denied an impending victory by civilian
policymakers, a liberal media, and antiwar protestors – was still resonant among the
officer corps in year six of the Iraq quagmire. It wasn't the military's fault!
Keep in mind that Daddis wrote a book on the Vietnam War called 'No Sure Victory' in which
he pins US failure on not being versed ENOUGH on hearts and minds counterinsurgency war,
hence the reliance on massive and unworkable statistical and reporting systems of
"progress."
"The army's unpreparedness for counterinsurgency in the early 1960s surely encouraged
this confusion. Conventional officers had little experience in developing a
counterinsurgency reporting system and applying it within a larger strategic context.. So
it was for the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Insufficiently versed in the mysteries of
counterinsurgency, officers turned to statistics to assist them in measuring and reporting
progress and effectiveness. Statistics, though, bred more statistics, and the MACV
headquarters soon became awash in a flood of numbers, facts, and figures."
–Daddis, No Sure Victory
but also potential dangers in such lists as they inevitably influence the thinking of
an entire generation of future leaders. In the case of Vietnam, the perils are obvious. The
generals have been assigning and reading problematic books for years, works that were
essentially meant to reinforce professional pride in the midst of a series of unsuccessful
and unending wars.
You are barking up the wrong tree somewhat. Daddis laments reading list limitations as far
as Iraq, but the reading list did not make any difference given 3 issues:
(a) the decision to go to war in Iraq, when it was not necessary
(b) the woefully inadequate number of troops provided the commanders for conquest and
occupation and
(c) the cavalier, careless nature of planning for postwar Iraq.
What was or was not on the reading list is of limited impact given these 3 big realities
the civilian leadership saddled commanders with.
Watch: Bernie Sanders' Response to Trump State of the Union
"Here's the story that Trump failed to mention "
Following President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a response.
"I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to Trump's State of the Union speech," Sanders announced. "But I also want
to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, Trump chose not to discuss."
And, he added, "I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year."
Watch:
... ... ...
The complete text of Sanders' prepared remarks follow:
Good evening. Thanks for joining us.
Tonight , I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to President Trump's State of the Union speech. But I want
to do more than just that. I want to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, President Trump chose
not to discuss. I want to talk to you about the lies that he told during his campaign and the promises he made to working people
which he did not keep.
Finally, I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year.
President Trump talked tonight about the strength of our economy. Well, he's right. Official unemployment today is 4.1 percent
which is the lowest it has been in years and the stock market in recent months has soared. That's the good news.
But what President Trump failed to mention is that his first year in office marked the lowest level of job creation since
2010. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 254,000 fewer jobs were created in Trump's first 11 months in office
than were created in the 11 months before he entered office.
Further, when we talk about the economy, what's most important is to understand what is happening to the average worker. And
here's the story that Trump failed to mention tonight .
Over the last year, after adjusting for inflation, the average worker in America saw a wage increase of, are you ready for
this, 4 cents an hour, or 0.17%. Or, to put it in a different way, that worker received a raise of a little more than $1.60 a week.
And, as is often the case, that tiny wage increase disappeared as a result of soaring health care costs.
Meanwhile, at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the rich continue to get much richer while millions of American
workers are working two or three jobs just to keep their heads above water. Since March of last year, the three richest people in
America saw their wealth increase by more than $68 billion. Three people. A $68 billion increase in wealth. Meanwhile, the average
worker saw an increase of 4 cents an hour.
Tonight , Donald Trump touted the bonuses he claims workers received because of his so-called "tax reform" bill. What he forgot
to mention is that only 2% of Americans report receiving a raise or a bonus because of this tax bill.
What he also failed to mention is that some of the corporations that have given out bonuses, such as Walmart, AT&T, General
Electric, and Pfizer, are also laying off tens of thousands of their employees. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex and Huggies,
recently said they were using money from the tax cut to restructure -- laying off more than 5,000 workers and closing 10 plants.
What Trump also forgot to tell you is that while the Walton family of Walmart, the wealthiest family in America, and Jeff
Bezos of Amazon, the wealthiest person in this country, have never had it so good, many thousands of their employees are forced onto
Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing because of the obscenely low wages they are paid. In my view, that's wrong. The taxpayers
of this country should not be providing corporate welfare to the wealthiest families in this country.
Trump's Broken Promises
Now, let me say a few words about some of the issues that Donald Trump failed to mention tonight , and that is the difference
between what he promised the American people as a candidate and what he has delivered as president.
Many of you will recall, that during his campaign, Donald Trump told the American people how he was going to provide "health
insurance for everybody," with "much lower deductibles."
That is what he promised working families all across this country during his campaign. But as president he did exactly the
opposite. Last year, he supported legislation that would have thrown up to 32 million people off of the health care they had while,
at the same time, substantially raising premiums for older Americans.
The reality is that although we were able to beat back Trump's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 3 million fewer Americans
have health insurance today than before Trump took office and that number will be going even higher in the coming months.
During his campaign, Trump promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
As president, however, he supported a Republican Budget Resolution that proposed slashing Medicaid by $1 trillion and cutting
Medicare by $500 billion. Further, President Trump's own budget called for cutting Social Security Disability Insurance by $64 billion.
During Trump's campaign for president, he talked about how he was going to lower prescription drug prices and take on the
greed of the pharmaceutical industry which he said was "getting away with murder." Tonight he said "one of my greatest priorities
is to reduce the price of prescription drugs."
But as president, Trump nominated Alex Azar, a former executive of the Eli Lilly Company -- one of the largest drug companies
in this country -- to head up the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump spoke about how in other countries "drugs cost far less," yet he has done nothing to allow Americans to purchase less
expensive prescription drugs from abroad or to require Medicare to negotiate drug prices – which he promised he would do when he
ran for president.
During the campaign, Donald Trump told us that: "The rich will not be gaining at all" under his tax reform plan.
Well, that was quite a whopper. As president, the tax reform legislation Trump signed into law a few weeks ago provides 83
percent of the benefits to the top one percent, drives up the deficit by $1.7 trillion, and raises taxes on 92 million middle class
families by the end of the decade.
During his campaign for president, Trump talked about how he was going to take on the greed of Wall Street which he said "has
caused tremendous problems for us.
As president, not only has Trump not taken on Wall Street, he has appointed more Wall Street billionaires to his administration
than any president in history. And now, on behalf of Wall Street, he is trying to repeal the modest provisions of the Dodd-Frank
legislation which provide consumer protections against Wall Street thievery.
What Trump Didn't Say
But what is also important to note is not just Trump's dishonesty. It is that tonight he avoided some of the most important
issues facing our country and the world.
How can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change? No, Mr. Trump, climate
change is not a "hoax." It is a reality which is causing devastating harm all over our country and all over the world and you are
dead wrong when you appoint administrators at the EPA and other agencies who are trying to decimate environmental protection rules,
and slow down the transition to sustainable energy.
How can a president of the United States not discuss the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires
like the Koch brothers to undermine American democracy by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates who will represent
the rich and the powerful?
How can he not talk about Republican governors efforts all across this country to undermine democracy, suppress the vote and
make it harder for poor people or people of color to vote?
How can he not talk about the fact that in a highly competitive global economy, hundreds of thousands of bright young people
are unable to afford to go to college, while millions of others have come out of school deeply in debt?
How can he not talk about the inadequate funding and staffing at the Social Security Administration which has resulted in
thousands of people with disabilities dying because they did not get their claims processed in time?
How can he not talk about the retirement crisis facing the working people of this country and the fact that over half of older
workers have no retirement savings? We need to strengthen pensions in this country, not take them away from millions of workers.
How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering
in democratic elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections
that we will be holding. How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin?
What Trump Did Talk About
Now, let me say a few words about what Trump did talk about.
Trump talked about DACA and immigration, but what he did not tell the American people is that he precipitated this crisis
in September by repealing President Obama's executive order protecting Dreamers.
We need to seriously address the issue of immigration but that does not mean dividing families and reducing legal immigration
by 25-50 percent. It sure doesn't mean forcing taxpayers to spend $25 billion on a wall that candidate Trump promised Mexico would
pay for. And it definitely doesn't mean a racist immigration policy that excludes people of color from around the world.
To my mind, this is one of the great moral issues facing our country. It would be unspeakable and a moral stain on our nation
if we turned our backs on these 800,000 young people who were born and raised in this country and who know no other home but the
United States.
And that's not just Bernie Sanders talking. Poll after poll shows that over 80 percent of the American people believe that
we should protect the legal status of these young people and provide them with a path toward citizenship.
We need to pass the bi-partisan DREAM Act, and we need to pass it now.
President Trump also talked about the need to rebuild our country's infrastructure. And he is absolutely right. But the proposal
he is bringing forth is dead wrong.
Instead of spending $1.5 trillion over ten years rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, Trump would encourage states to
sell our nation's highways, bridges, and other vital infrastructure to Wall Street, wealthy campaign contributors, even foreign governments.
And how would Wall Street and these corporations recoup their investments? By imposing massive new tolls and fees paid for
by American commuters and homeowners.
The reality is that Trump's plan to privatize our nation's infrastructure is an old idea that has never worked and never will
work.
Tonight , Donald Trump correctly talked about the need to address the opioid crisis. Well, I say to Donald Trump, you don't
help people suffering from opioid addiction by cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion. If you are serious about dealing with this crisis,
we need to expand, not cut Medicaid.
Conclusion/A Progressive Agenda
My fellow Americans. The simple truth is that, according to virtually every poll, Donald Trump is the least popular president
after one year in office of any president in modern American history. And the reason for that is pretty clear. The American people
do not want a president who is compulsively dishonest, who is a bully, who actively represents the interests of the billionaire class,
who is anti-science, and who is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our nation of origin, our religion, our gender,
or our sexual orientation.
That is not what the American people want. And that reality is the bad news that we have to deal with.
But the truth is that there is a lot of good news out there as well. It's not just that so many of our people disagree with
Trump's policies, temperament, and behavior. It is that the vast majority of our people have a very different vision for the future
of our country than what Trump and the Republican leadership are giving us.
In an unprecedented way, we are witnessing a revitalization of American democracy with more and more people standing up and
fighting back. A little more than a year ago we saw millions of people take to the streets for the women's marches and a few weeks
ago, in hundreds of cities and towns around the world, people once again took to the streets in the fight for social, economic, racial
and environmental justice.
Further, we are seeing the growth of grassroots organizations and people from every conceivable background starting to run
for office – for school board, city council, state legislature, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.
In fact, we are starting to see the beginning of a political revolution, something long overdue.
And these candidates, from coast to coast, are standing tall for a progressive agenda, an agenda that works for the working
families of our country and not just the billionaire class. These candidates understand that the United States has got to join the
rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare for All, single-payer
program.
They understand that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the top one-tenth of one percent now owns almost
as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we should not be giving tax breaks for billionaires but demanding that they start paying
their fair share of taxes.
They know that we need trade policies that benefit working people, not large multi-national corporations.
They know that we have got to take on the fossil fuel industry, transform our energy system and move to sustainable energies
like wind, solar and geothermal.
They know that we need a $15 an hour federal minimum wage, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and universal
childcare.
They understand that it is a woman who has the right to control her own body, not state and federal governments, and that
woman has the right to receive equal pay for equal work and work in a safe environment free from harassment.
They also know that if we are going to move forward successfully as a democracy we need real criminal justice reform and we
need to finally address comprehensive immigration reform.
Yes. I understand that the Koch brothers and their billionaire friends are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
in the 2018 mid-term elections supporting the Trump agenda and right-wing Republicans. They have the money, an unlimited amount of
money. But we have the people, and when ordinary people stand up and fight for justice there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.
That has been the history of America, and that is our future.
Watch: Bernie Sanders' Response to Trump State of the Union
"Here's the story that Trump failed to mention "
Following President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a response.
"I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to Trump's State of the Union speech," Sanders announced. "But I also want
to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, Trump chose not to discuss."
And, he added, "I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year."
Watch:
... ... ...
The complete text of Sanders' prepared remarks follow:
Good evening. Thanks for joining us.
Tonight , I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to President Trump's State of the Union speech. But I want
to do more than just that. I want to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, President Trump chose
not to discuss. I want to talk to you about the lies that he told during his campaign and the promises he made to working people
which he did not keep.
Finally, I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year.
President Trump talked tonight about the strength of our economy. Well, he's right. Official unemployment today is 4.1 percent
which is the lowest it has been in years and the stock market in recent months has soared. That's the good news.
But what President Trump failed to mention is that his first year in office marked the lowest level of job creation since
2010. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 254,000 fewer jobs were created in Trump's first 11 months in office
than were created in the 11 months before he entered office.
Further, when we talk about the economy, what's most important is to understand what is happening to the average worker. And
here's the story that Trump failed to mention tonight .
Over the last year, after adjusting for inflation, the average worker in America saw a wage increase of, are you ready for
this, 4 cents an hour, or 0.17%. Or, to put it in a different way, that worker received a raise of a little more than $1.60 a week.
And, as is often the case, that tiny wage increase disappeared as a result of soaring health care costs.
Meanwhile, at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the rich continue to get much richer while millions of American
workers are working two or three jobs just to keep their heads above water. Since March of last year, the three richest people in
America saw their wealth increase by more than $68 billion. Three people. A $68 billion increase in wealth. Meanwhile, the average
worker saw an increase of 4 cents an hour.
Tonight , Donald Trump touted the bonuses he claims workers received because of his so-called "tax reform" bill. What he forgot
to mention is that only 2% of Americans report receiving a raise or a bonus because of this tax bill.
What he also failed to mention is that some of the corporations that have given out bonuses, such as Walmart, AT&T, General
Electric, and Pfizer, are also laying off tens of thousands of their employees. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex and Huggies,
recently said they were using money from the tax cut to restructure -- laying off more than 5,000 workers and closing 10 plants.
What Trump also forgot to tell you is that while the Walton family of Walmart, the wealthiest family in America, and Jeff
Bezos of Amazon, the wealthiest person in this country, have never had it so good, many thousands of their employees are forced onto
Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing because of the obscenely low wages they are paid. In my view, that's wrong. The taxpayers
of this country should not be providing corporate welfare to the wealthiest families in this country.
Trump's Broken Promises
Now, let me say a few words about some of the issues that Donald Trump failed to mention tonight , and that is the difference
between what he promised the American people as a candidate and what he has delivered as president.
Many of you will recall, that during his campaign, Donald Trump told the American people how he was going to provide "health
insurance for everybody," with "much lower deductibles."
That is what he promised working families all across this country during his campaign. But as president he did exactly the
opposite. Last year, he supported legislation that would have thrown up to 32 million people off of the health care they had while,
at the same time, substantially raising premiums for older Americans.
The reality is that although we were able to beat back Trump's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 3 million fewer Americans
have health insurance today than before Trump took office and that number will be going even higher in the coming months.
During his campaign, Trump promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
As president, however, he supported a Republican Budget Resolution that proposed slashing Medicaid by $1 trillion and cutting
Medicare by $500 billion. Further, President Trump's own budget called for cutting Social Security Disability Insurance by $64 billion.
During Trump's campaign for president, he talked about how he was going to lower prescription drug prices and take on the
greed of the pharmaceutical industry which he said was "getting away with murder." Tonight he said "one of my greatest priorities
is to reduce the price of prescription drugs."
But as president, Trump nominated Alex Azar, a former executive of the Eli Lilly Company -- one of the largest drug companies
in this country -- to head up the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump spoke about how in other countries "drugs cost far less," yet he has done nothing to allow Americans to purchase less
expensive prescription drugs from abroad or to require Medicare to negotiate drug prices – which he promised he would do when he
ran for president.
During the campaign, Donald Trump told us that: "The rich will not be gaining at all" under his tax reform plan.
Well, that was quite a whopper. As president, the tax reform legislation Trump signed into law a few weeks ago provides 83
percent of the benefits to the top one percent, drives up the deficit by $1.7 trillion, and raises taxes on 92 million middle class
families by the end of the decade.
During his campaign for president, Trump talked about how he was going to take on the greed of Wall Street which he said "has
caused tremendous problems for us.
As president, not only has Trump not taken on Wall Street, he has appointed more Wall Street billionaires to his administration
than any president in history. And now, on behalf of Wall Street, he is trying to repeal the modest provisions of the Dodd-Frank
legislation which provide consumer protections against Wall Street thievery.
What Trump Didn't Say
But what is also important to note is not just Trump's dishonesty. It is that tonight he avoided some of the most important
issues facing our country and the world.
How can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change? No, Mr. Trump, climate
change is not a "hoax." It is a reality which is causing devastating harm all over our country and all over the world and you are
dead wrong when you appoint administrators at the EPA and other agencies who are trying to decimate environmental protection rules,
and slow down the transition to sustainable energy.
How can a president of the United States not discuss the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires
like the Koch brothers to undermine American democracy by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates who will represent
the rich and the powerful?
How can he not talk about Republican governors efforts all across this country to undermine democracy, suppress the vote and
make it harder for poor people or people of color to vote?
How can he not talk about the fact that in a highly competitive global economy, hundreds of thousands of bright young people
are unable to afford to go to college, while millions of others have come out of school deeply in debt?
How can he not talk about the inadequate funding and staffing at the Social Security Administration which has resulted in
thousands of people with disabilities dying because they did not get their claims processed in time?
How can he not talk about the retirement crisis facing the working people of this country and the fact that over half of older
workers have no retirement savings? We need to strengthen pensions in this country, not take them away from millions of workers.
How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering
in democratic elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections
that we will be holding. How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin?
What Trump Did Talk About
Now, let me say a few words about what Trump did talk about.
Trump talked about DACA and immigration, but what he did not tell the American people is that he precipitated this crisis
in September by repealing President Obama's executive order protecting Dreamers.
We need to seriously address the issue of immigration but that does not mean dividing families and reducing legal immigration
by 25-50 percent. It sure doesn't mean forcing taxpayers to spend $25 billion on a wall that candidate Trump promised Mexico would
pay for. And it definitely doesn't mean a racist immigration policy that excludes people of color from around the world.
To my mind, this is one of the great moral issues facing our country. It would be unspeakable and a moral stain on our nation
if we turned our backs on these 800,000 young people who were born and raised in this country and who know no other home but the
United States.
And that's not just Bernie Sanders talking. Poll after poll shows that over 80 percent of the American people believe that
we should protect the legal status of these young people and provide them with a path toward citizenship.
We need to pass the bi-partisan DREAM Act, and we need to pass it now.
President Trump also talked about the need to rebuild our country's infrastructure. And he is absolutely right. But the proposal
he is bringing forth is dead wrong.
Instead of spending $1.5 trillion over ten years rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, Trump would encourage states to
sell our nation's highways, bridges, and other vital infrastructure to Wall Street, wealthy campaign contributors, even foreign governments.
And how would Wall Street and these corporations recoup their investments? By imposing massive new tolls and fees paid for
by American commuters and homeowners.
The reality is that Trump's plan to privatize our nation's infrastructure is an old idea that has never worked and never will
work.
Tonight , Donald Trump correctly talked about the need to address the opioid crisis. Well, I say to Donald Trump, you don't
help people suffering from opioid addiction by cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion. If you are serious about dealing with this crisis,
we need to expand, not cut Medicaid.
Conclusion/A Progressive Agenda
My fellow Americans. The simple truth is that, according to virtually every poll, Donald Trump is the least popular president
after one year in office of any president in modern American history. And the reason for that is pretty clear. The American people
do not want a president who is compulsively dishonest, who is a bully, who actively represents the interests of the billionaire class,
who is anti-science, and who is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our nation of origin, our religion, our gender,
or our sexual orientation.
That is not what the American people want. And that reality is the bad news that we have to deal with.
But the truth is that there is a lot of good news out there as well. It's not just that so many of our people disagree with
Trump's policies, temperament, and behavior. It is that the vast majority of our people have a very different vision for the future
of our country than what Trump and the Republican leadership are giving us.
In an unprecedented way, we are witnessing a revitalization of American democracy with more and more people standing up and
fighting back. A little more than a year ago we saw millions of people take to the streets for the women's marches and a few weeks
ago, in hundreds of cities and towns around the world, people once again took to the streets in the fight for social, economic, racial
and environmental justice.
Further, we are seeing the growth of grassroots organizations and people from every conceivable background starting to run
for office – for school board, city council, state legislature, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.
In fact, we are starting to see the beginning of a political revolution, something long overdue.
And these candidates, from coast to coast, are standing tall for a progressive agenda, an agenda that works for the working
families of our country and not just the billionaire class. These candidates understand that the United States has got to join the
rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare for All, single-payer
program.
They understand that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the top one-tenth of one percent now owns almost
as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we should not be giving tax breaks for billionaires but demanding that they start paying
their fair share of taxes.
They know that we need trade policies that benefit working people, not large multi-national corporations.
They know that we have got to take on the fossil fuel industry, transform our energy system and move to sustainable energies
like wind, solar and geothermal.
They know that we need a $15 an hour federal minimum wage, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and universal
childcare.
They understand that it is a woman who has the right to control her own body, not state and federal governments, and that
woman has the right to receive equal pay for equal work and work in a safe environment free from harassment.
They also know that if we are going to move forward successfully as a democracy we need real criminal justice reform and we
need to finally address comprehensive immigration reform.
Yes. I understand that the Koch brothers and their billionaire friends are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
in the 2018 mid-term elections supporting the Trump agenda and right-wing Republicans. They have the money, an unlimited amount of
money. But we have the people, and when ordinary people stand up and fight for justice there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.
That has been the history of America, and that is our future.
As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit
Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.
As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit
Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.
"... For being "intelligence" agencies who no one is apparently allowed to question or criticize, they sure make a lot of "mistakes", "lose" a lot of documents, and just get a lot of things "wrong". ..."
"... Iraq was invaded and occupied as well. Control resources!! That is the end game...As a Combat Veteran served during 9/11 and tip of the spear in 2003 we found ZERO weapons of mass destruction....So many young Americans impacted and suffered for pure profit at the hands of greedy Men... ..."
His comments came hours after SIGAR said in
a quarterly report on the conflict that the Pentagon prohibited the inclusion of information on the number of districts in Afghanistan,
and the population therein, controlled by the Afghan government or the Taliban or contested by both sides.
"The number of districts controlled or influenced by the Afghan government had been one of the last remaining publicly available
indicators for members of Congress -- many of whose staff do not have access to the classified annexes to SIGAR reports -- and for
the American public of how the 16-year-long U.S. effort to secure Afghanistan is faring," SIGAR said in a statement. "This is the
first time SIGAR has been specifically instructed not to release information marked 'unclassified' to the American taxpayer."
In his emailed statement, Gresback said that, as of October 2017, about 56 percent of the country's 407 districts were under Afghan
government control or influence, 30 percent remained contested, and roughly 14 percent were now under insurgent control or influence.
R Roger47 yesterday
Afghanistan is too big and too poor for their own government and military to ever be able to control. Much of the country is
controlled by tribal leaders associated loosely with the Taliban. They want to continue to live their lives as they have done
for hundreds of years. We can either let them do so, or occupy their country forever. I say make an agreement to leave them alone
as long as they keep terrorists out, and bring our troops home.
e edward yesterday
For being "intelligence" agencies who no one is apparently allowed to question or criticize, they sure make a lot of "mistakes",
"lose" a lot of documents, and just get a lot of things "wrong".
C CBVET2003 yesterday
Iraq was invaded and occupied as well. Control resources!! That is the end game...As a Combat Veteran served during 9/11
and tip of the spear in 2003 we found ZERO weapons of mass destruction....So many young Americans impacted and suffered for pure
profit at the hands of greedy Men...
V Vegasvince 22 hours ago
Several things he promised to work on are traditional Democratic issues. Since they also agree, I'd hope we can see quick
congressional action. Infrastructure, prescription drug costs, terminal patients access to drug trials, Job training investment,
Paid family leave, former prisoner job training, etc... These should be fast tracked through Congress and to the Presidents. We
can agree on things in America and need a productive governement to get thing s done!
"... For being "intelligence" agencies who no one is apparently allowed to question or criticize, they sure make a lot of "mistakes", "lose" a lot of documents, and just get a lot of things "wrong". ..."
"... Iraq was invaded and occupied as well. Control resources!! That is the end game...As a Combat Veteran served during 9/11 and tip of the spear in 2003 we found ZERO weapons of mass destruction....So many young Americans impacted and suffered for pure profit at the hands of greedy Men... ..."
His comments came hours after SIGAR said in
a quarterly report on the conflict that the Pentagon prohibited the inclusion of information on the number of districts in Afghanistan,
and the population therein, controlled by the Afghan government or the Taliban or contested by both sides.
"The number of districts controlled or influenced by the Afghan government had been one of the last remaining publicly available
indicators for members of Congress -- many of whose staff do not have access to the classified annexes to SIGAR reports -- and for
the American public of how the 16-year-long U.S. effort to secure Afghanistan is faring," SIGAR said in a statement. "This is the
first time SIGAR has been specifically instructed not to release information marked 'unclassified' to the American taxpayer."
In his emailed statement, Gresback said that, as of October 2017, about 56 percent of the country's 407 districts were under Afghan
government control or influence, 30 percent remained contested, and roughly 14 percent were now under insurgent control or influence.
R Roger47 yesterday
Afghanistan is too big and too poor for their own government and military to ever be able to control. Much of the country is
controlled by tribal leaders associated loosely with the Taliban. They want to continue to live their lives as they have done
for hundreds of years. We can either let them do so, or occupy their country forever. I say make an agreement to leave them alone
as long as they keep terrorists out, and bring our troops home.
e edward yesterday
For being "intelligence" agencies who no one is apparently allowed to question or criticize, they sure make a lot of "mistakes",
"lose" a lot of documents, and just get a lot of things "wrong".
C CBVET2003 yesterday
Iraq was invaded and occupied as well. Control resources!! That is the end game...As a Combat Veteran served during 9/11
and tip of the spear in 2003 we found ZERO weapons of mass destruction....So many young Americans impacted and suffered for pure
profit at the hands of greedy Men...
V Vegasvince 22 hours ago
Several things he promised to work on are traditional Democratic issues. Since they also agree, I'd hope we can see quick
congressional action. Infrastructure, prescription drug costs, terminal patients access to drug trials, Job training investment,
Paid family leave, former prisoner job training, etc... These should be fast tracked through Congress and to the Presidents. We
can agree on things in America and need a productive governement to get thing s done!
"... Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger," said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing." ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
Forward Operating Base Torkham, in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan (army.mil) If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria,
could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.
Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his forces will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded.
Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the United States to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian
border with Turkey east of the Euphrates all the way to Iraq.
If the Turks attack Manbij, America will face a choice: stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.
Should the U.S. let the Turks drive the Kurds out of Manbij and the entire Syrian border area, as Erdogan threatens, American
credibility would suffer a blow from which it would not soon recover.
But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan's forces could mean a crackup of NATO and a loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including
the air base at Incirlik.
Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea. NATO's loss would thus be a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who
gave Ankara the green light to cleanse the Kurds from Afrin.
Yet Syria is but one of many challenges facing U.S. foreign policy.
The Winter Olympics in South Korea may have taken the menace of a North Korean ICBM out of the news, but no one believes that
threat is behind us.
Last week, China charged that the USS Hopper, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal,
a reef in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, though it is far closer to Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer, says China,
was chased off by one of her frigates. If we continue to contest China's territorial claims with our warships, a clash is inevitable.
In a similar incident Monday, a Russian military jet came within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance jet in international
airspace over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to end its mission.
U.S. relations with Cold War ally Pakistan are at rock bottom. In his first tweet of 2018, President Trump charged Pakistan with
being a false friend.
"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given
us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools," Trump declared. "They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt
in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
As for America's longest war in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year, the end is nowhere on the horizon. A week ago, the International
Hotel in Kabul was attacked and held for 13 hours by Taliban gunmen who killed 40. Midweek, a Save the Children facility in Jalalabad
was attacked by ISIS, creating panic among aid workers across the country.
Saturday, an ambulance exploded in Kabul, killing 103 people and wounding 235. Monday, Islamic State militants attacked Afghan
soldiers guarding a military academy in Kabul. With the fighting season two months off, U.S. troops will not soon be departing. If
Pakistan is indeed providing sanctuary for the terrorists of the Haqqani network, how does this war end successfully for the United
States? Last week, in a friendly fire incident, the U.S.-led coalition killed 10 Iraqi soldiers. The Iraq war began 15 years ago.
Yet another war, where the humanitarian crisis rivals Syria, continues on the Arabian Peninsula. There, a Saudi air, sea, and
land blockade that threatens the Yemeni people with starvation has failed to dislodge Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa
three years ago. This weekend brought news that secessionist rebels, backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized power in Yemen's
southern port of Aden from the Saudi-backed Hadi regime fighting the Houthis. These rebels seek to split the country, as it was before
1990.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE appear to be backing different horses in this tribal-civil-sectarian war into which America has
been drawn. There are other wars -- Somalia, Libya, Ukraine -- where the U.S. is taking sides, sending arms, training troops, flying
missions.
Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and
forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger,"
said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily,
and what we're doing."
No, we don't, Senator. As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial
city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President
and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists,
visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
"... Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger," said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing." ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
Forward Operating Base Torkham, in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan (army.mil) If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria,
could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.
Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his forces will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded.
Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the United States to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian
border with Turkey east of the Euphrates all the way to Iraq.
If the Turks attack Manbij, America will face a choice: stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.
Should the U.S. let the Turks drive the Kurds out of Manbij and the entire Syrian border area, as Erdogan threatens, American
credibility would suffer a blow from which it would not soon recover.
But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan's forces could mean a crackup of NATO and a loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including
the air base at Incirlik.
Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea. NATO's loss would thus be a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who
gave Ankara the green light to cleanse the Kurds from Afrin.
Yet Syria is but one of many challenges facing U.S. foreign policy.
The Winter Olympics in South Korea may have taken the menace of a North Korean ICBM out of the news, but no one believes that
threat is behind us.
Last week, China charged that the USS Hopper, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal,
a reef in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, though it is far closer to Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer, says China,
was chased off by one of her frigates. If we continue to contest China's territorial claims with our warships, a clash is inevitable.
In a similar incident Monday, a Russian military jet came within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance jet in international
airspace over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to end its mission.
U.S. relations with Cold War ally Pakistan are at rock bottom. In his first tweet of 2018, President Trump charged Pakistan with
being a false friend.
"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given
us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools," Trump declared. "They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt
in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
As for America's longest war in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year, the end is nowhere on the horizon. A week ago, the International
Hotel in Kabul was attacked and held for 13 hours by Taliban gunmen who killed 40. Midweek, a Save the Children facility in Jalalabad
was attacked by ISIS, creating panic among aid workers across the country.
Saturday, an ambulance exploded in Kabul, killing 103 people and wounding 235. Monday, Islamic State militants attacked Afghan
soldiers guarding a military academy in Kabul. With the fighting season two months off, U.S. troops will not soon be departing. If
Pakistan is indeed providing sanctuary for the terrorists of the Haqqani network, how does this war end successfully for the United
States? Last week, in a friendly fire incident, the U.S.-led coalition killed 10 Iraqi soldiers. The Iraq war began 15 years ago.
Yet another war, where the humanitarian crisis rivals Syria, continues on the Arabian Peninsula. There, a Saudi air, sea, and
land blockade that threatens the Yemeni people with starvation has failed to dislodge Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa
three years ago. This weekend brought news that secessionist rebels, backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized power in Yemen's
southern port of Aden from the Saudi-backed Hadi regime fighting the Houthis. These rebels seek to split the country, as it was before
1990.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE appear to be backing different horses in this tribal-civil-sectarian war into which America has
been drawn. There are other wars -- Somalia, Libya, Ukraine -- where the U.S. is taking sides, sending arms, training troops, flying
missions.
Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and
forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger,"
said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily,
and what we're doing."
No, we don't, Senator. As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial
city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President
and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists,
visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
"... By Major Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, ..."
"... He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at ..."
"... and check out his new podcast ..."
"... . Originally published at TomDispatch ..."
"... On Strategy : A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, ..."
"... Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... A Better War : The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ..."
"... Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... On Strategy ..."
"... Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... War Comes to Long An ..."
"... I. Laying Plans ..."
"... 1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. ..."
"... 2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. ..."
"... 3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field. ..."
"... 4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline. ..."
"... 5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger. ..."
"... 7. Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons. ..."
"... 8. Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death. ..."
"... 9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness. ..."
"... 10. By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure. ..."
"... 11. These five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will fail. ..."
"... 12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:– ..."
"... 13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth? (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment? ..."
"... 14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat. ..."
"... 15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat:–let such a one be dismissed! ..."
"... The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation. ..."
"... Chaque fois que les incidents de guerre obligent l'un de nos officiers à agir contre un village [ ], il ne doit pas perdre de vue que son premier soin, la soumission des habitants obtenue, sera de reconstruire le village, d'y créer un marché, d'y établir une école. C'est de l'action de la politique et de la force que doit résulter la pacification du pays et l'organisation à lui donner plus tard. ..."
"... Every time one of our officers is forced to act against a village because of war incidents, he must not lose sight of his first concern, which, after the submission of the inhabitants, is to rebuild the village, to create a market, to establish a school. It is the joint action of policy and force that must result in the pacification of the country and in its later organization. ..."
"... The Bridge on the River Kwai ..."
"... A Bright Shining Lie ..."
"... The Best and the Brightest ..."
"... The Ugly American is a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The Ugly American depicts the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps, whose insensitivity to local language, culture, customs and refusal to integrate was in marked contrast to the polished abilities of Eastern Bloc (primarily Soviet) diplomacy and led to Communist diplomatic success overseas [sic]. The book caused a sensation in diplomatic circles. John F. Kennedy was so impressed with the book that he sent a copy to each of his colleagues in the United States Senate. The book was one of the biggest bestsellers in the country, has been in print continuously since it appeared and is one of the most politically influential novels in all of American literature. ..."
"... The title of the novel is a play on Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American and was sometimes confused with it. ..."
"... The "Ugly American" of the book title refers to the book's hero, plain-looking engineer Homer Atkins, whose "calloused and grease-blackened hands always reminded him that he was an ugly man." Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their needs, and offers genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump.[2] ..."
"... as it very properly attempted to conceal from the Japanese, ..."
By Major Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West
Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a
memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War,Ghost Riders of Baghdad:
Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge . He lives with his wife and four sons
in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at@SkepticalVetand check out his new podcastFortress on
a Hill. Originally published at TomDispatch
[Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an
unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of
the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]
Vietnam: it's always there. Looming in the past, informing American futures.
A 50-year-old war, once labeled the longest in our history, is still alive and well and
still being refought by one group of Americans: the military high command. And almost half a
century later, they're still losing it and blaming others for doing so.
Of course, the U.S. military and Washington policymakers lost the war in Vietnam in the
previous century and perhaps it's well that they did. The United States really had no business
intervening in that anti-colonial civil war in the first place, supporting a South Vietnamese
government of questionable legitimacy, and stifling promised nationwide elections on both sides
of that country's artificial border. In doing so, Washington presented an easy villain for a
North Vietnamese-backed National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency, a group known to Americans
in those years as the Vietcong.
More than two decades of involvement and, at the war's peak, half a million American troops
never altered the basic weakness of the U.S.-backed regime in Saigon. Despite millions of Asian
deaths and 58,000 American ones, South Vietnam's military could not, in the end, hold the line
without American support and finally collapsed under the weight of a conventional North
Vietnamese invasion in April 1975.
There's just one thing. Though a majority of historians (known in academia as the "orthodox"
school) subscribe to the basic contours of the above narrative, the vast majority of senior
American military officers do not. Instead, they're still refighting the Vietnam War to a far
cheerier outcome through the books they read, the scholarship they publish, and (most
disturbingly) the policies they continue to pursue in the Greater Middle East.
The Big Re-Write
In 1986, future general, Iraq-Afghan War commander, and CIA director David Petraeus penned
an article
for the military journal Parameters that summarized his Princeton doctoral
dissertation on the Vietnam War. It was a piece commensurate with then-Major Petraeus's
impressive intellect, except for its disastrous conclusions on the lessons of that war. Though
he did observe that Vietnam had "cost
the military dearly" and that "the frustrations of Vietnam are deeply etched in the minds of
those who lead the services," his real fear was that the war had left the military unprepared
to wage what were then called "low-intensity conflicts" and are now known as
counterinsurgencies. His takeaway: what the country needed wasn't less Vietnams but
better-fought ones. The next time, he concluded fatefully, the military should do a far better
job of implementing counterinsurgency forces, equipment, tactics, and doctrine to win such
wars.
Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed present itself in Iraq, he
and a whole generation of COINdinistas (like-minded officers
devoted to his favored counterinsurgency approach to modern warfare) embraced those very
conclusions to win the war on terror. The names of some of them -- H.R. McMaster and James
Mattis, for instance -- should ring a bell or two these days. In Iraq and later in Afghanistan,
Petraeus and his acolytes would get their chance to translate theory into practice. Americans
-- and much of the rest of the planet -- still live with the results.
Like Petraeus, an entire generation of senior military leaders, commissioned in the years
after the Vietnam War and now atop the defense behemoth, remain fixated on that ancient
conflict. After all these decades, such "thinking" generals and "soldier-scholars" continue to
draw all the wrong lessons from what, thanks in part to them, has now become America's
second longest war.
Rival Schools
Historian Gary Hess identifies two main schools
of revisionist thinking. There are the "Clausewitzians" (named after the nineteenth century
Prussian military theorist) who insist that Washington never sufficiently attacked the enemy's
true center of gravity in North Vietnam. Beneath the academic language, they essentially agree
on one key thing: the U.S. military should have bombed the North into a parking lot.
The second school, including Petraeus, Hess labeled the "hearts-and-minders." As
COINdinistas, they felt the war effort never focused clearly enough on isolating the Vietcong,
protecting local villages in the South, building schools, and handing out candy -- everything,
in short, that might have won (in the phrase of that era) Vietnamese hearts and minds.
Both schools, however, agreed on something basic: that the U.S. military should have won in
Vietnam.
The danger presented by either school is clear enough in the twenty-first century. Senior
commanders, some now serving in key national security positions, fixated on Vietnam, have
translated that conflict's supposed lessons into what now passes for military strategy in
Washington. The
result has been an ever-expanding war on terror campaign waged ceaselessly from South Asia
to West Africa, which has essentially turned out to be perpetual war based on the can-do belief
that counterinsurgency and advise-and-assist missions should have worked in Vietnam and can
work now.
The Go-Big Option
The leading voice of the Clausewitzian school was U.S. Army Colonel and Korean War/Vietnam
War vet Harry Summers, whose 1982 book, On Strategy : A
Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, became an instant classic within the military. It's
easy enough to understand why. Summers argued that civilian policymakers -- not the military
rank-and-file -- had lost the war by focusing hopelessly on the insurgency in South Vietnam
rather than on the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. More troops, more aggressiveness, even
full-scale invasions of communist safe havens in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, would have
led to victory.
Summers had a deep emotional investment in his topic.
Later , he would argue that the source of post-war pessimistic analyses of the conflict lay
in "draft dodgers and war evaders still [struggling] with their consciences." In his own work,
Summers marginalized all Vietnamese actors (as would so many later military historians), failed
to adequately deal with the potential consequences, nuclear or otherwise, of the sorts of
escalation he advocated, and didn't even bother to ask whether Vietnam was a core national
security interest of the United States.
Perhaps he would have done well to reconsider a famous post-war
encounter he had with a North Vietnamese officer, a Colonel Tu, whom he assured that "you
know you never beat us on the battlefield."
"That may be so," replied his former enemy, "but it is also irrelevant."
Whatever its limitations, his work remains influential in military circles to this day. (I
was assigned the book as a West Point cadet!)
A more sophisticated Clausewitzian analysis came from current National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster in a highly acclaimed 1997 book, Dereliction of
Duty . He argued that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were derelict in failing to give
President Lyndon Johnson an honest appraisal of what it would take to win, which meant that
"the nation went to war without the benefit of effective military advice." He concluded that
the war was lost not in the field or by the media or even on antiwar college campuses, but in
Washington, D.C., through a failure of nerve by the Pentagon's generals, which led civilian
officials to opt for a deficient strategy.
McMaster is a genuine scholar and a gifted writer, but he still suggested that the Joint
Chiefs should have advocated for a more aggressive offensive strategy -- a full ground invasion
of the North or unrelenting carpet-bombing of that country. In this sense, he was just another
"go-big" Clausewitzian who, as historian Ronald Spector pointed
out recently, ignored Vietnamese views and failed to acknowledge -- an observation
of historian Edward Miller -- that "the Vietnam War was a Vietnamese war."
COIN: A Small (Forever) War
Another Vietnam veteran, retired Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Krepinevich, fired the opening
salvo for the hearts-and-minders. In The Army and Vietnam , published in 1986, he
argued
that the NLF, not the North Vietnamese Army, was the enemy's chief center of gravity and that
the American military's failure to emphasize counterinsurgency principles over conventional
concepts of war sealed its fate. While such arguments were, in reality, no more
impressive than those of the Clausewitzians, they have remained popular with military
audiences, as historian Dale Andrade points
out , because they offer a "simple explanation for the defeat in Vietnam."
Krepinevich would write an influential 2005 Foreign Affairspiece , "How to Win
in Iraq," in which he applied his Vietnam conclusions to a new strategy of prolonged
counterinsurgency in the Middle East, quickly winning over the New
York Times 's resident conservative columnist, David Brooks, and generating "discussion in
the Pentagon, CIA, American Embassy in Baghdad, and the office of the vice president."
In 1999, retired army officer and Vietnam veteran Lewis Sorley penned the definitive
hearts-and-minds tract, A Better War : The
Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam . Sorley boldly
asserted
that, by the spring of 1970, "the fighting wasn't over, but the war was won." According to his
comforting tale, the real explanation for failure lay with the "big-war" strategy of U.S.
commander General William Westmoreland. The counterinsurgency strategy of his successor,
General Creighton Abrams -- Sorley's knight in shining armor -- was (or at least should have
been) a war winner.
Critics
noted that Sorley overemphasized the marginal differences between the two generals'
strategies and produced a remarkably counterfactual work. It didn't matter, however. By 2005,
just as the situation in Iraq, a country then locked in a sectarian civil war amid an American
occupation, went from bad to worse, Sorley's book found
its way into the hands of the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, and State
Department counselor Philip Zelikow. By then, according
to the Washington Post 's David Ignatius, it could also "be found on the
bookshelves of senior military officers in Baghdad."
Another influential hearts-and-minds devotee was Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl. (He even
made it
onto The Daily Show with Jon Stewart .) His Learning to Eat Soup with
a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam followed Krepinevich in
claiming that "if [Creighton] Abrams had gotten the call to lead the American effort at the
start of the war, America might very well have won it." In 2006, the Wall Street
Journalreported that Army Chief of Staff
General Peter Schoomaker "so liked [Nagl's] book that he made it required reading for all
four-star generals," while the Iraq War commander of that moment, General George Casey, gave
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a copy during a visit to Baghdad.
David Petraeus and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, co-authors in 2006 of
FM 3-24, the first ( New York Times -reviewed ) military field manual for counterinsurgency since
Vietnam, must also be considered among the pantheon of hearts-and-minders. Nagl wrote a
foreword for their manual,
while Krepinevich provided a glowing back-cover endorsement .
Such revisionist interpretations would prove tragic in Iraq and Afghanistan, once they had
filtered down to the entire officer corps.
Reading All the Wrong Books
In 2009, when former West Point history professor Colonel Gregory Daddis was deployed
to Iraq as the command historian for the Multinational Corps -- the military's primary tactical
headquarters -- he noted that corps commander Lieutenant General Charles Jacoby had assigned a
professional reading list to his principal subordinates. To his disappointment, Daddis also
discovered that the only Vietnam War book included was Sorley's A Better War . This
should have surprised no one, since his argument -- that American soldiers in Vietnam
were
denied an impending victory by civilian policymakers, a liberal media, and antiwar protestors
-- was still resonant among the officer corps in year six of the Iraq quagmire. It wasn't the
military's fault!
Officers have long distributed professional reading lists for subordinates, intellectual
guideposts to the complex challenges ahead. Indeed, there's much to be admired in the concept,
but also potential dangers in such lists as they inevitably influence the thinking of an entire
generation of future leaders. In the case of Vietnam, the perils are obvious. The generals have
been assigning and reading problematic books for years, works that were essentially meant to
reinforce professional pride in the midst of a series of unsuccessful and unending wars.
Just after 9/11, for instance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers -- who spoke at my
West Point graduation -- included Summers's On
Strategy on his list. A few years later, then-Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker
added
McMaster's Dereliction of Duty . The trend continues today. Marine Corps Commandant
Robert Neller has kept McMaster and added Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (he of the
illegal bombing of both Laos and Cambodia and war
criminal fame). Current Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley kept Kissinger and
added good
old Lewis Sorley. To top it all off, Secretary of Defense Mattis has included
yet another Kissinger book and, in a different list , Krepinevich's
The Army and Vietnam .
Just as important as which books made the lists is what's missing from them: none of these
senior commanders include newer scholarship
,
novels , or journalistic accounts which might raise thorny, uncomfortable questions about
whether the Vietnam War was winnable, necessary, or advisable, or incorporate local voices that
might highlight the limits of American influence and power.
Serving in the Shadow of Vietnam
Most of the generals leading the war on terror just missed service in the Vietnam War. They
graduated from various colleges or West Point in the years immediately following the withdrawal
of most U.S. ground troops or thereafter: Petraeus in
1974 , future Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal in 1976 , and present National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster in 1984 .
Secretary of Defense Mattis finished ROTC and graduated from Central Washington University in
1971 , while
Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam War, receiving his
commission in 1976
.
In other words, the generation of officers now overseeing the still-spreading war on terror
entered military service at the end of or after the tragic war in Southeast Asia. That meant
they narrowly escaped combat duty in the bloodiest American conflict since World War II and so
the professional credibility that went with it. They were mentored and taught by academy
tactical officers, ROTC instructors, and commanders who had cut their teeth on that conflict.
Vietnam literally dominated the discourse of their era -- and it's never ended.
Petraeus, Mattis, McMaster, and the others entered service when military prestige had
reached a nadir or was just rebounding. And those reading lists taught the young officers where
to lay the blame for that -- on civilians in Washington (or in the nation's streets) or on a
military high command too weak to assert its authority effectively. They would serve in
Vietnam's shadow, the shadow of defeat, and the conclusions they would draw from it would only
lead to twenty-first-century disasters.
From Vietnam to the War on Terror to Generational War
All of this misremembering, all of those Vietnam "lessons" inform the U.S. military's
ongoing "surges" and "advise-and-assist" approaches to its wars in the Greater Middle East and
Africa. Representatives of both Vietnam revisionist schools now guide the development of the
Trump administration's version of global strategy. President Trump's in-house Clausewitzians
clamor for -- and receive
-- ever more delegated authority to do their damnedest and what retired General (and Vietnam
vet) Edward Meyer called for
back in 1983: "a freer hand in waging war than they had in Vietnam." In other words, more
bombs, more troops, and carte blanche to escalate such conflicts to their hearts' content.
Meanwhile, President Trump's hearts-and-minds faction consists of officers who have spent
three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to approximately 70%
of the world's nations. Furthermore, they've recently fought for and been granted a new
"mini-surge" in Afghanistan intended to -- in disturbingly Vietnam-esque language -- "break the
deadlock ," "reverse the decline," and "end the
stalemate " there. Never mind that neither 100,000 U.S. troops (when I was
there in 2011) nor 16 full years of combat could, in the term of the trade, "stabilize"
Afghanistan. The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced
Trump that -- despite his original
instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or
6,000 or 7,000) more troops (and yet more
drones ,
planes , and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents tragedy bordering on
farce.
The hearts and minders and Clausewitzians atop the military establishment since 9/11 are
never likely to stop citing their versions of the Vietnam War as the key to victory today; that
is, they will never stop focusing on a war that was always unwinnable and never worth fighting.
None of today's acclaimed military personalities seems willing to consider that Washington
couldn't have won in Vietnam because, as former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak (who
flew
269 combat missions over that country) noted in the
recent Ken Burns documentary series, "we were fighting on the wrong side."
Today's leaders don't even pretend that the post-9/11 wars will ever end. In an interview
last June, Petraeus -- still considered a sagacious guru of the Defense establishment --
disturbingly described the Afghan conflict as " generational ." Eerily
enough, to cite a Vietnam-era precedent, General Creighton Abrams predicted something similar.
speaking to the White House as the war in Southeast Asia was winding down. Even as President
Richard Nixon slowly withdrew U.S. forces, handing over their duties to the South Vietnamese
Army (ARVN) -- a process known then as "Vietnamization" -- the general warned
that, despite ARVN improvements, continued U.S. support "would be required indefinitely to
maintain an effective force." Vietnam, too, had its "generational" side (until, of course, it
didn't).
That war and its ill-fated lessons will undoubtedly continue to influence U.S. commanders
until a new set of myths, explaining away a new set of failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere, take over, possibly thanks to books by veterans of these conflicts about how
Washington could have won the war on terror.
It's not that our generals don't read. They do. They just doggedly continue to read the
wrong books.
In 1986, General Petraeus ended his influential Parametersarticle
with a quote from historian George Herring: "Each historical situation is unique and the use of
analogy is at best misleading, at worst, dangerous." When it comes to Vietnam and a cohort of
officers shaped in its shadow (and even now convinced it could have been won), "dangerous"
hardly describes the results. They've helped bring us generational war and, for today's young
soldiers, ceaseless tragedy.
I know there is a book with the name; "The Arrogance of Power", but it is apt when applied
to US attempt to obliterate the nation of Vietnam. We continue to spread this filthy type of
"war" around the globe only because we have not really met our "match" but, we will .oh yes,
we will. Every book that has been written about either the war itself or the tactics used to
try to "win" has contributed to more understanding of that brutal war. The military must
relearn the rule of war that war itself alone cannot win, it takes the political side also.
It has been infernally "easy" since 9/11 for the politicians, the military industrial complex
to construct a world of "terror" and most Americans believe in that world. It has been
immensely profitable. No compulsory military service; a bunch of "little" wars around the
globe being run by private enterprises; no excess war profits taxes; a Pentagon budget that
includes the propagandizing of the American sports public .and on and on and on. What's not
to like for the profit mongers and the ideologically bent?? Ho Chi Min and the people of
Vietnam were outright betrayed by WW1 (just like the Arabs) treaties; by the US in it's
treatment of Vietnam in the treaties of WW2 (Roosevelt died but he already had an
understanding with the French (DeGaulle)) to not interfere with their retaking over of
Vietnam after WW2 so as to get French cooperation with the birth of NATO.
May I add another book: "Ho Chi Min" "A Life" William J. Duiker. Pub. 2000.
Well if they are looking for good books on 'Nam, might I suggest some of the books from my
own collection?
"Long Time Passing" – Myra MacPherson
"About Face" – David H. Hackworth
"Nam" – Mark Baker
"Dispatches" – Michael Herr
"One Soldier"- John H. Shook
"The Only War We Had" – Michael Lee Lanning
"To Heal a Nation" – Jan C. Scruggs
Also, the novel (based on the authors experience as an NVA soldier), 'The Sorrows of War'
by Bao Ninh. It shows many NVA soldiers were as cynical of their political masters as the
average US grunt.
Oh, I'd forgotten 'The Quiet American', incredible book – I kept having to check the
inside page when I read it to confirm that it was in fact written before the Vietnam War
– its prescience was amazing. It should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in
foreign policy of any type.
George Martin Windrow's "The Last Valley" (1996) displaces Bernard Fall as the definitive
work on Dien Bien Phu, prelude to America's debacle. I work a lot in Vietnam, and his
description of how their society organizes and moblilizes is spot on. He also has blood
curdling descriptions of what artillery does to human bodies. And there is the entertaining
interlude where the US briefly entertained atomic bombing to break the siege.
From Bernard Fall's Newport lecture at the Naval War College in about 1964:
"Let me state this definition: RW = G + P, or, "revolutionary warfare equals guerrilla
warfare plus political action." This formula for revolutionary warfare is the result of the
application of guerrilla methods to the furtherance of an ideology or a political system.
This is the real difference between partisan warfare, guerrilla warfare, and everything else.
"Guerrilla" simply means "small war," to which the correct Army answer is (and that applies
to all Western armies) that everybody knows how to fight small wars; no second lieutenant of
the infantry ever learns anything else but how to fight small wars. Political action,
however, is the difference. The communists, or shall we say, any sound revolutionary warfare
operator (the French underground, the Norwegian underground, or any other European anti-Nazi
underground) most of the time used small-war tactics–not to destroy the German Army, of
which they were thoroughly incapable, but to establish a competitive system of control over
the population. Of course, in order to do this, here and there they had to kill some of the
occupying forces and attack some of the military targets. But above all they had to kill
their own people who collaborated with the enemy."
Also worth a look: War Comes to Long An by Jeffrey Race, which essentially
discloses that the U.S. war effort, as understood by the Vietnamese themselves, was to keep
the French colonial oligarchy in place.
Race learned Vietnamese on the boat over to Vietnam and interviewed the Vietnamese
themselves to find out why they continued to fight. Basically, the oligarchy promised only
continued oppression by the rentiers.
I didn't need to read books about Vietnam. I simply listened to the stories and night-time
screams of my new roommates returning to school on the GI Bill in '68 and '69. The lives
ruined, on both sides, stays with me today.
One of those room-mates was on Hamburger Hill in May of '69 and was attempting college in
the Fall. PTSD was apparent and he soon enough dropped out (of life).
The sad part is we Americans do everything we keep to keep snatching defeat from victory's
teeth. The Vietnamese as a whole were happy with us before our government (read CIA)
sabotaged the elections, and handed power over to the Catholic minority and its most corrupt
part at that. (When you have to pay/bribe someone for artillery support during a battle ) Ho
Chi Min and company did not ally themselves to their worst enemy, the Chinese, because they
wanted too.
Same with Iraq. It was probably unwindable, but scrapping detailed State Department plans
on what when, and if, Iraq was occupied because you don't want to spend the money, defend
only the oil ministry's offices, let the entire country just collapse, and then fire not only
anyone a member of the Ba'ath Party as well as the entire Iraqi Army. Of course, if wanted to
be a teacher or have a job in the government, you had to be a Ba'athist, and to secure any of
the weapons and ammunition of the army is something. I am not what that something is, but
it's really something. And then the Bush Administration basically says it's going to invade
Iran once everything settles, which gave the Iranians incentive to keep arming anyone in Iraq
fighting the Americans and British.
I am raaaanting now and I can feel my blood rising so I am gonna stop now. It's just so
hard seeing our government's foreign policy and its intelligence services being run by well
educated morons.
Can't comment on Iraq, but Vietnam was a MAJOR F-up by USA. Ho Chi Min was actually very
much pro-USA – until they handed them back to French after WW2.
With even a bit of US support Vietnam could have been fairly firmly pro-US (it always was
anti-China, so the "it will go to Chinese like Koreans did" fears were fearmongering/PR at
worst and lack of understanding at best), aiming to build a sort of social-democratic regime
rather than full-on Communist one. Yes, it would have upset the French. What's not to like,
given how deGaule was trying to screw everyone around to push their national interests? (much
better than British at the time, one should say).
The Cold War was spinning up in Europe, and the U.S. was trying to get France on its side.
The price for that was allowing France to attempt to reassert itself in Indochina.
I know the usual excuse – but there was about zero chance that France would really
go into bed with USSR.
deGaule definitely threatened it, but I very much doubt he would go the full hog –
if nothing else, he didn't want to be anyone's, and that included USSR's, puppet. At the very
very worst, they might end up Yugoslavia-like, although I'd say that once proto-EU was cooked
up, France would jump there pretty quick, as otherwise it would have lost pretty much all
influence in Europe.
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were all, arguably, 'winnable' – the common thread in
all three is the US failure to understand local political dynamics. With Vietnam, it was the
failure to understand that what was happening was primarily a civil war with the 'Communists'
not necessarily being anti-American – they saw (and still see) China as their long
historical enemy. In Iraq the dismembering of the existing Ba'ath party structures without
having anything (apart from the free market of course) to replace it proved fatal, along with
an ignorance of Shia/Sunni dynamics. In Afghanistan the 'victory' was blown by an insistence
on chasing phantom Al-Q enemies when the Taliban was more or less destroyed.
When you read the history of long lived empires, from Rome to the British Empire, a common
characteristic they all have is an acute awareness of how to manipulate local dynamics in
order to maintain control without expending too much manpower. The US military seems to
completely lack this capacity. In fact, rather than being in charge, a common feature seems
to be that US military power is all too easily manipulated by local powerbrokers for their
own ends.
Yep, I'll sign under that. I do wonder how much it has to do with the American psyche, and
how much with the fact that even British or Roman empires had sort of hard limitations (not
just in terms of manpower, but more importantly in the ability to get the manpower to the
sharp end pronto).
I think an element of it is quite simply the sheer wealth and power of America means it
doesn't have to think through the consequences of interventions too much. Even in the heyday
of the European empires, military adventures were very expensive operations – two or
three failures in a row could fatally set an empire back.
I think another major issue is the lack of skin in the game for decision makers. I think
the early days of WWII was the last time there was a major cull of military officers for
incompetence in the US. And even in WWII, it was rare for officers to get killed. Even more
so since then, and with the ending of the draft, it means no risks for their sons or
daughters, and minimal ones for anyone they would be likely to know.
There is simply little or no price paid for failure. At least not by the people
responsible.
"All, arguably, winnable." For what definition of "WIN?"
Our military rulers are supposed to "study war." The curriculum supposedly includes not
only Clausewitz, Mr. "Center of Gravity," on "modern" war, but also that hoary old classic
under the nom de plume "Sun Tzu," called "The Art of War." Said rulers, for some reason, skip
over the first part of Sun Tzu's advice, the part about asking whether going to war is wise
at all, at all:
I. Laying Plans
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.
2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a
subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.
3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into
account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the
field.
4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method
and discipline.
5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so
that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
7. Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.
8. Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and
narrow passes; the chances of life and death.
9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and
strictness.
10. By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its
proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by
which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.
11. These five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be
victorious; he who knows them not will fail.
12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military
conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:–
13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two
generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?
(4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On
which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater
constancy both in reward and punishment?
14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.
15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a
one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it,
will suffer defeat:–let such a one be dismissed!http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html
There's a lot more in "The Art of War" about the idiocy of doofus war-fighting in absence
of the Moral Law and true national interest at the end of immense logistics and supply
chains, war that bankrupts the peasants, getting stuck in quagmires and such. The current
rulers just jump (if they pay any attention at all to the work any more) straight to all the
chestnuts ("All war is deception," duh, "Attack where he is weak, retreat where he is
strong," duh) about how to conduct strategy and tactics.
When was the last time any of these fundamental "Think before shooting" considerations Sun
Tzu distilled from millennia of earlier wars and his own experiences was given ANY attention
by the rotter nihilists ("Mutual Assured Destruction, Massive Retaliation, "counterinsurgency
always and everywhere, the F-35 model of logistics?) who commit "the nation" and the peasants
to their programs and "operations"? And even the attempts to "get the peasants on side" via
Bernays saucing, one of the necessary conditions per Sun Tzu, have been completely bollixed,
or simply plowed over.
All this sh!t-storm activity is conducted from within the same kind of bubble that got
inflated around the French High Command in the run up to the Great War, and seems to
regularly envelop "high commands" which are maybe experiencing a "contact high" from
breathing, inside that bubble, the heady fumes of their self-generated hallucinogenic
"designer drugs."
Many of our cities and towns already look a lot like Fallujah and Raqqa after
"liberation-by-destruction." Waiting for a massive collapse, maybe slow-mo or maybe
tipping-point quick, with huge collateral damage, in three, two, one
The problem is, many will argue that the parts of Sun Tzu you so correctly pointed out
aren't really the US military's job, they are the responsibility of the US Congress.
But something other than "Congress" is what's loosing the dogs of war. There's how it's
supposed to work, on paper, per that "quaint document," and how it actually works. Like so
much of "the Republic." Which ain't.
"When you read the history of long lived empires, from Rome to the British Empire, a
common characteristic they all have is an acute awareness of how to manipulate local dynamics
in order to maintain control without expending too much manpower."
+ 100
It won't surprise readers that Petraeus' "masterpiece" on counterinsurgency bears a strong
similarity to a publication by the late Sir Frank Kitson. Sir Frank commanded British forces
in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and UK Land Forces soon after. He also served in colonial
insurgencies in the 1950s. Kitson gave a talk, based on his publication, on such matters to
his alma mater, which I attended, in the mid-1980s. He was also the speaker at "speech day"
around then.
When the Iraq and Afghanistan War started, the British military were full of confidence
that their experience in counterinsurgency would allow them to show the US how it was done.
They had to be rescued in somewhat ignominious manner from both Basra and Kandahar as they
were shown to be completely out of their depth. It is part of British Army mythology that
they defeated the IRA using sound and sensible COIN, but the reality is much more
complicated.
Incidentally, it is said that Mao (and possibly Ho Chi Minh too) were avid readers of the
biographies of early 20th Century IRA leaders, including Michael Collins and Tom Barry, both
experts in counter-counter insurgency. Tom Barry was the leader of the most effective unit,
the West Cork Brigade. Collins was a master in using intelligence against intelligence
services, while Tom Barry was capable of using limited resources to keep an enormous number
of soldiers tied up. Both knew the skills of provoking the State into over-reactions which
pushed civilians over onto the rebels side.
Yes – despite its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement the British Government
is still sitting on files which would likely shed light on the dirty war in Northern Ireland.
Its pretty clear that both the main loyalist groups were to a large extent run by the
intelligence services to kill suspected IRA members, and were very likely involved in
bombings that resulted in mass casualties in Dublin and Monaghan. While they did undoubtedly
manage to neutralise some IRA Units in reality they stoked up as much violence as they
stopped.
In advance of a Corbyn government, many papers, some going back to the smearing of Labour
in the 1920s, have been "lost". The cache lost include the papers on the "sexed up dodgy
dossier", written by the UK's current envoy to the UN (Matthew Ryecroft) and sexed up by the
loathsome Alistair Campbell, and the death of the weapons inspector. The form of death
officially recorded, as with George Michael's, is disputed by many pathologists, including
former colleagues of my father.
Indeed. Document "disappearance" is a serious problem, with a long history, addressed
pretty well in Ian Cobain's recent title The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the
Shaping of a Modern Nation.
Whatever approach Petraeus & Co proposed, "hearts and minds" counter-insurgency was
basically a century old. Here:
Chaque fois que les incidents de guerre obligent l'un de nos officiers à agir
contre un village [ ], il ne doit pas perdre de vue que son premier soin, la soumission des
habitants obtenue, sera de reconstruire le village, d'y créer un marché, d'y
établir une école. C'est de l'action de la politique et de la force que doit
résulter la pacification du pays et l'organisation à lui donner plus
tard.
I.e. Every time one of our officers is forced to act against a village because of war
incidents, he must not lose sight of his first concern, which, after the submission of the
inhabitants, is to rebuild the village, to create a market, to establish a school. It is the
joint action of policy and force that must result in the pacification of the country and in
its later organization.
From the "fundamental instructions" of General Gallieni from 22nd May 1898, in the midst
of the "pacification" of Madagascar. Its estimated death toll was about 100000.
These generals remind me of the character of Colonel Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness)
in The Bridge on the River Kwai . They're so focused on the task in front of them,
they can't seem to step back and think about the wider picture.
In the Netflix film The Siege of Jadotville ,
the real life Commandant Pat Quinlan is quoted as saying 'Soldiers do tactics, politicians do
strategy'. The US miliitary always seems to have a surfeit of tactics with no discernable
strategy.
And of course Nicholson, at the end of the film, was going to stop the demolition of that
so painfully built bridge by the "inglorious bastards" on his nominal own team. Only dumb
luck and the timing of a bullet from a "Jap" led to his falling on the detonator as he died,
and blowing up the span .
re: wider picture.
The wider picture is the political picture. The military in the US is supposed to be and
remain non-political. The politicians send the military to wars. The military does not choose
what war, where, why to fight. Those decisions are Congress and the prez's job.
adding: When then (2003) Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told the Senate Armed
Services Committee the truth about what an Iraq invasion required he displeased the Bush
admin and DoD, and was shortly edged out of his command by retirement. That in-essence
"sacking" had a large effect on the thinking of the entire chain of command, imo.
Thank you Yves for posting this article. It is rather disheartening but explains a lot of
what I have been wondering about for years – Didn't we learn anything from Vietnam?
Obviously the answer is no; but even worse is the attitude of "we could/should have won"
displayed by the current military brass.
I remarked to wifey the other day that kids who were only a year old on 9/11 will be old
enough to join the military this year
I first heard of Ghost Riders of Baghdad by following various military Twitter accounts,
like Angry Staff Officer, or the account of Robert Bateman ( who sometimes writes for
Esquire). Angry Staff officer also has a blog with very informative posts. I thought of, Is
The Amy's Professional Military Education Broken?, after reading the above post. A sample, "
All military education must stem from the fundamental that war is a human endeavor, and as
such cannot be prosecuted without understanding basic factors of humanity".
https://angrystaffofficer.com/2017/07/18/is-the-armys-professional-military-education-system-broken/
It is never mentioned here but how about the possibility that some wars simply cannot be
won – ever. It is not for nothing that Afghanistan is know as the place that empires go
to die nor that a geopolitical axiom is to never fight a land war in Asia. There was no
possible time-line where the US won in Vietnam using either military means or COIN
operations. The terrible truth is that most of those 58,00 Americans died long after it was
know that they could never win.
The COINdinistas had their chance in Iraq but younger offices at the time were furious with
senior officers in how out of touch they were with what was going on so it was a repeat of
the Vietnam experience all over again, including the notorious body-counts. And this whole
we-would-have-won-if-not-for-the-politicians-and-hippies is as much crap as the post WW1
German officers with their we-were-stabbed-in-the-back obsession. I see this even here in
Australia. Years ago I saw an Army show that featured the history of the Army. When they got
to the Vietnam war era they had Aussie soldiers naming the dead bodies in a mock-up of the
Battle of Long Tan while of the other side of the arena they had hippies shouting peace
slogans and the like. The message was clear – you betrayed us!
And that "you never beat us on the battlefield" was apparently not true either according to
an article I read last year setting out a few hard truths. The truth is that the training of
American officers is badly broken and that sycophants do very well in it. The whole system
needs to be junked as America is not bringing out the best officers that it can – not
by a long shot – and it was this system that produced leaders like Petraeus. They may
have been presented as the Great White Hope once but I invite other commentators find out how
his superior, Admiral William Fallon, regarded him. Nothing less than a root and branch
overhaul of the American officer training regime will counter how we see wars being fought
now. Otherwise we will continue to see more of the same.
Its worse than that: the US military is the cutting edge of a political Imperialist policy
completely contradicted by the
21st C environment. This is failure at the DNA level.
Two things that need to be understand about the Vietnam war that the US military does not
get.
The first is that the US did not lose the Vietnam war, we were beaten by the Vietnamese.
If we just "lost" the war, then all the "Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics" crap where the
only to lose is through a failure of will, (protesters and namby-pamby members of Congress)
becomes the dominant explanation.
We were beaten, and so we need to know why our military was beaten, and what the
military/Pentagon did wrong.
The second thing is the idea that the
Vietnamese won no battles in the war is patently false .
There are at least 70 battles that were lost.
The reason that the Pentagon insists on ignoring both of these is because the "stab in the
back from protesters" means that there is no accountability for the failures of our
military.
So, like the Bourbon kings, our military has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
The article states "Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed
present itself in Iraq "
In fact, the next Vietnam-like quagmire was engineered much sooner than that, and is still
running.
From an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, US National Security Adviser at the time:
" it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the
opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the
president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a
Soviet military intervention The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote
to President Carter, essentially: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its
Vietnam war.' " http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
Popular insurgencies can be beaten. There are many examples, especially in Latin America.
The common enabling condition appears to be exhaustion of the peasantry over a period of
years, after which they choose 'peace and order' enforced by thugs with badges over the
guerrillas who cannot restore economic life, even in 'liberated zones'.
Pastoral mountain tribesmen are probably the least susceptible to this exhaustion and
subjugation can take generations: witness the Scots.
I think you're getting at something that the win/lose focus misses: whether or not the US
ultimately failed to maintain a client regime in Vietnam, it brutally demonstrated the costs
of resistance.
In Yves' intro she writes
but decided to stay at war because they deemed the damage to US prestige of winding down
the war to be too great.
US prestige = certainty of monumental costs to resistance. Prestige is honorspeak for
legitimate terrorism.
I think you are missing the point of all of this and in fact trivializing the war.
Vietnam was not a popular insurgency (whatever that means). It was an all out war to rid
that nation of colonial domination and unify the country. It was not the "Viet Namese war"
for these people, but the war against America.
"Popular insurgency" is the Orwellian term used by those in power. A good example is the
American war of independence. From the British Empire's point of view, it was a "popular
insurgency".
It would be instructive if you could define "popular insurgency" more clearly and provide
some context.
The issue is that they can only be done by governments in their own nations or the nations
that they are very close by.
Even then, the success record is mixed and it requires a willingness to be totally
ruthless. Otherwise the subjugated people eventually will be able to win some form of
independence, like the Irish.
The US is different. It is dealing with self inflicted and totally pointless wars in the
Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan.
The insurgencies in Latin America can hardly be compared to Vietnam, as they were for the
most part beaten by CIA dirty work rather than crushed by a full-on military operation.
The long, sad record is so awful, maybe we just turn over the whole military to the Civil
Air patrol and the Coast Guard! They could not possibly do worse, and might be much
better!
In no time flat, either of those organizations (already peopled by nascent Petraeuses and
Mattises) would revert to the mean that we already know too well. Nice thought, though. The
Coast Guard's multi-missions mission: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missions_of_the_United_States_Coast_Guard
Unlike all the other "branches" of the MIC hydra, the CG suffers from cost cutting and
neoliberalism. "More and more work, for fewer and fewer people, for less and less money,
under tighter and tighter constraints, with every more detailed metrics " and their recent
acquisitions of new cutters are kind of F-35/littoral-combat-ships-ish "Billions Later, Plan
to Remake the Coast Guard Fleet Stumbles," http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/us/09ship.html
One thing that is rarely, if ever, mentioned is the type of person who joins the officer
corps. The school I attended has produced (British) generals and admirals (only, not the
ranks). Many, if not most, of the pupils who joined, or were encouraged to join, and only as
officers were considered dunces. Goodness knows what the soldiers and sailors, especially
NCOs, thought of the "young ruperts".
One contemporary, now a well regarded and well known painter (deservedly so), stayed in
the same class / year for three years. He was encouraged into the Welsh Guards and served a
few years. His elder brother joined the same regiment and is a general. Ian Duncan Smith,
formerly of the Scots Guards, is similar.
Read The Pentagon Papers to see why we couldn't win hearts and minds. The Vietnamese hated
the French and we ended up doing everything the French did to make the Vietnamese hate us
too.
Two good books that give a historical perspective of American involvement in the Pacific
and Asia are James Bradley's,The Imperial Cruise, and The China Mirage- The Hidden History of
American Disaster in Asia. Both books are written in a narrative style that is very
approachable and entertaining. Bradley tells a great story. They describe some long standing
American policy that go unreported and bring new understanding to todays events.
These titles led me to Barbara Tuchman's, Stilwell and the American Experience in China-
1911-45. I haven't read this one yet, but Stilwell seems an interesting American character.
Someone on the ground, seeing reality for what it is, and ignored by the upper brass. Another
typical American story- a tragedy.
One of the criticisms of American foreign policy made by the British has always been the
lack of political foresight and strategic thinking. I came across these criticisms in the
context of WWII policy, but at their core, I think they say much about the character of
American leadership. American founding principles and the needs of Empire are contradictory
to the citizenry. America has become an Empire by luck and default. Luck in the unmatched
bounty the North American continent has bestowed on the Nation and Europeans wearing
themselves out. This point is driven home by the fact that American standing in the world is
falling like a rock in many metrics.
I believe this explains why Americans still are reluctant to view themselves as being an
Empire. Too many tricky contradictions when dealing with their own citizens and reason for
being. It is what lies behind the lie of spreading "Democracy" to the world. The British
Empire faced no such dilemma. At least they brought law, order, and culture to those they
conquered. American Empire spreads chaos. Resisting cultures are treated to the political
ideology of annihilation. American policy is, "bombing them into the stone age."
Another great read is Halford Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History. In a way, his
thesis ties up all the loose ends of the Great Game being played by our political and social
betters. The Anglo-Saxon mode of rule has been to carve up the world. Asian cultures are much
older and as humanity moves forward in time, people are truly tiring of war. A united
Eurasian Continent would be a supreme power to set living standards and future goals. True
power is moving East.
What has the West to offer, but more blood and bombs. The embrace of cultural diversity
moves away from war and embodies political power in the melding of culture not its
extermination. I think that was the policy of Alexander the Great.
The great fear of American political leaders is being labeled provincials. Failed world
leadership lends credence to this charge. We are not ready to lead, and it shows by the
mediocracy of our leaders. An Empire that kills itself has to be a first. Is it any wonder
that the leadership now embrace the kill anything that moves mentality. It is all they have
in the form of power projection and vision.
All this to get to the point that maybe a multipolar world is not such a bad thing. Trying
something new when everything else seems to fail.
Eh I'm no fan of the West but I wouldn't paint the East in very pretty colors either, for
sure. Humanity has a tendency to suck. Look close to home to make things better I would
say.
You want a multipolar world, me too but what's with this "supreme" "United Eurasian
Continent"??? I want to have to at least take my shoes off to count the world's power
centers.
We have all forgotten the "Forgotten War". In another Asian byproduct of WWII, Curtis
LeMay channeled Clausewitz to the max as we flattened North Korea. How did that work out?
Does it have any ramifications for the USA in 2018?
Books to "explain" Vietnam and sequelae: Why no mention of a really seminal tome, "The
Ugly American"? Dated 1958. I read it, avidly, several times over, as a young,
testosterone-poisoned American Boy Scout Youth, and its mythos helped in getting me to enlist
in the Imperial Army in 1966. From Wiki:
The Ugly American is a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The
Ugly American depicts the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps, whose insensitivity to local
language, culture, customs and refusal to integrate was in marked contrast to the polished
abilities of Eastern Bloc (primarily Soviet) diplomacy and led to Communist diplomatic
success overseas [sic]. The book caused a sensation in diplomatic circles. John F. Kennedy
was so impressed with the book that he sent a copy to each of his colleagues in the United
States Senate. The book was one of the biggest bestsellers in the country, has been in print
continuously since it appeared and is one of the most politically influential novels in all
of American literature.
The title of the novel is a play on Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American and
was sometimes confused with it.
The "Ugly American" of the book title refers to the book's hero, plain-looking
engineer Homer Atkins, whose "calloused and grease-blackened hands always reminded him that
he was an ugly man." Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their
needs, and offers genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the
development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump.[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American
Another of the hero's engineering triumph was getting the women of "Dong Ba" (?) to unbend
their backs by changing to a New, Improved, longer model of the bamboo brooms they used to
sweep the dirt floors of their huts. A relatively innocuous form of Coca-Colonialism But the
part that I got all hepped up about was the engineer's innovation, borrowing from the Soviet
"multiple launch rocket systems" known as "Katyushas," https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2lPpPVlDhg ,
of fitting a truck with a several dozen rocket-launching rails, which he used to fire a
volley of "spin-stabilized folding-fin air-to-ground rockets (SSFFARs)" into a bamboo grove
where Evil Insurgents were having a meeting of their cabal -- "in the glare, you could see
body parts spinning up into the night sky " Heady Stuff for young mopes.
Apparently the myth of "The Ugly (But Big-Hearted, Local-Language-Speaking) American
settled nicely into the mind and mindset of Saint Kennedy, too
Tradition is durable. I recall Haitians, like some African forebears, preferred to cook
with charcoal, which one gets by burning wood in a low oxygen furnace before burning it in
your clay stove. Vastly wasteful. Now a good part of local effort goes into long walks to
find bits of shrubbery to reduce to charcoal. And they denuded the whole country of trees and
woody shrubs. Efforts made to change the custom met resistance -- "good enough for
grandemere, good enough for.me." Like trying to get Americans to stop smoking, or worse, to
drive smaller cars let alone kick the deadly automobile habit that has so many knock-on
deleterious effects on people and planet.
The degradation of the Haitian portion of Santo Dimingo was as much a result of the soil
erosion caused by that mono-crop, sugar cane. The French merchants were making "boo koo"
bucks deploying as many slaves as possible to harvest this cash crop. (Too many slaves on too
little land.)
The other half of Santo Domingo Island is the Dominican Republic and it has little of the
resource devastation apparent in Haiti.
I see VietNam as the perfect example of successful neo liberal economic policies. Military
Keynesianism, the workings of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and corporate profiteering are
more pertinent than Clausewitz or Coin. As with the thoroughly neo liberal DNC, it's never
been about winning or losing. It's just about the next consulting or munitions contract.
Forever war means forever contract. The Mt. Pelerin society didn't start in 1947 for nothing.
Keep them talking about winning and losing while the money flows in. Tough about the GI Joe
collateral damage.
The destined warriors are misused. International Law has no problem with wars of defense.
I have a right to defend myself. The State has a monopoly on the use of force.
Sports aren't enough for the action figures.
Couldn't beat the Vietnamese so beating the Beats
at home, in the homeland develops into for profit prisons
& the recreation of the Gulag. American Gulags
& how much of that labor for pennies is done for Koch Industries?
Meltoy?
I could found an entire nation on a love & war movie. South Koreans have made the
theaters called 4D. Shakes you around and blows wind and smells on you.
Spies fail in concert with their employers, the diplomats.
Haley is at the UN taking names.
Economic Warfare is universal. I mean there has been all my life
War against me. I went to Canada, so I am the enemy & the Wall is to keep me here where I
can be found & made to pay.
One term President Carter pardoned dodgers.
Wear sweaters.
On goes the petrodollar war. 100 Year Oil War.
Law of unintended consequences.
No care.
10,000 a year die from just small arms, in Mexico, not even artillery.
US Police kill 2,000 or is it 3? or is it 4? A year.
Now it is striking that Scandinavia, the Netherlands?
Nations other places & until France so few do big
murders of their countrymen or even within the EU.
They have lived where war means everything is
bombed or destroyed by cannons.
Germany won economically in capitalism matured
Because debts were to NAZIs enabling a great write off
of debt, not happening and inflated by Hedge Funds
for anybody else till Greece is enslaved & Puerto Rico
& whose next?
Doesn't matter, the US Military & its Bankers
& its police have been & will be at war with or
just at all Territories.
Unitary Power but as Gov. of Govs, can't be
That.
Why? Why Not?
War is not a war against spaceship aliens
So war is to destroy the Earth.
Kill anyone because you are destined
to kill.
Great Generals Have a Zest for Killing the Enemy.
Read "Our Jungle Road to Tokyo" by Robert L. Eichelberger who
is a great and perfect General of the 8th Army
in the Pacific.
Long as a General & an Army has one job only
At the behest of its Civilians.
All will be well.
Or at least rational, which is better.
Obviously Econ War is war.
Declaration of Econ War is Sanctions
Declared.
Because of illegal War.
I insist that the ICAO demand that
Kim Y. Un & DPRK give Notices to Airmen
When launching their Rockets.
My Rocket Program is called
The "Message Rocket Program".
Beat, I'm Beat.
"Army censorship concealed from
the American public, as it very properly
attempted to conceal from the Japanese, How weak we were.
The ethical weakness of the US
has become so profound.
All it does is war piratical parasitical
& everywhere all the time
on the ground or in the mind.
Out flow of all territory is by right
The Unitary Power's.
No Territory is won or lost.
Revisionist history is in full swing across the MSM spectrum. Take, for instance, the new
movie – 'The Post' – that pretends to be an accurate drama about Daniel Ellsberg,
the Pentagon Papers, and the "heroic" roll played by the Washington Post. It's fake history,
as this excellent review makes clear, but it fits a certain preferred narrative. https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/22/the-post-and-the-pentagon-papers/
adding: one the the self-serving fictions the Dem party estab tells itself is that the
working class voted for Nixon and other GOP candidates because the working class is racist.
That neatly sidesteps the then growing belief that Vietnam – a Dem war, LBJ's war
– was unwinnable, the Dem power establishment new it was unwinnable, and yet kept
drafting working class boys to go fight and die because LBJ and others' egos were at stake.
The Dems have never dealt with that betrayal of the working class.
The reading list is missing the books that describe the actual horrors of combat that our
soldiers endured:
Hamburger Hill – the movie does not do full justice to the total clusterfuck that
battle was. I guarantee that you will weep bitter tears as you read accounts of the stupidity
of commanding officers from general to lieutenant, and of the tragic waste of life of young
draftees.
We Were Soldiers Once – The first 3/4 of the movie closely follows the book -- and
then goes all Hollywood at the end. It had to, because what actually happened was a stinging
defeat of the American troops and a template for the rest of the war. A REMF staff officer
needed to "get his ticket punched" for promotion with combat command experience, so was put
in charge of a battalion that took part in the latter phases of the battle. While withdrawing
from the battlefield afterward, he led the unit into an NVA ambush and lost 2/3 of his men
(155 KIA, 124 WIA and 4 MIA out of about 450 troopers present).
For somewhat more sanitized versions of what the grunts endured, see the half-dozen books
(extended after-action reports) by S. L. A. Marshall.
Nothing has changed from Nam to GWOT as far as the utter stupidity of America's military
leaders, and their need for constant wars to advance their careers and feed their patrons in
the MIC. One thing they *did* learn, after getting their sorry asses fragged by young
draftees fed up with dying at the hands of incompetent dolts, was to ditch the draft and pay
for mercenary -- called "volunteer" -- enlisted ranks. The wonder is, after 16 years of
endless, futile deployemnts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria, that the mercs aren't
murdering their idiot officers now as well ..
"Go tell the spartans" did without the hollywood ending, us military assistance and Burt
Lancaster ponied up the 150k USD required to finish it.
Set in 1964, says it was clearly fucked then.
Worth a look.
Yeah, Go Tell the Spartans is an excellent Nam flick.
Another is Platoon. Oliver Stone served in the 25th Infantry Division in Quang Tin
Province in 1967. The last big battle of Platoon is based on an actual event in Quang Tin in
1971, when the VC overran Firebase Mary Ann and inflicted 33 KIA and 83 WIA on the 23rd
Division.. Sappers in the Wire is a very good book about that fiasco.
Books by S. L. A. Marshall may have to be read with caution, even though I have never read
them. The reason that I say this is a book that I recommended in this series of posts called
"About Face" by David H. Hackworth. Hackworth was detailed to escort Marshall around Vietnam
and he "described his initial elation at an assignment with a man he idolized, and how that
elation turned to disillusion after seeing Marshall's character and methods firsthand.
Hackworth described Marshall as a "voyeur warrior," for whom "the truth never got in the way
of a good story", and went so far as to say, "Veterans of many of the actions he 'documented'
in his books have complained bitterly over the years of his inaccuracy or blatant bias". The
guy was always chasing a buck.
One significant action this piece left out was Congress' cutting off aid to South Vietnam
after the US military withdrawal in '72 on. When the final tank-led NVA push came in Apr 75
most of the ARVN forces remained at their bases for lack of fuel and ammunition. Could the
NVA Apr 75 campaign have met with similar lack of success as the '71 and '68 campaigns had
Congress continued support for South Vietnam? Guess we'll never know.
Tom Hagel, at one point, calls the wars in Iraq and Afganistan stupid but I can't find it
in the transcript. However, he also said this;
WE DISTRUST OUR INSTITUTIONS, WE DISTRUST THE GOVERNMENT, BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES. WE ARE
ANGRY AND WE JUST WANT TO SMASH IT. IN A WAY, I THINK THE CHICKENS HAVE COME HOME TO WRIST
BECAUSE OUR CURRENT POLITICIANS TOO OFTEN, I DON'T TRUST THEM, EITHER. I THINK THEY
CONTINUALLY LIE TO US, BUT WE'VE ALLOWED OURSELVES TO BE LIED TO BECAUSE WE ELECT THEM ALL
THE TIME. THEY FORGOT THAT THEY WORK FOR US. WE ARE CITIZENS, WE RUN THE SHOW. THEY WORK FOR
US. FOR SOME REASON, AS A SOCIETY, WE HAVE LOST THAT. WE JUST LET IT GO ON. CONSEQUENTLY, A
LOT OF THE DISTRUST IN THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS CAN BE TRACKED BACK TO THE VIETNAM WAR.
BECAUSE IT WAS SO CLEAR UP OR A WHILE,. ESPECIALLY WITH ALL THE ARCHIVES AND THE MATERIALS
THAT HAVE BEEN RELEASED IN THAT, THE SOCIETY AND THE TROOPS WERE LIED TO,
Basics (I learned this at a military University, informally, not as coursework):
The objective of the military in war is to cause the enemy's economy to collapse.
This can be achieved by other means: eg Sanctions (an act of war) and Venezuela as an
example.
It would have been easier to control Vietnam in the '60s, by becoming the largest customer
for their major product, Rubber, and having American corporations, such as Coca-Cola,
"colonize" the country.
My experience of the Vietnamese, in the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam, is
they are Capitalists.
The various wars the US is fighting around the world have all the appearance of draining
the US economy and forcing it to collapse. Which in the world of soccer is referred to as an
"own goal."
That is, the US' largest enemy appears as itself.
1914 there were a number of Empires, British, French, German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman,
Russian, et, and the US.
By the 1920s there were many less.
By the 1960s few.
Today, one, the US.
In California, where I live, manufactured goods used to come from the east, over the
mountains. Today it appears few goods come over the mountains from the east.
One wonders if the union will last, for how long, and if it's ending will be bloody or
peaceful.
I came back from Vietnam feeling that I had just bathed in a septic lagoon. It was a war
based on a false moral premiss, and the obvious was apparent to anyone properly informed. In
a war that is at its foundation a moral outrage, even if you win you lose. Added to our
present situation is the fact that no one will read the Koran READ THE KORAN ..(the Penguin
Classic translation will do nicely) then come back and we'll talk about "hearts and minds".
The halls of power are everywhere stacked with sociopaths, narcissists, and culpable
morons.
David Halberstam from the Best and Brightest:
"The truth of the war never entered the upper-level American calculations; that this was a
revolutionary war, and that the other side held title to the revolution because of the
colonial war which had just ended. This most simple fact entered into the estimates of the
American intelligence community and made them quite accurate. But it never entered into the
calculations of the principals, for a variety of reasons; among other things to see the other
side in terms of nationalism or as revolutionaries might mean a re-evaluation of whether the
United States was even fighting on the right side. In contrast, the question of Communism and
anti-Communism as opposed to revolution and anti-revolution was far more convenient for
American policy."
The Vietnam War could never have been won by the USA. Invasion of the North at worst would
have started a nuclear war (as Russia threaten) or at best a wider war with the Chinese
Peoples Army which had ended in a tie a decade before in Korea.
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are repeats except without the draft there is inadequate
manpower. The USA's Great Game uses proxy forces that they supply and then fight; the
Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS. Kurds will soon be added to the list. These wars likewise cannot
be won. Counter insurgency wars have been won against minorities who do not have outside
support or safe havens; the American Indian Wars or Australia for example. This is fairly
clear. Then why don't the experts, West Point graduates, see it? First, it is hard to admit
that it all for nothing. Second, the ruling ideology in the West; neo-liberalism, advocates
the free movement of people, goods and services. The way mankind ends wars is with strong
borders, home based militias and peace treaties. This is antithesis to western plutocrats.
The military is doing what their bosses want them to do.
I think the thing that always needs to put out in front of any discussion of the
euphemistically named 'Vietnam War' is that there literally wouldn't have been a war if not
for US interference. Debates about whether we could have 'won' or not, or if the US should
have 'intervened' in the first place always seem to ignore the fact that this wasn't just
some regional conflict that the US decided to interject itself into. If we had allowed the
elections stipulated by the 1954 Geneva Accords to happen, rather than seeking to make the
South into a permanent puppet regime, there wouldn't have been any war. Going even further
back, if we hadn't given our support to the French to continue their colonial rule there
probably wouldn't have even been a First Indochina War, or it would have at least been far
shorter.
Memorable books that I was reading at the time and shortly thereafter:
"A Viet Cong Memoir," by Truong Nhu Tang, a massively detailed account of his own personal
journey from a privileged family serving the French, to a leader of the Viet Cong war against
the US invaders.
Frances Fitzgerald's "The Fire in the Lake" What the American invaders did not understand
nor care to learn about Vietnamese society and customs, that did them in as much as anything
else in that war.
"Betrayal" by Marine Colonel William Corson;
"Our Own Worst Enemy" by William J Lederer;
"The Viet-Nam Reader," edited by Marcus Raskin and Bernard Fall
Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam"
"Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia" by William Shawcross (This
is an explosive, massively researched, highly detailed and horrifying account of Kissinger's
deliberate destruction of the land and the people of what until then had been the "bread
basket of SE Asia" and the most contented society on earth.)
Why would anyone blame de Gaulle WRT to anything in Indochina? De Gaulle didn't take over
France until several years after their Vietnam debacle, and de Gaulle was the man who got the
French out of Algeria (he nearly got assassinated for this). De Gaulle was an authoritarian
French nationalist, but he was neither an imperialist nor a sabre-rattler.
As the author alludes, the war in Vietnam was essentially unwinnable because it failed to
meet a basic precept for success in any war: It did not have a higher purpose. Ditto
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Raises fundamental questions regarding military action as the geopolitical default option
of choice, which as the title to the post suggests, is not desired by the MIC.
"... By Major Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, ..."
"... He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at ..."
"... and check out his new podcast ..."
"... . Originally published at TomDispatch ..."
"... On Strategy : A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, ..."
"... Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... A Better War : The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ..."
"... Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... On Strategy ..."
"... Dereliction of Duty ..."
"... The Army and Vietnam ..."
"... War Comes to Long An ..."
"... I. Laying Plans ..."
"... 1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. ..."
"... 2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. ..."
"... 3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field. ..."
"... 4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline. ..."
"... 5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger. ..."
"... 7. Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons. ..."
"... 8. Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death. ..."
"... 9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness. ..."
"... 10. By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure. ..."
"... 11. These five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will fail. ..."
"... 12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:– ..."
"... 13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth? (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment? ..."
"... 14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat. ..."
"... 15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat:–let such a one be dismissed! ..."
"... The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation. ..."
"... Chaque fois que les incidents de guerre obligent l'un de nos officiers à agir contre un village [ ], il ne doit pas perdre de vue que son premier soin, la soumission des habitants obtenue, sera de reconstruire le village, d'y créer un marché, d'y établir une école. C'est de l'action de la politique et de la force que doit résulter la pacification du pays et l'organisation à lui donner plus tard. ..."
"... Every time one of our officers is forced to act against a village because of war incidents, he must not lose sight of his first concern, which, after the submission of the inhabitants, is to rebuild the village, to create a market, to establish a school. It is the joint action of policy and force that must result in the pacification of the country and in its later organization. ..."
"... The Bridge on the River Kwai ..."
"... A Bright Shining Lie ..."
"... The Best and the Brightest ..."
"... The Ugly American is a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The Ugly American depicts the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps, whose insensitivity to local language, culture, customs and refusal to integrate was in marked contrast to the polished abilities of Eastern Bloc (primarily Soviet) diplomacy and led to Communist diplomatic success overseas [sic]. The book caused a sensation in diplomatic circles. John F. Kennedy was so impressed with the book that he sent a copy to each of his colleagues in the United States Senate. The book was one of the biggest bestsellers in the country, has been in print continuously since it appeared and is one of the most politically influential novels in all of American literature. ..."
"... The title of the novel is a play on Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American and was sometimes confused with it. ..."
"... The "Ugly American" of the book title refers to the book's hero, plain-looking engineer Homer Atkins, whose "calloused and grease-blackened hands always reminded him that he was an ugly man." Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their needs, and offers genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump.[2] ..."
"... as it very properly attempted to conceal from the Japanese, ..."
By Major Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West
Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a
memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War,Ghost Riders of Baghdad:
Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge . He lives with his wife and four sons
in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at@SkepticalVetand check out his new podcastFortress on
a Hill. Originally published at TomDispatch
[Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an
unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of
the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]
Vietnam: it's always there. Looming in the past, informing American futures.
A 50-year-old war, once labeled the longest in our history, is still alive and well and
still being refought by one group of Americans: the military high command. And almost half a
century later, they're still losing it and blaming others for doing so.
Of course, the U.S. military and Washington policymakers lost the war in Vietnam in the
previous century and perhaps it's well that they did. The United States really had no business
intervening in that anti-colonial civil war in the first place, supporting a South Vietnamese
government of questionable legitimacy, and stifling promised nationwide elections on both sides
of that country's artificial border. In doing so, Washington presented an easy villain for a
North Vietnamese-backed National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency, a group known to Americans
in those years as the Vietcong.
More than two decades of involvement and, at the war's peak, half a million American troops
never altered the basic weakness of the U.S.-backed regime in Saigon. Despite millions of Asian
deaths and 58,000 American ones, South Vietnam's military could not, in the end, hold the line
without American support and finally collapsed under the weight of a conventional North
Vietnamese invasion in April 1975.
There's just one thing. Though a majority of historians (known in academia as the "orthodox"
school) subscribe to the basic contours of the above narrative, the vast majority of senior
American military officers do not. Instead, they're still refighting the Vietnam War to a far
cheerier outcome through the books they read, the scholarship they publish, and (most
disturbingly) the policies they continue to pursue in the Greater Middle East.
The Big Re-Write
In 1986, future general, Iraq-Afghan War commander, and CIA director David Petraeus penned
an article
for the military journal Parameters that summarized his Princeton doctoral
dissertation on the Vietnam War. It was a piece commensurate with then-Major Petraeus's
impressive intellect, except for its disastrous conclusions on the lessons of that war. Though
he did observe that Vietnam had "cost
the military dearly" and that "the frustrations of Vietnam are deeply etched in the minds of
those who lead the services," his real fear was that the war had left the military unprepared
to wage what were then called "low-intensity conflicts" and are now known as
counterinsurgencies. His takeaway: what the country needed wasn't less Vietnams but
better-fought ones. The next time, he concluded fatefully, the military should do a far better
job of implementing counterinsurgency forces, equipment, tactics, and doctrine to win such
wars.
Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed present itself in Iraq, he
and a whole generation of COINdinistas (like-minded officers
devoted to his favored counterinsurgency approach to modern warfare) embraced those very
conclusions to win the war on terror. The names of some of them -- H.R. McMaster and James
Mattis, for instance -- should ring a bell or two these days. In Iraq and later in Afghanistan,
Petraeus and his acolytes would get their chance to translate theory into practice. Americans
-- and much of the rest of the planet -- still live with the results.
Like Petraeus, an entire generation of senior military leaders, commissioned in the years
after the Vietnam War and now atop the defense behemoth, remain fixated on that ancient
conflict. After all these decades, such "thinking" generals and "soldier-scholars" continue to
draw all the wrong lessons from what, thanks in part to them, has now become America's
second longest war.
Rival Schools
Historian Gary Hess identifies two main schools
of revisionist thinking. There are the "Clausewitzians" (named after the nineteenth century
Prussian military theorist) who insist that Washington never sufficiently attacked the enemy's
true center of gravity in North Vietnam. Beneath the academic language, they essentially agree
on one key thing: the U.S. military should have bombed the North into a parking lot.
The second school, including Petraeus, Hess labeled the "hearts-and-minders." As
COINdinistas, they felt the war effort never focused clearly enough on isolating the Vietcong,
protecting local villages in the South, building schools, and handing out candy -- everything,
in short, that might have won (in the phrase of that era) Vietnamese hearts and minds.
Both schools, however, agreed on something basic: that the U.S. military should have won in
Vietnam.
The danger presented by either school is clear enough in the twenty-first century. Senior
commanders, some now serving in key national security positions, fixated on Vietnam, have
translated that conflict's supposed lessons into what now passes for military strategy in
Washington. The
result has been an ever-expanding war on terror campaign waged ceaselessly from South Asia
to West Africa, which has essentially turned out to be perpetual war based on the can-do belief
that counterinsurgency and advise-and-assist missions should have worked in Vietnam and can
work now.
The Go-Big Option
The leading voice of the Clausewitzian school was U.S. Army Colonel and Korean War/Vietnam
War vet Harry Summers, whose 1982 book, On Strategy : A
Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, became an instant classic within the military. It's
easy enough to understand why. Summers argued that civilian policymakers -- not the military
rank-and-file -- had lost the war by focusing hopelessly on the insurgency in South Vietnam
rather than on the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. More troops, more aggressiveness, even
full-scale invasions of communist safe havens in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, would have
led to victory.
Summers had a deep emotional investment in his topic.
Later , he would argue that the source of post-war pessimistic analyses of the conflict lay
in "draft dodgers and war evaders still [struggling] with their consciences." In his own work,
Summers marginalized all Vietnamese actors (as would so many later military historians), failed
to adequately deal with the potential consequences, nuclear or otherwise, of the sorts of
escalation he advocated, and didn't even bother to ask whether Vietnam was a core national
security interest of the United States.
Perhaps he would have done well to reconsider a famous post-war
encounter he had with a North Vietnamese officer, a Colonel Tu, whom he assured that "you
know you never beat us on the battlefield."
"That may be so," replied his former enemy, "but it is also irrelevant."
Whatever its limitations, his work remains influential in military circles to this day. (I
was assigned the book as a West Point cadet!)
A more sophisticated Clausewitzian analysis came from current National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster in a highly acclaimed 1997 book, Dereliction of
Duty . He argued that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were derelict in failing to give
President Lyndon Johnson an honest appraisal of what it would take to win, which meant that
"the nation went to war without the benefit of effective military advice." He concluded that
the war was lost not in the field or by the media or even on antiwar college campuses, but in
Washington, D.C., through a failure of nerve by the Pentagon's generals, which led civilian
officials to opt for a deficient strategy.
McMaster is a genuine scholar and a gifted writer, but he still suggested that the Joint
Chiefs should have advocated for a more aggressive offensive strategy -- a full ground invasion
of the North or unrelenting carpet-bombing of that country. In this sense, he was just another
"go-big" Clausewitzian who, as historian Ronald Spector pointed
out recently, ignored Vietnamese views and failed to acknowledge -- an observation
of historian Edward Miller -- that "the Vietnam War was a Vietnamese war."
COIN: A Small (Forever) War
Another Vietnam veteran, retired Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Krepinevich, fired the opening
salvo for the hearts-and-minders. In The Army and Vietnam , published in 1986, he
argued
that the NLF, not the North Vietnamese Army, was the enemy's chief center of gravity and that
the American military's failure to emphasize counterinsurgency principles over conventional
concepts of war sealed its fate. While such arguments were, in reality, no more
impressive than those of the Clausewitzians, they have remained popular with military
audiences, as historian Dale Andrade points
out , because they offer a "simple explanation for the defeat in Vietnam."
Krepinevich would write an influential 2005 Foreign Affairspiece , "How to Win
in Iraq," in which he applied his Vietnam conclusions to a new strategy of prolonged
counterinsurgency in the Middle East, quickly winning over the New
York Times 's resident conservative columnist, David Brooks, and generating "discussion in
the Pentagon, CIA, American Embassy in Baghdad, and the office of the vice president."
In 1999, retired army officer and Vietnam veteran Lewis Sorley penned the definitive
hearts-and-minds tract, A Better War : The
Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam . Sorley boldly
asserted
that, by the spring of 1970, "the fighting wasn't over, but the war was won." According to his
comforting tale, the real explanation for failure lay with the "big-war" strategy of U.S.
commander General William Westmoreland. The counterinsurgency strategy of his successor,
General Creighton Abrams -- Sorley's knight in shining armor -- was (or at least should have
been) a war winner.
Critics
noted that Sorley overemphasized the marginal differences between the two generals'
strategies and produced a remarkably counterfactual work. It didn't matter, however. By 2005,
just as the situation in Iraq, a country then locked in a sectarian civil war amid an American
occupation, went from bad to worse, Sorley's book found
its way into the hands of the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, and State
Department counselor Philip Zelikow. By then, according
to the Washington Post 's David Ignatius, it could also "be found on the
bookshelves of senior military officers in Baghdad."
Another influential hearts-and-minds devotee was Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl. (He even
made it
onto The Daily Show with Jon Stewart .) His Learning to Eat Soup with
a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam followed Krepinevich in
claiming that "if [Creighton] Abrams had gotten the call to lead the American effort at the
start of the war, America might very well have won it." In 2006, the Wall Street
Journalreported that Army Chief of Staff
General Peter Schoomaker "so liked [Nagl's] book that he made it required reading for all
four-star generals," while the Iraq War commander of that moment, General George Casey, gave
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a copy during a visit to Baghdad.
David Petraeus and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, co-authors in 2006 of
FM 3-24, the first ( New York Times -reviewed ) military field manual for counterinsurgency since
Vietnam, must also be considered among the pantheon of hearts-and-minders. Nagl wrote a
foreword for their manual,
while Krepinevich provided a glowing back-cover endorsement .
Such revisionist interpretations would prove tragic in Iraq and Afghanistan, once they had
filtered down to the entire officer corps.
Reading All the Wrong Books
In 2009, when former West Point history professor Colonel Gregory Daddis was deployed
to Iraq as the command historian for the Multinational Corps -- the military's primary tactical
headquarters -- he noted that corps commander Lieutenant General Charles Jacoby had assigned a
professional reading list to his principal subordinates. To his disappointment, Daddis also
discovered that the only Vietnam War book included was Sorley's A Better War . This
should have surprised no one, since his argument -- that American soldiers in Vietnam
were
denied an impending victory by civilian policymakers, a liberal media, and antiwar protestors
-- was still resonant among the officer corps in year six of the Iraq quagmire. It wasn't the
military's fault!
Officers have long distributed professional reading lists for subordinates, intellectual
guideposts to the complex challenges ahead. Indeed, there's much to be admired in the concept,
but also potential dangers in such lists as they inevitably influence the thinking of an entire
generation of future leaders. In the case of Vietnam, the perils are obvious. The generals have
been assigning and reading problematic books for years, works that were essentially meant to
reinforce professional pride in the midst of a series of unsuccessful and unending wars.
Just after 9/11, for instance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers -- who spoke at my
West Point graduation -- included Summers's On
Strategy on his list. A few years later, then-Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker
added
McMaster's Dereliction of Duty . The trend continues today. Marine Corps Commandant
Robert Neller has kept McMaster and added Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (he of the
illegal bombing of both Laos and Cambodia and war
criminal fame). Current Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley kept Kissinger and
added good
old Lewis Sorley. To top it all off, Secretary of Defense Mattis has included
yet another Kissinger book and, in a different list , Krepinevich's
The Army and Vietnam .
Just as important as which books made the lists is what's missing from them: none of these
senior commanders include newer scholarship
,
novels , or journalistic accounts which might raise thorny, uncomfortable questions about
whether the Vietnam War was winnable, necessary, or advisable, or incorporate local voices that
might highlight the limits of American influence and power.
Serving in the Shadow of Vietnam
Most of the generals leading the war on terror just missed service in the Vietnam War. They
graduated from various colleges or West Point in the years immediately following the withdrawal
of most U.S. ground troops or thereafter: Petraeus in
1974 , future Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal in 1976 , and present National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster in 1984 .
Secretary of Defense Mattis finished ROTC and graduated from Central Washington University in
1971 , while
Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam War, receiving his
commission in 1976
.
In other words, the generation of officers now overseeing the still-spreading war on terror
entered military service at the end of or after the tragic war in Southeast Asia. That meant
they narrowly escaped combat duty in the bloodiest American conflict since World War II and so
the professional credibility that went with it. They were mentored and taught by academy
tactical officers, ROTC instructors, and commanders who had cut their teeth on that conflict.
Vietnam literally dominated the discourse of their era -- and it's never ended.
Petraeus, Mattis, McMaster, and the others entered service when military prestige had
reached a nadir or was just rebounding. And those reading lists taught the young officers where
to lay the blame for that -- on civilians in Washington (or in the nation's streets) or on a
military high command too weak to assert its authority effectively. They would serve in
Vietnam's shadow, the shadow of defeat, and the conclusions they would draw from it would only
lead to twenty-first-century disasters.
From Vietnam to the War on Terror to Generational War
All of this misremembering, all of those Vietnam "lessons" inform the U.S. military's
ongoing "surges" and "advise-and-assist" approaches to its wars in the Greater Middle East and
Africa. Representatives of both Vietnam revisionist schools now guide the development of the
Trump administration's version of global strategy. President Trump's in-house Clausewitzians
clamor for -- and receive
-- ever more delegated authority to do their damnedest and what retired General (and Vietnam
vet) Edward Meyer called for
back in 1983: "a freer hand in waging war than they had in Vietnam." In other words, more
bombs, more troops, and carte blanche to escalate such conflicts to their hearts' content.
Meanwhile, President Trump's hearts-and-minds faction consists of officers who have spent
three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to approximately 70%
of the world's nations. Furthermore, they've recently fought for and been granted a new
"mini-surge" in Afghanistan intended to -- in disturbingly Vietnam-esque language -- "break the
deadlock ," "reverse the decline," and "end the
stalemate " there. Never mind that neither 100,000 U.S. troops (when I was
there in 2011) nor 16 full years of combat could, in the term of the trade, "stabilize"
Afghanistan. The can-do, revisionist believers atop the national security state have convinced
Trump that -- despite his original
instincts -- 4,000 or 5,000 (or
6,000 or 7,000) more troops (and yet more
drones ,
planes , and other equipment) will do the trick. This represents tragedy bordering on
farce.
The hearts and minders and Clausewitzians atop the military establishment since 9/11 are
never likely to stop citing their versions of the Vietnam War as the key to victory today; that
is, they will never stop focusing on a war that was always unwinnable and never worth fighting.
None of today's acclaimed military personalities seems willing to consider that Washington
couldn't have won in Vietnam because, as former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak (who
flew
269 combat missions over that country) noted in the
recent Ken Burns documentary series, "we were fighting on the wrong side."
Today's leaders don't even pretend that the post-9/11 wars will ever end. In an interview
last June, Petraeus -- still considered a sagacious guru of the Defense establishment --
disturbingly described the Afghan conflict as " generational ." Eerily
enough, to cite a Vietnam-era precedent, General Creighton Abrams predicted something similar.
speaking to the White House as the war in Southeast Asia was winding down. Even as President
Richard Nixon slowly withdrew U.S. forces, handing over their duties to the South Vietnamese
Army (ARVN) -- a process known then as "Vietnamization" -- the general warned
that, despite ARVN improvements, continued U.S. support "would be required indefinitely to
maintain an effective force." Vietnam, too, had its "generational" side (until, of course, it
didn't).
That war and its ill-fated lessons will undoubtedly continue to influence U.S. commanders
until a new set of myths, explaining away a new set of failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere, take over, possibly thanks to books by veterans of these conflicts about how
Washington could have won the war on terror.
It's not that our generals don't read. They do. They just doggedly continue to read the
wrong books.
In 1986, General Petraeus ended his influential Parametersarticle
with a quote from historian George Herring: "Each historical situation is unique and the use of
analogy is at best misleading, at worst, dangerous." When it comes to Vietnam and a cohort of
officers shaped in its shadow (and even now convinced it could have been won), "dangerous"
hardly describes the results. They've helped bring us generational war and, for today's young
soldiers, ceaseless tragedy.
I know there is a book with the name; "The Arrogance of Power", but it is apt when applied
to US attempt to obliterate the nation of Vietnam. We continue to spread this filthy type of
"war" around the globe only because we have not really met our "match" but, we will .oh yes,
we will. Every book that has been written about either the war itself or the tactics used to
try to "win" has contributed to more understanding of that brutal war. The military must
relearn the rule of war that war itself alone cannot win, it takes the political side also.
It has been infernally "easy" since 9/11 for the politicians, the military industrial complex
to construct a world of "terror" and most Americans believe in that world. It has been
immensely profitable. No compulsory military service; a bunch of "little" wars around the
globe being run by private enterprises; no excess war profits taxes; a Pentagon budget that
includes the propagandizing of the American sports public .and on and on and on. What's not
to like for the profit mongers and the ideologically bent?? Ho Chi Min and the people of
Vietnam were outright betrayed by WW1 (just like the Arabs) treaties; by the US in it's
treatment of Vietnam in the treaties of WW2 (Roosevelt died but he already had an
understanding with the French (DeGaulle)) to not interfere with their retaking over of
Vietnam after WW2 so as to get French cooperation with the birth of NATO.
May I add another book: "Ho Chi Min" "A Life" William J. Duiker. Pub. 2000.
Well if they are looking for good books on 'Nam, might I suggest some of the books from my
own collection?
"Long Time Passing" – Myra MacPherson
"About Face" – David H. Hackworth
"Nam" – Mark Baker
"Dispatches" – Michael Herr
"One Soldier"- John H. Shook
"The Only War We Had" – Michael Lee Lanning
"To Heal a Nation" – Jan C. Scruggs
Also, the novel (based on the authors experience as an NVA soldier), 'The Sorrows of War'
by Bao Ninh. It shows many NVA soldiers were as cynical of their political masters as the
average US grunt.
Oh, I'd forgotten 'The Quiet American', incredible book – I kept having to check the
inside page when I read it to confirm that it was in fact written before the Vietnam War
– its prescience was amazing. It should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in
foreign policy of any type.
George Martin Windrow's "The Last Valley" (1996) displaces Bernard Fall as the definitive
work on Dien Bien Phu, prelude to America's debacle. I work a lot in Vietnam, and his
description of how their society organizes and moblilizes is spot on. He also has blood
curdling descriptions of what artillery does to human bodies. And there is the entertaining
interlude where the US briefly entertained atomic bombing to break the siege.
From Bernard Fall's Newport lecture at the Naval War College in about 1964:
"Let me state this definition: RW = G + P, or, "revolutionary warfare equals guerrilla
warfare plus political action." This formula for revolutionary warfare is the result of the
application of guerrilla methods to the furtherance of an ideology or a political system.
This is the real difference between partisan warfare, guerrilla warfare, and everything else.
"Guerrilla" simply means "small war," to which the correct Army answer is (and that applies
to all Western armies) that everybody knows how to fight small wars; no second lieutenant of
the infantry ever learns anything else but how to fight small wars. Political action,
however, is the difference. The communists, or shall we say, any sound revolutionary warfare
operator (the French underground, the Norwegian underground, or any other European anti-Nazi
underground) most of the time used small-war tactics–not to destroy the German Army, of
which they were thoroughly incapable, but to establish a competitive system of control over
the population. Of course, in order to do this, here and there they had to kill some of the
occupying forces and attack some of the military targets. But above all they had to kill
their own people who collaborated with the enemy."
Also worth a look: War Comes to Long An by Jeffrey Race, which essentially
discloses that the U.S. war effort, as understood by the Vietnamese themselves, was to keep
the French colonial oligarchy in place.
Race learned Vietnamese on the boat over to Vietnam and interviewed the Vietnamese
themselves to find out why they continued to fight. Basically, the oligarchy promised only
continued oppression by the rentiers.
I didn't need to read books about Vietnam. I simply listened to the stories and night-time
screams of my new roommates returning to school on the GI Bill in '68 and '69. The lives
ruined, on both sides, stays with me today.
One of those room-mates was on Hamburger Hill in May of '69 and was attempting college in
the Fall. PTSD was apparent and he soon enough dropped out (of life).
The sad part is we Americans do everything we keep to keep snatching defeat from victory's
teeth. The Vietnamese as a whole were happy with us before our government (read CIA)
sabotaged the elections, and handed power over to the Catholic minority and its most corrupt
part at that. (When you have to pay/bribe someone for artillery support during a battle ) Ho
Chi Min and company did not ally themselves to their worst enemy, the Chinese, because they
wanted too.
Same with Iraq. It was probably unwindable, but scrapping detailed State Department plans
on what when, and if, Iraq was occupied because you don't want to spend the money, defend
only the oil ministry's offices, let the entire country just collapse, and then fire not only
anyone a member of the Ba'ath Party as well as the entire Iraqi Army. Of course, if wanted to
be a teacher or have a job in the government, you had to be a Ba'athist, and to secure any of
the weapons and ammunition of the army is something. I am not what that something is, but
it's really something. And then the Bush Administration basically says it's going to invade
Iran once everything settles, which gave the Iranians incentive to keep arming anyone in Iraq
fighting the Americans and British.
I am raaaanting now and I can feel my blood rising so I am gonna stop now. It's just so
hard seeing our government's foreign policy and its intelligence services being run by well
educated morons.
Can't comment on Iraq, but Vietnam was a MAJOR F-up by USA. Ho Chi Min was actually very
much pro-USA – until they handed them back to French after WW2.
With even a bit of US support Vietnam could have been fairly firmly pro-US (it always was
anti-China, so the "it will go to Chinese like Koreans did" fears were fearmongering/PR at
worst and lack of understanding at best), aiming to build a sort of social-democratic regime
rather than full-on Communist one. Yes, it would have upset the French. What's not to like,
given how deGaule was trying to screw everyone around to push their national interests? (much
better than British at the time, one should say).
The Cold War was spinning up in Europe, and the U.S. was trying to get France on its side.
The price for that was allowing France to attempt to reassert itself in Indochina.
I know the usual excuse – but there was about zero chance that France would really
go into bed with USSR.
deGaule definitely threatened it, but I very much doubt he would go the full hog –
if nothing else, he didn't want to be anyone's, and that included USSR's, puppet. At the very
very worst, they might end up Yugoslavia-like, although I'd say that once proto-EU was cooked
up, France would jump there pretty quick, as otherwise it would have lost pretty much all
influence in Europe.
Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were all, arguably, 'winnable' – the common thread in
all three is the US failure to understand local political dynamics. With Vietnam, it was the
failure to understand that what was happening was primarily a civil war with the 'Communists'
not necessarily being anti-American – they saw (and still see) China as their long
historical enemy. In Iraq the dismembering of the existing Ba'ath party structures without
having anything (apart from the free market of course) to replace it proved fatal, along with
an ignorance of Shia/Sunni dynamics. In Afghanistan the 'victory' was blown by an insistence
on chasing phantom Al-Q enemies when the Taliban was more or less destroyed.
When you read the history of long lived empires, from Rome to the British Empire, a common
characteristic they all have is an acute awareness of how to manipulate local dynamics in
order to maintain control without expending too much manpower. The US military seems to
completely lack this capacity. In fact, rather than being in charge, a common feature seems
to be that US military power is all too easily manipulated by local powerbrokers for their
own ends.
Yep, I'll sign under that. I do wonder how much it has to do with the American psyche, and
how much with the fact that even British or Roman empires had sort of hard limitations (not
just in terms of manpower, but more importantly in the ability to get the manpower to the
sharp end pronto).
I think an element of it is quite simply the sheer wealth and power of America means it
doesn't have to think through the consequences of interventions too much. Even in the heyday
of the European empires, military adventures were very expensive operations – two or
three failures in a row could fatally set an empire back.
I think another major issue is the lack of skin in the game for decision makers. I think
the early days of WWII was the last time there was a major cull of military officers for
incompetence in the US. And even in WWII, it was rare for officers to get killed. Even more
so since then, and with the ending of the draft, it means no risks for their sons or
daughters, and minimal ones for anyone they would be likely to know.
There is simply little or no price paid for failure. At least not by the people
responsible.
"All, arguably, winnable." For what definition of "WIN?"
Our military rulers are supposed to "study war." The curriculum supposedly includes not
only Clausewitz, Mr. "Center of Gravity," on "modern" war, but also that hoary old classic
under the nom de plume "Sun Tzu," called "The Art of War." Said rulers, for some reason, skip
over the first part of Sun Tzu's advice, the part about asking whether going to war is wise
at all, at all:
I. Laying Plans
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.
2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a
subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.
3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into
account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the
field.
4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method
and discipline.
5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so
that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
7. Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.
8. Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and
narrow passes; the chances of life and death.
9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and
strictness.
10. By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its
proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by
which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.
11. These five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be
victorious; he who knows them not will fail.
12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military
conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:–
13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two
generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?
(4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On
which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater
constancy both in reward and punishment?
14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.
15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a
one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it,
will suffer defeat:–let such a one be dismissed!http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html
There's a lot more in "The Art of War" about the idiocy of doofus war-fighting in absence
of the Moral Law and true national interest at the end of immense logistics and supply
chains, war that bankrupts the peasants, getting stuck in quagmires and such. The current
rulers just jump (if they pay any attention at all to the work any more) straight to all the
chestnuts ("All war is deception," duh, "Attack where he is weak, retreat where he is
strong," duh) about how to conduct strategy and tactics.
When was the last time any of these fundamental "Think before shooting" considerations Sun
Tzu distilled from millennia of earlier wars and his own experiences was given ANY attention
by the rotter nihilists ("Mutual Assured Destruction, Massive Retaliation, "counterinsurgency
always and everywhere, the F-35 model of logistics?) who commit "the nation" and the peasants
to their programs and "operations"? And even the attempts to "get the peasants on side" via
Bernays saucing, one of the necessary conditions per Sun Tzu, have been completely bollixed,
or simply plowed over.
All this sh!t-storm activity is conducted from within the same kind of bubble that got
inflated around the French High Command in the run up to the Great War, and seems to
regularly envelop "high commands" which are maybe experiencing a "contact high" from
breathing, inside that bubble, the heady fumes of their self-generated hallucinogenic
"designer drugs."
Many of our cities and towns already look a lot like Fallujah and Raqqa after
"liberation-by-destruction." Waiting for a massive collapse, maybe slow-mo or maybe
tipping-point quick, with huge collateral damage, in three, two, one
The problem is, many will argue that the parts of Sun Tzu you so correctly pointed out
aren't really the US military's job, they are the responsibility of the US Congress.
But something other than "Congress" is what's loosing the dogs of war. There's how it's
supposed to work, on paper, per that "quaint document," and how it actually works. Like so
much of "the Republic." Which ain't.
"When you read the history of long lived empires, from Rome to the British Empire, a
common characteristic they all have is an acute awareness of how to manipulate local dynamics
in order to maintain control without expending too much manpower."
+ 100
It won't surprise readers that Petraeus' "masterpiece" on counterinsurgency bears a strong
similarity to a publication by the late Sir Frank Kitson. Sir Frank commanded British forces
in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and UK Land Forces soon after. He also served in colonial
insurgencies in the 1950s. Kitson gave a talk, based on his publication, on such matters to
his alma mater, which I attended, in the mid-1980s. He was also the speaker at "speech day"
around then.
When the Iraq and Afghanistan War started, the British military were full of confidence
that their experience in counterinsurgency would allow them to show the US how it was done.
They had to be rescued in somewhat ignominious manner from both Basra and Kandahar as they
were shown to be completely out of their depth. It is part of British Army mythology that
they defeated the IRA using sound and sensible COIN, but the reality is much more
complicated.
Incidentally, it is said that Mao (and possibly Ho Chi Minh too) were avid readers of the
biographies of early 20th Century IRA leaders, including Michael Collins and Tom Barry, both
experts in counter-counter insurgency. Tom Barry was the leader of the most effective unit,
the West Cork Brigade. Collins was a master in using intelligence against intelligence
services, while Tom Barry was capable of using limited resources to keep an enormous number
of soldiers tied up. Both knew the skills of provoking the State into over-reactions which
pushed civilians over onto the rebels side.
Yes – despite its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement the British Government
is still sitting on files which would likely shed light on the dirty war in Northern Ireland.
Its pretty clear that both the main loyalist groups were to a large extent run by the
intelligence services to kill suspected IRA members, and were very likely involved in
bombings that resulted in mass casualties in Dublin and Monaghan. While they did undoubtedly
manage to neutralise some IRA Units in reality they stoked up as much violence as they
stopped.
In advance of a Corbyn government, many papers, some going back to the smearing of Labour
in the 1920s, have been "lost". The cache lost include the papers on the "sexed up dodgy
dossier", written by the UK's current envoy to the UN (Matthew Ryecroft) and sexed up by the
loathsome Alistair Campbell, and the death of the weapons inspector. The form of death
officially recorded, as with George Michael's, is disputed by many pathologists, including
former colleagues of my father.
Indeed. Document "disappearance" is a serious problem, with a long history, addressed
pretty well in Ian Cobain's recent title The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the
Shaping of a Modern Nation.
Whatever approach Petraeus & Co proposed, "hearts and minds" counter-insurgency was
basically a century old. Here:
Chaque fois que les incidents de guerre obligent l'un de nos officiers à agir
contre un village [ ], il ne doit pas perdre de vue que son premier soin, la soumission des
habitants obtenue, sera de reconstruire le village, d'y créer un marché, d'y
établir une école. C'est de l'action de la politique et de la force que doit
résulter la pacification du pays et l'organisation à lui donner plus
tard.
I.e. Every time one of our officers is forced to act against a village because of war
incidents, he must not lose sight of his first concern, which, after the submission of the
inhabitants, is to rebuild the village, to create a market, to establish a school. It is the
joint action of policy and force that must result in the pacification of the country and in
its later organization.
From the "fundamental instructions" of General Gallieni from 22nd May 1898, in the midst
of the "pacification" of Madagascar. Its estimated death toll was about 100000.
These generals remind me of the character of Colonel Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness)
in The Bridge on the River Kwai . They're so focused on the task in front of them,
they can't seem to step back and think about the wider picture.
In the Netflix film The Siege of Jadotville ,
the real life Commandant Pat Quinlan is quoted as saying 'Soldiers do tactics, politicians do
strategy'. The US miliitary always seems to have a surfeit of tactics with no discernable
strategy.
And of course Nicholson, at the end of the film, was going to stop the demolition of that
so painfully built bridge by the "inglorious bastards" on his nominal own team. Only dumb
luck and the timing of a bullet from a "Jap" led to his falling on the detonator as he died,
and blowing up the span .
re: wider picture.
The wider picture is the political picture. The military in the US is supposed to be and
remain non-political. The politicians send the military to wars. The military does not choose
what war, where, why to fight. Those decisions are Congress and the prez's job.
adding: When then (2003) Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told the Senate Armed
Services Committee the truth about what an Iraq invasion required he displeased the Bush
admin and DoD, and was shortly edged out of his command by retirement. That in-essence
"sacking" had a large effect on the thinking of the entire chain of command, imo.
Thank you Yves for posting this article. It is rather disheartening but explains a lot of
what I have been wondering about for years – Didn't we learn anything from Vietnam?
Obviously the answer is no; but even worse is the attitude of "we could/should have won"
displayed by the current military brass.
I remarked to wifey the other day that kids who were only a year old on 9/11 will be old
enough to join the military this year
I first heard of Ghost Riders of Baghdad by following various military Twitter accounts,
like Angry Staff Officer, or the account of Robert Bateman ( who sometimes writes for
Esquire). Angry Staff officer also has a blog with very informative posts. I thought of, Is
The Amy's Professional Military Education Broken?, after reading the above post. A sample, "
All military education must stem from the fundamental that war is a human endeavor, and as
such cannot be prosecuted without understanding basic factors of humanity".
https://angrystaffofficer.com/2017/07/18/is-the-armys-professional-military-education-system-broken/
It is never mentioned here but how about the possibility that some wars simply cannot be
won – ever. It is not for nothing that Afghanistan is know as the place that empires go
to die nor that a geopolitical axiom is to never fight a land war in Asia. There was no
possible time-line where the US won in Vietnam using either military means or COIN
operations. The terrible truth is that most of those 58,00 Americans died long after it was
know that they could never win.
The COINdinistas had their chance in Iraq but younger offices at the time were furious with
senior officers in how out of touch they were with what was going on so it was a repeat of
the Vietnam experience all over again, including the notorious body-counts. And this whole
we-would-have-won-if-not-for-the-politicians-and-hippies is as much crap as the post WW1
German officers with their we-were-stabbed-in-the-back obsession. I see this even here in
Australia. Years ago I saw an Army show that featured the history of the Army. When they got
to the Vietnam war era they had Aussie soldiers naming the dead bodies in a mock-up of the
Battle of Long Tan while of the other side of the arena they had hippies shouting peace
slogans and the like. The message was clear – you betrayed us!
And that "you never beat us on the battlefield" was apparently not true either according to
an article I read last year setting out a few hard truths. The truth is that the training of
American officers is badly broken and that sycophants do very well in it. The whole system
needs to be junked as America is not bringing out the best officers that it can – not
by a long shot – and it was this system that produced leaders like Petraeus. They may
have been presented as the Great White Hope once but I invite other commentators find out how
his superior, Admiral William Fallon, regarded him. Nothing less than a root and branch
overhaul of the American officer training regime will counter how we see wars being fought
now. Otherwise we will continue to see more of the same.
Its worse than that: the US military is the cutting edge of a political Imperialist policy
completely contradicted by the
21st C environment. This is failure at the DNA level.
Two things that need to be understand about the Vietnam war that the US military does not
get.
The first is that the US did not lose the Vietnam war, we were beaten by the Vietnamese.
If we just "lost" the war, then all the "Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics" crap where the
only to lose is through a failure of will, (protesters and namby-pamby members of Congress)
becomes the dominant explanation.
We were beaten, and so we need to know why our military was beaten, and what the
military/Pentagon did wrong.
The second thing is the idea that the
Vietnamese won no battles in the war is patently false .
There are at least 70 battles that were lost.
The reason that the Pentagon insists on ignoring both of these is because the "stab in the
back from protesters" means that there is no accountability for the failures of our
military.
So, like the Bourbon kings, our military has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
The article states "Two decades later, when the next Vietnam-like quagmire did indeed
present itself in Iraq "
In fact, the next Vietnam-like quagmire was engineered much sooner than that, and is still
running.
From an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, US National Security Adviser at the time:
" it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the
opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the
president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a
Soviet military intervention The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote
to President Carter, essentially: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its
Vietnam war.' " http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
Popular insurgencies can be beaten. There are many examples, especially in Latin America.
The common enabling condition appears to be exhaustion of the peasantry over a period of
years, after which they choose 'peace and order' enforced by thugs with badges over the
guerrillas who cannot restore economic life, even in 'liberated zones'.
Pastoral mountain tribesmen are probably the least susceptible to this exhaustion and
subjugation can take generations: witness the Scots.
I think you're getting at something that the win/lose focus misses: whether or not the US
ultimately failed to maintain a client regime in Vietnam, it brutally demonstrated the costs
of resistance.
In Yves' intro she writes
but decided to stay at war because they deemed the damage to US prestige of winding down
the war to be too great.
US prestige = certainty of monumental costs to resistance. Prestige is honorspeak for
legitimate terrorism.
I think you are missing the point of all of this and in fact trivializing the war.
Vietnam was not a popular insurgency (whatever that means). It was an all out war to rid
that nation of colonial domination and unify the country. It was not the "Viet Namese war"
for these people, but the war against America.
"Popular insurgency" is the Orwellian term used by those in power. A good example is the
American war of independence. From the British Empire's point of view, it was a "popular
insurgency".
It would be instructive if you could define "popular insurgency" more clearly and provide
some context.
The issue is that they can only be done by governments in their own nations or the nations
that they are very close by.
Even then, the success record is mixed and it requires a willingness to be totally
ruthless. Otherwise the subjugated people eventually will be able to win some form of
independence, like the Irish.
The US is different. It is dealing with self inflicted and totally pointless wars in the
Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan.
The insurgencies in Latin America can hardly be compared to Vietnam, as they were for the
most part beaten by CIA dirty work rather than crushed by a full-on military operation.
The long, sad record is so awful, maybe we just turn over the whole military to the Civil
Air patrol and the Coast Guard! They could not possibly do worse, and might be much
better!
In no time flat, either of those organizations (already peopled by nascent Petraeuses and
Mattises) would revert to the mean that we already know too well. Nice thought, though. The
Coast Guard's multi-missions mission: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missions_of_the_United_States_Coast_Guard
Unlike all the other "branches" of the MIC hydra, the CG suffers from cost cutting and
neoliberalism. "More and more work, for fewer and fewer people, for less and less money,
under tighter and tighter constraints, with every more detailed metrics " and their recent
acquisitions of new cutters are kind of F-35/littoral-combat-ships-ish "Billions Later, Plan
to Remake the Coast Guard Fleet Stumbles," http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/us/09ship.html
One thing that is rarely, if ever, mentioned is the type of person who joins the officer
corps. The school I attended has produced (British) generals and admirals (only, not the
ranks). Many, if not most, of the pupils who joined, or were encouraged to join, and only as
officers were considered dunces. Goodness knows what the soldiers and sailors, especially
NCOs, thought of the "young ruperts".
One contemporary, now a well regarded and well known painter (deservedly so), stayed in
the same class / year for three years. He was encouraged into the Welsh Guards and served a
few years. His elder brother joined the same regiment and is a general. Ian Duncan Smith,
formerly of the Scots Guards, is similar.
Read The Pentagon Papers to see why we couldn't win hearts and minds. The Vietnamese hated
the French and we ended up doing everything the French did to make the Vietnamese hate us
too.
Two good books that give a historical perspective of American involvement in the Pacific
and Asia are James Bradley's,The Imperial Cruise, and The China Mirage- The Hidden History of
American Disaster in Asia. Both books are written in a narrative style that is very
approachable and entertaining. Bradley tells a great story. They describe some long standing
American policy that go unreported and bring new understanding to todays events.
These titles led me to Barbara Tuchman's, Stilwell and the American Experience in China-
1911-45. I haven't read this one yet, but Stilwell seems an interesting American character.
Someone on the ground, seeing reality for what it is, and ignored by the upper brass. Another
typical American story- a tragedy.
One of the criticisms of American foreign policy made by the British has always been the
lack of political foresight and strategic thinking. I came across these criticisms in the
context of WWII policy, but at their core, I think they say much about the character of
American leadership. American founding principles and the needs of Empire are contradictory
to the citizenry. America has become an Empire by luck and default. Luck in the unmatched
bounty the North American continent has bestowed on the Nation and Europeans wearing
themselves out. This point is driven home by the fact that American standing in the world is
falling like a rock in many metrics.
I believe this explains why Americans still are reluctant to view themselves as being an
Empire. Too many tricky contradictions when dealing with their own citizens and reason for
being. It is what lies behind the lie of spreading "Democracy" to the world. The British
Empire faced no such dilemma. At least they brought law, order, and culture to those they
conquered. American Empire spreads chaos. Resisting cultures are treated to the political
ideology of annihilation. American policy is, "bombing them into the stone age."
Another great read is Halford Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History. In a way, his
thesis ties up all the loose ends of the Great Game being played by our political and social
betters. The Anglo-Saxon mode of rule has been to carve up the world. Asian cultures are much
older and as humanity moves forward in time, people are truly tiring of war. A united
Eurasian Continent would be a supreme power to set living standards and future goals. True
power is moving East.
What has the West to offer, but more blood and bombs. The embrace of cultural diversity
moves away from war and embodies political power in the melding of culture not its
extermination. I think that was the policy of Alexander the Great.
The great fear of American political leaders is being labeled provincials. Failed world
leadership lends credence to this charge. We are not ready to lead, and it shows by the
mediocracy of our leaders. An Empire that kills itself has to be a first. Is it any wonder
that the leadership now embrace the kill anything that moves mentality. It is all they have
in the form of power projection and vision.
All this to get to the point that maybe a multipolar world is not such a bad thing. Trying
something new when everything else seems to fail.
Eh I'm no fan of the West but I wouldn't paint the East in very pretty colors either, for
sure. Humanity has a tendency to suck. Look close to home to make things better I would
say.
You want a multipolar world, me too but what's with this "supreme" "United Eurasian
Continent"??? I want to have to at least take my shoes off to count the world's power
centers.
We have all forgotten the "Forgotten War". In another Asian byproduct of WWII, Curtis
LeMay channeled Clausewitz to the max as we flattened North Korea. How did that work out?
Does it have any ramifications for the USA in 2018?
Books to "explain" Vietnam and sequelae: Why no mention of a really seminal tome, "The
Ugly American"? Dated 1958. I read it, avidly, several times over, as a young,
testosterone-poisoned American Boy Scout Youth, and its mythos helped in getting me to enlist
in the Imperial Army in 1966. From Wiki:
The Ugly American is a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. The
Ugly American depicts the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps, whose insensitivity to local
language, culture, customs and refusal to integrate was in marked contrast to the polished
abilities of Eastern Bloc (primarily Soviet) diplomacy and led to Communist diplomatic
success overseas [sic]. The book caused a sensation in diplomatic circles. John F. Kennedy
was so impressed with the book that he sent a copy to each of his colleagues in the United
States Senate. The book was one of the biggest bestsellers in the country, has been in print
continuously since it appeared and is one of the most politically influential novels in all
of American literature.
The title of the novel is a play on Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American and
was sometimes confused with it.
The "Ugly American" of the book title refers to the book's hero, plain-looking
engineer Homer Atkins, whose "calloused and grease-blackened hands always reminded him that
he was an ugly man." Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their
needs, and offers genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the
development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump.[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American
Another of the hero's engineering triumph was getting the women of "Dong Ba" (?) to unbend
their backs by changing to a New, Improved, longer model of the bamboo brooms they used to
sweep the dirt floors of their huts. A relatively innocuous form of Coca-Colonialism But the
part that I got all hepped up about was the engineer's innovation, borrowing from the Soviet
"multiple launch rocket systems" known as "Katyushas," https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F2lPpPVlDhg ,
of fitting a truck with a several dozen rocket-launching rails, which he used to fire a
volley of "spin-stabilized folding-fin air-to-ground rockets (SSFFARs)" into a bamboo grove
where Evil Insurgents were having a meeting of their cabal -- "in the glare, you could see
body parts spinning up into the night sky " Heady Stuff for young mopes.
Apparently the myth of "The Ugly (But Big-Hearted, Local-Language-Speaking) American
settled nicely into the mind and mindset of Saint Kennedy, too
Tradition is durable. I recall Haitians, like some African forebears, preferred to cook
with charcoal, which one gets by burning wood in a low oxygen furnace before burning it in
your clay stove. Vastly wasteful. Now a good part of local effort goes into long walks to
find bits of shrubbery to reduce to charcoal. And they denuded the whole country of trees and
woody shrubs. Efforts made to change the custom met resistance -- "good enough for
grandemere, good enough for.me." Like trying to get Americans to stop smoking, or worse, to
drive smaller cars let alone kick the deadly automobile habit that has so many knock-on
deleterious effects on people and planet.
The degradation of the Haitian portion of Santo Dimingo was as much a result of the soil
erosion caused by that mono-crop, sugar cane. The French merchants were making "boo koo"
bucks deploying as many slaves as possible to harvest this cash crop. (Too many slaves on too
little land.)
The other half of Santo Domingo Island is the Dominican Republic and it has little of the
resource devastation apparent in Haiti.
I see VietNam as the perfect example of successful neo liberal economic policies. Military
Keynesianism, the workings of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and corporate profiteering are
more pertinent than Clausewitz or Coin. As with the thoroughly neo liberal DNC, it's never
been about winning or losing. It's just about the next consulting or munitions contract.
Forever war means forever contract. The Mt. Pelerin society didn't start in 1947 for nothing.
Keep them talking about winning and losing while the money flows in. Tough about the GI Joe
collateral damage.
The destined warriors are misused. International Law has no problem with wars of defense.
I have a right to defend myself. The State has a monopoly on the use of force.
Sports aren't enough for the action figures.
Couldn't beat the Vietnamese so beating the Beats
at home, in the homeland develops into for profit prisons
& the recreation of the Gulag. American Gulags
& how much of that labor for pennies is done for Koch Industries?
Meltoy?
I could found an entire nation on a love & war movie. South Koreans have made the
theaters called 4D. Shakes you around and blows wind and smells on you.
Spies fail in concert with their employers, the diplomats.
Haley is at the UN taking names.
Economic Warfare is universal. I mean there has been all my life
War against me. I went to Canada, so I am the enemy & the Wall is to keep me here where I
can be found & made to pay.
One term President Carter pardoned dodgers.
Wear sweaters.
On goes the petrodollar war. 100 Year Oil War.
Law of unintended consequences.
No care.
10,000 a year die from just small arms, in Mexico, not even artillery.
US Police kill 2,000 or is it 3? or is it 4? A year.
Now it is striking that Scandinavia, the Netherlands?
Nations other places & until France so few do big
murders of their countrymen or even within the EU.
They have lived where war means everything is
bombed or destroyed by cannons.
Germany won economically in capitalism matured
Because debts were to NAZIs enabling a great write off
of debt, not happening and inflated by Hedge Funds
for anybody else till Greece is enslaved & Puerto Rico
& whose next?
Doesn't matter, the US Military & its Bankers
& its police have been & will be at war with or
just at all Territories.
Unitary Power but as Gov. of Govs, can't be
That.
Why? Why Not?
War is not a war against spaceship aliens
So war is to destroy the Earth.
Kill anyone because you are destined
to kill.
Great Generals Have a Zest for Killing the Enemy.
Read "Our Jungle Road to Tokyo" by Robert L. Eichelberger who
is a great and perfect General of the 8th Army
in the Pacific.
Long as a General & an Army has one job only
At the behest of its Civilians.
All will be well.
Or at least rational, which is better.
Obviously Econ War is war.
Declaration of Econ War is Sanctions
Declared.
Because of illegal War.
I insist that the ICAO demand that
Kim Y. Un & DPRK give Notices to Airmen
When launching their Rockets.
My Rocket Program is called
The "Message Rocket Program".
Beat, I'm Beat.
"Army censorship concealed from
the American public, as it very properly
attempted to conceal from the Japanese, How weak we were.
The ethical weakness of the US
has become so profound.
All it does is war piratical parasitical
& everywhere all the time
on the ground or in the mind.
Out flow of all territory is by right
The Unitary Power's.
No Territory is won or lost.
Revisionist history is in full swing across the MSM spectrum. Take, for instance, the new
movie – 'The Post' – that pretends to be an accurate drama about Daniel Ellsberg,
the Pentagon Papers, and the "heroic" roll played by the Washington Post. It's fake history,
as this excellent review makes clear, but it fits a certain preferred narrative. https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/22/the-post-and-the-pentagon-papers/
adding: one the the self-serving fictions the Dem party estab tells itself is that the
working class voted for Nixon and other GOP candidates because the working class is racist.
That neatly sidesteps the then growing belief that Vietnam – a Dem war, LBJ's war
– was unwinnable, the Dem power establishment new it was unwinnable, and yet kept
drafting working class boys to go fight and die because LBJ and others' egos were at stake.
The Dems have never dealt with that betrayal of the working class.
The reading list is missing the books that describe the actual horrors of combat that our
soldiers endured:
Hamburger Hill – the movie does not do full justice to the total clusterfuck that
battle was. I guarantee that you will weep bitter tears as you read accounts of the stupidity
of commanding officers from general to lieutenant, and of the tragic waste of life of young
draftees.
We Were Soldiers Once – The first 3/4 of the movie closely follows the book -- and
then goes all Hollywood at the end. It had to, because what actually happened was a stinging
defeat of the American troops and a template for the rest of the war. A REMF staff officer
needed to "get his ticket punched" for promotion with combat command experience, so was put
in charge of a battalion that took part in the latter phases of the battle. While withdrawing
from the battlefield afterward, he led the unit into an NVA ambush and lost 2/3 of his men
(155 KIA, 124 WIA and 4 MIA out of about 450 troopers present).
For somewhat more sanitized versions of what the grunts endured, see the half-dozen books
(extended after-action reports) by S. L. A. Marshall.
Nothing has changed from Nam to GWOT as far as the utter stupidity of America's military
leaders, and their need for constant wars to advance their careers and feed their patrons in
the MIC. One thing they *did* learn, after getting their sorry asses fragged by young
draftees fed up with dying at the hands of incompetent dolts, was to ditch the draft and pay
for mercenary -- called "volunteer" -- enlisted ranks. The wonder is, after 16 years of
endless, futile deployemnts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria, that the mercs aren't
murdering their idiot officers now as well ..
"Go tell the spartans" did without the hollywood ending, us military assistance and Burt
Lancaster ponied up the 150k USD required to finish it.
Set in 1964, says it was clearly fucked then.
Worth a look.
Yeah, Go Tell the Spartans is an excellent Nam flick.
Another is Platoon. Oliver Stone served in the 25th Infantry Division in Quang Tin
Province in 1967. The last big battle of Platoon is based on an actual event in Quang Tin in
1971, when the VC overran Firebase Mary Ann and inflicted 33 KIA and 83 WIA on the 23rd
Division.. Sappers in the Wire is a very good book about that fiasco.
Books by S. L. A. Marshall may have to be read with caution, even though I have never read
them. The reason that I say this is a book that I recommended in this series of posts called
"About Face" by David H. Hackworth. Hackworth was detailed to escort Marshall around Vietnam
and he "described his initial elation at an assignment with a man he idolized, and how that
elation turned to disillusion after seeing Marshall's character and methods firsthand.
Hackworth described Marshall as a "voyeur warrior," for whom "the truth never got in the way
of a good story", and went so far as to say, "Veterans of many of the actions he 'documented'
in his books have complained bitterly over the years of his inaccuracy or blatant bias". The
guy was always chasing a buck.
One significant action this piece left out was Congress' cutting off aid to South Vietnam
after the US military withdrawal in '72 on. When the final tank-led NVA push came in Apr 75
most of the ARVN forces remained at their bases for lack of fuel and ammunition. Could the
NVA Apr 75 campaign have met with similar lack of success as the '71 and '68 campaigns had
Congress continued support for South Vietnam? Guess we'll never know.
Tom Hagel, at one point, calls the wars in Iraq and Afganistan stupid but I can't find it
in the transcript. However, he also said this;
WE DISTRUST OUR INSTITUTIONS, WE DISTRUST THE GOVERNMENT, BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES. WE ARE
ANGRY AND WE JUST WANT TO SMASH IT. IN A WAY, I THINK THE CHICKENS HAVE COME HOME TO WRIST
BECAUSE OUR CURRENT POLITICIANS TOO OFTEN, I DON'T TRUST THEM, EITHER. I THINK THEY
CONTINUALLY LIE TO US, BUT WE'VE ALLOWED OURSELVES TO BE LIED TO BECAUSE WE ELECT THEM ALL
THE TIME. THEY FORGOT THAT THEY WORK FOR US. WE ARE CITIZENS, WE RUN THE SHOW. THEY WORK FOR
US. FOR SOME REASON, AS A SOCIETY, WE HAVE LOST THAT. WE JUST LET IT GO ON. CONSEQUENTLY, A
LOT OF THE DISTRUST IN THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS CAN BE TRACKED BACK TO THE VIETNAM WAR.
BECAUSE IT WAS SO CLEAR UP OR A WHILE,. ESPECIALLY WITH ALL THE ARCHIVES AND THE MATERIALS
THAT HAVE BEEN RELEASED IN THAT, THE SOCIETY AND THE TROOPS WERE LIED TO,
Basics (I learned this at a military University, informally, not as coursework):
The objective of the military in war is to cause the enemy's economy to collapse.
This can be achieved by other means: eg Sanctions (an act of war) and Venezuela as an
example.
It would have been easier to control Vietnam in the '60s, by becoming the largest customer
for their major product, Rubber, and having American corporations, such as Coca-Cola,
"colonize" the country.
My experience of the Vietnamese, in the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam, is
they are Capitalists.
The various wars the US is fighting around the world have all the appearance of draining
the US economy and forcing it to collapse. Which in the world of soccer is referred to as an
"own goal."
That is, the US' largest enemy appears as itself.
1914 there were a number of Empires, British, French, German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman,
Russian, et, and the US.
By the 1920s there were many less.
By the 1960s few.
Today, one, the US.
In California, where I live, manufactured goods used to come from the east, over the
mountains. Today it appears few goods come over the mountains from the east.
One wonders if the union will last, for how long, and if it's ending will be bloody or
peaceful.
I came back from Vietnam feeling that I had just bathed in a septic lagoon. It was a war
based on a false moral premiss, and the obvious was apparent to anyone properly informed. In
a war that is at its foundation a moral outrage, even if you win you lose. Added to our
present situation is the fact that no one will read the Koran READ THE KORAN ..(the Penguin
Classic translation will do nicely) then come back and we'll talk about "hearts and minds".
The halls of power are everywhere stacked with sociopaths, narcissists, and culpable
morons.
David Halberstam from the Best and Brightest:
"The truth of the war never entered the upper-level American calculations; that this was a
revolutionary war, and that the other side held title to the revolution because of the
colonial war which had just ended. This most simple fact entered into the estimates of the
American intelligence community and made them quite accurate. But it never entered into the
calculations of the principals, for a variety of reasons; among other things to see the other
side in terms of nationalism or as revolutionaries might mean a re-evaluation of whether the
United States was even fighting on the right side. In contrast, the question of Communism and
anti-Communism as opposed to revolution and anti-revolution was far more convenient for
American policy."
The Vietnam War could never have been won by the USA. Invasion of the North at worst would
have started a nuclear war (as Russia threaten) or at best a wider war with the Chinese
Peoples Army which had ended in a tie a decade before in Korea.
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are repeats except without the draft there is inadequate
manpower. The USA's Great Game uses proxy forces that they supply and then fight; the
Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS. Kurds will soon be added to the list. These wars likewise cannot
be won. Counter insurgency wars have been won against minorities who do not have outside
support or safe havens; the American Indian Wars or Australia for example. This is fairly
clear. Then why don't the experts, West Point graduates, see it? First, it is hard to admit
that it all for nothing. Second, the ruling ideology in the West; neo-liberalism, advocates
the free movement of people, goods and services. The way mankind ends wars is with strong
borders, home based militias and peace treaties. This is antithesis to western plutocrats.
The military is doing what their bosses want them to do.
I think the thing that always needs to put out in front of any discussion of the
euphemistically named 'Vietnam War' is that there literally wouldn't have been a war if not
for US interference. Debates about whether we could have 'won' or not, or if the US should
have 'intervened' in the first place always seem to ignore the fact that this wasn't just
some regional conflict that the US decided to interject itself into. If we had allowed the
elections stipulated by the 1954 Geneva Accords to happen, rather than seeking to make the
South into a permanent puppet regime, there wouldn't have been any war. Going even further
back, if we hadn't given our support to the French to continue their colonial rule there
probably wouldn't have even been a First Indochina War, or it would have at least been far
shorter.
Memorable books that I was reading at the time and shortly thereafter:
"A Viet Cong Memoir," by Truong Nhu Tang, a massively detailed account of his own personal
journey from a privileged family serving the French, to a leader of the Viet Cong war against
the US invaders.
Frances Fitzgerald's "The Fire in the Lake" What the American invaders did not understand
nor care to learn about Vietnamese society and customs, that did them in as much as anything
else in that war.
"Betrayal" by Marine Colonel William Corson;
"Our Own Worst Enemy" by William J Lederer;
"The Viet-Nam Reader," edited by Marcus Raskin and Bernard Fall
Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam"
"Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia" by William Shawcross (This
is an explosive, massively researched, highly detailed and horrifying account of Kissinger's
deliberate destruction of the land and the people of what until then had been the "bread
basket of SE Asia" and the most contented society on earth.)
Why would anyone blame de Gaulle WRT to anything in Indochina? De Gaulle didn't take over
France until several years after their Vietnam debacle, and de Gaulle was the man who got the
French out of Algeria (he nearly got assassinated for this). De Gaulle was an authoritarian
French nationalist, but he was neither an imperialist nor a sabre-rattler.
As the author alludes, the war in Vietnam was essentially unwinnable because it failed to
meet a basic precept for success in any war: It did not have a higher purpose. Ditto
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Raises fundamental questions regarding military action as the geopolitical default option
of choice, which as the title to the post suggests, is not desired by the MIC.
"... Everyone is assuming this is an anti-American, Russia-backed operation, and Turkey has left the NATO fold, but is it? Wheels within wheels, and it's is not clear what the end result will be. If I was Assad, I would be looking very closely at all this. There seems to be some suggestion that the Kurds are getting reinforcements and supplies shipped via Syrian government areas, which is interesting. ..."
"... If one is set on running an empire, one simply cannot afford to be seen losing to "inferior 3'rd world tribals" very often, if not they, then others will take notice and get ideas. ..."
"... The USA was not designed to be an empire, it was designed to be a Republic for, by and of the People. Our international adventurism will be the death of not just us, but possibly the world. Not a month goes by without a major provocative incident towards Russia. Usually assassinations of Russian diplomats, Oligarchs, or military bellicosity. I wonder if these are in response to disavowed US operatives being killed, or if Russia is exhibiting enormous restraint, because they are the responsible ones who don't want to see the world burn for Israel. ..."
In what way? The fact that the Turks won? They beat the shit out some very tough British and Anzac troops, who were invading
their country. Might be something to consider at this point.
Another point: this little piece of Syria that is being invaded lies between two other little bits of Syria that turkey has
already invaded / occupied. If they manage to link up on either side, they will have created a wide buffer on their border. Is
this just a bit of "protection" for turkey, or is it part of the US plan to split up, partition and dismember Syria?
Everyone is assuming this is an anti-American, Russia-backed operation, and Turkey has left the NATO fold, but is it? Wheels
within wheels, and it's is not clear what the end result will be. If I was Assad, I would be looking very closely at all this.
There seems to be some suggestion that the Kurds are getting reinforcements and supplies shipped via Syrian government areas,
which is interesting.
Yes. It is OK for an empire to be hated and feared, it doesn't work so good when Glory slowly fades and he empire instead becomes
hated and despised.
If one is set on running an empire, one simply cannot afford to be seen losing to "inferior 3'rd world tribals" very often,
if not they, then others will take notice and get ideas.
Letting one's side down has consequences. Not delivering on the benefits promised for foreigners serving the empire has consequences
too.
The USA was not designed to be an empire, it was designed to be a Republic for, by and of the People. Our international
adventurism will be the death of not just us, but possibly the world. Not a month goes by without a major provocative incident
towards Russia. Usually assassinations of Russian diplomats, Oligarchs, or military bellicosity. I wonder if these are in response
to disavowed US operatives being killed, or if Russia is exhibiting enormous restraint, because they are the responsible ones
who don't want to see the world burn for Israel.
"... Everyone is assuming this is an anti-American, Russia-backed operation, and Turkey has left the NATO fold, but is it? Wheels within wheels, and it's is not clear what the end result will be. If I was Assad, I would be looking very closely at all this. There seems to be some suggestion that the Kurds are getting reinforcements and supplies shipped via Syrian government areas, which is interesting. ..."
"... If one is set on running an empire, one simply cannot afford to be seen losing to "inferior 3'rd world tribals" very often, if not they, then others will take notice and get ideas. ..."
"... The USA was not designed to be an empire, it was designed to be a Republic for, by and of the People. Our international adventurism will be the death of not just us, but possibly the world. Not a month goes by without a major provocative incident towards Russia. Usually assassinations of Russian diplomats, Oligarchs, or military bellicosity. I wonder if these are in response to disavowed US operatives being killed, or if Russia is exhibiting enormous restraint, because they are the responsible ones who don't want to see the world burn for Israel. ..."
In what way? The fact that the Turks won? They beat the shit out some very tough British and Anzac troops, who were invading
their country. Might be something to consider at this point.
Another point: this little piece of Syria that is being invaded lies between two other little bits of Syria that turkey has
already invaded / occupied. If they manage to link up on either side, they will have created a wide buffer on their border. Is
this just a bit of "protection" for turkey, or is it part of the US plan to split up, partition and dismember Syria?
Everyone is assuming this is an anti-American, Russia-backed operation, and Turkey has left the NATO fold, but is it? Wheels
within wheels, and it's is not clear what the end result will be. If I was Assad, I would be looking very closely at all this.
There seems to be some suggestion that the Kurds are getting reinforcements and supplies shipped via Syrian government areas,
which is interesting.
Yes. It is OK for an empire to be hated and feared, it doesn't work so good when Glory slowly fades and he empire instead becomes
hated and despised.
If one is set on running an empire, one simply cannot afford to be seen losing to "inferior 3'rd world tribals" very often,
if not they, then others will take notice and get ideas.
Letting one's side down has consequences. Not delivering on the benefits promised for foreigners serving the empire has consequences
too.
The USA was not designed to be an empire, it was designed to be a Republic for, by and of the People. Our international
adventurism will be the death of not just us, but possibly the world. Not a month goes by without a major provocative incident
towards Russia. Usually assassinations of Russian diplomats, Oligarchs, or military bellicosity. I wonder if these are in response
to disavowed US operatives being killed, or if Russia is exhibiting enormous restraint, because they are the responsible ones
who don't want to see the world burn for Israel.
Completely unrealistic assessment of the situation. Essentially "kicking the can down the road:" approach. Looks
like Trump administration is now neocon administration. Kind of Obama II or Bush III.
Military Keysianism (in the style of national socialism) all over again. But the US empire requires now spending that can
hardly be afforded by US economy. Add to this care of disabled veterans, number of which is growing each year (while casualties
rate due to modern medicine is low, number of disabled soldiers is substantial).
Hopefully over $100
per barrel oil will sober some hot Pentagon heads. Neocons, who now dominate foreign policy of Trump administration, are hopeless in this respect, they will
pursue the dream of global dominance and American empire ("America uber alles") till the last American (excluding of cause themselves
-- 99% of them are chickenhawks -- and their families)
So 700 billion dollars will be spent not matter what suffering and deprivations for ordinary
Americans (no jobs, no hope) it entails
The USA population lose much treasure and has a deteriorating standard of living to maintain
an empire at the behest of neoliberal elite... This sentiment is merely confirming the US public
discontent with interventionism and neocon foreign policy that had been revived by the 2003 Iraq
invasion. The recent J. Wallin Opinion Research
survey revealed that 71 percent of Americans believed Congress should pass legislation that
restrained military action. Due to power of MIC an overblown defense budget does not get proper
the scrutiny of any other form of public spending. the United States' annual military budget
around $700 billion. Those guys need war to justify it.
Much of those costs have been borne by ordinary Americans -- from paying for war debts to
being at greater risk of terrorist attacks -- while the war profits go to a select group of
corporations. It is difficult to imagine any single decision in any other realm of policy that
has cost so much, delivered little, and harmed America and the rest of the world so
irreparably.
Notable quotes:
"... our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare, air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, and it is continuing to erode. ..."
"... to keep the peace for one more year, one more month, one more week, one more day. To ensure our diplomats who are working to solve problems do so from a position of strength ..."
"... It is incumbent upon us to field a more lethal force if our nation is to retain the ability to defend ourselves and what we stand for. The defense strategy's three primary lines of effort will restore our comparative military advantage. ..."
"... We're going to build a more lethal force. We will strengthen our traditional alliances and building new partnerships with other nations. And at the same time we'll reform our department's business practices for performance and affordability. ..."
"... We will modernize key capabilities, recognizing we cannot expect success fighting tomorrow's conflicts with yesterday's weapons or equipment. Investments in space and cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense, advanced autonomous systems, and resilient and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to win. ..."
"... And again, the 40-odd nations that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in NATO's mission in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Our third line of effort serves as the foundation for our competitive edge: reforming the business practices of the department to provide both solvency and security, thereby gaining the full benefit from every dollar spent, in which way we will gain and hold the trust of Congress and the American people. ..."
We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia are from
each other, nations that do seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models,
pursuing veto authority over other nations' economic, diplomatic and security decisions.
Rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran persist in taking outlaw actions that threaten
regional and even global stability. Oppressing their own people and shredding their own
people's dignity and human rights, they push their warped views outward.
And despite the defeat of ISIS' physical caliphate, violent extremist organizations like
ISIS or Lebanese Hezbollah or al Qaida continue to sow hatred, destroying peace and murdering
innocents across the globe.
In this time of change, our military is still strong. Yet our competitive edge has
eroded in every domain of warfare, air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, and it is continuing
to erode.
Rapid technological change, the negative impact on military readiness is resulting from the
longest continuous stretch of combat in our nation's history and defense spending caps, because
we have been operating also for nine of the last 10 years under continuing resolutions that
have created an overstretched and under-resourced military.
Our military's role is to keep the peace; to keep the peace for one more year, one more
month, one more week, one more day. To ensure our diplomats who are working to solve problems
do so from a position of strength and giving allies confidence in us. This confidence is
underpinned by the assurance that our military will win should diplomacy fail.
When unveiling his national security strategy, President Trump said, "Weakness is the surest
path to conflict, and unquestioned strength is the most certain means of defense."
Ladies and gentlemen, we have no room for complacency, and history makes clear that America
has no preordained right to victory on the battlefield. Simply, we must be the best if the
values that grew out of the Enlightenment are to survive.
It is incumbent upon us to field a more lethal force if our nation is to retain the
ability to defend ourselves and what we stand for. The defense strategy's three primary lines
of effort will restore our comparative military advantage.
We're going to build a more lethal force. We will strengthen our traditional alliances
and building new partnerships with other nations. And at the same time we'll reform our
department's business practices for performance and affordability.
In doing this, we will earn the trust of the American people and Congress, if their defense
dollars are well spent.
But let me go through each of the lines of effort. And I want to start with lethality,
because everything we do in the department must contribute to the lethality of our
military.
The paradox of war is that an enemy will attack any perceived weakness. So we in America
cannot adopt a single preclusive form of warfare. Rather we must be able to fight across the
spectrum of conflict.
This means that the size and the composition of our force matters. The nation must field
sufficient capable forces to deter conflict. And if deterrence fails, we must win.
We will modernize key capabilities, recognizing we cannot expect success fighting
tomorrow's conflicts with yesterday's weapons or equipment. Investments in space and
cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense, advanced autonomous systems, and
resilient and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to
win.
Changing our forces' posture will prioritize readiness for warfighting for major combat,
making us strategically predictable for our allies and operationally unpredictable for any
adversary.
Increasing the lethality of our troops, supported by our defense civilians, requires us to
reshape our approach that managing our outstanding talent, reinvigorating our military
education and honing civilian workforce expertise.
The creativity and talent of the department is our deepest wellspring of strength, and one
that warrants greater investment.
And to those who would threaten America's experiment in democracy, they must know: If you
challenge us it will be your longest and your worst day. Work with our diplomats; you don't
want to fight the Department of Defense.
The second line of effort I noted was to strengthen alliances as we build new partnerships,
as well.
In my past, I fought many times and never did I fight in a solely American formation. It was
always alongside foreign troops.
Now, as Winston Churchill once said, the only thing harder than fighting with allies is
fighting without them. But we are going to be stronger together in recognizing that our
military will be designed and trained and ready to fight alongside allies.
History proves that nations with allies thrive, an approach to security and prosperity that
has served the United States well in keeping peace and winning war. Working by, with and
through allies who carry their equitable share allows us to amass the greatest possible
strength.
We carried a disproportionate share of the defense burden for the democracies in the
post-World War II era. The growing economic strength of today's democracies and partners
dictates they must now step up and do more.
When together we pool our resources and share responsibility for the common defense,
individual nations' security burdens become lighter. This has been demonstrated right now,
today, for example, by over 70 nations and international organizations of the Defeat-ISIS
campaign that is successfully conducting operations in the Middle East. And again, the
40-odd nations that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in NATO's mission in Afghanistan.
To strengthen and work jointly with more allies, our organizations, processes and procedures
must be ally-friendly. The department will do more than just listen to other nations' ideas. We
will be willing to be persuaded by them, recognizing that all not -- that not all good ideas
come from the country with the most aircraft carriers.
This line of effort will bolster an extended network capable of decisively meeting the
challenges of our time. So we're going to make the military more lethal, and we are going to
build and strengthen traditional alliances, as well as go out and find some new partners --
maybe nontraditional partners -- as we do what the Greatest Generation did, coming home from
World War II, when they built the alliances that have served us so well, right through
today.
Our third line of effort serves as the foundation for our competitive edge: reforming
the business practices of the department to provide both solvency and security, thereby gaining
the full benefit from every dollar spent, in which way we will gain and hold the trust of
Congress and the American people.
Completely unrealistic assessment of the situation. Essentially "kicking the can down the road:" approach. Looks
like Trump administration is now neocon administration. Kind of Obama II or Bush III.
Military Keysianism (in the style of national socialism) all over again. But the US empire requires now spending that can
hardly be afforded by US economy. Add to this care of disabled veterans, number of which is growing each year (while casualties
rate due to modern medicine is low, number of disabled soldiers is substantial).
Hopefully over $100
per barrel oil will sober some hot Pentagon heads. Neocons, who now dominate foreign policy of Trump administration, are hopeless in this respect, they will
pursue the dream of global dominance and American empire ("America uber alles") till the last American (excluding of cause themselves
-- 99% of them are chickenhawks -- and their families)
So 700 billion dollars will be spent not matter what suffering and deprivations for ordinary
Americans (no jobs, no hope) it entails
The USA population lose much treasure and has a deteriorating standard of living to maintain
an empire at the behest of neoliberal elite... This sentiment is merely confirming the US public
discontent with interventionism and neocon foreign policy that had been revived by the 2003 Iraq
invasion. The recent J. Wallin Opinion Research
survey revealed that 71 percent of Americans believed Congress should pass legislation that
restrained military action. Due to power of MIC an overblown defense budget does not get proper
the scrutiny of any other form of public spending. the United States' annual military budget
around $700 billion. Those guys need war to justify it.
Much of those costs have been borne by ordinary Americans -- from paying for war debts to
being at greater risk of terrorist attacks -- while the war profits go to a select group of
corporations. It is difficult to imagine any single decision in any other realm of policy that
has cost so much, delivered little, and harmed America and the rest of the world so
irreparably.
Notable quotes:
"... our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare, air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, and it is continuing to erode. ..."
"... to keep the peace for one more year, one more month, one more week, one more day. To ensure our diplomats who are working to solve problems do so from a position of strength ..."
"... It is incumbent upon us to field a more lethal force if our nation is to retain the ability to defend ourselves and what we stand for. The defense strategy's three primary lines of effort will restore our comparative military advantage. ..."
"... We're going to build a more lethal force. We will strengthen our traditional alliances and building new partnerships with other nations. And at the same time we'll reform our department's business practices for performance and affordability. ..."
"... We will modernize key capabilities, recognizing we cannot expect success fighting tomorrow's conflicts with yesterday's weapons or equipment. Investments in space and cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense, advanced autonomous systems, and resilient and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to win. ..."
"... And again, the 40-odd nations that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in NATO's mission in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Our third line of effort serves as the foundation for our competitive edge: reforming the business practices of the department to provide both solvency and security, thereby gaining the full benefit from every dollar spent, in which way we will gain and hold the trust of Congress and the American people. ..."
We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia are from
each other, nations that do seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models,
pursuing veto authority over other nations' economic, diplomatic and security decisions.
Rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran persist in taking outlaw actions that threaten
regional and even global stability. Oppressing their own people and shredding their own
people's dignity and human rights, they push their warped views outward.
And despite the defeat of ISIS' physical caliphate, violent extremist organizations like
ISIS or Lebanese Hezbollah or al Qaida continue to sow hatred, destroying peace and murdering
innocents across the globe.
In this time of change, our military is still strong. Yet our competitive edge has
eroded in every domain of warfare, air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, and it is continuing
to erode.
Rapid technological change, the negative impact on military readiness is resulting from the
longest continuous stretch of combat in our nation's history and defense spending caps, because
we have been operating also for nine of the last 10 years under continuing resolutions that
have created an overstretched and under-resourced military.
Our military's role is to keep the peace; to keep the peace for one more year, one more
month, one more week, one more day. To ensure our diplomats who are working to solve problems
do so from a position of strength and giving allies confidence in us. This confidence is
underpinned by the assurance that our military will win should diplomacy fail.
When unveiling his national security strategy, President Trump said, "Weakness is the surest
path to conflict, and unquestioned strength is the most certain means of defense."
Ladies and gentlemen, we have no room for complacency, and history makes clear that America
has no preordained right to victory on the battlefield. Simply, we must be the best if the
values that grew out of the Enlightenment are to survive.
It is incumbent upon us to field a more lethal force if our nation is to retain the
ability to defend ourselves and what we stand for. The defense strategy's three primary lines
of effort will restore our comparative military advantage.
We're going to build a more lethal force. We will strengthen our traditional alliances
and building new partnerships with other nations. And at the same time we'll reform our
department's business practices for performance and affordability.
In doing this, we will earn the trust of the American people and Congress, if their defense
dollars are well spent.
But let me go through each of the lines of effort. And I want to start with lethality,
because everything we do in the department must contribute to the lethality of our
military.
The paradox of war is that an enemy will attack any perceived weakness. So we in America
cannot adopt a single preclusive form of warfare. Rather we must be able to fight across the
spectrum of conflict.
This means that the size and the composition of our force matters. The nation must field
sufficient capable forces to deter conflict. And if deterrence fails, we must win.
We will modernize key capabilities, recognizing we cannot expect success fighting
tomorrow's conflicts with yesterday's weapons or equipment. Investments in space and
cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense, advanced autonomous systems, and
resilient and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to
win.
Changing our forces' posture will prioritize readiness for warfighting for major combat,
making us strategically predictable for our allies and operationally unpredictable for any
adversary.
Increasing the lethality of our troops, supported by our defense civilians, requires us to
reshape our approach that managing our outstanding talent, reinvigorating our military
education and honing civilian workforce expertise.
The creativity and talent of the department is our deepest wellspring of strength, and one
that warrants greater investment.
And to those who would threaten America's experiment in democracy, they must know: If you
challenge us it will be your longest and your worst day. Work with our diplomats; you don't
want to fight the Department of Defense.
The second line of effort I noted was to strengthen alliances as we build new partnerships,
as well.
In my past, I fought many times and never did I fight in a solely American formation. It was
always alongside foreign troops.
Now, as Winston Churchill once said, the only thing harder than fighting with allies is
fighting without them. But we are going to be stronger together in recognizing that our
military will be designed and trained and ready to fight alongside allies.
History proves that nations with allies thrive, an approach to security and prosperity that
has served the United States well in keeping peace and winning war. Working by, with and
through allies who carry their equitable share allows us to amass the greatest possible
strength.
We carried a disproportionate share of the defense burden for the democracies in the
post-World War II era. The growing economic strength of today's democracies and partners
dictates they must now step up and do more.
When together we pool our resources and share responsibility for the common defense,
individual nations' security burdens become lighter. This has been demonstrated right now,
today, for example, by over 70 nations and international organizations of the Defeat-ISIS
campaign that is successfully conducting operations in the Middle East. And again, the
40-odd nations that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in NATO's mission in Afghanistan.
To strengthen and work jointly with more allies, our organizations, processes and procedures
must be ally-friendly. The department will do more than just listen to other nations' ideas. We
will be willing to be persuaded by them, recognizing that all not -- that not all good ideas
come from the country with the most aircraft carriers.
This line of effort will bolster an extended network capable of decisively meeting the
challenges of our time. So we're going to make the military more lethal, and we are going to
build and strengthen traditional alliances, as well as go out and find some new partners --
maybe nontraditional partners -- as we do what the Greatest Generation did, coming home from
World War II, when they built the alliances that have served us so well, right through
today.
Our third line of effort serves as the foundation for our competitive edge: reforming
the business practices of the department to provide both solvency and security, thereby gaining
the full benefit from every dollar spent, in which way we will gain and hold the trust of
Congress and the American people.
Remember how the USA ignited the Ukraine to punish the Russians for their thwarting of the
planned US attack on Syria? Well, the very same Ukraine has recently passed a law abolishing
the "anti-terrorist operation" in the Donbass and declaring the Donbass "occupied territory".
Under Ukie law, Russia is now officially an "aggressor state". This means that the Ukronazis
have now basically rejected the Minsk Agreements and are in a quasi-open state of war with
Russia. The chances of a full-scale Ukronazi attack on the Donbass are now even higher then
before, especially before or during the soccer World Cup in Moscow this summer (remember
Saakashvili?). Having been ridiculed (again) with their Border Security Force in Syria, the US
Americans will now seek a place to take revenge on the evil Russkies and this place will most
likely be the Ukraine. And we can always count the Israelis to find a pretext to continue to
murder Palestinians and bomb Syria. As for the Saudis, they appear to be temporarily busy
fighting each other. So unless the Empire does something really crazy, the only place it can
lash out with little to lose (for itself) is the eastern Ukraine. The Novorussians understand
that. May God help them.
Saker, interesting analysis. 1 tiny point of criticism:
Remember how the USA ignited the Ukraine to punish the Russians for their thwarting of
the planned US attack on Syria?
If I am not mistaken the CIA fomented "Orange revolution" in Ukraine was in 2014, whereas
Russia stepped into the Syrian war in 2015. So in the quoted sentence, it seems you got the
sequence of events back to front.
Ha-ha! Goddam Russkies scorched the Amero-ISIS arse and now Russo-Turks are gaslighting the
Kurds and their ten 'Murican lilypads. It's time for a diversionary Great Patriotic Ukrainian
War, just as soon as Porko sobers up.
What occurred in 2014 was the Maidan psy-op. As far as I recall, the only thing
significant that happened in Ukraine in 2010 was the election of Yanukovych.
In an article about Syria, Russia is omnipresent and the article ends by talking about
Ukraine. Nothing could better illustrate the fact that Putin has painted himself into a
corner in both places. He is irreversibly bogged down in Syria and any deal he makes with the
Kurds will just bog him down even more. Putin is a sitting duck. The US can lower the boom on
him at any time by relaunching the war and there's nothing he can do about it. And, of
course, the author makes clear that all this is "about" Ukraine. Syria is a proxy war. But in
Ukraine also, Putin has painted himself into a corner. He can't go forward, he can't go
backwards and he can't stay where he is!
Looks to me like he has done very well, the Ukraine is a basket case, surviving on little
more than borrowed money(I see on the QT that they are back to having to buy coal from Russia
AGAIN) and sooner rather than later there will be another coup as they find that even the EU
don';t want them.Syria why does he need to make a deal with the Kurd's for they are not his
problem,if anyone makes a deal with the Kurd's it will have be Syria,as far as that little
chunk we carved out just what good is it landlocked with no access to a water port,as normal
your trolling along with the mighty U.S. which is little more than a paper tiger with its
involvement in Afghanistan Africa and other places of interest as it tries to save what can't
be saved,the EMPIRE
I am not sure there is any evidence that Pres Putin needs t do anything.
He has no intention of raking the Ukraine. Not an issue. He's responding the consequences
of a western incited violent revolution that spun out of control -- and is protecting "ethnic
Russians" a dynamic that plagues Europe and Asia.
In Syria he is not launching a campaign of conquest but supporting. Anyone who thinks
Russia is caught in a vice is sorely mistaken. I can see from the comments that
misunderstanding the motivations of pothers remains in play and that is not encouraging.
Yo be clear, I have full faith of US might. we can bring a formidable amount of force on
any situation -- it's frightening, just how formidable we are. The question remains
first should we
second how long we need to sustain it
third tested against multiple adversaries (of our own making) in multiple locations
fourth tested against other modern states who themselves have engaged in tech superior
forces
fifth the strategic advantages -- short verses long term
Just because one can -- doesn't . . .
Nor am I ignoring that we have allies willing to take on Russia, but when push comes to
shove . . . who knows. I think we are the ones getting played and as for trapped -- and
bogged down --
"... As a former service member, Uncle Sam paid me to live in Europe for a couple years and sure opened my eyes (though they got their money out of me from an Iraq and A-stan deployment). I realized that many parts of US are overrated, crime ridden dumps even when compared to most places even in Eastern Europe. ..."
"... Europeans can thank US promoted defense freeloading so they can focus on beating the US on all quality of life measure including crime rates, mortality, longevity, health care, and other measures of happiness other than GDP such as not worrying about your kids getting massacred at school from yet another mass shooting. ..."
"... I'm a proud American but these infinitely proved wrong neocons keep resurrecting themselves. ..."
@deef, the ad hominem you begin with against the author shows where you are coming from.
George the Lesser revisionists like you never learn.
Where is the ROI on global policing? Selective sampling of wars? Where have you been for
the last 15 years as the US digs deeper within the biggest strategic blunder in the history
of the US? We could have done more useful things with the $5,000,000,000,000+ that was spent
on these dumb wars of choice such as manned mission to mars, universal insurance, pave the
freeways in gold
The US causes more unintended consequences and greater conflicts and deaths than the good
intentions they believe they are performing. See Syria, Iraq, Yemen, et al.
What's the casualty/death/missing numbers of Iraqis during the US's invasion vs. Saddam's
time? Is the average Iraqi happy to be there? I guess all that matters is that the US is
supposedly safer. Would any US citizen agree to that for the past 15 years?
And let's not kid ourselves, the State Dept. in any neocon administration is an extension
of the Department of Defense.
As a former service member, Uncle Sam paid me to live in Europe for a couple years and
sure opened my eyes (though they got their money out of me from an Iraq and A-stan
deployment). I realized that many parts of US are overrated, crime ridden dumps even when
compared to most places even in Eastern Europe.
Europeans can thank US promoted defense freeloading so they can focus on beating the US on
all quality of life measure including crime rates, mortality, longevity, health care, and
other measures of happiness other than GDP such as not worrying about your kids getting
massacred at school from yet another mass shooting.
I'm a proud American but these infinitely proved wrong neocons keep resurrecting
themselves.
I stand corrected, it is 17 years of continuous hole digging, tax dollar burning, and
amortization of the decline of future prosperity continues un-abated.
Sons and daughters born in 2001 of vets of these stupid wars of choice are now eligible to
fight the same end-stateless, no condition of victory wars with an expanded enemy set to
include peer competitors of Russia, China, N. Korea.
The annual soldier that dies on Jan. 1 of year X hand wringing editorial can continue
indefinitely.
@jk "I'm a proud American but these infinitely proved wrong neocons keep resurrecting
themselves."
Because we let them. We don't laugh them off television programs or kick them out of the
auditoriums where they keep inviting each other to appear. We don't punish elected
politicians (like Trump) who keep hiring them because they think we won't notice.
As far as I remember his posts Michael Kenny is "Israel-firster."
He does not care much about the US national security by definition, having different
priorities.
BTW it's a news for me that AEI launched such neocon stalwarts as "Frederick Kagan, John
Bolton, former vice president Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot Cohen,
Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, David Frum, and Danielle Pletka."
It is a sad fact that Trump administration now is infiltrated with neocons, but in reality
how it can be different.
POTUS no longer defines the US foreign policy; MIC does (neocons can probably be better
understood as professional lobbyists of MIC). In a way, POTUS is now by-and-large ceremonial
figure, although Trump at least during the election campaign (and shortly after, say, before
April 2017 and Mueller commission) has had somewhat more isolationist views (his bellicosity
toward Iran and NK notwithstanding.) But he was quickly brought into the fold. Now he acts
like a regular Republican President, say, like Bush III.
The latter just demonstrates the power of MIC.
That's why there a surprising level of continuity of foreign policy between different
administrations.
My impression is that Israel also is effectively acting as a MIC lobbyist injecting some
money they got via military help into the USA politics directly, or indirectly.
Remember how the USA ignited the Ukraine to punish the Russians for their thwarting of the
planned US attack on Syria? Well, the very same Ukraine has recently passed a law abolishing
the "anti-terrorist operation" in the Donbass and declaring the Donbass "occupied territory".
Under Ukie law, Russia is now officially an "aggressor state". This means that the Ukronazis
have now basically rejected the Minsk Agreements and are in a quasi-open state of war with
Russia. The chances of a full-scale Ukronazi attack on the Donbass are now even higher then
before, especially before or during the soccer World Cup in Moscow this summer (remember
Saakashvili?). Having been ridiculed (again) with their Border Security Force in Syria, the US
Americans will now seek a place to take revenge on the evil Russkies and this place will most
likely be the Ukraine. And we can always count the Israelis to find a pretext to continue to
murder Palestinians and bomb Syria. As for the Saudis, they appear to be temporarily busy
fighting each other. So unless the Empire does something really crazy, the only place it can
lash out with little to lose (for itself) is the eastern Ukraine. The Novorussians understand
that. May God help them.
Saker, interesting analysis. 1 tiny point of criticism:
Remember how the USA ignited the Ukraine to punish the Russians for their thwarting of
the planned US attack on Syria?
If I am not mistaken the CIA fomented "Orange revolution" in Ukraine was in 2014, whereas
Russia stepped into the Syrian war in 2015. So in the quoted sentence, it seems you got the
sequence of events back to front.
Ha-ha! Goddam Russkies scorched the Amero-ISIS arse and now Russo-Turks are gaslighting the
Kurds and their ten 'Murican lilypads. It's time for a diversionary Great Patriotic Ukrainian
War, just as soon as Porko sobers up.
What occurred in 2014 was the Maidan psy-op. As far as I recall, the only thing
significant that happened in Ukraine in 2010 was the election of Yanukovych.
In an article about Syria, Russia is omnipresent and the article ends by talking about
Ukraine. Nothing could better illustrate the fact that Putin has painted himself into a
corner in both places. He is irreversibly bogged down in Syria and any deal he makes with the
Kurds will just bog him down even more. Putin is a sitting duck. The US can lower the boom on
him at any time by relaunching the war and there's nothing he can do about it. And, of
course, the author makes clear that all this is "about" Ukraine. Syria is a proxy war. But in
Ukraine also, Putin has painted himself into a corner. He can't go forward, he can't go
backwards and he can't stay where he is!
Looks to me like he has done very well, the Ukraine is a basket case, surviving on little
more than borrowed money(I see on the QT that they are back to having to buy coal from Russia
AGAIN) and sooner rather than later there will be another coup as they find that even the EU
don';t want them.Syria why does he need to make a deal with the Kurd's for they are not his
problem,if anyone makes a deal with the Kurd's it will have be Syria,as far as that little
chunk we carved out just what good is it landlocked with no access to a water port,as normal
your trolling along with the mighty U.S. which is little more than a paper tiger with its
involvement in Afghanistan Africa and other places of interest as it tries to save what can't
be saved,the EMPIRE
I am not sure there is any evidence that Pres Putin needs t do anything.
He has no intention of raking the Ukraine. Not an issue. He's responding the consequences
of a western incited violent revolution that spun out of control -- and is protecting "ethnic
Russians" a dynamic that plagues Europe and Asia.
In Syria he is not launching a campaign of conquest but supporting. Anyone who thinks
Russia is caught in a vice is sorely mistaken. I can see from the comments that
misunderstanding the motivations of pothers remains in play and that is not encouraging.
Yo be clear, I have full faith of US might. we can bring a formidable amount of force on
any situation -- it's frightening, just how formidable we are. The question remains
first should we
second how long we need to sustain it
third tested against multiple adversaries (of our own making) in multiple locations
fourth tested against other modern states who themselves have engaged in tech superior
forces
fifth the strategic advantages -- short verses long term
Just because one can -- doesn't . . .
Nor am I ignoring that we have allies willing to take on Russia, but when push comes to
shove . . . who knows. I think we are the ones getting played and as for trapped -- and
bogged down --
"... As a former service member, Uncle Sam paid me to live in Europe for a couple years and sure opened my eyes (though they got their money out of me from an Iraq and A-stan deployment). I realized that many parts of US are overrated, crime ridden dumps even when compared to most places even in Eastern Europe. ..."
"... Europeans can thank US promoted defense freeloading so they can focus on beating the US on all quality of life measure including crime rates, mortality, longevity, health care, and other measures of happiness other than GDP such as not worrying about your kids getting massacred at school from yet another mass shooting. ..."
"... I'm a proud American but these infinitely proved wrong neocons keep resurrecting themselves. ..."
@deef, the ad hominem you begin with against the author shows where you are coming from.
George the Lesser revisionists like you never learn.
Where is the ROI on global policing? Selective sampling of wars? Where have you been for
the last 15 years as the US digs deeper within the biggest strategic blunder in the history
of the US? We could have done more useful things with the $5,000,000,000,000+ that was spent
on these dumb wars of choice such as manned mission to mars, universal insurance, pave the
freeways in gold
The US causes more unintended consequences and greater conflicts and deaths than the good
intentions they believe they are performing. See Syria, Iraq, Yemen, et al.
What's the casualty/death/missing numbers of Iraqis during the US's invasion vs. Saddam's
time? Is the average Iraqi happy to be there? I guess all that matters is that the US is
supposedly safer. Would any US citizen agree to that for the past 15 years?
And let's not kid ourselves, the State Dept. in any neocon administration is an extension
of the Department of Defense.
As a former service member, Uncle Sam paid me to live in Europe for a couple years and
sure opened my eyes (though they got their money out of me from an Iraq and A-stan
deployment). I realized that many parts of US are overrated, crime ridden dumps even when
compared to most places even in Eastern Europe.
Europeans can thank US promoted defense freeloading so they can focus on beating the US on
all quality of life measure including crime rates, mortality, longevity, health care, and
other measures of happiness other than GDP such as not worrying about your kids getting
massacred at school from yet another mass shooting.
I'm a proud American but these infinitely proved wrong neocons keep resurrecting
themselves.
I stand corrected, it is 17 years of continuous hole digging, tax dollar burning, and
amortization of the decline of future prosperity continues un-abated.
Sons and daughters born in 2001 of vets of these stupid wars of choice are now eligible to
fight the same end-stateless, no condition of victory wars with an expanded enemy set to
include peer competitors of Russia, China, N. Korea.
The annual soldier that dies on Jan. 1 of year X hand wringing editorial can continue
indefinitely.
@jk "I'm a proud American but these infinitely proved wrong neocons keep resurrecting
themselves."
Because we let them. We don't laugh them off television programs or kick them out of the
auditoriums where they keep inviting each other to appear. We don't punish elected
politicians (like Trump) who keep hiring them because they think we won't notice.
As far as I remember his posts Michael Kenny is "Israel-firster."
He does not care much about the US national security by definition, having different
priorities.
BTW it's a news for me that AEI launched such neocon stalwarts as "Frederick Kagan, John
Bolton, former vice president Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot Cohen,
Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, David Frum, and Danielle Pletka."
It is a sad fact that Trump administration now is infiltrated with neocons, but in reality
how it can be different.
POTUS no longer defines the US foreign policy; MIC does (neocons can probably be better
understood as professional lobbyists of MIC). In a way, POTUS is now by-and-large ceremonial
figure, although Trump at least during the election campaign (and shortly after, say, before
April 2017 and Mueller commission) has had somewhat more isolationist views (his bellicosity
toward Iran and NK notwithstanding.) But he was quickly brought into the fold. Now he acts
like a regular Republican President, say, like Bush III.
The latter just demonstrates the power of MIC.
That's why there a surprising level of continuity of foreign policy between different
administrations.
My impression is that Israel also is effectively acting as a MIC lobbyist injecting some
money they got via military help into the USA politics directly, or indirectly.
"... at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ..."
"... Return to Moscow ..."
"... The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the infamous Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge." ..."
The claim of Russian meddling in the US election has brought US-Russia relations to what may
be an all-time low, substantially contributing to the near-universal demonization of Russian
president Vladimir Putin and of Russia itself in virtually all major media, with little or no
discussion of the supposed evidence for the claim. A stellar exception is the London Review
of Books, which published a critically important essay by Rutgers University professor
Jackson Lears in the January 4, 2018 issue. Titled "What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about
Russian Hacking," the article is an excellent overview and analysis of many of the issues the
title suggests.
The claim of Russian meddling in the election remains to this day
evidence-free, although you would never know that from the treatment of the topic in the
mainstream media. As Professor Lears observes:
Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on
evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and
their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment'
produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper,
the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the
NSA. The claims of the last were made with only 'moderate' confidence. The label Intelligence
Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of
the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself
contained this crucial admission: 'Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof
that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is
often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.' Yet the
assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing
journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for
the intelligence agencies, or at least for those 'hand-picked' analysts.
But although Professor Lears refers to the reports of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity in his discussion of "Russian hacking," it seems clear there must have been a leak, not
a hack, because "the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds
an Internet capability for a remote hack ." ("Was the 'Russian Hack' An Inside Job?", July
25, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/25/was-the-russian-hack-an-inside-job/
.)
In any case, definitive claims about who was responsible (assuming, purely arguendo
, it was a hack) face the fact that, according to Ray McGovern and William S. Binney, two
members of VIPS,
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, was the
agency's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting, and
created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.
In other words, as Russian president Vladimir Putin has explained,
today's technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an
extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it
is possible to set up any entity or any individual [so] that everyone will think that they
are the exact source of that attack. (Valdimir Putin's televised interview on NBC (June 4,
2017), by NBC News' Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of
Russia, June 5, 2017.)
[9]
Demonization of Putin and Russia
The demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia itself is just part, albeit
the most dangerous part, of a disinformation campaign flowing from the mainstream media. I
don't propose to present a full treatment of the subject here. But in broad outline, it's my
understanding that when the Cold War ended in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin accepted
the advice of Western neoliberal planners and dismantled much of the Russian "safety net," with
the result that the Russian economy tanked and millions of people faced terrific hardship.
Vladimir Putin has been attempting to repair that situation, and his initial success is part of
the reason for his popularity in Russia. That understanding comes from a number of articles
I've read over the years, but primarily from Tony Kevin's book Return to Moscow ,
mentioned above. I'm hardly an expert on internal Russian politics. But I've read many of the
extensive public statements Mr. Putin has made since 2007, and with my primary concern being
his role in international relations and with respect to the control of Russia's nuclear
arsenal, he strikes me as a statesman.
[10] . Yet as investigative journalist Robert Parry observes,
The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and
the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to
Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the
infamous
Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane
coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from
hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to
the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge."
Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide key facts that
otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia. Ironically, many "liberals" who
cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam
War now insist that we must all accept whatever the U.S. intelligence community feeds us,
even if we're told to accept the assertions on faith.
[11] .
One result is a needless heightening of the dangers and risks outlined in this article.
"... Here's another map that's a little different than the one linked by Peter AU1. The Kurdish Project - https://thekurdishproject.org/kurdistan-map/ (remove the space) ..."
"... Notice the potential for deep water ports on the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas. Tillerson's role with Exxon provided him with an unique understanding of exactly how much $$ that Erdogan was able to steal without consequence and leaves the pit bulls' jowels dribbling with saliva, as if a rib eye steak's aroma was wafting thru the room, with jealous envy. ..."
I think you're on target with your comment. Also, I don't believe Jared has asked the Kurds themselves whether they're on board
or not. Let me explain.
Remember that both Pence and Tillerson were outspoken Never Trumpers. Pence was promised that he'd be 100% in charge of
policy and all day to day decisions. When he asked Trump what he intended to be doing he replied: "I'll be busy making America
Great Again." Whatever deal and contract wound up being signed between them, I think the tomahawk missile attack on Syria violated
the details and revoked most of Pence's authority.
Several, including Bannon have stated that Jared is in charge of ME policy. So, what did Jared offer to Exxon and Tillerson
in exchange for the SOS position? I believe he / they are slated to become the King of Kurdistan. "King" is the only thing
that Tillerson hasn't had in his life; yet.
Notice the potential for deep water ports on the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas. Tillerson's role with Exxon provided
him with an unique understanding of exactly how much $$ that Erdogan was able to steal without consequence and leaves the pit
bulls' jowels dribbling with saliva, as if a rib eye steak's aroma was wafting thru the room, with jealous envy.
Bernie Sanders figured out that he could double down and REALLY monetize the scam that Ron Paul executed against the Republican
voters in 2012; which he executed to perfection.
I believe Exxon / Tillerson have figured out that they are going to REALLY monetize the oil theft that Erdogan executed with
Kurdistan and his name will be written in the history books as a King.
Trump wants out of Nato. The Pentagon wants ports, runways and to surround Russia. Whether Turkey remains in Nato or not is
inconsequential to Jared and Greater Israel.
"... at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ..."
"... Return to Moscow ..."
"... The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the infamous Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge." ..."
The claim of Russian meddling in the US election has brought US-Russia relations to what may
be an all-time low, substantially contributing to the near-universal demonization of Russian
president Vladimir Putin and of Russia itself in virtually all major media, with little or no
discussion of the supposed evidence for the claim. A stellar exception is the London Review
of Books, which published a critically important essay by Rutgers University professor
Jackson Lears in the January 4, 2018 issue. Titled "What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about
Russian Hacking," the article is an excellent overview and analysis of many of the issues the
title suggests.
The claim of Russian meddling in the election remains to this day
evidence-free, although you would never know that from the treatment of the topic in the
mainstream media. As Professor Lears observes:
Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on
evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and
their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment'
produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper,
the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the
NSA. The claims of the last were made with only 'moderate' confidence. The label Intelligence
Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of
the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself
contained this crucial admission: 'Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof
that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is
often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.' Yet the
assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing
journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for
the intelligence agencies, or at least for those 'hand-picked' analysts.
But although Professor Lears refers to the reports of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity in his discussion of "Russian hacking," it seems clear there must have been a leak, not
a hack, because "the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds
an Internet capability for a remote hack ." ("Was the 'Russian Hack' An Inside Job?", July
25, 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/25/was-the-russian-hack-an-inside-job/
.)
In any case, definitive claims about who was responsible (assuming, purely arguendo
, it was a hack) face the fact that, according to Ray McGovern and William S. Binney, two
members of VIPS,
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years; Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, was the
agency's technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting, and
created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.
In other words, as Russian president Vladimir Putin has explained,
today's technology is such that the final address can be masked and camouflaged to an
extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. And, vice versa, it
is possible to set up any entity or any individual [so] that everyone will think that they
are the exact source of that attack. (Valdimir Putin's televised interview on NBC (June 4,
2017), by NBC News' Megyn Kelly, text published on the website of the President of
Russia, June 5, 2017.)
[9]
Demonization of Putin and Russia
The demonization of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia itself is just part, albeit
the most dangerous part, of a disinformation campaign flowing from the mainstream media. I
don't propose to present a full treatment of the subject here. But in broad outline, it's my
understanding that when the Cold War ended in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin accepted
the advice of Western neoliberal planners and dismantled much of the Russian "safety net," with
the result that the Russian economy tanked and millions of people faced terrific hardship.
Vladimir Putin has been attempting to repair that situation, and his initial success is part of
the reason for his popularity in Russia. That understanding comes from a number of articles
I've read over the years, but primarily from Tony Kevin's book Return to Moscow ,
mentioned above. I'm hardly an expert on internal Russian politics. But I've read many of the
extensive public statements Mr. Putin has made since 2007, and with my primary concern being
his role in international relations and with respect to the control of Russia's nuclear
arsenal, he strikes me as a statesman.
[10] . Yet as investigative journalist Robert Parry observes,
The demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia is where the neocons and
the liberal interventionists most significantly come together. The U.S. media's approach to
Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. For instance, the full story of the
infamous
Magnitsky case cannot be told in the West, nor can the objective reality of the Ukrane
coup in 2014 . The American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from
hearing the "other side of the story." Indeed to even suggest that there is another side to
the story makes you a "Putin apologist" or "Kremlin stooge."
Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide key facts that
otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia. Ironically, many "liberals" who
cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam
War now insist that we must all accept whatever the U.S. intelligence community feeds us,
even if we're told to accept the assertions on faith.
[11] .
One result is a needless heightening of the dangers and risks outlined in this article.
"... Here's another map that's a little different than the one linked by Peter AU1. The Kurdish Project - https://thekurdishproject.org/kurdistan-map/ (remove the space) ..."
"... Notice the potential for deep water ports on the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas. Tillerson's role with Exxon provided him with an unique understanding of exactly how much $$ that Erdogan was able to steal without consequence and leaves the pit bulls' jowels dribbling with saliva, as if a rib eye steak's aroma was wafting thru the room, with jealous envy. ..."
I think you're on target with your comment. Also, I don't believe Jared has asked the Kurds themselves whether they're on board
or not. Let me explain.
Remember that both Pence and Tillerson were outspoken Never Trumpers. Pence was promised that he'd be 100% in charge of
policy and all day to day decisions. When he asked Trump what he intended to be doing he replied: "I'll be busy making America
Great Again." Whatever deal and contract wound up being signed between them, I think the tomahawk missile attack on Syria violated
the details and revoked most of Pence's authority.
Several, including Bannon have stated that Jared is in charge of ME policy. So, what did Jared offer to Exxon and Tillerson
in exchange for the SOS position? I believe he / they are slated to become the King of Kurdistan. "King" is the only thing
that Tillerson hasn't had in his life; yet.
Notice the potential for deep water ports on the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas. Tillerson's role with Exxon provided
him with an unique understanding of exactly how much $$ that Erdogan was able to steal without consequence and leaves the pit
bulls' jowels dribbling with saliva, as if a rib eye steak's aroma was wafting thru the room, with jealous envy.
Bernie Sanders figured out that he could double down and REALLY monetize the scam that Ron Paul executed against the Republican
voters in 2012; which he executed to perfection.
I believe Exxon / Tillerson have figured out that they are going to REALLY monetize the oil theft that Erdogan executed with
Kurdistan and his name will be written in the history books as a King.
Trump wants out of Nato. The Pentagon wants ports, runways and to surround Russia. Whether Turkey remains in Nato or not is
inconsequential to Jared and Greater Israel.
What we've been undergoing to a large extent is a form of psychological abuse, actually,
by very narcissistic, hegemonic governments and officials for a very long time. It's a form
of gaslighting where actually our own faith in our ability to judge a situation, and to
some extent even our own identity, has been eroded and damaged to the point where we're
effectively accepting their version of reality.
I have to agree with this – and the excellent article. The US elite has such a world
shattering level of hubris that they don't even consider that they themselves could be
destroyed in a conflagration of their own making.
"... The risk has been with us since the 1950s, but has become scarier beginning with the US-backed coup in Ukraine, and increased with US involvement in the war on Syria. It's been heightened by plans for "modernization" of US warheads and delivery systems -- plans initiated by President Obama and continuing or expanded by President Trump. ..."
"... The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. ..."
"... Return to Moscow ..."
"... The whole Bush II thing, the elections, Iraq, 9-11 were kind of "through the looking glass" events in which political corruption became mainstream acceptable in a surreal kind of way. I take events like the "Russian Hack" as a kind of ready-reckoner of political consciousness: if you accept or support such muck the only question remains – are you a gull or a knave? An idiot or a cynical bastard? ..."
"... "Sleepwalking into nuclear war" is a haunting and apt metaphor for what is happening to us as a society. Reading Robert Roth's provocative musings on the collective insanity currently enveloping us, I was reminded of William Shirer's accounts of the period he was stationed in Nazi Germany as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune before the outbreak of WWII. ..."
"... Even with all the propaganda the Germans were subjected to, said Shirer, Germans realized that Hitler was taking them into an unwinnable war against the rest of the world that they really didn't want. They knew they were headed into the abyss, yet the political climate was so paranoid that resistance seemed unpatriotic, if not treasonous. They went along in the hope that the national nightmare would dissipate of its own accord, that things weren't as bad as they seemed. ..."
"... Mr. Roth's observations about the blights of willful public ignorance and mass media disinformation are important. Commenter "animalogic" (#7) aptly describes those party to the widespread deceit as either "a gull or a knave." The Establishment needs and therefore nurtures both. ..."
"... Roth has gone straight to the relevant point, nuclear war , for it is already clear that the prospective outcome of any permutation of a 'conventional' war will see the Empire hegemony, USA/Israel and vassal states, lose against Russia, who will be supported, by mutually recognized need, with China. No matter how it is considered, a Russia-China alliance will defeat the empire hegemony if nuclear weapons are not used. ..."
"... One positive thing in US policy is a stability and progress – dummy president replaced by stupid one, that replaced by insane; after him goes imbecile. I can't imagine who's going to be next :-). But there are many of old crazy women and men ready to help if current imbecile went down. ..."
"... There will be no nuclear war as Russia and the U.S. can wipe each other off the map, however the Zionists will continue to keep America at war for the Zionist NWO as that is the game plan and we goyim Americans will continue to be sent to the slaughter house for greater Israel. ..."
"... One honest, generally morally competent man holding the ever-more-powerful office of president of the U.S., could fix many things. Unfortunately, Donald John Trump is not that man. ..."
"... Let's consider one example: Many people believe that a real investigation into 9/11 would destroy the "deep state". Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey et al. have recently completed a study of the "collapse" of WTC7, whereby they've proven that "fire" was not the cause of the "collapse" of that building. This finding directly contradicts the NIST report. For the first time in 16 years there is now incontrovertible scientific evidence in the public domain that 9/11 was an "inside job". Why won't Donald John Trump take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity and order an investigation? ..."
"... The world is not about to end, but the Western public space has become very stupid. Most politicians, media and academics have managed to redefine basic terms into idiotic caricatures. Concepts like meddling, trolls, collusion, etc don't mean what we are told they mean. They are all an eternal part of human society, exchange of ideas, disagreements. Expressing one's opinions is not 'propaganda', or 'meddling' in elections – it is freedom of speech. The idea that there is only one correct view – the Western liberal one – is medieval. ..."
"... Nobody will deliberately start nuclear war, but the probability that it might start as the result of series of mistakes has increased. ..."
"... The US and its vassals (including other NATO countries) moved NATO troops close to Russian borders, destabilized Ukraine, Syria, cooked up "Russiagate" (which is really an FBI-gate, but sore losers would not admit it) to justify further increases in Pentagon budget (a trough where very fat pigs feed). ..."
"... The main danger is that in its death throes the Empire will start a war, although we can only hope that even degenerate US elites understand that dead people cannot benefit by their wealth. Hope springs eternal. ..."
"... Agree with much of the sentiment and some of the proposals here regarding the need to ratchet down rhetoric, pledge no first strike, and generally try much harder to reduce the risk of even a "small" nuke exchange. ..."
"... Well, hope is always nice. But we might not understand the dynamic nature of the global-liberal overreach that we have been experiencing. People don't behave the way Western elites have been acting without some measure of disconnect from reality. And hubris. When a substantial part of elite climbs on an irrational high horse of invincibility they become paralysed by the framework they have created. They don't want to hear other views because it makes them uncomfortable. They have given up on both principles and institutions – it is anything goes world now. ..."
"... The Trotskyites who became in America first anti-Stalinist Democrat Hawks and then anti-Russian/Israel-first Republican Hawks have worked things so that they control foreign affairs for both political parties. And they have an insatiable bloodlust. Like the godfather of their movement, they are amoral with genocidal desires when it comes to peoples they despise. They are the type of self-righteous bullies who aspire to rule the globe to overreach and push and shove and threaten and sucker punch until the worst for the world happens. ..."
"... Good to see you posting. I hear they are muling Ophrah. Really good choice for next president. Woman, black, fat and wealthy. Not gay or transvestite though but that's coming next. ..."
"... Makes me wonder what after Putin. I do it like him that much but he still intelligent, cool and calculating man that is not doing stupid things but neither genius. ..."
"... Regarding Americans, unfortunately they never felt real pain. Like a kid who does not know that fire is dangerous. I think financial collapse gonna be trouble sooner or later with them. The best thing Russia and China can do is to undermine us dollar status and the whole financial system which was built by uncle Sam for uncle Sam benefit. ..."
My goal in writing about these things is to alert you to the problems and encourage you to
share your concerns with people you know and with federal policy-makers. Right now, the entire
gamut of political discussion all but excludes the topic nuclear war, so if some Senators,
Members of Congress, and the President were to begin hearing from people that we're concerned
about the threat, and how easily it could happen, and that we want that threat removed, it
would be some progress.
Why the focus on nuclear war? Because of all the pending potential disasters we may have to
face, it's the most sudden, inescapable, irrevocable. At some level, people know that, though
they don't like to think about it. Author Carl Boggs describes the reaction of the people of
Hawaii when they received a false alarm about an incoming ICBM attack:
People scattered frenetically, mostly without logic or purpose or hope. Where to go? If
this turned out to be one of Kim Jong Un's powerful ICBMs, it could be over in 20 minutes.
Repair to a shelter? None exist. Go to the basement? Sure suicide. Find a car or taxi and
head for the hills? No time. [T]he response was utter psychological numbness, paralysis -- a
dysfunctional yet comprehensible state of mind in the face of nuclear oblivion. [T]he end
seemed inescapable.
And because, as Mr. Boggs says upon hearing a talk by former nuclear war planner Daniel
Ellsberg, it's a lot less unlikely than most of us have been led to believe.
The American people have been lulled to sleep, distracted by endless media and political
spectacles, while busy warmakers keep refining their insane nuclear blueprints . More than 70
years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pentagon elites still theorize and fantasize about the
unthinkable, their demented plans far removed from the realm of political debate or even
public awareness.
[1]
The risk has been with us since the 1950s, but has become scarier beginning with the
US-backed coup in Ukraine, and increased with US involvement in the war on Syria. It's been
heightened by plans for "modernization" of US warheads and delivery systems -- plans initiated
by President Obama and continuing or expanded by President Trump. And it's heightened
further by a Pentagon plan to develop a "low-yield" warhead for the submarine-based Trident
missile, and a new nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile.
[2] I believe that expanding the range of options in this way would
increase the likelihood that the weapons will actually be used.
In case you think I'm overstating the problem, you should know that almost everything in
"Dr. Strangelove" -- the Stanley Kubrick film in which nuclear war is started by a rogue
military officer -- was true.
[3] . "Doomsday" is an "Actual War
Plan," as Daniel Ellsberg says in a December 13, 2017 interview discussing his new book,
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.
[4].
Dan Ellsberg proposes a Six-Step Program for dismantling the Doomsday Machine:
A U.S.
no-first-use policy;
Probing investigative hearings on our war plans in the light of nuclear
winter;
Eliminating our ICBMs;
Foregoing the delusion of preemptive damage-limiting by our
first-strike forces;
Giving up the profits, jobs, and alliance hegemony based on maintaining
that pretense;
Otherwise dismantling the American Doomsday Machine.
Of course none of that will happen under present circumstances. It's Ellsberg's goal to
contribute to developing an informed electorate that, recognizing the risk, will demand such
actions.
... ... ...
Regarding the two nuclear-armed superpowers, who between them possess some 15,000 nuclear
warheads, the Cold War that ended in 1991 has lately been replaced by a New Cold War. U.S. and
NATO provocations to Russia have reached a largely unheard crescendo in Ukraine, where a
U.S.-backed coup installed a regime, essentially in the Russian belly, that's riddled with
neo-Nazis and hostile to Russia; in eastern Europe generally, where NATO war games have been
held repeatedly just across the Russian border; and in Syria, where the U.S. continues to
maintain an unlawful presence in proximity to Russian forces legitimately there at the
invitation of the internationally recognized and constitutionally elected Syrian government.
And in both Syria and Ukraine, there are signs the situation is becoming even more dangerous
than it's been for some time.
[7]
These situations raise the risk of unintended nuclear war, as confrontation may lead at any
time to escalation spiraling out of control. Dr. William Polk, a member of the White House team
that handled the Cuban Missile Crisis, describes how in a confrontational situation, the logic
of events could force the Russians and us to the next step and that step also to the next and
so on, to the ultimate disastrous result without anyone having initially intended it.
[8] . Mr. Shatz concludes that what we once mistook for safety was more like sleepwalking.
Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin sums up the situation in similar terms:
"Under the false and demonizing imagery of 'Putin's Russia' which has now taken hold in the
United States and NATO world, the West is truly 'sleepwalking', as Kissinger, Gorbachev,
[University of Kent professor Richard] Sakwa, [Princeton emeritus professor Stephen F.] Cohen
and others have urgently warned, into a potential nuclear war with Russia. It is the Cuban
missile crisis all over again, but actually worse now [in part] because American policy under
recent U.S. presidents has been so lacking in statesmanship, consistency or historical
perspective where Russia is concerned." ( Return to Moscow , University of Western
Australia, 2017, p. 255).
Think you're pretty spot with all you say. The whole Bush II thing, the elections, Iraq,
9-11 were kind of "through the looking glass" events in which political corruption became
mainstream acceptable in a surreal kind of way.
I take events like the "Russian Hack" as a kind of ready-reckoner of political consciousness:
if you accept or support such muck the only question remains – are you a gull or a
knave? An idiot or a cynical bastard?
"Sleepwalking into nuclear war" is a haunting and apt metaphor for what is happening to us as
a society. Reading Robert Roth's provocative musings on the collective insanity currently
enveloping us, I was reminded of William Shirer's accounts of the period he was stationed in
Nazi Germany as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune before the outbreak of WWII.
His account of attending a Nazi rally where he appeared to be the only member of the
audience not mesmerized by Hitler's delusional rants reminds me of my own reaction to the
Russiagate hysteria being orchestrated by neocons and Clinton dead-enders. Who are these
people and what is the matter with them? The current state of our Union is a testament to the
power of propaganda, which Hitler and Goebbels understood so well.
Even with all the propaganda the Germans were subjected to, said Shirer, Germans realized
that Hitler was taking them into an unwinnable war against the rest of the world that they
really didn't want. They knew they were headed into the abyss, yet the political climate was
so paranoid that resistance seemed unpatriotic, if not treasonous. They went along in the
hope that the national nightmare would dissipate of its own accord, that things weren't as
bad as they seemed.
But as it turned out, things were even worse than they seemed. The nightmare was real and
there was no waking from it.
The USA/Russia/China/Israel/France/UK/India/Pakistan have collectively been playing Russian
Roulette for 65 years.
Probability dictates sooner or later, one of the chambers will contain a live round.
What an excellent essay. It appears to have been submitted initially to The Unz Review, which
should enhance the reputation of both the author and publisher.
Mr. Roth's observations about the blights of willful public ignorance and mass media
disinformation are important. Commenter "animalogic" (#7) aptly describes those party to the
widespread deceit as either "a gull or a knave." The Establishment needs and therefore
nurtures both.
Great article and great comments so far (11 of them).
We have a scenario much like those scenarios prior to the Great War (WWI) and the second
world war, and the same shadowy 'hidden hand' orchestrating the entire pending disaster so
they can yet further augment their control and expand their illegal land theft.
The consolidation of the mass media agencies, now almost pure propaganda/perception
management agencies controlled by the competing factions of the 0.1%, and the advent of the
internet and 'big data' have enabled this psychopathic cabal to attain previously undreamt of
control over the common 99%, including control over their perception.
Roth has gone straight to the relevant point, nuclear war , for it is already clear
that the prospective outcome of any permutation of a 'conventional' war will see the Empire
hegemony, USA/Israel and vassal states, lose against Russia, who will be supported, by
mutually recognized need, with China. No matter how it is considered, a Russia-China alliance
will defeat the empire hegemony if nuclear weapons are not used.
It is because of this point that the entirety of humanity must rally and do 'what ever it
takes' to stop the terrorist empire from sustaining the current tyranny. The psychopaths of
the empire, not exposed to public scrutiny, hidden in the shadows, can and will nudge the
world into unwinnable (for anyone) nuclear war; their egos are the definition of human
depravity.
Exposing the grand charade to a critical mass of the general population is the first
objective, then exposing the 'hidden hands' in the shadows is the next.
The parasite must be stopped, and we, the people who have seen glimpses of the enemy, are
incumbent to spread the word.
I left this comment on a different article ( http://thesaker.is/listening-to-mattis/ ), but
seems it could be in place here also. Cause we're talking approximately same and nothing gonna
change
-- -- -
Well, it's getting boring a little. I mean the descriptions of the insanity of US's
rulers.
One positive thing in US policy is a stability and progress – dummy president
replaced by stupid one, that replaced by insane; after him goes imbecile. I can't imagine
who's going to be next :-).
But there are many of old crazy women and men ready to help if current imbecile went
down.
Thanks God, we, Russians, not that happy. After imbecile alcoholic Yeltsin we've got not
bad alternative (your media and stupid people in power call him a killer). Who (with his sanity) the only chance for this world to survive.
But, actually we're very tired from all this stuff and the possibility of US generals to
test our conventional and even nuke arms constantly increasing. They can also test if our
soldiers who've seen Napoleon, Hitler and many others got worse or still the same. I'm asking US citizens – Is it really interesting to you to get know it for
sure?
There will be no nuclear war as Russia and the U.S. can wipe each other off the map, however
the Zionists will continue to keep America at war for the Zionist NWO as that is the game
plan and we goyim Americans will continue to be sent to the slaughter house for greater
Israel.
"But as Mr. Shatz observes, the problems run much deeper than President Trump."
This statement is misleading. One honest, generally morally competent man holding the
ever-more-powerful office of president of the U.S., could fix many things. Unfortunately, Donald John Trump is not that man.
Let's consider one example: Many people believe that a real investigation into 9/11 would
destroy the "deep state". Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey et al. have recently completed a study of the
"collapse" of WTC7, whereby they've proven that "fire" was not the cause of the "collapse" of
that building. This finding directly contradicts the NIST report. For the first time in 16
years there is now incontrovertible scientific evidence in the public domain that 9/11 was an
"inside job". Why won't Donald John Trump take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity
and order an investigation?
There is only one plausible explanation: I believe that Donald John Trump was the "deep
state" candidate of choice in the 2016 election. I believe that's why they ran wild-eyed
madwoman Hillary Clinton against him rather than the more electable Sanders. I believe that's
why, in the early fall of 2016, as the election was coming into the home stretch, Obama
started ramping up tensions with Russia; i.e., so as to nudge the disgruntled anti-war
Democrats (Sanders supporters) into Trump's camp, swinging the election to him.
I believe that Donald John Trump is a "deep cover" or "sleeper" agent that's been groomed
and waiting in the wings for his masters' call. I believe that Donald John Trump was called
to power in a desperate now or never moment to save the "deep state" (Zionist) agenda.
Donald John Trump is a liar. Donald John Trump is a fraud. Donald John Trump is a con man.
Donald John Trump is a mass-murderer.
I don't think anyone in the West is sleepwalking into anything, esp the USA. I think the
American people see the writing on the wall and that if the American Empire loses status the
economy of the USA will revert to being a labor intensive existence of working the ground
just to have enough food to eat and water to drink. So entitled and lazy Americans are and
horrified to be relegated back to a 1920/30′s quality of life (loss of Bread &
Circuses), that if the Military Industril Complex has to threaten the entire planet with nuclear
annihilation if they don't tithe 10% of their GDP (Roman Empire) so fat ass Yankees can
continue to be fat asses – then just burn the place to the ground.
If the BRIC countries attempt to dethrone the petro dollar lazy entitled Americans will
BEG Washington to do whatever it takes to bring back $3.00 t-shirts at Wal-Mart.
The world is not about to end, but the Western public space has become very stupid. Most
politicians, media and academics have managed to redefine basic terms into idiotic
caricatures. Concepts like meddling, trolls, collusion, etc don't mean what we are told they
mean. They are all an eternal part of human society, exchange of ideas, disagreements.
Expressing one's opinions is not 'propaganda', or 'meddling' in elections – it is
freedom of speech. The idea that there is only one correct view – the Western liberal
one – is medieval.
We are at a point when views other than BBC, CNN, NY Times , are routinely dismissed as
'meddling', 'trolling, or sometimes 'hatred'. The objective is to suppress and dismiss them.
That is very dangerous for any civilisation, but for a system that was built on celebrating
free speech, it is fatal.
I often hear that it is a 'natural' pendulum swing, that most people in the West don't
agree with it, that it is an angry reaction to an unexpected loss ('Clinton dead-enders'),
that it will self-correct over time. In my view that is missing the point and overlooks the
permanent damage this hysteria has caused. If the more rational members of the elite are
unable to defend rationality and freedom today – when it is still easy – they are
co-responsible for the madness.
"After the Maidan the leaders of two right wing neo-Nazi organisations were rewarded with
control of four ministries
Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the fascist Social National Party (SNPU) , which later
changed its name to Svoboda, became the new top commander of the National Defense and
Security Council (covering the military, police, courts and intelligence apparatus). The CIA
renamed the organisation to "Svoboda," meaning "Freedom," to make it more acceptable to
Americans.
Dmytro Yarosh, Right Sector commander, was second-in-command of the National Defense and
Security Council. This is the man who organized and ran Ukraine's February 22nd Coup in Kiev,
and the May 2nd Massacre of Its Opponents in Odessa, for Barack Obama. Yarosh's teams
carry out the most violent operations for the CIA in Ukraine. They are responsible for the
atrocities committed in the Donbass, for the crimes against humanity .
Oleh Tyahnybok, co founder of the SNPU and currently the party leader of Svoboda, a self
confessed neo-Nazi. He opposed the introduction of the Russian language as the second
official state language; called for the lustration of former communist officials. He also
proposed recognition of the fighting role of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and
Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II."
-- Where are the Lobby, the Anti-Defamation League, the Friends of Israel in UK, and the
whole Holocaust business? Where are the fighters with BDS?
Nobody will deliberately start nuclear war, but the probability that it might start as the
result of series of mistakes has increased.
The US and its vassals (including other NATO
countries) moved NATO troops close to Russian borders, destabilized Ukraine, Syria, cooked up
"Russiagate" (which is really an FBI-gate, but sore losers would not admit it) to justify
further increases in Pentagon budget (a trough where very fat pigs feed).
The Empire is
afraid of losing its position, but shortsighted elites do everything to accelerate its
demise. The main danger is that in its death throes the Empire will start a war, although we
can only hope that even degenerate US elites understand that dead people cannot benefit by
their wealth. Hope springs eternal.
Agree with much of the sentiment and some of the proposals here regarding the need to ratchet
down rhetoric, pledge no first strike, and generally try much harder to reduce the risk of
even a "small" nuke exchange.
But giving up our inter-continental ballistic missiles would be foolhardy, even more so if
it's done unilaterally. With rivals / potential enemies like China and eventually India, who
in time will be able to muster conventional forces and troop contingents far larger than
ours, we cannot give up the nuke deterrent.
And the reference "the TWO nuclear-armed superpowers" is out of date. That would be at
least THREE nuke-armed superpowers: China, the USA, and Russia.
"But giving up our inter-continental ballistic missiles would be foolhardy, even more so
if it's done unilaterally. With rivals / potential enemies like China and eventually India,
who in time will be able to muster conventional forces and troop contingents far larger than
ours, we cannot give up the nuke deterrent."
because it will keep the victims of ZIO/U$A imperial policy at bay for the victims request
for REPARATIONS, when that time comes
understand that dead people cannot benefit by their wealth. Hope springs eternal
Well, hope is always nice. But we might not understand the dynamic nature of the
global-liberal overreach that we have been experiencing. People don't behave the way Western
elites have been acting without some measure of disconnect from reality. And hubris. When a substantial part of elite climbs on an irrational high horse of invincibility they
become paralysed by the framework they have created. They don't want to hear other views
because it makes them uncomfortable. They have given up on both principles and institutions
– it is anything goes world now.
So where is the assurance that rationality would prevail in a crisis? It didn't in 1914.
Who would step in and tell the morons that they have been living a lie of their own creation?
That constraints are still there, that their verbal acuity has not changed how the world is,
that 'soft power' is called soft for a reason – it doesn't add up to a hill of beans
when it matters. The risk for any dissenter of consequence is very high (see Trump for a
related, imperfect example).
Let's hope. Most bad scenarios don't actually end life on the planet, they just make life
more miserable. That's what happened in the past. We might see a 'nuclear' version of that.
One thing I know for sure: none of the liberal fire-eaters in Washington, Brussels or London
will ever own up to this. They are born 'victims', so they will go on whining
The Dutch government tries to get a law accepted now that greatly increases the legal
possibilities of our secret service to spy on anyone.
March 21 there is a referendum on the law, I expect that we will reject it, but the
politicians already stated that they will reject a negative referendum.
By accident, of course, today our secret service made public that they spied on Russian
interference in the USA elections, without being specific of course, 'classified', as a lot
in the USA.
The Trotskyites who became in America first anti-Stalinist Democrat Hawks and then
anti-Russian/Israel-first Republican Hawks have worked things so that they control foreign
affairs for both political parties. And they have an insatiable bloodlust. Like the godfather
of their movement, they are amoral with genocidal desires when it comes to peoples they
despise. They are the type of self-righteous bullies who aspire to rule the globe to
overreach and push and shove and threaten and sucker punch until the worst for the world
happens.
Most regular readers of Unz Review can agree with the above. What they also need to accept
is that those problems did not enter the US, or more generally the Anglosphere, with the
flight of mostly Jewish Trotskyites from the USSR and Europe. The same attitudes of
insufferable hubris that was basically amoral in regard to national and ethnic groups it most
despised marked the British Empire.
The British WASP Elite form certainly was more refined
and pleasant-seeming than the Jewish Neocon form, and other groups of people within that
world usually proved able to bring the most crazed WASP Elite monsters back from the edge of
the cliff. But they existed, and they caused needless trouble around the globe.
It is the mix of the two that makes the American hawkish anti-Russian, Israel-first
foreign policy insane enough to try to start a nuclear exchange.
Anon from TN
You may be right, but we can't do anything about it now: much hyped democracy is a pure ruse
(look at presumably two party system in the US: Republicrats always win). I just hope that
the sense of self-preservation in those degenerate elites is stronger than their lies that
they apparently believe themselves (even mice are smart enough for that). If not, then those
morons along with innocent bystanders (99.9% of world population) would be dead. Look on the
bright side: rodents and insects would be happy to inherit the Earth.
Unpopular jerk-boy opinion incoming. I honestly think the Hawaii response is pretty typical
but shameful. I like the response of the guy who just tweets, 'OK, if I die goodbye, I'm
golfing anyway' and turns his stupid phone off.
Good to see you posting. I hear they are muling Ophrah. Really good choice for next
president. Woman, black, fat and wealthy. Not gay or transvestite though but that's coming
next. What makes me wonder how this sort of imbeciles gets elected without collapsing the
state. I think it is moving slowly in this direction but there was enough to have just 2 morons in top positions and
look -- no
more USSR. Talk about "Checks and balances."
Makes me wonder what after Putin. I do it like him that much
but he still intelligent, cool and calculating man that is not doing stupid things but
neither genius.
Regarding Americans, unfortunately they never felt real pain. Like a kid who does not know that fire is dangerous. I
think financial collapse gonna be trouble
sooner or later with them. The best thing Russia and China can do is to undermine us dollar
status and the whole financial system which was built by uncle Sam for uncle Sam benefit.
Anon from TN
You are right: Dutch government has already thrown away negative results of the referendum on
EU association with Ukraine. What's more, it betrayed its own citizens by still pretending to
investigate the crash of MH-17, even though everyone with a brain knows that Ukrainian puppet
government is to blame (international airlines made this conclusion long time ago: they fly
over Russia, but avoid Ukraine, flying around it, just like they fly around North Korea).
I
am tempted to say that you guys elected this scum, but then you'd say that I elected Trump,
which I didn't (anyway, what choice did we have: corrupt to the core mad witch would have
been even worse).
today our secret service made public that they spied on Russian interference in the USA
elections
Spying is like a recursive algorithm. Next Russia will announce that they ' spied on
the Dutch spies who were spying on them '. Maybe we can skip the ' motivations ':
they are all spying on each other, all the time, it is their job description.
I am still waiting for someone to explain to us how is ' interference ' or '
meddling ' different from having an opinion about an election. And we all know that
Americans (or Dutch) have never, ever, expressed any opinions about other countries'
elections. Right. My democracy promotion is your meddling.
It is bad when you kill my cow. It is very good when I kill your cow. Monkey reasoning
level?
What we've been undergoing to a large extent is a form of psychological abuse, actually,
by very narcissistic, hegemonic governments and officials for a very long time. It's a form
of gaslighting where actually our own faith in our ability to judge a situation, and to
some extent even our own identity, has been eroded and damaged to the point where we're
effectively accepting their version of reality.
I have to agree with this – and the excellent article. The US elite has such a world
shattering level of hubris that they don't even consider that they themselves could be
destroyed in a conflagration of their own making.
"... The risk has been with us since the 1950s, but has become scarier beginning with the US-backed coup in Ukraine, and increased with US involvement in the war on Syria. It's been heightened by plans for "modernization" of US warheads and delivery systems -- plans initiated by President Obama and continuing or expanded by President Trump. ..."
"... The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. ..."
"... Return to Moscow ..."
"... The whole Bush II thing, the elections, Iraq, 9-11 were kind of "through the looking glass" events in which political corruption became mainstream acceptable in a surreal kind of way. I take events like the "Russian Hack" as a kind of ready-reckoner of political consciousness: if you accept or support such muck the only question remains – are you a gull or a knave? An idiot or a cynical bastard? ..."
"... "Sleepwalking into nuclear war" is a haunting and apt metaphor for what is happening to us as a society. Reading Robert Roth's provocative musings on the collective insanity currently enveloping us, I was reminded of William Shirer's accounts of the period he was stationed in Nazi Germany as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune before the outbreak of WWII. ..."
"... Even with all the propaganda the Germans were subjected to, said Shirer, Germans realized that Hitler was taking them into an unwinnable war against the rest of the world that they really didn't want. They knew they were headed into the abyss, yet the political climate was so paranoid that resistance seemed unpatriotic, if not treasonous. They went along in the hope that the national nightmare would dissipate of its own accord, that things weren't as bad as they seemed. ..."
"... Mr. Roth's observations about the blights of willful public ignorance and mass media disinformation are important. Commenter "animalogic" (#7) aptly describes those party to the widespread deceit as either "a gull or a knave." The Establishment needs and therefore nurtures both. ..."
"... Roth has gone straight to the relevant point, nuclear war , for it is already clear that the prospective outcome of any permutation of a 'conventional' war will see the Empire hegemony, USA/Israel and vassal states, lose against Russia, who will be supported, by mutually recognized need, with China. No matter how it is considered, a Russia-China alliance will defeat the empire hegemony if nuclear weapons are not used. ..."
"... One positive thing in US policy is a stability and progress – dummy president replaced by stupid one, that replaced by insane; after him goes imbecile. I can't imagine who's going to be next :-). But there are many of old crazy women and men ready to help if current imbecile went down. ..."
"... There will be no nuclear war as Russia and the U.S. can wipe each other off the map, however the Zionists will continue to keep America at war for the Zionist NWO as that is the game plan and we goyim Americans will continue to be sent to the slaughter house for greater Israel. ..."
"... One honest, generally morally competent man holding the ever-more-powerful office of president of the U.S., could fix many things. Unfortunately, Donald John Trump is not that man. ..."
"... Let's consider one example: Many people believe that a real investigation into 9/11 would destroy the "deep state". Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey et al. have recently completed a study of the "collapse" of WTC7, whereby they've proven that "fire" was not the cause of the "collapse" of that building. This finding directly contradicts the NIST report. For the first time in 16 years there is now incontrovertible scientific evidence in the public domain that 9/11 was an "inside job". Why won't Donald John Trump take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity and order an investigation? ..."
"... The world is not about to end, but the Western public space has become very stupid. Most politicians, media and academics have managed to redefine basic terms into idiotic caricatures. Concepts like meddling, trolls, collusion, etc don't mean what we are told they mean. They are all an eternal part of human society, exchange of ideas, disagreements. Expressing one's opinions is not 'propaganda', or 'meddling' in elections – it is freedom of speech. The idea that there is only one correct view – the Western liberal one – is medieval. ..."
"... Nobody will deliberately start nuclear war, but the probability that it might start as the result of series of mistakes has increased. ..."
"... The US and its vassals (including other NATO countries) moved NATO troops close to Russian borders, destabilized Ukraine, Syria, cooked up "Russiagate" (which is really an FBI-gate, but sore losers would not admit it) to justify further increases in Pentagon budget (a trough where very fat pigs feed). ..."
"... The main danger is that in its death throes the Empire will start a war, although we can only hope that even degenerate US elites understand that dead people cannot benefit by their wealth. Hope springs eternal. ..."
"... Agree with much of the sentiment and some of the proposals here regarding the need to ratchet down rhetoric, pledge no first strike, and generally try much harder to reduce the risk of even a "small" nuke exchange. ..."
"... Well, hope is always nice. But we might not understand the dynamic nature of the global-liberal overreach that we have been experiencing. People don't behave the way Western elites have been acting without some measure of disconnect from reality. And hubris. When a substantial part of elite climbs on an irrational high horse of invincibility they become paralysed by the framework they have created. They don't want to hear other views because it makes them uncomfortable. They have given up on both principles and institutions – it is anything goes world now. ..."
"... The Trotskyites who became in America first anti-Stalinist Democrat Hawks and then anti-Russian/Israel-first Republican Hawks have worked things so that they control foreign affairs for both political parties. And they have an insatiable bloodlust. Like the godfather of their movement, they are amoral with genocidal desires when it comes to peoples they despise. They are the type of self-righteous bullies who aspire to rule the globe to overreach and push and shove and threaten and sucker punch until the worst for the world happens. ..."
"... Good to see you posting. I hear they are muling Ophrah. Really good choice for next president. Woman, black, fat and wealthy. Not gay or transvestite though but that's coming next. ..."
"... Makes me wonder what after Putin. I do it like him that much but he still intelligent, cool and calculating man that is not doing stupid things but neither genius. ..."
"... Regarding Americans, unfortunately they never felt real pain. Like a kid who does not know that fire is dangerous. I think financial collapse gonna be trouble sooner or later with them. The best thing Russia and China can do is to undermine us dollar status and the whole financial system which was built by uncle Sam for uncle Sam benefit. ..."
My goal in writing about these things is to alert you to the problems and encourage you to
share your concerns with people you know and with federal policy-makers. Right now, the entire
gamut of political discussion all but excludes the topic nuclear war, so if some Senators,
Members of Congress, and the President were to begin hearing from people that we're concerned
about the threat, and how easily it could happen, and that we want that threat removed, it
would be some progress.
Why the focus on nuclear war? Because of all the pending potential disasters we may have to
face, it's the most sudden, inescapable, irrevocable. At some level, people know that, though
they don't like to think about it. Author Carl Boggs describes the reaction of the people of
Hawaii when they received a false alarm about an incoming ICBM attack:
People scattered frenetically, mostly without logic or purpose or hope. Where to go? If
this turned out to be one of Kim Jong Un's powerful ICBMs, it could be over in 20 minutes.
Repair to a shelter? None exist. Go to the basement? Sure suicide. Find a car or taxi and
head for the hills? No time. [T]he response was utter psychological numbness, paralysis -- a
dysfunctional yet comprehensible state of mind in the face of nuclear oblivion. [T]he end
seemed inescapable.
And because, as Mr. Boggs says upon hearing a talk by former nuclear war planner Daniel
Ellsberg, it's a lot less unlikely than most of us have been led to believe.
The American people have been lulled to sleep, distracted by endless media and political
spectacles, while busy warmakers keep refining their insane nuclear blueprints . More than 70
years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pentagon elites still theorize and fantasize about the
unthinkable, their demented plans far removed from the realm of political debate or even
public awareness.
[1]
The risk has been with us since the 1950s, but has become scarier beginning with the
US-backed coup in Ukraine, and increased with US involvement in the war on Syria. It's been
heightened by plans for "modernization" of US warheads and delivery systems -- plans initiated
by President Obama and continuing or expanded by President Trump. And it's heightened
further by a Pentagon plan to develop a "low-yield" warhead for the submarine-based Trident
missile, and a new nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile.
[2] I believe that expanding the range of options in this way would
increase the likelihood that the weapons will actually be used.
In case you think I'm overstating the problem, you should know that almost everything in
"Dr. Strangelove" -- the Stanley Kubrick film in which nuclear war is started by a rogue
military officer -- was true.
[3] . "Doomsday" is an "Actual War
Plan," as Daniel Ellsberg says in a December 13, 2017 interview discussing his new book,
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.
[4].
Dan Ellsberg proposes a Six-Step Program for dismantling the Doomsday Machine:
A U.S.
no-first-use policy;
Probing investigative hearings on our war plans in the light of nuclear
winter;
Eliminating our ICBMs;
Foregoing the delusion of preemptive damage-limiting by our
first-strike forces;
Giving up the profits, jobs, and alliance hegemony based on maintaining
that pretense;
Otherwise dismantling the American Doomsday Machine.
Of course none of that will happen under present circumstances. It's Ellsberg's goal to
contribute to developing an informed electorate that, recognizing the risk, will demand such
actions.
... ... ...
Regarding the two nuclear-armed superpowers, who between them possess some 15,000 nuclear
warheads, the Cold War that ended in 1991 has lately been replaced by a New Cold War. U.S. and
NATO provocations to Russia have reached a largely unheard crescendo in Ukraine, where a
U.S.-backed coup installed a regime, essentially in the Russian belly, that's riddled with
neo-Nazis and hostile to Russia; in eastern Europe generally, where NATO war games have been
held repeatedly just across the Russian border; and in Syria, where the U.S. continues to
maintain an unlawful presence in proximity to Russian forces legitimately there at the
invitation of the internationally recognized and constitutionally elected Syrian government.
And in both Syria and Ukraine, there are signs the situation is becoming even more dangerous
than it's been for some time.
[7]
These situations raise the risk of unintended nuclear war, as confrontation may lead at any
time to escalation spiraling out of control. Dr. William Polk, a member of the White House team
that handled the Cuban Missile Crisis, describes how in a confrontational situation, the logic
of events could force the Russians and us to the next step and that step also to the next and
so on, to the ultimate disastrous result without anyone having initially intended it.
[8] . Mr. Shatz concludes that what we once mistook for safety was more like sleepwalking.
Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin sums up the situation in similar terms:
"Under the false and demonizing imagery of 'Putin's Russia' which has now taken hold in the
United States and NATO world, the West is truly 'sleepwalking', as Kissinger, Gorbachev,
[University of Kent professor Richard] Sakwa, [Princeton emeritus professor Stephen F.] Cohen
and others have urgently warned, into a potential nuclear war with Russia. It is the Cuban
missile crisis all over again, but actually worse now [in part] because American policy under
recent U.S. presidents has been so lacking in statesmanship, consistency or historical
perspective where Russia is concerned." ( Return to Moscow , University of Western
Australia, 2017, p. 255).
Think you're pretty spot with all you say. The whole Bush II thing, the elections, Iraq,
9-11 were kind of "through the looking glass" events in which political corruption became
mainstream acceptable in a surreal kind of way.
I take events like the "Russian Hack" as a kind of ready-reckoner of political consciousness:
if you accept or support such muck the only question remains – are you a gull or a
knave? An idiot or a cynical bastard?
"Sleepwalking into nuclear war" is a haunting and apt metaphor for what is happening to us as
a society. Reading Robert Roth's provocative musings on the collective insanity currently
enveloping us, I was reminded of William Shirer's accounts of the period he was stationed in
Nazi Germany as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune before the outbreak of WWII.
His account of attending a Nazi rally where he appeared to be the only member of the
audience not mesmerized by Hitler's delusional rants reminds me of my own reaction to the
Russiagate hysteria being orchestrated by neocons and Clinton dead-enders. Who are these
people and what is the matter with them? The current state of our Union is a testament to the
power of propaganda, which Hitler and Goebbels understood so well.
Even with all the propaganda the Germans were subjected to, said Shirer, Germans realized
that Hitler was taking them into an unwinnable war against the rest of the world that they
really didn't want. They knew they were headed into the abyss, yet the political climate was
so paranoid that resistance seemed unpatriotic, if not treasonous. They went along in the
hope that the national nightmare would dissipate of its own accord, that things weren't as
bad as they seemed.
But as it turned out, things were even worse than they seemed. The nightmare was real and
there was no waking from it.
The USA/Russia/China/Israel/France/UK/India/Pakistan have collectively been playing Russian
Roulette for 65 years.
Probability dictates sooner or later, one of the chambers will contain a live round.
What an excellent essay. It appears to have been submitted initially to The Unz Review, which
should enhance the reputation of both the author and publisher.
Mr. Roth's observations about the blights of willful public ignorance and mass media
disinformation are important. Commenter "animalogic" (#7) aptly describes those party to the
widespread deceit as either "a gull or a knave." The Establishment needs and therefore
nurtures both.
Great article and great comments so far (11 of them).
We have a scenario much like those scenarios prior to the Great War (WWI) and the second
world war, and the same shadowy 'hidden hand' orchestrating the entire pending disaster so
they can yet further augment their control and expand their illegal land theft.
The consolidation of the mass media agencies, now almost pure propaganda/perception
management agencies controlled by the competing factions of the 0.1%, and the advent of the
internet and 'big data' have enabled this psychopathic cabal to attain previously undreamt of
control over the common 99%, including control over their perception.
Roth has gone straight to the relevant point, nuclear war , for it is already clear
that the prospective outcome of any permutation of a 'conventional' war will see the Empire
hegemony, USA/Israel and vassal states, lose against Russia, who will be supported, by
mutually recognized need, with China. No matter how it is considered, a Russia-China alliance
will defeat the empire hegemony if nuclear weapons are not used.
It is because of this point that the entirety of humanity must rally and do 'what ever it
takes' to stop the terrorist empire from sustaining the current tyranny. The psychopaths of
the empire, not exposed to public scrutiny, hidden in the shadows, can and will nudge the
world into unwinnable (for anyone) nuclear war; their egos are the definition of human
depravity.
Exposing the grand charade to a critical mass of the general population is the first
objective, then exposing the 'hidden hands' in the shadows is the next.
The parasite must be stopped, and we, the people who have seen glimpses of the enemy, are
incumbent to spread the word.
I left this comment on a different article ( http://thesaker.is/listening-to-mattis/ ), but
seems it could be in place here also. Cause we're talking approximately same and nothing gonna
change
-- -- -
Well, it's getting boring a little. I mean the descriptions of the insanity of US's
rulers.
One positive thing in US policy is a stability and progress – dummy president
replaced by stupid one, that replaced by insane; after him goes imbecile. I can't imagine
who's going to be next :-).
But there are many of old crazy women and men ready to help if current imbecile went
down.
Thanks God, we, Russians, not that happy. After imbecile alcoholic Yeltsin we've got not
bad alternative (your media and stupid people in power call him a killer). Who (with his sanity) the only chance for this world to survive.
But, actually we're very tired from all this stuff and the possibility of US generals to
test our conventional and even nuke arms constantly increasing. They can also test if our
soldiers who've seen Napoleon, Hitler and many others got worse or still the same. I'm asking US citizens – Is it really interesting to you to get know it for
sure?
There will be no nuclear war as Russia and the U.S. can wipe each other off the map, however
the Zionists will continue to keep America at war for the Zionist NWO as that is the game
plan and we goyim Americans will continue to be sent to the slaughter house for greater
Israel.
"But as Mr. Shatz observes, the problems run much deeper than President Trump."
This statement is misleading. One honest, generally morally competent man holding the
ever-more-powerful office of president of the U.S., could fix many things. Unfortunately, Donald John Trump is not that man.
Let's consider one example: Many people believe that a real investigation into 9/11 would
destroy the "deep state". Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey et al. have recently completed a study of the
"collapse" of WTC7, whereby they've proven that "fire" was not the cause of the "collapse" of
that building. This finding directly contradicts the NIST report. For the first time in 16
years there is now incontrovertible scientific evidence in the public domain that 9/11 was an
"inside job". Why won't Donald John Trump take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity
and order an investigation?
There is only one plausible explanation: I believe that Donald John Trump was the "deep
state" candidate of choice in the 2016 election. I believe that's why they ran wild-eyed
madwoman Hillary Clinton against him rather than the more electable Sanders. I believe that's
why, in the early fall of 2016, as the election was coming into the home stretch, Obama
started ramping up tensions with Russia; i.e., so as to nudge the disgruntled anti-war
Democrats (Sanders supporters) into Trump's camp, swinging the election to him.
I believe that Donald John Trump is a "deep cover" or "sleeper" agent that's been groomed
and waiting in the wings for his masters' call. I believe that Donald John Trump was called
to power in a desperate now or never moment to save the "deep state" (Zionist) agenda.
Donald John Trump is a liar. Donald John Trump is a fraud. Donald John Trump is a con man.
Donald John Trump is a mass-murderer.
I don't think anyone in the West is sleepwalking into anything, esp the USA. I think the
American people see the writing on the wall and that if the American Empire loses status the
economy of the USA will revert to being a labor intensive existence of working the ground
just to have enough food to eat and water to drink. So entitled and lazy Americans are and
horrified to be relegated back to a 1920/30′s quality of life (loss of Bread &
Circuses), that if the Military Industril Complex has to threaten the entire planet with nuclear
annihilation if they don't tithe 10% of their GDP (Roman Empire) so fat ass Yankees can
continue to be fat asses – then just burn the place to the ground.
If the BRIC countries attempt to dethrone the petro dollar lazy entitled Americans will
BEG Washington to do whatever it takes to bring back $3.00 t-shirts at Wal-Mart.
The world is not about to end, but the Western public space has become very stupid. Most
politicians, media and academics have managed to redefine basic terms into idiotic
caricatures. Concepts like meddling, trolls, collusion, etc don't mean what we are told they
mean. They are all an eternal part of human society, exchange of ideas, disagreements.
Expressing one's opinions is not 'propaganda', or 'meddling' in elections – it is
freedom of speech. The idea that there is only one correct view – the Western liberal
one – is medieval.
We are at a point when views other than BBC, CNN, NY Times , are routinely dismissed as
'meddling', 'trolling, or sometimes 'hatred'. The objective is to suppress and dismiss them.
That is very dangerous for any civilisation, but for a system that was built on celebrating
free speech, it is fatal.
I often hear that it is a 'natural' pendulum swing, that most people in the West don't
agree with it, that it is an angry reaction to an unexpected loss ('Clinton dead-enders'),
that it will self-correct over time. In my view that is missing the point and overlooks the
permanent damage this hysteria has caused. If the more rational members of the elite are
unable to defend rationality and freedom today – when it is still easy – they are
co-responsible for the madness.
"After the Maidan the leaders of two right wing neo-Nazi organisations were rewarded with
control of four ministries
Andriy Parubiy, co-founder of the fascist Social National Party (SNPU) , which later
changed its name to Svoboda, became the new top commander of the National Defense and
Security Council (covering the military, police, courts and intelligence apparatus). The CIA
renamed the organisation to "Svoboda," meaning "Freedom," to make it more acceptable to
Americans.
Dmytro Yarosh, Right Sector commander, was second-in-command of the National Defense and
Security Council. This is the man who organized and ran Ukraine's February 22nd Coup in Kiev,
and the May 2nd Massacre of Its Opponents in Odessa, for Barack Obama. Yarosh's teams
carry out the most violent operations for the CIA in Ukraine. They are responsible for the
atrocities committed in the Donbass, for the crimes against humanity .
Oleh Tyahnybok, co founder of the SNPU and currently the party leader of Svoboda, a self
confessed neo-Nazi. He opposed the introduction of the Russian language as the second
official state language; called for the lustration of former communist officials. He also
proposed recognition of the fighting role of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and
Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II."
-- Where are the Lobby, the Anti-Defamation League, the Friends of Israel in UK, and the
whole Holocaust business? Where are the fighters with BDS?
Nobody will deliberately start nuclear war, but the probability that it might start as the
result of series of mistakes has increased.
The US and its vassals (including other NATO
countries) moved NATO troops close to Russian borders, destabilized Ukraine, Syria, cooked up
"Russiagate" (which is really an FBI-gate, but sore losers would not admit it) to justify
further increases in Pentagon budget (a trough where very fat pigs feed).
The Empire is
afraid of losing its position, but shortsighted elites do everything to accelerate its
demise. The main danger is that in its death throes the Empire will start a war, although we
can only hope that even degenerate US elites understand that dead people cannot benefit by
their wealth. Hope springs eternal.
Agree with much of the sentiment and some of the proposals here regarding the need to ratchet
down rhetoric, pledge no first strike, and generally try much harder to reduce the risk of
even a "small" nuke exchange.
But giving up our inter-continental ballistic missiles would be foolhardy, even more so if
it's done unilaterally. With rivals / potential enemies like China and eventually India, who
in time will be able to muster conventional forces and troop contingents far larger than
ours, we cannot give up the nuke deterrent.
And the reference "the TWO nuclear-armed superpowers" is out of date. That would be at
least THREE nuke-armed superpowers: China, the USA, and Russia.
"But giving up our inter-continental ballistic missiles would be foolhardy, even more so
if it's done unilaterally. With rivals / potential enemies like China and eventually India,
who in time will be able to muster conventional forces and troop contingents far larger than
ours, we cannot give up the nuke deterrent."
because it will keep the victims of ZIO/U$A imperial policy at bay for the victims request
for REPARATIONS, when that time comes
understand that dead people cannot benefit by their wealth. Hope springs eternal
Well, hope is always nice. But we might not understand the dynamic nature of the
global-liberal overreach that we have been experiencing. People don't behave the way Western
elites have been acting without some measure of disconnect from reality. And hubris. When a substantial part of elite climbs on an irrational high horse of invincibility they
become paralysed by the framework they have created. They don't want to hear other views
because it makes them uncomfortable. They have given up on both principles and institutions
– it is anything goes world now.
So where is the assurance that rationality would prevail in a crisis? It didn't in 1914.
Who would step in and tell the morons that they have been living a lie of their own creation?
That constraints are still there, that their verbal acuity has not changed how the world is,
that 'soft power' is called soft for a reason – it doesn't add up to a hill of beans
when it matters. The risk for any dissenter of consequence is very high (see Trump for a
related, imperfect example).
Let's hope. Most bad scenarios don't actually end life on the planet, they just make life
more miserable. That's what happened in the past. We might see a 'nuclear' version of that.
One thing I know for sure: none of the liberal fire-eaters in Washington, Brussels or London
will ever own up to this. They are born 'victims', so they will go on whining
The Dutch government tries to get a law accepted now that greatly increases the legal
possibilities of our secret service to spy on anyone.
March 21 there is a referendum on the law, I expect that we will reject it, but the
politicians already stated that they will reject a negative referendum.
By accident, of course, today our secret service made public that they spied on Russian
interference in the USA elections, without being specific of course, 'classified', as a lot
in the USA.
The Trotskyites who became in America first anti-Stalinist Democrat Hawks and then
anti-Russian/Israel-first Republican Hawks have worked things so that they control foreign
affairs for both political parties. And they have an insatiable bloodlust. Like the godfather
of their movement, they are amoral with genocidal desires when it comes to peoples they
despise. They are the type of self-righteous bullies who aspire to rule the globe to
overreach and push and shove and threaten and sucker punch until the worst for the world
happens.
Most regular readers of Unz Review can agree with the above. What they also need to accept
is that those problems did not enter the US, or more generally the Anglosphere, with the
flight of mostly Jewish Trotskyites from the USSR and Europe. The same attitudes of
insufferable hubris that was basically amoral in regard to national and ethnic groups it most
despised marked the British Empire.
The British WASP Elite form certainly was more refined
and pleasant-seeming than the Jewish Neocon form, and other groups of people within that
world usually proved able to bring the most crazed WASP Elite monsters back from the edge of
the cliff. But they existed, and they caused needless trouble around the globe.
It is the mix of the two that makes the American hawkish anti-Russian, Israel-first
foreign policy insane enough to try to start a nuclear exchange.
Anon from TN
You may be right, but we can't do anything about it now: much hyped democracy is a pure ruse
(look at presumably two party system in the US: Republicrats always win). I just hope that
the sense of self-preservation in those degenerate elites is stronger than their lies that
they apparently believe themselves (even mice are smart enough for that). If not, then those
morons along with innocent bystanders (99.9% of world population) would be dead. Look on the
bright side: rodents and insects would be happy to inherit the Earth.
Unpopular jerk-boy opinion incoming. I honestly think the Hawaii response is pretty typical
but shameful. I like the response of the guy who just tweets, 'OK, if I die goodbye, I'm
golfing anyway' and turns his stupid phone off.
Good to see you posting. I hear they are muling Ophrah. Really good choice for next
president. Woman, black, fat and wealthy. Not gay or transvestite though but that's coming
next. What makes me wonder how this sort of imbeciles gets elected without collapsing the
state. I think it is moving slowly in this direction but there was enough to have just 2 morons in top positions and
look -- no
more USSR. Talk about "Checks and balances."
Makes me wonder what after Putin. I do it like him that much
but he still intelligent, cool and calculating man that is not doing stupid things but
neither genius.
Regarding Americans, unfortunately they never felt real pain. Like a kid who does not know that fire is dangerous. I
think financial collapse gonna be trouble
sooner or later with them. The best thing Russia and China can do is to undermine us dollar
status and the whole financial system which was built by uncle Sam for uncle Sam benefit.
Anon from TN
You are right: Dutch government has already thrown away negative results of the referendum on
EU association with Ukraine. What's more, it betrayed its own citizens by still pretending to
investigate the crash of MH-17, even though everyone with a brain knows that Ukrainian puppet
government is to blame (international airlines made this conclusion long time ago: they fly
over Russia, but avoid Ukraine, flying around it, just like they fly around North Korea).
I
am tempted to say that you guys elected this scum, but then you'd say that I elected Trump,
which I didn't (anyway, what choice did we have: corrupt to the core mad witch would have
been even worse).
today our secret service made public that they spied on Russian interference in the USA
elections
Spying is like a recursive algorithm. Next Russia will announce that they ' spied on
the Dutch spies who were spying on them '. Maybe we can skip the ' motivations ':
they are all spying on each other, all the time, it is their job description.
I am still waiting for someone to explain to us how is ' interference ' or '
meddling ' different from having an opinion about an election. And we all know that
Americans (or Dutch) have never, ever, expressed any opinions about other countries'
elections. Right. My democracy promotion is your meddling.
It is bad when you kill my cow. It is very good when I kill your cow. Monkey reasoning
level?
It will be a long and slow process to drain the sludge filled swamp. Let's move forward
and stop concentrating so much on this swamp, the murky swamp water will and is becoming much
more clearer by the day. Let's focus on this immigration. #MAGA
Why do you even want an FBI? Sessions is useless, get rid of him. He's blinded by his own
crap (going after marijuana) instead of dealing with the real problems that the USA faces,
like Hillary Clinton. He must be a Deep state operative.
Watergate was a trap to overthrow Richard Nixon. It was not a third grade burglary. Deep
throat was a CIA guy and the two investigative newspapers guys were in on the trap. The
motive? To stop Nixon from making peace with Russia and China.
How in the world can President Trump clean up swamp when their are so dam many swimming in
it. Can't trust anyone to do their job or to have his back he's fighting the wolves every
day. God Bless and protect our President against the evil around him!!!!!! Amen!!!
The FBI and doj and congress have proven to be domestic enemies of the united states of
America! Send all to Gitmo! High treason! Stop all immigration due to the written plan to
take over Americas using immigrants and illegals and daca and refugees to kill all Americans.
This is serious the congress have planned to take America over for fifty years!
Laura should it surprise you? The DemonRats all ready know what is in it. Most of them
where involved in it in one way or another so why would they want to go look at it and be
reminded of there evil ways and what they have really done. They would love for it to go away
so they are not prosecuted for treason and sedition.
It will be a long and slow process to drain the sludge filled swamp. Let's move forward
and stop concentrating so much on this swamp, the murky swamp water will and is becoming much
more clearer by the day. Let's focus on this immigration. #MAGA
Why do you even want an FBI? Sessions is useless, get rid of him. He's blinded by his own
crap (going after marijuana) instead of dealing with the real problems that the USA faces,
like Hillary Clinton. He must be a Deep state operative.
Watergate was a trap to overthrow Richard Nixon. It was not a third grade burglary. Deep
throat was a CIA guy and the two investigative newspapers guys were in on the trap. The
motive? To stop Nixon from making peace with Russia and China.
How in the world can President Trump clean up swamp when their are so dam many swimming in
it. Can't trust anyone to do their job or to have his back he's fighting the wolves every
day. God Bless and protect our President against the evil around him!!!!!! Amen!!!
The FBI and doj and congress have proven to be domestic enemies of the united states of
America! Send all to Gitmo! High treason! Stop all immigration due to the written plan to
take over Americas using immigrants and illegals and daca and refugees to kill all Americans.
This is serious the congress have planned to take America over for fifty years!
Laura should it surprise you? The DemonRats all ready know what is in it. Most of them
where involved in it in one way or another so why would they want to go look at it and be
reminded of there evil ways and what they have really done. They would love for it to go away
so they are not prosecuted for treason and sedition.
Everyone in the world can see that the United States has become a bitterly divided country, but still has a really amazing level
of continuity in foreign policy between various administrations.
Notable quotes:
"... The long-awaited National Defense Strategy is a vision of US imperialism besieged on all sides and in mortal danger of losing global dominance. ..."
"... "Great power competition -- not terrorism -- is now the primary focus of US national security," Mattis said in his speech, which accompanied the release of an 11-page declassified document outlining the National Defense Strategy in broad terms. A lengthier classified version was submitted to the US Congress, which includes the Pentagon's detailed proposals for a massive increase in military spending. ..."
"... Russia, it charges, is attempting to achieve "veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, economic, and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor." ..."
"... "China is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea," it states. "Russia has violated the borders of nearby nations and pursues veto power over the economic, diplomatic, and security decisions of its neighbors." ..."
"... Both Moscow and Beijing issued statements condemning the US defense strategy. A Chinese spokesman denounced the document as a return to a "Cold War mentality." Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, told a United Nations press conference: "It is regrettable that instead of having a normal dialog, instead of using the basis of international law, the US is indeed striving to prove their leadership through such confrontational strategies and concepts." A government spokesman in Moscow characterized the document as "imperialistic." ..."
The long-awaited National Defense Strategy is a vision of US imperialism besieged on all sides and in mortal danger of losing
global dominance.
The Trump administration's defense secretary, former Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, rolled out a new National Defense Strategy
Friday that signals open preparations by US imperialism for direct military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China.
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, Mattis made clear that the strategy, the first such document to be issued by
the Pentagon in roughly a decade, represented an historic shift from the ostensible justification for US global militarism for nearly
two decades: the so-called war on terrorism.
"Great power competition -- not terrorism -- is now the primary focus of US national security," Mattis said in his speech, which
accompanied the release of an 11-page declassified document outlining the National Defense Strategy in broad terms. A lengthier classified
version was submitted to the US Congress, which includes the Pentagon's detailed proposals for a massive increase in military spending.
Much of the document's language echoed terms used in the National Security Strategy document unveiled last month in a fascistic
speech delivered by President Donald Trump. Mattis insisted that the US was facing "growing threat from revisionist powers as different
as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models."
Russia, it charges, is attempting to achieve "veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, economic,
and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic
structures to its favor."
"China is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South
China Sea," it states. "Russia has violated the borders of nearby nations and pursues veto power over the economic, diplomatic, and
security decisions of its neighbors."
In what appeared to be a threat directed against both Russia and China, Mattis warned, "If you challenge us, it will be your longest
and worst day."
Both Moscow and Beijing issued statements condemning the US defense strategy. A Chinese spokesman denounced the document as a
return to a "Cold War mentality." Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, told a United Nations press conference: "It
is regrettable that instead of having a normal dialog, instead of using the basis of international law, the US is indeed striving
to prove their leadership through such confrontational strategies and concepts." A government spokesman in Moscow characterized the
document as "imperialistic."
Trey Gowdy mentions of the Melian Dialogue: see lygdamus.com
He also mentioned: Insulting never works as a method of persuasion. That applies to insult of Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... The Athenians offer the Melians an ultimatum: surrender and pay tribute to Athens, or be destroyed. The Athenians do not wish to waste time arguing over the morality of the situation, because in practice might makes right-or, in their own words, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" ..."
"... The Melians argue that an invasion will alarm the other neutral Greek states, who will become hostile to Athens for fear of being invaded themselves. The Athenians counter that the Greek states on the mainland are unlikely to act this way. It is the independent island states and the disgruntled subjects that Athens has already conquered that are more likely to take up arms against Athens. ..."
"... This speech should be obligatory study for each prospective teacher, politician and in fact every person around. ..."
The Athenians offer the Melians an ultimatum: surrender and pay tribute to Athens, or be destroyed. The Athenians do not wish
to waste time arguing over the morality of the situation, because in practice might makes right-or, in their own words, "the strong
do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".[25]
The Melians argue that they are a neutral city and not an enemy, so Athens has no need to conquer them. The Athenians counter
that if they accept Melos' neutrality and independence, they would look weak: Their subjects would think that they left Melos alone
because they were not strong enough to conquer it.
The Melians argue that an invasion will alarm the other neutral Greek states, who will become hostile to Athens for fear of being
invaded themselves. The Athenians counter that the Greek states on the mainland are unlikely to act this way. It is the independent
island states and the disgruntled subjects that Athens has already conquered that are more likely to take up arms against Athens.
The Melians argue that it would be shameful and cowardly of them to submit without a fight. The Athenians counter that it is only
shameful to submit to an opponent whom one has a reasonable chance of defeating. There is no shame in submitting to an overwhelmingly
superior opponent like Athens.
The Melians argue that though the Athenians are far stronger, there is at least a slim chance that the Melians could win, and
they will regret not trying their luck. The Athenians counter that this argument is emotional and short-sighted. If the Melians lose,
which is highly likely, they will come to bitterly regret their foolish optimism.
The Melians believe that they will have the assistance of the gods because their position is morally just. The Athenians counter
that the gods will not intervene because it is the natural order of things for the strong to dominate the weak.
The Melians argue that their Spartan kin will come to their defense. The Athenians counter that the Spartans are a practical people
who never put themselves at risk when their interests are not at stake, and rescuing Melos would be especially risky since Athens
has the stronger navy.
The Athenians express their shock at the Melians' lack of realism. They say that there is no shame in submitting to a stronger
enemy, especially one who is offering reasonable terms. They also argue that it is sensible to submit to one's superiors, stand firm
against one's equals, and be moderate to one's inferiors. The Melians do not change their minds and politely dismiss the envoys.
Analysis
Warships of the era (triremes) could carry little in the way
of supplies, and thus needed friendly and neutral ports where the crew could purchase food and other necessities on a daily basis.[26]
Whether or not Melos was truly neutral, Peloponnesian ships could freely resupply there, which made it strategically important to
the enemy.[27]
Capturing Melos reduced the reach of the enemy's navy.
The mercilessness which the Athenian invaders showed to the Melians was exceptional even for the time and shocked many Greeks,
even in Athens.[28]
These may have included the Athenian playwright Euripides,
whose play The Trojan Women is widely regarded
as a commentary on the razing of Melos. The historian Xenophon
wrote that in 405 BC, with the Spartan army closing in on Athens, the citizens of Athens worried that the Spartans would treat them
with the same cruelty that the Athenian army had shown the Melians.[29]
The Athenian rhetorician Isocrates was a proud patriot but
accepted that the razing of Melos was a stain on Athens' history.[30][31]
It is uncertain whether the fate of Melos was decided by the government of Athens or the Athenian generals on Melos. A historical
speech falsely attributed to the Athenian orator Andocides
claims that the statesman Alcibiades advocated the enslavement
of the Melian survivors before the government of Athens.[32]
This account gives no date for the decree, so it could have been passed to justify the atrocities after-the-fact.[33]
Thucydides made no mention of any such decree in his own account.
The phrase "Melian hunger" became a byword for extreme starvation. Starvation is a normal goal of sieges and the ancient Greeks
had much experience with them, so this suggests that the Melian experience was extreme. The earliest known reference to the starvation
of the Melians is in Aristophanes' play, The Birds, which was first performed in 414 BC.[34]
Its usage lasted well into the Byzantine era, as it is mentioned in the Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia.[35]
I really appreciate your thoughts, and concerns for the future of our country! It's so nice to know that we still have some
politicians who truly care about WE the people! GOD BLESS YOU Trey!
Trey Gowdy mentions of the Melian Dialogue: see lygdamus.com
He also mentioned: Insulting never works as a method of persuasion. That applies to insult of Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... The Athenians offer the Melians an ultimatum: surrender and pay tribute to Athens, or be destroyed. The Athenians do not wish to waste time arguing over the morality of the situation, because in practice might makes right-or, in their own words, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" ..."
"... The Melians argue that an invasion will alarm the other neutral Greek states, who will become hostile to Athens for fear of being invaded themselves. The Athenians counter that the Greek states on the mainland are unlikely to act this way. It is the independent island states and the disgruntled subjects that Athens has already conquered that are more likely to take up arms against Athens. ..."
"... This speech should be obligatory study for each prospective teacher, politician and in fact every person around. ..."
The Athenians offer the Melians an ultimatum: surrender and pay tribute to Athens, or be destroyed. The Athenians do not wish
to waste time arguing over the morality of the situation, because in practice might makes right-or, in their own words, "the strong
do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".[25]
The Melians argue that they are a neutral city and not an enemy, so Athens has no need to conquer them. The Athenians counter
that if they accept Melos' neutrality and independence, they would look weak: Their subjects would think that they left Melos alone
because they were not strong enough to conquer it.
The Melians argue that an invasion will alarm the other neutral Greek states, who will become hostile to Athens for fear of being
invaded themselves. The Athenians counter that the Greek states on the mainland are unlikely to act this way. It is the independent
island states and the disgruntled subjects that Athens has already conquered that are more likely to take up arms against Athens.
The Melians argue that it would be shameful and cowardly of them to submit without a fight. The Athenians counter that it is only
shameful to submit to an opponent whom one has a reasonable chance of defeating. There is no shame in submitting to an overwhelmingly
superior opponent like Athens.
The Melians argue that though the Athenians are far stronger, there is at least a slim chance that the Melians could win, and
they will regret not trying their luck. The Athenians counter that this argument is emotional and short-sighted. If the Melians lose,
which is highly likely, they will come to bitterly regret their foolish optimism.
The Melians believe that they will have the assistance of the gods because their position is morally just. The Athenians counter
that the gods will not intervene because it is the natural order of things for the strong to dominate the weak.
The Melians argue that their Spartan kin will come to their defense. The Athenians counter that the Spartans are a practical people
who never put themselves at risk when their interests are not at stake, and rescuing Melos would be especially risky since Athens
has the stronger navy.
The Athenians express their shock at the Melians' lack of realism. They say that there is no shame in submitting to a stronger
enemy, especially one who is offering reasonable terms. They also argue that it is sensible to submit to one's superiors, stand firm
against one's equals, and be moderate to one's inferiors. The Melians do not change their minds and politely dismiss the envoys.
Analysis
Warships of the era (triremes) could carry little in the way
of supplies, and thus needed friendly and neutral ports where the crew could purchase food and other necessities on a daily basis.[26]
Whether or not Melos was truly neutral, Peloponnesian ships could freely resupply there, which made it strategically important to
the enemy.[27]
Capturing Melos reduced the reach of the enemy's navy.
The mercilessness which the Athenian invaders showed to the Melians was exceptional even for the time and shocked many Greeks,
even in Athens.[28]
These may have included the Athenian playwright Euripides,
whose play The Trojan Women is widely regarded
as a commentary on the razing of Melos. The historian Xenophon
wrote that in 405 BC, with the Spartan army closing in on Athens, the citizens of Athens worried that the Spartans would treat them
with the same cruelty that the Athenian army had shown the Melians.[29]
The Athenian rhetorician Isocrates was a proud patriot but
accepted that the razing of Melos was a stain on Athens' history.[30][31]
It is uncertain whether the fate of Melos was decided by the government of Athens or the Athenian generals on Melos. A historical
speech falsely attributed to the Athenian orator Andocides
claims that the statesman Alcibiades advocated the enslavement
of the Melian survivors before the government of Athens.[32]
This account gives no date for the decree, so it could have been passed to justify the atrocities after-the-fact.[33]
Thucydides made no mention of any such decree in his own account.
The phrase "Melian hunger" became a byword for extreme starvation. Starvation is a normal goal of sieges and the ancient Greeks
had much experience with them, so this suggests that the Melian experience was extreme. The earliest known reference to the starvation
of the Melians is in Aristophanes' play, The Birds, which was first performed in 414 BC.[34]
Its usage lasted well into the Byzantine era, as it is mentioned in the Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia.[35]
I really appreciate your thoughts, and concerns for the future of our country! It's so nice to know that we still have some
politicians who truly care about WE the people! GOD BLESS YOU Trey!
Everyone in the world can see that the United States has become a bitterly divided country, but still has a really amazing level
of continuity in foreign policy between various administrations.
Notable quotes:
"... The long-awaited National Defense Strategy is a vision of US imperialism besieged on all sides and in mortal danger of losing global dominance. ..."
"... "Great power competition -- not terrorism -- is now the primary focus of US national security," Mattis said in his speech, which accompanied the release of an 11-page declassified document outlining the National Defense Strategy in broad terms. A lengthier classified version was submitted to the US Congress, which includes the Pentagon's detailed proposals for a massive increase in military spending. ..."
"... Russia, it charges, is attempting to achieve "veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, economic, and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor." ..."
"... "China is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea," it states. "Russia has violated the borders of nearby nations and pursues veto power over the economic, diplomatic, and security decisions of its neighbors." ..."
"... Both Moscow and Beijing issued statements condemning the US defense strategy. A Chinese spokesman denounced the document as a return to a "Cold War mentality." Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, told a United Nations press conference: "It is regrettable that instead of having a normal dialog, instead of using the basis of international law, the US is indeed striving to prove their leadership through such confrontational strategies and concepts." A government spokesman in Moscow characterized the document as "imperialistic." ..."
The long-awaited National Defense Strategy is a vision of US imperialism besieged on all sides and in mortal danger of losing
global dominance.
The Trump administration's defense secretary, former Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, rolled out a new National Defense Strategy
Friday that signals open preparations by US imperialism for direct military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China.
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, Mattis made clear that the strategy, the first such document to be issued by
the Pentagon in roughly a decade, represented an historic shift from the ostensible justification for US global militarism for nearly
two decades: the so-called war on terrorism.
"Great power competition -- not terrorism -- is now the primary focus of US national security," Mattis said in his speech, which
accompanied the release of an 11-page declassified document outlining the National Defense Strategy in broad terms. A lengthier classified
version was submitted to the US Congress, which includes the Pentagon's detailed proposals for a massive increase in military spending.
Much of the document's language echoed terms used in the National Security Strategy document unveiled last month in a fascistic
speech delivered by President Donald Trump. Mattis insisted that the US was facing "growing threat from revisionist powers as different
as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models."
Russia, it charges, is attempting to achieve "veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, economic,
and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic
structures to its favor."
"China is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South
China Sea," it states. "Russia has violated the borders of nearby nations and pursues veto power over the economic, diplomatic, and
security decisions of its neighbors."
In what appeared to be a threat directed against both Russia and China, Mattis warned, "If you challenge us, it will be your longest
and worst day."
Both Moscow and Beijing issued statements condemning the US defense strategy. A Chinese spokesman denounced the document as a
return to a "Cold War mentality." Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, told a United Nations press conference: "It
is regrettable that instead of having a normal dialog, instead of using the basis of international law, the US is indeed striving
to prove their leadership through such confrontational strategies and concepts." A government spokesman in Moscow characterized the
document as "imperialistic."
"... Imagine a Russia in which Putin was no longer around and the hawks, with plenty of stored up grievances, were in power. The Russians have their neocons too and if they came out on top we'd be worse off than now ..."
"... The European elites wish to see Europe as a world power. Unrealistic, perhaps, but say that entity did become a dominant force. They complain about the lack of democratic control in the States, but that's nothing to the lack of democratic control in Europe. And we've already seen what the Europeans, including us, are capable of when it comes to predatory foreign intervention. Give the Europeans enough things that go bang and we could be yearning for the good old days. ..."
Babak - "The only sensible thing to do is to cut and run; in my opinion. Just work through
the implications as US cuts and run in the Levant, in the Persian Gulf, in South Korea."
As you point out, that could have unexpected effects. We saw what happened when a previous
dominant power - Great Britain, though by no means as overwhelmingly dominant and not at all
so at the end - effectively cut and ran after the Second World War. It ended up more of a
mess than it started out as.
Even in an ideal world, a world in which the current style of Great Power politics was
universally abandoned, the sudden withdrawal of the US would cause instability and chaos. The
disengagement would have to be gradual.
But there is no such ideal world as that and there will not be. Therefore the sudden
withdrawal of the US would leave a power vacuum that others would fill.
What others? Imagine a Russia in which Putin was no longer around and the hawks, with
plenty of stored up grievances, were in power. The Russians have their neocons too and if
they came out on top we'd be worse off than now .
The European elites wish to see Europe as a world power. Unrealistic, perhaps, but say
that entity did become a dominant force. They complain about the lack of democratic control
in the States, but that's nothing to the lack of democratic control in Europe. And we've
already seen what the Europeans, including us, are capable of when it comes to predatory
foreign intervention. Give the Europeans enough things that go bang and we could be yearning
for the good old days.
I'm one of those that still hope that the non-interventionist policy that was voted for in
America in 2016 will be carried through. But if that is indeed Trump's intention then there
is more in his way than local political or administrative difficulties. To engineer such a
transition would require great care. It's no good if the US just steps back and worse comes
forward to take its place.
It's not overly idealistic, or even that unrealistic, to hope for a world in which defense
forces (AND defensive alliances) are used for the proper purpose of defence and not for
expensive and destructive enterprises dreamed up by some bubble elite. That's part of what
Trump 2016 was about. But getting to such a world would require a considerably more careful
transition than we've seen in similar circumstances in the past.
There are some analogies here with the recent Poroshenko government desire to take Donbass area back by military force.
Notable quotes:
"... How will this breakup of Syrian national territory affect the situation between the Donbass region and the Ukraine junta? ..."
"... True and very sad. The Syrians have been caught in the crossfire since the beginning. We have theorized over the various causes of the war, but, in the end, when the superpowers are hanging around, Syrians are the first row of pieces to be sacrificed. ..."
"... The Afrin war plays several roles. It will demonize and demoralize further the 'independentist' Kurds, awake the nationalist Turkish feeling by displaying military power that has been damaged by the coup, boost the Islamist flame among the rural Turks so the Turks can forget about their grudge over the EU and the declining buying power. ..."
"... All the actors are tributaries flowing into the main river, and all moving in the same general direction, because the river is actually the tide of history. All players are advancing to meet their inevitable destinie ..."
Let me see if I understand all this? The Erdogan Turks fully back the terrorists in Syria
aiming to dislodge the Assad Syrian government. The USA et al fully backs the same.
The USA also backs the PKK/YPG Kurd faction in Syria as a means to at least break up
Syrian national territory, as originally in their plans, even if they do remove the Assad
government as originally planned.
Erdogan has wanted to expand Turkey's national boundaries at the expense of Syria's. This
latest encroachment, as with Euphrates Shield, accomplishes this goal especially if they can
subsume their terrorist proxies occupied areas in Idlib Province as the USA has by using
their newest Kurd proxies in eastern Syria. Erdogan need only create some new proxy
(Turkmen?) and go after the terrorists and Kurds in western Syria. No doubt with American
help.
Erdogan and the USA disagree only on what future the Kurdish people will play in the
eastern territories of Syria and Turkey. So what will be the necessary accommodation between
them?
If a Kurdish state is declared and backed by NATO and a UN resolution what if anything can
Syria and her allies do about it as war is simply out of the question.
How will this breakup of Syrian national territory affect the situation between the
Donbass region and the Ukraine junta?
This would not be some devious plot by Turks/US to prolong the war in Syria and give cover to
send more troops in ... troops that never leave? The whole thing seems a bit too ...
convenient.
True and very sad. The Syrians have been caught in the crossfire since the beginning.
We have theorized over the various causes of the war, but, in the end, when the superpowers
are hanging around, Syrians are the first row of pieces to be sacrificed.
And I would never put my faith in any international community ruling after Syria. We are
in uncharted territory, I believe. Dance with the one you came with and if you have to stand
on Putin's toes to keep up, then hold him close.
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong
do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." -- Thucydides
"These oilfields seem to be the big prize and one of the main reasons the US wants to hold
onto this corner of Syria."
Posted by: financial matters | Jan 21, 2018 10:37:30 AM | 18
The goal of the MIC and Deep State is just to keep the chaos going as long as possible to
sell arms and benefit careers. However, Trump has been enticed to go along with it by the
promise that the US will "take their oil."
You may be correct that those Kurds aren't Syrian, but not necessarily so. The areas of
Syria that have actually had Kurdish, or for instance Armenian, majorities have enjoyed a
large measure of de facto autonomy, which has only increased in the last 20 years. So while
nominally required to use Arabic in schools, if the school is staffed with Kurdish teachers
and administrators with Kurdish students, there is little to stop them from simply teaching
in Kurdish. Or Armenian, or Aramaic, etc.
We had wrongly predicted that Turkish threats against the Kurdish held north-west area of
Afrin were empty:
Maybe not. Maybe your first analysis was correct. If the Kurdish militias do fight, it will
take many weeks, and lead to substantial Turkish losses. So it is really too early to say
that Erdogan will attempt to conquer Afrin no matter the cost, and too early to say that the
US will not put effective pressure on Erdogan, or offer him some sort of deal.
So far, Erdogan has upped the ante, but he hasn't gone all in.
Erdogan is obsessed by keeping power and winning his re election in 2018 or 2019 . To get
that, he needs to neutralize the Turkish Kurds who don't vote for him. Sunni conservative
Kurds worship Erdogan for his promotion of Sunni Islam. For them Islam is the unifying factor
of Turks especially Sunni Islam. They all vote for the AKP.
Erdogan has emasculated the burgeoning liberal Kurdish party, the HDP, by demonizing the
liberal Kurds and throwing its leader in prison just to get more votes in the previous
parliamentary election that he reran to win with a very small margin.
For the next election, he is very worried about the growth of other centrist parties, the
weakness of his ally the MHP, a nationalist party archi-enemy of the Kurds and about the
insatisfaction of the Turks with the deteriorating relation with the EU and the fall of the
lira.
The Afrin war plays several roles. It will demonize and demoralize further the
'independentist' Kurds, awake the nationalist Turkish feeling by displaying military power
that has been damaged by the coup, boost the Islamist flame among the rural Turks so the
Turks can forget about their grudge over the EU and the declining buying power.
The question is will he win fast enough not to create the impression of failure and a
quagmire that would reflect negatively on his voters? And what will be the aftermath of
Afrin? early elections?
It's a multiple win-win, a great demonstration of congruent interests all doing their own
thing. Lots of things remain to play out. But there are no downsides to this situation, no
matter who holds what piece of Syrian territory for what temporary short time.
All the actors are tributaries flowing into the main river, and all moving in the same
general direction, because the river is actually the tide of history. All players are
advancing to meet their inevitable destinies: Turkey moves closer to Russia, and closer,
despite much bad blood, to restoring the friendship between itself and Syria (over time); the
Kurds get their final lesson about the perfidious US and settle into their lands in Syria, as
Syrians; Dr. Assad gets his entire country back for his people (over time); terrorists die;
the US is further marginalized and its generals scream mayhem, in words only.
The Ukrainian Parliament has practically declared
the Minsk agreements null and void and decided to militarily "liberate" Donetsk, Lugansk and
Crimea from the will of the people living there. Just in time the neo-nazi fanatics of the Azov
Battalion
received a U.S. military delegation and U.S. arms.
The 2015 Minsk II agreement (
full text ) demanded that the Ukraine creates a new law for the administration of these
regions:
Without delays, but no later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, a
resolution has to be approved by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, indicating the territory
which falls under the special regime in accordance with the law "On temporary Order of Local
Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts," based in the line
set up by the Minsk Memorandum as of Sept. 19, 2014.
Russia is not a party of the agreement. But when the resolution by the Ukrainian parliament
was not forthcoming western propaganda falsely blamed Russia for "not fulfilling the Minsk
agreement" and the west has since bound the sanctions on Russia to this fake conclusion.
The National Bank of Ukraine announced
that an independent accountant found that PrivatBank, then owned by the coup financier and
billionaire
Ihor Kolomoyskiy , was plundered of $5.5 billion shortly before it went bankrupt and
nationalized by the coup government. In connection with that an IMF loan of $1.8 billion to the
Ukraine
allegedly went directly into Kolomoyskiy's pockets. How much of this stolen money was paid
to U.S. politicians?
While the anti-Trump politicians and media still fret about "Russian influence" on U.S.
social media everyone seems to have forgotten that in early 2016 the Ukraine set up a massive
troll farm and a Ministry of Truth. Back then even the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine
disliked that . If every troll tweeting in Russian or with Cyrillic letters in its name is
under the direct command of Vladimir Putin where then are those Ukrainians trolls?
The last round in Ukraine erupted while the winter games finished in Sochi. I see the
empire positioning things to repeat the treatment during FIFA. Ukraine is being primed and
the clock is set to create incidents that will force Russia's hand.
This potential very public shaming of Russia is what is restraining Russia from responding
to many of the US and Israeli (and Turkish?) provocations in Syria. Perhaps they are hoping
their present silence will gain them some grace for that showcase event.
Personally, I doubt it.
And should some incidents happen during the FIFA world cup events, we will see the real
Putin - which might be for the best in the long run.
re:?The Ukrainian Parliament has practically declared the Minsk agreements null and void and
decided to militarily "liberate" Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea from the will of the people
living there. Just in time the neo-nazi fanatics of the Azov Battalion received a U.S.
military delegation..."
And also just in time Russia is voting on legalizing militias in Africa and elsewhere; just
in time for Spring in the Ukraine? http://russiafeed.com/russia-legalize-private-military-contractors-get-leg-africa/
I'm curious about Ukraine & its neo-nazi's. How do the Israelis who work there, knowing
the past-present? After all, mention the word nazi in their presence, and they go out of
their collective minds attacking the source. Or maybe there's some sort of collusion taking
place?
"... Imagine a Russia in which Putin was no longer around and the hawks, with plenty of stored up grievances, were in power. The Russians have their neocons too and if they came out on top we'd be worse off than now ..."
"... The European elites wish to see Europe as a world power. Unrealistic, perhaps, but say that entity did become a dominant force. They complain about the lack of democratic control in the States, but that's nothing to the lack of democratic control in Europe. And we've already seen what the Europeans, including us, are capable of when it comes to predatory foreign intervention. Give the Europeans enough things that go bang and we could be yearning for the good old days. ..."
Babak - "The only sensible thing to do is to cut and run; in my opinion. Just work through
the implications as US cuts and run in the Levant, in the Persian Gulf, in South Korea."
As you point out, that could have unexpected effects. We saw what happened when a previous
dominant power - Great Britain, though by no means as overwhelmingly dominant and not at all
so at the end - effectively cut and ran after the Second World War. It ended up more of a
mess than it started out as.
Even in an ideal world, a world in which the current style of Great Power politics was
universally abandoned, the sudden withdrawal of the US would cause instability and chaos. The
disengagement would have to be gradual.
But there is no such ideal world as that and there will not be. Therefore the sudden
withdrawal of the US would leave a power vacuum that others would fill.
What others? Imagine a Russia in which Putin was no longer around and the hawks, with
plenty of stored up grievances, were in power. The Russians have their neocons too and if
they came out on top we'd be worse off than now .
The European elites wish to see Europe as a world power. Unrealistic, perhaps, but say
that entity did become a dominant force. They complain about the lack of democratic control
in the States, but that's nothing to the lack of democratic control in Europe. And we've
already seen what the Europeans, including us, are capable of when it comes to predatory
foreign intervention. Give the Europeans enough things that go bang and we could be yearning
for the good old days.
I'm one of those that still hope that the non-interventionist policy that was voted for in
America in 2016 will be carried through. But if that is indeed Trump's intention then there
is more in his way than local political or administrative difficulties. To engineer such a
transition would require great care. It's no good if the US just steps back and worse comes
forward to take its place.
It's not overly idealistic, or even that unrealistic, to hope for a world in which defense
forces (AND defensive alliances) are used for the proper purpose of defence and not for
expensive and destructive enterprises dreamed up by some bubble elite. That's part of what
Trump 2016 was about. But getting to such a world would require a considerably more careful
transition than we've seen in similar circumstances in the past.
There are some analogies here with the recent Poroshenko government desire to take Donbass area back by military force.
Notable quotes:
"... How will this breakup of Syrian national territory affect the situation between the Donbass region and the Ukraine junta? ..."
"... True and very sad. The Syrians have been caught in the crossfire since the beginning. We have theorized over the various causes of the war, but, in the end, when the superpowers are hanging around, Syrians are the first row of pieces to be sacrificed. ..."
"... The Afrin war plays several roles. It will demonize and demoralize further the 'independentist' Kurds, awake the nationalist Turkish feeling by displaying military power that has been damaged by the coup, boost the Islamist flame among the rural Turks so the Turks can forget about their grudge over the EU and the declining buying power. ..."
"... All the actors are tributaries flowing into the main river, and all moving in the same general direction, because the river is actually the tide of history. All players are advancing to meet their inevitable destinie ..."
Let me see if I understand all this? The Erdogan Turks fully back the terrorists in Syria
aiming to dislodge the Assad Syrian government. The USA et al fully backs the same.
The USA also backs the PKK/YPG Kurd faction in Syria as a means to at least break up
Syrian national territory, as originally in their plans, even if they do remove the Assad
government as originally planned.
Erdogan has wanted to expand Turkey's national boundaries at the expense of Syria's. This
latest encroachment, as with Euphrates Shield, accomplishes this goal especially if they can
subsume their terrorist proxies occupied areas in Idlib Province as the USA has by using
their newest Kurd proxies in eastern Syria. Erdogan need only create some new proxy
(Turkmen?) and go after the terrorists and Kurds in western Syria. No doubt with American
help.
Erdogan and the USA disagree only on what future the Kurdish people will play in the
eastern territories of Syria and Turkey. So what will be the necessary accommodation between
them?
If a Kurdish state is declared and backed by NATO and a UN resolution what if anything can
Syria and her allies do about it as war is simply out of the question.
How will this breakup of Syrian national territory affect the situation between the
Donbass region and the Ukraine junta?
This would not be some devious plot by Turks/US to prolong the war in Syria and give cover to
send more troops in ... troops that never leave? The whole thing seems a bit too ...
convenient.
True and very sad. The Syrians have been caught in the crossfire since the beginning.
We have theorized over the various causes of the war, but, in the end, when the superpowers
are hanging around, Syrians are the first row of pieces to be sacrificed.
And I would never put my faith in any international community ruling after Syria. We are
in uncharted territory, I believe. Dance with the one you came with and if you have to stand
on Putin's toes to keep up, then hold him close.
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong
do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." -- Thucydides
"These oilfields seem to be the big prize and one of the main reasons the US wants to hold
onto this corner of Syria."
Posted by: financial matters | Jan 21, 2018 10:37:30 AM | 18
The goal of the MIC and Deep State is just to keep the chaos going as long as possible to
sell arms and benefit careers. However, Trump has been enticed to go along with it by the
promise that the US will "take their oil."
You may be correct that those Kurds aren't Syrian, but not necessarily so. The areas of
Syria that have actually had Kurdish, or for instance Armenian, majorities have enjoyed a
large measure of de facto autonomy, which has only increased in the last 20 years. So while
nominally required to use Arabic in schools, if the school is staffed with Kurdish teachers
and administrators with Kurdish students, there is little to stop them from simply teaching
in Kurdish. Or Armenian, or Aramaic, etc.
We had wrongly predicted that Turkish threats against the Kurdish held north-west area of
Afrin were empty:
Maybe not. Maybe your first analysis was correct. If the Kurdish militias do fight, it will
take many weeks, and lead to substantial Turkish losses. So it is really too early to say
that Erdogan will attempt to conquer Afrin no matter the cost, and too early to say that the
US will not put effective pressure on Erdogan, or offer him some sort of deal.
So far, Erdogan has upped the ante, but he hasn't gone all in.
Erdogan is obsessed by keeping power and winning his re election in 2018 or 2019 . To get
that, he needs to neutralize the Turkish Kurds who don't vote for him. Sunni conservative
Kurds worship Erdogan for his promotion of Sunni Islam. For them Islam is the unifying factor
of Turks especially Sunni Islam. They all vote for the AKP.
Erdogan has emasculated the burgeoning liberal Kurdish party, the HDP, by demonizing the
liberal Kurds and throwing its leader in prison just to get more votes in the previous
parliamentary election that he reran to win with a very small margin.
For the next election, he is very worried about the growth of other centrist parties, the
weakness of his ally the MHP, a nationalist party archi-enemy of the Kurds and about the
insatisfaction of the Turks with the deteriorating relation with the EU and the fall of the
lira.
The Afrin war plays several roles. It will demonize and demoralize further the
'independentist' Kurds, awake the nationalist Turkish feeling by displaying military power
that has been damaged by the coup, boost the Islamist flame among the rural Turks so the
Turks can forget about their grudge over the EU and the declining buying power.
The question is will he win fast enough not to create the impression of failure and a
quagmire that would reflect negatively on his voters? And what will be the aftermath of
Afrin? early elections?
It's a multiple win-win, a great demonstration of congruent interests all doing their own
thing. Lots of things remain to play out. But there are no downsides to this situation, no
matter who holds what piece of Syrian territory for what temporary short time.
All the actors are tributaries flowing into the main river, and all moving in the same
general direction, because the river is actually the tide of history. All players are
advancing to meet their inevitable destinies: Turkey moves closer to Russia, and closer,
despite much bad blood, to restoring the friendship between itself and Syria (over time); the
Kurds get their final lesson about the perfidious US and settle into their lands in Syria, as
Syrians; Dr. Assad gets his entire country back for his people (over time); terrorists die;
the US is further marginalized and its generals scream mayhem, in words only.
The Ukrainian Parliament has practically declared
the Minsk agreements null and void and decided to militarily "liberate" Donetsk, Lugansk and
Crimea from the will of the people living there. Just in time the neo-nazi fanatics of the Azov
Battalion
received a U.S. military delegation and U.S. arms.
The 2015 Minsk II agreement (
full text ) demanded that the Ukraine creates a new law for the administration of these
regions:
Without delays, but no later than 30 days from the date of signing of this document, a
resolution has to be approved by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, indicating the territory
which falls under the special regime in accordance with the law "On temporary Order of Local
Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts," based in the line
set up by the Minsk Memorandum as of Sept. 19, 2014.
Russia is not a party of the agreement. But when the resolution by the Ukrainian parliament
was not forthcoming western propaganda falsely blamed Russia for "not fulfilling the Minsk
agreement" and the west has since bound the sanctions on Russia to this fake conclusion.
The National Bank of Ukraine announced
that an independent accountant found that PrivatBank, then owned by the coup financier and
billionaire
Ihor Kolomoyskiy , was plundered of $5.5 billion shortly before it went bankrupt and
nationalized by the coup government. In connection with that an IMF loan of $1.8 billion to the
Ukraine
allegedly went directly into Kolomoyskiy's pockets. How much of this stolen money was paid
to U.S. politicians?
While the anti-Trump politicians and media still fret about "Russian influence" on U.S.
social media everyone seems to have forgotten that in early 2016 the Ukraine set up a massive
troll farm and a Ministry of Truth. Back then even the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine
disliked that . If every troll tweeting in Russian or with Cyrillic letters in its name is
under the direct command of Vladimir Putin where then are those Ukrainians trolls?
The last round in Ukraine erupted while the winter games finished in Sochi. I see the
empire positioning things to repeat the treatment during FIFA. Ukraine is being primed and
the clock is set to create incidents that will force Russia's hand.
This potential very public shaming of Russia is what is restraining Russia from responding
to many of the US and Israeli (and Turkish?) provocations in Syria. Perhaps they are hoping
their present silence will gain them some grace for that showcase event.
Personally, I doubt it.
And should some incidents happen during the FIFA world cup events, we will see the real
Putin - which might be for the best in the long run.
re:?The Ukrainian Parliament has practically declared the Minsk agreements null and void and
decided to militarily "liberate" Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea from the will of the people
living there. Just in time the neo-nazi fanatics of the Azov Battalion received a U.S.
military delegation..."
And also just in time Russia is voting on legalizing militias in Africa and elsewhere; just
in time for Spring in the Ukraine? http://russiafeed.com/russia-legalize-private-military-contractors-get-leg-africa/
I'm curious about Ukraine & its neo-nazi's. How do the Israelis who work there, knowing
the past-present? After all, mention the word nazi in their presence, and they go out of
their collective minds attacking the source. Or maybe there's some sort of collusion taking
place?
I am afraid, if one is to believe Mathis words, that the Syrian, Ukrainian and Korean potential confrontations will lead to
exchanges that will force us into wars on several theaters in the very near future.
As of today, Gen. Mathis exposing the sew Us Defense Strategy warned that: The US will counter any "threat to America's democracy
experiment" in the world, if necessary with military force, the Pentagon chief threatened.
He singled out Russia and China as "adversaries", a far cry form the "partners" designation used by Russia in designing the
USA. He vowed: the US will respond with lethal force.
So the stage is set for escalation of escalation in several theaters. How long will the bear be poked and the dragon provoked
before retaliation ensues?
I am afraid that war looks more and more certain in 2018.
@40 b... thanks for that... the place was getting out of hand.. you are becoming too popular..
@56 carl... it is an outrageous statement from mattis, any way you read it!
"The US will counter any threat to America's democracy experiment in the world..."
usa as country that gets to dictate its agenda anywhere in the world.. it would explain why they want to circumvent any international
body that they don't already control too, like the un.. america's democracy experiment is imposing the us$ as world currency under
the threat of their military.. it is already starting to fall apart on all accounts which explains mattis's anxiousness in representing
these same undemocratic structures and institutions he refers to as 'america's ''democracy'' experiment'... he needs to get a
gig in hollywood at comedy central.. he never found his true calling..
"We will modernize key capabilities," Mattis said. "Investments in space and cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense,
advanced autonomous systems and resilient and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to win." [Sputnik
News]
Just two quotes from 'Mad dog' Mattis which prove he needs to be put in an asylum.
"I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you
all".
"Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they're so sick of
the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact."
He singled out Russia and China as "adversaries", a far cry form the "partners"
designation used by Russia in designing the USA. He vowed: the US will
respond with lethal force.
Actions speak louder than words. The US is scared of two things: 1) a military conflict where its troops get slaughtered wholesale,
and 2) going up against any army or regular military force it can't destroy from the air. Whatever happens in the near future
we can rest assured Uncle Scam won't be engaging in direct hostilities with China or Russia.
@63 "Investments in space and cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense, advanced autonomous systems and resilient
and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to win."
Nice for the high-quality troops. Sounds like they should be totally risk-free. But I don't share Mad Dog's faith in technology.
Looks like an accident waiting to happen.
Mattis opens his mouth and reveals his level of ignorance when it comes to understanding the Outlaw US Empire's history--it's
certainly not a "democracy experiment," nor has it ever tried to install a democracy anywhere on the planet. I'd bet he's
just as ignorant when it comes to military history, too. He reminds me of the ignorant brute Sgt. Snorkel from the Beatle Bailey
comic strip. The so-called "new" "defense posture" is no more than a tidied-up version of the two that preceded it: What we say
goes; either you're with us or against us.
By way of rebuttal, I highly recommend reading
this interview of Hassan Nasrallah from 3 Jan 2018, particularly his remarks about differences in the quality of soldiers
from The Resistance versus those of the enemy--IDF, NATO, USA, Daesh--and why they exist.
Contrary to all the hype about the Empire being a new energy exporting colossus,
it needed to import LNG
to keep its East Coast dwellings warm, but the cargo seems to have found a better price elsewhere. Just how will it displace Russian
gas from the market when it can't provide enough domestic supply?
Meanwhile, Tillerson pulls an Albright
: "Signs of starvation and death in North Korea indicate that US diplomatic strategy works fine, says the secretary of state."
Is he being two-faced? You bet! From last year
: "We're not your enemy, we're not your threat..."
Ignorant, lying, immoral are just a few of the important behavioral traits of those leading faces of the Outlaw US Empire.
And my historical investigations prove such traits have been in the forefront since its inception. Guess we can thank its tutor,
the British Empire.
The US administration either is very smart in bluffing to temporarily reassure its panicking regional allies, Israel and Saudi
Arabia or it is living in the la-la land of an incompetence close to stupidity.
Do they really believe that the Russians will allow the USA to rob their victory in Syria over ISIS? Or that the Turks will
stay idle while the USA is building a Kurdish military entity on their border? Or that Iran and Syria will allow the partitioning
of Syria and the US illegal long term presence in the region?
The USA administration is posed for dramatic blowbacks and reshuffling of alliances in the region.Maybe that is why it is running
like a headless hen!
This will damage Trump with his base. Reducing the involvement of the United States military abroad was one of the more important
commitments he made to his base and now he has broken that commitment and quite a few of his base are disappointed. Even if it's
just a couple of hundred thousand of them, there goes the next presidential election for Trump and the Republicans. By forgetting
about Russia-gate, focusing on his foreign military involvements, and provided the Democratic candidate is not a Clinton, the
presidency is for there for taking by the Democrats. Having Tulsi Gabbard on the ticket would help.
The only reservation I have is if Trump is stiffing the generals in the White House and sometime in the future pulls the plug
on all those interventions then he'll remain in the White House for another four years.
Tillerson could have been speaking for Trump, or Obama, or Bush - under whose regime the Likudnik/neocons/Zionists were able to
foment a policy coup while using the OSP to concoct lies for Israel's long-desired war.
While there are generally multiple motives for entry into wars, only one is whitewashed. As Phil Giraldi put it:
""Why doesn't anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this
conference and we all know it's American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for
Netanyahu? Shouldn't we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?"
Here's where we are, as the same cabal cheerlead for war on Iran (Lebanon must be first) a you are either committed to stopping
the drive to war by all cognizable social and pitical forces, or you are not.
The time for letting cries of 'anti-Semite' preclude FAIR dis ussuon of the role of Jews and the Israel Lobby is over.
Those who censor this necessary component of analysis should be deemed confederates of the bankers, MIC, transnationals, and
Zionist Jews who have been driving wars for decades.
With millions dead, playtime is over. Those censoring the truth side with the warmongers.
I am afraid, if one is to believe Mathis words, that the Syrian, Ukrainian and Korean potential confrontations will lead to
exchanges that will force us into wars on several theaters in the very near future.
As of today, Gen. Mathis exposing the sew Us Defense Strategy warned that: The US will counter any "threat to America's democracy
experiment" in the world, if necessary with military force, the Pentagon chief threatened.
He singled out Russia and China as "adversaries", a far cry form the "partners" designation used by Russia in designing the
USA. He vowed: the US will respond with lethal force.
So the stage is set for escalation of escalation in several theaters. How long will the bear be poked and the dragon provoked
before retaliation ensues?
I am afraid that war looks more and more certain in 2018.
@40 b... thanks for that... the place was getting out of hand.. you are becoming too popular..
@56 carl... it is an outrageous statement from mattis, any way you read it!
"The US will counter any threat to America's democracy experiment in the world..."
usa as country that gets to dictate its agenda anywhere in the world.. it would explain why they want to circumvent any international
body that they don't already control too, like the un.. america's democracy experiment is imposing the us$ as world currency under
the threat of their military.. it is already starting to fall apart on all accounts which explains mattis's anxiousness in representing
these same undemocratic structures and institutions he refers to as 'america's ''democracy'' experiment'... he needs to get a
gig in hollywood at comedy central.. he never found his true calling..
"We will modernize key capabilities," Mattis said. "Investments in space and cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense,
advanced autonomous systems and resilient and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to win." [Sputnik
News]
Just two quotes from 'Mad dog' Mattis which prove he needs to be put in an asylum.
"I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you
all".
"Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they're so sick of
the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact."
He singled out Russia and China as "adversaries", a far cry form the "partners"
designation used by Russia in designing the USA. He vowed: the US will
respond with lethal force.
Actions speak louder than words. The US is scared of two things: 1) a military conflict where its troops get slaughtered wholesale,
and 2) going up against any army or regular military force it can't destroy from the air. Whatever happens in the near future
we can rest assured Uncle Scam won't be engaging in direct hostilities with China or Russia.
@63 "Investments in space and cyberspace, nuclear deterrent forces, missile defense, advanced autonomous systems and resilient
and agile logistics will provide our high-quality troops what they need to win."
Nice for the high-quality troops. Sounds like they should be totally risk-free. But I don't share Mad Dog's faith in technology.
Looks like an accident waiting to happen.
Mattis opens his mouth and reveals his level of ignorance when it comes to understanding the Outlaw US Empire's history--it's
certainly not a "democracy experiment," nor has it ever tried to install a democracy anywhere on the planet. I'd bet he's
just as ignorant when it comes to military history, too. He reminds me of the ignorant brute Sgt. Snorkel from the Beatle Bailey
comic strip. The so-called "new" "defense posture" is no more than a tidied-up version of the two that preceded it: What we say
goes; either you're with us or against us.
By way of rebuttal, I highly recommend reading
this interview of Hassan Nasrallah from 3 Jan 2018, particularly his remarks about differences in the quality of soldiers
from The Resistance versus those of the enemy--IDF, NATO, USA, Daesh--and why they exist.
Contrary to all the hype about the Empire being a new energy exporting colossus,
it needed to import LNG
to keep its East Coast dwellings warm, but the cargo seems to have found a better price elsewhere. Just how will it displace Russian
gas from the market when it can't provide enough domestic supply?
Meanwhile, Tillerson pulls an Albright
: "Signs of starvation and death in North Korea indicate that US diplomatic strategy works fine, says the secretary of state."
Is he being two-faced? You bet! From last year
: "We're not your enemy, we're not your threat..."
Ignorant, lying, immoral are just a few of the important behavioral traits of those leading faces of the Outlaw US Empire.
And my historical investigations prove such traits have been in the forefront since its inception. Guess we can thank its tutor,
the British Empire.
The US administration either is very smart in bluffing to temporarily reassure its panicking regional allies, Israel and Saudi
Arabia or it is living in the la-la land of an incompetence close to stupidity.
Do they really believe that the Russians will allow the USA to rob their victory in Syria over ISIS? Or that the Turks will
stay idle while the USA is building a Kurdish military entity on their border? Or that Iran and Syria will allow the partitioning
of Syria and the US illegal long term presence in the region?
The USA administration is posed for dramatic blowbacks and reshuffling of alliances in the region.Maybe that is why it is running
like a headless hen!
This will damage Trump with his base. Reducing the involvement of the United States military abroad was one of the more important
commitments he made to his base and now he has broken that commitment and quite a few of his base are disappointed. Even if it's
just a couple of hundred thousand of them, there goes the next presidential election for Trump and the Republicans. By forgetting
about Russia-gate, focusing on his foreign military involvements, and provided the Democratic candidate is not a Clinton, the
presidency is for there for taking by the Democrats. Having Tulsi Gabbard on the ticket would help.
The only reservation I have is if Trump is stiffing the generals in the White House and sometime in the future pulls the plug
on all those interventions then he'll remain in the White House for another four years.
Tillerson could have been speaking for Trump, or Obama, or Bush - under whose regime the Likudnik/neocons/Zionists were able to
foment a policy coup while using the OSP to concoct lies for Israel's long-desired war.
While there are generally multiple motives for entry into wars, only one is whitewashed. As Phil Giraldi put it:
""Why doesn't anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this
conference and we all know it's American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for
Netanyahu? Shouldn't we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?"
Here's where we are, as the same cabal cheerlead for war on Iran (Lebanon must be first) a you are either committed to stopping
the drive to war by all cognizable social and pitical forces, or you are not.
The time for letting cries of 'anti-Semite' preclude FAIR dis ussuon of the role of Jews and the Israel Lobby is over.
Those who censor this necessary component of analysis should be deemed confederates of the bankers, MIC, transnationals, and
Zionist Jews who have been driving wars for decades.
With millions dead, playtime is over. Those censoring the truth side with the warmongers.
The United States cannot be a moral or ethical country until it faces up to the realities of US empire and the destruction it
causes around the world. The US undermines governments (including democracies), kills millions of people, causes mass migrations
of people fleeing their homes, communities and countries and produces vast environmental damage.
A new coalition, The Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases , held
its inaugural event January 12-14, 2018 at the University of Baltimore in Maryland. The meeting was framed by a
Unity Statement that brought together numerous peace and justice organizations.
The basis for unity was:
"U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars
of aggression and occupation, and that the closure of US foreign military bases is one of the first necessary steps toward a just,
peaceful and sustainable world."
... ... ... (image deleted)
US foreign military bases as of 2015. Source BaseNation.us
Responsibility to End Global Empire of Bases
Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace and the vice presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2016 opened the conference,
describing the responsibility of the people of the United States (USians) to protect the world from US aggression. He
argued :
"The only logical, principled and strategic response to this question is citizens of the empire must reject their imperial
privileges and join in opposing ruling elites exploiting labor and plundering the Earth. To do that, however, requires breaking with
the intoxicating allure of cross-class, bi-partisan 'white identity politics.'"
This reality conflicts with one of the excuses the US uses to engage in war – so-called 'humanitarian wars', which are based on
the dubious legal claim that the US has a "responsibility to protect." The
United
States is viewed as "the greatest threat to peace in the world today" by people around the world. Thus, USians need to organize
to protect the world from the United States.
US empire is not only a threat to world peace and stability but also a threat to the United States.
Chalmers Johnson , who wrote a series of books on empire,
warned in his 2004 book, " The
Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic ," that there were four "sorrows" the United States would
suffer. In the 14 years since they have all come true:
"If present trends continue, four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative
impact guarantees that the United States will cease to bear any resemblance to the country once outlined in our Constitution. First,
there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a growing reliance on
weapons of mass destruction among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second, there will be a loss of
democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency fully eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from an "executive branch"
of government into something more like a Pentagonized presidency. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will
increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly,
there will be bankruptcy, as we pour our economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchange the education,
health, and safety of our fellow citizens."
The footprint of US empire are what Chalmers Johnson called an "empire of bases." David Vine, the author of
Base Nation, put US empire in context by describing 800 US bases in 80 countries
and US military personnel in more than 170 countries. Bases range from so-called Lily Pad Bases of hundreds of troops to town-sized
bases of tens of thousands of troops and their families. He noted many bases have schools and they do not need to worry about heating
or air conditioning,
unlike schools in
Baltimore where parents bought space heaters to keep children warm and where schools were closed due to lack of heat.
The contrast between Baltimore schools and military base schools is one example of many of the heavy price USians pay for the
military. Vine reported that $150 billion is spent annually to keep US troops on bases abroad and that even a Lily Pad base could
cost $1 billion. More is spent on foreign military bases than on any agency of the federal government, other than the Pentagon and
Veterans Administration.
The Pentagon is not transparent about the number of US foreign bases it manages or their cost. They usually publish a Base Structure
Report but have not done so in several years. The Pentagon only reports 701 bases, but researchers have found many, even significant
bases, not included in their list of bases.
"95% of all foreign military bases in the world are US bases. In addition, [there are] 19 Naval air carriers (and 15 more planned),
each as part of a Carrier Strike Group, composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft – each of
which can be considered a floating military base."
The military footprint of the United States shows it is the largest empire in world history. In
our interview with
historian Alfred McCoy , author of In The Shadows of the
American Century , he describes how some of the key characteristics of US empire are secrecy and covert actions. This are
some of the reasons why it is rare to ever hear US empire discussed in the corporate media or by politicians. McCoy told us this
was true for some other empires too, and that it is often not until the empire begins to falter that their existence becomes part
of the political dialogue.
Strategies for Closing US Foreign Military Bases
David Vine described an unprecedented opportunity to close bases abroad, to do so we need to build a bigger movement. We also
need to elevate the national dialogue about US Empire and develop a national consensus to end it.
Vine pointed to Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric about pulling back from US involvement abroad and focusing on the necessities
at home as indicative of the mood of the country. In fact,
a
recent survey found that "78 percent of Democrats, 64.5 percent of Republicans, and 68.8 percent of independents supported restraining
military action overseas."
McCoy argued that after the globalization of President Barack Obama, which included the Asian Pivot and efforts to pass major
trade agreements, in particular the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP),
created a backlash desire to focus on "America First." Both trade agreements, the TPP and TTIP, failed as a result of a political
shift in the country, in part created by grassroots movements.
McCoy describes Obama as one of three "Grandmasters of the Great Game" (the other two being Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's
National Security Adviser, and Elihu Root, former Secretary of War and Secretary of State at the beginning of the 20th Century) who
excelled in being strategic on behalf of US empire. In addition to trade agreements and the Asian Pivot, Obama built on the intelligence
apparatus of the George W. Bush era. Even though Obama was a "grandmaster," he did not slow the weakening of US empire. McCoy sees
the inability to account for the unpredictable complexities of US and global political developments as a common weakness of empire
strategists.
The conference was divided into regions of the world (with the exception of one session on the impact of military bases on the
environment and health). There will be reports and videos published on each section of the conference on the
No Foreign Bases webpage . One common denominator around the world is opposition
to US military bases. According to the Unity Statement of the coalition:
"Many individual national coalitions – for example, Okinawa, Italy, Jeju Island Korea, Diego Garcia, Cyprus, Greece, and Germany
– are demanding closure of bases on their territory. The base that the US has illegally occupied the longest, for over a century,
is Guantánamo Bay, whose existence constitutes an imposition of the empire and a violation of International Law. Since 1959 the government
and people of Cuba have demanded that the government of the US return the Guantánamo territory to Cuba."
One important strategy for success is for US activists to work in cooperation with people around the world who want US military
bases to be closed and for the US military to leave their country. Attendees at the conference had traveled to South Korea, Okinawa
and other places to protest in solidarity with US activists.
Another strategy that many in the conference urged was the need for education about US imperialism and to tie US militarism abroad
with militarized police at home. Similarly, the reality of the US military focusing on black and brown countries abroad highlights
a white supremacy philosophy that infects foreign policy and domestic policy. Members of the No US Foreign Bases coalition also engage
in domestic efforts for racial and environmental justice.
Further, the no bases coalition highlights the environmental and health damage caused by foreign and domestic military bases.
As the Unity Statement notes, "military bases are the largest users of fossil fuel in the world, heavily contributing to environmental
degradation." Pat Elder and David Swanson described
the degradation in and around the Potomac River, writing:
"The Pentagon's impact on the river on whose bank it sits is not simply the diffuse impact of global warming and rising oceans
contributed to by the US military's massive oil consumption. The US military also directly poisons the Potomac River in more ways
than almost anyone would imagine."
The conference attendees decided on some next steps. A national day of action against foreign military bases is being planned
for February 23, the anniversary of the US seizing Guantanamo Bay, Cuba through a "perpetual lease" that began in 1903. Activists
are encouraged to plan local actions. If you plan an event, contact [email protected]and we'll post it on the events page. The demands will include closing the base and prison in Guantanamo, returning the land
to Cuba and ending the US blockade.
The conference also decided to hold a conference outside of the United States in one of the countries where the US has a foreign
military base within the next year. People from some countries were not allowed to attend the inaugural conference this weekend.
And, the coordinating committee will reach out to other peace and justice groups to select a date and place for a national mass
action against US wars. This will be organized as quickly as possible because the threat of more wars is high.
This is a key moment for the antiwar movement in the US to make itself more visible and to demand the closure of US foreign bases.
In this report on
living in a post-primacy world , even the Pentagon recognizes what many commentators are seeing – the US empire is fading. One
great risk as the empire ends is more wars as the US tries to hang on to global hegemony. We must oppose war and work for the least
damaging end of empire.
Indeed, if the US becomes a cooperative member of the global community, rather than being a dominator, it would be a positive
transition. Imagine how much better it would be for everyone in the world if the US collaborated on addressing the climate crisis
in a serious way, obeyed international law and invested in positive programs to solve the many crises we face at home and abroad.
During the Baltimore conference, World Beyond War sponsored
a billboard nearby that read, "3% of US military spending could end starvation on earth." Imagine what a peace budget could look
like. The US could invest in domestic necessities including rebuilding infrastructure, a cleaner and safer public transportation
system, education, housing and health care. The US could provide aid to other countries to repair the damage it has caused. Members
of the US military could transition into a civilian jobs program that applies their expertise to programs of social uplift.
It is imperative that as the US Empire falls, we organize for a smooth transition to a world that is better for everyone. The
work of the new coalition to end US foreign military bases is a strong start.
Homeless encampment in the foreground of a Baltimore, MD billboard that read, "3% of US military spending could end starvation
on earth." Source World Beyond War.
The United States cannot be a moral or ethical country until it faces up to the realities of US empire and the destruction it
causes around the world. The US undermines governments (including democracies), kills millions of people, causes mass migrations
of people fleeing their homes, communities and countries and produces vast environmental damage.
A new coalition, The Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases , held
its inaugural event January 12-14, 2018 at the University of Baltimore in Maryland. The meeting was framed by a
Unity Statement that brought together numerous peace and justice organizations.
The basis for unity was:
"U.S. foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars
of aggression and occupation, and that the closure of US foreign military bases is one of the first necessary steps toward a just,
peaceful and sustainable world."
... ... ... (image deleted)
US foreign military bases as of 2015. Source BaseNation.us
Responsibility to End Global Empire of Bases
Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace and the vice presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2016 opened the conference,
describing the responsibility of the people of the United States (USians) to protect the world from US aggression. He
argued :
"The only logical, principled and strategic response to this question is citizens of the empire must reject their imperial
privileges and join in opposing ruling elites exploiting labor and plundering the Earth. To do that, however, requires breaking with
the intoxicating allure of cross-class, bi-partisan 'white identity politics.'"
This reality conflicts with one of the excuses the US uses to engage in war – so-called 'humanitarian wars', which are based on
the dubious legal claim that the US has a "responsibility to protect." The
United
States is viewed as "the greatest threat to peace in the world today" by people around the world. Thus, USians need to organize
to protect the world from the United States.
US empire is not only a threat to world peace and stability but also a threat to the United States.
Chalmers Johnson , who wrote a series of books on empire,
warned in his 2004 book, " The
Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic ," that there were four "sorrows" the United States would
suffer. In the 14 years since they have all come true:
"If present trends continue, four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative
impact guarantees that the United States will cease to bear any resemblance to the country once outlined in our Constitution. First,
there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a growing reliance on
weapons of mass destruction among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second, there will be a loss of
democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency fully eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from an "executive branch"
of government into something more like a Pentagonized presidency. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will
increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly,
there will be bankruptcy, as we pour our economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchange the education,
health, and safety of our fellow citizens."
The footprint of US empire are what Chalmers Johnson called an "empire of bases." David Vine, the author of
Base Nation, put US empire in context by describing 800 US bases in 80 countries
and US military personnel in more than 170 countries. Bases range from so-called Lily Pad Bases of hundreds of troops to town-sized
bases of tens of thousands of troops and their families. He noted many bases have schools and they do not need to worry about heating
or air conditioning,
unlike schools in
Baltimore where parents bought space heaters to keep children warm and where schools were closed due to lack of heat.
The contrast between Baltimore schools and military base schools is one example of many of the heavy price USians pay for the
military. Vine reported that $150 billion is spent annually to keep US troops on bases abroad and that even a Lily Pad base could
cost $1 billion. More is spent on foreign military bases than on any agency of the federal government, other than the Pentagon and
Veterans Administration.
The Pentagon is not transparent about the number of US foreign bases it manages or their cost. They usually publish a Base Structure
Report but have not done so in several years. The Pentagon only reports 701 bases, but researchers have found many, even significant
bases, not included in their list of bases.
"95% of all foreign military bases in the world are US bases. In addition, [there are] 19 Naval air carriers (and 15 more planned),
each as part of a Carrier Strike Group, composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, and a carrier air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft – each of
which can be considered a floating military base."
The military footprint of the United States shows it is the largest empire in world history. In
our interview with
historian Alfred McCoy , author of In The Shadows of the
American Century , he describes how some of the key characteristics of US empire are secrecy and covert actions. This are
some of the reasons why it is rare to ever hear US empire discussed in the corporate media or by politicians. McCoy told us this
was true for some other empires too, and that it is often not until the empire begins to falter that their existence becomes part
of the political dialogue.
Strategies for Closing US Foreign Military Bases
David Vine described an unprecedented opportunity to close bases abroad, to do so we need to build a bigger movement. We also
need to elevate the national dialogue about US Empire and develop a national consensus to end it.
Vine pointed to Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric about pulling back from US involvement abroad and focusing on the necessities
at home as indicative of the mood of the country. In fact,
a
recent survey found that "78 percent of Democrats, 64.5 percent of Republicans, and 68.8 percent of independents supported restraining
military action overseas."
McCoy argued that after the globalization of President Barack Obama, which included the Asian Pivot and efforts to pass major
trade agreements, in particular the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP),
created a backlash desire to focus on "America First." Both trade agreements, the TPP and TTIP, failed as a result of a political
shift in the country, in part created by grassroots movements.
McCoy describes Obama as one of three "Grandmasters of the Great Game" (the other two being Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's
National Security Adviser, and Elihu Root, former Secretary of War and Secretary of State at the beginning of the 20th Century) who
excelled in being strategic on behalf of US empire. In addition to trade agreements and the Asian Pivot, Obama built on the intelligence
apparatus of the George W. Bush era. Even though Obama was a "grandmaster," he did not slow the weakening of US empire. McCoy sees
the inability to account for the unpredictable complexities of US and global political developments as a common weakness of empire
strategists.
The conference was divided into regions of the world (with the exception of one session on the impact of military bases on the
environment and health). There will be reports and videos published on each section of the conference on the
No Foreign Bases webpage . One common denominator around the world is opposition
to US military bases. According to the Unity Statement of the coalition:
"Many individual national coalitions – for example, Okinawa, Italy, Jeju Island Korea, Diego Garcia, Cyprus, Greece, and Germany
– are demanding closure of bases on their territory. The base that the US has illegally occupied the longest, for over a century,
is Guantánamo Bay, whose existence constitutes an imposition of the empire and a violation of International Law. Since 1959 the government
and people of Cuba have demanded that the government of the US return the Guantánamo territory to Cuba."
One important strategy for success is for US activists to work in cooperation with people around the world who want US military
bases to be closed and for the US military to leave their country. Attendees at the conference had traveled to South Korea, Okinawa
and other places to protest in solidarity with US activists.
Another strategy that many in the conference urged was the need for education about US imperialism and to tie US militarism abroad
with militarized police at home. Similarly, the reality of the US military focusing on black and brown countries abroad highlights
a white supremacy philosophy that infects foreign policy and domestic policy. Members of the No US Foreign Bases coalition also engage
in domestic efforts for racial and environmental justice.
Further, the no bases coalition highlights the environmental and health damage caused by foreign and domestic military bases.
As the Unity Statement notes, "military bases are the largest users of fossil fuel in the world, heavily contributing to environmental
degradation." Pat Elder and David Swanson described
the degradation in and around the Potomac River, writing:
"The Pentagon's impact on the river on whose bank it sits is not simply the diffuse impact of global warming and rising oceans
contributed to by the US military's massive oil consumption. The US military also directly poisons the Potomac River in more ways
than almost anyone would imagine."
The conference attendees decided on some next steps. A national day of action against foreign military bases is being planned
for February 23, the anniversary of the US seizing Guantanamo Bay, Cuba through a "perpetual lease" that began in 1903. Activists
are encouraged to plan local actions. If you plan an event, contact [email protected]and we'll post it on the events page. The demands will include closing the base and prison in Guantanamo, returning the land
to Cuba and ending the US blockade.
The conference also decided to hold a conference outside of the United States in one of the countries where the US has a foreign
military base within the next year. People from some countries were not allowed to attend the inaugural conference this weekend.
And, the coordinating committee will reach out to other peace and justice groups to select a date and place for a national mass
action against US wars. This will be organized as quickly as possible because the threat of more wars is high.
This is a key moment for the antiwar movement in the US to make itself more visible and to demand the closure of US foreign bases.
In this report on
living in a post-primacy world , even the Pentagon recognizes what many commentators are seeing – the US empire is fading. One
great risk as the empire ends is more wars as the US tries to hang on to global hegemony. We must oppose war and work for the least
damaging end of empire.
Indeed, if the US becomes a cooperative member of the global community, rather than being a dominator, it would be a positive
transition. Imagine how much better it would be for everyone in the world if the US collaborated on addressing the climate crisis
in a serious way, obeyed international law and invested in positive programs to solve the many crises we face at home and abroad.
During the Baltimore conference, World Beyond War sponsored
a billboard nearby that read, "3% of US military spending could end starvation on earth." Imagine what a peace budget could look
like. The US could invest in domestic necessities including rebuilding infrastructure, a cleaner and safer public transportation
system, education, housing and health care. The US could provide aid to other countries to repair the damage it has caused. Members
of the US military could transition into a civilian jobs program that applies their expertise to programs of social uplift.
It is imperative that as the US Empire falls, we organize for a smooth transition to a world that is better for everyone. The
work of the new coalition to end US foreign military bases is a strong start.
Homeless encampment in the foreground of a Baltimore, MD billboard that read, "3% of US military spending could end starvation
on earth." Source World Beyond War.
Okay, the segment with the shooting through the truck window is still only 5 seconds but
I'd argue that the fact that it is part of a 3 minute montage 'our guys are kicking ass in
Afghanistan' actually gives it a much worse context. If this was some innocent procedural,
'we had to reluctantly do it' incident, no one in their right mind would have popped it into
such a sequence.
Okay, the segment with the shooting through the truck window is still only 5 seconds but
I'd argue that the fact that it is part of a 3 minute montage 'our guys are kicking ass in
Afghanistan' actually gives it a much worse context. If this was some innocent procedural,
'we had to reluctantly do it' incident, no one in their right mind would have popped it into
such a sequence.
Institute for Policy Studies Co-founder Marcus Raskin will be remembered, among many other
noteworthy achievements, for coining the term "national security state." In congressional
testimony in 1967, he used the phrase to describe the complex web of war institutions he feared
would drive continuous conflict abroad while turning the United States into a "garrison and
launching pad for nuclear war."
Raskin died on December 24, 2017, at age 83 -- just as the current president of the United
States was about to make nuclear threats via Twitter. And as for his fears about the country
becoming a garrison, Raskin wasn't far off. Over the five decades after Raskin's testimony, the
number of inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons grew from 188,000 to 1.5 million , with the vast majority of them
poor and people of color.
While progressive activists have tended to treat these issues separately, Raskin
consistently connected the dots between America's military adventures overseas and economic and
racial injustice at home.
In a 2008 book with Robert Spero, for example, he used President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
"four essential human freedoms" as a clever frame for exposing the extent to which the national
security state had accelerated poverty and inequality while undermining other basic rights.
Roosevelt laid out these four freedoms in his 1941 State of the Union address. They included
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. FDR's notion
of "freedom from want" built on this famous line from his 1937 inaugural address: "The test of
our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether
we provide enough for those who have too little."
Institute for Policy Studies Co-founder Marcus Raskin will be remembered, among many other
noteworthy achievements, for coining the term "national security state." In congressional
testimony in 1967, he used the phrase to describe the complex web of war institutions he feared
would drive continuous conflict abroad while turning the United States into a "garrison and
launching pad for nuclear war."
Raskin died on December 24, 2017, at age 83 -- just as the current President of the United
States was about to make nuclear threats via Twitter. And as for his fears about the country
becoming a garrison, Raskin wasn't far off. Over the five decades after Raskin's testimony, the
number of inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons grew from 188,000 to 1.5 million , with the vast majority of them
poor and people of color.
While progressive activists have tended to treat these issues separately, Raskin
consistently connected the dots between America's military adventures overseas and economic and
racial injustice at home.
In a 2008 book with Robert Spero, for example, he used President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
"four essential human freedoms" as a clever frame for exposing the extent to which the national
security state had accelerated poverty and inequality while undermining other basic rights.
Roosevelt laid out these four freedoms in his 1941 State of the Union address. They included
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. FDR's notion
of "freedom from want" built on this famous line from his 1937 inaugural address: "The test of
our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether
we provide enough for those who have too little."
In Four Freedoms Under Siege , Raskin and Spero concede that the Cold War
superpower rivalry did contribute to some progress towards Roosevelt's dream of freedom from
want. Raskin was a young aide in Kennedy's National Security Council during a period of high
tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that were playing out with deadly
consequences in Cuba, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
And while he was horrified by the existential threat posed by the superpower standoff,
Raskin later recognized that the competition with the Soviet Union did give a boost to the U.S.
labor unions and other forces that were pushing for progressive economic reforms.
The elites, Raskin and Spero explained, feared that movements for "social and economic
justice, from rhetoric to out-and-out radicalism, would transform the power structure in such a
way as to open up the society to democracy that displaces overlapping economic oligarchies. The
right, especially big business, also feared that this would be just the prelude to the
redistribution of resources, or at least access to them."
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Raskin and Spero point out, "people at the top no
longer had to concern themselves with the people at the bottom." And the permanence of the
national security state obliterated any hope of a post-Cold War "peace dividend" that could've
helped realize FDR's dream of freedom from want.
Raskin and Spero wrote their book during the militarily aggressive administration of
President George W. Bush. As Halliburton and other private military contractors lined up to
feed at the Iraq War trough, the period perfectly illustrated the danger of a war economy
without end.
"This kind of 'let 'er rip' corruption policy did not originate with Bush II conservatives,"
Raskin and Spero wrote, "but they pushed the idea of a corporate controlled state to the limit
as a partner to military expansion."
In his final weeks, Marc Raskin was excited to learn about plans for a Poor People's Campaign that, like his own work,
will take on the inter-connected problems of the War Economy, poverty, racism, and ecological
devastation.
The campaign will mark the 50th anniversary of a similar effort led by the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. and other leaders who saw the need to build on the civil rights cause by
tackling the militarism that had led to the Vietnam War and the poverty that plagued too many
Americans of all races. Back then in 1968, Institute for Policy Studies staff included leaders
of both the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Raskin himself was indicted that year
for conspiracy to aid resistance to the draft.
The new Poor People's Campaign, led by two prominent faith leaders -- the Rev. Liz Theoharis
and the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II -- held a kick-off event in Washington on December 4. The
Institute for Policy Studies prepared a report for
the launch that includes data on each of the campaign's focus areas. Theoharis and Barber
announced plans for a historic 40-day wave of civil disobedience across the country in the
spring of 2018, culminating in a mass demonstration in the capital in June.
At a December 12 follow-up meeting at the Institute for Policy Studies, Raskin asked one of
the lead organizers of the new Poor People's Campaign who they expect to be their strongest
opponents. From his six decades of experience in Washington, he had a keen sense of the
challenges ahead. Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for
Policy Studies and is a co-editor of Inequality.org.
Institute for Policy Studies Co-founder Marcus Raskin will be remembered, among many other
noteworthy achievements, for coining the term "national security state." In congressional
testimony in 1967, he used the phrase to describe the complex web of war institutions he feared
would drive continuous conflict abroad while turning the United States into a "garrison and
launching pad for nuclear war."
Raskin died on December 24, 2017, at age 83 -- just as the current president of the United
States was about to make nuclear threats via Twitter. And as for his fears about the country
becoming a garrison, Raskin wasn't far off. Over the five decades after Raskin's testimony, the
number of inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons grew from 188,000 to 1.5 million , with the vast majority of them
poor and people of color.
While progressive activists have tended to treat these issues separately, Raskin
consistently connected the dots between America's military adventures overseas and economic and
racial injustice at home.
In a 2008 book with Robert Spero, for example, he used President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
"four essential human freedoms" as a clever frame for exposing the extent to which the national
security state had accelerated poverty and inequality while undermining other basic rights.
Roosevelt laid out these four freedoms in his 1941 State of the Union address. They included
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. FDR's notion
of "freedom from want" built on this famous line from his 1937 inaugural address: "The test of
our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether
we provide enough for those who have too little."
Institute for Policy Studies Co-founder Marcus Raskin will be remembered, among many other
noteworthy achievements, for coining the term "national security state." In congressional
testimony in 1967, he used the phrase to describe the complex web of war institutions he feared
would drive continuous conflict abroad while turning the United States into a "garrison and
launching pad for nuclear war."
Raskin died on December 24, 2017, at age 83 -- just as the current President of the United
States was about to make nuclear threats via Twitter. And as for his fears about the country
becoming a garrison, Raskin wasn't far off. Over the five decades after Raskin's testimony, the
number of inmates in U.S. state and federal prisons grew from 188,000 to 1.5 million , with the vast majority of them
poor and people of color.
While progressive activists have tended to treat these issues separately, Raskin
consistently connected the dots between America's military adventures overseas and economic and
racial injustice at home.
In a 2008 book with Robert Spero, for example, he used President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
"four essential human freedoms" as a clever frame for exposing the extent to which the national
security state had accelerated poverty and inequality while undermining other basic rights.
Roosevelt laid out these four freedoms in his 1941 State of the Union address. They included
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. FDR's notion
of "freedom from want" built on this famous line from his 1937 inaugural address: "The test of
our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether
we provide enough for those who have too little."
In Four Freedoms Under Siege , Raskin and Spero concede that the Cold War
superpower rivalry did contribute to some progress towards Roosevelt's dream of freedom from
want. Raskin was a young aide in Kennedy's National Security Council during a period of high
tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that were playing out with deadly
consequences in Cuba, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
And while he was horrified by the existential threat posed by the superpower standoff,
Raskin later recognized that the competition with the Soviet Union did give a boost to the U.S.
labor unions and other forces that were pushing for progressive economic reforms.
The elites, Raskin and Spero explained, feared that movements for "social and economic
justice, from rhetoric to out-and-out radicalism, would transform the power structure in such a
way as to open up the society to democracy that displaces overlapping economic oligarchies. The
right, especially big business, also feared that this would be just the prelude to the
redistribution of resources, or at least access to them."
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Raskin and Spero point out, "people at the top no
longer had to concern themselves with the people at the bottom." And the permanence of the
national security state obliterated any hope of a post-Cold War "peace dividend" that could've
helped realize FDR's dream of freedom from want.
Raskin and Spero wrote their book during the militarily aggressive administration of
President George W. Bush. As Halliburton and other private military contractors lined up to
feed at the Iraq War trough, the period perfectly illustrated the danger of a war economy
without end.
"This kind of 'let 'er rip' corruption policy did not originate with Bush II conservatives,"
Raskin and Spero wrote, "but they pushed the idea of a corporate controlled state to the limit
as a partner to military expansion."
In his final weeks, Marc Raskin was excited to learn about plans for a Poor People's Campaign that, like his own work,
will take on the inter-connected problems of the War Economy, poverty, racism, and ecological
devastation.
The campaign will mark the 50th anniversary of a similar effort led by the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. and other leaders who saw the need to build on the civil rights cause by
tackling the militarism that had led to the Vietnam War and the poverty that plagued too many
Americans of all races. Back then in 1968, Institute for Policy Studies staff included leaders
of both the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Raskin himself was indicted that year
for conspiracy to aid resistance to the draft.
The new Poor People's Campaign, led by two prominent faith leaders -- the Rev. Liz Theoharis
and the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II -- held a kick-off event in Washington on December 4. The
Institute for Policy Studies prepared a report for
the launch that includes data on each of the campaign's focus areas. Theoharis and Barber
announced plans for a historic 40-day wave of civil disobedience across the country in the
spring of 2018, culminating in a mass demonstration in the capital in June.
At a December 12 follow-up meeting at the Institute for Policy Studies, Raskin asked one of
the lead organizers of the new Poor People's Campaign who they expect to be their strongest
opponents. From his six decades of experience in Washington, he had a keen sense of the
challenges ahead. Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for
Policy Studies and is a co-editor of Inequality.org.
I'm in the UK as well and now find it quite alarming how the BBC shapes the news.
Recently on Radio 4 I listened to the BBC talking of a terrorist group related to or derived from Al Qaeda merely as "rebels",
and giving the impression that their actions were part of a legitimate insurgency. That's not how 9/11 was described.
It's all too like the BBC's Ukraine reporting, in which the neo-Nazi component was played down and the indiscriminate shelling
of civilian areas in Donetsk and Lugansk spoken of as legitimate warfare.
Crazy. And not only the PR. All those journalists and expensive editors and more admin staff than you can shake a stick at,
and there's more fact to be got on some one man and a dog Russian news outlet. I heard recently of an old BBC hand describing
the way the BBC changed after David Kelly. What with that and what with the material we now see put out by the BBC, I reckon that
as far as foreign news goes we've got ourselves our very own Pravda on the Thames.
I'm in the UK as well and now find it quite alarming how the BBC shapes the news.
Recently on Radio 4 I listened to the BBC talking of a terrorist group related to or derived from Al Qaeda merely as "rebels",
and giving the impression that their actions were part of a legitimate insurgency. That's not how 9/11 was described.
It's all too like the BBC's Ukraine reporting, in which the neo-Nazi component was played down and the indiscriminate shelling
of civilian areas in Donetsk and Lugansk spoken of as legitimate warfare.
Crazy. And not only the PR. All those journalists and expensive editors and more admin staff than you can shake a stick at,
and there's more fact to be got on some one man and a dog Russian news outlet. I heard recently of an old BBC hand describing
the way the BBC changed after David Kelly. What with that and what with the material we now see put out by the BBC, I reckon that
as far as foreign news goes we've got ourselves our very own Pravda on the Thames.
The leader and driving force behind the UN disaster was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu whose quest to seize Jerusalem and convert it into the 'eternal' capital of the Jews
was his top priority. For decades the entire world has rejected Israel's seizure of Jerusalem
and its conversion into an ethnically cleansed capital for the 'Jewish' state. The UN and
international jurists denounced Israel's colonial conquest and ethnic cleansing of
Palestine.
Netanyahu took charge with the election of Donald Trump as President. Operation Jerusalem
was his first order to Puppet Donald. A number of Israel-First multi-billionaires, who financed
Trump's electoral campaign, demanded an immediate pay-off from their puppet: The
Administration's unconditional support for Netanyahu's agenda. Despite protests from the rest
of the world, especially the US closest European allies, Trump plunged the nation right into
the Zionist soup: a Jewish Jerusalem; the systematic eviction of all Arabs, Christian, Muslim
and secular, and the eventual annexation of all of Palestine; as well as an increasing military
confrontation with Iran.
Real estate speculator, Jared Kushner, Trump's pampered son-in- law, and a complete
Netanyahu flunky, became the senior advisor for the Middle East. Kushner pressured Trump's
National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn to intervene with Russia on behalf of Israel's
take-over of Jerusalem. Flynn was subsequently prosecuted for discussing global US Russian
relations and the 'good soldier' is falling on his sword on behalf of the Zionists. Not
surprising, the Congressional Democrats, the FBI and the Special Prosecutor found it easier to
prosecute Flynn for his discussion regarding de-escalating the tense US-Russian relations
provoked by the Obama administration than his discussions with the Kremlin in support of
Israel's seizure of Jerusalem!
Netanyahu's operational weapons in manipulating US policy involved Jared Kushner, the
billionaire Israel-First donors, the AIPAC and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Tel Aviv succeeded in
securing Trump's commitment to the Israeli agenda, despite opposition from the entire UN
National Security Council and the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly. In the style
of a typical authoritarian, US President Trump grovels at the feet of his 'superior', Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while tearing at the throats of his 'inferiors', the 193
member nations of the UN General Assembly.
Netanyahu's vitriolic bar room threats against the entire membership of the UN prior to the
vote ensured the repudiation of all Security Council representatives with the exception of his
South Carolina puppet, Ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump and Haley backed the blustering Netanyahu
by issuing gangland threats to all UN representatives who dare to oppose Washington's
dictates.
In this way, Prime Minister Netanyahu secured the greatest diplomatic and political success
of his career – the total submission of the US to his agenda, at the risk of a major
humiliation in the UN. This, in effect, formalized Israeli hegemony over Washington, for the
world to see.
In contrast to Netanyahu's beaming success, the US suffered a historic diplomatic defeat:
Fourteen times as many nations voted against the demands of the US President over–
Netanyahu's grab of Jerusalem.
What makes the defeat even more striking is the fact that all major allies and most of the
biggest aid recipients openly defied the US threats. Eight of the ten biggest US aid recipients
voted against Trump–Netanyahu–Haley. This bizarre troika is now left with an enemy
list circling the entire globe, and a few timorous allies in the South Pacific and among the
death squads of Guatemala.
Trump's total and puerile embrace of the raving Netanyahu has exposed and widened fissures
in US global hegemony.
Apart from 'capturing' Netanyahu's vote, the other pro Trump nations included a handful of
insignificant Pacific islands (Marshall Islands, Palau, Micronesia), Togo, a corrupt African
mini-state and two banana-sized 'death squad democracies', Honduras and Guatemala. The latter
two regimes hold power via stolen elections backed by narco-thugs in the pay (dubbed 'foreign
aid') of the US.
... ... ...
Conclusion
Clearly Trump's championing of a racist, colonialist, ethnic cleansing state like Israel is
view as a strategic diplomatic disaster. The Manhattan egomaniac has tied the US fortunes to
the whims of a pariah state led by a complete lunatic.
Trump's decision to demonstrate total loyalty to his Zionist billionaire campaign
'donor-owners' and his Israel-First son-in-law in his first major foreign policy decision
failed to impress any of the influential nations of the world – East or West. Indeed, it
showed how fractured and dangerously dysfunctional the US Administration had become.
Most important, Trump's proclamation of a unipolar world based on his notion of the US's
economic power has collapsed. Israel, despite Haley's bluster and list-taking, has no
legitimacy. It's continued Mossad assassinations of leading Palestinians and others and the
increasing IDF slaughter of the spontaneous Palestinian civilian resistance has failed to
improve its international standing – except among Guatemalan torturers.
However, it is not clear that the US has lost its big power influence regarding other
regional conflicts. The subsequent UN Security Council vote in favor of Washington's demands
for added sanctions against North Korea demonstrated Trump's power to intimidate the oligarchs
and leaders of China and Russia.
In other words, limits on US power still depend on the issues, the allies, the diplomatic
appeals, the adversaries and the distribution of benefits and costs.
In the case of Jerusalem, Real Estate Mogul Trump's bizarre decision to hand an entire city
over to the Zionists alienated all Muslims and Christians the world over, as well as the
secular Western liberal nations and emerging powers, like Russia and China. The US tied its
prestige to the whims of a paranoid nation arrogantly flaunting its racist superiority complex,
backed by groups of immensely wealthy overseas dual citizens.
Diplomatically, Israel's vituperative responses to any legal criticism from world bodies
undermines its chances of coalition building.
Finally, Washington's support for Israel's perpetual and overt violation of international
law and its bombing of humanitarian missions makes Israel a very costly ally.
The leader and driving force behind the UN disaster was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu whose quest to seize Jerusalem and convert it into the 'eternal' capital of the Jews
was his top priority. For decades the entire world has rejected Israel's seizure of Jerusalem
and its conversion into an ethnically cleansed capital for the 'Jewish' state. The UN and
international jurists denounced Israel's colonial conquest and ethnic cleansing of
Palestine.
Netanyahu took charge with the election of Donald Trump as President. Operation Jerusalem
was his first order to Puppet Donald. A number of Israel-First multi-billionaires, who financed
Trump's electoral campaign, demanded an immediate pay-off from their puppet: The
Administration's unconditional support for Netanyahu's agenda. Despite protests from the rest
of the world, especially the US closest European allies, Trump plunged the nation right into
the Zionist soup: a Jewish Jerusalem; the systematic eviction of all Arabs, Christian, Muslim
and secular, and the eventual annexation of all of Palestine; as well as an increasing military
confrontation with Iran.
Real estate speculator, Jared Kushner, Trump's pampered son-in- law, and a complete
Netanyahu flunky, became the senior advisor for the Middle East. Kushner pressured Trump's
National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn to intervene with Russia on behalf of Israel's
take-over of Jerusalem. Flynn was subsequently prosecuted for discussing global US Russian
relations and the 'good soldier' is falling on his sword on behalf of the Zionists. Not
surprising, the Congressional Democrats, the FBI and the Special Prosecutor found it easier to
prosecute Flynn for his discussion regarding de-escalating the tense US-Russian relations
provoked by the Obama administration than his discussions with the Kremlin in support of
Israel's seizure of Jerusalem!
Netanyahu's operational weapons in manipulating US policy involved Jared Kushner, the
billionaire Israel-First donors, the AIPAC and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Tel Aviv succeeded in
securing Trump's commitment to the Israeli agenda, despite opposition from the entire UN
National Security Council and the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly. In the style
of a typical authoritarian, US President Trump grovels at the feet of his 'superior', Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while tearing at the throats of his 'inferiors', the 193
member nations of the UN General Assembly.
Netanyahu's vitriolic bar room threats against the entire membership of the UN prior to the
vote ensured the repudiation of all Security Council representatives with the exception of his
South Carolina puppet, Ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump and Haley backed the blustering Netanyahu
by issuing gangland threats to all UN representatives who dare to oppose Washington's
dictates.
In this way, Prime Minister Netanyahu secured the greatest diplomatic and political success
of his career – the total submission of the US to his agenda, at the risk of a major
humiliation in the UN. This, in effect, formalized Israeli hegemony over Washington, for the
world to see.
In contrast to Netanyahu's beaming success, the US suffered a historic diplomatic defeat:
Fourteen times as many nations voted against the demands of the US President over–
Netanyahu's grab of Jerusalem.
What makes the defeat even more striking is the fact that all major allies and most of the
biggest aid recipients openly defied the US threats. Eight of the ten biggest US aid recipients
voted against Trump–Netanyahu–Haley. This bizarre troika is now left with an enemy
list circling the entire globe, and a few timorous allies in the South Pacific and among the
death squads of Guatemala.
Trump's total and puerile embrace of the raving Netanyahu has exposed and widened fissures
in US global hegemony.
Apart from 'capturing' Netanyahu's vote, the other pro Trump nations included a handful of
insignificant Pacific islands (Marshall Islands, Palau, Micronesia), Togo, a corrupt African
mini-state and two banana-sized 'death squad democracies', Honduras and Guatemala. The latter
two regimes hold power via stolen elections backed by narco-thugs in the pay (dubbed 'foreign
aid') of the US.
... ... ...
Conclusion
Clearly Trump's championing of a racist, colonialist, ethnic cleansing state like Israel is
view as a strategic diplomatic disaster. The Manhattan egomaniac has tied the US fortunes to
the whims of a pariah state led by a complete lunatic.
Trump's decision to demonstrate total loyalty to his Zionist billionaire campaign
'donor-owners' and his Israel-First son-in-law in his first major foreign policy decision
failed to impress any of the influential nations of the world – East or West. Indeed, it
showed how fractured and dangerously dysfunctional the US Administration had become.
Most important, Trump's proclamation of a unipolar world based on his notion of the US's
economic power has collapsed. Israel, despite Haley's bluster and list-taking, has no
legitimacy. It's continued Mossad assassinations of leading Palestinians and others and the
increasing IDF slaughter of the spontaneous Palestinian civilian resistance has failed to
improve its international standing – except among Guatemalan torturers.
However, it is not clear that the US has lost its big power influence regarding other
regional conflicts. The subsequent UN Security Council vote in favor of Washington's demands
for added sanctions against North Korea demonstrated Trump's power to intimidate the oligarchs
and leaders of China and Russia.
In other words, limits on US power still depend on the issues, the allies, the diplomatic
appeals, the adversaries and the distribution of benefits and costs.
In the case of Jerusalem, Real Estate Mogul Trump's bizarre decision to hand an entire city
over to the Zionists alienated all Muslims and Christians the world over, as well as the
secular Western liberal nations and emerging powers, like Russia and China. The US tied its
prestige to the whims of a paranoid nation arrogantly flaunting its racist superiority complex,
backed by groups of immensely wealthy overseas dual citizens.
Diplomatically, Israel's vituperative responses to any legal criticism from world bodies
undermines its chances of coalition building.
Finally, Washington's support for Israel's perpetual and overt violation of international
law and its bombing of humanitarian missions makes Israel a very costly ally.
"... Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress. Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. ..."
American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and
dangerous antics of Donald Trump are troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party
leadership's failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign.
Bernie
Sanders's challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump's triumph, revealed the breadth of
popular anger at politics as usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and
interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington.
Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists
exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress.
Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in
2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns
underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus.
"... Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress. Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. ..."
American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and
dangerous antics of Donald Trump are troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party
leadership's failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign.
Bernie
Sanders's challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump's triumph, revealed the breadth of
popular anger at politics as usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and
interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington.
Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists
exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress.
Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in
2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns
underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus.
"... Ukraine. Putin's remarks on the state of affairs in Ukraine are, of course, wholly at odds with what Washington puts out on the subject. But they are not at odds with reality: Washington is. ..."
"... Those terms remain Putin's point of reference. They appear to remain the European Union's, too. Washington, which the Europeans and Russia excluded from the Minsk talks for the wisest of reasons, does not seem to have a point of reference, busy as it is pretending there is progress on the corruption front and that Kiev is not dependent on a frightening collection of militias, many of them led by neo–Nazi fanatics. ..."
"... These groups still present the threat of a massacre in the eastern provinces, as Putin reminded his audience. He spoke with notable ease of Russian assistance in those regions, suggesting this can end when they are capable of self-defense. ..."
Ukraine. Putin's remarks on the state of affairs in Ukraine are, of course, wholly at
odds with what Washington puts out on the subject. But they are not at odds with reality:
Washington is. As Putin calmly noted, the number-one obstacle to a settlement in Ukraine
is, as it has been for three years come next February, the profoundly corrupt government
installed in Kiev after the American-cultivated coup in 2014.
I say three years next February because it was then the settlement framework known as Minsk
II (for the city where it was negotiated and signed) was put in place.
Those terms remain Putin's point of reference. They appear to remain the European
Union's, too. Washington, which the Europeans and Russia excluded from the Minsk talks for the
wisest of reasons, does not seem to have a point of reference, busy as it is pretending there
is progress on the corruption front and that Kiev is not dependent on a frightening collection
of militias, many of them led by neo–Nazi fanatics.
These groups still present the threat of a massacre in the eastern provinces, as Putin
reminded his audience. He spoke with notable ease of Russian assistance in those regions,
suggesting this can end when they are capable of self-defense.
We would do well to understand where the force of inertia lies in Ukraine. This was Putin's
topic. A settlement in Ukraine remains possible via the framework fixed three years ago. Let us
not forget this. Moscow has not deviated from Minsk II -- another point worth noting. The
spoilers are in Kiev, and behind them are those in Washington, which continues to encourage the
irresponsible behavior of the Poroshenko government and other Ukrainian elites.
"... Ukraine. Putin's remarks on the state of affairs in Ukraine are, of course, wholly at odds with what Washington puts out on the subject. But they are not at odds with reality: Washington is. ..."
"... Those terms remain Putin's point of reference. They appear to remain the European Union's, too. Washington, which the Europeans and Russia excluded from the Minsk talks for the wisest of reasons, does not seem to have a point of reference, busy as it is pretending there is progress on the corruption front and that Kiev is not dependent on a frightening collection of militias, many of them led by neo–Nazi fanatics. ..."
"... These groups still present the threat of a massacre in the eastern provinces, as Putin reminded his audience. He spoke with notable ease of Russian assistance in those regions, suggesting this can end when they are capable of self-defense. ..."
Ukraine. Putin's remarks on the state of affairs in Ukraine are, of course, wholly at
odds with what Washington puts out on the subject. But they are not at odds with reality:
Washington is. As Putin calmly noted, the number-one obstacle to a settlement in Ukraine
is, as it has been for three years come next February, the profoundly corrupt government
installed in Kiev after the American-cultivated coup in 2014.
I say three years next February because it was then the settlement framework known as Minsk
II (for the city where it was negotiated and signed) was put in place.
Those terms remain Putin's point of reference. They appear to remain the European
Union's, too. Washington, which the Europeans and Russia excluded from the Minsk talks for the
wisest of reasons, does not seem to have a point of reference, busy as it is pretending there
is progress on the corruption front and that Kiev is not dependent on a frightening collection
of militias, many of them led by neo–Nazi fanatics.
These groups still present the threat of a massacre in the eastern provinces, as Putin
reminded his audience. He spoke with notable ease of Russian assistance in those regions,
suggesting this can end when they are capable of self-defense.
We would do well to understand where the force of inertia lies in Ukraine. This was Putin's
topic. A settlement in Ukraine remains possible via the framework fixed three years ago. Let us
not forget this. Moscow has not deviated from Minsk II -- another point worth noting. The
spoilers are in Kiev, and behind them are those in Washington, which continues to encourage the
irresponsible behavior of the Poroshenko government and other Ukrainian elites.
"... What's puzzling is why that capacity for outrage and demand for accountability doesn't extend to our now well-established penchant for waging war across much of the planet. ..."
"... Compare their culpability to that of the high-ranking officials who have presided over or promoted this country's various military misadventures of the present century. Those wars have, of course, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and will ultimately cost American taxpayers many trillions of dollars. Nor have those costly military efforts eliminated "terrorism," as President George W. Bush promised back when today's G.I.s were still in diapers. ..."
"... Bush told us that, through war, the United States would spread freedom and democracy. Instead, our wars have sown disorder and instability, creating failing or failed states across the Greater Middle East and Africa. In their wake have sprung up ever more, not fewer, jihadist groups, while acts of terror are soaring globally. These are indisputable facts. ..."
"... For starters, there is no "new strategy." Trump's generals, apparently with a nod from their putative boss, are merely modifying the old "strategy," which was itself an outgrowth of previous strategies tried, found wanting, and eventually discarded before being rebranded and eventually recycled. ..."
"... Thus far, Trump's interventionism has been a fragment of what the Hillary campaign promised. ..."
"... This is the center of a world empire. It maintains a gigantic military which virtually never stops fighting wars, none of them having anything to do with defense. It has created an intelligence monstrosity which makes old outfits like Stazi seem almost quaint, and it spies on everyone. Indeed, it maintains seventeen national security establishments, as though you can never have too much of a good thing. And some of these guys, too, are engaged full-time in forms of covert war, from fomenting trouble in other lands and interfering in elections to overthrowing governments. ..."
"... It's unlikely that the USA would be remaining in Afghanistan if its goals were not being attained. So the author has merely shown that the stated goals cannot be the real goals. What then are the real goals? I propose two: 1) establish a permanent military presence on a Russian border; 2) finance it with the heroin trade. Given other actions of the Empire around the globe, the first goal is obvious. The bombing of mud huts containing competitors' drug labs, conjoined with the fact that we do not destroy the actual poppy fields (obvious green targets in an immense ocean of brown) make this goal rather obvious as well. The rest of the article is simply more evidence that the Empire does not include mere human tragedy in its profit calculation. ..."
"... Andrew Bacevich calls for a Weinstein moment without realizing that it already happened more than ten years ago. The 2006 midterm elections were the first Weinstein moment, which saw the American people deliver a huge outpouring of antiwar sentiment that inflicted significant congressional losses on the neocon Republicans of George W. Bush. ..."
What makes a Harvey Weinstein moment? The now-disgraced Hollywood mogul is hardly the first
powerful man to stand accused of having abused women. The Harveys who preceded Harvey himself
are legion, their prominence matching or exceeding his own and the misdeeds with which they
were charged at least as reprehensible.
In the relatively recent past, a roster of prominent offenders would include Bill Clinton,
Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, and, of course, Donald Trump. Throw in various jocks,
maestros, senior military officers, members of the professoriate and you end up with quite a
list. Yet in virtually all such cases, the alleged transgressions were treated as instances of
individual misconduct, egregious perhaps but possessing at best transitory political
resonance.
All that, though, was pre-Harvey. As far as male sexual hijinks are concerned, we might
compare Weinstein's epic fall from grace to the stock market crash of 1929: one week it's the
anything-goes Roaring Twenties, the next we're smack dab in a Great Depression.
How profound is the change? Up here in Massachusetts where I live, we've spent the past year
marking John F. Kennedy's 100th birthday. If Kennedy were still around to join in the
festivities, it would be as a Class A sex offender. Rarely in American history has the cultural
landscape shifted so quickly or so radically.
In our post-Harvey world, men charged with sexual misconduct are guilty until proven
innocent, all crimes are capital offenses, and there exists no statute of limitations. Once a
largely empty corporate slogan, "zero tolerance" has become a battle cry.
All of this serves as a reminder that, on some matters at least, the American people retain
an admirable capacity for outrage. We can distinguish between the tolerable and the
intolerable. And we can demand accountability of powerful individuals and
institutions.
Everything They Need to Win (Again!)
What's puzzling is why that capacity for outrage and demand for accountability doesn't
extend to our now well-established penchant for waging war across much of the planet.
In no way would I wish to minimize the pain, suffering, and humiliation of the women preyed
upon by the various reprobates now getting their belated comeuppance. But to judge from
published accounts, the women (and in some cases, men) abused by Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mark
Halperin, Leon Wieseltier, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Garrison
Keillor, my West Point classmate Judge Roy Moore, and their compadres at least managed
to survive their encounters. None of the perpetrators are charged with having committed murder.
No one died.
Compare their culpability to that of the high-ranking officials who have presided over or
promoted this country's various military misadventures of the present century. Those wars have,
of course, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and will
ultimately cost American taxpayers many
trillions of dollars. Nor have those costly military efforts eliminated "terrorism," as
President George W. Bush promised back when today's G.I.s were still in diapers.
Bush told us that, through war, the United States would spread freedom and democracy.
Instead, our wars have sown disorder and instability, creating failing or failed states across
the Greater Middle East and Africa. In their wake have sprung up ever more, not fewer, jihadist
groups, while acts
of terror are soaring globally. These are indisputable facts.
It discomfits me to reiterate this mournful litany of truths. I feel a bit like the doctor
telling the lifelong smoker with stage-four lung cancer that an addiction to cigarettes is
adversely affecting his health. His mute response: I know and I don't care. Nothing the doc
says is going to budge the smoker from his habit. You go through the motions, but wonder
why.
In a similar fashion, war has become a habit to which the United States is addicted. Except
for the terminally distracted, most of us know that. We also know -- wecannot not
know -- that, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. forces have been unable to
accomplish their assigned mission, despite more than 16 years of fighting in the former and
more than a decade in the latter.
It's not exactly a good news story, to put it mildly. So forgive me for saying it (
yet again ), but most of us simply don't care, which means that we continue to allow a free
hand to those who preside over those wars, while treating with respect the views of pundits and
media personalities who persist in promoting them. What's past doesn't count; we prefer to
sustain the pretense that tomorrow is pregnant with possibilities. Victory lies just around the
corner.
By way of example, consider a
recent article in U.S. News and World Report. The headline: "Victory or Failure in
Afghanistan: 2018 Will Be the Deciding Year." The title suggests a balance absent from the text
that follows, which reads like a Pentagon press release. Here in its entirety is the nut graf
(my own emphasis added):
"Armed with a new strategy and renewed support from old allies, the Trump
administration now believes it has everything it needs to win the war in Afghanistan.
Top military advisers all the way up to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis say they can accomplish
what two previous administrations and multiple troop surges could not: the defeat of the
Taliban by Western-backed local forces, a negotiated peace and the establishment of a
popularly supported government in Kabul capable of keeping the country from once again becoming
a haven to any terrorist group."
Now if you buy this, you'll believe that Harvey Weinstein has learned his lesson and can be
trusted to interview young actresses while wearing his bathrobe.
For starters, there is no "new strategy." Trump's generals, apparently with a nod from their
putative boss, are merely modifying the old "strategy," which was itself an outgrowth of
previous strategies tried, found wanting, and eventually discarded before being rebranded and
eventually recycled.
Short of using nuclear weapons, U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan over the past decade and
a half have experimented with just about every approach imaginable: invasion, regime change,
occupation, nation-building, pacification, decapitation, counterterrorism, and
counterinsurgency, not to mention various surges ,
differing in scope and duration. We have had a big troop presence and a smaller one, more
bombing and less, restrictive rules of engagement and permissive ones. In the military
equivalent of throwing in the kitchen sink, a U.S. Special Operations Command four-engine prop
plane recently deposited the largest non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal on a cave
complex in eastern Afghanistan. Although that MOAB made a big
boom, no offer of enemy surrender materialized.
$65
billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars. And under the circumstances, consider that a mere down
payment.
According to General John Nicholson, our
17th commander in Kabul since 2001, the efforts devised and implemented by his many
predecessors have resulted in a "stalemate" -- a generous interpretation given that the Taliban
presently controls more
territory than it has held since the U.S. invasion. Officers no less capable than Nicholson
himself, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal among them, didn't get it done. Nicholson's
argument: trust me.
In essence, the "new strategy" devised by Trump's generals, Secretary of Defense Mattis and
Nicholson among them, amounts to this: persist a tad longer with a tad more. A modest uptick in
the number of U.S. and allied
troops on the ground will provide more trainers, advisers, and motivators to work with and
accompany their Afghan counterparts in the field. The Mattis/Nicholson plan also envisions an
increasing number of air strikes, signaled by the recent use of B-52s to attack illicit
Taliban "
drug labs ," a scenario that Stanley Kubrick himself would have been hard-pressed to
imagine.
Notwithstanding the novelty of using strategic bombers to destroy mud huts, there's not a
lot new here. Dating back to 2001, coalition forces have already dropped tens of thousands of
bombs in Afghanistan. Almost as soon as the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, coalition efforts
to create effective Afghan security forces commenced. So, too, did attempts to reduce the
production of the opium that has funded the Taliban insurgency, alas with essentially
no effect whatsoever . What Trump's generals want a gullible public (and astonishingly
gullible and inattentive members of Congress) to believe is that this time they've somehow
devised a formula for getting it right.
Turning the Corner
With his trademark capacity to intuit success, President Trump already sees clear evidence
of progress. "We're not fighting anymore to just walk around," he remarked in his
Thanksgiving message to the troops. "We're fighting to win. And you people [have] turned it
around over the last three to four months like nobody has seen." The president, we may note,
has yet to visit Afghanistan.
I'm guessing that the commander-in-chief is oblivious to the fact that, in U.S. military
circles, the term winning has acquired notable elasticity. Trump may think that it
implies vanquishing the enemy -- white flags and surrender ceremonies on the U.S.S. Missouri . General Nicholson knows better. "Winning," the field commander
says , "means delivering a negotiated settlement that reduces the level of violence and
protecting the homeland." (Take that definition at face value and we can belatedly move Vietnam
into the win column!)
Should we be surprised that Trump's generals, unconsciously imitating General William
Westmoreland a half-century ago, claim once again to detect light at the end of the tunnel? Not
at all. Mattis and Nicholson (along with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and National
Security Adviser H.R. McMaster) are following the Harvey Weinstein playbook: keep doing it
until they make you stop. Indeed, with what can only be described as chutzpah, Nicholson
himself recently announced that we have "
turned the corner " in Afghanistan. In doing so, of course, he is counting on Americans not
to recall the various war managers, military and civilian alike, who have made identical claims
going back years now, among them Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in 2012
.
From on high, assurances of progress; in the field, results that, year after year, come
nowhere near what's promised; on the homefront, an astonishingly credulous public. The war in
Afghanistan has long since settled into a melancholy and seemingly permanent rhythm.
The fact is that the individuals entrusted by President Trump to direct U.S. policy believe
with iron certainty that difficult political problems will yield to armed might properly
employed. That proposition is one to which generals like Mattis and Nicholson have devoted a
considerable part of their lives, not just in Afghanistan but across much of the Islamic world.
They are no more likely to question the validity of that proposition than the Pope is to
entertain second thoughts about the divinity of Jesus Christ.
In Afghanistan, their entire worldview -- not to mention the status and clout of the officer
corps they represent -- is at stake. No matter how long the war there lasts, no matter how many
"
generations " it takes, no matter how much blood is shed to no purpose, and no matter how
much money is wasted, they will never admit to failure -- nor will any of the
militarists-in-mufti cheering them on from the sidelines in Washington, Donald Trump not the
least among them.
Meanwhile, the great majority of the American people, their attention directed elsewhere --
it's the season for holiday shopping, after all -- remain studiously indifferent to the charade
being played out before their eyes.
It took a succession of high-profile scandals before Americans truly woke up to the plague
of sexual harassment and assault. How long will it take before the public concludes that they
have had enough of wars that don't work? Here's hoping it's before our president, in a moment
of ill temper, unleashes "
fire and fury " on the world.
It's astonishing to see people make the claim that "victory" is possible in Afghanistan.
Could they actually believe this or are they lying in order to drag this out even longer and
keep the money pit working overtime? These are individuals that are highly placed and so
should know better. It's not really a war but an occupation with the native insurgents
fighting to oust the foreign occupier. The US has tried every trick there is in trying to
tamp down the insurgency. They know what we're trying to do and can thwart us at every step.
The US lost even as it began it's invasion there but didn't know it yet in the wake of it's
initial success in scattering the Taliban, not even a real army and not even a real state.
They live there and we don't; they can resist for the next thirty years or fifty years. When
does the multi-billion bill come due and how will we pay it?
"How long will it take before the public concludes that they have had enough of wars that
don't work?"
It already happened, but Progressives like you failed to note that Republican voters
subbed the Bush clan and their various associates for Trump in the Primary season, precisely
because he called the Iraq and Afghan wars mistakes. The Americans suffer under a two party
establishment that is clearly antagonistic to their interests. As a part of that regime, a
dutiful Progressive toad, you continue to peddle the lie that it was the war-weary White
Americans who celebrated those wars. In reality, any such support was ginned up from tools
like you who wrote puff pieces for their Neocon Progressive masters.
Thus far, Trump's interventionism has been a fragment of what the Hillary campaign
promised. Might you count that among your lucky stars? Fat chance. You cretinous Progressive
filth have no such spine upon which to base an independent thought. You trot out the same old
tiresome tropes week after week fulfilling your designated propagandist duty and then you
skulk back to your den of iniquity to prepare another salvo of agitprop. What a miserable
existence.
This is the center of a world empire. It maintains a gigantic military which virtually never
stops fighting wars, none of them having anything to do with defense. It has created an
intelligence monstrosity which makes old outfits like Stazi seem almost quaint, and it spies
on everyone. Indeed, it maintains seventeen national security establishments, as though you
can never have too much of a good thing. And some of these guys, too, are engaged full-time
in forms of covert war, from fomenting trouble in other lands and interfering in elections to
overthrowing governments.
Obama ended up killing more people than any dictator or demagogue of this generation on
earth you care to name, several hundred thousand of them in his eight years. And he found new
ways to kill, too, as by creating the world's first industrial-scale extrajudicial killing
operation. Here he signs off on "kill lists," placed in his Oval Office in-box, to murder
people he has never seen, people who enjoy no legal rights or protections. His signed orders
are carried out by uniformed thugs working at computer screens in secure basements where they
proceed to play computer games with real live humans as their targets, again killing or
maiming people they have never seen.
If you ever have wondered where all the enabling workers came from in places like Stalin's
Gulag or Hitler's concentration camps, well, here is your answer. American itself produces
platoons of such people. You could find them working at Guantanamo and in the far-flung
string of secret torture facilities the CIA ran for years, and you could find them in places
like Fallujah or Samarra or Abu Ghraib, at the CIA's basement game arcade killing centers,
and even all over the streets of America dressed as police who shoot unarmed people every
day, sometimes in the back.
ZOG has now asserted the right to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason. No trial,
no hearing, no witnesses, no defense, no nothing. Is this actually legal? Any constitutional
lawyers out there care to comment? Has ZOG now achieved the status of an all-powerful
all-knowing deity with the power of life and death over all living things?
It's unlikely that the USA would be remaining in Afghanistan if its goals were not being
attained. So the author has merely shown that the stated goals cannot be the real goals. What
then are the real goals? I propose two: 1) establish a permanent military presence on a
Russian border; 2) finance it with the heroin trade. Given other actions of the Empire around
the globe, the first goal is obvious. The bombing of mud huts containing competitors' drug
labs, conjoined with the fact that we do not destroy the actual poppy fields (obvious green
targets in an immense ocean of brown) make this goal rather obvious as well. The rest of the
article is simply more evidence that the Empire does not include mere human tragedy in its
profit calculation.
The Native Born White American Working Class Teenage Male Population used as CANNON FODDER
for Congressman Steven Solarz's and Donald Trump's very precious Jewish only Israel .
Israel and the deep state did the attack on 911 and thus set the table for the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria and the Zionist neocons who control every facet of
the U.S. gov and the MSM and the MIC and the FED ie the BANKS set in motion the blood
sacrifice for their Zionist god SATAN, that is what they have done.
The Zionist warmongers and Satanists will destroy America.
It's not so much that America is addicted to war as that the American "business model" makes
permanent war inevitable. US global dominance rests on economic domination, in particular,
the dollar as world reserve currency. That has allowed the US economy to survive in spite of
being hollowed out, financialised and burdened with enormous sovereign debt. Economic
dominance derives from political dominance, which, in its turn, flows from military
dominance. For that military dominance to be credible, not only must the US have the biggest
and best military forces on the planet, it must show itself willing to use those forces to
maintain its dominance by actually using them from time to time, in particular, to
unequivocally beat off any challenge to its dominance (Putin!). It also, of course, must win,
or, more correctly, be able to present the outcome credibly as a win. Failure to maintain
military dominance will undermine the position of the dollar, sending its value through the
floor. A low dollar means cheap exports (Boeing will sell more planes than Airbus!), but it
also means that imports (oil, outsourced goods) will be dear. At that point the hollowed out
nature of the US economy will cut in, probably provoking a Soviet-style implosion of the US
economy and society and ruining anyone who has holdings denominated in dollars. I call that
the Gorbachev conundrum. Gorby believed in the Soviet Union and wanted to reform it. But the
Soviet system had become so rigid as to be unreformable. He pulled a threat and the whole
system unravelled. But if he hadn't pulled the thread, the whole system would have unravelled
anyway. It was a choice between hard landing and harder landing. Similarly, US leaders have
to continue down the only road open to them: permanent war. As Thomas Jefferson said of
slavery, it's like holding a wolf by the ears. You don't like it but you don't dare let go!
"How long will it take before the public concludes that they have had enough of wars that
don't work?" Answer: Never.
In Alabama when people would rant about how toxic Roy Moore was, I would politely point
out that his opponent for Senate was OK with spending trillions of dollars fighting pointless
winless wars on the other side of the planet just so politically connected defense
contractors can make a buck, and ask if that should be an issue too? The response,
predictably, was as if I was an alien from the planet Skyron in the galaxy of Andromeda.
We are sheep. We are outraged at these sexual transgressions because the corporate press
tells us to be outraged. We are not outraged at these stupid foreign wars, because the
corporate press does not tell us to be outraged. It's all mass effect, and the comfort of
being in a herd and all expressing the same feelings.
Andrew Bacevich is wrong about a couple of things in this article.
First, he says that the American public is both apathetic and credulous. I agree
that we have largely become apathetic towards these imperial wars, but I disagree that we
have become credulous. In fact, these two states of mind exclude one another; you cannot be
both apathetic and credulous with respect to the same object at the same time. The credulity
charge is easy to dismiss because virtually no one today believes anything that comes out of
Washington or its mouthpieces in the legacy media. The apathy charge is on point but it needs
qualification. The smarter, more informed Americans have seen that their efforts to change
the course of American policy have been to no avail, and they've given up in frustration and
disgust. The less smart, less informed Americans are constrained by the necessity of getting
on with their meager lives; they are an apolitical mass that possesses neither the
understanding nor the capacity to make any difference on the policy front whatsoever.
Second,Andrew Bacevich calls for a Weinstein moment without realizing that it
already happened more than ten years ago. The 2006 midterm elections were the first Weinstein
moment, which saw the American people deliver a huge outpouring of antiwar sentiment that
inflicted significant congressional losses on the neocon Republicans of George W. Bush. An
echo of that groundswell happened again in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected to office on an
explicitly antiwar platform. But Obama turned out to be one of the most pro-war presidents
ever, and thus an angry electorate made one final push in the same direction by attempting to
clean house with Donald Trump. Now that Donald has shown every sign of having cucked out to
the war lobby, we seem to be left with no electoral solutions.
The only thing that's going to work is for the American Imperium to be handed a
much-deserved military and financial defeat. The one encouraging fact is that if the top ten
percent of our political and financial elite were planed off by a foreign power, the American
people would give as few damns about that as they currently do about our imperial wars.
Very good but some little errors. Concerning Russia and China, Russia vent all or
nothing.
China was much smarter. First they allowed self employment, than small business and long time
after they started to sell state enterprises,
If Tom's Dispatch continues to be successful, Americans will continue to be asleep.
Masterful propaganda. War, according to our favorite spooks, is necessary to win, but
otherwise reprehensible.
Sex is otherwise necessary for human life but Harvey Weinstein is ugly. Hold tightly to
your cognitive dissonance, because you're expected to remember John F Kennedy who got it on,
but is the expendable martyr you should care about, not that other guy
Let's review: terror attacks are wins. Superior or effective anti-war propaganda comes
from the military
itself. They really don't want war, but really they do.
We're trying to make Afghanistan not Afghanistan: aka, trying to be a miracle worker. We
can throw as much money as we like at that place, and it isn't going to happen, least of all
with troops on nine month shifts.
Let Iran and Pakistan squabble over it. Good riddance.
1) doesn't really make much sense, given that Poland and the Baltic States would be more
than happy to take all US forces in Europe to give us a presence near Russia in a part of the
world that would be far easier to justify to the American public-and to the international
community. Afghanistan? Who exactly is Russia going to mess with? Iran is their-for now,
longer term, the two have conflicting agendas in the region, but don't expect the geniuses in
the Beltway to pick up on that opportunity-ally, and unlike the USSR, the Russians don't want
to get involved in the India-Pakistan conflict. Russia's current tilt toward China makes a
strategic marriage with India of the kind that you found in the Cold War impossible, but they
obviously don't want to tilt toward the basketcase known as Pakistan. The only reason that
Russia would want to get involved with Afghanistan beyond having a more preferable status
than having American troops there is power projection among ex-Soviet states, and there are
far more effective ways to do than muddle about with Afghanistan.
2, on the other hand, given Iran-Contra who knows? The first generation of the Taliban
pretty much wiped the heroin trade out as offensive to Islamic sensibilities, but the newer
generations have no such qualms.
I think you give America's rulers far too much credit. The truth is probably far scarier:
the morons who work in the Beltway honestly believe their own propaganda-that we can make
Afghanistan into some magical Western democracy if we throw enough money at it-and combine
that with the usual bureaucratic inertia.
According to General John Nicholson, our 17th commander in Kabul since 2001,
We have been killing these people for 17 years. Now our generals say that if we
indiscriminately kill enough men, women, and children who get in the way of our B52s, that
they will see the light and make peace. How totally wonderful.
My solution is to gage the Lindsey Grahams for a year.
What will do more good for peace – B52s or shutting up Graham's elk?
I remember when Trump said he knew more than the generals and was viciously attacked for it.
It turns out he did know more than the generals just by knowing it was a waste. Trump was
pushed by politics to defer to the generals who always have an answer when it comes to a war
– more men, more weapons, more time.
"The less smart, less informed Americans are constrained by the necessity of getting on
with their meager lives; they are an apolitical mass that possesses neither the understanding
nor the capacity to make any difference on the policy front whatsoever."
I wonder if any Abolitionists criticized the slaves for failing to revolt? Probably not;
I'm guessing they were mostly convinced that the negro required intervention from outside,
whether due to their nature or from overwhelming circumstance.
If the enslaved American public is liberated, I hope we'll know what to do with ourselves
afterwards. It'd be a shame to simply end up in another kind of bondage, resentful and
subject to whatever oppressive system replaces the current outrage. Perhaps the next one will
more persuasively convince us that we're important and essential?
We are sheep. We are outraged at these sexual transgressions because the corporate press
tells us to be outraged. We are not outraged at these stupid foreign wars, because the
corporate press does not tell us to be outraged. It's all mass effect, and the comfort of
being in a herd and all expressing the same feelings.
Thank you, Andrew J. Bacevich, for your words of wisdom and thank you, Mr. Unz, for this
post.
This corporation needs to be dissolved. I've read about "the inertia" of Federal Government
that has morphed into a cash cow for a century of wasted tax dollars funding the MIIC, now
the MIIC. Does our existence have to end in financial ruin or, worse yet, some foreign entity
creating havoc on our soil?
The Founders NEVER intended that the US of A become a meddler in other Sovereignty's internal
affairs or the destroyer of Nation States that do not espoused our "doctrine." Anyone without
poop for brains knows that this is about Imperialism and greed, fueled by money and an
insatiable luster for MORE.
This should be easier to change than it appears. Is there no will? After all, it Is our
Master's money that lubricates the machinery. So, we continue to provide the lubrication for
our Masters like a bunch of imbeciles that allow them to survail our words and movements.
Somebody please explain our stupidity.
the folks in the US are sick of the wars, contrary to Bacevich. They simply will vote come
next election accordingly. They register their disgust in all the polls.
This article is not very useful. More punditry puff.
No comments on the Next War for Israel being cooked up by the new crop of neocon
youngsters, I guess, and Trump who will trump, trump, trump into the next War for the
Jews.
How about some political science on Iran, Syria, Hisbollah, Hamas and the US, Arabia,
Judenstaat axis of evil?
Hey Bacevich? When you link to WashPost and NYTimes to make your points, you don't. They
block access if you've already read links to those two papers three times each and can no
longer, for the month, read there. When folks link to papers that won't let you read, it
makes one wonder why.
I believe Americans are damned sick and tired of the stupid, needless war in Afghanistan. But
then they should have been sick and tired of stupid , needless wars like Korea, Vietnam and
Iraq, and probably most of them were. But it's easy to be complacent when someone else's son
is doing the fighting and dying And it's easy to be complacent when your stomach is full and
you have plenty of booze and pain killers available. There will be a day of reckoning when
the next big economic bust arrives and which may make the Great Depression paltry by
comparison. America is a far different place then it was in the 1930s when our population was
140 million. Americans were not so soft and the conveniences we now take for granted not
available. When the supermarkets run out of food, watch out. There may not even be any soup
lines to stand in.
In truth, U.S. commanders have quietly shelved any expectations of achieving an actual
victory -- traditionally defined as "imposing your will on the enemy" -- in favor of a more
modest conception of success.
Your assumptions are wrong about the US goal of the invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan and Iraq were not invaded to establish democracy or impose American will
whatever that is. Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded to establish a temporary military staging ground for a
US invasion of Iran, the designated regional enemy of Israel. As long as the current regime in Iran remains, the US will remain in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
And minerals! Eric Prince himself recently tried to sell the idea of having his private
militias do the fighting in Afghanistan for the US and finance it by mining said country's
minerals, thus making himself even richer.
I was onboard with Mr. Bacevich, until I got to this:
Almost as soon as the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, coalition efforts to create
effective Afghan security forces commenced. So, too, did attempts to reduce the production
of the opium that has funded the Taliban insurgency
What utter rubbish! The Taliban was instrumental in shutting down the poppy production
until the CIA came along and restarted it to fund their black ops.
We have the reverse Midas touch. Everything we touch (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.,
etc.) turns to shit. We supposedly attack countries to liberate them from their tyrants who
are supposedly killing their own people, and end up killing more people than all of them put
together. And, oh yes, we have our favorite tyrants (Saudis, Israelis) whom we provide with
horrible weapons (like cluster bombs) to help them kill people we hate.
Mr. Bacevich is right about the lack of outrage about our wars, but the current Weinstein
explosion consists of hordes of mostly American female victims, mostly white, a (very) few
jews, and a few men, who have the stage to complain about their oppressors. What would be the
counterpart of that w.r.t. the wars? Millions of brown victims in far away lands that most of
us couldn't even find on a map? How likely is that to happen?
So yes, no outrage, and none likely. The last 17 years have proven that.
You don't know the American has been paying everything through monopoly money printed
through the thin air since WWI, i.e. a keystroke on the Federal Reserve's computer? No wonder
the Americans have been waging reckless wars all over the world on the fabricated phantom WMD
allegations as humanitarian intervention relentlessly.
Romans did not stop waging reckless wars until their empire collapsed; the British
imitates the Romans and the American is born out of the British, hence the Americans will no
stop waging reckless wars until their empire collapsed like the Romans.
"... The Russia Investigation shifts to Clinton's Political Rivals ..."
"... Let me get this straight: The Democrats think Stein siphoned votes away from Hillary, so Stein must be a "Russian agent". Is that it? ..."
"... The persecution of Jill Stein strips away the facade once and for all exposing Russia-gate as a complete fraud that is being used to exact revenge on the adversaries of Hillary Clinton and her reprobate friends. The New York Times even admits as much. ..."
"... That's what's really really going on, the fatcat honchos behind the scenes are just settling scores for Hillary's lost election. It's payback time for the Clinton Mafia. Here's more baloney from the Times: ..."
"... Give me a break. Does anyone on the Senate Intelligence Committee honestly believe that Jill Stein is a Russian agent? ..."
"... Of course not. They're just harassing her to send a message to anyone who might be thinking about running for president in the future. They're saying, "You'd better watch your step or we'll trump-up charges against you and make your life a living hell. Isn't that the message?You're damn right it is! ..."
"... "This is a witch hunt. It is neo-McCarthyism, plain and simple. The people who are outright calling Stein a Russian agent are making a complete mockery of themselves and of the American political process ..."
"... Dragging Stein into this mess shows Clinton Democrats up for what they really are. It proves that the 'Resist' crowd's crusade is not just about Trump and "collusion" -- it's also about discrediting all dissenting American voices and establishing their own definition of what political opposition is supposed to look like -- and for the Clinton cult, it's not supposed to look like Jill Stein . ..."
"... Anyone who disagrees with the Democrats is a Putin puppet -- and if you've ever been to Moscow, forget it -- don't even bother trying to defend yourself. Off with your head." ("McCarthy-style targeting of Jill Stein proves Democrats have truly lost the plot", RT) ..."
"... "The Socialist Equality Party condemns the targeting of Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate in the 2016 election, by the neo-McCarthyite witch-hunters on the Senate Intelligence Committee . The attack on Stein, spearheaded by the Democratic Party, is an unconstitutional attempt to delegitimize and suppress political opposition to the monopoly of the capitalist two-party system . ..."
"... This is the Orwellian reality of America in 2017, ruled by two right-wing, oligarchic parties that can and will tolerate no political opposition . ..."
"... If you're a liberal and you hate Donald Trump, then you probably see the Russia-gate investigation as your best chance to achieve the Golden Grail of "impeachment". But are you willing to compromise your principles, join forces with the sinister and unscrupulous Clinton cabal, and throw allies like Jill Stein under the bus to achieve your goal? ..."
"... How high a price are you willing to pay to get rid of Trump? That's the question that every liberal in America should be asking themselves. And they'd better answer it fast before it's too late. ..."
"... Mueller is clearly not the upstanding 'protector of American values' he is painted he is a servile political degenerate. A lifetime of betrayal has rendered him ethically autistic. He is blind to the way his own actions condemn him before reasonable minds. Hopefully he will wake up when condemned hiself in an American Court of Law at some future date. ..."
"... According to Edward Aguilar of Project for Nuclear Awareness, cancelling construction of the new submarines, reducing the current number of such subs, and retiring rather than replacing nuclear warheads and a couple hundred ICBMs would save $270 billion. ..."
"... The weapons oligarchy appears to be a racketeering-influenced and corrupt organization. Luckily, the RICO Act provides for heavy criminal penalties for such death-dealing corruption. ..."
Widespread anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide
and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the global
so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs.
Notable quotes:
"... For all the haters of us ugly Americans, just remember that we at this blog are suffering in our country standing up for the truth, pitted against our neighbors, coworkers, and friends in the arena of political debate and decrying the massive injustice of our foreign aggression. ..."
"... The world knows the military industrial complex that has worked over years, and year to create the ugly tentacles throughout what was once our government has been usurped. Dollars. All these bastards see is dollars. Not human life. Not the potential of that lost life in science, math, technology. Just dollars. ..."
"... or heavens sakes the voters in Arizona returned the worst of ALL Warmongers to Congress. ..."
"... We can't even get the voters to learn that their votes equal WAR pushed by both Parties they are aligned with. Get real. Our challenge is yours. Help us! ..."
"... I know there are many highly intelligent Americans, who are already today suffering and paying a price. And I agree that (widespread) anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the global so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs. ..."
"... Playing groups of people against one another is the oldest domination trick in the world, but it seems to work every single time...sad! ;-) ..."
"... I'm from California. Technically the USA. My take on things is we United States of Americans are exceptional. Most of us are exceptionally ignorant and violent. That is exceptionally sad. ..."
For all the haters of us ugly Americans, just remember that we at this blog are suffering in our country standing up for the
truth, pitted against our neighbors, coworkers, and friends in the arena of political debate and decrying the massive injustice
of our foreign aggression.
I won't call ya out by name, but lumping us forlorn sacks into your "untouchable" category reeks of reactionary arrogance that
is, to pay patrons at this fine blog their due, beneath you.
In the mean time, American issues = issues concerning the empire they we all want to see destroyed. Liberating Americans should
also be on your wish list.
The world knows the military industrial complex that has worked over years, and year to create the ugly tentacles throughout
what was once our government has been usurped. Dollars. All these bastards see is dollars. Not human life. Not the potential of
that lost life in science, math, technology. Just dollars.
For heavens sakes the voters in Arizona returned the worst of ALL Warmongers to Congress. And you, the World, think
for a moment we, citizens in this colony, have a snowball's chance in hell reeling these creatures in all by ourselves are sorely
mistaken.
We can't even get the voters to learn that their votes equal WAR pushed by both Parties they are aligned with. Get real. Our
challenge is yours. Help us!
I know there are many highly intelligent Americans, who are already today suffering and paying a price. And I agree that
(widespread) anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide
and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the
global so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs.
Playing groups of people against one another is the oldest domination trick in the world, but it seems to work every single
time...sad! ;-)
I'm from California. Technically the USA. My take on things is we United States of Americans are exceptional. Most of us
are exceptionally ignorant and violent. That is exceptionally sad.
I am very glad to have found MoA and the crew of experts. I have learned so very much.
Big up b! Booyakah as they say in JA. God help us.
"... What's puzzling is why that capacity for outrage and demand for accountability doesn't extend to our now well-established penchant for waging war across much of the planet. ..."
"... Compare their culpability to that of the high-ranking officials who have presided over or promoted this country's various military misadventures of the present century. Those wars have, of course, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and will ultimately cost American taxpayers many trillions of dollars. Nor have those costly military efforts eliminated "terrorism," as President George W. Bush promised back when today's G.I.s were still in diapers. ..."
"... Bush told us that, through war, the United States would spread freedom and democracy. Instead, our wars have sown disorder and instability, creating failing or failed states across the Greater Middle East and Africa. In their wake have sprung up ever more, not fewer, jihadist groups, while acts of terror are soaring globally. These are indisputable facts. ..."
"... For starters, there is no "new strategy." Trump's generals, apparently with a nod from their putative boss, are merely modifying the old "strategy," which was itself an outgrowth of previous strategies tried, found wanting, and eventually discarded before being rebranded and eventually recycled. ..."
"... Thus far, Trump's interventionism has been a fragment of what the Hillary campaign promised. ..."
"... This is the center of a world empire. It maintains a gigantic military which virtually never stops fighting wars, none of them having anything to do with defense. It has created an intelligence monstrosity which makes old outfits like Stazi seem almost quaint, and it spies on everyone. Indeed, it maintains seventeen national security establishments, as though you can never have too much of a good thing. And some of these guys, too, are engaged full-time in forms of covert war, from fomenting trouble in other lands and interfering in elections to overthrowing governments. ..."
"... It's unlikely that the USA would be remaining in Afghanistan if its goals were not being attained. So the author has merely shown that the stated goals cannot be the real goals. What then are the real goals? I propose two: 1) establish a permanent military presence on a Russian border; 2) finance it with the heroin trade. Given other actions of the Empire around the globe, the first goal is obvious. The bombing of mud huts containing competitors' drug labs, conjoined with the fact that we do not destroy the actual poppy fields (obvious green targets in an immense ocean of brown) make this goal rather obvious as well. The rest of the article is simply more evidence that the Empire does not include mere human tragedy in its profit calculation. ..."
"... Andrew Bacevich calls for a Weinstein moment without realizing that it already happened more than ten years ago. The 2006 midterm elections were the first Weinstein moment, which saw the American people deliver a huge outpouring of antiwar sentiment that inflicted significant congressional losses on the neocon Republicans of George W. Bush. ..."
What makes a Harvey Weinstein moment? The now-disgraced Hollywood mogul is hardly the first
powerful man to stand accused of having abused women. The Harveys who preceded Harvey himself
are legion, their prominence matching or exceeding his own and the misdeeds with which they
were charged at least as reprehensible.
In the relatively recent past, a roster of prominent offenders would include Bill Clinton,
Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, and, of course, Donald Trump. Throw in various jocks,
maestros, senior military officers, members of the professoriate and you end up with quite a
list. Yet in virtually all such cases, the alleged transgressions were treated as instances of
individual misconduct, egregious perhaps but possessing at best transitory political
resonance.
All that, though, was pre-Harvey. As far as male sexual hijinks are concerned, we might
compare Weinstein's epic fall from grace to the stock market crash of 1929: one week it's the
anything-goes Roaring Twenties, the next we're smack dab in a Great Depression.
How profound is the change? Up here in Massachusetts where I live, we've spent the past year
marking John F. Kennedy's 100th birthday. If Kennedy were still around to join in the
festivities, it would be as a Class A sex offender. Rarely in American history has the cultural
landscape shifted so quickly or so radically.
In our post-Harvey world, men charged with sexual misconduct are guilty until proven
innocent, all crimes are capital offenses, and there exists no statute of limitations. Once a
largely empty corporate slogan, "zero tolerance" has become a battle cry.
All of this serves as a reminder that, on some matters at least, the American people retain
an admirable capacity for outrage. We can distinguish between the tolerable and the
intolerable. And we can demand accountability of powerful individuals and
institutions.
Everything They Need to Win (Again!)
What's puzzling is why that capacity for outrage and demand for accountability doesn't
extend to our now well-established penchant for waging war across much of the planet.
In no way would I wish to minimize the pain, suffering, and humiliation of the women preyed
upon by the various reprobates now getting their belated comeuppance. But to judge from
published accounts, the women (and in some cases, men) abused by Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mark
Halperin, Leon Wieseltier, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Garrison
Keillor, my West Point classmate Judge Roy Moore, and their compadres at least managed
to survive their encounters. None of the perpetrators are charged with having committed murder.
No one died.
Compare their culpability to that of the high-ranking officials who have presided over or
promoted this country's various military misadventures of the present century. Those wars have,
of course, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and will
ultimately cost American taxpayers many
trillions of dollars. Nor have those costly military efforts eliminated "terrorism," as
President George W. Bush promised back when today's G.I.s were still in diapers.
Bush told us that, through war, the United States would spread freedom and democracy.
Instead, our wars have sown disorder and instability, creating failing or failed states across
the Greater Middle East and Africa. In their wake have sprung up ever more, not fewer, jihadist
groups, while acts
of terror are soaring globally. These are indisputable facts.
It discomfits me to reiterate this mournful litany of truths. I feel a bit like the doctor
telling the lifelong smoker with stage-four lung cancer that an addiction to cigarettes is
adversely affecting his health. His mute response: I know and I don't care. Nothing the doc
says is going to budge the smoker from his habit. You go through the motions, but wonder
why.
In a similar fashion, war has become a habit to which the United States is addicted. Except
for the terminally distracted, most of us know that. We also know -- wecannot not
know -- that, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. forces have been unable to
accomplish their assigned mission, despite more than 16 years of fighting in the former and
more than a decade in the latter.
It's not exactly a good news story, to put it mildly. So forgive me for saying it (
yet again ), but most of us simply don't care, which means that we continue to allow a free
hand to those who preside over those wars, while treating with respect the views of pundits and
media personalities who persist in promoting them. What's past doesn't count; we prefer to
sustain the pretense that tomorrow is pregnant with possibilities. Victory lies just around the
corner.
By way of example, consider a
recent article in U.S. News and World Report. The headline: "Victory or Failure in
Afghanistan: 2018 Will Be the Deciding Year." The title suggests a balance absent from the text
that follows, which reads like a Pentagon press release. Here in its entirety is the nut graf
(my own emphasis added):
"Armed with a new strategy and renewed support from old allies, the Trump
administration now believes it has everything it needs to win the war in Afghanistan.
Top military advisers all the way up to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis say they can accomplish
what two previous administrations and multiple troop surges could not: the defeat of the
Taliban by Western-backed local forces, a negotiated peace and the establishment of a
popularly supported government in Kabul capable of keeping the country from once again becoming
a haven to any terrorist group."
Now if you buy this, you'll believe that Harvey Weinstein has learned his lesson and can be
trusted to interview young actresses while wearing his bathrobe.
For starters, there is no "new strategy." Trump's generals, apparently with a nod from their
putative boss, are merely modifying the old "strategy," which was itself an outgrowth of
previous strategies tried, found wanting, and eventually discarded before being rebranded and
eventually recycled.
Short of using nuclear weapons, U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan over the past decade and
a half have experimented with just about every approach imaginable: invasion, regime change,
occupation, nation-building, pacification, decapitation, counterterrorism, and
counterinsurgency, not to mention various surges ,
differing in scope and duration. We have had a big troop presence and a smaller one, more
bombing and less, restrictive rules of engagement and permissive ones. In the military
equivalent of throwing in the kitchen sink, a U.S. Special Operations Command four-engine prop
plane recently deposited the largest non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal on a cave
complex in eastern Afghanistan. Although that MOAB made a big
boom, no offer of enemy surrender materialized.
$65
billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars. And under the circumstances, consider that a mere down
payment.
According to General John Nicholson, our
17th commander in Kabul since 2001, the efforts devised and implemented by his many
predecessors have resulted in a "stalemate" -- a generous interpretation given that the Taliban
presently controls more
territory than it has held since the U.S. invasion. Officers no less capable than Nicholson
himself, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal among them, didn't get it done. Nicholson's
argument: trust me.
In essence, the "new strategy" devised by Trump's generals, Secretary of Defense Mattis and
Nicholson among them, amounts to this: persist a tad longer with a tad more. A modest uptick in
the number of U.S. and allied
troops on the ground will provide more trainers, advisers, and motivators to work with and
accompany their Afghan counterparts in the field. The Mattis/Nicholson plan also envisions an
increasing number of air strikes, signaled by the recent use of B-52s to attack illicit
Taliban "
drug labs ," a scenario that Stanley Kubrick himself would have been hard-pressed to
imagine.
Notwithstanding the novelty of using strategic bombers to destroy mud huts, there's not a
lot new here. Dating back to 2001, coalition forces have already dropped tens of thousands of
bombs in Afghanistan. Almost as soon as the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, coalition efforts
to create effective Afghan security forces commenced. So, too, did attempts to reduce the
production of the opium that has funded the Taliban insurgency, alas with essentially
no effect whatsoever . What Trump's generals want a gullible public (and astonishingly
gullible and inattentive members of Congress) to believe is that this time they've somehow
devised a formula for getting it right.
Turning the Corner
With his trademark capacity to intuit success, President Trump already sees clear evidence
of progress. "We're not fighting anymore to just walk around," he remarked in his
Thanksgiving message to the troops. "We're fighting to win. And you people [have] turned it
around over the last three to four months like nobody has seen." The president, we may note,
has yet to visit Afghanistan.
I'm guessing that the commander-in-chief is oblivious to the fact that, in U.S. military
circles, the term winning has acquired notable elasticity. Trump may think that it
implies vanquishing the enemy -- white flags and surrender ceremonies on the U.S.S. Missouri . General Nicholson knows better. "Winning," the field commander
says , "means delivering a negotiated settlement that reduces the level of violence and
protecting the homeland." (Take that definition at face value and we can belatedly move Vietnam
into the win column!)
Should we be surprised that Trump's generals, unconsciously imitating General William
Westmoreland a half-century ago, claim once again to detect light at the end of the tunnel? Not
at all. Mattis and Nicholson (along with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and National
Security Adviser H.R. McMaster) are following the Harvey Weinstein playbook: keep doing it
until they make you stop. Indeed, with what can only be described as chutzpah, Nicholson
himself recently announced that we have "
turned the corner " in Afghanistan. In doing so, of course, he is counting on Americans not
to recall the various war managers, military and civilian alike, who have made identical claims
going back years now, among them Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in 2012
.
From on high, assurances of progress; in the field, results that, year after year, come
nowhere near what's promised; on the homefront, an astonishingly credulous public. The war in
Afghanistan has long since settled into a melancholy and seemingly permanent rhythm.
The fact is that the individuals entrusted by President Trump to direct U.S. policy believe
with iron certainty that difficult political problems will yield to armed might properly
employed. That proposition is one to which generals like Mattis and Nicholson have devoted a
considerable part of their lives, not just in Afghanistan but across much of the Islamic world.
They are no more likely to question the validity of that proposition than the Pope is to
entertain second thoughts about the divinity of Jesus Christ.
In Afghanistan, their entire worldview -- not to mention the status and clout of the officer
corps they represent -- is at stake. No matter how long the war there lasts, no matter how many
"
generations " it takes, no matter how much blood is shed to no purpose, and no matter how
much money is wasted, they will never admit to failure -- nor will any of the
militarists-in-mufti cheering them on from the sidelines in Washington, Donald Trump not the
least among them.
Meanwhile, the great majority of the American people, their attention directed elsewhere --
it's the season for holiday shopping, after all -- remain studiously indifferent to the charade
being played out before their eyes.
It took a succession of high-profile scandals before Americans truly woke up to the plague
of sexual harassment and assault. How long will it take before the public concludes that they
have had enough of wars that don't work? Here's hoping it's before our president, in a moment
of ill temper, unleashes "
fire and fury " on the world.
It's astonishing to see people make the claim that "victory" is possible in Afghanistan.
Could they actually believe this or are they lying in order to drag this out even longer and
keep the money pit working overtime? These are individuals that are highly placed and so
should know better. It's not really a war but an occupation with the native insurgents
fighting to oust the foreign occupier. The US has tried every trick there is in trying to
tamp down the insurgency. They know what we're trying to do and can thwart us at every step.
The US lost even as it began it's invasion there but didn't know it yet in the wake of it's
initial success in scattering the Taliban, not even a real army and not even a real state.
They live there and we don't; they can resist for the next thirty years or fifty years. When
does the multi-billion bill come due and how will we pay it?
"How long will it take before the public concludes that they have had enough of wars that
don't work?"
It already happened, but Progressives like you failed to note that Republican voters
subbed the Bush clan and their various associates for Trump in the Primary season, precisely
because he called the Iraq and Afghan wars mistakes. The Americans suffer under a two party
establishment that is clearly antagonistic to their interests. As a part of that regime, a
dutiful Progressive toad, you continue to peddle the lie that it was the war-weary White
Americans who celebrated those wars. In reality, any such support was ginned up from tools
like you who wrote puff pieces for their Neocon Progressive masters.
Thus far, Trump's interventionism has been a fragment of what the Hillary campaign
promised. Might you count that among your lucky stars? Fat chance. You cretinous Progressive
filth have no such spine upon which to base an independent thought. You trot out the same old
tiresome tropes week after week fulfilling your designated propagandist duty and then you
skulk back to your den of iniquity to prepare another salvo of agitprop. What a miserable
existence.
This is the center of a world empire. It maintains a gigantic military which virtually never
stops fighting wars, none of them having anything to do with defense. It has created an
intelligence monstrosity which makes old outfits like Stazi seem almost quaint, and it spies
on everyone. Indeed, it maintains seventeen national security establishments, as though you
can never have too much of a good thing. And some of these guys, too, are engaged full-time
in forms of covert war, from fomenting trouble in other lands and interfering in elections to
overthrowing governments.
Obama ended up killing more people than any dictator or demagogue of this generation on
earth you care to name, several hundred thousand of them in his eight years. And he found new
ways to kill, too, as by creating the world's first industrial-scale extrajudicial killing
operation. Here he signs off on "kill lists," placed in his Oval Office in-box, to murder
people he has never seen, people who enjoy no legal rights or protections. His signed orders
are carried out by uniformed thugs working at computer screens in secure basements where they
proceed to play computer games with real live humans as their targets, again killing or
maiming people they have never seen.
If you ever have wondered where all the enabling workers came from in places like Stalin's
Gulag or Hitler's concentration camps, well, here is your answer. American itself produces
platoons of such people. You could find them working at Guantanamo and in the far-flung
string of secret torture facilities the CIA ran for years, and you could find them in places
like Fallujah or Samarra or Abu Ghraib, at the CIA's basement game arcade killing centers,
and even all over the streets of America dressed as police who shoot unarmed people every
day, sometimes in the back.
ZOG has now asserted the right to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason. No trial,
no hearing, no witnesses, no defense, no nothing. Is this actually legal? Any constitutional
lawyers out there care to comment? Has ZOG now achieved the status of an all-powerful
all-knowing deity with the power of life and death over all living things?
It's unlikely that the USA would be remaining in Afghanistan if its goals were not being
attained. So the author has merely shown that the stated goals cannot be the real goals. What
then are the real goals? I propose two: 1) establish a permanent military presence on a
Russian border; 2) finance it with the heroin trade. Given other actions of the Empire around
the globe, the first goal is obvious. The bombing of mud huts containing competitors' drug
labs, conjoined with the fact that we do not destroy the actual poppy fields (obvious green
targets in an immense ocean of brown) make this goal rather obvious as well. The rest of the
article is simply more evidence that the Empire does not include mere human tragedy in its
profit calculation.
The Native Born White American Working Class Teenage Male Population used as CANNON FODDER
for Congressman Steven Solarz's and Donald Trump's very precious Jewish only Israel .
Israel and the deep state did the attack on 911 and thus set the table for the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria and the Zionist neocons who control every facet of
the U.S. gov and the MSM and the MIC and the FED ie the BANKS set in motion the blood
sacrifice for their Zionist god SATAN, that is what they have done.
The Zionist warmongers and Satanists will destroy America.
It's not so much that America is addicted to war as that the American "business model" makes
permanent war inevitable. US global dominance rests on economic domination, in particular,
the dollar as world reserve currency. That has allowed the US economy to survive in spite of
being hollowed out, financialised and burdened with enormous sovereign debt. Economic
dominance derives from political dominance, which, in its turn, flows from military
dominance. For that military dominance to be credible, not only must the US have the biggest
and best military forces on the planet, it must show itself willing to use those forces to
maintain its dominance by actually using them from time to time, in particular, to
unequivocally beat off any challenge to its dominance (Putin!). It also, of course, must win,
or, more correctly, be able to present the outcome credibly as a win. Failure to maintain
military dominance will undermine the position of the dollar, sending its value through the
floor. A low dollar means cheap exports (Boeing will sell more planes than Airbus!), but it
also means that imports (oil, outsourced goods) will be dear. At that point the hollowed out
nature of the US economy will cut in, probably provoking a Soviet-style implosion of the US
economy and society and ruining anyone who has holdings denominated in dollars. I call that
the Gorbachev conundrum. Gorby believed in the Soviet Union and wanted to reform it. But the
Soviet system had become so rigid as to be unreformable. He pulled a threat and the whole
system unravelled. But if he hadn't pulled the thread, the whole system would have unravelled
anyway. It was a choice between hard landing and harder landing. Similarly, US leaders have
to continue down the only road open to them: permanent war. As Thomas Jefferson said of
slavery, it's like holding a wolf by the ears. You don't like it but you don't dare let go!
"How long will it take before the public concludes that they have had enough of wars that
don't work?" Answer: Never.
In Alabama when people would rant about how toxic Roy Moore was, I would politely point
out that his opponent for Senate was OK with spending trillions of dollars fighting pointless
winless wars on the other side of the planet just so politically connected defense
contractors can make a buck, and ask if that should be an issue too? The response,
predictably, was as if I was an alien from the planet Skyron in the galaxy of Andromeda.
We are sheep. We are outraged at these sexual transgressions because the corporate press
tells us to be outraged. We are not outraged at these stupid foreign wars, because the
corporate press does not tell us to be outraged. It's all mass effect, and the comfort of
being in a herd and all expressing the same feelings.
Andrew Bacevich is wrong about a couple of things in this article.
First, he says that the American public is both apathetic and credulous. I agree
that we have largely become apathetic towards these imperial wars, but I disagree that we
have become credulous. In fact, these two states of mind exclude one another; you cannot be
both apathetic and credulous with respect to the same object at the same time. The credulity
charge is easy to dismiss because virtually no one today believes anything that comes out of
Washington or its mouthpieces in the legacy media. The apathy charge is on point but it needs
qualification. The smarter, more informed Americans have seen that their efforts to change
the course of American policy have been to no avail, and they've given up in frustration and
disgust. The less smart, less informed Americans are constrained by the necessity of getting
on with their meager lives; they are an apolitical mass that possesses neither the
understanding nor the capacity to make any difference on the policy front whatsoever.
Second,Andrew Bacevich calls for a Weinstein moment without realizing that it
already happened more than ten years ago. The 2006 midterm elections were the first Weinstein
moment, which saw the American people deliver a huge outpouring of antiwar sentiment that
inflicted significant congressional losses on the neocon Republicans of George W. Bush. An
echo of that groundswell happened again in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected to office on an
explicitly antiwar platform. But Obama turned out to be one of the most pro-war presidents
ever, and thus an angry electorate made one final push in the same direction by attempting to
clean house with Donald Trump. Now that Donald has shown every sign of having cucked out to
the war lobby, we seem to be left with no electoral solutions.
The only thing that's going to work is for the American Imperium to be handed a
much-deserved military and financial defeat. The one encouraging fact is that if the top ten
percent of our political and financial elite were planed off by a foreign power, the American
people would give as few damns about that as they currently do about our imperial wars.
Very good but some little errors. Concerning Russia and China, Russia vent all or
nothing.
China was much smarter. First they allowed self employment, than small business and long time
after they started to sell state enterprises,
If Tom's Dispatch continues to be successful, Americans will continue to be asleep.
Masterful propaganda. War, according to our favorite spooks, is necessary to win, but
otherwise reprehensible.
Sex is otherwise necessary for human life but Harvey Weinstein is ugly. Hold tightly to
your cognitive dissonance, because you're expected to remember John F Kennedy who got it on,
but is the expendable martyr you should care about, not that other guy
Let's review: terror attacks are wins. Superior or effective anti-war propaganda comes
from the military
itself. They really don't want war, but really they do.
We're trying to make Afghanistan not Afghanistan: aka, trying to be a miracle worker. We
can throw as much money as we like at that place, and it isn't going to happen, least of all
with troops on nine month shifts.
Let Iran and Pakistan squabble over it. Good riddance.
1) doesn't really make much sense, given that Poland and the Baltic States would be more
than happy to take all US forces in Europe to give us a presence near Russia in a part of the
world that would be far easier to justify to the American public-and to the international
community. Afghanistan? Who exactly is Russia going to mess with? Iran is their-for now,
longer term, the two have conflicting agendas in the region, but don't expect the geniuses in
the Beltway to pick up on that opportunity-ally, and unlike the USSR, the Russians don't want
to get involved in the India-Pakistan conflict. Russia's current tilt toward China makes a
strategic marriage with India of the kind that you found in the Cold War impossible, but they
obviously don't want to tilt toward the basketcase known as Pakistan. The only reason that
Russia would want to get involved with Afghanistan beyond having a more preferable status
than having American troops there is power projection among ex-Soviet states, and there are
far more effective ways to do than muddle about with Afghanistan.
2, on the other hand, given Iran-Contra who knows? The first generation of the Taliban
pretty much wiped the heroin trade out as offensive to Islamic sensibilities, but the newer
generations have no such qualms.
I think you give America's rulers far too much credit. The truth is probably far scarier:
the morons who work in the Beltway honestly believe their own propaganda-that we can make
Afghanistan into some magical Western democracy if we throw enough money at it-and combine
that with the usual bureaucratic inertia.
According to General John Nicholson, our 17th commander in Kabul since 2001,
We have been killing these people for 17 years. Now our generals say that if we
indiscriminately kill enough men, women, and children who get in the way of our B52s, that
they will see the light and make peace. How totally wonderful.
My solution is to gage the Lindsey Grahams for a year.
What will do more good for peace – B52s or shutting up Graham's elk?
I remember when Trump said he knew more than the generals and was viciously attacked for it.
It turns out he did know more than the generals just by knowing it was a waste. Trump was
pushed by politics to defer to the generals who always have an answer when it comes to a war
– more men, more weapons, more time.
"The less smart, less informed Americans are constrained by the necessity of getting on
with their meager lives; they are an apolitical mass that possesses neither the understanding
nor the capacity to make any difference on the policy front whatsoever."
I wonder if any Abolitionists criticized the slaves for failing to revolt? Probably not;
I'm guessing they were mostly convinced that the negro required intervention from outside,
whether due to their nature or from overwhelming circumstance.
If the enslaved American public is liberated, I hope we'll know what to do with ourselves
afterwards. It'd be a shame to simply end up in another kind of bondage, resentful and
subject to whatever oppressive system replaces the current outrage. Perhaps the next one will
more persuasively convince us that we're important and essential?
We are sheep. We are outraged at these sexual transgressions because the corporate press
tells us to be outraged. We are not outraged at these stupid foreign wars, because the
corporate press does not tell us to be outraged. It's all mass effect, and the comfort of
being in a herd and all expressing the same feelings.
Thank you, Andrew J. Bacevich, for your words of wisdom and thank you, Mr. Unz, for this
post.
This corporation needs to be dissolved. I've read about "the inertia" of Federal Government
that has morphed into a cash cow for a century of wasted tax dollars funding the MIIC, now
the MIIC. Does our existence have to end in financial ruin or, worse yet, some foreign entity
creating havoc on our soil?
The Founders NEVER intended that the US of A become a meddler in other Sovereignty's internal
affairs or the destroyer of Nation States that do not espoused our "doctrine." Anyone without
poop for brains knows that this is about Imperialism and greed, fueled by money and an
insatiable luster for MORE.
This should be easier to change than it appears. Is there no will? After all, it Is our
Master's money that lubricates the machinery. So, we continue to provide the lubrication for
our Masters like a bunch of imbeciles that allow them to survail our words and movements.
Somebody please explain our stupidity.
the folks in the US are sick of the wars, contrary to Bacevich. They simply will vote come
next election accordingly. They register their disgust in all the polls.
This article is not very useful. More punditry puff.
No comments on the Next War for Israel being cooked up by the new crop of neocon
youngsters, I guess, and Trump who will trump, trump, trump into the next War for the
Jews.
How about some political science on Iran, Syria, Hisbollah, Hamas and the US, Arabia,
Judenstaat axis of evil?
Hey Bacevich? When you link to WashPost and NYTimes to make your points, you don't. They
block access if you've already read links to those two papers three times each and can no
longer, for the month, read there. When folks link to papers that won't let you read, it
makes one wonder why.
I believe Americans are damned sick and tired of the stupid, needless war in Afghanistan. But
then they should have been sick and tired of stupid , needless wars like Korea, Vietnam and
Iraq, and probably most of them were. But it's easy to be complacent when someone else's son
is doing the fighting and dying And it's easy to be complacent when your stomach is full and
you have plenty of booze and pain killers available. There will be a day of reckoning when
the next big economic bust arrives and which may make the Great Depression paltry by
comparison. America is a far different place then it was in the 1930s when our population was
140 million. Americans were not so soft and the conveniences we now take for granted not
available. When the supermarkets run out of food, watch out. There may not even be any soup
lines to stand in.
In truth, U.S. commanders have quietly shelved any expectations of achieving an actual
victory -- traditionally defined as "imposing your will on the enemy" -- in favor of a more
modest conception of success.
Your assumptions are wrong about the US goal of the invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan and Iraq were not invaded to establish democracy or impose American will
whatever that is. Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded to establish a temporary military staging ground for a
US invasion of Iran, the designated regional enemy of Israel. As long as the current regime in Iran remains, the US will remain in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
And minerals! Eric Prince himself recently tried to sell the idea of having his private
militias do the fighting in Afghanistan for the US and finance it by mining said country's
minerals, thus making himself even richer.
I was onboard with Mr. Bacevich, until I got to this:
Almost as soon as the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, coalition efforts to create
effective Afghan security forces commenced. So, too, did attempts to reduce the production
of the opium that has funded the Taliban insurgency
What utter rubbish! The Taliban was instrumental in shutting down the poppy production
until the CIA came along and restarted it to fund their black ops.
We have the reverse Midas touch. Everything we touch (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.,
etc.) turns to shit. We supposedly attack countries to liberate them from their tyrants who
are supposedly killing their own people, and end up killing more people than all of them put
together. And, oh yes, we have our favorite tyrants (Saudis, Israelis) whom we provide with
horrible weapons (like cluster bombs) to help them kill people we hate.
Mr. Bacevich is right about the lack of outrage about our wars, but the current Weinstein
explosion consists of hordes of mostly American female victims, mostly white, a (very) few
jews, and a few men, who have the stage to complain about their oppressors. What would be the
counterpart of that w.r.t. the wars? Millions of brown victims in far away lands that most of
us couldn't even find on a map? How likely is that to happen?
So yes, no outrage, and none likely. The last 17 years have proven that.
You don't know the American has been paying everything through monopoly money printed
through the thin air since WWI, i.e. a keystroke on the Federal Reserve's computer? No wonder
the Americans have been waging reckless wars all over the world on the fabricated phantom WMD
allegations as humanitarian intervention relentlessly.
Romans did not stop waging reckless wars until their empire collapsed; the British
imitates the Romans and the American is born out of the British, hence the Americans will no
stop waging reckless wars until their empire collapsed like the Romans.
"... The Russia Investigation shifts to Clinton's Political Rivals ..."
"... Let me get this straight: The Democrats think Stein siphoned votes away from Hillary, so Stein must be a "Russian agent". Is that it? ..."
"... The persecution of Jill Stein strips away the facade once and for all exposing Russia-gate as a complete fraud that is being used to exact revenge on the adversaries of Hillary Clinton and her reprobate friends. The New York Times even admits as much. ..."
"... That's what's really really going on, the fatcat honchos behind the scenes are just settling scores for Hillary's lost election. It's payback time for the Clinton Mafia. Here's more baloney from the Times: ..."
"... Give me a break. Does anyone on the Senate Intelligence Committee honestly believe that Jill Stein is a Russian agent? ..."
"... Of course not. They're just harassing her to send a message to anyone who might be thinking about running for president in the future. They're saying, "You'd better watch your step or we'll trump-up charges against you and make your life a living hell. Isn't that the message?You're damn right it is! ..."
"... "This is a witch hunt. It is neo-McCarthyism, plain and simple. The people who are outright calling Stein a Russian agent are making a complete mockery of themselves and of the American political process ..."
"... Dragging Stein into this mess shows Clinton Democrats up for what they really are. It proves that the 'Resist' crowd's crusade is not just about Trump and "collusion" -- it's also about discrediting all dissenting American voices and establishing their own definition of what political opposition is supposed to look like -- and for the Clinton cult, it's not supposed to look like Jill Stein . ..."
"... Anyone who disagrees with the Democrats is a Putin puppet -- and if you've ever been to Moscow, forget it -- don't even bother trying to defend yourself. Off with your head." ("McCarthy-style targeting of Jill Stein proves Democrats have truly lost the plot", RT) ..."
"... "The Socialist Equality Party condemns the targeting of Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate in the 2016 election, by the neo-McCarthyite witch-hunters on the Senate Intelligence Committee . The attack on Stein, spearheaded by the Democratic Party, is an unconstitutional attempt to delegitimize and suppress political opposition to the monopoly of the capitalist two-party system . ..."
"... This is the Orwellian reality of America in 2017, ruled by two right-wing, oligarchic parties that can and will tolerate no political opposition . ..."
"... If you're a liberal and you hate Donald Trump, then you probably see the Russia-gate investigation as your best chance to achieve the Golden Grail of "impeachment". But are you willing to compromise your principles, join forces with the sinister and unscrupulous Clinton cabal, and throw allies like Jill Stein under the bus to achieve your goal? ..."
"... How high a price are you willing to pay to get rid of Trump? That's the question that every liberal in America should be asking themselves. And they'd better answer it fast before it's too late. ..."
"... Mueller is clearly not the upstanding 'protector of American values' he is painted he is a servile political degenerate. A lifetime of betrayal has rendered him ethically autistic. He is blind to the way his own actions condemn him before reasonable minds. Hopefully he will wake up when condemned hiself in an American Court of Law at some future date. ..."
"... According to Edward Aguilar of Project for Nuclear Awareness, cancelling construction of the new submarines, reducing the current number of such subs, and retiring rather than replacing nuclear warheads and a couple hundred ICBMs would save $270 billion. ..."
"... The weapons oligarchy appears to be a racketeering-influenced and corrupt organization. Luckily, the RICO Act provides for heavy criminal penalties for such death-dealing corruption. ..."
This review way written almost two year ago. The new President is now sitting in White house. Nothing changed.
The problem with Bacevich' views is that neoliberalism dictates expansion and maintenance of neoliberal empire as well in best
Trotskyism tradition "export of neoliberal revolution" using bayonets, if other means do not work. So this is the nature of the
neoliberal beast, not an aberration like he assumes. Militarism is essence of US foreign policy under neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... This book, Bacevich's eighth, extends his string of brutal, bracing and essential critiques of the pernicious role of reflexive militarism in American foreign policy. As in past books, Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. Assailing generals, journalists and foreign policy experts alike, he links together more than a dozen military interventions that span 35 years and declares them a single war. Bacevich analyzes each intervention, looking for common themes from Carter's late 1970s missteps to Barack Obama's widespread use of assassination by drone strike today. ..."
"... A presumption that using military power signified to friends and foes that Washington was getting serious about a problem diminished the role of diplomats and diplomacy. " 'Getting serious' also implied a preference for uniforms over suits as the principal agents of U.S. policy," Bacevich writes. "Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse would be true." ..."
"... In another repeated mistake, triumphalist American commanders prematurely declare victory without realizing that their opponent has simply withdrawn to fight another day as a guerrilla force, as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001. They also personalize the enemy, wrongly assuming that the removal of figures like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi will instantly end conflict. ..."
"... From Somalia in 1993 to Yemen today, American commanders and policy makers overestimated the advantage American military technology bestows on them. And most crucially of all, the United States has failed to decide whether it is, in fact, at war. ..."
"... "In the war for the greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course midway in between," Bacevich writes. "Instead of intimidating, U.S. military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated a lack of both competence and determination." ..."
"... For all that, Bacevich is right that the United States' reflexive use of armed intervention in the Middle East is folly. An unquestioning faith in military might and an underinvestment in diplomacy has tied Washington in a policy straitjacket. Bacevich's call for Americans to rethink their nation's militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential. ..."
BOOK REVIEW: AMERICA'S WAR FOR THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST (A Military History) By Andrew J. Bacevich
Illustrated. 453 pp. Random House. $30.
In the opening chapter of his latest book, the military historian Andrew J. Bacevich blames Jimmy Carter, a president commonly
viewed as more meek than martial, for unwittingly spawning 35 years of American military intervention in the Middle East. Bacevich
argues that three mistakes by Carter set precedents that led to decades of squandered American lives and treasure.
First, Carter called on Americans to stop worshiping "self-indulgence and consumption" and join a nationwide effort to conserve
energy. Self-sacrifice, he argued in what is now widely derided as Carter's "malaise speech," would free Americans from their dependence
on foreign oil and "help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country."
The president came across as more hectoring pastor than visionary leader, Bacevich argues in "America's War for the Greater Middle
East." His guileless approach squandered an opportunity to persuade Americans reeling from high foreign oil prices to trade "dependence
for autonomy."
Carter's second mistake was authorizing American support to guerrillas fighting a Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, a move
that eventually helped fuel the spread of radical Islam. Finally, in a misguided effort to counter views that he was "too soft,"
Carter declared that the United States would respond with military force to any outside effort to seize Persian Gulf oil fields.
"This statement, subsequently enshrined as the Carter Doctrine, inaugurated America's war for the greater Middle East," Bacevich
writes.
This book, Bacevich's eighth, extends his string of brutal, bracing and essential critiques of the pernicious role of reflexive
militarism in American foreign policy. As in past books, Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. Assailing generals,
journalists and foreign policy experts alike, he links together more than a dozen military interventions that span 35 years and declares
them a single war. Bacevich analyzes each intervention, looking for common themes from Carter's late 1970s missteps to Barack Obama's
widespread use of assassination by drone strike today.
Washington's penchant for intervention, Bacevich contends, is driven by more than America's thirst for oil or the military-industrial
complex's need for new enemies. In addition to these two factors, he argues that "a deeply pernicious collective naïveté" among both
Republicans and Democrats spawns interventions doomed by "confusion and incoherence."
The ultimate responsibility for the United States' actions lies with an "oblivious" American public engrossed in "shallow digital
enthusiasms and the worship of celebrity," Bacevich writes. Americans support freedom, democracy and prosperity in other nations,
he tells us, as long as they get the lion's share of it. "Ensuring that Americans enjoy their rightful quota (which is to say, more
than their fair share) of freedom, abundance and security comes first," Bacevich says. "Everything else figures as an afterthought."
Bacevich's argument is heavy-handed at times, but when he writes about military strategy, he is genuinely incisive. Citing numerous
examples, he convincingly argues that destructive myths about the efficacy of American military power blind policy makers, generals
and voters. The use of overwhelming lethal force does not immediately cause dictators or terrorists to turn tail and run, even if
that's what politicians in Washington want to believe. Rather, it often leads to resentment, chaos and resistance.
A presumption that using military power signified to friends and foes that Washington was getting serious about a problem
diminished the role of diplomats and diplomacy. " 'Getting serious' also implied a preference for uniforms over suits as the principal
agents of U.S. policy," Bacevich writes. "Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse
would be true."
In another repeated mistake, triumphalist American commanders prematurely declare victory without realizing that their opponent
has simply withdrawn to fight another day as a guerrilla force, as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001. They also personalize the enemy,
wrongly assuming that the removal of figures like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi will instantly end conflict.
From Somalia in 1993 to Yemen today, American commanders and policy makers overestimated the advantage American military technology
bestows on them. And most crucially of all, the United States has failed to decide whether it is, in fact, at war.
"In the war for the greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course
midway in between," Bacevich writes. "Instead of intimidating, U.S. military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated
a lack of both competence and determination." The historical forces at work in the Middle East are different from the dynamics
that led to American victories in World War II and the Cold War. American officials have failed to understand that. What's more,
a deluded Washington foreign policy establishment believes that an American way of life based on "consumption and choice" will be
accepted over time in the "Islamic world."
But it is here, in his description of the "Islamic world," that Bacevich stumbles. What is missing in this book about "the greater
Middle East" are the people of the greater Middle East. Bacevich's most highly developed Muslim character in these pages is Saddam
Hussein. The former Afghan president Hamid Karzai is a distant second. Beyond those two, the rest of the world's estimated 1.6 billion
Muslims come across as two-dimensional caricatures.
And so Bacevich lumps together vastly different nationalities - from Bosnians to Iraqis to Somalis - often referring to all of
them primarily as "Muslims." The dizzying complexities of each country's history, politics, culture, resources and rivalries are
missing. And when it comes to how "Muslims" view the world, Bacevich veers into the simplistic essentialism that he accuses Washington
policy makers of following.
Bacevich suggests that in the "Islamic world" lifestyles based on "consumption and choice" might not work. Such broad-brush statements
might well be considered simplistic and even bigoted if applied to other faiths. Can one contend that a "Christian world," "Hindu
world" or "Jewish world" exists? Are such generalizations analytically useful? Do the world's hundreds of millions of Muslims practice
their faith identically?
As a result of this essentialism, Bacevich glosses over a vital point about the Middle East today: A historic and brutal struggle
between radicals and modernists for the future of the region is underway. One can argue that the United States has no place in that
fight, but making sweeping generalizations about Muslims as Bacevich does limits our understanding of the forces at work in the region.
It also plays into the hands of extremists who seek to divide the world by faith.
In the most troubling passage of the book, Bacevich breezily questions pluralism itself. "According to one of the prevailing shibboleths
of the present age, this commingling of cultures is inherently good," he writes. "It fosters pluralism, thereby enriching everyday
life. Yet cultural interaction also induces friction, whether spontaneously generated or instigated by demagogues and provocateurs."
We do live in a dangerous world, but it is also an inevitably interconnected one. The commingling of cultures cannot be stopped.
Nor should it be.
For all that, Bacevich is right that the United States' reflexive use of armed intervention in the Middle East is folly. An
unquestioning faith in military might and an underinvestment in diplomacy has tied Washington in a policy straitjacket. Bacevich's
call for Americans to rethink their nation's militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential.
David Rohde is the national security investigations editor for Reuters and a contributing editor for The Atlantic.
This review way written almost two year ago. The new President is now sitting in White house. Nothing changed.
The problem with Bacevich' views is that neoliberalism dictates expansion and maintenance of neoliberal empire as well in best
Trotskyism tradition "export of neoliberal revolution" using bayonets, if other means do not work. So this is the nature of the
neoliberal beast, not an aberration like he assumes. Militarism is essence of US foreign policy under neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... This book, Bacevich's eighth, extends his string of brutal, bracing and essential critiques of the pernicious role of reflexive militarism in American foreign policy. As in past books, Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. Assailing generals, journalists and foreign policy experts alike, he links together more than a dozen military interventions that span 35 years and declares them a single war. Bacevich analyzes each intervention, looking for common themes from Carter's late 1970s missteps to Barack Obama's widespread use of assassination by drone strike today. ..."
"... A presumption that using military power signified to friends and foes that Washington was getting serious about a problem diminished the role of diplomats and diplomacy. " 'Getting serious' also implied a preference for uniforms over suits as the principal agents of U.S. policy," Bacevich writes. "Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse would be true." ..."
"... In another repeated mistake, triumphalist American commanders prematurely declare victory without realizing that their opponent has simply withdrawn to fight another day as a guerrilla force, as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001. They also personalize the enemy, wrongly assuming that the removal of figures like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi will instantly end conflict. ..."
"... From Somalia in 1993 to Yemen today, American commanders and policy makers overestimated the advantage American military technology bestows on them. And most crucially of all, the United States has failed to decide whether it is, in fact, at war. ..."
"... "In the war for the greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course midway in between," Bacevich writes. "Instead of intimidating, U.S. military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated a lack of both competence and determination." ..."
"... For all that, Bacevich is right that the United States' reflexive use of armed intervention in the Middle East is folly. An unquestioning faith in military might and an underinvestment in diplomacy has tied Washington in a policy straitjacket. Bacevich's call for Americans to rethink their nation's militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential. ..."
BOOK REVIEW: AMERICA'S WAR FOR THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST (A Military History) By Andrew J. Bacevich
Illustrated. 453 pp. Random House. $30.
In the opening chapter of his latest book, the military historian Andrew J. Bacevich blames Jimmy Carter, a president commonly
viewed as more meek than martial, for unwittingly spawning 35 years of American military intervention in the Middle East. Bacevich
argues that three mistakes by Carter set precedents that led to decades of squandered American lives and treasure.
First, Carter called on Americans to stop worshiping "self-indulgence and consumption" and join a nationwide effort to conserve
energy. Self-sacrifice, he argued in what is now widely derided as Carter's "malaise speech," would free Americans from their dependence
on foreign oil and "help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country."
The president came across as more hectoring pastor than visionary leader, Bacevich argues in "America's War for the Greater Middle
East." His guileless approach squandered an opportunity to persuade Americans reeling from high foreign oil prices to trade "dependence
for autonomy."
Carter's second mistake was authorizing American support to guerrillas fighting a Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, a move
that eventually helped fuel the spread of radical Islam. Finally, in a misguided effort to counter views that he was "too soft,"
Carter declared that the United States would respond with military force to any outside effort to seize Persian Gulf oil fields.
"This statement, subsequently enshrined as the Carter Doctrine, inaugurated America's war for the greater Middle East," Bacevich
writes.
This book, Bacevich's eighth, extends his string of brutal, bracing and essential critiques of the pernicious role of reflexive
militarism in American foreign policy. As in past books, Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. Assailing generals,
journalists and foreign policy experts alike, he links together more than a dozen military interventions that span 35 years and declares
them a single war. Bacevich analyzes each intervention, looking for common themes from Carter's late 1970s missteps to Barack Obama's
widespread use of assassination by drone strike today.
Washington's penchant for intervention, Bacevich contends, is driven by more than America's thirst for oil or the military-industrial
complex's need for new enemies. In addition to these two factors, he argues that "a deeply pernicious collective naïveté" among both
Republicans and Democrats spawns interventions doomed by "confusion and incoherence."
The ultimate responsibility for the United States' actions lies with an "oblivious" American public engrossed in "shallow digital
enthusiasms and the worship of celebrity," Bacevich writes. Americans support freedom, democracy and prosperity in other nations,
he tells us, as long as they get the lion's share of it. "Ensuring that Americans enjoy their rightful quota (which is to say, more
than their fair share) of freedom, abundance and security comes first," Bacevich says. "Everything else figures as an afterthought."
Bacevich's argument is heavy-handed at times, but when he writes about military strategy, he is genuinely incisive. Citing numerous
examples, he convincingly argues that destructive myths about the efficacy of American military power blind policy makers, generals
and voters. The use of overwhelming lethal force does not immediately cause dictators or terrorists to turn tail and run, even if
that's what politicians in Washington want to believe. Rather, it often leads to resentment, chaos and resistance.
A presumption that using military power signified to friends and foes that Washington was getting serious about a problem
diminished the role of diplomats and diplomacy. " 'Getting serious' also implied a preference for uniforms over suits as the principal
agents of U.S. policy," Bacevich writes. "Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse
would be true."
In another repeated mistake, triumphalist American commanders prematurely declare victory without realizing that their opponent
has simply withdrawn to fight another day as a guerrilla force, as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001. They also personalize the enemy,
wrongly assuming that the removal of figures like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi will instantly end conflict.
From Somalia in 1993 to Yemen today, American commanders and policy makers overestimated the advantage American military technology
bestows on them. And most crucially of all, the United States has failed to decide whether it is, in fact, at war.
"In the war for the greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course
midway in between," Bacevich writes. "Instead of intimidating, U.S. military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated
a lack of both competence and determination." The historical forces at work in the Middle East are different from the dynamics
that led to American victories in World War II and the Cold War. American officials have failed to understand that. What's more,
a deluded Washington foreign policy establishment believes that an American way of life based on "consumption and choice" will be
accepted over time in the "Islamic world."
But it is here, in his description of the "Islamic world," that Bacevich stumbles. What is missing in this book about "the greater
Middle East" are the people of the greater Middle East. Bacevich's most highly developed Muslim character in these pages is Saddam
Hussein. The former Afghan president Hamid Karzai is a distant second. Beyond those two, the rest of the world's estimated 1.6 billion
Muslims come across as two-dimensional caricatures.
And so Bacevich lumps together vastly different nationalities - from Bosnians to Iraqis to Somalis - often referring to all of
them primarily as "Muslims." The dizzying complexities of each country's history, politics, culture, resources and rivalries are
missing. And when it comes to how "Muslims" view the world, Bacevich veers into the simplistic essentialism that he accuses Washington
policy makers of following.
Bacevich suggests that in the "Islamic world" lifestyles based on "consumption and choice" might not work. Such broad-brush statements
might well be considered simplistic and even bigoted if applied to other faiths. Can one contend that a "Christian world," "Hindu
world" or "Jewish world" exists? Are such generalizations analytically useful? Do the world's hundreds of millions of Muslims practice
their faith identically?
As a result of this essentialism, Bacevich glosses over a vital point about the Middle East today: A historic and brutal struggle
between radicals and modernists for the future of the region is underway. One can argue that the United States has no place in that
fight, but making sweeping generalizations about Muslims as Bacevich does limits our understanding of the forces at work in the region.
It also plays into the hands of extremists who seek to divide the world by faith.
In the most troubling passage of the book, Bacevich breezily questions pluralism itself. "According to one of the prevailing shibboleths
of the present age, this commingling of cultures is inherently good," he writes. "It fosters pluralism, thereby enriching everyday
life. Yet cultural interaction also induces friction, whether spontaneously generated or instigated by demagogues and provocateurs."
We do live in a dangerous world, but it is also an inevitably interconnected one. The commingling of cultures cannot be stopped.
Nor should it be.
For all that, Bacevich is right that the United States' reflexive use of armed intervention in the Middle East is folly. An
unquestioning faith in military might and an underinvestment in diplomacy has tied Washington in a policy straitjacket. Bacevich's
call for Americans to rethink their nation's militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential.
David Rohde is the national security investigations editor for Reuters and a contributing editor for The Atlantic.
Widespread anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide
and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the global
so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs.
Notable quotes:
"... For all the haters of us ugly Americans, just remember that we at this blog are suffering in our country standing up for the truth, pitted against our neighbors, coworkers, and friends in the arena of political debate and decrying the massive injustice of our foreign aggression. ..."
"... The world knows the military industrial complex that has worked over years, and year to create the ugly tentacles throughout what was once our government has been usurped. Dollars. All these bastards see is dollars. Not human life. Not the potential of that lost life in science, math, technology. Just dollars. ..."
"... or heavens sakes the voters in Arizona returned the worst of ALL Warmongers to Congress. ..."
"... We can't even get the voters to learn that their votes equal WAR pushed by both Parties they are aligned with. Get real. Our challenge is yours. Help us! ..."
"... I know there are many highly intelligent Americans, who are already today suffering and paying a price. And I agree that (widespread) anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the global so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs. ..."
"... Playing groups of people against one another is the oldest domination trick in the world, but it seems to work every single time...sad! ;-) ..."
"... I'm from California. Technically the USA. My take on things is we United States of Americans are exceptional. Most of us are exceptionally ignorant and violent. That is exceptionally sad. ..."
For all the haters of us ugly Americans, just remember that we at this blog are suffering in our country standing up for the
truth, pitted against our neighbors, coworkers, and friends in the arena of political debate and decrying the massive injustice
of our foreign aggression.
I won't call ya out by name, but lumping us forlorn sacks into your "untouchable" category reeks of reactionary arrogance that
is, to pay patrons at this fine blog their due, beneath you.
In the mean time, American issues = issues concerning the empire they we all want to see destroyed. Liberating Americans should
also be on your wish list.
The world knows the military industrial complex that has worked over years, and year to create the ugly tentacles throughout
what was once our government has been usurped. Dollars. All these bastards see is dollars. Not human life. Not the potential of
that lost life in science, math, technology. Just dollars.
For heavens sakes the voters in Arizona returned the worst of ALL Warmongers to Congress. And you, the World, think
for a moment we, citizens in this colony, have a snowball's chance in hell reeling these creatures in all by ourselves are sorely
mistaken.
We can't even get the voters to learn that their votes equal WAR pushed by both Parties they are aligned with. Get real. Our
challenge is yours. Help us!
I know there are many highly intelligent Americans, who are already today suffering and paying a price. And I agree that
(widespread) anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide
and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the
global so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs.
Playing groups of people against one another is the oldest domination trick in the world, but it seems to work every single
time...sad! ;-)
I'm from California. Technically the USA. My take on things is we United States of Americans are exceptional. Most of us
are exceptionally ignorant and violent. That is exceptionally sad.
I am very glad to have found MoA and the crew of experts. I have learned so very much.
Big up b! Booyakah as they say in JA. God help us.
"... I'll have a wild guess. Give me a U, give me an S, give me an A. USA. Nah, couldn't be. Washington had nothing to do with N Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Australia (really, 1975), Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria, the Ukraine and Yeltsin's Russia. No way, that's just scratching the surface of a myriad totally inexplicable events, such as 9/11, which US governments couldn't possibly have had anything to do with. Al Qaida and ISIS? Nah, just random accidents of history. Oh hold on a minute, can I see a pattern here? ..."
"... You left out Iran, Operation Ajax. When CIA gifted 25 years of the Shah to the Iranian People. Because the Soviets would have enslaved and murdered the Iranian People. ..."
I'll have a wild guess. Give me a U, give me an S, give me an A. USA. Nah, couldn't be. Washington had nothing to do with
N Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Australia (really, 1975), Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria, the Ukraine and Yeltsin's Russia. No
way, that's just scratching the surface of a myriad totally inexplicable events, such as 9/11, which US governments couldn't possibly
have had anything to do with. Al Qaida and ISIS? Nah, just random accidents of history. Oh hold on a minute, can I see a pattern
here?
HOLY COW!! I'm shocked I tell ya. There was me, all these years, believing that, for example, Truman (sic), Nixon, Bush 1 &
2, Obomber and Killery were angels of light, truth and justice. I'm amazed that Julian Assange had to seek asylum and that Trump
might never do anything about it. Oh well, Viva Vladimir Vladimirovich, at least so far he hasn't disillusioned me, nor growing
millions around the World, including decent people in the USA.
You left out Iran, Operation Ajax. When CIA gifted 25 years of the Shah to the Iranian People. Because the Soviets
would have enslaved and murdered the Iranian People.
More smoke and mirrors, nicely done though. If JA gets rolled up into the general Obama Admin "never saw a stitchup we didn't
like" narrative, he may very well become eligible for a presidential pardon, or, at the very least, a dropping of federal charges.
Of course, that assumes some high-ranking officials are eventually put on trial (still a supposition, at this point).
But the stench of the swamp is getting ever stronger. Methinks it's almost time to strike a match and burn off some of that
nasty stinky methane. Perhaps it could be used to power a new generation of eco-friendly, green mobile-guillotine vehicles.
MAGA, bitchez! A Happy New Year to you Mr President and to all ZHers.
Yes Tyler, I have been patient so far, but we do miss the edit button.
Looks like this guy is a globalist and neocon in his major views. A defender of the "unipolar moment"
2018 might be a tough year for Putin as Trump administration is not only as aggressive as Obama administration was, but
to certain extent is more reckless then Obama administration.
Oil price rise might help a bit, so the attempt to push Russia into economic chaos via artificial lowering of oil prices (With
Saudi support) did not work all too well , but the US became way too aggressive under Trump and that might provoke retaliation on
the part of Russia. Which can unleash a spiral fo violence leading to a war.
Notable quotes:
"... lethal military aid to Ukraine, preside over a tightening of sanctions on the Kremlin, the buildup of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern Europe and designate Russia as a strategic rival of the United States, the foreign policy commentariat would have had a field day. After all, Donald Trump was the "Siberian candidate" who was going to preside over a twenty-first century version of Yalta with his good friend Vladimir Putin. These were the steps that a Hillary Clinton team was expected to make, not someone who had run on a platform of seeking better relations with Moscow. ..."
"... When it comes to Ukraine, the logic appears to be that Russia has too much to lose to restart the conflict and that U.S. efforts to rebuild the Ukrainian security forces will not provoke Russian steps to ascend the ladder of escalation. Likewise, the administration sees no reason for the U.S. to abandon its operations in Syria and does not feel any need to step back from the reiteration of the Obama-era policy that Bashar al-Assad has no political future in Syria. ..."
"... So the starting point for U.S.-Russia relations in 2018 is the Trump administration's insistence that improved U.S.-Russia ties, while desirable, are not essential -- and that the ball is in Moscow's court to make a series of up-front concessions and policy reversals. ..."
"... This is based on the analysis that Russia will face continued economic problems, will not be able to sanctions-proof its economy and will find it increasingly difficult to sustain its current international position. In some ways, this is a variant of the strategy pursued by the Obama administration: to wait for the moment when Russia can, proverbially, no longer pay the bills. ..."
"... Putin's starting point -- based on his experience in dealing with four previous U.S. presidents, and now having a better sense of how U.S. domestic politics works -- is not to offer any first moves given the lack of confidence he has that any gestures would be reciprocated. ..."
"... Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the Captain Jerome E. Levy chair of economic geography and national security at the Naval War College. He is also a contributing editor to the National Interest. The views expressed here are his own. ..."
lethal
military aid to Ukraine, preside over a tightening of sanctions on the Kremlin, the buildup
of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern Europe and designate Russia as a strategic rival of the
United States, the foreign policy commentariat would have had a field day. After all, Donald
Trump was the "Siberian candidate" who was going to preside over a twenty-first century version
of Yalta with his good friend
Vladimir Putin. These were the steps that a Hillary Clinton team was expected to make, not
someone who had run on a platform of seeking better relations with Moscow.
Yet here we are. The situation has changed over the past year from what was expected of
Trump (when champagne corks popped in the Duma after the results of the November 2016 election
were broadcast) to reports that Russian officials quietly admit that they miss dealing with
their Obama-era counterparts. So what does this portend for the future?
The strategic ethos of the Trump administration appears to be settling in to a variant of
the old "selective cooperation" approach, buttressed by Trump's own personal assessment that
U.S. diplomats were too keen to offer concessions and inducements to other countries to get
their support when that support would have materialized in the end. As I previously noted, the
gamble that the Trump team is taking vis-a-vis North Korea is that Russia and China have too
much at stake to permit an unraveling of the situation on the Korean peninsula, and therefore
there is no need for Washington to offer compromises in other areas to get Beijing and Moscow
on board for tough new measures directed against Kim Jong-un. When it comes to Ukraine, the
logic appears to be that Russia has too much to lose to restart the conflict and that U.S.
efforts to rebuild the Ukrainian security forces will not provoke Russian steps to ascend the
ladder of escalation. Likewise, the administration sees no reason for the U.S. to abandon its
operations in Syria and does not feel any need to step back from the reiteration of the
Obama-era policy that Bashar al-Assad has no political future in Syria.
So the starting point for U.S.-Russia relations in 2018 is the Trump administration's
insistence that improved U.S.-Russia ties, while desirable, are not essential -- and that the
ball is in Moscow's court to make a series of up-front concessions and policy reversals.
This
is based on the analysis that Russia will face continued economic problems, will not be able to
sanctions-proof its economy and will find it increasingly difficult to sustain its current
international position. In some ways, this is a variant of the strategy pursued by the Obama
administration: to wait for the moment when Russia can, proverbially, no longer pay the
bills.
Putin's starting point -- based on his experience in dealing with four previous U.S.
presidents, and now having a better sense of how U.S. domestic politics works -- is not to
offer any first moves given the lack of confidence he has that any gestures would be
reciprocated. There will always be some Russian transgression that Congress will use as the
excuse for not authorizing sanctions relief. The Russians are also aware that the Trump
administration has added additional stress to the fractures in the trans-Atlantic alliance,
with the previously warm and strong relationship between President Obama and German chancellor
Angela Merkel now replaced by a degree of disdain in both Berlin and Washington for the other
country's leader. America's Asian allies are likewise concerned about the reliability and
staying power of the United States. So Putin might feel it a better strategy to concentrate his
efforts on de-linking key U.S. partners from Washington's preferred agenda, a strategy that has
already produced some early returns in the strategic reorientation of Turkey towards a closer
working relationship with Russia.
... ... ..
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the Captain Jerome E. Levy chair of economic geography and national
security at the Naval War College. He is also a contributing editor to the National Interest.
The views expressed here are his own.
"... I'll have a wild guess. Give me a U, give me an S, give me an A. USA. Nah, couldn't be. Washington had nothing to do with N Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Australia (really, 1975), Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria, the Ukraine and Yeltsin's Russia. No way, that's just scratching the surface of a myriad totally inexplicable events, such as 9/11, which US governments couldn't possibly have had anything to do with. Al Qaida and ISIS? Nah, just random accidents of history. Oh hold on a minute, can I see a pattern here? ..."
"... You left out Iran, Operation Ajax. When CIA gifted 25 years of the Shah to the Iranian People. Because the Soviets would have enslaved and murdered the Iranian People. ..."
I'll have a wild guess. Give me a U, give me an S, give me an A. USA. Nah, couldn't be. Washington had nothing to do with
N Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Australia (really, 1975), Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria, the Ukraine and Yeltsin's Russia. No
way, that's just scratching the surface of a myriad totally inexplicable events, such as 9/11, which US governments couldn't possibly
have had anything to do with. Al Qaida and ISIS? Nah, just random accidents of history. Oh hold on a minute, can I see a pattern
here?
HOLY COW!! I'm shocked I tell ya. There was me, all these years, believing that, for example, Truman (sic), Nixon, Bush 1 &
2, Obomber and Killery were angels of light, truth and justice. I'm amazed that Julian Assange had to seek asylum and that Trump
might never do anything about it. Oh well, Viva Vladimir Vladimirovich, at least so far he hasn't disillusioned me, nor growing
millions around the World, including decent people in the USA.
You left out Iran, Operation Ajax. When CIA gifted 25 years of the Shah to the Iranian People. Because the Soviets
would have enslaved and murdered the Iranian People.
More smoke and mirrors, nicely done though. If JA gets rolled up into the general Obama Admin "never saw a stitchup we didn't
like" narrative, he may very well become eligible for a presidential pardon, or, at the very least, a dropping of federal charges.
Of course, that assumes some high-ranking officials are eventually put on trial (still a supposition, at this point).
But the stench of the swamp is getting ever stronger. Methinks it's almost time to strike a match and burn off some of that
nasty stinky methane. Perhaps it could be used to power a new generation of eco-friendly, green mobile-guillotine vehicles.
MAGA, bitchez! A Happy New Year to you Mr President and to all ZHers.
Yes Tyler, I have been patient so far, but we do miss the edit button.
Looks like this guy is a globalist and neocon in his major views. A defender of the "unipolar moment"
2018 might be a tough year for Putin as Trump administration is not only as aggressive as Obama administration was, but
to certain extent is more reckless then Obama administration.
Oil price rise might help a bit, so the attempt to push Russia into economic chaos via artificial lowering of oil prices (With
Saudi support) did not work all too well , but the US became way too aggressive under Trump and that might provoke retaliation on
the part of Russia. Which can unleash a spiral fo violence leading to a war.
Notable quotes:
"... lethal military aid to Ukraine, preside over a tightening of sanctions on the Kremlin, the buildup of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern Europe and designate Russia as a strategic rival of the United States, the foreign policy commentariat would have had a field day. After all, Donald Trump was the "Siberian candidate" who was going to preside over a twenty-first century version of Yalta with his good friend Vladimir Putin. These were the steps that a Hillary Clinton team was expected to make, not someone who had run on a platform of seeking better relations with Moscow. ..."
"... When it comes to Ukraine, the logic appears to be that Russia has too much to lose to restart the conflict and that U.S. efforts to rebuild the Ukrainian security forces will not provoke Russian steps to ascend the ladder of escalation. Likewise, the administration sees no reason for the U.S. to abandon its operations in Syria and does not feel any need to step back from the reiteration of the Obama-era policy that Bashar al-Assad has no political future in Syria. ..."
"... So the starting point for U.S.-Russia relations in 2018 is the Trump administration's insistence that improved U.S.-Russia ties, while desirable, are not essential -- and that the ball is in Moscow's court to make a series of up-front concessions and policy reversals. ..."
"... This is based on the analysis that Russia will face continued economic problems, will not be able to sanctions-proof its economy and will find it increasingly difficult to sustain its current international position. In some ways, this is a variant of the strategy pursued by the Obama administration: to wait for the moment when Russia can, proverbially, no longer pay the bills. ..."
"... Putin's starting point -- based on his experience in dealing with four previous U.S. presidents, and now having a better sense of how U.S. domestic politics works -- is not to offer any first moves given the lack of confidence he has that any gestures would be reciprocated. ..."
"... Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the Captain Jerome E. Levy chair of economic geography and national security at the Naval War College. He is also a contributing editor to the National Interest. The views expressed here are his own. ..."
lethal
military aid to Ukraine, preside over a tightening of sanctions on the Kremlin, the buildup
of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern Europe and designate Russia as a strategic rival of the
United States, the foreign policy commentariat would have had a field day. After all, Donald
Trump was the "Siberian candidate" who was going to preside over a twenty-first century version
of Yalta with his good friend
Vladimir Putin. These were the steps that a Hillary Clinton team was expected to make, not
someone who had run on a platform of seeking better relations with Moscow.
Yet here we are. The situation has changed over the past year from what was expected of
Trump (when champagne corks popped in the Duma after the results of the November 2016 election
were broadcast) to reports that Russian officials quietly admit that they miss dealing with
their Obama-era counterparts. So what does this portend for the future?
The strategic ethos of the Trump administration appears to be settling in to a variant of
the old "selective cooperation" approach, buttressed by Trump's own personal assessment that
U.S. diplomats were too keen to offer concessions and inducements to other countries to get
their support when that support would have materialized in the end. As I previously noted, the
gamble that the Trump team is taking vis-a-vis North Korea is that Russia and China have too
much at stake to permit an unraveling of the situation on the Korean peninsula, and therefore
there is no need for Washington to offer compromises in other areas to get Beijing and Moscow
on board for tough new measures directed against Kim Jong-un. When it comes to Ukraine, the
logic appears to be that Russia has too much to lose to restart the conflict and that U.S.
efforts to rebuild the Ukrainian security forces will not provoke Russian steps to ascend the
ladder of escalation. Likewise, the administration sees no reason for the U.S. to abandon its
operations in Syria and does not feel any need to step back from the reiteration of the
Obama-era policy that Bashar al-Assad has no political future in Syria.
So the starting point for U.S.-Russia relations in 2018 is the Trump administration's
insistence that improved U.S.-Russia ties, while desirable, are not essential -- and that the
ball is in Moscow's court to make a series of up-front concessions and policy reversals.
This
is based on the analysis that Russia will face continued economic problems, will not be able to
sanctions-proof its economy and will find it increasingly difficult to sustain its current
international position. In some ways, this is a variant of the strategy pursued by the Obama
administration: to wait for the moment when Russia can, proverbially, no longer pay the
bills.
Putin's starting point -- based on his experience in dealing with four previous U.S.
presidents, and now having a better sense of how U.S. domestic politics works -- is not to
offer any first moves given the lack of confidence he has that any gestures would be
reciprocated. There will always be some Russian transgression that Congress will use as the
excuse for not authorizing sanctions relief. The Russians are also aware that the Trump
administration has added additional stress to the fractures in the trans-Atlantic alliance,
with the previously warm and strong relationship between President Obama and German chancellor
Angela Merkel now replaced by a degree of disdain in both Berlin and Washington for the other
country's leader. America's Asian allies are likewise concerned about the reliability and
staying power of the United States. So Putin might feel it a better strategy to concentrate his
efforts on de-linking key U.S. partners from Washington's preferred agenda, a strategy that has
already produced some early returns in the strategic reorientation of Turkey towards a closer
working relationship with Russia.
... ... ..
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the Captain Jerome E. Levy chair of economic geography and national
security at the Naval War College. He is also a contributing editor to the National Interest.
The views expressed here are his own.
Essentially CIA dictates the US foreign policy. The tail is wagging the dog. The current Russophobia hysteria mean
additional billions for CIA and FBI. As simple as that.
The article contain some important observation about self-sustaining nature of the US
militarism. It is able to create new threats and new insurgencies almost at will via CIA activities.
The key problem is that wars are highly profitable for important part of the ruling elite,
especially representing finance and military industrial complex. Also now part of the US
ruling elite now consists of "colonial administrators" which are directly interested in maintaining
and expanding the US empire. This is trap from which nation might not be able to escape.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies. ..."
"... Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. ..."
"... No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them. ..."
"... The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination." ..."
"... Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991. ..."
"... Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. ..."
"... Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States. ..."
"... U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy. ..."
"... The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war. ..."
"... The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years. ..."
"... Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out. ..."
"... Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq. ..."
"... But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant ..."
"... The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective. ..."
"... This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale. ..."
"... China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." ..."
"... As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others. ..."
"... But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike. ..."
"... Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy. ..."
"... In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. ..."
"... The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction. ..."
"... Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budge t of any president since World War Two. ..."
"... Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction. ..."
The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington
seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer,
writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.
As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials
ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed
hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment
that had already killed millions of people.
As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented,
the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as
Pete Seeger satirized it
, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to "credibility": the domestic political credibility
of the politicians involved and America's international credibility as a military power.
Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the
1954 Geneva Accords
and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die
was cast. The CIA's support for the repressive
Diem regime and its successors
ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president
could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could
achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited
from them.
The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book
Roots
of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing,"
Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination."
Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived
the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere,
but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of
Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991.
Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized
intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across
every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility
as Johnson and Nixon did. His predictable response has been to escalate ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa, and to threaten new ones against North Korea, Iran and
Venezuela.
Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries
across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only
become more entrenched over time, as
President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now,
the lack of any actual military threat to the United States.
Ironically but predictably, the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy has finally provoked
a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans.
As I explained in a recent article , North Korea's discovery in 2016 of a U.S. plan to assassinate
its president, Kim Jong Un, and launch a Second Korean War has triggered a crash program to develop
long-range ballistic missiles that could give North Korea a viable nuclear deterrent and prevent
a U.S. attack. But the North Koreans will not feel safe from attack until their leaders and ours
are sure that their missiles can deliver a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.
The CIA's Pretexts for War
U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and
around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book,
The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World ,
was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores
and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher
sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role
of the CIA in U.S. policy.
Prouty surprisingly described the role of the CIA as a response by powerful people and interests
to the abolition of the U.S. Department of War and the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.
Once the role of the U.S. military was redefined as one of defense, in line with the United Nations
Charter's
prohibition against the threat or use of military force in 1945 and similar moves by other military
powers, it would require some kind of crisis or threat to justify using military force in the future,
both legally and politically. The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such
pretexts for war.
The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence
and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating
pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years.
Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National
Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions
to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment,
ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out.
Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis
in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed
VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts
for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq.
CIA in Syria and Africa
But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations
to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty
meant. In late 2011, after destroying Libya and aiding in the torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi,
the CIA and its allies began
flying fighters
and weapons from Libya to Turkey and infiltrating them into Syria. Then, working with Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey, Croatia and other allies, this operation poured
thousands of tons of weapons across Syria's borders to ignite and fuel a full-scale civil war.
Once these covert operations were under way, they ran wild until they had unleashed a savage Al
Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), spawned the even
more savage "Islamic State," triggered
the heaviest
and
probably the deadliest U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam and drawn Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel,
Jordan, Hezbollah, Kurdish militias and almost every state or armed group in the Middle East into
the chaos of Syria's civil war.
Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have expanded their operations across Africa, the U.N.
has published a report titled
Journey to Extremismin Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment
, based on 500 interviews with African militants. This study has found that the kind of special operations
and training missions the CIA and AFRICOM are conducting and supporting in Africa are in fact the
critical "tipping point" that drives Africans to join militant groups like Al Qaeda, Al-Shabab and
Boko Haram.
The report found that government action, such as the killing or detention of friends or family,
was the "tipping point" that drove 71 percent of African militants interviewed to join armed groups,
and that this was a more important factor than religious ideology.
The conclusions of Journey to Extremism in Africa confirm the findings of other similar
studies. The Center for Civilians in Conflict interviewed 250 civilians who joined armed groups in
Bosnia, Somalia, Gaza and Libya for its 2015 study,
The People's Perspectives: Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict . The study
found that the most common motivation for civilians to join armed groups was simply to protect themselves
or their families.
The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and
the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror,"
would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take
on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy
objective.
"The more intimate one becomes with this activity," Prouty wrote, "The more one begins to realize
that such operations are rarely, if ever, initiated from an intent to become involved in pursuit
of some national objective in the first place."
The U.S. justifies the deployment of 6,000 U.S. special forces and military trainers to
53 of the 54 countries in Africa as a response to terrorism. But the U.N.'s Journey to Extremism
in Africa study makes it clear that the U.S. militarization of Africa is in fact the "tipping
point" that is driving Africans across the continent to join armed resistance groups in the first
place.
This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early
60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations
that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed
resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on
a continental scale.
Taking on China
What seems to really be driving the CIA's militarization of U.S. policy in Africa is China's growing
influence on the continent. As Steve Bannon put it in an
interview with the Economist in August, "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."
China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine
named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every
10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against
the wall, just to show we mean business."
China is too powerful and armed with nuclear weapons. So, in this case, the CIA's job would be
to spread violence and chaos to disrupt Chinese trade and investment, and to make African governments
increasingly dependent on U.S. military aid to fight the militant groups spawned and endlessly regenerated
by U.S.-led "counterterrorism" operations.
Neither Ledeen nor Bannon pretend that such policies are designed to build more prosperous or
viable societies in the Middle East or Africa, let alone to benefit their people. They both know
very well what Richard Barnet already understood 45 years ago, that America's unprecedented investment
in weapons, war and CIA covert operations are only good for one thing: to kill people and destroy
infrastructure, reducing cities to rubble, societies to chaos and the desperate survivors to poverty
and displacement.
As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies
into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the
safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash
on others.
But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely
about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop
the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which
we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike.
Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist,
beginning with his book on
The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled
The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's
analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many
ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy.
The Three Scapegoats
In
Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he named North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as his
prime targets for destabilization, economic warfare and, ultimately, the overthrow of their governments,
whether by coup d'etat or the mass destruction of their civilian population and infrastructure.
But Trump's choice of scapegoats for America's failures was obviously not based on a rational reassessment
of foreign policy priorities by the new administration. It was only a tired rehashing of the CIA's
unfinished business with two-thirds of Bush's "axis of evil" and Bush White House official
Elliott Abrams'
failed 2002 coup in Caracas, now laced with explicit and illegal threats of aggression.
How Trump and the CIA plan to sacrifice their three scapegoats for America's failures remains
to be seen. This is not 2001, when the world stood silent at the U.S. bombardment and invasion of
Afghanistan after September 11th. It is more like 2003, when the U.S. destruction of Iraq split the
Atlantic alliance and alienated most of the world. It is certainly not 2011, after Obama's global
charm offensive had rebuilt U.S. alliances and provided cover for French President Sarkozy, British
Prime Minister Cameron, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Arab royals to destroy Libya,
once ranked by the U.N. as the
most developed country
in Africa , now mired in intractable chaos.
In 2017, a U.S. attack on any one of Trump's scapegoats would isolate the United States from many
of its allies and undermine its standing in the world in far-reaching ways that might be more permanent
and harder to repair than the invasion and destruction of Iraq.
In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President
Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to
"make the economy
scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. But the
solid victory of Venezuela's
ruling Socialist Party in recent nationwide gubernatorial elections, despite a long and deep
economic crisis, reveals little public support for the CIA's puppets in Venezuela.
The CIA has successfully discredited the Venezuelan government through economic warfare, increasingly
violent right-wing street protests and a global propaganda campaign. But the CIA has stupidly hitched
its wagon to an extreme right-wing, upper-class opposition that has no credibility with most of the
Venezuelan public, who still turn out for the Socialists at the polls. A CIA coup or U.S. military
intervention would meet fierce public resistance and damage U.S. relations all over Latin America.
Boxing In North Korea
A U.S. aerial bombardment or "preemptive strike" on North Korea could quickly escalate into a
war between the U.S. and China, which has reiterated
its commitment to North
Korea's defense if North Korea is attacked. We do not know exactly what was in the
U.S. war plan discovered by North Korea, so neither can we know how North Korea and China could
respond if the U.S. pressed ahead with it.
Most analysts have long concluded that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be met with a North
Korean artillery and missile barrage that would inflict unacceptable civilian casualties on Seoul,
a metropolitan area of 26 million people, three times the population of New York City. Seoul is only
35 miles from the frontier with North Korea, placing it within range of a huge array of North Korean
weapons. What was already a no-win calculus is now compounded by the possibility that North Korea
could respond with nuclear weapons, turning any prospect of a U.S. attack into an even worse nightmare.
U.S. mismanagement of its relations with North Korea should be an object lesson for its relations
with Iran, graphically demonstrating the advantages of diplomacy, talks and agreements over threats
of war. Under the
Agreed Framework
signed in 1994, North Korea stopped work on two much larger nuclear reactors than the small experimental
one operating at Yongbyong since 1986, which only produces 6 kg of plutonium per year, enough for
one nuclear bomb.
The lesson of Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 after Saddam Hussein had complied with demands that
he destroy Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons and shut down a nascent nuclear program was not
lost on North Korea. Not only did the invasion lay waste to large sections of Iraq with hundreds
of thousands of dead but Hussein himself was hunted down and condemned to death by hanging.
Still, after North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, even its small experimental
reactor was shut down as a result of the
"Six Party Talks" in
2007, all the fuel rods were removed and placed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, and the cooling tower of the reactor was demolished in 2008.
But then, as relations deteriorated, North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapon test and again
began reprocessing spent fuel rods to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
North Korea has now conducted six nuclear weapons tests. The explosions in
the first five tests increased gradually up to 15-25 kilotons, about the yield of the bombs the
U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but estimates for the yield of the 2017 test range
from 110
to 250 kilotons , comparable
to a small hydrogen bomb.
The even greater danger in a new war in Korea is that the U.S. could unleash part of its arsenal
of
4,000 more powerful weapons (100 to 1,200 kilotons), which could kill millions of people and
devastate and poison the region, or even the world, for years to come.
The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks
in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate
defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see
a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction.
China has proposed a
reasonable framework for diplomacy to address the concerns of both sides, but the U.S. insists
on maintaining its propaganda narratives that all the fault lies with North Korea and that it has
some kind of "military solution" to the crisis.
This may be the most dangerous idea we have heard from U.S. policymakers since the end of the
Cold War, but it is the logical culmination of a
systematic normalization of deviant and illegal U.S. war-making that has already cost millions
of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. As historian Gabriel Kolko
wrote in Century of War in 1994, "options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous
and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy
that is possible in official circles."
Demonizing Iran
The idea that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program is seriously contested by the IAEA,
which has examined every allegation presented by the CIA and other Western "intelligence" agencies
as well as Israel. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei revealed many details of this wild
goose chase in his 2011 memoir,
Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times .
When the CIA and its partners reluctantly acknowledged the IAEA's conclusions in a 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ElBaradei issued
a press release confirming that, "the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons
program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."
Since 2007, the IAEA has resolved all its outstanding concerns with Iran. It has verified that
dual-use technologies that Iran imported before 2003 were in fact used for other purposes, and it
has exposed the mysterious "laptop documents" that appeared to show Iranian plans for a nuclear weapon
as forgeries. Gareth Porter thoroughly explored all these questions and allegations and the history
of mistrust that fueled them in his 2014 book,
Manufactured
Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare , which I highly recommend.
But, in the parallel Bizarro world of U.S. politics, hopelessly poisoned by the CIA's
endless disinformation campaigns, Hillary Clinton could repeatedly take false credit for disarming
Iran during her presidential campaign, and neither Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump nor any corporate
media interviewer dared to challenge her claims.
"When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb," Clinton fantasized
in a
prominent foreign policy speech on June 2, 2016, claiming that her brutal sanctions policy "brought
Iran to the table."
In fact, as Trita Parsi documented in his 2012 book,
A Single
Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran , the Iranians were ready, not just
to "come to the table," but to sign a comprehensive agreement based on a U.S. proposal brokered by
Turkey and Brazil in 2010. But, in a classic case of "tail wags dog," the U.S. then rejected its
own proposal because it would have undercut support for tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
In other words, Clinton's sanctions policy did not "bring Iran to the table", but prevented the U.S.
from coming to the table itself.
As a senior State Department official told Trita Parsi, the real problem with U.S. diplomacy with
Iran when Clinton was at the State Department was that the U.S. would not take "Yes" for an answer.
Trump's ham-fisted decertification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA is right out of Clinton's
playbook, and it demonstrates that the CIA is still determined to use Iran as a scapegoat for America's
failures in the Middle East.
The spurious claim that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism is another CIA canard
reinforced by endless repetition. It is true that Iran supports and supplies weapons to Hezbollah
and Hamas, which are both listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. But they are
mainly defensive resistance groups that defend Lebanon and Gaza respectively against invasions and
attacks by Israel.
Shifting attention away from Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other groups that actually commit terrorist crimes around the
world might just seem like a case of the CIA "taking its eyes off the ball," if it wasn't so transparently
timed to frame Iran with new accusations now that the manufactured crisis of the nuclear scare has
run its course.
What the Future Holds
Barack Obama's most consequential international achievement may have been the triumph of symbolism
over substance behind which he expanded and escalated the so-called "war on terror," with a vast
expansion of covert operations and proxy wars that eventually triggered the
heaviest U.S.
aerial bombardments since Vietnam in Iraq and Syria.
Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and
the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the
most expensive military budget of any president since World War Two.
But Obama's expansion of the "war on terror" under cover of his deceptive global public relations
campaign created many more problems than it solved, and Trump and his advisers are woefully ill-equipped
to solve any of them. Trump's expressed desire to place America first and to resist foreign entanglements
is hopelessly at odds with his aggressive, bullying approach to every foreign policy problem.
If the U.S. could threaten and fight its way to a resolution of any of its international problems,
it would have done so already. That is exactly what it has been trying to do since the 1990s, behind
both the swagger and bluster of Bush and Trump and the deceptive charm of Clinton and Obama: a "good
cop – bad cop" routine that should no longer fool anyone anywhere.
But as Lyndon Johnson found as he waded deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy in Vietnam, lying
to the public about unwinnable wars does not make them any more winnable. It just gets more people
killed and makes it harder and harder to ever tell the public the truth.
In unwinnable wars based on lies, the "credibility" problem only gets more complicated, as new
lies require new scapegoats and convoluted narratives to explain away graveyards filled by old lies.
Obama's cynical global charm offensive bought the "war on terror" another eight years, but that only
allowed the CIA to drag the U.S. into more trouble and spread its chaos to more places around the
world.
Meanwhile, Russian President Putin is winning hearts and minds in capitals around the world by
calling for a recommitment to the
rule of international
law , which
prohibits
the threat or use of military force except in self-defense. Every new U.S. threat or act of aggression
will only make Putin's case more persuasive, not least to important U.S. allies like South Korea,
Germany and other members of the European Union, whose complicity in U.S. aggression has until now
helped to give it a false veneer of political legitimacy.
Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition,
as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor.
France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their
own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and
destruction.
Americans had better hope that we are not so exceptional, and that the world will find a diplomatic
rather than a military "solution" to its American problem. Our chances of survival would improve
a great deal if American officials and politicians would finally start to act like something other
than putty in the hands of the CIA
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction
of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on "Obama at War" in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card
on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader .
"... Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. ..."
"... The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources" lie repeatedly and never tell the truth? ..."
"... The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy. We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character." ..."
"... The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. "Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush. ..."
"... The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world? ..."
"... Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned, or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it. ..."
"... For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists" who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term. ..."
"... Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. ..."
"... When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative. ..."
"... ... Americans are "intentionally ignorant" of other countries' rights and sovereignty while other countries had been well-informed of America's malicious intents of destroying other countries' rights and sovereignty ... ..."
"... No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate them. ..."
"... "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." -- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda ..."
"... "Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." ..."
"... "When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility." ..."
"... Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere. If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme and go back to fucking off. The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously European crimes....& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amongst themselves? ..."
"... "The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." ..."
"... I agree with Paul Craig Roberts. He asks "Why" and "How." Well, Paul, here is my answer. Decades of Public Education and over 50 years of mass media monopoly. In an age where FOX is the top rated News station and CNN is considered liberal? Where kids in Public school are offered Chocolate milk and frozen pizza for school breakfast before going to class rooms with 30-40 kids. When Texas political appointees chose school text book content for the nation? A nation where service has ended, replaced with volunteer soldiers signing up for pay and benefits, instead of just serving as service, like we did in the 70's? ..."
"... There is a difference between IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY. As Ron White said, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID". In todays information age, ignorance is a choice. ..."
"... The problem is that we have no "Constitution." That is a fable. The constitution of the separation of powers has been undermined from almost day one. Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. ..."
"... Yes sir. Globalization has failed us. The infinite growth paradigm has failed us, as we knew it would. Castro's Cuba, based in a localized agrarian economy, is looking pretty good about now. Localization is the only way back to sustainability. ..."
"... Books? Who said books? You mean reading books? Let me throw a couple out there: I read 'The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America' last year, it was published 50+ years ago by a very recommended writer and accomplished historian. Boorstin's observations are truer today and even more concerning thanks to our modern, ubiquitous "connectivity". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159979.The_Image ..."
"... Adorno famously pointed out in 1940 that the "Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." ..."
"... He doesn't blame the masses because he simply points out the fact that Americans are completely ignorant and blindly believe anything MSM spoon-fed to them. ..."
"... Paul Craig Roberts believe that the people are capable of creating a better and more just society. Instead the people have voted against their own best interest and overwhelmingly believe the propaganda. ..."
"... "... the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise ..." ..."
"... Governments were created by the history of warfare, which was always organized crime developing on larger and larger scales. In the context, the greater problem is that people like Paul Craig Roberts are reactionary revolutionaries, who provide relatively good analysis, followed by bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals. ..."
"... The "American People" are the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy. As Cognitive Dissonance has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled." ..."
"... The article above was another illustration of the ways that the typical reactionary revolutionaries, Black Sheeple, or controlled opposition groups, respond to recognizing the more and more blatant degrees to which there has been an accelerating "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CONTINUE TO STAY WITHIN THE SAME OLD-FASHIONED BULLSHIT-BASED FRAME OF REFERENCE, INSTEAD, AROUND AND AROUND WE GO, STUCK IN THE SAME DEEPENING RUTS, since they do NOT more fully "face the facts" regarding how and why the only realistic solutions to the real problems would require developing better organized crime. INSTEAD, they continue to promote the same dualities based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the associate bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals ... ..."
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.-Bob Dylan, "Hurricane"
Attorney John W. Whitehead opens a recent posting on his Rutherford Institute website with these words from a song by Bob Dylan.
Why don't all of us feel ashamed? Why only Bob Dylan?
I wonder how many of Bob Dylan's fans understand what he is telling them. American justice has nothing to do with innocence or
guilt. It only has to do with the prosecutor's conviction rate, which builds his political career. Considering the gullibility of
the American people, American jurors are the last people to whom an innocent defendant should trust his fate. The jury will betray
the innocent almost every time.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book (2000, 2008) there is no justice in America. We titled our book, "How the Law Was
Lost." It is a description of how the protective features in law that made law a shield of the innocent was transformed over time
into a weapon in the hands of the government, a weapon used against the people. The loss of law as a shield occurred prior to 9/11,
which "our representative government" used to construct a police state.
The marketing department of our publisher did not appreciate our title and instead came up with "The Tyranny of Good Intentions."
We asked what this title meant. The marketing department answered that we showed that the war on crime, which gave us the abuses
of RICO, the war on child abusers, which gave us show trials of total innocents that bested Joseph Stalin's show trials of the heroes
of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the war on drugs, which gave "Freedom and Democracy America" broken families and by far the highest
incarceration rate in the world all resulted from good intentions to combat crime, to combat drugs, and to combat child abuse. The
publisher's title apparently succeeded, because 15 years later the book is still in print. It has sold enough copies over these years
that, had the sales occurred upon publication would have made the book a "best seller." The book, had it been a best seller, would
have gained more attention, and perhaps law schools and bar associations could have used it to hold the police state at bay.
Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant
and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors
who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. Jurors even convicted
the few survivors of the Clinton regime's assault on the Branch Davidians of Waco, the few who were not gassed, shot, or burned to
death by US federal forces. This religious sect was demonized by Washington and the presstitute media as child abusers who were manufacturing
automatic weapons while they raped children. The charges proved to be false, like Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction,"
and so forth, but only after all of the innocents were dead or in prison.
The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support
the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources"
lie repeatedly and never tell the truth?
The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy.
We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed
ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the
character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character."
Was the American character present in the torture prisons of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and hidden CIA torture dungeons where
US military and CIA personnel provided photographic evidence of their delight in torturing and abusing prisoners? Official reports
have concluded that along with torture went rape, sodomy, and murder. All of this was presided over by American psychologists with
Ph.D. degrees.
We see the same inhumanity in the American police who respond to women children, the elderly, the physically and mentally handicapped,
with gratuitous violence. For no reason whatsoever, police murder, taser, beat, and abuse US citizens. Every day there are more reports,
and despite the reports the violence goes on and on and on. Clearly, the police enjoy inflicting pain and death on citizens whom
the police are supposed to serve and protect. There have always been bullies in the police force, but the wanton police violence
of our time indicates a complete collapse of the American character.
The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home
Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous
countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds
of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over
the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq.
"Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush.
The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the
rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world?
Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its
will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned,
or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing
up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it.
For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit
in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists"
who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British
Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from
terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term.
Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. As John Whitehead makes clear, the
American people cannot even prevent "their police," paid by their tax payments, from murdering 3 Americans each day, and this is
only the officially reported murders. The actual account is likely higher.
What Whitehead describes and what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own
sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples. Americans accept no sense of responsibility for the
millions of peoples that Washington has exterminated over the past two decades dating back to the second term of Clinton. Every one
of the millions of deaths is based on a Washington lie.
When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the
lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the
affirmative.
Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a
criminal enterprise.
benb
The American people have been scientifically mis-educated, propagandized, and beaten down. A disproportionate number of the
under 30's are societal DOAs thanks to ... weaponized TV. But I am being too optimistic...
PrayingMantis
... Americans are "intentionally ignorant" of other countries' rights and sovereignty while other countries had been well-informed
of America's malicious intents of destroying other countries' rights and sovereignty ...
BarnacleBill
No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal
peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate
them.
Also, I have to say that I believe the US empire is a long, long, way from collapse. It is still expanding, for goodness sake.
Empires collapse only when the shrinking process is well under way. (The recent Soviet Empire was exceptional, in this regard.)
It will take several more generations before the darkness lifts, I'm afraid.
macholatte
The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element
in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the
true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely
by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers
of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost
every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking,
we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the
masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
-- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
OldPhart
"Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government
into a criminal enterprise."
I think that happened August 13, 1971, but didn't get fully organized (as in Mafia) until 2000.
PT
The majority have their nose to the grind stone and as such can not see past the grind stone. They rely on "official sources"
to put the rest of the world in order for them, but have no time to audit the "official sources". Would public education suffer
if mothers and fathers were monitoring what the children were learning? But who has got time for that when both parents are working?
How many non-work organizations were your parents and grand-parents involved in (both the wage-earner and the housekeeper)? How
many organizations are you involved in?
Do you constantly hassle your local politicians or do you just say, "I'll vote 'em out in four years time"? (Yes, I know, you
just don't vote. Fair enough, this question is for the voters.)
Yes, some of us are guilty of not fighting back. We had "Shut up and do as you're told" and "Well, if you're not happy with
what you've got then work harder" beaten into us. Some of us are a little awake because, despite all our efforts, the grind stone
was removed from us and then we got to see the larger picture of what lies behind the grind stone. Others are still busy, nose
to the wheel, and all they see is the wheel.
And that is before we even consider HypnoToad on the Idiot Box. Some "need" the idiot box to help them wind down. Some can
no longer enjoy the silence. (Remember Brave New World? It's true. Many people can no longer stand to be around silence, with
nothing but their own thoughts.) I tell everyone that TV is crap. Radio is crap. Newspapers are crap. Turn that shit off for six
months to a year, then go back to it and see what you really think of it. But they can't handle the thought of being away from
"the background noise".
Ever spoken to grandparents who remember wars and depressions? And even amongst the rations and the hardships they still find
positive memories? Time to talk to them again. Or not. I guess we'll get first-hand experience soon enough.
Allow me for a moment to share a brief anecdote about the new "American Character".
Last Sunday I was at the local supermarket. I was at the bakery counter, when suddenly a nicely dressed, Sunday best, non-Caucasian
woman barrels into my cart riding a fat scooter. She rudely demands from the counter person a single cinnamon bun and then wheels
off towards the front. Curious, I follow her up the aisle as she scarfs down the pastry in three bites. She then proceeds to stuff
the empty bag between some soda bottles and scooters through the checkout without paying for her item. In the parking lot she
then disembarks from her scooter, easily lifts it into the trunk of her Cadillac and walks to the drivers side, gets in and speeds
off with her kids, who were in the back seat.
Amazed at what I had just witnessed, I went back into the store, retrieved the empty bag, included it in my few items at checkout
and then went to the manager to share this story with him. He laughed and said there was nothing he could do.
The new "American Character" is that of a sense of entitlement and apathy.
I weep for the future.
Headbanger
Having character is not politically correct. Plus there's no need to develop character anymore because there's no jobs requiring
any!
Consumption is the ONLY value of the inDUHvidual today.
And the less character they have, the more shit they'll consume to feel fulfilled cause they can't get that from themselves.
clymer Sat, 07/25/2015 - 07:34
Macholatte, i don't think PCR is writing from a point of view that is haughty and contemptful of the American people, per se,
but rather from a perspective that is hopeless and thoroughly depressed after contemplating what the American people of many generations
ago has taken for themselves as natural rights from a tyrranical government, only to see the nation slowly morph into something
even worse than what was rejected by the founders.
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within...
He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body
politic so that it can no longer resist."
ThroxxOfVron
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "
"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "
The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe.
It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.
The indiginous populations of the Western Hemisphere were suystemaically and with forethought expropriated, ensalved, and slaughtered.
The indiginous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being margialized,
forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.
...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history
and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most
eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.
Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere.
If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme
and go back to fucking off.
The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously
European crimes.
...& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amonsgst themselves?
Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West.
The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters.
It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only
because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...
El Vaquero
The US will collapse within the next decade if some serious new technology is not developed and the infrastructure to use it
is put in. There is too much debt and not enough material resources to continue growing the ponzi scheme that is our monetary
system at an exponential rate without something breaking. The question is, will it be at the end of this boom-bust cycle, or the
next? And if you look at what is being done on the financial front, which is the backbone of our neo-empire, that is shrinking.
The USD is slowly falling out of favor. There will come a point where that rapidly accelerates. We've been in a state of collapse
for 15 years.
Abitdodgie
ignorance is choice these days and Americans love it.
AetosAeros
Not only a choice, but the ONLY choice they are prepared to accept. Cognitive Dissonance at it's finest. And to make matters
worse, in only the best American fashion, we've asked if if it can be Supersized to go along with the Freedom Lies we feed ourselves.
I've seen the enemy, and....
But only if I'm willing to look in the mirror. Today's American doesn't look for what's right there in front of him/her, we
look for all the new 'Social Norms' that we aren't living up to. This article is completely on target, and I hope Roberts hasn't
decided to do any remodeling, cause too many idle nails guns make for a great Evening News sidebar mention.
Damnit all to hell.
Fun Facts
Fun Facts's picture
protocol #1 - Take control of the media and use it in propaganda for our plans
protocol #2 - Start fights between different races, classes and religions
... ... ...
protocol #13 - Use our media to create entertaining distractions
protocol #14 - Corrupt minds with filth and perversion
protocol #15 - Encourage people to spy on one another
Rubicon727
We educators began seeing this shift towards "me-ism" around 1995-6. Students from low to middle income families became either
apathetic towards "education" or followed their parent's sense of "entitlement." Simultaneously, the tech age captured both population's
attention. Respecting "an education" dwindled.
Fast forward to the present: following the 2007-8 crash, we noted clear divisions between low income vs middle/upper class
students based on their school behavior. Low to slightly middle income students brought to school family tensions and the turmoil
of parents losing their jobs. A rise in non-functioning students increase for teachers while the few well performing students
decline significantly.
Significant societal, financial shifts in America can always be observed in the student population.
reader2010
Mission Accomplished.
"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments,
when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business
a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility."
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985
Lea
"The American people have been scientifically mis-educated".
You've got the answer there. The education system is the root cause of the problem. I'm from Europe, but if I've understood
correctly, the US education policy is to teach as little as possible to children, and expect them to fill in the gaps in the Universities,
past a certain age.
Only, it can't work. Children WILL learn, as childhood is the time when most informations are stored. If the schools don't
provide the knowledge, they will get it from the television, movies or games, with the consequences we can see: ignorance, obsession
with TV and movies stars, inability to differentiate life from movies, and over-simplistic reasoning (if any).
In Europe, we knew full well children learn fast and a lot, and that was why the schools focused on teaching them as much general
knowldge as possible before 18 years old, which is when - it is scientifically proved - the human brain learns best.
Recently, the EU leading countries have understood that having educated masses doesn't pay if you want to lead them like sheep,
so they are perfidiously trying to lower the standards... to the dismay of parents.
My advice, if I may presume to give any, would be to you USA people: teach your children what they won't learn at school, history,
geography, literature (US, European and even Asian, why not), a foreign language if you can, arts, music, etc; and keep them away
from the TV, movies and games.
And please adapt what you teach them to their age.
Refuse-Resist
Bang on! One anecdotal example: insisting that all 3rd graders use calculators "to learn" their multiplication tables. If I
didn't do flashcards at home with my kids they wouldn't know them. As somebody who majored in engineering and took many many advanced math courses, I always felt that knowing your 'times tables'
was essential to being successful in math.
What better way to dumb down otherwise intelligent children by creating a situation where the kid can't divide 32 by 4 without
a calculator. Trigonometry? Calculus? Linear Algebra? Fuggedaboudit.
doctor10
The CB's and MIC have Americans right where they want them. the consequences of 3-4 generations of force feeding Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny
ThroxxOfVron
Some of US were never fucking asleep. Some of us were born with our eyes and minds open. We were, and are: hated, and reviled, and marginalized, and disowned for it. The intellectual repression was, and is, fucking insane and brutal. Words such as ethics and logic exist for what purpose? What are these expressions of? A bygone time? Abstractions?
Those that have tried to preserve their self awareness, empathy, and rationality have been ruthlessly systematically demeaned
and condemed for confronting our families, our culture and institutions. We all have a right to be angry and disgusted and distrustful of the people and institutions around us. I am very fucking angry, and disgusted, and distrustful of the people and institutions around me.
But I still have hope. Nothing lasts forever.. This self-righteous nation called The United States, this twisted fraud of a culture called America, is most dangerously overdue
for receipt of chastisment and retribution. It would be best if the citizenry of the United States taught themselves a lesson in stead of inviting Other nations and cultures
to educate them.
A serious self education may be tedious and imperfect; but, it would be far far cheaper than forcing someone to come all the
way over those oceans to educate Americans at the price they will be demanding for those lessons...
I do not require representation. I will speak my own mind and act of my own accord.
Every time other so-called Americans take a shit on me for thinking and speaking and acting differently it is a badge of honor
and a confirmation of my spiritual and intellectual liberty. They don't know it but they are all gonna run out of shit before
I run out of being free.
ThroxxOfVron
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "
"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "
The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe. It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.
The indiginous populations of the Western Hemisphere were suystemaically and with forethought expropriated, ensalved, and slaughtered.
The indiginous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being margialized,
forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.
...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history
and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most
eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.
Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere. If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme
and go back to fucking off. The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously
European crimes....& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amongst themselves?
See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
That would be: Hell NO. Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West. The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters. It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only
because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...
Mini-Me
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise."
I agree with the first part. As for the latter, "government," by definition, is a criminal enterprise. It doesn't start out
pure as the driven snow and then change into something nefarious over time. Its very essence requires the initiation of violence
or its threat. Government without the gun in the ribs is a contradiction.
The fact that those in power got more votes than the losing criminals does not magically morph these people into paragons of
virtue. They are almost without exception thoroughly deranged human beings. Lying is second nature to them. Looting is part of
the job description. Killing is an end to their means: the acquisition and aggrandizement of power over others, no matter how
much death and destruction results.
These people are sick bastards. To expect something virtuous from them after an endless string of wanton slaughter, theft and
abuse, is simply wishful thinking.
Jack Burton
I agree with Paul Craig Roberts. He asks "Why" and "How." Well, Paul, here is my answer. Decades of Public Education and over
50 years of mass media monopoly. In an age where FOX is the top rated News station and CNN is considered liberal? Where kids in
Public school are offered Chocolate milk and frozen pizza for school breakfast before going to class rooms with 30-40 kids. When
Texas political appointees chose school text book content for the nation? A nation where service has ended, replaced with volunteer
soldiers signing up for pay and benefits, instead of just serving as service, like we did in the 70's?
Paul Craig Roberts points out the police war against the people. That comes right from the very top, orders filter down to
street cops. Street Cops are recruited from groups of young men our fathers generation would have labeled mental! But now they
are hired across the board, shaved heads, tatoos, and a code of silence and Cops Above Justice.
Schools
Media
Crazed Cops
And a corporate owned government.
The people have allowed the elites to rule in their place, never bothering to question the two fake candidates we are allowed
to vote for.
Jtrillian
There is a difference between IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY. As Ron White said, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID". In todays information age, ignorance is a choice.
Part of the problem that no one is talking about or addressing is the population explosion. And it's not linear. Those who
are the least educated, fully dependent others for their survival (welfare), the most complacent, and often with violent criminal
records are breeding the fastest.
Evolution is not guaranteed. It can be argued that the apathy we experience today is a sign of the human race de-evolving.
It takes a certain amount of cognitive ability to observe and question what is going on.
Further, the society we have created where "60 is the new 40" creates very little time to pay attention to what is going on
in the world. Many people rely on mainstream media which is not really news any more. When six corporations control more than
90% of the news, it's the message of the corporate elite that we are fed. This becomes painfully obvious when you start turning
to other sources for information like social media and independent news. Mainstream media today is full of opinion bias - injecting
opinion as though it were fact. They also appeal to the lowest commmon denominator by focusing on emotionally charged topics and
words rather than boring facts. Finally, the mainstream media is extremely guilty of propaganda by omission, ignoring important
events altogether or only presenting one side of the story as is being done with regard to ISIS, Syria, and Ukraine today. People
who watch the mainstream media have no idea that the US played a significant role in arming ISIS and aided in their rise to power.
They have no idea that it was likely ISIS that used chemical weapons in Syria. They have no idea that the US has propped up real
life neo nazis in high government positions in Ukraine. And they have ignored the continuing Fukushima disaster that is STILL
dumping millions of gallons of radioactive water into the ocean every single day.
To sum up, democracies only work when people pay attention and participate. People are either too stupid, too overworked, are
are looking to the wrong sources for information.
Until we break up mainstream media, remove incentives for those who cannot even care for themselves to stop breeding, and make
fundamental changes to our society that affords people the time to focus on what is happening in the world, it will only get worse.
Much worse.
serotonindumptruck
A dying empire is like a wounded, cornered animal.
It will lash out uncontrollably and without remorse in a futile effort to save itself from certain death.
Enough Already
The problem is that we have no "Constitution." That is a fable. The constitution of the separation of powers has been undermined
from almost day one. Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
In the centuries since then, there has been no "separation of powers." Marbury v Madison (1803) gave the Supreme Court the
right to "decide" what the "law" was. Although, only in the 20th century did the "Supreme" court really start "legislating" from
the bench.
We're just peons to the Overall Federal Power; the three "separate" parts of the federal government have been in collusion
from the first. But like all empires, this one is in the final stage of collapse; it has just gotten too big.
gswifty
Yes sir. Globalization has failed us. The infinite growth paradigm has failed us, as we knew it would. Castro's Cuba, based
in a localized agrarian economy, is looking pretty good about now. Localization is the only way back to sustainability.
napples
Books? Who said books? You mean reading books? Let me throw a couple out there: I read 'The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America' last year, it was published 50+ years ago by a very recommended
writer and accomplished historian. Boorstin's observations are truer today and even more concerning thanks to our modern, ubiquitous
"connectivity". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159979.The_Image
Another by Boorstin, The Discoverers was my fav, like Bryson's 'Short History' on steroids:
I'm currently trying to fathom all of the historical implications of the claims Menzies is making in his book '1434', where
apparently everything I learned about history is a lie. While he's making a lot of claims(hoping some sticks?) I'm not truly convinced.
It is a very good, believable thought experiment. It almost makes perfect sense given the anglo/euro history of deceit & dishonesty,
but I digress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies
Adorno famously pointed out in 1940 that the "Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." It takes 75 years for someone
such as PCR to reiterate. He doesn't blame the masses because he simply points out the fact that Americans are completely
ignorant and blindly believe anything MSM spoon-fed to them.
George Orwell once remarked that the average person today is about as naive as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In
the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of what
Adorno called Culture Industry and MSM, no matter what. Today we are indeed in another Dark Age
PoasterToaster
"Americans" are not one person. Individuals are not fungible. Reasoning from the "average American" leads to false conclusions.
reader2010
Jacques Derrida says, "The individualism of technological civilization relies precisely on a misunderstanding of the unique
self. It is the individualism of a role and not of a person. In other words it might be called the individualism of a masque or
persona, a character [personnage] and not a person." There are many Americans but they all play the same role in the Pursuit of
Happiness, aka wage slaves, career slaves, debt slaves, information junkies, and passive consumers.
Moccasin
Paul Craig Roberts believe that the people are capable of creating a better and more just society. Instead the people have
voted against their own best interest and overwhelmingly believe the propaganda.
When do the people or the society take responsibility for its greater good or own the crimes of those they put into power?
Blaming the aristocracy or the oligarchs seems like a scapegoat when the people have never stood up to the corruption in a
cohesive or concerted way. imho, After a few generations of abuse and corruption the people need to take responsibility for their
future. I expect that most will just buy into the charade and live the lie, on that basis as a society we are doomed to live in
a corporatocracy fascist state.
Aldous Huxley called it a scientific dictatorship, Edward Bernays referred to us as a herd.
Moccasin
In the USA being white, monied and having the capacity to afford a good education is privileged. To his credit he speaks to
the greater population, the 'average citizen' and not the plutocratic class.
MSorciere
What we have is the result of conditioning and commoditizing a population. The country is filled with consumers, not citizens.
Teach the acquisition of money and goods as the main goal and individualism as the only acceptable social unit. We end up with
a nation of insatiable sociopaths, ruled by power-hungry psychopaths.
Divisive politics, jackbooted authority from the DC scumpond down to the cop on the beat, the constant preaching of the cult
of the individual as a sustitute for true liberty... all of these have served to destroy a sense of community and decentness between
Americans.
The ONLY thing that could threaten the ruling class is a banding together of the people - in large numbers. 'They' have purposefully
and effectively quashed that.
TrulyStupid
Shifting responsibility to the usual suspects is simply a manifestation of the American moral collapse. Man up and do some
self evaluation.
T-NUTZ
"what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity,
any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples"
Unfortunately, Paul, the American people have lost any sense of mercy and justice for their own people.
Painful as it may be, we need to rationally look at US history/society. The nascent US was formed by stealing land from the
native population and using human capital (read African Slaves) to generate wealth (it took a civil war with circa 500K casualties
to stop this- one could argue the US "civil war" never ended). More recently, the US has been almost continuously at war since
1940, we dropped atomic bombs on Japan. Currently, the US/NATO war theater extends from the Levant, to Caspian Basin, Persian
Gulf, China Sea, Indian Ocean, Horn of Africa (Saudi/US war on Yemen), the Maghreb and E Europe and Russian Border.
"... the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise ..."
Governments were created by the history of warfare, which was always organized crime
developing on larger and larger scales. In the context, the greater problem is that people like Paul Craig Roberts are
reactionary revolutionaries, who provide relatively good analysis, followed by bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals.
The "American People" are the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy. As Cognitive Dissonance
has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they
are controlled."
It is practically impossible to exaggerate the degree to which that is so, on such profound levels, because of the ways that
most people want to continue to believe that false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals are
valid, and should be applied to their problems, despite that those mistaken ideas cause the opposite to happen in the real world,
because those who promote those kinds of false fundamental dichotomies and their related impossible ideals, ARE "controlled
opposition."
Rather, the place to begin would be by recognizing that all human beings and civilizations must necessarily operate as entropic
pumps of energy flows, which necessarily are systems of organized lies operating robberies. Everyone has some power to rob, and
power to kill to back that up. Governments assembled and channeled those powers. There was never a time when governments were
not organized crime. There could never be any time when governments were not organized crime. The only things that exist are the
dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies. Those dynamic equilibria have become extremely
unbalanced due the degree that the best organized gangs of criminals were able to control their opposition.
Paul Craig Roberts, as well as pretty well all of the rest of the content published on Zero Hedge, are presentations
of various kinds of controlled opposition groups, most of which do not recognize that they are being controlled by the language
that they use, and the philosophy of science that they take for granted. THAT is the greatest failure of the American People,
as well as most of the rest of the people everywhere else. They believe in false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible
ideals, and therefore, their bogus "solutions" always necessarily backfire badly, and cause the opposite to happen in the real
world.
After all, the overwhelming vast majority of the American People operate as the controlled opposition to the best organized
gangs of criminals that most control the government of the USA. Therefore, the FAILURES of the American People are far more profound
and problematic than what is superficially presented by guys like Paul Craig Roberts, and also, of course, his suggested bogus
"solutions" are similarly superficial.
The ONLY things which can actually exist are the dynamic equilibrium between different systems of organized lies operating
robberies. The degree to which the American People, as well as most of the rest of the people in the world, FAIL to understand
that is the degree to which they enable the best organized gangs of criminals to control them, due to the vast majority of people
being members of various controlled opposition groups. Controlled opposition always presents relatively superficial analysis of
the political problems, which are superficially correct. However, they then follow that up with similarly superficial "solutions."
Therefore, magical words are bandied about, that express their dualities, through false fundamental dichotomies, and the related
impossible ideals.
Governments must exist because organized crime must exist. Better governments could be achieved through
better organized crime. However, mostly what get presented in the public places are the utter bullshit of the biggest
bullies, who dominate the society because they were the best organized gangs of criminals, who were also able to dominate their
apparent opposition. Therefore, instead of more realistic, better balancing of the dynamic equilibria between different systems
of organized lies operating robberies, we get runaway developments of the best organized gangs of criminals being able to control
governments, whose only apparent opposition is controlled to stay within the same bullshit frame of reference regarding everything
that was actually happening.
The mainline of the FAILURES of the American People have been the ways that the international bankers were able to recapture
control over the American public "money" supply. After that, everything else was leveraged up, through the funding of the political
processes, schools, and mass media, etc., being more and more dominated by that fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting
system. Of course, that FAILURE has now become more than 99% ... Therefore, no political possible ways appear to exist to pull
out of that flaming spiral nose dive, since we have already gone beyond the event horizon into that social black hole.
Most of the content on Zero Hedge which is based upon recognizing that set of problems still acts as controlled opposition
in that regard too. Therefore, the bogus "solutions" here continue to deliberately ignore that money is necessarily measurement
backed by murder. Instead of accepting that, the controlled opposition groups like to promote various kinds of "monetary reforms."
However, meanwhile, we are actually already headed towards the established debt slavery systems having generated debt insanities,
which are going to provoke death insanities.
In that context, the only realistic resolutions to the real problems would necessarily have to be monetary revolutions,
that may emerge out of the future situations, after the runaway debt insanities have provoked death insanities. Indeed, the only
genuine solutions to the problems are to develop different death control systems, to back up different debt control systems, which
must necessarily be done within the context that governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best
organized gangs of criminals.
The various controlled opposition groups do not want to face those social facts. Rather, they continue to want to believe in
the dualities expressed as false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals, which is their greatest overall FAILURE.
In my view, the article above by Roberts contained a lot of nostalgic nonsense. There was never a time when there
were any governments which were not based on the applications of the principles and methods of organized crime, and there
could never be any time in the future when that could be stopped from being the case.
The greatest FAILURE of the American People, as well as most of the rest of the world's people, has been to become so brainwashed
to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, that there is no significant opposition that is not controlled by thinking
inside of the box of that bullshit. The government did NOT transform into a criminal enterprise. The government was necessarily
ALWAYS a criminal enterprise. That criminal enterprise has become more and more severely UNBALANCED due to the FAILURE
of the people to understand that they were actually members of an organized crime gang, called their country. Instead, they were
more and more scientifically brainwashed to believe in bullshit about everything, including their country.
The ONLY connection between human laws and the laws of nature is the ability to back up lies with violence. The development
of the government of the USA has been the developed of integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. Those
systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS have been able to become more extremely unbalanced because there is almost nothing which is publicly
significant surrounding that core of organized crime but various controlled opposition groups.
Of course, it seems politically impossible for my recommendations to actually happen within the foreseeable future, as the
current systems of debt slavery drive through debt insanities to become death insanities, but nevertheless, the only theoretically
valid ideas to raise to respond to the real problems would have to based upon a series of intellectual scientific revolutions.
However, since we have apparently run out of time to go through those sorts of paradigm shifts sufficiently, we are stuck in the
deepening ruts of political problems which guys like Roberts correctly present to be the case
... HOWEVER, ROBERTS, LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE, CONTINUE TO PRESUME UPON DUALITIES, AND THEREFORE,
HAVE THEIR MECHANISMS REGARDING "SOLUTIONS" ABSURDLY BACKWARDS.
Rather, we should start with the concept of SUBTRACTION, which then leads to robbery. We should start with the recognition
that governments are necessarily, by definition, the biggest forms of organized crime. Governments did NOT transform
into being that. Governments were always that. The political problems we have now are due to the best organized gangs
of criminals, which currently are primarily the biggest gangsters, which can rightly be referred to as the banksters, having dominated
all aspects of the funding of politics, enough to capture control over all sociopolitical institutions, so that the American People
would more and more be subjected to the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy, which was built on top of thousands
of years of previous history of Neolithic Civilizations being based on backing up lies with violence.
The runaway systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS, or the integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, that more
and more dominate the lives of the American People are due to the applications of the methods of organized crime, and could not
be effectively counter-balanced in any other ways. However, the standing social situation is that there is no publicly significant
opposition that is not controlled to stay within the same frame of reference of the biggest bullies, which is now primarily the
frame of reference of the banksters. Indeed, to the degree to which people's lives are controlled by the monetary system, they
are debt slaves. Moreover, the degree to which they do not understand, and do not want to understand, that money is necessarily
measurement backed by murder, then they think like controlled opposition groups, who have their mechanisms absurdly backwards,
when they turn from their superficial analysis of what the political problems, to then promote their superficial solutions of
those problems.
I AGREE that "Americans need to face the facts." However, those facts are that citizens are members
of an organized crime gang, called their country. "Their" country is currently controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals.
However, there are no genuine resolutions for those problems other than to develop better organized crime. Since the controlled
opposition groups that are publicly significant do not admit any of the deeper levels of the scientific facts regarding human
beings and civilizations operating as entropic pumps of energy flows, but rather, continue to perceive all of that in the most
absurdly backward ways possible, the current dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies
continue to become more and more extremely UNBALANCED.
In the case of the article above, Roberts does NOT "face the facts" that governments were
always forms of organized crime, and must necessarily be so, because human beings must live as entropic pumps of energy
flows. Rather, Roberts tends to illustrate how the controlled opposition takes for granted certain magical words and phrases,
such as "Liberty" or "Constitution," that have no adequate operational definitions to connect them to the material
world.
We are living inside of an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, which has applied the progress in science primarily to become
better at backing up lies with violence, while refusing to allow scientific methods to admit and address how and why that has
been what has actually happened. Therefore, almost all of the language that we use to communicate, as well as almost
all of the philosophy of science that we take for granted, was based on the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is now primarily
manifested as the banksters' bullshit, as that bullshit developed in America to become ENFORCED FRAUDS.
ALL of the various churches, corporations, and countries are necessarily various systems of organized lies operating robberies.
Those which are the biggest now were historically the ones that were the best at doing that. The INTENSE PARADOXES are due to
human systems necessarily being organized lies operating robberies, wherein the greatest social successfulness has been achieved
by those who were the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. That flows throughout ALL of the established systems,
which are a core of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups.
The degree to which the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, have been more and more scientifically
brainwashed to believe in bullshit about governments in particular, and human beings and civilizations in general, is the degree
to which the established systems based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS are headed towards some series of psychotic breakdowns. For all practical
purposes, it is politically impossible to get enough people to stop acting like incompetent political idiots, and instead start
acting more like competent citizens, because they do not understand, and moreover have been conditioned to not want to understand
that governments are necessarily organized crime.
Roberts ironically illustrated the deeper nature of the political problems that he also shares, when he perceives that governments
have somehow transformed into being criminal enterprise, when governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises.
Similarly, with those who recognize that, but then promote the impossible solutions based upon somehow stopping that
from being the case, which is as absurdly backwards as stopping human beings from operating as entropic pumps of energy
flows, which then also presumes that it would be possible to stop human civilizations from being entropic pumps of energy
flows.
Rather, the deeper sorts of intellectual scientific revolutions that we should go through require becoming much more
critical of the language that we use to communicate with, and more critical about the philosophy of science that we presumed was
correct. Actually, we were collectively brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is as absurdly backwards
as it could possibly be. However, due to the collective FAILURES of people to understand that, as reflected by the ways that the
core of organized crime is surrounded by nothing which is publicly significant than layers of controlled opposition, there are
no reasonable ways to doubt that the established debt slavery systems will continue to drive even worse debt insanities, which
will provoke much worse death insanities. Therefore, to be more realistic about the foreseeable future, the development of new
death control systems will emerge out of the context of crazy collapses into chaos, wherein the runaway death insanities provide
the possible opportunities for new death controls to emerge out of that situation.
Of course, the about 99% FAILURE of the American People to want to understand anything that I have outlined above
indicates that the foreseeable future for subsequent generations shall not too likely be catalyzed transformations
towards enough people better understanding their political problems, in order to better resolve those problems. Rather, what I
mostly expect is for the psychotic breakdowns of the previous systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS to give opportunities to some possible
groups of controlled opposition to take advantage of that, to perhaps emerge as the new version of professional liars and immaculate
hypocrites, who will be able to operate some new version of organized lies, operating robberies, who may mostly still get away
with being some modified versions of still oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, due to social success still being based upon the
best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who were able to survive through those transformations, so that the
new systems arise from some of the seeds of the old systems.
At the present time, it is extremely difficult to imagine how the human species could possibly reconcile progress in
physical science by surpassing that with progress in political science. Rather, what mostly exists now is the core of
organized crime, which gets away with spouting the bullshit about itself, such as how the banksters dominate the mass media, and
the lives of everyone else who depend upon the established monetary system (which is dominated by the current ways that governments
ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks), while that core of organized crime has no publicly significant opposition that
is not controlled by the ways that they think, which ways stay within the basic bullshit world view, as promoted by the biggest
bullies for thousands of years, and as more and more scientifically promoted to brainwash the vast majority of people to believe
in that kind of bullshit so completely that it mostly does not occur to them that they are doing that, and certainly almost never
occurs to them that they are doing that in the most profoundly absurd and backward ways possible.
That is how and why it is possible for an author like Roberts to correctly point out the ways in which the government of the
USA is transforming into being more blatantly based on organized crime ... HOWEVER, Roberts is not willing and able to go through
deeper levels of intellectual scientific revolutions, in order to recognize how and why governments were always necessarily manifestations
of organized crime. Therefore, as is typically the case, Roberts does not recognize how ironically he recommends that Americans
should "face the facts," while he himself does not fully do so.
The whole history of Neolithic Civilizations was social pyramid systems based on being able to back up lies with violence,
becoming more sophisticated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which currently manifest as the globalized
electronic frauds of the banksters, were are backed up by the governments (that those banksters effectively control) having atomic
bombs. Those are the astronomically amplified magnitudes of the currently existing combined money/murder systems. Therefore, it
appears to be politically impossible at the present time to develop better governments, due to the degree that almost everyone
is either a member of the core groups of organized crime, or members of the surrounding layers of groups of controlled opposition,
both of which want to stay within the same overall bullshit frame of reference, because, so far, their lives have been socially
successful by being professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
Ironically, I doubt that someone like Roberts, or pretty well everyone else whose material is published on Zero Hedge
is able and willing to recognize the degree to which they are actually controlled opposition. Indeed, even more ironically, as
I have repeated before, even Cognitive Dissonance, when he previously stated on Zero Hedge:"The
absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled." DOES NOT "GET IT" regarding the
degree to which he too is controlled opposition, even while superficially attempting to recognize and struggle with that situation.
(Indeed, of course, that includes me too, since I am still communicating using the English language, which was the natural language
that most developed to express the biggest bullies' bullshit world view.)
Overall, I REPEAT, the deeper problems are due to progress in physical science, NOT being surpassed by progress in
political science. Instead, while there EXIST globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing
regarding the ways of thinking that made that science and those technologies possible has found any significant expression through
political science, because political science would have to go through even more profound paradigm shifts within itself in order
to do that.
The INTENSE PARADOXES continue to be the manifestation of the oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that deliberately refuses
to become any more genuinely scientific about itself. Therefore, the banksters have been able to pay for the best scientific brainwashing
that money could buy, for generation after generation, in order to more and more brainwash most of the American People to believe
in the banksters' bullshit world view. While there exist electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing regarding
the physical science paradigm shifts that made that possible have even the slightest degree of public appreciation within the
realms of politics today, which are almost totally dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, despite that being as
absurdly backwards as possible, while the controlled opposition groups, mostly in the form of old-fashioned religions and ideologies,
continue to stay within that same bullshit world view, and adamantly refuse to change their perceptual paradigms regarding political
problems.
However, I REPEAT, the issues we face are NOT that governments have transformed to become criminal enterprises,
but that governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises, which had the power to legalized their own lies, and
then back those lies up with legalized violence. Thereby, the best organized criminals, the international bankers, as
the biggest gangsters, or the banksters, were able to apply the methods of organized crime through the political processes. Meanwhile,
the only "opposition" that was allowed to be publicly significant was controlled, to basically stay within the same bullshit world
view, which is what Roberts has done in his series of articles, as well as what is almost always presented in the content published
on Zero Hedge.
The NEXT LEVEL of "the need to face the facts" is to recognize that the political economy is based
upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, or systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. However, the NEXT LEVEL "the need
to face the facts" is the that the only possible changes are to change the dynamic equilibria between the different
systems of organized lies operating robberies, i.e., change those ENFORCED FRAUDS, in ways which CAN NOT STOP
THOSE FROM STILL BEING ENFORCED FRAUDS, because of the degree to which money is necessarily measurement backed by murder.
For the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, to stop being such dismal FAILURES would require them to
become more competent citizens. However, at the present time they appear to be totally unable to do that, because they are unwilling
to go through the profound paradigm shifts that it would take them to become more competent citizens inside of world where there
exist globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. The vast majority of the American People would not like
to go through the severe cognitive dissonance that would be required, to not only recognize that "their" government was a criminal
enterprise, but that it also must be, and that they too must necessarily be members of that organized crime gang. However, without
that degree of perceptual paradigm shifts of the political problems, then enough of the American People could not become more
competent citizens.
Somehow, most people continue to count on themselves never having to think about how and why progress was achieved in physical
science, by going through series of profound paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceived the world. Most people continue to
presume that it is not necessary for their perception of politics to go through profound paradigm shifts, that surpass those which
have already been achieved in physical science. We continue to live in an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that employs science
and technology to become better at being dishonest and violent, but does not apply science and technology to "face
the facts" about that scientific dictatorship as a whole.
At the present time, technologies which have become trillions of times more capable and powerful are primarily used as special effects within the context of repeating the same old-fashioned, stupid social stories, such as promoted by the biggest
bullies, and their surrounding controlled opposition groups. Ironically, especially when it comes to politics, that tends to manifest
the most atavistic throwbacks to old-fashioned religions and ideologies being relied upon to propose bogus "solutions," despite
that those kinds of social stories adamantly refuse to change their paradigms in light of the profound paradigms shifts which
have been achieved in physical science.
The article above was another illustration of the ways that the typical reactionary revolutionaries, Black Sheeple, or controlled
opposition groups, respond to recognizing the more and more blatant degrees to which there has been an accelerating "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CONTINUE TO STAY WITHIN
THE SAME OLD-FASHIONED BULLSHIT-BASED FRAME OF REFERENCE, INSTEAD, AROUND AND AROUND WE GO, STUCK IN
THE SAME DEEPENING RUTS, since they do NOT more fully "face the facts" regarding how and why the only
realistic solutions to the real problems would require developing better organized crime. INSTEAD, they
continue to promote the same dualities based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the associate bogus "solutions" based upon
impossible ideals ...
Given that overall situation, that there there almost nothing which is publicly significant than the core of organized crime,
surrounded by controlled opposition groups, I see no reasonable hopes for the foreseeable material future of a civilization controlled
by ENFORCED FRAUDS, since there is no publicly possible ways to develop better dynamic equilibria between the different systems
of organized lies operating robberies, since the biggest forms of doing that were most able to get away with pretending that they
are not doing that, which was facilitated by their controlled opposition promoting the opinions that nobody should do that, while
actually everyone must be doing that.
Roberts' article above, to me, was another typical example of superficially correct analysis, which implies some bogus "solutions"
because those are based upon the same superficiality. It is NOT good enough to recognize "transformation of government
into a criminal enterprise," unless one goes through deeper levels of analysis regarding how and why that is what
actually exists, and then, one should continue to be consistent with that deeper analysis when one turns to proposing genuine
solutions to those problems, namely, I REPEAT THAT the only realistic resolutions to the real political
problems requires the transformation of government into a better organized criminal enterprise, which
ideally should be based upon enough citizens who are competent enough to understand that they are members of an organized crime
gang, which should assert themselves to make sure that their country becomes better organized crime.
Essentially CIA dictates the US foreign policy. The tail is wagging the dog. The current Russophobia hysteria mean
additional billions for CIA and FBI. As simple as that.
The article contain some important observation about self-sustaining nature of the US
militarism. It is able to create new threats and new insurgencies almost at will via CIA activities.
The key problem is that wars are highly profitable for important part of the ruling elite,
especially representing finance and military industrial complex. Also now part of the US
ruling elite now consists of "colonial administrators" which are directly interested in maintaining
and expanding the US empire. This is trap from which nation might not be able to escape.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies. ..."
"... Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. ..."
"... No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them. ..."
"... The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination." ..."
"... Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991. ..."
"... Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. ..."
"... Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States. ..."
"... U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy. ..."
"... The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war. ..."
"... The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years. ..."
"... Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out. ..."
"... Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq. ..."
"... But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant ..."
"... The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective. ..."
"... This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale. ..."
"... China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." ..."
"... As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others. ..."
"... But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike. ..."
"... Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy. ..."
"... In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. ..."
"... The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction. ..."
"... Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budge t of any president since World War Two. ..."
"... Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction. ..."
The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington
seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer,
writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.
As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials
ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed
hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment
that had already killed millions of people.
As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented,
the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as
Pete Seeger satirized it
, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to "credibility": the domestic political credibility
of the politicians involved and America's international credibility as a military power.
Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the
1954 Geneva Accords
and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die
was cast. The CIA's support for the repressive
Diem regime and its successors
ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president
could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could
achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited
from them.
The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book
Roots
of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing,"
Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination."
Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived
the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere,
but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of
Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991.
Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized
intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across
every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility
as Johnson and Nixon did. His predictable response has been to escalate ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa, and to threaten new ones against North Korea, Iran and
Venezuela.
Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries
across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only
become more entrenched over time, as
President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now,
the lack of any actual military threat to the United States.
Ironically but predictably, the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy has finally provoked
a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans.
As I explained in a recent article , North Korea's discovery in 2016 of a U.S. plan to assassinate
its president, Kim Jong Un, and launch a Second Korean War has triggered a crash program to develop
long-range ballistic missiles that could give North Korea a viable nuclear deterrent and prevent
a U.S. attack. But the North Koreans will not feel safe from attack until their leaders and ours
are sure that their missiles can deliver a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.
The CIA's Pretexts for War
U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and
around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book,
The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World ,
was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores
and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher
sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role
of the CIA in U.S. policy.
Prouty surprisingly described the role of the CIA as a response by powerful people and interests
to the abolition of the U.S. Department of War and the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.
Once the role of the U.S. military was redefined as one of defense, in line with the United Nations
Charter's
prohibition against the threat or use of military force in 1945 and similar moves by other military
powers, it would require some kind of crisis or threat to justify using military force in the future,
both legally and politically. The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such
pretexts for war.
The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence
and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating
pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years.
Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National
Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions
to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment,
ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out.
Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis
in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed
VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts
for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq.
CIA in Syria and Africa
But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations
to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty
meant. In late 2011, after destroying Libya and aiding in the torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi,
the CIA and its allies began
flying fighters
and weapons from Libya to Turkey and infiltrating them into Syria. Then, working with Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey, Croatia and other allies, this operation poured
thousands of tons of weapons across Syria's borders to ignite and fuel a full-scale civil war.
Once these covert operations were under way, they ran wild until they had unleashed a savage Al
Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), spawned the even
more savage "Islamic State," triggered
the heaviest
and
probably the deadliest U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam and drawn Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel,
Jordan, Hezbollah, Kurdish militias and almost every state or armed group in the Middle East into
the chaos of Syria's civil war.
Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have expanded their operations across Africa, the U.N.
has published a report titled
Journey to Extremismin Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment
, based on 500 interviews with African militants. This study has found that the kind of special operations
and training missions the CIA and AFRICOM are conducting and supporting in Africa are in fact the
critical "tipping point" that drives Africans to join militant groups like Al Qaeda, Al-Shabab and
Boko Haram.
The report found that government action, such as the killing or detention of friends or family,
was the "tipping point" that drove 71 percent of African militants interviewed to join armed groups,
and that this was a more important factor than religious ideology.
The conclusions of Journey to Extremism in Africa confirm the findings of other similar
studies. The Center for Civilians in Conflict interviewed 250 civilians who joined armed groups in
Bosnia, Somalia, Gaza and Libya for its 2015 study,
The People's Perspectives: Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict . The study
found that the most common motivation for civilians to join armed groups was simply to protect themselves
or their families.
The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and
the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror,"
would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take
on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy
objective.
"The more intimate one becomes with this activity," Prouty wrote, "The more one begins to realize
that such operations are rarely, if ever, initiated from an intent to become involved in pursuit
of some national objective in the first place."
The U.S. justifies the deployment of 6,000 U.S. special forces and military trainers to
53 of the 54 countries in Africa as a response to terrorism. But the U.N.'s Journey to Extremism
in Africa study makes it clear that the U.S. militarization of Africa is in fact the "tipping
point" that is driving Africans across the continent to join armed resistance groups in the first
place.
This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early
60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations
that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed
resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on
a continental scale.
Taking on China
What seems to really be driving the CIA's militarization of U.S. policy in Africa is China's growing
influence on the continent. As Steve Bannon put it in an
interview with the Economist in August, "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."
China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine
named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every
10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against
the wall, just to show we mean business."
China is too powerful and armed with nuclear weapons. So, in this case, the CIA's job would be
to spread violence and chaos to disrupt Chinese trade and investment, and to make African governments
increasingly dependent on U.S. military aid to fight the militant groups spawned and endlessly regenerated
by U.S.-led "counterterrorism" operations.
Neither Ledeen nor Bannon pretend that such policies are designed to build more prosperous or
viable societies in the Middle East or Africa, let alone to benefit their people. They both know
very well what Richard Barnet already understood 45 years ago, that America's unprecedented investment
in weapons, war and CIA covert operations are only good for one thing: to kill people and destroy
infrastructure, reducing cities to rubble, societies to chaos and the desperate survivors to poverty
and displacement.
As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies
into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the
safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash
on others.
But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely
about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop
the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which
we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike.
Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist,
beginning with his book on
The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled
The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's
analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many
ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy.
The Three Scapegoats
In
Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he named North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as his
prime targets for destabilization, economic warfare and, ultimately, the overthrow of their governments,
whether by coup d'etat or the mass destruction of their civilian population and infrastructure.
But Trump's choice of scapegoats for America's failures was obviously not based on a rational reassessment
of foreign policy priorities by the new administration. It was only a tired rehashing of the CIA's
unfinished business with two-thirds of Bush's "axis of evil" and Bush White House official
Elliott Abrams'
failed 2002 coup in Caracas, now laced with explicit and illegal threats of aggression.
How Trump and the CIA plan to sacrifice their three scapegoats for America's failures remains
to be seen. This is not 2001, when the world stood silent at the U.S. bombardment and invasion of
Afghanistan after September 11th. It is more like 2003, when the U.S. destruction of Iraq split the
Atlantic alliance and alienated most of the world. It is certainly not 2011, after Obama's global
charm offensive had rebuilt U.S. alliances and provided cover for French President Sarkozy, British
Prime Minister Cameron, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Arab royals to destroy Libya,
once ranked by the U.N. as the
most developed country
in Africa , now mired in intractable chaos.
In 2017, a U.S. attack on any one of Trump's scapegoats would isolate the United States from many
of its allies and undermine its standing in the world in far-reaching ways that might be more permanent
and harder to repair than the invasion and destruction of Iraq.
In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President
Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to
"make the economy
scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. But the
solid victory of Venezuela's
ruling Socialist Party in recent nationwide gubernatorial elections, despite a long and deep
economic crisis, reveals little public support for the CIA's puppets in Venezuela.
The CIA has successfully discredited the Venezuelan government through economic warfare, increasingly
violent right-wing street protests and a global propaganda campaign. But the CIA has stupidly hitched
its wagon to an extreme right-wing, upper-class opposition that has no credibility with most of the
Venezuelan public, who still turn out for the Socialists at the polls. A CIA coup or U.S. military
intervention would meet fierce public resistance and damage U.S. relations all over Latin America.
Boxing In North Korea
A U.S. aerial bombardment or "preemptive strike" on North Korea could quickly escalate into a
war between the U.S. and China, which has reiterated
its commitment to North
Korea's defense if North Korea is attacked. We do not know exactly what was in the
U.S. war plan discovered by North Korea, so neither can we know how North Korea and China could
respond if the U.S. pressed ahead with it.
Most analysts have long concluded that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be met with a North
Korean artillery and missile barrage that would inflict unacceptable civilian casualties on Seoul,
a metropolitan area of 26 million people, three times the population of New York City. Seoul is only
35 miles from the frontier with North Korea, placing it within range of a huge array of North Korean
weapons. What was already a no-win calculus is now compounded by the possibility that North Korea
could respond with nuclear weapons, turning any prospect of a U.S. attack into an even worse nightmare.
U.S. mismanagement of its relations with North Korea should be an object lesson for its relations
with Iran, graphically demonstrating the advantages of diplomacy, talks and agreements over threats
of war. Under the
Agreed Framework
signed in 1994, North Korea stopped work on two much larger nuclear reactors than the small experimental
one operating at Yongbyong since 1986, which only produces 6 kg of plutonium per year, enough for
one nuclear bomb.
The lesson of Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 after Saddam Hussein had complied with demands that
he destroy Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons and shut down a nascent nuclear program was not
lost on North Korea. Not only did the invasion lay waste to large sections of Iraq with hundreds
of thousands of dead but Hussein himself was hunted down and condemned to death by hanging.
Still, after North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, even its small experimental
reactor was shut down as a result of the
"Six Party Talks" in
2007, all the fuel rods were removed and placed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, and the cooling tower of the reactor was demolished in 2008.
But then, as relations deteriorated, North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapon test and again
began reprocessing spent fuel rods to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
North Korea has now conducted six nuclear weapons tests. The explosions in
the first five tests increased gradually up to 15-25 kilotons, about the yield of the bombs the
U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but estimates for the yield of the 2017 test range
from 110
to 250 kilotons , comparable
to a small hydrogen bomb.
The even greater danger in a new war in Korea is that the U.S. could unleash part of its arsenal
of
4,000 more powerful weapons (100 to 1,200 kilotons), which could kill millions of people and
devastate and poison the region, or even the world, for years to come.
The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks
in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate
defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see
a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction.
China has proposed a
reasonable framework for diplomacy to address the concerns of both sides, but the U.S. insists
on maintaining its propaganda narratives that all the fault lies with North Korea and that it has
some kind of "military solution" to the crisis.
This may be the most dangerous idea we have heard from U.S. policymakers since the end of the
Cold War, but it is the logical culmination of a
systematic normalization of deviant and illegal U.S. war-making that has already cost millions
of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. As historian Gabriel Kolko
wrote in Century of War in 1994, "options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous
and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy
that is possible in official circles."
Demonizing Iran
The idea that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program is seriously contested by the IAEA,
which has examined every allegation presented by the CIA and other Western "intelligence" agencies
as well as Israel. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei revealed many details of this wild
goose chase in his 2011 memoir,
Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times .
When the CIA and its partners reluctantly acknowledged the IAEA's conclusions in a 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ElBaradei issued
a press release confirming that, "the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons
program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."
Since 2007, the IAEA has resolved all its outstanding concerns with Iran. It has verified that
dual-use technologies that Iran imported before 2003 were in fact used for other purposes, and it
has exposed the mysterious "laptop documents" that appeared to show Iranian plans for a nuclear weapon
as forgeries. Gareth Porter thoroughly explored all these questions and allegations and the history
of mistrust that fueled them in his 2014 book,
Manufactured
Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare , which I highly recommend.
But, in the parallel Bizarro world of U.S. politics, hopelessly poisoned by the CIA's
endless disinformation campaigns, Hillary Clinton could repeatedly take false credit for disarming
Iran during her presidential campaign, and neither Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump nor any corporate
media interviewer dared to challenge her claims.
"When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb," Clinton fantasized
in a
prominent foreign policy speech on June 2, 2016, claiming that her brutal sanctions policy "brought
Iran to the table."
In fact, as Trita Parsi documented in his 2012 book,
A Single
Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran , the Iranians were ready, not just
to "come to the table," but to sign a comprehensive agreement based on a U.S. proposal brokered by
Turkey and Brazil in 2010. But, in a classic case of "tail wags dog," the U.S. then rejected its
own proposal because it would have undercut support for tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
In other words, Clinton's sanctions policy did not "bring Iran to the table", but prevented the U.S.
from coming to the table itself.
As a senior State Department official told Trita Parsi, the real problem with U.S. diplomacy with
Iran when Clinton was at the State Department was that the U.S. would not take "Yes" for an answer.
Trump's ham-fisted decertification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA is right out of Clinton's
playbook, and it demonstrates that the CIA is still determined to use Iran as a scapegoat for America's
failures in the Middle East.
The spurious claim that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism is another CIA canard
reinforced by endless repetition. It is true that Iran supports and supplies weapons to Hezbollah
and Hamas, which are both listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. But they are
mainly defensive resistance groups that defend Lebanon and Gaza respectively against invasions and
attacks by Israel.
Shifting attention away from Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other groups that actually commit terrorist crimes around the
world might just seem like a case of the CIA "taking its eyes off the ball," if it wasn't so transparently
timed to frame Iran with new accusations now that the manufactured crisis of the nuclear scare has
run its course.
What the Future Holds
Barack Obama's most consequential international achievement may have been the triumph of symbolism
over substance behind which he expanded and escalated the so-called "war on terror," with a vast
expansion of covert operations and proxy wars that eventually triggered the
heaviest U.S.
aerial bombardments since Vietnam in Iraq and Syria.
Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and
the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the
most expensive military budget of any president since World War Two.
But Obama's expansion of the "war on terror" under cover of his deceptive global public relations
campaign created many more problems than it solved, and Trump and his advisers are woefully ill-equipped
to solve any of them. Trump's expressed desire to place America first and to resist foreign entanglements
is hopelessly at odds with his aggressive, bullying approach to every foreign policy problem.
If the U.S. could threaten and fight its way to a resolution of any of its international problems,
it would have done so already. That is exactly what it has been trying to do since the 1990s, behind
both the swagger and bluster of Bush and Trump and the deceptive charm of Clinton and Obama: a "good
cop – bad cop" routine that should no longer fool anyone anywhere.
But as Lyndon Johnson found as he waded deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy in Vietnam, lying
to the public about unwinnable wars does not make them any more winnable. It just gets more people
killed and makes it harder and harder to ever tell the public the truth.
In unwinnable wars based on lies, the "credibility" problem only gets more complicated, as new
lies require new scapegoats and convoluted narratives to explain away graveyards filled by old lies.
Obama's cynical global charm offensive bought the "war on terror" another eight years, but that only
allowed the CIA to drag the U.S. into more trouble and spread its chaos to more places around the
world.
Meanwhile, Russian President Putin is winning hearts and minds in capitals around the world by
calling for a recommitment to the
rule of international
law , which
prohibits
the threat or use of military force except in self-defense. Every new U.S. threat or act of aggression
will only make Putin's case more persuasive, not least to important U.S. allies like South Korea,
Germany and other members of the European Union, whose complicity in U.S. aggression has until now
helped to give it a false veneer of political legitimacy.
Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition,
as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor.
France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their
own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and
destruction.
Americans had better hope that we are not so exceptional, and that the world will find a diplomatic
rather than a military "solution" to its American problem. Our chances of survival would improve
a great deal if American officials and politicians would finally start to act like something other
than putty in the hands of the CIA
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction
of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on "Obama at War" in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card
on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader .
Essentially CIA dictates the US foreign policy. The tail is wagging the dog. The current Russophobia hysteria mean
additional billions for CIA and FBI. As simple as that.
The article contain some important observation about self-sustaining nature of the US
militarism. It is able to create new threats and new insurgencies almost at will via CIA activities.
The key problem is that wars are highly profitable for important part of the ruling elite,
especially representing finance and military industrial complex. Also now part of the US
ruling elite now consists of "colonial administrators" which are directly interested in maintaining
and expanding the US empire. This is trap from which nation might not be able to escape.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies. ..."
"... Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. ..."
"... No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them. ..."
"... The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination." ..."
"... Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991. ..."
"... Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. ..."
"... Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States. ..."
"... U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy. ..."
"... The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war. ..."
"... The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years. ..."
"... Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out. ..."
"... Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq. ..."
"... But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant ..."
"... The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective. ..."
"... This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale. ..."
"... China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." ..."
"... As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others. ..."
"... But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike. ..."
"... Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy. ..."
"... In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. ..."
"... The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction. ..."
"... Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budge t of any president since World War Two. ..."
"... Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction. ..."
The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington
seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer,
writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.
As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials
ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed
hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment
that had already killed millions of people.
As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented,
the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as
Pete Seeger satirized it
, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to "credibility": the domestic political credibility
of the politicians involved and America's international credibility as a military power.
Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the
1954 Geneva Accords
and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die
was cast. The CIA's support for the repressive
Diem regime and its successors
ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president
could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could
achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited
from them.
The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book
Roots
of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing,"
Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination."
Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived
the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere,
but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of
Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991.
Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized
intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across
every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility
as Johnson and Nixon did. His predictable response has been to escalate ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa, and to threaten new ones against North Korea, Iran and
Venezuela.
Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries
across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only
become more entrenched over time, as
President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now,
the lack of any actual military threat to the United States.
Ironically but predictably, the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy has finally provoked
a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans.
As I explained in a recent article , North Korea's discovery in 2016 of a U.S. plan to assassinate
its president, Kim Jong Un, and launch a Second Korean War has triggered a crash program to develop
long-range ballistic missiles that could give North Korea a viable nuclear deterrent and prevent
a U.S. attack. But the North Koreans will not feel safe from attack until their leaders and ours
are sure that their missiles can deliver a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.
The CIA's Pretexts for War
U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and
around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book,
The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World ,
was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores
and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher
sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role
of the CIA in U.S. policy.
Prouty surprisingly described the role of the CIA as a response by powerful people and interests
to the abolition of the U.S. Department of War and the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.
Once the role of the U.S. military was redefined as one of defense, in line with the United Nations
Charter's
prohibition against the threat or use of military force in 1945 and similar moves by other military
powers, it would require some kind of crisis or threat to justify using military force in the future,
both legally and politically. The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such
pretexts for war.
The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence
and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating
pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years.
Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National
Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions
to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment,
ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out.
Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis
in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed
VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts
for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq.
CIA in Syria and Africa
But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations
to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty
meant. In late 2011, after destroying Libya and aiding in the torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi,
the CIA and its allies began
flying fighters
and weapons from Libya to Turkey and infiltrating them into Syria. Then, working with Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey, Croatia and other allies, this operation poured
thousands of tons of weapons across Syria's borders to ignite and fuel a full-scale civil war.
Once these covert operations were under way, they ran wild until they had unleashed a savage Al
Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), spawned the even
more savage "Islamic State," triggered
the heaviest
and
probably the deadliest U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam and drawn Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel,
Jordan, Hezbollah, Kurdish militias and almost every state or armed group in the Middle East into
the chaos of Syria's civil war.
Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have expanded their operations across Africa, the U.N.
has published a report titled
Journey to Extremismin Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment
, based on 500 interviews with African militants. This study has found that the kind of special operations
and training missions the CIA and AFRICOM are conducting and supporting in Africa are in fact the
critical "tipping point" that drives Africans to join militant groups like Al Qaeda, Al-Shabab and
Boko Haram.
The report found that government action, such as the killing or detention of friends or family,
was the "tipping point" that drove 71 percent of African militants interviewed to join armed groups,
and that this was a more important factor than religious ideology.
The conclusions of Journey to Extremism in Africa confirm the findings of other similar
studies. The Center for Civilians in Conflict interviewed 250 civilians who joined armed groups in
Bosnia, Somalia, Gaza and Libya for its 2015 study,
The People's Perspectives: Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict . The study
found that the most common motivation for civilians to join armed groups was simply to protect themselves
or their families.
The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and
the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror,"
would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take
on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy
objective.
"The more intimate one becomes with this activity," Prouty wrote, "The more one begins to realize
that such operations are rarely, if ever, initiated from an intent to become involved in pursuit
of some national objective in the first place."
The U.S. justifies the deployment of 6,000 U.S. special forces and military trainers to
53 of the 54 countries in Africa as a response to terrorism. But the U.N.'s Journey to Extremism
in Africa study makes it clear that the U.S. militarization of Africa is in fact the "tipping
point" that is driving Africans across the continent to join armed resistance groups in the first
place.
This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early
60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations
that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed
resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on
a continental scale.
Taking on China
What seems to really be driving the CIA's militarization of U.S. policy in Africa is China's growing
influence on the continent. As Steve Bannon put it in an
interview with the Economist in August, "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."
China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine
named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every
10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against
the wall, just to show we mean business."
China is too powerful and armed with nuclear weapons. So, in this case, the CIA's job would be
to spread violence and chaos to disrupt Chinese trade and investment, and to make African governments
increasingly dependent on U.S. military aid to fight the militant groups spawned and endlessly regenerated
by U.S.-led "counterterrorism" operations.
Neither Ledeen nor Bannon pretend that such policies are designed to build more prosperous or
viable societies in the Middle East or Africa, let alone to benefit their people. They both know
very well what Richard Barnet already understood 45 years ago, that America's unprecedented investment
in weapons, war and CIA covert operations are only good for one thing: to kill people and destroy
infrastructure, reducing cities to rubble, societies to chaos and the desperate survivors to poverty
and displacement.
As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies
into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the
safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash
on others.
But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely
about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop
the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which
we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike.
Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist,
beginning with his book on
The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled
The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's
analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many
ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy.
The Three Scapegoats
In
Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he named North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as his
prime targets for destabilization, economic warfare and, ultimately, the overthrow of their governments,
whether by coup d'etat or the mass destruction of their civilian population and infrastructure.
But Trump's choice of scapegoats for America's failures was obviously not based on a rational reassessment
of foreign policy priorities by the new administration. It was only a tired rehashing of the CIA's
unfinished business with two-thirds of Bush's "axis of evil" and Bush White House official
Elliott Abrams'
failed 2002 coup in Caracas, now laced with explicit and illegal threats of aggression.
How Trump and the CIA plan to sacrifice their three scapegoats for America's failures remains
to be seen. This is not 2001, when the world stood silent at the U.S. bombardment and invasion of
Afghanistan after September 11th. It is more like 2003, when the U.S. destruction of Iraq split the
Atlantic alliance and alienated most of the world. It is certainly not 2011, after Obama's global
charm offensive had rebuilt U.S. alliances and provided cover for French President Sarkozy, British
Prime Minister Cameron, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Arab royals to destroy Libya,
once ranked by the U.N. as the
most developed country
in Africa , now mired in intractable chaos.
In 2017, a U.S. attack on any one of Trump's scapegoats would isolate the United States from many
of its allies and undermine its standing in the world in far-reaching ways that might be more permanent
and harder to repair than the invasion and destruction of Iraq.
In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President
Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to
"make the economy
scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. But the
solid victory of Venezuela's
ruling Socialist Party in recent nationwide gubernatorial elections, despite a long and deep
economic crisis, reveals little public support for the CIA's puppets in Venezuela.
The CIA has successfully discredited the Venezuelan government through economic warfare, increasingly
violent right-wing street protests and a global propaganda campaign. But the CIA has stupidly hitched
its wagon to an extreme right-wing, upper-class opposition that has no credibility with most of the
Venezuelan public, who still turn out for the Socialists at the polls. A CIA coup or U.S. military
intervention would meet fierce public resistance and damage U.S. relations all over Latin America.
Boxing In North Korea
A U.S. aerial bombardment or "preemptive strike" on North Korea could quickly escalate into a
war between the U.S. and China, which has reiterated
its commitment to North
Korea's defense if North Korea is attacked. We do not know exactly what was in the
U.S. war plan discovered by North Korea, so neither can we know how North Korea and China could
respond if the U.S. pressed ahead with it.
Most analysts have long concluded that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be met with a North
Korean artillery and missile barrage that would inflict unacceptable civilian casualties on Seoul,
a metropolitan area of 26 million people, three times the population of New York City. Seoul is only
35 miles from the frontier with North Korea, placing it within range of a huge array of North Korean
weapons. What was already a no-win calculus is now compounded by the possibility that North Korea
could respond with nuclear weapons, turning any prospect of a U.S. attack into an even worse nightmare.
U.S. mismanagement of its relations with North Korea should be an object lesson for its relations
with Iran, graphically demonstrating the advantages of diplomacy, talks and agreements over threats
of war. Under the
Agreed Framework
signed in 1994, North Korea stopped work on two much larger nuclear reactors than the small experimental
one operating at Yongbyong since 1986, which only produces 6 kg of plutonium per year, enough for
one nuclear bomb.
The lesson of Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 after Saddam Hussein had complied with demands that
he destroy Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons and shut down a nascent nuclear program was not
lost on North Korea. Not only did the invasion lay waste to large sections of Iraq with hundreds
of thousands of dead but Hussein himself was hunted down and condemned to death by hanging.
Still, after North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, even its small experimental
reactor was shut down as a result of the
"Six Party Talks" in
2007, all the fuel rods were removed and placed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, and the cooling tower of the reactor was demolished in 2008.
But then, as relations deteriorated, North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapon test and again
began reprocessing spent fuel rods to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
North Korea has now conducted six nuclear weapons tests. The explosions in
the first five tests increased gradually up to 15-25 kilotons, about the yield of the bombs the
U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but estimates for the yield of the 2017 test range
from 110
to 250 kilotons , comparable
to a small hydrogen bomb.
The even greater danger in a new war in Korea is that the U.S. could unleash part of its arsenal
of
4,000 more powerful weapons (100 to 1,200 kilotons), which could kill millions of people and
devastate and poison the region, or even the world, for years to come.
The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks
in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate
defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see
a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction.
China has proposed a
reasonable framework for diplomacy to address the concerns of both sides, but the U.S. insists
on maintaining its propaganda narratives that all the fault lies with North Korea and that it has
some kind of "military solution" to the crisis.
This may be the most dangerous idea we have heard from U.S. policymakers since the end of the
Cold War, but it is the logical culmination of a
systematic normalization of deviant and illegal U.S. war-making that has already cost millions
of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. As historian Gabriel Kolko
wrote in Century of War in 1994, "options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous
and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy
that is possible in official circles."
Demonizing Iran
The idea that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program is seriously contested by the IAEA,
which has examined every allegation presented by the CIA and other Western "intelligence" agencies
as well as Israel. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei revealed many details of this wild
goose chase in his 2011 memoir,
Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times .
When the CIA and its partners reluctantly acknowledged the IAEA's conclusions in a 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ElBaradei issued
a press release confirming that, "the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons
program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."
Since 2007, the IAEA has resolved all its outstanding concerns with Iran. It has verified that
dual-use technologies that Iran imported before 2003 were in fact used for other purposes, and it
has exposed the mysterious "laptop documents" that appeared to show Iranian plans for a nuclear weapon
as forgeries. Gareth Porter thoroughly explored all these questions and allegations and the history
of mistrust that fueled them in his 2014 book,
Manufactured
Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare , which I highly recommend.
But, in the parallel Bizarro world of U.S. politics, hopelessly poisoned by the CIA's
endless disinformation campaigns, Hillary Clinton could repeatedly take false credit for disarming
Iran during her presidential campaign, and neither Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump nor any corporate
media interviewer dared to challenge her claims.
"When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb," Clinton fantasized
in a
prominent foreign policy speech on June 2, 2016, claiming that her brutal sanctions policy "brought
Iran to the table."
In fact, as Trita Parsi documented in his 2012 book,
A Single
Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran , the Iranians were ready, not just
to "come to the table," but to sign a comprehensive agreement based on a U.S. proposal brokered by
Turkey and Brazil in 2010. But, in a classic case of "tail wags dog," the U.S. then rejected its
own proposal because it would have undercut support for tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
In other words, Clinton's sanctions policy did not "bring Iran to the table", but prevented the U.S.
from coming to the table itself.
As a senior State Department official told Trita Parsi, the real problem with U.S. diplomacy with
Iran when Clinton was at the State Department was that the U.S. would not take "Yes" for an answer.
Trump's ham-fisted decertification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA is right out of Clinton's
playbook, and it demonstrates that the CIA is still determined to use Iran as a scapegoat for America's
failures in the Middle East.
The spurious claim that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism is another CIA canard
reinforced by endless repetition. It is true that Iran supports and supplies weapons to Hezbollah
and Hamas, which are both listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. But they are
mainly defensive resistance groups that defend Lebanon and Gaza respectively against invasions and
attacks by Israel.
Shifting attention away from Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other groups that actually commit terrorist crimes around the
world might just seem like a case of the CIA "taking its eyes off the ball," if it wasn't so transparently
timed to frame Iran with new accusations now that the manufactured crisis of the nuclear scare has
run its course.
What the Future Holds
Barack Obama's most consequential international achievement may have been the triumph of symbolism
over substance behind which he expanded and escalated the so-called "war on terror," with a vast
expansion of covert operations and proxy wars that eventually triggered the
heaviest U.S.
aerial bombardments since Vietnam in Iraq and Syria.
Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and
the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the
most expensive military budget of any president since World War Two.
But Obama's expansion of the "war on terror" under cover of his deceptive global public relations
campaign created many more problems than it solved, and Trump and his advisers are woefully ill-equipped
to solve any of them. Trump's expressed desire to place America first and to resist foreign entanglements
is hopelessly at odds with his aggressive, bullying approach to every foreign policy problem.
If the U.S. could threaten and fight its way to a resolution of any of its international problems,
it would have done so already. That is exactly what it has been trying to do since the 1990s, behind
both the swagger and bluster of Bush and Trump and the deceptive charm of Clinton and Obama: a "good
cop – bad cop" routine that should no longer fool anyone anywhere.
But as Lyndon Johnson found as he waded deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy in Vietnam, lying
to the public about unwinnable wars does not make them any more winnable. It just gets more people
killed and makes it harder and harder to ever tell the public the truth.
In unwinnable wars based on lies, the "credibility" problem only gets more complicated, as new
lies require new scapegoats and convoluted narratives to explain away graveyards filled by old lies.
Obama's cynical global charm offensive bought the "war on terror" another eight years, but that only
allowed the CIA to drag the U.S. into more trouble and spread its chaos to more places around the
world.
Meanwhile, Russian President Putin is winning hearts and minds in capitals around the world by
calling for a recommitment to the
rule of international
law , which
prohibits
the threat or use of military force except in self-defense. Every new U.S. threat or act of aggression
will only make Putin's case more persuasive, not least to important U.S. allies like South Korea,
Germany and other members of the European Union, whose complicity in U.S. aggression has until now
helped to give it a false veneer of political legitimacy.
Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition,
as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor.
France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their
own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and
destruction.
Americans had better hope that we are not so exceptional, and that the world will find a diplomatic
rather than a military "solution" to its American problem. Our chances of survival would improve
a great deal if American officials and politicians would finally start to act like something other
than putty in the hands of the CIA
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction
of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on "Obama at War" in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card
on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader .
"... Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. ..."
"... The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources" lie repeatedly and never tell the truth? ..."
"... The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy. We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character." ..."
"... The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. "Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush. ..."
"... The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world? ..."
"... Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned, or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it. ..."
"... For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists" who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term. ..."
"... Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. ..."
"... When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative. ..."
"... ... Americans are "intentionally ignorant" of other countries' rights and sovereignty while other countries had been well-informed of America's malicious intents of destroying other countries' rights and sovereignty ... ..."
"... No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate them. ..."
"... "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." -- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda ..."
"... "Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." ..."
"... "When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility." ..."
"... Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere. If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme and go back to fucking off. The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously European crimes....& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amongst themselves? ..."
"... "The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." ..."
"... I agree with Paul Craig Roberts. He asks "Why" and "How." Well, Paul, here is my answer. Decades of Public Education and over 50 years of mass media monopoly. In an age where FOX is the top rated News station and CNN is considered liberal? Where kids in Public school are offered Chocolate milk and frozen pizza for school breakfast before going to class rooms with 30-40 kids. When Texas political appointees chose school text book content for the nation? A nation where service has ended, replaced with volunteer soldiers signing up for pay and benefits, instead of just serving as service, like we did in the 70's? ..."
"... There is a difference between IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY. As Ron White said, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID". In todays information age, ignorance is a choice. ..."
"... The problem is that we have no "Constitution." That is a fable. The constitution of the separation of powers has been undermined from almost day one. Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. ..."
"... Yes sir. Globalization has failed us. The infinite growth paradigm has failed us, as we knew it would. Castro's Cuba, based in a localized agrarian economy, is looking pretty good about now. Localization is the only way back to sustainability. ..."
"... Books? Who said books? You mean reading books? Let me throw a couple out there: I read 'The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America' last year, it was published 50+ years ago by a very recommended writer and accomplished historian. Boorstin's observations are truer today and even more concerning thanks to our modern, ubiquitous "connectivity". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159979.The_Image ..."
"... Adorno famously pointed out in 1940 that the "Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." ..."
"... He doesn't blame the masses because he simply points out the fact that Americans are completely ignorant and blindly believe anything MSM spoon-fed to them. ..."
"... Paul Craig Roberts believe that the people are capable of creating a better and more just society. Instead the people have voted against their own best interest and overwhelmingly believe the propaganda. ..."
"... "... the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise ..." ..."
"... Governments were created by the history of warfare, which was always organized crime developing on larger and larger scales. In the context, the greater problem is that people like Paul Craig Roberts are reactionary revolutionaries, who provide relatively good analysis, followed by bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals. ..."
"... The "American People" are the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy. As Cognitive Dissonance has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled." ..."
"... The article above was another illustration of the ways that the typical reactionary revolutionaries, Black Sheeple, or controlled opposition groups, respond to recognizing the more and more blatant degrees to which there has been an accelerating "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CONTINUE TO STAY WITHIN THE SAME OLD-FASHIONED BULLSHIT-BASED FRAME OF REFERENCE, INSTEAD, AROUND AND AROUND WE GO, STUCK IN THE SAME DEEPENING RUTS, since they do NOT more fully "face the facts" regarding how and why the only realistic solutions to the real problems would require developing better organized crime. INSTEAD, they continue to promote the same dualities based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the associate bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals ... ..."
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.-Bob Dylan, "Hurricane"
Attorney John W. Whitehead opens a recent posting on his Rutherford Institute website with these words from a song by Bob Dylan.
Why don't all of us feel ashamed? Why only Bob Dylan?
I wonder how many of Bob Dylan's fans understand what he is telling them. American justice has nothing to do with innocence or
guilt. It only has to do with the prosecutor's conviction rate, which builds his political career. Considering the gullibility of
the American people, American jurors are the last people to whom an innocent defendant should trust his fate. The jury will betray
the innocent almost every time.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book (2000, 2008) there is no justice in America. We titled our book, "How the Law Was
Lost." It is a description of how the protective features in law that made law a shield of the innocent was transformed over time
into a weapon in the hands of the government, a weapon used against the people. The loss of law as a shield occurred prior to 9/11,
which "our representative government" used to construct a police state.
The marketing department of our publisher did not appreciate our title and instead came up with "The Tyranny of Good Intentions."
We asked what this title meant. The marketing department answered that we showed that the war on crime, which gave us the abuses
of RICO, the war on child abusers, which gave us show trials of total innocents that bested Joseph Stalin's show trials of the heroes
of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the war on drugs, which gave "Freedom and Democracy America" broken families and by far the highest
incarceration rate in the world all resulted from good intentions to combat crime, to combat drugs, and to combat child abuse. The
publisher's title apparently succeeded, because 15 years later the book is still in print. It has sold enough copies over these years
that, had the sales occurred upon publication would have made the book a "best seller." The book, had it been a best seller, would
have gained more attention, and perhaps law schools and bar associations could have used it to hold the police state at bay.
Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant
and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors
who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. Jurors even convicted
the few survivors of the Clinton regime's assault on the Branch Davidians of Waco, the few who were not gassed, shot, or burned to
death by US federal forces. This religious sect was demonized by Washington and the presstitute media as child abusers who were manufacturing
automatic weapons while they raped children. The charges proved to be false, like Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction,"
and so forth, but only after all of the innocents were dead or in prison.
The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support
the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources"
lie repeatedly and never tell the truth?
The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy.
We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed
ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the
character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character."
Was the American character present in the torture prisons of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and hidden CIA torture dungeons where
US military and CIA personnel provided photographic evidence of their delight in torturing and abusing prisoners? Official reports
have concluded that along with torture went rape, sodomy, and murder. All of this was presided over by American psychologists with
Ph.D. degrees.
We see the same inhumanity in the American police who respond to women children, the elderly, the physically and mentally handicapped,
with gratuitous violence. For no reason whatsoever, police murder, taser, beat, and abuse US citizens. Every day there are more reports,
and despite the reports the violence goes on and on and on. Clearly, the police enjoy inflicting pain and death on citizens whom
the police are supposed to serve and protect. There have always been bullies in the police force, but the wanton police violence
of our time indicates a complete collapse of the American character.
The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home
Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous
countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds
of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over
the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq.
"Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush.
The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the
rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world?
Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its
will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned,
or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing
up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it.
For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit
in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists"
who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British
Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from
terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term.
Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. As John Whitehead makes clear, the
American people cannot even prevent "their police," paid by their tax payments, from murdering 3 Americans each day, and this is
only the officially reported murders. The actual account is likely higher.
What Whitehead describes and what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own
sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples. Americans accept no sense of responsibility for the
millions of peoples that Washington has exterminated over the past two decades dating back to the second term of Clinton. Every one
of the millions of deaths is based on a Washington lie.
When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the
lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the
affirmative.
Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a
criminal enterprise.
benb
The American people have been scientifically mis-educated, propagandized, and beaten down. A disproportionate number of the
under 30's are societal DOAs thanks to ... weaponized TV. But I am being too optimistic...
PrayingMantis
... Americans are "intentionally ignorant" of other countries' rights and sovereignty while other countries had been well-informed
of America's malicious intents of destroying other countries' rights and sovereignty ...
BarnacleBill
No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal
peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate
them.
Also, I have to say that I believe the US empire is a long, long, way from collapse. It is still expanding, for goodness sake.
Empires collapse only when the shrinking process is well under way. (The recent Soviet Empire was exceptional, in this regard.)
It will take several more generations before the darkness lifts, I'm afraid.
macholatte
The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element
in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the
true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely
by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers
of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost
every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking,
we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the
masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
-- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
OldPhart
"Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government
into a criminal enterprise."
I think that happened August 13, 1971, but didn't get fully organized (as in Mafia) until 2000.
PT
The majority have their nose to the grind stone and as such can not see past the grind stone. They rely on "official sources"
to put the rest of the world in order for them, but have no time to audit the "official sources". Would public education suffer
if mothers and fathers were monitoring what the children were learning? But who has got time for that when both parents are working?
How many non-work organizations were your parents and grand-parents involved in (both the wage-earner and the housekeeper)? How
many organizations are you involved in?
Do you constantly hassle your local politicians or do you just say, "I'll vote 'em out in four years time"? (Yes, I know, you
just don't vote. Fair enough, this question is for the voters.)
Yes, some of us are guilty of not fighting back. We had "Shut up and do as you're told" and "Well, if you're not happy with
what you've got then work harder" beaten into us. Some of us are a little awake because, despite all our efforts, the grind stone
was removed from us and then we got to see the larger picture of what lies behind the grind stone. Others are still busy, nose
to the wheel, and all they see is the wheel.
And that is before we even consider HypnoToad on the Idiot Box. Some "need" the idiot box to help them wind down. Some can
no longer enjoy the silence. (Remember Brave New World? It's true. Many people can no longer stand to be around silence, with
nothing but their own thoughts.) I tell everyone that TV is crap. Radio is crap. Newspapers are crap. Turn that shit off for six
months to a year, then go back to it and see what you really think of it. But they can't handle the thought of being away from
"the background noise".
Ever spoken to grandparents who remember wars and depressions? And even amongst the rations and the hardships they still find
positive memories? Time to talk to them again. Or not. I guess we'll get first-hand experience soon enough.
Allow me for a moment to share a brief anecdote about the new "American Character".
Last Sunday I was at the local supermarket. I was at the bakery counter, when suddenly a nicely dressed, Sunday best, non-Caucasian
woman barrels into my cart riding a fat scooter. She rudely demands from the counter person a single cinnamon bun and then wheels
off towards the front. Curious, I follow her up the aisle as she scarfs down the pastry in three bites. She then proceeds to stuff
the empty bag between some soda bottles and scooters through the checkout without paying for her item. In the parking lot she
then disembarks from her scooter, easily lifts it into the trunk of her Cadillac and walks to the drivers side, gets in and speeds
off with her kids, who were in the back seat.
Amazed at what I had just witnessed, I went back into the store, retrieved the empty bag, included it in my few items at checkout
and then went to the manager to share this story with him. He laughed and said there was nothing he could do.
The new "American Character" is that of a sense of entitlement and apathy.
I weep for the future.
Headbanger
Having character is not politically correct. Plus there's no need to develop character anymore because there's no jobs requiring
any!
Consumption is the ONLY value of the inDUHvidual today.
And the less character they have, the more shit they'll consume to feel fulfilled cause they can't get that from themselves.
clymer Sat, 07/25/2015 - 07:34
Macholatte, i don't think PCR is writing from a point of view that is haughty and contemptful of the American people, per se,
but rather from a perspective that is hopeless and thoroughly depressed after contemplating what the American people of many generations
ago has taken for themselves as natural rights from a tyrranical government, only to see the nation slowly morph into something
even worse than what was rejected by the founders.
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within...
He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body
politic so that it can no longer resist."
ThroxxOfVron
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "
"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "
The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe.
It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.
The indiginous populations of the Western Hemisphere were suystemaically and with forethought expropriated, ensalved, and slaughtered.
The indiginous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being margialized,
forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.
...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history
and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most
eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.
Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere.
If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme
and go back to fucking off.
The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously
European crimes.
...& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amonsgst themselves?
Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West.
The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters.
It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only
because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...
El Vaquero
The US will collapse within the next decade if some serious new technology is not developed and the infrastructure to use it
is put in. There is too much debt and not enough material resources to continue growing the ponzi scheme that is our monetary
system at an exponential rate without something breaking. The question is, will it be at the end of this boom-bust cycle, or the
next? And if you look at what is being done on the financial front, which is the backbone of our neo-empire, that is shrinking.
The USD is slowly falling out of favor. There will come a point where that rapidly accelerates. We've been in a state of collapse
for 15 years.
Abitdodgie
ignorance is choice these days and Americans love it.
AetosAeros
Not only a choice, but the ONLY choice they are prepared to accept. Cognitive Dissonance at it's finest. And to make matters
worse, in only the best American fashion, we've asked if if it can be Supersized to go along with the Freedom Lies we feed ourselves.
I've seen the enemy, and....
But only if I'm willing to look in the mirror. Today's American doesn't look for what's right there in front of him/her, we
look for all the new 'Social Norms' that we aren't living up to. This article is completely on target, and I hope Roberts hasn't
decided to do any remodeling, cause too many idle nails guns make for a great Evening News sidebar mention.
Damnit all to hell.
Fun Facts
Fun Facts's picture
protocol #1 - Take control of the media and use it in propaganda for our plans
protocol #2 - Start fights between different races, classes and religions
... ... ...
protocol #13 - Use our media to create entertaining distractions
protocol #14 - Corrupt minds with filth and perversion
protocol #15 - Encourage people to spy on one another
Rubicon727
We educators began seeing this shift towards "me-ism" around 1995-6. Students from low to middle income families became either
apathetic towards "education" or followed their parent's sense of "entitlement." Simultaneously, the tech age captured both population's
attention. Respecting "an education" dwindled.
Fast forward to the present: following the 2007-8 crash, we noted clear divisions between low income vs middle/upper class
students based on their school behavior. Low to slightly middle income students brought to school family tensions and the turmoil
of parents losing their jobs. A rise in non-functioning students increase for teachers while the few well performing students
decline significantly.
Significant societal, financial shifts in America can always be observed in the student population.
reader2010
Mission Accomplished.
"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments,
when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business
a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility."
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985
Lea
"The American people have been scientifically mis-educated".
You've got the answer there. The education system is the root cause of the problem. I'm from Europe, but if I've understood
correctly, the US education policy is to teach as little as possible to children, and expect them to fill in the gaps in the Universities,
past a certain age.
Only, it can't work. Children WILL learn, as childhood is the time when most informations are stored. If the schools don't
provide the knowledge, they will get it from the television, movies or games, with the consequences we can see: ignorance, obsession
with TV and movies stars, inability to differentiate life from movies, and over-simplistic reasoning (if any).
In Europe, we knew full well children learn fast and a lot, and that was why the schools focused on teaching them as much general
knowldge as possible before 18 years old, which is when - it is scientifically proved - the human brain learns best.
Recently, the EU leading countries have understood that having educated masses doesn't pay if you want to lead them like sheep,
so they are perfidiously trying to lower the standards... to the dismay of parents.
My advice, if I may presume to give any, would be to you USA people: teach your children what they won't learn at school, history,
geography, literature (US, European and even Asian, why not), a foreign language if you can, arts, music, etc; and keep them away
from the TV, movies and games.
And please adapt what you teach them to their age.
Refuse-Resist
Bang on! One anecdotal example: insisting that all 3rd graders use calculators "to learn" their multiplication tables. If I
didn't do flashcards at home with my kids they wouldn't know them. As somebody who majored in engineering and took many many advanced math courses, I always felt that knowing your 'times tables'
was essential to being successful in math.
What better way to dumb down otherwise intelligent children by creating a situation where the kid can't divide 32 by 4 without
a calculator. Trigonometry? Calculus? Linear Algebra? Fuggedaboudit.
doctor10
The CB's and MIC have Americans right where they want them. the consequences of 3-4 generations of force feeding Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny
ThroxxOfVron
Some of US were never fucking asleep. Some of us were born with our eyes and minds open. We were, and are: hated, and reviled, and marginalized, and disowned for it. The intellectual repression was, and is, fucking insane and brutal. Words such as ethics and logic exist for what purpose? What are these expressions of? A bygone time? Abstractions?
Those that have tried to preserve their self awareness, empathy, and rationality have been ruthlessly systematically demeaned
and condemed for confronting our families, our culture and institutions. We all have a right to be angry and disgusted and distrustful of the people and institutions around us. I am very fucking angry, and disgusted, and distrustful of the people and institutions around me.
But I still have hope. Nothing lasts forever.. This self-righteous nation called The United States, this twisted fraud of a culture called America, is most dangerously overdue
for receipt of chastisment and retribution. It would be best if the citizenry of the United States taught themselves a lesson in stead of inviting Other nations and cultures
to educate them.
A serious self education may be tedious and imperfect; but, it would be far far cheaper than forcing someone to come all the
way over those oceans to educate Americans at the price they will be demanding for those lessons...
I do not require representation. I will speak my own mind and act of my own accord.
Every time other so-called Americans take a shit on me for thinking and speaking and acting differently it is a badge of honor
and a confirmation of my spiritual and intellectual liberty. They don't know it but they are all gonna run out of shit before
I run out of being free.
ThroxxOfVron
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "
"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "
The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe. It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.
The indiginous populations of the Western Hemisphere were suystemaically and with forethought expropriated, ensalved, and slaughtered.
The indiginous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being margialized,
forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.
...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history
and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most
eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.
Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere. If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme
and go back to fucking off. The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously
European crimes....& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amongst themselves?
See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
That would be: Hell NO. Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West. The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters. It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only
because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...
Mini-Me
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise."
I agree with the first part. As for the latter, "government," by definition, is a criminal enterprise. It doesn't start out
pure as the driven snow and then change into something nefarious over time. Its very essence requires the initiation of violence
or its threat. Government without the gun in the ribs is a contradiction.
The fact that those in power got more votes than the losing criminals does not magically morph these people into paragons of
virtue. They are almost without exception thoroughly deranged human beings. Lying is second nature to them. Looting is part of
the job description. Killing is an end to their means: the acquisition and aggrandizement of power over others, no matter how
much death and destruction results.
These people are sick bastards. To expect something virtuous from them after an endless string of wanton slaughter, theft and
abuse, is simply wishful thinking.
Jack Burton
I agree with Paul Craig Roberts. He asks "Why" and "How." Well, Paul, here is my answer. Decades of Public Education and over
50 years of mass media monopoly. In an age where FOX is the top rated News station and CNN is considered liberal? Where kids in
Public school are offered Chocolate milk and frozen pizza for school breakfast before going to class rooms with 30-40 kids. When
Texas political appointees chose school text book content for the nation? A nation where service has ended, replaced with volunteer
soldiers signing up for pay and benefits, instead of just serving as service, like we did in the 70's?
Paul Craig Roberts points out the police war against the people. That comes right from the very top, orders filter down to
street cops. Street Cops are recruited from groups of young men our fathers generation would have labeled mental! But now they
are hired across the board, shaved heads, tatoos, and a code of silence and Cops Above Justice.
Schools
Media
Crazed Cops
And a corporate owned government.
The people have allowed the elites to rule in their place, never bothering to question the two fake candidates we are allowed
to vote for.
Jtrillian
There is a difference between IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY. As Ron White said, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID". In todays information age, ignorance is a choice.
Part of the problem that no one is talking about or addressing is the population explosion. And it's not linear. Those who
are the least educated, fully dependent others for their survival (welfare), the most complacent, and often with violent criminal
records are breeding the fastest.
Evolution is not guaranteed. It can be argued that the apathy we experience today is a sign of the human race de-evolving.
It takes a certain amount of cognitive ability to observe and question what is going on.
Further, the society we have created where "60 is the new 40" creates very little time to pay attention to what is going on
in the world. Many people rely on mainstream media which is not really news any more. When six corporations control more than
90% of the news, it's the message of the corporate elite that we are fed. This becomes painfully obvious when you start turning
to other sources for information like social media and independent news. Mainstream media today is full of opinion bias - injecting
opinion as though it were fact. They also appeal to the lowest commmon denominator by focusing on emotionally charged topics and
words rather than boring facts. Finally, the mainstream media is extremely guilty of propaganda by omission, ignoring important
events altogether or only presenting one side of the story as is being done with regard to ISIS, Syria, and Ukraine today. People
who watch the mainstream media have no idea that the US played a significant role in arming ISIS and aided in their rise to power.
They have no idea that it was likely ISIS that used chemical weapons in Syria. They have no idea that the US has propped up real
life neo nazis in high government positions in Ukraine. And they have ignored the continuing Fukushima disaster that is STILL
dumping millions of gallons of radioactive water into the ocean every single day.
To sum up, democracies only work when people pay attention and participate. People are either too stupid, too overworked, are
are looking to the wrong sources for information.
Until we break up mainstream media, remove incentives for those who cannot even care for themselves to stop breeding, and make
fundamental changes to our society that affords people the time to focus on what is happening in the world, it will only get worse.
Much worse.
serotonindumptruck
A dying empire is like a wounded, cornered animal.
It will lash out uncontrollably and without remorse in a futile effort to save itself from certain death.
Enough Already
The problem is that we have no "Constitution." That is a fable. The constitution of the separation of powers has been undermined
from almost day one. Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
In the centuries since then, there has been no "separation of powers." Marbury v Madison (1803) gave the Supreme Court the
right to "decide" what the "law" was. Although, only in the 20th century did the "Supreme" court really start "legislating" from
the bench.
We're just peons to the Overall Federal Power; the three "separate" parts of the federal government have been in collusion
from the first. But like all empires, this one is in the final stage of collapse; it has just gotten too big.
gswifty
Yes sir. Globalization has failed us. The infinite growth paradigm has failed us, as we knew it would. Castro's Cuba, based
in a localized agrarian economy, is looking pretty good about now. Localization is the only way back to sustainability.
napples
Books? Who said books? You mean reading books? Let me throw a couple out there: I read 'The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America' last year, it was published 50+ years ago by a very recommended
writer and accomplished historian. Boorstin's observations are truer today and even more concerning thanks to our modern, ubiquitous
"connectivity". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159979.The_Image
Another by Boorstin, The Discoverers was my fav, like Bryson's 'Short History' on steroids:
I'm currently trying to fathom all of the historical implications of the claims Menzies is making in his book '1434', where
apparently everything I learned about history is a lie. While he's making a lot of claims(hoping some sticks?) I'm not truly convinced.
It is a very good, believable thought experiment. It almost makes perfect sense given the anglo/euro history of deceit & dishonesty,
but I digress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies
Adorno famously pointed out in 1940 that the "Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." It takes 75 years for someone
such as PCR to reiterate. He doesn't blame the masses because he simply points out the fact that Americans are completely
ignorant and blindly believe anything MSM spoon-fed to them.
George Orwell once remarked that the average person today is about as naive as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In
the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of what
Adorno called Culture Industry and MSM, no matter what. Today we are indeed in another Dark Age
PoasterToaster
"Americans" are not one person. Individuals are not fungible. Reasoning from the "average American" leads to false conclusions.
reader2010
Jacques Derrida says, "The individualism of technological civilization relies precisely on a misunderstanding of the unique
self. It is the individualism of a role and not of a person. In other words it might be called the individualism of a masque or
persona, a character [personnage] and not a person." There are many Americans but they all play the same role in the Pursuit of
Happiness, aka wage slaves, career slaves, debt slaves, information junkies, and passive consumers.
Moccasin
Paul Craig Roberts believe that the people are capable of creating a better and more just society. Instead the people have
voted against their own best interest and overwhelmingly believe the propaganda.
When do the people or the society take responsibility for its greater good or own the crimes of those they put into power?
Blaming the aristocracy or the oligarchs seems like a scapegoat when the people have never stood up to the corruption in a
cohesive or concerted way. imho, After a few generations of abuse and corruption the people need to take responsibility for their
future. I expect that most will just buy into the charade and live the lie, on that basis as a society we are doomed to live in
a corporatocracy fascist state.
Aldous Huxley called it a scientific dictatorship, Edward Bernays referred to us as a herd.
Moccasin
In the USA being white, monied and having the capacity to afford a good education is privileged. To his credit he speaks to
the greater population, the 'average citizen' and not the plutocratic class.
MSorciere
What we have is the result of conditioning and commoditizing a population. The country is filled with consumers, not citizens.
Teach the acquisition of money and goods as the main goal and individualism as the only acceptable social unit. We end up with
a nation of insatiable sociopaths, ruled by power-hungry psychopaths.
Divisive politics, jackbooted authority from the DC scumpond down to the cop on the beat, the constant preaching of the cult
of the individual as a sustitute for true liberty... all of these have served to destroy a sense of community and decentness between
Americans.
The ONLY thing that could threaten the ruling class is a banding together of the people - in large numbers. 'They' have purposefully
and effectively quashed that.
TrulyStupid
Shifting responsibility to the usual suspects is simply a manifestation of the American moral collapse. Man up and do some
self evaluation.
T-NUTZ
"what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity,
any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples"
Unfortunately, Paul, the American people have lost any sense of mercy and justice for their own people.
Painful as it may be, we need to rationally look at US history/society. The nascent US was formed by stealing land from the
native population and using human capital (read African Slaves) to generate wealth (it took a civil war with circa 500K casualties
to stop this- one could argue the US "civil war" never ended). More recently, the US has been almost continuously at war since
1940, we dropped atomic bombs on Japan. Currently, the US/NATO war theater extends from the Levant, to Caspian Basin, Persian
Gulf, China Sea, Indian Ocean, Horn of Africa (Saudi/US war on Yemen), the Maghreb and E Europe and Russian Border.
"... the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise ..."
Governments were created by the history of warfare, which was always organized crime
developing on larger and larger scales. In the context, the greater problem is that people like Paul Craig Roberts are
reactionary revolutionaries, who provide relatively good analysis, followed by bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals.
The "American People" are the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy. As Cognitive Dissonance
has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they
are controlled."
It is practically impossible to exaggerate the degree to which that is so, on such profound levels, because of the ways that
most people want to continue to believe that false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals are
valid, and should be applied to their problems, despite that those mistaken ideas cause the opposite to happen in the real world,
because those who promote those kinds of false fundamental dichotomies and their related impossible ideals, ARE "controlled
opposition."
Rather, the place to begin would be by recognizing that all human beings and civilizations must necessarily operate as entropic
pumps of energy flows, which necessarily are systems of organized lies operating robberies. Everyone has some power to rob, and
power to kill to back that up. Governments assembled and channeled those powers. There was never a time when governments were
not organized crime. There could never be any time when governments were not organized crime. The only things that exist are the
dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies. Those dynamic equilibria have become extremely
unbalanced due the degree that the best organized gangs of criminals were able to control their opposition.
Paul Craig Roberts, as well as pretty well all of the rest of the content published on Zero Hedge, are presentations
of various kinds of controlled opposition groups, most of which do not recognize that they are being controlled by the language
that they use, and the philosophy of science that they take for granted. THAT is the greatest failure of the American People,
as well as most of the rest of the people everywhere else. They believe in false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible
ideals, and therefore, their bogus "solutions" always necessarily backfire badly, and cause the opposite to happen in the real
world.
After all, the overwhelming vast majority of the American People operate as the controlled opposition to the best organized
gangs of criminals that most control the government of the USA. Therefore, the FAILURES of the American People are far more profound
and problematic than what is superficially presented by guys like Paul Craig Roberts, and also, of course, his suggested bogus
"solutions" are similarly superficial.
The ONLY things which can actually exist are the dynamic equilibrium between different systems of organized lies operating
robberies. The degree to which the American People, as well as most of the rest of the people in the world, FAIL to understand
that is the degree to which they enable the best organized gangs of criminals to control them, due to the vast majority of people
being members of various controlled opposition groups. Controlled opposition always presents relatively superficial analysis of
the political problems, which are superficially correct. However, they then follow that up with similarly superficial "solutions."
Therefore, magical words are bandied about, that express their dualities, through false fundamental dichotomies, and the related
impossible ideals.
Governments must exist because organized crime must exist. Better governments could be achieved through
better organized crime. However, mostly what get presented in the public places are the utter bullshit of the biggest
bullies, who dominate the society because they were the best organized gangs of criminals, who were also able to dominate their
apparent opposition. Therefore, instead of more realistic, better balancing of the dynamic equilibria between different systems
of organized lies operating robberies, we get runaway developments of the best organized gangs of criminals being able to control
governments, whose only apparent opposition is controlled to stay within the same bullshit frame of reference regarding everything
that was actually happening.
The mainline of the FAILURES of the American People have been the ways that the international bankers were able to recapture
control over the American public "money" supply. After that, everything else was leveraged up, through the funding of the political
processes, schools, and mass media, etc., being more and more dominated by that fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting
system. Of course, that FAILURE has now become more than 99% ... Therefore, no political possible ways appear to exist to pull
out of that flaming spiral nose dive, since we have already gone beyond the event horizon into that social black hole.
Most of the content on Zero Hedge which is based upon recognizing that set of problems still acts as controlled opposition
in that regard too. Therefore, the bogus "solutions" here continue to deliberately ignore that money is necessarily measurement
backed by murder. Instead of accepting that, the controlled opposition groups like to promote various kinds of "monetary reforms."
However, meanwhile, we are actually already headed towards the established debt slavery systems having generated debt insanities,
which are going to provoke death insanities.
In that context, the only realistic resolutions to the real problems would necessarily have to be monetary revolutions,
that may emerge out of the future situations, after the runaway debt insanities have provoked death insanities. Indeed, the only
genuine solutions to the problems are to develop different death control systems, to back up different debt control systems, which
must necessarily be done within the context that governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best
organized gangs of criminals.
The various controlled opposition groups do not want to face those social facts. Rather, they continue to want to believe in
the dualities expressed as false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals, which is their greatest overall FAILURE.
In my view, the article above by Roberts contained a lot of nostalgic nonsense. There was never a time when there
were any governments which were not based on the applications of the principles and methods of organized crime, and there
could never be any time in the future when that could be stopped from being the case.
The greatest FAILURE of the American People, as well as most of the rest of the world's people, has been to become so brainwashed
to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, that there is no significant opposition that is not controlled by thinking
inside of the box of that bullshit. The government did NOT transform into a criminal enterprise. The government was necessarily
ALWAYS a criminal enterprise. That criminal enterprise has become more and more severely UNBALANCED due to the FAILURE
of the people to understand that they were actually members of an organized crime gang, called their country. Instead, they were
more and more scientifically brainwashed to believe in bullshit about everything, including their country.
The ONLY connection between human laws and the laws of nature is the ability to back up lies with violence. The development
of the government of the USA has been the developed of integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. Those
systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS have been able to become more extremely unbalanced because there is almost nothing which is publicly
significant surrounding that core of organized crime but various controlled opposition groups.
Of course, it seems politically impossible for my recommendations to actually happen within the foreseeable future, as the
current systems of debt slavery drive through debt insanities to become death insanities, but nevertheless, the only theoretically
valid ideas to raise to respond to the real problems would have to based upon a series of intellectual scientific revolutions.
However, since we have apparently run out of time to go through those sorts of paradigm shifts sufficiently, we are stuck in the
deepening ruts of political problems which guys like Roberts correctly present to be the case
... HOWEVER, ROBERTS, LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE, CONTINUE TO PRESUME UPON DUALITIES, AND THEREFORE,
HAVE THEIR MECHANISMS REGARDING "SOLUTIONS" ABSURDLY BACKWARDS.
Rather, we should start with the concept of SUBTRACTION, which then leads to robbery. We should start with the recognition
that governments are necessarily, by definition, the biggest forms of organized crime. Governments did NOT transform
into being that. Governments were always that. The political problems we have now are due to the best organized gangs
of criminals, which currently are primarily the biggest gangsters, which can rightly be referred to as the banksters, having dominated
all aspects of the funding of politics, enough to capture control over all sociopolitical institutions, so that the American People
would more and more be subjected to the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy, which was built on top of thousands
of years of previous history of Neolithic Civilizations being based on backing up lies with violence.
The runaway systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS, or the integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, that more
and more dominate the lives of the American People are due to the applications of the methods of organized crime, and could not
be effectively counter-balanced in any other ways. However, the standing social situation is that there is no publicly significant
opposition that is not controlled to stay within the same frame of reference of the biggest bullies, which is now primarily the
frame of reference of the banksters. Indeed, to the degree to which people's lives are controlled by the monetary system, they
are debt slaves. Moreover, the degree to which they do not understand, and do not want to understand, that money is necessarily
measurement backed by murder, then they think like controlled opposition groups, who have their mechanisms absurdly backwards,
when they turn from their superficial analysis of what the political problems, to then promote their superficial solutions of
those problems.
I AGREE that "Americans need to face the facts." However, those facts are that citizens are members
of an organized crime gang, called their country. "Their" country is currently controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals.
However, there are no genuine resolutions for those problems other than to develop better organized crime. Since the controlled
opposition groups that are publicly significant do not admit any of the deeper levels of the scientific facts regarding human
beings and civilizations operating as entropic pumps of energy flows, but rather, continue to perceive all of that in the most
absurdly backward ways possible, the current dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies
continue to become more and more extremely UNBALANCED.
In the case of the article above, Roberts does NOT "face the facts" that governments were
always forms of organized crime, and must necessarily be so, because human beings must live as entropic pumps of energy
flows. Rather, Roberts tends to illustrate how the controlled opposition takes for granted certain magical words and phrases,
such as "Liberty" or "Constitution," that have no adequate operational definitions to connect them to the material
world.
We are living inside of an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, which has applied the progress in science primarily to become
better at backing up lies with violence, while refusing to allow scientific methods to admit and address how and why that has
been what has actually happened. Therefore, almost all of the language that we use to communicate, as well as almost
all of the philosophy of science that we take for granted, was based on the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is now primarily
manifested as the banksters' bullshit, as that bullshit developed in America to become ENFORCED FRAUDS.
ALL of the various churches, corporations, and countries are necessarily various systems of organized lies operating robberies.
Those which are the biggest now were historically the ones that were the best at doing that. The INTENSE PARADOXES are due to
human systems necessarily being organized lies operating robberies, wherein the greatest social successfulness has been achieved
by those who were the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. That flows throughout ALL of the established systems,
which are a core of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups.
The degree to which the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, have been more and more scientifically
brainwashed to believe in bullshit about governments in particular, and human beings and civilizations in general, is the degree
to which the established systems based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS are headed towards some series of psychotic breakdowns. For all practical
purposes, it is politically impossible to get enough people to stop acting like incompetent political idiots, and instead start
acting more like competent citizens, because they do not understand, and moreover have been conditioned to not want to understand
that governments are necessarily organized crime.
Roberts ironically illustrated the deeper nature of the political problems that he also shares, when he perceives that governments
have somehow transformed into being criminal enterprise, when governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises.
Similarly, with those who recognize that, but then promote the impossible solutions based upon somehow stopping that
from being the case, which is as absurdly backwards as stopping human beings from operating as entropic pumps of energy
flows, which then also presumes that it would be possible to stop human civilizations from being entropic pumps of energy
flows.
Rather, the deeper sorts of intellectual scientific revolutions that we should go through require becoming much more
critical of the language that we use to communicate with, and more critical about the philosophy of science that we presumed was
correct. Actually, we were collectively brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is as absurdly backwards
as it could possibly be. However, due to the collective FAILURES of people to understand that, as reflected by the ways that the
core of organized crime is surrounded by nothing which is publicly significant than layers of controlled opposition, there are
no reasonable ways to doubt that the established debt slavery systems will continue to drive even worse debt insanities, which
will provoke much worse death insanities. Therefore, to be more realistic about the foreseeable future, the development of new
death control systems will emerge out of the context of crazy collapses into chaos, wherein the runaway death insanities provide
the possible opportunities for new death controls to emerge out of that situation.
Of course, the about 99% FAILURE of the American People to want to understand anything that I have outlined above
indicates that the foreseeable future for subsequent generations shall not too likely be catalyzed transformations
towards enough people better understanding their political problems, in order to better resolve those problems. Rather, what I
mostly expect is for the psychotic breakdowns of the previous systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS to give opportunities to some possible
groups of controlled opposition to take advantage of that, to perhaps emerge as the new version of professional liars and immaculate
hypocrites, who will be able to operate some new version of organized lies, operating robberies, who may mostly still get away
with being some modified versions of still oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, due to social success still being based upon the
best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who were able to survive through those transformations, so that the
new systems arise from some of the seeds of the old systems.
At the present time, it is extremely difficult to imagine how the human species could possibly reconcile progress in
physical science by surpassing that with progress in political science. Rather, what mostly exists now is the core of
organized crime, which gets away with spouting the bullshit about itself, such as how the banksters dominate the mass media, and
the lives of everyone else who depend upon the established monetary system (which is dominated by the current ways that governments
ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks), while that core of organized crime has no publicly significant opposition that
is not controlled by the ways that they think, which ways stay within the basic bullshit world view, as promoted by the biggest
bullies for thousands of years, and as more and more scientifically promoted to brainwash the vast majority of people to believe
in that kind of bullshit so completely that it mostly does not occur to them that they are doing that, and certainly almost never
occurs to them that they are doing that in the most profoundly absurd and backward ways possible.
That is how and why it is possible for an author like Roberts to correctly point out the ways in which the government of the
USA is transforming into being more blatantly based on organized crime ... HOWEVER, Roberts is not willing and able to go through
deeper levels of intellectual scientific revolutions, in order to recognize how and why governments were always necessarily manifestations
of organized crime. Therefore, as is typically the case, Roberts does not recognize how ironically he recommends that Americans
should "face the facts," while he himself does not fully do so.
The whole history of Neolithic Civilizations was social pyramid systems based on being able to back up lies with violence,
becoming more sophisticated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which currently manifest as the globalized
electronic frauds of the banksters, were are backed up by the governments (that those banksters effectively control) having atomic
bombs. Those are the astronomically amplified magnitudes of the currently existing combined money/murder systems. Therefore, it
appears to be politically impossible at the present time to develop better governments, due to the degree that almost everyone
is either a member of the core groups of organized crime, or members of the surrounding layers of groups of controlled opposition,
both of which want to stay within the same overall bullshit frame of reference, because, so far, their lives have been socially
successful by being professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
Ironically, I doubt that someone like Roberts, or pretty well everyone else whose material is published on Zero Hedge
is able and willing to recognize the degree to which they are actually controlled opposition. Indeed, even more ironically, as
I have repeated before, even Cognitive Dissonance, when he previously stated on Zero Hedge:"The
absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled." DOES NOT "GET IT" regarding the
degree to which he too is controlled opposition, even while superficially attempting to recognize and struggle with that situation.
(Indeed, of course, that includes me too, since I am still communicating using the English language, which was the natural language
that most developed to express the biggest bullies' bullshit world view.)
Overall, I REPEAT, the deeper problems are due to progress in physical science, NOT being surpassed by progress in
political science. Instead, while there EXIST globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing
regarding the ways of thinking that made that science and those technologies possible has found any significant expression through
political science, because political science would have to go through even more profound paradigm shifts within itself in order
to do that.
The INTENSE PARADOXES continue to be the manifestation of the oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that deliberately refuses
to become any more genuinely scientific about itself. Therefore, the banksters have been able to pay for the best scientific brainwashing
that money could buy, for generation after generation, in order to more and more brainwash most of the American People to believe
in the banksters' bullshit world view. While there exist electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing regarding
the physical science paradigm shifts that made that possible have even the slightest degree of public appreciation within the
realms of politics today, which are almost totally dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, despite that being as
absurdly backwards as possible, while the controlled opposition groups, mostly in the form of old-fashioned religions and ideologies,
continue to stay within that same bullshit world view, and adamantly refuse to change their perceptual paradigms regarding political
problems.
However, I REPEAT, the issues we face are NOT that governments have transformed to become criminal enterprises,
but that governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises, which had the power to legalized their own lies, and
then back those lies up with legalized violence. Thereby, the best organized criminals, the international bankers, as
the biggest gangsters, or the banksters, were able to apply the methods of organized crime through the political processes. Meanwhile,
the only "opposition" that was allowed to be publicly significant was controlled, to basically stay within the same bullshit world
view, which is what Roberts has done in his series of articles, as well as what is almost always presented in the content published
on Zero Hedge.
The NEXT LEVEL of "the need to face the facts" is to recognize that the political economy is based
upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, or systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. However, the NEXT LEVEL "the need
to face the facts" is the that the only possible changes are to change the dynamic equilibria between the different
systems of organized lies operating robberies, i.e., change those ENFORCED FRAUDS, in ways which CAN NOT STOP
THOSE FROM STILL BEING ENFORCED FRAUDS, because of the degree to which money is necessarily measurement backed by murder.
For the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, to stop being such dismal FAILURES would require them to
become more competent citizens. However, at the present time they appear to be totally unable to do that, because they are unwilling
to go through the profound paradigm shifts that it would take them to become more competent citizens inside of world where there
exist globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. The vast majority of the American People would not like
to go through the severe cognitive dissonance that would be required, to not only recognize that "their" government was a criminal
enterprise, but that it also must be, and that they too must necessarily be members of that organized crime gang. However, without
that degree of perceptual paradigm shifts of the political problems, then enough of the American People could not become more
competent citizens.
Somehow, most people continue to count on themselves never having to think about how and why progress was achieved in physical
science, by going through series of profound paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceived the world. Most people continue to
presume that it is not necessary for their perception of politics to go through profound paradigm shifts, that surpass those which
have already been achieved in physical science. We continue to live in an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that employs science
and technology to become better at being dishonest and violent, but does not apply science and technology to "face
the facts" about that scientific dictatorship as a whole.
At the present time, technologies which have become trillions of times more capable and powerful are primarily used as special effects within the context of repeating the same old-fashioned, stupid social stories, such as promoted by the biggest
bullies, and their surrounding controlled opposition groups. Ironically, especially when it comes to politics, that tends to manifest
the most atavistic throwbacks to old-fashioned religions and ideologies being relied upon to propose bogus "solutions," despite
that those kinds of social stories adamantly refuse to change their paradigms in light of the profound paradigms shifts which
have been achieved in physical science.
The article above was another illustration of the ways that the typical reactionary revolutionaries, Black Sheeple, or controlled
opposition groups, respond to recognizing the more and more blatant degrees to which there has been an accelerating "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CONTINUE TO STAY WITHIN
THE SAME OLD-FASHIONED BULLSHIT-BASED FRAME OF REFERENCE, INSTEAD, AROUND AND AROUND WE GO, STUCK IN
THE SAME DEEPENING RUTS, since they do NOT more fully "face the facts" regarding how and why the only
realistic solutions to the real problems would require developing better organized crime. INSTEAD, they
continue to promote the same dualities based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the associate bogus "solutions" based upon
impossible ideals ...
Given that overall situation, that there there almost nothing which is publicly significant than the core of organized crime,
surrounded by controlled opposition groups, I see no reasonable hopes for the foreseeable material future of a civilization controlled
by ENFORCED FRAUDS, since there is no publicly possible ways to develop better dynamic equilibria between the different systems
of organized lies operating robberies, since the biggest forms of doing that were most able to get away with pretending that they
are not doing that, which was facilitated by their controlled opposition promoting the opinions that nobody should do that, while
actually everyone must be doing that.
Roberts' article above, to me, was another typical example of superficially correct analysis, which implies some bogus "solutions"
because those are based upon the same superficiality. It is NOT good enough to recognize "transformation of government
into a criminal enterprise," unless one goes through deeper levels of analysis regarding how and why that is what
actually exists, and then, one should continue to be consistent with that deeper analysis when one turns to proposing genuine
solutions to those problems, namely, I REPEAT THAT the only realistic resolutions to the real political
problems requires the transformation of government into a better organized criminal enterprise, which
ideally should be based upon enough citizens who are competent enough to understand that they are members of an organized crime
gang, which should assert themselves to make sure that their country becomes better organized crime.
Essentially CIA dictates the US foreign policy. The tail is wagging the dog. The current Russophobia hysteria mean
additional billions for CIA and FBI. As simple as that.
The article contain some important observation about self-sustaining nature of the US
militarism. It is able to create new threats and new insurgencies almost at will via CIA activities.
The key problem is that wars are highly profitable for important part of the ruling elite,
especially representing finance and military industrial complex. Also now part of the US
ruling elite now consists of "colonial administrators" which are directly interested in maintaining
and expanding the US empire. This is trap from which nation might not be able to escape.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S. Davies. ..."
"... Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the 1954 Geneva Accords and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die was cast. ..."
"... No U.S. president could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited from them. ..."
"... The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book Roots of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing," Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination." ..."
"... Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991. ..."
"... Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility as Johnson and Nixon did. ..."
"... Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only become more entrenched over time, as President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now, the lack of any actual military threat to the United States. ..."
"... U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World , was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role of the CIA in U.S. policy. ..."
"... The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such pretexts for war. ..."
"... The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years. ..."
"... Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out. ..."
"... Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq. ..."
"... But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty meant ..."
"... The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror," would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy objective. ..."
"... This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on a continental scale. ..."
"... China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." ..."
"... As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash on others. ..."
"... But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike. ..."
"... Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist, beginning with his book on The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled The CIA as Organized Crime : How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy. ..."
"... In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to "make the economy scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. ..."
"... The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction. ..."
"... Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the most expensive military budge t of any president since World War Two. ..."
"... Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition, as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor. France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and destruction. ..."
The U.S. government may pretend to respect a "rules-based" global order, but the only rule Washington
seems to follow is "might makes right" -- and the CIA has long served as a chief instigator and enforcer,
writes Nicolas J.S. Davies.
As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials
ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed
hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment
that had already killed millions of people.
As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented,
the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as
Pete Seeger satirized it
, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to "credibility": the domestic political credibility
of the politicians involved and America's international credibility as a military power.
Once the CIA went to work in Vietnam to undermine the
1954 Geneva Accords
and the planned reunification of North and South through a free and fair election in 1956, the die
was cast. The CIA's support for the repressive
Diem regime and its successors
ensured an ever-escalating war, as the South rose in rebellion, supported by the North. No U.S. president
could extricate the U.S. from Vietnam without exposing the limits of what U.S. military force could
achieve, betraying widely held national myths and the powerful interests that sustained and profited
from them.
The critical "lesson of Vietnam" was summed up by Richard Barnet in his 1972 book
Roots
of War . "At the very moment that the number one nation has perfected the science of killing,"
Barnet wrote, "It has become an impractical means of political domination."
Even the senior officer corps of the U.S. military saw it that way, since many of them had survived
the horrors of Vietnam as junior officers. The CIA could still wreak havoc in Latin America and elsewhere,
but the full destructive force of the U.S. military was not unleashed again until the invasion of
Panama in 1989 and the First Gulf War in 1991.
Half a century after Vietnam, we have tragically come full circle. With the CIA's politicized
intelligence running wild in Washington and its covert operations spreading violence and chaos across
every continent, President Trump faces the same pressures to maintain his own and his country's credibility
as Johnson and Nixon did. His predictable response has been to escalate ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa, and to threaten new ones against North Korea, Iran and
Venezuela.
Trump is facing these questions, not just in one country, Vietnam, but in dozens of countries
across the world, and the interests perpetuating and fueling this cycle of crisis and war have only
become more entrenched over time, as
President Eisenhower warned that they would, despite the end of the Cold War and, until now,
the lack of any actual military threat to the United States.
Ironically but predictably, the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy has finally provoked
a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans.
As I explained in a recent article , North Korea's discovery in 2016 of a U.S. plan to assassinate
its president, Kim Jong Un, and launch a Second Korean War has triggered a crash program to develop
long-range ballistic missiles that could give North Korea a viable nuclear deterrent and prevent
a U.S. attack. But the North Koreans will not feel safe from attack until their leaders and ours
are sure that their missiles can deliver a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.
The CIA's Pretexts for War
U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff from 1955 to 1964, managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and
around the world. Fletcher Prouty's book,
The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World ,
was suppressed when it was first published in 1973. Thousands of copies disappeared from bookstores
and libraries, and a mysterious Army Colonel bought the entire shipment of 3,500 copies the publisher
sent to Australia. But Prouty's book was republished in 2011, and it is a timely account of the role
of the CIA in U.S. policy.
Prouty surprisingly described the role of the CIA as a response by powerful people and interests
to the abolition of the U.S. Department of War and the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.
Once the role of the U.S. military was redefined as one of defense, in line with the United Nations
Charter's
prohibition against the threat or use of military force in 1945 and similar moves by other military
powers, it would require some kind of crisis or threat to justify using military force in the future,
both legally and politically. The main purpose of the CIA, as Prouty saw it, is to create such
pretexts for war.
The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence
and a clandestine service that conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating
pretexts for war, and that is what they have done for 70 years.
Prouty described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S. military, the State Department, the National
Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in critical positions
to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment,
ammunition and other resources it needs to carry them out.
Many retired intelligence officers, such as Ray McGovern and the members of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), saw the merging of clandestine operations with intelligence analysis
in one agency as corrupting the objective analysis they tried to provide to policymakers. They formed
VIPS in 2003 in response to the fabrication of politicized intelligence that provided false pretexts
for the U.S. to invade and destroy Iraq.
CIA in Syria and Africa
But Fletcher Prouty was even more disturbed by the way that the CIA uses clandestine operations
to trigger coups, wars and chaos. The civil and proxy war in Syria is a perfect example of what Prouty
meant. In late 2011, after destroying Libya and aiding in the torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi,
the CIA and its allies began
flying fighters
and weapons from Libya to Turkey and infiltrating them into Syria. Then, working with Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey, Croatia and other allies, this operation poured
thousands of tons of weapons across Syria's borders to ignite and fuel a full-scale civil war.
Once these covert operations were under way, they ran wild until they had unleashed a savage Al
Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), spawned the even
more savage "Islamic State," triggered
the heaviest
and
probably the deadliest U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam and drawn Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel,
Jordan, Hezbollah, Kurdish militias and almost every state or armed group in the Middle East into
the chaos of Syria's civil war.
Meanwhile, as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have expanded their operations across Africa, the U.N.
has published a report titled
Journey to Extremismin Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment
, based on 500 interviews with African militants. This study has found that the kind of special operations
and training missions the CIA and AFRICOM are conducting and supporting in Africa are in fact the
critical "tipping point" that drives Africans to join militant groups like Al Qaeda, Al-Shabab and
Boko Haram.
The report found that government action, such as the killing or detention of friends or family,
was the "tipping point" that drove 71 percent of African militants interviewed to join armed groups,
and that this was a more important factor than religious ideology.
The conclusions of Journey to Extremism in Africa confirm the findings of other similar
studies. The Center for Civilians in Conflict interviewed 250 civilians who joined armed groups in
Bosnia, Somalia, Gaza and Libya for its 2015 study,
The People's Perspectives: Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict . The study
found that the most common motivation for civilians to join armed groups was simply to protect themselves
or their families.
The role of U.S. "counterterrorism" operations in fueling armed resistance and terrorism, and
the absence of any plan to reduce the asymmetric violence unleashed by the "global war on terror,"
would be no surprise to Fletcher Prouty. As he explained, such clandestine operations always take
on a life of their own that is unrelated, and often counter-productive, to any rational U.S. policy
objective.
"The more intimate one becomes with this activity," Prouty wrote, "The more one begins to realize
that such operations are rarely, if ever, initiated from an intent to become involved in pursuit
of some national objective in the first place."
The U.S. justifies the deployment of 6,000 U.S. special forces and military trainers to
53 of the 54 countries in Africa as a response to terrorism. But the U.N.'s Journey to Extremism
in Africa study makes it clear that the U.S. militarization of Africa is in fact the "tipping
point" that is driving Africans across the continent to join armed resistance groups in the first
place.
This is a textbook CIA operation on the same model as Vietnam in the late 1950s and early
60s. The CIA uses U.S. special forces and training missions to launch covert and proxy military operations
that drive local populations into armed resistance groups, and then uses the presence of those armed
resistance groups to justify ever-escalating U.S. military involvement. This is Vietnam redux on
a continental scale.
Taking on China
What seems to really be driving the CIA's militarization of U.S. policy in Africa is China's growing
influence on the continent. As Steve Bannon put it in an
interview with the Economist in August, "Let's go screw up One Belt One Road."
China is already too big and powerful for the U.S. to apply what is known as the Ledeen doctrine
named for neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative Michael Ledeen who suggested that every
10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against
the wall, just to show we mean business."
China is too powerful and armed with nuclear weapons. So, in this case, the CIA's job would be
to spread violence and chaos to disrupt Chinese trade and investment, and to make African governments
increasingly dependent on U.S. military aid to fight the militant groups spawned and endlessly regenerated
by U.S.-led "counterterrorism" operations.
Neither Ledeen nor Bannon pretend that such policies are designed to build more prosperous or
viable societies in the Middle East or Africa, let alone to benefit their people. They both know
very well what Richard Barnet already understood 45 years ago, that America's unprecedented investment
in weapons, war and CIA covert operations are only good for one thing: to kill people and destroy
infrastructure, reducing cities to rubble, societies to chaos and the desperate survivors to poverty
and displacement.
As long as the CIA and the U.S. military keep plunging the scapegoats for our failed policies
into economic crisis, violence and chaos, the United States and the United Kingdom can remain the
safe havens of the world's wealth, islands of privilege and excess amidst the storms they unleash
on others.
But if that is the only "significant national objective" driving these policies, it is surely
about time for the 99 percent of Americans who reap no benefit from these murderous schemes to stop
the CIA and its allies before they completely wreck the already damaged and fragile world in which
we all must live, Americans and foreigners alike.
Douglas Valentine has probably studied the CIA in more depth than any other American journalist,
beginning with his book on
The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He has written a new book titled
The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, in which he brings Fletcher Prouty's
analysis right up to the present day, describing the CIA's role in our current wars and the many
ways it infiltrates, manipulates and controls U.S. policy.
The Three Scapegoats
In
Trump's speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he named North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as his
prime targets for destabilization, economic warfare and, ultimately, the overthrow of their governments,
whether by coup d'etat or the mass destruction of their civilian population and infrastructure.
But Trump's choice of scapegoats for America's failures was obviously not based on a rational reassessment
of foreign policy priorities by the new administration. It was only a tired rehashing of the CIA's
unfinished business with two-thirds of Bush's "axis of evil" and Bush White House official
Elliott Abrams'
failed 2002 coup in Caracas, now laced with explicit and illegal threats of aggression.
How Trump and the CIA plan to sacrifice their three scapegoats for America's failures remains
to be seen. This is not 2001, when the world stood silent at the U.S. bombardment and invasion of
Afghanistan after September 11th. It is more like 2003, when the U.S. destruction of Iraq split the
Atlantic alliance and alienated most of the world. It is certainly not 2011, after Obama's global
charm offensive had rebuilt U.S. alliances and provided cover for French President Sarkozy, British
Prime Minister Cameron, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Arab royals to destroy Libya,
once ranked by the U.N. as the
most developed country
in Africa , now mired in intractable chaos.
In 2017, a U.S. attack on any one of Trump's scapegoats would isolate the United States from many
of its allies and undermine its standing in the world in far-reaching ways that might be more permanent
and harder to repair than the invasion and destruction of Iraq.
In Venezuela, the CIA and the right-wing opposition are following the same strategy that President
Nixon ordered the CIA to inflict on Chile, to
"make the economy
scream" in preparation for the 1973 coup. But the
solid victory of Venezuela's
ruling Socialist Party in recent nationwide gubernatorial elections, despite a long and deep
economic crisis, reveals little public support for the CIA's puppets in Venezuela.
The CIA has successfully discredited the Venezuelan government through economic warfare, increasingly
violent right-wing street protests and a global propaganda campaign. But the CIA has stupidly hitched
its wagon to an extreme right-wing, upper-class opposition that has no credibility with most of the
Venezuelan public, who still turn out for the Socialists at the polls. A CIA coup or U.S. military
intervention would meet fierce public resistance and damage U.S. relations all over Latin America.
Boxing In North Korea
A U.S. aerial bombardment or "preemptive strike" on North Korea could quickly escalate into a
war between the U.S. and China, which has reiterated
its commitment to North
Korea's defense if North Korea is attacked. We do not know exactly what was in the
U.S. war plan discovered by North Korea, so neither can we know how North Korea and China could
respond if the U.S. pressed ahead with it.
Most analysts have long concluded that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be met with a North
Korean artillery and missile barrage that would inflict unacceptable civilian casualties on Seoul,
a metropolitan area of 26 million people, three times the population of New York City. Seoul is only
35 miles from the frontier with North Korea, placing it within range of a huge array of North Korean
weapons. What was already a no-win calculus is now compounded by the possibility that North Korea
could respond with nuclear weapons, turning any prospect of a U.S. attack into an even worse nightmare.
U.S. mismanagement of its relations with North Korea should be an object lesson for its relations
with Iran, graphically demonstrating the advantages of diplomacy, talks and agreements over threats
of war. Under the
Agreed Framework
signed in 1994, North Korea stopped work on two much larger nuclear reactors than the small experimental
one operating at Yongbyong since 1986, which only produces 6 kg of plutonium per year, enough for
one nuclear bomb.
The lesson of Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003 after Saddam Hussein had complied with demands that
he destroy Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons and shut down a nascent nuclear program was not
lost on North Korea. Not only did the invasion lay waste to large sections of Iraq with hundreds
of thousands of dead but Hussein himself was hunted down and condemned to death by hanging.
Still, after North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, even its small experimental
reactor was shut down as a result of the
"Six Party Talks" in
2007, all the fuel rods were removed and placed under supervision of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, and the cooling tower of the reactor was demolished in 2008.
But then, as relations deteriorated, North Korea conducted a second nuclear weapon test and again
began reprocessing spent fuel rods to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
North Korea has now conducted six nuclear weapons tests. The explosions in
the first five tests increased gradually up to 15-25 kilotons, about the yield of the bombs the
U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but estimates for the yield of the 2017 test range
from 110
to 250 kilotons , comparable
to a small hydrogen bomb.
The even greater danger in a new war in Korea is that the U.S. could unleash part of its arsenal
of
4,000 more powerful weapons (100 to 1,200 kilotons), which could kill millions of people and
devastate and poison the region, or even the world, for years to come.
The U.S. willingness to scrap the Agreed Framework in 2003, the breakdown of the Six Party Talks
in 2009 and the U.S. refusal to acknowledge that its own military actions and threats create legitimate
defense concerns for North Korea have driven the North Koreans into a corner from which they see
a credible nuclear deterrent as their only chance to avoid mass destruction.
China has proposed a
reasonable framework for diplomacy to address the concerns of both sides, but the U.S. insists
on maintaining its propaganda narratives that all the fault lies with North Korea and that it has
some kind of "military solution" to the crisis.
This may be the most dangerous idea we have heard from U.S. policymakers since the end of the
Cold War, but it is the logical culmination of a
systematic normalization of deviant and illegal U.S. war-making that has already cost millions
of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. As historian Gabriel Kolko
wrote in Century of War in 1994, "options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous
and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy
that is possible in official circles."
Demonizing Iran
The idea that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons program is seriously contested by the IAEA,
which has examined every allegation presented by the CIA and other Western "intelligence" agencies
as well as Israel. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei revealed many details of this wild
goose chase in his 2011 memoir,
Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times .
When the CIA and its partners reluctantly acknowledged the IAEA's conclusions in a 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ElBaradei issued
a press release confirming that, "the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons
program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran."
Since 2007, the IAEA has resolved all its outstanding concerns with Iran. It has verified that
dual-use technologies that Iran imported before 2003 were in fact used for other purposes, and it
has exposed the mysterious "laptop documents" that appeared to show Iranian plans for a nuclear weapon
as forgeries. Gareth Porter thoroughly explored all these questions and allegations and the history
of mistrust that fueled them in his 2014 book,
Manufactured
Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare , which I highly recommend.
But, in the parallel Bizarro world of U.S. politics, hopelessly poisoned by the CIA's
endless disinformation campaigns, Hillary Clinton could repeatedly take false credit for disarming
Iran during her presidential campaign, and neither Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump nor any corporate
media interviewer dared to challenge her claims.
"When President Obama took office, Iran was racing toward a nuclear bomb," Clinton fantasized
in a
prominent foreign policy speech on June 2, 2016, claiming that her brutal sanctions policy "brought
Iran to the table."
In fact, as Trita Parsi documented in his 2012 book,
A Single
Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy With Iran , the Iranians were ready, not just
to "come to the table," but to sign a comprehensive agreement based on a U.S. proposal brokered by
Turkey and Brazil in 2010. But, in a classic case of "tail wags dog," the U.S. then rejected its
own proposal because it would have undercut support for tighter sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
In other words, Clinton's sanctions policy did not "bring Iran to the table", but prevented the U.S.
from coming to the table itself.
As a senior State Department official told Trita Parsi, the real problem with U.S. diplomacy with
Iran when Clinton was at the State Department was that the U.S. would not take "Yes" for an answer.
Trump's ham-fisted decertification of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA is right out of Clinton's
playbook, and it demonstrates that the CIA is still determined to use Iran as a scapegoat for America's
failures in the Middle East.
The spurious claim that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism is another CIA canard
reinforced by endless repetition. It is true that Iran supports and supplies weapons to Hezbollah
and Hamas, which are both listed as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. But they are
mainly defensive resistance groups that defend Lebanon and Gaza respectively against invasions and
attacks by Israel.
Shifting attention away from Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other groups that actually commit terrorist crimes around the
world might just seem like a case of the CIA "taking its eyes off the ball," if it wasn't so transparently
timed to frame Iran with new accusations now that the manufactured crisis of the nuclear scare has
run its course.
What the Future Holds
Barack Obama's most consequential international achievement may have been the triumph of symbolism
over substance behind which he expanded and escalated the so-called "war on terror," with a vast
expansion of covert operations and proxy wars that eventually triggered the
heaviest U.S.
aerial bombardments since Vietnam in Iraq and Syria.
Obama's charm offensive invigorated old and new military alliances with the U.K., France and
the Arab monarchies, and he quietly ran up the
most expensive military budget of any president since World War Two.
But Obama's expansion of the "war on terror" under cover of his deceptive global public relations
campaign created many more problems than it solved, and Trump and his advisers are woefully ill-equipped
to solve any of them. Trump's expressed desire to place America first and to resist foreign entanglements
is hopelessly at odds with his aggressive, bullying approach to every foreign policy problem.
If the U.S. could threaten and fight its way to a resolution of any of its international problems,
it would have done so already. That is exactly what it has been trying to do since the 1990s, behind
both the swagger and bluster of Bush and Trump and the deceptive charm of Clinton and Obama: a "good
cop – bad cop" routine that should no longer fool anyone anywhere.
But as Lyndon Johnson found as he waded deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy in Vietnam, lying
to the public about unwinnable wars does not make them any more winnable. It just gets more people
killed and makes it harder and harder to ever tell the public the truth.
In unwinnable wars based on lies, the "credibility" problem only gets more complicated, as new
lies require new scapegoats and convoluted narratives to explain away graveyards filled by old lies.
Obama's cynical global charm offensive bought the "war on terror" another eight years, but that only
allowed the CIA to drag the U.S. into more trouble and spread its chaos to more places around the
world.
Meanwhile, Russian President Putin is winning hearts and minds in capitals around the world by
calling for a recommitment to the
rule of international
law , which
prohibits
the threat or use of military force except in self-defense. Every new U.S. threat or act of aggression
will only make Putin's case more persuasive, not least to important U.S. allies like South Korea,
Germany and other members of the European Union, whose complicity in U.S. aggression has until now
helped to give it a false veneer of political legitimacy.
Throughout history, serial aggression has nearly always provoked increasingly united opposition,
as peace-loving countries and people have reluctantly summoned the courage to stand up to an aggressor.
France under Napoleon and Hitler's Germany also regarded themselves as exceptional, and in their
own ways they were. But in the end, their belief in their exceptionalism led them on to defeat and
destruction.
Americans had better hope that we are not so exceptional, and that the world will find a diplomatic
rather than a military "solution" to its American problem. Our chances of survival would improve
a great deal if American officials and politicians would finally start to act like something other
than putty in the hands of the CIA
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction
of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on "Obama at War" in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card
on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader .
"... North Korea's air defenses are so weak that we had to notify them we were flying B1 bombers near their airspace–they didn't even know our aircraft were coming. This reminds me of the "fearsome" Republican Guard that Saddam had in the Persian Gulf. Turns out we had total air superiority and just bombed the crap out of them and they surrendered in droves. ..."
"... We have already seen what happens when an army has huge amounts of outdated Soviet weaponry versus the most technologically advanced force in the world. It's a slaughter. Also, there has to be weaponry up the USA's sleeve that would be used in the event of an attack. Don't forget our cyber warfare abilities that would undoubtedly be implemented as well. This writer seems to always hype Russia's capabilities and denigrate the US's capabilities. Sure, Russia has the capacity to nuke the US into smithereens, and vice versa. But if its a head to head shooting war, the US and NATO would dominate. FACT. ..."
"... Commander's intent: ..."
"... Decapitate the top leadership and remove retaliatory capability. ..."
"... Massive missile/bombing campaign (including carpet) of top leadership locations, tactical missile locations and DMZ artillery belt. Destruction of surface fleet and air force. ..."
"... Advance into DMZ artillery belt up to a range of 240 mm cannon. Not further (local tactical considerations taken into account of course). ..."
"... Phase three: "break the enemy's will to fight" and destroy the "regime support infrastructure" ..."
"... I guess an American attack on North Korea would consist of preemptive strategic nuking to destroy the entire country before it can do anything. Since North Korea itself contributes essentially nothing to the world economy, no one would lose money. ..."
"... These examples perfectly illustrate the kind of mindset induced by what Professor John Marciano called "Empire as a way of life" [1] which is characterized by a set of basic characteristics: ..."
"... there has to be ..."
"... would undoubtedly ..."
"... the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts ..."
"... A perfect illustration of that is the famous quote " it became necessary to destroy the town to save it ..."
"... I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you, the difference in Iraq and Iran, but I know Jesus and I talk to God ..."
"... this applies to the vast majority of US politicians, decision-makers and elected officials, hence Putin's remark that " It's difficult to talk with people who confuse Austria and Australia ". ..."
"... As a result, there is no more discernible US diplomacy left: all the State Department does is deliver threats, ultimatums and condemnations. Meaningful *negotiations* have basically been removed form the US foreign policy toolkit. ..."
"... That belief is also the standard cop out in any conversation of morality, ethnics, or even the notions of right and wrong. An anti-religious view par excellence . ..."
"... The US policies towards Russia, China and Iran all have the potential of resulting in a disaster of major magnitude. The world is dealing with situation in which a completely delusional regime is threatening everybody with various degrees of confrontation. This is like being in the same room with a monkey playing with a hand grenade. Except for that hand grenade is nuclear. ..."
"... This situation places a special burden of responsibility on all other nations, especially those currently in Uncle Sam's cross-hairs, to act with restraint and utmost restraint. That is not fair, but life rarely is. It is all very well and easy to declare that force must be met by force and that the Empire interprets restraint as weakness until you realize that any miscalculation can result in the death of millions of people. I am therefore very happy that the DPRK is the only country which chose to resort to a policy of hyperbolic threats while Iran, Russia and China acted, and are still acting, with the utmost restraint. ..."
"... they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners ..."
"... If the U.S. attacks North Korea or Iran we will become a pariah among nations (especially once the pictures start pouring in). We will be loathed. Countries may very well decide that we are not worthy of having the world's reserve currency. In that case the dollar will collapse as will our economy. ..."
"... Maybe it's just me, but it seems that NK is just another tyranny in a long list of tyrannies throughout millennia, and like all of them it will just implode on its own. Therefore, the best thing you can do is simply to ignore it (thus denying the tyrant an external threat to rally the populace) and wait for the NK people to say enough is enough. ..."
"... I agree with the logic that as Americans become dumber the ability to have a powerful military also degrades, however an increasingly declining America also makes it more dangerous. As ever more ideologues rule the corridors of power and the generally stupid population that will consent to everything they are told, America will start involving itself in ever more reckless conflicts. This means they despite being a near idiocracy, the nuclear weapons and military bases all over world make America an ever greater threat for the world ..."
My recent analysis of the potential consequences of a US attack on the DPRK has elicited a wide range of reactions. There is one
type of reaction which I find particularly interesting and most important and I would like to focus on it today: the ones which entirely
dismissed my whole argument. The following is a selection of some of the most telling reactions of this kind:
Example 1:
North Korea's air defenses are so weak that we had to notify them we were flying B1 bombers near their airspace–they didn't
even know our aircraft were coming. This reminds me of the "fearsome" Republican Guard that Saddam had in the Persian Gulf. Turns
out we had total air superiority and just bombed the crap out of them and they surrendered in droves.
We have already seen what happens when an army has huge amounts of outdated Soviet weaponry versus the most technologically
advanced force in the world. It's a slaughter. Also, there has to be weaponry up the USA's sleeve that would be used in the event
of an attack. Don't forget our cyber warfare abilities that would undoubtedly be implemented as well. This writer seems to always
hype Russia's capabilities and denigrate the US's capabilities. Sure, Russia has the capacity to nuke the US into smithereens,
and vice versa. But if its a head to head shooting war, the US and NATO would dominate. FACT.
Example 2:
Commander's intent:
Decapitate the top leadership and remove retaliatory capability.
Execution:
Phase one:
Massive missile/bombing campaign (including carpet) of top leadership locations, tactical missile locations and DMZ artillery
belt. Destruction of surface fleet and air force.
Phase two:
Advance into DMZ artillery belt up to a range of 240 mm cannon. Not further (local tactical considerations taken into account
of course).
Phase three: "break the enemy's will to fight" and destroy the "regime support infrastructure"
Phase four: Regime change.
There you go .
Example 3:
I guess an American attack on North Korea would consist of preemptive strategic nuking to destroy the entire country before
it can do anything. Since North Korea itself contributes essentially nothing to the world economy, no one would lose money.
These examples perfectly illustrate the kind of mindset induced by what
Professor John Marciano called "Empire as a way of life"
[1] which is characterized
by a set of basic characteristics:
First foremost, simple, very simple one-sentence "arguments" . Gone are the days when argument were built in some logical sequence,
when facts were established, then evaluated for their accuracy and relevance, then analyzed and then conclusions presented. Where
in the past one argument per page or paragraph constituted the norm, we now have tweet-like 140 character statements which are more
akin to shouted slogans than to arguments (no wonder that tweeting is something a bird does – hence the expression "bird brain").
You will see that kind of person writing what initially appears to be a paragraph, but when you look closer you realize that the
paragraph is really little more than a sequence of independent statements and not really an argument of any type. A quasi-religious
belief in one's superiority which is accepted as axiomatic .
Nothing new here: the Communists considered themselves as the superior for class reasons, the Nazis by reason of racial superiority,
the US Americans just "because" – no explanation offered (I am not sure that this constitutes of form of progress). In the US case,
that superiority is cultural, political, financial and, sometimes but not always, racial. This superiority is also technological,
hence the " there has to be " or the " would undoubtedly " in the example #1 above. This is pure faith and not
something which can be challenged by fact or logic. Contempt for all others . This really flows from #2 above. Example 3 basically
declares all of North Korea (including its people) as worthless. This is where all the expressions like "sand niggers" "hadjis" and
other "gooks" come from: the dehumanization of the "others" as a preparation for their for mass slaughter. Notice how in the example
#2 the DPRK leaders are assumed to be totally impotent, dull and, above all, passive.
The notion that they might do something unexpected is never even considered (a classical recipe for military disaster, but more
about that later). Contempt for rules, norms and laws . This notion is well expressed by the famous US 19th century slogan of "
my country, right or wrong " but goes far
beyond that as it also includes the belief that the USA has God-given (or equivalent) right to ignore international law, the public
opinion of the rest of the planet or even the values underlying the documents which founded the USA. In fact, in the logic of such
imperial drone the belief in US superiority actually serves as a premise to the conclusion that the USA has a "mission" or a "responsibility"
to rule the world. This is "might makes right" elevated to the rank of dogma and, therefore, never challenged. A very high reliance
on doublethink . Doublethink defined by Wikipedia as " the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs
as correct, often in distinct social contexts ".
A perfect illustration of that is the famous quote " it became necessary
to destroy the town to save it ". Most US Americans are aware of the fact that US policies have resulted in them being hated
worldwide, even amongst putatively allied or "protected" countries such as South Korea, Israel, Germany or Japan. Yet at the very
same time, they continue to think that the USA should "defend" "allies", even if the latter can't wait for Uncle Sam's soldiers to
pack and leave. Doublethink is also what makes it possible for ideological drones to be aware of the fact that the US has become
a subservient Israeli colony while, at the same time, arguing for the support and financing of Israel.
As a result, there is no more discernible US diplomacy left: all the State Department does is deliver threats, ultimatums and
condemnations. Meaningful *negotiations* have basically been removed form the US foreign policy toolkit.
A totally uncritical acceptance
of ideologically correct narratives even when they are self-evidently nonsensical to an even superficial critical analysis. An great
example of this kind of self-evidently stupid stories is all the nonsense about the Russians trying to meddle in US elections or
the latest
hysteria about relatively small-size military exercises in Russia .
The acceptance of the official 9/11 narrative is a perfect
example of that. Something repeated by the "respectable" Ziomedia is accepted as dogma, no matter how self-evidently stupid. A profound
belief that everything is measured in dollars . From this flow a number of corollary beliefs such as "US weapons are most expensive,
they are therefore superior" or "everybody has his price" [aka "whom we can't kill we will simply buy"]. In my experience folks like
these are absolutely unable to even imagine that some people might not motivated by greed or other egoistic interests: ideological
drones project their own primitive motives unto everybody else with total confidence.
That belief is also the standard cop out in
any conversation of morality, ethnics, or even the notions of right and wrong. An anti-religious view par excellence .
Notice the total absence of any more complex consideration which might require some degree of knowledge or expertise: the imperial
mindset is not only ignoramus-compatible, it is ignoramus based . This is what Orwell was referring to in his famous book 1984 with
the slogan "Ignorance is Strength". However, it goes way beyond simple ignorance of facts and includes the ability to "think in slogans"
(example #2 is a prefect example of this).
There are, of course, many more psychological characteristics for the perfect "ideological drone", but the ones above already
paint a pretty decent picture of the kind of person I am sure we all have seen many times over. What is crucial to understand about
them is that even though they are far from being a majority, they compensate for that with a tremendous motivational drive. It might
be due to a need to repeatedly reassert their certitudes or a way to cope with some deep-seated cognitive dissonance, but in my experience
folks like that have energy levels that many sane people would envy. This is absolutely crucial to how the Empire, and any other
oppressive regime, works: by repressing those who can understand a complex argument by means of those who cannot. Let me explain:
Unless there are mechanisms set in to prevent that, in a debate/dispute between an educated and intelligent person and an ideological
drone the latter will always prevail because of the immense advantage the latter has over the former. Indeed, while the educated
and intelligent person will be able to immediately identify numerous factual and logical gaps in his opponent's arguments, he will
always need far more "space" to debunk the nonsense spewed by the drone than the drone who will simply dismiss every argument with
one or several slogans. This is why I personally never debate or even talk with such people: it is utterly pointless.
As a result, a fact-based and logical argument now gets the same consideration and treatment as a collection of nonsensical slogans
(political correctness mercilessly enforces that principle: you can't call an idiot and idiot any more). Falling education standards
have resulted in a dramatic degradation of the public debate: to be well-educated, well-read, well-traveled, to speak several languages
and feel comfortable in different cultures used to be considered a prerequisite to expressing an opinion, now they are all treated
as superfluous and even useless characteristics. Actual, formal, expertise in a topic is now becoming extremely rare. A most interesting
kind of illustration of this point can be found in this truly amazing video posted by Peter Schiff:
One could be tempted to conclude that this kind of 'debating' is a Black issue. It is not. The three quotes given at the beginning
of this article are a good reminder of this (unless, of course, they were all written by Blacks, which we have no reason to believe).
Twitter might have done to minds what MTV has done to rock music: laid total waste to it.
Consequences:
There are a number of important consequences from the presence of such ideological drones in any society. The first one is that
any ideology-based regime will always and easily find numerous spontaneous supporters who willingly collaborate with it. Combined
with a completely subservient media, such drones form the rontline force of any ideological debate. For instance, a journalist can
always be certain to easily find a done to interview, just as a politician can count on them to support him during a public speech
or debate. The truth is that, unfortunately, we live in a society that places much more emphasis on the right to have an opinion
than on the actual ability to form one .
By the way, the intellectually challenged always find a natural ally in the coward and the "follower" (as opposed to "leader types")
because it is always much easier and safer to follow the herd and support the regime in power than to oppose it. You will always
see "stupid drones" backed by "coward drones". As for the politicians , they naturally cater to all types of drones since they always
provide a much bigger "bang for the buck" than those inclined to critical thinking whose loyalty to whatever "cause" is always dubious.
The drone-type of mindset also comes with some major weaknesses including a very high degree of predictability, an inability to
learn from past mistakes, an inability to imagine somebody operating with a completely different set of motives and many others.
One of the most interesting ones for those who actively resist the AngloZionist Empire is that the ideological drone has very little
staying power because as soon as the real world, in all its beauty and complexity, comes crashing through the door of the drone's
delusional and narrow imagination his cocky arrogance is almost instantaneously replaced by a total sense of panic and despair. I
have had the chance to speak Russian officers who were present during the initial interrogation of US POWs in Iraq and they were
absolutely amazed at how terrified and broken the US POWs immediately became (even though they were not mistreated in any way). It
was as if they had no sense of risk at all, until it was too late and they were captured, at which point they inner strength instantly
gave way abject terror. This is one of the reasons that the Empire cannot afford a protracted war: not because of casualty aversion
as some suggest, but to keep the imperial delusions/illusions unchallenged by reality . As long as the defeat can be hidden or explained
away, the Empire can fight on, but as soon as it becomes impossible to obfuscate the disaster the Empire has to simply declare victory
and leave.
Thus we have a paradox here: the US military is superbly skilled at killing people in large numbers, but but not at winning wars
. And yet, because this latter fact is easily dismissed on grounds #2 #5 and #7 above (all of them, really), failing to actually
win wars does not really affect the US determination to initiate new wars, even potentially very dangerous ones. I would even argue
that each defeat even strengthens the Empire's desire to show it power by hoping to finally identify one victim small enough to be
convincingly defeated. The perfect example of that was Ronald Reagan's decision to invade Grenada right after the US Marines barracks
bombing in Beirut. The fact that the invasion of Grenada was one of the worst military operations in world history did not prevent
the US government from handing out more medals for it than the total number of people involved – such is the power of the drone-mindset!
We have another paradox here: history shows that if the US gets entangled in a military conflict it is most likely to end up defeated
(if "not winning" is accepted as a euphemism for "losing"). And yet, the United States are also extremely hard to deter. This is
not just a case of " Fools rush
in where angels fear to tread " but the direct result of a form of conditioning which begins in grade schools. From the point
of view of an empire, repeated but successfully concealed defeats are much preferable to the kind of mental paralysis induced in
drone populations, at least temporarily, by well-publicized defeats . Likewise, when the loss of face is seen as a calamity much
worse than body bags, lessons from the past are learned by academics and specialists, but not by the nation as a whole (there are
numerous US academics and officers who have always known all of what I describe above, in fact – they were the ones who first taught
me about it!).
If this was only limited to low-IQ drones this would not be as dangerous, but the problem is that words have their own power and
that politicians and ideological drones jointly form a self-feeding positive feedback loop when the former lie to the latter only
to then be bound by what they said which, in turn, brings them to join the ideological drones in a self-enclosed pseudo-reality of
their own.
What all this means for North Korea and the rest of us
I hate to admit it, but I have to concede that there is a good argument to be made that all the over-the-top grandstanding and
threatening by the North Koreans does make sense, at least to some degree. While for an educated and intelligent person threatening
the continental United States with nuclear strikes might appear as the epitome of irresponsibility, this might well be the only way
to warn the ideological drone types of the potential consequences of a US attack on the DPRK. Think of it: if you had to deter somebody
with the set of beliefs outlined in #1 through #8 above, would you rather explain that a war on the Korean Peninsula would immediately
involve the entire region or simple say "them crazy gook guys might just nuke the shit out of you!"? I think that the North Koreans
might be forgiven for thinking that an ideological drone can only be deterred by primitive and vastly exaggerated threats.
Still, my strictly personal conclusion is that ideological drones are pretty much "argument proof" and that they cannot be swayed
neither by primitive nor by sophisticated arguments. This is why I personally never directly engage them. But this is hardly an option
for a country desperate to avoid a devastating war (the North Koreans have no illusions on that account as they, unlike most US Americans,
remember the previous war in Korea).
But here is the worst aspect of it all: this is not only a North Korean problem
The US policies towards Russia, China and Iran all have the potential of resulting in a disaster of major magnitude. The world
is dealing with situation in which a completely delusional regime is threatening everybody with various degrees of confrontation.
This is like being in the same room with a monkey playing with a hand grenade. Except for that hand grenade is nuclear.
This situation places a special burden of responsibility on all other nations, especially those currently in Uncle Sam's cross-hairs,
to act with restraint and utmost restraint. That is not fair, but life rarely is. It is all very well and easy to declare that force
must be met by force and that the Empire interprets restraint as weakness until you realize that any miscalculation can result in
the death of millions of people. I am therefore very happy that the DPRK is the only country which chose to resort to a policy of
hyperbolic threats while Iran, Russia and China acted, and are still acting, with the utmost restraint.
In practical terms, there is no way for the rest of the planet to disarm the monkey. The only option is therefore to incapacitate
the monkey itself or, alternatively, to create the conditions in which the monkey will be too busy with something else to pay attention
to his grenade. An internal political crisis triggered by an external military defeat remains, I believe, the most likely and desirable
scenario (see here if that
topic is of interest to you). Still, the future is impossible to predict and, as the Quran says, " they plan, and Allah plans.
And Allah is the best of planners ". All we can do is try to mitigate the impact of the ideological drones on our society as
much as we can, primarily by *not* engaging them and limiting our interaction with those still capable of critical thought. It is
by excluding ideological drones from the debate about the future of our world that we can create a better environment for those truly
seeking solutions to our current predicament.
-- -- -
1. If you have not listened to his lectures on this topic, which I highly recommend, you can find them here:
If the U.S. attacks North Korea or Iran we will become a pariah among nations (especially once the pictures start pouring in).
We will be loathed. Countries may very well decide that we are not worthy of having the world's reserve currency. In that case
the dollar will collapse as will our economy.
North Korea is a nationalistic country that traces their race back to antiquity. America on the other hand is a degenerated country
that is ruled over by Jews. The flag waving American s may call the Koreans gooks but if we apply the American racial ideology
on themselves, the Americans are the the 56percent Untermensch. While the north Koreans are superior for having rejected modern
degeneracy.
A key point, which signifies a serious cultural degeneration from values of chivalry and honoring the opposite side to a very
Asiatic MO which absolutely rules current US establishment. This, and, of course, complete detachment from the realities of the
warfare.
It is all talk, because China makes them invulnerable to sanctions and NK has nukes. The US will have to go to China to deal with
NK and China will want to continue economically raping the US in exchange. That is why China gave NK an H bomb and ICBM tech (
it's known to have gave those same things to Pakistan). The real action will be in the Middle East. The Saudi are counting on
the US giving them CO2 fracking in the future, and Iran being toppled soon. William S. Lind says Iran will be hit by Trump and
Israel will use the ensuing chaos to expel the West Bank Palestinians (back to the country whose passports they travel on).
Maybe it's just me, but it seems that NK is just another tyranny in a long list of tyrannies throughout millennia, and
like all of them it will just implode on its own. Therefore, the best thing you can do is simply to ignore it (thus denying the
tyrant an external threat to rally the populace) and wait for the NK people to say enough is enough.
There's no doubt in my mind that Kim will end up like Nikolae Ceaușescu in Romania, put up against a wall by his own military
and shot on TV. All anyone has to do is be patient and not drink the Rah-Rah Kool-Aid.*
Just a thought.
VicB3
*Was talking with a 82nd Major at the Starbucks, and mentioned NK, Ceausecu, sitting tight, etc. (Mentioned we might help things
along by blanketing the whole country with netbooks, wi-fi, and even small arms.) Got the careerist ladder- climber standard response
of how advanced our weapons are, the people in charge know what they're doing, blah blah blah. Wouldn't even consider an alternative
view (and didn't know or understand half of what I was talking about). It was the same response I got from an Air Force Colonel
before the U.S. went into Afghanistan and Iraq and I told him the whole thing was/would be insanely stupid.
His party-line team-player response was when I knew for certain that any action in NK would/will fail spectacularly for the
U.S., possibly even resulting in and economic collapse and civil war/revolution on this end.
Excellent post. But the US public education "system", while awful, is not the main reason that America is increasingly packed
with drones and idiots. IQ is decreasing rapidly, as revealed in the College Board's data on SAT scores over the last 60 years
.In addition, Dr. James Thompson has a Dec.15 post on Unz that shows a shocking decline in the ability of UK children to understand
basic principles of physics, which are usually acquired on a developmental curve. Mike Judge's movie 'Idiocracy' appears to have
been set unrealistically far in the future ..
In short, the current situation can and will get a lot worse in America. On the other hand, America's armed forces will be deteriorating
apace, so they are becoming less dangerous to the rest of the world.
The good thing about democracy is that anyone can express an opinion. The bad thing about democracy is that anyone can express
an opinion. I have to laugh at all the internet commandos and wannabe Napoleons that roost on the internet giving us their advice.
It's easy to cherrypick opinions that range from uninformed to downright stupid and bizarre. Those people don't actually run anything
though, fortunately. Keep in mind that half the population is mentally average or below average and that average is quite mediocre.
Throw in a few degrees above mediocre and you've got a majority, a majority that can and is regularly bamboozled. The majority
of the population is just there to pay taxes and provide cannon fodder, that's all, like a farmer's herd of cows provides for
his support. Ideological drones are desired in this case. It's my suspicion that the educational system is geared towards producing
such a product as well as all other aspects of popular culture also induce stupefying effects. Insofar as American policy goes,
look at what it actually does rather than what it says, the latter being a form of show biz playing to a domestic audience. I
just skip the more obnoxious commenters since they're just annoying and add nothing but confusion to any discussion.
but it seems that NK is just another tyranny in a long list of tyrannies throughout millennia, and like all of them it will
just implode on its own
.
There's no doubt in my mind that Kim will end up like Nikolae Ceaușescu in Romania, put up against a wall by his own military
and shot on TV.
All things come to an end eventually, and I agree with you that the best course of action for the US over NK would be to leave
it alone (and stop poking it), but this idea that "tyrannies always collapse" seems pretty unsupported by reality.
Off the top of my head all of the following autocrats died more or less peacefully in office and handed their "tyranny" on
intact to a successor, just in the past few decades: Mao, Castro, Franco, Stalin, Assad senior, two successive Kims (so much for
the assumption that the latest Kim will necessarily end up like Ceausescu). In the past, if a tyrant and his tyranny lasted long
enough and arranged a good succession, it often came to be remembered as a golden age, as with the Roman, Augustus.
I suspect it might be a matter of you having a rather selective idea of what counts as a tyranny (I wouldn't count Franco in
that list, myself, but establishment opinion is against me there, I think). You might be selectively remembering only the tyrannies
that came to a bad end.
so they are becoming less dangerous to the rest of the world
I agree with the logic that as Americans become dumber the ability to have a powerful military also degrades, however an
increasingly declining America also makes it more dangerous. As ever more ideologues rule the corridors of power and the generally
stupid population that will consent to everything they are told, America will start involving itself in ever more reckless conflicts.
This means they despite being a near idiocracy, the nuclear weapons and military bases all over world make America an ever greater
threat for the world.
The good thing about democracy is that anyone can express an opinion.
Not sure if this is a joke or not. In case you are serious, you clearly have not been following the news, from USA to Germany
all these so called democracies have been undertaking massive censorship operations. From jailing people to shutting down online
conversations to ordering news to not report on things that threaten their power.
A bizarre posting utterly detached from reality. Don't you understand that if a blustering lunatic presses a megaton-pistol against
our collective foreheads and threatens to pull the trigger, it represents a very disquieting situation? And if we contemplate
actions that would cause a million utterly harmless and innocent Koreans to be incinerated, to prevent a million of our own brains
from being blown out, aren't we allowed to do so without being accused of being vile bigots that think yellow gook lives are worthless?
Aren't we entitled to any instinct of self preservation at all?
What the Korean situation obviously entails is a high-stakes experiment in human psychology. All that attention-seeking little
freak probably wants is to be treated with respect, and like somebody important. Trump started out in a sensible way, by treating
Kim courteously, but for that he was pilloried by the insanely-partisan opposition within his own party – McCain I'm mainly thinking
of. That's the true obstacle to a sane resolution of the problem. I say if the twerp would feel good if we gave him a tickertape
parade down Fifth Avenue and a day pass to Disneyland, we should do so – it's small enough a concession in view of what's at stake.
But if rabid congress-critters obstruct propitiation, then intimidation and even preemptive megadeath may be all that's left.
I suspect the true conversation about the topic will start when all that becomes really serious. I mean more serious than posting
the latest selfie on a Facebook. Hangs around that warhead miniaturization/hardening timetable, IMHO. Maybe too late then.
Also, one man's tyranny is another mans return to stability. For better or worse, Mao got rid of the Warlords. Franco got rid
of the Communists and kept Spain out of WWII. The Assads are Baath Party and both secular and modernizers.
Stalin? Depends on who you talk to, but the Russians do like a strong hand.
Kim? His people only have to look West to China and Russia, or def. to the South, to know that things could be much better.
And more and more he can't control the flow of information. That, and the rank and file of his army have roundworms. And guns.
At some point, the light comes on. And that same rank and file with guns tells itself "You know, we could be doing better."
Double think is not just a question of ignorance or self contradiction because often it's important to make people embrace COMPLEXITY
instead CONFUSION believing the late it's basically the first
Saker and his legion of fanboys here didn't "attack" the text but the writer.
In the first place, there's nothing in the text to "attack". It's a laundry list of disconnected slogans and so is not a different
point of view at all. Released from the confines of the author's gamer world, it evaporates into nothing. I pointed this out to
you at some length elsewhere.
In the second, it appears you missed the point of the article. Hint: it's stated in the title. The article's about the mindsets
of the authors of such "texts", and not about the texts themselves.
It appears that I am sort of a "dissident" here.
You flatter yourself. To be a dissident requires, at the very least, comprehension of the argument one is disagreeing with.
Your "texts" are the equivalent of shouting slogans and waving placards. It may work for a street protest, but is totally out
of place on a webzine discussion forum. Hence your screeds here do not constitute real dissension, but trolling.
Three years later Russia is still standing... Still to a neoliberal state and not to be a USA vassal is a pipe dream. The system
is Washington-centric by design. but what is the alternative in unclear. Russia is still a neoliberal state and Putin is not eternal.
Contrary to Putin's vision, a neoliberal state can't be sovereign, it can only be a vassal of Washington. As soon as a neoliberal
state shows some independence it became a "rogue state" and punishment via financial system (and for smaller states via military actions)
will follow. Dominance in finance sphere gives the USA the ability to punish Russia to almost any extent they wish without significant
possibilities of retaliation, unless formal block of Russia and China is created.\
Russia can only retaliate in selected carefully chosen "weak spots". NGOs, media, the USA food companies (Coca-cola, junk food,
chickens, etc), financial and consulting firms (and first of all Big Three, closely connected with the USA government). Not so far nine
got under Russian government knife.
Notable quotes:
"... Yep, how dare the Russkies retaliate, when they ought to come begging on their knees to be allowed to do what the grand master in DC wants them to do ..."
"... Russians are using "trade as a geopolitical tool," warns a Washington think tank. Russia engaging in trade war – How despicable! ..."
"... And next Russans claim that "Fruit shipments from the EU have recently contained Oriental fruit moths " ..."
"... "It's not unusual for Russia to find something wrong when they have a political reason to do so". ..."
"... No word on whether his tongue immediately turned black and started to smoke, then fell out of his mouth. It's not unusual for the United States to apply sanctions when they have a political reason to do so, and fuck-all else. ..."
"... I was wrong about Rosoboronexport. It is EXEMPT from the list of sanctions. No doubt some of the deals (titanium) are critical for the US's own MIC. ..."
"... The baying audience of FOX-friends might be stoked at the idea of economic war with Russia, but the cold-eyed businessmen are likely to be unenthused at best ..."
Found at zerohedge, a US reaction on Russia's reaction to the sanctions:
"Assuming that they take this action, it would be blatant protectionism," Clayton Yeutter, a U.S. Trade Representative
under President Ronald Reagan, said in a phone interview. "There is little or no legitimacy to their complaints."
Russians are using "trade as a geopolitical tool," warns a Washington think tank. Russia engaging in trade war – How despicable!
First Russkies pretend to find antibiotics in McDonalds "cheese" products. But everybody knows the cheese cannot possibly contain
antibiotics, because it's not even real cheese! (it's a kind of edible plastic substance )
And next Russans claim that "Fruit shipments from the EU have recently contained Oriental fruit moths "
That's a lie too.
Everybody knows that if you eat your Polish quinces with a runcible spoon, then they will not contain any measurable amounts
of moth larvae.
"It's not unusual for Russia to find something wrong when they have a political reason to do so".
No word on whether his tongue immediately turned black and started to smoke, then fell out of his mouth. It's not unusual for
the United States to apply sanctions when they have a political reason to do so, and fuck-all else.
I was wrong about Rosoboronexport. It is EXEMPT from the list of sanctions. No doubt some of the deals (titanium) are critical
for the US's own MIC. Put Kadyrov or someone on the board and force Congress to slit Boeing's throat.
Or hire him to the company that produces rolled titanium alloys for Boeing and Airbus. A shot across the bow to say that Western
leaders will have to be standing in front of their populations as they crash their economies. Russia won't do it for them.
Excellent reasoning. The baying audience of FOX-friends might be stoked at the idea of economic war with Russia, but the cold-eyed
businessmen are likely to be unenthused at best. This is a great plan for achieving leverage cheaply and easily, and the
U.S. government would be left 'splaining to Boeing that they had to lay off a couple of thousand workers because a bad man was
appointed to the board of their major supplier.
The west is locked into its lame sanctions groove, and too proud to back down.
This might be
the big shootout from which only one currency will walk away.
"... William Roebuck, the American embassy's chargé d'affaires in Damascus, thus urged Washington in 2006 to coordinate with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to encourage Sunni Syrian fears of Shi'ite Iranian proselytizing even though such concerns are "often exaggerated." It was akin to playing up fears of Jewish dominance in the 1930s in coordination with Nazi Germany. ..."
"... A year later, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned of a classified Defense Department memo stating that U.S. policy was now to "attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years," first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. (Quote starts at 2:07 .) ..."
"... So the answer was not to oppose the Islamists, but to use them. Even though "the Islamist surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people," Gambill said, "it has two important silver linings for US interests." One is that the jihadis "are simply more effective fighters than their secular counterparts" thanks to their skill with "suicide bombings and roadside bombs." ..."
"... The other is that a Sunni Islamist victory in Syria will result in "a full-blown strategic defeat" for Iran, thereby putting Washington at least part way toward fulfilling the seven-country demolition job discussed by Wesley Clark. ..."
"... The U.S. would settle with the jihadis only after the jihadis had settled with Assad. The good would ultimately outweigh the bad. This kind of self-centered moral calculus would not have mattered had Gambill only spoken for himself. But he didn't. Rather, he was expressing the viewpoint of Official Washington in general, which is why the ultra-respectable FP ran his piece in the first place. ..."
"... The parallels with the DIA are striking. "The west, gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition," the intelligence report declared, even though "the Salafist[s], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [i.e. Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency." ..."
"... ancien régime, ..."
"... With the Saudis footing the bill, the U.S. would exercise untrammeled sway. ..."
"... Has a forecast that ever gone more spectacularly wrong? Syria's Baathist government is hardly blameless in this affair. But thanks largely to the U.S.-backed sectarian offensive, 400,000 Syrians or more have died since Gambill's article appeared, with another 6.1 million displaced and an estimated 4.8 million fleeing abroad. ..."
"... So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels. Iranian influence now extends from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, while the country that now seems to be wobbling out of control is Saudi Arabia where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is lurching from one self-induced crisis to another. The country that Gambill counted on to shore up the status quo turns out to be undermining it. ..."
"... It's not easy to screw things up so badly, but somehow Washington's bloated foreign-policy establishment has done it. Since helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Gambill has moved on to a post at the rightwing Middle East Forum where Daniel Pipes, the group's founder and chief, now inveighs against the same Sunni ethnic cleansing that his employee defended or at least apologized for. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
"... I do not believe than anyone in the civil or military command ever believed that arming the jihadists would bring any sort of stability or peace to the region. I do not believe that peace was ever an interest of the US until it has once again gained hegemonic control of central Asia. This is a fight to retain US global domination – causalities do not matter. The US and its partners or co-rulers of the Empire the Saud family and the Zionist oligarchy will slaughter with impunity until someone stops them or their own corruption defeats them. ..."
"... The Empire can not exist without relentless ongoing slaughter it has been at it every day now for 73 years. It worked for them all that time but that time has run out. China has already set the date for when its currency will become fully freely exchanged, less than 5 years. ..."
"... Even the most stupid person on earth couldn't think that the US was using murdering, butchering head choppers in a bid to bring peace and stability to the middle East. The Neocons and the other criminals that infest Washington don't want peace at any price because its bad for business. ..."
"... It's the same GROTESQUE caricature of these wars that the mainstream media always presents: that the U.S. is on the side of good, and fights for good, even though every war INVARIABLY ends up in a bloodbath, with no one caring how many civilians have died, what state the country is left in, that civilian infrastructure and civilians were targeted, let alone whether war could have been prevented. For example, in 1991, shortly after the first Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against their regime, but George H. Bush allowed Saddam to fly his military helicopters (permission was needed due to the no-fly zones), and quell the rebellion in blood – tens of thousands were butchered! Bush said that when he told Iraqis to rebel, he meant the military generals, NOT the Iraqi people themselves. In other words, the U.S. wanted Saddam gone, but the same regime in place. The U.S. never cared about the people! ..."
"... The military-industrial-complex sicced Mueller on Trump because they despise his overtures towards rapprochement with the Kremlin. The military-industrial-complex MUST have a villain to justify the gigantic defense [sic] spending which permeates the entire U.S. politico-economic system. Putin and Russia were always the preferred demon because they easily fit the bill in the minds of an easily brainwashed American public. Of course saber rattling towards Moscow puts the world on the brink of nuclear war, but no matter, the careerism and fat contracts are all that matter to the MIC. Trump's rhetoric about making peace with the Kremlin has always mortified the MIC. ..."
"... This is a rare instance of our elites battling it out behind the scenes, both groups being reprehensible power hungry greed heads and sociopaths, it's hard to tell how this will end. ..."
"... Lets be clear: The military-industrial-complex wants plenty of low intensity conflict to fuel ever more fabulous weapons sales, not a really hot war where all those pretty expensive toys are falling out of the sky in droves. ..."
"... On 24 October 2017, the Intercept released an NSA document unearthed from leaked intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals that terrorist militants in Syria were under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which has now claimed half a million lives. ..."
"... The US intelligence memo is evidence of internal US government confirmation of the direct role that both the Saudi and US governments played in fueling attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of "regime change" in Syria. ..."
"... Israel's support for terrorist forces in Syria is well established. The Israelis and Saudis coordinate their activities. ..."
"... An August 2012 DIA report (written when the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist groups: "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." The "deterioration of the situation" was predicted to have "dire consequences" for Iraq, which included the "grave danger" of a terrorist "Islamic state". Some of the "dire consequences" are blacked out but the DIA warned one such consequence would be the "renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena." ..."
"... The heavily redacted DIA memo specifically mentions "the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)." ..."
"... To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were, mentioned in the document who sought the creation of a "Salafist principality," the DIA memo explained: "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime." ..."
"... The DIA memo clearly indicates when it was decided to transform US, Saudi, and Turkish-backed Al Qaeda affiliates into ISIS: the "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State). NATO member state Turkey has been directly supporting terrorism in Syria, and specifically, supporting ISIS. In 2014, Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle's reported "'IS' supply channels through Turkey." DW exposed fleets of hundreds of trucks a day, passing unchallenged through Turkey's border crossings with Syria, clearly bound for the defacto ISIS capital of Raqqa. Starting in September 2015, Russian airpower in Syria successfully interdicted ISIS supply lines. ..."
"... The usual suspects in Western media launched a relentless propaganda campaign against Russian support for Syria. The Atlantic Council's Bellingcat disinformation operation started working overtime. ..."
"... The propaganda effort culminated in the 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun false flag chemical incident in Idlib. Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta have been paraded by "First Draft" coalition media "partners" in a vigorous effort to somehow implicate the Russians. ..."
"... In a January 2016 interview on Al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn admitted that he "paid very close attention" to the August 2012 DIA report predicting the rise of a "declared or undeclared Salafist Principality" in Syria. Flynn even asserts that the White House's sponsoring of terrorists (that would emerge as Al Nusra and ISIS) against the Syrian regime was "a willful decision." ..."
"... Flynn was interviewed by British journalist Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera's Head to Head program. Flynn made it clear that the policies that led to the "the rise of the Islamic State, the rise of terrorism" were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making ..."
"... General Flynn explained to Hersh that 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.' Hersh's investigative report exposed a kind of intelligence schism between the Pentagon and CIA concerning the covert program in Syria. ..."
"... The article raises a very serious charge. Up till now it appeared that supplying weapons to Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence but the suggestion here is that it was a concerted policy and it's hard to believe that there was no one in the Pentagon that was privy to that policy who wouldn't raise an objection. ..."
"... That it conformed with Israeli, Saudi and CIA designs is not surprising, but that there was no dissension within the Pentagon is appalling (or that Obama didn't raise objections). Clark's comment should put him on the hot seat for a congressional investigation but, of course, there is no one in congress to run with it. The policy is so manifestly evil that it seems to dwarf even the reckless ignorance of preceding "interventions". ..."
"... The DIA report released by Gen. Flynn in 2012 predicted the Islamic State with alarm. That is why Flynn was fired as Director of DIA. He objected to the insane policy of supporting the CIA/Saudi madness and saw it as not only counter-productive but disastrous. His comments to AlJazeera in 2016 reinforced this position. Gen Flynn's faction of the American military has been consistent in its opposition to CIA support of terrorist forces. ..."
"... I see Gen. Flynn as a whistleblower. The 2012 report he circulated saw the rise of the Salafist Islamic state with alarm ..."
"... Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. ..."
"... Thank you. Gen Flynn also urged coordination with Russia against ISIS, so it doesn't take much to see why he was targeted. ..."
"... The use of Islamist proxy warriors to help achieve American geo-political ends goes back to at least 1979, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria. One of the better books on 9/11 is Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's "The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism". The first section of that book – "The Geopolitics of Terrorism" – covers, across 150 well-sourced pages, the history and background of this involvement. It is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to be better informed on this topic. ..."
"... Jaycee, actually you have to go back much further than that to WW2. Hitler used the marginalized Turkic people in Russia and turned them into effective fighters to create internal factions within the Soviet Union. After Hitler lost and the Cold War began, the US, who had no understanding of the Soviets at the time radicalized and empowered Islamist including the Muslim Brotherhood to weaponize Islam against the Soviet Union. ..."
"... All these western imperial geostrategic planners are certifiably insane and have no business anywhere near the levers of government policy. They are the number one enemy of humanity. If we don't find a way to remove them from power, they may actually succeed in destroying life on Earth. ..."
"... There is a volume of evidence that the war criminals in our midst were arming and training "jihadists." See link below. http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/10/the-evidence-of-planning-of-wars.html ..."
"... Incompetence and stupidity are their only defense because if anyone acknowledged that trillions of dollars have been made by the usual suspects committing these crimes, the industrialists of war would face a justice symbolized by Nuremberg. ..."
"... The American groupthink rarely allows propaganda and disinformation disturb: endless wars and endless lies and criminality, have not disturbed this mindset. It is clever to manipulate people to think in a way opposite of truth so consistently. All the atrocities by the US have been surrounded by media propaganda and mastery of groupthink techniques go down well. Mention something unusual or real news and you might get heavily criticized for daring to think outside the box and doubt what are (supposedly) "religious truths". Tell a lie long enough and it becomes the truth. ..."
"... The CIA was a key force behind the creation of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Most major incidents of "Islamic Terrorism" have some kind of CIA backing behind them. See this large collection of links for compiled evidence: http://www.pearltrees.com/joshstern/government-supporting/id18814292 ..."
"... This journalist and other journalists writing on some of my favorite Russian propaganda news websites, have reported the US empire routinely makes "deals with the devil", the enemy of my enemy is my friend, if doing so furthers their goal of perpetual war and global hegemony. Yet, inexplicably, these journalists buy the US empire's 911 story without question, in the face of many unanswered questions ..."
"... Bin Laden (CIA staffer) and a handful of his men, all from close allied countries to the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, delivered the 2nd Pearl Harbor on 911. What a timely coincidence! We accept the US Empire provides weapons and military support to the same enemy, and worse, who attacked us on 911, but one is labeled a "conspiracy nut" if they believe that same US Empire would orchestrate 911 to justify their long planned global war. One thing about being a "conspiracy nut", if you live long enough, often you will see your beliefs vindicated ..."
"... So many questions, and so much left unanswered, but don't worry America may run out of money for domestic vital needs but the U.S. always has the money to go fight another war. It's a culture thing, and if you ain't into it then you just don't pay no attention to it. In fact if your life is better off from all of these U.S. led invasions, then your probably not posting any comments here, either. ..."
"... From the October 1973 Yom Kippur War onward, the United States had no foreign policy in the Middle East other than Israel's. Daniel Lazare should read "A clean break: a new strategy for the Realm". ..."
"... For the majority of amoral opportunists of the US, money=power=virtue and they will attack all who disagree. ..."
"... I am stunned that anyone could be so foolish as to think that the US military machine, US imperialism, does things "naively", bumbling like a helpless giant into wars that destroy entire nations with no end in sight. One need not be a "conspiracy theorist" to understand that the Pentagon does not control the world with an ever-expanding war budget equal to the next 10 countries combined, that it does this just because it is stuck on the wrong path. No! US imperialism develops these "big guns" to use them, to overpower, take over and dominate the world for the sake of profits and protection of the right to exploit for private profit. ..."
"... Daniel Pipes, from what I've read of him, is among those who counsel the U.S. government to use its military power to support the losing side in any civil wars fought within Israel's enemy states, so that the wars will continue, sparing Israel the threat of unified enemy states. What normal human beings consider a humanitarian disaster, repeated in Iraq, Syria and Libya, would be reckoned a success according to this way of thinking. The thinking would appear to lead to similar treatment of Iran, with even more catastrophic consequences. ..."
"... I think this pattern of using Salafists for regime change started already in Afghanistan, with Brzezinski plotting with Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan to pay and train Osama bin Laden to attack the pro Russia regime and trying to get the USSR involved in it, also trying to blame the USSR for its agression, like they did in Syri"r? ..."
"... Yes, the Brzezinski/Reagan support of fanatic insurgencies began in AfPak and was revived for the zionists. Russia happened to be on the side more or less tending to progress in both cases, so it had to be opposed. The warmongers are always the US MIC/intel, allied with the anti-American zionist fascists for Mideast wars. ..."
"... Sheldon Adelson, Soros, Saban all wanted carving up of Arabic states into small sectarian pieces (No Nasseric pan-Arabic states, a threat to Israël). And protracted wars of total destruction. Easy. ..."
"... Of course, they were told (by whom?) that the jihadists were 'democratic rebels' and 'freedom fighters' who just wanted to 'bring democracy' to Syria, and get rid of the 'tyrant Assad.' 5 years later, so much of the nonsense about "local councils" and "white helmets" has been exposed for what it was. Yet many 'free thinking' people bought the propaganda. Just like they do on Russiagate. Who needs an "alt-right" when America's "left" is a total disgrace? ..."
When a Department of Defense intelligence
report about the Syrian rebel movement became public in May 2015, lots of people didn't
know what to make of it. After all, what the report said was unthinkable – not only that
Al Qaeda had dominated the so-called democratic revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
for years, but that the West continued to support the jihadis regardless, even to the point of
backing their goal of creating a Sunni Salafist principality in the eastern deserts.
Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative in
August 2014.
The United States lining up behind Sunni terrorism – how could this be? How could a
nice liberal like Barack Obama team up with the same people who had brought down the World
Trade Center?
It was impossible, which perhaps explains why the report remained a non-story long after it
was released courtesy of a Judicial Watch freedom-of-information
lawsuit . The New York Times didn't mention it until
six months later while the Washington Post waited more than a year before
dismissing it as "loopy" and "relatively unimportant." With ISIS rampaging across much of
Syria and Iraq, no one wanted to admit that U.S. attitudes were ever anything other than
hostile.
But three years earlier, when the Defense Intelligence Agency was compiling the report,
attitudes were different. Jihadis were heroes rather than terrorists, and all the experts
agreed that they were a low-risk, high-yield way of removing Assad from office.
After spending five days with a Syrian rebel unit, for instance, New York Times reporter
C.J. Chivers
wrote that the group "mixes paramilitary discipline, civilian policing, Islamic law, and
the harsh demands of necessity with battlefield coldness and outright cunning."
Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut,
assured the Washington Post that "al Qaeda is a fringe element" among the rebels, while,
not to be outdone, the gossip site Buzzfeed published a
pin-up of a "ridiculously photogenic" jihadi toting an RPG.
"Hey girl," said the subhead. "Nothing sexier than fighting the oppression of tyranny."
And then there was Foreign Policy, the magazine founded by neocon guru Samuel P. Huntington,
which was most enthusiastic of all. Gary Gambill's " Two Cheers for Syrian
Islamists ," which ran on the FP web site just a couple of weeks after the DIA report was
completed, didn't distort the facts or make stuff up in any obvious way. Nonetheless, it is a
classic of U.S. propaganda. Its subhead glibly observed: "So the rebels aren't secular
Jeffersonians. As far as America is concerned, it doesn't much matter."
Assessing the Damage
Five years later, it's worth a second look to see how Washington uses self-serving logic to
reduce an entire nation to rubble.
First a bit of background. After displacing France and Britain as the region's prime
imperial overlord during the 1956 Suez Crisis and then breaking with Egyptian President Gamal
Abdel Nasser a few years later, the United States committed itself to the goal of defeating
Arab nationalism and Soviet Communism, two sides of the same coin as far as Washington was
concerned. Over the next half-century, this would mean steering Egypt to the right with
assistance from the Saudis, isolating Libyan strong man Muammar Gaddafi, and doing what it
could to undermine the Syrian Baathist regime as well.
William Roebuck, the American embassy's chargé d'affaires in Damascus, thus
urged
Washington in 2006 to coordinate with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to encourage Sunni Syrian fears of
Shi'ite Iranian proselytizing even though such concerns are "often exaggerated." It was akin to
playing up fears of Jewish dominance in the 1930s in coordination with Nazi Germany.
A year later, former NATO commander Wesley Clark learned of a classified Defense Department
memo stating that U.S. policy was now to "attack and destroy the governments in seven countries
in five years," first Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. (Quote starts
at 2:07 .)
Since the United States didn't like what such governments were doing, the solution was to
install more pliable ones in their place. Hence Washington's joy when the Arab Spring struck
Syria in March 2011 and it appeared that protesters would soon topple the Baathists on their
own.
Even when lofty democratic rhetoric gave way to ominous sectarian
chants of "Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the coffin," U.S. enthusiasm remained strong.
With Sunnis accounting for perhaps 60 percent of the population, strategists figured that there
was no way Assad could hold out against religious outrage welling up from below.
Enter Gambill and the FP. The big news, his article began, is that secularists are no longer
in command of the burgeoning Syrian rebel movement and that Sunni Islamists are taking the lead
instead. As unfortunate as this might seem, he argued that such a development was both
unavoidable and far from entirely negative.
"Islamist political ascendancy is inevitable in a majority Sunni Muslim country brutalized
for more than four decades by a secular minoritarian dictatorship," he wrote in reference to
the Baathists. "Moreover, enormous financial resources are pouring in from the Arab-Islamic
world to promote explicitly Islamist resistance to Assad's Alawite-dominated, Iranian-backed
regime."
So the answer was not to oppose the Islamists, but to use them. Even though "the Islamist
surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people," Gambill said, "it has two important silver
linings for US interests." One is that the jihadis "are simply more effective fighters than
their secular counterparts" thanks to their skill with "suicide bombings and roadside
bombs."
The other is that a Sunni Islamist victory in Syria will result in "a full-blown strategic
defeat" for Iran, thereby putting Washington at least part way toward fulfilling the
seven-country demolition job discussed by Wesley Clark.
"So long as Syrian jihadis are committed to fighting Iran and its Arab proxies," the article
concluded, "we should quietly root for them – while keeping our distance from a conflict
that is going to get very ugly before the smoke clears. There will be plenty of time to tame
the beast after Iran's regional hegemonic ambitions have gone down in flames."
Deals with the Devil
The U.S. would settle with the jihadis only after the jihadis had settled with Assad. The
good would ultimately outweigh the bad. This kind of self-centered moral calculus would not
have mattered had Gambill only spoken for himself. But he didn't. Rather, he was expressing the
viewpoint of Official Washington in general, which is why the ultra-respectable FP ran his
piece in the first place.The Islamists were something America could employ to their advantage and then throw away
like a squeezed lemon. A few Syrians would suffer, but America would win, and that's all that
counts.
The parallels with the DIA are striking. "The west, gulf countries, and Turkey support the
opposition," the intelligence report declared, even though "the Salafist[s], the Muslim
Brotherhood, and AQI [i.e. Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency."
Where Gambill predicted that "Assad and his minions will likely retreat to northwestern
Syria," the DIA speculated that the jihadis might establish "a declared or undeclared Salafist
principality" at the other end of the country near cities like Hasaka and Der Zor (also known
as Deir ez-Zor).
Where the FP said that the ultimate aim was to roll back Iranian influence and undermine
Shi'ite rule, the DIA said that a Salafist principality "is exactly what the supporting powers
to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic
depth of Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)."
Bottle up the Shi'ites in northwestern Syria, in other words, while encouraging Sunni
extremists to establish a base in the east so as to put pressure on Shi'ite-influenced Iraq and
Shi'ite-ruled Iran.
As Gambill put it: "Whatever misfortunes Sunni Islamists may visit upon the Syrian people,
any government they form will be strategically preferable to the Assad regime, for
three reasons: A new government in Damascus will find continuing the alliance with Tehran
unthinkable, it won't have to distract Syrians from its minority status with foreign policy
adventurism like the ancien régime, and it will be flush with petrodollars from
Arab Gulf states (relatively) friendly to Washington."
With the Saudis footing the bill, the U.S. would exercise untrammeled sway.
Disastrous Thinking
Has a forecast that ever gone more spectacularly wrong? Syria's Baathist government is
hardly blameless in this affair. But thanks largely to the U.S.-backed sectarian offensive,
400,000
Syrians or more have died since Gambill's article appeared, with another 6.1 million
displaced and an estimated 4.8 million fleeing abroad.
U.S.-backed Syrian "moderate" rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy
(left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot
from the YouTube video] War-time destruction totals around $250
billion , according to U.N. estimates, a staggering sum for a country of 18.8 million
people where per-capita income prior to the outbreak of violence was under $3,000. From Syria,
the specter of sectarian violence has spread across Asia and Africa and into Europe and North
America as well. Political leaders throughout the advanced industrial world are still
struggling to contain the populist fury that the Middle East refugee crisis, the result of
U.S.-instituted regime change, helped set off.
So instead of advancing U.S. policy goals, Gambill helped do the opposite. The Middle East
is more explosive than ever while U.S. influence has fallen to sub-basement levels. Iranian
influence now extends from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean, while the country that now
seems to be wobbling out of control is Saudi Arabia where Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is
lurching from one self-induced crisis to another. The country that Gambill counted on to shore
up the status quo turns out to be undermining it.
It's not easy to screw things up so badly, but somehow Washington's bloated foreign-policy
establishment has done it. Since helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Gambill has
moved on to a post at the rightwing Middle East Forum where Daniel Pipes, the group's founder
and chief, now inveighs against the same Sunni ethnic cleansing that his employee
defended or at least apologized for.
The forum is particularly well known for its Campus Watch program, which targets academic
critics of Israel, Islamists, and – despite Gambill's kind words about "suicide bombings
and roadside bombs" – anyone it considers the least bit apologetic about Islamic
terrorism.
Double your standard, double the fun. Terrorism, it seems, is only terrorism when others do
it to the U.S., not when the U.S. does it to others.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the
Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
Babyl-on , December 8, 2017 at 5:26 pm
I do not believe than anyone in the civil or military command ever believed that arming
the jihadists would bring any sort of stability or peace to the region. I do not believe that
peace was ever an interest of the US until it has once again gained hegemonic control of
central Asia. This is a fight to retain US global domination – causalities do not matter. The US
and its partners or co-rulers of the Empire the Saud family and the Zionist oligarchy will
slaughter with impunity until someone stops them or their own corruption defeats them.
The Empire can not exist without relentless ongoing slaughter it has been at it every day
now for 73 years. It worked for them all that time but that time has run out. China has
already set the date for when its currency will become fully freely exchanged, less than 5
years. When that happens the world will return to the gold standard + Bitcoin possibly and US
dollar hegemony will end. After that the trillion dollar a year military and the 20 trillion
debt take on a different meaning. Before that slaughter non-stop will continue.
john wilson , December 9, 2017 at 6:31 am
Really, Baby-lon, your first short paragraph sums this piece by Lazare perfectly and makes
the rest of his blog seem rather pointless. Even the most stupid person on earth couldn't
think that the US was using murdering, butchering head choppers in a bid to bring peace and
stability to the middle East. The Neocons and the other criminals that infest Washington
don't want peace at any price because its bad for business.
Babyl-on and John Wilson: you have nailed it. The last thing the US (gov't.) wants is
peace. War is big business; casualties are of no concern (3 million Koreans died in the
Korean War; 3 million Vietnamese in that war; 100's of thousands in Iraq [including Clinton's
sanctions] and Afghanistan). The US has used jihadi proxies since the mujahedeen in 1980's
Afghanistan and Contras in Nicaragua. To the US (gov't.), a Salafist dictatorship (such as
Saudi Arabia) is highly preferable to a secular, nationalist ruler (such as Egypt's Nasser,
Libya's Gaddafi, Syria's Assad).
So the cover story of the jjihadi's has changed – first they are freedom fighters, then
terrorists. What does not change is that in either case they are pawns of the US (gov't.)
goal of hegemony.
(Incidentally, Drew Hunkins must be responding to a different article.)
Exactly Baby right on, Either USA strategists are extremely ignorant or they are attempting
to create chaos, probably both.
Perhaps not continuously but surely frequently the USA has promoted war prior to the last 73
years. Native Genocide , Mexican Wars, Spanish War, WWI ( USA banker repayment war)
Richard , December 9, 2017 at 5:24 pm
Exactly Babylon! Looks like consortiumnews is turning into another propaganda rag. Assad
was allied with Russia and Iran – that's why the U.S. wanted him removed. Israel said
that they would preferred ISIS in power over Assad. The U.S. would have happily wiped out 90%
of the population using its terrorist proxies if it thought it could have got what it
wanted.
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 8:50 am
CN tends to make moderate statements so as to communicate with those most in need of
them.
One must start with the understandings of the audience and show them that the evidence leads
further.
Richard , December 10, 2017 at 10:27 am
Sam F, no, it's a DELIBERATE lie in support of U.S. foreign policy. The guy wrote: "the
NAIVE belief that jihadist proxies could be used to TRANSFORM THE REGION FOR THE BETTER." It
could have been written as: "the stated justification by the president that he wanted to
transform the region for the better, even though there are often ulterior motives."
It's the same GROTESQUE caricature of these wars that the mainstream media always
presents: that the U.S. is on the side of good, and fights for good, even though every war
INVARIABLY ends up in a bloodbath, with no one caring how many civilians have died, what
state the country is left in, that civilian infrastructure and civilians were targeted, let
alone whether war could have been prevented. For example, in 1991, shortly after the first
Gulf War, Iraqis rose up against their regime, but George H. Bush allowed Saddam to fly his
military helicopters (permission was needed due to the no-fly zones), and quell the rebellion
in blood – tens of thousands were butchered! Bush said that when he told Iraqis to
rebel, he meant the military generals, NOT the Iraqi people themselves. In other words, the
U.S. wanted Saddam gone, but the same regime in place. The U.S. never cared about the
people!
Either Robert Parry or the author wrote that introduction. I suspect Mr Parry – he
always portrays the president as having a heart of gold, but, always, sadly, misinformed;
being a professional journalist, he knows full well that people often only read the start and
end of an article.
Drew Hunkins , December 8, 2017 at 5:31 pm
What we have occurring right now in the United States is a rare divergence of interests
within our ruling class. The elites are currently made up of Zionist-militarists. What we're
now witnessing is a rare conflict between the two factions. This particular internecine
battle has reared its head in the past, the Dubai armaments deal comes to mind off the top of
my head.
Trump started the Jerusalem imbroglio because he's concerned about Mueller's witch
hunt.
The military-industrial-complex sicced Mueller on Trump because they despise his overtures
towards rapprochement with the Kremlin. The military-industrial-complex MUST have a villain
to justify the gigantic defense [sic] spending which permeates the entire U.S.
politico-economic system. Putin and Russia were always the preferred demon because they
easily fit the bill in the minds of an easily brainwashed American public. Of course saber
rattling towards Moscow puts the world on the brink of nuclear war, but no matter, the
careerism and fat contracts are all that matter to the MIC. Trump's rhetoric about making
peace with the Kremlin has always mortified the MIC.
Since Trump's concerned about 1.) Mueller's witch hunt (he definitely should be deeply
concerned, this is an out of control prosecutor on mission creep), and 2.) the almost total
negative coverage the press has given him over the last two years, he's made a deal with the
Zionist Power Configuration; Trump, effectively saying to them: "I'll give you Jerusalem, you
use your immense influence in the American mass media to tamp down the relentlessly hostile
coverage toward me, and perhaps smear Mueller's witch hunt a bit ".
This is a rare instance of our elites battling it out behind the scenes, both groups being
reprehensible power hungry greed heads and sociopaths, it's hard to tell how this will
end.
How this all eventually plays out is anyone's guess indeed. Let's just make sure it
doesn't end with mushroom clouds over Tehran, Saint Petersburg, Paris, Chicago, London, NYC,
Washington and Berlin.
Abe , December 8, 2017 at 7:57 pm
Trump's purported deviation from foreign policy orthodoxy regarding both Russia and Israel
was a propaganda scam engineered by the pro-Israel Lobby from the very beginning. As Russia-gate fiction is progressively deconstructed, the Israel-gate reality becomes
ever more despicably obvious.
The shamelessly Israel-pandering Trump received the "Liberty Award" for his contributions
to US-Israel relations at a 3 February 2015 gala hosted by The Algemeiner Journal, a New
York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news.
After the event, Trump did not renew his television contract for The Apprentice, which
raised speculation about a Trump bid for the presidency. Trump announced his candidacy in
June 2015.
Trump's purported break with GOP orthodoxy, questioning of Israel's commitment to peace,
calls for even treatment in Israeli-Palestinian deal-making, and refusal to call for
Jerusalem to be Israel's undivided capital, were all stage-managed for the campaign.
Cheap theatrics notwithstanding, the Netanyahu regime in Israel has "1000 percent" support
from the Trump regime.
Drew Hunkins , December 8, 2017 at 8:10 pm
If Trump were totally and completely subservient to Netanyahu he would have bombed
Damascus to remove Assad and would have bombed Tehran to obliterate Iran. Of course thus far
he has done neither. Don't get me wrong, Trump is essentially part and parcel of the Zionist
cabal, but I don't quite think he's 1,000% under their thumb (not yet?).
I don't think the Zionist Power Configuration concocted Trump's policy of relative peace
with the Kremlin. Yes, the ZPC is extremely powerful in America, but Trump's position of
detente with Moscow seemed to be genuine. He caught way too much heat from the mass media for
it to be a stunt, it's almost torpedoed his presidency, and may eventually do just that. It
was actually one of the very few things Trump got right; peace with Russia, cordial relations
with the Kremlin are a no-brainer. A no-brainer to everyone but the
military-industrial-complex.
Abe , December 8, 2017 at 10:59 pm
Russian. Missiles. Lets be clear: The military-industrial-complex wants plenty of low intensity conflict to
fuel ever more fabulous weapons sales, not a really hot war where all those pretty expensive
toys are falling out of the sky in droves.
Whether it was "bird strike" or something more technological that recently grounded the
"mighty" Israeli F-35I, it's clear that America isn't eager to have those "Inherent Resolve"
jets, so busily not bombing ISIS, painted with Russian SAM radar.
Russia made it clear that Trump's Tomahawk Tweet in April 2017 was not only under totally
false pretenses. It had posed a threat to Russian troops and Moscow took extra measures to
protect them.
Russian deployment of the advanced S-400 system on the Syrian coast in Latakia also
impacts Israel's regional air superiority. The S-400 can track and shoot down targets some
400 kilometers (250 miles) away. That range encompasses half of Israel's airspace, including
Ben Gurion International Airport. In addition to surface-to-air missiles installations, Russian aircraft in Syria are
equipped with air-to-air missiles. Those weapons are part of an calculus of Israeli aggression in the region.
Of course, there's much more to say about this subject.
Surely, Drew, even the brain washed sheep otherwise known as the American public can't
seriously believe that their government armed head choppers in a bid to bring peace to the
region, can they?
Drew Hunkins , December 9, 2017 at 1:34 pm
Yup Mr. Wilson. It's too much cognitive dissonance for them to process. After all, we're
the exceptional nation, the beacon on the hill, the country that ONLY intervenes abroad when
there is a 'right to protect!' or it's a 'humanitarian intervention.' As Ken Burns would say:
Washington only acts "with good intentions. They're just sometimes misplaced." That's all.
The biggest global empire the world has ever seen is completely out of the picture.
mike k , December 8, 2017 at 5:34 pm
When evil people with evil intentions set out to do something in the world, the result is
evil. Like Libya, or Iraq, or Syria. Why do I call these people who killed millions for their
own selfish greed for power evil? If you have to ask that, then you just don't understand
what evil is – and you have a lot of company, because many people believe that evil
does not even exist! Such sheeple become the perfect victims of the evil ones, who are
destroying our world.
john wilson , December 9, 2017 at 6:36 am
Correction, Mike. The public do believe that evil exists but they sincerely think that
Putin and Russia are the evil ones'
mike k , December 9, 2017 at 5:41 pm
One of the ways to avoid recognizing evil is to ascribe it to inappropriate, incorrect
sources usually as a result of believing misleading propaganda. Another common maneuver is to
deny evil's presence in oneself, and believe it is always "out there". Or one can feel that
"evil" is an outmoded religious concept that is only used to hit at those one does not
like.
Mild - ly Facetious , December 8, 2017 at 6:22 pm
Oh Jerusalem: Requiem for the two-state solution (Gas masks required)
On 24 October 2017, the Intercept released an NSA document unearthed from leaked
intelligence files provided by Edward Snowden which reveals that terrorist militants in Syria
were under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the war which
has now claimed half a million lives.
Marked "Top Secret" the NSA memo focuses on events that unfolded outside Damascus in March
of 2013.
The US intelligence memo is evidence of internal US government confirmation of the direct
role that both the Saudi and US governments played in fueling attacks on civilians and
civilian infrastructure, as well as military targets in pursuit of "regime change" in
Syria.
Israel's support for terrorist forces in Syria is well established. The Israelis and
Saudis coordinate their activities.
Abe , December 8, 2017 at 6:27 pm
An August 2012 DIA report (written when the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya
to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist
groups: "the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the
insurgency in Syria." The "deterioration of the situation" was predicted to have "dire consequences" for Iraq,
which included the "grave danger" of a terrorist "Islamic state". Some of the "dire consequences" are blacked out but the DIA warned one such consequence
would be the "renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world
entering into Iraqi Arena."
The heavily redacted DIA memo specifically mentions "the possibility of establishing a
declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this
is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian
regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)."
To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were, mentioned in the document who sought
the creation of a "Salafist principality," the DIA memo explained: "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and
Iran support the regime."
The DIA memo clearly indicates when it was decided to transform US, Saudi, and
Turkish-backed Al Qaeda affiliates into ISIS: the "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality"
(State). NATO member state Turkey has been directly supporting terrorism in Syria, and
specifically, supporting ISIS. In 2014, Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle's reported "'IS' supply
channels through Turkey." DW exposed fleets of hundreds of trucks a day, passing unchallenged
through Turkey's border crossings with Syria, clearly bound for the defacto ISIS capital of
Raqqa. Starting in September 2015, Russian airpower in Syria successfully interdicted ISIS supply
lines.
The usual suspects in Western media launched a relentless propaganda campaign against
Russian support for Syria. The Atlantic Council's Bellingcat disinformation operation started
working overtime.
The propaganda effort culminated in the 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun false flag chemical
incident in Idlib. Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta have been paraded by "First
Draft" coalition media "partners" in a vigorous effort to somehow implicate the Russians.
Abe , December 9, 2017 at 12:26 pm
In a January 2016 interview on Al Jazeera, former director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency Michael Flynn admitted that he "paid very close attention" to the August 2012 DIA
report predicting the rise of a "declared or undeclared Salafist Principality" in Syria. Flynn even asserts that the White House's sponsoring of terrorists (that would emerge as
Al Nusra and ISIS) against the Syrian regime was "a willful decision."
Flynn was interviewed by British journalist Mehdi Hasan for Al Jazeera's Head to Head
program. Flynn made it clear that the policies that led to the "the rise of the Islamic State, the
rise of terrorism" were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the
result of conscious decision making:
Hasan: "You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups
were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn't
listening?"
Flynn: "I think the administration."
Hasan: "So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?"
Flynn: "I don't know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it
was a willful decision."
Hasan: "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the
Muslim Brotherhood?"
Flynn: "It was a willful decision to do what they're doing."
Holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan read aloud
key passages such as, "there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared
Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the
opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime."
Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did
the State Department soon after its release, Flynn did the opposite: he confirmed that while
acting DIA chief he "paid very close attention" to this report in particular and later added
that "the intelligence was very clear."
Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence
official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria
knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on
the Syrian regime:
Hasan: "In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups
[Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you're
worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?"
Flynn: "I hate to say it's not my job but that my job was to was to to ensure that the
accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be."
Flynn unambiguously confirmed that the 2012 DIA document served as source material in his
own discussions over Syria policy with the White House. Flynn served as Director of Intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda.
Flynn's admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked
groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature. The Pentagon's former highest ranking intelligence officer in charge of the hunt for Osama
bin Laden confessed that the United States directly aided the Al Qaeda terrorist legions of
Ayman al-Zawahiri beginning in at least 2012 in Syria.
Abe , December 9, 2017 at 12:44 pm
Mehdi Hasan goes Head to Head with Michael Flynn, former head of the US Defense
Intelligence Agency
"Flynn would later tell the New York Times that this 2012 intelligence report in
particular was seen at the White House where it was 'disregarded' because it 'didn't meet the
narrative' on the war in Syria. He would further confirm to investigative journalist Seymour
Hersh that Defense Department (DoD) officials and DIA intelligence in particular, were loudly
warning the administration that jihadists were leading the opposition in Syria -- warnings
which were met with 'enormous pushback.' Instead of walking back his Al Jazeera comments,
General Flynn explained to Hersh that 'If the American public saw the intelligence we were
producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic.' Hersh's investigative
report exposed a kind of intelligence schism between the Pentagon and CIA concerning the
covert program in Syria.
"In a personal exchange on his blog Sic Semper Tyrannis, legendary DoD intelligence
officer and former presidential briefer Pat Lang explained [ ] that the DIA memo was used as
a 'warning shot across the [administration's] bow.' Lang has elsewhere stated that DIA
Director Flynn had 'tried to persuade people in the Obama Administration not to provide
assistance to the Nusra group.' It must be remembered that in 2012 what would eventually
emerge as distinct 'ISIS' and 'Nusra' (AQ in Syria) groups was at that time a singular entity
desiring a unified 'Islamic State.' The nascent ISIS organization (referenced in the memo as
'ISI' or Islamic State in Iraq) was still one among many insurgent groups fighting to topple
Assad.
"In fact, only one year after the DIA memo was produced (dated August 12, 2012) a
coalition of rebels fighting under the US-backed Revolutionary Military Council of Aleppo
were busy celebrating their most strategic victory to date, which served to open an
opposition corridor in Northern Syria. The seizure of the Syrian government's Menagh Airbase
in August 2013 was only accomplished with the military prowess of fighters identifying
themselves in front of cameras and to reporters on the ground as the Islamic State of Iraq
and al-Sham.
"Public embarrassment came for Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford who reluctantly confirmed
that in fact, yes, the US-funded and supplied FSA commander on the ground had personally led
ISIS and Nusra fighters in the attack (Ford himself was previously filmed alongside the
commander). This after the New York Times publicized unambiguous video proof of the fact.
Even the future high commander of Islamic State's military operations, Omar al-Shishani,
himself played a leading role in the US sponsored FSA operation."
"one first needs to understand what has happened in Syria and other Middle Eastern
countries in recent years. The original plan of the US and Saudi Arabia (behind whom stood an
invisible Israel) was the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and his replacement with Islamic
fundamentalists or takfiris (Daesh, al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra).
"The plan involved the following steps:
sweep away a strong secular Arab state with a political culture, armed forces and
security services;
generate total chaos and horror in Syria that would justify the creation of Israel's
'security zone', not only in Golan Heights, but also further north;
start a civil war in Lebanon and incite takfiri violence against Hezbollah, leading
to them both bleeding to death and then create a "security zone", this time in Lebanon;
prevent the creation of a "Shiite axis" of Iran/Iraq/Syria/Lebanon;
continue the division of Syria along ethnic and religious lines, establish an
independent Kurdistan and then to use them against Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
give Israel the opportunity to become the unquestioned major player in the region and
force Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and everyone else to apply for permission from Israel
in order to implement any oil and gas projects;
gradually isolate, threaten, undermine and ultimately attack Iran with a wide
regional coalition, removing all Shiite centers of power in the middle East.
"It was an ambitious plan, and the Israelis were completely convinced that the United
States would provide all the necessary resources to see it through. But the Syrian government
has survived thanks to military intervention by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Daesh is almost
defeated and Iran and Hezbollah are so firmly entrenched in Syria that it has driven the
Israelis into a state of fear bordering on panic. Lebanon remains stable, and even the recent
attempt by the Saudis to abduct Prime Minister Saad Hariri failed.
"As a result, Saudi Arabia and Israel have developed a new plan: force the US to attack
Iran. To this end, the 'axis of good"' (USA-Israel-Saudi Arabia) was created, although this
is nothing new. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab States in the Persian Gulf have in the past
spoken in favor of intervention in Syria. It is well known that the Saudis invaded Bahrain,
are occupying it de facto, and are now at war in Yemen.
"The Israelis will participate in any plan that will finally split the Sunnis and Shiites,
turning the region into rubble. It was not by chance that, having failed in Lebanon, they are
now trying to do the same in Yemen after the murder of Ali Abdullah Saleh.
"For the Saudis and Israelis, the problem lies in the fact that they have rather weak
armed forces; expensive and high-tech, but when it comes to full-scale hostilities,
especially against a really strong opponent such as the Iranians or Hezbollah, the
'Israel/Wahhabis' have no chance and they know it, even if they do not admit it. So, one
simply needs to think up some kind of plan to force the Shiites to pay a high price.
"So they developed a new plan. Firstly, the goal is now not the defeat of Hezbollah or
Iran. For all their rhetoric, the Israelis know that neither they nor especially the Saudis
are able to seriously threaten Iran or even Hezbollah. Their plan is much more basic:
initiate a serious conflict and then force the US to intervene. Only today, the armed forces
of the United States have no way of winning a war with Iran, and this may be a problem. The
US military knows this and they are doing everything to tell the neo-cons 'sorry, we just
can't.' This is the only reason why a US attack on Iran has not already taken place. From the
Israeli point of view this is totally unacceptable and the solution is simple: just force the
US to participate in a war they do not really need. As for the Iranians, the Israeli goal of
provoking an attack on Iran by the US is not to defeat Iran, but just to bring about
destruction – a lot of destruction [ ]
"You would need to be crazy to attack Iran. The problem, however, is that the Saudis and
the Israelis are close to this state. And they have proved it many times. So it just remains
to hope that Israel and the KSA are 'crazy', but 'not that crazy'."
The article raises a very serious charge. Up till now it appeared that supplying weapons to
Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria was just another example of Pentagon incompetence but the
suggestion here is that it was a concerted policy and it's hard to believe that there was no
one in the Pentagon that was privy to that policy who wouldn't raise an objection.
That it
conformed with Israeli, Saudi and CIA designs is not surprising, but that there was no
dissension within the Pentagon is appalling (or that Obama didn't raise objections). Clark's
comment should put him on the hot seat for a congressional investigation but, of course,
there is no one in congress to run with it. The policy is so manifestly evil that it seems to
dwarf even the reckless ignorance of preceding "interventions".
Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:24 pm
There WAS dissension within the Pentagon, not only about being in a coalition with the
Gulf States and Turkey in support of terrorist forces, but about allowing ISIS to invade
Ramadi, which CENTCOM exposed by making public that US forces watched it happen and did
nothing. In addition, CENTCOM and SOCOM publicly opposed switching sides in Yemen.
A senior commander at Central Command (CENTCOM), speaking on condition of anonymity,
scoffed at that argument. "The reason the Saudis didn't inform us of their plans," he said,
"is because they knew we would have told them exactly what we think -- that it was a bad
idea.
Military sources said that a number of regional special forces officers and officers at
U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) argued strenuously against supporting the Saudi-led
intervention because the target of the intervention, the Shia Houthi movement -- which has
taken over much of Yemen and which Riyadh accuses of being a proxy for Tehran -- has been
an effective counter to Al-Qaeda.
The DIA report released by Gen. Flynn in 2012 predicted the Islamic State with alarm. That
is why Flynn was fired as Director of DIA. He objected to the insane policy of supporting the
CIA/Saudi madness and saw it as not only counter-productive but disastrous. His comments to
AlJazeera in 2016 reinforced this position. Gen Flynn's faction of the American military has
been consistent in its opposition to CIA support of terrorist forces.
Thanks, I never read anything about it in the MSM (perhaps Aljazeera was an exception?).
However, this doesn't explain Gen. Flynn's tight relationship with Turkey's Erdogan who
clearly backed the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels to the point of shooting down a Russian jet
over Syria.
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 8:57 am
The fighter shoot-down incident was before Erdogan's reversals in Syria policy.
Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:28 pm
I see Gen. Flynn as a whistleblower. The 2012 report he circulated saw the rise of the
Salafist Islamic state with alarm.
B. THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE
INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.
C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA, AND
IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.
C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR
UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY
WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME,
WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN).
D. THE DETERIORATION OF THE SITUATION HAS DIRE CONSEQUENCES ON THE IRAQI SITUATION AND
ARE AS FOLLOWS:
–1. THIS CREATES THE IDEAL ATMOSPHERE FOR AQI TO RETURN TO ITS OLD POCKETS IN
MOSUL AND RAMADI, AND WILL PROVIDE A RENEWED MOMENTUM UNDER THE PRESUMPTION OF UNIFYING THE
JIHAD AMONG SUNNI IRAQ AND SYRIA ISI COULD ALSO DECLARE AN ISLAMIC STATE THROUGH ITS UNION
WITH OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, WHICH WILL CREATE GRAVE DANGER IN
REGARDS TO UNIFYING IRAQ AND THE PROTECTION OF ITS TERRITORY
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed
that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian
leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in
control of the opposition. Turkey wasn't doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign
fighters and weapons across the border. 'If the American public saw the intelligence we
were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,' Flynn told me.
'We understood Isis's long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the
fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State
inside Syria.' The DIA's reporting, he said, 'got enormous pushback' from the Obama
administration. 'I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.'
j. D. D. , December 9, 2017 at 8:33 am
Thank you. Gen Flynn also urged coordination with Russia against ISIS, so it doesn't take
much to see why he was targeted. Ironically, the MSM is now going bananas over his support
for nuclear power in the region, which he had tied to desalination of sea water, toward
alleviating that crucial source of conflict in the area.
Abbybwood , December 9, 2017 at 11:24 pm
I believe Wesley Clark told Amy Goodman that he was handed the classified memo regarding
the U.S. overthrowing seven countries in five years starting with Iraq and ending with Iran,
in 2001, not 2006. He said it was right after 9/11 when he visited the Pentagon and Joint
Chief of Staff's office and was handed the memo.
jaycee , December 8, 2017 at 7:19 pm
The use of Islamist proxy warriors to help achieve American geo-political ends goes back
to at least 1979, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Libya, and Syria. One of the better books on
9/11 is Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's "The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of
Terrorism". The first section of that book – "The Geopolitics of Terrorism" –
covers, across 150 well-sourced pages, the history and background of this involvement. It is
highly recommended for anyone who wishes to be better informed on this topic.
One disturbing common feature across the years have been US sponsored airlifts of Islamist
fighters facing defeat, as seen in Afghanistan in late 2001 and just recently in eastern
Syria. In 2001, some of those fighters were relocated to North Africa, specifically Mali
– the roots of the Islamist insurgency which has destabilized that country over the
past few years. Where exactly the ISIS rebels assisted some weeks ago were relocated is yet
unknown.
turk151 , December 9, 2017 at 10:03 pm
Jaycee, actually you have to go back much further than that to WW2. Hitler used the
marginalized Turkic people in Russia and turned them into effective fighters to create
internal factions within the Soviet Union. After Hitler lost and the Cold War began, the US,
who had no understanding of the Soviets at the time radicalized and empowered Islamist
including the Muslim Brotherhood to weaponize Islam against the Soviet Union.
Hence the birth of the Mujaheddin and Bin Laden, the rest is history.
j. D. D. , December 8, 2017 at 7:57 pm
The article does not support the sub-headline. There is no evidence provided, nor is there
any evidence to be found, that Washington's policy in the region was motivated by anything
other than geopolitical objectives.
David G , December 9, 2017 at 7:25 am
I think that phrasing may point to the hand of editor Robert Parry. The incredible value
of CN notwithstanding, Parry in his own pieces (erroneously in my eyes) maintains a belief
that Obama somehow meant well. Hence the imputation of some "naïve" but ultimately
benevolent motive on the part of the U.S. genocidaires, as the whole Syria catastrophe got
going on Obama's watch.
Anon , December 9, 2017 at 9:14 am
The imputation of naivete works to avoid accusation of a specific strategy without
sufficient evidence.
Skip Scott , December 9, 2017 at 9:45 am
Although I am no fan of Obama, and most especially the continuation of the warmongering
for his 8 years, he did balk at the "Red line" when he found out he was being set up, and it
wasn't Assad who used chemical weapons. I don't think he "meant well" so much as he knew the
exact length of his leash. His bragging about going against "The Washington playbook" was of
course laughable; just as his whole hopey/changey thing was laughable with Citigroup picking
his cabinet.
All these western imperial geostrategic planners are certifiably insane and have no
business anywhere near the levers of government policy. They are the number one enemy of
humanity. If we don't find a way to remove them from power, they may actually succeed in
destroying life on Earth.
"Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the
naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better,
explains Daniel Lazare." What a load of old rubbish, naïve belief indeed. it is difficult to believe that
anyone could write this stuff with a straight face.
Linda Wood , December 8, 2017 at 10:37 pm
Incompetence and stupidity are their only defense because if anyone acknowledged that
trillions of dollars have been made by the usual suspects committing these crimes, the
industrialists of war would face a justice symbolized by Nuremberg.
Zachary Smith , December 8, 2017 at 11:37 pm
That Gary Gambill character "outed" himself as a Zionist on September 4 of this year. He
appears to have mastered the propaganda associated with the breed. At the link see if
you can find any mention of the murders, thefts, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid of his
adopted nation. Blaming the victim may be this fellow's specialty. Sample:
The well-intentioned flocked in droves to the belief that Israeli- Palestinian peace was
achievable provided Israel made the requisite concessions, and that this would liberate the
Arab-Islamic world from a host of other problems allegedly arising from it: bloated
military budgets, intolerance of dissent, Islamic extremism, you name it.
Why tackle each of these problems head on when they can be alleviated all at once when
Israel is brought to heel? Twenty years later, the Middle East is suffering the
consequences of this conspiracy of silence.
The American groupthink rarely allows propaganda and disinformation disturb: endless wars
and endless lies and criminality, have not disturbed this mindset. It is clever to manipulate
people to think in a way opposite of truth so consistently. All the atrocities by the US have
been surrounded by media propaganda and mastery of groupthink techniques go down well.
Mention something unusual or real news and you might get heavily criticized for daring to
think outside the box and doubt what are (supposedly) "religious truths". Tell a lie long
enough and it becomes the truth.
It takes courage to go against the flow of course and one can only hope that the Americans
are what they think they are: courageous and strong enough to hear their cherished truths
smashed, allow the scales before their eyes to fall and practise free speech and free
thought.
Theo , December 9, 2017 at 6:35 am
Thanks for this article and many others on this site.In Europe and in Germany you hardly
hear,read or see any of these facts and their connections.It seems to be only of marginal
interest.
The CIA was a key force behind the creation of both al Qaeda and ISIS. Most major
incidents of "Islamic Terrorism" have some kind of CIA backing behind them. See this large
collection of links for compiled evidence:
http://www.pearltrees.com/joshstern/government-supporting/id18814292
triekc , December 9, 2017 at 8:27 am
This journalist and other journalists writing on some of my favorite Russian propaganda
news websites, have reported the US empire routinely makes "deals with the devil", the enemy
of my enemy is my friend, if doing so furthers their goal of perpetual war and global
hegemony. Yet, inexplicably, these journalists buy the US empire's 911 story without
question, in the face of many unanswered questions.
Beginning in the 1990's, neocons who
would become W's cabinet, wrote detailed plans of military regime change in Middle East, but
stating they needed a "strong external shock to the United States -- a latter-day 'Pearl
Harbor", to get US sheeple to support increased militarism and global war. Few months after W
took office, and had appointed those war mongering neocons to positions of power, Bin Laden
(CIA staffer) and a handful of his men, all from close allied countries to the US, Saudi
Arabia, UAE, Egypt, delivered the 2nd Pearl Harbor on 911. What a timely coincidence! We
accept the US Empire provides weapons and military support to the same enemy, and worse, who
attacked us on 911, but one is labeled a "conspiracy nut" if they believe that same US Empire
would orchestrate 911 to justify their long planned global war. One thing about being a
"conspiracy nut", if you live long enough, often you will see your beliefs vindicated
Joe Tedesky , December 9, 2017 at 11:27 am
You commented on what I was thinking, and that was, 'remember when al Queda was our enemy
on 911'? So now that bin Laden is dead, and his al Queda now fights on our side, shouldn't
the war be over? And, just for the record who did attack us on 911?
So many questions, and so much left unanswered, but don't worry America may run out of
money for domestic vital needs but the U.S. always has the money to go fight another war.
It's a culture thing, and if you ain't into it then you just don't pay no attention to it. In
fact if your life is better off from all of these U.S. led invasions, then your probably not
posting any comments here, either.
Knowing the Pentagon mentality they probably have an 'al Queda combat medal' to pin on the
terrorists chest. Sarcasm I know, but seriously is anything not within the realm of
believable when it comes to this MIC establishment?
Christene Bartels , December 9, 2017 at 8:53 am
Great article and spot on as far as the author takes it. But the world is hurtling towards
Armageddon so I'd like to back things up about one hundred years and get down to brass
tacks.
The fact of the matter is, the M.E. has never been at total peace but it has been nothing
but one colossal FUBAR since the Ottoman Empire was defeated after WWI and the Allied Forces
got their grubby, greedy mitts on its M.E. territories and all of that luscious black gold.
First up was the British Empire and France and then it really went nuclear (literally) in
1946 when Truman and the U.S. joined in the fun and decided to figure out how we could carve
out that ancient prime piece of real estate and resurrect Israel. By 1948 ..violà
..there she was.
So now here we sit as the hundred year delusion that we knew what the hell we were doing
comes crashing down around us. Seriously, whoever the people have been who thought that a
country with the historical perspective of a toddler was going to be able to successfully
manage and manipulate a region filled with people who are still tribal in perspective and are
still holding grudges and settling scores from five thousand years ago were complete and
total arrogant morons. Every single one of them. Up to the present moment.
Which gets me down to those brass tacks I alluded to at the beginning of my comment.
Delusional crusades lead by arrogant morons always, always, always end up as ash heaps. So, I
would suggest we all prepare for that rapidly approaching conclusion accordingly. For me,
that means hitting my knees.
Gregory Herr , December 9, 2017 at 1:00 pm
Middle Eastern people are no more "tribal" or prone to holding grudges than any other
people. Middle Eastern people have exhibited and practiced peaceful and tolerant living
arrangements within several different contexts over the centuries. Iraq had a fairly thriving
middle class and the Syrians are a cultured and educated people.
Gregory Herr , December 9, 2017 at 10:07 pm
Syrian society is constructed very much within the construct of close family ties and a
sense of a Syrian homeland. It is solely the business of the Syrian people to decide whether
the socialist Ba'ath government functions according to their own sense of realities and
standards. Some of those realities may include aspects of a necessitated national security
state (necessitated by CIA and Israeli subterfuge) that prompts shills to immediately
characterize the Assad government as "an authoritarian regime" and of course that's all you
need to know. Part of what pisses the West off about the Syrians is that they are so
competent, and that includes their intelligence and security services. One of the other parts
is the socialist example of government functioning in interests of the general population,
not selling out to vultures.
It bothers me that Mr. Lazare wrote: "Syria's Baathist government is hardly blameless in
this affair." Really? Well the Syrian government can hardly be blamed for the vile strategy
of using terrorist mercenaries to take or destroy a people's homeland–killing horrific
numbers of fathers, mothers, and children on the way to establish some kind of Wild West
control over Damascus that can then be manipulated for the typical elite deviances. What was
purposely planned and visited upon the Syrian people has had human consequences that were
known and disregarded by the planners. It has been and continues to be a grave crime against
our common humanity that should be raised to the roof of objection! People like Gambill
should be excoriated for their crass appraisal of human costs .and for their contrived and
twisted rationalizations and deceits. President Assad recently gave an interview to teleSUR
that is worth a listen. He talks about human costs with understanding for what he is talking
about. Gambill doesn't give a damn.
BASLE , December 9, 2017 at 10:46 am
From the October 1973 Yom Kippur War onward, the United States had no foreign policy in
the Middle East other than Israel's. Daniel Lazare should read "A clean break: a new strategy
for the Realm".
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 9:08 am
Yes, Israel is the cut-out or fence for US politicians stealing campaign money from the
federal budget.
US policy is that of the bribery sources and nothing else. And it believes that to be
professional competence.
For the majority of amoral opportunists of the US, money=power=virtue and they will attack
all who disagree.
"Official Washington helped unleash hell on Syria and across the Mideast behind the
naïve belief that jihadist proxies could be used to transform the region for the better,
explains Daniel Lazare."
Lazare makes the case very well about our amoral foreign policy but I think he errs in
saying our aim was to "transform the region for the better." Recent history, going back to
Afghanistan shows a very different goal, to defeat our enemies and the enemies of our allies
with little concern for the aftermath. Just observing what has happened to the people where
we supported extremists is evidence enough.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward men. We hope the conscience of our nation is bothered by
our behavior but we know that is not true, and we sleep very well, thank you.
Marilyn Vogt-Downey , December 9, 2017 at 11:18 am
I am stunned that anyone could be so foolish as to think that the US military machine, US
imperialism, does things "naively", bumbling like a helpless giant into wars that destroy
entire nations with no end in sight. One need not be a "conspiracy theorist" to understand
that the Pentagon does not control the world with an ever-expanding war budget equal to the
next 10 countries combined, that it does this just because it is stuck on the wrong path. No!
US imperialism develops these "big guns" to use them, to overpower, take over and dominate
the world for the sake of profits and protection of the right to exploit for private
profit.
There is ample evidence–see the Brookings Institute study among many
others–that the Gulf monarchies–flunkies of US imperialism–who "host"
dozens of US military bases in the region, some of them central to US war
strategy–initiated and nourished and armed and financed the "jihadi armies" in Syria
AND Libya AND elsewhere; they did not do this on their own. The US government–the
executive committee of the US ruling class–does not naively support the Gulf monarchies
because it doesn't know any better! Washington (following British imperialism) organized,
established and backed these flunky regimes. They are autocratic, antediluvian regimes,
allowing virtually civil rights, with no local proletariat to speak of, no popular base. They
are no more than sheriffs for imperialism in that region of the world, along with the Zionist
state of Israel, helping imperialism do the really dirty work.
Look at the evidence. Stop the totally foolish assessment that the US government spends
all this money on a war machine just to "naively" blunder into wars that level entire
nations–and is not taking on destruction of the entire continent of Africa to eliminate
any obstacles to its domination.
No! That is foolish and destructive. Unless we look in the face what is going on–the
US government since its "secret" intervention in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, has
recruited, trained, armed, funded and relied on jihadi armies to unseat regimes and
destabilize and destroy populations and regimes the US government wants to overthrow, and
destroy, any that could potentially develop into an alternative model of nationalist,
bourgeois industrial development on any level.
Wake up!!! The evidence is there. There is no reason to bumble and bungle along as if we
are in the dark.
Randal Marlin , December 9, 2017 at 11:26 am
Daniel Pipes, from what I've read of him, is among those who counsel the U.S. government
to use its military power to support the losing side in any civil wars fought within Israel's
enemy states, so that the wars will continue, sparing Israel the threat of unified enemy
states. What normal human beings consider a humanitarian disaster, repeated in Iraq, Syria
and Libya, would be reckoned a success according to this way of thinking.
The thinking would appear to lead to similar treatment of Iran, with even more catastrophic
consequences.
Behind all this is the thinking that the survival of Israel outweighs anything else in any
global ethical calculus.
Those who don't accept this moral premise but who believe in supporting the survival of
Israel have their work cut out for them.
This work would be made easier if the U.S. population saw clearly what was going on, instead
of being preoccupied with salacious sexual misconduct stories or other distractions.
Zachary Smith , December 9, 2017 at 2:43 pm
A Russian interceptor has been scrambled to stop a rogue US fighter jet from actively
interfering with an anti-terrorist operation, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It also
accused the US of provoking close encounters with the Russian jets in Syria.
A US F-22 fighter was preventing two Russian Su-25 strike aircraft from bombing an
Islamic State (IS, former ISIS) base to the west of the Euphrates November 23, according to
the ministry. The ministry's spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov described the
episode as yet another example of US aircraft attempts to prevent Russian forces from
carrying out strikes against Islamic State.
"The F-22 launched decoy flares and used airbrakes while constantly maneuvering [near
the Russian strike jets], imitating an air fight," Konashenkov said. He added that the US
jet ceased its dangerous maneuvers only after a Russian Su-35S fighter jet joined the two
strike planes.
If this story is true, then it illustrates a number of things. First, the US is still
providing ISIS air cover. Second, either the F-22 pilot or his commander is dumber than dirt.
The F-22 may be a fine airplane, but getting into a contest with an equally fine non-stealth
airplane at eyeball distances means throwing away every advantage of the super-expensive
stealth.
Israel obtained operational nuclear weapons capability by 1967, with the mass production
of nuclear warheads occurring immediately after the Six-Day War. In addition to the Israeli
nuclear arsenal, Israel has offensive chemical and biological warfare stockpiles.
Israel, the Middle East's sole nuclear power, is not a signatory to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In 2015, the US-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that
Israel had 115 nuclear warheads. Outside estimates of Israel's nuclear arsenal range up to
400 nuclear weapons.
Israeli nuclear weapons delivery mechanisms include Jericho 3 missiles, with a range of
4,800 km to 6,500 km (though a 2004 source estimated its range at up to 11,500 km), as well
as regional coverage from road mobile Jericho 2 IRBMs.
Additionally, Israel is believed to have an offshore nuclear capability using
submarine-launched nuclear-capable cruise missiles, which can be launched from the Israeli
Navy's Dolphin-class submarines.
The Israeli Air Force has F-15I and F-16I Sufa fighter aircraft are capable of delivering
tactical and strategic nuclear weapons at long distances using conformal fuel tanks and
supported by their aerial refueling fleet of modified Boeing 707's.
In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, fled to the United Kingdom and
revealed to the media some evidence of Israel's nuclear program and explained the purposes of
each building, also revealing a top-secret underground facility directly below the
installation.
The Mossad, Israel's secret service, sent a female agent who lured Vanunu to Italy, where
he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel aboard a freighter. An Israeli court
then tried him in secret on charges of treason and espionage, and sentenced him to eighteen
years imprisonment.
At the time of Vanunu's kidnapping, The Times reported that Israel had material for
approximately 20 hydrogen bombs and 200 fission bombs by 1986. In the spring of 2004, Vanunu
was released from prison, and placed under several strict restrictions, such as the denial of
a passport, freedom of movement limitations and restrictions on communications with the
press. Since his release, he has been rearrested and charged multiple times for violations of
the terms of his release.
Safety concerns about this 40-year-old reactor have been reported. In 2004, as a
preventive measure, Israeli authorities distributed potassium iodide anti-radiation tablets
to thousands of residents living nearby. Local residents have raised concerns regarding
serious threats to health from living near the reactor.
According to a lawsuit filed in Be'er Sheva Labor Tribunal, workers at the center were
subjected to human experimentation in 1998. According to Julius Malick, the worker who
submitted the lawsuit, they were given drinks containing uranium without medical supervision
and without obtaining written consent or warning them about risks of side effects.
In April 2016 the U.S. National Security Archive declassified dozens of documents from
1960 to 1970, which detail what American intelligence viewed as Israel's attempts to
obfuscate the purpose and details of its nuclear program. The Americans involved in
discussions with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other Israelis believed the country was
providing "untruthful cover" about intentions to build nuclear weapons.
mike k , December 9, 2017 at 6:38 pm
The machinations of those seeking to gain advantages for themselves by hurting others, are
truly appalling. If we fail to name evil for what it is, then we fail as human beings.Those
who look the other way as their country engages in an organized reign of terror, are
complicit in that enormous crime.
Den Lille Abe , December 9, 2017 at 8:54 pm
The path the US has chosen since the end of WWII has been over dead bodies. In the name of
"security", bringing "Freedom" and "Democracy" and complete unconstrained greed it has
trampled countless nations into piles of rubble.
To say it is despised or loathed is an overwhelming understatement. It is almost universally
hated in the third world. Rightly.
Bringing this monstrosity to a halt is a difficult task, and probably cannot be done
militarily without a nuclear war, economically could in the end have the same outcome, then
how?
Easy! Ruin its population. This process has started, long ago.
The decline in the US of health, general wealth, nutrition, production, education, equality,
ethics and morals is already showing as cracks in the fabrics of the US.
A population of incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies, armed to teeth with guns, in a
country with a crumbling infrastructure, full of environmental disasters is 21 st century for
most Americans.
In all the areas I mentioned the US is going backwards compared to most other countries.
So the monster will come down.
turk151 , December 9, 2017 at 10:20 pm
I think you are being a little hard on the incarcerated, obese, low iQ zealot junkies,
armed to teeth with guns
I am not sure who is more loathsome the evangelicals who were supporting the Bush / Cheney
cabal murderous wars until the bitter end or the liberal intelligentsia careerist
cheerleaders for Obama and Hilary's Wars in Iraq and Syria, who also dont give a damn about
another Arab country being destroyed and sold into slavery as long as Hillary gets elected.
At least with the former group, you can chalk it up to a lack of education.
Linda Wood , December 10, 2017 at 1:52 am
This is possibly the most intelligent and hopeful discussion I have read since 9/11. It
says that at least some Americans do see that we have a fascist cell in our government. That
is the first step in finding a way to unplug it. Best wishes to all of you who have written
here. We will find a way to put war out of business.
Barbara van der Wal-Kylstra , December 10, 2017 at 2:46 am
I think this pattern of using Salafists for regime change started already in Afghanistan,
with Brzezinski plotting with Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan to pay and train Osama bin Laden to
attack the pro Russia regime and trying to get the USSR involved in it, also trying to blame
the USSR for its agression, like they did in Syri"r?
Sam F , December 10, 2017 at 9:18 am
Yes, the Brzezinski/Reagan support of fanatic insurgencies began in AfPak and was revived
for the zionists.
Russia happened to be on the side more or less tending to progress in both cases, so it had
to be opposed.
The warmongers are always the US MIC/intel, allied with the anti-American zionist fascists
for Mideast wars.
Luutzen , December 10, 2017 at 9:15 am
Sheldon Adelson, Soros, Saban all wanted carving up of Arabic states into small sectarian
pieces (No Nasseric pan-Arabic states, a threat to Israël). And protracted wars of total
destruction. Easy.
mike k , December 10, 2017 at 11:05 am
The US Military is part of the largest terrorist organization on Earth. For the super rich
and powerful rulers of that US Mafia, the ignorant religious fanatics and other tools of
Empire are just pawns in their game of world domination and universal slavery for all but
themselves. These monsters of evil delight in profiting from the destruction of others; but
their insatiable greed for more power will never be satisfied, and will become the cause of
the annihilation of every living thing – including themselves. But like other sold out
human addicts, at this point they don't really care, and will blindly pursue their nightmare
quest to the very end – and perhaps they secretly hope that that final end of
everything will at last quench their burning appetite for blood and gold.
Joe Tedesky , December 10, 2017 at 11:12 am
I'm leaving a link to a very long David Swanson article, where Mr Swanson goes into quite
a lot of detail to how the U.S. wages war.
What's interesting of course is how not just Washington, but much of the 'left' also
cheered on the jihadists.
Of course, they were told (by whom?) that the jihadists were 'democratic rebels' and
'freedom fighters' who just wanted to 'bring democracy' to Syria, and get rid of the 'tyrant
Assad.' 5 years later, so much of the nonsense about "local councils" and "white helmets" has
been exposed for what it was. Yet many 'free thinking' people bought the propaganda. Just
like they do on Russiagate. Who needs an "alt-right" when America's "left" is a total
disgrace?
When national security establishment is trying to undermine sitting President this is iether color revolution or coup d'état. In
the USa it looks more like color revolution.
"Now you have this interesting dynamic where the national security establishment is effectively undermining a duly elected president
of the United States. I recognize that Trump is vulnerable, but these types of investigations often become highly politicized."
Notable quotes:
"... The Credico subpoena, after he declined a request for a "voluntary" interview, underscores how the investigation is moving into areas of "guilt by association" and further isolating whistleblowers who defy the powers-that-be through unauthorized release of information to the public, a point made by National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake in an interview. ..."
"... Drake knows well what it means to blow the whistle on government misconduct and get prosecuted for it. A former senior NSA executive, Drake complained about a multi-billion-dollar fraud, waste, and widespread violation of the rights of civilians through secret mass surveillance programs. As a result, the Obama administration indicted Drake in 2010, "as the first whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg charged with espionage," according to the Institute for Public Accuracy. ..."
"... In 2011, the government's case against him, which carried a potential 35 years in prison, collapsed. Drake went free in a plea deal and was awarded the 2011 Ridenhour Truth Telling Prize. ..."
"... In this hyper-inflated, politicized environment, it is extremely difficult to wade through the massive amount of disinformation on all sides. Hacking is something all modern nation-states engage in, including the United States, including Russia. The challenge here is trying to figure out who the players are, whose ox is being gored, and who is doing the goring. ..."
"... From all accounts, Trump was duly elected. Now you have the Mueller investigation and the House investigation. Where is this all leading? The US intelligence agency hasn't done itself any favors. The ICA provides no proof either, in terms of allegations that the Russians "hacked" the election. We do have the evidence disclosed by Reality Winner that maybe there was some interference. But the hyper-politicization is making it extraordinarily difficult. ..."
"... Well, if you consider the content of those emails .Certainly, the Clinton folks got rid of Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... The national security establishment was far more comfortable having Clinton as president. Someone central to my own case, General Michael Hayden, just a couple days ago went apoplectic because of a tweet from Trump taking on the mainstream media. Hayden got over 100,000 likes on his response. Well, Hayden was central to what we did in deep secrecy at the highest levels of government after 9/11, engaging in widespread surveillance and then justifying it as "raw executive authority." ..."
"... Now you have this interesting dynamic where the national security establishment is effectively undermining a duly elected president of the United States. I recognize that Trump is vulnerable, but these types of investigations often become highly politicized. I worry that what is really happening is being sacrificed on the altar of entertainment and the stage of political theater. ..."
"... What is happening to Randy is symptomatic of a larger trend. If you dare speak truth to power, you are going to pay the price. Is Randy that much of a threat, just because he is questioning authority? Are we afraid of the press? Are we afraid of having the uncomfortable conversations, of dealing with the inconvenient truths about ourselves? ..."
"... Yeah, it is definitely a way of describing the concept of fascism without using the word. The present Yankee regime seems to be quite far along that road, and the full-on types seem to be engaged in a coup to eliminate those they fear may not be as much in the fascist deep-state bag. ..."
"... How disgusting to have to live today in the society so accurately described by Orwell in 1984. It was a nice book to read, but not to live in! ..."
"... Truth is he enemy of coercive power. Lies and secrecy are essential in leading the sheeple to their slaughter. ..."
"... Perhaps the one good thing about Trumps election is that its shows democracy is still just about alive and breathing in the US, because as is pointed out in this article, Trump was never expected to win and those who lost are still in a state of shock and disbelief. ..."
"... One things for sure: the Neocons, the deep state, and all the rest of the skunks that infest Washington will make absolutely sure that future elections will go the way as planned, so perhaps we should celebrate Trump, because he may well be the last manifestation of the democracy in the US. ..."
"... In the end, what will bring this monstrously lumbering "Russia-gate" dog and pony show crashing down is that stupid, fake Fusion GPS dossier that was commissioned, paid for, and disseminated by Team Hillary and the DNC. Then, as with the sinking of the Titanic, all of the flotsam and jetsam floating within its radius of destruction will go down with it. What will left to pluck from the lifeboats afterwards is anyone's guess. All thanks to Hillary. ..."
The investigation to somehow blame Russia for Donald Trump's election has now merged with another establishment goal of isolating
and intimidating whistleblowers and other dissidents, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.
The Russia-gate investigation has reached into the ranks of journalism with the House Intelligence Committee's subpoena of Randy
Credico, who produced a series about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for Pacifica Radio and apparently is suspected of having passed
on early word about leaked Democratic emails to Donald Trump's supporter Roger Stone.
The Credico subpoena, after he declined a request for a "voluntary" interview, underscores how the investigation is moving
into areas of "guilt by association" and further isolating whistleblowers who defy the powers-that-be through unauthorized release
of information to the public, a point made by National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake in an interview.
Drake knows well what it means to blow the whistle on government misconduct and get prosecuted for it. A former senior NSA
executive, Drake complained about a multi-billion-dollar fraud, waste, and widespread violation of the rights of civilians through
secret mass surveillance programs. As a result, the Obama administration indicted Drake in 2010, "as the first whistleblower since
Daniel Ellsberg charged with espionage," according to the Institute for Public Accuracy.
In 2011, the government's case against him, which carried a potential 35 years in prison, collapsed. Drake went free in a
plea deal and was awarded the 2011 Ridenhour Truth Telling Prize.
I interviewed Drake about the significance of Credico's subpoena, which Credico believes resulted from his journalism about the
persecution of Julian Assange for releasing information that powerful people would prefer kept hidden from the public. (I had a small
role in Credico's 14-part radio series, Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom . It was broadcast first as part of his Live
on the Fly Series, over WBAI and later on KPFA and across the country on community radio.)
Credico got his start as a satirist and became a political candidate for mayor of New York City and later governor of New York,
making mainstream politicians deal with issues they would rather not deal with.
I spoke to Thomas Drake by telephone on Nov. 30, 2017.
Dennis Bernstein: How do you look at Russiagate, based on what you know about what has already transpired in terms of the
movement of information? How do you see Credico's role in this?
Thomas Drake: Information is the coin of the realm. It is the currency of power. Anyone who questions authority or is perceived
as mocking authority -- as hanging out with "State enemies" -- had better be careful. But this latest development is quite troubling,
I must say. This is the normalization of everything that has been going on since 9/11. Randy is a sort of 21st century Diogenes who
is confronting authority and pointing out corruption. This subpoena sends a chilling message. It's a double whammy for Randy because,
in the eyes of the US government, he is a media figure hanging out with the wrong media figure [Julian Assange].
Dennis Bernstein: Could you say a little bit about what your work was and what you tried to do with your expose?
Thomas Drake: My experience was quite telling, in terms of how far the government will go to try to destroy someone's life.
The attempt by the government to silence me was extraordinary. They threw everything they had at me, all because I spoke the truth.
I spoke up about abuse of power, I spoke up about the mass surveillance regime. My crime was that I made the choice to go to the
media. And the government was not just coming after me, they were sending a really chilling message to the media: If you print this,
you are also under the gun.
Dennis Bernstein: We have heard the charges again and again, that this was a Russian hack. What was the source? Let's trace
it back as best we can.
Thomas Drake:In this hyper-inflated, politicized environment, it is extremely difficult to wade through the massive
amount of disinformation on all sides. Hacking is something all modern nation-states engage in, including the United States, including
Russia. The challenge here is trying to figure out who the players are, whose ox is being gored, and who is doing the goring.
From all accounts, Trump was duly elected. Now you have the Mueller investigation and the House investigation. Where is this
all leading? The US intelligence agency hasn't done itself any favors. The ICA provides no proof either, in terms of allegations
that the Russians "hacked" the election. We do have the evidence disclosed by Reality Winner that maybe there was some interference.
But the hyper-politicization is making it extraordinarily difficult.
The advantage that intelligence has is that they can hide behind what they are doing. They don't actually have to tell the truth,
they can shade it, they can influence it and shape it. This is where information can be politicized and used as a weapon. Randy has
found himself caught up in these investigations by virtue of being a media figure and hanging out with "the wrong people."
Dennis Bernstein: It looks like the Russiagaters in Congress are trying to corner Randy. All his life he has spoken truth
to power. But what do you think the role of the press should be?
Thomas Drake: The press amplifies just about everything they focus on, especially with today's 24-hour, in-your-face social
media. Even the mainstream media is publishing directly to their webpages. You have to get behind the cacophony of all that noise
and ask, "Why?" What are the intentions here?
I believe there are still enough independent journalists who are looking further and deeper. But clearly there are those who are
hell-bent on making life as difficult as possible for the current president and those who are going to defend him to the hilt. I
was not surprised at all that Trump won. A significant percentage of the American electorate were looking for something different.
Dennis Bernstein : Well, if you consider the content of those emails .Certainly, the Clinton folks got rid of Bernie
Sanders.
Thomas Drake: That would have been an interesting race, to have Bernie vs. Trump. Sanders was appealing, especially to
young audiences. He was raising legitimate issues.
Dennis Bernstein: In Clinton, they had a known quantity who supported the national security state.
Thomas Drake:The national security establishment was far more comfortable having Clinton as president. Someone central
to my own case, General Michael Hayden, just a couple days ago went apoplectic because of a tweet from Trump taking on the mainstream
media. Hayden got over 100,000 likes on his response. Well, Hayden was central to what we did in deep secrecy at the highest levels
of government after 9/11, engaging in widespread surveillance and then justifying it as "raw executive authority."
Now you have this interesting dynamic where the national security establishment is effectively undermining a duly elected
president of the United States. I recognize that Trump is vulnerable, but these types of investigations often become highly politicized.
I worry that what is really happening is being sacrificed on the altar of entertainment and the stage of political theater.
What is happening to Randy is symptomatic of a larger trend. If you dare speak truth to power, you are going to pay the price.
Is Randy that much of a threat, just because he is questioning authority? Are we afraid of the press? Are we afraid of having the
uncomfortable conversations, of dealing with the inconvenient truths about ourselves?
"Raw Executive Authority" means Totalitarianism/Fascism.
exiled off mainstreet , December 7, 2017 at 4:23 pm
Yeah, it is definitely a way of describing the concept of fascism without using the word. The present Yankee regime seems
to be quite far along that road, and the full-on types seem to be engaged in a coup to eliminate those they fear may not be as
much in the fascist deep-state bag.
It is highly encouraging to know that a great many good and decent men and women Americans are 100% supportive of Mr, Randy
Credico as he prepares for his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. Remember all those standing right there beside
you, speak what rightly needs to be spoken, and make history Mr. Credico!
jaycee , December 7, 2017 at 3:56 pm
The intensification of panic/hysteria was obviously triggered by the shock election of Trump. Where this is all heading is
on display in Australia, as the government is writing legislation to "criminalise covert and deceptive activities of foreign actors
that fall short of espionage but are intended to interfere with our democratic systems and processes or support the intelligence
activities of a foreign government." The legislation will apparently be accompanied by new requirements of public registration
of those deemed "foreign agents". (see http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/07/auch-d07.html
).
This will be an attack on free speech, free thought, and political freedoms, justified by an orchestrated hysteria which ridiculously
assumes a "pure" political realm (i.e. the "homeland") under assault by impure foreign agents and their dirty ideas. Yes, that
is a fascist construct and the liberal establishment will see it through, not the alt-right blowhards.
mike k , December 7, 2017 at 5:49 pm
How disgusting to have to live today in the society so accurately described by Orwell in 1984. It was a nice book to read,
but not to live in!
john wilson , December 8, 2017 at 5:48 am
Actually Mike, the book was a prophesy but you aren't seen nothing yet. You me and the rest of the posters here may well find
ourselves going for a visit to room 101 yet.
fudmier , December 7, 2017 at 4:42 pm
Those who govern (527 of them) at the pleasure of the constitution are about to breach the contract that entitles them to govern.
Limiting the scope of information allowed to those who are the governed, silencing the voices of those with concerns and serious
doubts, policing every word uttered by those who are the governed, as well as abusing the constitutional privilege of force and
judicial authority, to deny peaceful protests of the innocents is approaching the final straw.
The governors and their corporate sponsors have imposed on those the governors govern much concern. Exactly the condition that
existed prior to July 4, 1776, which elicited the following:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the Political bands which connected them
with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's
God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.
Those who govern (527 of them and the puppet master oligarch behind them) will make certain that there's no support for the
next declaration. There's no respect to the opinions of the mankind, what matters is keeping the current status quo in place and
further advance it by silencing the independent media.
Maybe when the next "Mother of all bubbles" come, there's an opportunity for the mankind to be heard, but it's doubtful. What
has taken place during the last bubble is that the rich has gotten richer and the poor, well, you know the routine.
Truth is he enemy of coercive power. Lies and secrecy are essential in leading the sheeple to their slaughter.
john wilson , December 8, 2017 at 5:44 am
Perhaps the one good thing about Trumps election is that its shows democracy is still just about alive and breathing in
the US, because as is pointed out in this article, Trump was never expected to win and those who lost are still in a state of
shock and disbelief.
Trump's election has also shown us in vivid technicolour, just what is really going on in the deep state. Absolutely none of
this stuff would have come out had Clinton won and anything there was would have been covered up as though under the concrete
foundation of a tower block. However, Trump still has four years left and as a British prime minister once said, "a week is a
long time in politics". Well four more years of Trump is a hell of a lot longer so who knows what might happen in that time.
One things for sure: the Neocons, the deep state, and all the rest of the skunks that infest Washington will make absolutely
sure that future elections will go the way as planned, so perhaps we should celebrate Trump, because he may well be the last manifestation
of the democracy in the US.
Christene Bartels , December 8, 2017 at 9:57 am
In the end, what will bring this monstrously lumbering "Russia-gate" dog and pony show crashing down is that stupid, fake
Fusion GPS dossier that was commissioned, paid for, and disseminated by Team Hillary and the DNC. Then, as with the sinking of
the Titanic, all of the flotsam and jetsam floating within its radius of destruction will go down with it. What will left to pluck
from the lifeboats afterwards is anyone's guess. All thanks to Hillary.
Apparently, Santa isn't the only one making a list and checking it twice this year. He's going to have to share the limelight
with Karma.
Actually it was the West, especially the USA which created political Islam to fight Soviets. They essentially created Osama bin
Laden as a political figure. The USA is also the main protector of Saudi Arabia were Wahhabism is the official religion. Then
they tried to partition Russia by supporting Chechen islamists and financed the jihadist groups in Russia (especially in Dagestan).
Obama administration flirted with Muslim Brotherhood and unleashed the wars in Lybia and Siria were islamists were trying to
take down the legitimate governments.
So Political Islam despite its anti-Western message used as a tool as a patsy for the destabilization of "unfriendly", the dogs
that could be unleashed when weapons and money started to flow.
Now it looks like boomerang returns home.
Notable quotes:
"... I'd say that in modern times the main culprit was Zbigniew Brzezynski, who freely admitted in an interview with the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998 that he had this, as he called it, "brilliant idea" to let the Islamist genie out of the bottle to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan following the Soviet occupation in 1979. At that time he was President Carter's National Security Advisor. The transmission belt, from the CIA and various other U.S. agencies to the jihadists in Afghanistan, went via Pakistan. The ISI, the all-powerful military Inter-Service Intelligence-an institution which is pro-jihadist to boot-was used by the U.S. to arm elements which later morphed into al-Qaeda. The breeding ground for the modern, one might say postmodern form of jihadism, was Afghanistan-and it was made possible by U.S. policy inputs which helped its development. ..."
"... Instead of utter anarchy, I think we are more likely to see the ever more stringent control of the social media. The German government has already imposed on Google and Twitter which is based on the German draconian "hate speech" legislation, rather than on the universally accepted standards. On the whole we see everywhere in Europe that when you have a political party or a person trying to call a spade by its name, to call for a moratorium on immigration or for a fundamental change in the way of thinking, they will be demonized. ..."
"... The answer is fairly simple, but it would require a fundamental transformation of the mindset of the political decision-makers. It is to start treating Islamic activism not as "religious" but as an eminently political activity -- subversive political activity, in the same way as communist subversion was treated during the Cold War. ..."
"... To start with, every single potential U.S. citizen from the Islamic world needs to be interviewed in great detail about his or her beliefs and commitments. It is simply impossible for a believing Muslim to swear the oath of allegiance to the United States. None of them, if they are true believers, can regard the U.S. Constitution as superior to the Sharia-which is the law of God, while the U.S. Constitution is a man-made document. ..."
"... If there is to be a civil war in Europe, it would be pursued between the elite class which wants to continue pursuing multiculturalism and unlimited immigration --for example Germany, where over a million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa etc. were admitted in 2015 alone-and the majority of the population who have not been consulted, and who feel that their home country is being irretrievably lost. ..."
FPR:Your book
The Sword of the Prophet was published back in 2002, yet here we are-15 years later-still scratching our heads over this problem.
Defeating Jihad you wrote ten years ago, and yet we are still fumbling around in the dark. It seems like we don't have the
ability to say what is right and what is wrong. We've lost the ability we had had during the Cold War to say out way is better than
their way . . .
ST: I'm afraid the problem is deeper than that. It is in the unwillingness of the ruling elite in the Western world to come to
grips with the nature of Islam-as-such. There is this constant tendency by the politicians, the media and the academia to treat jihadism
as some sort of aberration which is alien to "true" Islam. We had an example of that in 2014, when President Obama went so far as
to say that ISIS was "un-Islamic"! It is rather curious that the President of the United States assumes the authority of a theologian
who can pass definite judgments on whether a certain phenomenon is "Islamic" or not. Likewise we have this constant repetition of
the mantra of the "religion of peace and tolerance," which is simply not supported by 14 centuries of historical experience. What
I've tried to emphasize in both those books you've mentioned, and in my various other writings and public appearances, is that the
problem of Islam resides in the core texts, in the Kuran and the Hadith , the "Traditions" of the prophet of Islam,
Muhammed. This is the source from which the historical practice has been derived ever since. The problem is not in the jihadists
misinterpreting Islam, but rather in interpreting it all too well. This mythical "moderate Islam," for which everybody seems to be
looking these days, is an exception and not the rule.
In answer to your question, I'd say that "scratching one's head" is-by now-only the phenomenon of those who refuse to face reality.
Reasonable people who are capable of judging phenomena on their merits and on the basis of ample empirical evidence, are no longer
in doubt. They see that the problem is not in the alleged misinterpretation of the Islamic teaching, but rather in its rigorous application
and literal understanding. I'm afraid things will not get better, because with each and every new jihadist attack, such as the
Charlie Hebdo slaughter in Paris a year ago, or again in Paris last November, or the New Year's Eve violence in Germany, we are
witnessing-time and over again-the same problem. The Islamic mindset, the Islamic understanding of the world, the Muslim Weltanschauung
, world outlook, is fundamentally incompatible with the Western value system and the Western way of life.
FPR:. . . It seems obvious, regarding Islam, that its "freedom of religion" is impacting other people, and it's dictated to
do so-it must go out and fight the infidels. And that's where we have the disconnect. Maybe there is some traction to the statement,
as you put it, that fundamentalism reflects a far more thorough following of Islam, and that it is simply incompatible with the Constitution?
ST: It is inevitable, because if you are an orthodox, practicing, mainstream Muslim, then you necessarily believe in the need
to impose Sharia as the law of the land. Sharia is much more than a legal code. It is also a political program, it is a code of social
behavior, it is the blueprint for the totality of human experience. That's why it is impossible to make Sharia compatible with the
liberal principle of "live and let live": it is inherently aggressive to non-Islam. In the Islamic paradigm, the world is divided
in the Manichean manner, black-and-white, into "the World of Faith," Dar al-Islam , literally "the world of submission," and
"the World of War, Dar al-Harb .
It is the divine duty of each and every Muslim to seek the expansion of Dar al-Islam at the expense of Dar al-Harb
until the one true faith is triumphant throughout the world. In this sense the Islamic mindset is very similar to Bolshevism.
The Bolsheviks also believed that "the first country of Socialism" should expand its reach and control until the whole world has
undergone the proletarian revolution and has become one in the march to the Utopia of communism. There is constant inner tension
in the Islamic world, in the sense that for as long as non-Islam exists, it is inherently perceived as "the other," as an abomination.
In that sense, Muslims perceive any concession made by the West-for instance in allowing mass immigration into Western Europe-not
as a gesture of good will and multicultural tolerance, but as a sign of weakness that needs to be exploited and used as a means to
an end.
FPR:The Roman Catholic Church has its Catechism which decides the issues of doctrine. Until there's an Islamic "catechism"
which can say "no, this is no longer the right interpretation, this is not what it means any more"-and I don't think this would be
a short-term thing, because you'd still have the splinter groups dissenting against the "traitors"-but is this the only way to go
to the center of theological jurisprudence in the Islamic world?
ST: The problem is twofold. First of all, there is no "interpretation" of the Kuran . Classical Islamic sources are adamant
that the Kuran needs to be taken at face value, literally. If it says in Sura 9, verse 5, "fight the infidels wherever you find them,
and let them go if they convert," or if it says time and over again that the choice for a non-Muslim is to accept Islam, or to live
as a second-class citizen-the dhimmi -under Islamic supremacy, or else to be killed it is very hard to imagine what sort of
authority in the Islamic world would be capable of saying "now we are going to relativize and soften the message."
The second part of the problem is that there is no single authority in Islam. It is not organized in a hierarchical way like the
Roman Catholic Church, where if the Pope speaks ex cathedra his pronouncements are obligatory for all Catholics everywhere.
Islam is a diffused religion, with various centers of learning and various ullema who may or may not agree on certain peripheral
details. Yet any any one of them who'd dare say "look, now we rally need to reinterpret the fundamental sources, the Kuran
and the Hadith, so as to make it compatible with the pluralist society"-they'd immediately be condemned as heretics. We've seen attempts
at reform in the past. In the end the orthodox interpretation always prevails, because it is-sadly-the right interpretation of the
core texts. With neither the hierarchy capable of imposing a new form of teaching on the faithful, nor the existence of alternative
core texts which would provide grounds for such reinterpretation, it is very hard to see how it could be done.
FPR:How do we go forward? . . . How does the end-game play out?
ST:I'd say that in modern times the main culprit was Zbigniew Brzezynski, who freely admitted in an interview with the French
weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998 that he had this, as he called it, "brilliant idea" to let the Islamist genie
out of the bottle to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan following the Soviet occupation in 1979. At that time he was President Carter's
National Security Advisor. The transmission belt, from the CIA and various other U.S. agencies to the jihadists in Afghanistan, went
via Pakistan. The ISI, the all-powerful military Inter-Service Intelligence-an institution which is pro-jihadist to boot-was used
by the U.S. to arm elements which later morphed into al-Qaeda. The breeding ground for the modern, one might say postmodern form
of jihadism, was Afghanistan-and it was made possible by U.S. policy inputs which helped its development.
But if we look at the past 14 centuries, time and over again we see the same phenomenon. The first time they tried to conquer
Europe was across the Straits of Gibraltar and across the Iberian Peninsula, today's Spain. Then they crossed the Pyrinees and were
only stopped at Poitiers by Charles Martel in 732AD. Then they were gradually being pushed back, and the Reconquista -- the reconquest
of Spain-lasted 800 years, until 1492, when Cordoba finally fell to the Christian forces. Then came the second, Ottoman onslaught,
in the XIVth century, which went across the Dardanelles into the Balkan Peninsula. The Turks were only finally stopped at the gates
of Vienna in 1683. Pushing Turkey out of Europe went all the way to 1912, to the First Balkan War.
So we may say that we are now witnessing the third Islamic conquest of Europe. This time it is not using armed janissaries,
it is using so-called refugees. In fact most of them are healthy young men, and the whole process is obviously a strategic exercise
-- a joint venture between Ankara and Riyadh, who are logistically and financially helping this mass transfer of people from the
Turkish and Middle Eastern refugee camps to the heart of Europe. The effect may be the same, but this time it is far more dangerous
because, on the European side-unlike in 732, or 1683-there is no political will and there is no moral strength to resist. This is
happening because the migrants, the invaders, see Europe as the candy store with a busted lock and they are taking advantage of that
fact.
FPR: When you see the horrors of rapes and sexual assaults that took place across Germany, and now we see the Germans' response
. . . vigilantes on their streets . . . this is something that we either control politically and with leadership, or else it falls
apart into anarchy, Prof. Trifkovic?
ST: Instead of anarchy I think we will have a form of postmodern totalitarianism. The elite class, the government of Germany etc,
and the media, will demonize those who try to resist. In fact we already have the spectacle of the minister of the interior of one
of the German states saying that "hate speech" on the social networks and websites was far worse than the "incidents" in Cologne.
And the Mayor of Cologne-an ultra-feminist who is also a pro-immigration enthusiast-said that in order to prevent such events in
the future women should observe a "code of conduct" and keep distance "at an arm's length" from men. It's a classic example of blaming
the victim. The victims of Islamic violence should change their behavior in order to adapt themselves to the code of conduct and
values of the invaders. This is truly unprecedented.
Instead of utter anarchy, I think we are more likely to see the ever more stringent control of the social media. The German government
has already imposed on Google and Twitter which is based on the German draconian "hate speech" legislation, rather than on the universally
accepted standards. On the whole we see everywhere in Europe that when you have a political party or a person trying to call a spade
by its name, to call for a moratorium on immigration or for a fundamental change in the way of thinking, they will be demonized.
The same applies to Marine Le Pen in France and to her party, the Front National , or to Geert Wilders in Holland, or to Strache
in Austria. Whoever tries to articulate a coherent plan of action that includes a ban or limits on Islamic immigration is immediately
demonized as a right-wing fanatic or a fascist. Instead of facing the reality of the situation, that you have a multi-million Islamic
diaspora in Europe which is not assimilating, which refuses even to accept a code of conduct of the host population, the reaction
is always the same: blame the victim, and demonize those who try to articulate some form of resistance.
FPR: Dr. Trifkovic, how does a country such as ours, the United States, fix this problem . . .
ST: The answer is fairly simple, but it would require a fundamental transformation of the mindset of the political decision-makers.
It is to start treating Islamic activism not as "religious" but as an eminently political activity -- subversive
political activity, in the same way as communist subversion was treated during the Cold War. In both cases we have a committed, highly motivated group
of people who want to effect a fundamental transformation of the United States in a way that is contrary to the U.S. Constitution,
to the American way of life, and to the American values. It is time to stop the Islamists from hiding behind the "freedom of religion"
mantra. What they are seeking is not some "freedom of religion" but the freedom to organize in order to pursue political subversion.
They do not accept the U.S. Constitution.
To start with, every single potential U.S. citizen from the Islamic world needs to be interviewed in great detail about his or
her beliefs and commitments. It is simply impossible for a believing Muslim to swear the oath of allegiance to the United States.
None of them, if they are true believers, can regard the U.S. Constitution as superior to the Sharia-which is the law of God, while
the U.S. Constitution is a man-made document. I happen to know the oath because I am myself a naturalized U.S. citizen. They can
do it "in good faith" from their point of view by practicing taqqiya . This is the Arab word for the art of dissimulation,
when the Muslim lies to the infidel in order to protect the faith. For them to lie to investigators or to immigration officials about
their beliefs and their objectives does not create any conflict of conscience. The prophet of Islam himself has mandated the use
of taqqiya if it serves the objective of spreading the faith.
FPR: Can a civil war come out of this? Is it conceivable?
ST: If there is to be a civil war in Europe, it would be pursued between the elite class which wants to continue pursuing multiculturalism
and unlimited immigration --for example Germany, where over a million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa etc. were admitted
in 2015 alone-and the majority of the population who have not been consulted, and who feel that their home country is being irretrievably
lost. I do not believe that there will be many people fighting on the side of the multiculturalists' suicide, but nevertheless we
still have very effective forces of coercion and control on the government side which can be deployed to prevent the articulation
of any long-term, coherent plan of resistance.
FPR: Where can people continue to read you writings, Dr. Trifkovic?
ST: On Chroniclesmagazine.org where I publish weekly
online commentaries, and also in the print edition of Chronicles where I have my regular column.
"... There's a continuity in American policies that transcend whatever administration happens to be in office. This is particularly true in foreign policy. The US has been expansionist and interventionist since 1898 and continues on this track which inevitably leads to conflict with other countries who don't care to be under the US thumb. ..."
"... Hence the current crop of enemies and war drum pounding. This would be the same were Clinton to have been elected. Unfortunately the mass of Americans are getting dragged along with this at increasing peril to them with no recourse available. ..."
most dangerous developments under Trump trace back to Obama initiatives --
There's a continuity in American policies that transcend whatever administration happens
to be in office. This is particularly true in foreign policy. The US has been expansionist and
interventionist since 1898 and continues on this track which inevitably leads to conflict with
other countries who don't care to be under the US thumb.
Hence the current crop of enemies and war drum pounding. This would be the same were Clinton
to have been elected. Unfortunately the mass of Americans are getting dragged along with this
at increasing peril to them with no recourse available.
"... Why? Because the U.N. has basically been the complete opposite of what its angriest critics claim. It is not out to get the U.S. Rather, it has largely been America's tool since its inception and, in particular, it has repeatedly covered Uncle Sam's overly-exposed butt as he (a.k.a. "the royal we") has gone around the world on a three decade-long military bender since the end of the Cold War. ..."
"... Or what about America's complicity in the catastrophe of Yemen? Where are those sanctions? And what exactly has the U.N. done to punish any number of extra-legal maneuver by a succession of American presidents over the course of the "Global War on Terror"? The simple answer is nothing. ..."
"... Instead, the Secretary General is largely beholden to the disproportionate influence of the United States. The Security Council's agenda is basically set by the United States and that's particularly true since the Soviet Union collapsed. At the same time, the U.N.'s occasionally contentious debates do little more than offer the imprimatur of international approbation or well-noted disdain despite the functionally inconsequential nature of those debates. ..."
"... Either way it is a win for Uncle Sam because the presence of a neutered United Nations provides the United States with a fig leaf just big enough to cover the dangly parts of America's otherwise naked empire. ..."
"... The money that does go from the U.S. Treasury into the minutia around the margins like UNESCO programs and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and all the other little crumbs that get thrown around the world these are payoffs. This is what the world gets for mostly keeping its mouth shut in the face of America's globe-spanning empire. The tiny amount of aid that trickles down past the bureaucracy much like the bureaucracy itself is not an example of America "getting played" by wasteful foreigners with hidden agendas. This is America paying to play the world like organ grinder with a hurdy-gurdy monkey. ..."
"... Frankly, the " 28.5% of the overall peacekeeping bill " that Trump calls "unfair" ( about $2.2 billion of the $3.3 billion the U.S. gives to the UN annually ) is a pittance particularly if you want the unchecked right to tell Persians what they can and cannot do in the Persian Gulf, to tell the Chinese what they can and cannot build in the South China Sea, and to tell every other power on the face of the earth why they cannot have the same nuclear capability America not only has but is currently "upgrading" to the tune of $1.5 trillion . ..."
"... Even more amazingly, the U.S. wants to deny these nations the only real insurance policy against U.S.-led regime change. And why is that? Because there ain't a Curveball's chance in Hell that the U.N. will ever be able to stop Uncle Sam from marching where he wants, when he wants and for whatever reason he wants to cook-up. That's a historically provable fact . ..."
"... The only real check on U.S. power is the ability of an asymmetrical power to go nuclear. And let's admit it, they are ALL asymmetrical powers when compared to America's gargantuan, trillion-dollar national security beast . ..."
"... But like it was tested by Team Bush, the IAEA is going to be tested again as Trump and Netanyahu make their bogus case without a hint of irony that Iran is the world's greatest threat. But that's really just par for a course that's riddled with falsified flags haphazardly stuck into the shallow holes of a back nine that's actually been built by and for a club-wielding Uncle Sam. ..."
"... And in the case of the U.N., that projected guilt is in spite of the fact that it is often tasked with quietly cleaning up some of the collateral damage wrought by their main accuser. They just have to do so without any real power or the funds to do the job. That's the simple truth you won't hear in Trump's speech or any speech, for that matter. ..."
"... It's the fact that the U.N.'s meager amount of "wasteful spending" doesn't even begin to cover the cost of doing business when your business depends of paying the world to look the other way while you get away with murder. ..."
For decades the American Right has decried the U.N. for encroaching on American sovereignty, but the truth is that the U.N. is
a chief U.S. accomplice in violating the sovereignty of other nations, notes J.P. Sottile.
President Trump
opened his big United Nations week and his famous mouth with a
predictable plug for one of his properties and
some playful glad-handing with French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump also
scolded the U.N.'s unwieldy scrum for "not living
up to its potential." He made a passing reference to the U.N.'s wasteful use of American money. And he called for "reform" of the
much-maligned international forum.
It was a stolid prelude
to what will no doubt be "must-see" TV when he speaks to the
UN General Assembly on
Tuesday about North Korea and Iran. And it was a far cry from the way America's leading "America Firster" spent the campaign
lamenting how unfair the U.N
. is to the poor schlemiel we call Uncle Sam.
He is likely to use his speech to throw a little bit of that same red meat to his base, but his call for reform falls well short
of what
his supporters want which is an abrupt end of U.S. involvement in the international body. They are motivated by a grab-bag of
reasons that point to the U.N. being a threat to their guns, their bank accounts and their God-given freedom.
Oddly enough, these conspiratorial narratives have been around for decades and they mostly center on a grand plan by U.N. elites
to abscond American sovereignty and dissolve the U.S. into a U.N.-led world government. And the evidence of this is the way the U.N.
harasses and restricts Uncle Sam while siphoning-off America's wealth. At least, that's what some think.
Most ominously, many object to the way U.N. funds are being used to quietly deploy
gun-grabbing U.N. soldiers in advance of
the big takeover . But like so
much of Trump's intoxicating
irredentism this is a grievance more likely rooted in a three-day meth bender in a Tallahassee trailer park than it is from shocking
evidence gathered from well-traveled observation. It's paranoia. But really, it's worse than that.
Why? Because the U.N. has basically been the complete opposite of what its angriest critics claim. It is not out to get the
U.S. Rather, it has largely been America's tool since its inception and, in particular, it has repeatedly covered Uncle Sam's overly-exposed
butt as he (a.k.a. "the royal we") has gone around the world on a three decade-long military bender since the end of the Cold War.
Yes, the Gulf War was U.N. approved and the whole world got behind it because (
April Glaspie's
backstory notwithstanding) the prima facie case was strong and it was a fairly clear-cut example of unwarranted aggression.
That was an easy call.
Global Violence
But since then, the calls have been nothing short of murky as the U.S. has bombed and droned and deployed and invaded and covertly-acted
and regime-changed all around the globe. And the unspoken truth is that the United Nations has been America's all-too silent partner
as Uncle Sam traipsed around the planet with a loaded gun, remote control assassination machines and paper-thin rationales for intervention.
Although the U.N. occasionally puts a bug up Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's ass on the issue of the slow-motion ethnic
cleansing in the West Bank what other issue is there where the U.N. has taken a real stand against the U.S. or U.S. policy objectives?
Where is the U.N.'s punishment for being lied to by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell? And where is the punishment for destroying
a bystander nation under false pretenses? Where is the punishment for Abu Ghraib or Gitmo?
Where is the punishment for America's summary execution of "suspected militants" around the Muslim world simply because they are
of "military age" and in the wrong place at the right time and for the CIA, it is always the right time to kill a suspect no matter
how wrong the place many be. And where is the condemnation of America's destabilizing role as the
world's
leading supermarket of military hardware ?
How about mounting civilian causalities from an ever-widening widening bombing campaign? The U.N. can say the killings are "
unacceptable ," but does it really matter if there is no sanction? There haven't been any sanctions after children were killed
in a "
U.S.-backed raid " in Somalia. Go figure, right?
Or what about America's complicity in the catastrophe of Yemen? Where are those sanctions? And what exactly has the U.N. done
to punish any number of extra-legal maneuver by a succession of American presidents over the course of the "Global War on Terror"?
The simple answer is nothing.
Instead, the Secretary General is largely beholden to the disproportionate influence of the United States. The Security Council's
agenda is basically set by the United States and that's particularly true since the Soviet Union collapsed. At the same time, the
U.N.'s occasionally contentious debates do little more than offer the imprimatur of international approbation or well-noted disdain
despite the functionally inconsequential nature of those debates.
A Fig Leaf for Empire
Either way it is a win for Uncle Sam because the presence of a neutered United Nations provides the United States with a fig
leaf just big enough to cover the dangly parts of America's otherwise naked empire.
The money that does go from the U.S. Treasury into the minutia around the margins like UNESCO programs and United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and all the other little crumbs that get thrown around the world
these are payoffs. This is what the world gets for mostly keeping its mouth shut in the face of America's globe-spanning empire.
The tiny amount of aid that trickles down past the bureaucracy much like the bureaucracy itself is not an example of America "getting
played" by wasteful foreigners with hidden agendas. This is America paying to play the world like organ grinder with a hurdy-gurdy
monkey.
Even more amazingly, the U.S. wants to deny these nations the only real insurance policy against U.S.-led regime change. And why
is that? Because there ain't a
Curveball's chance
in Hell that the U.N. will ever be able to stop Uncle Sam from marching where he wants, when he wants and for whatever reason he
wants to cook-up. That's a historically
provable fact.
The only real check on U.S. power is the ability of an asymmetrical power to go nuclear. And let's admit it, they are ALL asymmetrical
powers when compared to America's gargantuan,
trillion-dollar national security beast . And this is why the U.N.'s "partnership" with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
is the only U.N.-associated agency that really matters. They can't do much, but they can throw a wrench into another WMD snipe hunt
like they are doing now with the Iran Nuclear Deal .
But like it was tested by Team Bush, the IAEA is going to be tested again as Trump and Netanyahu
make their bogus case without
a hint of irony that Iran is the world's greatest threat. But that's really just par for a course that's riddled with falsified flags
haphazardly stuck into the shallow holes of a back nine that's actually been built by and for a club-wielding Uncle Sam.
A Cult of Grievance
And therein lies the truly pernicious part of the Trumped-up case against the U.N. because, like so much of America's growing
cult of grievance, it reflects an ever-widening gap between America's stated ideals and its self-serving behavior around the world.
As we are learning almost daily, Americans tried to square that circle by electing a profligate liar who fully embodies America's
insatiable desire to take credit, particularly where none is due and to outsource the blame to scapegoats like the U.N., particularly
when the only alternative is a long look into the mirror.
And in the case of the U.N., that projected guilt is in spite of the fact that it is often tasked with quietly cleaning up
some of the collateral damage wrought by their main accuser. They just have to do so without any real power or the funds to do
the job. That's the simple truth you won't hear in Trump's speech or any speech, for that matter.
It's the fact that the U.N.'s meager amount of "wasteful spending" doesn't even begin to cover the cost of doing business when
your business depends of paying the world to look the other way while you get away with murder.
JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington,
D.C. He blogs at Newsvandal.com or you can
follow him on Twitter .
By JP Sottile / Republished with permission / Consortium News
This is guy is definitely a plain vanilla neocon propagandist like Robert "Nulandgate" Kagan (writing is almost undistinguishable):
"Throughout history, Russia's cold climate, incomparable vastness and lack of defensible borders have made both autocracy and incipient
chaos more natural to it than liberal democracy -- so that through Russian eyes, as
Joseph Conrad wrote , freedom
itself can look like "a form of debauch." Boris Yeltsin's rule in the 1990s was as much an experiment in quasi-anarchy as in democracy".
What a simplistic neocon prostitute masquerading as a political scientist. Of course MIC pays well, but intellectual prostitution is
always intellectual prostitution.
Notable quotes:
"... This is a verbose way of saying that unless US recovers (or find anew) some sort of "monster" in abroad to which to put sword on it, then, her "national unity" will not survive long. In other words, his argument is that of the same Neo-Conservative's great American Project, which in turn could only be the "glue" that could hold America together. And that glue will be a "quasi-Empire" clothed in high-minded language of liberal Humanitarianism and lofty internationalism. ..."
"... And his arguments was, that, the "elites of the political regime" (broadly defined) must "channel" the atavistic energies of the teeming plebs of any nations (particularly any democratic nation) into some sort of laudatory projects, lofty schemes, and other national self-congratulatory agendas, lest otherwise their abundant energies may degenerate into a nihilistic self-harm to the nation itself. Consequently, it's a far cry from what John Adams have said about America, in 1821, which was when he said this: ..."
"... Hence, lets see what this new cry for an old song will amount to this time around, since, the last "great national project" in which people like Bob Kaplan have championed seems to have run aground in the deserts of Arabia. ..."
Indeed, of late, American democracy has been less an inspiration than a tawdry spectacle. Congress has seen a degree of partisan
dysfunction unknown since nineteenth-century frontier days. The president, by any account, simply lacks the decorum of all former
modern presidents. The monied classes essentially run Washington, a process that has been maturing and abundantly commented upon
for decades. Despite the quiet dedication of an often-maligned, policy-driven bureaucratic elite, America is less and less the "city
upon a hill." In all of this, keep in mind that it is less important how Americans see themselves than how others see them.
This is a verbose way of saying that unless US recovers (or find anew) some sort of "monster" in abroad to which to put
sword on it, then, her "national unity" will not survive long. In other words, his argument is that of the same Neo-Conservative's
great American Project, which in turn could only be the "glue" that could hold America together. And that glue will be a "quasi-Empire"
clothed in high-minded language of liberal Humanitarianism and lofty internationalism.
Hence, we seemed to be back to that old Straussian's school of double-speak (which was what Dr Leo Strauss's real political
arguments was, and what he then "imparted" as an political educations to the Neo-Conservative's clique who used to congregate
at his feet back in Chicago University).
And his arguments was, that, the "elites of the political regime" (broadly defined) must "channel" the atavistic energies
of the teeming plebs of any nations (particularly any democratic nation) into some sort of laudatory projects, lofty schemes,
and other national self-congratulatory agendas, lest otherwise their abundant energies may degenerate into a nihilistic self-harm
to the nation itself. Consequently, it's a far cry from what John Adams have said about America, in 1821, which was when he said
this:
"....Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions
and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence
of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own...."
Hence, lets see what this new cry for an old song will amount to this time around, since, the last "great national project"
in which people like Bob Kaplan have championed seems to have run aground in the deserts of Arabia.
It's interesting to reread this two years article by
Here is an extremely shred observation: "I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though,
it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead,
injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a
deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.
Notable quotes:
"... how Paul Wolfowitz and his neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us." ..."
"... the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East. ..."
"... the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us." ..."
"... Would the neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991? ..."
"... The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe. ..."
"... Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States. ..."
"... I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though, it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead, injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster. ..."
"... "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." ..."
"... the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth, behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl. ..."
"... In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ½-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome: ..."
"... In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad. ..."
"... "The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in an interview . "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda. ..."
"... In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said. ..."
"... That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out. ..."
"... As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated, politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress. ..."
"... Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, divulged some details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented) with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. ..."
"... Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam? ..."
Former Washington insider and four-star General Wesley Clark spilled the beans several years ago on how Paul Wolfowitz and his
neoconservative co-conspirators implemented their sweeping plan to destabilize key Middle Eastern countries once it became clear
that post-Soviet Russia "won't stop us."
As I recently reviewed a YouTube
eight-minute clip of General Clark's October 2007 speech, what leaped out
at me was that the neocons had been enabled by their assessment that -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia had become
neutralized and posed no deterrent to U.S. military action in the Middle East.
While Clark's public exposé largely escaped attention in the neocon-friendly "mainstream media" (surprise, surprise!), he recounted
being told by a senior general at the Pentagon shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 about the Donald Rumsfeld/Paul Wolfowitz-led
plan for "regime change" in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.
This was startling enough, I grant you, since officially the United States presents itself as a nation that respects international
law, frowns upon other powerful nations overthrowing the governments of weaker states, and – in the aftermath of World War II – condemned
past aggressions by Nazi Germany and decried Soviet "subversion" of pro-U.S. nations.
But what caught my eye this time was the significance of Clark's depiction of Wolfowitz in 1992 gloating over what he judged
to be a major lesson learned from the Desert Storm attack on Iraq in 1991; namely, "the Soviets won't stop us."
That remark directly addresses a question that has troubled me since March 2003 when George W. Bush attacked Iraq. Would the
neocons – widely known as "the crazies" at least among the remaining sane people of Washington – have been crazy enough to opt for
war to re-arrange the Middle East if the Soviet Union had not fallen apart in 1991?
The question is not an idle one. Despite the debacle in Iraq and elsewhere, the neocon "crazies" still exercise huge influence
in Establishment Washington. Thus, the question now becomes whether, with Russia far more stable and much stronger, the "crazies"
are prepared to risk military escalation with Russia over Ukraine, what retired U.S. diplomat William R. Polk
deemed a potentially dangerous nuclear
confrontation, a "Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse."
Putin's Comment
The geopolitical vacuum that enabled the neocons to try out their "regime change" scheme in the Middle East may have been what
Russian President Vladimir Putin was referring to in his state-of-the-nation address on April 25, 2005, when he called the collapse
of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [past] century." Putin's comment has been a favorite meme of those
who seek to demonize Putin by portraying him as lusting to re-establish a powerful USSR through aggression in Europe.
But, commenting two years after the Iraq invasion, Putin seemed correct at least in how the neocons exploited the absence
of the Russian counterweight to over-extend American power in ways that were harmful to the world, devastating to the people at the
receiving end of the neocon interventions, and even detrimental to the United States.
If one takes a step back and attempts an unbiased look at the spread of violence in the Middle East over the past quarter-century,
it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Putin's comment was on the mark. With Russia a much-weakened military power in the 1990s
and early 2000s, there was nothing to deter U.S. policymakers from the kind of adventurism at Russia's soft underbelly that, in earlier
years, would have carried considerable risk of armed U.S.-USSR confrontation.
I lived in the USSR during the 1970s and would not wish that kind of restrictive regime on anyone. Until it fell apart, though,
it was militarily strong enough to deter Wolfowitz-style adventurism. And I will say that – for the millions of people now dead,
injured or displaced by U.S. military action in the Middle East over the past dozen years – the collapse of the Soviet Union as a
deterrent to U.S. war-making was not only a "geopolitical catastrophe" but an unmitigated disaster.
Visiting Wolfowitz
In his 2007 speech, General Clark related how in early 1991 he dropped in on Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy (and later, from 2001 to 2005, Deputy Secretary of Defense). It was just after a major Shia uprising in Iraq in March 1991.
President George H.W. Bush's administration had provoked it, but then did nothing to rescue the Shia from brutal retaliation by Saddam
Hussein, who had just survived his Persian Gulf defeat.
According to Clark, Wolfowitz said: "We should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. The truth is, one thing we did learn is
that we can use our military in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. We've got about five or 10 years to clean up those
old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran (sic), Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us."
It's now been more than 10 years, of course. But do not be deceived into thinking Wolfowitz and his neocon colleagues believe
they have failed in any major way. The unrest they initiated keeps mounting – in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon – not to mention
fresh violence now in full swing in Yemen and the crisis in Ukraine. Yet, the Teflon coating painted on the neocons continues to
cover and protect them in the "mainstream media."
True, one neocon disappointment is Iran. It is more stable and less isolated than before; it is playing a sophisticated role in
Iraq; and it is on the verge of concluding a major nuclear agreement with the West – barring the throwing of a neocon/Israeli monkey
wrench into the works to thwart it, as has been done
in the past.
An earlier setback for the neocons came at the end of August 2013 when President Barack Obama decided not to let himself be mouse-trapped
by the neocons into ordering U.S. forces to attack Syria. Wolfowitz et al. were on the threshold of having the U.S. formally join
the war against Bashar al-Assad's government of Syria when there was the proverbial slip between cup and lip. With the aid of the
neocons' new devil-incarnate Vladimir Putin, Obama faced them down and avoided war.
A week after it became clear that the neocons were not going to get their war in Syria, I found myself at the main CNN studio
in Washington together with Paul Wolfowitz and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, another important neocon. As I reported in "How
War on Syria Lost Its Way," the scene was surreal – funereal, even, with both Wolfowitz and Lieberman very much down-in-the-mouth,
behaving as though they had just watched their favorite team lose the Super Bowl.
Israeli/Neocon Preferences
But the neocons are nothing if not resilient. Despite their grotesque disasters, like the Iraq War, and their disappointments,
like not getting their war on Syria, they neither learn lessons nor change goals. They just readjust their aim, shooting now at Putin
over Ukraine as a way to clear the path again for "regime change" in Syria and Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Why
Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia."]
The neocons also can take some solace from their "success" at enflaming the Middle East with Shia and Sunni now at each other's
throats – a bad thing for many people of the world and certainly for the many innocent victims in the region, but not so bad for
the neocons. After all, it is the view of Israeli leaders and their neocon bedfellows (and women) that the internecine wars among
Muslims provide at least some short-term advantages for Israel as it consolidates control over the Palestinian West Bank.
In a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
memorandum for President Obama on Sept. 6, 2013,
we called attention to an uncommonly candid
report
about Israeli/neocon motivation, written by none other than the Israel-friendly New York Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem Jodi Rudoren
on Sept. 2, 2013, just two days after Obama took advantage of Putin's success in persuading the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons
to be destroyed and called off the planned attack on Syria, causing consternation among neocons in Washington.
Rudoren can perhaps be excused for her naïve lack of "political correctness." She had been barely a year on the job, had very
little prior experience with reporting on the Middle East, and – in the excitement about the almost-attack on Syria – she apparently
forgot the strictures normally imposed on the Times' reporting from Jerusalem. In any case, Israel's priorities became crystal clear
in what Rudoren wrote.
In her article, entitled "Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria," Rudoren noted that the Israelis were arguing, quietly,
that the best outcome for Syria's (then) 2 ½-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, was no outcome:
"For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory
by Mr. Assad's government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.
"'This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don't want one to win - we'll settle for
a tie,' said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. 'Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that's the strategic
thinking here. As long as this lingers, there's no real threat from Syria.'"
Clear enough? If this is the way Israel's leaders continue to regard the situation in Syria, then they look on deeper U.S. involvement
– overt or covert – as likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict there. The longer Sunni and Shia are killing
each other, not only in Syria but also across the region as a whole, the safer Tel Aviv's leaders calculate Israel is.
Favoring Jihadis
But Israeli leaders have also made clear that if one side must win, they would prefer the Sunni side, despite its bloody extremists
from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In September 2013, shortly after Rudoren's article, Israeli Ambassador to the United States
Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored
the Sunni extremists over Assad.
"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime
as the keystone in that arc," Oren said in
an interview. "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys
who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
In June 2014, Oren – then speaking as a former ambassador – said Israel
would even prefer a victory by the Islamic State, which was massacring captured Iraqi soldiers and beheading Westerners, than the
continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail,
let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said.
Netanyahu sounded a similar theme in his March 3, 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he trivialized the threat from the
Islamic State with its "butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube" when compared to Iran, which he accused of "gobbling up the
nations" of the Middle East.
That Syria's main ally is Iran with which it has a mutual defense treaty plays a role in Israeli calculations. Accordingly, while
some Western leaders would like to achieve a realistic if imperfect settlement of the Syrian civil war, others who enjoy considerable
influence in Washington would just as soon see the Assad government and the entire region bleed out.
As cynical and cruel as this strategy is, it isn't all that hard to understand. Yet, it seems to be one of those complicated,
politically charged situations well above the pay-grade of the sophomores advising President Obama – who, sad to say, are no match
for the neocons in the Washington Establishment. Not to mention the Netanyahu-mesmerized Congress.
Corker Uncorked
Speaking of Congress, a year after Rudoren's report, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, divulged some
details about the military attack that had been planned against Syria, while lamenting that it was canceled. In doing so, Corker called Obama's abrupt change on Aug. 31, 2013, in opting for negotiations over open war on Syria, "the worst
moment in U.S. foreign policy since I've been here." Following the neocon script, Corker blasted the deal (since fully implemented)
with Putin and the Syrians to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
Corker complained, "In essence – I'm sorry to be slightly rhetorical – we jumped into Putin's lap." A big No-No, of course – especially
in Congress – to "jump into Putin's lap" even though Obama was able to achieve the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons without
the United States jumping into another Middle East war.
It would have been nice, of course, if General Clark had thought to share his inside-Pentagon information earlier with the rest
of us. In no way should he be seen as a whistleblower.
At the time of his September 2007 speech, he was deep into his quixotic attempt to win the Democratic nomination for president
in 2008. In other words, Clark broke the omerta code of silence observed by virtually all U.S. generals, even post-retirement, merely
to put some distance between himself and the debacle in Iraq – and win some favor among anti-war Democrats. It didn't work, so he
endorsed Hillary Clinton; that didn't work, so he endorsed Barack Obama.
Wolfowitz, typically, has landed on his feet. He is now presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's foreign policy/defense adviser, no
doubt outlining his preferred approach to the Middle East chessboard to his new boss. Does anyone know the plural of "bedlam?"
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He
is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern
served for considerable periods in all four of CIA's main directorates.
The most important part of power elite in neoliberal society might not be financial oligarchy, but intelligence agencies elite.
If you look at the role
of Brennan in "Purple color revolution" against Trump that became clear that heads of the agencies are powerful political players
with resources at hand, that are not available to other politicians.
Notable quotes:
"... Men in positions of great power have been forced to realize that their aspirations and responsibilities have exceeded the horizons of their own experience, knowledge, and capability. Yet, because they are in chargeof this high-technology society, they are compelled to do something. This overpowering necessity to do something -- although our leaders do not know precisely what to do or how to do it -- creates in the power elite an overbearing fear of the people. It is the fear not of you and me as individuals but of the smoldering threat of vast populations and of potential uprisings of the masses. ..."
"... This power elite is not easy to define; but the fact that it exists makes itself known from time to time. Concerning the power elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the "vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery." Fuller noted also, "Always their victories [are] in the name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country. The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers." ..."
"... This report, as presented in the novel, avers that war is necessary to sustain society, the nation, and national sovereignty, a view that has existed for millennia. Through the ages, totally uncontrolled warfare -- the only kind of "real" war -- got bigger and "better" as time and technology churned on, finally culminating in World War II with the introduction of atomic bombs. ..."
"... This is why, even before the end of World War II, the newly structured bipolar confrontation between the world of Communism and the West resulted in the employment of enormous intelligence agencies that had the power, invisibly, to wage underground warfare, economic and well as military, anywhere -- including methods of warfare never before imagined. These conflicts had to be tactically designed to remain short of the utilization of the H-bomb by either side. There can never be victories in such wars, but tremendous loss of life could occur, and there is the much-desired consumption and attrition of trillions of dollars', and rubles', worth of war equipment. ..."
"... Since WWII, there has been an epidemic of murders at the highest level in many countries. Without question the most dynamic of these assassinations was the murder of President John F. Kennedy, but JFK was just one of many in a long list that includes bankers, corporate leaders, newsmen, rising political spokesmen, and religious leaders. ..."
"... The ever-present threat of assassination seriously limits the number of men who would normally attempt to strive for positions of leadership, if for no other reason than that they could be singled out for murder at any time. This is not a new tactic, but it is one that has become increasingly utilized in pressure spots around the world. ..."
"... Under totalitarian or highly centralized nondemocratic regimes, the intelligence organization is a political, secret service with police powers. It is designed primarily to provide personal security to those who control the authority of the state against all political opponents, foreign and domestic. These leaders are forced to depend upon these secret elite forces to remain alive and in power. Such an organization operates in deep secrecy and has the responsibility for carrying out espionage, counterespionage, and pseudoterrorism. This methodology is as true of Israel, Chile, or Jordan as it has been of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The second category of intelligence organization is one whose agents are limited to the gathering and reporting of intelligence and who have no police functions or the power to arrest at home or abroad. This type of organization is what the CIA was created to be; however, it does not exist. ..."
"... Over the decades since the CIA was created, it has acquired more sinister functions. All intelligence agencies, in time, tend to develop along similar lines. The CIA today is a far cry hum the agency that was created in 1947 by the National Security Act. As President Harry S. Truman confided to close friends, the greatest mistake of his administration took place when he signed that National Security Act of 1947 into law. It was that act which, among other things it did, created the Central Intelligence Agency.3 ..."
True existence of these multimegaton hydrogen bombs has so drastically changed the Grand Strategy of world powers that, today
and for the future, that strategy is being carried out by the invisible forces of the CIA, what remains of the KGB, and their lesser
counterparts around the world.
Men in positions of great power have been forced to realize that their aspirations and responsibilities have exceeded the
horizons of their own experience, knowledge, and capability. Yet, because they are in chargeof this high-technology society, they
are compelled to do something. This overpowering necessity to do something -- although our leaders do not know precisely what to
do or how to do it -- creates in the power elite an overbearing fear of the people. It is the fear not of you and me as individuals
but of the smoldering threat of vast populations and of potential uprisings of the masses.
This power elite is not easy to define; but the fact that it exists makes itself known from time to time. Concerning the power
elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the "vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their
ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery." Fuller noted also, "Always their victories [are] in the
name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country. The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign
powers."
The power elite is not a group from one nation or even of one alliance of nations. It operates throughout the world and no doubt
has done so for many, many centuries.
... ... ...
From this point ot view, warfare, and the preparation tor war, is an absolute necessity for the welfare of the state and for control
of population masses, as has been so ably documented in that remarkable novel by Leonard Lewin Report From Iron Mountain on
the Possibility and Desirability of Peace and attributed by Lewin to "the Special Study Group in 1966," an organization whose
existence was so highly classified that there is no record, to this day, of who the men in the group were or with what sectors of
the government or private life they were connected.
This report, as presented in the novel, avers that war is necessary to sustain society, the nation, and national sovereignty,
a view that has existed for millennia. Through the ages, totally uncontrolled warfare -- the only kind of "real" war -- got bigger
and "better" as time and technology churned on, finally culminating in World War II with the introduction of atomic bombs.
Not long after that great war, the world leaders were faced suddenly with the reality of a great dilemma. At the root of this
dilemma was the new fission-fusion-fission H-bomb. Is it some uncontrollable Manichean device, or is it truly a weapon of war?
... ... ...
Such knowledge is sufficient. The dilemma is now fact. There can no longer be a classic or traditional war, at least not the all-out,
go-for-broke-type warfare there has been down through the ages, a war that leads to a meaningful victory for one side and abject
defeat for the other.
Witness what has been called warfare in Korea, and Vietnam, and the later, more limited experiment with new weaponry called the
Gulf War in Iraq.
... ... ...
This is why, even before the end of World War II, the newly structured bipolar confrontation between the world of Communism
and the West resulted in the employment of enormous intelligence agencies that had the power, invisibly, to wage underground warfare,
economic and well as military, anywhere -- including methods of warfare never before imagined. These conflicts had to be tactically
designed to remain short of the utilization of the H-bomb by either side. There can never be victories in such wars, but tremendous
loss of life could occur, and there is the much-desired consumption and attrition of trillions of dollars', and rubles', worth of
war equipment.
One objective of this book is to discuss these new forces. It will present an insider's view of the CIA story and provide
comparisons with the intelligence organizations -- those invisible forces -- of other countries. To be more realistic with the priorities
of these agencies themselves, more will be said about operational matters than about actual intelligence gathering as a profession.
This subject cannot be explored fully without a discussion of assassination. Since WWII, there has been an epidemic of murders
at the highest level in many countries. Without question the most dynamic of these assassinations was the murder of President John
F. Kennedy, but JFK was just one of many in a long list that includes bankers, corporate leaders, newsmen, rising political spokesmen,
and religious leaders.
The ever-present threat of assassination seriously limits the number of men who would normally attempt to strive for positions
of leadership, if for no other reason than that they could be singled out for murder at any time. This is not a new tactic, but it
is one that has become increasingly utilized in pressure spots around the world.
It is essential to note that there are two principal categories of intelligence organizations and that their functions are determined
generally by the characteristics of the type of government they serve -- not by the citizens of the government, but by its leaders.
Under totalitarian or highly centralized nondemocratic regimes, the intelligence organization is a political, secret service
with police powers. It is designed primarily to provide personal security to those who control the authority of the state against
all political opponents, foreign and domestic. These leaders are forced to depend upon these secret elite forces to remain alive
and in power. Such an organization operates in deep secrecy and has the responsibility for carrying out espionage, counterespionage,
and pseudoterrorism. This methodology is as true of Israel, Chile, or Jordan as it has been of the Soviet Union.
The second category of intelligence organization is one whose agents are limited to the gathering and reporting of intelligence
and who have no police functions or the power to arrest at home or abroad. This type of organization is what the CIA was created
to be; however, it does not exist.
Over the decades since the CIA was created, it has acquired more sinister functions. All intelligence agencies, in time, tend
to develop along similar lines. The CIA today is a far cry hum the agency that was created in 1947 by the National Security Act.
As President Harry S. Truman confided to close friends, the greatest mistake of his administration took place when he signed that
National Security Act of 1947 into law. It was that act which, among other things it did, created the Central Intelligence Agency.3
Heritage Foundation is just a neocon swamp filled with "national security parasites". What you can expect from them ?
Notable quotes:
"... A 2009 Heritage Foundation report, " Maintaining the Superiority of America's Defense Industrial Base ," called for further government investment in aircraft weaponry for "ensuring a superior fighting force" and "sustaining international stability." ..."
"... These special pleas pose a question: which came first, Heritage's heavy dependence on funds from defense giants, or the foundation's belief that unless we steadily increase our military arsenal we'll be endangering "international stability"? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle: someone who is predisposed to go in a certain direction may be more inclined to do so if he is being rewarded in return. ..."
"... No doubt both corporations will continue to look after Heritage, which will predictably call for further increases, whether they be in aerospace or shipbuilding. ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... Like American higher education, Conservatism Inc. is very big business. Whatever else it's about rates a very far second to keeping the money flowing. "Conservative" positions are often simply causes for which foundations and media enterprises that have the word "conservative" attached to them are paid to represent. It is the label carried by an institution or publication, not necessarily the position it takes, that makes what NR or Heritage advocates "conservative." ..."
According to recent
reports the Heritage Foundation, clearly the most established and many would say politically influential conservative think tank
in Washington, is considering David Trulio, Lockheed Martin vice president and longtime lobbyist for the defense industry, to be
its next president. While Heritage's connection to Washington's sprawling national security industry is already well-established,
naming Trulio as its president might be seen as gilding the lily.
If anything, reading this report made me more aware of the degree to which the "conservative policy community" in Washington depends
on the whims and interests of particular donors.
And this relationship is apparently no longer something to be concealed or embarrassed by. One can now be open about being in
the pocket of the defense industry. Trulio's potential elevation to Heritage president at what we can assume will be an astronomical
salary, will no doubt grease the already well-oiled pipeline of funds from major contractors to this "conservative" foundation, which
already operates with an
annual disclosed budget of almost $100 million.
A 2009 Heritage Foundation report, "
Maintaining
the Superiority of America's Defense Industrial Base ," called for further government investment in aircraft weaponry for "ensuring
a superior fighting force" and "sustaining international stability." In 2011, senior national security fellow James Carafano
wrote " Five Steps
to Defend America's Industrial Defense Base ," which complained about a "fifty billion dollar under-procurement by the Pentagon"
for buying new weaponry. In 2016,
Heritage made the case for
several years of reinvestment to get the military back on "sound footing," with an increase in fiscal year 2016 described as "an
encouraging start."
These special pleas pose a question: which came first, Heritage's heavy dependence on funds from defense giants, or the foundation's
belief that unless we steadily increase our military arsenal we'll be endangering "international stability"? Perhaps the answer lies
somewhere in the middle: someone who is predisposed to go in a certain direction may be more inclined to do so if he is being rewarded
in return. Incidentally, the 2009 position paper seems to be directing the government to throw more taxpayer dollars to Boeing
than to its competitor Lockheed. But it seems both defense giants have landed a joint contract this year to produce a new submersible
for the Navy, so it may no longer be necessary to pick sides on that one at least. No doubt both corporations will continue to
look after Heritage, which will predictably call for further increases, whether they be in aerospace or shipbuilding.
Although one needn't reduce everything to dollars and cents, if we're looking at the issues Heritage and other likeminded foundations
are likely to push today, it's far more probable they'll be emphasizing the national security state rather than, say, opposition
to gay marriage or the defense of traditional gender roles. There's lots more money to be made advocating for the former rather than
the latter. In May 2013, Heritage
sponsored a formal debate between "two conservatives" and "two liberals" on the issue of defense spending, with Heritage and
National Review presenting the "conservative" side. I wondered as I listened to part of this verbal battle why is was considered
"conservative" to call for burdening American taxpayers with massive increases in the purchase of Pentagon weaponry and planes that
take
17 years to get off the ground.
Like American higher education, Conservatism Inc. is very big business. Whatever else it's about rates a very far second to
keeping the money flowing. "Conservative" positions are often simply causes for which foundations and media enterprises that have
the word "conservative" attached to them are paid to represent. It is the label carried by an institution or publication, not necessarily
the position it takes, that makes what NR or Heritage advocates "conservative."
In any event, Mr. Trulio won't have to travel far if he takes the Heritage helm. He and his corporation are already ensconced
only a few miles away from Heritage's Massachusetts Avenue headquarters, if the information provided by Lockheed Martin is correct.
It says: "Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately
98,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment
of advanced technology systems, products and services." A company like that can certainly afford to underwrite a think tank -- if
the price is right.
Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for twenty-five
years. He is a Guggenheim recipient and a Yale PhD. He writes for many websites and scholarly journals and is the author of thirteen
books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents . His books have been translated into multiple
languages and seem to enjoy special success in Eastern Europe.
"... Since World War II the United States has used the Dollar Standard and its dominant role in the IMF and World Bank to steer trade and investment along lines benefiting its own economy. But now that the growth of China's mixed economy has outstripped all others while Russia finally is beginning to recover, countries have the option of borrowing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and other non-U.S. consortia. ..."
"... The problem with surrendering is that this Washington Consensus is extractive and lives in the short run, laying the seeds of financial dependency, debt-leveraged bubbles and subsequent debt deflation and austerity. The financial business plan is to carve out opportunities for price gouging and corporate profits. Today's U.S.-sponsored trade and investment treaties would make governments pay fines equal to the amount that environmental and price regulations, laws protecting consumers and other social policies might reduce corporate profits. "Companies would be able to demand compensation from countries whose health, financial, environmental and other public interest policies they thought to be undermining their interests, and take governments before extrajudicial tribunals. These tribunals, organised under World Bank and UN rules, would have the power to order taxpayers to pay extensive compensation over legislation seen as undermining a company's 'expected future profits.' ..."
"... At the center of today's global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity. ..."
"... The price of resistance involves risking military or covert overthrow. Long before the Ukraine crisis, the United States has dropped the pretense of backing democracies. The die was cast in 1953 with the coup against Iran's secular government, and the 1954 coup in Guatemala to oppose land reform. Support for client oligarchies and dictatorships in Latin America in the 1960 and '70s was highlighted by the overthrow of Allende in Chile and Operation Condor's assassination program throughout the continent. Under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States has claimed that America's status as the world's "indispensible nation" entitled it back the recent coups in Honduras and Ukraine, and to sponsor the NATO attack on Libya and Syria, leaving Europe to absorb the refugees. ..."
"... The trans-Atlantic financial bubble has left a legacy of austerity since 2008. Debt-ridden economies are being told to cope with their downturns by privatizing their public domain. ..."
"... The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions. American intransigence threatens to force an either/or choice in what looms as a seismic geopolitical shift over the proper role of governments: Should their public sectors provide basic services and protect populations from predatory monopolies, rent extraction and financial polarization? ..."
"... Today's global financial crisis can be traced back to World War I and its aftermath. The principle that needed to be voiced was the right of sovereign nations not to be forced to sacrifice their economic survival on the altar of inter-government and private debt demands. The concept of nationhood embodied in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia based international law on the principle of parity of sovereign states and non-interference. Without a global alternative to letting debt dynamics polarize societies and tear economies apart, monetary imperialism by creditor nations is inevitable. ..."
"... The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's democratic destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy, between oligarchy and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation, and probably for the remainder of the 21 st century. ..."
"... wiki/Anglo-Persian Oil Company "In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He financed this with capital he had made from his shares in the highly profitable Mount Morgan mine in Queensland, Australia. D'Arcy assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received £20,000 (£2.0 million today),[1] an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits." Note the 16% = ~1/6, the rest going off-shore. ..."
"... The Greens in Aus researched the resources sector in Aus, to find that it is 83% 'owned' by off-shore entities. Note that 83% = ~5/6, which goes off-shore. Coincidence? ..."
"... Note that in Aus, the democratically elected so-called 'leaders' not only allow exactly this sort of economic rape, they actively assist it by, say, crippling the central bank and pleading for FDI = selling our, we the people's interests, out. Those traitor-leaders are reversing 'Enlightenment' provisions, privatising whatever they can and, as Michael Hudson well points out the principles, running Aus into debt and austerity. ..."
"... US banking oligarchs will expend the last drop of our blood to prevent a such a linking, just as they were willing to sacrifice our blood and treasure in WW1 and 2, as is alluded to here.: ..."
"... The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's democratic destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy, between oligarchy and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation, and probably for the remainder of the 21st century. ..."
"... It's important to note that such interests have ruled (owned, actually) imperial Britain for centuries and the US since its inception, and the anti-federalists knew it. ..."
"... "After World War I the U.S. Government deviated from what had been traditional European policy – forgiving military support costs among the victors. U.S. officials demanded payment for the arms shipped to its Allies in the years before America entered the Great War in 1917. The Allies turned to Germany for reparations to pay these debts." The Yank banker, the Yankee Wall Street super rich, set off a process of greed that led to Hitler. ..."
"... But they didn't invent anything. They learned from their WASP forebears in the British Empire, whose banking back to Oliver Cromwell had become inextricably entangled with Jewish money and Jewish interests to the point that Jews per capita dominated it even at the height of the British Empire, when simpleton WASPs assume that WASPs truly ran everything, and that WASP power was for the good of even the poorest WASPs. ..."
"... The Berlin Baghdad railway was an important cause for WWI. ..."
"... Bingo. Stopping it was a huge factor. There was no way the banksters of the world were going to let that go forward, nor were they going to let Germany and Russia link up in any other ways. They certainly were not about to allow any threats to the Suez Canal nor any chance to let the oil fields slip from their control either. ..."
"... This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve ..."
"... In fact, this is exactly how it was supposed to work. The wave of liberal democracies was precisely to overturn the monarchies, which were the last bulwark protecting the people from the full tyranny of the financiers, who were, by nature, one-world internationalists. ..."
"... The real problem with this is that any form of monetary arrangement involves an implied trusteeship, with obligations on, as well as benefits for, the trustee. The US is so abusing its trusteeship through the continual use of an irresponsible sanctions regime that it risks a good portion of the world economy abandoning its system for someone else's, which may be perceived to be run more responsibility. The disaster scenario would be the US having therefore in the future to access that other system to purchase oil or minerals, and having that system do to us what we previously did to them -- sanction us out. ..."
"... " Marx believed that capitalism was inherently built upon practices of usury and thus inevitably leading to the separation of society into two classes: one composed of those who produce value and the other, which feeds upon the first one. In "Theories of Surplus Value" (written 1862-1863), he states " that interest (in contrast to industrial profit) and rent (that is the form of landed property created by capitalist production itself) are superfetations (i.e., excessive accumulations) which are not essential to capitalist production and of which it can rid itself." ..."
In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade
and "foreign aid" (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping
their assets and imposing austerity. The reality since World War I is that the United States has taken the lead in shaping the international
financial system to promote gains for its own bankers, farm exporters, its oil and gas sector, and buyers of foreign resources –
and most of all, to collect on debts owed to it.
Each time this global system has broken down over the past century, the major destabilizing force has been American over-reach
and the drive by its bankers and bondholders for short-term gains. The dollar-centered financial system is leaving more industrial
as well as Third World countries debt-strapped. Its three institutional pillars – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank
and World Trade Organization – have imposed monetary, fiscal and financial dependency, most recently by the post-Soviet Baltics,
Greece and the rest of southern Europe. The resulting strains are now reaching the point where they are breaking apart the arrangements
put in place after World War II.
The most destructive fiction of international finance is that all debts can be paid, and indeed should be paid, even when
this tears economies apart by forcing them into austerity – to save bondholders, not labor and industry. Yet European countries,
and especially Germany, have shied from pressing for a more balanced global economy that would foster growth for all countries and
avoid the current economic slowdown and debt deflation.
Imposing austerity on Germany after World War I
After World War I the U.S. Government deviated from what had been traditional European policy – forgiving military support costs
among the victors. U.S. officials demanded payment for the arms shipped to its Allies in the years before America entered the Great
War in 1917. The Allies turned to Germany for reparations to pay these debts. Headed by John Maynard Keynes, British diplomats sought
to clean their hands of responsibility for the consequences by promising that all the money they received from Germany would simply
be forwarded to the U.S. Treasury.
The sums were so unpayably high that Germany was driven into austerity and collapse. The nation suffered hyperinflation as the
Reichsbank printed marks to throw onto the foreign exchange also were pushed into financial collapse. The debt deflation was much
like that of Third World debtors a generation ago, and today's southern European PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain).
In a pretense that the reparations and Inter-Ally debt tangle could be made solvent, a triangular flow of payments was facilitated
by a convoluted U.S. easy-money policy. American investors sought high returns by buying German local bonds; German municipalities
turned over the dollars they received to the Reichsbank for domestic currency; and the Reichsbank used this foreign exchange to pay
reparations to Britain and other Allies, enabling these countries to pay the United States what it demanded.
But solutions based on attempts to keep debts of such magnitude in place by lending debtors the money to pay can only be temporary.
The U.S. Federal Reserve sustained this triangular flow by holding down U.S. interest rates. This made it attractive for American
investors to buy German municipal bonds and other high-yielding debts. It also deterred Wall Street from drawing funds away from
Britain, which would have driven its economy deeper into austerity after the General Strike of 1926. But domestically, low U.S. interest
rates and easy credit spurred a real estate bubble, followed by a stock market bubble that burst in 1929. The triangular flow of
payments broke down in 1931, leaving a legacy of debt deflation burdening the U.S. and European economies. The Great Depression lasted
until outbreak of World War II in 1939.
Planning for the postwar period took shape as the war neared its end. U.S. diplomats had learned an important lesson. This time
there would be no arms debts or reparations. The global financial system would be stabilized – on the basis of gold, and on creditor-oriented
rules. By the end of the 1940s the United States held some 75 percent of the world's monetary gold stock. That established the U.S.
dollar as the world's reserve currency, freely convertible into gold at the 1933 parity of $35 an ounce.
It also implied that once again, as in the 1920s, European balance-of-payments deficits would have to be financed mainly by the
United States. Recycling of official government credit was to be filtered via the IMF and World Bank, in which U.S. diplomats alone
had veto power to reject policies they found not to be in their national interest. International financial "stability" thus became
a global control mechanism – to maintain creditor-oriented rules centered in the United States.
To obtain gold or dollars as backing for their own domestic monetary systems, other countries had to follow the trade and investment
rules laid down by the United States. These rules called for relinquishing control over capital movements or restrictions on foreign
takeovers of natural resources and the public domain as well as local industry and banking systems.
By 1950 the dollar-based global economic system had become increasingly untenable. Gold continued flowing to the United States,
strengthening the dollar – until the Korean War reversed matters. From 1951 through 1971 the United States ran a deepening balance-of-payments
deficit, which stemmed entirely from overseas military spending. (Private-sector trade and investment was steadily in balance.)
U.S. Treasury debt replaces the gold exchange standard
The foreign military spending that helped return American gold to Europe became a flood as the Vietnam War spread across Asia
after 1962. The Treasury kept the dollar's exchange rate stable by selling gold via the London Gold Pool at $35 an ounce. Finally,
in August 1971, President Nixon stopped the drain by closing the Gold Pool and halting gold convertibility of the dollar.
There was no plan for what would happen next. Most observers viewed cutting the dollar's link to gold as a defeat for the United
States. It certainly ended the postwar financial order as designed in 1944. But what happened next was just the reverse of a defeat.
No longer able to buy gold after 1971 (without inciting strong U.S. disapproval), central banks found only one asset in which to
hold their balance-of-payments surpluses: U.S. Treasury debt. These securities no longer were "as good as gold." The United States
issued them at will to finance soaring domestic budget deficits.
By shifting from gold to the dollars thrown off by the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit, the foundation of global monetary reserves
came to be dominated by the U.S. military spending that continued to flood foreign central banks with surplus dollars. America's
balance-of-payments deficit thus supplied the dollars that financed its domestic budget deficits and bank credit creation – via foreign
central banks recycling U.S. foreign spending back to the U.S. Treasury.
In effect, foreign countries have been taxed without representation over how their loans to the U.S. Government are employed.
European central banks were not yet prepared to create their own sovereign wealth funds to invest their dollar inflows in foreign
stocks or direct ownership of businesses. They simply used their trade and payments surpluses to finance the U.S. budget deficit.
This enabled the Treasury to cut domestic tax rates, above all on the highest income brackets.
U.S. monetary imperialism confronted European and Asian central banks with a dilemma that remains today: If they do not turn around
and buy dollar assets, their currencies will rise against the dollar. Buying U.S. Treasury securities is the only practical way to
stabilize their exchange rates – and in so doing, to prevent their exports from rising in dollar terms and being priced out of dollar-area
markets.
The system may have developed without foresight, but quickly became deliberate. My book Super Imperialism sold best in
the Washington DC area, and I was given a large contract through the Hudson Institute to explain to the Defense Department exactly
how this extractive financial system worked. I was brought to the White House to explain it, and U.S. geostrategists used my book
as a how-to-do-it manual (not my original intention).
Attention soon focused on the oil-exporting countries. After the U.S. quadrupled its grain export prices shortly after the 1971
gold suspension, the oil-exporting countries quadrupled their oil prices. I was informed at a White House meeting that U.S. diplomats
had let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries know that they could charge as much as they wanted for their oil, but that the United
States would treat it as an act of war not to keep their oil proceeds in U.S. dollar assets.
This was the point at which the international financial system became explicitly extractive. But it took until 2009, for the first
attempt to withdraw from this system to occur. A conference was convened at Yekaterinburg, Russia, by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO). The alliance comprised Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India,
Pakistan and Mongolia. U.S. officials asked to attend as observers, but their request was rejected.
The U.S. response has been to extend the new Cold War into the financial sector, rewriting the rules of international finance
to benefit the United States and its satellites – and to deter countries from seeking to break free from America's financial free
ride.
The IMF changes its rules to isolate Russia and China
Aiming to isolate Russia and China, the Obama Administration's confrontational diplomacy has drawn the Bretton Woods institutions
more tightly under US/NATO control. In so doing, it is disrupting the linkages put in place after World War II.
The U.S. plan was to hurt Russia's economy so much that it would be ripe for regime change ("color revolution"). But the effect
was to drive it eastward, away from Western Europe to consolidate its long-term relations with China and Central Asia. Pressing Europe
to shift its oil and gas purchases to U.S. allies, U.S. sanctions have disrupted German and other European trade and investment with
Russia and China. It also has meant lost opportunities for European farmers, other exporters and investors – and a flood of refugees
from failed post-Soviet states drawn into the NATO orbit, most recently Ukraine.
To U.S. strategists, what made changing IMF rules urgent was Ukraine's $3 billion debt falling due to Russia's National Wealth
Fund in December 2015. The IMF had long withheld credit to countries refusing to pay other governments. This policy aimed primarily
at protecting the financial claims of the U.S. Government, which usually played a lead role in consortia with other governments and
U.S. banks. But under American pressure the IMF changed its rules in January 2015. Henceforth, it announced, it would indeed be willing
to provide credit to countries in arrears other governments – implicitly headed by China (which U.S. geostrategists consider to be
their main long-term adversary), Russia and others that U.S. financial warriors might want to isolate in order to force neoliberal
privatization policies. [1] I provide the full
background in "The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia," December 9, 2015, available on michael-hudson.com, Naked
Capitalism , Counterpunch and Johnson's Russia List .
Article I of the IMF's 1944-45 founding charter
prohibits it from lending to a member engaged in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes generally.
An obvious reason for this rule is that such a country is unlikely to earn the foreign exchange to pay its debt. Bombing Ukraine's
own Donbass region in the East after its February 2014 coup d'état destroyed its export industry, mainly to Russia.
Withholding IMF credit could have been a lever to force adherence to the Minsk peace agreements, but U.S. diplomacy rejected that
opportunity. When IMF head Christine Lagarde made a new loan to Ukraine in spring 2015, she merely expressed a verbal hope for peace.
Ukrainian President Porochenko announced the next day that he would step up his civil war against the Russian-speaking population
in eastern Ukraine. One and a half-billion dollars of the IMF loan were given to banker Ihor Kolomoiski and disappeared offshore,
while the oligarch used his domestic money to finance an anti-Donbass army. A million refugees were driven east into Russia; others
fled west via Poland as the economy and Ukraine's currency plunged.
The IMF broke four of its rules by lending to Ukraine: (1) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the
loan (the "No More Argentinas" rule, adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan to that country). (2) Not to lend to a country
that repudiates its debt to official creditors (the rule originally intended to enforce payment to U.S.-based institutions). (3)
Not to lend to a country at war – and indeed, destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back
the loan. Finally (4), not to lend to a country unlikely to impose the IMF's austerity "conditionalities." Ukraine did agree to override
democratic opposition and cut back pensions, but its junta proved too unstable to impose the austerity terms on which the IMF insisted.
U.S. neoliberalism promotes privatization carve-ups of debtor countries
Since World War II the United States has used the Dollar Standard and its dominant role in the IMF and World Bank to steer
trade and investment along lines benefiting its own economy. But now that the growth of China's mixed economy has outstripped all
others while Russia finally is beginning to recover, countries have the option of borrowing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB) and other non-U.S. consortia.
At stake is much more than just which nations will get the contracting and banking business. At issue is whether the philosophy
of development will follow the classical path based on public infrastructure investment, or whether public sectors will be privatized
and planning turned over to rent-seeking corporations.
What made the United States and Germany the leading industrial nations of the 20 th century – and more recently, China
– has been public investment in economic infrastructure. The aim was to lower the price of living and doing business by providing
basic services on a subsidized basis or freely. By contrast, U.S. privatizers have brought debt leverage to bear on Third World countries,
post-Soviet economies and most recently on southern Europe to force selloffs. Current plans to cap neoliberal policy with the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) go so far
as to disable government planning power to the financial and corporate sector.
American strategists evidently hoped that the threat of isolating Russia, China and other countries would bring them to heel if
they tried to denominate trade and investment in their own national currencies. Their choice would be either to suffer sanctions
like those imposed on Cuba and Iran, or to avoid exclusion by acquiescing in the dollarized financial and trade system and its drives
to financialize their economies under U.S. control.
The problem with surrendering is that this Washington Consensus is extractive and lives in the short run, laying the seeds
of financial dependency, debt-leveraged bubbles and subsequent debt deflation and austerity. The financial business plan is to carve
out opportunities for price gouging and corporate profits. Today's U.S.-sponsored trade and investment treaties would make governments
pay fines equal to the amount that environmental and price regulations, laws protecting consumers and other social policies might
reduce corporate profits. "Companies would be able to demand compensation from countries whose health, financial, environmental and
other public interest policies they thought to be undermining their interests, and take governments before extrajudicial tribunals.
These tribunals, organised under World Bank and UN rules, would have the power to order taxpayers to pay extensive compensation over
legislation seen as undermining a company's 'expected future profits.' "
This policy threat is splitting the world into pro-U.S. satellites and economies maintaining public infrastructure investment
and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. U.S.-sponsored neoliberalism supporting its own financial and corporate interests
has driven Russia, China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into an alliance to protect their economic self-sufficiency
rather than becoming dependent on dollarized credit enmeshing them in foreign-currency debt.
At the center of today's global split are the last few centuries of Western social and democratic reform. Seeking to follow
the classical Western development path by retaining a mixed public/private economy, China, Russia and other nations find it easier
to create new institutions such as the AIIB than to reform the dollar standard IMF and World Bank. Their choice is between short-term
gains by dependency leading to austerity, or long-term development with independence and ultimate prosperity.
The price of resistance involves risking military or covert overthrow. Long before the Ukraine crisis, the United States has
dropped the pretense of backing democracies. The die was cast in 1953 with the coup against Iran's secular government, and the 1954
coup in Guatemala to oppose land reform. Support for client oligarchies and dictatorships in Latin America in the 1960 and '70s was
highlighted by the overthrow of Allende in Chile and Operation Condor's assassination program throughout the continent. Under President
Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States has claimed that America's status as the world's "indispensible
nation" entitled it back the recent coups in Honduras and Ukraine, and to sponsor the NATO attack on Libya and Syria, leaving Europe
to absorb the refugees.
Germany's choice
This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve. The industrial takeoff of Germany and other European nations involved
a long fight to free markets from the land rents and financial charges siphoned off by their landed aristocracies and bankers. That
was the essence of classical 19 th -century political economy and 20 th -century social democracy. Most economists
a century ago expected industrial capitalism to produce an economy of abundance, and democratic reforms to endorse public infrastructure
investment and regulation to hold down the cost of living and doing business. But U.S. economic diplomacy now threatens to radically
reverse this economic ideology by aiming to dismantle public regulatory power and impose a radical privatization agenda under the
TTIP and TAFTA.
Textbook trade theory depicts trade and investment as helping poorer countries catch up, compelling them to survive by becoming
more democratic to overcome their vested interests and oligarchies along the lines pioneered by European and North American industrial
economies. Instead, the world is polarizing, not converging. The trans-Atlantic financial bubble has left a legacy of austerity
since 2008. Debt-ridden economies are being told to cope with their downturns by privatizing their public domain.
The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment
opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions. American intransigence threatens to
force an either/or choice in what looms as a seismic geopolitical shift over the proper role of governments: Should their public
sectors provide basic services and protect populations from predatory monopolies, rent extraction and financial polarization?
Today's global financial crisis can be traced back to World War I and its aftermath. The principle that needed to be voiced
was the right of sovereign nations not to be forced to sacrifice their economic survival on the altar of inter-government and private
debt demands. The concept of nationhood embodied in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia based international law on the principle of parity
of sovereign states and non-interference. Without a global alternative to letting debt dynamics polarize societies and tear economies
apart, monetary imperialism by creditor nations is inevitable.
The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's democratic
destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic
leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy, between oligarchy
and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation, and probably for
the remainder of the 21 st century.
Endnotes
[1] I provide the full background in
"The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia," December 9, 2015, available on michael-hudson.com, Naked Capitalism
, Counterpunch and Johnson's Russia List .
"Austerity" is such a misused word these days. What the Allies did to Germany after Versailles was austerity, and everyone paid
dearly for it.
What the IMF and the Western Banking Cartel do to third world countries is akin to a pusher hopping up addicts on debt and
then taking it away while stripping them of their assets, pretty much hurting only the people of the third world country; certainly
not the WBC, and almost certainly not the criminal elite who took the deal.
The Austerity everyone complains about in the developed world these days is a joke, hardly austerity, for it has never meant
more than doing a little less deficit-spending than in prior periods, e.g. UK Labour whining about "Austerity" is a joke, as the
UK debt has done nothing but grow, which in terms understandable to simple folk like me means they are spending more than they
can afford to carry.
" The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment
opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions "
In the whole article not a word about the euro, also an instrument of imperialism, that mainly benefits Germany, the country
that has to maintain a high level of exports, in order to feed the Germans, and import raw materials for Germany's industries.
Isolating China and Russia, with the other BRICS countries, S Africa, Brazil, India, dangerous game.
This effort forced China and Russia to close cooperation, the economic expression of this is the Peking Petersburg railway, with
a hub in Khazakstan, where the containers are lifted from the Chinese to the Russian system, the width differs.
Four days for the trip.
The Berlin Baghdad railway was an important cause for WWI.
Let us hope that history does not repeat itself in the nuclear era.
Edward Mead Earle, Ph.D., 'Turkey, The Great Powers and The Bagdad Railway, A study in Imperialism', 1923, 1924, New York
The U.S. response has been to extend the new Cold War into the financial sector, rewriting the rules of international finance
to benefit the United States and its satellites – and to deter countries from seeking t o break free from America's
financial free ride .
Nah, the NY banksters wouldn't dream of doing such a thing; would they?
This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve
What I said, and beautifully put, the whole article.
World War I may well have been an important way-point, but the miserable mercantile modus operandi was well established
long before.
An interesting A/B case:
a) wiki/Anglo-Persian Oil Company
"In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar of
Persia. He financed this with capital he had made from his shares in the highly profitable Mount Morgan mine in Queensland, Australia.
D'Arcy assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange
the Shah received £20,000 (£2.0 million today),[1] an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future
profits." Note the 16% = ~1/6, the rest going off-shore.
b) The Greens in Aus researched the resources sector in Aus, to find that it is 83% 'owned' by off-shore entities. Note
that 83% = ~5/6, which goes off-shore. Coincidence?
Then see what happened when the erstwhile APOC was nationalized; the US/UK perpetrated a coup against the democratically elected
Mossadegh, eventual blow-back resulting in the 1979 revolution, basically taking Iran out of 'the West.'
Note that in Aus, the democratically elected so-called 'leaders' not only allow exactly this sort of economic rape, they
actively assist it by, say, crippling the central bank and pleading for FDI = selling our, we the people's interests, out. Those
traitor-leaders are reversing 'Enlightenment' provisions, privatising whatever they can and, as Michael Hudson well points out
the principles, running Aus into debt and austerity.
We the people are powerless passengers, and to add insult to injury, the taxpayer-funded AusBC lies to us continually. Ho,
hum; just like the mainly US/Z MSM and the BBC do – all corrupt and venal. Bah!
Now, cue the trolls: "But Russia/China are worse!"
The immediate question facing Germany and the rest of Western Europe is how long they will sacrifice their trade and investment
opportunities with Russia, Iran and other economies by adhering to U.S.-sponsored sanctions.
US banking oligarchs will expend the last drop of our blood to prevent a such a linking, just as they were willing to sacrifice
our blood and treasure in WW1 and 2, as is alluded to here.:
Today's global financial crisis can be traced back to World War I and its aftermath.
Excellent.:
The principle that needed to be voiced was the right of sovereign nations not to be forced to sacrifice their economic survival
on the altar of inter-government and private debt demands Without a global alternative to letting debt dynamics polarize societies
and tear economies apart, monetary imperialism by creditor nations is inevitable.
This is a gem of a summary.:
The past century's global fracture between creditor and debtor economies has interrupted what seemed to be Europe's
democratic destiny to empower governments to override financial and other rentier interests. Instead, the West is following
U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. This conflict between creditors and democracy,
between oligarchy and economic growth (and indeed, survival) will remain the defining issue of our epoch over the next generation,
and probably for the remainder of the 21st century.
Instead, the West is following U.S. diplomatic leadership back into the age when these interests ruled governments. It's
important to note that such interests have ruled (owned, actually) imperial Britain for centuries and the US since its inception,
and the anti-federalists knew it.
Here is a revolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain.
You will find all the strength of this country in the hands of your enemies [ ed comment: the money grubbers ]
Patrick Henry June 5 and 7, 1788―1788-1789 Petersburg, Virginia edition of the Debates and other Proceedings . . . Of the
Virginia Convention of 1788
The Constitution had been laid down under unacceptable auspices; its history had been that of a coup d'état.
It had been drafted, in the first place, by men representing special economic interests. Four-fifths of them were
public creditors, one-third were land speculators, and one-fifth represented interests in shipping, manufacturing, and merchandising.
Most of them were lawyers. Not one of them represented the interest of production -- Vilescit origine tali.
- Albert Jay Nock [Excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock's Jefferson, published in 1926]
"After World War I the U.S. Government deviated from what had been traditional European policy – forgiving military support
costs among the victors. U.S. officials demanded payment for the arms shipped to its Allies in the years before America entered
the Great War in 1917. The Allies turned to Germany for reparations to pay these debts." The Yank banker, the Yankee Wall Street
super rich, set off a process of greed that led to Hitler.
But they didn't invent anything. They learned from their
WASP forebears in the British Empire, whose banking back to Oliver Cromwell had become inextricably entangled with Jewish money
and Jewish interests to the point that Jews per capita dominated it even at the height of the British Empire, when simpleton WASPs
assume that WASPs truly ran everything, and that WASP power was for the good of even the poorest WASPs.
To Michael Hudson,
Great article. Evidence based, factually argued, enjoyably readable.
Replacements for the dollar dominated financial system are well into development. Digital dollars, credit cards, paypal, stock
and currency exchange online platforms, and perhaps most intriguing The exponential rise of Bitcoin and similar crypto-currencies.
The internet is also exponentially exposing the screwing we peasants have been getting by the psychopath, narcissistic, hedonistic,
predatory lenders and controllers. Next comes the widespread, easily usable, and inexpensive cell phone apps, social media exposures,
alternative websites (like Unz.com), and other technologies that will quickly identify every lying, evil, jerk so they can be
neutrilized / avoided
"Textbook trade theory depicts trade and investment as helping poorer countries catch up, compelling them to survive by
becoming more democratic to overcome their vested interests and oligarchies along the lines pioneered by European and North
American industrial economies."
I must be old; the economic textbooks I had did explain the benefits of freer trade among nations using Ricardo and Trade Indifference
Curves, but didn't prescribe any one political system being fostered by or even necessary for the benefits of international trade
to be reaped.
to be honest, this way of running things only need to last for 10-20 more years before automation will replace 800 million jobs.
then we will have a few trillionaire overlords unless true AI comes online. by that point nothing matters as we will become zoo
animals.
What the IMF and the Western Banking Cartel do to third world countries is akin to a pusher hopping up addicts on debt and
then taking it away while stripping them of their assets, pretty much hurting only the people of the third world country; certainly
not the WBC, and almost certainly not the criminal elite who took the deal.
That's true and the criminals do similar asset stripping to their own as well, through various means.
It's always the big criminals against the rest of us.
The Berlin Baghdad railway was an important cause for WWI.
Bingo. Stopping it was a huge factor. There was no way the banksters of the world were going to let that go forward, nor
were they going to let Germany and Russia link up in any other ways. They certainly were not about to allow any threats to the
Suez Canal nor any chance to let the oil fields slip from their control either.
The wars were also instigated to prevent either Germany or Russia having control of, and free access to warm water ports
and the wars also were an excuse to steal vast amounts of wealth from both Germany and Russia through various means.
All pious and pompous pretexts aside, economics was the motive for (the) war (s), and the issues are not settled to this day.
I.e., it's the same class of monstrously insatiable criminals who want everything for themselves who're causing the major troubles
of the day.
Unfortunately, as long as we have SoB's who're eager to sacrifice our blood and treasure for their
benfit, things will never change.
The golden rule is one thing. The paper rule is something else.
May you live in interesting times.
The golden rule is for dreamers, unfortunately. Those who control paper money rule, and your wish has been granted; we live
in times that are both interesting and fascinating, but are nevertheless the same old thing. Only the particular particulars
have changed.
Essentially, the anti-EU and anti-euro line that Professor Hudson has being pushing for years, which has now morphed into a pro-Putin
line as the anti-EU faction in the US have sought to use Putin as a "useful idiot" to destroy the EU. Since nobody in Europe reads
these articles, Ii doesn't really matter and I certainly don't see any EU leader following the advice of someone who has never
concealed his hostility to the EU's very existence: note the use of the racist slur "PIIGS" to refer to certain EU Member States.
Thus, Professor Hudson is simply pushing the "let Putin win in Ukraine" line dressed up in fine-sounding economic jargon.
Since nobody in Europe reads these articles, Ii doesn't really matter
None of it rally matters anyway, no matter how valid. To paraphrase Thucydides, the money grubbers do what they want and the
rest of us are forced to suck it up and limp along.
and I certainly don't see any EU leader following the advice
I doubt that that's Hudson's intent in writing the article. I see it as his attempt to explain the situation to those of us
who care about them even though our concern is pretty much useless.
I do thank him for taking the time to pen this stuff which I consider worthwhile and high quality.
That sounds good but social media is the weapon of choice in the EU too. Lot's of kids know and love Hudson. Any half capable
writer who empathetically explains why you're getting fucked is going to have some followers. Watering, nutrition, weeding. Before
too long you'll be on the Eurail to your destination.
said: "The Yank banker, the Yankee Wall Street super rich, set off a process of greed that led to Hitler." If true, so what?
That's a classic example of 'garbage in, garbage out'. http://www.codoh.com
This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to evolve
In fact, this is exactly how it was supposed to work. The wave of liberal democracies was precisely to overturn the monarchies,
which were the last bulwark protecting the people from the full tyranny of the financiers, who were, by nature, one-world internationalists.
The real problem with this is that any form of monetary arrangement involves an implied trusteeship, with obligations on,
as well as benefits for, the trustee. The US is so abusing its trusteeship through the continual use of an irresponsible
sanctions regime that it risks a good portion of the world economy abandoning its system for someone else's, which may be perceived
to be run more responsibility. The disaster scenario would be the US having therefore in the future to access that other system
to purchase oil or minerals, and having that system do to us what we previously did to them -- sanction us out.
The proper
use by the US of its controlled system thus should be a defensive one -- mainly to act so fairly to all players that it, not someone
else, remains in control of the dominant worldwide exchange system. This sensible course of conduct, unfortunately, is not being
pursued by the US.
there is fuzzy, and then there is very fuzzy, and then there is the fuzziness compounded many-fold. The latter is this article.
Here from wiki: "
" Marx believed that capitalism was inherently built upon practices of usury and thus inevitably leading to the separation
of society into two classes: one composed of those who produce value and the other, which feeds upon the first one. In "Theories
of Surplus Value" (written 1862-1863), he states " that interest (in contrast to industrial profit) and rent (that is the form
of landed property created by capitalist production itself) are superfetations (i.e., excessive accumulations) which are not
essential to capitalist production and of which it can rid itself."
Wiki goes on to identify "rentier" as used by Marx, to be the same thing as "capitalists." What the above quotation says
is that capitalism CAN rid itself of genuine rent capital. First, the feudal rents that were extracted by landowners were NOT
part of a free market system. Serfdom was only one part of unfree conditions. A general condition of anarchy in rules and laws
by petty principalities characteristic of feudalism, both contained commerce and human beings. There was no freedom, political
or economic.
The conflation (collapsing) of rents and interest is a Marxist error which expands into complete nonsense when a competitive
economy has replaced feudal conditions. ON top of that, profits from a business, firm, or industrial enterprise are NOT rents.
Any marxist is a fool to pretend otherwise, and is just another ideological (False consciousness ) fanatic.
Germany loans money back to the poorer nations who buy her exports just as China loans money to the United States (they purchase
roughly a third of our Treasury bonds) so that Americans can continue to buy Chinese manufactured goods.
The role to be played by the USA in the "new world order" is that of being the farmer to the world. The meticulous Asians will
make stuff.
The problem with this is that it is based on 19th century notions of manufacturing. Technique today is vastly more complicated
than it was in the 1820′s and a nation must do everything in its power to protect and nurture its manufacturing and scientific
excellence. In the United States we have been giving this away to our competitors. We educate their children at our taxpayer's
expense and they take the knowledge gained back to their native countries where, with state subsidies, they build factories that
put Americans out of work. We fall further and further behind.
At some point quantity of duplicity turns into quality. and affect international relations. Economic decline can speed this process
up. The US elite has way too easy life since 1991. And that destroyed the tiny patina of self-restraint that it has during Cold War
with negative (hugely negative) consequences first of all for the US population. Empire building is a costly project even if it supported
by the dominance of neoliberal ideology and technological advances in computers and telecommunication. . The idea of "full spectrum
dominance" was a disaster. But the realization of this came too late and at huge cost for the world and for the US population. Russia
decimated its own elite twice in the last century. In might be the time for the USA to follow the Russia example and do it once in XXI
century. If we thing about Hillary Clinton Jon McCain, Joe Biden, Niki Haley, as member of the US elite it is clear that "something
is rotten in the state of Denmark).
Notable quotes:
"... How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in 2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous. ..."
"... There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious. ..."
"... The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia, a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West would use subsequently in Libya. ..."
"... Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. ..."
"... Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point explicitly in a February 2008 State Department briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking. ..."
"... This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Español's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and, more famously, in Ukraine. ..."
"... One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess. Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate. ..."
"... "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard." ..."
"... Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision and Putin knows it. ..."
"... He's been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove (former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough. ..."
"... U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending the befuddled taxpayers the bill. ..."
"... When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America. ..."
How Washington's chronic deceit -- especially towards Russia -- has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy.
For any country, the foundation of successful diplomacy is a reputation for credibility and reliability. Governments are wary
of concluding agreements with a negotiating partner that violates existing commitments and has a record of duplicity. Recent U.S.
administrations have ignored that principle, and their actions have backfired majorly, damaging American foreign policy in the process.
The consequences of previous deceit are most evident in the ongoing effort to achieve a diplomatic solution to the North Korean
nuclear crisis. During his recent trip to East Asia, President Trump
urged
Kim Jong-un's regime to "come to the negotiating table" and "do the right thing" -- relinquish the country's nuclear weapons and
ballistic missile programs. Presumably, that concession would lead to a lifting (or at least an easing) of international economic
sanctions and a more normal relationship between Pyongyang and the international community.
Unfortunately, North Korean leaders have
abundant reasons to be wary of such U.S. enticements. Trump's transparent attempt to renege on Washington's commitment to the
deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- which the United States and other major powers signed in
2015 to curb Tehran's nuclear program -- certainly does not increase Pyongyang's incentive to sign a similar agreement. His decision
to decertify Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, even when the United Nations confirms that
Tehran is adhering to its obligations, appears more than a little disingenuous.
North Korea is likely focused on another incident that raises even greater doubts about U.S. credibility. Libyan dictator Muammar
Qaddafi capitulated on the nuclear issue in December of 2003, abandoning his country's nuclear program and reiterating a commitment
to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and welcomed Libya
back into the community of respectable nations. Barely seven years later, though, Washington and its NATO partners double-crossed
Qaddafi, launching airstrikes and cruise missile attacks to assist rebels in their campaign to overthrow the Libyan strongman. North
Korea and other powers took notice of Qaddafi's fate, making the already difficult task of getting a de-nuclearization agreement
with Pyongyang
nearly
impossible.
The Libya intervention sullied America's reputation in another way. Washington and its NATO allies prevailed on the UN Security
Council to pass a resolution endorsing a military intervention to protect innocent civilians. Russia and China refrained from vetoing
that resolution after Washington's assurances that military action would be limited in scope and solely for humanitarian purposes.
Once the assault began, it quickly became evident that the resolution was merely a fig leaf for another U.S.-led regime-change war.
Beijing, and especially Moscow, understandably felt duped. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates
succinctly described Russia's reaction, both short-term and long-term:
The Russians later firmly believed they had been deceived on Libya. They had been persuaded to abstain at the UN on the grounds
that the resolution provided for a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians. Yet as the list of bombing targets
steadily grew, it became obvious that very few targets were off-limits, and that NATO was intent on getting rid of Qaddafi. Convinced
they had been tricked, the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including against President Bashar al-Assad
in Syria.
The Libya episode was hardly the first time the Russians concluded that U.S. leaders had
cynically
misled them . Moscow asserts that when East Germany unraveled in 1990, both U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and West German
Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher offered verbal assurances that, if Russia accepted a unified Germany within NATO, the alliance
would not expand beyond Germany's eastern border. The official U.S. position that there was nothing in writing affirming such a limitation
is correct -- and the clarity, extent, and duration of any verbal commitment to refrain from enlargement are certainly
matters of
intensecontroversy . But invoking
a "you didn't get it in writing" dodge does not inspire another government's trust.
There seems to be no limit to Washington's desire to crowd Russia. NATO has even added the Baltic republics, which had been
part of the Soviet Union itself. In early 2008, President George W. Bush unsuccessfully
tried to admit Georgia and Ukraine, which
would have engineered yet another alliance move eastward. By that time, Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders were beyond furious.
The timing of Bush's attempted ploy could scarcely have been worse. It came on the heels of Russia's resentment at another
example of U.S. duplicity. In 1999, Moscow had reluctantly accepted a UN mandate to cover NATO's military intervention against Serbia,
a long-standing Russian client. The alliance airstrikes and subsequent moves to detach and occupy Serbia's restless province of Kosovo
for the ostensible reason of protecting innocent civilians from atrocities was the same "humanitarian" justification that the West
would use subsequently in Libya.
Nine years after the initial Kosovo intervention, the United States adopted an evasive policy move, showing utter contempt
for Russia's wishes and interests in the process. Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear
that such a move would face a certain Russian (and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition
of European Union countries brazenly bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial
move. Not even all EU members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their
own.
Russia's leaders protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing
international precedent. Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique. Under Secretary of State
for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns made that point
explicitly in a February 2008 State Department
briefing. Both the illogic and the hubris of that position were breathtaking.
It is painful for any American to admit that the United States has acquired a well-deserved reputation for duplicity in its foreign
policy. But the evidence for that proposition is quite substantial. Indeed, disingenuous U.S. behavior regarding NATO expansion and
the resolution of Kosovo's political status may be the single most important factor for the poisoned bilateral relationship with
Moscow. The U.S. track record of duplicity and betrayal is one reason why prospects for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue
through diplomacy are so bleak.
Actions have consequences, and Washington's reputation for disingenuous behavior has complicated America's own foreign policy
objectives. This is a textbook example of a great power shooting itself in the foot.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 10 books,
the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 700 articles and policy studies on international affairs.
you are dead ON! I have been saying this since IRAQ
fiasco (not one Iraqi onboard on 9/11) we should have invaded egypt and saudi arabia. how the foolish american public(sheep) just
buys the american propaganda is beyond me.. don't blame the Russians one spittle!!
Excellent piece. The US really has destroyed its credibility over the years.
This points Ted Galen Carpenter makes in this piece go a long way toward explaining Russia's destabilizing behavior in recent
years.
One point in particular jumped out at me:
"Kosovo wanted to declare its formal independence from Serbia, but it was clear that such a move would face a certain Russian
(and probable Chinese) veto in the UN Security Council. Washington and an ad-hoc coalition of European Union countries brazenly
bypassed the Council and approved Pristina's independence declaration. It was an extremely controversial move. Not even all EU
members were on board with the policy, since some of them (e.g., Spain) had secessionist problems of their own. Russia's leaders
protested vehemently and warned that the West's unauthorized action established a dangerous, destabilizing international precedent.
Washington rebuffed their complaints, arguing that the Kosovo situation was unique."
This -- in the context of the long history of US and EU deceit and duplicity in their dealings with Russia is why Russia
is supporting Catalan separatism (e.g. RT en Español's constant attacks on Spain and promotion of the separatists). The US and
the EU effectively gave Russia permission to do this back in the 1990s. We set a precedent for their actions in Catalonia -- and,
more famously, in Ukraine.
You have made a reasonable case that the US and Europe have not always been reliable, but the expansion of NATO is not one
of them. No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries feared a
Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard.
The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic which Russia invoked with the Medvedev Doctrine in 2008. This is currently
on display in Ukraine. Russia is aggressively denying Ukraine their sovereignty. Who could possibly blame former Soviet Block
countries for hightailing it to NATO during a lull in Russian aggression?
One could scarcely ask for a better summary of why the Cold War seems, sadly, to be reheating as well as why Democratic attempts
to blame it on Russian meddling are a equally sad evasion of their share of bipartisan responsibility for creating this mess.
Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer for, "the courage to change the things I can," is painfully appropriate.
The whole weakness of the author's argument is a classic American one: very few Americans seem to be able to get their heads around
the fact that the Soviet Union ceased to exist 26 years ago! They are still totally locked into their cold war mentality. He thus
unquestioningly accepts Putin's pre-1789 "sphere of influence" theory in which there are "superior" and "inferior" races, with
only the superior races being entitled to have a sovereign state and the inferior races being forced to submit to being ruled
by foreigners. Mr Carpenter really needs to put his cold war mentality aside and come into the 21st century!
Most seriously
of all, Mr Carpenter offers no solution for improving relations between the US and Russia. Saying that past US actions were wrong,
even if true, says nothing about the present and offers nothing for the future. At best, Mr Carpenter's article is empty moralising.
And the unspoken, but perfectly obvious, subtext, namely that the US should "atone for its sins" by capitulating to Putin,
is morally reprehensible and politically unrealistic. Since, by Mr Carpenter's own account, the problem is caused by US wrongdoing,
isn't it for the US to put things right (for example, by getting Putin out of Ukraine) and not simply make a mess in someone else's
country and then run for home with its tail between its legs? Who gave Americans the right to give away other people's countries?
The one problem with your argument if, you are an american as I am, is that Russia is not acting in our names. If the US government,
supposedly a government of, by, and for the people breaks its word, then you and I are foresworn oathbreakers as well because
the government is (theoretically, at least) acting on OUR authority.
Really?! "Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad or backyard."
I think that if you look at a map or a globe, you will find that this is not a belief but a fact. How you could overlook this,
I don't know.
"The idea of a "sphere of influence" is a cold war relic "
If you are going to try and use history to influence opinion, it is best to check your facts. This is a very old concept.What
do you think the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire in Central Asia was about? For that matter, what we
call the Byzantine Commonwealth was a clearly attempt by the Romaoi to establish a political, cultural, and religious sphere of
influence to support the power of the Empire, much as the United States has been doing over the past several decades.
You could make the case that Iraq too in 2003 is another reason why the Russians and the North Koreans distrust the US.
At this point, it is fairly certain that the Bush Administration knew that Saddam was not building nuclear weapons of mass
destruction, which is what Bush strongly implied in his ramp up to the war.
One other takeaway that the North Koreans mag have from the 2003 Iraq invasion is that the US will lie any way to get what
it wants.
Not saying that Russia or North Korea are perfect. Far from it. But the US needs to take a hard look in the mirror.
Re: craigsummers, "No one forced any eastern European country to join NATO and the EU – decisions that indicate these countries
feared a Russian revival after the collapse of the USSR. Russia always believed that these countries were in their near abroad
or backyard."
Except both here and abroad, the Global Cop Elites in Washington shape the strategy space through propaganda, fear-mongering
and subversion. Moreover, the Eastern European countries are happy to join NATO when it's the American taxpayers who foot a large
percentage of the bill.
Standard U.S. MO: create the threat, inflate the threat, send in the War Machine at massive cost to sustain the threat.
Rather than being broadened, NATO should have been ratcheted back after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. military
presence in Europe massively reduced. Then normalized relations between Europe and Russia would have been designed and developed
by Europe and Russia. Not the 800 pound Gorilla Global Cop that is good at little more than breaking things. (And perversely,
after flushing TRILLIONS of tax dollars down the toilet, duping Americans to wildly applaud the "Warrior-Heroes" for a job well
done.)
The 2008 war between Georgia and Russia was, per observers at the time, in Russian word and thought directly linked to the Balkan
's precedent.
The subtext here – of nation states, sovereignty, separatism and secessionist movements – is even more relevant with respect
to US-China relationships. Since WW2 and that brief, transient monopoly on nuclear weapons, US foreign policy has eroded the Peace
of Westphalia while attempting to erect an "international order" of convenience on top if it.
Both China and Russia know that nothing will stop the expansionism of US "national interests". In response to the doctrinal
aspirations of the Soviets, the US has committed itself to an ideology that is just a greedy and relentless. In retrospect, it
is hard to tell how many decades ago the Cold War stopped being about opposition to Soviet ideology, and instead became about
"projecting" – in every sense of the word – an equally globalist US ideology.
We are the redcoats now. Now wonder the neocons and neolibs are shouting "Russia!" at every opportunity.
I am amazed how many masochistic conservatives are in USA conservative circles especially in the CATO institute. Mr. T. G. Carpenter,
as is clear from not only this and other articles, is a staunch defender of Yalta and proponent of Yalta 2 after the Cold War
ended. As far as I remember Libya was the hatchet job of the Europeans especially the French and British. B. Obama at first didn't
want to attack Libya but gave in after lobbying by the French, British and the neoliberal/neo-conservative lobby and supporters
of the Arab Spring in the USA. America lost credibility after and only since the conservatives neoliberals and neocons manipulated
USA and the West's foreign politics for thirty plus years. USA is still a democratic country so it is easy to blame everything
on the US. In today's Putin's Russia similar critics of the Russian politics wouldn't be so "easy".
The Central Europe doesn't want Russia's sphere of influence precisely because of centuries of Russian occupation and atrocities
in there especially after WW2, brutal and bloody invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Cuban Crisis, Afghanistan, Chechnya
etc. Now you have infiltration by Russia of the American electoral process and political system and some conservatives still can't
connect the dots and see what is going on. I wonder why the western conservatives and US in particular are such great supporters
of Russia. If Russia should be allowed to keep her sphere of influence after the Cold War then what was the reason to fight the
Cold War in the first place. Wouldn't it be easier to surrender to Russia right after WW2.
One other observation about Russia that should be made but isn't is that the Russia-phobes can't point to an actual motive for
Russian military aggression. There is no "Putin Plan" for conquest and domination by Russia like in Das Kapital or Hitler's
Mein Kampf . What strategic value would Russia see from overrunning Poland and then having to perpetually suppress 35
million resistors? Or retaking the Baltic states that have only minority ethnic Russian populations?
Putin is a rationally calculating man. He has made his strategic objectives well known. They are economic. He sees Russia
as the great linchpin of the pan-Eurasian One Belt/One Road (OB/OR) initiative proposed by China as well as the AIIB. In that
construct, Europe and East Asia are Russia's customers and bilateral trading partners. Military conquest would wreck that vision
and Putin knows it.
In the gangster movies, a mob boss often says that he hates bloodshed because it's bad for business. That's Putin. He's
been remarkably restrained when egged on by Big Mouth Nikki Haley, Mad Dog Mattis or that other Pentagon nutcase Phillip Breedlove
(former Supreme Commander of NATO) who have gone out of their way to demonize Russia. Unfortunately, with those Pentagon hacks
whispering in Trump's ear, too much war-mongering is never enough.
U.S. foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. The War Machine Hammer wrecks everything that it touches while sending
the befuddled taxpayers the bill.
"And, Mr. Carpenter, when you have time off from your job as Russian apologist, learn the meaning of "verbal." It's not a synonym
for "oral."
I imagine you thought you were being funny; and you were, just not in the way you foresaw. In fact, verbal is a synonym for
oral; to wit, "spoken rather than written; oral. "a verbal agreement". Synonyms: oral, spoken, stated, said, verbalized, expressed."
Of course anyone who attempts to portray the United States as duplicitous and sneaky (those are synonyms!)is immediately branded
a "Russian apologist". As if there are certain countries which automatically have no rights, and can be assumed to be lying every
time they speak. Except they're not, and the verbal agreement that NATO would not advance further east in exchange for Russian
cooperation has been acknowledged by western principals who were present.
As SteveM implies, NATO's reason for being evaporated with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and was dead as a dodo with
the breakup of the Soviet Union. Everything since has been a rationalization for keeping it going, including regular demonizations
of imaginary enemies until they become real enemies. You can't just 'join NATO' because it's the in-crowd, you know. No, there
are actually criteria, one of which is the premise that your acceptance materially enhances the security of the alliance. Pretty
comical imagining Montenegro in that context, isn't it?
When you meet individual Americans, they are frequently so nice and level-headed that you are perplexed trying to imagine
where their leaders come from. And while we're on that subject, America does not actually have a foreign policy, as such. Its
foreign policy is to bend every other living soul on the planet to the service of America.
Russiagate witch hunt is destroying CIA franchise in Facebook and Twitter, which were used
by many Russians and Eastern Europeans in general.
One telling sign of the national security state is "demonizing enemies of the state" including
using neo-McCarthyism methods, typically for Russiagate.
In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence
for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely
gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since
the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it
probably is not that interesting any more).
Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people,
as the new Undermensch. If these people and US MSM recognized the reality that they are now
a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States
Notable quotes:
"... Buried in the story's "jump" is the acknowledgement that Milner's "companies sold those holdings several years ago." But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage. On Monday, The Washington Post published a page-one article entitled, "9 in Trump's orbit had contacts with Russians." ..."
"... The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that's obviously true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading "Russian propaganda." ..."
"... We saw that when former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile disclosed in her new book that she considered the possibility of replacing Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket after Clinton's public fainting spell and worries about her health. ..."
"... In other words, the go-to excuse for everything these days is to blame the Russians and smear anyone who says anything – no matter how true – if it also was reported on RT. ..."
"... The CIA has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, with some of those efforts farmed out to newer entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NATO has a special command in Latvia that undertakes "strategic communications." ..."
"... Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world to harass people who criticize the Zionist project. Indeed, since the 1980s, Israel has pioneered many of the tactics of computer spying and sabotage that were adopted and expanded by America's National Security Agency, explaining why the Obama administration teamed up with Israel in a scheme to plant malicious code into Iranian centrifuges to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. ..."
"... And, if you're really concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections and policies, there's the remarkable influence of Israel and its perceived ability to effect the defeat of almost any politician who deviates from what the Israeli government wants, going back at least to the 1980s when Sen. Chuck Percy and Rep. Paul Findley were among the political casualties after pursuing contacts with the Palestinians. ..."
"... The answer seems to be the widespread hatred for President Trump combined with vested interests in favor of whipping up the New Cold War. That is a goal valued by both the Military-Industrial Complex, which sees trillions of dollars in strategic weapons systems in the future, and the neoconservatives, who view Russia as a threat to their "regime change" agendas for Syria and Iran. ..."
"... After all, if Russia and its independent-minded President Putin can be beaten back and beaten down, then a big obstacle to the neocon/Israeli goal of expanding the Mideast wars will be removed. ..."
"... Right now, the neocons are openly lusting for a "regime change" in Moscow despite the obvious risks that such turmoil in a nuclear-armed country might create, including the possibility that Putin would be succeeded not by some compliant Western client like the late Boris Yeltsin but by an extreme nationalist who might consider launching a nuclear strike to protect the honor of Mother Russia. ..."
"... The likely outcome from the anti-Russian show trials on Capitol Hill is that technology giants will bow to the bipartisan demand for new algorithms and other methods for stigmatizing, marginalizing and eliminating information that challenges the mainstream storylines in the cause of fighting "Russian propaganda." ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... witch hunt by congressional Democrats, working with the intelligence agencies and leading media outlets, to legitimize censorship and attack free speech on the Internet. ..."
"... The aim of this campaign is to claim that social conflict within the United States arises not from the scale of social inequality in America, greater than in any other country in the developed world, but rather from the actions of "outside agitators" working in the service of the Kremlin. ..."
"... The McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s sought to suppress left-wing thought and label all forms of dissent as illegitimate and treasonous. Those who led them worked to purge left-wing opinion from Hollywood, the trade unions and the universities. ..."
"... Likewise, the new McCarthyism is aimed at creating a political climate in which left-wing organizations and figures are demonized as agents of the Kremlin who are essentially engaged in treasonous activity deserving of criminal prosecution. ..."
"... Danny there was a time not to long ago, I would have said of how we are 'moving towards' to us becoming a police state, well instead replace that prediction of 'moving towards' to the stark reality to be described as 'that now we are', and there you will have it that we have finally arrived to becoming a full blown 'police state'. ..."
"... Thanks to Mr. Parry for this very fair and complete review of the latest attempts to generate a fake foreign enemy. The tyrant over a democracy must generate fake foreign enemies to pose falsely as a protector, so as to demand domestic power and accuse his opponents of disloyalty, as Aristotle and Plato warned thousands of years ago. ..."
"... The insanity of the entire "Russian hacking" narrative has been revealed over and over, including this past weekend when +/-100 Clinton loyalists published a screed on Medium saying Donna Brazile had been taken in by Russian propaganda. ..."
"... I have come to expect just about anything when it comes to Russia-Gate, but I was taken aback by the Hillary bots' accusation that videos of Hillary stumbling and others showing her apparently having a fit of some kind and also needing to be helped up the steps to someone's house -- which were taken by Americans and shown by Americans and seen by millions of shocked Americans -- were driven by Russia-Gate. ..."
"... Now, since the extremist xenophobic idea that contact with *any* Russians is a scandal has taken hold in the United States, people are probably not too eager to mention these contacts in these atmosphere of extreme xenophobic anti-Russian hatred in today's United States. Furthermore, people who have contact with large numbers of people probably really have difficulties remembering and listing these all. ..."
"... Their contacts are with Russian business and maybe the Russian mob, not the Russian state. There is really not question that Trump and his cronies are crooks, but they are crooks in the US and in all the other countries where they do business, not just Russia. I'm sure Mueller will be able to tie Trump directly to some of the sleeze. But there is no evidence that the Russian government is involved in any of it. "Russia-gate" implies Russian government involvement, not just random Russians. There is no evidence of that and moreover the logic is against. ..."
"... Mr. Cash . I think George Papadopoulis, Trump's young Aide, was an inside mole for neocon pro-Israel interests. Those interests needed to knock the unreliable President Trump out of the way to get the "system" back where it belonged – in their pocket. Papadopoulis, on his own, was rummaging around making Trump/Russian connections that finally ended with the the William (Richard?) Browder (well-known Washington DC neocon)/Natalia Veselnitskaya/Donald Trump, Jr. fiasco. The Trumps knew nothing of those negotiations, and young Trump left when he realized Natalia was only interested in Americans being allowed to adopt Russian children again and had no dirt on Hillary. ..."
"... It was never my impression that Cold War liberals opposed McCarthy or the anti-Communist witch hunt. Where they didn't gleefully join in, they watched quietly from the sidelines while the American left was eviscerated, jailed, driven from public life. Then the liberals stepped in when it was clear things were going a little too far and just as the steam had run out of McCarthy's slander machine. ..."
"... At that point figures like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy found the path clear for their brand of political stagecraft. They were imperialists to a man, something they proved abundantly when given the chance. Liberals supplanted the left in U.S. life- in the unions, the teaching profession, publishing and every other field where criticism of the Cold War and the enduring prevalence of worker solidarity across international lines threatened the new order. ..."
"... The book concludes that by equating dissent with disloyalty, promoting guilt by association, and personally commanding loyalty programs, ""Truman and his advisors employed all the political and programmatic techniques that in later years were to become associated with the broad phenomenon of McCarthyism."" ..."
"... Formed by Google in June 2015 with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat as a founding member, the "First Draft" coalition includes all the usual mainstream media "partners" in "regime change" war propaganda: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the UK Guardian and Telegraph, BBC News, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab and Kiev-based Stopfake. ..."
"... In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it probably is not that interesting any more) ..."
"... Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people, anyone who is "Russian linked" by ever having logged in to social networks from Russia or using Cyrillic letters. If these people and their media at least recognized the reality that they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States ..."
"... The interview of Roger Waters on RT is one of the best I have seen in a long while. I wish some other artists get the courage to raise their voices. The link to the Roger Waters interview is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jcvfbLoIA This Roger Waters interview is worth watching. ..."
"... It would seem that everyone on the US telivision , newspaper and internet news has mastered the art of hand over mouth , gasp and looking horrified every time Russia is mentioned. It looks to me that the US is in the middle of another of it´s mid life crises. Panic reigns supreme every where. If it was not so sad it would be funny. i was born in the 1940s and remember the McCarthy witch hunts and the daily shower of people jumping out of windows as a result of it. ..."
"... In The Fifties (1993), American journalist and historian David Halberstam addressed the noxious effect of McCarthyism: "McCarthy's carnival like four year spree of accusation charges, and threats touched something deep in the American body politic, something that lasted long after his own recklessness, carelessness and boozing ended his career in shame." (page 53) ..."
"... Halberstam specifically discussed how readily the so-called "free" press acquiesced to McCarthy's masquerading: "The real scandal in all this was the behavior of the members of the Washington press corps, who, more often than not, knew better. They were delighted to be a part of his traveling road show, chronicling each charge and then moving on to the next town, instead of bothering to stay behind and follow up. They had little interest in reporting how careless McCarthy was or how little it all meant to him." (page 55) ..."
"... Why have they not investigated James Comey? Why has the MSM instead created a Russian Boogeyman? Why was he invited to testify about the Russian connection but never cross examined about his own influence? Why is the clearest reason for election meddling by James Comey not even spoken of by the MSM? This is because the MSM does not want to cover events as they happened but wants to recreate a alternate reality suitable to themselves which serves their interests and convinces us that the MSM has no part at all in downplaying the involvement of themselves in the election but wants to create a foreign enemy to blame. ..."
Special Report: Many American liberals who once denounced McCarthyism as evil are now learning
to love the ugly tactic when it can be used to advance the Russia-gate "scandal" and silence dissent,
reports Robert Parry.
The New York Times has finally detected some modern-day McCarthyism, but not in the anti-Russia
hysteria that the newspaper has fueled for several years amid the smearing of American skeptics as
"useful idiots" and the like. No, the Times editors
are accusing a Long Island Republican of McCarthyism for linking his Democratic rival to "New
York City special interest groups." As the Times laments, "It's the old guilt by association."
Yet, the Times sees no McCarthyism in the frenzy of Russia-bashing and guilt by association for
any American who can be linked even indirectly to any Russian who might have some ill-defined links
to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Monday, in the same edition that expressed editorial outrage over that Long Island political
ad's McCarthyism, the Times ran two front-page articles under the headline: "A Complex Paper Trail:
Blurring Kremlin's Ties to Key U.S. Businesses."
Buried in the story's "jump" is the acknowledgement that Milner's "companies sold those holdings
several years ago." But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington
and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage.
On Monday, The Washington Post published
a page-one article entitled, "9 in Trump's orbit had contacts with Russians."
The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that's obviously
true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading
"Russian propaganda."
We saw that when former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile disclosed in her
new book that she considered the possibility of replacing Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket
after Clinton's public fainting spell and worries about her health.
Though there was a video of Clinton's collapse on Sept. 11, 2016, followed by her departure from
the campaign trail to fight pneumonia – not to mention her earlier scare with blood clots – the
response from a group of 100 Clinton supporters was to question Brazile's patriotism: "It is
particularly troubling and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda,
spread by both the Russians and our opponents about our candidate's health."
In other words, the go-to excuse for everything these days is to blame the Russians and smear
anyone who says anything – no matter how true – if it also was reported on RT.
Pressing the Tech Companies
Just as Sen. Joe McCarthy liked to haul suspected "communists" and "fellow-travelers" before his
committee in the 1950s, the New McCarthyism has its own witch-hunt hearings, such as last week's
Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google for supposedly allowing Russians
to have input into the Internet's social networks. Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled
before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.Trying to appease Congress and fend off threats of government regulation, the rich tech companies
displayed their eagerness to eradicate any Russian taint.
Twitter's general counsel Sean J. Edgett
told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism that Twitter adopted an "expansive
approach to defining what qualifies as a Russian-linked account."
Edgett said the criteria included "whether the account was created in Russia, whether the user
registered the account with a Russian phone carrier or a Russian email address, whether the user's
display name contains Cyrillic characters, whether the user frequently Tweets in Russian, and whether
the user has logged in from any Russian IP address, even a single time. We considered an account
to be Russian-linked if it had even one of the relevant criteria."
The trouble with Twitter's methodology was that none of those criteria would connect an account
to the Russian government, let alone Russian intelligence or some Kremlin-controlled "troll farm."
But the criteria could capture individual Russians with no link to the Kremlin as well as people
who weren't Russian at all, including, say, American or European visitors to Russia who logged onto
Twitter through a Moscow hotel.
Also left unsaid is that Russians are not the only national group that uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
It is considered a standard script for writing in Belarus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbo-Croatia and
Ukraine. So, for instance, a Ukrainian using the Cyrillic alphabet could end up falling into the
category of "Russian-linked" even if he or she hated Putin.
Twitter's attorney also said the company conducted a separate analysis from information provided
by unidentified "third party sources" who pointed toward accounts supposedly controlled by the St.
Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), totaling 2,752 accounts. The IRA is typically described
in the U.S. press as a "troll farm" which employs tech-savvy employees who combat news and opinions
that are hostile to Russia and the Russian government. But exactly how those specific accounts were
traced back to this organization was not made clear.
And, to put that number in some perspective, Twitter claims 330 million active monthly users,
which makes the 2,752 accounts less than 0.001 percent of the total.
The Trouble with 'Trolling'
While the Russia-gate investigation has sought to portray the IRA effort as exotic and somehow
unique to Russia, the strategy is followed by any number of governments, political movements and
corporations – sometimes using enthusiastic volunteers but often employing professionals skilled
at challenging critical information or at least muddying the waters.
Those of us who operate on the Internet are familiar with harassment from "trolls" who may use
access to "comment" sections to inject propaganda and disinformation to sow confusion, to cause disruption,
or to discredit the site by promoting ugly opinions and nutty conspiracy theories.
As annoying as this "trolling" is, it's just a modern version of more traditional strategies used
by powerful entities for generations – hiring public-relations specialists, lobbyists, lawyers and
supposedly impartial "activists" to burnish images, fend off negative news and intimidate nosy investigators.
In this competition, modern Russia is both a late-comer and a piker.
The U.S. government fields legions of publicists, propagandists, paid journalists,
psy-ops specialists , contractors and non-governmental organizations to promote Washington's
positions and undermine rivals through information warfare.
The CIA has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, with some of
those
efforts farmed out to newer entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or paid
for by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NATO has a special command in Latvia
that undertakes
"strategic communications."
Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world
to harass people who criticize the Zionist project. Indeed, since the 1980s, Israel has pioneered
many of the tactics of computer spying and sabotage that were adopted and expanded by America's National
Security Agency, explaining why the Obama administration teamed up with Israel in a scheme to plant
malicious code into Iranian centrifuges to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.
It's also ironic that the U.S. government touted social media as a great benefit in advancing
so-called "color revolutions" aimed at "regime change" in troublesome countries. For instance, when
the "green revolution" was underway in Iran in 2009 after the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
the Obama administration asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance so the street protesters
could continue using the platform to organize against Ahmadinejad and to distribute their side of
the story to the outside world.
During the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, Facebook, Twitter and Skype won praise as a means of
organizing mass demonstrations to destabilize governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Back then,
the U.S. government denounced any attempts to throttle these social media platforms and the free
flow of information that they permitted as proof of dictatorship.
Social media also was a favorite of the U.S. government in Ukraine in 2013-14 when the Maidan
protests exploited these platforms to help destabilize and ultimately overthrow the elected government
of Ukraine, the key event that launched the New Cold War with Russia.
Swinging the Social Media Club
The truth is that, in those instances, the U.S. governments and its agencies were eagerly exploiting
the platforms to advance Washington's geopolitical agenda by disseminating American propaganda and
deploying U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, which
taught
activists how to use social media to advance "regime change" scenarios.
A White Helmets volunteer pointing to the aftermath of a military attack.
While these uprisings were sold to Western audiences as genuine outpourings of public anger –
and there surely was some of that – the protests also benefited from U.S. funding and expertise.
In particular, NED and USAID provided money, equipment and training for anti-government operatives
challenging regimes in U.S. disfavor.
One of the most successful of these propaganda operations occurred in Syria where anti-government
rebels operating in areas controlled by Al Qaeda and its fellow Islamic militants used social media
to get their messaging to Western mainstream journalists who couldn't enter those sectors without
fear of beheading.
Since the rebels' goal of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad meshed with the objectives of
the U.S. government and its allies in Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Western journalists
uncritically accepted the words and images provided by Al Qaeda's collaborators.
The success of this propaganda was so extraordinary that the White Helmets, a "civil defense"
group that worked in Al Qaeda territory, became the go-to source for dramatic video and even was
awarded the short-documentary
Oscar for an info-mercial produced for Netflix – despite evidence that the White Helmets were
staging some of the scenes for propaganda purposes.
Indeed, one argument for believing that Putin and the Kremlin might have "meddled" in last year's
U.S. election is that they could have felt it was time to give the United States a taste of its own
medicine.
After all, the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure the continued rule
of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin. And there were the U.S.-backed street protests in Moscow
against the 2011 and 2012 elections in which Putin strengthened his political mandate. Those
protests earned the "color" designation the "snow revolution."
However, whatever Russia may or may not have done before last year's U.S. election, the Russia-gate
investigations have always sought to exaggerate the impact of that alleged "meddling" and molded
the narrative to whatever weak evidence was available.
The original storyline was that Putin authorized the "hacking" of Democratic emails as part of
a "disinformation" operation to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy and to help elect Donald Trump
– although
no hard evidence has been presented to establish that Putin gave such an order or that Russia
"hacked" the emails. WikiLeaks has repeatedly denied getting the emails from Russia, which also denies
any meddling.
Further, the emails were not "disinformation"; they were both real and, in many cases, newsworthy.
The DNC emails provided evidence that the DNC unethically tilted the playing field in favor of Clinton
and against Sen. Bernie Sanders, a point that Brazile also discovered in reviewing staffing and financing
relationships that Clinton had with the DNC under the prior chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The purloined emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta revealed the contents of Clinton's
paid speeches to Wall Street (information that she was trying to hide from voters) and pay-to-play
features of the Clinton Foundation.
A Manchurian Candidate?
Still, the original narrative was that Putin wanted his Manchurian Candidate (Trump) in the White
House and took the extraordinary risk of infuriating the odds-on favorite (Clinton) by releasing
the emails even though they appeared unlikely to prevent Clinton's victory. So, there was always
that logical gap in the Russia-gate theory.
Since then, however, the U.S. mainstream narrative has shifted, in part, because the evidence
of Russian election "meddling" was so shaky. Under intense congressional pressure to find something,
Facebook reported
$100,000 in allegedly "Russian-linked" ads purchased in 2015-17, but noted that only 44 percent
were bought before the election. So, not only was the "Russian-linked" pebble tiny – compared to
Facebook's annual revenue of $27 billion – but more than half of the pebble was tossed into this
very large lake after Clinton had already lost.
So, the storyline was transformed into some vague Russian scheme to exacerbate social tensions
in the United States by taking different sides of hot-button issues, such as police brutality against
blacks. The New York Times reported that one of these "Russian-linked" pages
featured photos of cute puppies , which the Times speculated must have had some evil purpose
although it was hard to fathom. (Oh, those devious Russians!).
The estimate of how many Americans may have seen one of these "Russian-linked" ads also keeps
growing, now up to as many as 126 million or about one-third of the U.S. population. Of course, the
way the Internet works – with any item possibly going viral – you might as well say the ads could
have reached billions of people.
Whenever I write an article or send out a Tweet, I too could be reaching 126 million or even billions
of people, but the reality is that I'd be lucky if the number were in the thousands. But amid the
Russia-gate frenzy, no exaggeration is too outlandish or too extreme.
Another odd element of Russia-gate is that the intensity of this investigation is disproportionate
to the lack of interest shown toward far better documented cases of actual foreign-government interference
in American elections and policymaking.
For instance, the major U.S. media long ignored the extremely well-documented case of Richard
Nixon colluding with South Vietnamese officials to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam
War peace talks to gain an advantage for Nixon in the 1968 election. That important chapter of history
only gained
The
New York Times' seal of approval earlier this year after the Times had dismissed the earlier
volumes of evidence as "rumors."
In the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan's team – especially his campaign director William Casey in
collaboration with Israel and Iran – appeared to have gone behind President Jimmy Carter's back
to undercut Carter's negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran and essentially
doom Carter's reelection hopes.
There were a couple of dozen witnesses to that scheme who spoke with me and other investigative
journalists – as well as documentary evidence showing that President Reagan did authorize secret
arms shipments to Iran via Israel shortly after the hostages were freed during Reagan's inauguration
on Jan. 20, 1981.
However, since Vice President (later President) George H.W. Bush, who was implicated in the scheme,
was well-liked on both sides of the aisle and because Reagan had become a Republican icon, the October
Surprise case of 1980 was pooh-poohed by the major media and dismissed by a congressional investigation
in the early 1990s. Despite the extraordinary number of witnesses and supporting documents, Wikipedia
listed the scandal as a "conspiracy theory."
Israeli Influence
And, if you're really concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections and policies,
there's the remarkable influence of Israel and its perceived ability to effect the defeat of almost
any politician who deviates from what the Israeli government wants, going back at least to the 1980s
when
Sen.
Chuck Percy and Rep. Paul Findley were among the political casualties after pursuing contacts
with the Palestinians.
If anyone doubts how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to pull the strings
of U.S. politicians, just watch one of his record-tying three addresses to joint sessions of Congress
and count how often
Republicans and Democrats jump to their feet in enthusiastic applause. (The only other foreign
leader to get the joint-session honor three times was Great Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)
So, what makes Russia-gate different from the other cases? Did Putin conspire with Trump to extend
a bloody war as Nixon did with the South Vietnamese leaders? Did Putin lengthen the captivity of
U.S. hostages to give Trump a political edge? Did Putin manipulate U.S. policy in the Middle East
to entice President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and set the region ablaze, as Israel's Netanyahu
did? Is Putin even now pushing for wider Mideast wars, as Netanyahu is?
Indeed, one point that's never addressed in any serious way is why is the U.S. so angry with Russia
while these other cases, in which U.S. interests were clearly damaged and American democracy compromised,
were treated largely as non-stories.
Why is Russia-gate a big deal while the other cases weren't? Why are opposite rules in play now
– with Democrats, many Republicans and the major news media flogging fragile "links," needling what
little evidence there is, and assuming the worst rather than insisting that only perfect evidence
and perfect witnesses be accepted as in the earlier cases?
The answer seems to be the widespread hatred for President Trump combined with vested interests
in favor of whipping up the New Cold War. That is a goal valued by both the Military-Industrial Complex,
which sees trillions of dollars in strategic weapons systems in the future, and the neoconservatives,
who view Russia as a threat to their "regime change" agendas for Syria and Iran.
After all, if Russia and its independent-minded President Putin can be beaten back and beaten
down, then a big obstacle to the neocon/Israeli goal of expanding the Mideast wars will be removed.
Right now, the neocons are openly lusting for a
"regime change" in Moscow despite the obvious risks that such turmoil in a nuclear-armed country
might create, including the possibility that Putin would be succeeded not by some compliant Western
client like the late Boris Yeltsin but by an extreme nationalist who might consider launching a nuclear
strike to protect the honor of Mother Russia.
The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons
by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and "stop fascism." But their contempt for Trump
and their exaggeration of the "Hitler" threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses have
blinded them to
the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they are playing into the
hands of the war-hungry neocons.
A Smokescreen for Repression
There also seems to be little or no concern that the Establishment is using Russia-gate as a smokescreen
for
clamping down on independent media sites on the Internet. Traditional supporters of civil liberties
have looked the other way as the rights of people associated with the Trump campaign have been trampled
and journalists who simply question the State Department's narratives on, say, Syria and Ukraine
are denounced as "Moscow stooges" and "useful idiots."
The likely outcome from the anti-Russian show trials on Capitol Hill is that technology giants
will bow to the bipartisan demand for new algorithms and other methods for stigmatizing, marginalizing
and eliminating information that challenges the mainstream storylines in the cause of fighting "Russian
propaganda."
The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. "I don't think you get it," Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-California,
warned social media executives last week. "You bear this responsibility. You created these platforms,
and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it. Or we will."
As this authoritarian if not totalitarian future looms and as the dangers of nuclear annihilation
from an intentional or unintentional nuclear war with Russia grow, many people who should know better
are caught up in the Russia-gate frenzy.
I used to think that liberals and progressives opposed McCarthyism because they regarded it as
a grave threat to freedom of thought and to genuine democracy, but now it appears that they have
learned to love McCarthyism except, of course, when it rears its ugly head in some Long Island political
ad criticizing New York City.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative,
either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com ).
Joe Tedesky , November 6, 2017 at 3:12 pm
I watched the C-Span 'Russian/2016 Election Investigation Hearings' in horror, as each congressperson
grilled the Hi-Tech executives in a way to suggest that our First Amendment Rights are now on
life support, and our Congress is ready to pull the plug at any moment. I thought, of how this
wasn't the America I was brought up to believe in. So as I have reached the age in life where
nothing should surprise me, I realize now how fragile our Rights are, in this warring nation that
calls itself America.
When it comes to Israel I have two names, Jonathan Pollard & the USS Liberty, and with that,
that is enough said.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:33 pm
This week's congressional hearings on "extremist content" on the Internet mark a new stage
in the McCarthyite witch hunt by congressional Democrats, working with the intelligence agencies
and leading media outlets, to legitimize censorship and attack free speech on the Internet.
One after another, congressmen and senators goaded representatives of Google, Twitter and Facebook
to admit that their platforms were used to sow "social divisions" and "extremist" political opinions.
The aim of this campaign is to claim that social conflict within the United States arises
not from the scale of social inequality in America, greater than in any other country in the developed
world, but rather from the actions of "outside agitators" working in the service of the Kremlin.
The hearings revolved around claims that Russia sought to "weaponize" the Internet by harnessing
social anger within the United States. "Russia," said Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, promoted
"discord in the US by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues." It sought to "mobilize
real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests."
The McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s sought to suppress left-wing thought and label
all forms of dissent as illegitimate and treasonous. Those who led them worked to purge left-wing
opinion from Hollywood, the trade unions and the universities.
Likewise, the new McCarthyism is aimed at creating a political climate in which left-wing
organizations and figures are demonized as agents of the Kremlin who are essentially engaged in
treasonous activity deserving of criminal prosecution.
Watching this Orwellian tragedy play out in our American society, where our Congress is insisting
that disclaimers and restrictions be placed upon suspicious adbuys and editorial essays, is counterintuitive
to what we Americans were brought up to belief. Why, all my life teachers, and adults, would warn
us students of reading the news to not to believe everything we read as pure fact, but to research
a subject before coming to a conclusion toward your accepting an opinion to wit. And with these
warnings of avoiding us being suckered into a wrong belief, we were told that this was the price
we were required to pay for having a free press society. This freedom of speech was, and has always
been the bedrock of our hopes and wishes for our belief in the American Dream.
Danny there was a time not to long ago, I would have said of how we are 'moving towards'
to us becoming a police state, well instead replace that prediction of 'moving towards' to the
stark reality to be described as 'that now we are', and there you will have it that we have finally
arrived to becoming a full blown 'police state'. Little by little, and especially since 911
one by one our civil liberties were taken away. Here again our freedom of speech is being destroyed,
and with this America is now where Germany had been in the mid-thirties. America's own guilty
conscience is rapidly doing some physiological projections onto their imaginary villain Russia.
All I keep hearing is my dear sweet mother lecturing me on how one lie always leads to another
lie until the truth will finally jump up and bite you in the ass, and think to myself of how wise
my mother had been with her young girl Southside philosophy. May you Rest In Peace Mum.
Martin , November 7, 2017 at 3:21 pm
Yankees chicks are coming home to roost. So many peoples rights and lives had to be extinguished
for Americans to have the illusion of pursuing their happiness, well, what goes around comes around.
Gregory Herr , November 7, 2017 at 8:39 pm
Gee wiz Adam Schiff you make it sound as if signing petitions and rallying to causes and civil
protests are unamerican or something. And Russians on the internet are harnessing social anger!
Pathetic. These jerks who would have us believe they are interested in "saving" democracy or stopping
fascism have sure got it backward.
Geoffrey de Galles , November 8, 2017 at 12:33 pm
Joe, Allow me please, respectfully, to add Mordecai Vanunu -- Israel's own Daniel Ellsberg
-- to your two names.
Erik G , November 6, 2017 at 3:55 pm
Thanks to Mr. Parry for this very fair and complete review of the latest attempts to generate
a fake foreign enemy. The tyrant over a democracy must generate fake foreign enemies to pose falsely
as a protector, so as to demand domestic power and accuse his opponents of disloyalty, as Aristotle
and Plato warned thousands of years ago.
It is especially significant that the zionists are the sole beneficiaries of this scam as well
as the primary sponsors of the DNC, hoping to attack Russia and Iran to support Israeli land thefts
in the Mideast. It is well established that zionists control US mass media, which never examine
the central issue of our times, the corruption of democracy by the zionist/MIC/WallSt influence
upon the US government and mass media. Russia-gate is in fact a coverup for Israel-gate.
Why did we ever believe that the democrat party was a defender of free speech? These bought
and paid for tools of the economic elites are only interested in serving their masters with slavish
devotion. Selfishness and immorality are their stock in trade; betraying the public their real
intention.
Cratylus , November 6, 2017 at 4:11 pm
Great essay.
But one disagreement. I may agree with Trump on very, very few things, among them getting rid
of the horrible TPP, one cornerstone of Hillary's pivot; meeting with Putin in Hamburg; the Lavrov-Tillerson
arranged cease-fire in SE Syria; the termination of the CIA's support for anti-Assad jihadis in
Syria; a second meeting with Putin at the ASEAN conference this week; and in general the idea
of "getting along with Russia" (a biggie) which Russia-gate is slowing to a crawl as designed
by the neocons.
But Trump as an "incompetent buffoon" is a stretch albeit de rigueur on the pages of the NYT,
the programs of NPR and in all "respectable" precincts. Trump won the presidency for god's sake
– something that eluded the 17 other GOP primary candidates, some of them considered very"smart"
and Bernie and Jill, and in the past, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul – and the supposedly "very smart"
Hillary for which we should be eternally grateful. "Incompetent" hardly seems accurate. The respectable
commentariat has continually underestimated Trump. We should heed Putin who marveled at Trump's
seemingly impossible victory.
Bill Cash , November 6, 2017 at 4:13 pm
How do you explain all the connections between Trump acolytes and Russia and their lying about
it. I think they've all lied about their contacts. Why would they do that?I lived through the
real McCarthyism and, so far, this isn't close to what happened then.
Bill , November 6, 2017 at 4:40 pm
Probably because they are corruptly involved. Thing is, the higher priority is to avoid another
decades-long cold war risking nuclear war. Do you remember how many close calls we had in the
last one?
I'm more suspicious of Trump than most here, but even I think we need some priorities. Far
more extensive corruption of a similar variety keeps occurring and no one cares, as Mr. Parry
points out here yet again.
As for McCarthyism, whatever the current severity, the result is unfolding as a new campaign
against dissenting voices on the internet. That's supremely not-okay with me.
Gregory Herr , November 7, 2017 at 8:46 pm
Right. Just because we don't yet have another fulll-fledged HUAC happening doesn't mean severe
perils aren't attached to this new McCarthyism. Censorship of dissent is supremely not-okay with
me as well.
That class of people lie as a matter of course; it's standard procedure. If you exacerbate
it by adding on the anti-Russia hysteria that was spewed out by the Democrats before the ink was
dry on the ballots, what possible reason would they have for being truthful?
The insanity of the entire "Russian hacking" narrative has been revealed over and over,
including this past weekend when +/-100 Clinton loyalists published a screed on Medium saying
Donna Brazile had been taken in by Russian propaganda.
Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 7:10 pm
I have come to expect just about anything when it comes to Russia-Gate, but I was taken
aback by the Hillary bots' accusation that videos of Hillary stumbling and others showing her
apparently having a fit of some kind and also needing to be helped up the steps to someone's house
-- which were taken by Americans and shown by Americans and seen by millions of shocked Americans
-- were driven by Russia-Gate.
Obviously, Brazile, like millions of voters, saw these films and made appropriate inferences:
that Hillary's basic health and stamina were a question mark. Of course, Hillary also offered
Americans nothing in her campaign rhetoric. She came across as the mother-in-law from hell.
Was it also a Russia-Gate initiative when Hillary hid from her supporters on election night
and let Podesta face the screaming sobbing supporters? Too much spiked vodka or something? Our
political stage in the USA is a madhouse.
Adrian Engler , November 6, 2017 at 6:20 pm
These people probably have "connections" with a relatively large number of people, and only
very small fraction of the people they have contact with are probably Russians. Now, since
the extremist xenophobic idea that contact with *any* Russians is a scandal has taken hold in
the United States, people are probably not too eager to mention these contacts in these atmosphere
of extreme xenophobic anti-Russian hatred in today's United States. Furthermore, people who have
contact with large numbers of people probably really have difficulties remembering and listing
these all.
Today's political atmosphere in the United States probably has a lot in common with the Soviet
Union. There, people got in trouble if they had contacts with people from Western, capitalist
countries – and if they were asked and did not mention these contacts in order to avoid problems,
they could get in trouble even more.
I think it is absolutely clear that no one who takes part in this hateful anti-Russian campaign
can pretend to be liberal or progressive. The kind of society these xenophobes who detest pluralism
and accuse everyone who has opinions outside the mainstream of being a foreign agent is absolutely
abhorrent, in my view.
Leslie F , November 6, 2017 at 6:40 pm
Their contacts are with Russian business and maybe the Russian mob, not the Russian state.
There is really not question that Trump and his cronies are crooks, but they are crooks in the
US and in all the other countries where they do business, not just Russia. I'm sure Mueller will
be able to tie Trump directly to some of the sleeze. But there is no evidence that the Russian
government is involved in any of it. "Russia-gate" implies Russian government involvement, not
just random Russians. There is no evidence of that and moreover the logic is against.
occupy on , November 7, 2017 at 12:47 am
Mr. Cash . I think George Papadopoulis, Trump's young Aide, was an inside mole for neocon
pro-Israel interests. Those interests needed to knock the unreliable President Trump out of the
way to get the "system" back where it belonged – in their pocket. Papadopoulis, on his own, was
rummaging around making Trump/Russian connections that finally ended with the the William (Richard?)
Browder (well-known Washington DC neocon)/Natalia Veselnitskaya/Donald Trump, Jr. fiasco. The
Trumps knew nothing of those negotiations, and young Trump left when he realized Natalia was only
interested in Americans being allowed to adopt Russian children again and had no dirt on Hillary.
In the meantime, Trump Jr. was connected with an evil Russian (Natalia), William Browder was
able to link the neocon-hated Trump Sr with neocon-hated, evil Russians (who currently have a
warrant out for Browder's arrest on a 15 [or 50?] million dollar tax evasion charge), and neocons
have a good chance of claiming victory out of chaos (as is their style and was their intent for
the Middle East [not Washington DC!] in the neocon Project For a New American Century – 1998).
Clinton may have lost power in Washington DC, but Clinton-supporting neocons may not have – thanks
to George Papadopoulis. We shall see. Something tells me the best is yet to come out of the Mueller
Investigations.
Roy G Biv , November 7, 2017 at 2:03 pm
You are seeing it clearly Bill. This site was once a go-to-source for investigative journalism.
Now it is a place for opinion screeds, mostly with head buried in the sand about the blatant Russian
manipulation of the 2016 election. The dominant gang of posters here squash any dissent and dissenting
comments usually get deleted within a day. I don't understand why and how it came to be so, but
the hysterical labeling of Comey/Mueller investigations as McCarthyism by Parry has ruined his
sterling reputation for me.
Stygg , November 7, 2017 at 2:24 pm
If this "Russian manipulation" was as blatant as everyone keeps telling me, how come it's all
based on ridiculous BS instead of evidence? Where's the beef?
anon , November 7, 2017 at 3:22 pm
Unable to substantiate anything you say nor argue against anything said here, you disgrace
yourself. Do you think anyone is fooled by your repeated lie that you are a disaffected former
supporter of this site? And you made the "Stygg" reply above.
Tom Hall , November 6, 2017 at 4:46 pm
It was never my impression that Cold War liberals opposed McCarthy or the anti-Communist
witch hunt. Where they didn't gleefully join in, they watched quietly from the sidelines while
the American left was eviscerated, jailed, driven from public life. Then the liberals stepped
in when it was clear things were going a little too far and just as the steam had run out of McCarthy's
slander machine.
At that point figures like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy found the
path clear for their brand of political stagecraft. They were imperialists to a man, something
they proved abundantly when given the chance. Liberals supplanted the left in U.S. life- in the
unions, the teaching profession, publishing and every other field where criticism of the Cold
War and the enduring prevalence of worker solidarity across international lines threatened the
new order.
So it's no surprise that liberalism is the rallying point for a new wave of repression. The
dangerous buffoon currently occupying the White House stands as a perfect foil to the phony indignation
of the liberal leadership- Schumer, Pelosi et al.. The jerk was made to order, and they mean to
dump him as their ideological forebears unloaded old Tail Gunner Joe. In fact, Trump is so odious,
the Democrats, their media colleagues and major elements of the national security state believe
that bringing down the bozo can be made to look like a triumph of democracy. Of course, by then
dissent will have been stamped out far more efficiently than Trump and his half-assed cohorts
could have achieved. And it will be done in the name of restoring sanity, honoring the constitution,
and protecting everyone from the Russians. I was born in the fifties, and it looks like I'm going
to die in the fifties.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:37 pm
Truman started it. And he used it very well.
THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE AND ORIGINS OF ""McCARTHYISM
By Richard M. Freeland
This book argues that Truman used anti-Communist scare tactics to force Congress to implement
his plans for multilateral free trade and specifically to pass the Marshall Plan. This is a sound
emphasis, but other elements of postwar anti-Communist campaigns are neglected, especially anti-labor
legislation; and Freeland attributes to Truman a ""go-soft"" attitude toward the Soviets, which
is certainly not proven by the fact that he restrained the ultras Forrestal, Kennan, and Byrnes
-- indeed, some of Freeland's own citations confirm Truman's violent anti-Soviet spirit.
The book concludes that by equating dissent with disloyalty, promoting guilt by association,
and personally commanding loyalty programs, ""Truman and his advisors employed all the political
and programmatic techniques that in later years were to become associated with the broad phenomenon
of McCarthyism."" Freeland's revisionism is confined and conservative: he deems the Soviets
most responsible for the Cold War and implies that ""subversion"" was in fact a menace.
You are one of the very few critical journalists today willing to print objective measures
of the truth, while the MSM spins out of control under the guise of "protecting America" (and
their vital sources), while at the same time actually undermining the very principles of a working
democracy they sanctimoniously pretend to defend. It makes me nostalgic for the McCarthy era,
when we could safely satirize the Army-McCarthy Hearings (unless you were a witness!). I offer
the following as a retrospective of a lost era.:
Top-Ten Criteria for being a Putin Stooge, and a Chance at Winning A One Way Lottery Ticket:to
the Gala Gitmo Hotel:
:
(1) Reading Consortium News, Truth Dig, The Real News Network, RT and Al Jeziera
(2) Drinking Starbucks and vodka at the Russian Tea Room with Russian tourists (with an embedded
FSS agent) in NYC.
(3) Meeting suspicious tour guides in Red Square who accept dollars for their historical jokes.
(4) Claiming to catch a cell phone photo of the Putin limousine passing through the Kremlin Tower
gate.
(4) Starting a joint venture with a Russian trading partner who sells grain to feed Putin's stable
of stallions. .
(5) Catching the flu while being sneezed upon in Niagara Falls by a Russian violinist.
(6) Finding the hidden jewels in the Twelfth Chair were nothing but cut glass.
(7) Reading War and Peace on the Brighton Beach ferry.
(8) Playing the iPod version of Rachmaninoff's "Vespers" through ear buds while attending mass
in Dallas, TX..
(9) Water skiing on the Potomac flying a pennant saying "Wasn't Boris Good Enough?"
(10) Having audibly chuckled even once at items (1) – (9). Thanks Bob, Please don't let up!
Lisa , November 6, 2017 at 7:47 pm
Howard,
I chuckled loudly more than once – but luckily, no one heard me! No witnesses! So you are acquainted
with the masterpiece "12 chairs"? Very suspicious.
David G , November 6, 2017 at 8:42 pm
I've heard that's Mel Brooks favorite among his own movies.
David G , November 6, 2017 at 8:48 pm
I always find it exasperating when I have to remind the waiter at the diner to bring Russian
dressing along with the reuben sandwich, but these days I wonder if my loyalty is being tested.
Dave P. , November 6, 2017 at 10:27 pm
David G –
They will change the name of dressing very soon. Remember 2003 when French refused to endorse
the invasion of Iraq. I think they unofficially changed the name of "French Fries" to "Freedom
Fries".
It is just the start. The whole History is being rewritten – in compliance with Zionist Ideology.
Those evil Russkies will be shown as they are!
Clearly, since I've published one book by a Russian, one by a now-deceased US ex-pat living
in Russia, and have our catalog made available in Russia via our international distributor, I
am a traitor to the US. If you add in my staunch resistance to the whole Russiagate narrative
AND the fact I post links to stories in RT America, I'm doomed.
I wish I could think I'm being wholly sarcastic.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:38 pm
You are not alone. Many of us live outside the open air prison and feel the same way
Abe , November 6, 2017 at 5:29 pm
Robert Parry has described "the New McCarthyism" having "its own witch-hunt hearings". In fact
"last week's Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google" was merely an exercise
in political theatre because all three entities already belong to the "First Draft" coalition:
Formed by Google in June 2015 with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat as
a founding member, the "First Draft" coalition includes all the usual mainstream media "partners"
in "regime change" war propaganda: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the UK Guardian and
Telegraph, BBC News, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab and Kiev-based Stopfake.
In a remarkable post-truth declaration, the "First Draft" coalition insists that members will
"work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process".
In the "post-truth" regime of US and NATO hybrid warfare, the deliberate distortion of truth
and facts is called "verification".
The Washington Post / PropOrNot imbroglio, and "First Draft" coalition "partner" organizations'
zeal to "verify" US intelligence-backed fake news claims about Russian hacking of the US presidential
election, reveal the "post-truth" mission of this new Google-backed hybrid war propaganda alliance.
Hysterical demonization of Russia escalated dramatically after Russia thwarted the Israeli-Saudi-US
plan to dismember the Syrian state.
With the rollback of ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorist proxy forces in Syria, and the failure of
Kurdish separatist efforts in Iraq, Israel plans to launch military attacks against southern Lebanon
and Syria.
South Front has presented a cogent and fairly detailed analysis of Israel's upcoming war in
southern Lebanon.
Conspicuously absent from the South Front analysis is any discussion of the Israeli planned
assault on Syria, or possible responses to the conflict from the United States or Russia.
Israeli propaganda preparations for attack are already in high gear. Unfortunately, sober heads
are in perilously short supply in Israel and the U.S., so the prognosis can hardly be optimistic.
"Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War
Over time, IDF's military effectiveness had declined. [ ] In the Second Lebanon War of 2006
due to the overwhelming numerical superiority in men and equipment the IDF managed to occupy key
strong points but failed to inflict a decisive defeat on Hezbollah. The frequency of attacks in
Israeli territory was not reduced; the units of the IDF became bogged down in the fighting in
the settlements and suffered significant losses. There now exists considerable political pressure
to reassert IDF's lost military dominance and, despite the complexity and unpredictability of
the situation we may assume the future conflict will feature only two sides, IDF and Hezbollah.
Based on the bellicose statements of the leadership of the Jewish state, the fighting will be
initiated by Israel.
"The operation will begin with a massive evacuation of residents from the settlements in the
north and centre of Israel. Since Hezbollah has agents within the IDF, it will not be possible
to keep secret the concentration of troops on the border and a mass evacuation of civilians. Hezbollah
units will will be ordered to occupy a prepared defensive position and simultaneously open fire
on places were IDF units are concentrated. The civilian population of southern Lebanon will most
likely be evacuated. IDF will launch massive bombing causing great damage to the social infrastructure
and some damage to Hezbollah's military infrastructure, but without destroying the carefully protected
and camouflaged rocket launchers and launch sites.
"Hezbollah control and communications systems have elements of redundancy. Consequently, regardless
of the use of specialized precision-guided munitions, the command posts and electronic warfare
systems will not be paralysed, maintaining communications including through the use of fibre-optic
communications means. IDF discovered that the movement has such equipment during the 2006 war.
Smaller units will operate independently, working with open communication channels, using the
pre-defined call signs and codes.
"Israeli troops will then cross the border of Lebanon, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping
mission in southern Lebanon, beginning a ground operation with the involvement of a greater number
of units than in the 2006 war. The IDF troops will occupy commanding heights and begin to prepare
for assaults on settlements and actions in the tunnels. The Israelis do not score a quick victory
as they suffer heavy losses in built-up areas. The need to secure occupied territory with patrols
and checkpoints will cause further losses.
"The fact that Israel itself started the war and caused damage to the civilian infrastructure,
allows the leadership of the movement to use its missile arsenal on Israeli cities. While Israel's
missile defence systems can successfully intercept the launched missiles, there are not enough
of them to blunt the bombardment. The civilian evacuation paralyzes life in the country. As soon
IDF's Iron Dome and other medium-range systems are spent on short-range Hezbollah rockets, the
bombardment of Israel with long-range missiles may commence. Hezbollah's Iranian solid-fuel rockets
do not require much time to prepare for launch and may target the entire territory of Israel,
causing further losses.
"It is difficult to assess the duration of actions of this war. One thing that seems certain
is that Israel shouldn't count on its rapid conclusion, similar to last September's exercises.
Hezbollah units are stronger and more capable than during the 2006 war, despite the fact that
they are fighting in Syria and suffered losses there.
"Conclusions
"The combination of large-scale exercises and bellicose rhetoric is intended to muster Israeli
public support for the aggression against Hezbollah by convincing the public the victory would
be swift and bloodless. Instead of restraint based on a sober assessment of relative capabilities,
Israeli leaders appear to be in a state of blood lust. In contrast, the Hezbollah has thus far
demonstrated restraint and diplomacy.
"Underestimating the adversary is always the first step towards a defeat. Such mistakes are
paid for with soldiers' blood and commanders' careers. The latest IDF exercises suggest Israeli
leaders underestimate the opponent and, more importantly, consider them to be quite dumb. In reality,
Hezbollah units will not cross the border. There is no need to provoke the already too nervous
neighbor and to suffer losses solely to plant a flag and photograph it for their leader. For Hezbollah,
it is easier and safer when the Israeli soldiers come to them. According to the IDF soldiers who
served in Gaza and southern Lebanon, it is easier to operate on the plains of Gaza than the mountainous
terrain of southern Lebanon. This is a problem for armoured vehicles fighting for control of heights,
tunnels, and settlements, where they are exposed to anti-armor weapons.
"While the Israeli establishment is in a state of patriotic frenzy, it would be a good time
for them to turn to the wisdom of their ancestors. After all, as the old Jewish proverb says:
'War is a big swamp, easy to go into but hard to get out'."
Yes, the latest "big fish" outed yesterday as an agent of the Kremlin was the U.S. Secretary
of Commerce (Wilbur Ross) who was discovered to hold stock in a shipping company that does business
with a Russian petrochemical company (Sibur) whose owners include Vladimir Putin's son-in-law
(Kirill Shamalov). Obviously the orders flow directly from Putin to Shamalov to Sibur to the shipping
company to Ross to Trump, all to the detriment of American citizens.
From RT (another tainted source!): "US Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has a stake in
a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars a year in revenue from a company whose key owners
include Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law and a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S.
Treasury Department as a member of Putin's inner circle," says the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the main publisher of the Paradise Papers. After the report
was published, some US lawmakers accused Ross of misleading Congress during his confirmation hearings."
Don't go mistaking the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for "Consortium
News." These guys are dedicated witch hunters, searching for anyone with six degrees of separation
to Vladimir Putin and his grand plan to thwart the United States and effect regime change within
its borders.
In a clear attempt to weasel out of his traitorous transgression, Ross stated "In a separate
interview with CNBC, that Sibur [which is NOT the company he owned stock in] was not subject to
US sanctions." 'A company not under sanction is just like any other company, period. It was a
normal commercial relationship and one that I had nothing to do with the creation of, and do not
know the shareholders who were apparently sanctioned at some later point in time,' he said." Since
when can we start allowing excuses like that? Not knowing that someone holds stock in a company
that does business with a company in which you own stock may at some later point in time become
sanctioned by the all-wise and all-good American federal government?
I can't wait till they make the first Ben Stiller comedy based on this fiasco twenty years
from now. It will be hilarious slap-stick, maybe titled "Can You Believe these Mother Fockers?"
President Chelea Clinton of our great and noble idiocracy will throw out the first witch on opening
day of the movie.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:27 pm
Let's be honest. Most Americans think McCarthy is a retail store. No education. And they think
Russia is the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Trump is in Japan to start war with N. Korea to hide the
blemishes or the canker on his ass. America is rapidly collapsing.
Adrian Engler , November 6, 2017 at 6:34 pm
In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence
for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists
largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established
fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence
services, it probably is not that interesting any more).
Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian
people, anyone who is "Russian linked" by ever having logged in to social networks from Russia
or using Cyrillic letters. If these people and their media at least recognized the reality that
they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States
But when people daily spew hate against anything and anyone "Russia linked" and still don't
recognize that they have gone over to the far right and even claim they are liberal or progressive,
this is completely absurd.
McCarthyism, as terrible as it was, at least originally was motivated by hatred against a certain
political ideology that also had its bad sides. But today's Russiagate peddlers clearly are motivated
by hatred against a certain ethnicity, a certain country, and a certain language. I don't think
there is any way to avoid the conclusion that with their hatred against anyone who is "Russia
linked", they have become right-wing extremists.
Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 6:46 pm
"Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world
to harass people who criticize the Zionist project."
Yes, very well organized.
In fact virtually every synagogue is a center for organizing people to harass others who are exercising
their First Amendment rights to diseminate information about Israel's occupation of Palestine.
The link below is to a protest and really, personal attack, against a Unitarian minister in Marblehead,
Mass., for daring to screen the film ""The Occupation of the American Mind, Israel's Public Relations
War in the United States." In other words, for daring to provide an dissenting opinion and, simply,
to tell the truth. Ironic is that the protesters' comment actually reinforce the basic message
of the film.
No other views on Israel will be allowed to enter the public for a good airing and discussion
and debate. The truth about the illegal Israeli occupation will be shouted down, and those who
try to provide information to the public on this subject will be vilified as "anti-semites." Kudos
to this minister for screening the film.
The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in the United States (2016)
examines pro-Israel Hasbara propaganda efforts within the U.S.
This important documentary, narrated by Roger waters, exposes how the Israeli government, the
U.S. government, and the pro-Israel Lobby join forces to shape American media coverage in Israel's
favor.
Documentary producer Sut Jhally is professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts,
and a leading scholar on advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. He is also the
founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation, a documentary film company that
looks at issues related to U.S. media and public attitudes.
Jhally is the producer and director of dozens of documentaries about U.S. politics and media
culture, including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli–Palestinian
Conflict.
The Occupation of the American Mind provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle
for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people – a battle that has only intensified
over the past few years in the face of widening international condemnation of Israel's increasingly
right-wing policies.
Dave P. , November 7, 2017 at 2:45 am
Abe –
The interview of Roger Waters on RT is one of the best I have seen in a long while. I wish
some other artists get the courage to raise their voices. The link to the Roger Waters interview
is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jcvfbLoIA
This Roger Waters interview is worth watching.
It would seem that everyone on the US telivision , newspaper and internet news has mastered
the art of hand over mouth , gasp and looking horrified every time Russia is mentioned. It looks
to me that the US is in the middle of another of it´s mid life crises. Panic reigns supreme every
where. If it was not so sad it would be funny. i was born in the 1940s and remember the McCarthy
witch hunts and the daily shower of people jumping out of windows as a result of it.
As a Canadian I could not get over, even though I was just a teenager back then, just how a
people in a supposedly advanced country could be so collectively paniced. I think back then it
was just a scam to get rid of unions and any kind of collective action against the owners of the
country, and this time around I think it is just a continuation of that scam, to frighten people
into subservience to the police state. I heard a women on TV today commenting on the Texas masscre,
she said " The devil never sleeps", well in the USA the 1/10 of 1% never sleeps when it comes
to more control, more pwoer and more wealth, in fact I think they are after the very last shekle
still left in the pockets of the bottom 99.9 % of the population. Those evil Russians are just
a ploy in the scam.
Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 6:58 pm
"The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons
by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and "stop fascism." But their contempt for
Trump and their exaggeration of the "Hitler" threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses
have blinded them to the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they
are playing into the hands of the war-hungry neocons."
And they are driving more and more actual and potential Dem Party members away in droves, further
weakening the party and depriving it of its most intelligent members. Any non-senile person knows
that this is all BS and these people are not only turning their backs on the Dem Party but I think
many of them are being driven to the right by their disgust with this circus and the exposure
of the party's critical weaknesses and derangement.
Paolo , November 6, 2017 at 6:59 pm
You correctly write that "the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure
the continued rule of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin". The irony is that a few years later
Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor, and presumably the 'mericans gave him a hand to win his
first term.
How extremely sad it is to see the USA going totally nuts.
Abe , November 6, 2017 at 9:00 pm
In The Fifties (1993), American journalist and historian David Halberstam addressed
the noxious effect of McCarthyism: "McCarthy's carnival like four year spree of accusation charges,
and threats touched something deep in the American body politic, something that lasted long after
his own recklessness, carelessness and boozing ended his career in shame." (page 53)
Halberstam specifically discussed how readily the so-called "free" press acquiesced to
McCarthy's masquerading: "The real scandal in all this was the behavior of the members of the
Washington press corps, who, more often than not, knew better. They were delighted to be a part
of his traveling road show, chronicling each charge and then moving on to the next town, instead
of bothering to stay behind and follow up. They had little interest in reporting how careless
McCarthy was or how little it all meant to him." (page 55)
Abe , November 6, 2017 at 9:15 pm
On March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow and a news team at CBS produced a half-hour See It Now special
titled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy".
Murrow interspersed his own comments and clarifications into a damaging series of film clips
from McCarthy's speeches. He ended the broadcast with a warning:
"As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves–as
indeed we are–the defenders of freedom, what's left of it, but we cannot defend freedom abroad
by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and
dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies, and whose fault
is that? Not really his. He didn't create the situation of fear; he merely exploited it, and rather
successfully. Cassius was right: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.'"
CBS reported that of the 12,000 phone calls received within 24 hours of the broadcast, positive
responses to the program outnumbered negative 15 to 1. McCarthy's favorable rating in the Gallup
Poll dropped and was never to rise again.
Gary , November 6, 2017 at 11:34 pm
Sad to see so many hypocrites here espousing freedom from McCarthyism while they continue to
vote for capitalist candidates year in year out. Think about the fact that in 2010 when Citizens
United managed to get the Supreme Court to certify corporations as people the fear among many
was that this would open US company subsidiaries to be infiltrated by foreign money. I guess it
is happening in spades with collusion between Russian money & Trump's organization along with
Facebook, Twitter & many others. How Mr. Parry can maintain that this parallels the 1950s anti-communist
crusade is quite ingenuous. When libertarians, the likes of Bannon, Mercer, Trump et al, with
their "destruction of the administrative state" credo are compared to the US communists of the
50s we know progressives have become about as disoriented as can be.
geeyp , November 7, 2017 at 3:30 am
I guess these "Paradise Papers" were released just yesterday, i.e., Sunday the 5th. Somehow
I didn't get to it.
john wilson , November 7, 2017 at 6:01 am
So it looks like Hillary will be crossing Putin off her Xmas card list this year! I sometimes
wonder if all we posters on here and other similar sites are on a list somewhere and when the
day of reckoning comes, the list will be produced and we will have to account for our treasonous
behaviour? Of course, one man's treason is another man's truth. I suppose in the end it boils
down to the power thing. If you have a perceived enemy you can claim the need for an army. If
you have an army you have power and with that power you can dispose of anyone who disagrees with
you simply by calling them the enemy.
Lisa , November 7, 2017 at 9:38 am
John, your post made me wonder whether I would be on a list of traitors. I've written three
posts, starting yesterday, and tried to explain something about the background of Yuri Milner,
mentioned in the article. After "your comment has been posted, thank you" nothing has appeared
on this thread.
Well, once more: Milner is known to me as a well-educated physicist from Moscow State University,
and the co-founder and financier of The Breakthrough Prize, handing out yearly awards to promising
scientists, with a much larger sum than the humble Nobel Prize. The awarding ceremony is held
in December in Silicon Valley.
john wilson , November 7, 2017 at 12:34 pm
Hi Lisa, I have just looked up Milner on Wiki and he appears to be into everything including
investment in internet companies. He is the co-founder of the "break through prize" that you mention
and seems to have backed face book and twitter in their start up. I don't see why you posts haven't
appeared as anyone can look Milner up on Wiki and elsewhere in great detail. You don't say where
you have tried to post, but I would have thought on this site you would have no trouble whatever.
If you have watched the last episode of 'cross talk' on RT you will see that anyone who as ever
mentioned Russia in a public place is regarded as some kind of traitor. I guess you and me are
due for rendition anytime now!! LOL
Lisa , November 7, 2017 at 1:49 pm
Hi John,
Naturally I had been trying to post on this site. First I tried three times in the comment space
below all other posts, and they never went through. Only when I posted a reply to someone else's
comment, my reply appeared. Maybe some technical problem on the site.
My motive was to show that Milner is doing worthwhile things with his millions, even if he
is an "evil Russian oligarch". The mentioned prize has its own website: breakthroughprize.org.
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) is a board member.
The prize is certainly a "Putin conspiracy", as it has links to Russia. (sarc)
Zachary Smith , November 7, 2017 at 8:05 pm
Maybe some technical problem on the site.
Possibly that's the case. Disappearing-forever posts happen to me from time to time. For at
least a while afterwards I cut/paste what I'm about to attempt to "post" to a WORD file before
hitting the "post comment" button.
In any event, avoid links whenever possible. By cut/pasting the exact title of the piece you're
using as a reference, others can quickly locate it themselves without a link.
K , November 7, 2017 at 9:44 am
I'm a lifelong Democrat. I was a Bernie supporter. But logic dictates my thinking. The Russia
nonsense is cover for Hillary's loss and a convenient hammer with which to attack Trump. Not biting.
Bill Maher is fixated on this. The Rob Reiner crowd is an embarrassment. The whole thing is embarrassing.
The media is inept. Very bizarre times.
Excellent article which should shed light on the misunderstandings manifested to manipulate
and censor Americans. Personally, it's ludicrous to imply that Russia was the primary reason I
could not vote for Hillary. My interest in Twitter peaked when Sidney Blumenthal's name popped
up selling arms in Libya. He was on The Clinton Foundation's Payroll for $120K, while the Obama
Administration specifically told HRC Sidney Blumenthal was not to work for the State Department.
Further research showed Chris Stevens had no knowledge of Sidney Blumenthal selling arms in
Libya. Hillary NEVER even gave Chris Stevens, a candidate with an outstanding background for diplomatic
relations in the Middle East, her email. Chris Stevens possessed a Law Degree in International
Trade, and had previously worked for Senator Lugar (R). Senator Lugar had warned HRC not to co-mingle
State Department business with The Clinton Foundation.
To add salt to the wound Hillary choose to put a third rate security firm in Libya, changing
firms a couple of short weeks before the bombing. I think she anticipated the bombing, remarking
"What difference does it make? " at the congressional hearings.
If you remember Guccifer (that hacker) he said he'd hacked both Hillary and Sidney Blumenthal.
He also said he found Sidney Blumenthal's account more interesting.
That's just one reason why I started surfing the internet. Sidney Blumenthal was a name that
hung in the cobwebs of my memory, and I wanted to know what this scum-job of a journalist was
doing!
Then there was Clinton Cash, BoysonTheTracks, Clinton Chronicles, the outrageous audacity of
the Democrats Superdelegates voting before a single primary ballot had been cast, MSM bias to
Hillary, Kathy Shelton's video "I thought you should know." and maybe around September 2016, wondering
what dirty things Hillary had done with Russia since 1993?
So I guess it's true. In the end after witnessing what has transpired since the election I
would not vote for Hillary because she'd rather risk WWIII, than have the TRUTH come out why she
lost.
After living in Europe much of the last three years we've recently returned to the U.S. I must
say that life here feels very much like I'm living within a strange Absurdist theatre play of
some sort (not that Europe is vastly better). Truth, meaning, rationality, mean absolutely nothing
at this juncture here in the United States. Reality has been turned on its head. The only difference
between our political parties runs along identity politics lines: "do you prefer your drone strikes,
illegal invasions, regime change black-ops, economic warfare and massive government spying 'with'
or 'without' gender specific bathrooms?" MSM refer to this situation as "democracy" while of course
any thinking person knows we are actually living within a totalitarian nightmare. Theatre of the
Absurd as a way of life. I must admit it feels pretty creepy being home again.
I wish it wasn't asking too much, but I suspect it is. If the NYT was reporting it, I'd feel
better about our chances. But the Deep State controls the narrative, and thus controls Pompeo,
Trump's order notwithstanding. I hope I'm wrong.
Dave P. , November 7, 2017 at 4:17 pm
Yes Joe. It is rather painful to watch as you said this Orwellian Tragedy playing out in the
Country which has just about become a police state. For those of us who grew up admiring the Western
Civilization starting with the Greeks and Romans, and then for its institutions enshrining Individual
Rights; and its scientific, literary, and cultural achievements, it is as if it still happening
in some dream, though it has been coming for some time now – more than two decades now at least.
The System was not perfect but I think that it was good as it could get. The system had been in
decline for four decades or so now.
From Robert Parry's article:
"The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. "I don't think you get it," Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-California, warned social media executives last week. "You bear this responsibility.
You created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do
something about it. Or we will."
Diane Feinstein's multi-billionaire husband was implicated in those Loan and Savings scandals
of Reagan and G.H.W. Bush Era and in many other financial scandals later on but Law did not touch
him. He has a dual residency in Israel. These are very corrupt people.
Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Perle, Nulad-Kagan clan, Kristol, Gaffney . . . the list goes
on; add Netanyahu to it. In the Hollywood Harvey Weinstein, Rob Reiner. and the rest . . . In
Finance and wall Street characters like Sandy Weiss and the gang. The Media and TV is directly
or indirectly owned and controlled by "The Chosen People". So, where would you put the blame for
all what is going on in this country, and all this chaos, death, and destruction going on in ME
and many countries in Africa.
Any body who points out their role in it or utters a word of criticism of Israel is immediately
called an anti-semite. Just to tell my own connections, my wife youngest sister is married to
person who is Jewish (non-practicing). In all the relatives we have, they are closest to us for
more than thirty five years now. They are those transgender common restroom liberals, but we have
many common views and interests. In life, I have never differentiated people based on their ethnic
or racial backgrounds; you look at the principles they stand for.
As I see it, this era of Russia-Gate and witch hunt is hundred times worse than McCarthy era.
It seems irreversible. There is no one in the political establishment or elsewhere in Media or
academia left for regeneration of the "Body Politic". In fact, what we are witnessing here is
much worse than it was in the Soviet Union. It is complete degeneration of political leadership
in this country. It extends to Media and other institutions as well. People in Soviet Union did
not believe the lies they were told by the government there. And there arose writers like Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn in Soviet Union. What is left here now except are these few websites?
Maedhros , November 7, 2017 at 4:27 pm
If there is evidence, you should be able to provide some so that readers can analyze and discuss
it. Exactly what evidence has been provided that the Russian government manipulated the 2016 election?
CitizenOne , November 7, 2017 at 10:42 pm
Robert Parry You Nailed It!!!
I need to do a little research to see how far back you used the term "New McCarthyism" to describe
the next cold war with Russia. It was about the same time the first allegations of a Trump-Russia
conspiracy was floated by the MSM. I do not pretend to know how much airtime they spent covering
their coverup for all that the MSM did to profit from SuperPacs. They have webed a weave that
conspires to conceive to the tunes of billions of dollars spent to reprieve their intent to deceive
us and distract us away from their investment in Donald Trump which was the real influence in
the public spaces to gain mega profits from extorting the SuperPacs into spending their dollars
to defeat the trumped up candidate they created and boosted. One has to look no further than the
Main Stream Press (MSM) to find the guilty party with motive and opportunity to cash in on a candidacy
which if not for the money motive would not pass any test of journalistic integrity but would
make money for the Media.
The Russian Boogeyman was created shortly after the election and is an obvious attempt to shield
and defend the actions of the MSM which was the real fake news covered in the nightly news leading
up to the election which sought to get money rather than present the facts.
This is an example of how much power and influence the MSM has on us all to be able to upend
a National election and turn around and blame some foreign Devil for the results of an election.
The Russians had little to do with Trumps election. The MSM had everything to do with it. They
cast blame on the Russians and in so doing create a new Cold War which suits the power establishment
and suitably diverts all of our attention away from their machinations to influence the last presidential
election.
Win Win. More Nuclear Weapons and more money for the MIC and more money for all of the corporations
who would profit from a new Cold War.
Profit in times of deceit make more money from those who cheat.
CitizenOne , November 7, 2017 at 11:25 pm
Things not talked about:
1. James Comey and his very real influence on the election has never entered the media space
for an instant. It has gone down the collective memory hole. That silence has been deafening because
he was the person who against DOJ advice reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the
Servergate investigation after it had been closed by the FBI just days before the election.
The silence of the media on the influence on the election by the reopening of James Comey's
Servergate investigation and how the mass media press coverage implicating Hillary Clinton (again)
in supposed crimes (which never resulted in an indictment) influenced the National Election in
ways that have never been examined by the MSM is a nail in the coffin of media impartiality.
Why have they not investigated James Comey? Why has the MSM instead created a Russian Boogeyman?
Why was he invited to testify about the Russian connection but never cross examined about his
own influence? Why is the clearest reason for election meddling by James Comey not even spoken
of by the MSM? This is because the MSM does not want to cover events as they happened but wants
to recreate a alternate reality suitable to themselves which serves their interests and convinces
us that the MSM has no part at all in downplaying the involvement of themselves in the election
but wants to create a foreign enemy to blame.
It serves many interests. The MSM lies to all of us for the benefit of the MIC. It serves to
support White House which will deliver maximum investments in the Defense Industry. It does this
by creating a foreign enemy which they create for us to fear and be afraid of.
It is obvious to everyone with a clear eyed history of how the last election went down and
how the MSM and the government later played upon our fears to grab more cash have cashed in under
the present administration.
It is up to us to elect leaders who will reject this manipulation by the media and who will
not be cowed by the establishment. We have the power enshrined in our Constitution to elect leaders
who will pave the path forward to a better future.
Those future leaders will have to do battle with a media infrastructure that serves the power
structure and conspires to deceive us all.
Clear critical thinking must accompany free speech, however, and irrationality seems to have
beset Americans, too stuck in the mud of identity politics. Can they get out? I have hopes that
a push is coming from the new multipolar world Xi and Putin are advocating, as well as others
(but not the George Soros NWO variety). The big bully American government, actually ruled by oligarchy,
has not been serving its regular folks well, so things are falling apart. Seems like the sex scandals,
political scandals especially of the Democrat brand, money scandals are unraveling to expose underlying
societal sickness in the Disunited States of America.
It is interesting that this purge shakeup in Saudi Arabia is happening in 2017, one hundred
years since the shakeup in Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution. So shake-ups are happening everywhere.
I think a pattern is emerging of major changes in world events. Just yesterday I read that because
"Russia-gate" isn't working well, senators are looking to start a "China-gate", for evidence of
Trump collusion with Chinese oligarchs. Ludicrous. As Seer once said, "The Empire in panic mode".
Patricia, thanks for the info on Sid Blumenthal, HRC and the selling of arms from Libya to
ME jihadists, which seems to exonerate Chris Stevens from those dirty deeds and lays blame squarely
at Blumenthal's and Clinton's doorstep; changes my thinking. And thanks to Robert Parry for continuing
to push back at the participation of MSM and government players in the Orwellian masquerade being
pulled on the sheeple.
Truther , November 8, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Just the facts for those of you who have minds still open. suggest you bookmark it quickly
as the moderator will delete it within the hour.
"... "China is the world leader in payments made by mobile devices", ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... 80% recognize that the Congress is dysfunctional and 86% believe that Washington is dishonest. Never has an empire of such limitless power crumbled and declined with so few accomplishments. ..."
Lumpen Capitalism refers to an economic system in which the financial and military sector
exploits the state treasury and productive economy for the 1% of the population.)
Introduction
US journalists and commentators, politicians and Sinologists spend considerable time and space
speculating on the personality of China's President Xi Jinping and his appointments to the leading
bodies of the Chinese government, as if these were the most important aspects of the entire 19th
National Congress of the Communist Party of China (October 18-24, 2017) .
(The 19th National Congress was attended by 2,280 delegates representing 89 million members.)
Mired down in gossip, idle speculation and petty denigration of its leaders, the Western press
has once again failed to take account of the world-historical changes which are currently taking
place in China and throughout the world.
World historical changes, as articulated by Chinese President Xi Jinping, are present in the vision,
strategy and program of the Congress. These are based on a rigorous survey of China's past, present
and future accomplishments.
The serious purpose, projections and the presence of China's President stand in stark contrast
to the chaos, rabble-rousing demagogy and slanders characterizing the multi-billion dollar US Presidential
campaign and its shameful aftermath.
The clarity and coherence of a deep strategic thinker like President Xi Jinping contrasts to the
improvised, contradictory and incoherent utterances from the US President and Congress. This is not
a matter of mere style but of substantive content.
We will proceed in the essay by contrasting the context, content and direction of the two political
systems.
China: Strategic Thinking and Positive Outcomes
China, first and foremost, has established well-defined strategic guidelines that emphasize macro-socio-economic
and military priorities over the next five, ten and twenty years.
China is committed to reducing pollution in all of its manifestations via the transformation of
the economy from heavy industry to a high-tech service economy, moving from quantitative to qualitative
indicators.
Secondly, China will increase the relative importance of the domestic market and reduce its dependence
on exports. China will increase investments in health, education, public services, pensions and family
allowances.
Thirdly, China plans to invest heavily in ten economic priority sectors. These include computerized
machinery, robotics, energy saving vehicles, medical devices, aerospace technology, and maritime
and rail transport. It targets three billion (US) dollars to upgrade technology in key industries,
including electrical vehicles, energy saving technology, numerical control (digitalization) and several
other areas. China plans to increase investment in research and development from .95% to 2% of GDP.
Moreover, China has already taken steps to launch the 'petro-Yuan', and end US global financial
dominance.
China has emerged as the world's leader in advancing global infrastructure networks with its One
Belt One Road (Silk Road) across Eurasia. Chinese-built ports, airports and railroads already connect
twenty Chinese cities to Central Asia, West Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and Europe. China has established
a multi-lateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (with over 60 member nations) contributing 100
billion dollars for initial financing.
China has combined its revolution in data collection and analysis with central planning to conquer
corruption and improve the efficiency in credit allocation. Beijing's digital economy is now at the
center of the global digital economy. According to one expert, "China is the world leader in
payments made by mobile devices", (11 times the US). One in three of the world's start-ups,
valued at more than $1 billion, take place in China ( FT 10/28/17, p. 7). Digital technology
has been harnessed to state-owned banks in order to evaluate credit risks and sharply reduce bad
debt. This will ensure that financing is creating a new dynamic flexible model combining rational
planning with entrepreneurial vigor (ibid).
As a result, the US/EU-controlled World Bank has lost its centrality in global financing. China
is already Germany's largest trading partner and is on its way to becoming Russia's leading trade
partner and sanctions-busting ally.
China has widened and expanded its trade missions throughout the globe, replacing the role of
the US in Iran, Venezuela and Russia and wherever Washington has imposed belligerent sanctions.
While China has modernized its military defense programs and increased military spending, almost
all of the focus is on 'home defense' and protection of maritime trade routes. China has not engaged
in a single war in decades.
China's system of central planning allows the government to allocate resources to the productive
economy and to its high priority sectors. Under President Xi Jinping, China has created an investigation
and judicial system leading to the arrest and prosecution of over a million corrupt officials in
the public and private sector. High status is no protection from the government's anti-corruption
campaign: Over 150 Central Committee members and billionaire plutocrats have fallen. Equally important,
China's central control over capital flows (outward and inward) allows for the allocation of financial
resources to high tech productive sectors while limiting the flight of capital or its diversion into
the speculative economy.
As a result, China's GNP has been growing between 6.5% – 6.9% a year – four times the rate of
the EU and three times the US.
As far as demand is concerned, China is the world's biggest market and growing. Income is growing
– especially for wage and salaried workers. President Xi Jinping has identified social inequalities
as a major area to rectify over the next five years.
The US: Chaos, Retreat and Reaction
In contrast, the United States President and Congress have not fashioned a strategic vision for
the country, least of all one linked to concrete proposals and socio-economic priorities, which might
benefit the citizenry.
The US has 240,000 active and reserve armed forces stationed in 172 countries. China has less
than 5,000 in one country – Djibouti. The US stations 40,000 troops in Japan, 23,000 in South Korea,
36,000 in Germany, 8,000 in the UK and over 1,000 in Turkey. What China has is an equivalent number
of highly skilled civilian personnel engaged in productive activity around the world. China's overseas
missions and its experts have worked to benefit both global and Chinese economic growth.
The United States' open-ended, multiple military conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Jordan and elsewhere have absorbed and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars
away from productive investments in the domestic economy. In only a few cases, military spending
has built useful roads and infrastructure, which could be counted a 'dual use', but overwhelmingly
US military activities abroad have been brutally destructive, as shown by the deliberate dismemberment
of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya.
The US lacks the coherence of China's policy making and strategic leadership. While chaos has
been inherent in the politics of the US 'free market' financial system, it is especially widespread
and dangerous during the Trump regime.
Congressional Democrats and Republicans, united and divided, actively confront President Trump
on every issue no matter how important or petty. Trump improvises and alters his policies by the
hour or, at most, by the day. The US possesses a party system where one party officially rules in
the Administration with two militarist big business wings.
US has been spending over 700 billion dollars a year to pursue seven wars and foment 'regime changes'
or coups d'état on four continents and eight regions over the past two decades. This has only caused
disinvestment in the domestic economy with deterioration of critical infrastructure, loss of markets,
widespread socioeconomic decline and a reduction of spending on research and development for goods
and services.
The top 500 US corporations invest overseas, mainly to take advantage of low tax region and sources
of cheap labor, while shunning American workers and avoiding US taxes. At the same time, these corporations
share US technology and markets with the Chinese.
Today, US capitalism is largely directed by and for financial institutions, which absorb and divert
capital from productive investments, generating an unbalanced crisis-prone economy. In contrast,
China determines the timing and location of investments as well as bank interest rates, targeting
priority investments, especially in advanced high-tech sectors.
Washington has spent billions on costly and unproductive military-centered infrastructure (military
bases, naval ports, air stations etc.) in order to buttress stagnant and corrupt allied regimes.
As a result, the US has nothing comparable to China's hundred-billion-dollar 'One Belt-One Road'
(Silk Road) infrastructure project linking continents and major regional markets and generating millions
of productive jobs.
The US has broken global linkages with dynamic growth centers. Washington resorts to self-defecating,
mindless chauvinistic rhetoric to impose trade policy, while China promotes global networks via joint
ventures. China incorporates international supply linkages by securing high tech in the West and
low cost labor in the East.
Big US industrial groups' earnings and rising stock in construction and aerospace are products
of their strong ties with China. Caterpillar, United Technologies 3M and US car companies reported
double-digit growth on sales to China.
In contrast, the Trump regime has allocated (and spent) billions in military procurement to threaten
wars against China's peripheral neighbors and interfere with its maritime commerce.
US Decline and Media Frenzy
The retreat and decline of US economic power has driven the mass media into a frenzy of idiotic
ad hominem assaults on China's political leader President Xi Jinping. Among the nose pickers in print,
the scribes of the Financial Times take the prize for mindless vitriol. Mercenaries and
holy men in Tibet are described as paragons of democracy and 'victims' of a flourishing modernizing
Chinese state lacking the 'western values' (sic) of floundering Anglo-American warmongers!
To denigrate China's system of national planning and its consequential efforts to link its high
tech economy with improving the standard of living for the population, the FT journalists
castigate President Xi Jinping for the following faults:
For not being as dedicated a Communist as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaopeng For being too 'authoritarian'
(or too successful) in his campaign to root out corrupt officials. For setting serious long-term
goals while confronting and overcoming economic problems by addressing the 'dangerous' level of debt.
While China has broadened its cultural horizon, the Anglo-Saxon global elite increases possibility
of nuclear warfare. China's cultural and economic outreach throughout the world is dismissed by the
Financial Times as 'subversive soft power'. Police-state minds and media in the West see
China's outreach as a plot or conspiracy. Any serious writer, thinker or policymaker who has studied
and praised China's success is dismissed as a dupe or agent of the sly President Xi Jinping. Without
substance or reflection, the FT (10/27/17) warns its readers and police officials to be
vigilant and avoid being seduced by China's success stories!
China's growing leadership in automobile production is evident in its advance towards dominating
the market for electric vehicles. Every major US and EU auto company has ignored the warnings of
the Western media ideologues and rushed to form joint ventures with China.
China has an industrial policy. The US has a war policy. China plans to surpass the US and Germany
in artificial intelligence, robotics, semi-conductors and electric vehicles by 2025. And it will
-- because those are its carefully pronounced scientific and economic priorities.
Shamelessly and insanely, the US press pursues the expanding stories of raging Hollywood rapists
like the powerful movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein, and the hundreds of victims, while ignoring the
world historic news of China's rapid economic advances.
The US business elites are busy pushing their President and the US Congress to lower taxes for
the billionaire elite, while 100 million US citizens remain without health care and register decreased
life expectancy! Washington seems committed to in State-planned regression.
As US bombs fall on Yemen and the American taxpayers finance the giant Israeli concentration camp
once known as 'Palestine', while China builds systems of roads and rail linking the Himalayas and
Central Asia with Europe.
While Sherlock Holmes applies the science of observation and deduction, the US media and politicians
perfect the art of obfuscation and deception.
In China, scientists and innovators play a central role in producing and increasing goods and
services for the burgeoning middle and working class. In the US, the economic elite play the central
role in exacerbating inequalities, increasing profits by lowering taxes and transforming the American
worker into poorly-paid temp-labor – destined to die prematurely of preventable conditions.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping works in concert with the nation's best technocrats to subordinate
the military to civilian goals, President Trump and his Administration subordinate their economic
decisions to a military-industrial-financial-Israeli complex. Beijing invests in global networks
of scientists, researchers and scholars. The US 'opposition' Democrats and disgruntled Republicans
work with the giant corporate media (including the respectable Financial Times ) to fund
and fabricate conspiracies and plots under Trump's Presidential bed.
Conclusion
China fires and prosecutes corrupt officials while supporting innovators. Its economy grows through
investments, joint ventures and a great capacity to learn from experience and powerful data collection.
The US squanders its domestic resources in pursuing multiple wars, financial speculation and rampant
Wall Street corruption.
China investigates and punishes its corrupt business and public officials while corruption seems
to be the primary criteria for election or appointment to high office in the US. The US media worships
its tax-dodging billionaires and thinks it can mesmerize the public with a dazzling display of bluster,
incompetence and arrogance.
China directs its planned economy to address domestic priorities. It uses its financial resources
to pursue historic global infrastructure programs, which will enhance global partnerships in mutually
beneficial projects.
It is no wonder that China is seen as moving toward the future with great advances while the US
is seen as a chaotic frightening threat to world peace and its publicists as willing accomplices.
China is not without shortcomings in the spheres of political expression and civil rights. Failure
to rectify social inequalities and failure to stop the outflow of billions of dollars of illicit
wealth, and the unresolved problems with regime corruption will continue to generate class conflicts.
But the important point to note is the direction China has chosen to take and its capacity and
commitment to identify and correct the major problems it faces.
The US has abdicated its responsibilities. It is unwilling or unable to harness its banks to invest
in domestic production to expand the domestic market. It is completely unwilling to identify and
purge the manifestly incompetent and to incarcerate the grossly corrupt officials and politicians
of both parties and the elites.
Today overwhelming majorities of US citizens despise, distrust and reject the political elite.
Over 70% think that the inane factional political divisions are at their greatest level in over 50
years and have paralyzed the government.
80% recognize that the Congress is dysfunctional and 86% believe that Washington is dishonest.
Never has an empire of such limitless power crumbled and declined with so few accomplishments.
China is a rising economic empire, but it advances through its active engagement in the market
of ideas and not through futile wars against successful competitors and adversaries. As the US declines,
its publicists degenerate.
The media's ceaseless denigration of China's challenges and its accomplishments is a poor substitute
for analysis. The flawed political and policy making structures in the US and its incompetent free-market
political leaders lacking any strategic vision crumble in contrast to China's advances.
"All along Trump has been the candidate of the military. The other two power centers of
the
power triangle , the corporate and the executive government (CIA), had gone for Clinton.
The Pentagon's proxy defeated the CIA proxy. (Last months' fight over Raqqa was similar - with
a similar outcome.)"
Notable quotes:
"... All along Trump has been the candidate of the military. The other two power centers of the power triangle , the corporate and the executive government (CIA), had gone for Clinton. The Pentagon's proxy defeated the CIA proxy. (Last months' fight over Raqqa was similar - with a similar outcome.) ..."
"... Former U.S. Army Captain and now CIA director Mike Pompeo was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is part of the Junta circle, installed to control the competition. ..."
"... Is the U.S. military really qualified to teach anyone how to respect human rights? Did it learn that from committing mass atrocities in about each campaign it ever fought? ..."
"... The deep-seated problems plaguing the USA do have solutions, but they are not those being forwarded by the very radical conservatives now in charge of Congress and many statehouses. And the junta members share their mindsets. So, I see the domestic situation continuing to spiral further out-of-control with no sign anywhere of a countervailing power arising with the potential to steer the ship-of-state away from the massive reef it's rapidly heading for ..."
"... Ah, Masha Gessen, literally cancer. Who elevated her? I find it interesting that she does the "translating" for the CIA-scripted FX show "The Americans", a show which has probably more effectively demonized Russians for the cud-chewing crowd than the sum total of Cold War propaganda since the 50s AND the daily Russian hate columns in Wapo et al that trickle down to the Buzzfeed crowd. ..."
"... Military junta or not b, make no mistake, the real power behind the throne are a cabal of billionaires who buy their way by co-opting the politicians who make the laws. Democracy is indeed dead here in the U$A. It's now a full-blown Oligarchy. ..."
"... I agree with this division of power and would add that Trump is also the candidate of the police. I see the media though as more being in the CIA/corporate camps. I think the military backing is necessary as you mention to take the CIA down a few notches. So far I'd say the result in Syria is promising. ..."
"... This tribal civil war is also spilling over into places like Las Vegas, which clearly is run by the Jewish Mafia. There still is no plausible motive given for the shooting incident, but we know that the owners of MGM would never willingly have allowed this to happen on their own property. So it clearly was a hit, and with Area 51 down the road and all the MIC contractors in Vegas, it is highly unlikely that they were not involved or at least aware of the operation. ..."
"... The ground work, or state-of-affairs that lead to what one might call a soft military coup in the US (see b) = within what, at one extreme could be called Ayn-Randian rabid individualism, and at the other a sort of neo-liberal capitalism which is nevertheless highly 'socialist' in the sense re-distributive from the center of power (if only to create a slave/subservient class and prevent uprisings), there is NO public space for 'solidarity' within (besides familial, or close, etc.) ..."
"... historically, dying empires invest in the double prong, military conquest + internal control (can be vicious) ..."
"... I don't think it is all that clear. Corps or better conglomerates of power like 'the media', the 'silicons', banking and finance, Energy, electronics, Big Pharma, etc. are politcally inclined (say!) to some form of corporate fascism, > bought pols from all-sides of any-aisle. Their ties to the military / milit. type power at home are not very strong, they may collaborate on occasion. Some of these 'industries' fear domination that goes beyond soft power and they loathe sanctions - think about who/what/how is doing lucrative deals and has continuing biz success in Iraq, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, etc. - NOT US cos./corps. ..."
"... First, if the only two choices were the Executive CIA and the Military "Junta" with Trump why would we continue the farce of elections? And if the elections were pre-determined and the ruling Junta took over in a coup, then how and why is the CIA out of power? ..."
"... The "farce of elections" is accurate because Trump is not doing what he claimed he would do, not unusual actually. It was Trump who sprang the "junta" on us. And who claimed that the CIA would be out of power? ..."
"... I used to think it was a counter-coup also. But sheep-dog Sanders and Trump's having supported Hillary in 2008 among other things caused me to conclude that it all bullshit. I now believe that the hyper-partisanship is just a show. The political system in the US is designed to prevent any real populist from gaining power. We are being played. Trump is the Republican Obama. ..."
"... The excuse for this was that while US hands were tied (because public wouldn't support further adventurism after Iraq) close allies could push forward. But the new Cold War has changed the calculus. ..."
"... The US isn't giving up on Empire. It's just a different type of Empire for a different type of environment. When Trump talks about "draining the swamp" I think he merely refers to foreign influence. ..."
"... Trump has one ally and that is the 65million voters who put him into office. He surrendered his top people. Saker says it was lack of character. I think when they point the gun at you, your family, your closest friends in your life, you acquiesce. They even took from him Keith Schiller, his personal security man for years. Kelly forced him out of the WH. ..."
"... On the bright side, members of Congress are at least nominally elected. Four star Generals, not so much. It's still a felony carrying a prison term of 5 to 10 years per incident to lie to Congress. The military have no precedent to recommend them either as a source of information or in their decision making ability. They are way out of their depth when it comes to administering a nation. ..."
"... Moon of Alabama always writes interesting and insightful critiques of the Deep State, the military, and the imperialist/war party, but falls flat on his face in his naive faith in the supposed anti-establishment, populist, and America First Nationalist proclivities of Donald Trump, and his arch-reactionary Svengali Steve Bannon. There is indeed at least one major split in the ranks of the ruling class, but to present Trump and Bannon as either valiant figures struggling for the national good, or noble isolated men surrounded by vipers and traitors is absurd. ..."
"... Now, in its late imperial decline, the U.S. has become unable to continue to exercise hegemony, the way it became accustomed to in the first 70+ years in the Post-WW 2 period. The number one Client/Ally/Master, Israel and their deeply embedded 5th Column in the U.S., the Zionists with their associated Pro-Zionist factions within the War Party, now nearly directly and openly controls U.S. foreign policy and military actions in the regions that the Likudnik faction in Israel cares about (i.e. the Levant, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa). ..."
"... Hollowed out economically and industrially the U.S. Empire is clearly on the way out. The various factions fighting for control of policy seem to be oblivious to this basic fact. ..."
In an advertising campaign in 2008 the U.S. Air Force declared itself to be "Above
All". The slogan and symbol of the campaign
was similar to the
German "Deutschland Über Alles" campaign of 1933. It was a sign of things to come.
On Thursday Masha Gessen watched the press briefing of White House Chief of Staff General
John Kelly and
concluded :
The press briefing could serve as a preview of what a military coup in this country would
look like, for it was in the logic of such a coup that Kelly advanced his four arguments .
Those who criticize the President don't know what they're talking about because they
haven't served in the military . ...
The President did the right thing because he did exactly what his generals told him to
do . ...
Communication between the President and a military widow is no one's business but
theirs. ...
Citizens are ranked based on their proximity to dying for their country. ...
Gessen is late. The coup happened months ago. A military junta is in strong control of White
House polices. It is now widening its claim to power.
All along Trump has been the candidate of the military. The other two power centers of
the
power triangle , the corporate and the executive government (CIA), had gone for Clinton.
The Pentagon's proxy defeated the CIA proxy. (Last months' fight over Raqqa was similar - with
a similar outcome.)
The military will demand its due beyond the three generals now in Trump's cabinet.
With the help of the media the generals in the White House defeated their civilian
adversary. In August the Trump ship dropped its ideological
pilot . Steve Bannon went from board. Bannon's militarist enemy, National Security Advisor
General McMaster, had won. I
stated :
Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary"
candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that
insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office.
An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the
White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public
figure head of a stratocracy - a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.
The military took full control of White House processes and policies:
Everything of importance now passes through
the Junta's hands ... To control Trump the Junta filters his information input
and eliminates any potentially alternative view ... The Junta members dictate their policies
to Trump by only proposing certain alternatives to him. The one that is most preferable to
them, will be presented as the only desirable one. "There are no alternatives," Trump will be
told again and again.
With the power center captured the Junta starts to implement its ideology and to suppress
any and all criticism against itself.
On Thursday the 19th Kelly
criticized Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of South Florida for hearing in (invited) on a
phone-call Trump had with some dead soldiers wife:
Kelly then continued his criticism of Wilson, mentioning the 2015 dedication of the Miramar
FBI building, saying she focused in her speech that she "got the money" for the building.
The video of the Congresswoman's speech (above link) proves that Kelly's claim was a
fabrication. But one is no longer allowed to point such out. The Junta, by definition, does not
lie. When the next day journalists asked the White House Press Secretary about Kelly's
unjustified attack she
responded:
MS. SANDERS: If you want to go after General Kelly, that's up to you. But I think that that
-- if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that's
something highly inappropriate
It is now "highly inappropriate" to even question the Junta that rules the empire.
... ... ...
If the soldiers do not work "for any other reason than that they love this country" why do
they ask to be paid? Why is the public asked to finance 200 military
golf courses ? Because the soldiers "love the country"? Only a few 10,000 of the 2,000,000
strong U.S. military will ever see an active front-line.
And imagine the "wonderful joy" Kelly "got in his heart" when he
commanded the illegal torture camp of Guantanamo Bay:
Presiding over a population of detainees not charged or convicted of crimes, over whom he had
maximum custodial control, Kelly treated them with brutality. His response to the detainees'
peaceful hunger strike in 2013 was punitive force-feeding, solitary confinement, and rubber
bullets. Furthermore, he sabotaged efforts by the Obama administration to resettle detainees,
consistently undermining the will of his commander in chief.
Former U.S. Army Captain and now CIA director Mike Pompeo was educated at the United States
Military Academy at West Point. He is part of the Junta circle, installed to control the
competition. Pompeo also wants to again feel the "wonderful joy". On Friday he
promised that the CIA would become a "much more vicious agency". Instead of merely
waterboarding 'terrorists' and drone-bombing brown families, Pompeo's more vicious CIA will
rape the 'terrorist's' kids and nuke whole villages. Pompeo's remark was made at a
get-together of the Junta and neo-conservative warmongers.
On October 19 Defense Secretary General Mattis was asked in Congress about the recent
incident in Niger during which, among others, several U.S. soldiers were killed. Mattis
set
(vid 5:29pm) a curious new metric for deploying U.S. troops:
Any time we commit out troops anywhere it is based on a simple first question and that is -
is the well-being of the American people sufficiently enhanced by putting our troops there ,
by putting our troops in a position to die?
In his October 20 press briefing General Kelly also tried to
explain why U.S. soldiers are in Niger:
So why were they there ? They're there working with partners, local -- all across Africa --
in this case, Niger -- working with partners, teaching them how to be better soldiers;
teaching them how to respect human rights ...
Is the U.S. military really qualified to teach anyone how to respect human rights? Did it
learn that from committing mass atrocities in about
each campaign it ever fought?
One of the soldiers who were killed in Niger while "teaching how to respect human rights"
was
a 39 year old "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist" with "more than a
dozen awards and decorations". The U.S. military sent a highly qualified WMD specialist on a "routine patrol" in Niger to
teach local soldiers "to respect human rights" due to which presumably "the well-being of the
American people" would be "sufficiently enhanced"? Will anyone really buy that bridge?
But who would dare to ask more about this? It is" highly inappropriate " to doubt whatever
the military says. Soon that will change into "verboten". Any doubt, any question will be
declared "fake news" and a sign of devious foreign influence. Whoever spreads such will be
blocked from communicating.
The military is now indeed "Above All". That air force slogan was a remake of a 1933
"Über Alles" campaign in Germany. One wonders what other historic similarities will
develop from it.
Posted by b on October 21, 2017 at 03:58 PM | Permalink
The military junta rely on the US dollar as reserve currency for their lurks and perks. The
more they take power, the faster this will slip away. So called allies will move towards
China/Russia and other currencies.
Dangerous times but the downfall of the US is gaining momentum.
@1 While I understand the temptation to link Trump to Neo-con policies, I think it over
simplifies the issue.
Thierry Meyssan has a recent article in which he questions how seriously we should take
the US's anti-Iran policy. In it he states "We have to keep in mind that Donald Trump is not
a professional politician, but a real estate promoter, and that he acts like one. He gained
his professional success by spreading panic with his outrageous statements and observing the
reactions he had created amongst his competitors and his partners."
That statement is a great summary of one of the key precepts of what I called
'asymmetrical leadership' - which I think characterizes Trumps leadership style (an
application of asymmetrical warfare techniques to the political arena). This does not mean
that the Junta has not taken over control. I would agree with b on this. However, the forms
by which that control get expressed will still run through Trump and will still reflect his
'asymmetric' style.
It does take someone on the other side of the world to give perspective. I don't think it is
as much a military junta as things are falling apart. The generals are attempting to keep
their corrupt war profits flowing. The media moguls still hate Donald Trump; only as an
oligarch hates another. Donald Trump is firing up his base. Expect, the whole of the
alt-right propaganda is false. It relies on the hatred of others. All he will do is speed up
the splintering. If your home is foreclosed, flooded, polluted, burned down or blown apart;
reality is slapping you in the face.
One of your most important posts, b. At first I thought it strange that you would quote Masha
Gessen, an infamous anti-Putin journalist and Khodorkovsky fan, but then it didn't seem so
strange. Gessen is a Zionist, therefore she is aligned with the CIA/Wall Street faction,
which as you perceptively say lost out with Trump and Raqqa. I say Wall Street as opposed to
corporate because, as I have pointed out before, non-financial corporates - and that includes
most of the Dow Jones or FTSE - have fuck all say on anything except how they are going to
meet next quarterly's earnings estimates. And the CIA is very close to Wall Street.
What interests me is how this relates to Iran, on which both factions appear to be in
agreement, but there must be nuances. The Saker published an article where,in my opinion, he
failed to give enough weight to how circumstances around Iran have changed over the last
decade. I see little green men in large green aircraft weaving their way down the Caspian
Sea, not to mention invisible Chinese hardware in the sense of how did it get there, and a
Europe which is in disarray with their tongues hanging out for deals with Iran. The success
of the anti-Trump MSM narrative combined with fears of potentially millions of Iranian
refugees would surely indicate this is the worst possible time to attack Iran. So how can
they conjure a war out of this?
On a far more insidious note, one has to wonder what an radiological 'expert' was doing in
Niger - thanks b for that important piece of info.
When that info is combined with:
1) US Special ops in Mali from 2006
2) US operation Oasis Enabler (2009) looking to infiltrate and control Elite Malian army
units
3) March 2012 Coup brought to power American trained Capt. Amadou Sanogo
4) French Operation Serval, at the request of the 'interim government' fights to control
northern Malian territory and URANIUM mines along the Mali - Niger border (they said they
fought ISIS but what they actually fought was a Tuareg separatist movement)
together with the presence of ISIS (the US trained, evacuated from Syria version?) in the
area... Ominous is hardly strong enough to describe the feeling...
I start my comment by referencing these since the operational doctrine of the Outlaw US
Empire is to keep any such challenges to its perceived dominance--and quest for total
dominance--subdued to the point of insignificance. As you can clearly read, Xi, China, Putin,
Russia, and their allies aren't going to allow any junta to stop their integration and
development plans preparing their nations and region for the future--plans and thinking
woefully absent from any sector of the Outlaw US Empire excepting perhaps weapon development.
The just completed Valdai Conference provides an excellent insight to the drama, the comments
and visions are as important as they're powerful, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/55882
I could pile more of the same for barflies to digest, but I don't think that's required.
There's a very longstanding joke about the joining together of these two words--military
intelligence--and for good reason, particularly within the Outlaw US Empire. I don't think
anyone within the governmental establishment has any idea of what to do about the
Eurasian/Muiltipolar Challenge other than trying to break it--no ideas of how to compete or
join it so as to also profit from it. The reason for this as I see it is ideological--Zero
Sumism and Randian junk economics is so deeply ingrained they've polluted minds to the point
where their blinded and unable to think outside the box they've caged themselves within:
Hoisted by their own petard as the saying goes. They just can't accept Win/Win as something
viable--sharing is for sissies and commies. Problem is that well over half of humanity sees
Win/Win as eminently viable and far more welcome than the demonstrably failed Zero Sum Game
promoted by Randian political-economists and enforced through the barrel a gun.
The deep-seated problems plaguing the USA do have solutions, but they are not those being
forwarded by the very radical conservatives now in charge of Congress and many statehouses.
And the junta members share their mindsets. So, I see the domestic situation continuing to
spiral further out-of-control with no sign anywhere of a countervailing power arising with
the potential to steer the ship-of-state away from the massive reef it's rapidly heading for.
There might be a surprise in store from the junta, however--it might just take on a bit of
the massive corruption plaguing the USA by attacking the Clinton Foundation and its related
sewage. Although, that just solves one part of a huge host of problems.
funny thing that just accord to me that i had not thought of for nearly ten years, one of the
initial "benefits" of the state of Israel, was the cutting off of Africa from asia, and its
pretty glaring that a project to connect Asia Africa and Europe does not include the logical
land route as well.
At least in the times of Caesar and Augustus, military junta who seized power could claim to
be effective and victorious military, able to crush significant enemy armies. The current top
military in the US were at best kiddies the last time the US actually managed to defeat a
truly powerful enemy, back in 1945. (though this criticism can apply to all major powers)
Ah, Masha Gessen, literally cancer. Who elevated her? I find it interesting that she does the
"translating" for the CIA-scripted FX show "The Americans", a show which has probably more
effectively demonized Russians for the cud-chewing crowd than the sum total of Cold War
propaganda since the 50s AND the daily Russian hate columns in Wapo et al that trickle down
to the Buzzfeed crowd.
We need to start calling the CIA traitors, actual traitors. Masha Gessen is CIA, CIA
ghostwrites for most MSM. Traitors all. But even without the constant hagiographies, would
people start to get it? "Americans", I mean?
Here's a bit of what Hamid Karzai at the Valdai Club had to say about what the junta
accomplished in Afghanistan:
"Today, I am one of the greatest critics of the US policy in Afghanistan. Not because I am
anti-Western, I am a very Western person. My education is Western, my ideas are Western. I am
very democratic in my inner instincts. And I love their culture. But I am against the US
policy because it is not succeeding. It is causing us immense trouble and the rise of
extremism and radicalism and terrorism. I am against the US policy because on their watch,
under their total control of the Afghan air space, the Afghan intelligence and the Afghan
military, of all that they have, that super power, there is Daesh in Afghanistan. How come
Daesh emerged in Afghanistan 14–15 years after the US presence in Afghanistan with that
mass of resources and money and expenditure? Why is the world not as cooperative with America
in Afghanistan today as it was before? How come Russia now has doubts about the intentions of
the US in Afghanistan or the result of its work in Afghanistan? How come China does not view
it the same way? How come Iran has immense difficulty with the way things are conducted in
Afghanistan?
"Therefore, as an Afghan in the middle of this great game, I propose to our ally, the
United States, the following: we will all succeed if you tell us that you have failed. We
would understand. Russia would understand, China would understand. Iran, Pakistan, everybody
would understand. India would understand. We have our Indian friends there. We see all signs
of failure there, but if you do not tell us you failed, what is this, a game?"
I doubt the junta will do any better than its performed in Afghanistan because it only
knows how to play the game Karzai describes. Link is same as one above.
We can now add the Air Force being 'Above All' to the supremacist 'exceptional and
indispensable' lunatic attitude in the US that is definitely psychologically the same as
another people that thought they were 'Uber Alles'.
You stated: The insurgency that brought Trump to the top was defeated by a
counter-insurgency campaign waged by the U.S. military. (Historically its first successful
one).
I differ. JFK was taken out by a combined US Naval Intel and CIA plot. The beneficiary was
the MIC. Eleven days later, LBJ reversed the executive order by JFK to end the US involvement
in Nam. For 11 more years the Military got what it wanted--war.
LBJ got what he wanted--the Presidency. The Cuban-Americans got what they wanted--revenge for failure at Bay of Pigs by
Kennedy. The Mafia got what they wanted--revenge for Bobby Kennedy.
One other thing about the counter-insurgency. It was not so much Military. They waited while
the IC ran the leaks and counter-insurgency. Then,Trump fell into the Military's arms. He had
been cut off from his base and key supporters and had to empower them by obedience to their
plans. Foreign policy is what they wanted. He can still have all the domestic policy he can
get, which is basically nothing much. A SC justice, some EOs, and all the Twitter-shit he can
muster.
American democracy is indeed dead. The US Military's only real victory after WWII. After
Vietnam, the generals said: "Freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly and the right
to trial by jury and all that crap has got to go! And they got rid of it all! The Junta is in
control. And the only positive aspect is that we have a rolling Fukushima disaster in Trump,
who could implode and then explode in a nuclear Holocaust any second from all the humiliation
and investigations crushing in on him--if the Junta did not keep tight control over all the
information coming in to him. So you better leave them in place or... BAM! That's the
blackmail. But it only works as long as Trump has sole authority to launch our nuclear
arsenal. If someone else with a 2nd launch key were required to agree, the Junta would no
longer be needed to "protect" us Mafia-style.
Military junta or not b, make no mistake, the real power behind the throne are a cabal of
billionaires who buy their way by co-opting the politicians who make the laws. Democracy is indeed dead here in the U$A. It's now a full-blown Oligarchy.
Re Bill Wedin at 18, you wrote "the blackmail only works as long as Trump has sole authority
to launch our nuclear arsenal."
Authority to launch also includes predelegation to some of the highest ranking military,
in the event of a perceived nuclear attack, in which the National Command Authority is
disrupted and unable to give launch orders. However, this leaves open the question as to
whether the President could be bypassed in the process.
Trident sub commanders also have the necessary launch codes on board to initiate a nuclear
strike. Yes, the codes are under lock and key, but the key is on board.
The current US militarism also reflects on the kneeling during the national anthem, which is
also an ode to the flag in a war setting -- "by the rockets red glare" etc. President Trump
has said the protests (against police killing blacks) are unpatriotic and disrespectful of
military veterans. Trump has initiated a petition: "The President has asked for a list of
supporters who stand for the National Anthem. Add your name below to show your patriotism and
support."
Randolph Bourne (see #8) had some thoughts on this.
. . . We reverence not our country but the flag. We may criticize ever so severely our
country, but we are disrespectful to the flag at our peril. It is the flag and the uniform
that make men's heart beat high and fill them with noble emotions, not the thought of and
pious hopes for America as a free and enlightened nation. It cannot be said that the object
of emotion is the same, because the flag is the symbol of the nation, so that in
reverencing the American flag we are reverencing the nation. For the flag is not a symbol
of the country as a cultural group, following certain ideals of life, but solely a symbol
of the political State, inseparable from its prestige and expansion.
""All along Trump has been the candidate of the military. The other two power centers of the
power triangle, the corporate and the executive government (CIA), had gone for Clinton. The
Pentagon proxy won over the CIA proxy. (Last months' fight over Raqqa was similar - with the
same outcome.)""
I agree with this division of power and would add that Trump is also the candidate of the
police. I see the media though as more being in the CIA/corporate camps. I think the military backing is necessary as you mention to take the CIA down a few
notches. So far I'd say the result in Syria is promising.
I think this CIA/corporate power has to be dealt with first to give progressive/socialist
ideas much of a chance. It's a fine line but the military is supposed to protect against
enemies foreign and domestic.
The corporate part of course has huge power over Congress.
a 39 year old "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist"
This is Niger - Remember back in 2002/2003 :
The Italian letter and Yellow Cake. These days we have Areva mining uranium in Niger
Hence the French military offering both security and protecting the "assets" of French
Establishment. Those soldiers were not ambushed but were conducting a raid and something went
wrong!
If there was a coup Masha would be singing praises free n the rooftop because the waragenda
she is paid to shill for would be back on. The fact that the lying bitch is gnashing her teeth would suggest that the NeoCon agenda,
especially for war against Russia, has been derailed. Fuck you Masha. You suck.
This is great news! I hope the military junta smashes the CIA into little tiny pieces.
Why? Because the US military is in its most easily defeatable state ever - they haven't won a
war in generations, their generals are armchair soldiers most who have never seen combat, and
they have a fondness for massively overpriced technological pieces of MIC enriching garbage
for weapons. The CIA owns the media, and without an effective propaganda arm, the military
will only ever face another Vietnam.
On the topic of losing generals I'm reminded of Harry Truman. A couple of Truman quotes:
"It's the fellows who go to West Point and are trained to think they're gods in uniform that
I plan to take apart". . ."I didn't fire him [General MacArthur] because he was a dumb son of
a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to
three quarters of them would be in jail."
> It's worse now. Most generals got where they are by sucking up, not performing.
> Donald Trump is no Harry Truman, for sure.
Remember CNN? That fake MSM outlet that never tells the truth? Well, they have been skewering Kelly since he ran his mouth about that Florida
congresswoman. So have the other outlets. Huckabee-Sanders is now something of a national
joke after her comments. Kelly's shit doesn't hold up and he's been called out
repeatedly. "It is now "highly inappropriate" to even question the Junta that rules over the
empire." Bullshit.
Look in the Twitter archives and you will find a counter-tweet for almost anything Trump
says, including one criticizing four-star general Colin Powell...
"The slogan and symbol of the campaign was similar to the German "Deutschland Über
Alles" campaign of 1933."
This is once again typical anti-German propaganda that was used to get both WWI and WWII
started, and is now being used against Putin and Russia as well as nationalists across Europe
and the Anglo world. In 1933 France still had control of the Saar and the Rhineland, Germany
was saddled with monumental war debts, and Hitler was clearly not running a campaign on the
slogan "Germany should rule the world", which is what the Anglo-Zionist narrative would have
us believe. The meaning "Über Alles" was clearly "Germany First". That means look out
for the German people first. The Weimar government clearly wasn't doing this. Call it
Hitler's "MAGA".
The real truth is that it is this same US military industrial complex who worked for
Roosevelt, Churchill, and their Zionist masters to get the second world war started, and who
now are desperate for a third. They are sadistic, murdering globalists. Hitler was a
nationalist. He never planned to rule the world the same way the Zionists already do, as is
evidenced by the never ending strife in the Middle East, and their ongoing tribal civil war
which is also being waged within the US government.
This tribal civil war is also spilling over into places like Las Vegas, which clearly is
run by the Jewish Mafia. There still is no plausible motive given for the shooting incident,
but we know that the owners of MGM would never willingly have allowed this to happen on their
own property. So it clearly was a hit, and with Area 51 down the road and all the MIC
contractors in Vegas, it is highly unlikely that they were not involved or at least aware of
the operation.
Here is a LV company where for $3500 you can fly around the desert in a Helicopter
shooting up targets with a SAW-249.
The original meaning of "Deutschland über alles" came about in the early 1800's when
there was no united Germany: it meant that there should be a united Germany above all the
minor German states, duchies and principalities that existed at the time.
For those who want to avoid being datamined by nhs, the original link about "Why Donald Trump
is the perfect tool in the hands of neocons right now" is here: https://failedevolution.blogspot.com/
"One of the soldiers who were killed in Niger while "teaching how to respect human rights"
was a 39 year old "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist" with "more than
a dozen awards and decorations".
The U.S. military sent a highly qualified WMD specialist on a "routine patrol" in Niger to
teach local soldiers "to respect human rights" due to which presumably "the well-being of the
American people" would be "sufficiently enhanced"?" It's all about the uranium in Agades, then?
Trump is either very gullible and ignorant (most likely) or he is diabolically clever.
Everything he does - every action, every appointment, every utterance - could not be better
formulated to undermine the Zioamerican empire. Which is kind of what he promised to do.
The brazen arrogance of these jerks like Kelly is stupefying. Infuriatingly shameless.
The guy has never done an honest day's work IN HIS LIFE, has had his snout in the public
trough continuously and has materially contributed to the ruination of his country. STFU you
stupid twat. He is also a scumbag that no doubt had a lot to do with his son's demise -
imagine being this a-hole's son?
These clowns call themselves "General" and we are supposed to think that puts them in the
same class as a Wellington or a Caesar or Napoleon? They were all first class bastards,
ruthless, but fine Generals. Tough, bold, audacious leaders of men and brilliant strategists,
who took risks, including with their own lives. Hell, the Prussian officer training system
turned out Quartermasters that were better field Generals than these American frauds.
As I have said in another thread, the US has none of the martial virtues. Not as a people,
not as military institutions, not as individual soldiers or sailors (their airmen are
obviously cowards or psychopaths so not necessary even to consider in this context). Virtues
such as steadfastness in adversity, discipline when under fire, self-sacrifice for comrades
and the cause. Not saying anything about the morality of any particular cause here, just what
makes a professional army. To compare the US military with Rome's Legions, say, is laughable.
The biggest difference between these American whackers is that in real armies individuals are
expected to be able to contend with a worthy adversary. To take risks. To fight when it is
HARD to fight. Even Rome's patricians understood that every now and then they had to expose
themselves to danger if they were to have any honour, as Crassus, richest of them all, found
out very dramatically when he met his end at the head of the Syrian Legions. (Defeated by the
Iranians! - they've seen 'em all come and go). Windbags like Kelly wouldn't know what honour
is.
The US has NEVER fought an adversary on anything like equal terms. They preen themselves
about WW2. I call BS. They waited until the Soviets had broken the back of the most fearsome
war machine in history, the Wehrmacht and then faced teenagers and old men in France. On the
occasions when they did face professional German troops they had their whiney arses kicked.
As for the Pacific war, they stood off island after island and rained a stupendous amount of
naval shells and bombs on the Japanese garrisons to the point where they were insane with the
cacophany and pure physical terror to turn your bowels to water, before setting foot on them,
while the aerial destruction of Japanese cities is one of the great atrocities in history,
disgraceful and completely without honour. I suspect a disproportionate number of US military
casualties are due to being run over by a forklift, training accidents, friendly fire,
syphilis or fragging of their own.
The qualities the US military (they don't deserve the epithet "army") exemplifies are
cowardice, incompetence, viciousness and wanton destructiveness. No wonder, as the corruption
(plenty of fiscal as well as moral) starts at the top with the Kellys and drips down like a
putrid slime from there.
He and his ilk are just a bunch of murderous bags of human excrement. No decent person can
have anything but contempt for them.
It is little surprise if a junta has taken over. Many Democrats would support a military
junta over Trump. Now we are hearing similar calls from Republicans.
One of the latest is this opinion piece by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post
from October 12, 2017:
Republicans, it's time to panic The Washington Examiner has a short
summary:
Michael Gerson, who's also a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote in an op-ed Friday
that "the security of our country -- and potentially the lives of millions of people abroad
-- depends on Trump being someone else entirely."
"The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and
decision is upon us. The thin line of sane, responsible advisers at the White House -- such
as Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson -- could break at any moment," Gerson wrote. "The American government now has a
dangerous fragility at its very center. Its welfare is as thin as an eggshell -- perhaps as
thin as Donald Trump's skin."
The op-ed comes amid Trump's feud with Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who warned that the
president's reckless threats could lead to "World War III."
"I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it's a situation of trying
to contain him," Corker told the New York Times.
At this point in history to be US president is to be a criminal.
An "autonomous" US president has not existed at least since JFK, perhaps not since
Lincoln. Kelley, like his boss, routinely "clowns" the media, and however unctuous Kelley's remarks
are, they fit into that mode.
Our generals are weak men. If they weren't, they wouldn't need a Trump, or a whatever to
run for office and win that office.
They can't run and win any better than they can conduct warfare as a rational means to a
rational end; and as the post eloquently points out, again: they are experts at rape, murder,
war crimes, mayhem and destruction. The ubiquitous propaganda to hide that is all they have
that saves them from the penal colony where they belong.
Their project to rule the world would be as successful as any "they destroyed it in order
to save it" attempts.
MG's fragmented consciousness permit her to be rational at times, and irresponsible at
others.
re: Presiding over a population of detainees not charged or convicted of crimes, over whom
he had maximum custodial control, Kelly treated them with brutality. . .
The US needed go show progress in the "war on terror" and one way was to accumulate some
prisoners of the "war." CIA operatives were sent to the tribal areas of Afghanistan &
Pakistan with cash to entice "bounty hunters." It was easy, because every tribal chief had
enemies, which he would capture and present for a big payoff. So the Guantanamo (Gitmo)
prison was set up in Cuba and soon accumulated 7-800 "detainees" who were bullied and
tortured.
None of them were tried because there was no evidence they had done anything wrong.
The Supreme Court ruled that they should have a judicial process but (except a few cases) it
was never done. Most of the prisoners detainees were released, including a
13 yo boy and a 92 yo man, and about 200 remained. I guess it's less now.
Meanwhile the
Washington politicians were able to crow about all those dangerous people in Gitmo, and
prattle about the "recidivism" danger if and when they would be released. What were they
supposed to do, forgive and forget all the terrible treatment they had received?? So yes,
Kelly is scum, but that's not unusual for a general.
The ground work, or state-of-affairs that lead to what one might call a soft military coup in
the US (see b) = within what, at one extreme could be called Ayn-Randian rabid individualism,
and at the other a sort of neo-liberal capitalism which is nevertheless highly 'socialist' in
the sense re-distributive from the center of power (if only to create a slave/subservient
class and prevent uprisings), there is NO public space for 'solidarity' within (besides
familial, or close, etc.)
Therefore, the belonging or 'solidarity' is activated only facing an outside enemy who is
personalised as e.g. communist, ugly dictator, intends to attack the US, poisons babies, etc.
That gives the military an edge.. Then natch, historically, dying empires invest in the
double prong, military conquest + internal control (can be vicious), ain't flash news.
.... I don't think it is all that clear. Corps or better conglomerates of power like 'the
media', the 'silicons', banking and finance, Energy, electronics, Big Pharma, etc. are
politcally inclined (say!) to some form of corporate fascism, > bought pols from all-sides
of any-aisle. Their ties to the military / milit. type power at home are not very strong,
they may collaborate on occasion. Some of these 'industries' fear domination that goes beyond
soft power and they loathe sanctions - think about who/what/how is doing lucrative deals and
has continuing biz success in Iraq, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, etc. - NOT US cos./corps.
To me this looks more like total disorganisation than anything else.
First, if the only two choices were the Executive CIA and the Military "Junta" with Trump
why would we continue the farce of elections? And if the elections were pre-determined and
the ruling Junta took over in a coup, then how and why is the CIA out of power?
Secondly, same question will be here for you when a) the military and Trump get booted
with impeachment, or b) when the next election comes.
Van Morrison once penned "politics, superstition and religion go hand in hand." It never
fails, those out of power go from being logical, critical thinkers to becoming outlandish
bores who exaggerate things and fabricate what they see. It's called delusion.
@J 49 The "farce of elections" is accurate because Trump is not doing what he claimed he would do,
not unusual actually. It was Trump who sprang the "junta" on us. And who claimed that the CIA
would be out of power?
Kelly: So why were they there? They're there working with partners, local -- all across
Africa -- in this case, Niger -- working with partners, teaching them how to be better
soldiers; teaching them how to respect human rights
These guys didn't die teaching, nor in combat in Niger, they were (according to news
reports) trying to track down an accomplice of one Abu Adnan al-Sahraoui. In other words they
were doing police work in a foreign country, an absolutely ridiculous task which they were
not trained or able to do and which put their lives needlessly in danger. This criticism
applies to the whole "war on terror" which has proven to be a tragic farce (if there can be
such a thing).
I used to think it was a counter-coup also. But sheep-dog Sanders and Trump's having
supported Hillary in 2008 among other things caused me to conclude that it all
bullshit. I now believe that the hyper-partisanship is just a show. The political system in the
US is designed to prevent any real populist from gaining power. We are being played. Trump is the Republican Obama.
I really think that this is the case in this instance. Trump is bellicose and erratic. In
the realm of foreign policy and military, it yielded one positive change: his obsession with
ISIS led to huge decrease of fighting between "moderate opposition" in Syria with "SAA and
allies", allowing the latter to effectively reduce the territory controlled by ISIS,
similarly, Obama's efforts to sideline "sectarian forces trained by Iran" from fighting with
ISIS were apparently abandoned with similar effect. But otherwise, no "reset" with Russia,
clown show concerning the nuclear program of North Korea, berating allies who spend
insufficiently to fight threats that they do not have, increasing domestic military budget
(again, to fight threats that we do not have) and so on. Formation of the new axis of evil,
North Korea, Iran and Venezuela is a notable novelty.
Trump was so contradictory is his campaign statements that it is almost amazing that ANY
positive element can be discerned. At the time, I paid attention to his praises of John
Bolton, a proud walrus-American who communicates using bellowing, in other words, resembles a
walrus both in the way he looks, but also in the way he speaks.
Needless to say, Dotard in Chief can exercise power only through underlings that may try
to make sense of what he says. In some cases, like reforming American healthcare according to
his promises, this is flatly impossible. So generals are seemingly in the same position, and
of course, when in doubt, they do what they would do anyway.
Not that I am any more or less in the loop than any of these fine commenters, but what pops
into my mind when reading of the ambush of the four special forces servicemen is the crash of
the helicopter that took out so many of the seal team six who supposedly took out Osama.
Maybe they knew too much would be my guess. Why else would they put such a knowledgable
specialist out on the perimeter? Makes no sense. Offing your own is part and parcel in the
military. Heroes of convenience.
What seems to have been lost in the discussion is what exactly the "counter-coup" is all
about.
1. During the Obama years, "successes" like Lybia and Ukraine were matched by "failures"
like the lost proxy war for Syria and pushing Russia into the arms of China. The new 'Cold
War' makes US nationalism more important as 'hot' conflicts become more likely.
2. Obama/Clinton-led civilian authority was abusing power to promote an "Empire-first"
vision of governance, Obama/Clinton:
>> replaced/retired many military officers;
>> placed US resources/forces in a support role ("leading from behind")
;
>> grew a 'radical center' (aka "Third Way") that sought to undermine traditional
nationalist/patriotism via immigration and divisive 'wedge issues'.
The excuse for this was that while US hands were tied (because public wouldn't support
further adventurism after Iraq) close allies could push forward. But the new Cold War has
changed the calculus.
The US isn't giving up on Empire. It's just a different type of Empire for a different
type of environment. When Trump talks about "draining the swamp" I think he merely refers to
foreign influence.
So Trump pivots US policy based on Obama's record (as Obama did off Bush's record), and
the next President will pivot off Trump's record, but the direction is always the same.
Trump has one ally and that is the 65million voters who put him into office.
He surrendered his top people.
Saker says it was lack of character.
I think when they point the gun at you, your family, your closest friends in your life, you
acquiesce. They even took from him Keith Schiller, his personal security man for years. Kelly forced
him out of the WH.
Trump is powerless except when he functions as Leader of the rallies. As President, even
with the cabal running the Oval Office, they all are limited by the Shadow Government, Deep
State, IC, Khazarian Matrix. No President is a free man empowered to act.
He now is focused on what is possible. Perhaps that will be a tax cut and a few more SC
justices and a few score of judges for the fed district courts. Those don't interfere with
Financial Power and MIC and the Hegemony of Empire.
There is one hope. Putin + Xi.
And we know the limits they face.
Inside the Tyranny of American government, there is no hope. During the Trump time Putin
and Xi have to make the most of the Swamp creating their own problems. It is that moment of
opportunity, though it looks bleak.
One thing for certain, the US military does not want a direct war. It wants more of these
terror conflicts. Africa will become huge over the next few years. Graham is already selling
it big. Trillions of dollars is what is the goal.
SE Asia and Africa are the new big "markets" for MIC. ISIS/AQ are the product. War is the
service industry being sold as the "solution".
The Long War of anti-terror is the scam Smedley Butler told us about in the thirties.
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not
what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It
is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over
here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns
6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the
flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the
bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and
the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has
its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men"
to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels
me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of
this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned
ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my
time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In
short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the
members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service.
My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups.
This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I
helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues
in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of
Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in
1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic
for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went
its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket.
Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could
do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
On the bright side, members of Congress are at least nominally elected. Four star Generals,
not so much. It's still a felony carrying a prison term of 5 to 10 years per incident to lie
to Congress.
The military have no precedent to recommend them either as a source of information or in
their decision making ability. They are way out of their depth when it comes to administering
a nation.
In none of their unwarranted invasions (all the result of bad information and poor judgment)
of other nations have they been successful the day after the bombs stopped falling.
IDIOTS!!! you forget the fact that if clinton won you would first be glowing GREEN and now
dead. On Oct 16th 2016 Putin said "if hillary wins its WW3" on you tube. guess what we are
alive and have to deal with that taxevader trump. we will survive!
The time has long passed since one can ignore JFK's failed insistence on the inspections
of the illegal Israeli nuclear weapons program at Dimona, and then his sudden death.
Factoring Israel into the equation greatly simplifies understanding the make-up of the Warren
Commission, LBJ's about turn on the relation to the illegal nuclear weapons program and his
reaction to the attack on the Liberty, and the evolution of US politics more generally.
One would be more pressed to argue why one thinks it is not a primary cause.
We voted for change and as usual, we got more of the same. All I can say is thank God it's
not Hillary in the White House. At least Trump's not spoiling for a war with Russia.
Democracy has been dead in America for a long time. I'd rather Kelly run the country than
Hillary Clinton. She would have us all annihilated in a war with Russia and China
It's going to be hard to fight a junta. The military is at least halfway competent, something
that can't be said for either the administration or congress. Look at this latest flap - on
the one side you have Wilson the rodeo clown, on the other you have Trump, who can't resist
the urge to pop off on twitter.
Then you have Kelly, who at least comes off like an adult.
Before people start pointing to all the nefarious things the military is doing, let me just
say I'm talking about perception.
Good post sans the Africa bit. They are having a tough time explaining the Niger debacle
to people. I don't think African conflicts have the same glamorous draw as MENA conflicts.
Once the economy goes to shit, it will be an even tougher sell.
Trump is walking a narrow line. He has not brought us into a war with either Russia or
NoKo...yet. This deserves some praise. The media blitz against Trump has always had a twofold
reasoning behind it: it puts pressure on his ego to acquiesce and, two, if he doesn't, the
public has been inoculated against feeling too bad when a lone-gunmen puts a bullet in his
brain. I guess if you believe that, as I do, it explains why even a bumbling policy is a
positive aspect of a Trump presidency, instead of the true-believer approach from Hillary and
her ilk. There really is no other choice. It's either war or watch the empire crumble. The
true believers might have chosen the former, but President Trump, I believe, has sabotaged
that possibility. So take all the Trump-bashers in here with a grain or salt. They are asking
for the stars, but watching the empire's police implode suits me just fine.
"But the white supremacists...KKK!" What a fucking joke.
Moon of Alabama always writes interesting and insightful critiques of the Deep State, the
military, and the imperialist/war party, but falls flat on his face in his naive faith in the
supposed anti-establishment, populist, and America First Nationalist proclivities of Donald
Trump, and his arch-reactionary Svengali Steve Bannon. There is indeed at least one major
split in the ranks of the ruling class, but to present Trump and Bannon as either valiant
figures struggling for the national good, or noble isolated men surrounded by vipers and
traitors is absurd.
Now, in its late imperial decline, the U.S. has become unable to continue to exercise
hegemony, the way it became accustomed to in the first 70+ years in the Post-WW 2 period. The
number one Client/Ally/Master, Israel and their deeply embedded 5th Column in the U.S., the
Zionists with their associated Pro-Zionist factions within the War Party, now nearly directly
and openly controls U.S. foreign policy and military actions in the regions that the Likudnik
faction in Israel cares about (i.e. the Levant, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa).
Hollowed out economically and industrially the U.S. Empire is clearly on the way out. The
various factions fighting for control of policy seem to be oblivious to this basic fact. The
actual situation is similar to that the U.S. participated in during period from the late
1800s - WW 2; the declining hegemon accustomed to calling the shots in international affairs
(then the British Empire, now the U.S.), ends up overextended and committed in far too many
areas, with declining resources and domestic solidarity to dedicate to the tasks; the rising
hegemon (then the U.S. now China) is still focused on issues of internal and external
economic development and the exercise of regional power. China is already either equal in
power to the U.S. or more powerful and will only continue to grow in power as the U.S.
continues to decline. The Israelis/Zionists fully realize that the U.S. would not survive
another disastrous war (like the air war they want the U.S. to wage against Iran, the U.S.
does not have the capability to conduct a land war against Iran) intact. They are willing to
try to force the issue to achieve one more step in their plan to establish "Eretz Israel"
whose territory would extend from the Nile to the Euphrates and from the Sinai to Turkey.
Their plans are just as crazy as those of the NeoCons and the NeoLiberals and their endless
disastrous wars; and Trump/Bannon are their agents in the U.S.
"... The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan.The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don't think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia. ..."
"... Russia bashing became more intense when Washington's coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia. ..."
"... The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex. ..."
"... Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential election or in the state elections. The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas. ..."
The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created
by CIA director John Brennan.The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent
Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security
complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia
has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to
have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary
and to have him impeached. I don't think the Democrats have considered the consequence of
further worsening the relations between the US and Russia.
Public Russia bashing pre-dates Trump. It has been going on privately in neoconservative
circles for years, but appeared publicly during the Obama regime when Russia blocked
Washington's plans to invade Syria and to bomb Iran.
Russia bashing became more intense when Washington's coup in Ukraine failed to deliver
Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their
naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin
Russia.
The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US
foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US
unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and
of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex.
Russia bashing is much larger than merely Russiagate. The danger lies in Washington
convincing Russia that Washington is planning a surprise attack on Russia. With US and NATO
bases on Russia's borders, efforts to arm Ukraine and to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO
provide more evidence that Washington is surrounding Russia for attack. There is nothing more
reckless and irresponsible than convincing a nuclear power that you are going to attack.
Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential
election or in the state elections. The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and
the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas.
These selfish agendas are a dire threat to life on earth.
"... Google is algorithmically burying leftist news and opinion sources such as Alternet, Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News, and Truthout, among others. ..."
"... my political essays are often reposted by right-wing and, yes, even pro-Russia blogs. I get mail from former Sanders supporters, Trump supporters, anarchists, socialists, former 1960s radicals, anti-Semites, and other human beings, some of whom I passionately agree with, others of whom I passionately disagree with. As far as I can tell from the emails, none of these readers voted for Clinton, or Macron, or supported the TPP, or the debt-enslavement and looting of Greece, or the ongoing restructuring of the Greater Middle East (and all the lovely knock-on effects that has brought us), or believe that Trump is a Russian operative, or that Obama is Martin Luther Jesus-on-a-stick. ..."
"... What they share, despite their opposing views, is a general awareness that the locus of power in our post-Cold War age is primarily corporate, or global capitalist, and neoliberal in nature. They also recognize that they are being subjected to a massive propaganda campaign designed to lump them all together (again, despite their opposing views) into an intentionally vague and undefinable category comprising anyone and everyone, everywhere, opposing the hegemony of global capitalism, and its non-ideological ideology (the nature of which I'll get into in a moment). ..."
"... Although the term has been around since the Fifth Century BC, the concept of "extremism" as we know it today developed in the late Twentieth Century and has come into vogue in the last three decades. During the Cold War, the preferred exonymics were "subversive," "radical," or just plain old "communist," all of which terms referred to an actual ideological adversary. ..."
"... Which is why, despite the "Russiagate" hysteria the media have been barraging us with, the West is not going to war with Russia. Nor are we going to war with China. Russia and China are developed countries, whose economies are entirely dependent on global capitalism, as are Western economies. The economies of every developed nation on the planet are inextricably linked. This is the nature of the global hegemony I've been referring to throughout this essay. Not American hegemony, but global capitalist hegemony. Systemic, supranational hegemony (which I like to prefer "the Corporatocracy," as it sounds more poetic and less post-structural). ..."
"... Global capitalism, since the end of the Cold War (i.e, immediately after the end of the Cold War), has been conducting a global clean-up operation, eliminating actual and potential insurgencies, mostly in the Middle East, but also in its Western markets. Having won the last ideological war, like any other victorious force, it has been "clear-and-holding" the conquered territory, which in this case happens to be the whole planet. Just for fun, get out a map, and look at the history of invasions, bombings, and other "interventions" conducted by the West and its assorted client states since 1990. Also, once you're done with that, consider how, over the last fifteen years, most Western societies have been militarized, their citizens placed under constant surveillance, and an overall atmosphere of "emergency" fostered, and paranoia about "the threat of extremism" propagated by the corporate media. ..."
"... Short some sort of cataclysm, like an asteroid strike or the zombie apocalypse, or, you know, violent revolution, global capitalism will continue to restructure the planet to conform to its ruthless interests. The world will become increasingly "normal." The scourge of "extremism" and "terrorism" will persist, as will the general atmosphere of "emergency." There will be no more Trumps, Brexit referendums, revolts against the banks, and so on. Identity politics will continue to flourish, providing a forum for leftist activist types (and others with an unhealthy interest in politics), who otherwise might become a nuisance, but any and all forms of actual dissent from global capitalist ideology will be systematically marginalized and pathologized. ..."
"... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
"... That is certainly what the geopolitical establishment is hoping for, but I remain skeptical of their ability to contain what forces they've used to balance the various camps of dissenting proles. They've painted themselves into a corner with non-white identity politics combined with mass immigration. The logical conclusion of where they're going is pogroms and none of the kleptocracy seem bold enough to try and stop this from happening. ..."
"... Germany is the last EU member state where an anti EU party entered parliament. In the last French elections four out of every ten voters voted on anti EU parties. In Austria the anti EU parties now have a majority. So if I were leading a big corporation, thriving by globalism, what also the EU is, I would be worried. ..."
"... This is a great article. The author's identification of "normality" & "extremism" as Capitalism's go-to concepts for social control is spot on accurate. That these terms can mean anything or nothing & are infinitely flexible is central to their power. ..."
Back in October of 2016, I wrote
a somewhat divisive essay in which I suggested that political dissent is being systematically
pathologized. In fact, this process has been ongoing for decades, but it has been significantly accelerated
since the Brexit referendum and the Rise of Trump (or, rather, the Fall of Hillary Clinton, as it
was Americans' lack of enthusiasm for eight more years of corporatocracy with a sugar coating of
identity politics, and not their enthusiasm for Trump, that mostly put the clown in office.)
In the twelve months since I wrote that piece, we have been subjected to a concerted campaign
of corporate media propaganda for which there is no historical precedent. Virtually every major organ
of the Western media apparatus (the most powerful propaganda machine in the annals of powerful propaganda
machines) has been relentlessly churning out variations on a new official ideological narrative designed
to generate and enforce conformity. The gist of this propaganda campaign is that "Western democracy"
is under attack by a confederacy of Russians and white supremacists, as well as "the terrorists"
and other "extremists" it's been under attack by for the last sixteen years.
I've been writing about this campaign for a year now, so I'm not going to rehash all the details.
Suffice to say we've gone from
Russian operatives hacking the American elections to "Russia-linked" persons "apparently" setting
up "illegitimate" Facebook accounts, "likely operated out of Russia," and publishing ads that are
"indistinguishable from legitimate political speech" on the Internet. This is what the corporate
media is presenting as evidence of
"an unprecedented foreign invasion of American democracy," a handful of political ads on Facebook.
In addition to the Russian hacker propaganda, since August, we have also been treated to relentless
white supremacist hysteria and daily reminders from the corporate media that
"white nationalism is destroying the West." The negligible American neo-Nazi subculture has been
blown up into a biblical Behemoth inexorably slouching its way towards the White House to officially
launch the Trumpian Reich.
At the same time, government and corporate entities have been aggressively restricting (and in
many cases eliminating) fundamental civil liberties such as freedom of expression, freedom of the
press, the right of assembly, the right to privacy, and the right to due process under the law. The
justification for this curtailment of rights (which started in earnest in 2001, following the September
11 attacks) is protecting the public from the threat of "terrorism," which apparently shows no signs
of abating. As of now, the United States has been in
a State of Emergency for over sixteen years. The UK is in
a virtual State of Emergency . France is now in the process of enshrining
its permanent State of Emergency into law. Draconian counter-terrorism measures have been
implemented throughout the EU . Not just
the notorious American police but
police
throughout the West have been militarized . Every other day we learn of some
new emergency security measure designed to keep us safe from "the terrorists," the "lone wolf
shooters," and other "extremists."
Conveniently, since the Brexit referendum and unexpected election of Trump (which is when the
capitalist ruling classes first recognized that they had a widespread nationalist backlash on their
hands), the definition of "terrorism" (or, more broadly, "extremism") has been expanded to include
not just Al Qaeda, or ISIS, or whoever we're calling "the terrorists" these days, but anyone else
the ruling classes decide they need to label "extremists." The FBI has designated Black Lives Matter
"Black Identity Extremists." The FBI and the DHS have designated Antifa
"domestic terrorists."
Whatever your opinion of these organizations and "extremist" persons is beside the point. I'm
not a big fan of neo-Nazis, personally, but neither am I a fan of Antifa. I don't have much use for
conspiracy theories, or a lot of the nonsense one finds on the Internet, but I consume a fair amount
of alternative media, and I publish in CounterPunch, The Unz Review, ColdType, and other non-corporate
journals.
I consider myself a leftist, basically, but my political essays are often reposted by right-wing
and, yes, even pro-Russia blogs. I get mail from former Sanders supporters, Trump supporters, anarchists,
socialists, former 1960s radicals, anti-Semites, and other human beings, some of whom I passionately
agree with, others of whom I passionately disagree with. As far as I can tell from the emails, none
of these readers voted for Clinton, or Macron, or supported the TPP, or the debt-enslavement and
looting of Greece, or the ongoing restructuring of the Greater Middle East (and all the lovely knock-on
effects that has brought us), or believe that Trump is a Russian operative, or that Obama is Martin
Luther Jesus-on-a-stick.
What they share, despite their opposing views, is a general awareness that the locus of power
in our post-Cold War age is primarily corporate, or global capitalist, and neoliberal in nature.
They also recognize that they are being subjected to a massive propaganda campaign designed to lump
them all together (again, despite their opposing views) into an intentionally vague and undefinable
category comprising anyone and everyone, everywhere, opposing the hegemony of global capitalism,
and its non-ideological ideology (the nature of which I'll get into in a moment).
As I wrote in that essay a year ago, "a line is being drawn in the ideological sand." This line
cuts across both Left and Right, dividing what the capitalist ruling classes designate "normal" from
what they label "extremist." The traditional ideological paradigm, Left versus Right, is disappearing
(except as a kind of minstrel show), and is being replaced, or overwritten, by a pathological
paradigm based upon the concept of "extremism."
* * *
Although the term has been around since the Fifth Century BC, the concept of "extremism" as
we know it today developed in the late Twentieth Century and has come into vogue in the last three
decades. During the Cold War, the preferred exonymics were "subversive," "radical," or just plain
old "communist," all of which terms referred to an actual ideological adversary.
In the early 1990s, as the U.S.S.R. disintegrated, and globalized Western capitalism became the
unrivaled global-hegemonic ideological system that it is today, a new concept was needed to represent
the official enemy and its ideology. The concept of "extremism" does that perfectly, as it connotes,
not an external enemy with a definable ideological goal, but rather, a deviation from the norm. The
nature of the deviation (e.g., right-wing, left-wing, faith-based, and so on) is secondary, almost
incidental. The deviation itself is the point. The "terrorist," the "extremist," the "white supremacist,"
the "religious fanatic," the "violent anarchist" these figures are not rational actors whose ideas
we need to intellectually engage with in order to debate or debunk. They are pathological deviations,
mutant cells within the body of "normality," which we need to identify and eliminate, not for ideological
reasons, but purely in order to maintain "security."
A truly global-hegemonic system like contemporary global capitalism (the first of this kind in
human history), technically, has no ideology. "Normality" is its ideology an ideology which erases
itself and substitutes the concept of what's "normal," or, in other words, "just the way it is."
The specific characteristics of "normality," although not quite arbitrary, are ever-changing. In
the West, for example, thirty years ago, smoking was normal. Now, it's abnormal. Being gay was abnormal.
Now, it's normal. Being transgender is becoming normal, although we're still in the early stages
of the process. Racism has become abnormal. Body hair is currently abnormal. Walking down the street
in a semi-fugue state robotically thumbing the screen of a smartphone that you just finished thumbing
a minute ago is "normal." Capitalism has no qualms with these constant revisions to what is considered
normal, because none of them are threats to capitalism. On the contrary, as far as values are concerned,
the more flexible and commodifiable the better.
See, despite what intersectionalists will tell you, capitalism has no interest in racism, misogyny,
homophobia, xenophobia, or any other despotic values (though it has no problem working with these
values when they serve its broader strategic purposes). Capitalism is an economic system, which we
have elevated to a social system. It only has one fundamental value, exchange value, which isn't
much of a value, at least not in terms of organizing society or maintaining any sort of human culture
or reverence for the natural world it exists in. In capitalist society, everything, everyone, every
object and sentient being, every concept and human emotion, is worth exactly what the market will
bear no more, no less, than its market price. There is no other measure of value.
Yes, we all want there to be other values, and we pretend there are, but there aren't, not really.
Although we're free to enjoy parochial subcultures based on alternative values (i.e., religious bodies,
the arts, and so on), these subcultures operate within capitalist society, and ultimately conform
to its rules. In the arts, for example, works are either commercial products, like any other commodity,
or they are subsidized by what could be called "the simulated aristocracy," the ivy league-educated
leisure classes (and lower class artists aspiring thereto) who need to pretend that they still have
"culture" in order to feel superior to the masses. In the latter case, this feeling of superiority
is the upscale product being sold. In the former, it is entertainment, distraction from the depressing
realities of living, not in a society at all, but in a marketplace with no real human values. (In
the absence of any real cultural values, there is no qualitative difference between Gerhard
Richter and Adam Sandler, for example. They're both successful capitalist artists. They're just selling
their products in different markets.)
The fact that it has no human values is the evil genius of global capitalist society. Unlike the
despotic societies it replaced, it has no allegiance to any cultural identities, or traditions, or
anything other than money. It can accommodate any form of government, as long as it plays ball with
global capitalism. Thus, the window dressing of "normality" is markedly different from country to
country, but the essence of "normality" remains the same. Even in countries with state religions
(like Iran) or state ideologies (like China), the governments play by the rules of global capitalism
like everyone else. If they don't, they can expect to receive a visit from global capitalism's Regime
Change Department (i.e., the US military and its assorted partners).
Which is why, despite the "Russiagate" hysteria the media have been barraging us with, the
West is not going to war with Russia. Nor are we going to war with China. Russia and China are developed
countries, whose economies are entirely dependent on global capitalism, as are Western economies.
The economies of every developed nation on the planet are inextricably linked. This is the nature
of the global hegemony I've been referring to throughout this essay. Not American hegemony, but global
capitalist hegemony. Systemic, supranational hegemony (which I like to prefer "the Corporatocracy,"
as it sounds more poetic and less post-structural).
We haven't really got our minds around it yet, because we're still in the early stages of it,
but we have entered an epoch in which historical events are primarily being driven, and societies
reshaped, not by sovereign nation states acting in their national interests but by supranational
corporations acting in their corporate interests. Paramount among these corporate interests is the
maintenance and expansion of global capitalism, and the elimination of any impediments thereto. Forget
about the United States (i.e., the actual nation state) for a moment, and look at what's been happening
since the early 1990s. The US military's "disastrous misadventures" in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan,
Syria, and the former Yugoslavia, among other exotic places (which have obviously had nothing to
do with the welfare or security of any actual Americans), begin to make a lot more sense.
Global capitalism, since the end of the Cold War (i.e, immediately after the end of the Cold
War), has been conducting a global clean-up operation, eliminating actual and potential insurgencies,
mostly in the Middle East, but also in its Western markets. Having won the last ideological war,
like any other victorious force, it has been
"clear-and-holding" the
conquered territory, which in this case happens to be the whole planet. Just for fun, get out a map,
and look at the history of invasions, bombings, and other "interventions" conducted by the West and
its assorted client states since 1990. Also, once you're done with that, consider how, over the last
fifteen years, most Western societies have been militarized, their citizens placed under constant
surveillance, and an overall atmosphere of "emergency" fostered, and paranoia about "the threat of
extremism" propagated by the corporate media.
I'm not suggesting there's a bunch of capitalists sitting around in a room somewhere in their
shiny black top hats planning all of this. I'm talking about systemic development, which is a little
more complex than that, and much more difficult to intelligently discuss because we're used to perceiving
historico-political events in the context of competing nation states, rather than competing ideological
systems or non-competing ideological systems, for capitalism has no competition . What it
has, instead, is a variety of insurgencies, the faith-based Islamic fundamentalist insurgency and
the neo-nationalist insurgency chief among them. There will certainly be others throughout the near
future as global capitalism consolidates control and restructures societies according to its values.
None of these insurgencies will be successful.
Short some sort of cataclysm, like an asteroid strike or the zombie apocalypse, or, you know,
violent revolution, global capitalism will continue to restructure the planet to conform to its ruthless
interests. The world will become increasingly "normal." The scourge of "extremism" and "terrorism"
will persist, as will the general atmosphere of "emergency." There will be no more Trumps, Brexit
referendums, revolts against the banks, and so on. Identity politics will continue to flourish, providing
a forum for leftist activist types (and others with an unhealthy interest in politics), who otherwise
might become a nuisance, but any and all forms of actual dissent from global capitalist ideology
will be systematically marginalized and pathologized.
This won't happen right away, of course. Things are liable to get ugly first (as if they weren't
ugly enough already), but probably not in the way we're expecting, or being trained to expect by
the corporate media. Look, I'll give you a dollar if it turns out I'm wrong, and the Russians, terrorists,
white supremacists, and other "extremists" do bring down "democracy" and launch their Islamic, white
supremacist, Russo-Nazi Reich, or whatever, but from where I sit it looks pretty clear tomorrow belongs
to the Corporatocracy.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin.
His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut
novel,
ZONE
23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at
cjhopkins.com or
consentfactory.org .
Brilliant Article. But this has been going on for nearly a century or more. New York Jewish bankers
fund the Bolshevik revolution which gets rid of the Romanov dynasty and many of the revolutionaries
are not even Russian. What many people do not know is that many Western companies invested money
in Bolshevik Russia as the Bolsheviks were speeding up the modernising of the country. What many
do not know is that Feminism, destruction of families and traditional societies, homoerotic art
etc . was forced on the new Soviet population in a shock therapy sort of way. The same process
has been implemented in the West by the elites using a much slower 'boiling the frog' method using
Cultural Marxism. The aim of the Soviet Union was to spread Communism around the World and hence
bring about the One World Government as wished by the globalists. Their national anthem was the
'Internationale'. The globalists were funding revolutionary movements throughout Europe and other
parts of the world. One such attempt went extremely wrong and that was in Germany where instead
of the Communists coming in power, the National Socialists come in power which was the most dangerous
challenge faced by the Zio/globalists/elite gang. The Globalists force a war using false flag
events like Pearl Harbour etc and crushed the powers which challenged their rule i.e. Germany,
Japan and Italy. That is why Capitalist USA funded Communist Soviet Union using the land lease
program, which on the surface never makes any sense.
However in Soviet Russia, a power struggle leads to Stalin destroying the old Communist order
of Lenin Trotsky. Trotsky and his supporters leave the Soviet Union. Many of the present Neo Cons
are ex Trotskyites and hence the crazy hatred for Russia even today in American politics. These
Neocons do not have any principles, they will use any ideology such as Communism, Islam, twisted
Western Conservatism anything to attain their global goals.
Now with Stalin coming to power, things actually improved and the war with Hitler's Third Reich
gave Stalin the chance to purge many old school globalist commies and then the Soviet Union went
towards a more nationalist road. Jews slowly started losing their hold on power with Russians
and eventually other Soviets gaining more powerful positions. These folks found the ugly modern
art culture of the early Soviet period revolting and started a new movement where the messages
of Socialism can be delivered with more healthy beautiful art and culture. This process was called
'Social Realism'. So strangely what happened was that the Capitalist Christian West was becoming
more and more less traditional with time (Cultural Marxism/Fabien Socialism via media, education,
Hollywood) while the Eastern block was slowly moving in an opposite direction. The CIA (which
is basically the intelligence agency arm of Wall Street Bankers) was working to stop this 'Social
Realism' movement.
These same globalists also funded Mao and pulled the rug under Chiang Kai Shek who they were
supporting earlier. Yes, Mao was funded by the Rockerfeller/ Rothschild Cabal. Now, even if the
Globalists were not happy with Stalin gaining power in the Soviet Union (they preferred the internationalist
Trotskyites), they still found that they could work out with the Soviet Union. That is why during
the 2nd World war, the USA supports the USSR with money and material, Stalin gets a facelift as
'friendly Uncle Joe' for the Western audience. Many Cossack families who had escaped the Soviet
Union to the West were sent to their deaths after the War to the Soviet Union. Why? Mr. Eden of
Britain who could not stand Hitler wanted a New World Order where they could work with the more
murderous Soviet Union.
Now we have the cold war. What is not known is that behind the scenes at a higher level, the
Americans and the Soviets cooperated with each other exchanging technology, basically the cold
war was quite fake. But the Cold war gave the American government (basically the Globalists) to
take American Tax payers hard earned money to fund many projects such as Star Wars programme etc
All this was not needed, as a gentleman named Keenan had shown in his book that all the Americans
needed to do was to make sure Japan, Germany and Britain did not fall to the Soviets, that's it.
Thus trillions of American tax payer money would be saved. But obviously the Military Industrial
Complex did not like that idea. Both the Soviet and the American governments got the excuse spend
their people's hard money on weapons research as well as exchanging some of that technology in
the back ground. It is during this period that the precursor to the Internet was already developed.
Many of the technology we use today was already invented much earlier by government agencies but
released to the people later.
Then we have the Vietnam war. Now you must realise that the Globalist government of America
uses wars not only to change enemy societies but also the domestic society in the West. So during
the Vietnam War, the US government using the alphabet agencies such as the CIA kick start the
fake opposition hippie movements. The CIA not only drugged the Vietnamese population using drugs
from the Golden Triangle but later released them on the home population in the USA and the West.
This was all part of the Cultural Marxist plan to change or social engineer American/ Western
society. Many institutes like the Travestock Institute were part of this process. For example
one of the main hochos of the Cultural Marxism, a Mr. Aderno was closely related to the Beatles
movement.
Several experiments was done on mind control such as MK Ultra, monarch programming, Edward
Bernay's works etc Their aim was to destroy traditional Western society and the long term goal
is a New World Order. Blacks for example were used as weapons against Whites at the same time
the black social order was destroyed further via the media etc
Now, Nixon going to China was to start a long term (long planned) process to bring about Corporate
Communism. Yes that is going to be economic system in the coming New World Order. China is the
test tube, where the Worst of Communism and the Worst of Crony Capitalism be brought together
as an experiment. As the Soviet Union was going in a direction, the globalist was not happy about
(it was becoming more nationalist), they worked to bring the Soviet Union down and thus the Soviet
experiment ended only to be continued in China.
NATO today is the core military arm of the globalists, a precursor to a One World Military
Force. That explains why after the Warsaw pact was dismantled, NATO was not or why NATO would
interfere in the Middle East which is far away from the Atlantic Ocean.
The coming Cashless society will finally lead to a moneyless or distribution society, in other
words Communism, that is the long term plan.
My point is, many of the geo political events as well as social movements of the last century
(feminism for example) were all planned for a long time and are not accidents. The coming technologies
like the internet of things, 5G technology, Cashless society, biometric identification everywhere
etc are all designed to help bring about the final aim of the globalists. The final aim is a one
world government with Corporate ruled Communism where we, the worker bees will be living in our
shitty inner city like ghetto homes eating GM plastic foods and listening to crappy music. That
is the future they have planned for us. A inner city ghetto like place under Communism ruled by
greedy evil corporates.
"Short some sort of cataclysm, like an asteroid strike or the zombie apocalypse, or, you know,
violent revolution, global capitalism will continue to restructure the planet to conform to its
ruthless interests."
That is certainly what the geopolitical establishment is hoping for, but I remain skeptical
of their ability to contain what forces they've used to balance the various camps of dissenting
proles. They've painted themselves into a corner with non-white identity politics combined with
mass immigration. The logical conclusion of where they're going is pogroms and none of the kleptocracy
seem bold enough to try and stop this from happening.
That is certainly what the geopolitical establishment is hoping for, but I remain skeptical
of their ability to contain what forces they've used to balance the various camps of dissenting
proles.
There must be some evidence for your assertions about the long term plans and aims of globalists
and others if there is truth in them. The sort of people you are referring to would often have
kept private diaries and certainly written many hundreds or thousands of letters. Can you give
any references to such evidence of say 80 to 130 years ago?
.. puzzling that the writer feels the need to virtue-signal by saying he "doesn't have much
time for conspiracy theories" while condemning an absolutely massive conspiracy to present establishment
lies as truth.
That is one of the most depressing demonstrations of the success of the ruling creeps that
I have yet come across.
Germany is the last EU member state where an anti EU party entered parliament. In the last
French elections four out of every ten voters voted on anti EU parties. In Austria the anti EU
parties now have a majority. So if I were leading a big corporation, thriving by globalism, what
also the EU is, I would be worried.
"See, despite what intersectionalists will tell you, capitalism has no interest in racism, misogyny,
homophobia, xenophobia, or any other despotic values (though it has no problem working with these
values when they serve its broader strategic purposes). Capitalism is an economic system, which
we have elevated to a social system. It only has one fundamental value, exchange value, which
isn't much of a value, at least not in terms of organizing society or maintaining any sort of
human culture or reverence for the natural world it exists in. In capitalist society, everything,
everyone, every object and sentient being, every concept and human emotion, is worth exactly what
the market will bear no more, no less, than its market price. There is no other measure of value."
This is a great article. The author's identification of "normality" & "extremism" as Capitalism's
go-to concepts for social control is spot on accurate. That these terms can mean anything or nothing
& are infinitely flexible is central to their power.
Mr Hopkins is also correct when he points out that Capitalism has essentially NO values (exchange
value is a value, but also a mechanism). Again, Capitalism stands for nothing: any form of government
is acceptable as long as it bows to neoliberal markets.
However, the author probably goes to far:
"Nor are we going to war with China. Russia and China are developed countries, whose economies
are entirely dependent on global capitalism, as are Western economies. The economies of every
developed nation on the planet are inextricably linked. This is the nature of the global hegemony
I've been referring to throughout this essay. Not American hegemony, but global capitalist hegemony.
Systemic, supranational hegemony".
Capitalism has no values: however the Masters of the capitalist system most certainly do: Capitalism
is a means, the most thorough, profound means yet invented, for the attainment of that value which
has NO exchange value: POWER.
Capitalism is a supranational hegemony – yet the Elites which control it, who will act as one
when presented with any external threats to Capitalism itself, are not unified internally. Indeed,
they will engage in cut throat competition, whether considered as individuals or nations or as
particular industries.
US Imperialism is not imaginary, it is not a mere appearance or mirage of Capitalism, supranational
or not. US Imperialism in essence empowers certain sets of Capitalists over other sets. No, they
may not purposely endanger the System as a whole, however, that still leaves plenty of space for
aggressive competition, up to & including war.
Imperialism is the political corollary to the ultimate economic goal of the individual Capitalist:
Monopoly.
Psychologically daring (being no minstrel to corporatocracy nor irrelevant activism and other
"religions" that endorse the current world global system as the overhead), rationally correct,
relevant, core definition of the larger geo-world and deeper "ideological" grounding( in the case
of capitalism the quite shallow brute forcing of greed as an incentive, as sterile a society as
possible), and adhering to longer timelines of reality of planet earth. Perfectly captures the
"essence" of the dynamics of our times.
The few come to the authors' through-sites by many venue-ways, that's where some of the corporocratic
world, by sheer statistics wind up also. Why do they not get the overhand into molding the shallow
into anything better in the long haul. No world leader, no intellectual within power circles,
even within confined quarters, speaks to the absurdity of the ongoing slugging and maltering of
global human?
The elites of now are too dumb to consider the planet exo-human as a limited resource. Immigration,
migration, is the de facto path to "normalization" in the terms of the author. Reducing the world
population is not "in" the capitalist ideology. A major weakness, or if one prefers the stake
that pinches the concept of capitalism: more instead of quality principles.
The game changers, the possible game changers: eugenics and how they play out as to the elites
( understanding the genome and manipulating it), artificial intelligence ( defining it first,
not the "Elon Musk" definition), and as a far outlier exo-planetary arguments.
Confront the above with the "unexpected", the not-human engineered possible events (astroids
and the like, secondary effects of human induced toxicity, others), and the chances to get to
the author's "dollar" and what it by then might mean is indeed tiny.
As to the content, one of the utmost relevant articles, it is "art" to condense such broad
a world view into a few words, it requires a deep understanding foremost, left to wonder what
can be grasped by most reading above. Some-one try the numbers?, "big data" anyone, they might
turn out in favor of what the author undoubtedly absorbed as the nucleus of twenty-first thinking,
strategy and engineering.
This kind of thinking and "Harvard" conventionality, what a distance.
Great article, spot on. Indeed we are all at the mercy now of a relatively small clique of ruthless
criminals who are served by armies of desensitized, stupid mercenaries: MBAs, politicians, thugs,
college professors, "whorenalists", etc. I am afraid that the best answer to the current and future
dystopia is what the Germans call "innere Emigration," to psychologically detach oneself
from the contemporary world.
Thus, the only way out of this hellhole is through reading and thinking, which every self-respecting
individual should engage in. Shun most contemporary "literature" and instead turn to the classics
of European culture: there you will find all you need.
For an earlier and ever so pertinent analysis of the contemporary desert, I can heartily recommend
Umberto Galimberti's I vizi capitali e i nuovi vizi (Milan, 2003).
And yes, another verbally strong expression of the in your face truth, though for so few to
grasp. The author again has a deep understanding, if one prefers, it points to the venueway of
coming to terms, the empirical pathway as to the understanding.
"Plasticky" society is my preferred term for designating the aberrance that most (within the
elites), the rest who cares (as an historical truth), do not seem to identify as proper cluelessness
in the light of longer timelines. The current global ideology, religion of capitalism-democracy
is the equivalent of opportunistic naval staring of the elites. They are not aware that suffocation
will irreversibly affect oneself. Not enough air is the equivalent of no air in the end.
The negligible American neo-Nazi subculture has been blown up into a biblical Behemoth inexorably
slouching its way towards the White House to officially launch the Trumpian Reich.
While the above is true, I hope most folks understand that the basic concept of controlling
people through fear is nothing new. The much vaunted constitution was crammed down our collective
throats by the rich scoundrels of the time in the words of more than one anti-federalist through
the conjuring of quite a set of threats, all bogus.
I address my most fervent prayer to prevent our adopting a system destructive to liberty
We are told there are dangers, but those dangers are ideal; they cannot be demonstrated.
- Patrick Henry, Foreign Wars, Civil Wars, and Indian Wars -- Three Bugbears, June 5, 7,
and 9, 1788
Bottom line: Concentrated wealth and power suck.The USA was ruled by a plutoligarchy from its
inception, and the material benefits we still enjoy have occurred not because of it but
despite it.
For today's goofy "right wing" big business "conservatives" who think the US won WW2, I got news
for you. Monopoly capitalism, complete with increasing centralization of the economy and political
forces were given boosts by both world wars.
It was precisely in reaction to their impending defeat at the hands of the competitive storms
of the market tha t business turned, increasingly after the 1900′s, to the federal government
for aid and protection. In short, the intervention by the federal government was designed,
not to curb big business monopoly for the sake of the public weal, but to create monopolies
that big business (as well as trade associations smaller business) had not been able
to establish amidst the competitive gales of the free market. Both Left and Right have been
persistently misled by the notion that intervention by the government is ipso facto leftish
and anti-business. Hence the mythology of the New-Fair Deal-as-Red that is endemic on the Right.
Both the big businessmen, led by the Morgan interests, and Professor Kolko almost uniquely
in the academic world, have realized that monopoly privilege can only be created by the
State and not as a result of free market operations.
-Murray N. Rothbard, Rothbard Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty, [Originally appeared
in Left and Right, Spring 1965, pp. 4-22.]
It was all about connecting the dots really. Connecting the dots of too many books I have gobe
through and videos I have seen. Too many to list here.
You can get a lot of info from the book 'Tragedy and Hope' by Carroll Quigley though he avoids
mantioning Jews and calls it the Anglo American establishment, Anthony Sutton however I completely
disagree about funding of the Third Reich but he does talk a lot about the secret relationship
between the USA and the USSR, Revilo Oliver etc.. etc Well you could read the Protocols. Now if
you think that the protocols was a forgery, you gotta see this, especially the last part.
Also check this out
Also check out what this Wall Street guy realised in his career.
Also this 911 firefighter, what he found out after some research
Capitalism is an economic system, which we have elevated to a social system. It only
has one fundamental value, exchange value, which isn't much of a value, at least not in terms
of organizing society or maintaining any sort of human culture or reverence for the natural
world it exists in. In capitalist society, everything, everyone, every object and sentient
being, every concept and human emotion, is worth exactly what the market will bear no more,
no less, than its market price. There is no other measure of value.
This looks like the "financialization" of society with Citizens morphing into Consumers.
And it's worth saying that Citizenship and Consumership are completely different concepts:
Citizenship – Dictionary.com
1. – the state of being vested with the rights, privileges, and duties of a citizen.
2. – the character of an individual viewed as a member of society;behavior in terms of the
duties, obligations, and functions of a citizen:
an award for good citizenship.
The Consumer – Dictionary.com
1. a person or thing that consumes.
2. Economics. a person or organization that uses a commodity or service.
A good citizen can then define themselves in a rather non-selfish, non-financial way as for
example, someone who respects others, contributes to local decisions (politically active), gains
respect through work and ethical standards etc.
A good consumer on the other hand, seems to be more a self-idea, essentially someone who buys
and consumes a lot (financial idea), has little political interest – and probably defines themselves
(and others) by how they spend money and what they own.
It's clear that US, and global capitalism, prefers active consumers over active citizens, and
maybe it explains why the US has such a worthless and dysfunctional political process.
Some folks are completely unable to connect the dots even when spoon fed the evidence. You'll
note that some, in risible displays of quasi-intellectual arrogance, make virtually impossible
demands for proof, none of which they'll ever accept. Rather, they flock to self aggrandizing
mythology like flies to fresh sewage which the plutoligarchy produces nearly infinitely.
Your observations appear pretty accurate and self justifying I'd say.
Look up the film director Aaron Russo (recently deceased), discussing how David Rockefeller
tried to bring him over to the dark side. Rockefeller discussed for example the women's movement,
its engineering. Also, there's Aldous Huxley's speech The Ultimate Revolution, on how drugs are
the final solution to rabble troubles–we will think we're happy even in the most appalling societal
conditions.
I can only say Beware of Zinn, best friend of Chomsky, endlessly tauted by shysters like Amy
Goodman and Counterpunch. Like all liberal gatekeepers, he wouldn't touch 911. I saw him speak
not long before he died, and when questioned on this he said, 'That was a long time ago, let's
talk about now.'
This from a professed historian, and it was only 7 years after 911. He seemed to have the same
old Jewish agenda, make Europeans look really bad at all times. He was always on message, like
the shyster Chomsky. Sincerely probing for the truth was not part of his agenda; his truths were
highly selective, and such a colossal event as 911 concerned him not at all, with the ensuing
wars, Patriot Acts, bullshit war on Terror, etc etc
" capitalism has no interest in racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, or any other despotic
values (though it has no problem working with these values when they serve its broader strategic
purposes). Capitalism is an economic system, which we have elevated to a social system."
This is a typical Left Lie. Capitalism in its present internationalist phase absolutely requires
Anti-Racism to lubricate sales uh, internationally and domestically. We are all Equal.
Then, the ticking-off of the rest of the bad isms, and labeling them 'despotic' is another
Leftwing and poetic attack on more or less all of us white folks, who have largely invented Capitalism,
from a racialist point of view.
"Poetic" because it is an emotional appeal, not a rational argument. The other 'despotisms'
are not despotic, unless you claim, like I do that racial personalities are more, or less despotic,
with Whites being the least despotic. The Left totalitarian thinks emotional despotism's source
is political or statist. It are not. However, Capitalism has been far less despotic than communism,
etc.
Emotional Despotism is part of who Homo Sapiens is, and this emotional despotism is not racially
equal. Whites are the least despotic, and have organized law and rules to contain such despotism.
Systems arise naturally from the Human Condition, like it or not. The attempt here is to sully
the Capitalist system, and that is all it is. This article itself is despotic propaganda.
Arguably, human nature is despotic, and White civilization has attempted to limit our despotic
nature.
This is another story.
As for elevating capitalism into a 'social system' .this is somewhat true. However, that is
not totally bad, as capitalism delivers the goods, which is the first thing, after getting out
of bed.
The second thing, is having a conformable social environment, and that is where racial accord
enters.
People want familiar and trustworthy people around them and that is just the way human nature
is genetic similarity, etc.
Beyond that, the various Leftie complaints-without-end, are also just the way it is. And yes
they can be addressed and ameliorated to some degree, but human nature is not a System to be manipulated,
even thought the current crop of scientistic lefties talk a good storyline about epigenetics and
other Hopes, false of course, like communist planning which makes its first priority, Social Change
which is always despotic. Society takes care of itself, especially racial society.
As Senator Vail said about the 1924 Immigration Act which held the line against Immigration,
"if there is going to be any changing being done, we will do it and nobody else." That 'we' was
a White we.
Capitalism must be national. International capital is tyranny.
US oil companies make about five cents off a single gallon of gasoline, on the other hand US
Big Government taxes on a single gallon are around seventy-one cents for US states & rising, the
tax is now $1.00 per gallon for CA.
IOW, greedy US governments make fourteen to twenty times what oil companies make, and it is
the oil companies who make & deliver the vital product to the marketplace.
And that is just in the US. Have a look at Europe's taxes. My, my.
Some agendas require the "state sponsored" part to be hidden.
That is part of the reason why the constitutional convention was held in secret as well.
The cunning connivers who ram government down our throats don't like their designs exposed,
and it's an old trick which nearly always works.
Here's Aristophanes on the subject. His play is worth a read. Short and great satire on the
politicians of the day.
SAUSAGE-SELLER
No, Cleon, little you care for his reigning in Arcadia, it's to pillage and impose on the
allies at will that you reckon; y ou wish the war to conceal your rogueries as in a mist,
that Demos may see nothing of them, and harassed by cares, may only depend on yourself for
his bread. But if ever peace is restored to him, if ever he returns to his lands to comfort
himself once more with good cakes, to greet his cherished olives, he will know the blessings
you have kept him out of, even though paying him a salary; and, filled with hatred and rage,
he will rise, burning with desire to vote against you. You know this only too well; it is
for this you rock him to sleep with your lies.
The first loyalty of jews is supposed to be to jews.
Norman Finkelstein is called a traitor by jews, the Dutch jew Hamburger is called a traitor
by Dutch jews, he's the chairman of 'Een ander joodse geluid', best translated by 'another jewish
opinion', the organisation criticises Israel.
Jewish involvement in Sept 11 seems probable, the 'dancing Israelis', the assertion that most
jews working in the Twin Towers at the time were either sick or took a day off, the fact that
the Towers were jewish property, ready for a costly demolition, much abestos in the buildings,
thus the 'terrorist' act brought a great profit.
Can one expect a jew to expose things like this ?
On his book, I did not find inconsistencies with literature I already knew.
The merit of the book is listing many events that affected common people in the USA, and destroying
the myth that 'in the USA who is poor has only himself to blame'.
This nonsense becomes clear even from the diaries of Harold L Ickes, or from Jonathan Raban
Bad Land, 1997.
As for Zinn's criticism of the adored USA constitution, I read that Charles A Beard already
in 1919 resigned because he also criticised this constitution.
Indeed, in our countries about half the national income goes to the governments by taxes, this
is the reason a country like Denmark is the best country to live in.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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© Reuters / Jonathan Ernst Inconvenient thoughts on Cold War and other news. Intelligence agencies, Nikki Haley, sanctions, and public opinion. 1. National intelligence agencies have long played major roles, often not entirely visible, in international politics. They are doing so again today, as is evident in several countries, from Russiagate in the United States and the murky Skripal assassination attempt in the UK to the apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. Leaving aside what President Obama knew about Russiagate allegations against Donald Trump and when he knew it, the question arises as to whether these operations were ordered by President Putin and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) or were " rogue " operations unknown in advance by the leaders and perhaps even directed against them.
Putin compares Khashoggi case to Skripal poisoning, asks why Russia condemned despite lack of proof
'Ambitious as Lucifer': Steve Bannon takes dig at Nikki Haley and her 'suspicious' resignation
Image copyright REUTERS
Erdogan urges Turks to dump dollar to support lira
